Microsoft, Samsung sign patent accord ... HP expands lead over Dell ... Mozilla releases Thunderbird 2

HIGHLIGHTS
News: Yahoo sued over jailing of Chinese dissident
News: Nokia phone sales drop in Q1 as prices fall
News: Gates launches developing world tech initiative
News: Microsoft, Samsung sign broad patent accord
Windows Tip: Forcing a remote reboot
ITwhirled: Physicist needs $20K to test time-travel hypothesis
Podcast: BlackBerry services resume after outage ... HP expands lead over Dell ... Microsoft, Lenovo join forces for R&D


NEWS UPDATES

Yahoo sued over jailing of Chinese dissident
The wife of an imprisoned Chinese dissident has sued Yahoo Inc. for divulging information about her husband's Internet activity, which allegedly led to his arrest and torture.

Nokia phone sales drop in Q1 as prices fall
Sales in Nokia Corp.'s core mobile phone business dropped in the first quarter as competition intensified in the global handset market, particularly from Asian vendors.

Gates launches developing world tech initiative
Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates launched an initiative in Beijing Thursday aimed at bridging the digital divide between technologically advanced and developing countries.

Microsoft, Samsung sign broad patent accord
Microsoft Corp. entered into a broad patent licensing agreement with South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. aimed at speeding product development efforts for both companies, they said Thursday.

Mozilla releases Thunderbird 2 e-mail client
Mozilla Corp. unveiled the final version of its open-source Thunderbird 2 e-mail client on Thursday, improving how users can organize and label their messages.

HP extends market lead over Dell in PC sales
Hewlett-Packard Co. (PC) has extended its lead over Dell Inc. in personal computer sales according to two industry reports released Wednesday.

New legislation would overhaul U.S. patent system
A group of U.S. lawmakers have introduced legislation that would overhaul the U.S. patent system, earning them praise from a number of technology groups.

Next OpenOffice release to include Pentaho BI
Open-source business intelligence software vendor Pentaho Corp. is hoping a new tie-up unveiled Thursday with the OpenOffice.org community and Sun Microsystems Inc. will bring its BI offerings to the attention of many more new users.

MS Antitrust: Iowa judge approves class-action settlement
A judge in Iowa's Polk Country District Court Wednesday granted preliminary approval to a settlement in one of the last class-action lawsuits faced by Microsoft Corp. in the wake of the antitrust case brought by the U.S. government in the 1990s.

Ballmer: SAAS shouldn't threaten IT jobs
While the movement toward SAAS (software as a service) and away from client-based software may change the role of the IT professional, it shouldn't signal a widespread loss of jobs, experts speaking during Microsoft Corp.'s IT Pro Town Hall in Redmond said on Wednesday.

Red Hat creates global services center in India
Red Hat Inc. has set up a global services center in India that will assist its customers with deploying open-source technologies. The center will hire about 100 staff over the next 12 months.


WINDOWS TIP

Forcing a remote reboot
Mitch Tulloch, MTIT Enterprises

You've probably heard that old saying, "When in doubt, reboot." There
can be many reasons why you might need to reboot a system from
applications that leak memory to problems caused by patching. And
while rebooting a system to fix an issue isn't an elegant solution,
well if it works, it works. Right?

Unfortunately sometimes when you try and reboot a remote system it may
not behave as expected. For example, one business I know has scheduled
reboots for one of their servers using Task Scheduler and the
shutdown /r, but from time to time the reboot fails for no apparent
reason, even when using the /f (force) command. How can you make sure
your server reboots when you tell it to?

Subscribe to Windows in the Enterprise - Tips for how to maximize Windows safely and securely.


ITWHIRLED

Physicist needs $20K to test time-travel hypothesis
Always wanted to meet Abraham Lincoln or James Dean? Got $20,000 burning a hole in your pocket? Talk to physics prof John Cramer, who has some interesting ideas on time travel but can't get the funding needed to test them out.

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