WinInsider

Intel Australia has warned consumers to be wary of manufacturers offering laptops containing processors designed for desktop PCs. The chip giant issued the warning in response to indications that the practice, believed to be limited to "white-box" manufacturers based in Taiwan, may be spreading as major manufacturers face economic pressure to build notebooks to meet price-points.

AOL has fired the latest salvo at Trillian users who continue to connect to its AIM service by forcibly kicking them offline, a move mirroring the company's action against MSN Messenger in the past. AOL had previously only made efforts to block users of the independent client from connecting, but Cerulean Studios has been quick to release patches that bypass the blocks.

Trillian users report receiving a message from "AOL Instant Messenger" before being cut off, stating: "You have been disconnected from the AOL Instant Messaging Service (SM) for accessing the AOL network using unauthorized software..."

Bill Gates was in Paris on February 8th. At this occasion, he has granted an exclusive interview with no concessions to our colleagues of Liberation, a well known french newspaper. The interview is obviously in French but we have translated the most interesting questions and answers.

Q:We should originally met in the Napoléon room. Despite we are in the Régence room, we have a special question comparing Microsoft to Napoleon: Microsoft is seen by lot of people as an empire whose's main objective is to dominate the software industry. What do you think of this analogy? Isn't Microsoft's empire too dominant, today?
Bill: This analogy is stupid. We are a company, we are employing smart people to write software, we are listening to what our consumers have to say, we are raising long term difficult challenges that nobody else is treating, like digital hand writing, speech recognition, computer's reliability. Those things demand a real reflection and breakthroughs. Today, in the United-States, who is really conducting research? If you put aside the pharmaceutical industry and the aerospace industry only IBM and Microsoft are strongly oriented R&D. We have an approach on the long term, many of our products have success, many fail, but this has nothing to do with the political power, with territorial possession, wars, etc. Heh! We're creating software and people can use them if they like them, or they can not use them if they aren't sastify. It's giving a bad favour to people who work at Microsoft and content themselves with writing good software, by comparing them to an army or everything else that is military related.

Thanks Rod for this one! In 1454, Johann Gutenberg changed the world forever when the first of his Bibles rolled off the world's first printing press. Three centuries later, in 1791, Charles Babbage was born. Best known for his Difference Engine and Analytical Engine, his work is widely acknowledged as providing the earliest steppingstones from which the modern computer would emerge. Again, the world would never be the same. William Henry Gates arrived on the planet in 1955. Whether you love him or detest him with every ounce of your moral fiber, there is no denying the contribution Bill has made to this earth. Without Microsoft, the PC we have today would be a very different beast. Without Microsoft, ".Net" would be just another domain name suffix.

The ads will attempt to explain how Microsoft's vast .Net technology can, for instance, help make supply chains more efficient. They will feature companies that have already tried out .Net, including Dollar Rent A Car, which used the technology to integrate its reservation system with the Web site of an airline partner.

The .Net strategy ties together nearly all of the software giant's products, services, Web sites and development efforts. It includes a new blueprint for how software should be designed; a set of products for building that software; and .Net My Services, an initial set of Microsoft-hosted services. Later this year, the company plans to offer content, shopping, banking, entertainment and other Internet services through a variety of devices, all linked to its Passport authentication service.

To be clear, the security check feature introduced in the Microsoft Visual C++ .NET compiler is NOT vulnerable. The allegation that applications compiled with Visual C++'s /GS switch some how expose themselves to more attacks is unfounded and patently false. The Cigital press release itself says it, "This security feature is meant to protect potentially vulnerable source code automatically from _some_ forms of buffer overflow attacks." The expectation is right there, some forms of buffer overflow attacks can evade the compiler injected security checks. This understanding makes the following statement in the Cigital press release questionable:

"The protection afforded by the new feature allows developers to continue to use vulnerable string functions such as strcpy() as usual and still be "protected" against some forms of stack smashing."

Compaq Computer Corporation today announced support for Intel's new PXA250 and PXA210 Applications Processors for Pocket PCs and committed to incorporate the new microprocessors into upcoming versions of the iPAQ Pocket PC by mid-year.

More than 1.5 million iPAQ Pocket PCs have been sold worldwide, solidifying Compaq's position as the top Pocket PC manufacturer in the world. In the last month, iPAQ Pocket PCs have been at the forefront of some of the world's most prominent events, providing rich content and wireless access to information and the Internet. Compaq iPAQ Pocket PCs were used at the World Economic Forum and the Super Bowl, and are currently being used at the Winter Olympics to allow Australian athletes to enhance their experience and help ensure safety at the 2002 Winter Games.

InstallShield Software Corp.'s AdminStudio 3.0 takes some of the sting out of packaging software applications for deployment to the ever-changing corporate desktop. The product fits in best at midsize to large organizations that need a sophisticated tool to customize software application installations before the products are deployed to the desktop.

Leave your laptop at the office. Using your PocketPC and the Presenter-to-Go PC or CF card, you can travel light. The "MARGI Mirror" Pocket PC application together with either the Presenter-to-Go PC or CF card allows PocketPC users to connect to a digital projector (or a VGA display) and display the contents of the handheld's LCD up to twice the 240 x 320 display size, regardless of the application it is running. MARGI Mirror and the Presenter-to-Go CF card act like a graphics output card for the handheld. It is even possible to attach a keyboard, run word processing software, and see the output on the display as one types on the keyboard.

While Microsoft is focusing much of its energy these days on developing Web services and on tightening the security of its software, it hasn't stopped exploring new markets. The Redmond, Wash.-based company plans to make deeper forays into the areas of security software and storage through two upstart divisions, according to Group Vice President Jim Allchin. A new storage business unit, run by Bob Muglia, is "looking at products that corporate customers might use," Allchin said in an interview with CNET News.com. "They pay a lot (for storage) and are concerned with storage...That whole world is super-confusing, and there are some things we can do that customers would love."