Wired News

Microsoft will omit anti-virus protection in Vista, the next version of Windows, which it plans to ship late this year. As with previous versions of Windows dating back to Windows 2000 at least, Redmond is promoting Vista as a landmark improvement in Windows security. For unspecified business (not technical) reasons, Microsoft will sell anti-virus protection to consumers through its OneCare online backup and security service. Symantec, though its assisted enquiries from investigators, has said it would rather take on Microsoft in the marketplace than cry foul to regulators over Microsoft's entry into the consumer anti-virus marketplace. McAfee has made no suggestion it's about to object to Redmond's encroachment on it traditional turf, either. So it seems Microsoft has either decided anti-virus technology is better delivered as a service or else figured out that's a better business model to pursue.

Google is releasing new beta versions of its Google Toolbar for consumers and corporations. After Google Toolbar 4.0 is released publicly on Monday, new custom buttons will let people run search queries directly on any Web site from their toolbar. People can easily create their own buttons from Web sites, and developers will be able to use a new XML application-programming interface to create more advanced buttons. Bookmarks can be saved to a user's Google account so they can be accessed from any computer. The enhanced search offers query suggestions and spelling corrections. Users can send Web pages via Gmail or mobile text messaging or to a blog with the click of a button. The new enterprise edition lets administrators control which features to enable. Google Toolbar 4.0 beta for Internet Explorer will initially be available in English, and in more than 16 languages by the end of March. It runs on Windows XP.

At Google's Official Blog: googleblog.blogspot.con, Google expresses its helplessness at removing sensitive information from the search results. Excerpts from the blog: "Google users in China today struggle with a service that, to be blunt, isn't very good. Google.com appears to be down around 10% of the time. Even when users can reach it, the website is slow, and sometimes produces results that when clicked on, stall out the user's browser. Our Google News service is never available; Google Images is accessible only half the time. At Google we work hard to create a great experience for our users, and the level of service we've been able to provide in China is not something we're proud of. This problem could only be resolved by creating a local presence, and this week we did so, by launching Google.cn , our website for the People's Republic of China. In order to do so, we have agreed to remove certain sensitive information from our search results. We kno...

Linus Torvalds , the developer of the Linux kernel, has publicly stated his opposition to the digital-rights management (DRM) provisions that have been proposed for the new version of the GNU General Public License (GPL). The GPL is used by many open-source software developers. The new draft for version three of the GPL prohibits the use of GPL-licensed software from implementing DRM copy-protection systems. Torvalds wrote in a posting for the Linux kernel mailing list that he does not expect the kernel to adopt the new license. His position, while not a total surprise, represents a significant rejection of the proposed draft.

The Walt Disney Co on Tuesday said it would buy Pixar Animation Studios in a $7.4 billion deal that gives Pixar animators creative control over the world's most famous cartoon studio and make Pixar CEO Steve Jobs Disney's largest individual shareholder. Under the agreement, expected to close this summer, Jobs, who also heads Apple Computer Inc, will join Disney's board of directors. Pixar's six films with Disney, including "Toy Story," "Finding Nemo" and "The Incredibles," have grossed more than $3.2 billion. "As I considered the possibility of returning Disney animation to greatness, it was clear to me that maintaining a relationship with Pixar was essential," Iger told analysts on a conference call on Tuesday. Pixar has over $1 billion in cash on its balance sheet, making the net value of the transaction about $6.3 billion, Staggs said. Both boards of directors have approved the deal, which calls for 2.3 Disney shares to be issu...

IBM, whose secure messaging system is used within many of the biggest companies, on Monday said its customers would soon be able to chat with instant messaging users from America Online, Yahoo and Google. International Business Machines Corp. said it plans by midyear to allow its Lotus Sametime corporate instant messaging system to work with the three consumer platforms, marking the latest move to break down barriers that have separated instant messaging audiences from one another. Lotus Sametime counts 20 million users inside companies worldwide, including more than 25 companies with over 100,000 users apiece. IBM said 60 percent of the world's 100 largest companies use Sametime. By allowing corporate messaging systems to work with consumer versions of IM, office workers will be able to communicate instantly with friends or family outside of work.

Google has announced that its Google Talk service is now fully interoperable with other communications services that support the server-to-server XMPP protocol. This open interoperability, also known as federation, enables any communications service provider to connect to Google Talk, so respective users can talk to each other. Many service providers world-wide support XMPP federation today, as also thousands of active XMPP-based communications services run by major corporations, ISPs, universities, and individual users. Some of these service providers supporting XMPP federation include Jabber.org , Earthlink, Sipphone's Gizmo Project, Chikka (Philippines), MediaRing (Singapore), Tiscali (Italy), and Netease (China).

Both Microsoft and IBM are vying for supremacy in the $2.8 billion corporate messaging market which includes collaboration tools such as e-mail, Web publishing, electronic calendars and project management systems. To encourage customers to switch from their existing Lotus applications to Microsoft's platform, Microsoft said it would offer a tool to allow potential customers to identify and organize its most-used shared software. In market share terms, Microsoft had 32 percent of the 389 million users of e-mail and collaboration software, while IBM had around 24 percent, Radicati estimated. By 2009, Radicati estimates that the number of Microsoft Exchange users will rise to 200 million users, or 37 percent of the corporate market. IBM Domino/Notes users will sink to 68 million, or 13 percent of the market, while IBM's new Workplace software will grow to 35 million users, or 6.5 percent of the market, meaning IBM's total share will amount to around 20 percent of the global ma...

Google is great at getting Web users access to information, and great at getting advertisers access to its Web users. So, what is it doing getting into the radio business? Tuesday's purchase of radio advertising company dMarc Broadcasting for $102 million (and up to $1.1 billion more over the next three years) is just another step toward making the company a one-stop shop for advertisers. It's not clear how much the dMarc deal will do for Google, which may be why the company isn't betting that much, comparatively speaking, on the acquisition. The reason: DMarc only gives Google access to a small slice of a contracting market. Up until now, dMarc's chief product has been a tool that lets radio outlets automate their operations, a tool used by some 5,000 of the 13,000 stations in the U.S. Of those customers, about 500 use another dMarc product, one that allows them to automatically sell leftover air time--"remnant" time, in industry-speak--to advertisers at a st...

IBM said Tuesday that net profits rose 13 percent, although revenue was unimpressive in many areas and missed analysts' consensus estimate. Cost cuts and the sell-off of IBM's personal-computer business boosted profit margins, while positive trends in chips and mainframes helped the hardware division. In the last three months of 2005, IBM earned $3.19 billion, or $1.99 per share, on revenue of $24.4 billion. The results were pulled down 10 cents per share by a $267 million charge stemming from IBM's recent decision to freeze its pension plan for U.S. workers in 2008, and by 2 cents per share because of an accounting change. Leaving those figures out, the $2.11 in earnings per share easily beat the $1.94 consensus of analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial. The revenue forecast was $25.5 billion. In the same period of 2004, IBM registered a net profit of $2.83 billion, $1.67 per share, with revenue of $27.7 billion. However, subtracting the performance of IBM's personal-c...

Seagate Technology LLC has started shipping a notebook PC hard drive that overcomes an obstacle many feared would be a major roadblock to the further expansion of disk capacity and the overall growth of the storage industry. With some drives now topping out at 500 gigabytes, the miniaturization is nearly at its limit. Made any smaller, the particles can begin to interfere with the magnetism of their neighbors. The result is disastrous for data. The new approach that aligns bits of data vertically rather than horizontally enables Seagate — and other drive vendors — to further boost the density of drives without increasing the risk of scrambling data. Seagate's new drive, the Momentus 5400.3, was being shipped as of Monday, the Scotts Valley, Calif.-based company said. The shift to perpendicular recording allows it to bump up the maximum capacity of its notebook drive to 160 gigabytes from 120 gigabytes. The 2.5-inch drive costs $325, compared to about $240 for the 120 gig model. Sea...

Microsoft's latest Windows Vista beta , in the field less than a month, has been getting a thorough going over from developers and early adopters. Where are the games? In a world where many PC users are heavy secret Solitaire players, curiosity abounds as to what games will come with Windows Vista. Two sites ( here and here ) have posted screenshots, apparently obtained at Microsoft's September 2005 Professional Developer's Conference, exploring this recreational angle. Did you know that Microsoft isn't the only entity that's registered 'Windows Vista' as a trademark? Microsoft is certainly covering all its legal bases when it comes to protecting the Windows Vista name. According to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office , Microsoft has registered Windows Vista at least seven times as a trademark. What's a quick way to learn to write Vista-aware code? On his blog, Tim Sneath, a Microsoft Windows Vista Technical evangelist, suggested setting up a series ...

Apple has released Intel-based laptop MacBook Pro and iMac powered by a Dual Core Processor with clocks of up to 1.83Ghz at the currently running MacWorld Conference and Expo. iNtel iNside Apple claims that the Dual Core Processor will deliver up to four times the performance of the PowerBook G4. The new MacBook Pro , the first Mac notebook based on an Intel processor, features a stunning aluminum enclosure just one inch thin, weighs only 5.6 pounds, includes a built-in iSight video camera for video conferencing on-the-go, and the Apple Remote and Front Row software for a simple, intuitive and powerful way for users to enjoy their content wherever they go. Apple has also unvield the new iMac which is powered by the Intel Dual Core Processor which is twice as fast as the previous iMac. The widely praised iMac design now features a built-in iSight video camera for video conferencing out-of-the-box, and the breakthrough media experience of Front Row with the Apple Remote for a simple,...

Sales for servers running the decades-old Unix operating system aren't growing as quickly as those that run on Microsoft's Windows and the open-source Linux. But recent maneuvers by large server vendors show that Unix is still a big business -- and showing new signs of life. The $16 billion-a-year market, which comprises everything from workstations to high-end servers, has long been a three-way race between Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard and IBM. The contest intensified over the last year as Sun tried to keep its footing, HP held its own and IBM gained. Who's Crazy? Now all three vendors are looking for signs that recent bets they've made -- gambits the other two rivals call crazy -- will pay off this year: IBM is counting on its Power line of chips to provide better bang for the buck than rival vendors. The firm controls every part of the process, from chip design to manufacturing. Rivals say IBM can't afford to do this for long. Sun also designs its own chips,...

If Internet is incomplete without Google, so is the case this year with Consumer Electronics Show 2006 and High-Def DVD Players, offering the final component to replicate the movie theater experience at home. Among the more interesting gizmos on display at the show, which ends Sunday: • The Inno, a portable combination XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. receiver/MP3 player with 1 gigabyte of internal memory. The device, from Pioneer Electronics, allows users to store songs taken from their own CD collection, as well as 50 hours of XM programming. Playlists can combine songs from both sources. Users can also bookmark songs they hear on XM, then buy the tracks for 99 cents from Napster. The device will be available in March and retails for $399. A boom box and car kit are also available. • Samsung Electronics Co. also announced a line of portable satellite radio/MP3 players. The Helix XM2Go player is similar to the Pioneer Inno and will also sell for $399 in March. But an even smaller Sams...

Intel Inc. has officially introduced their Centrino Duo Platform today. With dual-core capabilities, power saving features to improve battery life, Wireless connectivity and Advanced Graphics Media Accelerator, Intel has made a strong waves into the market. Hardware Benchmarking Sites like AnandTech have already reviewed the notebooks based on the Centrino Duo Platform and the results are pretty impressive. They compared one notebook based on the Centrino platform with the one based on Centrino Duo Platform. The Centrino Duo Platform based machine performed better in terms of speed and lasted 30 minutes of battery life more. Intel is also offering Comparison and more detailed features of the Duo Platform on their Website.

International Business Machines Corp. said Thursday it will freeze its $48 billion pension plan in 2008 and instead enhance its 401(k) benefits for its 125,000 U.S. workers. Nearly all IBM's U.S. employees - everyone hired before Jan. 1, 2005 - have pension benefits accruing under a traditional annuity-like plan or a cash-balance plan, which gives workers interest-bearing funds that they can take with them if they leave the company. Industrial giants such as IBM and airlines that still carry pension obligations say the costs and complexities hamper their ability to compete with younger, more nimble rivals that aren't saddled with pension obligations. Beginning in 2008, then, IBM workers' pension benefits will be locked in place, based on salary and length of service. The accrual of benefits will stop, meaning future raises or additional years with the company will not signify bigger pension checks upon retirement. Instead, IBM will increase its contribution to its 401(k) pl...

Google Inc. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. may be preparing a low-cost PC that runs an operating system created by Google and could be announced as early as Friday at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times . A Wal-Mart spokesperson called the report “strictly a rumor without any truth to it at all.” A call to Google was not immediately returned. Google has long been rumored to be working on its own operating system, possibly based on Linux, as well as its own Web browser. Screenshots purportedly from an in-development Google operating system were circulated on the Internet in September, but were later discredited. Bear Stearns released a report last month speculating that consumers would soon be able to see “Google Cubes” -- small hardware boxes that would allow users to move songs, videos and other digital files between their computers and TV sets. In recent months, Google has also unveiled services and software delivered through th...

Report says a newly discovered flaw could expose hundreds of millions of Windows PCs to virus. January 3, 2006: 11:08 AM EST http://money.cnn.com/2006/01/03/technology/windows_virusthreat/index.htm?section=money_latest NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - The new year is off to a rocky start at Microsoft, where security experts are scrambling to confront a potentially massive virus threat to Windows PCs. According to a report Tuesday in the Financial Times, the latest vulnerability involves a flaw which allows hackers to infect computers using programs inserted into image files. The threat was discovered last week. But it mushroomed over the weekend, when a group of hackers published the source code they used to exploit the flaw. What makes this threat particularly vicious, according to the Times, is that unwitting victims can infect their computers simply by viewing a web page, e-mail, or instant message that includes a contaminated image. That differs from most virus attacks, which require a us...