In testimony before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Tuesday, Gen. Wesley Clark - the former supreme commander of NATO forces and US presidential candidate, speaking as a board member of and advisor to security software company Tiversa - cited a study by his company revealing that in a period of two hours' search time on the P2P file-sharing system LimeWire, over 200 classified US Government documents were discovered.

"If you saw the scope of the risk," Gen. Clark testified, "I think you'd agree that it's just totally unacceptable. The American people would be outraged if they were aware of what's inadvertently shared by government agencies on P2P networks. They would demand solutions."

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Mozilla CEO Mitchell Baker suggested Thursday that its Thunderbird e-mail client be spun off, but is soliciting the opinions of users before making any final decision.

Baker said in her blog that Thunderbird is being "dwarfed by the enormous energy and community focused on the web, Firefox and the ecosystem around it." By spinning it off, she believes that the project would allow the application to thrive.

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The last week of July is often an important manufacturing milestone for computer companies. Earlier this afternoon, Microsoft proved that's still the case with no fewer than five major announcements in the development arena. A few hours later, its communications division said it is proceeding with plans to release to manufacturing tomorrow its ambitious Office Communications Server 2007 and Office Communicator 2007 (the client module) - the keystones of its Unified Communications strategy.

But this time around, adopting this new Microsoft product isn't just a matter of ripping out one piece of software and replacing it with another. UC is an entirely new mindset for corporate communications, and whether it's necessarily better than the current mix of landline telephony with cellular communications with instant messaging, may not be proven for at least the next few years. For businesses even considering UC, it's an investment that is certainly bound to become historic no matter what the outcome.

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Microsoft said Thursday that it had agreed to acquire AdECN, a company that deals with the buying and selling of display advertising. The Redmond company says the acquisition was a key part of its overall strategy to provide a comprehensive package of search and online display advertising to Microsoft's clients. Financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed.

"We believe the addition of AdECN to the Microsoft portfolio is a perfect fit and will create more efficiency for the industry by forming a more robust marketplace between advertisers and publishers, aggregating more supply and demand. This is good for the whole advertising industry," Microsoft's Platform and Services president Kevin Johnson said.

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AOL has released the first beta of a new software application code-named "Helix," which pulls together e-mail, IM, Web browsing into a single user interface designed to ease multitasking. Helix succeeds "OpenRide," the software AOL pitched as an upgrade to its aging client.

Although it won't say so openly, Helix is essentially an upgrade of OpenRide; installing the former overwrites the latter. AOL's almost schizophrenic approach to application development -- Communicator, "Fanfare" and AOL Suite were all developed for a similar purpose over the last six years, but eventually fell by the wayside -- highlights the struggle the company faces in its ongoing transition from ISP to Web services provider.

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Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer boldly touted the success of Windows at the company's annual Financial Analysts Meeting Thursday, saying that the number of PCs with Windows installed will surpass 1 billion by the end of Microsoft's next fiscal year on June 30, 2008.

"There will be more PCs running Windows than automobiles at that point," Ballmer suggested. He also provided some guidance on sales of Windows Vista, announcing that 60 million licenses of the new operating system have been sold. 20 million copies of Vista were sold after mid-May, when Microsoft announced 40 million licenses sold in the first 100 days.

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Hungarian authorities have raided the offices of Microsoft Magyarorszag, the Redmond company's subsidiary in the country. Regulators believe Microsoft abused its position in the market to force computer makers sell only Office and no competing products.

"The GVH sensed that (Microsoft) likely applied a system of conditions and benefits -- rewards for loyalty -- for the most significant software distributors which gave no incentive to these distributors in selling other products competing with Microsoft Office software," the agency said on its Web site, according to Reuters. Microsoft has not commented on the news.

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Dell said Thursday that it had signed a deal with Japanese retailer Bic Camera to sell several notebooks and a desktop model in its 22 stores across the country in August. The Round Rock, Texas computer manufacturer had a preexisting relationship with Bic, but only for kiosks in the stores where customers could order PCs from the manufacturer directly.

Dell's deal in Japan follows a similar deal the company struck with Wal-Mart in the US to sell its computers in 3,400 stores across the country and in 500 Sam's Club locations, and another deal with Carphone Warehouse LLC in the UK earlier this month.

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Sprint said Thursday that it will partner with Google to develop a portal that takes advantage of the company's planned WiMax network. The Mountain View, Calif. Search giant provides various tools for the site, including e-mail, chat, and other applications. The features that Google provides are enhanced by Sprint's network, including network bandwidth, location detection and presence capabilities.

"This collaboration brings what will be the best mobile Internet network together with the leading Internet search company," Sprint's 4G chief Barry West said. "It allows us to capitalize on the powerful mobility and Internet trends, and create wireless services and applications that take advantage of each company's history of product development innovation." Sprint also announced that it is providing APIs for others to build applications that take advantage of its WiMax network capabilities.

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At the start of AMD's semi-annual technology analyst day conference, president Dirk Meyer and VP of marketing Henri Richard set the tone for the day-long session by toning down even further the relative importance of performance, including among consumers.

"No longer do we hear that it's all about performance," said Meyer during his opening remarks. Instead, the three pillars of the company, as he perceives them, are power efficiency, providing the optimum visual experience to customers, and thirdly, something of a surprise: affordable Internet access, including to emerging markets. This may come as a shock to customers and investors alike who never considered AMD an ISP.

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Despite the war of words going on over next-generation game console sales, not much has changed when it comes to which device is actually being played most. According to Nielsen GamePlay Metrics, the PlayStation 2 still accounts for 42 percent of game use in the US.

The original Xbox holds a distant second place with 17 percent, while the new Xbox 360 is played by 8 percent of households. Behind the Xbox 360 is Nintendo's GameCube at 5.8 percent. Although it may be bringing in major revenue for Nintendo, the Wii accounts for only 4 percent of video game use. Sony's PlayStation 3 trails far behind at 1.5 percent. Nielsen used a sample of 12,000 U.S. households with around 33,000 individuals to accumulate its figures for June.

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No fewer than five major announcements in the development field are being issued by Microsoft this afternoon, the timing of which is by no means coincidental: On the top of the list, Beta 2 of Visual Studio 2008 -- which is quickly losing touch with its old code-name "Orcas" -- will be made generally available for download by this Friday, along with Beta 2 of .NET Framework 3.5.

But what developers have been itching to finally try is building applications for Silverlight - the company's new cross-platform graphical front-end module - under the auspices of Visual Studio.

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Sony has scored another win in the war for high-definition dominance, signing a deal with Target to promote Blu-ray players and movies exclusively in its retail stores. Sony is paying a fee to have Blu-ray featured in end-of-aisle displays, and Target will not carry the $179 HD DVD add-on for the Xbox 360.

Target will continue to offer HD DVD products on its Web site, and did not specify why it had selected Blu-ray only for its brick-and-mortar locations. The HD DVD Promotional Group said the move by Target was not important, as its Toshiba players are already featured at Circuit City and Best Buy. It's also not clear if Target customers, who are typically not high-end shoppers, will be willing to spend $499 for Sony's Blu-ray player with HD DVD players available elsewhere for $299.

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ABC.com is now beta testing a player that will allow it to stream television shows in high-definition. The player is produced by Move Networks, and recommends a 2Mbps or faster broadband connection, 128MB of video RAM, 1 GB of RAM, and a resolution of at least 1300x770 pixels.

Only four episodes from four different shows are currently available from "Desperate Housewives," "Grey's Anatomy," "Lost," and "Ugly Betty." Other shows will be added soon, ABC says. All episodes are shown with what ABC calls "limited commercial interruptions," although viewers are not permitted to skip those commercials that do exist.

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Aiming to stay competitive with Sony, Microsoft cut the price of its HD DVD add-on for Xbox 360 by 10 percent, as well as including five free movies through a mail-in offer.

The free disc offer is similar to an offer that Toshiba has been using to promote its own set-top HD DVD players. The price will be dropped in the United States from $199 to $179 USD beginning August 1, and the promotion will run from that date to September 30.

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