Robert McMillan

By working to integrate OpenID

Microsoft Corp. has introduced a new product combining the Whale Communications virtual private networking software it bought last year with the latest version of its Internet Security and Acceleration Server, the company said Wednesday.

Two and a half years after handing the chief executive title to his hand-picked successor, Kevin Rollins, Michael Dell is again running the company he founded, Dell Inc.

With sales of its storage software dropping, Symantec Corp. plans to lay off some staff as part of plans to cut CDN$235 million in expenses.

With Christmas fast approaching, Santa Claus reached out for a little help from Stopbadware.org this week. The consumer advocacy group said it was approached by an Incline Village, Nevada, man who has legally changed his name to Santa Claus, who asked them to help figure out why his Web site was being flagged by Google Inc.'s Web site filters.

Sony BMG Music Entertainment will pay US$1.5 million in penalties to settle lawsuits with two U.S. states over its controversial use of copy protection software.

Hackers have released attack code that exploits a critical vulnerability in Microsoft's Word software -- the third such bug to be disclosed in the past week.

Microsoft has rolled out its monthly security updates for December, patching critical flaws in Internet Explorer, Windows Media Format and the Visual Studio 2005 development software. However, no fixes were provided for two Microsoft Word flaws that have been used in a small number of attacks over the past week.