Short Takes

November 19, 2007 (Computerworld) -- •Microsoft Corp. has won a lawsuit filed by a company that had charged it with infringing on a patent for technology that helps computers boot up faster. Acceleration Software International Corp. was seeking $600 million to $900 million for Microsoft’s use of the technology in Windows XP. Dell Inc. has agreed to acquire Everdream Corp., a hosted service management provider. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. When the sale closes later this year, Everdream will become part of Dell’s global services organization. Mozilla Corp. disclosed on its Web site that it plans to fix just 20% of the bugs now in Version 3.0 of its Firefox browser before the final version is released next year. The company has asked developers to prioritize already-identified bugs. Microsoft has delivered a “release candidate” version of Windows Vista Service Pack 1 to 15,000 by-invitation-only testers and said it was on track to ship the update early next year.

Q&A: Eyeing IT spin-offs through an R&D lens

David Tennenhouse, a former research and development director at Intel and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, talks in an interview about his new job as a venture capitalist.

Benchmarks Last Week

Brief items about notable IT developments, both present and past.

Oracle Claims Early Wins in Battle With Red Hat

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison told an audience at the OpenWorld user conference that the company now provides Linux support to 1,500 users, a significant boost to its effort to challenge Red Hat.

Paglo unveils free IT infrastructure search engine

An IT search engine start-up said it will soon launch beta software that will allow businesses to scour and search all of the IT data from their networks, computers and security systems from a free, Web-based application.

Opinion: Preparing for XBRL Reporting and Beyond

XBRL technology has an advantage over XML in financial reporting.