After Conficker made itself at home, on several million machines, using the AutoRun feature, Microsoft will be changing the way AutoRun works under Windows 7.

Conficker.E, which made its way onto computers at the beginning of April, is expected to self-destruct on May 5. Meanwhile, Conficker.C continues to generate revenue by selling fake anti-virus software to victims.

Yet another version of Windows 7, this time build 7100, has been leaked to file-sharing sites. Build 7100 is thought to be the Release Candidate, which will be available to MSDN customers on April 30.

In another bow to the continued popularity of WinXP – Windows 7 is expected to include a Windows XP virutal machine.

BizTalk Server 2009 is now available for MSDN customers and will be released to the rest of the world on May 1. The new version of BizTalk Server works with Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 SP1, SQL Server 2008, and the .Net Framework 3.5 SP1.

Microsoft can’t seem to make up its mind about Windows 7 and netbooks, even announcing a Starter version specifically for the small computers. Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols of Computerworld decided to run some tests on his Dell Mini 9 to see how it worked.

While Chrysler and GM might be envious a drop of only 6%, for Microsoft, which hasn’t seen a drop in 23 years, it probably feels like an abyss has opened under them.

Ubuntu 9.04 – the release candidate – was posted April 16. The final code was promised, and posted, on April 23.

Windows 7 – the release candidate – may be available on May 5. Or it may not. However, no real change is expected between the beta, released in October, and the final version, expected sometime late this year. So why can’t Microsoft release software faster?

Our own Editor-in-Chief David Gewirtz will be talking about China (friend or foe?) today on WDEL 1150am at 5:35pm EST (it’ll be a short interview).

Also, if you haven’t caught David’s latest articles for CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360, here’s a list of his three most recent contributions: Thespies who wear sweatpants, Infrastructure or chotchkes?, and Is Chinafriend or foe?.

This edition of "Learning SQL" has been updated to include MySQL 6.0, Oracle 11g, and Microsoft’s SQL Server 2008. The author covers SQL fundamentals such as writing database applications, performing administrative tasks, and generating reports.