The Imperishable Evolution

This is priceless

George Kurtz on the “Aurora” Exploit In Google Attack Now Public:

As reported on Thursday by McAfee and confirmed by Microsoft, the security vulnerability affects Internet Explorer on all recent versions of Windows. An attacker could gain complete control over a vulnerable system by tricking a user to visit a rigged Web page. New versions of Windows make this exploitation harder, but not impossible.

Waw, this is pretty insane...

Microsoft on Google's Chrome Frame:

“With Internet Explorer 8, we made significant advancements and updates to make the browser safer for our customers. Given the security issues with plug-ins in general and Google Chrome in particular, Google Chrome Frame running as a plug-in has doubled the attach area for malware and malicious scripts. This is not a risk we would recommend our friends and families take. 

This is  cheeky.

Prince McLean on Zune HD:

OLED

Today's OLED panels are much dimmer than standard issue LCDs: a typical maximum output of 200cd/m^2 compared to around 4-500 for mid-range LCDs. [...] Microsoft knows this, which is why it only demonstrates the Zune HD in dark rooms. [...] There are other problems with OLED. They don't last long, because the electroluminescence layer degrades far more rapidly than regular LCDs. Component colors within OLED also die at different times, with the blue pixels fading first.

[...]

Unless you will exclusively be using your Zune HD to watch gothic movies in the dark, the screen will be gobbling up more power than an LCD. This is particularly the case if you want to browse the web, which involves a lot of white space. Showing a white background, OLED consumes as much as 300% of the power of an LCD.

Processor

Nvidia's "Tegra" uses a conventional ARM11 family CPU core (ARMv6), the same generation CPU core used by the original iPhone, the Zune, Nokia N95, and the HTC Hero. The Tegra's CPU/GPU package also uses DDR1 memory, introducing significant real world RAM bandwidth limits no matter how powerful the embedded GPU core is rated to be in theoretical terms. In contrast, the modern Cortex-A8 used in the iPhone 3GS, Palm Pre, Nokia N900, and Pandora game console represents the latest generation of ARM CPU cores. It also employs a DDR2 memory interface, erasing a serious performance bottleneck hobbling the Zune HD's Tegra.

[...]

Tegra is also being hyped as providing "8 processing cores," but this is nonsense as it simply counts logical blocks common to all embedded SoC parts as "cores." The CPU in the Tegra is a single ARM11 core. Even if the Tegra did supply multiple CPU cores, the Windows CE kernel used by the Zune HD doesn't support multi-core SMP so it couldn't make any use of them. 

"HD" Radio

HD Radio uses a proprietary audio codec called HDC, which like Microsoft's own WMA, is based on but not compatible with MPEG-4 standards. It should be no wonder why Microsoft is jumping on board to promote this proprietary standard. Major corporate broadcasters, including ClearChannel, support HD Radio because it allows them to deliver more content using subchannels squeezed into the existing radio spectrum. [...] That's also why Microsoft is restricting sales to the US; who outside the US would buy a media player with HD Radio features that aren't even available outside of the US, and which isn't compatible with the digital radio standards that are available locally?

Software

What's "new" in the release of the Zune HD is a different version of the mobile IE browser, based not upon the creaky IE 4 engine from 1997, but a mobile version of IE 6, which dates back to 2001. That leaves the Zune HD's browser nearly a decade behind the modern WebKit browsers used in the iPhone, Palm Pre, Android, and modern BlackBerry phones.

Sharon Pian Chan on Microsoft interns still feel the love:

On the same day that Microsoft Corp. reported some of its worst financial results ever earlier this summer, a dozen buses left the company's headquarters campus. [...] Microsoft had rented the museum for a private party and a screening of the most recent " Harry Potter" movie. After the film, the roughly 600 attendees received a free Xbox 360 video-game console. The recipients of the VIP treatment? Microsoft's summer interns.

Waw... Really cool and funny ad from Microsoft.