WinInsider

Bill Gates, who routinely sells Microsoft shares for portfolio diversification, plans to sell two million common shares worth $94.1 million, a regulatory filing on Wednesday said. The chairman and co-founder of the world's largest software company has already sold 12 million shares worth $599 million from June 3 to Aug. 13, according to the filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Gates, one of the world's richest men, is Microsoft's biggest shareholder with more than 650 million shares. Microsoft's stock was up $1.15 to $52.19 in afternoon trading on Nasdaq.

RealNetworks launched a new version of its RealOne media player on Tuesday, but its biggest new feature is somewhat of an overstatement. The company claims that RealOne v. 2.0 is the first "universal player," because it is the first to support all three of the most important online video formats, RealVideo, Windows Media Video, and Apple QuickTime MPEG-4. But what Real isn't saying is that its RealOne player requires Windows Media Player (WMP) and Apple QuickTime Player to be installed on users' systems before that support can be enabled. So it's unclear what benefits the universal player really offers users. Users hoping to take advantage of the universal player features will have to purchase the $20 Plus player.

In "core hopping," for example, a stream of calculations will jump from one microprocessor core to another. Localized heat generated by transistors during intense number crunching can create "hot spots" that place a ceiling on performance, said Wilf Pinfold, technical director of microprocessor research at Intel labs. By rotating application processing, key transistors will stay cooler, heat will be more geographically spread and overall performance will climb.

Other areas of research involve specialization, where small chips within a chip perform specific jobs such as encryption or compression, improving processing prioritization. The changes are important in that, without a microprocessor overhaul, the industry's ability to continually make computing faster, cheaper and more powerful will begin to slow

Many web servers running Apache-SSL remain vulnerable to attacks, although a June security alert did prompt administrators to patch standard Apache Web installations, according to a survey released Tuesday. About 75 percent of Web sites hosted on Apache-SSL servers are vulnerable, as the software has not been upgraded to fix a serious flaw uncovered in June, according to a survey by Web server information firm Netcraft Ltd. of Bath, England.

Administrators seem to have given priority to patching regular Apache installations, as about half of the 22 million Web sites that rely on Apache are protected through an Apache software upgrade, Netcraft said. The flaw affects all versions of Apache 1.2, versions of Apache 1.3 up to 1.3.24 and versions of Apache 2 up to 2.0.36, according to a statement from the Foundation released on June 20.

Transmeta's Crusoe processor has been certified as compatible with Microsoft's Windows CE .Net, Transmeta announced Wednesday. Hardware manufacturers will now be able to design products that use the TM5500 and TM5800 Crusoe processors and that run Windows CE .Net, Microsoft's operating system for embedded devices, said David Ditzel, chief technology officer and vice president of marketing for Transmeta. Embedded products are devices such as cell phones, set-top boxes, personal digital assistants (PDAs), point-of-sale terminals, and other small, mobile devices.

Microsoft on Wednesday plans to release its second collection of bug fixes, or service pack, to Office XP, the company confirmed Tuesday. Service Pack 2, a 15MB download, is supposed to enhance Office XP's performance, security and stability, while fixing a wide range of glitches, Microsoft said. Microsoft also included five separately released smaller fixes from April, May and June. One updates the Office XP spell checker, while others resolve bugs in Word and Excel. Service Pack 2 also addresses glitches with Access, FrontPage, Publisher, PowerPoint and SharePoint Team Services, as well as problems affecting all of Office.

The world's two largest PC chip makers are revving up their product lines with new, faster chips and cutting prices on existing processors as their long-running rivalry heats up at the end of summer.

Advanced Micro Devices Inc. today made the first move, releasing two faster versions of its flagship PC processor, the Athlon XP 2600+ and 2400+. The chips, priced at $297 and $193, respectively, in 1,000-unit quantities, supplant the Athlon XP 2200+ as the top-performing processors for the Sunnyvale, Calif., company.

Intel Corp., based in Santa Clara, Calif., is expected to fire back by releasing a 2.8GHz Pentium 4 processor on Sunday, weeks ahead of its original schedule. The new chip will be priced at $637 in 1,000-unit quantities, according to sources close to the company.

Microsoft is undergoing a major cultural shift in the way it deals with security, but it has come much later than it should have, said company executives at its TechEd conference in Brisbane. "For a long time, what was important to customers was features and performance--because our products were deployed mainly in trusted environments, where security and resiliency from attack just wasn't an issue," said Riley.

While admitting it has fallen behind, Microsoft believes it is in a position to alter the security landscape. "Microsoft has the most operating system installations out there, so it's incumbent on Microsoft to do an orders of magnitude better job than anybody else in the industry," said Valentine. "Microsoft has to lead the industry, working with partners, standards groups, even competitors. Security shouldn't be a competitive environment; we need to make sure everything we learn . . . we share with partners and industry."

The Apache flaw could allow an attacker to discover sensitive information or execute malicious code, while the Windows bug makes it possible for users to gain privileges high enough to alter files and user accounts. The Apache flaw affects versions 2.0.39 and earlier, but only affects non-Unix platforms such as Windows, OS2 and Netware. The software can be made to reveal the absolute path to a script whenever the server attempts, and fails, to execute the script. Such path information would give valuable information to a potential attacker. An attacker could also use the flaw to execute programs on the server.

The new Apache flaw comes shortly after researchers publicized several security holes in OpenSSL, a security protocol, which could open the door to attacks on Apache servers. These flaws, along with other recent vulnerabilities in Apache and Microsoft servers, led one Internet researcher to comment on Tuesday that "a great many e-commerce sites are presently vulnerable to direct attack over the Internet."

Windows XP Media Center Edition, the newest member of the Microsoft Windows XP family, offers the best of computing and entertainment for the home user. Formerly known as "Freestyle," Windows XP Media Center Edition turns your PC into a media center, bringing together rich entertainment experiences with the freedom to access them from anywhere in the room with a simple remote control. Media center PCs with Windows XP Media Center Edition will be available for the holidays in 2002.