Microsoft

For the second time in a month, Microsoft Corp. has had to defend Windows Update against charges that it upgraded machines without users' permission. So far, it has no explanation for the newest instance of unauthorized updating.

In a post published late Friday to a company blog, Nate Clinton, program manager for Microsoft Update, denied that Windows' update mechanism was to blame for reports of settings being changed without user interaction, updates downloading and installing, and systems rebooting.

When Microsoft announced Windows Home Server earlier this year, it was greeted with a mixture of curious disdain and eagerness. Some questioned what the product offered over existing solutions, while others welcomed it with open arms. It's at once hard to explain and easy to understand what Windows Home Server is, but it's worth getting to know the newest addition to the Windows family.

A team of Microsoft spokespeople have been working throughout the day to devise a plausible explanation for a comment made by CEO Steve Ballmer during a company gathering in the UK, which on its face appears to say it is considering litigation against users of Red Hat Linux for patent infringement.

Microsoft says it wants to make the browser available as broadly as possible to protect Windows users.

Microsoft is making its Internet Explorer 7 browser available to all Windows XP users—even those using pirated software—and installation will no longer require that the operating system first be validated as genuine.

The company said the move is about security and ecosystem safety, because if even one user in a network is not using the security enhancements provided in IE 7, that user places the entire network at risk.

Microsoft officials said at the end of August that they planned to release Windows XP Service Pack (SP) 3 to Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) and TechNet testers within a couple weeks.Microsoft releases beta of XP SP3 to Vista, Windows Server testers

It is now more than a month later. And it doesn’t seem Microsoft has made good on that promise. The company did, however, broaden the private XP SP3 beta on the evening of October 4 to include Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008 testers.

First, Sun open sourced Java. Then, Adobe (NSDQ: ADBE) announced plans to open source its Flex software development kit. Now Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) is opening up the .Net Framework to developers, albeit in its own way.

The company Wednesday announced it would later this year be making the source code of the .Net Framework available for viewing, though not for editing.

That was the message that some security professionals took away from BlueHat, an event last week on Microsoft's campus that allows security researchers to mingle with Microsoft developers.

Got a copy of Excel 2007 handy?

Try multiplying 850 by 77.1 - the answer should be 65535.

Excel 2007 thinks it's 100000.

Older versions of the spreadsheet - as well as the latest versions of the OpenOffice.org and Gnumeric packages - get it right.

The problem, replicated here at ZDNet UK, was reported a couple of days ago on the Microsoft Excel newsgroup , and looks like an elementary programming cock-up.

MICROSOFT is in talks to buy into Facebook in a deal that could value the online company at $US10 billion, according to reports. The move could give Microsoft more access to young users and let Facebook get closer to a major software maker at a time when its growth is increasingly tied to a proliferation of small applications from independent developers on its site.

Citing people familiar with the matter, the Journal said the world's largest software company sought to buy a stake of up to 5 per cent in Facebook for $US300 million to $US500 million.

Microsoft Corp. is inviting hackers onto its Redmond, Washington, campus again next week and this time software virtualization and mobile security will be the hot topics.

The company's semi-annual BlueHat hacking conference will run Thursday and Friday, giving Microsoft engineers and executives a chance to hear first-hand reports on the latest in computer security research. This will be Microsoft's sixth BlueHat conference, since it introduced the event in early 2005.