WinInfo Short Takes: Week of April 19

Microsoft Won’t Cut as Many Longhorn Features as Reported
According to Microsoft sources, a “BusinessWeek” report that detailed cutbacks in the Longhorn feature set was a bit exaggerated. Although Microsoft will indeed cut features as the product gets closer to fruition, the company is now saying that none of the features the company demonstrated at Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC) 2003 in October will be cut, and that the three main pillars of the product–the Avalon presentation layer, the WinFS storage engine, and the Indigo collaboration components–will appear in the next major Windows release as planned.

Monti: EU Sought the Minimum Fine
Defending the European Union (EU) antitrust case against Microsoft this week, European Competition Commissioner Mario Monti described the $612 million fine levied against the software giant as “the minimum necessary to allow effective competition. As a percentage of turnover, the fine is far from being the highest imposed by the [European] Commission, although in absolute terms it is high simply because of the enormous turnover of Microsoft in the EU.” In other words, we went easy on you, Microsoft. That fact won’t prevent the company from launching an appeal, of course.

Microsoft Simplifies Protocol Licensing
In response to complaints from regulators at the US Department of Justice (DOJ), this week Microsoft eased the terms of the protocol licensing program that the company set up in the wake of its US antitrust settlement. The Microsoft Communications Protocol Program (MCPP) now covers additional Microsoft technologies for server-to-server communication and includes simplified technical documentation that competitors can use to create solutions that work well with Microsoft’s server products. Since January, three new licensees–GeoTrust, Sun Microsystems, and AOL Time Warner–have signed up for the program.

April Patch Day Overwhelms Microsoft Servers
Microsoft’s controversial April 2004 monthly security patch–in which the company fixed more than 20 security flaws, some of which were several months old–apparently caused quite a flutter among security-minded customers. Because of record demand, Microsoft Windows Update servers were almost overwhelmed for several hours Wednesday as almost four million simultaneous users caused the servers to reach a sustained download rate of more than 50GB a second. Microsoft says that the feeding frenzy lasted about 4 hours, which raises an interesting question. Perhaps the people who quietly receive Automatic Updates should get such security updates first–a day before Microsoft makes them available for manual download. That way, customers who take steps to automatically update their systems will be rewarded, and customers who make knee-jerk reactions to security alerts get what they deserve. I know that statement sounds harsh, but we need to start using our heads a bit more when it comes to security.

More: WinNT Magazine