Microsoft has agreed to license its audio watermarking technology to Activated Content Corp. of Seattle. We all know watermarking's place as a part of the music industry's DRM toolbox, but Activated—already a DRM watermarking player—now wants to use Microsoft's watermarking technology to get into the advertising business. Watermarks... and ads? Yep.
Microsoft has announced the details of its new DirectX version; to ensure full support one need not only to install Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista but may also need to replace a graphics card. Contemporary graphics accelerators from Nvidia GeForce 8800 and AMD/ATI Radeon 2900 may not support all the new features added to Direct3D 10.1. The features of DirectX 10.1 include incremental improvements to 3D rendering quality. As for the innovations, among them are 32-bit floating-point operations (instead of 16-bit ones, used today by default) and obligatory support of 4x FSAA.
In its biggest one-day security update since February, Microsoft Corp. today issued nine bulletins that patched 14 vulnerabilities in Office, Internet Explorer and every edition of Windows. Eight of the fixes were pegged as critical, the company's highest risk rating.
Faced with an overload of vulnerabilities -- including some in components that Microsoft has patched in the past -- researchers squabbled over which should get priority.
"I think six of these are equally important," said Andrew Storms, director of security operations at nCircle Network Security Inc.
Reports were circulating that Microsoft was about to reverse its decision to restrict home Vista users from being able to virtualize their desktops. Apparently, Microsoft has now decided to maintain its current position to only allow business users of Vista the ability to virtualize the desktop, and not extend this to the home editions.
It's no secret that there's a leaked beta of Vista SP1 floating around, but no-one yet has really taken the time to analyse it in detail to find out what it really does.
I made it my mission this weekend to trawl through the registry and file changes in SP1 to find out as best I could exactly what SP1 does.
Microsoft will release nine security updates on Patch Tuesday next week, patching flaws in Windows, Office, Internet Explorer and Virtual PC. Of the nine bulletins, six will be labelled "critical," Microsoft's highest rating, with the remaining three ranked "important." The vulnerabilities have been pegged as remote code executable, a sure sign that the bugs are very dangerous, and if exploited, could easily allow a PC to be hijacked by hackers.
When Microsoft announced that Windows Vista was going to be available in multiple editions, curiosity turned toward the higher-end versions of Vista targeted at corporate environments (Vista Enterprise) and enthusiasts (Vista Ultimate). Among the features in these high-end editions is BitLocker Drive Encryption, which Microsoft included to address "the theft or unwanted disclosure of data made available through physical loss of computer devices."
Say what?
Linchpin Labs, a small Australian security company whose free utility Microsoft has blocked from loading unsigned drivers into Windows Vista, has lashed out at the American giant. Microsoft, says Linchpin, should set its own security house in order before it accuses other developers of turning their legitimate software into threats.
Microsoft last week slammed the door on a free utility out of Australia that outflanked one the company's touted security features in Windows Vista by having the program's digital certificate revoked.
Users took the company to task for the move, noting the slippery slope the company had stepped on, with some blasting Microsoft as playing "software police."
It's official: Windows Server 2008 (WS08) will be launched Feb. 27, 2008, along with new versions of Visual Studio and SQL Server. Microsoft's flagship server operating system will probably be Bill Gates' last product launch before he retires later in 2008. Is Bill Gates going out with a bang? We examined the Windows Server 2008 Beta Community Technology Preview (CTP), which was released in June, 2007, to see what it promises for the upcoming OS.
