Added Content: Outlook 2003: Reverting back to /Being compatible with a previous version of Microsoft Office Outlook (Oct 31)
There could be all sorts of reasons why you want to revert back to an older version of Microsoft Office Outlook. One could be because your demo has expired. Also there could be all sorts of reasons why you need to be compatible with older versions of Microsoft Office Outlook like when your laptop holds a previous version of Outlook while your home computer holds Microsoft Office Outlook 2003.
Added Content: What is the Winmail.dat file? (Oct 31)
Since this question has come up quite a few times now I’ve added it to my FAQ.
View: What is the Winmail.dat file?
Windows SharePoint Services Template Package- Legal (Oct 31)
This product shows the great results you can get when you customize a Windows SharePoint Services-based Web site using Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003. This template contains the custom Theme used in creating this site, and detailed instructions and necessary files to allow you to reproduce the look on your own Windows SharePoint Services-based site. For more inspiration, information and tools to help you customize Windows SharePoint Services-based Web sites with FrontPage 2003, visit the Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003 Customization Kit at http://www.sharepointcustomization.com/
Download: Windows SharePoint Services Template Package- Legal
E-Mail Providers Devising Ways to Stop Spam (Oct 30)
Congress recently edged closer to passing the nation’s first law to curb e-mail spam, but those who work under the Internet’s hood are attacking the problem from another angle.
Rather than trying to flag and prohibit unsavory messages, as a Senate bill that passed last week would attempt, they are tinkering with the technical architecture of e-mail so that computers will be able to recognize good mail. Then, the theory goes, it is a relatively simple matter to block all other e-mail from getting through.
For the past nine months, several separate initiatives by technologists at e-mail and Internet provider companies have sought to crack the problem, but solutions have been elusive. A major hurdle is that spammers exploit the very attributes of e-mail that help make it popular: Anyone can send mail directly to anyone else and can do so anonymously if they choose. The result is that it can be difficult to sort good from bad. Not only can spammers devise fictitious Internet addresses to mask their locations, but increasingly they are forging the addresses of legitimate individuals and companies.
Microsoft Corp., America Online, Yahoo Inc. and EarthLink Inc. — the top Internet provider and e-mail account companies that joined together to work on the problem last spring — are close to an announcement on a “trusted sender” system. The approaches by the different groups vary, but they all hinge on retooling e-mail so that servers — the computers that power networks of other computers — can mark mail that is sent as trusted and identify those same characteristics when the e-mail is received.
View: E-Mail Providers Devising Ways to Stop Spam
Publishing a SharePoint Site Accessible to External Users (Oct 30)
Many organizations require an efficient way to share files, folders, and resources and easily collaborate on the same document with people outside of the network. Using the Windows SharePoint Services solution in Windows Small Business Server 2003, organizations can now easily collaborate with users outside of the local network to satisfy this business need.
This document does not include information about publishing a SharePoint site accessible to external users using Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server.
Download: Publishing a SharePoint Site Accessible to External Users (updated link to reflect the repost by Microsoft on November 3rd)
Copy shop worker loses position after posting Mac photo (Oct 30)
Michael Hanscom admits it probably wasn’t the best idea. He thought the photo on his personal blog of Apple computers being offloaded at a Microsoft loading dock might get a couple of smirks from friends. He never imagined it would cost him his job.
THAT’S PRECISELY what he says happened, though. Hanscom has found several minutes of Web fame this week as the latest example of how bloggers’ blend of personal and professional can backfire. Hanscom, who says he has kept an online journal since 1998, worked in Microsoft’s copy shop, taking printing and publishing orders from employees at the software giant’s headquarters in Redmond, Wash. (MSNBC is a Microsoft-NBC joint venture.)
On Monday, Hanscom’s manager called him in and showed him an Oct. 23 post that featured a photo of stacked boxes of Apple Macintosh G5 computers under the title, “Even Microsoft wants G5s,” noted he had seen them on the loading dock of the building where he worked and remarked that a couple had fallen off their palettes. The close-cropped photograph reveals little more than a delivery truck and the pile of computers on a loading dock. Though Microsoft remains a target of derision for many Mac users, the company remains a major producer of software for Apple systems.
But the entry still raised hackles with Microsoft security officials, he says, who told his manager they couldn’t ask him to remove the post but instead wanted him off Microsoft premises. “I was told they saw it as a security violation,” says Hanscom, a longtime Mac fan who says he was amused to see Microsoft getting the machines. “I think they might have seen it as derogatory.
echnically, Microsoft didn’t fire Hanscom. The 30-year-old has worked for a temp firm, Todays Staffing, since he moved to Seattle from Anchorage in the summer of 2001 — mostly on contracts for Xerox, which runs Microsoft’s copy service. The Microsoft gig was Hanscom’s second posting with Xerox and he says he saw no hints that anyone was unhappy with his work. “My manager had nothing but good things to say,” Hanscom recalls. Even after he had Hanscom escorted off campus, “he was hoping to help me find something else.”
Microsoft would not comment on Hanscom’s dismissal. Spokeswoman Stacy Drake McCredy said the company did not discuss personnel or security matters.
View full story: Copy shop worker loses position after posting Mac photo
View: http://www.michaelhanscom.com/eclecticism/2003/10/even_microsoft_.html
PDC Highlights Day Three (Oct 30)
PDC attendees talk about what areas they’d like to see Microsoft researching, and Rick Rashid shares his thoughts on the advances in traditional and non-traditional computer systems.
Download: PDC Highlights Day Three
PDC Highlights Day Two (Oct 30)
Eric Rudder talks about how developers can prepare for WinFX, and Gordon Mangione discusses important features in Yukon.
Download: PDC Highlights Day Two
CAN-SPAM Law Won’t, Critics Say (Oct 30)
Proposed new law is a start, but flawed, even advocates admit.
The first federal antispam law may be on its way to reality, but many antispam advocates say it won’t stem the flood into e-mail users’ in-boxes.
The Senate unanimously approved the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing (CAN-SPAM) Act last week. It requires e-mail users to opt out of unwanted commercial e-mail, instead of requiring e-mail senders to get permission before sending. That approach is backwards, say vendors of antispam technologies and at least one consumer advocacy group.
Only Partly There
The bill gives consumers little control over spam, says Ray Everett-Church, counsel for the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email (CAUCE). Everett-Church says he is encouraged that the bill includes an amendment requiring the Federal Trade Commission to consider a national do-not-spam e-mail registry, but it doesn’t require the FTC to actually implement such a list.
A 1991 law authorized the Federal Communications Commission to create a national do-not-call telemarketing registry, which took effect in early October–12 years later, Everett-Church notes. The FTC has expressed concerns about creating and maintaining a massive do-not-spam list, and CAN-SPAM’s opt-out approach basically lets spammers continue to e-mail until they’re told to stop, he adds.
“Until the FTC decides whether or not they care to create a do-not-e-mail list, [CAN-SPAM] creates essentially carte blanche permission for spammers to send unlimited quantities of e-mail to the consumer,” Everett-Church says. “I’m deeply concerned that we may never see a do-not-e-mail list, and until such a time as we do, we will see an unlimited right to see spam.”
View: CAN-SPAM Law Won’t, Critics Say
Patch day! (Oct 30)
Write it down in your Outlook Calendar and set a reminder for it as the new patch policy from Microsoft means that patches are released at the end of the month unless they are severe (then they are generally available within 24 hours).
This month there are updates for updates;
Microsoft Security Bulletin MS03-042: Buffer Overflow in Windows Troubleshooter ActiveX Control Could Allow Code Execution (826232)
Maximum Severity Rating: Critical
Recommendation: Customers should apply the patch immediately
Microsoft Security Bulletin MS03-043: Buffer Overrun in Messenger Service Could Allow Code Execution (828035)
Maximum Severity Rating: Critical
Recommendation: Customers should disable the Messenger Service immediately and evaluate their need to deploy the patch
Microsoft Security Bulletin MS03-045: Buffer Overrun in the ListBox and in the ComboBox Control Could Allow Code Execution (824141)
Maximum Severity Rating: Important
Recommendation: Customers should install this security patch at the earliest opportunity
PDC Highlights – Day One (Oct 29)
Check out some of the activities of the first day of the PDC. Attendees talk about what they are learning and excited about and Robert Hess interviews Jim Allchin about what he’s most excited about with Longhorn.
Should we make fun of the guy that thinks Yukon will be the one after Longhorn…???
Download: PDC Highlights – Day One
Messenger 6.1 Games Patch (Oct 29)
For the people addicted to the MSN6 games mess.be has developed some custom games and have updated their patch for the final release of MSN 6.1 (build 6.1.0155). Next to the default games from MSN you’ll have; Chess, Nine Men’s Morris, Reversi, Sea Battle, Yahtzee and Tetris as extra games available from the Launch Site button. You need to have your MSN6 closed before you apply the patch. Also the person you want to play with must have the patch applied.
Download: MSN Messenger 6.1 (English)
Download: MSN Messenger 6.1 (different language)
Download: Mess.be Games Patch v0.5
View: Mess.be games site
Developer claims rights breach in Office 2003 (Oct 29)
Freelance writer and software developer Eric Wilson has spent a decade supporting, writing about and developing Microsoft platforms. But last week he warned that buyers of Microsoft’s Office 2003, released last week, might be breaching his intellectual property rights.
Wilson, who writes regularly for Next, said technology in Office 2003 infringed patents he had applied for and, in an action reminiscent of the global recording and movie industries’ approach to piracy, said he would bypass Microsoft and instead pursue its customers for “additional royalties and special conditions”.
Microsoft Australia’s director of corporate and legal affairs, Chris Woodforde, said the software company was “very confident” no claim would succeed against Microsoft or its customers. He said that if Microsoft needed technology from a developer, they would buy it and not risk infringement.
“Eric’s a very respected developer and we’ve taken what he has to say very seriously,” Woodforde said.
“We’ve evaluated his claim and fully investigated and don’t agree with it.
“He has no issued patent and the reader view technology was available before he sought his patent.
“As a company that relies on intellectual property, we respect intellectual property rights . . . and if we thought there was going to be any liability to our customers we would do something about it. If this technology was available we would buy it.”
Full story: Developer claims rights breach in Office 2003
Happy Birthday! (Oct 28)
Bill Gates turned 48 today.
Sober worm causes headaches (Oct 28)
Virus firms warn of new email attachment-based malware.
A new virus threat called Sober could be causing a few headaches today, according to antivirus researchers.
The Sober worm, spotted in the last 12 hours, is a traditional attachment-based piece of malware that uses social engineering to trick people into activating its payload.
In contrast with the Flea virus discovered last week, which so far appears to have failed to bite, Sober hides its code in an HTML email. Microsoft Outlook users can activate the payload just by opening the email.
View article: Sober worm causes headaches
View: Info on Sober at Symantec
