Week in review: Microsoft mixes it up

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said his game plan is to grow the software giant from a nearly $15 billion company to a $30 billion behemoth over the next few years--and to do so at a pace that maintains a 40 percent operating margin.

He also told customers that engineering rather than deal-making will be Oracle's top priority over the next two years as the company prepares for an increasingly competitive business applications market, reassuring them that the company does not "have any other large acquisitions in mind" after the company's planned takeover of Siebel.

Name that worm
In order to reduce the confusion caused by the different names security companies give worms, viruses and other pests, the U.S Computer Emergency Readiness Team next month plans to take the wraps off the Common Malware Enumeration initiative.

The project assigns a unique identifier to a particular piece of malicious software. When included in security software, alerts and virus encyclopedia entries, this identifier should help people determine which pest is hitting their systems and whether they are protected, the initiative's backers said.

Meanwhile, Mozilla has released an update to Firefox to fix several serious security flaws, including a recently disclosed bug that could let attackers secretly run malicious software on PCs.

Firefox 1.0.7 was issued late Tuesday, a Mozilla representative said. A new Mozilla Suite 1.7.12, containing the affected Mozilla Web browser and other tools, was to follow by the end of the week.

In other Mozilla news, a report from security vendor Symantec found that Mozilla Web browsers are potentially more vulnerable to attack than Microsoft's Internet Explorer, but hackers are still focusing their efforts on IE.

Some readers were a bit skeptical of the findings. Jay Talbot, for example, read through the report and said it was incomplete because it only looked at "vendor confirmed" vulnerabilities.

"We all know how M$ doesn't like to hang their dirty laundry out for everyone to see, at least until it's too late," he wrote. "Just because more vulnerabilities are caught, and repaired, doesn't make a piece of software insecure. What makes it insecure are the ones that aren't caught in time, and it's too late."

Symantec, which has agreed to acquire privately held WholeSecurity, also reported this week that more computers in the Asia-Pacific region are being hijacked and used remotely by hackers to send viruses.

Gizmo me
Demofall, which took place this week in Huntington Beach, Calif., is a rare breed of a technology conference. By limiting presenters to six minutes, it gives those on hand a unique chance to see dozens of the latest innovations in a short period of time.

One that stood out was Destinator Anywhere Server, which is a mix of services like Yahoo Local and mobile phones incorporating GPS (Global Positioning System). The idea is that the phone becomes a portable version of the little digital boxes--now offered by many car rental companies--that direct drivers to their locations by spouting vocal commands on when to turn left, right or go straight for another quarter-mile.

Also at the conference, Mark Heesen, president of the National Venture Capital Association, told fellow venture capitalists that despite some bad economic signs, the time is ripe for a new cycle of investment, even if the size of funds has dropped significantly since the bubble burst on the Internet boom.

Also of note
Microsoft's radical Office 12 overhaul, due next year, aims to counteract "feature creep"...Google's network gives it a chance to rival Microsoft, according to a recent book...Do innovations and new technologies make us more intelligent?...Researchers have come up with a way to block secret digital cameras ...The Authors Guild filed a lawsuit against Google alleging "massive" copyright infringement...More couples are using digital music players for their weddings...All eyes are on Hurricane Rita, and Hurricane Katrina cleanup continues.