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Sun Settles With Microsoft, Announces 3,300 Job Cuts SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) - Struggling server maker Sun Microsystems Inc. reached a sweeping, $1.6 billion settlement with Microsoft Corp. and said it plans to cooperate with its longtime nemesis, a company it had branded an unrepentant monopolist. The surprise agreement was accompanied by an announcement Friday by Sun that it is cutting 3,300 jobs and that its net loss for the fiscal third quarter will be wider than expected. The cuts represent 9 percent of its total work force of more than 35,000. The "broad cooperating agreement" with Microsoft ends...

<p>Check this out: Yesterday Europe's antitrust czar, Mario Monti, ordered Microsoft to offer a version of its Windows operating system without the currently included Windows Media Player, which allows computers to play music, movies and the like. Oh, the commission also fined Microsoft $612 million for "bundling" Media Player into Windows. But that's not the weird part.</p>

A prominent technology analyst for Merrill Lynch is urging Sun Microsystems (Quote, Chart) to slash as much as 15 percent of its workforce and focus on being a niche player in mission-critical computing -- or risk joining the "carcasses" of formerly-great companies DEC and Data General at the bottom of a tech "ravine." In an open letter to Sun's chief executive Scott McNealy urging the company's board to take action, Steven Milunovich wrote that "Sun faces a crisis. It's necessary to cut expenses to assure profitability and narrow the product focus to reestablish a clear value proposition." If the company...

Sun Microsystems to Cut Another 1,080 Jobs SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) - Troubled computer and software maker Sun Microsystems Inc. plans to cut another 3 percent of its work force, or an estimated 1,080 jobs, in an effort to return to sustained profitability despite sagging sales. "This strategic realignment is an ongoing business practice that allows us to allocate resources to meet the highest priorities of the business," the Santa Clara-based company said in a statement Thursday. At the end of the last quarter, Sun reported it had 36,000 employees. At the end of fiscal 2001, by comparison, it...

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) -- Sun Microsystems co-founder Bill Joy, a driving force behind the company's key technologies, said Tuesday he's leaving after 21 years. "I have decided the time is now right for me to move on to different challenges," Joy said in a press release. He was not immediately available for further comment. Sun shares fell 7 cents to $4.17 in early trading. The stock is up from a trough of $2.34 a share in October 2002, but is down from its 52-week peak of $5.64, set in June. Sun took its usual position among the Nasdaq Composite...

IBM dismisses OpenOffice as child's play By Ashlee Vance in Chicago Posted: Ashlee Vance at 02:26 GMT IBM claims to have put more than $1 billion behind open source software, but the company is failing to pay even a modest amount of lip service to one of free software's most needed products. Karen Smith, vice president of Linux strategy and market development at IBM, has been telling a number of publications that no open source equivalent of Microsoft Office exists. Lest you think Smith has been living in a cave, rest easy. She does appear to be acquainted with OpenOffice...

NewsMax.com Wires and NewsMax.com Thursday, March 20, 2003 Computer giant Sun Microsystems Inc. fired thousands of American high-tech workers to replace them with younger, lower-paid engineers from India, a lawsuit charges. The legal action will step up the conflict between technology companies and American engineers over the H-1B visa program, which lets companies "temporarily" bring foreign workers into the United States ... whether they are needed or not. Class-action status is being sought for the lawsuit, filed Monday by Walter Kruz, 52, in California Superior Court in Santa Clara. He worked at Sun from May 2000 until late 2001, when...

SCO sues Big Blue for $1 billion; HP, Sun reassure customers The SCO Group last week announced a $1 billion lawsuit against IBM Corp. for allegedly sharing SCO’s proprietary technology with the open source software (OSS) community. SCO also claims to have warned Big Blue in a letter that if IBM doesn’t address its concerns, SCO will revoke its Unix license within 100 days. The implications of this move are unclear for IBM’s AIX installed base, but some industry watchers concede it could at least temporarily prevent IBM from shipping AIX. “That’s exceedingly unlikely, however,” stresses Rob Enderle, a senior...

Major Internet vulnerability discovered in e-mail protocolBy DAN VERTONMARCH 03, 2003The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been working in secret for more than two weeks with the private sector to fix a major Internet vulnerability that could have had disastrous consequences for millions of businesses and the U.S. military. Since Feb. 14, the DHS and the White House Office of Cyberspace Security have been working with Atlanta-based Internet Security Systems (ISS) to alert IT vendors and the business community about a major buffer overflow vulnerability in the sendmail mail transfer agent (MTA). Sendmail is the most common MTA and...

It is a well known fact that there are scores of computer professionals who have been laid off and are out of work in this country. Those positions include software engineers, network engineers, and electrical engineers. Those who have lost their jobs in the past 24 months know what I am talking about. We all know WHY we've been laid off. It is because indentured servants from other lands have overrun our country with the help of Congress due to the false premise of a labor shortage by IT industry lobbyists. Here we have an opportunity to "layoff" those who...

The Bush administration has accused Sun Microsystems Inc. of violating export rules in high-speed computer sales it made to China during the Clinton administration. According to a letter the company received in February 2002 from the U.S. Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), the illegal sales took place in 1997 and 1998. The letter was released on Sept. 30 by Sun in a regulatory filing. According to the letter, in 1997 Sun sold equipment to a Hong Kong reseller, which later sold the hardware to military organizations in China. Sun officials would not discuss the nature of the...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Just before closing arguments in its antitrust case, Microsoft delivered a broadside to one of its bitter software rivals, declaring Tuesday it will stop supporting Sun Microsystems' flagship product by 2004. Microsoft cited Sun's opposition in the case as the reason for the decision to remove support for Sun's Java programming language from future versions of Microsoft's Windows operating system. "The decision to remove Microsoft's Java implementation was made because of Sun's strategy of using the legal system to compete with Microsoft," Microsoft spokesman Jim Cullinan said in a statement. A Sun spokeswoman did not immediately return...

Beijing Developing Electronic Chains to Enslave Its People For nearly a thousand years the Great Wall of China protected the Asian empire from foreign invasion. Today, red China is installing a great "firewall," hoping to stem the tide of foreign ideas from invading the authoritarian one-party state. Despite claims to be an open society, China has an extraordinary fear of free information. For example, when President George Bush recently visited the Shanghai economic conference inside China, the communist government removed blocks on the Web sites of several U.S. news services. Immediately after President Bush left Shanghai, the paranoid red forces...