Several of the world's largest Web sites, including Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo, were taken offline at various times Tuesday due to an electronic attack on Akami, the hosting company that mirrors these sites for performance reasons. The sites were offline at various times between 9 and 11 am EST Tuesday, according to reports.
"It was a large scale, international attack on [the] Internet infrastructure," said an Akami spokesperson, though later evidence suggested that only sites mirrored by Akami were knocked offline. More important, perhaps, is news that the availability of all Internet sites dropped just 20 percent during the attacks, from 100 percent to just over 80 percent.
Microsoft has plans to port some of its Service Pack 2 updates and fixes to other Microsoft products. Redmond won't elaborate yet, but some of its testers will.
The world must wait until late July at the earliest until Microsoft delivers the final release of Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2). But that isn't stopping testers and customers from asking what Microsoft's intentions are, in terms of back-porting the SP2 updates and fixes to other Microsoft operating systems and related products.
A Seattle-based labor union says newly surfaced documents show that Microsoft has looked to outsource to Indian companies high-level jobs in software architecture and development.
The union, WashTech, says the previously confidential agreements between Microsoft and Indian outsourcing companies Infosys Technologies and Satyam Computer Services debunk the popular notion that only lower-level technology positions are vulnerable to outsourcing.
Microsoft may be poised to repurchase billions of dollars worth of its stock to reduce its huge cash balance and improve its share price, a Goldman Sachs analyst says. Rick Sherlund, who has followed the Redmond software company since it first sold shares to the public 18 years ago, wrote in a report published Monday that he expects the company to announce "a large share repurchase program and possibly a special distribution of cash, as well, to address the current cash position."
Microsoft must disclose portions of about 70 documents it sought to keep under seal when company executives testify in the government's lawsuit to block Oracle's $7.7 billion hostile bid for PeopleSoft.
U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker in San Francisco ruled at a closed hearing that Microsoft may keep only a few of the documents under seal, according to lawyers for Oracle and the Justice Department.
Executives at Microsoft will provide testimony for both Oracle and the federal government at the trial. Oracle says Microsoft competes with it for business customers. The government argues that Microsoft doesn't offer the kind of "high function" business software that is the focus of its antitrust case.
Microsoft intends to create an antivirus service in the near future, but has not finalized its plans yet, a company executive said Tuesday. The comments followed a media report that the company was readying its entry into the virus protection market. However, the software giant has not decided what form its service will take, said Amy Carroll, director of product management for Microsoft's Security Business and Technology Unit.
"Our plan is to make antivirus part of our pay-for product offerings," she said. "But we don't have specific AV product plans right now."
Microsoft on Monday released what it hopes is a nearly final test version of a security-oriented Windows upgrade. The delay raised questions about question whether Microsoft will be able to meet its latest timetable, which calls for the final product to be ready by July. The company has said it does not yet know whether a third release candidate will be needed before finalizing the code, a stage known as "released to manufacturing." The first release candidate version was offered in March.
"Windows XP SP2 is entering its final testing stages on its way toward a release this summer," a Microsoft representative wrote in an e-mail.
Microsoft on Monday released an almost final version, or "release candidate," of its delayed Virtual Server 2005 program, one of its final steps before wrapping up development. Virtual Server allows a single server to run multiple copies of an operating system, handy for server consolidation and letting computers run multiple tasks more efficiently.
The software giant announced that there will be two editions of the software--a standard version supporting up to four processors and an enterprise edition that can work on servers with up to 32 processors. It hopes to finish development work by the end of the summer and have the software broadly available before the end of the year. In its first version, Virtual Server competes with VMware, which storage giant EMC acquired earlier this year.
A standards body has pushed a next-generation DVD format forward, endorsing Microsoft's video technology along the way.
Last week, the DVD Forum steering committee approved version 1.0 of the physical specifications for HD-DVD read-only discs and voted to require that makers of HD-DVD video playback devices build in three video codecs, including the VC-9 technology used in Microsoft's Windows Media Video 9.
The decisions boost Microsoft's efforts in the digital entertainment arena and also advance the HD-DVD technology developed by Toshiba and NEC. HD-DVD, also known as high-definition and high-density DVD, uses blue laser light to cram more information on to discs than today's red-laser DVDs. The technology is vying against the rival Blu-ray format backed by Sony and others, as well as a Chinese format called EVD.
Microsoft is working on a set of security upgrades for Windows Server 2003 that executives said will deliver on the company's promise to make its products more secure by default and give enterprises more options for locking down servers.
The security capabilities for the company's flagship server operating system are due to be included in Service Pack 1, which is scheduled for release late this year.
The biggest addition due in SP1 is a technology called server roles that can automatically set up security procedures based on server use.