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Computer users now can fly through the universe, viewing stars, planets and celestial bodies as an astronomer would, with Tuesday's introduction of the Worldwide Telescope by Microsoft. The virtual service combines images and databases from every major telescope and astronomical organization in the world. Microsoft says it is providing the resource for free in memory of Jim Gray, the Microsoft researcher who disappeared last year while sailing his boat to the Farallon Islands on a trip to scatter his mother's ashes. The project is an extension of Gray's work. "I never imagined (the telescope) would be so beautiful," said Alexander...

Researchers said Windows XP Service Pack 3 delivers a measurable performance boost when compared to Windows XP with Service Pack 2.Windows XP runs some applications up to 10% faster with the latest service pack installed, a research firm has found. "We were pleasantly surprised to discover that Windows XP Service Pack 3 (v.3244) delivers a measurable performance boost to this aging desktop OS," wrote staff at exo.performance.network, in a blog post. The researchers found that a PC loaded with Microsoft's XP SP3 completed the OfficeBench test suite in less than 50 seconds. A similarly configured system running Windows XP with...

Excerpt - If you like to download the latest episodes of “Heroes” or other NBC shows from BitTorrent, maybe you shouldn’t buy a Microsoft Zune to watch them on. A future update of the software for Microsoft’s portable media player may well include a feature that will block unauthorized copies of copyrighted videos from being played on it. ~ snip ~

SAN FRANCISCO -- Did Microsoft(MSFT - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr) start dating before or after it jilted Yahoo!(YHOO - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr) on Saturday? The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that the Redmond, Wash. software giant has contacted Facebook to gauge the social-networking site's willingness to be acquired. But discussions are not active, according to the report, begging the question of when the overture was made. Microsoft has already invested $240 million in the site, founded by Mark Zuckerberg, for a 1.6% stake, giving Facebook an estimated $15 billion valuation. In spite of that tie-up, the Wall Street Journal's...

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said there will be a vast shift in Internet technology over the next decade as he met Tuesday with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak. "We're approaching the second decade of (the) digital age," the software mogul and philanthropist told Lee at the start of their meeting at the presidential Blue House, according to a media pool report. "The Internet has been operating now for 10 years," Gates said. "The second 10 years will be very different." Microsoft Corp., the South Korean government and South Korean companies are investing $313 million in...

BREAKING NEWS: A Microsoft spokesman says the software giant is walking away from its offer to buy out online portal Yahoo, according to the Associated Press.

I thought this might be of interest to the FR community, since it involves rights (actually as I found out, a complete lack thereof) with regard to software we paid for and many of us thought we owned. This is a bit long – I apologize for that, but I felt it might be important to include the emails I received from ebay and from Microsoft with regard to my alleged or apparent copyright rights violations. I have italicized the referenced emails so you can scan through those if you like and read the non-italicized text, which is my story....

Last Summer, Microsoft Corporation quietly introduced a powerful tool for getting past security on laptops and PCs running the Windows operations system (which about 90 percent do). The device is a USB thumb drive called COFEE (Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor). When you capture an enemy computer, you plug in COFEE and then use over a hundred software to quickly get whatever information is on the machine. COFEE can quickly reveal passwords, decrypt files, reveal recent Internet activity and much more. A lot of this can be done without COFEE, but with the Microsoft device, intelligence collection is a lot...

The growing use of encryption software -- like Microsoft's own BitLocker -- by cyber criminals has led Microsoft to develop a set of tools that law enforcement agents can use to get around the software, executives at the company said...Microsoft first released the toolset, called the Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor (COFEE)...Microsoft gives the software to agents for free.

There's another round of mass SQL injections going on which has infected hundreds of thousands of websites. Performing a Google search results in over 510,000 modified pages. As more and more websites are using database back-ends to make them faster and more dynamic, it also means that it's crucial to verify what information gets stored in or requested from those databases — especially if you allow users to upload content themselves which happens all the time in discussion forums, blogs, feedback forms, et cetera. Unless that data is sanitized before it gets saved you can't control what the website will...

Comments by Steve Ballmer at a press conference in Europe today have led to speculation that Microsoft is reconsidering its June 30 deadline to stop selling most new Windows XP licenses. A spokeswoman from Microsoft's public relations firm said Thursday that there is no plan for a change in deadline, however. "Our plan for Windows XP availability is unchanged. We're confident that's the right thing to do based on the feedback we've heard from our customers and partners," the spokeswoman said, reading from a Microsoft statement. Ballmer's comments at a press conference at Louvain-la-Neuve University in Belgium led to a...

Remember a few years back when Microsoft launched a new type of DRM under the name "PlaysForSure"? The idea was to create a standard DRM that a bunch of different online music download stores could use, and which makers of digital music devices could build for. Except... like any DRM, it had its problems. And, like any DRM, its real purpose was to take away features, not add them, making all of the content hindered by it less valuable. Yet, because Microsoft was behind it, many people assumed that at least Microsoft would keep supporting it. Well, you've now learned...

Summary: Microsoft are disabling WebDAV access to all hotmail.com accounts. This means Hotmail Pop Links and Outlook Express access to hotmail.com accounts will stop working at the end of June 2008. {snip} ...Microsoft have changed to using a new protocol. Rather than offering an open and standard protocol such as POP or IMAP, they’re using a new one they call DeltaSync for their live.com and new hotmail.com accounts. This protocol is not an open or standardised protocol. It’s a Microsoft proprietary one and only works with their Windows Live Mail, Vista Mail and Outlook Office Outlook Connector.

Novell Inc. and Microsoft Corp., trying to expand the reach of their unusual alliance, say they plan to put a bigger emphasis on the Chinese market. The companies say they will make an extra investment to sell more support subscriptions for Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Server operating system in China. The idea is to court companies currently using Linux without any software support, often for free. China is "quite a large and growing market in terms of Linux," said Susan Heystee, Novell's vice president and general manager of global strategic alliances. There is "a very large nonpaid Linux market" in...

Microsoft Corp.'s operating systems run most personal computers around the globe and are a cash cow for the world's largest software maker. But you'd never confuse a Windows user with the passionate fans of Mac OS X or even the free Linux operating system. Unless it's someone running Windows XP, a version Microsoft wants to retire. Fans of the six-year-old operating system set to be pulled off store shelves in June have papered the Internet with blog posts, cartoons and petitions recently. They trumpet its superiority to Windows Vista, Microsoft's latest PC operating system, whose consumer launch last January was...

I'm running IE on VISTA with Adobe Flash Player. The only consistent problem I have is videos. They freeze up. Right now I'm trying to watch my nephew playing Amen Corner at the Masters and it's driving me CRAZY! Earlier, I uninstalled Flash Player and reinstalled. Didn't help a bit. Anyone have any suggestions?! Thx

TheStreet.com Video - Microsoft's Vista OS is just plain awful, says Michael Comeau. (Contains some profanity. Viewer discretion is advised.)

The researchers damn Windows in current form, urge radical changes Calling the situation "untenable" and describing Windows as "collapsing," a pair of Gartner analysts yesterday said Microsoft Corp. must make radical changes to its operating system or risk becoming a has-been. In a presentation at a Gartner-sponsored conference in Las Vegas, analysts Michael Silver and Neil MacDonald said Microsoft has not responded to the market, is overburdened by nearly two decades of legacy code and decisions, and faces serious competition on a whole host of fronts that will make Windows moot unless the software developer acts. "For Microsoft, its ecosystem...

Excerpt - Microsoft’s Windows juggernaut is collapsing as it tries to support 20 years of applications and becomes more complicated by the minute. Meanwhile, Windows has outgrown hardware and customers are pondering skipping Vista to wait for Windows 7. If Windows is going to remain relevant it will need radical changes. That sobering outlook comes courtesy of Gartner analysts Michael Silver and Neil MacDonald. Half of a full room of IT managers and executives raised their hands when asked whether Microsoft needed to radically change its approach to Windows. “Windows is too monolithic,” says Silver. ~ snip ~

SAN FRANCISCO: Yahoo reiterated Monday its rejection of a takeover offer from Microsoft, again calling the bid too low. The company was responding to a letter from Microsoft in which the software company threatened to lower the price of its buyout offer and take it directly to Yahoo shareholders. Although Microsoft's offer was initially valued at $31 a share, a drop in the price of Microsoft shares has reduced the offer to just more than $29 a share. Microsoft's chief executive, Steven Ballmer, raised the pressure on Yahoo's directors Saturday in a letter warning that Microsoft would begin a proxy...

"If we have not concluded an agreement within the next three weeks, we will be compelled to take our case directly to your shareholders, including the initiation of a proxy contest to elect an alternative slate of directors for the Yahoo board," wrote Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer."If we are forced to take an offer directly to your shareholders, that action will have an undesirable impact on the value of your company from our perspective which will be reflected in the terms of our proposal," he wrote.

With the market preparing for the next -- and final -- phase of the life of Windows XP with the forthcoming general availability of Service Pack 3, the old operating system continues to show itself to be a spry performer. In head-to-head tests between Windows XP Service Pack 3 Beta (Release Candidate 2) against Windows Vista Service Pack 1, it's clear that XP still holds a measurable performance advantage overMicrosoft (NSDQ: MSFT)'s next-generation desktop operating system. Our CRN Test Center conducted a faceoff-type of performance evaluation. Testing was done on two identical desktops: HP (NYSE:HPQ)'s rp5700 model with a single...

Microsoft threatens Yahoo with proxy battle Sat Apr 5, 5:11 PM ET Microsoft issued a three-week ultimatum Saturday for Yahoo to accept its 44.6-billion-dollar takeover offer or face a hostile battle for the support of the Internet giant's shareholders. In an open letter to the Yahoo board of directors, Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer accused the company of avoiding serious negotiations over its February 1 offer and warned that any further delays could result in a less attractive offer for Yahoo. "We believe now is the time for our respective companies to authorize teams to sit down and negotiate a...

Journal written by symbolset (646467) and posted by ScuttleMonkey on Saturday April 05, @07:21AM from the also-duke-nukem-forever dept. Microsoft's efforts to get businesses to adopt Vista may come to a screeching halt now that Bill Gates has announced "Sometime in the next year or so we will have a new version", referring to Windows 7, the next expected version of the company's flagship desktop operating system.With a new version available soon, many organizations may decide to wait and see if they can avoid the pain of a Vista rollout altogether.

MIAMI (Reuters) - China's growing wealth is good for the world, and there will come a time when the influence of the United States shrinks to the level of its share of the world population, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates said on Friday. ADVERTISEMENT Asked at a meeting of the Inter-American Development Bank in Miami whether he regarded China's growing influence in Latin America as a threat, Gates, one of the world's richest people, said not at all. "The fact that China is getting rich is overall a very good thing. The fact that more minds are getting educated is huge....

Microsoft said today it will continue to sell Windows XP Home beyond its scheduled June 30 kill-date for the emerging class of "ultra-low-cost PCs," or ULCPCs. The operating system has been granted a reprieve until mid-2010, but only for the diminutive laptops such as the Asus Eee PC and Intel Classmate PC which lack the hardware necessary to run Windows Vista adequately. The cut-off date for XP licenses in mainstream boxes remains the end of June, 2008. Free live support and warranty-based technical support will dry up next April. After that, customers need to pay for phone support until April...

Microsoft may have won a year-long quest to make its OOXML (Office Open XML) document format an ISO-recognized international standard, but claims of foul play in the voting process may come back to haunt the software giant when the European Commission concludes its latest antitrust investigation of Microsoft's business practices. When the Commission, Europe's top antitrust authority, opened a probe into Microsoft's business practices in January, it said part of the investigation would examine whether OOXML, as the format is known, is "sufficiently interoperable with competitors' products." A month later ,the Commission sent a confidential request for information to all the national divisions...

SEATTLE (AP) — The format Microsoft Corp.'s Office 2007 programs use to save documents was approved as an international standard Tuesday, a step the company touted as proof it is willing to make once-proprietary technology work openly with competing programs. But the International Standards Organization vote didn't quiet some opponents, who argued that the Office Open XML standard still locks out competitors and gives Microsoft customers no choice but to keep buying its programs forever. The decision was made public on the Web site of a European standards organization, Ecma International, on Tuesday. ISO is expected to formally announce the...

I have been covering Microsoft for over 25 years - I've even written a few books about Windows. During that time, I've developed a certain respect for a company that just doesn't give up, and whose ability to spin surpasses even that of politicians. To be sure, Microsoft has crossed the line several times, but it has always worked within the system, however much it has attempted to use it for its own ends. No more: in the course of trying to force OOXML through the ISO fast-track process, it has finally gone further and attacked the system itself; in...

Symantec, Windows users beset by Vista SP1 flaws By Tom Espiner, ZDNet UK Monday, March 24, 2008 10:56 AM Security vendor Symantec has said that updated drivers to replace those adversely affected by Windows Vista Service Pack 1 are not yet available. The company said users will have to wait for the updated drivers, which will be available "in the coming weeks". The drivers in question are for Endpoint Protection and Network Access Control, two of Symantec's flagship enterprise security products. Microsoft released Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) to Windows Update on Tuesday. However, in the Vista team blog, Vista...

Microsoft has sought to appease frustrated Windows Vista customers by giving away free support to anyone struggling to install service pack one (SP1). A huge swath of people has been frozen out of the upgrade until an unknown date in April, but some were able to manually download SP1 as of last week via the firm’s Windows Update website. However, a heap of complaints have been stacking up on the firm’s official Vista blog, over troubles with the service pack install. So, in an apparent attempt to ease some of the grumbles, Microsoft blogger Brandon Le Blanc says that anyone,...

According to Microsoft's timeline, XP is on its way to becoming an ex-operating system. The approaching death of Windows XP may upset you, but it shouldn't come as a surprise. Microsoft Corp.'s product life-cycle guidelines have foretold the fate of XP since 2001. In fact, Microsoft has been killing off one version of a product as it is replaced with another for years now. But this time around, the approaching demise of XP is getting more attention than, say, the final passing of Windows 2000. Why? For a couple of reasons: XP is the most widely used operating system on...

Confused and angry users are blasting Microsoft on its own Vista blog over the requirements for downloading SP1 (Service Pack 1). And an industry analyst feels their pain. Last Tuesday, Microsoft released Vista SP1 to Windows Update, giving most users their first shot at obtaining the service pack. Previously, only earlier testers, volume licensing customers, and IT professionals and developers who subscribed to TechNet or Microsoft Developer Network had access to SP1. But as it added Vista SP1 to Windows Update, Microsoft also spelled out numerous caveats, telling users that there are as many as eight different reasons why they...

Click on link to upgrade to Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (x86). A 64 bit version is also available.

SEATTLE (AP) -- A major package of updates and security fixes for Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Vista operating system will be available for download Tuesday, according to Amazon.com Inc.'s Web site. The retailer is selling copies of Vista without the service pack and advising customers that they can download the free SP1 upgrade starting Tuesday. Amazon is also taking pre-orders for boxed copies of Windows Vista Service Pack 1, which it said it will start shipping Wednesday. In an e-mailed statement, Microsoft said it is on track to release SP1 in mid-March. The software maker acknowledged Amazon's claim that the upgrade...

Just one year ago, Megan Wallent's co-workers at Microsoft knew her as Michael. Then, in an e-mail sent to his entire staff, he announced that he no longer considered himself a male. The long-time executive, in charge of the Internet Explorer division for Microsoft, underwent major feminization surgery and legally changed his gender. Wallent's wife, like his co-workers, had no idea that this guy's guy was conflicted about his gender identity. ABC's Neal Karlinksy has the story from Seattle. Read more here and view a slideshow of the transition from Michael to Megan.

SEATTLE (AP) - Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) (MSFT) gave early testers their first glimpse of its next-generation Web browser Wednesday, and said Internet Explorer 8 will adhere to the same standards as competitors' programs. Microsoft's browsers, including the current Internet Explorer 7, gained notoriety among Web developers for handling Web page code differently than Mozilla Corp.'s Firefox, Apple Inc. (AAPL)'s Safari, the now-defunct Netscape Navigator and others. For the most part, major non-Microsoft browsers and outside developers who built Web pages worked with agreed-upon technical standards, while Microsoft was accused of adding proprietary code to those standards. The result: Web pages...

My computer is infested with this crap and I can't get rid of it. None of the free services can solve the problem, and I might even pay for such a service, except that all of them seem to be just folks willingly to take advantage of you and charge you more money, and possibly infect you more. Has anyone here seen this? How should I and anyone else deal with this?

Just spent my weekend dealing with new computers for the kids that have Vista installed. I found this short video that I think that all of you who have experienced Vista will appreciate. http://blip.tv/file/340692/

Antitrust: European regulators have slapped Microsoft with the biggest fine in history. If any group other than a government entity forced the company to hand over money, its members would be guilty of robbery. After previously fining Microsoft the equivalent of $1.2 billion, the European Commission last week dinged the software giant for an additional $1.4 billion. Snip... Proving that compliance isn't the regulatocracy's real goal, the commission levied the fine just days after Microsoft reportedly surrendered to the shakedown and promised it would do more cooperating and less competing with rivals. Regulators and busybodies on both sides of the...

Class Action Suit Airs Intel and Microsoft's Vista Dirty Laundry Jason Mick (Blog) - February 29, 2008 1:07 PM One of the most iconic images of Microsoft's Windows Vista launch in January 2007 was the small "Windows Vista Capable" stickers on computers months before, reassuring customers that when the new operating system came out, their computers could be updated to the latest and greatest. Unfortunately for the consumer it appears that the capabilities that these stickers promised were intentionally exaggerated to benefit Microsoft and chipmaker Intel. A class action suit filed against Microsoft in April 2007 accused Microsoft of intentionally...

A Microsoft Corp. executive last year said the software company made a mistake by lowering the minimum technical requirements needed to run Windows Vista, a decision he said was made to help Intel Corp. meet its quarterly earnings, according to internal emails disclosed this week. The emails provide a glimpse into how Microsoft executives and hardware partners grappled with technical glitches and other problems as they prepared the long-awaited Windows Vista software for market. The emails were released as part of a federal class-action suit alleging that Microsoft's marketing program for Windows Vista misled consumers. In several of the emails,...

Ric Weiland, who helped his friends Bill Gates and Paul Allen launch Microsoft, was a quiet philanthropist. But his final gift has provided one of the most powerful financial boosts ever to the gay-rights movement. Weiland has left $65 million to the Pride Foundation in Seattle and 10 nonprofit organizations, believed to be the largest estate gift ever given to the gay and lesbian community in the U.S. His generosity didn't stop there. Weiland left $160 million, the majority of his estate, to charity. That includes a gift to Stanford University estimated to be worth $60 million, which the university...

I got an interesting problem with Microsoft Office 2007 that I need to find out if anyone else has seen. I've been running Office 2003 for quite some time now and it does what I need it to do. One of these days I'm going to try using Linux but that's a ways off. My job at a military base is making it mandatory to use Office 2007. Why the military is pushing Vista and Office 2007 I'll never know because it causes all kinds of headaches with our XP programs. I decided to get the Home Use Office 2007...

Last week Microsoft rolled out three prerequisite updates to prepare users computers for the first service pack for Windows Vista. However, one of these updates apparently caused serious issues among some users, prompting Microsoft to quickly suspend automatic installations of KB937287 after customers complained that their PCs wouldn't boot up properly once the update had been applied. For affected users who already received the update, the only solution is to reboot their computers, boot from their original Vista disc and restore their computer to a state several days prior. However, some users have reported hardware and hard disk problems after...

Press release excerpt - Microsoft Makes Strategic Changes in Technology and Business Practices to Expand Interoperability New interoperability principles and actions will increase openness of key products. REDMOND, Wash. — Feb. 21, 2008 — Microsoft Corp. today announced a set of broad-reaching changes to its technology and business practices to increase the openness of its products and drive greater interoperability, opportunity and choice for developers, partners, customers and competitors. Specifically, Microsoft is implementing four new interoperability principles and corresponding actions across its high-volume business products: (1) ensuring open connections; (2) promoting data portability; (3) enhancing support for industry standards; and...

I am having problems with my computer. At firstit did not recognize my wireless connection. After rebooting it manytimes,connecting and disconecting the router and many failed attempots to reconnect, my computer gaveup. Now when itstarts it goes into a menu asking mew me tro start eitheron the last goo known windows configuration or safe mode and the such. When making a choice the computer starts XP but then begins to reboot itself all over again. I need this proble fixed ASAP...any help is appreciated.

Microsoft researchers are hoping to use "information epidemics" to distribute software patches more efficiently. Milan Vojnović and colleagues from Microsoft Research in Cambridge, UK, want to make useful pieces of information such as software updates behave more like computer worms: spreading between computers instead of being downloaded from central servers. The research may also help defend against malicious types of worm, the researchers say. Software worms spread by self-replicating. After infecting one computer they probe others to find new hosts. Most existing worms randomly probe computers when looking for new hosts to infect, but that is inefficient, says Vojnović, because...

Quoting extensively from internal Microsoft Corp. e-mails, plaintiffs' lawyers argued Friday that the company knowingly misled consumers by allowing PC makers to emblazon "Windows Vista Capable" stickers on PCs that could run only the most bare-bones version of the operating system. The new documents are the latest development in a lawsuit filed against Microsoft last year, charging that the company deceived consumers into thinking that the PCs they were buying could run Vista's most highly promoted features, even when they couldn't. The slogan was part of a campaign by Microsoft to maintain sales of Windows XP computers during the 2006...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Rupert Murdoch's News Corp is in talks to combine MySpace and other Internet properties with Yahoo Inc to fend off Microsoft Corp's $42.1 billion bid, according to several reports. One proposal under discussion would value the MySpace online social network at around $6 billion to $10 billion and would give News Corp a more than 20 percent stake in a combined company, according to the Wall Street Journal Web site Wednesday. News of the discussions were first reported by the Silicon Alley Insider blog, followed by the TechCrunch blog. A proposed deal would involve a cash...