By Rob Knies, Managing Editor, Microsoft Research Modern-day software development is notoriously challenging. Programs have become highly complex. Customer expectations have never been higher. Meeting quality standards is increasingly difficult. Challenging, yes. Difficult, perhaps. But such hurdles are not insurmountable, as Spec# demonstrates. Spec#, available…
By Rob Knies, Managing Editor, Microsoft Research Cynthia Dwork, a principal researcher for Microsoft Research Silicon Valley, has been honored as co-winner of the 2007 Edsger W. Dijkstra Prize in Distributed Computing. The award, one of the most prestigious in the distributed-systems discipline, was announced…
By Rob Knies, Managing Editor, Microsoft Research Luca Cardelli, a principal researcher at Microsoft Research Cambridge, has been named winner of the 2007 Senior Dahl-Nygaard Prize, presented annually to a senior researcher with outstanding career contributions. Cardelli, who heads the Programming Principles and Tools team…
With help from Microsoft Research Cambridge, Microsoft’s Developer Division will be offering an entirely new method for obtaining the latest beta of Visual Studio® 2008, Microsoft’s next-generation development tool for Windows Vista®, the 2007 Office System, and the Web. Microsoft Secure Content Distribution (MSCD), based…
By Rob Knies, Managing Editor, Microsoft Research Battling search spam. Streamlining Web-page monitoring. Helping protect online privacy. Enabling the illiterate to use computers. These are just a few of the ways Microsoft Research is demonstrating its commitment to making the Internet a more secure, easily…
By Rob Knies, Managing Editor, Microsoft Research The research and academic community is rife with conferences. Just about any subject or discipline you can name has its own annual gathering, where the learned and the innovative come together to discuss their work, review the work…
By Rob Knies, Managing Editor, Microsoft Research Xuedong Huang has a mantra: Act fast, ponder less, and learn. Those precepts are not common in research circles, where careful deliberation is generally a necessary precondition to productive work, but there’s little doubt that they have served…
On Jan. 8, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) announced that it had recognized 41 of its members for their contributions. Four of these new ACM fellows are from Microsoft Research.
By Rob Knies, Managing Editor, Microsoft Research One has spent his professional career exploring programming language theory. The other has made fundamental contributions to PC networks, operating systems, security, and document publishing. One works in Cambridge, U.K. The other works in Cambridge, Mass. But Tony…
Over the years, Microsoft Research has attracted experienced researchers at the top of their fields, as well as fresh new talent that achieves significant results right out of the gate. And the research community has rewarded many of them with some of its highest honors.…
By Rob Knies, Managing Editor, Microsoft Research It’s a familiar cliché: The best offense is a good defense. You hear it all the time in a sporting context. But, as it turns out, that hoary truism applies to Web surfing, as well. Consider BrowserShield, a…
By Rob Knies, Managing Editor, Microsoft Research You’re in pre-movie limbo. It’s 6 p.m., and the film you want to see starts at 7. You’ve got enough time to grab a quick dinner—if you don’t have to wait for a table. You know the neighborhood…
