Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer attempted to build bridges with governments and industry rivals on Tuesday when he said the software giant aspired to become a responsible industry leader.
"I say to our people we want to be a trustworthy Microsoft in a world of trustworthy computing," Ballmer said in a speech at the official opening of the CeBIT technology trade show in the German city of Hanover.
Microsoft reached a settlement with the U.S. Justice Department in November after an appeals court in June upheld a lower court finding that Microsoft had used illegal tactics to maintain its Windows monopoly.
As previously reported, AOL Time Warner are considering a move from the integration of Internet Explorer in their AOL browser and the first part of the change is upon us. They have started trialling the use of the Netscape/Mozilla rendering engine in their CompuServe software and if this is successful the AOL browser is likely to follow.
Microsoft have commented saying that "The real losers will be AOL users who will now be using inferior technology." and this move appears to be a result of the bitter legal arm wrestling currently taking place between AOL and Microsoft, as they fight over instant messaging, anti-trust and of course browsers. AOL have claimed Microsoft 'bullied' other companies with its monopoly and this step is looking like an attempt to strike back at Microsoft. Whether the change will make AOL better off, however, is questionable as a miracle will be needed (or a least a large cash injection) to make Netscape ready for general use.
Intel's high-end servers stand to get a big boost from the relentless forward march of processor technology. The company on Tuesday launched the Xeon MP processor, its latest chip for multiprocessor servers using four or more chips. The new Xeon MP chip offers nearly twice the clock speed of the chip it will replace, the 900MHz Pentium III Xeon chip that it introduced a year ago.
Xeon MP, to debut at speeds of 1.4GHz, 1.5GHz and 1.6GHz, gets its extra performance from Intel's NetBurst processor architecture, the same silicon that is behind the Pentium 4. However, the Xeon MP also packs a few server-oriented enhancements, including an on-chip Level 3 cache of up to 1MB, and Intel's hyper-threading technology, which allows a single chip to nearly mirror the performance of two. The cache stores important data closer to the processor core, speeding performance.
Thanks to NeoWin for this link.
Just two weeks ago Intel officially introduced the successor to the Pentium 4 under the codename Prescott. To be released in the second half of 2003, Prescott will be Intel's first 0.09-micron (90nm) CPU that will feature the following:
- Hyper-Threading technology
- Micro-architectural enhancements
- Additional L2 cache
- 800MHz FSB (200MHz Quad-Pumped)
- 90nm manufacturing process
- Close to 100,000,000 transistors
Intel has repeatedly shown graphs of where they expect CPU transistor counts to be over the next decade. Prescott's 2003 release places its transistor count at very close to 100 million transistors, meaning that it's going to be one very complicated and cache-filled desktop chip.
Microsoft Corp has offered an olive branch to the European Commission by saying it would open up some information that the Commission alleged it unfairly kept secret to make life tough for rivals. "We're taking steps to address the concerns raised by the Commission," John Frank, associate general counsel of Microsoft for Europe, said in a telephone interview from Paris.
Microsoft says it has told the Commission it is ready to open up some of its proprietary software so that rivals have more information to help them compete, but says it must stop short of allowing them to clone its systems.
Take that shitty Linux!
A flaw in a software-compression library used in all versions of Linux could leave the lion's share of systems based on the open-source operating system open to attack, said sources in the security community on Monday. Several other operating systems that use open-source components are vulnerable too varying degrees as well.
The software bug--known as a double-free vulnerability--causes key memory-management functions in the zlib compression library to fail, a condition that could allow a smart attacker to compromise computers over the Internet, said Dave Wreski, director for open-source security company Guardian Digital. "It is just a matter of time before an exploit is developed," Wreski said.
Microsoft Corp. continues to demonstrate its leadership in the business intelligence industry through record-breaking achievement last year in online analytical processing (OLAP), according to the 2001 OLAP Report. While companies such as Oracle Corp. and IBM Corp. lost momentum, Microsoft's percentage of the $3.3 billion industry almost doubled in 2001, growing from 11.7 percent to 21.3 percent. This was the fastest growth by any major OLAP vendor since publication of the first report in 1995. Led by Microsoft SQL Server 2000, Microsoft jumped from its third-place standing in 2000 to tie the 2000 winner for first place in 2001. Microsoft is expected to become the leader in 2002.
Legal experts describe Sun Microsystems' lawsuit against Microsoft as very aggressive and expansive, going well beyond anything pursued by federal and state trustbusters. And in many important respects, they say, the suit could be tough to win in its current form.
"The breadth of this suit is tremendous," said Bob Lande, an antitrust professor with the University of Baltimore Law School. "It's broader than the U.S. suits and the European suits put together." Besides the U.S. case settled in November by the Justice Department and nine of 18 states, the European Union is investigating whether Microsoft used its dominance in desktop operating systems to gain unfair advantage in the server-software market.
The lawsuit is so large, legal experts warn, that Sun could be embarking on a course that will require a decade or more of resources without any certain beneficial outcome.
A sure sign that Microsoft's dot-Net strategy is gaining momentum: The software giant was sued Friday by archrival Sun Microsystems. While Sun said the lawsuit centers on past actions, Michael Morris, general counsel, added: ''Microsoft's continuing practices... represent a threat to lawful competition.'' The lawsuit's timing suggests Sun is not counting on nine states and the District of Columbia to slow dot-Net in a remedy trial to begin next week.
''This seems to be Sun saying the battle is not going well, so we've got to fight our own,'' says Leonard Orland, a University of Connecticut antitrust professor.
''I don't think we're going to see many more lawsuits,'' says Gartner analyst David Smith. ''Microsoft's two biggest enemies have now weighed in, and most other companies aren't as willing to . . . antagonize Microsoft.''
Dan'l Lewin, Microsoft's vice president for .NET business development, wants to thaw the historically chilly relationship between his company and the Valley, a 1,500-mile hotbed of technology in the San Francisco Bay Area. His vision -- spreading the gospel of the company's bet-the-company .NET initiative -- drew him to Microsoft in January 2001.
Silicon Valley is home to many of Microsoft's biggest and fiercest rivals. And every day there sees the birth, and probably the death, of technology start-ups. Microsoft maintains a five-building complex, housing 1,380 employees in Mountain View. But many companies still view Microsoft as an outsider and an enemy, or at best a potential partner to be approached with great care.