Kurt Shintaku's Blog

Are you a consumer interested in a no-cost anti-malware/anti-virus product that provides real-time protection to address the ongoing security needs of a Windows PC?

Enter “Microsoft Security Essentials”.

WHAT IS MICROSOFT SECURITY ESSENTIALS?
Microsoft Security Essentials is essentially our free anti-virus product for consumers based on the same #1 detection engine built into Microsoft’s Enterprise/Corporate anti-malware security & protection software, “Forefront for Clients & Servers”. 

Today, few do a better job of protecting desktops & servers from new virus, worm, and trojan threats than Microsoft’s Anti-Malware engine.  This is why “Microsoft Forefront Security for Clients” was ranked in the top 3 anti-virus products specifically for undiscovered or ‘zero-day’ threats, recently  outperforming common  names such as Symantec, Computer Associates, McAfee, TrendMicro, Kaspersky, and other smaller names like AVG and Panda.

HOW DO I GET IT?
Microsoft Security Essentials is available to the first 75,000 visitors at http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials.  It will be accessible to beta testers in English in the US and Israel as well as Brazilian Portuguese testers.  Support for Simplified Chinese in China is scheduled to follow in 30 days.

Microsoft Security Essentials is scheduled to release in the second half of 2010 in 19 geographies.

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN FOREFRONT CLIENT SECURITY & MICROSOFT SECURITY ESSENTIALS

I was taking photos of our baby with a new 8GB High Capacity Secure Digital memory card in my new Casio digital camera.  When I took the card out of the camera and put it into the SD card slot of my rather modern & high end HP Compaq nc8430 laptop… Nothing.

I put it back into the camera and turned it on to verify that yes, the flash card worked fine.  But no matter what I did, the card wouldn’t show up as a hard drive on my PC. 

Of course, this kinda ticked me off. This is a very modern laptop and there’s no reason it shouldn’t be recognized by the reader.  The 8GB flash card read fine on both my Windows Mobile 6.1 phone and my Windows 7 Tablet PC but for some reason it didn’t work on my high end Windows Vista nc8430.  Of course I immediately thought:  This is either a firmware problem or a driver problem.  Gotta be.  So I searched for drivers and downloaded the newest ones… No joy.

Getting frustrated, I started searching the business support forums for an answer, and lo and behold, I saw the conversation thread below:

Q:  Can anyone help I have an nc6120 notebook with a built in card reader which works fine with normal SD cards XD etc but I cannot read SDHC cards – is there a fix?? I have installed the latest driver from the hp site and this has not worked.

A:  This registry trick may help:

1. Backup your registry
2. Run REGEDIT. The key you want to edit is located in:
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMControlSet001Servicestifm21Parameters
   Original Key Value: SDParam = 16 (Decimal)
   New Key Value: SDParam = 1
3. Reboot for new setting to take effect.

(Read http://forums11.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/bizsupport/questionanswer.do?threadId=1215750&admit=109447626+1226030638123+28353475)

YES, this works.  A silly registry entry makes it possible for me to get the 8GB card recognized.  What I want to know from HP is, why do I need to do this to get my flash card working?  The average consumer isn’t going to know how to do this, and guess who’s gonna get blamed for this not working by the typical end user?  That’s right:  Microsoft.

Sigh.

Some of you may have noticed that this site has not had many updates in the past week.  This is because I will be on a temporary leave of absence clear into late next month so you probably won’t be seeing much other than updates to my Twitter. 

If you’re wondering why, this photo will hopefully satisfy your curiosity:

Hello Internet.

The Service Level Dashboard Management Pack 2.0 for System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 was delivered late last week by the Microsoft Solution Accelerators team, and is available for you to download today from the System Center Catalog.

Assisting you in tracking, managing, and reporting on your line-of-business (LOB) application service levels, the Service Level Dashboard displays a list of applications and their performance and availability against service level goals.

Download the SLD 2.0 here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=1d9d709f-9628-46a8-952b-a78f5dd2bdd9

About the Service Level Dashboard Management Pack 2.0

Using the information collected by Operations Manager 2007 R2, and leveraging the service level objectives that you can set against IT services and their components, this graphical dashboard presents detailed information through Microsoft SharePoint that helps customers:

• Easily keep tabs on IT service health via the IT Service status header bar, which is customizable to show the IT services you wish to monitor.
• Quickly identify components that may be falling away from their expected levels of service, helping head off problems before they occur.
• View Mean Time To Repair (MTTR), Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF), and application service level trends for each monitored component.
• Leverage the familiar interface of SharePoint (either SharePoint Services 3.0 or Office SharePoint Server 2007) to share information with target audiences – all without having to grant access to, or train users on, the Operations Manager console.

To read more about this Solution Accelerator online at TechNet click here, or read more at our Operations Manager team blog.  Also watch our TechNet EDGE video blog that presents the dashboard as part of our overview on Operations Manager 2007 R2.

[taken from Network World]

iPhones in the enterprise leaving IT pros at wit’s end
iPhone Security, management concerns at top of the list

LAS VEGAS–Executives smitten with iPhones are forcing enterprise IT departments to come up with ways to support the mobile devices even though big security and management questions abound…

…One healthcare IT pro said supporting iPhones would be a nightmare given industry data protection regulations and the ability of end users to relatively easily "jailbreak" their iPhones. Another IT pro pointed out that supporting a bunch of native apps on iPhones would seem to run counter to other IT trends, such as the move toward desktop virtualization and centralized applications control…

[taken from Buzzstudy’s research]

The Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) is wrapping up in Los Angeles. At their respective keynotes, both Microsoft and Sony made major announcements in a similar vain.  Microsoft presented their Project Natal, a camera-based device which can track full body motion without needing a controller. Shortly after, Sony demonstrated a prototype high-precision motion tracking controller for the Playstation 3.  Both exciting and impressive in different ways.

We decided to see the web’s reaction to these announcements, and threw the Wii Motion Plus accessory in for comparison.  MotionPlus is an add-on coming for the Nintendo Wii controllers which improves their motion tracking accuracy and capabilities.

…more…

Read the results at:

• Microsoft’s Project Natal versus Sony’s Motion Controller
  http://infegy.com/buzzstudy/microsofts-project-natal-versus-sonys-motion-controller/

Well, looks like the Interwebs have decided to talk about the annually asked question, “Who won the E3 Press war of 2009?  Microsoft, Nintendo, or Sony?”

• G4TV:  E3 2009 Press Conference Report Card:  Rating the Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony Pressers
  http://e3.g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/696148/E3-2009-Press-Conference-Report-Card-Rating-The-Microsoft-Nintendo-And-Sony-Pressers.html
• GOONLINEGAMES:  E3 2009: Who Really Won E3 2009?
  http://jonathancullen.goonlinegames.net/2009/06/03/e3-2009-who-really-won-e3-2009/
• VICTIMOFCULTURE:  E3 2009: Press conference review
  – http://www.victimofculture.com/2009/06/01/e3-2009-microsoft-press-conference-review
  – http://www.victimofculture.com/2009/06/02/e3-2009-nintendo-press-conference-review
  – http://www.victimofculture.com/2009/06/02/e3-2009-sony-press-conference-review
• GAMASUTRA:  E3 Analysis – Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony
  – http://gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=23868
  – http://gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=23897
  – http://gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=23885
• 1Up:  E3 2009 Conference Grades (Podcast)
  http://n4g.com/events_e32009/News-339876.aspx (Summary & podcast)
• MODUSGAMERANDI:  Reactions from Nintendo E3 ‘09 Press Conference
  – http://modusgamerandi.wordpress.com/2009/06/01/reactions-from-microsoft-e3-09-press-conference/
  – http://modusgamerandi.wordpress.com/2009/06/02/reactions-from-nintendo-e3-%e2%80%9809-press-conference/

– http://modusgamerandi.wordpress.com/2009/06/02/reactions-from-sony-e3-%e2%80%9809-press-conference/

• MYCRESCENDO:  Who had the best showing? Let me break it down for ya’ll
  http://mycrescendo.wordpress.com/2009/06/04/e3-2009-who-had-the-best-showing-let-me-break-it-down-for-yall/
• CNET:  How Microsoft stole the show at E3
  http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-10256539-17.html

Interesting articles about the Press Conference battles:

• E3 2009: Who won E3? The case for Microsoft
  http://news.vgchartz.com/news.php?id=3824
• E3 2009: The Big Three, Who Won?
  http://nidzumi.com/e3-2009-the-big-three-who-won

Really interesting article:

LOS ANGELES–About halfway through a closed-door demo I was in this afternoon of Microsoft’s just-announced full-body motion-sensitive control system, Project Natal, another reporter told our host that he was skeptical of what he was seeing.

A minute later, after taking the virtual controls himself of the game "Burnout Paradise" and giving Natal a test, the reporter walked back over to where I was standing and when I asked him if he was still skeptical, he gave me a chastened look and said, "It’s interesting."

In other words, he was won over.

…

FULL ARTICLE:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10797_3-10255403-235.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

<taken from Reuters>

SEATTLE (Reuters) – Microsoft Corp said on Tuesday its new Windows 7 operating system will be generally available on October 22, well ahead of its original schedule and in time for the holiday shopping season.

The new operating system, which will replace the unpopular Vista, was originally planned for roll-out at the beginning of next year, but Microsoft confirmed last month that it would hit the market in time for the year’s busiest buying period.

The arrival of the new system is a big event for the computing world, as more than 90 percent of the world’s PC’s run on Windows, and strategically important for Microsoft, which gets more than half of its profit from its operating system unit.

The latest release is crucial to win back public confidence after the disappointing launch of Vista in 2007. Vista was incompatible with some low-power machines and perceived by many to be too complicated.

The world’s largest software company also faces new threats to its dominance in operating systems, especially in the fast-growing "netbook" market for small, portable PCs ideal for surfing the Internet and sending e-mail.

Earlier on Tuesday, netbook pioneer Acer Inc said it plans to sell small PCs that run on Google Inc’s new Android operating system, making it the first manufacturer to do so.

Microsoft said it will send Windows 7 code to PC makers to load onto new machines — known in the industry as "release to manufacturing" — around the end of July.

By October 22, people will be able to buy new computers with Windows 7 installed, or pick up the software off the shelf to install on their old computers.

Microsoft confirmed that it will run a program whereby people who buy PCs with certain versions of Vista before October 22 can get a free upgrade to Windows 7, but it has not yet released details.

Microsoft shares were up 7 cents at $21.47 on Nasdaq.

(Reporting by Bill Rigby, editing by Gerald E. McCormick)