Stories about: Electronic Industries Alliance

Microsoft's last-minute lobbying in the US on behalf of its Office Open XML document format included a visit by outgoing chairman Bill Gates to a US Congressional committee last week.

The United States member group to the ISO standards body on Wednesday finalized plans to vote in favor of approving Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) document format as an open standard.

In a reversal, the American representative to the ISO standards body is now tentatively supporting the approval of Microsoft's Office Open XML document format as an open standard this year.

Microsoft has lost a key vote in its quest to develop an alternative to the Open Document Format standard, backed by the open-source community.

The effort to control what's called e-waste could lead to a national "e-fee," a recycling charge that would be paid just like a sales tax on laptop PCs, computer monitors, televisions and some other electronic devices.

A long-simmering dispute between the CERT Coordination Center and vulnerability research companies flared into public view Monday when Next Generation Security Software Ltd. (NGSS) announced it is severing its relationship with CERT, saying that the government-sponsored Internet security reporting center passed vulnerability information to third parties.

One of the least sexy jobs in IT management may be disposing of old PCs, servers and other technology equipment.

In an effort to minimize possible adverse effects of discarded electronic devices on the environment, a group representing more than 2,000 vendors announced Thursday it would test-run several recycling options for PC monitors, TVs, computers and computer peripherals.

Yesterday's announcement that another coalition of private-sector companies has joined the battle to beef up security on the Internet is raising concerns about the coordination of those activities and possible duplication of effort.

The CERT Coordination Center (CERT/CC), a government-funded Internet security group, said Thursday that it would begin offering to private sector companies advance notice security alerts that it had previously only shared with the government.

The U.S. Senate on Tuesday overwhelmingly passed legislation allowing for permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) with China, a bill resoundingly backed by high-technology companies and one that supporters say will further open the communist country's market to U.S. computer, software, telecommunications and other technology manufacturers.