Microsoft has issued an updated security advisory that enables users to download a workaround for a security flaw in IE. Users can download the technology bits that prevent the Javaprxy.dll COM object from running in IE. The download does not address the underlying vulnerability in IE, however.

Microsoft is currently working on making the workaround available through its automatic update service.

Source: News.com

As Errol Rose made preparations on Monday to bury his 15-year-old son, Christopher, who was killed last week in Brooklyn during a fight over an iPod, he received a telephone call from a stranger. The man spoke in tones that the grieving father said had momentarily quieted his anguish.

The stranger, Rose soon learned, was Steve Jobs, chief executive of Apple Computer, the company that makes the iPod.

“I didn’t know who he was,” Rose said yesterday. “He called me on my cellphone, at 4 maybe. Or maybe it was 5.” Rose said he had stopped noticing the passage of time since his son was killed.

The men spoke for a few minutes.

Calling him by his first name, Jobs asked how Rose was doing, he said, and conveyed his sympathies. “He told me that he understood my pain,” Rose said. “He told me if there is anything–anything–anything he could do, to not be afraid to call him. It really lightened me a bit.”

Source: News.com

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has informed motherboard makers that the unit price (for 1000 unit lots) for its Sempron CPUs will be adjusted downward in early August, with Sempron 2500+ prices dropping more than US$7, according to sources in the motherboard industry. AMD also plans to launch a dual-core Athlon 64 X2 processor on August 1 priced at US$345, a third less than its current lowest priced dual-core CPU, the sources indicated.

Microsoft’s forthcoming Longhorn operating system places great emphasis on locking down PCs to prevent unauthorised access to hardware and software, the software giant revealed today.

Source: Vnunet (via Security Focus)

The inventor of one of the precursors to handheld devices — an operating system that enabled computer users to write with a pen instead of a keyboard — long suspected Microsoft Corp. of crushing his business.

Now, Jerrold Kaplan says he has the evidence — documents that surfaced during a class-action suit filed in Minnesota indicating that Microsoft chairman Bill Gates set out in the early 1990s to discourage other companies from doing business with Kaplan’s startup, Go Computer Inc.

Formed in 1987, Go Computer developed a tablet computer as well as software that enabled computers to understand handwriting. Decades later, the ability to write with a stylus is a key function of many personal digital assistants as well as of tablet computers, for which Microsoft developed a variation of its Windows XP operating system.

Source: AP

LOS ANGELES and RALEIGH, N.C. Vivendi Universal Games (VU Games) and Epic Games today announced a studio-wide agreement under which VU Games will license Unreal Engine 3 tools and technology for next generation console and PC game development.

VU Games’ internal and external development studios are licensed to use Unreal Engine 3 technology for next generation titles, which are expected to launch starting in 2006. Specific titles will be announced at a later date.

“Our licensing agreement with Epic Games underscores VU Games’ commitment to developing top tier next generation products,” said Peter Della Penna, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, Product Development for VU Games. “Unreal Engine 3 technology will enable us to create exceptional high quality next gen titles in a productive and cost effective fashion.”

Mark Rein, Vice President and Co-founder of Epic Games said “VU Games has an incredible lineup of internal and external development teams that we know are going to benefit from working with Unreal Engine 3.”

The European Parliament on Wednesday rejected a proposed law to create a single way of patenting software across the European Union, a blow to big companies who had pushed hard for its adoption.

The so-called software patent directive, rejected by a 648-14 vote with 18 abstentions, would have given companies EU-wide patent protection for computerized inventions ranging from programs for complex CAT scanners to ABS car-brake systems. The protection would also have extended to computer programs when the software is used in the context of realizing inventions.

But lawmakers said the measure would stifle enterprise and did not promote innovation, and that human knowledge can’t be patented. The move kills the legislation since the EU head office, which had drafted it, does not plan to set forth a new version.

Source: AP