NEWS HEADLINES FOR: TUESDAY NOVEMBER 21, 2000

Microsoft Casino Review

Encarta 2001 DVD Review

"Increasingly, people are looking for some human interaction in online shopping, and with the new shopping features on MSN, consumers can get real-time answers and advice," said Yusuf Mehdi, vice president of MSN. "MSN is merging the personal service of offline shopping with the convenience of online shopping to gift-wrap an easier online holiday experience for consumers."

If so, Santa won’t be the only one using the Internet this holiday season: the Gartner Group consulting firm estimates consumers will spend more than $19.5 billion in online shopping transactions this holiday season -- twice last year’s total. However, the ease of Internet shopping and the anonymity of the Web combine to form a troubling specter of Holidays Yet To Come. A sizeable percentage of the commerce that will take place over the Internet this holiday season will involve counterfeit or fraudulent merchandise.

The International Anti-Counterfeiting Coalition (IACC) estimates that trademark infringement and counterfeiting robs the United States of $200 billion annually. Internet shopping and auction sites have become a major venue for the dissemination of counterfeit goods. While the majority of Internet businesses are honest, the anonymity of the Web makes it easy for criminals to sell counterfeit and fraudulent materials.

Noted bug hunter Georgi Guninski reported the vulnerability on the Bugtraq security mailing list. He said the problem affects Internet Explorer 5.5 and Microsoft's Outlook and Outlook Express email clients.

A Microsoft spokeswoman says that Ewel's announcement was consistent with security features in Windows 2000. "This is part of our overall commitment to security. ... Signed drivers and trusted applications are features found today in Windows 2000, and this capability will be supported in future versions of Windows," she says.

The two companies said they will work together to integrate Microsoft Reader software with Pulse Data's BrailleNote, a family of screenless devices that translate text into speech and braille.

Publishers are beginning to take e-books seriously in the wake of some high-profile successes, but they have a long way to go in winning broad consumer acceptance. In the meantime, e-books may offer an enormous improvement for distributing publications into niche publishing markets, such as braille.

Dimitri, a 19-year-old information technology student, visited Microsoft's Dutch office near Amsterdam airport. There he met with the company's public relations manager and three staffers, Microsoft confirmed.

Earlier this month Dimitri, who is known only by his first name, hacked into the same Microsoft Web server twice, the second time after Microsoft had said the security hole was patched. Dimitri created files on Microsoft's system boasting of his hack, and alerted the media.

The first new addition to Encarta 2001 that you are likely to notice is the "Encarta Today" area at the bottom of the home area. This is the first place that the internet is being blended more and more into Encarta as each new version comes out. Encarta today is updated every day as expected, with new articles or information on helping you achieve better grades or special reports on certain special dates of the year.

On the look for a cool new smart game? If so check out the review of Microsoft Casino I've just posted! Here is a snippet from the review:

Microsoft regularly releases ‘smart’ games that aren’t dedicated to hardcore gamers. With the release of Microsoft Casino, Microsoft has introduced the first Casino game that costs nothing when you play with it but that earns nothing too. This game will open the doors of Casinos to everyone and promises to bring you a lot of fun due to the challenging games. The game has many interesting aspects: the first one is that you can loose thousands of virtual dollars without impact on your finances, the second one is that you can live a Casino experience while being at home without going to the real thing. The final aspect I found in this game is if you’re not a Casino addict like me you’ll learn the rules of all these popular games so you’ll be able play a little poker with some friends next time they ask and not actually lose.

NEWS HEADLINES FOR: MONDAY NOVEMBER 20, 2000

Official Launch of Intel Pentium 4

• Hyper Pipelined Technology, which enables the Pentium 4 processor to execute software instructions in a 20-stage pipeline, as compared to the 10-stage pipeline of the Pentium III processor.
• Rapid Execution Engine allows frequently used Arithmetic Logic Unit instructions to be executed at double the core clock. The industry's first 400 MHz system bus speeds the transfer of data between the processor and main memory.
• In addition, 144 new instructions have been added to further speed the processing of video, audio and 3-D applications. These and other technical innovations make Pentium 4 processor-based PCs the ideal machines for creating and experiencing Internet media.

The Intel Pentium 4 is designed to work with Intel i850 chipset that'll soon equip top notch motherboards. Intel 850 chipset features dual RDRAM memory banks complement the Pentium 4 processor's 400 MHz system bus, providing up to 3.2 gigabytes of data per second. Intel also announced availability of the Intel Desktop Board D850GB, which supports the new Pentium 4 processor in the ATX form factor. Stay tune on ActiveWin.Com as we'll review and benchmark this new processor in the next few weeks.