New Windows Home Server beta could restore lost backup capability
In Microsoft's history, it was Windows 95 that had finally confirmed for the entire operating system market that Windows had "arrived," cementing its position as the dominant system for well over a decade to come. The place of Windows Home Server in the market Microsoft has been working to create for it, has been far more tenable -- it doesn't really have competition in its category, but Home Server has yet to prove that it has "arrived." That could change with the forthcoming introduction of Power Pack 3, which will incorporate support for Windows 7, and which also may restore some features which loyal users have, to their surprise, found missing in recent versions.
Early this morning, Microsoft announced the forthcoming availability of the first beta of Power Pack 3 for Windows Home Server. Its key feature is the ability to automatically back up the contents of hard drives elsewhere in the home network, using the same disk imaging system created for Windows Server 2008. The company is signing up participants now through Microsoft Connect, though Betanews confirmed Friday morning that the beta download has not yet been posted.
No 'Bing boom' yet: ComScore data confirms Bing's slow growth
Earlier this month, the first sampling data from Web researcher StatCounter suggested that Microsoft's new Bing search service was gathering momentum, albeit slowly. Today, the first broader-based data analysis from ratings service comScore closely confirms what the early samples were saying: During the month of June, Microsoft-hosted searches including Bing for US customers numbered just 30 million more than for Microsoft-hosted searches including Windows Live the month before. This is during a month when just over 14 billion general searches were processed by the nation's top five providers.
The news looks a little better for Microsoft when you consider that June was a slow month for searches overall -- down by 2% among the nation's top 5 providers, and flat overall when advanced searches and the sites that facilitate them, are entered into the picture. So while Google's general search traffic declined by 2% in keeping with the general trend, its US usage share overall stayed flat at 65%. Bing gained 0.4% of usage share over Windows Live last June -- better than flat, but not the "Bing Boom" that some made it out to be.
Mozilla rushes Firefox 3.5.1 to address serious vulnerability
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After yesterday's discovery of a serious security hole left open by Mozilla Firefox's new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine, the organization chose not to wait until next week -- as had been its plan on Tuesday -- to open up availability of its version 3.5.1 bug fix. Instead, the completed build showed up on Mozilla's FTP servers late Thursday morning, although access to that build through HTTP had been sporadic throughout the early afternoon.
Top 5 non-obvious feature enhancements to Office 2010
The question has been asked, who really needs to use Microsoft Office these days? The answer is, anyone who is in the business of professionally generating content for a paying customer. Word 2010 may not be the optimum tool for the everyday blogger, and Excel 2010 maybe not the best summer trip planner, just as a John Deere is not the optimum vehicle for a trip to the grocery store. But in recent years, Microsoft is the only software producer that has come close to understanding what professional content creators require in their daily toolset.
So far, the improvements we've found from actually using the Office 2010 Technical Preview released Monday (as opposed to the ones Microsoft told us about) can mainly be described as usability enhancements -- tools that appear to be responses to how people actually use the products. Compared to Office 2007, which threw out the old instruction manual with regard to how applications should work, Office 2010's changes are subtler, slicker, and less ostentatious. Of those we've noticed in our initial tests, here are five which we feel will make compelling arguments for at least some users to upgrade:
Bing and Chrome OS: What if it's all bluster?
In the final scenes of Twilight's Last Gleaming (1977), which history may yet restore to its rightful place as one of the dumbest movies ever made, the President of the United States (Charles Durning) learns from a renegade general-turned-prison escapee (Burt Lancaster) that the whole point of the Vietnam War was a geopolitical bluster intended to convince the Soviet Union that the US was crazy enough to engage in World War III if it had to. After the President is told this Earth-shattering information by his kidnapper, his own cabinet conspire to assassinate him to prevent the information from being revealed in a press conference. This despite the fact that the real world was already entitled to The Pentagon Papers in paperback for several years, though readers clearly preferred Jaws and The Exorcist.
It is no "eyes-only" confidential secret that bluster is a very effective political and marketing tool at the disposal of anyone who can afford to use it. So you're safe from any assassination attempts from the likes of Joseph Cotten or Richard Widmark. Meanwhile, anyone reading Betanews on a daily basis over the last few weeks might get the impression that World War III is about to be triggered by the volatile mix of Google and Microsoft, or that at least some of us here who may have stayed up too late to watch Twilight's Last Gleaming on AMC may think so.
First TraceMonkey vulnerability poses new priorities for Firefox 3.5.1
Developers on the "Shiretoko" track for Mozilla's new open source Firefox 3.5 Web browser now have very good reason to expect a ship date for the first round of bug fixes and vulnerabilities. A very big vulnerability has turned up in just the wrong place: a public site for posting exploits.
The problem is a new permutation of an old exploit technique that, ironically, was first brought to prominence in 2006 by a package called "Internet Exploiter." It's called a heap spray, comprised of shellcode that's set to be distributed into an area in blocks, a bit like spraying bricks into a wall. The resulting pattern may contain executable code that can be triggered through an overflow; and in this case, it's version 3.5's embedded font support, using the <FONT> tag, that's the trigger.
TiVo lawsuit explodes into billion-dollar stakes
Yesterday, in a go-for-broke strategy which could very well snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, satellite TV systems manufacturer EchoStar (partner and former owner of Dish Network) filed a motion in US District Court in Marshall, Texas, asking the court to suspend proceedings until the outcome of EchoStar's federal appeal is heard, in the patent infringement case brought against it by DVR manufacturer TiVo. An injunction against EchoStar is being stayed pending that appeal.
That's not a big deal in itself. What is big is EchoStar's assertion that sanctions being sought against it amount to as much as $1 billion -- the first time the proverbial math has alluded to TiVo's potential jackpot. This in addition to the $104 million that the Supreme Court decided EchoStar was liable for, in its refusal to hear EchoStar's first appeal.
AMD claims six-core Opteron performance lead over Intel Xeon
Just last month, AMD began shipping its first 6-core, 45 nm Opteron server CPUs with "Istanbul" architecture, with the top-of-the-line 2.6 GHz, 4- and 8-way 8435 SE selling for $2,649 in 1,000-unit quantities ("trays"). Perhaps ahead of schedule, yesterday AMD cut the tape for a 2.8 GHz 4- and 8-way model 8439 SE model that one-ups its own June release. Its tray price: $2,649.
And while a new entry on the high end usually triggers a price drop for existing models, it may yet be too soon for AMD to drop the price of the 2.6 GHz model below its June price. In an interview with Betanews, AMD's Opteron product manager Steve Demski said that won't be much of a problem, since in this economy and with the current state of data center architecture, high wattage and higher performance are less of a factor than ever before.
Finally, a pricing structure for Windows Azure services
The free ride ends this upcoming winter. The third week of November has been set as the official launch date for commercial services on Windows Azure, Microsoft's platform for deployment of .NET Services to the cloud. This news was delivered by the company's Server and Tools division president Bob Muglia, in an address to its Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans.
By stark contrast to other cloud services that utilize Windows, including Amazon EC2, Windows Azure is not the customer's server operating system relocated from the data center to the cloud. Rather, it's a hosting platform for .NET applications that reach global Web customers. Since its announcement last October, developers have been allowed to build and deploy test applications over Azure for no charge. The doors will close as soon as November 17, and developers will be courted to become paying customers.
Microsoft: How Software Assurance will work for Windows 7
No, Windows 7 did not release to manufacturing yesterday, a fact that was once again repeated by Microsoft to Betanews late yesterday. As blogger Ed Bott accurately pointed out, those who drew conclusions about the multitude of zeroes in the build number were not taking into account the more esoteric meanings such numbers have historically held within Microsoft.
So yesterday's news of volume licensing discounts for Windows 7 beginning September 1 was not a delay. In fact, as a Microsoft spokesperson outlined for Betanews late yesterday, business customers are already eligible for upgrades to Windows 7 under their existing Software Assurance program, which will expire shortly after the new licensing program is set to begin.
Windows 7 volume licenses to be discounted September 1
At this morning's Worldwide Developers' Conference in New Orleans, there were some who had prematurely speculated that Microsoft was ready to release Windows 7 to manufacturing (RTM) as soon as today. When it didn't, the headline went out that Windows 7 was "delayed" -- it wasn't.
But some business customers will begin ordering Windows 7 a few weeks later than anticipated, maybe not so much on account of delay as bad speculation that was never responded to. September 1 will be the start date for volume license customers to place their orders for Windows 7, including for upgrade versions. As a Microsoft spokesperson confirmed to Betanews this afternoon, Microsoft will discount the price for Windows 7 Professional upgrade licenses by 15% for a six-month promotional period. That means that volume license prices could start at $152, while Vista licenses during the same period remain at a base price of $179.
Top 5 obvious feature enhancements to Microsoft Office 2010
Perhaps it was an accident that Microsoft released a series of Office 2010 preview videos this morning, instead of another chapter in its non-revealing "Office 2010: The Movie" theatrical trailer. The videos themselves were pulled down from Microsoft's servers, along with the micro-site that accompanied them, but not before search engine caches everywhere captured them, and not before blogger Long Zheng gathered them in one place.
This morning, these Microsoft-produced videos show extensive screen shots and demos of each primary Office 2010 component at work, although the appearance of the early code-name "Office 14" in a few of those shots indicates that videos may not necessarily be depicting the most recent build, being distributed to Technical Preview participants as soon as today.
Before it can tackle Windows, Chrome must leave Safari in the dust
Download Google Chrome 3.0.192.1 for Windows from Fileforum now.
Just a few months ago, Apple Safari 4 could stake a claim to being the fastest Web browser available for Windows. But although its speed has improved even since then, especially in the second update since its official launch released late Wednesday, Safari is now as much as 30% slower than the latest beta of Google Chrome 3, released the following morning. This according to Betanews tests completed late Thursday.
Silverlight 3 goes live on Microsoft's servers
Download Microsoft Silverlight 3 for Windows Final from Fileforum now.
A day earlier than expected, though not without precedent,
EC's Reding: Government should act as broker for media downloads
In a speech delivered this morning in Brussels before the Lisbon Council, the European Commissioner for Telecoms and Digital Media, Viviane Reding, raised a point she's made before: that one reason piracy is so rampant on the Internet is because rights holders and media publishers have yet to produce a viable, desirable alternative for media consumers. This time, the phrase Comm. Reding used to describe piracy was "sexy."
But in a novel addition to her ongoing effort to produce a policy she calls Digital Europe, Reding suggested that her government could assist rights holders and publishers, enabling them to spend more time and resources developing that "sexier" alternative. Specifically, she proposed a system whereby the EU government could serve as the online clearinghouse for intellectual property rights covering the entire continent.
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