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What's worse for a software company than being told it broke the law? Only this: Being told it makes an inferior product. Scarcely a day after Judge Jackson's ruling of law last week, AOL and Gateway unveiled a trio of low-cost Internet-access devices that pointedly excluded Microsoft from their party. The devices--a countertop, a desktop and a wireless Web appliance--use upstart Linux, rather than Microsoft's Windows, as their operating system. Linux, according to AOL and Gateway execs, beat Windows to the punch by being faster and more reliable. Ouch...
Chalk it up to longstanding Microsoft-AOL rivalry if you will. But "netpliances" like the new Gateways are a portent of precisely the kind of products that could release--faster than any judge--Redmond's iron grip on the software industry. By 2004, analysts expect this kind of cheap-and-easy surfing gadget to outsell PCs. In this market, the most unobtrusive operating system wins, and the feature-heavy heft that won the desktop wars for Microsoft becomes a liability. "Most of these devices have no need for a Windows experience," says Dan Kuznetsky, a system-software analyst at technology...
...based service is that you can log on from any PC with Net access and check your mail from various accounts. But the disadvantage is that it's slower, and many Web-based free e-mail services won't be able to check messages in your AOL e-mail account. The other type of free service is called a Post Office Protocol (POP3) account, and it runs on dedicated e-mail software like the kind you usually get when you subscribe for Internet service. POP3 accounts commonly let you store more messages than Web-based e-mail and usually come...
Even in Wayne County, whose cyberpolice work is regarded as pioneering, the results are mixed. The department's efforts began shortly after Sheriff Ficano looked in on an AOL chat that his 16-year-old daughter was having one night in 1998. "Someone started asking things about her appearance that made her very uncomfortable," he recalls. "It just made me think about how the Internet has given pedophiles an excellent vehicle to get in touch with children." The fbi's struggle to handle its growing Internet caseload, coupled with a mountain of complaints from local parents and kids, prompted Ficano...
...find that most eggs end with a list of programmers who have found themselves otherwise uncredited. Their lack of official recognition could explain why some eggs take satirical aim at management. Some versions of AOL, for example, have been implanted with Scott's Winkie, a winking face that offers mock insider gossip, such as a forthcoming "big announcement involving Steve Case, the CIA and the former Soviet Republic of Georgia." Microsoft's Wine Guide--now discontinued, alas--contains pictures of a shirtless Bill Gates (real snaps taken at a company picnic) that slide by to the strains of Pretty Woman...