Starting this week, major retail chains began selling Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2), the latest version of Microsoft's desktop operating system.
"Microsoft began shipping retail boxes to retailers last week, so they will start showing up on store shelves worldwide throughout the month," said a spokesman with Microsoft's Windows client division.
If you are responsible for Windows systems and you want your system to be secure you must expand your knowledge to various areas of computer security. Every system is a target and the only way to be prepared for an incident is to know what a perpetrator would change and where to look for evidence. This book promises to guide you into a part of computer security some consider to be exotic - forensics. Harlan Carvey is an instructor and course developer. He developed curriculum for a two-day, hands-on course addressing incident response and "live" forensics in the Windows environment.
At the office, my cubicle colleague--a Firefox aficionado of long standing--smugly greeted the news by asking me what took so long. But rest assured this is no small concession.
The short answer is I don't have a lot of time or patience to fiddle around getting my different applications to play nice. So when forced to decide between competing software alternatives, yours truly has nearly always gone with the Microsoft offering.
In an effort to settle its anti-trust dispute with the European Union, Microsoft is reportedly ready to remove Windows Media Player as a standard component of their Windows operating system.
In reports out of Europe over the weekend, Microsoft would use the removal of WMP from Windows as a means to reduce or eliminate the $613 million fine imposed by the EU earlier this year.
Microsoft has been reticent to commit publicly to how, when and if it would make the browser-specific security fixes that it delivered as part of Windows XP Service Pack 2 available to users of older versions of Windows.
But this week, Redmond software vendor issued a definitive statement regarding its back-porting intentions. The decision: No SP2 fixes — not even ones like the SP2 pop-up blocker or the ActiveX-control blocker — will be offered for users of older versions of Windows and Internet Explorer (IE).
Microsoft this week reiterated that it would keep the new version of Microsoft's IE Web browser available only as part of the recently released Windows XP operating system, Service Pack 2. The upgrade to XP from any previous Windows versions is $99 when ordered from Microsoft. Starting from scratch, the operating system costs $199.That, analysts say, is a steep price to pay to secure a browser that swept the market as a free, standalone product.
Microsoft Corp. filed nine new lawsuits against spammers who send unsolicited e-mail, including an e-mail marketing Web hosting company, the world's largest software maker said on Thursday
With the latest batch of lawsuits, Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft (MSFT: Research, Estimates) said it is involved in more than 100 legal cases against spammers, including more than 70 lawsuits filed in the United States.
A Microsoft-backed proposal for verifying the source of e-mail has been shelved by the Internet engineers working to turn it from specification to standard, in a final blow for antispam technology Sender ID.
Microsoft this week reiterated that it would keep the new version of Microsoft's IE Web browser available only as part of the recently released Windows XP operating system, Service Pack 2. The upgrade to XP from any previous Windows versions is $99 when ordered from Microsoft. Starting from scratch, the OS costs $199.That, say analysts, is a steep price to pay to secure a browser that swept the market as a free, standalone product.
Back in August, on the heels of its release of Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2), Microsoft issued an emergency fix for a major VPN-related problem that plagued SP2 customers. Now Microsoft has turned that hot fix into an official SP2 fix that is downloadable from the company's Web sites.
