Robby Pedrica's Tech Blog

Tag: Microsoft

  • The new Browser Ballot Screen for EU Windows

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    This is the latest iteration of the browser for any Windows PCs sold into the EU in the next 5 years.

  • Patents – Eolas strikes again

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    Microsoft fought a patent battle with Eolas for many years, with a number of twists and turns that made Days of our Lives look like a beginner soapy. Eolas originally sued Microsoft for infringement based on their patent ‘906 in 1998, which describes a method for 3rd party browser plugins to run various forms of…

  • Windows and critical systems

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    I’ve blogged previously about using Windows in critical systems ( Win2k in French air-force fighters and British attack submarines ) and my disregard for this platform in these kinds of applications. Honestly, would you really want a Windows machine running your life-support system when in hospital? or the device that decides whether or not a…

  • Microsoft and its GPL Hyper-V drivers

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    Considering the lack of general attention this has received in the media, Nick asked me to blog on this topic and set a time-line. So here goes: Microsoft first announced they were releasing the Hyper-V drivers as GPL code on the 20th of July 2009. Note this is an announcement and not the actual release.…

  • The SMB2.0 zero-day vuln

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    The SMB 2.0 vulnerability that was found earlier this month, is set to be covered with a patch soon according to Microsoft. Next Patch-Tuesday is only on Oct 13 so one would hope that it comes before. Especially as there is exploit code out in the wild now, with Stephen Frewer of Harmony Security adding…

  • Microsoft, Word and the evil patent

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    Microsoft has been recently sued by i4i ( a Canadian developer of sgml software ) for patent infringement, specifically on a custom XML feature in Word. The damages so far amount to $290m which is a considerable amount. That though is not the big problem for Microsoft: the suit includes an injunction against Microsoft selling…

  • Windows botnets take down most of the major social web services

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    Twitter, Facebook, Livejournal and some other social web services were completely taken off the air this Thursday past by a massive DDoS attack aimed, wait for it, at one person – a pro-Georgian blogger called Cyxymu. This user is an activist blogger and someone doesn’t like him! So hoards of virus-infested Windows machines ( about…

  • Internet Explorer patch

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    This past Tuesday saw Microsoft release a patch targeting a number of vulnerabilities in its browser on Windows 2000 and XP platforms ( possible IE 5, 6 and 7 ). The bugs relate to how IE handles objects in memory and table operations, more specifically it could allow remote code execution. The vulnerabilities can be…

  • Microsoft, Hyper-V drivers for Linux and the GPL

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    Microsoft released some drivers for Linux running on Hyper-V this week, with a lot of bell ringing and fanfare. Most people don’t know that behind the scenes, a protracted battle has been fought due to the fact that Microsoft have had these drivers for some time but they weren’t GPL-compliant. Microsoft have now been forced…

  • Old Windows viruses just keep on coming

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    The 2nd week of this month saw a large number of DDoS attacks on prominent US and South Korean web sites. Many thousands of compromised Windows PCs were used through a botnet to perform these attacks with a subtle variation of the Mydoom virus/worm. Considering that Mydoom was released in Jan 2004, it’s surprising (…

  • Ubuntu the minor player?

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    Well that’s according to Dana Blankenhorn on ZDnet … While Dana is not an anti-Linux person, his view is limited to presumably the closed US ecosystem. Meanwhile the rest of the world is speeding on and adopting FOSS at a rate of knots. Ubuntu itself ( and others ) is being used everywhere from education…

  • Mono where art thow?

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    The debate surrounding Mono, the ‘open source implementation of .Net’, has been going on for some years now. And a very roudy debate it has become lately. Some history first. Mono was originally conceived by Miguel de Icasa, now a Novell employee. Originally part of the Ximian project, it was later incorporated into Novell at…

  • Code/Software quality

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    Code quality and quality of software development/applications has always been a hot topic. The problem in the commercial world is that because code is closed source, you as a customer of a commercial software vendor, have no idea what the quality is of that application because you have no access to the code. Code could…

  • MS OFfice 2007 SP2 and ODF interoperability

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    I’ve waited a few days to blog on this particular issue so there would be time for those in the know to test how the new ODF format in Office 2007 SP2 works. Initial reports were that things were ( just ) ok but since then, it’s all gone downhill. One of the gurus in…

  • Linux hits 1% market share

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    This probably sounds like quite an anti-climax, but considering its 60% year on year growth, this is quite an achievement. And Windows has dropped 4% in the last year, which is a considerable dent in its market share. This together with the erosion of Internet Explorer’s browser market, indicates a general downturn for Microsoft. The…