News From May 11 2002

Technical, Business and Product News from the Modern Computer World... Updated Once Per Month

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - States seeking stiff antitrust sanctions against Microsoft Corp. will get to demonstrate a version of Windows with removable features after a judge rebuffed objections from Microsoft, which has insisted such a feat is technically impossible.

U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly on Tuesday said she would allow nine states next week to have a computer expert present a version of Windows developed using Microsoft's own technology.

A modular version of Windows is a key demand of the nine states who have rejected a proposed settlement of the four-year-old landmark case as too weak.

The states say a modular version of Windows would level the playing field for non-Microsoft software trying to compete with Microsoft's practice of attaching features to the operating system like its Web browser and multimedia player.

...Virginia-based computer testing consultant, James Bach, has built his modular version of Windows using Windows XP (news - web sites) Embedded, a commercial version of Windows designed for specialty devices such as cash registers and automatic teller machines.

Bach will testify that his modular version of Windows turned out "robust and reliable," Kollar-Kotelly said, citing a submission from the states.

...Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates (news - web sites) conceded in testimony last month that Windows XP Embedded lets customers choose different software features, including different versions of its Internet Explorer browser and Windows Media Player.

But Gates and other company officials say Windows XP Embedded subsequently would not work the same way as the home and professional versions of Windows XP.

...Microsoft group Vice President Jim Allchin said the states' proposals would open up sensitive technical information to computer hackers trying to break into corporate and government networks or unleash destructive viruses on the Internet.

"Providing such information just makes it a little easier to compromise the security mechanisms in Windows," Allchin said in written testimony to the court.

The non-settling states say the extra information is needed so competitors' applications can work as well with Windows as Microsoft programs. They say the security exemption is a loophole that would allow the software giant to continue abusing its monopoly power.

A states' witness, Princeton University professor Andrew Appel, told the court in April that "security through obscurity" was considered a well-known fallacy in the field of computer science....

SEATTLE (AP) - In a bid to extend its reach into small- and mid-sized European companies, Microsoft Corp. said Tuesday that it was acquiring the Danish business software house Navision for $1.3 billion in cash and stock.

The acquisition would be Redmond-based Microsoft's second largest after its $1.5 billion purchase of U.S. graphic software maker Visio in 2000.

The move parallels Microsoft's $1.1 billion acquisition in December 2000 of Great Plains Software, based in Fargo, N.D. Both companies produce software for the same market — but analysts said Great Plains has been unable to gain much of a foothold in Europe.

The Danish company, with some 1,300 employees in 30 countries, specializes in applications for enterprise resource planning, as well as customer relationship and knowledge management.

...Some analysts expressed surprise at the relatively high price Microsoft paid for the company — more than 6.5 times Navision's sales.

...The chipmaker will announce three new Pentium 4 chips for desktop PCs, along with a new version of its 850 chipset. The new chipset offers a faster 533MHz bus and supports a speedier version of Rambus memory, 1066MHz RDRAM, sources said.

Intel's new flagship Pentium 4 will be a 2.53GHz chip. The other new Pentium 4's will run at 2.26GHz and 2.4GHz. All work with the faster bus...

In 2002, companies are looking to fill 38,000 IT jobs — 9,900 more that the available pool of workers, according to a comprehensive new study by the Information Technology Association of Canada (ITAC), analyst firm IDC Canada, and Aon Consulting.

Conducted earlier this year, the study tracked hot skills, education, brain drain and worker commitment in both IT-focused businesses and IT departments in general industry.

With 60 per cent of enterprises reporting a “measurable loss” as a result of the IT skills shortage, Denis Vance, Toronto-based vice-president for consulting with analyst firm IDC Canada said that this shortage has already had a strong effect on Ontario enterprises, resulting in project delays, customer dissatisfaction and slower overall growth.

Vance said that among IT firms the most desired skills for 2002 are experience with SQL Server, Microsoft Exchange, XML and Oracle DB. Industry in general is also looking for SQL Server skills, plus security and WAN skills, and people who can run Windows NT servers. Over the next several years, the most in-demand jobs will be IT project managers, database administrators and IS business analysts, plus security and network systems specialists, he said...

...To complement Jaguar (the new OS X update), Jobs unveiled new e-mail software, an instant messaging application, technology for identifying different computing devices on a network and a handwriting recognition application, called "Inkwell."...

..."On May 14th, we are introducing our first dedicated server in a long time," Jobs said. "It's a rack-mount server, but I can't give you many details." Jobs would not release any technical specifications for the server, saying users will need to wait until next week. A partial picture of the server shown here revealed a silver and black design, suggesting Apple's penchant for stylish hardware.

Jaguar was built on top of one of the latest versions of the FreeBSD Unix operating system and will give rise to a host of new software tools.

Apple will roll out a handwriting recognition application called Inkwell with the Jaguar release. This software prompts a virtual notepad to appear on the screen and turns text entered with a pen into a font recognized by the computer. The Inkwell technology works across applications, allowing a user, for example, to change the text in a headline of an Adobe Systems Inc. PhotoShop document or to write several paragraphs in Microsoft Corp.'s Word application.