Jeremy Kirk

The scanning race has started: Microsoft Corp. announced an agreement Friday to scan 25 million pages from the British Library's collection that will eventually be made available on its MSN Book Search site next year.

Red Hat Inc. said Tuesday that the next version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, due for release in late 2006, will include a server virtualization capability integrated into the OS. The focus of Red Hat's development efforts will be to reduce IT infrastructure costs by developing an OS that encompasses security and storage management along with a management platform.

Microsoft Corp. has warned that if South Korean regulators order it to remove code or redesign Windows as part of an ongoing unfair competition investigation, it could pull the operating system from the market or delay the introduction of new versions.

Microsoft Corp. quickly backed off on a proposal to portable music player manufacturers that if they chose to include Windows Media Player in software packages, only that program could be included, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) reported Thursday in its update on the company's compliance with its antitrust settlement.

Microsoft Corp. said on Wednesday that it plans to consolidate the licensing terms for its Shared Source initiative under three license templates in an effort to simplify the program for developers.

The number of days a phishing site remains online has dropped to an average of 5.5 days, a sign that countermeasures against fraudulent Web sites are being enacted with increased speed, according the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG), which monitors phishing trends and online crime.

Microsoft Corp.'s moves into the security software market could be an agitator for more antitrust concerns over how it uses its market strength for other software offerings.

Microsoft Corp. is not going to release a version of its Office suite software for open-source rival Linux, although the company is actively studying how Linux works and how it can integrate with the platform, a Microsoft representative said.