Microsoft plans to bundle a cryptographically flawed pseudo random number generator in its upcoming service pack for Windows Vista. Cryptographers have expressed concern about a possible backdoor in a standard for random number generators approved by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) this year.
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Some users have gotten the massive Office 2007 SP1 update automatically, even though Microsoft Corp. said it would not use Windows Automatic Updates (AU) to push out the large upgrade for several months, the company confirmed today. Anyone running a preview copy of Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1), which was made available to all comers only yesterday, will receive the Office 2007 upgrade automatically. Users of other in-beta Microsoft products, including Windows XP SP3, which is still in limited testing, will also be hit by the Office update, which weighs in at almost 220MB.
Over the weekend my son Phil and I built a computer and a server for the test lab I use in my business (building computers is also a hobby we share). One of the machines was a Vista box, the other was a server which I’m testing the Windows Server 2008 RC-1 Hyper-V software that came out last Thursday. I’m sure I’ll be writing about the Hyper-V RC-1 software in several upcoming blog posts.
The year 2007 was good for technology fans. Whether you were largely desktop bound or constantly on the go, this year’s technology products went some way towards making your life easier, more fun or more productive. But a few stood out - not necessarily because they broke new ground but because it was clear that their influence would be felt well into the future. Whether you own one of these products or not, it’s likely that their presence will have an impact on how you work or play in the year to come.
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