WinInsider

Microsoft has announced that the first Portable Media Center (PMC) device, the Creative Zen Portable Media Center, is now available for purchase from Best Buy and Creative.com. The product will also be available from many other retailers, such as Amazon.com, CompUSA, Fry's Electronics, Good Guys!, and other electronics retailers nationwide in the near future. Other PMC devices from Samsung and iRiver America will soon be available as well. PMCs are portable devices that let users enjoy digital audio, video, photos, and recorded TV shows on the go.

The U.S. government's Computer Emergency Response Team (US-CERT) and software security companies have issued warnings about a number of security vulnerabilities in versions of Oracle's software.

US-CERT issued an alert Wednesday citing several security flaws in Oracle products that could be used to shut down or take control of vulnerable systems running the software or to corrupt or steal data from the Oracle Databases, US-CERT said.

The security holes affect a number of Oracle products, including versions of its 8i, 9i and 10g Database, Application Server and Enterprise Manager software, according to a bulletin posted Tuesday by Oracle, which also released a patch for the vulnerabilities.

An appeals court on Wednesday ruled that a three-year-old shareholder lawsuit charging Oracle and several of its top executives with misleading investors about Oracle's performance may proceed, overturning a lower court's dismissal.

Led by investor Local 144 of the Nursing Home Pension Fund, the March 2001 complaint charges Oracle executives with covering up a sales slump caused by an economic slowdown and alleges defects with its 11i E-Business Suite of applications. After a series of dismissals and refilings of amended complaints, a San Francisco federal court dismissed the complaint in March 2003, deciding that the plaintiffs' allegations did not show "a strong inference" that Oracle's executives intentionally made statements they knew to be false.

Microsoft said on Thursday that it has begun publicly testing its Windows Marketplace, an online shopping and download center for hardware and software related to its Windows operating system.

The software maker announced plans for the service in July. It said Thursday a final version is scheduled to launch in "the next couple of months," once the company gets enough feedback from early users. Microsoft's partner for the site is CNET Networks, publisher of News.com

The U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team, known as CERT, this week recommended that Windows XP users install Service Pack 2 (SP2) using Windows Update or Automatic Updates from Microsoft CERT cited "significant changes to improve the security of Windows XP" in making its recommendation.

In its recommendation, CERT cited noteworthy improvements in Outlook Express, Internet Explorer security and the Windows firewall. CERT also "highly recommends" that users enable Automatic Updates.

Though Windows XP SP2 is all about protecting systems from worms, viruses and spyware, it can't do much about what's already on computers -- and that could pose a problem. The company is warning users of the Windows XP operating system to check for spyware before downloading the free massive security update, called Service Pack 2. Barry Goff, a group product manager at Microsoft, said some spyware could cause computers to freeze up upon installation of the update.

Goff said fewer than 10 million consumers have received SP2, while several million businesses have downloaded the product. Research firm IDC estimates that about 260 million copies of Windows XP have been sold.

Microsoft released on Thursday the first major update for its SharePoint collaboration products. Service Pack 1 for SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and SharePoint Services includes support for saving and sharing files up to 2GB in size, new search features and an overhauled update process for applying patches.

Launched several years ago as a tool for building corporate portals, SharePoint has since morphed into a collection of collaboration tools that allow employees to work together remotely on documents and other tasks. Integrated collaboration tools have been one of the main weapons IBM's Lotus division has relied on to compete against Microsoft.

By cutting WinFS from Longhorn and indefinitely delaying the storage system, Microsoft has also again delayed the Microsoft Business Framework (MBF), a new Windows programming layer that is closely tied to WinFS.

Developers will now have to wait longer for MBF, which promises to make it easier to write business applications for the Windows platform by moving some of the base-level code out of the applications and into the operating system. MBF sits on top of the .Net framework and provides basic functions such as order entry and general ledger for application developers to build on.

Microsoft today has released the final version of Windows Media Player (WMP) 10, the latest rendition of its all-in-one digital media management and jukebox application. WMP 10 builds off the success of the previous version, adding a cleaner, simpler user interface, integration with a number of online music and video stores through what Microsoft calls the Digital Media Mall, and support for a new generation of subscription based services and devices.

"We've upgraded our digital media capabilities pretty dramatically with our new Windows Media Player 10 release," Dave Fester, the General Manager of Microsoft's Windows Consumer business, said at a reviewers workshop last month. "We want to upgrade the existing Windows XP installed base and give them new media experiences."

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer believes the software industry will create more positive change in the next 10 years than it did in the previous 10 -- provided that security threats are effectively handled.

"Security is the one issue that could stand in all our ways," Ballmer said in an address to the Massachusetts Software Council today. "To the degree that people don't feel they can rely on [applications] is a major impediment."

Beset by a wave of recent code flaws, Microsoft has made security its top priority, Ballmer said. It derailed its Longhorn OS development plan to issue Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2), shifted some programmers onto other security projects and began analyzing glitch feedback from users to spot trends.