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Microsoft has announced that it has entered into a series of partnerships to help promote the Xbox over the course of the upcoming months. The Xbox will be a part of the Pop Disaster Tour, which will include Xbox signs and radio promotions, as well as contests where participants can win a chance to play Xbox games with bands on the tour. Microsoft is also continuing its association with Pepsi and its SoBe line of drinks, as Pepsi will be promoting the new SoBe drink Mr. Green along with the Xbox in a cross-country tour in which people will have a chance to win Xbox consoles, games, and accessories. A unique Mr. Green Xbox console contest will also be held on the official Mr. Green Web site.

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Microsoft is the most popular stock right now among the 160 investment newsletters tracked by the Hulbert Financial Digest. No fewer than 14 separate services are recommending it for purchase.

Why do so many newsletters like MS? Fred Hager makes the familiar case: "Microsoft's Windows and Office product lines can be trusted to bring in billions of dollars in operating cash flow year after year, while its major investments in other fields guarantee that it will have a meaningful role to play in nearly every corner of the consumer and corporate information technology markets, whatever they may happen to be."

What about MS's ongoing legal troubles? The Pure Fundamentalist, edited by Alvin Toral reminds us that "So far the company has been remarkably successful in its dealings with plaintiffs' claims." And Michael Murphy of Technology Investing believes that "The states' [anti-trust] case seems to be pretty much falling apart. People are questioning why the nine Attorneys General should be able to try to dictate Federal anti-trust policy. Even their witness kind of fell apart on them."

A Microsoft Corp. executive on Thursday denied that the company used its Windows operating system monopoly to thwart rival audio and video players, as alleged in its landmark antitrust case. Will Poole, a vice president in charge of Microsoft's Windows New Media Platform Division, told federal court that RealNetworks Inc. was the dominant media-playing software despite its complaints about Microsoft.

"The inclusion of multimedia technology in Windows has not impeded RealNetworks' ability to create competing media players that run very well on Windows and to distribute and promote those media players broadly to users," Poole said in written testimony.

"I am confident that it would not be good for developers of software and Web sites that rely on (media) functionality in Windows or for consumers generally because the performance of their programs would be degraded," he said.

Microsoft Corp. is holding back on making further concessions to European Union antitrust regulators, waiting to see first what happens in the United States, John Frank, the company's top European lawyer, said Thursday. Microsoft has already moved to answer some of these complaints, but is resisting requests for further disclosures of Windows code functions. Frank says the previous concessions are sufficient to ensure that Windows-powered servers communicate effectively with rival software and hardware products. Anything more would amount to allowing rivals to copy its innovations.

Microsoft's predicted success in limiting U.S. antitrust charges seems to have stiffened its resolve. Washington has already dropped its demand to split up the company. "There's already a pretty broad provision on interoperability in the U.S. that's directly applicable to the EU's case," said Frank. "The Commission is very interested in understanding the U.S. settlement approach."

Hackers can potentially exploit a format string vulnerability in remote wall requests in order to execute arbitrary code in Solaris, Sun Microsystems version of the Unix operating system, security experts have warned. Sun Solaris versions 2.5.1, 2.6, 7, and 8 require a security patch to the utility rwall daemon or rpc.rwalld, the U.S.-government funded Computer Emergency Response Team/Coordination Center (CERT/CC) at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh said in an advisory Wednesday.

Legal remedies proposed by nine states in Microsoft Corp.'s renewed antitrust trial are extreme and unworkable, a computer-science expert hired by the software maker told the court. Stuart Madnick, a professor of information technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said a provision that would force Microsoft to create versions of its dominant Windows personal-computer operating-system software without the Internet Explorer browser and other programs now bundled with Windows "is technically infeasible."

Playing down accounting issues and an ongoing pricing dispute with Microsoft, Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang said an upcoming graphics chip should help propel the company to continued growth this year. Speaking on Wednesday at a chip conference here, Huang characterized the relationship with Microsoft as "very strong," adding, "We just asked a third party to help us solve some stuff."

Nvidia disclosed Monday that it was in arbitration with Microsoft over the pricing of its chips used in the Xbox, a move Nvidia said could either lead it to recognize additional revenue or force it to sell some chips at a loss--depending on how the issue is resolved. Microsoft's Xbox accounts for 15 percent to 20 percent of Nvidia's sales. Nvidia also said Monday it was restating its earnings for the past three years because of accounting issues.

The Redmond, Wash., software giant has quietly introduced MSN Internet Access for the Mac to customers in the 14 states that get local phone service through Qwest Communications International. The service, which has been running for about two weeks, is part of a deal Microsoft struck with Qwest a year ago to transition Qwest's dial-up and broadband customers from the Qwest.net service to Microsoft's MSN service. As part of the deal, Microsoft was required to offer service for Qwest's Mac customers. MSN product manager Lisa Gurry told CNET News.com that Mac customers make up a small fraction of Qwest.net's 500,000 subscribers.

The benchmark, conducted in Accenture's High Performance Scalability Lab, compared actual performance data from a manufacturing company now running SAP's R/3 data base on Unix with those results from running R/3 on Microsoft's Windows .Net server. According to the results, the Windows .Net-based application had the same, and sometimes higher, response times compared to the Unix-based system, specifically 508 milliseconds to 700 milliseconds, respectively. They study also showed that the .Net server could be deployed and maintained at about 30 percent of the cost of the Unix solution.

"The results surprised us in a couple of ways. First in terms of price, but more importantly, we were surprised by the actual online performance with a heavy batch component running [on the .Net server] at the same time," said Tim Donahue, an associate partner with Accenture in Columbus, Ohio.

An MIT professor on Wednesday criticized antitrust sanctions sought by nine states against Microsoft Corp., telling a federal judge they would cripple the Windows operating system and give away the company's technology to competitors. Stuart Madnick, professor of information technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said the states' demand for a version of Windows that can be customized by computer makers and other software makers would be difficult to achieve and sap resources devoted to improving the operating system.

"The beneficiaries of implementation of the non-settling states' proposal would be the same companies that are its most vocal advocates, Microsoft's competitors," Madnick said in written testimony. "Their most immediate advantage would come from degrading the performance of Windows," Madnick said.