Pirates work around Vista's activation feature ... HP settles civil lawsuit over spying

HIGHLIGHTS

News: Security hole found in Windows Media Player
News: Oracle increases i-Flex offer
News: Pirates work around Vista's activation feature
News: HP settles civil lawsuit over spying
Opinion: Two radically different approaches to enterprise application software
Podcast: Today's IT news audio update
ITwhirled: Geek Comic of the Week: Webcomic Crossover & Cameo Archive


NEWS UPDATES

Security hole found in Windows Media Player
Users are being advised to disable a certain type of file in Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Media Player software following the discovery of a new security hole in the software.

Oracle increases i-Flex offer
Oracle Corp. has increased the price it is willing to pay for an additional stake in i-flex solutions Ltd., a vendor of financial software in Mumbai, India.

Pirates work around Vista's activation feature
Hackers are distributing a file that they say lets users of the corporate version of Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Vista operating system get around the software's anti-piracy mechanisms.

HP settles civil lawsuit over spying
HP has agreed to a $14.5 million settlement in the California civil lawsuit related to the company's spying scandal. Under terms of the settlement with the California attorney general, HP will pay $13.5 million to create a "Privacy and Piracy Fund" for law enforcement activities related to privacy and intellectual property rights operated in the state Attorney General's Office.

Microsoft readies Windows, Visual Studio security fixes
Microsoft Corp. plans to patch its Windows and Visual Studio products next week, but it does not have a fix in the works for a widely publicized flaw in Word, which hackers are reportedly exploiting in targeted attacks.

Microsoft's Office Open XML format becomes a standard
ECMA's General Assembly voted by 20-1 in favor of Microsoft's Office Open XML document format at a meeting in Zurich on Thursday afternoon, and will now submit the format to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) for its approval. The vote against came from a representative of IBM Corp.

IBM accuses mainframe company of patent infringement
IBM Corp. says a Sunnyvale, California, company has infringed its patents by creating computers that allow customers to run IBM's System z operating systems and software on mainframes from other vendors.

MySQL, Open-Xchange announce partnership
Open-source players MySQL AB and Open-Xchange Inc. announced a partnership and support agreement Thursday to optimize the interaction between MySQL databases and Open-Xchange groupware functions. Open-Xchange customers won't have to pay extra for product support for MySQL, they said.

Microsoft: 1 million Zune sales by June 2007
Microsoft Corp. has predicted it will sell 1 million Zune devices in its first six months, a figure that would be more than Zune's chief rival iPod sold in its first 14 months but a relatively slow start for the much-hyped MP3 device.

FTC launches program for victims of ChoicePoint breach
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has begun mailing claim forms to more than 1,400 identity theft victims who spent money to clear up identity-theft problems due to a security breach at data broker ChoicePoint Inc. announced in early 2005.


OPINION

Two radically different approaches to enterprise application software
By Sean McGrath

Nothing stays still for long in this business. Every day (or so it
seems) there is some new technological innovation that changes the
business environment. Competitive forces move and shape-shift all the
time. To keep up, you develop/deploy your own technologies that in
turn may change the business environment in which you operate. Around
and around the cycles of change we go...


PODCAST

Daily IT News Audio Update
HP will pay $14.5 million to resolve a civil suit in its spying scandal ... Microsoft confirmed a new security flaw in Windows Media Player ... Oracle increased its bid for i-flex solutions


ITWHIRLED

Geek Comic of the Week: Webcomic Crossover & Cameo Archive
Do you ever get the feeling that Web comics are one big running in-joke? Check out this exhaustive list of crossovers and cameos between different Web comics characters and artists.