According to the Microsoft Security Response Center, Microsoft will issue 13 Security Bulletins on Tuesday, and it will host a webcast to address customer questions about the bulletin the following day (October 14 at 11:00am PST, if you're interested). Eight of the vulnerabilities are rated "Critical," and the other five are marked as "Important." All of the Critical vulnerabilities earned their rating through a remote code execution impact, meaning a hacker could potentially gain control of an infected machine. At least six of the 13 patches will require a restart.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation knows how to get things done.

On October 5, the Foundation met with FCC broadband coordinator Blair Levin. The purpose of that meeting was to provide a cost estimate for one of the Foundation's ideas: running fiber optic cables to every "anchor institution" in the US—libraries, hospitals, community colleges, public schools. By October 8, the FCC was asking for public comment (PDF) on the plan and the viability of its cost estimates, which say the entire project could be completed for $5-$10 billion.

The Gates Foundation has identified 123,000 "anchor institutions" in local communities that could make good use of fiber Internet connections. In addition to serving the community that comes to each institution, the idea is also to run fiber into the center of every community in the country, with the goal of making it easier to then expand Internet access to homes and businesses in the community.

Microsoft today announced new ways for consumers to try and buy Office 2010, the next version of the company's productivity suite slated for release in the first half of next year. The company unveiled an ad-supported version dubbed Office Starter 2010, a new Product Key Card that lets customers upgrade to one of three full versions of Microsoft Office, and the Click-To-Run technology that lets users download and buy Office 2010 directly from Office.com.

The European Commission's investigation into Microsoft's bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows may be winding down, as the Commission has announced plans to begin testing the browser ballot proposed this past July by Microsoft. Starting Friday, consumers, OEMs, developers, and "other interested parties" will have a chance to speak their mind on the browser ballot.

In deciding to move ahead with the browser ballot, the EC cited improvements made to Microsoft's original proposal. One of those is pictured above: before the ballot actually appears on the screen, users are educated on what, exactly, a browser does. ("It's what you use to surf the Internet.") Once users confirm that they are connected to the Internet, the ballot itself appears.

Virus Bulletin (VB) conducted its latest test in August, posting the results this month. The security research company evaluated 26 anti-malware products (product submission deadline was August 22) for the 32-bit version of Windows Server 2008 SP2. The basic requirements for a product passing the test is detecting, both on demand and on access, in its default settings, all malware known to be "In the Wild" at the time of the review, and not detecting any false positives when scanning a set of clean files. The products were pitted against about 3,000 unique samples of malware that fall into four categories: WildList viruses, worms and bots, polymorphic viruses, and Trojans.

Google doesn't mind hiring a Microsoft Most Valued Professional (MVP), but apparently the search giant does mind its new employee keeping the software giant's title. "It's with some sadness that I have to announce that as of the start of October, I'm no longer a Microsoft MVP," British developer Jon Skeet wrote on his Microsoft MVP blog. "As renewal time came round again, I asked my employer whether it was okay for me to renew, and was advised not to do so. As a result, while I enjoyed being awarded as an MVP, I've asked not to be considered for renewal this year."

Password details for Windows Live Hotmail accounts, including @hotmail.com, @msn.com, and @live.com e-mail addresses, were posted by an anonymous user over at pastebin.com, a site that allows users to paste snippets of text and then share it privately or publicly. On October 1, there were over 10,028 account user names and passwords posted as a result of either some type of "hack" or phishing scheme, most of which appear to be based in Europe, according to Neowin, which first reported this story. Pastebin has since removed the link in question, though the issue may not have such a simple solution.

"Over the weekend Microsoft learned that several thousand Windows Live Hotmail customers' credentials were exposed on a third-party site due to a phishing scheme," a Microsoft spokesperson confirmed with Ars. "As always, upon learning of the issue, we immediately requested that the credentials be removed and launched an investigation to determine the impact to customers. As part of that investigation, we determined that this was not a breach of internal Microsoft data and initiated our standard process of working to help customers regain control of their accounts."

Here's a tweet from user nikhil_j that is sure to get the Microsoft beta community excited: "MS set to launch windows live wave 4 Essentials beta due next week.! totally rocking news.!" It was tweeted on September 28, 2009, exactly a week ago, thus "next week" means "this week." Nikhil Jain lives in Delhi, India and is supposedly a Software Dev Engineer, but nevertheless we still have to place this tidbit in the rumor box.