The executive brain-drain at Microsoft is picking up pace, with Jeff Raikes, a 27-year company veteran and president of the Microsoft Business Division, announcing his retirement Jan. 10. And, in an unusual move, Microsoft has decided to replace Raikes with an outsider, rather than promote from within its ranks, giving Stephen Elop, the former chief operating officer for Juniper Networks, the position.

The Federal Communications Commission plans to investigate the network neutrality complaints filed against cable giant Comcast. The investigation will be the agency’s first major test of its network neutrality principles.

The complaint, which was filed in November by public advocacy groups and legal scholars from Yale, Harvard and Stanford, charges Comcast with interfering with its users’ ability to access legal content by cutting off peer-to-peer file-sharing networks such as BitTorrent and Gnutella, as well as business applications such as Lotus Notes.[Ed. note–Despite the fact they are denying it, Comcast does in fact deny subscribers access to peer-to-peer networks. As a matter of fact, just last month they released information stating they would begin blocking access to those services.]

Microsoft urged Windows Vista users to download a new security tool that automatically disables suspicious or malicious "gadgets," the small applets that mimic the "widgets" popular on Mac OS X.

Dubbed"Windows Sidebar Protection," the 1MB download was added to Windows Update on Tuesday and classified as a "high-priority" update. Microsoft customers running Vista RTM–the initial version that launched in late 2006 to businesses and early 2007 to consumers–saw the update on the list starting Tuesday. The update is optional, but depending on what settings have been selected in Windows’ Automatic Updates, it may be downloaded and installed without any additional user interaction.

Windows Sidebar is a Vista-only panel that holds the miniature applications known as gadgets–small single-purpose tools that, for instance, display the time and date or RSS feeds. The Windows gadgets are composed of HTML and various scripts.

The One Laptop Per Child Project (OLPC) and Microsoft are working together to develop a dual-boot system to put both Linux and Windows on laptops aimed at kids in developing countries, the head of OLPC said in an interview Tuesday. "We are working with them very closely to make a dual-boot system so that, like on an Apple, you can boot either one up. The version that’s up and running of Windows on the XO is very fast, it’s very, very successful. We’re working very hard to do both," said Nicholas Negroponte, chairman of OLPC.

A computer systems administrator was sentenced to 30 months in prison for trying to sabotage his company’s servers out of fear he was about to lose his job, prosecutors said. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Newark, N.J., said Yung-Hsun Lin received the longest ever federal prison term for a criminal attempt to damage a computer system. He was also ordered to pay $81,200 in restitution to his former employer, pharmacy benefit manager Medco Health Solutions.

A survey of more than 3,300 customers of Verizon Wireless, AT&T Mobility, T-Mobile, and Sprint in North America has revealed a series of new consumer attitudes about the way voicemail services are provided currently. The survey was conducted for US mobile carriers that are considering deploying SpinVox.

It used service demonstrations, an Internet-based survey engine and open feedback tools to investigate what consumers like and dislike about current voicemail services. It also recorded their impressions of the capabilities of SpinVox next generation of voicemail services next where voicemail is automatically converted to text and sent to the users as a SMS text message or email. The survey revealed customers were most keen on new features.

Microsoft will not launch a product that competes directly with Apple’s iPhone, the software company’s chairman, Bill Gates, said in an interview with Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. "No, we won’t do that. In the so-called smartphone business we will concentrate solely on software with our Windows Mobile program," Gates was quoted as saying in the interview, which was published on Wednesday.

A federal magistrate ordered the White House to reveal whether copies of possibly millions of missing emails are stored on computer backup tapes. The order by U.S. Magistrate Judge John Facciola comes amid an effort by the White House to scuttle two lawsuits that could force the Executive Office of the President to recover any email that has disappeared from computer servers where electronic documents are automatically archived.

Facciola gave the White House five business days to report whether computer backup tapes contain emails written between 2003 and 2005. Two federal laws require the White House to preserve all records including email.

In what might have been his final keynote address at an International CES event, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates opened the 2008 expo with talk about entering a new "digital decade," where his company plans to play a major role.

Gates delivered his final keynote as the full-time leader of Microsoft to a standing-room-only crowd as the 2008 CES began Jan. 6. While his opening address offered few specifics on the new technology Microsoft has been developing, Gates said the next decade of technology can offer users a rich array of choices and new ways to gather and organize their data.

Although the infamous Storm worm enters 2008 with a reputation as the world’s most dangerous botnet, security experts say there’s an up-and-comer called Nugache that could give it a run for its money.

Nugache was first sighted about two years ago as a worm designed to work with chat protocols, says Paul Henry, vice president of technology evangelism at Secure Computing. As such, it did not propagate virulently. But last month, hackers believed to be tied to the notorious Russian Business Network online criminal mob gave Nugache a facelift, copying many of the successful attributes of Storm, such as encryption, a rootkit and the ability to spread as Web-borne malware.