Alexander’s Blog

Windows Defender (Beta 2) is the final name for Microsoft’s antispyware solution. Windows Defender (Beta 2) is a free program that helps you stay productive by protecting your computer against pop-ups, slow performance and security threats caused by spyware and other potentially unwanted software.

Specific features of Windows Defender Beta 2 include:

More info…

Microsoft is adding the equivalent of two Googles to its Redmond campus over the next three years, spending $1 billion to build or buy 14 buildings with space for up to 12,000 employees. The plans, detailed Thursday, would result in one of the world’s largest corporate campuses, spread out on the woodsy plateau near Lake Sammamish.

The company floated its redevelopment plans a year ago and received Redmond’s approval to proceed last summer, but it had planned to spread the work over the next 10 to 20 years. Thursday, it announced the project is speeding up and would be nearly half done over the next three years.

Under work to be completed over the next three years, Microsoft is increasing its Redmond campus by a third. It’s adding 3.1 million square feet of office space, including seven new buildings totaling 1.1 million square feet and seven buildings it has acquired. The acquired buildings include the former Redmond offices of Eddie Bauer and Safeco.

For comparison, that’s more than twice the capacity of Seattle’s tallest skyscraper, the Columbia Tower. The expansion is also more than double the size of Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif.

Microsoft’s expansion plans would bring its total Redmond campus to more than 10 million square feet, creating what may be the world’s largest headquarters facility in a single location, said Chris Owens, Microsoft’s general manager of real estate and facilities.

Microsoft employed 30,255 people locally as of Sept. 30, and 63,564 people worldwide.

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With the release of ISA Server 2004 Service Pack 2 (SP2), Microsoft extends branch office interoperability with several new features that can help companies quickly, efficiently, and securely integrate branch offices into an organization’s computing ecosystem.

ISA Server 2004 SP2 also includes a number of additional updates and changes to elivate the performance and usability of ISA Server 2004. The following are technical changes included in ISA Server 2004 SP2:

1. Support for Microsoft Windows Server 2003 R2 and other R2-related releases (for example, Microsoft SQL Server 2005)

2. Improvements in the Cache Array Routing Protocol mechanism

3. New certificate alerts

4. Service Quality Monitoring (SQM) support (also known as Opt-in Customer Experience Improvement Program)

5. All accumulated Hotfixes through 11/1/2005