Microsoft Corp.’s Macintosh Business Unit (MacBU) has released Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac Service Pack 2 (SP2), a midcycle free update that is designed to improve the Office 2008 experience with better speed, stability and compatibility.
Microsoft dropped a mini-bombshell on Monday, announcing that it is contributing thousands of lines of code for inclusion in Linux.
But lest anyone think Microsoft suffered a massive head trauma over the weekend, the code it is releasing isn't really about helping Linux compete better with Microsoft. The drivers are really geared at making Windows a better host for Linux.
It’s been two years since Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates talked up Dryad, Microsoft’s concurrent-programming competitor to Google’s MapReduce and Apache Hadoop. But this week, Dryad was back on the radar screen, with Microsoft’s release of the Dryad code to academics and researchers.
Microsoft’s planned ’super-sandbox’ web browser/OS, code-named Gazelle, will provide a “bullet-proof” environment to run potentially high-risk applications, Cyber-Ark said this week.
The security specialist said memory sandboxing, as Microsoft intends to use for Gazelle, is a “highly effective” way to create a secure environment, because “the environment disappears entirely when the sandbox is closed”.
Microsoft today unveiled pricing details for its Azure services platform — possibly because customers were reluctant to build an application on the beta platform without knowing what it may one day cost them. The platform is Microsoft’s leap into the clouds, and it’s an impressive first step, at least on paper, complete with competitive pricing and lots of concessions designed to get enterprise customers to shift over their IT operations.
Microsoft released six security bulletins for Patch Tuesday on July 14, including fixes for vulnerabilities affecting DirectShow and the Video ActiveX Control that have been targeted by attackers.
The bulletins address a total of nine vulnerabilities. Three of the bulletins—the ones affecting DirectShow and the Video ActiveX Control and a third addressing issues in the Embedded OpenType Font Engine—are rated critical and deal with flaws with the highest possible rating on Microsoft's exploitability index, meaning consistent exploit code is likely.
As predicted, the 7600 Build of Windows 7 was reportedly released on July 13. Also as predicted, soon thereafter it was swiftly leaked out onto torrent sites.
Both 32-bit and 64-bit downloads of the new OS of the Ultimate edition were being actively hosted at press time. There is some question about whether the build is indeed the Release to Manufacturing build as rumored. This would mean that it would be almost the exact version of Windows 7 to appear on store shelves this fall, barring the discovery of a major bug in the RTM phase.
Concerns over compatibility and costs will lead six in 10 companies to skip the purchase of Microsoft's Windows 7 operating system, according to a new survey.
Windows 7 will be released 22 October, but has already garnered good reviews, in contrast to its disappointing current version, Windows Vista. Many of the more than 1,000 companies that responded to a survey by ScriptLogic said they have economised by cutting back on software updates and lack the resources to deploy Microsoft's latest offering.
Microsoft is crystalizing its “private cloud” positioning and plans to run it by the 6,000 or so partners attending its Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) this week.
Microsoft officials previously have said that they won’t allow customers to run the Microsoft Azure cloud operating system on customers’ on-premise servers, but that they will make available to users many of the advances in Windows Server, System Center, Hyper-V and other Microsoft technologies so users can create their own “private clouds.”
Despite moving aggressively to fix zero-day vulnerabilities in its software, Microsoft will have to move faster still to keep up with criminal hackers. One day before the company plans to release its July patch and fix two "browser-and-get-owned" vulnerabilities, a third "browse-and-get owned" flaw has been reported.
On Monday, Microsoft issued a Security Advisory about a previously undisclosed vulnerability in Office Web Components Spreadsheet ActiveX control (OWC 10 and OWC11).
