As expected, Microsoft today is proceeding with job cuts in targeted areas of its global workforce, delivering layoff notices in selected groups as part of the strategic realignment that the company traditionally makes at the beginning of its fiscal year. We haven't been able to get a precise count, but the numbers we're now hearing are in the hundreds of job cuts globally, and the low hundreds in the Seattle region.
Microsoft faces a rash of zero-day vulnerabilities in some of its most important software, according to recent disclosures of unpatched bugs, including flaws in Windows XP, Internet Explorer and its flagship Web server.
Along with the unveiling of a vulnerability by a group of disgruntled security researchers who have dubbed themselves the Microsoft-Spurned Researcher Collective (MSRC), Microsoft has been served notice of at least three other flaws in the last few weeks.
As the dog days of summer arrive in Seattle, Microsoft is preparing to issue four security bulletins next Tuesday -- three of them rated "critical," Microsoft's highest ranking.
The good news is there are only four patches, and that two of them fix outstanding zero-day vulnerabilities for which users and administrators have been waiting.
Security researchers irked by how Microsoft responded to Google engineer Tavis Ormany's public disclosure of a zero-day Windows XP Help Center security bug have banded together to form a group called the Microsoft Spurned Researcher Collective*.
The group is forming a "union" in the belief that together they will be better placed to handle flak from Redmond and elsewhere following the publication of security flaws. A statement, published by The Windows Club blog, explains the Collective's stance.
Microsoft is furious with Vupen Security after it leaked information about two security vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office 2010, even though the software package has only been out a few weeks.
Vupen has identified 130 security flaws in 2010 alone, with most of them being in Microsoft products, which means that either Microsoft software is really insecure or Vupen does not like the company all that much. TechEye's gamblers, which means all of us, are pretty divided on this one.
In a blog post on Monday, Barbara Gordon, who heads Microsoft's customer service and support, argued that her company's offerings beat Google's hands down.
"The launch of Office 2010 earlier this month reminded me just how much this makes us different," Gordon said. "When was the last time you called Google for help recovering a lost Google Doc? Were you even able to find a number? My guess is, no. Google simply does not provide that level of service."
Over the weekend, the Italian Windows site “Windowsette” got a hold of some super secret squirrel Microsoft presentations apparently laying around on the internet somewhere. I took a look through every single one of these, slide-by-slide, so I’m quite confident these are the real deal. I just feel bad for the poor sap who either leaked these or inadvertently shared these with the world.
Windows Phone 7 is nearing "gold" status so they can release it to the carriers and manufacturers for final testing and device production. There are a number of features that simply won't be in the initial release. Will it matter or is the target market for the device less discerning than the smartphone enthusiast?
In the PC world, vendors used to say that the hardware and operating system were far less important than the number and variety of applications available for a given platform. (With Web apps’ popularity growing, that adage probably is less true than it used to be.) In the mobile phone world, however, applications still matter. A lot.
I’m hearing from my sources that Microsoft is planning to make available for download later today, June 23, its third technical preview (i.e., pre-beta) of Internet Explorer 9.
