WinInsider

On October 23, Michael "Woody" Hanscom posted a picture to his Web log, intended to garner a chuckle or two from a few close friends and colleagues. The reaction the picture drew from his employer can only be compared to a kind of Orwellian nightmare where anything an individual does online can come back to haunt them. That nightmare is the reality faced by an increasingly vulnerable corporate world where the Web can be used as a tool to disclose potentially sensitive and damaging trade secrets to the masses.

Microsoft has put pen to paper in outlining its vision for Windows Update. Even though version 4 is still in use by beta testers, Microsoft has drawn up its roadmap for the service's next generation, which includes SP2 for Windows XP and an updated release of Internet Explorer.

Windows Update 5.0 is set to enter into testing before the end of this year and extends patching capabilities to the full monty of Microsoft products including Office, SQL Server, Exchange, as well as Windows.

Microsoft this week awarded grants to five universities to enhance the Assignment Manager component of Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003 Academic. Chosen from a field of 20 proposals from 17 universities around the world, the Redmond, Wash.-based company Tuesday selected the universities based on their submitted request for proposal (RFP) under the Visual Studio .NET Academic Tools Source Licensing Program, part of Microsoft's Shared Source Initiative.

The universities selected include the Federal University of Pernambuco (Brazil), Monash University (Australia), Universidade Estadual Paulista Julio de Mesquita Filho (Brazil), University of Hull (United Kingdom) and Yale University (United States).

Microsoft on Friday quietly released a new Macintosh version of its Windows Media Player software. The company, which said in September that Windows Media Player 9 for Mac OS X was "coming soon," posted the software to its Web site on Friday. The new software follows the release of Apple's iTunes for Windows, which competes with the Windows version of Microsoft's media player.

The new Mac version sports a "brushed steel" look designed to match the appearance of Apple's OS X operating system, and it has plug-in support to allow media files to be played from within Internet Explorer, Netscape and Apple's Safari browser.

You just can't make this stuff up. Matthew Szulik, the CEO of Linux maker Red Hat, said this week that Windows was a better choice on the desktop than, yes, Linux. "I would say that for the consumer market place, Windows probably continues to be the right product line," Szulik said. "From the device-driver standpoint and perhaps some of the other traditional functionality, for that classic consumer purchaser, it is my view that [Linux] needs to mature a little bit more." Szulik even discussed the horrors of what would happen if his own father tried to purchase a computer running Linux today. "We know painfully well what happens," he said. "He will try to get it installed and either doesn't have a positive experience or puts a lot of pressure on ... support systems." But don't despair, Linux lovers: Szulik says Linux will get there in a few years and is perfectly capable today for many business scenarios. "We think that the enterprise desktop market place is much more strategic and has buyers whose needs we can exceed," he added.

According to the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) and Carnegie Mellon University, all the complaints about Microsoft having security problems are bunk. In fact, a report written by two organizations specifically calls for all the finger-pointing to stop, since all technology is inherently vulnerable, and simply blaming Microsoft for everything obscures the real problem: The very infrastructure of the Internet is not controlled or owned by Microsoft, and it is extremely vulnerable to attack. Furthermore, the report says, over 90 percent of all Microsoft-related attacks involved vulnerabilities that were already fixed by the software giant, and that includes the two most infamous recent attacks, SoBig.F and MSBlaster.

Microsoft has agreed to pay as much as $89 million to settle a class-action lawsuit in North Carolina that alleged the vendor overcharged for its software. Under the settlement, North Carolina residents who bought Microsoft Windows, Office or standalone Word or Excel products between Dec. 9, 1995, and Dec. 31, 2002, can apply for vouchers that may be used to buy desktop or notebook computers, software or select peripherals from any manufacturer, Microsoft said in a statement Thursday.

Even though interest in open source software is high in Germany's public sector, Microsoft continues to grab contracts with local authorities. This month the U.S. software giant began installing its new Office 2003 software in 110,000 PCs in North Rhine Westphalia (NRW), Germany's largest and most populated state, Microsoft said in a statement Wednesday.

The decision to install the new Office product makes NRW the only German state operating every computer with uniform software, said Fritz Behrens, state interior minister, in the statement.

Is Microsoft's new version of Windows a radical innovation or a return to the company's winner-take-all software strategy from a decade ago? The next operating system, code-named Longhorn, promises a huge leap forward from current versions of Windows, with better graphics, storage, search and security features, according to analysts and others familiar with the technology. But those features come at a price: Most can be used only through client software that's designed specifically for the new system.

Longhorn, which had its official coming-out party last week, marks Microsoft's return to "fat client" application development--software that resides largely on desktop or portable PCs rather than on a shared server or network. The company is even considering phasing out the development of a stand-alone browser, instead building Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and Web-based applications that would run directly in Longhorn as "native" Windows code.

Didn't have time to be in all six tracks at the same time? Not able to attend the PDC this year? Then take the PDC home with you! Take advantage of the opportunity to purchase the official Microsoft PDC 2003 Conference DVD available for $499.00 (USD). PDC attendees will receive a discounted attendee price of $199.00 (USD). This DVD set will contain streaming media files and presentation slides from the breakout presentations, lunch sessions and both the Security and Architecture Symposiums. Note that Pre-conference sessions, Hands-on Labs and Keynote/General Session presentations are not included.