The commission's competition representative said that if the matter is not resolved within a matter of weeks, it may fine Microsoft a significant sum of money.
Although Microsoft announced last month that it had addressed the majority of the Commission's concerns in this area, the EC representative said the European body was still talking to the software giant "concerning the proper implementation of the interoperability remedy." There are also issues regarding the version of Windows without Media Player that are yet to be resolved, the representative said.
Microsoft has unveiled a new security advisory service to plug the gap between public disclosure of a vulnerability and the availability of a patch.
Dubbed Microsoft Security Advisories, the service is a pilot program begun in response to customer requests, Stephen Toulouse, the program manager of Microsoft Security Research Center, said in an interview.
"When we got down to it, in the absence of a bulletin, customers wanted us to provide authoritative guidance on security related topics," Toulouse said.
Aiming to make the licensing terms for its products less complex, Microsoft plans to publish in July a shortened and simplified version of its "Product Use Rights" document.
The current licensing document is just over 100 pages long and full of legal jargon. The new document will be about half as long and in plain language, Sunny Charlebois, product manager for licensing and pricing at Microsoft, said on Wednesday. Microsoft is not changing its licensing terms, she said.
The Product Use Rights document is for products bought on so called volume licenses only and details how Microsoft licenses its products. It is meant to help Microsoft customers, partners and others such as industry analysts understand what licenses are needed for use of Microsoft software.
Electronics giant Philips Electronics is putting its muscle into a long-term deal with Microsoft to support Windows multimedia technology in its chips.
As part of a nonexclusive agreement the two launched today, Philips' Nexperia semiconductors will include support for Windows Media Audio and Video as well as Windows Digital Rights Management 10.
For Microsoft, the deal gives the company a chance to further extend its reach past the PC and into devices following the launch of Windows Mobile 5.0, its operating system platform for smart phones and Pocket PCs.
The chief executives of Microsoft and Red Hat held a private meeting in New York, CNET News.com has learned, an indication that relations between the rivals might be warming.
Microsoft's Steve Ballmer and Red Hat's Matthew Szulik met for more than an hour at a McCormick & Schmick's restaurant in New York in late March, sources familiar with the situation said. Microsoft initiated the meeting, one source indicated.
Red Hat declined to comment for this story. But Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, although not commenting on the Ballmer-Szulik get-together, said in an interview Monday that Microsoft is interested in meeting with open-source companies.
Bill Gates doesn't think his company has been slow to crack the cell phone market. He just thinks the little devices have yet to catch up to the power of his company's software.
Still, with cell phones quickly gaining the power PCs had not that long ago, Microsoft's chairman sees a bright future, in which the company's operating system can quickly gain share from Nokia and others that run rival software.
Gates spoke to CNET News.com on the eve of a speech announcing Windows Mobile 5.0, the next version of Microsoft's operating system for handhelds and cell phones. In the chat, Gates outlined the company's mobile strategy, explained why Microsoft is steering clear of the portable-game market (for now) and described why he's happy that Microsoft is an underdog, for a change.
Microsoft plans to release a new version of its Office productivity software next year, company Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates said Tuesday.
Although many insiders had speculated that a new version of Office would come in 2006, Microsoft until Tuesday had not publicly confirmed when it would deliver the product. A 2006 release is in line with Microsoft's two-to three-year release schedules for Office. The last major version, Office 2003, arrived in late 2003.
Microsoft and Developer Express on Tuesday are announcing availability of Refactor! for Visual Basic 2005, a free plug-in that provides refactoring to Visual Basic 2005 developers.
Refactoring enables developers to simplify and restructure source code, thus making it easier to maintain. "Its a way of moving code around and doing certain automatic edits to the code that enable you to take code that youve worked with for a while and reshape it in such a way that it makes sense, said Jay Roxe, product manager for Visual Basic at Microsoft.
Thanks to Allen H. and Jim W.: Microsoft New Zealand has officially released the Windows XP Royale theme, which was originally designed solely for Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005, but was then later ported to XP Tablet PC Edition 2005 as well. Now, all XP users can download this sharp-looking theme, which features the new Microsoft Energy style, along with a few new backgrounds. Find out more at the Microsoft New Zealand Web site.
Hidden away in Building 17 - when he's not on the road, working to counteract the impression among open-source backers that Microsoft is the devil personified - is Bill Hilf. Hilf works for Microsoft's general manager of platform strategy and Linux point man, Martin Taylor. Hilf is the director of Microsoft's platform technology strategy group. He also happens to run a sizeable Linux lab on the Redmond campus. Linux running at Microsoft? Isn't that sacrilege? Think of it more as a competitive advantage, said Hilf.