Microsoft Support & Discussions

Microsoft Corporate Vice President Gurdeep Singh Pall is no longer working on Skype strategy. He is now involved with Microsoft’s Information Platform team and Bing — an interesting combo. Source: All About Microsoft

By Paul Thurrott Activision’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 arrives as the most eagerly-anticipated video game of all time. Fortunately, it’s also the high-water mark for the Call of Duty series, and the single best Xbox 360 title of 2011. Battlefield 3, you’ve met your match. Source: Win Super Site

Add Samsung to the list of companies that are planning to launch Windows 8 PCs and tablets in the second half of 2012. Source: All About Microsoft

By Paul Thurrott Barnes & Noble is asking the US Department of Justice to investigate Microsoft for antitrust violations, alleging that the software giant is unfairly threatening companies that license the Android mobile OS. The last major US retail bookseller, Barnes & Nobile uses Android in its popular Nook eReader and tablet devices. Source: Win Super Site

By Paul Thurrott This week on What The Tech: Andrew and Paul discuss Windows Phone, the Mango update, and Nokia. Why did Nokia release a Windows Phone without a front facing camera? Paul gives his thoughts on upcoming Windows Phone devices. What importance does screen size play in devices these days? Andrew and Paul run down their thoughts on the new Nook tablet compared to the Amazon Kindle. Andrew talks about who might be interested in acquiring Palm

Microsoft is poised to release to manufacturing Silverlight 5. There’s word from some of my contacts that this might be the last major release of Silverlight, but Microsoft isn’t confirming or denying. Source: All About Microsoft

Microsoft is adding spellchecking to all variants of its Internet Explorer (IE) 10 browser, rectifying a missing feature in IE 9. Source: All About Microsoft

Severity Rating: Critical Revision Note: V1.0 (November 8, 2011): Bulletin published. Summary: This security update resolves a privately reported vulnerability in Microsoft Windows. The vulnerability could allow remote code execution if an attacker sends a continuous flow of specially crafted UDP packets to a closed port on a target system. Read Bulletin

Severity Rating: Moderate Revision Note: V1.0 (November 8, 2011): Bulletin published. Summary: This security update resolves a privately reported vulnerability in Microsoft Windows. The vulnerability could allow denial of service if a user opens a specially crafted TrueType font file as an e-mail attachment or navigates to a network share or WebDAV location containing a specially crafted TrueType font file. For an attack to be successful, a user must visit the untrusted remote file system location or WebDAV share containing the specially crafted TrueType font file, or open the file as an e-mail attachment. In all cases, however, an attacker would have no way to force us…

Severity Rating: Important Revision Note: V1.0 (November 8, 2011): Bulletin published. Summary: This security update resolves a privately reported vulnerability in Microsoft Windows. The vulnerability could allow remote code execution if a user opens a legitimate file (such as an .eml or .wcinv file) that is located in the same network directory as a specially crafted dynamic link library (DLL) file. Then, while opening the legitimate file, Windows Mail or Windows Meeting Space could attempt to load the DLL file and execute any code it contained. For an attack to be successful, a user must visit an untrusted remote file system location or WebDAV share and open a legitim…

Severity Rating: Important Revision Note: V1.0 (November 8, 2011): Bulletin published. Summary: This security update resolves a privately reported vulnerability in Active Directory, Active Directory Application Mode (ADAM), and Active Directory Lightweight Directory Service (AD LDS). The vulnerability could allow elevation of privilege if Active Directory is configured to use LDAP over SSL (LDAPS) and an attacker acquires a revoked certificate that is associated with a valid domain account and then uses that revoked certificate to authenticate to the Active Directory domain. By default, Active Directory is not configured to use LDAP over SSL. Read Bulletin

By Paul Thurrott At midnight last night, standing in line at the local Best Buy with hundreds of fellow "Call of Duty" fans and my son, I wondered, briefly, why people do such things. And then I got home and spent the next several hours playing the latest Modern Warfare title into the wee hours of the morning. This is a special game, and while I’ll need more time before I can formulate a full review, here are some screenshots to get you excited. I know I am. See you online! Source: Win Super Site

By Paul Thurrott Reuters reported this week that Hewlett-Packard is looking to sell webOS, a technology that the firm once viewed as its future in the personal computing space. HP purchased webOS maker Palm in 2010 for a whopping $1.2 billion, but it’s likely that it would get less than half that for the company’s assets now. Source: Win Super Site

By Paul Thurrott Paul Thurrott demonstrates Windows 8 on the tablet in this edition of Windows IT Pro Insider. Along with Sean Deuby, Michael Otey, and Jeff James, Paul walks through the touch-screen interface and the start menu. Source: Win Super Site

Typing quickly and accurately is a critical part of the user experience for any piece of software. When using a device without a physical keyboard, providing a great text input experience is even more important. Windows 8 provides several capabilities to make text input great on any device, and spellchecking is one of them. Spellchecking in Windows 8 allows customers to identify misspelled words while they are entering text, have commonly misspelled words fixed automatically, and take corrective action on others. In Windows 8, spellchecking support is available to applications across the entire operating system, including IE10. Of course, s…

Microsoft and Joyent have hit the ‘first stable build’ milestone of their native Windows port of Node.js. Meanwhile, Microsoft is adding Python language support to its Kinect development kit. Source: All About Microsoft

By Paul Thurrott For US-based consumers, Windows Phone Take 2 starts now, with a new lineup of handsets based on Windows Phone 7.5, the second-generation version of Microsoft’s new smartphone software. Source: Win Super Site

By Paul Thurrott It’s too late to help the millions of consumers who bought the first iPhone 4, but Apple has apparently fixed its balky antenna design with the second generation iPhone 4S. That’s according to the trusted consumer advocated at Consumer Reports, who previously and famously refused to recommend the original iPhone 4, as well as the slightly redesigned Verizon version, because the antenna was so poorly designed. Source: Win Super Site

By Paul Thurrott This week, Microsoft issued a workaround for a virulent new Trojan attack called Duqu. Source: Win Super Site