Cody Taylor

An anonymous reader writes “The software company where I work has an Innovation and Knowledge program that encourages workers to provide ideas for new products and suggestions to improve the work place, productivity or welfare. The ideas and suggestions are evaluated by a board that decides whether they should be implemented or not. The group of workers with more ideas participates in a raffle to receive a prize. I would like to know what other programs people have seen like this and how they differ. What is the best way to encourage workers to suggest new products to be made / researched by the company?”

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Program offering free or low-cost upgrades from Vista could kick off in July, sources say. While it won’t say so publicly, Microsoft is pushing to have PCs with the new OS for the holidays.

crazyeyes writes “With Windows 7 set for release in Dec. 09, Microsoft is getting ready with their free upgrade program, which allows Vista users to switch to Windows 7 when it arrives. The folks at TechARP have consistently scored accurate scoops on Microsoft software releases. They have now revealed Microsoft’s upgrade plans, schedules and even screenshots of the upgrade process.”

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kokito writes “OSNews managing editor Thom Holwerda reviews Haiku, the open source successor of the Be operating system. According to the review, Haiku faithfully/successfully replicates the BeOS user experience and ‘personality,’ boasting very short boot times, the same recognizable but modernized GUI using antialiasing for fonts and all vector graphics as well as vector icons, a file system with support for metadata-based queries (OpenBFS) and support for the BeAPI, considered by some the cleanest programming API ever. The project has also recently released a native GCC 4.3.3 tool chain, clearing the way for bringing up-to-date ports of multi-platform apps such as Firefox and VLC, and making it easier to work on Haiku ports in general.” (More below.)

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nandemoari writes “A hole allowing hackers to take control of Microsoft Exchange was just one ‘critical’ issue the Redmond-based company promises it has fixed with a patch correcting a total of eight vulnerabilities in its programs, including the Internet Explorer browser, Office, and its SQL Server. Three of the eight vulnerabilities patched yesterday were marked ‘critical.’ The most concerning is an issue with Exchange that would allow attackers to take over an Exchange server by simply forwarding a carefully crafted message to a corporate mail server. Microsoft has admitted that the vulnerability can be exploited when a user opens or previews an email in the Transport Neutral Encapsulation Format (TNEF).”

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