Tag Archives | Microsoft

Yes, WinXPSP2 RTM’d.

Microsoft comes through with Windows Service Pack 2.
“After some last-minute waxing and buffing, Microsoft finally sent its
Windows XP Service Pack 2 to manufacturing early Friday. The product is
expected to be available shortly through the Windows Updates feature in
Windows XP, company officials said.” [InfoWorld: Top News]

Garrett Fitzgerald’s Blog advices: “Getting your website ready for XP SP2.
If your website uses scripting or ActiveX controls, your users may have
trouble with it after they upgrade to Windows XP Service Pack 2.
Microsoft recently published a guide to updating your site so that it works properly for SP2 users. With the release of SP2 widely reported as “imminent”, now would be a good time…”

Garrett Fitzgerald’s Blog breaks the news of a Security bulletin from MS. “Microsoft breaks its normal security release schedule today to address the download.ject vulnerability, among others. Patch it while it’s hot! :-)”

Garretts also got a link on his blog to a really neat graphical demonstration of sorting algorithm efficiencies:
Sorting Algorithm Demos.

Former Windows Exec Talks Microsoft.
Veteran Microsoft watchers will remember Brad Silverberg, the former
Microsoft exec who championed Internet Explorer and Windows 95.
Professional services firm The Milestone Group is featuring an
interesting Q&A with Silverberg in the latest issue of The
Milestone Quarterly. [Microsoft Watch from Mary Jo Foley]

Synch the Browser.
“When Microsoft abandoned Internet Explorer development to concentrate
on fixing the browser’s security vulnerabilities, it opened the door to
the emerging RSS revolution,” says eWEEK’s Steve Gillmor.

An interesting speculative piece on how the web might be taken over by RSS technologies.

Microsoft issues seven security patches, two critical.
Software updates released today by Microsoft include fixes for
previously unknown flaws in the Windows OS, including critical holes in
the Windows Task Manager and HTML help features. [Computerworld News]

HTML Help, Task Manager and IIS 4.0 under NT 4 all get patches. Hot stuff. Get patched.

I thought anti-viruses were supposed to be the good guys. Somewhere
between installing Microsoft’s latest patch and installing Norton
AntiVirus 2004, my Windows XP laptop has lost its ability to do all
things IE-related without superfluous “Scripts are usually safe. Do you
want to allow scripts to run?” dialogs and “Internal Program Error”
dialogs. Attempting
to restore XP to a restore point failed, as it always has on the
machine — wonder what magic is involved in setting it up to work
correctly. It would be no problem if it only took out IE, as I prefer
FireFox for browsing, but it has also disabled QuickBooks and the
Norton AntiVirus user interface. Integrating their products with
Microsoft’s IE engine may not have been the smartest move. The
solution, according to Symantec’s
email support , is to completely remove NAV and reinstall IE, a process
they document in 21 pages in their email and knowledgebase.

Off to try the cure. Hope it’s not worse than the disease. Wish me luck.

Microsoft boosts partner investments. Company also reallocates one-third of its worldwide direct customer-marketing to joint-marketing with partners. [CNET News.com]

Putting its money where it’s mouth is, Microsoft is trying to lure partners who buy into its vision.

Another Internet Explorer flaw found.
“A researcher shows how a hacker could bypass a Microsoft patch and
continue to exploit the software giant’s Web browser.” Article on CNET News.com:

Man.