Joris Evers

In a move intended to be customer focused, Oracle Corp. will provide security patches for all of its products on a quarterly basis starting Jan. 18.

This first beta test is scheduled to start this month, but will be limited to about 1,000 specially selected testers, a Microsoft spokeswoman said. A second, public beta is planned for the first half of next year, she said.

At the second Longhorn PDC, to be held Sept. 13 through Sept. 16 in Los Angeles, Microsoft should be able to give developers more concrete information on the operating system. A first Longhorn beta is scheduled to be available in the first half of 2005, several months before the event.

Thunderbird 1.0 is aimed at advanced e-mail users and competes with products such as Microsoft Corp.'s Outlook Express and Qualcomm Inc.'s Eudora.

The vendor will promote its existing and partner offerings, but won't build new Solution Accelerators.

Microsoft Corp. is investigating a security flaw in Windows server software that could allow an attacker to gain complete control over systems running the software, the company said.

Firefox 1.0 appears to have sparked new activity in the Web browser market.

The patches will include fixes for significant security vulnerabilities and updates that are needed to prevent patch conflicts, said Mary Ann Davidson, Oracle's chief security officer.