eWEEK Editorial Board

Lets say theres a security vulnerability in the software you are using. Do you have a right to know about it? If so, when do you have a right to know? These persistent questions resurfaced at the recent Black Hat conference in Las Vegas when Cisco Systems and security research company Internet Security Systems threatened […]

Microsofts long prerelease cycle—early hype, alpha release, feature cutbacks, beta releases, tweaks, final release—has become business as usual for IT users, who have come to expect that “final release” really means “work in progress.” We believe the time has come for Microsoft to look at new ways to serve its vast and loyal user base. […]

Certainly, the layoffs were supposed to be over by now. Hewlett-Packards announcement of 14,500 jobs to be cut shows that its acquisition of Compaq continues to be a work in progress. Theres still opportunity in Palo Alto, but HP will have to execute. As CEO Mark Hurd finishes the first three months of his tenure, […]

Last month, the new Federal Communications Commission chairman, Kevin Martin, cited increased broadband deployment as his top goal for the agency—an agenda with which we wholeheartedly agree. According to a recent FCC report, the number of U.S. broadband subscriber lines grew by 34 percent last year; nonetheless, the United States still ranks between 10th and […]

If the lengthy list of complaints that AMD has filed against Intel, its market-dominating competitor, is found to hold water, technology historians may remember our present day as the “Intel Inside—or Else” era. In its lawsuit, AMD claims that Intel has used discriminatory pricing, threats to computer makers trying to sell AMD-based systems and other […]

The barrage of troubling enterprise security breaches continued last month when MasterCard International announced that a lapse on the part of its partner, CardSystems Solutions, had exposed 68,000 customers to a high risk of theft. As a third-party payment processor for MasterCard, Visa and American Express, CardSystems had access to vast amounts of customer data—most […]

The decision by Microsofts Chinese Internet portal to filter words such as “Freedom” and “Democracy” from its search engine, returning error messages about forbidden speech instead, has stirred up a mini-tempest on certain Web sites and blogs. The decision of MSN China, a joint venture between a city-owned Shanghai investment company and MSN called Shanghai […]

Spyware has rapidly advanced from a minor nuisance to a serious problem, meriting the attention of the courts and Congress. In our coverage this week, we report that software vendors, including giants such as Symantec, Yahoo and Google, are fighting among themselves and with small sites such as Hotbar.com and WebSearch.com over what constitutes spyware, […]

When technology laymen look at enterprise information systems, they can easily misperceive a necessary tool as an instrument of criminal conduct. Two incidents in the past month illustrate the potential for misunderstanding. An appellate court in Minnesota ruled May 3 that “the presence of an encryption program” (the widely used Pretty Good Privacy, or PGP) […]

Hard on the heels of “Tiger,” Apples latest Mac OS X release, came a report in The Wall Street Journal that Apple is preparing to incorporate Intel chips into a forthcoming product. The story breathed new life into the recurring rumor that an x86-compatible version of OS X is in the works. If the report […]