The Microsoft board musical chairs are continuing, with Seagate Chairman and CEO Stephen Luczo announcing on March 20 that he is leaving the board to focus on his duties at Seagate.
While on the Microsoft board Luczo was on the compensation and audit committees and a member of the CEO search committee that ended up recommending Satya Nadella as Microsoft's new CEO. He has been on the Microsoft board for close to two years.
More than six out of 10 ATM machines in the country will be running on an obsolete operating system when Microsoft pulls the plug on Windows XP support on April 8, raising serious security and compliance issues for the systems' operators.
Alex Kibkalo, a former senior architect at Microsoft who most recently served as a director of product management in 5nine Software (according to his LinkedIn profile), has been arrested for allegedly stealing Windows-related trade secrets while working for Microsoft.
The deadline for installing secure operating systems on federal government computers will pass next month with the job incomplete, leaving hundreds of thousands of machines running outdated software and unusually vulnerable to hackers.
Federal officials have known for more than six years that Microsoft will withdraw its free support for Windows XP on April 8, 2014. Despite a recent rush to complete upgrades, an estimated 10 percent of government computers — out of several million — will still be running the operating system on that date, company officials said.
Microsoft's Build 2014 conference is right around the corner. At that event, which kicks off April 2 in San Francisco, Microsoft is believed to be planning to disclose at least some high-level information about Windows 9.
All we know about Windows 9, at this point, has surfaced thanks to "sources with knowledge about Microsoft's Windows plans, but who asked not to be identified by name." You know... "those people."
With just less than a month until support for Windows XP ends, the security community has warned that hackers are hoarding exploits to let loose on unsuspecting firms once support ends.
After 8 April Microsoft will not release any more updates for the platform. This means that for hackers any holes in the platform they exploit will not be patched, presenting a potential gold mine.
A week after fixing the 'ring after pickup' bug for Skype on Windows desktop, Microsoft officials said they've also addressed the problem in the Windows Store/Metro-Style version of the Skype app for Windows 8.1.
The issue doesn't seem to be entirely fixed, according to a March 10 post on the Skype "Garage & Updates" blog. But it's better than it was, officials said, with the annoying ring stopping "much faster" with "Skype for Modern Windows 2.6." Here's how Microsoft execs are describing what they've accomplished:
Leaks of upcoming versions of Microsoft's software are nothing new, but it's a little surprising when the source is Microsoft itself. The Spring update to Windows 8.1, known as Update 1, was briefly available from Windows Update earlier this week.
The update wasn't a free-for-all. To get Windows Update to install it, you had to create a special (undocumented, secret) registry key to indicate that you were in a particular testing group; only then were the updates displayed and downloadable.
A decade ago, Microsoft kicked off SDL, or Security Development Lifecycle, a now-widely-adopted process designed to bake security into software, and began building what has become an unmatched reputation in how a vendor writes more secure code, keeps customers informed about security issues, and backs that up with regular patches.
But the Redmond, Wash. company, which just touted SDL's 10-year history with a flashy, anecdote-filled online presentation, seems willing to risk torching that hard-won reputation by pulling the plug on Windows XP.
On Monday, Microsoft China made statements on a Chinese social network that have been misinterpreted in reports in the West. Microsoft in Redmond told ZDNet that they are not extending support for Windows XP in China.
Microsoft translates the actual language used in the post as:
Microsoft China has taken special actions to closely work with leading Chinese internet security and anti-virus companies including Tencent for them to provide security protection for Chinese Windows XP users before they upgrade to modern operating system.
