Users running pirated or counterfeit copies of Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 can now download Internet Explorer 7, Microsoft announced Thursday.

From the moment it released IE7 almost a year ago, Microsoft has restricted the browser to users who can prove they own a legitimate copy of the operating system. Before Microsoft allows the browser to download, it runs the user's PC through a Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) validation test, a prime part of XP's antipiracy software.

When it instituted the requirement in 2006, Microsoft said rights to IE7 was one of the rewards for being legal. It changed its mind Thursday, saying the move is in users' best interest.

"Because Microsoft takes its commitment to help protect the entire Windows ecosystem seriously, we're updating the IE7 installation experience to make it available as broadly as possible to all Windows users," said Steve Reynolds, an IE program manager in a posting to a Microsoft company blog. "With today's 'Installation and Availability Update,' Internet Explorer 7 installation will no longer require Windows Genuine Advantage validation and will be available to all Windows XP users."

Microsoft has consistently touted IE7 as a more secure browser, and post-launch patch counts back that up. In the past 11 months, IE6 for Windows XP SP2 has been patched for 22 vulnerabilities, 20 of them rated critical. IE7 for XP SP2, however, has been patched only 13 times; 10 of those fixes were ranked critical. In fact, when Microsoft announced that IE7 would not be offered to users running illegal copies of XP, some analysts questioned the company's commitment to security.

Windows Server 2008 is on its way. With the first release candidate in the pipeline, it shouldn't be long before release to manufacturing and general availability.

With such a long development time (it's the first new Windows Server OS since 2003,) the show stopping new features have been well publicized: Most IT pros are familiar with at least some of the details of Server Core, PowerShell and Windows Server Virtualization (codenamed Viridian). But Windows 2008 includes a lot more than those headliners.

To that end, we're presenting the most overlooked features of Windows 2008. We spoke with Ward Ralston, senior technical product manager for Windows Server, to help us build our list. These items haven't garnered the same kind of press attention, hype and word-of-mouth as the others, but they're nonetheless important -- maybe very important -- to your network.

The Print Management Console (PMC). This was originally released with Windows Server 2003 R2. But unlike the R2 release, it's a native function in Windows 2008, and available to everyone. PMC is a snap-in for the Microsoft Management Console (MMC), which lets an admin see every printer in an entire organization, from one console. In addition, you can use Group Policy to map printers to specific user groups, so that the Accounting folks won't be hogging printers that Engineering needs.

Auditpol. This is a verbose logging tool that allows you to configure, create, back up and restore audit policies on any computer in your organization. In these days of regulatory compliance, auditing is more important than ever, and Auditpol may eliminate the need for a third-party auditing program. It includes a greatly expanded list of auditing counters from the simple tools available in Windows 2003, and hundreds of different categories that let you "create a paper trail of what's going on inside your OS," Ralston says.

Windows Remote Shell (WinRS). To connect to a command prompt on a remote computer in Windows 2003, an admin needed to use Terminal Services. TS worked well but wasn't scalable, requiring a connection to a console on each remote computer. WinRS makes secure connections to as many remote computers as necessary, all from a single console. That could be a significant time-saver for admins.

Event forwarding. This benefit is available to organizations that run Vista on their desktops. Event forwarding aggregates and forwards logs of chosen computers back to a central console, making management much more efficient. Say you're an admin and you start getting calls from users who are seeing the dreaded "Event 51" pop up on their screens, indicating a logon problem. Instead of employing sneakernet technology -- running from machine to machine to comb through security events or other problems -- you simply "subscribe" Vista computers through your console, and they send whatever information you ask for right to your door.

Active Directory Rights Management Services (AD RMS). In Windows 2003, this was known as Windows Rights Management Services. It was available in Windows 2003, but only as an add-on product for purchase. It's built into Windows 2008, and includes some upgrades. AD RMS assists in the creation of rights-protected files, licensing rights-protected information, and checking to make sure that only authorized users have access to rights-protected data. Some of the enhancements for Windows 2008 include the ability to administer AD RMS through the MMC, and delegate AD RMS tasks through "administrative roles."
 

From Redmond Developer

In a surprise move, Microsoft said today it is releasing the reference source code for the .NET Framework libraries, a key step toward opening up the proprietary development platform.

Developers will be able to review and debug .NET source code with Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5. Released under the Microsoft Reference License, developers are able to view, but not modify or distribute, the reference source code.

The goal is to give .NET developers an opportunity to better understand "the inner workings of the framework's source code," Scott Guthrie, general manager of Microsoft's developer division, said in a blog posting.

"Having source code access and debugger integration of the .NET Framework libraries is going to be really valuable for .NET developers," Guthrie wrote. "Being able to step through and review the source should provide much better insight into how the .NET Framework libraries are implemented, and in turn enable developers to build better applications and make even better use of them."

While Forrester analyst Jeffrey Hammond said that Microsoft has resisted opening the .NET Framework, it's not the first time the software giant has taken such a step, noting a similar move with the Windows source code several years back.

Developers are likely to welcome the move but see it as an incremental step, given the fact that they will not be able to modify or distribute the code. "I would view it as a testing the waters move, the next step would be going to the source submitter process that would allow other folks to innovate with the .NET Framework," Hammond said.

"It would be interesting to see Microsoft adopt a process by which they can tap into the innovation of the community at large, that's one of the things they are really struggling with right now," he added.

Hammond pointed out that Microsoft needed to make such an initial move, given what developers are becoming accustomed to in the open source world with tools such as Eclipse and Apache, among others.

"One of the things that makes Eclipse so powerful is there are so many external committers that a tremendous amount of defects get fixed in a very rapid time frame," Hammond said.

Still developers are ultimately going to want to be able to modify the .NET code and Hammond believes .NET developers are going to expect that over time. Yet the move  should at least ease the bug fixing process, he said.

 "When you have a bug and that bug gets traced to commercial software product, you can report the bug to the vendor but then you are pretty much out of luck until the vendor comes back with a solution," he said. "With this you can debug into that source, you can figure out why your having a problem, and a) maybe you work around it yourself, or b) be very specific when you give Microsoft feedback in terms of a defect that's impacting your ability to work."