MS already gearing up for Vista service pack ... SAP to offer hosted midmarket apps

HIGHLIGHTS
News: Microsoft already gearing up for Vista service pack
News: SAP to offer hosted suite of midmarket apps
News: Toshiba preps 2GB NAND flash memory chips
News: Broadcom takes massive $2.24 billion in backdating charges
Windows Tip: Preventing removal from a domain
Podcast: SAP prepares hosted midmarket apps ... Sun reports a quarterly profit ... Toshiba makes 2G byte NAND chip ... Apple patches Quicktime hole
ITwhirled: CSI: 19th century


NEWS UPDATES

Microsoft already gearing up for Vista service pack
On the verge of the release of Windows Vista, Microsoft Corp. is already accepting orders for features to go in the OS's first service pack.

SAP to offer hosted suite of midmarket apps
SAP AG is developing a hosted suite of business applications for the midmarket, hoping to attract an untapped segment of customers with the promise of faster implementation and lower ownership costs.

Toshiba preps 2GB NAND flash memory chips
Toshiba Corp. will begin selling in April NAND flash memory chips capable of holding up to 2G bytes of data, the company said Wednesday.

Broadcom takes massive $2.24 billion in backdating charges
Broadcom Corp. Tuesday unveiled the largest restatement of financial results related to stock options backdating so far, totalling $2.24 billion.

Apple patches security flaw in QuickTime
Apple Inc. has patched a vulnerability in its QuickTime media player. The problem concerns a buffer overflow that can occur when QuickTime processes a RTSP URL, which directs the player to a streaming file and allows a user to play and pause it.

Sun returns to black after five red-ink quarters
Sun Microsystems Inc., fresh from news of a renewed alliance with chipmaker Intel Corp., on Tuesday reported its first quarterly profit in more than a year. Sun posted net income of $126 million, or $0.03 per share, on a 7 percent gain in revenue to $3.566 billion, in its fiscal 2007 second quarter ended Dec. 31, 2006.

ATI buyout eats into AMD's Q4
Beset by sinking prices for microprocessors and the cost of acquiring graphics chip company ATI, Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) Tuesday reported a fourth-quarter loss of $574 million, down from a profit of $96 million for the same quarter last year.

FTC clears Brocade-McData deal
The Federal Trade Commission has cleared the pending acquisition of McData Corp. by Brocade Communications Systems Inc. after an antitrust review, removing the last regulatory hurdle to the deal.

Microsoft releases Ajax tool
Microsoft Corp. Tuesday released a developer tool formerly code-named Atlas for building Web applications based on Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML).


WINDOWS TIP

Preventing removal from a domain
By Mitch Tulloch, MTIT Enterprises

By default, any authenticated users on an Active Directory-based network can add a Windows XP workstation to a domain. In fact, they can create up to ten computer accounts in the domain if they want to. As an administrator, you can use Group Policy to manage who in your organization has the right to join workstations to the domain by configuring the Add Workstations To Domain policy setting, which is found under Computer Configuration/Windows Settings/Security Settings/Local Policies/User Rights Assignments.

Here's how to configure this setting.


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SAP prepares hosted midmarket apps ... Sun reports a quarterly profit ... Toshiba makes 2G byte NAND chip ... Apple patches Quicktime hole


ITWHIRLED

CSI: 19th century
For decades, historians have buzzed that Napoleon may have been poisoned by his British captors. But recent research has come up with a more prosaic answer: He died of stomach cancer -- just like the coroner who first examined his body said.