Dennis Fisher

A charitable foundation started by Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates and his wife, Melinda, last week donated $15 million to the Computer History Museum. The gift was the largest in the history of the museum and is part of its current effort to raise $125 million. The money from the Bill & […]

Internet Security Systems, which has had a reputation in the industry for testy relations with its resellers, has hired a new vice president of channels as it continues to try to improve its standing in the VAR community. The company announced last week that it has brought in Sergio Gemo, a veteran of Alcatel, to […]

Whipped into a frenzy at the prospect of acquiring Apple iBook laptops for approximately 5 percent of their original price, thousands of people jammed onto a racetrack in Virginia last week, eventually creating a ministampede that injured 17 people. Officials from the Henrico County school system announced that they were going to sell 1,000 used […]

The huge success of the open-source Firefox browser has spurred the browsers creator, the Mozilla Foundation, to create a for-profit arm called Mozilla Corp. Mozilla officials, however, said they have no plans to begin charging for Firefox or the foundations other software, such as the Thunderbird mail client. The new corporation will be owned by […]

The former IT director of an optical components company pleaded guilty this week to trying to sell trade secrets contained on backup tapes he stole from his employer. Brent Woodward admitted that he stole the tapes and then tried to sell the data contained on them to the chief technology officer of JDS Uniphase, a […]

Microsoft is suing Google, its chief rival in the exploding Internet and desktop search market, for hiring away an executive who helped develop Microsofts MSN search technology. The software company filed the suit last week after Kai-Fu Lee informed Microsoft officials that he was leaving to run a new Google research lab in China. Microsoft […]

Hewlett-Packard last week named former Dell CIO Randall Mott to take over the same position at HP. Mott will be responsible for application development, data management, network infrastructure, data center operations and telecommunications networks. Mott replaces Gilles Bouchard, HPs CIO since 2003, who will stay at the company as executive vice president. Check out eWEEK.coms […]

The merger of security software leader Symantec and Veritas, a force in the storage and backup sector, became official last week after months of planning. The companies announced the planned merger in December and have spent the intervening months working through the myriad details involved in combining two complex organizations. Gary Bloom, the former CEO […]

Concerto Software and Aspect Communications have agreed to merge in a $1 billion deal that would create the largest call center software company in the world. Concerto sells call center software, including predictive dialers, automatic call distributors and work force management applications. Aspect sells work force management products, as well as various other call center […]

Hoping to capitalize on Microsofts recent willingness to settle a variety of antitrust lawsuits, the founder of Go Computer filed two suits recently alleging that Microsoft used illegal means to prevent Gos pen-based system from taking off. Jerry Kaplan filed suits in both federal and California courts accusing the software maker of coercing a number […]