framework

Microsoft is gearing up for another Patch Tuesday.

In its regular series of monthly security fixes, the company tomorrow is launching eight separate bulletins to patch 23 different holes in a small but key range of products. Marked as "critical," two of the bulletins are aimed at stopping hackers from remotely running code in Windows, Internet Explorer, .NET, and Silverlight.

Specifically, these two bulletins are deemed critical for the desktop versions of Windows and should be applied to Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7. Only one of the bulletins is tagged as critical for Windows Server 2003, … Read more

A recent Windows security update failed to install on my Windows 7 laptop. The Windows sign-off indicated the operating system was installing an update before shutting down, but the patch never installed.

The next time I started the machine, I clicked Start > Windows Update to determine which update was failing. The Windows Update warning message offered a link to "get help with the error," but the link led nowhere useful.

I found the remedy described by Microsoft Support's Srinivas R on the Microsoft Answers site: click Start > Control Panel > Programs and Features, select Microsoft .… Read more

Microsoft said on Friday that it plans next month to end support for a test version of its Live Framework, which was essentially the developer side of its Live Mesh service.

The idea of Live Framework is to give developers of Web-based applications the ability to add desktop components, while those writing traditional applications could use the Live Framework to add synchronizing and other online capabilities.

In a blog posting, Microsoft said it plans to integrate many of the concepts behind the Live Framework into the next version of Windows Live. In the mean time, though, developers will lose access … Read more

Some argue that open-source software can't innovate. In fact, one of the industry's former executives, Peter Yared, recently argued that "the only successful open-source companies sell commodities."

Yared clearly hasn't heard of SpringSource, an open-source application platform provider that is redefining the J2EE application server and, quite possibly, the future of open source.

Yared isn't alone in his beliefs. A friend recently wrote me to suggest that open source is at its best when disrupting big, profitable markets:

Commercial open source is a (commodity) replacement market. When it is not (i.e., people are … Read more

I usually apply all the Windows updates that Microsoft labels as "Critical" or "Important." However, since Windows patches sometimes cause problems of their own, I often wait a week or more to install those that I determine I don't need right away.

If you have Automatic Updates set to download and install updates automatically, you won't see any Windows Update alerts in the notification area of the taskbar (the area near the clock) or anywhere else. Likewise, if you've disabled Automatic Updates, you won't be prompted to view or download anything, though … Read more

Leave it to Zend to kick Java-loving Sun Microsystems when it's down.

PHP has become one of the hottest programming languages in technology, and the engine behind the little scripting language that could is Zend Technologies. Back in 2000 Zend released its Zend Framework to facilitate PHP development, and it's now taking this Java-bashing crusade a step further with the release of its new Zend Server, as The Register reports.

As Dave Rosenberg notes over on CNET's Software Interrupted blog, Zend Technologies is making available its Zend Server on Tuesday as both a commercial product and one … Read more

Yahoo may be having problems running its business and keeping good people, but the company continues to be innovative around the user experience.

CEO Jerry Yang talks about making Yahoo the starting point for the Web and about making Yahoo's pages more open. The latest iteration of the Yahoo front page (above) takes advantage of a new YUI 3, a framework for building user interfaces and will allow users and developers to customize the page.

Here are notes from Yahoo engineer Nicholas C. Zakas about the new framework:

LOS ANGELES--While it was Windows Azure that got much of the attention, Microsoft also released another important platform at this week's Professional Developers Conference.

Microsoft's Live Framework is essentially the developer piece of Live Mesh. It's what lets developers use the mesh technology to add online components to their desktop applications, or conversely, to give online applications an offline component.

The software maker had said that this would be coming when it unveiled Live Mesh this spring, but its actual launch was somewhat overshadowed by the discussion of Windows Azure on Monday. The Live Framework is itself … Read more

Updated 9:56 a.m. PDT: Added screen shot and a link to Microsoft's Visual Studio 2010 page.

Airplanes are equipped with recorders that capture both cockpit audio and flight data, so in the event that something goes wrong, investigators can try to determine the source of the problem.

Microsoft is aiming to give software developers the same kind of access. In the next version of its developer tool suite, to be known as Visual Studio 2010, Microsoft plans to include the ability to record the full screens of what testers are seeing, as well as data about their machine. When a test application crashes, the technology will enable developers to see the bug as it occurred.

In an interview last week, Microsoft Developer Division Director Dave Mendlen said the feature is designed to avoid the all-too-frequent conflict that occurs when a software tester finds a bug that the developer says it can't reproduce. Internally, the feature has been called "TiVo for debuggers." … Read more