Nancy Weil

Attendees at the CeBIT trade show who are in the mood to wreak a little network havoc might want to stop by IBM Corp.'s autonomic computing display, where visitors will be welcome to press a button to cause a workload surge felt by IBM servers in Raleigh, N.C. If all goes as IBM plans, the surge will be detected and responded to by the company's new autonomic computing software suite.

WorldCom Inc. slashed 5,000 jobs, most of them corporate and administrative positions, and laid out various other measures Monday to cut US$2.5 billion in costs as part of the 100-day plan for emerging from bankruptcy announced recently by Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Michael Capellas.

In a year awash with scandal and a steady stream of layoffs as the economy continued to stagger, we could take comfort in the certainty that fellows like Oracle Corp. Chief Larry Ellison and Sun Microsystems Inc.'s Scott McNealy would amuse us with their comments.

U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly on Nov. 1 approved most of the provisions of a settlement deal between Microsoft Corp. and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and nine states that sued the software maker in a landmark antitrust lawsuit.

Bill Gates gave Comdex attendees a glimpse of what has become an important show focus when he spent nearly half of his speech, which lasted almost two hours, on consumer products.

U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly Friday approved most of the provisions of a settlement deal between Microsoft Corp. and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and nine states that sued the software maker in a landmark antitrust lawsuit. In doing so, she brushed aside harsher remedies proposed by nine states that had refused to sign on to the agreement.

Two Asian companies that failed in a previous bid to buy Global Crossing Ltd. after it filed for bankruptcy in January have succeeded in obtaining a majority investment in the company in a deal valued at US$750 million, Global Crossing announced Aug. 9.

The Financial Services Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives has voted to subpoena WorldCom Inc. executives and a telecommunications analyst.