Date: 01/30/08 (Security)    Keywords: security, microsoft

A workable exploit attack for a TCP/IP vulnerability in Microsoft's Windows has been launched into the wild courtesy of security firm Immunity. On Jan. 17, it became clear that you shouldn't dawdle on deploying Microsoft's MS08-001 patch. That patch, issued Jan. 8, fixed a Transmission Control Protocol/Internet...

Source: http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=840

Date: 01/30/08 (Web Technology)    Keywords: yahoo, microsoft, google

Microsoft sites maintained its leading position as the top property in Canada with nearly 22.5 mln visitors, reaching 94% of the Canadian online population, according to comScore. Microsoft was followed closely by Google Sites with 22.3 mln visitors, Yahoo! Sites with 16.3 mln visitors and Facebook.com with 15.4 mln visitors....

Source: http://blogs.zdnet.com/ITFacts/?p=13768

Date: 01/30/08 (Computer Geeks)    Keywords: microsoft

Microsoft, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, please release the REAL Vista service pack 1 right NOW instead of kicking out stupid and retarded betas and release candidates!

I'm being forced to use Vista on my pre-infected laptop, so HURRY!!

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/computergeeks/1148241.html

Date: 02/01/08 (Open Source)    Keywords: yahoo, microsoft

Let’s forget about search for a moment, and Microsoft’s obvious need to buy a leading online company or face extinction. Microsoft’s proposed $45 billion buy of Yahoo would give the Redmond, Wash company control over a top open source e-mail company, open source projects and an open source infrastructure. On September 17 of 2007, Yahoo bought [...]

Source: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/zdnet/open-source/~3/227336831/

Date: 02/01/08 (IT Management)    Keywords: yahoo, microsoft

Microsoft's $44.6 billion bid for Yahoo looks pretty compelling on paper. The deal even makes for a nice PowerPoint slide on synergies, but putting these two behemoths together could be difficult. Why? There's a lot of overlap. First let's get the slides out of the way. On Microsoft's...

Source: http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=7855

Date: 02/01/08 (Data Management)    Keywords: yahoo, microsoft

Microsoft's $44.6 billion bid for Yahoo looks pretty compelling on paper. The deal even makes for a nice PowerPoint slide on synergies, but putting these two behemoths together could be difficult. Why? There's a lot of overlap. First let's get the slides out of the way. On Microsoft's...

Source: http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=7855

Date: 02/02/08 (Computer Geeks)    Keywords: yahoo, microsoft, google

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/computergeeks/1148957.html

Date: 02/02/08 (Computer Help)    Keywords: web, microsoft

I recently got a used printer from my boyfriend, it is still in really good condition and its HP.
However, i can't get it to work at all. When i first hooked it up, it printed out a paper i needed, but now it doesnt do anything.

I heard with Windows Vista you needed a driver, so i went through the steps on microsoft windows web site to upload a driver onto my computer, but it still isnt working.

Please help!

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/computer_help/862925.html

Date: 02/03/08 (Data Management)    Keywords: yahoo, microsoft

I've had perhaps a dozen emails over the last several days asking what I think of Microsoft's offer to buy out Yahoo's shareholders. So here's what I think - first on motivation and prospects. Some mergers are defensive, some are driven by...

Source: http://blogs.zdnet.com/Murphy/?p=1059

Date: 02/03/08 (Web Technology)    Keywords: yahoo, microsoft

I've had perhaps a dozen emails over the last several days asking what I think of Microsoft's offer to buy out Yahoo's shareholders. So here's what I think - first on motivation and prospects. Some mergers are defensive, some are driven by...

Source: http://blogs.zdnet.com/Murphy/?p=1059

Date: 02/04/08 (Open Source)    Keywords: yahoo, microsoft

Instead of spending $45 billion on Yahoo, wouldn't Microsoft be better served spending that money with IBM?

Source: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/zdnet/open-source/~3/228933491/

Date: 02/04/08 (Open Source)    Keywords: linux, microsoft

Linux creator Linus Torvalds blasted patent trollers, Microsoft, Sun and the virtualization craze in his second official communiqué to the public. And he said desktop Linux is going nowhere in market share. In a second Q&A podcast posted on the Linux Foundation site, Torvalds told his interviewer, LF Executive Director Jim Zemlin, that the patent [...]

Source: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/zdnet/open-source/~3/229004160/

Date: 02/05/08 (Open Source)    Keywords: xml, microsoft

Forget Super Tuesday. Consider Super Friday. Super Friday is February 29, the end of the ISO Ballot Resolution Meeting which will decide the fate of Open XML as an ISO standard. Opponents say Microsoft has been packing national standards bodies to assure a “yes” vote on Open XML, which opponents call OOXML. The Open Document Format (ODF) used [...]

Source: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/zdnet/open-source/~3/229633935/

Date: 02/06/08 (Computer Geeks)    Keywords: technology, security, web, microsoft, google

The most common question that I get in my inbox is...

Why don't you use Mac OS X?

Some of you are under the impression that I don't use Apple products, or anything that's not Microsoft. That's not true. I am, in all honesty, a company agnostic. I use an iPod, I use many of the Google products, I use a Playstation instead of an Xbox...I use tons of things that aren't made by Microsoft. And, I'll say it, Windows is the only thing that Mircrosoft has produced that I like.

I'm not being ignorant, I'm very open-minded about technology. I'm not a die-hard anything. If Microsoft put out an absolute stinker that didn't even work, you'd bet I'd switch over to Ubuntu or Mac OS in a heartbeat (or maybe I would just downgrade to the previous version of Windows).

Some of you are also under the impression that I've never even tried Mac OS X or any operating system besides Windows. Far from true. Just two weeks ago, I was running Ubuntu. I liked it, but I couldn't lose my Windows apps. I've got connections with people that run Macs, and they've let me work on their computers, and I'm a fairly experienced Mac OS X user (though that's not saying much).

I get this question at least once a day by IM, email, LJ-message, whatever, and I decided to post the answer here in a new weekly feature to this journal.

Before I begin, I want to make it clear that Mac OS X is a fantastic alternative to the world of Windows. If you're just using it for photos, web browsing, stuff like that, Mac OS X is great. If you're a power-user, though, you need an OS like Windows. Now, I bring you the reasons why I don't use Mac OS X.

User interface
The Menu Bar is too far away from your focus. When you have an application open, your focus is on the middle of the screen (I don't see why you would have a window maximized since the dock (I'll get to that later) is in the way, and the monitor is huge). The Menu Bar is all the way at the top, hundreds of yards away from your focus. I didn't even notice it the first few times I was using it.

The dock is just terrible. Icons for the same file type are exactly the same, so you can't tell what is what. It gets in the way. Didn't they learn to avoid things like this in GUI Design 101? The dock, while it looks great and is a great marketing strategy, doesn't do much for productivity. Windows' quick launch bar is way better.

Usability
When using Mac OS X, I found my productivity was cut by a fraction. It wasn't a big difference, but it was a significant one. Like I said, if you're a general user, Mac OS X is fine, but for me, I've got to have something where I can actually do important things. There are also articles on the web that put Windows and Mac OS X running on the exact same hardware (a Mac computer!), and found that Mac OS X was slower than Windows. On a Mac computer. Hey, it surprised me, too.

Security
I know, I know. Mac OS X has this big reputation about being the most secure OS on the planet. Even though it's not true, think about the users. Mac OS X has about 20% of the market share, the rest goes to Windows. That's over 250 million users, ladies and gentlemen.But, nonetheless, Mac OS X does have some security issues.

Time Machine, which is praised by Mac OS users, does it's job just a little too well. Let's say you downloaded a Trojan, and let's just say it deleted some of your data. You restore your data from Time Machine, but guess what? It restores that Trojan as well. My idea: when you remove something from your computer, a Trojan, it should ask you if you want it archived in the Time Machine. Just a little suggestion

Cost
Jesus Christ! $1,200 for an iMac with only 250GB of storage? $1,700 for a MacBook Air? This is ridiculous. I can buy a brand new HP computer with Windows installed, with 600GB of storage, for only about $800. Maybe the iMac should cost a little more, because it can run Windows, and it's the only machine that you can run Mac OS X on legally, and it doesn't have a tower, but not that much more. Maybe $900, maybe a little more. I'll be honest, though, I don't mind having a computer tower. Building a desktop computer using notebook computer parts just doesn't seem safe to me.

So, those are my main concerns about Mac OS X, and I why I won't use it. When Mac OS XI comes around, I might check it out, to see if there is any improvement, but until then, I'm a Windows user.

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/computergeeks/1149394.html

Date: 02/06/08 (Data Management)    Keywords: yahoo, microsoft

Notable headlines: Mary Jo Foley: Microsoft declares its modeling love with a new language, ‘D' Larry Dignan: Yahoo's conundrum: White knights are hard to find Dan Farber: Mitch Kapor: Microsoft+Yahoo, major integration challenge David Morgenstern: Will Microsoft support Windows on Macs?...

Source: http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=7892

Date: 02/06/08 (Data Management)    Keywords: microsoft

With all eyes on what Microsoft is doing in the online-advertising space, it's easy to give short shrift to the datacenter and back-end infrastructure that is powering not just adCenter, but all of Microsoft's various Live services. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer reminded Wall Street analysts earlier this...

Source: http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1160

Date: 02/07/08 (Open Source)    Keywords: software, microsoft

In 2005, hot new startup XenSource was positioning itself as the open source alternative to VMware and Microsoft Virtual Server. Then came a controversial pact in 2006 between the powers that be at the Palo Alto virtualization software company and Microsoft. The mail goal, XenSource executives argued, was to ensure interoperability between the two platforms [...]

Source: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/zdnet/open-source/~3/231044917/

Date: 02/07/08 (Security)    Keywords: security, microsoft

Microsoft on Thursday issued advance notice of 12 security bulletins ahead of its February batch of patches with seven critical flaws affecting Vista, Internet Explorer and Office. The most notable patch will likely cover that Excel zero day vulnerability that surfaced last month. Since Microsoft confirmed the...

Source: http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=866

Date: 02/07/08 (Security)    Keywords: yahoo, microsoft, google

The OpenID Foundation on Thursday said that Google, IBM, Microsoft, VeriSign and Yahoo have joined its board. The additions--Yahoo joined OpenID last month and made its accounts compatible--are a big boost to the single sign-on initiative. While these newcomers are a nice addition to the board it's...

Source: http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=7918

Date: 02/09/08 (Security)    Keywords: blogging, yahoo, microsoft

My ZDNet blogging colleague Larry Dignan asks what Yahoo's Plan B will be, now that it reportedly is turning down Microsoft's $44 acquisition billion bid because it is too low. But I'm wondering about the flip-side of this equation: What is Microsoft's Plan B if it fails to snag Yahoo?...

Source: http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1170