The IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) has disbanded its anti-spam working group, MARID (MTA Authorization Records In DNS) working group, in part because of an intellectual-property row surrounding Microsoft's Sender ID proposal. Those participating in the effort are to put their various anti-spam proposals into practice, gathering real-world information that could lead to another IETF standardization effort. Other options include the creation of a standard by an industry organization or the coexistence of several standards.
Microsoft on Wednesday ventured further into the complex world of software licensing, making some changes and adding new features to its programs.
The Enterprise Edition Step-up License was originally offered as a one-year promotion on September 1, 2003. Customers with Software Assurance, an Enterprise Agreement, Select License or Open License Value could migrate from Standard Edition software to Professional or Enterprise Edition software while maintaining their Software Assurance coverage on a given product.
It's never taken Microsoft longer than three years (give or take a few months) to deliver a new version of its business-class operating system. And when Redmond ships its Longhorn operating environment sometime in 2006, more or less than three years will have elapsed since the software giant delivered Windows Server 2003.
When Longhorn finally does appear, however, there could be as much as a five year span between it and Windows XP Professional, Microsoft's last business-class operating client. And that's unprecedented in Microsoft's history.
Microsoft on Wednesday launched a free diagnostic tool that gives Exchange server shops the once-over. The new Microsoft Exchange Server Best Practices Analyzer Tool stuffs top support issues and resolutions from the company's knowledge database into self-run software, said Microsoft. "I like to think of [it] as a Microsoft-engineer-in-a-box," said Paul Bowden, program manager for Exchange development, in a statement.
Microsoft has appointed a new leader for its Worldwide Public Sector group, which plays a key role in its efforts to counter competition from open source software in government and education markets. Gerri Elliott succeeds Maggie Wilderotter and will be corporate vice president for Worldwide Public Sector. She will oversee Microsoft's outreach to governments and educational organizations around the world, Microsoft said in a statement Tuesday.
As Internet giants step into the crowded online music arena, some are banking on a new weapon to help attack market leader Apple Computer: instant messaging.
Microsoft has publicly acknowledged similar interests in tying its MSN Music online store into MSN Messenger. In a press conference last month, MSN's corporate vice president Yusuf Mehdi described a scenario in which two IM chatters could listen to each other's playlists and then buy the songs if they wished.
Microsoft's Visual Studio .NET platform performs "significantly better" than IBM's 2EE-based WebSphere Studio, according to a study released Tuesday by The Middleware Company (TMC), owners of the popular TheServerSide developer communities.
While the findings provide developers with a good indication of the benefits of Windows Server 2003 over Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS 2.1, the study was ostensibly designed to weigh the merits of developing enterprise applications using Visual Studio .NET or WebSphere Studio.
The report said the integrated .NET run-time features within Server 2003 saved Team .NET a lot of headaches because of its built-in Web server, load balancing and session and message servers.
Computer code that takes advantage of a flaw in the way many Microsoft applications process JPEG images has been published on the Internet and could be a precursor to actual attacks on vulnerable PCs, experts said. The code was published late last week, only days after Microsoft on Tuesday revealed the "critical" vulnerability and made available patches to fix the problem. Any application that processes JPEG images could be vulnerable.
The executive who leads Microsoft's government sales efforts is leaving to become CEO of a telecommunications company, the software maker said Tuesday. Maggie Wilderotter, senior vice president of Microsoft's worldwide public-sector unit, will head Citizens Communications, a Stamford, Conn.-based company that specializes in providing telecommunications services in rural areas and smaller cities.
Microsoft said it would speed up SP2 distribution to meet its self-imposed goals, having distributed just one-fifth of its planned installations a month after launch.
Microsoft on Tuesday said that as of last week it had distributed 20 million copies of Windows XP Service Pack 2, last month's comprehensive security update to the company's flagship operating system.
On Aug. 6, the company set a goal of distributing 100 million copies within two months through its automatic update service alone. That projection didn't include installations of the upgrade downloaded from the Windows Update Web site.