Microsoft

Here's the legend: at a computer trade show in 1981, Bill Gates supposedly uttered this statement, in defense of the just-introduced IBM PC's 640KB usable RAM limit: "640K ought to be enough for anybody."

The initial PC was based on the Intel 8088, which was a hybrid 8/16-bit processor — thus the reason for the 640KB memory limit. Though tiny by today's standards — 64-bit systems can support up to 128GB of memory — 640KB at that time was an order of magnitude larger than the 64KB limit that faced users of 8-bit computers, such as the Apple II+ and the Commodore 64.

A Microsoft automatic update has eradicated password stealing programs from more than two million computers. Writing on the TechNet blog, Matt McCormack says the company’s Malicious Software Removal Tool detected and erased Trojan horse programs designed to steal passwords from popular online games like World of Warcraft, Valve’s Steam Client and Lineage Online. Back on June 10, Microsoft sent an automatic update which upgraded the tool to fight against the password stealers and 700,000 machines were restored in just the first day.

"Human issues" are being blamed for a Microsoft security update failing to protect users of Windows XP SP2 and SP3 from a critical vulnerability. The Bluetooth flaw could allow remote execution of code on a targeted computer.

Arriving as part of June's Patch Tuesday releases, MS08-030 was supposed to fix a flaw that could allow an attack via Bluetooth.

Two brains for the price of one. That is the formula Microsoft has hit upon to try to make up for the loss of Bill Gates’ guiding hand on its technology direction.

Their ability to navigate one of the computing industry’s periodic upheavals – with the focus shifting from desktop PCs to the web – will determine whether Microsoft remains at the forefront of the industry Mr Gates did much to shape or instead slips into increasing irrelevance.

Microsoft Wednesday said it plans to release at the end of the month another beta of its Windows HPC Server 2008 and that the final version will ship by year-end.

The beta is the first release candidate (RC), which Microsoft says is feature complete. An RC is a final beta before the code is considered finished. Microsoft officials said they plan to have one more RC before development is complete.

Though the building alone covers a whopping 11 acres, you can't even see Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT)'s new $550 million data center in the hills west of San Antonio until you're practically on top of it. But by that point, you can hardly see anything else.

Microsoft launched a campaign today to enlist supporters in its opposition to a new advertising collaboration deal between Google and Yahoo, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.

One day after the companies announced an agreement allowing Google to sell search ads on Yahoo's website, Microsoft contacted advocacy groups that work to influence policy in Washington.

IT pros wanting to try out the latest Microsoft Hyper-V virtualization technology can now get the Release Candidate 1 (RC1) version via Windows Update. This optional version, which contains minor improvements, was first announced by Microsoft last month.

RC1 contains a few performance and bug fixes over RC0, according to the Microsoft Windows Virtualization Product Group Team Blog. Integration components (ICs) have been added to the integration services setup disk. RC1 also supports IPv4 address migration. There's also an improvement to work with Linux virtual machines.

Microsoft has filed 21 lawsuits in federal court in 14 states against resellers allegedly engaging in the sale of pirated software, including some alleged repeat offenders. Microsoft has taken the action as part of its ongoing efforts to protect its customers and partners from the risks of pirated and counterfeit software.

Microsoft also called attention to several resources available to help consumers to ensure they are getting genuine software, including a hot line and online validation tools at its website.

Microsoft is making some improvements to Internet Explorer that it hopes will make deploying and managing the browser easier for IT professionals.

The second beta version of IE8, expected in August, will have new capabilities for IT staff, including an easier way to deploy the browser with Vista. IT staff will be able to add IE8 to a Vista image more quickly in order to deploy the two products out to many users. Currently, IT professionals have to go through a process that can take two hours to deploy IE7 along with a Windows XP image, Microsoft said.