eWEEK EDITORS

Samsung Electronics and EMC Corp. last week announced a partnership to jointly develop and sell storage computers. EMC will sell its data storage products through Samsung Electronics in South Korea. Samsung will supply its parts to EMC. Read the full story at KoreaTimes

Broadcom Corp. last week introduced enhanced IT security and virus/worm protection capabilities in its XelCore RAID software stack. New features include data redundancy, secure backup, and the ability to hide a copy of customer data from attacks against the enterprise and the network on which the data resides. The system is able to hide data […]

Read this weeks Spencer column.

Some people have tried to position security efforts as potentially beneficial to the bottom line, but Microsoft Chief Security Officer Scott Charney this week admitted he was cynical. “Security is a cost center. If there were no attacks, no one would bother,” he told a few hundred IT professionals a security event in Boston. Charney […]

A new General Accounting Office report recommends centralized patch management services to help protect government systems against software vulnerabilities. The GAO study of 24 executive branch agencies found that although they are building system inventories, a vital first step in the process, most have no formal process for patching and many do not test patches […]

Network Associates Technology Inc. has been granted a broad patent for filtering unwanted e-mail messages. The patent covers “various computer program products, systems and methods,” including the use of multiple spam-filtering techniques such as compound filters and paragraph hashing. Some legal experts have expressed doubt that the patent will stand up to challenges given its […]

The Department of Homeland Security this week awarded a contract to Accenture LLC to oversee a program to track millions of foreign visitors to the United States using biometrics, such as digital photographs and fingerprints. The project, officially called US-VISIT, will track foreign visitors to ensure they do not overstay their visas. One of the […]

Microsoft on Thursday posted for download a public beta of the next version of its Visual FoxPro development tool. The public beta of Visual FoxPro 9.0, code-named “Europa,” is available on the Microsoft.com download site. The new version will include a number of user-interface tweaks, as well as some incremental new features for developers, such […]

Oracle will do something completely out of character when it meets the Justice Department in court next week to defend its hostile takeover of PeopleSoft. Namely, it will paint Microsoft as a champion of competition and a welcome competitor in the market for back-office software. For the full story, go to the New York Times. […]

What more could Microsoft ask for? It has market share, cash reserves and brand recognition that most competitors could only dream of. But one prize still eludes the Redmond software giant: better customer-satisfaction ratings. To tighten its bonds with users, Microsoft is spinning new tools and initiatives designed to foster a sense of community among […]

On Thursday, Microsoft Corp. notified 177 employees working out of its Findlay, Ohio, offices that the company had decided to close its facilities there. Findlay is home primarily to Microsoft Business Solutions Solomon team, but also includes other members of the server and tools, field service, and operations teams. While “there will be some opportunities […]

My latest Microsoft Watch column, “Trouble in Tablet Land?” created a lot of trouble of its own. While few readers disagreed that Microsoft needs to improve its Tablet marketing, more than a few erroneously deduced that we had pronounced the Tablet DOA. For the record, I didnt declare that Microsoft has decided to ax the […]