Microsoft is finally ready to enter the high-performance computing market, a technology dominated by open-source Linux technology. The Redmond software maker released Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 to manufacturing on June 9, with general availability of the product scheduled for August. It will be sold via volume licensing and OEM licensing for an estimated price of $469 a node, but prices will vary depending on the license and volume. Evaluation copies of Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003, a 64-bit operating system for industry-standard x64 processors, will be handed out to attendees of Microsoft’s TechEd 2006 conference in Boston the week of June 12.

If you take your Net safety seriously, you will probably have antivirus and a firewall and perhaps even an anti-spam program to stop the malicious software and messages getting at your home PC. On your browser you may have a pop-up blocker that stops the irritating adverts imposing themselves between you and what you want to look at. But this does not cover all the possible ways that the bad guys are trying to catch you out. Increasingly the makers of adware, spyware and viruses are using ordinary-looking Web sites as launch pads for their malicious creations that try to compromise your Windows computer when you visit.

Microsoft will not fix a serious flaw in Windows 98 and Windows Millennium Edition because a patch could break other applications. The security bug relates to Windows Explorer and could let an intruder commandeer a vulnerable PC, Microsoft warned in April. The software maker has made fixes available for Windows Server 2003, Windows XP and Windows 2000, but it has found that eliminating the vulnerability in Windows 98 and ME is "not feasible," it said.

The majority of spam servers are physically located in Taiwan, according to CipherTrust. In research conducted in May, the email security company found that 64 percent of machines sending out junk mail were in that country. Next was the United States with 23 percent and third China, with 3 percent. CipherTrust also determined that unwanted email traffic went up as much as 20 percent worldwide in May.

Only two and a half months after the prototype presentation at CeBIT, Cycos has introduced the first component of the Unified Communications Suite for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0. The CTI-Function (Computer Telephony Integration) from mrs (message routing system) for Microsoft CRM expands the Microsoft Program with extensive inbound and outbound telephony, comprising the automatic immediate display of customer data with detailed call information, and the activation of CRM Workflows and campaign management at incoming calls. The solution is available immediately, with the complete product suite coming out later. Additionally, an upgrade is possible. One feature of the CTI-Component from mrs for Microsoft CRM is the automatic caller identification and retrieval of customer data, all with the click of a mouse.

We’re often quite annoyed by Google, even though we also work with them from time-to-time. But there are issues that go beyond Google and Amazon and eBay and ZATZ. One is the so-called net-neutrality thing, which the oh-so-annoying U.S. Congress has just shat upon. Bottom line: a law designed to prevent ISPs from filtering your access to the Web didn’t make it. For example, Big Company A could pay Big ISP B to muck with how you access your favorite search engine. So, for example, each time you tried to go to Search Engine C, ISP B could choose to take you to Search Engine A instead. Or, each time you chose to access a ZATZ page talking about your legal rights, the ISP could legally take you to a page with just the opposite perspective. They could slow down access to sites who don’t pay to allow traffic through to their sites, and worse. Google, who’s anything but perfect, has written an interesting letter, which we recommend you read.

Microsoft and Mozilla have acknowledged that a security hole in their Web browsers could let an intruder nab files, but say it is tough to exploit and so not that high a risk. Internet Explorer and Firefox, as well as other Mozilla browsers, are flawed in the way they handle JavaScript, security experts warned this week. An attacker could use the problem to launch surreptitious file uploads, jeopardizing people’s personal data, they said. But exploiting the flaw requires so much user interaction that Microsoft and Mozilla don’t think it poses much of a danger.

Malicious hackers are actively exploiting a flaw patched by Microsoft in its April batch of bulletins to hijack computers for use in botnets, according to a warning from malware hunters. Researchers at Exploit Prevention Labs, an Atlanta-based Internet security outfit, said several bot-seeding scripts are targeting the MDAC (Microsoft Data Access Components) flaw covered in the software maker’s MS06-014 bulletin.

Stolen personal data for 26.5 million veterans and military personnel may have been erased by teenagers who sold the computer equipment, Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson said Thursday. He explained that the burglary occurred in an Aspen Hill, Md., neighborhood in which there had been a pattern of thefts by young burglars who took computer equipment, wiped them clean of the data and then sold them on college campus or high schools. "We remain hopeful this was a common random theft and that no use will be made of this data," Nicholson said. "However, certainly we cannot count on that."

The top U.S. veterans affairs official said on Thursday he could not be certain a recent computer theft did not include more private data on military personnel than had been reported so far. What began two weeks ago with the reported theft of computer equipment containing the names, Social Security numbers and birth dates of 26.5 million U.S. veterans, widened on Tuesday after the Veterans Affairs Department said the theft included confidential data on 2.2 million active-duty, National Guard and Reserve troops. The reason for the uncertainty was that one of 17 disks a department employee had in his home was apparently unreadable and officials could not be certain that data from it were not downloaded on the computer and external hard drive later stolen from his home.