Halo Reach Reaches $200M On Launch Day

By DustinPosted on

As expected, Halo Reach was a hit on launch day. I don’t know if anyone expected these numbers, but WOW. It pulled $200 Million ($200,000,000) on launch day alone. The next few weeks will bring even more. I’ve never really been a Halo fan, but it does have quite the following! I’d like to pick it up just to give an unbiased review (well, I’m going in a bit negative already, but I’ll give it equal treatment!), but I’m probably going to rent it or borrow it to do so.

Spencer said the $200 million figure made “Reach” the biggest launch of any game or movie this year. “Halo 3” garnered more than $300 million globally in its first week. First-day global sales for “Halo 3” were not available.

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Bing Passes Yahoo For #2 Search Engine

By DustinPosted on

Bing has been growing in popularity by leaps and bounds, giving Google a run for their money. Bing has surpassed Yahoo to become the number 2 search engine. Great news for the Bing team! I still alternate between the two. One weird note, searching for “MSE”, Microsoft’s Security Essentials is #1 on Google results, yet #2 on Microsoft’s own Bing search results.

According to Nielsen data out this morning Microsoft

Windows DLL Hijack Vulnerability Affects Exe Files As Well

By DustinPosted on

A new vulnerability in Windows is a bit more damaging as previously thought. But, there is a workaround, as well as a site to visit to see if your PC is vulnerable to the exploit. As always, make sure your PC is patched and all anti-virus is up to date!

The recently discovered DLL hijack vulnerability in Windows appears to be more critical than thought. Up until now it was confirmed that Windows would load dlls from the current working directory if they cannot be found in directories with a higher search priority. This in turn meant that attackers had to use a dll unknown on the system to exploit the vulnerability.

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Windows Live Messenger Supports Facebook Chat

By DustinPosted on

There is this little website called Facebook out there that has a built in (and very unstable, quirky) chat client. Microsoft has included a way to chat on Facebook using the newest refresh of Windows Live Messenger. I still use Pidgin for my messaging needs, as it supports MOST of the chat clients out there in a single package, but Microsoft is catching up. Maybe it’s time for a switch. I love the Messenger interface, too.

Facebook chat became available to Windows Live Messenger 2011 beta refresh users a little over 3 weeks ago, and we

Microsoft Holds Mock Funeral For iPhone

By DustinPosted on

Microsoft is betting that it’s Windows Phone 7 is going be to a hit. They even held a mock funeral for the iPhone and Blackberry. They had better have something great with the new release, coming out late in the game. I don’t like the iPhone (my wife does), I love Android, and I don’t miss my older WinMo 6.0 phone. I like Windows Mobile and my Dell Axim (non-phone), but it is really dated. Let’s hope Microsoft can make this a hit, and not with a lot of hype. I like REAL, hands-on improvements, not a bunch of rhetoric and empty promises.

Well, we can say that the folks from Redmond definitely have a morbid sense of humor. In celebration of the release to manufacturing (RTM) of Windows Phone 7, Microsoft held a mock funeral for two of the stars of the smartphone community: the Apple iPhone and RIM’s BlackBerry.

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Security: Mac OSX vs. Windows

By DustinPosted on

While this guy says that the Mac OSX is more secure than Windows, he also has some other conclusions in his little write up. First is the market share, with Windows still dominating the market. Next is that there are a lot more ways to infect an OS instead of hitting vulnerabilities in the OS itself: applications. Basically, if you aren’t aiming for something, you’re not going to hit it.

So while the Mac OS X has more vulnerabilities, it still remains a safer bet than Windows because it is not the direct target of attack.

Why Businesses Should Go With Windows 7 Professional

By DustinPosted on

The Windows Team blog has a post for businesses that are on the fence on Windows 7 Professional. Is it worth the upgrade from Windows XP? If your hardware is up to it, a definite YES. There are a lot of companies out there with outdated hardware that doesn’t even run Windows XP to its full potential. The comments on the post are worthwhile reading, as well.

From a technology perspective, one of the things we talked about was the benefits of Windows 7 Professional and why now is a good time to upgrade if you