Microsoft will be doing a lot to make developers and customers happy with its pending Internet Explorer release, if partner sources with inside information on the IE 7.0 browser are right. But there's one area where Microsoft won't be winning a lot of applause.

The company will continue to drag its feet by refusing to provide full support for the CSS2 (Cascading Style Sheets Level 2) W3C (Worldwide Web Consortium) standard, Microsoft partners say.

Sources claiming familiarity with Microsoft's IE 7.0 plans said the company will add some additional CSS2 support to its new standalone browser.

Picture the world of voice traffic on the Internet as a dark and forbidding place, rife with mobsters, con artists and shadowy sellers of dubious products.

Now picture getting hundreds of calls from these people every day. Imagine your worst day ever of telemarketing, back before the Do Not Call list, and then magnify it 10 times over.

That's the depressing future of VOIP (voice over IP), according to a report just released by the Burton Group. According to analyst Daniel Golding, the report's author, low costs brought on by outsourcing and offshoring, coupled with VOIP communications that are essentially free, can bring you exactly that kind of future, unless you take precautions.

At least a million machines are under the control of hackers worldwide, said security experts in Germany, indicating that the bot and botnet problem is worse than anyone thought.
Using only three computers as "honeypots," machines deliberately left open to attack, thus attracting hackers and their bots so researchers can capture data on their actions, German security analysts at Aachen University were able to identify more than 100 botnets during a three-month project. Those botnets ranged in size from only a few hundred compromised PCs to several of up to 50,000 systems.

The volume, the Honeynet Project researchers said, was staggering. Even using conservative estimates, they projected over a million PCs worldwide are currently under the control of hackers running botnets.

McAfee released a new tool that helps small and midsize businesses centralize management of protection against viruses and spyware. The tool, dubbed the McAfee ProtectionPilot, was unveiled Wednesday and is part of the new McAfee SMB Editions product suites.

According to David Roberts, senior vice president of channels for North America at the Santa Clara, Calif.-based vendor, the new product will be sold exclusively through the channel.

"This is designed to make it easy for channel partners to get into managed services for the small- and medium-size business market," he said. "As we looked at the needs of the SMB customer, we realized that it was best to let our channel partners help them out."

Specifically, the ProtectionPilot gives customers a graphical dashboard that coordinates realtime virus and spyware information from all over the network. It also boasts a threat information monitor that automatically shows emerging viruses of medium and higher importance as identified by McAfee AVERT.

Spyware has reached such epidemic proportions that legislators in the US Congress as well as state legislatures are responding to public outrage by drafting bills to prohibit its distribution, stem abusive practices and protect Internet user privacy. Unfortunately, pending and recently enacted anti-spyware laws are considerably flawed and could actually cause more harm than good. In fact, many experts believe we'd be better off if we'd simply put more effort into enforcing existing laws that prohibit fraud and deceptive business practices. And nearly all knowledgeable parties acknowledge that spyware is a technology problem that requires a technology solution.
New Laws, Plenty Of Flaws

Three pieces of legislation are receiving attention and attracting most of the debate.

- Bill S.2145, the SPY BLOCK Act, seeks to "to regulate the unauthorized installation of computer software, to require clear disclosure to computer users of certain computer software features that may pose a threat to user privacy, and for other purposes.... "