Lately, a number of readers have forwarded me Microsoft End User Licensing Agreements (EULAs) for a variety of recent products and updates, wondering whether language in these documents gives the software giant the right to examine their PCs and gather personal data. The situation has been exacerbated by sensational news reports, which quote sections of text from the EULAs, as if Microsoft might include some silver bullet that would prove, once and for all, that all its talk about protecting user privacy was just hogwash. After all, a reader noted just this morning, doesn't this prove that Microsoft is simply continuing the behavior that got it into antitrust trouble?
The Portuguese cable TV company that launched the first interactive TV service using Microsoft Corp. software last year said on Tuesday it has overcome technical hitches which have prevented hoped-for mass marketing. Launched with a fanfare in June 2001, interactive TV is part of a move to make Microsoft less dependent on cyclical personal computer sales by expanding into software for other devices. To underline the point, Microsoft's Chief Executive Steve Balmer flew over to Lisbon for the commercial start-up of interactive TV software on TV Cabo. Initial forecasts were that 100,000 clients would sign up for interactive TV by the end of 2001, yet by November barely 2,500 had done so and TV Cabo officials declined to say exactly how many clients they have currently.
Microsoft is setting itself up as a one-man band for subscriptions and services based on its Windows Media technology as part of a highly anticipated upgrade due next month, according to people familiar with the product.
The Windows Media 9 Player, which goes into public beta, or test, on Sept. 4, adds a new "Services" tab that initially allows consumers to sign up for a trial subscription to Pressplay, an online music service backed by Sony and Vivendi Universal. The move is part of Microsoft's increased emphasis on Web services and also an attempt to compete against similar offerings from competitors AOL Time Warner and RealNetworks, which are partners in a competing music service known as MusicNet.
Microsoft is poised for an onslaught into the security software market that could displace many of the sector's leading vendors, IDC analyst Chris Christiansen forecast Tuesday during a keynote address here at CIBC World Markets' Enterprise and E-Business Software Conference.
Microsoft is backing its pledge to make security a top priority with significant research and development investment, and future releases of its major products will be "considerably cleaner," said Christiansen, vice president of IDC's e-business infrastructure and Internet security software program, in Framingham, Massachusetts. IDC is a unit of International Data Group, the parent company of the IDG News Service.
During a news conference on steps Microsoft is taking to comply with the antitrust settlement, company officials said Windows XP Service Pack 1 (SP1) will be available in the next two months. "Late in August or September, Windows XP SP1 will be released," said Microsoft senior vice president and general counsel Brad Smith. Smith later clarified that the release could come in the latter part of September. "We will meet the deadline that we have set for ourselves to ship it this summer. There is still some chance that it will slip."
In Windows XP SP1, Microsoft will introduce two feature elements intended by the government to prevent the company from unfairly exploiting its desktop monopoly to encourage use of its middleware products. Included in the settlement are Internet Explorer -- which was at the heart of the antitrust case -- Windows Media Player, Windows Messenger, the Microsoft Java Virtual Machine and Outlook Express.
What do you do when your hobby -security- becomes your job? You chase other people whose hobby is hacking. That's the role Scott Charney has taken since he started working on security for the U.S. Justice Department in the early 1990s and, most recently, as Microsoft's chief security strategist.In January, Microsoft pegged Charney to replace Howard Schmidt, who left the company to become vice chairman of the President's Critical Infrastructure Protection Board, a federal commission. Charney assumed his duties in April. He arrives at Microsoft at a time when virtually everyone is thinking security, spurred by last year's terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. Charney testified about cyberterrorism last month on Capitol Hill.
Despite over half a decade of hype, undeserved level of press coverage, and unsubstantiated claims about the product's superiority to Windows and other operating systems, open source poster child Linux still managed to see its market shrink last year, according to reports by market researchers IDC and NPD Intelect. According to the IDC report, revenue generated by Linux shrank 5 percent in 2001, the first time the fledgling OS has seen its market contract. A similar report by NPD Intelect says that the Linux market shrunk 10.2 percent last year.
Microsoft Tuesday launched a .Net Web service in association with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and The Nasdaq Stock Market that will enable investors and analysts to access financial data stored on the Internet and analyze that data using Microsoft Office.
The Web service makes use of an industry standard data format called XBRL (Extensible Business Reporting Language), which is being developed as a standard way to represent data in business and financial reports. XBRL is a schema based on XML (Extensible Markup Language) and was designed with the intent of eliminating paper financial reports and replacing them with digital reports that can be delivered over the Internet.
Cornell University's research center for advanced computing said on Monday it will get $60 million to develop supercomputers using technology from Dell, Intel and Microsoft. Cornell Theory Center said the new agreement to get resources from the companies will allow it to double the size of its supercomputing "cluster" system, which already runs on servers, chips and software made by the three, and develop more affordable supercomputing systems. High performance computing is no longer limited to huge computers built by companies such as Cray Inc. and NEC, but now includes systems built with off-the-shelf components arranged in "clusters" that share the large computations by dividing up the workload.
Microsoft outlined the ways it is complying with a November antitrust settlement in a Monday conference call, but analysts say it is little more than Windows dressing. Microsoft also used the call to introduce a new licensing program for Windows communications protocols that have yet to be approved by the Justice Department. Federal trustbusters on Monday issued an advisory emphasizing that point.
Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith focused on four August milestones as part of Microsoft's compliance progress on the deal, which nine months later awaits the approval of a federal judge. In general, the settlement seeks to force Microsoft to treat PC makers and developers evenhandedly and disclose more of the underlying technology behind its software. However, critics charge that the company is using the settlement to raise prices.