A longer one
Microsoft's new licensing driving users crazy
What's the cost of little or no competition? For some Microsoft customers, it's paying as much as 107 percent more for the software they buy in volume. As previously reported by CNET News.com, Microsoft on Oct. 1 will dramatically change how it licenses software to its largest customers. That change will drive up what they pay for products such as Office XP or Windows 2000 between 33 percent and 107 percent, according to market researcher Gartner. Many customers also are finding they have to buy new versions of Office even to qualify for the new licensing program. With market share of more than 90 percent in both desktop productivity applications and operating systems, Microsoft is able to charge more in a way it couldn't in a more competitive market, say analysts and the company's customers.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp01
Yahoo News hacked, content altered
Online news took a hit this week with Yahoo's acknowledgment that a hacker substantially altered a news story that appeared on its site. The changes, which have since been removed, were made to an Aug. 23 Reuters story about the Russian software programmer Dmitry Sklyarov, who stands accused of violating U.S. copyright law. According to Yahoo, news of the hack was first reported and brought to the company's attention by SecurityFocus.com this week. A Yahoo representative said the Web portal had taken "appropriate steps to block unauthorized access" to its production tools.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02
Nimda rampage starts to slow
Companies infected with the Nimda worm worked at cleaning the malicious program out of their computer systems Thursday, as the worm's spread continued to slow. "From within six hours after it got going, we saw it retreat," said David Moore, senior researcher with the Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis, a supercomputing center at the University of California at San Diego. The spread of the virus peaked around noon Tuesday and has slowly decreased since then, according to CAIDA's analysis. "The response (to Nimda) was faster and more effective than the response to Code Red," Moore said. On Tuesday, the day the worm started to spread, the number of infected computer systems detected by CAIDA quickly climbed to a peak of 150,000. By Thursday, that number had dropped to almost 50,000.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02
Microsoft, DOJ still miles apart
Government trustbusters and Microsoft failed to reach a consensus on how the landmark antitrust case should proceed before a new judge. The Justice Department, 18 states and Microsoft on Thursday filed a joint status report with U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly at her request. In some ways, the legal filing demonstrates just how far apart the two sides remain. While Microsoft and trustbusters agreed on some issues, most related to legal or filing procedures and not to substantive scheduling or discovery. The two sides could not come to an agreement on a proposed schedule.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02
Via sues to halt Pentium 4
Taiwanese chip maker Via Technologies stepped up its legal battle with Intel Thursday, filing a lawsuit that seeks to halt sales of Intel's flagship Pentium 4 processor. Via and its subsidiary Centaur Technology filed suit against Intel in the Federal District Court for the Western Division of Texas (Austin Division), where Centaur is based, alleging that the Pentium 4 violates a Centaur patent. The lawsuit seeks to stop sales of the Pentium 4 and requests that monetary damages be paid to Via and Centaur. The action follows a barrage of suits filed in Taiwan earlier this month, in which Via alleged that Intel illegally pressured motherboard makers not to buy Via's Pentium 4 chipset, and that Intel employees destroyed promotional materials--such as balloons -- advertising the chipset.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02
Cable snag slows Asian access to a crawl
Internet traffic from Asia to the United States has slowed to a snail's pace due to two impaired undersea cables. "There appears to be a damage to some circuits on the China-US and SEA-ME-WE3 cables, about 30 km off Shantou in China," said telecommunications service provider Reach Communications spokesperson Martin Ratia. SEA-ME-WE3, which runs 38,000 km from Germany to Japan, is owned by telcos including Reach, Singapre Telecommunications, KDD Japan, France Telecom, Telekom Malaysia, PT Indosat and Deutsche Telecom. The 27,000 km China-US cable is owned by a consortium including Reach, SingTel, Concert, China Telecom, Japan Telecom, Korea Telecom, KDD Japan, Sprint and Telekom Malaysia.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/ne...kpt=zdnnp1tp02
Disney puts emphasis on gaming
Walt Disney has created a business unit focused on the interactive gaming market as it rewrites its corporate blueprint for working with technology. With its Buena Vista Game Entertainment Studio, Disney is aiming to change the way people play online and video games. Instead of just sitting at a single PC or game station, it wants to let people run games on televisions, telephones, wireless phones, PCs, digital set-top boxes and other technologies. The media and entertainment company tapped Jan Smith, who has worked with Disney for 14 years, as president of the unit. Smith also will continue to serve as president of Disney Interactive.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=mn_hd
Is StarOffice for everyone?
With the rising cost of office-productivity software, many small businesses are asking themselves whether investing in yet another upgrade is really necessary. And tight budgets are causing school districts to wonder whether there's an alternative to the pricey software they thought was so essential. With the start of the beta review process for StarOffice 6.0 right around the corner and general availability expected early in the new year, these customers could find their alternative in an office suite from Sun Microsystems. StarOffice is aimed at cost-constrained customers who want a full-featured office productivity suite while retaining compatibility with Microsoft Office files or, more importantly, who want to put their money into revenue-generating projects rather than office software. That's why small businesses, home offices, educational and government organizations, and consumers are receptive to the value of StarOffice.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1276-210...html?tag=bt_bh
Asian companies neglect of Nimda “criminal” says Aussie expert
An Australian security company has called three major Asian organisations “criminals” and the main culprits propagating hundreds of thousands attacks from the Nimda worm. Janteknology claimed to have had 30,000 probes from the malicious worm up to midnight last night and 17,000 so far today, the majority of them propagated from eight IP addresses hosted in the Asia-Pacific region. The Korean Network Information Centre has six attacking servers and both Hutchison Corporate Access Hong Kong Limited and the Ministry of Education in Thailand have one attacking server, according to Janteknology’s Glenn Miller.
http://www.zdnet.com.au/newstech/sec...0260586,00.htm
Driving the Info Highway
Just as microprocessors colonized motor vehicles during the past decade, a similarly steady transition to telematics will occur as the necessary equipment is installed in new cars and trucks over the next few years, auto industry analysts say. A wireless transmitter and receiver, an antenna, elementary voice-recognition and text-to-speech capabilities, and typically a GPS unit are all that's needed on board to support what the industry calls the "thin-client" telematics service -- the most fundamental set of mobile communications features. Although the basic service package is relatively simple and the changeover seems inevitable, the industry will soon have to address the complex potential safety and privacy issues that the technology raises.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/20...001ashley.html
Another worm, more patches
With the emergence of the Nimda worm -- the latest in a long series to attack Microsoft's Internet Information Server (IIS) and other software -- Gartner believes it's time for businesses with Web applications to start investigating less vulnerable Web server products. The Nimda worm can spread through e-mail, file sharing and Web site downloads. As a "rollup worm," Nimda bundles several known exploits against Microsoft's IIS, Internet Explorer browser and operating systems such as Windows 2000 and Windows XP, which have IIS and IE embedded in their code. To protect against Nimda, Microsoft recommends installing numerous patches and service packs on virtually every PC and server running IE, IIS Web servers or the Outlook Express e-mail client. As the earlier Code Red worm showed, many servers and PCs running IIS Web server processes may not be obvious because they may be run as personal Web servers on the intranet but are still be exposed to the Internet.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-201...html?tag=cd_mh
Market retreat: Not as bad as it seems?
The Standard & Poor's 500 index and Dow Jones industrial average lost 7 percent and 8.8 percent, respectively, in the three trading sessions since U.S. stock markets reopened after last week's terror strikes. Although that market sell-off has rattled investors and their portfolios, things have been relatively orderly and predictable with the stocks most directly affected by the terrorist attacks taking most of the declines, analysts said. So far, the stock markets are following historical patterns after a catastrophe. Indeed, some analysts are holding out hope that the recent market declines will form a bottom and indicate better times ahead. "Many of the conditions that coincide with a market bottom are developing," said Jeff DeGraaf, a technical analyst.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1007-200...html?tag=cd_mh
As Bush speech nears, officials set tone
President Bush sought to reassure an anxious nation Thursday as the Pentagon disclosed deployment orders for elite Army troops to help avenge last week's terrorism on American soil. At the same time, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said "much economic activity ground to a halt" after the attacks. The administration bluntly pressed its demand for the extradition of Osama bin Laden in the run-up to the commander in chief's speech to a joint session of Congress. "We want action, not just statements. He should not be given haven," said Secretary of State Colin Powell after Afghanistan issued a statement politely encouraging the suspected terrorist mastermind to leave the country.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-7228996.html
Clerics urge bin Laden to leave Afghanistan
As America gears up for war, Islamic clerics Thursday urged Osama bin Laden to voluntarily leave Afghanistan, where he and his followers have had sanctuary for five years, the Taliban news agency said. The statement came at the end of a two-day meeting by hundreds of Islamic clerics, or Ulema, asked by the Taliban government to decide about U.S. demands to hand over bin Laden, the suspected mastermind of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. The clerics' statement set no deadline for bin Laden to accept or reject the call, and it was unclear whether this would be enough to dissuade President Bush from launching military strikes against the impoverished Central Asian nation of Afghanistan.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200...html?tag=cd_mh
More news later on
