Last updated:Friday, August 15, 1997, 8:30 a.m.
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Pull up! Pull up! The best-selling (and one of the oldest) games for PCs, Flight Simulator, will get an update in October, with more destinations, more aircraft and more obstacles. And even though you're now flying a Learjet, watch out -- that's the Statue of Liberty ahead.

Setting common standards: Microsoft and Marimba are working on a standard technology that will let companies automatically update software on networked PCs.

Putting money where the mouths are: The former owner of Alamo Rent-a-Car, Michael Egan, has invested $20 million in The Globe, a chat-oriented web site, making it "the best-financed virtual community on the web, and among the largest privately financed new media companies in New York," the 600,000-member company says.

Credit denied: Online credit reports are kind of scary, if you ask us; the authentication information that TRW requests is easily obtainable for anyone with a smidgen of personal knowledge about you, and rudimentary investigative skills. Privacy advocates on the web agree.

Let's talk land records next: For anyone who's ever spent time inside an American county courthouse, the promise of paperless courts is pie-in-the-sky; it's not a technical issue, but a human resistance one. The federal courthouse in Kansas City is going to try to change that in a test case next year.

In more government news: The U.S Department of Commerce wants your opinion on whether the U.S. government should get involved in the domain-name dispute. Not sure what to think? Examine the thoughts of others at a very large web page. You can read a story about all this at the registration-required New York Times web site.

Papers are served: Informix, the target of three lawsuits in the past five months, has been sued again. This time, it's a class-action lawsuit on behalf of shareholders against the company executives, charging that the execs sold off so much of their personal stock ($14 million worth) that it artificially inflated the stock price.

Making the switch: Toshiba will spinoff a group next week that will devote itself to building enterprise and carrier switches.

Remember this, and fast: If you're on a Windows NT server and need to boost performance, Oracle offers a new technology that will let you cache up to 8GB of memory.

Saving you money: If you trade stocks through Fidelity Investments, you ought to know that you can get big discounts by doing it on the web.

Forget competition -- customers count: That's the message Sybase CEO Mitchell Kertzman delivered at a tech conference yesterday.

Not just a tech problem: The first-known Year 2000 problem lawsuit has popped up near Detroit, where a corporate user sued a vendor, alleging failure to fix the date-related glitch.

Aspec emerges from cloud
Finding a mission (statement)



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