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Microsoft to make changes to Internet Explorer?

After losing a ludicrous law suit, Microsoft have told the W3C that they're going to make some changes to Internet Explorer.

 

"In the near term, Microsoft has indicated to W3C that they will very soon be making changes to its Internet Explorer browser software in response to this ruling," a statement issued by Steven R Bratt, W3C's chief operating officer, said.

"These changes may affect a large number of existing Web pages," the statement continued. "W3C does not yet have any indication of what action, if any, other vendors of Web tools might take."

The Register reports, "According to W3C, members of the consortium met in California on 19 August to discuss the consequences of the ruling, which effectively said that Microsoft had used Eolas-patented technology such as plug-ins, applets and scriptlets in Internet Explorer.

Were the offending portions of the software to be removed, it would significantly alter the way IE works and countless Web sites would be forced to change their own to accommodate changes in IE."

(Regular readers will know that we are never slow to point the finger of blame at Microsoft for the latest virus attacks, for example - but in this case, MS are completely the innocent party. A judge upheld a ridiculous patent claim - almost as stupid as when British Telecom tried to claim ownership of Hyperlinks.)

 

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Brad Halstead joins DMXzone

We’re delighted to welcome Brad Halstead as a Premium Tutorial author today. Brad is considered by New Riders publishing to be their stellar technical editor on matters Dreamweaver, and has also co-written “Inside Dreamweaver MX”, “Dreamweaver MX Magic”, and “Dreamweaver MX Templates” (with Murray Summers, with whom he maintains the web site http://www.dreamweavermx-templates.com/)

Brad will be writing on Dreamweaver Templates every second Tuesday. The tutorial plan (which is subject to change after feedback) is:

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Interview with Ian Lloyd of Accessify.com

Ian Lloyd of Accessify.com is interviewed by Dave Shea on mezzoblue. Worth a read. And for those who think that real companies can't waste time worrying about Web Accessibility, Ian works for a high-street bank; you can't get more conservative than those. Read More

New MSBlaster worms released

In cheerful Friday news, it's been announced that new versions of the MSBlast virus have been released. Kaspersky labs said "Kaspersky Labs' experts anticipate that in the short run a repeated outbreak of the global scale may occur. This is because the two versions of "Lovesan" exploit the same vulnerability in Windows and may co-exist on the same computer. "In other words, all computers infected by the original "Lovesan" will soon be attacked by its revamped versio," commented Eugene Kaspersky, Head of Anti-Virus Research for Kaspersky Labs, "Taking into consideration that the amount of infected systems is now reaching 300,000 the return of the worm will imply a doubling of this number and lead to unpredictable results." In the worst case scenario the world community might face a global Internet slow-down and regional disruption of access to the World Wide Web: just as it happened in January 2003 due to the "Slammer" worm." Read More

Internet Infection Spreading Rapidly

CNN.com: A virus-like infection that was the subject of urgent U.S. government and industry warnings spread rapidly Monday across the Internet, causing computers to mysteriously restart and coordinating an electronic attack against Microsoft Corp.

Infected computers were programmed to automatically launch an attack on a Web site operated by Microsoft on Saturday. The site, windowsupdate.com, is used to deliver repairing software patches to Microsoft customers to prevent against these types of infections.

Read more at CNN.com. Read the DMXzone hack report.

07.55 GMT August 12 ZDnet reports: "The fast-spreading MSBlast worm seems to be crashing as many Windows computers as it's infecting, demonstrating to administrators that they need to patch their systems, security experts said on Monday. By midafternoon on Monday, the worm had infected at least 7,000 computers in a matter of hours, according to data provided by security company Symantec. Still, security experts stressed that the program had several flaws that had slowed its spread."

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10% of U.S. High-tech jobs to be out-sourced to 3rd world.

The Taipei Times says that US high-tech firms will outsource one out of 10 jobs to low-cost emerging markets by the end of next year, according to a report Tuesday by a market research firm.

In related news, writing Shakespeare plays has been out-sourced to a team of virtual monkeys.

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MX Widgets, NeXTensio2 launched by InterAKT

MX Widgets Suite (PHP) is a collection of server behaviors for Macromedia Dreamweaver MX, designed to help developers create complex HTML controls similar to the Access ones.

NeXTensio 2 was designed to help developers build administration sections for their database-driven websites. The main product feature is the generation of record lists and forms, allowing programmers to edit database content with ease.

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Web Accessibility Resources and Forums

Accessify.com, maintained as a labour of love by Web Standards Project member, Ian Lloyd, has a new forum for discussing and learning how to make your websites accessible, www.accessifyForum.com. Read More

The Big Hack hasn't happened..........yet

Update Aug 5 at 3pm: Reports of Linux hacking..

This weekend saw some interesting activity, however. Microsoft.com was down on Friday 1^st August, but repaired again. A spokesperson for Microsoft said:

“This attack does not have any association with any known vulnerability in Microsoft software. Microsoft has contacted the appropriate authorities, is cooperating in the investigation of the cause of this attack, and will take appropriate action. We regret any inconvenience this has caused to visitors to the Microsoft.com Web site.”

It’s an important distinction to note; the news has been full of critical microsoft Windows flaws that could allow a malicious hacker to take control of a user’s computer. But this attack didn’t exploit those flaws; it was a simple ‘nuclear’ attack by lots of hostile machines all attempting to access the site at once, locking out genuine attempts to request pages.

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