eWEEK EDITORS

Microsoft Corp. is denying that its CEO Steve Ballmer told Asian government leaders on Thursday that Microsoft believes that Linux violates more than 200 software patents. Instead, Ballmer was citing a controversial study done earlier this summer by a risk-mitigation consultancy that claimed that Linux has been found to violate more than 200 software patents, […]

Wi-LAN Inc. says it will offer a seamless upgrade path to WiMAX with the launch of its Libra MX OFDM platform. The company is an early provider of W-OFDM technology, one of the competing technologies vying for a spot in the final WiMAX standard. Wi-LAN guarantees interoperability with future WiMAX products, a somewhat risky move […]

Taiwans implementation of RFID lags behind other countries, according to a government sponsored study. The survey looked at four industries that were expected to adopt RFID early, including manufacturing, transportation, logistics and distribution centers and medical care. Only eight percent of those industries have implemented RFID. The low numbers could be explained by high prices […]

The “overabundance” of tag data RFID initially delivered actually slowed down Wal-Marts deployment, Wal-Mart CIO Linda Dillman said. “People are being encouraged to overdesign,” she said. “We didnt need all the data.” But that data flood did reveal some unexpected information, such as some of the most popular items to steal were wrinkle- and scar-reduction […]

Microsoft Corp.s Linux point man is at it again. This week, Martin Taylor, Microsofts general manager for platform strategy, isnt touting any new Microsoft-funded studies aimed to demonstrate that Microsofts total-cost-of-ownership numbers beat those of its Linux competitors. Instead, he is targeting one of the newer and increasingly powerful Linux players, Novell, by crusading to […]

Fujitsu Ltd. said it would develop WiMAX silicon in time for shipment in the second calendar quarter of 2005. The company made the disclosure as part of a press release about a new white paper the company published on the frequency spectrum requirements for implementation of the IEEE 802.16REVd (WiMAX) broadband wireless standard. Read the […]

Microsoft made a minority investment Monday in Unix/Linux management vendor Vintela. Neither Microsoft nor Lindon, Utah-based Vintela would comment on the size of the investment. But sources said the amount was less than $10 million. Vintela has acted as a key participant in Microsofts Unix/Linux interoperability strategy. Nonetheless, Vintela is an unlikely Microsoft partner. Vintela […]

Among the documents Adobe Systems provided the media supporting Mondays release of Acrobat 7 was a fact sheet outlining the pervasiveness of PDF (Portable Document Format) in the world. Heres a small sampling of the eye-popping collection of stats: As a de facto standard, 9.2 percent of the Webs 162 terabytes of content comprises PDF […]

Media reports often treat RFID as a “barcode on steroids” but this attitude oversimplifies the technology, according to Ben Gaucherin, chief technology officer for Sapient, a business consulting and technology services firm. While the technology will help manage the supply chain, it also has the ability to impact more industries than traditional bar code technology […]

Implantable RFID chips arent an easy sell with nine out of 10 people finding them “creepy,” according to Scott Silverman, the CEO of VeriChips parent corporation. Last month, the FDA approved the chips for human use. VeriChip touts them as a device that could help save lives in emergency rooms but some are worried the […]

The big picture take-away of this earnings season is that VOIP is booming, Jim Oberweis said in the November issue of the Oberweis. Report. “We believe that VoIP will likely cannibalize the traditional business over time, maybe even revolutionize it,” Oberweis said. Israeli company Audiocodes Ltd. is an early technology leader in the field. Another […]

Let me start this column by stating my biases: I believe the federal courts were right in ruling that Microsoft abused its monopoly power in PC operating systems. That said, I am very skeptical that Novell has any chance of proving that Microsoft used similar tactics to carve out a monopolists share of the desktop-office-suite […]