Tag Archives | Microsoft

Tune in Monday at 10 AM Pacific, 1 PM Eastern, for Steve Job’s keynote Presentation at the World Wide Developer Conference, http://developer.apple.com/wwdc/. I always find Jobs’ presentations entertaining. Buy your developers lunch and set up a projector in the lunch room to watch along. With any luck, you’ll have a good idea on what Microsoft will be announcing next month, Of course, it won’t ship until Longhorn. In 2007.

Slashdot posts No IE7 For 2k, Now In Extended Service. Yankovic writes “Looks like MS will not support IE7 on Windows 2000. ‘It should be no surprise that we do not plan on releasing IE7 for Windows 2000… [S]ome of the security work in IE7 relies on operating system functionality in XPSP2 that is non-trivial to port back to Windows 2000.’ While security fixes will still be available until 2010, I guess that means the only browsers with tabs for W2k will be Opera and Firefox.” All the details about an MS product’s fall into senility available at the lifecycle page.

I think this is great news! Perhaps the IE7 security flaws won’t affect the many users of non-WinXP platforms, estimated to be around 200 million PC users. Microsoft’s continual shedding of responsibility for the software it has put out there has to come to an end.

Slashdot posting: Several Critical MSIE Flaws Uncovered. An anonymous reader writes “Several flaws have been uncovered by security firm eEye in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. The flaws allow remote compromise of computers running Windows Operating Systems and affect IE, Outlook and possibly other MS software. With the next MS Windows security bulletin release scheduled for June 14, 2005 news sources are reporting that in comparison with the Mozilla Foundation’s prompt fix for the recently reported Mozilla 1.0.3 vulnerabilities MS appear to be leaving a large window for the possible malicious exploitation of these flaws.”

Of course, if Microsoft can come up with a patch, successfully test it against the many configurations it supports, and feels the threat of the exploit actually appear in the wild, I would expect them to release it. With Mozilla having delivered several quick turn-arounds on security patches, Microsoft has their work cut out for it: a quick response is required, but an admission of insecurity, and a huge liability if it fails (imagine a patch the brings down a large number of machines). If the release is not quickly forthcoming, Microsoft has an opportunity to downplay the threat, especially if it is more theoretical than something actually found in the wild. Playing the numbers game, if the release can beat out the exploit, Microsoft gets to claim they are taking care of their customers their best One Microsoft Way. But… if the exploit hits the street… if the exploit is nasty enough… another mess like Melissa or SQL Slammer will cost their customers millions of dollars of clean-up. Their customers have spent these millions before, and they will likely spend them again. But Microsoft plays a very dangerous game in dealing with security as a PR management process rather than a security issue to be dealt with out delay. Looking forward to learning more details on this problem, and watching Microsoft’s response.

News.com points to a British study that claims that dumping Microsoft software can save schools money.

I was shopping for some printing services, and started on the Staples web site. It redirected me to their partner, “Mark The World.” I clicked on the product I was interested in, and was greeted with the message:

The web browser you are using is incompatible

We are working to support Netscape in the very near future. If you do not have Internet Explorer, it may be downloaded for free at Microsoft’s website here.

How incredibly ignorant! My web browser is not incompatible. Mark the World’s web site is incompatible with industry standard browsers. What a terrible way to treat a potential customer! Kicking out customers running Safari, FireFox, Camino, Konqueror, Opera or Nautilus because Mark The World choose to go with the least secure web browser is such poor customer service. Blame the customer. Get a clue, MTW. It’s about choice. At the least, they should gracefully offer alternative services for those who prefer not to use their recommendation of browsers. I’ll take my business elsewhere.

Slashdot posts “An anonymous reader writes “The OASIS Group announces that the third Committee Draft [PDF] of the Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) v1.0 Specification has been approved as an OASIS Standard. The submission of the approved standard can be found at here. The OpenDocument format is intended to provide an open alternative to proprietary document formats including the popular DOC, XLS, and PPT formats used by Microsoft Office. Organizations and individuals that store their data in an open format avoid being locked in to a single software vendor, leaving them free to switch software if their current vendor goes out of business or changes their software or licensing terms to something less favorable.”

That’s great news! I was recently cleaning up some loose ends on my web site, and noticed that the oldest of my whitepapers at http://www.tedroche.com/papers.html were exported from MS Office 95 (I think) with the awful HTML that’s hostile to most browsers. I went to open up the original documents in OpenOffice.org and found they could not be read. Just as predicted in “The Long Now,” I have data locked up in a proprietary format I cannot read. I’m sure I can find a machine around here somewhere with the correct translators (and if I don’t, in this case, it’s no great loss) but it’s disturbing to see bits on disks turned from information into random noise.

Barring a successful injunction from Tiger Software — interesting that they waited until Ship Day Eve to sue! – Tiger, Mac OS X version 10.4 goes on sale officially today. The news sites are filled with interesting insights:

Pitting Tiger Server vs. Windows Server. After a week of non-stop Longhorn news, it’s time for Apple Computer to let the big cat out of the bag. The next version of the Mac client and server operating system is set to ship today. [Microsoft Watch from Mary Jo Foley]

Apple sued over ‘Tiger’ name. Apple is being sued by U.S. e-commerce site TigerDirect.com for infringing on its trademark with the launch of the latest version of Mac OS X, code-named “Tiger.” [Computerworld News]

Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. The time period between the release of Panther and Tiger (Mac OS X 10.3 and 10.4) has been the longest since Mac OS X was first released in 2001. During that 18-month period, Apple has been busy adding new features to the OS. They run the gamut from the readily-apparent (e.g., Spotlight and Dashboard) to under-the-hood tweaks (like improved support for metadata). By news@arstechnica.com (Ars Technica)