Short Takes Daily: What's going on in the world of Microsoft this Tuesday, June 9, 2015

Today in the news: We look at the Music, Movies & TV apps; examine the NSA backdoors that may or may not be built into Microsoft's data centers; see exactly how big a deal Patch Tuesday is.

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OUR SITE/ OUR SISTER SITE

Disabling the Windows 10 Upgrade Notification

Successfully Canceling Your Windows 10 Upgrade Reservation

Update Servicing Branches Available for Each Windows 10 Edition

How Exchange's new ever-expanding archive mailbox works

How the Windows 10 Upgrade Will Handle 3rd Party Antivirus

Music and Movies & TV apps leave preview in Windows 10 build 10130

Gallery: Music App on Windows 10

Gallery: Movies & TV App on Windows 10

Q. What is required to use the Windows Hello facial recognition logon in Windows 10?

Q. How do I delete service principals in Azure AD?

Q. How do I solve Write-Host failures in DSC?

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PATCH TUESDAY

Microsoft issued eight patches today, two rated as critical and six rated as important. The patches address one of two general weaknesses: allowing remote code execution or elevating user privilege.

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SERVICING BRANCH

Taking the same methodology it has used for delivering Windows 10 betas to Windows Insiders through "rings" of updates, Microsoft will provide updates through "branches."

We have a quick look at which branches will be available for each Windows 10 edition.

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AZURE BACKUP

Azure Backup is now available in 17 regions worldwide, with the addition of four data centers in the U.S. and one in Brazil. With the addition of these 5 new regions highlighted below (green dots), Azure Backup is now available in 17 regions worldwide.

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WHO'S SPYING ON YOUR DATA CENTER?

Orin Thomas reports from Lenovo TechWorld in Beijing:

One Chinese IT Pro suggested to me that there are two tiers when it comes to cloud. Workloads of US citizens and companies and everyone else. It wasn’t that he thought that the cloud providers were necessarily making some sort of distinction. His concern was more that US intelligence agencies were able to take whatever actions they wanted in cloud datacenters run by US based companies.

On two related men: Microsoft recently opened a "Transparency Centre" in Brussels as a way to provide governments with access to Microsoft Windows source code and other technical information they need. Reports Ars Technica, "The opening of the Transparency Centre in Brussels is evidence that Microsoft is worried that some in Europe still have their doubts about whether its software can be trusted."

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A QUICK LOOK AT OFFICE 2016

Brien Posey over at TechRepublic has a look at Office 2016 where he called out some of the new features in Word 2016, Excel 2016, PowerPoint 2016, OneNote 2016 and Sway. This is what you send to your pals who are asking, "What's new in these apps?"