Microsoft

It was only a matter of time before Vista was even more effectively hacked. Hacks to get Vista activated have been cropping up ever since it released, there have been a number of hacks to this point, one of the most famous being the BIOS crack but now something more insidious has come along.

Gizmodo is running a story about a hacker group known as NoPE which claims to have created a Vista installation DVD that requires no hack, no serial key and no bypassing, it simply activates, works and goes about updating right after the install.

Oh mercy me, Microsoft bans modified Xbox 360s (not user accounts) from Xbox Live post-May 2007 update! Zero tolerance policy! The hive-mind has spoken! Cats and dogs not allowed to live together! It's the end of innovation as we know it!

Or is it?

Microsoft is changing the way it documents its monthly security patches.

Starting next month, the software giant will add a few more details to its Advanced Notification Alerts in order to give customers a better idea of whether they'll be rushing out software patches to their users.

Microsoft Corp. said Tuesday it will release its "Halo 3" video game on September 25, a hugely anticipated event that the software giant hopes will help drive sales of its Xbox 360 gaming console.

"Halo 3" is the final installment of Microsoft's flagship video game franchise in which players assume the role of a futuristic soldier trying to turn the tide in a war against an alien army.

The game is expected to be a potent weapon for Microsoft as it fights Sony Corp. and Nintendo Co. Ltd. for dominance in the $30 billion global video game industry.

While everyone’s been focused on driver problems and annoying security prompts, Windows Vista’s installed base has taken just 15 weeks to race past that of Apple, according to chairman Bill Gates.

Delivering a keynote address to 3000 technophiles at Microsoft’s WinHEC event in Los Angeles, the typically reserved Gates wasted no time in talking up the market reaction to his company’s latest OS offering.

“As of last week we have had nearly 40 million copies (of Vista) sold, and that’s happened twice as fast as Windows XP,” he told the enthusiastic crowd.

OpenOffice.org has called Microsoft's assertion that its open-source application suite violates 45 of its patents "a desperate act". It's just hard to put into credible terms," said Louis Suarez-Potts, a community manager for OpenOffice.org and seven-year veteran of the all-volunteer group. "I don't understand what motivated Microsoft to risk so much with a position that can only serve to alienate [enterprise] customers, as well as those millions of people who use Linux."

Katie Moussouris, a pen testing specialist who founded and managed Symantec Vulnerability Research, has left 'Big Yellow' to join Microsoft as a security strategist.

Moussouris (right*), who joined Symantec with the acquisition of @Stake in 2004, has taken up an office in the MSRC (Microsoft Security Response Center), the Redmond unit tasked with responding to flaw warnings and security crises.

Free software is great, and corporate America loves it. It's often high-quality stuff that can be downloaded free off the Internet and then copied at will. It's versatile - it can be customized to perform almost any large-scale computing task - and it's blessedly crash-resistant.

Microsoft has severely criticised IBM, saying the company is pushing the OpenDocument Format standard to the detriment of Microsoft's own Open XML standard.

OpenDocument Format (ODF) is an open standard based on XML, designed to be used in office-application development. Microsoft has been involved in developing a rival open office standard, Open XML (OXML).

Although the main contributor to ODF is Sun, Microsoft has attacked IBM for its support of ODF.

Microsoft has been hard at work trying to bundle a set of special goodies to reward people who shelled out the cash for Vista Ultimate, such as Dreamscene, a bundle of animated wallpapers that uses Vista's advanced compositing display engine.