Paul Roberts IDG News Service

Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer addressed a gathering of software industry leaders in Boston last month, touting his company

After unveiling cutting-edge technology for choking off the spread of viruses in March, Hewlett-Packard Co. is quietly shelving the project, citing conflicts with Microsoft Corp.

Living up to its namesake, the Mydoom e-mail borne worm succeeded in bringing sco.com to a grinding halt on Sunday as thousands of infected computers launched a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on the Lindon Utah-based The SCO Group Inc.'s primary Web site.

Microsoft Corp. released a security alert Thursday acknowledging a serious security hole in its Outlook Express e-mail client. The vulnerability, which was found in Outlook Express versions 5.5 and 6.0, could allow a remote attacker to take control of machines running Outlook Express using malicious code embedded in an e-mail message.