WoW..when it rains it pours and apparently anyone who was out phishing today, got struck by lighting. A mere
two weeks before the Windows Update site forces Windows XP workstations to upgrade to Serivce Pack 1 and on the same
day that they released a significant upgrade to
Windows 2003 Server, Microsoft has gone on a rampage.
Microsoft Corp. on Thursday filed 117 civil lawsuits against alleged phishers trying to scam Microsoft customers
out of personal information such as credit card numbers.
The lawsuits, filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, seek to identify large-scale
scam operations and recover damages from so-called phishing operations. Phishers typically send out spam e-mail, made
to look like official e-mail from a real e-commerce company, asking recipients to click on a link and update their
personal information. The link takes consumers to a Web site that mimics the look of the real e-commerce company, but
collects personal information for ID thieves to use.
Signaling that after the recent rumors of their exit from the MSNBC arrangement Microsoft is still commited to
consumer media, they have launched a new portable video download service for $19.95 a month.
Seemingly connected with the MSN Entertainment brand as the sites have
the same look and feel, there is no obvious link from MSN Music portal to the Video
Download service, nor is their any linkage from the MSN Movies or
TV portals either. Not really sure what this means other then I think MS missed
an obvious linkage, or maybe someone smarter than I is at work here. NAhhhh!!!! ;)
Microsoft plans to release version 2.0 of its iSCSI initiator next month, and the software giant has added
features that could make Windows-based IP storage more attractive for high-end users.
Microsoft announced this week that version 2.0 of the Microsoft Internet Small Computer System Interface (iSCSI)
Software Initiator is ready to be released to manufacturing and will be available via download by mid-April.
Improvements in the second version include integration with Microsoft Multipath I/O (MPIO), support for all error
recovery levels, and support for Windows Server x64 Editions.
According to the EU antitrust regulators, apparently there is quite a bit in a name. As a result they are
forcing Microsoft to append an N to the end of the XP Home and Professional products which exclude the Windows Media
Player.
Microsoft Corp. said Monday it has agreed with European Union antitrust regulators on a new name for Windows
software sold in Europe.
Officials at the U.S. software giant said they had accepted the European Union's offer to call the European version
of Windows sold without Media Player "Windows XP Home Edition N" — with "N" standing for "not with media player."
Microsoft's "XP Professional Edition" will also include the "N" for versions sold without the media player, which
allows users to see video or hear audio downloads.
Want to be one of the first on your block to the Indigo and Avalon tech previews for XP or Windows Server 2003?
Well, what are you waiting for….get it
now.
I must have missed this one the other day. It looks like the Windows Server Update Services aka
WSUS, has a
Release Candidate for use in test environments only.
The Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) Open Evaluation Program (OEP) lets you evaluate the Release Candidate of
WSUS in a non-production environment. This version is not supported and can be used in a test environment only.
Why did they need to indicate that this is not supported AND can only be used in a test environment.
Personally, I wouldn't use it in production until it goes gold anyway, but isn't it enough to say "not-supported" and
let people make up their own minds?
Microsoft has announced yet another delay to its long awaited SQL 2005 database platform and its partner in crime,
Visual Studio 2005. VS 2005 is seen as a major release as it provides the first (at least from Microsoft) well
rounded BAL (Business Application Lifecycle) developement tool suite. This has to be seen as a major setback and
amounts to a potential new sales opportunity for competitor IBM and Borland.
The software maker said Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005 will be delivered in the second half of the year. A
company representative declined to say whether the company expects to ship the new software in the third or fourth
quarter of this year.
Both products have been delayed previously. Microsoft delayed the expected release of its flagship database and
development tools from the end of 2004 to the first half of 2005. Both products, which are used to build custom
applications, will be shipped in tandem.
On Monday, the company revamped the product pricing scheme and developer subscription service for Visual Basic
2005. The changes are meant to simplify the purchase process and make the cost of the company's tools suites easier
to compare to competitive products, said Prashant Sridharan, lead product manager in Microsoft's developer
division.
Do you live inside Visual Studio all day? Ever wished you could keep track of all those RSS feeds in a side
pane so you wouldn't need to exit to read the lastest cool news on Blogs.MSDN.com? Well, your wait is over…and
it's Open Source! Get it
here.
This open source plugin ships as part of SharpTools 2.0 and is a full-featured RSS / Blog aggregator which
integrates into the familiar dockable panes of the Visual Studio.NET IDE. You're gonna love it when you start
blogging from within the development environment! Features include:
Exchange D2D.com has a short
piece
that provides the low down on the Exchange Intellignet Mail Filter while also providing a bit of guidance on how the
end user can really take advantage of it's capabilities.
In an effort to keep up the momentum and demonstrate that their
Shared Source Initiatives
(SSI) are providing transparency, Microsoft has announced the expansion of the program into seven additional
countries.
The move allows Windows 2000, XP, CE and Server 2003 shared source programmes to be made available to eligible
enterprises, OEMs, systems integrators, Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals, and academic institutions in Cyprus,
Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Slovakia and Slovenia.
....
Microsoft began sharing Windows source code with academic institutions in 1991, and established the SSI in 2001 to
formalise a programme that allows access to key Microsoft technologies.
The SSI currently covers source code components from Windows 2000, XP, Server 2003, CE 3.0, CE .Net, CE 5.0,
components of Visual Studio .Net, ASP.Net Starter Kits, Windows Installer XML, Windows Template Library and
FlexWiki.
Large enterprises should not use Linux because it is not secure enough, has scalability problems and could fork
into many different flavours, according to the Agility Alliance.
Whether its true or not, this report from the
Agility Alliance will certainly raise some eyebrows.
Interestingly members of the alliance include Microsoft, SUN, DELL, Cisco and EMC. Noticeably absent??? IBM and
Oracle. Two companies with H U G E investments in the Linux space. Noticeably present?
SUN. Vested interest? Sure, since Microsoft and SUN solved their antitrust issues and SUN has released
Solaris x86, things are looking up for them. It's clearly in their best interest to be the unLinux.
Microsoft employee blogs are athttp://blogs.msdn.com. So, why am I writing this? Because they used to be at
weblogs.asp.net too, but starting this morning they are only at blogs.msdn.com. So, if you wanna listen into
Microsoft employee blogs, update your favorites and aggregators.
In the overall scheme, not hugely important, but I believe it points to the fact that the MSDN platform is roboust
enough to handle the volume and further, that the MSDN blogs brand has gained critical mass.
The site Search Engine
Low Down has a few screenshots of what they claim is the new MSN AdCenter. I don't see anything on these that
would lead me to believe that they are from MSN as they don't look anything like MSN and they don't say MSN anywhere on
them.
That said, SELD indicated that they received the screenshots
from Charlene Li of Forrester,
so… I guess we'll see. They must be so anxious to get this out the door that they didn't take the time to give it
that MSN look and feel…orrrrrr…maybe we can expect some new things from MSN in the coming months. Guess we'll
have to wait and see.
The Virtual PC Guy on MSDN has
some insight into the behaviour of and issues around Microsoft Virtual PC product and how it virtually resizes your OS
Window and the effects this can have on misbehaving or ill conceived apps.
Looks like some additional details of IE 7.0 are finding their way to the huddled masses, lbeit in fits and
starts. And are we ever chomping at the bit.
Take a look at Microsoft Watch for some
details on standards, secruity and the GUI. Sorry, no pics yet, just images for your mind to conjure up.
The most interesting things that I've heard so far are the RSS aggregator, tabbed browsing, .PNG graphics support,
IDN support (this is a big one in light of emerging phishing attacks) and possible integraton between IE 7 and the MS
AntiSpyware Beta, which I've heard is very likely getting the boot as far as enterprise support (Group Policy,
enterprise threat reporting, etc…) is concerened.
