When asked whether Microsoft will release an updated version of its Internet Explorer (IE) browser before Longhorn ships in 2006, Microsoft's pat answer is that it has no current plans to do so. IE is part of Windows, and that's that, according to the Microsoft party line.
Borrowing a line from Allstate Insurance, Microsoft says it wants customers to know they are in good hands when they choose its software.
The software maker plans to announce Wednesday that it will indemnify nearly all its customers against any claims that their use of Microsoft software infringed on any intellectual-property claims.
The company already offers unlimited protection to its volume license customers but is adding the indemnity for customers who buy its key products in other ways, such as from a computer maker or even off a retail shelf.
"Which company is the biggest spender in the Linux world? Is it IBM? Sun Microsystems? Red Hat? Novell? No, the biggest spender in Linux, at least this year, is arguably the company most threatened by its success.
With this week's $536 million settlement of a legal battle with Novell and April's $1.9 billion deal with Sun Microsystems, Microsoft has now agreed to pay more than $2.4 billion to companies likely to spend the money popularizing the arch-enemy of all things Microsoft.
Microsoft will support only x86 processors with 64-bit extensions when it releases a special version of Windows Server for high-performance computing next year, leaving support for Intel's Itanium 2 chip to a later, unspecified date.
The high-performance space is currently dominated by Unix and Linux operating systems running on 64-bit systems, including Itanium 2. Microsoft wants to break into the market, but feels the Itanium 2 is too expensive and too powerful for the small clusters that its target customers will set up in research and corporate environments.
Microsoft paid Novell $536 million dollars today, although it might not be enough to fend off a fresh antitrust case, which Novell says it will file by the end of the week. Novell says issues relating to the WordPerfect office suite, which it briefly owned in the early-1990s, are still outstanding.
Novell said Monday that it had reached a settlement with software maker Microsoft in which Microsoft will pay it $536 million in cash. The announcement sent Novell shares 11 percent higher in pre-open trading.
In addition, Novell said it planned to file a new antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft tied to decade-old competitive practices involving Novell's WordPerfect word processing software.
SOUTH Korean regulators have widened a probe into Microsoft's local subsidiary over allegations the US software giant violated trade rules by tying its Media Player program to its Windows operating system.
The investigation by South Korea's Fair Trade Commission comes after the European Union fined Microsoft E497 million ($847 million) this year in an antitrust case.
Microsoft RealNetworks filed a complaint with the commission alleging that Microsoft was undermining competition by tying its Media Player and Media Server software to Windows.
Has Microsoft been trying to retroactively claim IP (intellectual property) rights over many of the Internet's basic protocols? Larry J. Blunk, senior engineer for networking research and development at Merit Network Inc., believes that might be the case.
At the RSA Conference Europe 2004 in Barcelona, Microsoft gave an upbeat assessment of its campaign to improve security.
Rich Kaplan, corporate vice president of Microsoft's Security Business & Technology Unit, said on Thursday that the company remains focused on "evolving security challenges" and committed to working with other IT vendors to further its Trustworthy Computing initiative.
Before Microsoft releases its patches, it gives its biggest customers an email heads-up on its monthly security patching. Now, Redmond has decided to get all democratic and give all customers an 'early warning'. The latest patches are announced by Microsoft on the second Tuesday of each month but from this month onwards, consumers and business customers alike will get advance warning three days before the patches are available.
