Sun presents XML Office challenge to Microsoft

CBROnline reports that Sun Microsystems has unveiled a series of XML-based specifications designed to crack-open Microsoft`s Office monopoly and improve interoperability with StarOffice.

Sun appears to be taking this one seriously and has lined up partners to form a technical committee at the Organisation for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) that will drive the proposed formats. Partners include Corel, XML publishing specialist Arbortext, standards specialist Drake Certivo and aircraft giant Boeing, among others.

Sun`s apparent goal is to challenge Microsoft`s monopoly of desktop productivity suites using StarOffice 6.0, which will ultimately support the formats. The file formats are already used in OpenOffice 1.0, the basis of StarOffice 6.0.

The company says the OASIS Open Office XML Format Technical Committee`s work will enable exchange of data in XML-based formats while retaining a "high level" of formatting between text, spreadsheets, charts and graphs.

Sun says it has invited Microsoft to join, but it is "not optimistic" that the company will. Microsoft says it is still evaluating the offer. [CBROnline]

Security company Kaspersky Labs is warning that a potentially dangerous security vulnerability in versions 4.x and 8.x of the popular BIND domain name system could be exploited by a hacker who would then gain system administrator right. The company says there are no known cases of the exploitation as yet, although it warns that the "threat is real".

BIND software typically runs by default using system administrator privileges. If compromised, the attacker would inherit these privileges, and firewall protections will most likely be unable to help as the DNS protocol uses UDP transport, which does not recognise connections between systems. To fix the problem, Kaspersky recommends upgrading to the latest version as soon as possible.

AMD yesterday demonstrated a 64-bit version of Unreal Tournament 2003 from Epic Games at Comdex. The demonstration machine was running AMD`s Athlon 64 Processor.

Epic Games` VP Mark Rein was enthusiastic about the possibilities of the 64-bit Athlon, saying: "We`re extremely excited about the upcoming AMD Athlon 64 processor. It`s designed to run today`s 32-bit games and applications and will actually, clock-for-clock, boost their performance relative to 32-bit AMD Athlon processors. But when you add 64-bits to the picture you can get additional capabilities and other performance boosts."

Epic Games is planning to ship the 64-bit update for Unreal Tournament 2003 at the same time as the Athlon 64 processors start appearing in shops.

This week in TechNiche:
AMD to move beyond PC
Nokia unveils first cellphone for Edge network
Linux server sales to double next year