Articles by Elizabeth Millard

Microsoft vowed Tuesday to appeal the recent European Union antitrust ruling that orders the company to modify its business practices, make product changes and pay a hefty fine. On Monday, the company delivered an application to annul the EU's decision to the European Court of Justice After a five-year investigation, the EU determined that Microsof...

In the midst of Oracle's trial to defend its takeover bid for PeopleSoft, Oracle will disclose merger talks between SAP and Microsoft In a statement, Microsoft revealed Monday that in late 2003, it approached SAP to discuss the viability of a merger. After months of discussion, it became clear that a merger would be too complicated, and talks ended...

Microsoft has announced that it will ask a European court to suspend parts of the European Commission's March 24th ruling, which ordered the company to change its business practices and pay a fine of US$612 million In the ruling, the commission mandates that Microsoft must strip Media Player software from its Windows operating system, as well as sh...

A virus that was first seen on May 22nd has been worming its way across the Internet, stealing personal information in the process. Dubbed "Korgo," the worm exploits the same vulnerabilities and spreads in the same way as the Sasser worm that caused havoc last month. Although the virus is not yet widespread, security companies like Symantec and F-...

Social networking pioneer online service Friendster has tapped former NBC entertainment president Scott Sassa as its CEO, replacing interim CEO Tim Koogle. Friendster gave Koogle the reins in March, three years after he had stepped down as CEO of Yahoo and was replaced by Hollywood studio executive Terry Semel.

When Mel Karmazin on Tuesday announced that he had resigned his position as president of Viacom, the media giant responded by appointing Tom Freston and Leslie Moonves as co-presidents and co-chief operating officers, effective immediately. The two new appointees were Viacom's two most influential division heads: Freston was CEO of MTV Networks, and Moonves was CEO of CBS Television...

The Chinese government is establishing a committee that will review online games and censor them if it finds questionable content. The review will take place before the games are made available, so subscriptions will never be sold if the committee does not render approval Objectionable material, according to the country's Ministry of Culture, inclu...

Symantec has reported it has analyzed a virus capable of attacking 64-bit Windows files. The virus, W64.Rugrat.3344, is the first known threat to 64-bit systems According to Symantec, Rugrat is simply a proof-of-concept virus -- the kind usually written by "white hat" hackers and given to security companies as an example of potential danger.

Yahoo has announced it will add a feature to its Web browser toolbar that allows users to easily remove spyware programs from their computers. Called Anti-Spy, the feature is currently in beta. Yahoo will be collecting feedback from beta users and intends to utilize that information to produce the final version of Anti-Spy. The current beta versio...

At its eWorld customer conference Tuesday, BEA Systems introduced new products and services that support Liquid Computing, an initiative that builds on a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) foundation. Formerly named Project Sierra, Liquid Computing's goal is to improve interoperability between BEA products and other systems. The new additions to ...

At its TechEd conference Monday, Microsoft announced several tools and technologies aimed at developers and other IT professionals. During the keynote speech, CEO Steve Ballmer stressed that these advances in enterprise tools are part of the company's push to give customers better security and IT productivity options The tools that were highlighted...

On the heels of last week's revelation of a potential security breach in the form of a code leak, Cisco Systems on Tuesday is expected to unveil a new high-end router for large telecommunications carriers. Code-named HFR (Huge Fast Router), the product will be part of an event to mark the company's 20-year anniversary The new router will be given i...

As part of its legal wrangling with The SCO Group, IBM has filed a motion for summary judgment in an attempt to remove copyright claims from the multibillion-dollar lawsuit In its request, Big Blue cited a lack of evidence from SCO that would prove wrongdoing on IBM's part. The copyright claims in question are considered a major component of SCO's ...

Thanks to eBay and its competitors, online auctions have become a common way for individuals and companies to sell goods. More recently, nonprofit organizations have begun to see the light as well, supplementing their fundraising efforts by auctioning big-ticket items and services online The move toward Internet auctions has been aided in large par...

SAP's Sapphire user conference in New Orleans kicked off last week with a keynote by SAP chief executive Henning Kagermann, who called for more efforts to streamline the company's applications and bolster Web services adoption Those twin themes were echoed frequently throughout the week in conference sessions and product releases. Indeed, much of t...

Phishing -- a tactic in which fraudulent email directs users to a malicious Web site that masquerades as a site belonging to a legitimate company, such as a credit card firm or bank, while stealing users' personal data -- is unquestionably on the rise. A recent Gartner report noted that in the past year, approximately 57 million adults received a phishing e-mail. Worse, 11 million of those recipients clicked on the links in that e-mail...

The United States has set its sights on becoming the country with the fastest supercomputer. The Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) announced it has been chosen to lead a partnership with the goal of building the most powerful supercomputer by 2007. The Department of Energy awarded the lab a US$25 million contract for the effort...

In a recent report, Gartner estimated that 57 million U.S. adults received a "phishing" attack e-mail within the past year, and half of those who responded became victims of identity theft Phishing is a tactic used to get credit card information from consumers who believe they are visiting legitimate bank and credit card sites. Usually accomplished...

WebSphere Commerce, IBM's e-business software, got more than a fresh coat of paint and minor tweaks in a recent upgrade to version 5.6 In fact, Steve Gatto, marketing manager for IBM WebSphere Commerce, told the E-Commerce Times that enough improvements have been made to the application that it should have been bumped up to version 6.0 by now. Howe...

At its conference for customers, channel partners and user group members today, Hewlett-Packard announced two new products in its ongoing "adaptive enterprise" strategy Specifically, the company unveiled an archive and retrieval product as well as a dual-processor module that will benefit its server customers. In addition, HP will provide services ...