Tuesday, May 11, 2004 - Posts
Check it and patch soon...
from MS site: Vulnerability in Help and Support Center Could Allow Remote Code Execution (840374):
Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 841996 documents a known issue that customers may experience when they install this security update on a system where the Help and Support Center service is disabled. For the installation of this security update to be successful, the Help and Support Center service cannot be disabled. The article also documents recommended solutions for this issue. For more information, see Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 841996.
Affected Software:
The previous versions of Longhorn seems to be slow, maybe not too much optimized.
Here you can find an interesting Longhorn Optimization Guide... check it!!
Yesterday was out a news about the possibility to install Windows XP SP2 also on illegal Windows copies. This was false...
On a news appeared today on BetaNews, Microsoft now claims that it will not permit users who have obtained Windows XP illegally to upgrade to its latest service release.
This is the same thing as XP SP1: Prior to installing, SP2 will check the OS' product ID (PID) against a list of known pirated PIDs. If a PID is found to be invalid, SP2 will not install.
I'm not totally agree with this choice... unpatched machines where illegal Windows copies run are a possible danger for all. I think that patches must be available for the security of all the communities. Obviously, this is only my personal opinion.
Seems that after the arrest of the Sasser worm's author, another variant has appeared on the Internet a few hours after he was detained (the Sasser.e variant). A new virus replication or only antivirus firms that didn't recognize it immediately?
However, the advice is always the same... patch!!!
Sasser (A-E) Worm Removal Tool (KB841720)
I'm really happy to see that the Beta 1 of Mono (the .NET Framework Open Source implementation) in the first few hours of its release it had tallied over 40,000 downloads. 
This is a great success for all the Mono Team (a big interest reveals that the products is great) and simultaneously for the Open Source Community and the Microsoft world, for the great possibility to have a cross platform development tool (a developer may use C#, Python or PHP as their language of choice and deploy on GNU/Linux or Window without issue).
Great! This "cross-platform nature" of Mono could be its key for a big success!