Parsing Bill Gates: Is he saying Microsoft wants to be left alone?
While touring Asian countries this week, Gates gave reporters a bone to chew on: a suggestion that Microsoft will now pursue an "independent" strategy in the wake of the Yahoo deal's failure. But independent of what, exactly?
There may not be many opportunities left in history to draw extrapolated conclusions on something Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates says about the future of his company, or of anything else related to technology. So a single phrase containing a key word uttered by Gates during a press conference in Tokyo yesterday has once again drawn the wolves into a feeding frenzy.
Next Windows PowerShell will have GUI, remote management support
Two of the single most begged for features for PowerShell, the devastatingly useful scripting tool now made an integral part of Windows Server 2008 and Exchange Server 2007, are being addressed in the Community Technology Preview for version 2.0.
As Microsoft now confirms, there will be a unique graphical front end for editing scripts and running commands and cmdlets (compiled PowerShell keywords). And yes, Virginia, there will be a newly supported remote link to servers running Server Core, the new minimal Windows installation introduced in WS2K8.
XP SP3 distribution proceeds after auto download filter put in place
After delaying the availability of Windows XP Service Pack 3 through its Download Center for one week after an incompatibility problem was discovered, Microsoft has now opened it up to automatic distribution.
Download Windows XP Service Pack 3 from FileForum now (316 MB).
Google accuses Verizon of weaseling out of its 700 MHz requirements
Prior to the start of the biggest wireless spectrum auction in US history, Google took credit for convincing the FCC to impose an open access rule for the winning bidder. Now the company is urging the Commission to enforce that rule.
A petition filed by Google last Friday with the US Federal Communications Commission (PDF available here) urges the agency to write a specific order requiring Verizon Wireless, as the runaway victor in its 700 MHz C block auction, to comply with FCC guidelines mandating that it provide customers with unlocked and open equipment for use with services in that spectrum.
With the Yahoo deal nixed, the lawsuits pick up steam
Is it the duty of a CEO to make sure his company's shareholders can make a big short-term gain, even if it means the loss of the company in the long term? A Delaware court will decide that question when it hears Yahoo shareholders' case.
A class-action suit against Yahoo filed last February 21 in Delaware, originally on behalf of shareholders of retirement funds for Detroit city workers and law enforcement personnel, could pick up added class members as a result of last weekend's Yahoo and Microsoft merger talk failure. Attorneys on behalf of the shareholders are confirming today that they're pressing ahead with plans to hold Yahoo's chief executives and board of directors liable for failing to enter into a deal that would likely have maximized their share value.
Roundtable on Yahoo minus Microsoft: Who wins for losing?
There's a saying here in Indianapolis when someone starts falling behind: We say he's "lost the lead lap." Last weekend, Microsoft may have faced a critical moment in its race for online leadership. Does it realize how far behind it is?
With AOL's Platform-A now commanding the largest reach of any online advertising platform worldwide, there's respectable analysis that says Microsoft could now be considered the number four player in the online advertising space.
Yahoo minus Microsoft: Ballmer slams the door on his way out
It is perhaps the biggest "no-go" in the history of the Internet industry. So in the absence of any Cinco de Mayo celebrations in Redmond, did Microsoft manage to move the needle in its direction in its fight to avoid becoming the #4 player?
Whether the idea was made popular by the ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tse in the sixth century B.C., or by Michael Douglas' portrayal of "Gordon Gekko" in the classic 1980s movie "Wall Street," there's a notion that warriors don't enter into battles they haven't already won in advance. Maybe Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer hasn't read up on his philosophy or hasn't watched much AMC lately; in either case, he's the one holding an empty basket today, after shutting almost every door behind him on the way out of the Yahoo negotiations.
Dell tries again with its XPS 730 high-end desktop gaming system
After one of the worst starts in the history of PCs two years ago, Dell's XPS desktop series has come crawling back, but not without scrapes and bruises along the way. Yesterday it revealed a new 730 model it hopes can recapture Dell's glory.
There are two schools of thought in the consumer PC industry: One believes that the global economy is in such poor shape this year that computer purchases will end up being heavily curtailed, and that the discretionary segment of the market -- the high end -- will absorb the brunt of the blow. The other believes that since the bad economy will impact lower wage earners hardest, higher wage earners will continue spending as they have before, and thus the high end of the market will be an oasis in the desert.
Digg makes official its adoption of a 'semantic Web' standard
It could be the very thing the Web has lacked all these years, even with its wealth of intermingled hyperlinks: a markup language for conclusively identifying context. Now, Digg is making the bold attempt to be its biggest "beta tester."
One of the principal deficiencies all these years about HTML or XHTML as a markup language has been the absence of any genuine, built-in feature for explaining to indexing services or even to browsers with intelligent features, just exactly what a page contains at a granular level. Metadata could conceivably help categorize data, assuming everything on a page had the same category; but with more Web pages these days constituting whole blogs, whole-page metadata is rapidly becoming useless.
Expression Studio 2 released to retail
Microsoft's principal challenge to Adobe's creative suite now officially enters the second stage of its life cycle, with the release this afternoon of Expression Studio 2.
On the one hand, Microsoft is moving its Expression suite for Web developers towards more generally adopted Web standards with a more genuine embrace of PHP in addition to ASP.NET, with the final release today of version 2. On the other hand, it adds complete support for its Silverlight platform, showing it still has intentions to build a platform for the Web -- just not the same one it was building before.
AOL, Real, Yahoo must pay millions in outstanding music royalties
The artists' rights organization ASCAP will be receiving tens of millions in back royalties from 2006, from the leading Web radio broadcasters. But it's much less than what it had proposed, and way less than what royalties groups wanted last year.
A long-standing dispute over how much Internet streaming radio services owe in composers' royalties dating back to 2006 was settled yesterday in US District Court in New York. There, Judge William C. Conner issued a decision whose intricate formulas had their data, sadly, redacted from the public copy of the decision (PDF available here, black marks and all), although the end result is that AOL Radio, RealNetworks, and Yahoo will probably find themselves collectively owing more several million in back royalties.
Microsoft may or may not have raised its bid for Yahoo
There may, in the end, be a gap of at least four dollars per share between what Microsoft thinks it might possibly, perhaps, be willing to pay, and what Yahoo's shareholders definitely would like to see. Suddenly Redmond is looking soft.
During the founding days of America, one way for its first citizens to communicate indirectly with prospective business partners, while at the same time influencing the public markets, was by taking out notices in newspapers. These earliest editions were often tacked to public posts.
Google Analytics will finally integrate blog tracking
With all that Google has had on its plate over the past two years, you can imagine some projects have been shoved to the very back of the back burner. But only now is a February 2006 acquisition starting to heat up.
Over two years ago already, Google purchased the developer of an innovative set of blog traffic measurement tools called MeasureMap. Its key feature was providing blog proprietors with a near-real-time geographical plot of where its readers originated from, along with key data as to what readers were interested in and what they responded to.
Latest Skype 3.8 promises better audio, MySpace integration
Emerging from beta yesterday, build 115 of version 3.8 of the latest edition of Internet voice messaging platform Skype promises to focus on the messaging platform's single biggest gripe in recent months: call quality.
Download Skype 3.8.0.115 for Windows from BetaNews FileForum now.
Intel denies new iMac has new 'Montevina' platform
Is it a first peek at an entirely new class of Intel CPU that Apple is offering in its latest refresh of iMacs, or is it an older class of CPU that is being overclocked at customers' requests? Intel is indicating that the iMac's new high-end CPU is neither.
The latest round of the old "telephone game" amid several online news sources yesterday resulted in two unusual interpretations of Apple's news on Monday that its top-of-the-line iMac was getting a speed boost to 3.06 GHz.
© 1998-2025 BetaNews, Inc. All Rights Reserved. About Us - Privacy Policy - Cookie Policy - Sitemap.