Microsoft has missed its deadline for sending out the latest test versions of its flagship development products, SQL Server and Visual Studio.
Last year, the company set a target of the end of March for the release of the second beta of its upcoming Visual Studio 2005 programming tool and SQL Server 2005 database. But it has yet to release those test versions.
The products are scheduled for completion in the second half of 2005 and are expected to be released in tandem. The target completion dates have shifted substantially over the past few years, and the software is likely to be delivered more than a year later than first anticipated.
Microsoft, the world's largest software maker, on Monday said it was filing lawsuits against eight computer system builders and resellers in seven U.S. states, accusing them of distributing counterfeit and unlicensed software and software components.
The lawsuits follow similar action in November 2004 against eight dealers. Legal amendments in 2003 provide criminal and civil penalties for distributing software without authenticity certificates.
"Our partners are coming to us and asking for our help," said Microsoft senior attorney Bonnie MacNaughton in a statement.
Microsoft plans to expand its low-cost Windows XP Starter Edition program to Brazil, the company confirmed on Monday.
"On April 13, Microsoft is going to announce the expansion of its five market program to include Brazil," a Microsoft representative told CNET News.com. The company already offers the software in Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand, and has announced plans for India and Russia. The effort in India was pushed back slightly but the company has said it expects to have Starter Edition launched there by June.
Microsoft agreed to pay Gateway $150 million over the next four years, stemming from the finding that the software giant's practices had hurt the computer maker's business.
Microsoft said it will take pre-tax charges of $123 million in the quarter for its settlement with Gateway, $41 million for its settlement with Burst.com, as well as charges previously taken for these claims.
The company also will take a pre-tax charge of $550 million to reserve for certain antitrust-related claims described in the 10-Q periodic report from the previous quarter. More details about the third-quarter results will be provided with the Redmond, Wash., company's earnings announcement on April 28.
Expanding its efforts to monetize its intellectual property holdings, Microsoft has set up a group within its licensing business to sell Microsoft technologies to startups.
Inrix and Ascender, both companies that were founded last year, are among the first takers. Inrix is building a traffic information service with exclusively licensed technologies from Microsoft Research and Ascender has obtained rights to adapt and sell various Windows fonts developed by Microsoft, according to a Microsoft statement.
An e-mail campaign designed to lure people to a bogus Microsoft Web site is making the rounds as part of an attempt to install a Trojan horse, antivirus company Sophos said Friday.
Attackers are sending out fake e-mails that claim to come from Microsoft's Windows Update. People who click on the link in the message are steered to a site that looks like Microsoft's security update site, where they are urged to download fake patches.
But should unsuspecting users download the bogus patches, they will infect their computers with the Troj/DSNX-05 Trojan horse, according to Sophos. That, in turn, will let the attackers remotely take control of the infected PC.
Microsoft said Friday it has completed its deal to acquire Groove Networks, a move that comes days after a court rejected a bid to stop the deal.
Last week, a Delaware judge blocked an effort by ex-Groove executive Michael Matthews to halt the deal. Matthews had sued to stop the transaction, valued at $120 million, saying it was unfair to certain employees who had been given stock in the privately held company, according to reports.
Microsoft said that, as planned, the Groove product and team will become part of Microsoft's Information Worker business--the unit that is home to Office. The company said it will sell current and future versions of Groove's collaboration software on a standalone basis "while also exploring ways to take advantage of those technologies in others ways."
The man at Microsoft responsible for studying the open-source-code movement and figuring out the company's response says Microsoft's own Shared Source Initiative is working out just fine.
Jason Matusow, director of the Shared Source Initiative, said Microsoft would continue to add to the 20 products that it currently makes available for source-code inspection. Matusow was a session speaker Wednesday at the Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco.
Shared Source is a program that allows Microsoft customers and independent developers to download Microsoft source code, examine it, and copy it for their own use. Academic researchers may go further and tinker with the source code, as open-source-code programmers do. But professional and commercial developers may only look at and use the source code. They can't modify and copy it for distribution or embed it in products without a Microsoft license.
Microsoft on Thursday announced plans to release eight security bulletins on April 12, including "critical" fixes for flaws in several widely deployed applications.
As part of its advance notice mechanism, the software giant said five high-priority patches would deal only with flaws in the Windows operating system.
Three more bulletins with a maximum severity rating of "critical" will include fixes for the Microsoft Office suite, the MSN Messenger chat program, and Microsoft Exchange, which is widely used in large corporations using Microsoft infrastructure solutions.
In January 2003, a Toronto Police detective sent an e-mail to Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates asking for help in the fight against child exploitation.
Today that plea was answered with the official launch of the Child Exploitation Tracking System. Development of the CETS system began in 2003 and involved the Toronto Police Service, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and other global law enforcement bodies.
CETS is based on Microsoft Windows and Microsoft SQL, though according to Microsoft Canada President David Hemler the system won't force authorities to migrate to Windows and/or other Microsoft products.