Allchin: Disclosure May Endanger U.S.
A senior Microsoft Corp. executive told a federal court last week that sharing information with competitors could damage national security and even threaten the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan. He later acknowledged that some Microsoft code was so flawed it could not be safely disclosed.
So, Microsoft admits that their code is so buggy that disclosing those bugs could pose a risk to the country. Is writing that code a crime? Is selling it? Is failing to fix it? Is using it in a military context? [via Red Rock Eater]
Microsoft to launch massive online games network
The network will allow large groups of Xbox users to play tournaments together via the internet. But access to the network will come at a price. It will reportedly cost $9.95 per month to connect to Xbox Live, on top of the price of each game, and the service will only be available to those already paying for high-speed internet access.
The first security holes games are expected to be
open this summer.
Microsoft Media Player Logs Choices: It seems Media Player 8 logs songs and movies that are played with it and sends the information back to Microsoft. [via the null device]
Of the over 30,000 public comments received by the Department of Justice on the final judgement in the Microsoft anti-trust case, 47 have been released as being "major". [via Red Rock Eater]
Last month, Bill announced the Trustworthy Computing initiative within Microsoft. Shortly after, some loyal fan launches trustworthycomputing.com, clearly in the spirit of helping Microsoft know where to start looking. [via Red Rock Eater]
Do you want your mail to be read by Outlook users? Two tips from the latest Risks Digest:
Remember kids, friends don't let friends use Outlook.
One Runtime to Bind Them All: on the illusion of universal language support by .NET's Common Language Runtime.
The Common Language Runtime is being sold as a libertarian technology
that levels the playing field for minority languages. The CLR would
offer to all languages a neutral typesystem, a state-of-the-art
back-end compiler, runtime and set of enterprise-class
frameworks. VisualStudio.NET makes this complete with a first-rate IDE
that can be extended to support any language. It would almost zero the
barrier to entry for new languages.
The reality looks much darker instead. The CLR is not truly
language-neutral, and it will ostensibly favor languages that look a
lot like C#. Those not in this group will be severely bastardized,
producing dialects which are really "C# with another syntax"; look at
ISE's Eiffel# (or even Microsoft's own VB.NET and J#) for great
examples. Programmers' choice will be limited to superficial features:
whether to delimit their blocks with curly braces, Begin/End or
parentheses. It's also worth notice that the CTS/CTS do not allow use
of the full set of CLR features; for example, unsigned integers are
supported by the CLR but not considered language-neutral, simply
because many languages share Java's abomination for the
signed/unsigned duality (this includes Microsoft's own VB) and there's
no good solution for this issue.
[via CamWorld]
The public comment period on the Microsoft antitrust settlement ends Sunday. Here's how to comment. [via Voidstar]
Windows XP has serious flaw: are we surprised?
The hundreds of thousands of British computer users who have installed Microsoft's new Windows XP, billed as the most secure ever, have left their machines open to hackers, the company admitted yesterday.
Office XP is configured by default to send debugging information, including a memory dump which could include all or part of the document being worked on, to Microsoft in the event of a crash. [via Risks]
Comparing two support hotlines in providing support for Microsoft Products: Microsoft Technical Support vs. The Psychic Friends Network. [via Memepool]
