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Following a month of testing at no cost to customers, Microsoft's Windows Azure platform will become a paid service on Monday. The Azure platform is a set of cloud computing services that can be used together or independently on a pay-per-use basis. Originally unveiled in October 2008, the service h...

PC users purchased record numbers of Windows licenses in the last three months of 2009, driving big gains for Microsoft over the company's second fiscal quarter, the first quarter in which the company's Windows 7 OS was on retail shelves. For its quarter ended Dec. 31, Microsoft reported net income ...

In this business climate, the road to striking a venture capital deal is difficult for both funder and fundee. Small startups with big ideas obviously have a harder time finding VC firms willing to take a chance on them, but those VC firms themselves are under added pressure to make the correct deci...

Jammie Thomas-Rasset, the Minnesota woman who was twice found liable for copyright infringement for sharing two dozen songs using an online file-sharing application, has turned down an offer to settle her $54,000 penalty for less than half that amount. The Recording Industry Association of America g...

Oracle says it will focus strongly on customer service and support for customers of both its products and those of Sun Microsystems, whose acquisition it completed on Wednesday. "We believe our customers deserve the best level of support and it's our job to make that extremely compelling," Juergen R...

As the U.S. federal government moves ahead with its cloud computing strategy, it may find that the real bugbear won't be technology but politics. What else would expect on the Hill? Other problems could pop up in the government's approach to security and a lack of adequately qualified staff. Can the...

The Department of Justice has cleared the path for Live Nation and Ticketmaster to merge -- but with several conditions attached, including significant support to companies that will be formed to provide competition. The two firms, which announced the possibility of a merger a year ago, have agreed ...

The online poker scene was set on its ear with the arrival of the Swedish phenom known only by his Tolkien-esque moniker of "Isildur1." Isildur1 burst onto the scene in September 2009 and soon began to frequent the nosebleed seats of $1000/$2000 Pot Limit Omaha reserved for the true high stakes game...

Minnesota federal judge Michael Davis has reduced the fine imposed on Jammie Thomas-Rasset for illegally sharing music on the Internet from $1.92 million to $54,000. Davis, who presided over the trial, said that the original calculations to determine Thomas-Rasset's penalty -- more than $83,000 per ...

Regardless of the state of the economy, information security remains a top concern for consumers worked up about their information, for businesses seeking to protect that information, and for job-seekers looking for the next big thing. Even during the recession, the demand for information security-...

The movie industry loves a gala premiere, with red carpets, paparazzi and Klieg lights sweeping a glittering marquee. YouTube's announcement this week of its new movie rental strategy is about as far away from that scenario as you can get. Instead of the commercial first-run features that are popula...

American companies need to take a stand against censorship on the Internet, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said on Thursday in a speech on Internet freedom delivered at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. "Censorship should not be in any way accepted by any company from anywhere," Clinton sai...

The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard has undoubtedly made a significant improvement to the security of cardholder account numbers and other sensitive information within the payment card infrastructure. The standard lays out a strong set of requirements that merchants, acquirers and proce...

After strenuous deliberations, the European Union's antitrust regulatory authority is giving Oracle's proposed $7.4 billion acquisition of Sun Microsystems a green light. The EU's approval is the culmination of a months-long dispute between Oracle and Europe that threatened the deal's survival until...

Aberdeen's August 2009 research "Talent Acquisition Strategies 2009" found that the top strategy organizations are pursuing in the area of recruiting today is to proactively build and expand a candidate pipeline regardless of current hiring needs. Given the continuing pressure many organizations are...