Fine-Tune Your Web Site for Windows XP Service Pack 2. Make your Web site work well with the new security features in Windows XP SP2 that affect ActiveX controls, file downloads, pop-up windows, and more. [MSDN Just Published]

Heads up: New security in XP SP2 will bust your site unless you are careful!

4:30:37 PM    

What To Do About IE?. Should IT shops simply give up the security battle and replace Internet Explorer (IE) with Firefox or some other browser? Many IT shops are reluctant to change horses, primarily because of their reliance on IE-specific intranet applications and sites. [Microsoft Watch from Mary Jo Foley]

This is where lock-in comes into play.  MSFT has lots of IT shops tied up on this.  IT managers might like to move away from the troublesome IE, but intranet applications using MSFT solutions (think Exchange or Sharepoint or even OneNote) require the use of IE to function.  Other browsers simply will not work.  Suddenly you find the security of your entire operation compromised by design flaws in a web browser.  This is just bad.  Irrate IT managers should be looking at true standards-based soultions that are platform/browser/OS neutral.

10:52:00 AM    

New Microsoft patch doesn't plug all holes. Microsoft Corp.'s effort last week to fix a vulnerability in the Internet Explorer (IE) Web browser program and end the latest series of Internet attacks doesn’t address another closely related and dangerous vulnerability, according to a security specialist. [InfoWorld: Top News]

OK, now it's just a pig pile.  The only real patch is Firefox .91 or Mozilla 1.7.

10:45:36 AM    

GIF Slips Away From Unisys; Your Move, IBM

GIF Slips Away From Unisys; Your Move, IBM

Posted by jamie on Wednesday July 07, @09:00AM
from the do-the-right-thing dept.
Twenty years ago, Terry Welch's improvement on Lempel-Ziv compression appeared in IEEE Computer magazine. The authors of unix 'compress' and the GIF standard incorporated that algorithm without realizing it was patent-pending. When the submarine patent surfaced ten years later, its new owner Unisys intimidated developers and web authors into moving away from GIFs, inspiring the creation of a better standard, though sadly still a less popular one. Today, July 7, 2004, Unisys's last LZW patent (in Canada) expires, leaving GIF once again free... almost. See, there's the small matter of IBM's patent, granted on the same algorithm, which is valid for another two years. That still has a chilling effect on GIF development, though the consensus seems to be that IBM would lose any court action it tried to bring. So how about it, IBM? You've got nothing to lose! Want to make a lot of geeks happy and release that final patent into the public domain?

 [Slashdot]

10:42:28 AM