Microsoft has lost another partner to market its single sign-on services after auction giant eBay said it will no longer support Passport and its .NET alerts. In a notice released late Wednesday, eBay said members will have to sign in through eBay directly starting in late January.
"Once this takes place, the Microsoft Passport button that is currently displayed on Sign In pages will be replaced with links to a page with more information, including Help in case you cannot remember your User ID or password," the notice said.
Thousands of companies and California residents will turn their backs on a share of the $1.1 billion antitrust settlement against Microsoft if they don't file simple claim forms by the Jan. 8, 2005 deadline.
Last month the California Superior Court signed an order extending the deadline to Jan. 8 to give consumers more time to file claims. Consumers shouldn't expect that the court will extend the deadline again, said Richard Grossman, a lawyer with the San Francisco law firm of Townsend and Townsend and Crew, which was the lead counsel in the class action antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft.
The United States Patent and Trade Office has granted Microsoft a pair of software patents, one that deals with software compilation and another that addresses software editing.
U.S. Patent number 6,836,883 is titled "Method and system for compiling multiple languages" and was first applied for by Microsoft researchers on June 21, 2000.
A USPTO abstract on the newly-granted patent explains it as "a method and system for compiling multiple source language files that share a common library."
Computers running Microsoft's Windows XP are vulnerable to Trojan attacks capable of remotely controlling a user's system even when equipped with the latest Service Pack 2 patch, security firm Symantec has warned.
The Trojan horse, called "Phel", is capable of corrupting computers visiting a malicious Web site through Internet Explorer's Help controls, according to Symantec. The program exploits a vulnerability within Internet Explorer and SP2 that engages help files from Web pages. The vulnerability was discovered in October.
Microsoft Wednesday disclosed that it will not ship-as a separate product-its Exchange Edge Services, a set of e-mail security and anti-spam enhancements for Exchange Server.
In May, Microsoft said it would roll out Exchange Edge Services in 2005. The package was expected to provide support for identification standards, such as SPF (Sender Policy Framework), as well as other tools and techniques designed to stop spam, including IP Safelist, or presolved puzzle validity-a technology that requires e-mail servers to solve complex computational puzzles for each message they send out.
This week, Microsoft shipped Update Rollup 1 for Microsoft Media Center Extender for Windows XP Media Center, with versions of the fix available to customers of both HP and Linksys Media Center Extenders. (A version of the fix will ship in January for Media Center Extender for Xbox users.) The update rollup is a must-have for all Extender customers because it lets you stream content, such as Cinemax and HBO content, that's protected with Copy Generation Management System/Analog (CGMS/A). The update rollup also fixes several other problems and appeared to work well when I tested it this week. You can find out more about this fix and grab the free download from the Microsoft Web site.
Microsoft says its Service Pack 2 update adds an additional layer of security to Windows XP-based PCs. However, recent PCW tests seem to show that at least two major security suites are crippling SP2's ability to offer users accurate security information.
SP2, which Microsoft rolled out in August, includes the new Windows Security Center. This feature alerts users when their PC's antivirus or firewall software is missing or out of date. It also signals when the real-time virus scanner is disabled, and when the firewall is not enabled. At least, that's how it's supposed to work.
Microsoft's effort to delay European antitrust measures until the end of the appeals process failed with the release of an order Wednesday by the European Court of First Instance in Luxembourg.
The order upheld the March 2004 decision of the European Commission, which concluded after a five-year investigation that Microsoft had illegally abused its dominance in the desktop operating system market. The Commission called for Microsoft to pay a record fine of 497 million Euros, disclose Windows communications protocols to competitors to re-establish workgroup server operating system competition and release a version of Windows excluding Windows Media Player to invigorate media player competition.
MSN's Hotmail service, which has almost 200 million users worldwide, has dumped McAfee as its antivirus partner in favor of rival Trend Micro.
According to Microsoft, e-mails and attachments sent or received by any of Hotmail's 187 million Web mail customers will be scanned in real time by Trend Micro's antivirus software beginning Monday.
Hotmail's antivirus service was previously provided by McAfee and the reason for the change is unclear. However, Martin Hoffman, chief executive of Ninemsn, which operates Hotmail in Australia and is half owned by Microsoft, said in a statement that Hotmail will be able to provide a "safer online experience" using Trend Micro's products because they provide "deeper antivirus protection."
In a Q&A on the Microsoft Web site, Microsoft chairman and chief software architect Bill Gates tackled a handful of questions that Microsoft says are the ones he is most commonly asked.
In the three-page Word document posted this week, Gates opines on his happiest moments at Microsoft (getting BASIC to run on the Altair in 1976 and the IBM PC launch in 1981), the prospect for computers to really think on their own (not in the next 20 years), the role of fate or luck in his success ("immense") and the secrets to his success.