Microsoft's Product Activation Technology could cause a lot of problems.

Microsoft's new product activation technology in Office XP and Windows XP locks the software installation to a specific configuration.  The user may have problems if he does not enable the software within the required Activation period.  What is worse is that if the installation detects any "changes" in the hardware, it would de-activate itself.

In another news item, Microsoft has decided to drop the "Smart Tags" feature from its initial release of XP.  There has been criticism that Microsoft was reverting to it's monopoly tactics (controlling the user's access to the Internet through Microsoft products and sites).

Microsoft Wins Appeal but is it free ?

An appeals court does find Microsoft guilty of its monopoly charges (and reverts them to the lower court) but decides that Microsoft need not be broken up into two.   Find out why Microsoft is still guilty and what are the implications.

Lucent and Nortel retrenchments/losses

The way companies like Lucent and Nortel talk of retrenchments (not in the hundreds but the tens of thousands !), I wonder if their managers are doing any real work.  I bet they are spending most of their time drawing up lists of employees to fire (and shrinking their companies and business) instead of going out and looking for more business, business oportunities, recovery and growth.  When they say that they will being suffering losses in the billions of dollars in the current/coming quarter don't the senior executives feel any embarrassment ?

I have the suspicion (to make an understatement) that most US companies can only think in the short-term.  They do not look beyond the next two quarters (or rather one quarter).  CEOs get millions in stock options (perversely because the stock options are not expensed against the company's income ?) but retrenchments are heavy-handed.