Microsoft is preparing its Philippine office in briefing customers on the next version of Windows, called Vista, scheduled for launch next year.
Aaron Turner, a security expert based in Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington, visited the country to train local employees on “how to communicate better with customers on security.” Microsoft plans to train a workforce of about 300 Microsoft employees in the region.
Nearly two weeks after Microsoft issued an advisory about a security problem with its Internet Explorer web browser, the software giant still hasn’t released a patch to fix it, leaving millions of users vulnerable to hackers, security vendors warned Friday.
The security vulnerability that allows hackers to launch malicious software onto computers through web sites affects all Windows users except those running Windows Server 2003, Microsoft said in its advisory released November 21.
Microsoft Corp. has invited consumers to test the latest beta version of its Windows OneCare Live security service.
OneCare Live is intended to protect PCs running Windows XP from viruses and hackers, and to keep important documents backed up. The software client which runs the service will automatically download updates to handle new Internet threats, Microsoft said.
Enterprises conducting e-commerce transactions have been quick to take up Visa's free, hosted security auditing service, according to the company.
Edward Lodens, Visa's head of third-party assurance, said the take up since its launch in August has been good with "a lot of merchants" joining the program.
"It breaks down barriers to security [which] can be seen as a large cost to business," Lodens, who did not reveal the exact number of participants, said. "They can take best practice and validate their compliance."
Gartner has clarified its advice on when users should consider moving to Microsoft Vista, saying that organisations still running Windows 2000 should consider upgrading as soon as Vista ships.
As ZDNet UK reported on 11 November, Gartner recently advised that "companies shouldn't rush to upgrade to Microsoft Windows Vista" and that "most firms could safely hold back until 2008".
Bloggers and forums are buzzing this morning with reports that Microsoft's eagerly anticipated Xbox 360, released yesterday, is prone to overheating and crashing. Gamers are reporting freezes in the middle of playing, and some say that they've gotten email back from Microsoft customer support that says a flashing orange screen (what happened to that pretty Microsoft blue?) means the box is running too hot.
No word yet on how widespread the problem actually is, or whether Microsoft plans to do anything about it.
After standing on a city street for more than 28 hours, with only a blanket to protect him from the cold and rain, Peter Gonzalez had no doubt about what he should do next: stay up all night playing video games.
The 19-year-old college student was among the gaming fanatics who waited for hours to be among the first to snag an Xbox 360. Stores began selling the systems at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday.
Microsoft late Wednesday warned Windows users that proof-of-concept code was in circulation that could be remotely and anonymously exploited on Windows 2000 machines. Windows XP SP1 is somewhat less vulnerable, said Microsoft.
The security advisory gave out few details of the vulnerability, only saying that it was a flaw in the RPC (Remote Procedure Call) component, and could result in a denial-of-service attack that would crash affected computers.
Microsoft's first try at a gaming console amounted to essentially a very affordable PC. It used standard PC components, including a mobile Intel processor (a hybrid Pentium 3/Celeron), a desktop NVIDIA chipset, a Western Digital hard drive and relatively standard PC DVD-ROM. The original Xbox was such a PC in fact that there were quite a few users that wanted to mod it simply to have a cheap PC, not even for gaming - including ourselves.
Microsoft Corp., which built its business by aiming to put a "computer on every desk" is moving into the high-end supercomputing market as hardware becomes more affordable, Chairman Bill Gates said Tuesday.
The world's largest software maker will offer a version of Windows called "Compute Cluster Server 2003" that offers high performance computing by tying together several personal computers in a high-speed network that allows them to crunch huge amounts of data to simulate weather, analyze DNA and process other research-level tasks.
