Lisa Vaas

Many are gleeful. Tuesdays remarkably on-schedule release of Windows Server 2003 R2 represents the first fruits of Microsofts effort to shape up on delivering Windows products on a regular basis, with much-improved security, in a form that doesnt break applications. “Were pretty happy here,” said Bob Muglia, senior vice president of Server and Tools, in […]

The long march to Microsoft Windows Server 2003 R2 is over, as the company on Tuesday released to manufacturing the final code for this long-awaited server software, throwing in a $100 price cut on its Virtual Server for a little holiday bling and to get the cash registers ringing in a sluggish economy. In a […]

According to George Lambert, creator of the Podkey redirection service that allegedly hijacked a Podcast and held it for ransom, the alleged victim registered with his service to begin with and the “ransom” simply represents fees that would be required to do the custom coding the Podcaster has demanded. The alleged victim, Podcaster Erik Marcus, […]

A recently discovered vulnerability in Microsoft Corp.s SQL Server 2000 database allows users to mask their log-in names. The vulnerability was discovered by Imperva, a researcher and vendor of data-center security products. The flaw shows up in the use of SQL Profiler in Microsoft SQL Server 2000 to audit connections to SQL Server 2000 by […]

In an assault reminiscent of the early days of the Internet, Podcaster Erik Marcus recently found that his RSS feed had been inexplicably redirected. According to Marcus, rather than fully cooperate to address the situation, the cyber-squatter is demanding payment or permanent agreement to terms, and Marcus is seeking legal redress for this new form […]

Sleepycat Software Inc. has updated Berkeley DB, its flagship open-source developers database, with new replication features and efficiency improvements. Sleepycat announced on Tuesday that Berkeley DB 4.4 now supports in-memory replication, client-to-client replication, and controls for throttling and delaying synchronization and master election speed-ups. The update also comes with online Btree compaction and disk space […]

Bloggers have no privacy and should expect none—a lesson painfully learned by a Canadian citizen who was recently turned away after U.S. border guards Googled him and pored over his blog to discover where he lives. Hossein Derakhshan, born in Tehran and now living in Toronto, posted details of his border experience on his blog, […]

The European Commission last week adopted measures that will help fight terrorism and serious crime by opening up development of, and access to, common databases. The databases in question are the VIS (Visa Information System), the SIS (Schengen Information System) and EURODAC (a database containing fingerprints of asylum seekers and illegal immigrants). One of the […]

From the well-duh department last week came the startling news—brace yourself, this is a real shocker—that MySQL actually plans to do something about Oracle purchasing its essential storage engine, InnoDB. “Obviously, because Oracle made that acquisition, we are evaluating options to replace that functionality in some way,” said Richard Mason, vice president of MySQL for […]

IBM has packaged up its July purchase of e-forms player PureEdge Solutions Inc. announcing on Tuesday its in-house branding of PureEdges technology as IBM Workplace Forms. The e-forms give access to back-end data such as inventory figures, customer data and pricing information and present it in a consistent interface. Thats critical to industries such as […]

SimpleFeed Inc., a maker of marketing RSS feed technology, on Monday released an update with simplified personalization, new statistics reports, a new Web-based management tool and more. SimpleFeed is used in marketing departments as a means of communicating with customers about recent news, events, research updates, customer forums, support updates, blogs, sales promotions and the […]

Microsoft Corp. is working on a new RSS extension that Ray Ozzie is referring to as the “RSS of synchronization”—a way to synchronize the mishmash of competing calendars and contact list software and services to set up a “mesh” model that lets friends, family and co-workers bidirectionally update each others calendars and schedules. Ozzie, Microsofts […]