As Security Fix predicted earlier this week, Microsoft says it plans to issue at least two out-of-band software updates next week to plug a series of unusually stubborn and critical security holes in the Windows operating system and its Internet Explorer Web browser. Microsoft says it will issue two patches — one to deal with problems in Internet Explorer, and another to fix a bug in its Visual Studio software suite. From Microsoft: While we can’t go into specifics about the issue prior to release, we can say that the Visual Studio bulletin will address an issue that can affect certain types of applications. The Internet Explorer bulletin will provide defense-in-depth changes to Internet Explorer to help provide additional protections for the issues addressed by the Visual Studio bulletin. The Internet Explorer update will also address vulnerabilities rated as Critical that are unrelated to the Visual Studio bulletin that were