Last updated:Thursday, May 22, 1997, 8:30 a.m.
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Novell is going to slash 20 percent of its workforce worldwide and the layoffs will affect almost all groups within the company.

Pushing forward: Microsoft announces a dozen information partners for its active channels on the version 4.0 of the Internet Explorer browser.

Carmen Sandiego on steroids: Broderbund, which makes educational CD-ROMs, is going into the action video market but it's setting up a separate brand name so it doesn't alienate current customers who are used to its gentler inventory.

Gateway shows off a low-cost network PC for corporations, as its stock begins trading on the New York Stock Exchange today. The South Dakota PC maker brought a cow to the trading floor, but discarded the idea of using MOO as their stock symbol.

Key escrow encryption laws will be expensive and useless, a panel of scientists concludes in a report released yesterday. But the government says the panel is knocking down a straw man. However, Sybase says it just got government OK for its software products that use the highly secure 56-bit Data Encryption Standard even though it doesn't have the recovery keys the government is insisting upon elsewhere.

Congress gets annoyed: You know spam is bad when a congressman takes notice. Now a New Jersey Republican is proposing a spam ban. Of course, there's a competing bill, this one from Frank Mrukowski of Alaska, that would require senders to honestly label spam.

The Woz speaks: We've heard from Steve Jobs now that he's back in his old haunts in Cupertino; how about Steve Wozniak?

We know this goes against the grain but really, do you need more speed on your desktop? Ninety-nine percent of the time, current chips are fast enough and some folks are willing to trade off cost for ever-high computing performance. How about a Pentium-class, Intel-compatible, 133 megahertz chip for $30? National Semiconductor thought you'd be interested.

An Internet printing standard has been submitted to the IETF by two heavy hitters: Microsoft and Hewlett Packard.

AOL's instant messages are one of the features AOL users love. Now the online giant has released a beta version to the Internet at large. The release is Windows 95-compatible only; Win3.1 and Mac versions are to follow.

Fingerprints as passwords: Hmm, that could solve the problems of using the same password for too many systems, forgetting to change the password, trying to remember the nonsense string that we're supposed to use for passwords... Lucent Technologies iteration of this idea is drawing attention because it uses inexpensive digital technology.

Funny how everyone brings their own preconceptions to the web; forecasts of its future are often reflections of the forecaster's personal interests and past.

Trying to figure out why your web site isn't attracting advertisers despite hot technology, fabulous content and a loyal audience? Here's a clue: advertisers are buying blind, despite the web's touted ability to quantify everything.

Solar-powered satellite phones are making a splash in Australia, where the coin-operated phone booths can be few and far between in the Outback.

Chris Nolan: How will valley welcome Gates?
Mike Cassidy: Put your life on hold waiting for the phone