You might not realize it yet, but Microsoft has big plans for your future. The company has shown its cards for what it calls its "next big platform waves." In about 2 years, if all goes well, Microsoft customers will be lining up for a "spending wave" to pay for the Longhorn wave of technologies--which will include new versions of Windows, Windows Server, Microsoft Office, and various other products. Longhorn will be a huge leap over current technologies and will interoperate in ways that are impossible today. Microsoft's bet--and frankly, it's a bigger gamble than any of its public "bet the company" claims for Microsoft .NET or Windows Server 2003--is that customers will be so amazed by Longhorn's capabilities that they'll sign up for the full-meal deal, upgrading to not just the Windows client but also Windows Server, Office, and the other products.
In what is becoming an increasingly common mistake, the retail prices for Microsoft's upcoming Office 2003 products were inadvertently leaked Wednesday by online retailer Amazon.com. According to the UK version of Amazon's Web site, Microsoft Office 2003 will retail for £119.99 to £429.99 and become available on October 24. Individual Office 2003 applications will retail for £89.99 to £419.99 and will become available on the same date.
Microsoft has battened down the hatches to prepare for an expected denial-of-service (DoS) attack on its WindowsUpdate.com security site at midnight on August 15.
The DoS attack (define), which is being triggered by the fast-spreading 'Blaster' worm, could make it impossible to access the Microsoft Web site that is used to distribute security patches. Because the worm is programmed to hammer the WindowsUpdate.com with heavy traffic over the weekend, security experts are warning that the attack would "severely impact access to the website."
Microsoft has released the new low-cost version of Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Developer Edition, slashing the price from $499 to $49. Designed for developers, SQL Server Developer Edition has all the functionality of SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition but is license-restricted from use in a live server environment and runs on client OSs such as Windows XP and Windows 2000 Professional Edition. For more information about the new pricing and SQL Server Developer Edition in general [click here].
Over a month ago, Microsoft issued a critical security update, exhorting users to install a patch that fixed a security update the company said, at the time, had yet to be exploited. The patch was made available via Windows Update, via AutoUpdate, through the company's public Web site, and through its Security email newsletters. Security experts at Windows & .NET Magazine and elsewhere practically begged readers to install the patch, and I received an email from senior editor Mark Minasi that he had sent out to tens of thousands of readers noting that installation of the patch was an immediate priority for all Windows administrators. The US Department of Homeland Security even got involved, warning not once, but twice, that Windows users should install the patch that Microsoft issued in early July; the second warning was widely publicized on TV and in newspapers around the world.
One company in the Fortune 500 list of the world's biggest corporations had been convinced by its arguments. SCO declined to say which company took out the license or to reveal licensing specifics.
The Lindon, Utah, company said the deal illustrates the merits of its case. SCO said it hopes the deal will set a precedent.
"This Fortune 500 company recognizes the importance of paying for SCO's intellectual property that is found in Linux, and (they) can now run Linux in their environment under a legitimate license from SCO," Chris Sontag, head of the company's SCOsource effort to extract more revenue from its Unix intellectual property, said in a statement. "We anticipate this being the first of many licensees that will properly compensate SCO for our intellectual property."
The SCO Group on Wednesday terminated its Unix System V software contract with IBM subsidiary Sequent, potentially curtailing the company's ability to market its Unix-based Dynix/ptx operating system. SCO, owner of several key copyrights related to the Unix operating system, has been aggressively defending its intellectual property holdings connected to the software and filed a $3 billion lawsuit against IBM earlier this year. The suit claims that IBM has committed trade secret theft and breach of contract for allegedly copying proprietary Unix source code into its Linux-based products.
Microsoft has laid the blame for half of all Windows crashes on third-party code. Scott Charney, chief security strategist at Microsoft, told developers at the TechEd 2003 conference in Brisbane that information collected by Dr Watson, the company's reporting tool, revealed that "half of all crashes in Windows are caused not by Microsoft code, but third-party code."
Charney's comments come as the company highlights the rigor with which it tests its own products before release. Microsoft emphasized that products such as Yukon and Exchange Server were undergoing thorough testing--both internally and via independent third parties--prior to their release.
One Office Systems 2003 product is scheduled to hit the streets--or be released to manufacturing, anyway--next week. Microsoft is slated to start duping disks for Office Project 2003 on Monday, the company said.
This version continues the product's evolution from a stand-alone offering to one that fosters and supports collaboration, said Giovanni Mezgec, group product manager. It focuses more on process management and bringing project management tools to an audience beyond project managers per se.
After a brief respite, the legal maneuvering re-started Tuesday in PeopleSoft's struggle to remain free of Oracle. On Tuesday, Pleasanton-Calif.-based PeopleSoft said it added more details,many of which are under seal,charging that Oracle deliberately tried to "disrupt PeopleSoft's customer relationships" with its hostile bid and claims to have new information about "Oracle's deliberate campaign to mislead PeopleSoft customers about Oracle's plans to support PeopleSoft products.", according to a statement on the company's web site.