WinInsider

A spam-free world by 2006? That's what Microsoft chairman Bill Gates is promising. "Two years from now, spam will be solved," he told a select group of World Economic Forum participants at this Alpine ski resort. "And a lot of progress this year," he added at the event late Friday, hosted by U.S. talk show host Charlie Rose.

Gates said Microsoft, where he has the title of chief software designer, is working on a solution based on the concept of "proof," or identifying the sender of the e-mail.

How does a software giant resolve a dispute with a teenager? It gives him a game console, of course. Microsoft said yesterday that it had reached an agreement through which Rowe will transfer the domain name to the company in exchange for a series of gestures, including a free Microsoft Xbox video-game console and a free trip to the company's Redmond campus for the Microsoft Research Tech Fest in March.

The company will pay any costs that Rowe incurs in renaming and shifting his Web design business to a new domain, which has yet to be announced. Microsoft will direct traffic from mikerowesoft.com to that new site. It will also pay for Rowe to go through Microsoft certification training, and give him a subscription to MSDN, the Microsoft Developer Network Web site.

Users of Microsoft's Office System products released in October can expect the first service pack for the software in late June, Microsoft said Friday. Service Pack 1 (SP1) will apply to InfoPath 2003, OneNote 2003, Project 2003, Publisher 2003, Visio 2003 and SharePoint Portal Server and Windows SharePoint Services, as well as the Microsoft Office 2003 suite, which includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook, a Microsoft spokesman said.

The service pack might spark more sales or installations, as many businesses tend to wait until the first bundle of updates before using a product. However, Ken Smiley, an independent analyst in Kansas City, does not see Office System SP1 as a major release.

Microsoft and the United Nations will work together to bring computer technology and literacy to developing countries, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said Friday. Microsoft pledged software, computer training and cash to establish computer centers in poor communities, starting with pilot projects in Egypt, Mozambique and Morocco. The initiative will draw from a $1 billion Microsoft Unlimited Potential fund, which the U.S. software giant launched last year.

A federal judge on Friday said she was satisfied with Microsoft's efforts to comply with its landmark antitrust settlement after the company announced new steps, including free access to some of its Windows operating system code. U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said the 2002 settlement with the government was working and she brushed aside concerns from the Justice Department that a key provision had failed to live up to expectations.

"The decree seems to be operating," Kollar-Kotelly said. "We only have concerns about one provision."

She said some of Microsoft's competitors might be holding off on licensing the Windows protocols because they are waiting for the outcome of "external proceedings," a reference to a separate antitrust case the European Commission is pursuing against Microsoft.

Microsoft continues to build bridges between Office desktop apps and reservoirs of back-office data. The "Information Worker Bridge" project now under way seeks to make it easier for integrators or in-house developers to make Excel or Word de-facto front ends for back-end accounting, ERP or other applications, sources said.

In theory, this would take back-office integration beyond ODBC drivers and InfoPath, the Office application that lets people build dynamic forms on their desktops that tap into back-office XML data.

The SCO Group has taken its fight with the Linux community to Capitol Hill. Earlier this month, the company sent the 535 members of the U.S. Congress a letter that called Linux and open source software a threat to the security and economy of the U.S., SCO confirmed on Thursday.

The letter is dated Jan. 8 and was published on the Internet this week by an open source lobbying organization called the Open Source and Industry Alliance (OSAIA). It states that the commoditizing influence of open source software such as the Linux operating system is bad for the U.S. economy and argues that open source also skirts export controls that govern commercial products.

A kinder, gentler Microsoft has come to the LinuxWorld Expo and Conference with a pledge to bury at least some of the hatchet with the open source community.

"We know customers want to deploy Linux and we need to provide interoperability," said Martin Taylor, Microsoft's general manager for platform strategies. Taylor made his comments during a Q&A session on the exhibition floor at the LinuxWorld Expo Thursday.

"I hope we've priced our products fairly so customers don't have to throw Linux in our face to get a discount," he said, adding he believes the customer's buy decision is "really not about acquisition cost."

Buoyed by strong demand for PCs, Microsoft on Thursday reported better-than-expected quarterly sales and earnings, with the company noting that it sees signs of a recovery in corporate tech spending.

For the three months ended Dec. 31, Microsoft earned $1.55 billion, or 14 cents per share, on record revenue of $10.15 billion. The earnings figure included 20 cents per share to cover the cost of stock-based compensation, including a 14-cent one-time charge for the cost of a program that allowed employees to sell their underwater stock options.

In the same quarter a year earlier, Microsoft had earnings, after charges, of $1.87 billion, or 17 cents per share, on revenue of $8.54 billion.

Taking the bull by the horns, Microsoft sent an executive to field questions from LinuxWorld Conference and Expo attendees here. Martin Taylor, general manager of platform strategies for Microsoft, jokingly donned a flak jacket before making the case on Thursday that people should buy Microsoft's software for its quality, security and legal protection.

The move was part of the software giant's marketing campaign to debate the merits of its software based on facts rather than emotions, but some resentment and skepticism about Microsoft's practices bubbled up through the questions.