Microsoft News Tracker

GameDaily:

“Microsoft Game Studios has undergone a redeploying of resources in its Austin, Texas-based Digital Anvil studio and will centralize the studio’s resources in Redmond, Washington,” reads the official statement.

“We are working closely with current Digital Anvil employees to place each team member in a position on the Microsoft Game Studios team in Redmond if they so choose. This redeployment of resources will be finalized on January 31, 2006.”

Digital Anvil has been quiet for some time. The studio’s last game was released back in 2003—the PC title turned Xbox exclusive Brute Force.

Digital Anvil was founded by Chris Roberts of Wing Commander fame although he left the company shortly after it was acquired by Microsoft.

Nate Mook at BetaNews:

Internet Explorer is not having a good week. After the discovery of an unpatched flaw in the ubiquitous Web browser and code to exploit it prompted Microsoft to issue a public advisory, a new vulnerability has been found that puts users of Google Desktop at risk — even if they are running a fully patched system.

Uncovered by Israeli hacker Matan Gillon, the security hole involves a problem with the way IE imports cascading style sheets (CSS) from other Web sites, a technique referred to as cross site scripting (XSS). IE will import any type of file with a bracket, regardless of whether or not it’s valid CSS.

By combining the flaw with Google’s Desktop Search, a malicious Web site could read personal data off a visitor’s machine.
…
The vulnerability could extend beyond Google Desktop Search, however, to any service or application that relies on cross-domain security policies within Internet Explorer.

The exploit affects IE6 on Windows XP SP2 with all patches installed. Mozilla’s Firefox is not affected, nor is Opera, “because it doesn’t support the styleSheets collection,” said Gillon.

More by following the link

Vijay Bangaru has the story at the WinFS Team Blog:

MSDN subscribers can now download our Beta 1 Refresh release. This release contains the same functionality of our original Beta 1 release and runs on the final release of the .NET Framework 2.0.

Unsuprisingly, you have to delete prior betas of WinFS, VS 2005, and .NET 2.0. Details by following the link.

Ina Fried at CNET:

Microsoft is changing the way its Web browser handles certain controls in an effort to shield itself from liability in an ongoing patent spat with a start-up backed by the University of California.

The software giant is notifying Web developers and other partners on Friday that it is changing the way Internet Explorer handles certain Web programs, known as ActiveX controls and Java applets.

With the change, Web developers will need to slightly modify their pages or consumers will have to make an extra click to get to some content, such as for a Macromedia Flash-based advertisement.

“We think that the user experience impact is relatively modest,” said Michael Wallent, a general manager in Microsoft’s Windows-client unit.

Microsoft will incorporate the new version of Internet Explorer into all new copies of Windows and also into the next version of the browser, IE 7, which will be available for Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and as part of Windows Vista. Existing users may also get the new code as part of future security updates, Wallent said.

This pertains to the the Eolas lawsuit which is further described in the article and has been mentioned here previously.

Update (12/3): Ryan Naraine has more at eWeek including a link to this MSDN description of the changes.

Update (12/5): Tom Krazit at InfoWorld:

Starting in January, Microsoft will distribute new code as part of the regular updates and bug fixes familiar to IE users that will change the way IE works with sites using ActiveX controls, said Jack Evans, a Microsoft spokesman.

Jason Matusow, the Director of Microsoft’s Shared Source program, reveals on his weblog that he is moving on to new role as a Director in the Corporate Standards Strategy Team. Bill Hilf, the Director of Platform Technology Strategy (see this Q&A), will be taking over the Shared Source program.