Transmeta said future microprocessors from the comapny would also support the "NX" security protocol due from Microsoft in Windows XP Service Pack 2. NX, or "No Execute", is the shorthand for the Execution Protection feature that Microsoft will include in XP SP2. The technology prevents buffer overflows, one of the most popular forms of attack on a software program.
Transmeta will join Intel and Advanced Micro Devices in supporting the NX technology. So far, only Via Technolgies Inc. has not announced support for the technology in future processors.
Hand-held gaming received a lot of attention this year at E3, with both Sony Computer Entertainment and Nintendo introducing new portable gaming devices. But don't look for Microsoft to launch a dedicated portable game player of its own.
"For us, and my group, we're focused on Xbox," said Robbie Bach, Microsoft's chief Xbox officer. "Deciding to go into another dedicated gaming device would be a big, tough row to hoe. We're more interested in making the smart investment we made in Xbox pay off in a big way over the next three or four years."
Students at a university in Australia have discovered a flaw in 802.11 (Wi-Fi) wireless networks that would allow a hacker to effectively shut down any wireless network using a Denial of Service (DoS)-like attack. The PhD students, who hail from the Queensland University of Technology Information Research Centre, say that the Collision Avoidance (CA) feature of Wi-Fi networks which follow the IEEE's standardized 802.11 protocol is to blame. They were studying ways to prevent Wi-Fi-based attacks when they discovered the flaw.
Three months after scrapping an effort to integrate its e-commerce, content management, and integration software into one suite of products, Microsoft has decided to forge ahead with another major release of its e-commerce server software, which it expects to release in early 2006.
The successor to Commerce Server 2002 will have an improved user interface, new reporting features, and tighter integration with Microsoft's BizTalk Server and Visual Studio. Net. It will also have a feature that will allow online businesses make order-checking and account information available to their customers.
Microsoft is putting the pedal to the metal to get client and server software development in synch. But even better, the Redmond-based software vendor is finally sharing its server development roadmap with the rest of the world.
Microsoft told analysts in a conference call Friday that it will move to a two-year release cycle, with major releases and updates alternating. In other words, any major release, such as Longhorn, will be followed in two years by an update release, which in turn will be followed in two years by the next major release.
Later this year, Intel will turn on a security feature within its newest Pentium 4 processors -- dubbed "Prescott" after the code name of the chip family -- that will block buffer overflows, one of the most widely used hacker attack avenues.
Prescott supports the NX -- for "no execute" -- feature that blocks worms and viruses from executing code after creating a buffer overflow on the machine, said Paul Otellini, Intel's president and chief operating officer in a Webcast Thursday of the company's spring analyst meeting.
The internal unit responsible for securing Microsoft's IT infrastructure is moving away from traditional network security procedures and adopting a wide-ranging risk management strategy to take advantage of more strict authentication technologies.
Details of the new approach were released in a white paper from Microsoft's Corporate Security Group as part of the company's recent move to share some of its own security secrets with enterprise customers.
Itanium who? Intel's new Pentium 4-based 64-bit chips will ship in June, the company said this week, along with support for a new security extension that will help Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2)-based systems be more secure. The new microprocessors, based on what Intel calls EM64T (Extended Memory 64 Technology), will also support Hyperthreading, which makes a single processor perform like dual processors in many situations. Still, Intel has a ways to go before it catches up to AMD, which pioneered the AMD-64 platform which Intel is now copying. What an interesting turn of events.
Xbox chief Robbie Bach is in the middle of one of the busiest weeks of his year. The 2004 Electronics Entertainment Exposition - the annual convention of the video game industry - runs through today at the Los Angeles Convention Center. On Monday night, Bach announced that Electronic Arts would produce sports games and other titles to run on the Xbox Live online gaming service. On Tuesday, Sony announced it would cut the price of its PlayStation 2 (PS2) console to $149, matching the price cut Microsoft made to Xbox in March.
It's looking more like the next-generation Windows Server, code-named Longhorn, will get key orchestration features derived from BizTalk Server. Microsoft is working on workflow and orchestration technology, called the Windows Orchestration Engine (WinOE), for the Longhorn/Orcas time frame, several sources familiar with the company's plans said. The technology manages how processes or software services interact in distributed systems.