Never mind worrying about hackers stealing your password. A security researcher with the Finnish military has shown how people could steal your fingerprint, by taking advantage of an omission in Microsoft's Fingerprint Reader, a PC authentication device that Microsoft has been shipping since September 2004.
Though the Fingerprint Reader can prevent unauthorized people from logging on to your PC, Microsoft has promoted it not as a security device, but rather as convenient tool for home users who want a fast way to log on to Web sites without having to remember user names and passwords. In fact, the Microsoft.com Web site warns that the Fingerprint Reader should not be used to protect sensitive data.
Microsoft today said it has purchased Apptimum to prop up its Windows Vista operating system.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Microsoft said in a statement it plans to use Apptimum's Alohabob PC Relocator products to make it a cinch for Windows customers to transfer applications to their new computers.
The Redmond, Wash., software giant also said Apptimum's assets will be a strong complement to the Vista OS later this year.
"Our customers and partners have been asking for a much easier way to transfer their data and applications from old computers to new ones," said Amitabh Srivastava, corporate vice president of Windows Core Operating System Development at Microsoft.
CRN: How big of an opportunity is there with licensing for Office 2007 and Vista?
DAY: If you think about the SMB market, a fairly large percentage of those customers are on Office 2000 and Windows 2000. They never upgraded to the 2003 platform. From their point of view, what they had was good enough. It was stable, and it was good enough. We actually think there is a lot of benefit for them to move to 2003. But the reality is that a number of customers won't. They'll wait for 2007. Now what you have got is a very large installed base of customers that would be two versions back. For example, with Exchange, there is still 14 percent of our [installed] base on Exchange 5.5. So there is a tremendous opportunity in taking those Exchange 5.5 customers to 2003, at minimum. And then if they have Software Assurance, when we release the new version of Exchange, they will have the right to do that upgrade.
Cisco Systems, the world's largest network equipment maker, said on Monday it's partnering with Microsoft to create a package of communications tools geared for businesses.
Part of its efforts to diversify and expand its revenue stream, San Jose, Calif.-based Cisco is launching the "Cisco Unified Communications" system that will integrate voice, data and video products and applications.
The overall package includes 30 products, most of which are enhancements or updates to existing technologies.
Windows Vista won't have a backdoor that could be used by police forces to get into encrypted files, Microsoft has stressed.
In February, a BBC News story suggested that the British government was in discussions with Microsoft over backdoor access to the operating system. A backdoor is a method of bypassing normal authentication to gain access to a computer without to the PC user knowing.
But Microsoft has now quelled the suggestion that law enforcement might get such access.
"Microsoft has not and will not put 'backdoors' into Windows," a company representative said in a statement sent via e-mail.
As the company has already indicated, Microsoft will be releasing the TFS module of its VSTS later this month, but it is already looking ahead to the next version of Microsoft's ALM toolset.
Rob Caron, an architect for Visual Studio 2005 Team System, said Microsoft will launch TFS at SD West (Software Development Conference & Expo West) 2006.
In a blog post dated March 1, Caron said: "Hooray for March! It feels great to finally say, 'Team Foundation Server is shipping this month.' In a couple of weeks at SD West in Santa Clara, we're launching Team Foundation Server with a keynote from Rick LaPlante, general manager of Visual Studio 2005 Team System at Microsoft, and a series of technical sessions from Microsoft employees Kevin Kelly, Dennis Minium, Sam Guckenheimer, and Randy Miller."
It might just be the quintessential Seattle gadget.
Researchers from Microsoft have created an old-fashioned mariners compass that uses the Global Positioning System and an embedded database of Starbucks stores to literally point to the coffee retailer's nearest Seattle-area location.
One of the things it doesn't do is tell you how far away that location is. But the researchers have an answer for that, too.
"This is Seattle," said Raman Sarin, one of the researchers on the project. "You're not going to have to walk far."
The Coffee Compass was one of the projects on display Wednesday at the annual Microsoft Research TechFest. But don't be misled by that device's seemingly whimsical nature. For the most part, this is serious business -- in some cases signaling the potential direction of the products Microsoft brings to market.
Microsoft is asking U.S. courts to compel Sun Microsystems Inc., IBM, Oracle and Novell Inc. to hand over correspondence with EU regulators on Microsoft's antitrust battle in Europe.
It filed papers Friday with federal courts in New York, Massachusetts and California, saying they could order U.S. citizens to provide evidence for use in foreign legal action.
Microsoft said it needs to see these documents to understand how an independent expert came to write reports highly critical of the company's efforts to comply with a 2004 EU antitrust order.
Microsoft made a couple of big moves in the storage space on Friday, deepening its partnership with EMC and acquiring iSCSI technology from String Bean Software.
Microsoft acquired the WinTarget technology from String Bean Software of Montgomery Village, Md. WinTarget is an Internet Small Computer System Interface storage area networking solution designed and optimized for the Windows platform. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
Microsoft has until now focused on delivering iSCSI initiator technology. The WinTarget acquisition adds target technology to the mix to allow customers to build complete IP SAN solutions.
With the February Community Technology Preview, Microsoft is beginning to test a new feature designed to allow Vista users to upgrade on the fly. Microsoft won't handle the upgrades directly, however.
Microsoft testers are getting an early look at new functionality designed to allow users to upgrade to more powerful -- and, presumably, more expensive -- versions of Vista.
Microsoft is testing a new Windows upgrade mechanism, known as Windows Anytime Upgrade. A first iteration of the technology is integrated into the February Community Technology Preview releases of Vista that went to testers starting last week.