In case you haven't noticed, Wednesday is security patch day at Microsoft. In the past year, the Redmond, Wash.-based company quietly changed its procedure for releasing security bulletins and software patches for security vulnerabilities in its products, creating a carefully orchestrated process that predictably releases bulletins and patches to the public on Wednesdays, according to senior Microsoft security personnel.
The company never formally announced the change in procedure, which went into effect around May of 2002, nor is the policy mentioned on Microsoft's Web site or articulated in any document released by the company, according to Steve Lipner, director of security assurance at Microsoft.
European Competition Commissioner Mario Monti said a long running anti-trust investigation into Microsoft was now well advanced and a ruling would be made in the "first part of this year." Monti, speaking to reporters at the World Economic Forum in Davos, said all options remained open but that any ruling needed to give consideration to developments in U.S. cases against Microsoft and benefit consumers. Monti would not be drawn further on the exact timing of a ruling.
Investment bank Investec said on Friday that it believed Microsoft was in talks with French media conglomerate Vivendi Universal about buying Vivendi's video game business for as much as $2 billion. A spokeswoman for Vivendi Universal's game unit declined to comment. A Microsoft spokeswoman could not be immediately reached for comment.
Jeff Van Rhee, Investec's director of enterprise software research, told Reuters he had received indications a deal was in the works. "There was some pretty actionable data that said something had just happened and things were heating up pretty quickly," he said.
During a trip to Microsoft's Redmond campus this week, I had the opportunity to meet with Mark Lucovsky, one of the original architects of NT. We had a long discussion about the development and evolution of NT, but one of the more fascinating tidbits he revealed was that NT does not, in fact, stand for "New Technology," as documented in books such as "Showstoppers" and "Inside Windows NT." Instead, the name comes from the earliest days of the product's development, when it was targeted at the Intel i860, a RISC processor. In those days, Intel's chip was behind schedule, so Microsoft had to use an i860 emulator called the N10. NT was so named because it worked on the "N-Ten." I'll have much more information from my meetings with Lucovsky and others involved with Windows Server in the days ahead.
Microsoft has come far to deliver on its "Trustworthy Computing" promise, but more needs to be done, Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates said in an e-mail late Thursday. "While we've accomplished a lot in the past year, there is still more to do -- at Microsoft and across our industry," Gates said in the e-mail sent to a mailing list that is part of a Microsoft marketing effort called Executive E-mail.
The e-mail comes a year after Gates announced the Trustworthy Computing initiative, a Microsoft-wide focus on securing its products. As part of that initiative, Microsoft halted the development work of thousands of software engineers for 10 weeks to train them to look at software like hackers do. This resulted in the in-house discovery of many security bugs, Gates said.
By next Christmas, some recording companies expect to be selling compact discs wrapped in technology from Microsoft Corp. and other companies in an effort to protect both copyrights and the bottom line. But depending on how restrictive the record labels choose to be, consumers may spurn the CDs. And ultimately, Microsoft's latest move to help drive adoption of its newest version of Internet audio and video software risks falling on its face, analysts say.
Microsoft's new CD copyright technology is expected to be released in final form in the next few weeks. Already, it has been getting some attention from record labels that are eager to stop unlawful copying of CDs -- a practice the industry contends costs it billions of dollars a year. EMI Recorded Music and Universal Music Group plan to test the technology, with EMI planning to offer some CDs with new copyright protections later this year.
A federal judge on Wednesday denied Linux operating-system maker Lindows.com a quick victory in its attempt to invalidate Microsoft Corp.'s "Windows" trademark. Chief U.S. District Judge John Coughenour said evidence supplied by San Diego-based Lindows.com -- on whether the term "Windows" is too generic to be protected by trademark law -- wasn't strong enough to justify the company's motion for summary judgment.
It was offset, the judge said, by evidence offered by Microsoft pointing to the opposite conclusion. Instead, the issue will have to go before a jury, which will weigh the evidence. That trial is scheduled to begin April 7, Lindows.com lead attorney Daniel Harris said.
The EU's privacy watchdogs are expected to say next week that Microsoft's .NET Passport system broadly complies with EU data protection rules and only minor changes are needed, EU sources said on Thursday. In a dramatic climbdown from harsh criticism voiced in July, EU national privacy controllers are expected to adopt a recommendation by experts from their Internet Task-Force that says previous concerns were exaggerated. "This (Passport) is not a system the controllers see with horror," a source close to the issue told Reuters.
Microsoft on Thursday announced the launch of wmplugins.com, a new central clearing house for enhancements to Windows Media Player (WMP) 9 Series. The site features over 100 player enhancements from 20 different companies and Microsoft, and highlights the new extensibility model in WMP 9 Series, which makes it much easier to create such add-ons than it was with previous Media Player versions. These enhancements include new visualizations, skins, power toys, and other add-ons.
Reports suggest that Microsoft are after more acquisitions... Heated rumours today suggested that Microsoft are looking to purchase the troublesome Vivendi-Universal games division; housing some of the biggest game license, including Half Life, Warcraft, Spyro, Crash Bandicoot, plus many more. Of course such a buy-out would make even the Rare acquisition look small in comparison, however if anyone's got enough money, it's Microsoft. Sources stayed shy today, each denying the report as speculation and rumour