remote server

In the wake of a near record-breaking Patch Tuesday, Microsoft is investigating reports of a zero-day bug affecting Internet Explorer 7 and attacks against an unpatched flaw in the WordPad Text Converter.

Researchers at Symantec have discovered the cause of the IE7 vulnerability is a XML parsing engine and the library MSHTML.DLL. The problem is a function that incorrectly frees a certain region of heap memory so an attacker is able to control the EAX register with a specially crafted Unicode URL that includes the magic "0x0A0A" value.

Failed technology trends tend to be recycled every five or so years in hopes that businesses and consumers eventually will be ready to adopt what surely is a great idea.

The idea of the "thin client" -- a processor and monitor setup that loads all files and even the operating system from a central server -- has been trumpeted as the next big thing at least three times since I replaced my baseball mitt with a keyboard and mouse.

The latest incarnation of the thin client finally is starting to gain a hold as a "netbook," an incredibly portable notebook.

Looking for growth in new markets where it is increasingly being bypassed, Microsoft plans late next year to begin offering a new "cloud" operating system that would manage the relationship between software inside the computer and on the Web, where data and services are becoming increasingly centralized.

The company needs a new kind of operating system for a new computing world populated not by a single style of desktop computer but instead by dozens of different kinds of Internet-connected appliances ranging from smartphones to mini-laptops called netbooks.