The United States is in a league of its own when it comes to sending junk mail to email users. Researchers at security software company Sophos found that 42 percent of all spam sent this year came from the United States, based on a scan by its researchers of a global network of honey pots–computers designed to attract spam emails and viruses.

Happy holidays, everyone! No matter what winter holiday you celebrate, and even if you’re not, best wishes to everyone from the team here at ZATZ.

IT had its share of high drama in 2004 in the form of executive ousters and mergers, with two blockbuster deals coming just as the year drew to a close. The following stories helped shaped the face of enterprise IT in 2004.

Aided by home users blissfully unaware of their computers’ security holes, Sasser strangled millions of PCs in May. Others like Mydoom, Bagle and Netsky menaced the Internet throughout 2004. And more people worked remotely, picking up infections on laptops that were carried back to their company networks. All this left some wondering if it’s time to make users get a license to travel online.

The Mozilla Foundation is hatching yet another software project to challenge a key Microsoft title. The new project, code-named Lightning, aims to integrate Mozilla’s calendar application, Sunbird, with its recently released Thunderbird email application. That integration is aimed right at the heart of Microsoft’s widely used Outlook software.

America Online is testing a Web-based email service that will compete with Yahoo Mail, Microsoft’s Hotmail and Google’s Gmail. Right now, the beta service is available to AOL subscribers only, but it will eventually be offered for free to the public. The service, dubbed "AOL Mail on the Web," is expected to officially debut early next year for members, and later in the year for the public.

Ordered by European regulators to sell a version of Windows without a built-in media player and denied a stay on Wednesday from an appeals court, Microsoft said it will deliver both Home and Professional versions of the scaled-back operating system to computer makers in January. The Reduced Media editions will be available only in Europe.

A district judge in New York has refused to accept a guilty plea from a former America Online employee charged with stealing 92 million email addresses from the online giant, citing vagueness in the prosecutors’ argument that the theft violated the federal Can-Spam Act. U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein on Tuesday postponed the hearing in hopes of consulting with lawmakers in Washington, D.C., about specifics in the Can-Spam Act’s definition of why the defendant’s practices were considered in violation of the law.

Beware of CoolWebSearch, a program that can change Microsoft Internet Explorer’s security settings and wreak havoc on computers. Anti-spyware company Webroot Software said Tuesday that CoolWebSearch self-installs malicious HTML applications and exploits security flaws in IE.

Microsoft has extended a technology-sharing agreement with Citrix Systems to include a five-year patent cross-licensing plan between the two companies. The agreement, announced Tuesday, also calls for Citrix to get access to the source code of Longhorn, the forthcoming version of Microsoft’s Windows Server operating system, which is due out in 2007.