Microsoft Archive

"Microsoft has released its free Microsoft Safety Scanner. This scans for and removes malware from Windows systems without requiring prior installation. According to AV-Test's Andreas Marx, the on-demand anti-virus scanner appears to be based on the Malicious Software Removal Tool (MSRT), but with the addition of a complete signature database. MSRT used a mini database of widely distributed threats and is distributed monthly via the automatic update function."

Oh irony, thy silver thorn strikes like the moonlight through my delicate skin. While this complaint could actually hold merit, the fact it's coming from Microsoft lessens its validity somewhat. Redmond has just filed an antitrust complaint about Google in Europe.

"Microsoft today announced record second-quarter revenue of $19.95 billion for the quarter ended Dec. 31, 2010. Operating income, net income and diluted earnings per share for the quarter were $8.17 billion, $6.63 billion and $0.77 per share, respectively."

"From its inception in 1991, Microsoft Research has hewed to a remarkably unwavering mission. Its tenets are threefold: to invest in basic research to advance the state of the art in computer science, to transfer technologies into Microsoft products when appropriate, and to collaborate openly with the scientific community. The year 2010 has not varied from this established, successful tradition. But unlike 1991, when Microsoft Research was in its nascent stage, the organization is now fully mature, has grown into a worldwide presence, and has gained eminence as that modern-day rarity: an industrial research unit dedicated to pursuing pure research, in dozens of areas, that is helping to transform the future. Such a track record, naturally, has its own rewards. It's little surprise, then, that a review of Microsoft Research's 2010 highlights are bookended by a pair of illustrious awards, with others - including the biggest - sprinkled throughout the year."

Today Microsoft released 17 security bulletins which address 40 vulnerabilities affecting Microsoft Office, Windows, Internet Explorer, SharePoint Server and Exchange. This brings the total count for 2010 to 106 bulletins. Of note, only two of the bulletins are rated Critical, 14 are rated Important and one is Moderate. In addition to the bulletins released today, Microsoft is announcing plans to extend the Office File Validation feature currently available in Office 2010, to Office 2007 and 2003. This will help protect those using older versions of Microsoft Office from file parsing vulnerabilities.

"The Singularity project (an OS written in managed code used for research purposes) has provided several very useful research results and opened new avenues for exploration in operating system design. Recently, MSR released a paper covering an operating system research project that takes a new approach to building an OS stack with verifiable and type safe managed code. This project employs a novel use of Typed Assembly Language, which is what you think it is: Assembly with types (implemented as annotations and verified statically using the verification technology Boogie and the theorem prover Z3 (Boogie generates verification conditions that are then statically proven by Z3. Boogie is also a language used to build program verifiers for other languages)). As with Singularity, the C# Bartok compiler is used, but this time it generates TAL. The entire OS stack is verifiably type safe (the Nucleus is essentially the Verve HAL) and all objects are garbage collected. It does not employ the SIP model of process isolation (like Singularity). In this case, again, the entire operating system is type safe and statically proven as such using world-class theorem provers." Channel9 has an interview on video with one of the developers behind this MSR project. Source code to Verve is available.

"For reasons that are not immediately clear to me, it seems that a lot of developers who attended Microsoft's recent PDC event were surprised to hear that the company now sees HTML5 as the way forward for developing rich Internet applications - and not, as they had been expecting, Silverlight. Their surprise surprises me, because past statements by the company had already made this repositioning obvious, though perhaps not explicit."

Most websites glossed over this, but we didn't. Silverlight, once touted as Microsoft's answer to Adobe's Flash, has been retooled from its original purpose. Microsoft is betting big on HTML5 instead, turning Silverlight into the development platform for Windows Phone, and that's it. So... Silverlight is dead - long live Silerlight?

"Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer today announced that Ray Ozzie, Bill Gates' replacement as the company's chief software architect, will be stepping down from his post."

Who said a public outcry - even if it's just on the internet - never helped anyone? Yesterday, we reported on The New York Times' findings that Microsoft lawyers were taking part in raids on opposition groups in Russia. Today, Microsoft has announced a number of steps to fix the situation - the most significant of which is a unilateral software license extended to all NGOs in Russia and several other countries.

A provocative editorial at The Register makes this suggestion: "Microsoft should consider acquiring Novell's SUSE Linux business and focusing it completely on mobile. Novell has a seat at the Linux Foundation's MeeGo table, and Microsoft should embrace that operating system rather than its myriad (but universally unsuccessful) mobile variants of Windows."

In today's Patch Tuesday, Microsoft delivers four bulletins that close five vulnerabilities in Windows and Office.

U.K. government staff suggested replacing Microsoft Corp. operating systems on computers with free alternatives in response to a call for ideas for Prime Minister David Cameron's cost-cutting drive.

This is getting ridiculous. Windows Embedded Handheld? And to make it worse, there are two different versions of Windows Embedded Handheld coming out, each based on a different underlying OS.