Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said on Tuesday the software giant was boosting security measures after six employees were exposed to a letter that had tested positive for anthrax.
"Obviously, like all companies, we are beefing up the various things we do to try and keep our employees as safe as possible," Gates said at a news conference in Tokyo.
Six Microsoft employees were exposed to the anthrax-tainted envelope sent to the Microsoft office in Reno from Malaysia. All six have received a clean bill of health, but the United States remains on edge after anthrax-contaminated envelopes were sent to media offices in New York and Florida.
News source: Reuters
"Obviously, like all companies, we are beefing up the various things we do to try and keep our employees as safe as possible," Gates said at a news conference in Tokyo.
Six Microsoft employees were exposed to the anthrax-tainted envelope sent to the Microsoft office in Reno from Malaysia. All six have received a clean bill of health, but the United States remains on edge after anthrax-contaminated envelopes were sent to media offices in New York and Florida.
News source: Reuters
When a customer buys a prereleased CD, that person is sent an encrypted URL, which links to Speedera's streaming area, Smith said. The buyer can then listen to the music featured on the CD as often as desired. But once the CD is released to the public and presumably delivered to the customer, Speedera will block the Web address.
This also serves to protect the property of the music industry. After Napster, music companies grew hypersensitive to any offering that distributed copyrighted materials to a mass audience. They worried that the technology could be cracked and thereby allow the music to be copied, pirated and spread over the Web.
With Speedera's technology, listeners are kept from copying or recording the streamed music. Smith said there is a secret key embedded into the encryption that prevents anyone but the buyer to access the URL. He declined to offer specifics on how that is done.
"You can't record the music; nor can you e-mail to a friend. And it can't be accessed if someone posts it on a Web site," Smith said.
The technology is easily accessible for other kinds of media, such as video, and through different software, such as Microsoft's Windows Media and RealNetworks' RealMedia.
Sources close to Amazon said that if offering prereleased music over the Web proves successful, the e-tailer will likely extend the feature into other digital content.
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