Two new software programs circulating on the Internet could damage computer files, a software vendor said Thursday.

F-Secure, San Jose, Calif., formerly known as Data Fellows, said Thursday that two worms are spreading rapidly in Windows-based computer networks. They are similar to the infamous Melissa virus. According to a the company, both programs spread via users of the Microsoft Outlook e-mail program -- but in two different ways. Irok propagates through a file attachment called IROK.EXE, while the Kak worm arrives within an e-mail message.

"We are aware of Irok and Kak and have had a few reports of Kak, but nothing significant yet," said a spokesman from CERT, a nonprofit organization at Carnegie Mellon University that tracks computer viruses.

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Microsoft has released a patch that eliminates a security vulnerability in the TCP/IP Printing Services for Microsoft(r) Windows NT(r) 4.0 and Windows(r) 2000. If this service is installed, the vulnerability could allow a malicious user to disrupt printing services.

TCP/IP Printing Services is an RFC 1179-compliant printing service designed for environments that use the Berkeley Remote Printing protocols, also known as LPD and LPR. (In Windows 2000, TCP/IP Printing Services are also known as Print Services for Unix). A specially-malformed print request could cause TCPSVC.EXE to crash, which would not only prevent the server from providing printing services, but also would stop several other services, most importantly DHCP. Any affected services could be put back into service by restarting them; it would not be necessary to reboot the machine.

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Microsoft has released a patch that eliminates a security vulnerability in Microsoft(r) Internet Information Server and products based on it. Under certain fairly unusual conditions, the vulnerability could cause a web server to send the source code of .ASP and other files to a visiting user.

If a virtual directory on an IIS server is mapped to a UNC share, and a request for a file in the directory contains one of several particular characters at the end, the expected ISAPI extension processing may not occur. The result is that the source code of the file would be sent to the browser.

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Netscape fans can exhale; a beta release of Netscape 6 premieres next Tuesday at Internet World in Los Angeles. Netscape's parent, America Online, will do the launch honors for the first time. Steve Case, AOL's chair and chief executive officer, will unveil the browser in a keynote address Tuesday morning. Rooted in Gecko, Netscape's standards-based browser technology, Netscape 6 replaces the current Navigator 4x line that is struggling against Microsoft Internet Explorer.

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Steve Ballmer, Microsoft Corp.'s (NasdaqNM:MSFT - news) president and chief executive, told employees via e-mail this week that the company's efforts to resolve its federal antitrust case have led to substantial settlement offers.

Ballmer reassured employees in a companywide e-mail sent Monday that press reports of the company's settlement offer being inadequate were not accurate, and that the company continues to work with the U.S. Justice Department and the 19 states that filed antitrust suits against it.

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Comdisco Inc. (NYSE: CDO - news) and Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT - news) today announced they will offer a suite of services to enable businesses to achieve the highest levels of uptime for their mission-critical and Web-based applications running on the Microsoft® Windows NT® platform as well as on the newly released Microsoft Windows® 2000 Server platform. The agreement combines Microsoft's operating system and application expertise with Comdisco's expertise, methodology and infrastructure for delivering high-availability solutions.

Under the agreement, the companies will jointly develop, market and deliver solutions designed to provide companies with availability for their Windows-based environments, including data, applications, hardware, networks and storage.

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Would you like advertise your company on the 'Web? Would you like to reach a highly technical, educated and internet savvy audience? ActiveWin has some of the most competitive ad rates in the industry, and with high returns on your ad campaign it is a smart business decision to start today. E-mail bobstein@activewin.com for rates and more information.

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Companies will soon be better able to take advantage of today’s technologies without leaving yesterday’s behind.

Microsoft and Software AG, Europe’s largest system software provider, have announced an agreement to integrate the forthcoming Microsoft® Host Integration Server 2000 with Software AG’s enterprise integration technologies. This collaboration will extend the capabilities of Host Integration Server and provide a broader range of integration offerings, making it easier for customers to integrate mainframe-based applications with Windows® 2000- or Windows NT® Server-based applications.

"We are delighted to cooperate so closely with Software AG," said Tod Nielsen, vice president of marketing for the Developer Group at Microsoft. "For our customers, extending the functional spectrum of our host-integration technology in this way is essential to the long-term protection of existing investments and allows them to leverage the full power of the Windows DNA 2000 platform."

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Microsoft's corporate Internet website, Microsoft.com (NasdaqNM:MSFT - news), ousted Freeserve (quote from Yahoo! UK & Ireland: FRE.L) as the most-visited site in Britain in February, according to new research on Thursday.

Monthly rankings from MMXI Europe showed Microsoft.com -- Microsoft's corporate website rather than its msn.com consumer gateway to Internet services -- was visited by 31.9 percent of users in Britain, above Freeserve's 29.8 percent.

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Most Americans feel that the hefty sum of taxpayer money being spent on the Federal and State lawsuits against Microsoft could be better spent elsewhere, according to a recent Zogby poll.

In a March poll of 1,004 likely voters nationwide conducted for Americans for Technology Leadership, 66.5% agreed that the lawsuit, with costs estimated between $13 and $30 million is a bad use of tax dollars.

Roughly one-in-five (19.6%) felt that the case by the Federal government and 19 State Attorneys General was of sufficient importance to merit spending millions. An additional 13.9% were not sure.

What we asked:?

``The federal government and the 19 State Attorneys General are pursuing a lawsuit against Microsoft, saying the company has hurt consumers. Experts have estimated the Microsoft case has cost taxpayers between $13 million and $30 million dollars. Based on what you know about the case, do you think this case is a good use or a bad use of tax dollars?''

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Developers and licensees are privately questioning Microsoft Corp.'s claim that it is offering significant concessions in its antitrust settlement proposal to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Primarily, developers said, Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT) alleged proposals -- to decouple Internet Explorer from Windows, allow third parties "open" access to the Windows source code, publish all of its Windows application programming interfaces (APIs) and provide a level Windows licensing fee for hardware makers -- all come too late and offer little real value.

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British Telecommunications PLC (BT), AT&T Wireless Services Inc. and Microsoft Corp. today announced plans to cooperate in the wireless Internet industry to meet the needs of customers for mobile multimedia services.

The companies will collaborate to conceive, develop and deploy new wireless broadband applications for consumer and business markets around the world. Based on Microsoft's platform for mobile data services, the applications will be capable of being deployed on BT's and AT&T's existing and next-generation high-speed mobile data networks. The companies expect to begin trials of some services this fall with commercial rollout planned for soon thereafter.

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eFront has been sent word about an unofficial version of Netscape 6 Preview Release 1. Secretly hosted on Netscape's FTP servers, the beta was not set for a public release until next month. Netscape 6 is the next generation browser from Netscape Communications, based on the work of Mozilla.org. In development for two years, many Netscape followers have tracked the browser's progress and are quite anxious to see the final product. After the decision was made to re-write the browser from the ground up, Netscape began to receive pressure from the Internet community due to delays in beginning development anew. The first Preview Release of version 6 comes complete with a new installer, Netscape messenger (an AIM clone), Net2Phone, a new HTML engine, Sun's Java2, and a spell checker. Please note this release is completely unofficial and unsupported. Use it at your own risk - it will contain bugs. eFront does not recommend using this product until the official preview is made public next month. Download the UNOFFICIAL Netscape 6 Preview Release 1 from FileForum (http://fileforum.efront.com/detail.php3?fid=942950549)

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This week we have a Microsoft SideWinder Precision Racing Wheel for you to get the chance of winning. You can check out the review of the Microsoft SideWinder Precision Racing Wheel on our website right here. To be in with a chance of winning the Racing wheel simply answer the question on our competition page This competition ends on March 31st so get your entries in quick.

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Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told employees that Microsoft continues to submit last-minute proposals for settlement of its antitrust case, but that an appeal of the judge's decision is still on the table.

In a March 27 e-mail to thousands of Microsoft employees, Ballmer dismissed many reports in the press as "largely inaccurate," and said Microsoft chairman Bill Gates and other company executives are "focused on these efforts" and working closely with Microsoft's legal team on the proposals.

Ballmer said the case has not been settled and the Department of Justice has not viewed Microsoft's proposals as "inadequate."

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The crowded business-to-business Internet marketplace has a brand-new player: a software operation named Microsoft Corp. With investors and Old Economy companies swooning at the profit potential of business-to-business commerce via the Internet, Microsoft is serving notice that it is not going to be left out of the picture.

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IBM and Microsoft on Wednesday said that they will sell a lower-cost computer, known as an appliance server, that will be based on Windows 2000 for managing websites.

The product launch marks the first time Microsoft (stock: MSFT) has entered the appliance market for computers operating websites. International Data Corp. said it expects the market to have cumulative revenue of over $30 billion through the end of 2004.

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Growing tensions among the Justice Department and 19 state attorneys general have compromised settlement negotiations in the Microsoft antitrust trial, sources said today. Increasing dissension among state plaintiffs may largely remove them from settlement negotiations in the trial, said sources close to the talks. The DOJ now finds itself at odds not just with Microsoft but with its partners in the case.

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Microsoft Europe declined to comment on Wednesday on a report that it had poached a leading executive from the Psion-led Symbian alliance to take charge of sales and marketing at its wireless business.

No one was immediately available at Symbian's London offices or at Psion to comment on the report, on an Internet newsletter at www.theregister.co.uk, that Symbian executive vice president Juha Christensen would join Microsoft.

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The Web Standards Project (WaSP) today praised Microsoft's thorough implementation of HTML 4 and CSS 1 in the Macintosh version of Internet Explorer 5. However, the WaSP cautioned that no browser can be considered fully standards-compliant until it supports XML and the DOM, and the group urged Microsoft to take IE5/Mac to the next level.

``IE5/Mac offers the highest real-world standards compliance of any browser yet shipped,'' said group leader Jeffrey Zeldman, who also praised the browser for focusing on accessibility. ``An innovative Text Zoom feature allows the visually impaired to increase the size of type on a Web page,'' Zeldman noted. ``Web users will no longer be penalized for the poor authoring practices of some developers.''

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Microsoft Corp. today announced that Wells Fargo Bank has joined a growing list of organizations that are moving to the Microsoft^® Windows^® 2000 Server operating system as their enterprisewide operating system of choice.

To benefit from increased flexibility, greater manageability and faster performance, Wells Fargo has chosen to standardize on Windows 2000 Server and Active Directory™ service for the company's directory and file and print infrastructure as well as its platform for applications and Web services. Wells Fargo initially plans to migrate 120 NetWare servers to Windows 2000 at the company's Wholesale Banking Group.

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Microsoft Corp. officials today announced that the company has found an even greater need to protect consumers, honest resellers and the value of intellectual property in Maryland. Microsoft's most recent efforts uncovered five Maryland computer resellers that have allegedly distributed counterfeit and infringing Microsoft^® software and/or end user license agreements.

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Microsoft, in the midst of an extension in its settlement talks with the U.S. government, is preparing to announce a reorganization of the company. The restructuring that is in the works -- typical of the company's annual org chart tweaking and agenda revision -- will address its latest initiative, Next Generation Windows Services, which is due to be unveiled in May.

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If Sivakumar Nadarajah hadn't been sending himself email, he might not have discovered that Microsoft's Hotmail was losing his forwarded messages.

"I noticed this bug when I tried to forward a mail from Hotmail to my office account, which came from a Hotmail user," Nadarajah wrote in an email interview. "It never reached me (I tried three times). Then I spent a whole night to find the actual problem."

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All the rage among programmers, Linux is now poised for battle with Microsoft at the Point-of-Sale Terminal, according to a new study by IHL Consulting Group. ``Linux is getting a lot of press,'' says Greg Buzek, President of IHL Consulting Group. ``And solutions based on versions from Red Hat and VA Linux Systems are being investigated by many POS vendors as an option for their new software solutions.''

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The judge in the Microsoft antitrust trial has formally agreed to postpone delivering his verdict, people close to the case said today. The move suggests tempered optimism that lawyers could successfully negotiate a settlement.

Lawyers on all sides were notified late Monday that U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson had formally agreed to the delay and a new mediation schedule that allows for further negotiations until about April 7.

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Less than a week out of the chute, Microsoft’s Office Service Release-1 is coming under fire. Because of some testing that we’ve done and because of the rumblings that we’ve been seeing in newsgroups, we thought we would issue this warning before you venture out on the Net and grab the latest patch to the Microsoft’s Office Suite.

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Next week, Microsoft will detail revisions to its Open License program aimed at making it more palatable for small businesses and the providers that serve them.

On April 3, the software giant will announce Open License 5, a newly developed program designed to make it easier for solution providers and partners to sell into the small and midsize business markets.

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Promising to revolutionize the quality of media available to consumers on the Web and to transform the way consumers buy content online, Contentville.com has announced details of its plan to launch a new breed of e-commerce site, which include a multifaceted agreement with Microsoft Corp.

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The push to make businesses more efficient via trading exchanges is making its way to small and midsize companies, and the effects will be felt throughout the supply chain. Along with consumer titans Yahoo and America Online, Microsoft next week will throw its weight behind a business-to-business effort for small and midsize companies.

The goal, in part, of these efforts is to create so-called market-to-market opportunities, which promise to give small and midsize businesses the collective weight and influence to realize significant savings in their procurement of goods and services. In some cases, the savings could be greater than those enjoyed by larger companies using similar online conduits.

"I think that the purchasing savings for the smaller companies will actually exceed the kind of savings that the tier-one companies are able to drive because of their size," said Steve Banker, an analyst at ARC Advisory Group, in Dedham, Mass.

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The award-winning MSN™ MoneyCentral™ online personal finance service at http://moneycentral.msn.com/ today announced a major redesign to its site, introducing several new tools, resources and services to help consumers research, make decisions about and take action on their finances. In addition to providing a complete one-stop resource to help consumers manage their money and make smarter financial decisions, MSN MoneyCentral is delivering on the MSN vision of the Everday Web by offering powerful customization tools that allow users to create and tailor a personal finance resource to their needs - any time, any place and from multiple devices.

Through the new version of MSN MoneyCentral, consumers can pay all their bills online, view their account balances and recent transactions, track their portfolio, view a calendar of initial public offerings, and make and track the performance of stock recommendations, as well as compete for prizes in stock competitions.

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A new benchmark result shows that Microsoft® Windows® 2000 Server can help meet any data warehousing needs.

NCR's Teradata relational database has posted the first-ever one terabyte data warehouse performance benchmark on Microsoft Windows 2000. The performance result is on the Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC) TPC-R benchmark, which measures how well databases handle data-warehouse and decision-support workloads with multiple, concurrent users submitting complex queries. The combination of Windows 2000 Server and Teradata performed multiple-stream workloads of 21,254 composite queries per hour. That's a result that shows companies will soon be able to take advantage of unparalleled scalability, availability and manageability.

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Migrating to Microsoft® Exchange 2000 was a natural step for Getronics.

One of the world’s top five providers of information and communications technology services and solutions, Getronics uses the Exchange Server 5.5 messaging and collaboration platform to handle its flow of more than 200 million e-mail message transactions per year. Exchange performed beyond the IT company’s expectations, delivering cost savings through ease of use and solid reliability—and providing Getronics with a powerful application development platform. So when the beta version of Exchange 2000 became available, Getronics jumped on it.

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So you thought that tasteless joke you e-mailed to Mike in accounting would never see the light of day again? Guess again, and beware the life span of e-mail.

Last December, 23 New York Times employees lost their jobs for swapping bawdy e-mail messages. In February Northwest Airlines began court-authorized searches of the home PCs of more than a dozen flight attendants. The company was looking for evidence the workers organized a "sick-out" over holidays.

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Novell has targeted corporate users looking for a solid instant messaging system with its launch Monday of Instantme. The program works closely with America Online's popular Instant Messenger program and offers extras such as integration with Novell business products and Web access to instant messaging capabilities.

Novell executives announced the product here at the company's BrainShare user conference. Novell worked closely with AOL to develop the software and service, and as a result Novell Instantme users can access AIM users and AOL's Buddy List Network.

A basic version of Instantme is now available for free download; Novell executives say the company plans to release a secure version of the program, integrating encryption and digital certificates, by mid-year.

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The judge in the Microsoft Corp. case will be ruling some time after Tuesday on whether the firm broke the nation's antitrust laws, according to sources familiar with the case. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson had set a deadline of Tuesday to learn whether the two sides in the case needed more time to talk, one source said. But whatever the status of the talks, the conclusions of law themselves were not necessarily to be released Tuesday.

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Hoping to capture mind share from rival Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT), IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM) on Monday announced a new product that leverages Extensible Markup Language in connecting trading partners for electronic commerce. The WebSphere B2B Integrator is a competitor to Microsoft's BizTalk Server, which was announced a year ago. Both products are scheduled to ship in the summer and will compete in the growing market for XML technology, a favorite among corporations for linking applications with trading partners.

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Advanced Micro Devices Inc. will soon fire up the engine on its Spitfire chip in a move sure to spark yet another performance battle with rival Intel Corp.<