Network World staff

Weird and wacky news from the world of IT.

The European Commission could fine Microsoft Corp. up to 10 per cent of its global annual sales for monopoly offences, the commission said this week. Microsoft is still committing the monopoly abuses it was first accused of in 1998, the EC said in a preliminary ruling in its long-running antitrust case against the company.

StorageNetworks Inc., the once high-flying storage service provider, is liquidating operations. The company this week fired most of its employees and announced that CEO Paul Flanagan was leaving immediately.

Enterprise Java applications will be able to run directly on Palm Tungsten handhelds now that Palm Inc. has licensed IBM Corp.'s WebSphere Micro Environment Java run-time environment. Palm will offer WME on all its Tungsten devices.

A U.S. House subcommittee has approved a bill that would permanently extend a moratorium on some Internet taxes, including Internet access taxes, despite Democrats' concerns over the effect on mom-and-pop businesses and whether the bill ensures a tax ban on DSL access.

3Com Corp.'s top executives are moving from Silicon Valley to Massachusetts, the company announced recently.

IBM Corp. has unveiled a free voice portlet for transcribing telephony-based dictation. Called Transcription Portlet, the software lets remote users dial in to a portal using their cell phones and input information by voice.

CRM software maker Siebel Systems Inc. went on the offensive recently in an effort to quash reports that its customer satisfaction reviews were less than stellar. nThe reports stem from data in a confidential, Siebel-sponsored survey, which the company says was unlawfully leaked.