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Microsoft has announced that it will ask a European court to suspend parts of the European Commission's March 24th ruling, which ordered the company to change its business practices and pay a fine of US$612 million In the ruling, the commission mandates that Microsoft must strip Media Player software from its Windows operating system, as well as sh...

The U.S. Court of Appeals is set to rule on whether the communications company Research In Motion (RIM) will have to stop selling its BlackBerry e-mail device. The dispute is over who owns the patent for technology used in the bestselling gadget The Canadian company was sued by technology patent company NTP for patent violation and wants US$53.7 mi...

EMC today announced several new technologies and services designed to help customers make compliance with regulations a seamless part of IT operations. The new EMC technologies for e-mail and content archiving, new platform functionality for compliance-related data management, and services for data classification "will help customers extract the maximum value from their information at the lowest total cost while meeting regulatory demands and achieving compliance," the company said in a statement to the press today...

AMD today announced that it will introduce a new brand of PC processors to be named AMD Sempron. The company hopes the AMD Sempron processors will raise the computing bar for today's value-conscious buyers of desktop and notebook PCs. According to the company, the AMD Sempron processors are being developed to meet the evolving day-to-day needs of ...

In an effort to change the fact that it is often easier to use an Internet search from Google to track down information than it is to find the same kind of content or data lying somewhere on a corporate network, IBM has unveiled a technology called DB2 Information Integrator Big Blue said its new software -- code-named Masala -- delivers faster, be...

General Motors will invest US$3 billion to expand operations in China in the next three years, a massive outlay of capital that will enable it to double its output in the country that is home to one of the world's fastest-growing economies. GM, the world's leading automaker, and its partners will introduce some 20 new vehicles, including American-...

I'm currently reading a science fiction book that refers to Bill Gates, and I was watching a movie recently in which one of the streets is named Microsoft Way, which happened to be on the moon. Clearly, Microsoft permeates much of what we do in tech, so it's no wonder that every time there is a change, we focus on the impact on Microsoft and attempt to forecast a demise that has been overhyped and simply not forthcoming...

File-sharing through the dozens of software piracy mills on the Internet and well-known peer-to-peer networks like Kazaa, Morpheus, iMesh, eDonkey, Gnutella, LimeWire and Grokster accounts for thousands of illegally downloaded music files, games, movies and software. Computer security experts warn that more harm than the mere theft of intellectual property by piracy occurs through participation in file-sharing over the Internet. For example, use of file-sharing operations usually leads to situations in which computers -- and even networks -- are infected with spyware, malware and backdoors left ajar for hackers...

Microsoft Corp. has scrapped the development of True Fantasy Live Online for its Xbox consoles, which was scheduled for release in Japan this winter, its Japan unit officials said Friday "True Fantasy" would have been the first so-called "Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG)" software for the Xbox.

Microsoft has won a patent related to the timing of button-clicks on handheld computers and similar devices, sparking concerns among some companies and industry observers that the software giant will attempt to reap licensing fees for what many view as a common practice. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granted Patent No. 6,727,830 to Microsof...

Could it be that all of that pornographic spam is working, or is it just that Internet users are quietly peeking at porn behind all of those other browser windows for research, news, shopping and searches? An analysis of the percentage of porn site visits versus search engines, including top portals Google, Yahoo and MSN, and other less provocative...

A virus that was first seen on May 22nd has been worming its way across the Internet, stealing personal information in the process. Dubbed "Korgo," the worm exploits the same vulnerabilities and spreads in the same way as the Sasser worm that caused havoc last month. Although the virus is not yet widespread, security companies like Symantec and F-...

Security experts are warning that malware attacks will pose more of a major threat over the next three years than direct hacker attacks. The British mi2g Intelligence Unit claimed this week that the malware risk has risen from 1 in 40 last year to about 3 in 10 for 2004. This reflects a jump from 2.5 percent to 30 percent risk May was the fifth wor...

In an effort to further expand the breadth of its offerings, Web performance measurement firm Keynote Systems recently acquired NetRaker, a developer of customer experience management software. In other words, NetRaker's software is designed to help e-business managers measure and improve the navigability of their Web sites Most of NetRaker's emplo...

California wireless customers suffered a blow last week when the state Public Utilities Commission (PUC) voted to approve a pile of harmful regulations. The misleadingly named "Telecommunications Consumer Bill of Rights" is poised to raise mobile-phone bills and tie businesses in red tape "The PUC has overreached its regulatory responsibilities," s...

The leading candidate in an international race to fly people to space aboard a privately developed rocket plans to make his bid for the final frontier in three weeks. Burt Rutan, an aircraft designer, announced Wednesday that he would dispatch his novel craft, called SpaceShipOne, to suborbital altitude on June 21st. One of the company's aspiring astronauts will be aboard.

NASA's solar-powered Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity is beginning on Thursday what controllers expect to be frequent use of an overnight "deep sleep" mode to stretch the robot's power supply Opportunity has managed only one to two hours of activity on many recent days while it has been examining a stadium-sized impact crater from vantage points ...

Drugstore.com, an online provider of personal care, beauty, health, wellness, vision and pharmacy products, is turning to Kewill Solutions North America to meet its soaring shipping needs Kewill Solutions North America is the shipping management division of Kewill Systems, an international company that develops and sells software and services to ma...

Social networking pioneer online service Friendster has tapped former NBC entertainment president Scott Sassa as its CEO, replacing interim CEO Tim Koogle. Friendster gave Koogle the reins in March, three years after he had stepped down as CEO of Yahoo and was replaced by Hollywood studio executive Terry Semel.

With funding from Microsoft cofounder and billionaire Paul Allen, the first nongovernment manned rocket ship is set to propel 62 miles from the Earth's surface to reach space in a launch scheduled for June 21st SpaceShipOne, which soared two-thirds of the way to the 100-km, out-of-atmosphere point designated as space for the Ansari X Prize competit...