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Oracle Corp. has asked a court to toss out PeopleSoft's customer assurance program, saying the company's cash guarantees amount to an attempt to block Oracle's hostile takeover bid and lock in pay packages for PeopleSoft executives. In a motion filed with the Delaware court that is handling other aspects of the takeover bid, Oracle said PeopleSoft...

No matter how powerful notebook computers get, sooner or later all systems are limited by how long their battery can endure. Indeed, battery life always has been a major bottleneck for notebooks, and it seems the bigger the computer and the more features it has, the shorter its battery life is This tug-of-war leaves computer buyers in a tough spot....

Eastern Ontario voters today were allowed to vote by Internet or telephone -- but not by paper ballot -- in what is being called the first all-electronic election of North America Despite e-voting security issues in the United States that have pitted some researchers, publishers and ISPs against Diebold Election Systems, the Linux-based voting syst...

Last week, Apple's iTunes Music Store sold five times as many songs as the newly relaunched Napster service. According to Nielsen SoundScan, which measures digital download numbers, iTunes accounted for about 80 percent of all legally downloaded music files during the week. And at an analyst meeting Wednesday night, Apple CEO Steve Jobs commented that his company is now "the Microsoft of music stores."

Not to be ignored in the wake of several big online music announcements made over the course of the past few weeks, RealNetworks has announced a partnership with Intel that could help move RealNetworks' on-demand music service -- called Rhapsody -- from the office into the living room. While Apple's iTunes and Roxio's Napster have received much coverage in the press of late, RealNetworks has made it clear that the legit online music business is anything but a two-horse race...

Continuing a stream of activity surrounding newer, simpler security for remote access to corporate networks, Cisco announced it would support Secure Socket Layer (SSL) Virtual Private Network (VPN) technology in its widely used VPN 3000 Series concentrators Cisco's announcement that it will include the clientless VPN capabilities in addition to the...

While I was at Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference last month, I finished Merrill R. Chapman's book In Search of Stupidity. In the book, from the perspective of an insider, he lays out the mistakes other companies have made to contribute inadvertently to the dominance of Microsoft. While our views differ as to how significant some blunders were in certain cases, in general Chapman does a good job documenting why many of these companies failed and why Microsoft succeeded...

Microsoft has released Virtual PC 2004 to manufacturers, completing a lengthy product-customization process that began when the software giant acquired Connectix earlier this year The Redmond, Washington-based company also said it will lower the sticker price of Virtual PC dramatically -- by US$100, to $129 -- and predicted the product will be read...

For many online shoppers, Overstock.com has become a favorite bargain-hunting destination. The e-tailer offers up to 80 percent off the sticker price of items ranging from dresses to computers, and it has dedicated staffers in its customer service and warehousing departments to keep the operation running at Internet speed Yet the road was not alway...

Ever heard, "Did you google today?" or, "Go try googling, and you will find it?" Watch out for this sort of lingo. To most people, it may sound like free advertising for Google, but in reality, it could be a nightmare for the corporation. When a company's name brand lends itself to "verbing" -- such as xeroxing, fedexing or rollerblading -- a code-red alert strikes the boardroom. Legal SWAT teams swing into action to protect their successful global brand, and an aggressive policing of corporate name usage kicks in...

Software constantly evolves, and change often sparks controversy. Such is the case with Zip, a popular file-compression technology that almost every computer user has run into at one time or another. One reason why the technology, developed back in 1986, has gained such widespread acceptance is that customers have been able to mix and match different vendors' Zip products without having to worry about file compatibility. Soon, however, that might change.

Virus writers reportedly are talking tough about Microsoft's bounty offered in exchange for information leading to the arrest and conviction of major malware authors, downplaying its effectiveness and calling it just a publicity stunt Security experts differed on the likely effectiveness of Microsoft's plan, which has put a quarter-million-dollar p...

In a technology-industry version of the battle of the bands, Apple has come out swinging against a reborn, legitimate Napster, boasting that the iTunes Music Store has sold five times the number of songs Napster did in the challenger's first week of business The original, free Napster song-swapping service sparked the peer-to-peer (P2P) file-tradin...

Number-two microprocessor maker AMD has said it sees signs of improving market conditions and will start "selectively hiring" during 2004 to meet an anticipated increase in demand. The company said it expects to post a profit in the fourth quarter and is optimistic about at least the first half of 2004, thanks to what executives called a "mini-boo...

With many online behemoths still struggling to turn a profit in the e-commerce sector, smaller businesses may question whether the online sales model is truly a road to riches or just a pipedream After all, it costs big bucks to design, develop and maintain an e-commerce site that can draw the kind of customer volume needed to generate significant ...

A research paper posted online warns of holes in the latest WiFi (or 802.11) wireless cryptography protocol and outlines how WiFi Protected Access (WPA) can be compromised using a traditional network assault known as a dictionary attack. The paper, written by TruSecure's ICSA Labs senior technical director Bob Moskowitz, who indicates WPA can be c...

An outfit that has exploited a networking feature in Microsoft Windows to send pop-up ads to consumers' computers as frequently as one every 10 minutes has been slapped with a temporary restraining order to halt the practice, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced at a press conference in Washington, D.C The order also bars the spammers from ...

The original Napster software emerged and blossomed on university campuses, so it seems only appropriate that one of Roxio's first strategic steps with Napster 2.0 would be to return to the university -- this time with a legal system that will provide music to students and faculty at Penn State University Speaking in California at the annual Educau...

Noster fungitur -- ours works. It's the motto I suggested to a local Mac user group. But it's also the theme you need to push when selling open-source software against the Microsoft desktop system -- Windows 2003 Server with Office 2003. Office 2003, in combination with Server 2003, is the first major Microsoft product to incorporate the company's vision for an XML-enabled future filled with hot-button features like end-to-end document management...

Microsoft this week released the first patch -- described as "critical" by the Redmond, Washington-based software company -- for its new Office 2003 software suite. The patch addresses a problem with use of previous Office versions Microsoft warned the problem could result in corrupted, incomplete or inaccessible documents and error messages. The c...