Microsoft was scrambling for a fix last week after a major new security bug was discovered in the company's Internet Information Server. The new bug, known as $DATA, allows any web user to access a web site's database or passwords just by adding "::$DATA" to the end of certain site URLs. Many web sites, including MSNBC, Nasdaq, CompuServe and Microsoft's own, were placed at risk by the hole. Microsoft immediately posted a fix for IIS 3.0 and had promised a fix for other versions by last Thursday.

Despite Microsoft's $5 million settlement for the Internet Explorer name (see last week), several analysts are predicting that The Behemoth may still have a hard time protecting its right to that name. In court proceedings against SyNet, a bankrupt ISP that tried to trademark 'Internet Explorer', Microsoft lawyers claimed that the name is a generic term like "aspirin" which cannot be trademarked. But now that Ms has rights to the name, any other company attempting to use it would be able to bring that same argument up in court. And as we touched on last week, the same logic could also be used to defend uses of Windows trademarks as well. We figure there's a few lawyers being fired over this one..

Microsoft and Sun have agreed to move a hearing on the companies' lawsuits against each other to September. The suit, originally scheduled for July, is over Microsoft's bastardization of Java in its products. Both parties say the delay will give them more time to prepare for court, but Sun may have an alterior motive. Many of the documents filed in the case have been sealed. Sun has tried to have some of them unsealed, but since the court is so overloaded there was no way it could have been done by the July 12 hearing.
But even an extra two months might not be enough time to get all of the evidence Sun has requested. To speed things up a little, the company has started telling reporters who requested sealed documents to get their news organizations petitioning the court to unseal them. Sun has even faxed reporters lists of the documents its lawyers need.

Senator Orrin Hatch said Tuesday his concerns about Microsoft have expanded to include the company's investments in cable television. "I don't want to seem like I'm just on Microsoft's back all the time but I am concerned about the buying in to all of these cable systems," Hatch said during a Senate Judiciary Committee meeting. Hatch (R-Utah), who heads the Judiciary Committee, was in charge of a hearing earlier this year where Bill Gates and other industry represenatives testified.

Until recently, Microsoft has offered college professors $200 for mentioning Microsoft tools in a conference presentation. Educators interested in the deal could sign up by visiting a Web page titled "Faculty Speakers' Program." Now the Faculty Speakers' Program pages are nowhere to be found and links to them have been removed from Microsoft's Academic Cooperative site. The program was ridiculed by people inside and outside of edcation and was seen as Microsoft trying to buy influence by using professors for promotion. Microsoft represenatives would not comment on the future of the program, but mentioned that some pages are taken down in the summer to be "revamped."

In semi-related news, Microsoft and Intel launched a joint scholarship program in China last week to stimulate computer use among Chinese youths. The scholarship, which has a miniscule $140,000 of funding, can be applied for by any Chinese citizen who buys a computer in Beijing or Shanghai between now and September, but only five lucky citizens will get the scholarships. No word on whether or not Microsoft will give money to Chinese professors for mentioning their products during classes.

Microsoft is reportedly already working on an update for Windows 98. The new "improvements" include support for DirectX 6.0 and a WebTV viewers guide that was unfinished when Windows 98 shipped. Microsoft officials stress that this is not a bug fix because "no major bugs have been reported to date."
According to Slashdot, Windows 98 has an interesting new feature that screws up the LILO boot mechanism used by alternative OSes like Linux and BeOS. Was this deliberate? Of course not, just another "issue."
Even though the parties that requested it were willing to pay the costs of development, Microsoft has decided not to produce Icelandic versions of its software and refuses to even give a price as to how much it would cost to make the products.

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