$10,000 bug bounty set on Microsoft flaws

iDefense Labs, a subsidiary of VeriSign, is offering a quarterly hacking challenge. The company says it will pay $10,000 for each vulnerability submission that result in the publication of a Microsoft Security Bulletin with a severity rating of critical. One day every month, popularly known as 'patch Tuesday', Microsoft issues a set of security bulletins detailing the vulnerabilities that it has fixed in the previous month and offers a patch for them. ...more

Red Hat turns to virtualisation for customer cost savings

Customers are to remain in the driving seat in Red Hat's road map, according to Red Hat senior executives, and virtualisation will provide the engine. Red Hat's new CTO Brian Stevens outlined why the technology will provide the next disruptive episode in the march of Open Source. He said that the fundamental issues of cost are still the headline priority for customers. ...more

Microsoft opens doors on new MSN search beta

As we reported yesterday Microsoft is releasing a beta version of its much-trailed search engine. The new search now contains some five billion pages gathered and indexed by Microsoft's own technology rather than using databases from Yahoo and LookSmart as it has in the past. The new search retains the clean design borrowed from Google and early versions of Yahoo! and the structure will be familiar to existing users of MSN Search. ...more

FSP releases Silent Solution Kit for PC processors

One for modders. FPS has released its Silent Solution Kit for the quiet cooling of Intel and AMD-based systems. The kits address the problem of high-specced computers that generate a lot of heat and thus require a lot of cooling. ...more

Microsoft faces Netscape's communication

Former Netscape CEO James L Barksdale was given the opportunity to blast Microsoft from the witness box today, as the final phase of the antitrust case entered its second day. The New York Times reports Mr Barksdale submitted a testimony to the effect that the current proposed measures to punish Microsoft and reach a settlement would not have prevented Microsoft using anticompetitive behaviour to crush Netscape in the 1990s and therefore would not stop Microsoft from doing it again. Indeed, the crux of the current situation is whether Microsoft is currently pursuing anti-competitive behaviour in other areas, such as mobile devices and instant messaging, and how far the settlement should go to prevent Microsoft from repeating its actions. ...more