The Archives of The Evil Empire2000 September
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27 September: Microsoft WebTV shuts out subscribers
Up to 20,000 WebTV subscribers have been unable to connect to the service today because of problems related to a routine software upgrade. A corrupted file was loaded onto some systems as a result of a routine weekly maintenance. 27 September: New MSN client swipes your email, spams
your friends
Microsoft's ever-resourceful marketing goblins seem to have come up with a killer combination of features designed to win hearts and minds for MSN Explorer, the jazzy Internet-email client intended for newbies from the Great Unwebbed. The second beta of the software has a built in 'spam a friend by mistake' function, and if you happen to have an MSN email account, it may confiscate your POP service and give you a Hotmail account instead. 26 September: New IE 5.5 hole lets hackers into personal records
Veteran bug hunter has detected yet another security hole in Microsoft's recently released Internet Explorer 5.5 software that could potentially give hackers an easy route to personal computer files. Malicious programmers who set up booby-trap Web sites to lure unwitting surfers can break into someone's computer records--including cookies, or digital tags that reveal valuable information about a person--using Microsoft's ActiveX technology, which manages the sending and receiving of files. "The attacker may steal every file to which the user has access and send it to an arbitrary server," Guninski wrote. 22 September: A not-so-funny new worm
Funny is a new worm that is similar to the ILOVEYOU worm, but much less virulent. Funny will look for the presence of online banking software and, if found, deposit a trojan horse that will memorize keystrokes to obtain user passwords. The Funny worm arrives as e-mail and requires a user to open the attached file. Funny uses Visual Basic scripting to execute to access a user's Outlook address book and send copies of itself to all the addresses found. 22 September: Commentary: Getting personal with Windows Me
Some readers agreed that Microsoft's latest progeny is underwhelming, especially for the $50 price tag, and they offered some caveats of their own about possibly bumps on the upgrade path. "It is very simple: If you are upgrading from Windows 95/98/98SE, don't," counseled Charles Walton, a computer technician and desktop-support specialist in Nashville, Tenn. "If you really want to use Windows Me, do a clean install. Other than some better performance, the nicer look, and the better help, I'm just not real impressed. ... Sorry, MS, but you guys fell flat with this one." "I had to remove Windows Me and put 98SE back on my machine," lamented Ohio "Internet wizard" Henry Shilling. "This thing is just plain bad!" Cincinnati, Ohio, programmer/analyst Roger Plowman offered another disincentive to upgrading: "Anyone reading ZDNet for a while knows I'm an ardent Microsoft fan. But when it comes to Windows Me, my advice is -- don't." 22 September: Microsoft's name game
One of the greatest contributions of Microsoft to the history of computing is the naming of Windows 4.0, aka Windows 95. I would say it's the smartest marketing decision of a computer company. Tying the name of the software program to the year it was developed gives the consumers the urge to get a more recent version of the software. If you ask someone with no computer knowledge if you should buy Windows 95 or Windows 2000 what do you think you would get as an answer? Microsoft's .net naming strategy is as smart as the one I just described. In short, the main purpose of all the technology Microsoft is set to release in the next two years is to take advantage of the Internet (while keeping MS the richest company in the world). Every single domain of Microsoft is going to change to .net -- www.msn.net, www.hotmail.net, www.visualstudio.net, www.office.net, etc... -- and they will not be just sites. They will have the best of a computer program with the best of a site. And I bet we'll se a lot of companies following the trail and starting .net sites. 22 September: Windows for Warfare
More details have emerged of the Win2k-running US Navy aircraft carrier we reported as being planned back in July. According to Government Computer News the CVN 77 will commence construction in February next year, and will be commissioned, running 'Son of Windows,' in 2008. Roll that seven year period back instead of forward, and it'd be reasonable for you to wonder how on earth the Navy knows what it's buying into. 20 September: Commentary: Windows Me isn't MS' shining hour
Like so many other suckers, I purchased Windows Millennium Edition last week and spent the weekend installing it. I can save you reading the rest of this column by offering a single word of advice: Don't. If that sounds severe, then I will offer a question to ask yourself: Why? As in, "Why waste your money?" But before you take my advice, read the product box and look at the reasons Microsoft says you should upgrade. The Windows Me package doesn't make a good case for upgrading. It highlights Windows Media Player (available for free downloading), a program called Movie Maker that's so important it gets installed in the Accessories folder, and a new restore capability intended to reset a crashed computer back to the last time it actually worked. What does this say about Microsoft's confidence in this new release? 20 September: How the trial schedule is influencing MS' roadmaps
It's tricky to work out Microsoft's product strategy for dealing with possible judicial break up, particularly as the company claims it doesn't have one. But a close study of Bill Gates' speeches and TV appearance in Australia last week, supplemented by some other sources and some guess work gives us some clues. It is clear enough that Microsoft wants a strategy that will make break-up as difficult as possible, but nevertheless, it has a plan, of sorts. 19 September: New Office sercurity problem - Microsoft is "skeptical"
Microsoft is downplaying a report of a security vulnerability in Microsoft Office documents that could theoretically be used by a malicious programmer to gain control of a target computer. In an advisory, Bulgarian security consultant Georgi Guninski yesterday said he identified a vulnerability in which double-clicking on Microsoft Office documents from Windows Explorer or launching a document from the "Start/Run" menu may allow an unauthorized person to take control of a computer. The exploit works in conjunction with certain dynamic link library (DLL) files. Microsoft said it has investigated Guninski's report and confirmed the exploit. But the company said it is not a serious vulnerability because "there isn't a compelling exploit scenario." 19 September: Microsoft nemesis Joel Klein to depart post
Joel Klein, who as the federal government's lead antitrust enforcer led the case against Microsoft, said Tuesday that he plans to leave his post at the end of the month. Klein disclosed his intention to leave in a Department of Justice statement. He gave no information on his future plans. 19 September: Windows Outstuffs Linux in Poll
Who's the better ballot-stuffer, penguin heads or Windows freaks? That may have been a better question than the one MSNBC posted over the weekend, asking its readers to rate the "Best Operating System." Linux users are accusing the Microsoft-affiliated news site of tampering with the results of an online poll. They believe that the numbers were altered to ensure that a Microsoft-made system was chosen as the winner. 15 September: MSN Overcharges Customers
At least 1,000 MSN Internet-service subscribers awoke Friday morning to a nasty little surprise: an unauthorized charge on their credit cards ranging from $504 to more than $1,000, courtesy of MSN. By late Friday, an initially befuddled MSN customer service team had fielded more than a thousand calls from customers demanding an explanation for the spurious charges. By early Saturdayafternoon, MSN said it had discovered the source of the problem -- a glitch in its new billing system software. 14 September: Windows Me shuts out some third-party applications
Because of changes designed to solidify Windows Me's reliability, the new operating system is incompatible with a variety of third-party applications, Microsoft has confirmed. These changes essentially break a slew of applications from companies including McAfee.com, Symantec, Adaptec and Quarterdeck, Microsoft has confirmed. 14 September: Microsoft loses another key executive
After a short hiatus Microsoft's exec-related butterfingers syndrome has re-emerged. Paul Maritz, VP of platform strategy and the developer group, has decided to leave the company in order to spend more time with his farm. The news is particularly bizarre, because although in July of last year it did seem like people were plotting against Paul at MS and he was on his way out, in March of this year Maritz took charge of the merged platform and developer operations, making him lead member for .NET and a notch above platforms man Jim Allchin. 14 September: Windows 98 all over again?
Windows Me brings with it a distinct sense of déjà vu. Although the new OS will tout improved video playback and other features, analysts say consumers shouldn't expect any eye-popping changes. The new OS is largely an extension of Windows 98, which Microsoft chairman Bill Gates initially promised would be the last operating system based on DOS, the OS that forms the bedrock of the Redmond, Wash., empire. That promise was not kept. 13 September: First Windows Me security leak found one day before official release
Microsoft's brand-new operating system, Windows ME already has one confirmed security bug. The vulnerability allows malicious users to remotely shut down or force a reboot if the computer is running the WebTV for Windows application. Andrew Griffiths of Australia detailed the vulnerability in a posting at Bugtraq, a bug reporting service of Security Focus. 13 September: Microsoft quietly shadows Web surfers across MSN sites
A complaint that Microsoft was tracking Web surfers across its multiple properties raised the privacy bugaboo of the moment: the ability of companies to uniquely identify people as they traverse domains. Microsoft said today that it does not disclose how it identifies people who travel across its network of Web sites. In response to an advisory posted by PCHelp, a Washington state Internet technology consultancy, Microsoft said it redirects its various Web properties' visitors to a single server that assigns them a unique identifier. That identifier, an "MSID," lets Microsoft chart a single person's visits and activities over the company's Web sites, which include MSN.com and dozens of affiliated sites like Hotmail, CarPoint, Expedia, bCentral and LinkExchange. 11 September: IE feature can track Web surfers without warning
People surfing the Web incognito may want to think twice before using Internet Explorer. Microsoft today said it is investigating a possible privacy loophole in its Internet Explorer browser that could thwart efforts by people who want to surf the Web anonymously. The feature in IE 5 and above, referred to by Microsoft as "persistence," is designed to let Web pages remember information, such as search queries, entered by visitors. 6 September: IE security bug leaves files vulnerable
Microsoft is investigating a security vulnerability in its Internet Explorer browser that could give attackers free rein in reading known files on targeted computers. The bug is the latest in a long history of vulnerabilities involving the use of Web scripting languages to circumvent browsers' security restrictions. One of the most widely used of these scripting languages, which let Web sites execute one or more actions on visitors' computers, is JavaScript. Normally, a Web site can point to a local file on a visitor's computer and call that file up in a browser window. Under IE's security restrictions, only the visitor should be able to read it. But in a scripting sleight of hand demonstrated by Bulgarian bug hunter Georgi Guninski, IE 5.5 lets the Web server inject a JavaScript address into the window displaying that local file--and through that scripting code read targeted files and relay them back to the Web server. 1 September: Microsoft Hit for Unfair Practice
A federal judge has ordered Microsoft to pay $1 million in punitive damages to Bristol Technology for deceiving the small company during a dispute over a license to the Windows NT operating system. "The deceptive conduct engaged in by Microsoft clearly rises to the level of reckless and wanton indifference to the harm it caused Bristol and others, including independent software vendors," U.S. District Court Judge Janet C. Hall wrote in her 103-page decision. But the judge said a $1 million penalty against a company like Microsoft, which had $14.5 billion in revenue last year, probably was not sufficient to fully deter it from similar conduct in the future. Microsoft officials said they planned to appeal Hall's ruling.
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