Well now, we've had more fun with Microsoft's Legal department today. You may remember a couple of months back we were forced to change our logo because Microsoft said it was against their logo program, although it was a bit of an annoyance, we didn't mind changing it as we always planned to at some point anyway. Well today we get another call and letter from Microsoft's Legal department saying thanks for changing the logo but can you now cease from using the name "ActiveWindows" as they say it is misusing the Windows trademark and giving Windows a bad name somehow.

We would like you to comment about this either by e-mailing us or by writing a message on our message board so Microsoft can see it. We doubt it'll make a difference but anyway.

We would also like to publicly state that we are having our lawyers look into it and a decision will be made early next month, oh and one last thing - we know who made the complaint about this, just like she did for the logo but we're used to that windows badly coordinated beta department being (how do we put this) difficult so we're used to it.

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Microsoft Corp. today announced that it anticipates more than 30,000 additional IT professionals worldwide will be trained on the Microsoft^® Windows^® 2000 operating system as part of February Training Month, designed to prepare the industry and ready customers for the release of the final Windows 2000 product. Microsoft has been preparing IT professionals for the business operating system's release since April 1999. Highlights of February Training Month include discounted, one-day hands-on Microsoft Official Curriculum (MOC) training courses delivered by the Microsoft Certified Technical Education Center (Microsoft CTEC) channel; Technology Week, a one-week event providing professional trainers with information on Microsoft Windows 2000 and other related sessions; and four new TechNet briefing sessions to optimize IT professionals' solutions based on the Microsoft Windows 2000 operating system.

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Just in time for Americans to open the W-2 forms that are landing in their mailboxes, Microsoft Corp. today announced that its comprehensive tax resources are now available to help consumers reduce the hassle, pain and anxiety associated with preparing and filing their taxes this season. Consumers who prefer a CD-based product can choose the new Microsoft^® TaxSaver™ tax preparation software that arrived on store shelves last month. TaxSaver offers an easy, step-by-step method for preparing and filing accurate returns. For consumers interested in an online solution, the MSN™ MoneyCentral™ online personal finance service offers a wide range of tax resources on the Internet, including free online filing for 1040EZ tax forms. Consumers can take advantage of the award-winning online personal finance resource to easily research, prepare and file their taxes from beginning to end, or as an online companion to TaxSaver.

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Microsoft Corp. today announced the redesign and immediate availability of the TechNet Web site for IT professionals at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/. In addition to the Web site redesign, Microsoft will offer a Windows^® 2000 Discussion Forum and 15 new TechNet sessions, nine of which are focused on the Microsoft^® Windows 2000 operating system.

"IT professionals have told us they want one location where they can find the latest technical information about Microsoft products and solutions as well as a better way to plug into the Microsoft peer network to discuss current technical issues and share information," said Rosa Garcia, director of TechNet at Microsoft. "Microsoft is committed to providing innovative, all-inclusive resources to IT professionals through the TechNet program, and the new redesign of the TechNet Web site offers customers a flexible, powerful knowledge source that can be customized to address their specific organizational needs and provide a launch pad for peer-to-peer interaction."

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What had been a little local skirmish between Microsoft and Lotus over Notes may be escalating into a war, despite the fixed smiles of chumminess following Lotus' decision this week to offer MS Outlook with Notes.

Microsoft had of course hoped that Notes would fall to Exchange as had 1-2-3 fallen to Excel many years earlier, but it didn't happen. From time to time, Microsoft ran a campaign to show that "independent research" purported to prove that Exchange Server was "preferred by IT administrators", was "easier, faster than Lotus Domino" or that it "outperformed" Domino. The skirmishes were punctuated by announcements that Lotus and Microsoft would "promote interoperability on the Web" with IE4 (July 1997), or integrate Windows Media Technologies into Lotus Notes and Domino" (last September). The recent trouble started on 10 January when Microsoft announced that "an independent laboratory test" showed that "Exchange leads in email performance". It turned out that the lab was ZD Labs.

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Just hours before the big gig where Transmeta's super-secret was due to be revealed, company CEO Dave Ditzel blew it by spilling his guts to Dow Jones Newswires. We shouldn't be too hard on the lad, as spinmeisters and top flight execs alike generally melt when confronted by the Mighty Dow, but even so - Transmeta was supposed to be the big secret, and it's a bit careless of the boss to spoil the party. But it's happened now. There are two chips initially, the 400MHz 3120, aimed at appliances running Linux, among other things, and the 5400, running at 700MHz and aimed at Windows portables.

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The Palm handheld platform continued to maintain a strong lead over Windows CE in the US last month, according to the latest data from market researcher NPD Intelect. Palm Computing ended the year with a marketshare of 73.6 per cent, up 8.1 per cent on December 1998. Windows CE took around 25 per cent, divided between products from Casio, Sharp, Hewlett-Packard and Compaq.

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Microsoft plans to keep your information safe and secure and educate you in the process, a company executive declares.

Part of that vision involves re-launching the company's around-the-clock Security Response Center, for which Microsoft promises a 24-hour response time to every customer report. Brian Valentine, Microsoft's senior vice president of Windows, described the company's plans in a keynote at the RSA Data Security Conference here this week.

On Microsoft's security Web site, you'll find information on security, cryptography, and firewalls, as well as products. The site also provides patches or work-around solutions, and posts bulletins.

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With Microsoft® Windows® 2000, validating a digital certificate can be as easy as verifying a credit card.

ValiCert Inc., a leading provider of electronic transaction solutions, has announced that its Global VA Service root keys will be embedded in Windows 2000. The solution enables any secure Windows 2000-based application to automatically verify all digital certificates before trusting them for Internet transactions, resulting in improved e-commerce security.

"Microsoft is pleased to be able to offer its customers the enhanced security made possible through the inclusion of the ValiCert root keys in Windows 2000," said Brian Valentine, senior vice president of the Windows Division at Microsoft. "Certificate validation is truly a critical requirement to ensure trust in e-business transactions, and we look forward to continuing our ongoing relationship with ValiCert."

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True to its button-down culture, Hewlett-Packard has been quietly shipping consumer PCs using AMD's Athlon processor to some retail outlets and will likely begin to sell them on the Web by early March.

Since the beginning of the month, Hewlett-Packard has been selling Athlon-based Pavilion models in Sam's Clubs and Costco stores, an HP spokesman confirmed. The PC maker is expected to start selling them on its Web site by late February or early March, sources have said. Although wider distribution is likely, the decision to sell the Athlon systems online may not yet be final, the spokesman said.

With HP adopting the chip, AMD has persuaded four out of the top five PC makers to manufacture Athlon consumer systems. Dell remains the holdout. Gateway said it would start using Athlon chips earlier this month, after deciding to not release an Athlon PC last year. AMD could not be reached for comment.

HP's use of the chip is the latest victory for AMD, which will announce earnings for the fourth quarter tomorrow after the market closes. AMD is expected to report earnings of 1 cent a share for the quarter, according to a consensus of analysts compiled by First Call. Although this will amount to a profit of around $1.5 million, AMD hasn't posted a profit since the fourth quarter of 1998. The company is expected to report losses for 1999 in the range of $350 million.

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Excite@Home averted a Usenet "death penalty" today by reducing an excessive amount of newsgroup postings emanating from spammers.

The self-appointed administrators of Usenet, a computer bulletin board system containing topic-specific messages, have agreed to lift a proposed measure that would have blocked many newsgroup postings originating from Excite@Home servers.

The Redwood City, Calif., company said the unwanted messages have stemmed from spammers taking advantage of misconfigured software used by some subscribers. As a result, some spam, or junk email, appears to be originating from Excite@Home users but is actually generated by another source.

"Because of the rapid and positive response from the people at Excite@Home Network, the Usenet Death Penalty originally announced to go into effect at the close of business (Tuesday) has been lifted," Usenet spam tracker David Ritz wrote today in an email.

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Microsoft Corp. stood its ground against government trustbusters Tuesday with its latest legal filing to U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson.

 Citing copyright laws, a 1998 appeals court ruling and Jackson's findings of fact, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) claimed it is not a monopoly and did not break federal antitrust laws by tying Internet Explorer to Windows or striking exclusionary agreements with its partners.

In a 70-page filing, Microsoft responded to charges by the U.S. Department of Justice and 19 state attorneys general that the company violated both sections of the Sherman Antitrust Act in at least four ways.

Tuesday's filing follows Jackson's Nov. 5 findings of fact, which declared Microsoft a predatory monopolist.

In Microsoft's filing, the company argued that, even based on Jackson's findings, it didn't break the law. "Needless to say, Microsoft respectfully disagrees with many of the Court's findings of fact and believes that they are unsupported by the record," the filing stated.

Download The Entire Document ( RTF )

As expected, Microsoft yesterday released the final version of Windows 2000 to MSDN subscribers a couple of days early. So for those lucky enough to have a subscription, what are you waiting for?

http://msdn.microsoft.com/subscriptions/resources/subdwnld.asp

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The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday let stand a ruling that the fees charged by Network Solutions Inc. for registration and renewal of Internet addresses do not represent unconstitutional, unauthorized taxes, as Congress approved their collection.

The high court, without any comment or dissent, rejected an appeal by a group of nine individuals or companies that sued Network Solutions (Nasdaq: NSOL) and the National Science Foundation, a federally financed agency that had a cooperative agreement with the company.

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While Lotus says it is not ceding victory to archrival Microsoft in a long-running messaging software market war, it is certainly extending an olive branch.

At its annual user conference here, the company is set to announce today that it will allow users of Microsoft's Outlook client software to link to its Domino Web server software across corporate networks. The move is significant, since for years Lotus and Microsoft have fiercely defended their proprietary messaging products.

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Although much of the focus on Microsoft lately has been on lawsuits and executives switches, the company today got back to its strong suit--profits--by reporting higher than expected quarterly earnings of 47 cents a share, excluding extraordinary charges.

Benefiting from growing demand for PCs loaded with Microsoft operating systems and software, the company reported earnings of 47 cents per share, on revenues of $6.11 billion. This is up from split-adjusted earnings of 36 cents per share for the same period last year and revenues of $5.2 billion. First Call analysts expected the company to report earnings of 42 cents per share.

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Microsoft today disagreed with a federal judge's findings that strongly suggest the software maker violated U.S. antitrust law.

As reported earlier, Microsoft filed proposed "conclusions of law" today in its landmark antitrust case with the Justice Department and 19 states. The government filed a similar document--but one that supported U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson's findings of fact--on Dec. 6.

Microsoft took the offense early in the filing, relying on more than 20 years of precedents to show that, in legal terms, it did not violate two sections of the Sherman Act.

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Intel Corporation today announced, during the ninth annual RSA Conference, its new family of Intel® PRO/100 S network security-enabled adapters, which help accelerate network security over the local area network (LAN) and are designed for today's e-business network environment. In addition, Greg Lang, vice president and general manager, Intel's Network Interface Division, will deliver a keynote presentation during the conference on Jan. 19 entitled, ``Security Building Blocks for e-business.''(b)

Featuring an on-board network encryption co-processor, the Intel® PRO/100 S Management Adapter and the Intel® PRO/100 S Server Adapter help enable higher performance and end-to-end security within the LAN to safeguard continuously the confidentiality and integrity of data that flows between the personal computer (PC) and the network server.

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A company devoted to keeping Net users' identities under wraps is planning to take its software out in the open.

Zero-Knowledge Systems, a Canadian firm whose Freedom software lets users conceal their identities online, today said it had hired Mike Shaver, who is currently winding up his short tenure heading developer relations and evangelism for America Online's open source browser development group, Mozilla.org.

The Canadian Shaver, whose whimsical title at Mozilla was "international incident," will be chief software officer at Zero-Knowledge.

Hiring Shaver signals the company's plans to move its software into open source development, in which the underlying source code is published, volunteer developers can work on it, and people and companies can use it under the terms of a public license.

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Corel doesn't just want you to be able to edit some images or fool around with a print-shop knock off. They want to give you the best of all graphics worlds, and package them all together, in one box. They want to call it CorelDRAW 9. And they have.

The box weighs at least 5lbs, and it contained tons of stuff. I must admit, it frightened me to see not one, but three user's guides, three discs (not including the CorelSTUDIO demo that is included), and 35 pages of a feature list. That's a lot of stuff. But, there are a lot of features too.

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The gods on mount Olympus have seriously rearranged the furniture this week! The news the first week of Y2K was how quietly the year passed. Apparently the gods had been hunkered down in their bunkers waiting for the predicted disasters to strike. In stunning contrast, this week they came out with lightening bolts and thunder galore!

As everyone on the planet knows by now, AOL and Time-Warner have agreed to merge in a stock swap with AOL's Steve Case leading the combined company. Though the merger of Internet with the mainstream media has been talked about for years (e.g. Web TV, Interactive Television, Cable Modems, etc.) nothing so bold was expected so quickly. This truly is a Y2K-class event, a deal for the new millennium! In this editorial I'll try to summarize why this is such a stunning move and analyze a bit of the fall out from the perspective of us "e-Developers".

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News we posted about last month but no one took any notice of it - anyway, here is the PR:

Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT - news) today announced that the Windows® 2000 operating system will be the first platform with 128-bit encryption to be shipped internationally under the federal regulations on encryption exports announced Jan. 14, 2000. Microsoft worked closely with U.S. government regulators to obtain the necessary approvals to ship Windows 2000 with strong encryption to worldwide customers, irrespective of industry or application.

Previously, international customers with increased security needs had to buy additional software and add on strong encryption. International customers will now be able to benefit from built-in 128-bit encryption in Microsoft® Windows 2000 when it ships. This eliminates delays and restrictions associated with individual export licenses.

``Windows 2000 will be the most secure operating system Microsoft has ever shipped, and we are excited to be able to further extend this security for our international customers via 128-bit encryption,'' said Brian Valentine, senior vice-president of the Windows Division at Microsoft. ``In addition, we are pleased to have worked so closely with the federal government in developing a security solution that benefits all international computer users.''

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Within a year to 18 months, shoppers could be able to opt for an XML-based digital receipt that can be viewed through their Web browsers under a proposed standard NCR Corp. unveiled last night in conjunction with Visa International Inc., Office Depot Inc. and several major high-tech vendors.

Backers said consumers no longer would have to worry about losing receipts, since they'd have an always-available record that could be used for warranty and potentially even tax purposes. The digital receipts also could benefit businesses that want to better manage and track employee purchases made with procurement cards, proponents said.

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