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In other news, water is still wet…

Users of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer are being urged by experts to switch to a rival until a serious security flaw has been fixed.

The flaw in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer could allow criminals to take control of people’s computers and steal their passwords, internet experts say…

…”Microsoft is continuing its investigation of public reports of attacks against a new vulnerability in Internet Explorer,” said [Secunia] in a security advisory alert about the flaw.

Microsoft says it has detected attacks against IE 7.0 but said the “underlying vulnerability” was present in all versions of the browser.

Other browsers, such as Firefox, Opera, Chrome, Safari, are not vulnerable to the flaw Microsoft has identified.

Serious security flaw found in IE – BBC

Jeffry Zeldman on WebDesignInterviews.com:

…what’s really going to drive standards awareness in the next months is the release of IE8. For the first time, IE will no longer support “IE-only” websites by default. Instead, it will support standards by default. Think about that. If you’re a developer, and you’ve somehow managed to remain completely unaware of standards-based design, your IE-only website won’t work in IE. Wow! Right? So what will you do?

If you plan to have a career, you’ll start learning about standards-based design fast. (IE8 will support old-fashioned IE-only sites if you insert a tag in the head of each web page instructing the browser to do so, but that’s merely to protect old sites; it’s not a strategy you can pursue if you intend to create new sites.)

That’s the big news where browsers and standards adoption are concerned.

He’s right. IE’s position as the dominant browser on the web combined with it’s everlasting lack of support for web standards has created a unique bottleneck that’s been hard, but not impossible, to ignore. The pressure for web standards that actually mean something has been building for years. That bottleneck is about to be opened wide and the aftermath will be painful on a grand scale.

From Apple Insider…

For the quarter ending in September, Microsoft released revenues of $15.06 billion, net profits of $4.37 billion, and a reserve of cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments that added up to $20.7 billion.

Apple reported $7.9 billion in revenues and $1.14 billion in net profit, but those numbers don’t include most of its iPhone business, which is hidden away in subscription accounting under GAAP rules. For that reason, Apple also released its real earnings: $11.68 billion in revenue and $2.44 billion in net profits. The company also reported a cash position of $24.5 billion.

For a company often looked down upon by Microsoft brass, Apple sure is showing them a thing or two. Here’s a chart to put in perspective. When looking at this chart, remember that for years Microsoft’s position on Apple has been that “everyone uses Windows” so they don’t care about Apple. That’s statement still has some truth behind it, but it’s a self defeating argument in light of figures like these. It just goes to show that Microsoft isn’t very good at making money.

Apple has released two new “Get a Mac” ads with Justin Long and the hilarious John Hodgeman. In “Bean Counter” they’ve set their sights on Microsoft’s now infamous $300 million dollar advertising campaign, “Life without walls.” Microsoft’s multi-million-dollar baby started out weird and impenetrable with Jerry Seinfeld & Bill Gates, but has become more comprehension-friendly, if not sincere.

Vista’s horrible reputation makes it an easy target and they knock it out of the park (I laughed out loud) in this clip, but I’m still left wanting for some positive spin on the Mac. This is just more negativity about Vista, of which there’s already plenty to go around, it’s starting to feel like a Presidential campaign.

This is cringe inducing. It’s the first salvo being fired back at Apple’s Get a Mac campaign with Justin Long and the superb John Hodgeman.

This is weak tea. Microsoft is going to need a lot more than esoteric comedy and a act who used to be great to shake off the branding corner that they’ve been painted into.

On the other hand, their Mojave Experiment TV Spots are brilliant; just don’t actually go to MojaveExperiment.com it’s an almost an unusable Silverlight GUI disaster, but that’s another blog post. They can’t beat Apple on funny, or slick production, so all they’ve got is their product. Fortunately for them, Vista has a bad name that no piece of software, no matter how terrible, could actually live up to. It’s a case where not living up to the hype is a good thing. They know this and played off it well, this is where they should concentrate. This Seinfeld stuff is just Microsoft shooting themselves in the foot with an insanely expensive bullet.

They say you have to sell yourself on your product before you can sell anyone else. That hasn’t been happening at Microsoft lately, what with the top brass not being able to figure out what Vista Capable means. And from the looks of this, that won’t change. This is the stuff Office Space nightmares are made of.