Microsoft is working on a new reparations strategy, known internally as a customer incentive program, for those customers with volume licensing programs who will be negatively affected by the delay in the release of Windows Vista and Office 2007.

Most enterprises buy volume licensing agreements from Microsoft, along with Software Assurance, which guarantees them the rights to all upgrades for any product covered by the agreement while it is in force.

But even if Microsoft sticks to its current timetable for the delivery of Vista and Office 2007, the delays mean that some customers who bought Software Assurance and who would have qualified for those upgrades if they had shipped as originally expected will not get them before their contracts expire.

As such, the Redmond software maker is going to have to make amends through rebates, incentives and the like, to encourage those Software Assurance customers who have now ended up on the wrong side of the licensing tracks through no fault of their own to renew.

Source: eWeek

Microsoft on Monday offered the first glimpse of an external HD DVD drive built for the Xbox 360 game console.

Kevin Collins, senior program manager at Microsoft, demonstrated the HD DVD drive, which he said is scheduled to hit store shelves for the upcoming holiday shopping season, to attendees of the DVD Forum here.

Source: News.com

A Montana man who used his work computer to access child pornography does not have a reasonable expectation of privacy that would bar a search of the machine, a U.S. federal appeals court ruled on Tuesday.

Source: Reuters

AMD is now responding to the story that AMD wants to drop ATI brand, saying “AMD has no plans to drop the ATi brand name or ATi’s product brands. The ATi name will live on at AMD as our leading consumer brand, and so will the Radeon brand and other ATi product brands. AMD’s executive management knows very well the power and value of branding, and ATi’s branding is some of the most valued in the global technology industry.”

Source: arstechnica

Sprint Nextel Corp plans to spend up to $4.5 billion to build a high-speed wireless data network using an emerging technology known as WiMax that can cover whole cities, a source familiar with the plans said on Tuesday.

According to the source, Sprint will work with cellphone makers Motorola and Samsung Electronics as well as with chipmaker Intel Corp. to develop the technology. The investment in the network will take place from 2007 to 2009.

WiMax can blanket entire cities with high-speed wireless connections and is a longer-range version of the popular Wi-Fi technology used to connect to the Internet in public spaces like coffee shops.

Source: eWeek

During a QuakeCon Q&A panel, Kevin Cloud, co-owner of Id and exec producer on Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, responded to a question about PC games disappearing from retailer’s shelves by saying that piracy was “killing PC games.”

“It’s the primary reason retailers are moving to the console,” Cloud said, continuing on to say that ways to reduce piracy are in the forefront of every PC developer’s mind, and citing World of Warcraft’s subscription-based nature as an example of a possible solution to the problem.

Source: 1up

Microsoft released security updates for August, 2006. This update includes 9 critical fixes.

• Vulnerability in Server Service Could Allow Remote Code Execution (921883) - This update resolves several vulnerabilities in the Server service that could allow remote code execution. (Windows)
• Vulnerability in DNS Resolution Could Allow Remote Code Execution (920683) - This update resolves several vulnerabilities in the DNS service that could allow remote code execution. (Windows)
• Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer (918899)
  - This update resolves several vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer that could allow remote code execution. (Windows, Internet Explorer).
• Vulnerability in Microsoft Windows Could Allow Remote Code Execution (920214) - This update resolves a vulnerability in Outlook Express that could allow remote code execution. (Windows, Outlook Express)
• Vulnerability in Microsoft Management Console Could Allow Remote Code Execution (917008) - This update resolves a vulnerability in the Microsoft Management Console that could allow remote code execution. (Windows)
• Vulnerability in HTML Help Could Allow Remote Code Execution (922616) - This update resolves several vulnerabilities in HTML Help that could allow remote code execution. (Windows)
• Vulnerability in Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications Could Allow Remote Code Execution (921645) - This update resolves a vulnerability in Visual Basic for Applications that could allow remote code execution. (Office)
• Vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office Could Allow Remote Code Execution (922968) - This update resolves two vulnerabilities in PowerPoint that could allow remote code execution. (Office)
• Vulnerability in Windows Kernel Could Result in Remote Code Execution (917422) - This update resolves several vulnerabilities in the Windows kernel that could allow remote code execution. (Windows)

In addition to these Microsoft also released 3 Important updates for Windows

Businesses that use gateway security appliances to protect Research In Motion’s BlackBerry communications servers could be subject to attacks based on the planned release of exploit code by a high-profile malware researcher.

According to a warning released by network security applications and device provider Secure Computing, organizations with their BlackBerry servers installed behind their gateway intrusion detection boxes could be compromised when researcher Jesse D’Aguanno, a consultant with risk management experts Praetorian Global, of Placerville, Calif., releases his code the week of Aug. 14. D’Aguanno first revealed his vulnerability exploit on Aug. 5 at the Defcon hacker convention in Las Vegas.

Source: eWeek

According to recent statistics from blog-tracking site Technorati, the blogosphere has doubled every six months for the last three years. That’s 175,000 new blogs per day worldwide. Technorati added its 50 millionth blog on July 31, 2006.

The site’s State of the Blogosphere report is released every three months by Technorati CEO Dave Sifry. Sifry has been tracking the blogosphere since 2002, and even he’s surprised at the tremendous rate of growth for this quarter.

Source: News.com

A desktop PC containing the personal information of up to 36,000 U.S. military veterans has gone missing from U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) subcontractor Unisys, the VA announced yesterday.

The PC may have contained VA patients’ names, addresses, Social Security Numbers, dates of birth, insurance carriers and billing information, dates of military service, and claims data that may include some medical information, the VA said. Unisys notified the VA on Thursday that the computer was missing from the subcontractor’s Reston, Virginia, offices.

The VA immediately dispatched a team to Unisys to assist in the search for computer and to help determine what information it held, the VA said in a press release.

Source: Yahoo

Yahoo made a strong competitive move against personal search startups like Eurekster and Rollyo today with the announcement of Yahoo Search Builder, a customizable search engine tool.

A custom search engine can be created that searches just a few defined sites, and/or the entire Yahoo search index and Yahoo News. The search engine can be further tailored to include a specific search term along with whatever the user types in, exclude certain keywords, etc. Once completed, the search engine can be integrated directly into a website via a code snippet.

Source: techcrunch

Internet giant AOL has apologised for releasing the search queries of more than 650,000 of its US subscribers.

The company admitted the release to researchers was “a screw up” and had breached the privacy of its users.

AOL said it was an “innocent attempt to reach out to the academic community with research tools”.

Although users’ names were not associated with the search terms, fears were raised that the queries may contain personally identifiable data.

It is not clear which researchers were given the data and how they intended to use it.

Source: BBC NEWS