This week in security

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Gates and (Steve) Ballmer get any sleep every night is beyond me," wrote Carl Johnson in News.com's TalkBack forum. "These "critical" situations are affecting people's lives in dramatic ways..."

Meanwhile, Apple Computer released what seems to be one of its larger security updates for Mac OS X, doling out fixes for 44 flaws. Still, only a handful of the vulnerabilities are of major concern, according to security analysts. The package of fixes was released Monday.

By comparison, Apple last May released an update for 20 vulnerabilities and in March distributed an update for a dozen flaws. The flaws affect Apple's Mac OS 10.3.9 and 10.4.2 operating system software and related server software.

However, Apple's security fixes appear to break support for 64-bit applications in the operating system, according to Wolfram Research, maker of the Mathematica computation software. It's unclear whether applications other than Mathmatica's are affected.

Apple did not comment on the problem Wednesday, but early Thursday morning the company said it had released a new security update that fixes the issue. "We have issued a new version of the 2005-07 security update which resolves an issue affecting 64 bit applications," an Apple representative said in an e-mailed statement.