Microsoft has spent billions of dollars in recent years to secure its software. Now it's payback time.
Until recently, security was just something that the software company got hammered on -- a perennial headache, with no upside. But now, four years after Chairman Bill Gates launched his Trustworthy Computing push, Microsoft is starting to see security as a potential selling point.
Microsoft, the world's largest software maker, prematurely posted information about its much-anticipated Windows Vista operating system on one of its Web sites, the company said Tuesday.
Will Microsoft's forthcoming Vista OS support legacy applications written in VB6 (Visual Basic 6)? Microsoft plans to answer that question in detail about a month from now, a timeframe that happens to coincide with the one-year anniversary of a petition from developers asking for better support of the traditional VB environment during the emerging .NET era. Microsoft is currently readying a white paper about VB6 support in the next edition of Windows, disclosed Jay Roxe, Microsoft's lead product manager for Visual Studio, in an interview with DevSource.
An unfixed bug in the USB (Universal Serial Bus) driver of Windows XP Service Pack 2 OS causes a notebook's battery to drain faster than usual when there is a device connected to its USB port, Microsoft confirmed Friday.
After months of maintaining that it had not yet finalized its Windows Vista line up, Microsoft seems finally to have decided upon a half dozen core Vista versions.
MICROSOFT is fuming over a move by security outfit iDefense to offer hackers a $10,000 bounty for finding serious flaws in its software.
iDefense has been offering $8,000 for those who find flaws in VoleWare since last year, but now the figure has been upped to $10,000 it seems the Volish spinners have decided to moan about it.
Bill Gates on Tuesday showed off a new software tool aimed at giving consumers a virtual wallet to securely store their personal information for Internet transactions.
As part of that effort, Gates said the virtual personal information wallet, code-named "InfoCard," would allow consumers to safely manage their identities online. It seeks to provide better security by reducing reliance on usernames and passwords which are often the target of computer criminals.
Microsoft's Anti-Spyware program is causing troubles for people who also use Symantec's Norton Anti-Virus software; apparently, a recent update to Microsoft's anti-spyware application flags Norton as a password-stealing program and prompts users to remove it.
According to several different support threads over at Microsoft's user groups forum, the latest definitions file from Microsoft "(version 5805, 5807) detects Symantec Antivirus files as PWS.Bancos.A (Password Stealer)."
Microsoft may not make flawless software, but its proprietary strategy is hard to fault. In particular, Microsoft has mastered desktop lock-in, undermining users' confidence in any alternatives and creating a slew of minor difficulties that irritate those who do switch.
Microsoft Corp. today announced it will accelerate campus development plans and spend $1 billion over the next three years to expand its Redmond campus by one-third its current size.
Roughly half of the development agreement, approved by the city of Redmond in May 2005 to expand Microsoft's Redmond campus over the next 15-20 years, will now be fulfilled by 2009, making the company's Redmond campus one of the largest corporate campuses in the world.
