Windows News

By Bob Esch, The DataBus Editor Emeritus

“Microsoft Gets It Right”, says Steve Bass’s Home Office newsletter ( http://www.pcworld.com ).

In his “Home Office” newsletter, Steve Bass says “Microsoft's Error Reporting feature in Windows XP and Office XP is apparently doing some good. The company decided not to release Office 2003 because of the feedback it's received.”

He cites two stories to look at:

"Microsoft Delays Office 2003 Launch"
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,110437,tk,sbx,00.asp

"Extended Beta May Stabilize Office 2003"
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,110465,tk,sbx,00.asp

Carl Siechert, coauthor of "Microsoft Windows XP Inside Out," told Bass that Microsoft pays attention to the data it receives through the error-reporting utility. Bass reports, “From the response to the Office beta, I tend to agree. Take a look at the tool: In XP's Control Panel, choose System, select the Advanced tab, click Error Reporting, and make a decision how--or if--you want error reports to go to Microsoft.”

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Internet Connection Firewall and Windows’ Basic Firewall Do Not Block Internet Protocol Version 6 Traffic

In [05.20.2003 GnomeREPORT], Lockergnome’s Windows Daily newsletter asks:

“Does the Windows firewall protect you from all incoming traffic? Not if it's IPv6!

“While it's not much of a threat today, I can easily see it turning into one tomorrow. Microsoft’s  solution: ‘To work around this behavior, obtain firewall software that can filter and block IPv6 traffic.’

“How come nobody warned me about this? Why isn't the tech press all over this serious oversight?! And, most importantly, when (if ever) will a patch be issued to bring the software up-to-date?”

Full details at http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;Q306203

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(Additional background information on IPv6 from Microsoft's Web site)

“While the Internet continues its unprecedented exponential growth, the recent broad adoption of always-on technologies such as Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) and cable modems, coupled with the pending integration of personal data assistants (PDAs) and cellular phones into always-addressable Mobile Information Appliances, significantly elevates the urgency to expand the address space that Internet-connected systems use to communicate. The address space currently used is defined as part of the Internet Protocol, or IP (the network layer of the TCP/IP protocol suite). The version of IP commonly used today is Version 4 (IPv4), which has not been substantially changed since RFC 791 was published in 1981. Over that time, IPv4 has proven to be robust, easily implemented and interoperable, and has stood the test of scaling an internetwork (a network of networks) to a global utility the size of today's Internet. While this is a tribute to its initial design, moving forward to an even grander scale requires laying a new foundation.

“IPv6 will continue the tradition of the IPv4 protocol, which gained much of its acceptance by defining mechanisms to tie systems together over a wide variety of disparate networking technologies. Already defined link-layer mappings for transporting IPv6 include Ethernet, Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP), Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI), Token Ring, Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM), Frame Relay, IEEE 1394, and IPv4. From the architectural perspective, an IPv4-based infrastructure appears to IPv6-enabled systems as a single segment non-broadcast multi-access (NBMA) network. The capability to send IPv6 traffic over existing IPv4 networks will provide an initial reach as broad as the current Internet, limited only by the endpoints' ability and readiness to make use of it.”