MS releases Windows 7 code

Microsoft has detailed how its partners and business customers can get their hands on Windows 7 RTM (release to manufacturing) code, which will be available next month on different days for different sets of users, reports PCWorld.

The company also confirmed in an entry on The Windows Blog that it would release a rumoured "family pack" of the Windows 7 Home Premium edition of the OS for households with multiple PCs, allowing for installation of the software on as many as three PCs.

Microsoft did not give details on pricing of the pack, however, saying that would be available later.

Bureaucracy and a shortage of employees with technology prowess have left the US government without the talent it needs to defend against cyber attacks, a study warned, says AFP.

"The results of this research are troubling and, in many ways, familiar," said the authors of the report, which is intended to check the status of the federal cyber security workforce.

"The overriding finding of our analysis is that our federal government will be unable to combat these threats without a more co-ordinated, sustained effort to increase cyber security expertise in the federal workforce."

Novell plans to pull the covers off a cloud computing security service designed to provide identity and access management for hosted applications and storage, next week, states eWeek.

The company will showcase the new technology, as well as a compliance reporting suite, at the upcoming Burton Group Catalyst Conference, in San Diego.

The service is currently in a private beta, and is slated to be generally available in autumn in the US.

Despite selling the most expensive PCs in an economic recession, Apple continues to defy logic by selling more Macs with only modest price cuts, outpacing the overall PC industry, according to InformationWeek.

The consumer electronics company reported selling 2.6 million Mac computers in the fiscal third quarter ended 27 June, an increase of 4% over the same period a year ago.

The rise was impressive given that the overall PC industry saw shipments drop in the same timeframe by 3.1%, according to IDC.

Intel has appealed a $1.45 billion fine levied in May by the European Union for antitrust violations and a spokesperson for the company confirmed that Intel will allege human rights abuses as part of its argument against the European Commission's (EC) handling of its case, reports ChannelWeb.

The EC, following an eight-year investigation, ruled on 13 May that Intel gave secret rebates to computer manufacturers on the condition that they severely limit or completely exclude rival chip maker Advanced Micro Devices' x86 microprocessors in their products.

Intel claims that the EC "refused to look at some of the evidence and in some cases refused to get some other evidence that was available" in the investigation of the chip maker, Chuck Mulloy, an Intel spokesman, said.