Stories by: Frank Hayes

Fifty cents. That's how much U.S. businesses could save by shutting down all their PCs at night and on weekends, according to a study released last month (download file) by the Alliance to Save Energy. Of course, that's not how the report headlined it. The alliance's number was US$2.8 billion per year.

Oh, not again. Last week, the SANS Institute and Mitre released yet another list of the most serious programming errors that break software security. And this time, SANS and Mitre got dozens of other organizations to sign on, including Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, Tata, Symantec, the US Department of Homeland Security and the National Security Agency.

Microsoft cuts 5,000 jobs. That's the big news of the week. Not just because the layoffs will cut one in 20 of Microsoft's 91,000 employees. Not only because it signals just how hard Microsoft has been hurt by the failure of Vista and by shifts in the way big customers license and use software. Not even because of the grim sign it represents for the rest of the IT industry.

Heard about a competitor's security being breached? Then you're probably next. In fact, you may already be owned.

If you're a hard-core IT security wonk, you already know about this. If not, go to Doxpara.com right now and click on the button that says "Check my DNS." That will run a simple test to tell you whether your name server appears to be vulnerable to DNS cache poisoning.

Let's talk about RFID. But first, let's imagine the Internet as it might be. Suppose every ISP required its users to buy only its own brand of modem. And use only its own proprietary Web browser. And connect only to Web sites certified by the ISP to work with that modem and Web browser.

OK, try to follow this: Microsoft has spent the past two years slamming its Open XML file format through the process to make it an international standard. Along the way, there's been arm-twisting, committee-packing, bribery and other chicanery. But by last week, Microsoft was one step away from success.

How many heads will roll at EDS? That's the obvious question, now that Hewlett-Packard is buying the company. A back-of-the-envelope calculation says that at least half the employees of HP+EDS are in services, but they generate only one-third of the revenue. Conclusion: Up to 50 per cent of them will get the chop.

Gartner says Windows is "collapsing." Well, sure. Strictly speaking, Windows itself isn't in a state of collapse -- Windows XP is still useful to a huge population of customers. But for Vista and the Windows franchise as a whole, things do not look good.

Well, that was quick. Last week, consumer electronics giant Toshiba announced it was pulling the plug on its high-definition video disc format, HD DVD. Within days, Toshiba's partners announced that they were now Blu-ray shops, and HD DVD players and movies were reduced to fire-sale prices.