Microsoft can barely contain its irritation with MIT's $100 Linux laptops for
the Third World -- after all, why buy a $100 Linux box when you can buy a $1,000
Vista machine?
Now MS
is offering to put Windows on these machines so the poor and downtrodden
can decide if they want to spend their time troubleshooting Linux command lines
or trying to get spyware off of Windows. Maybe Steve Jobs should enter this
fray.
Posted by Doug Barney on 12/13/2006 at 1:15 PM0 comments
HP will
pony
up over $14 million to settle charges that it spied on reporters, employees
and directors. The cash is all going to the state of California, which -- after
Gray Davis -- could use the dough.
My guess is that the victims will start lining up soon, and will be asking
for real money!
Posted by Doug Barney on 12/12/2006 at 1:15 PM0 comments
Redmond contributing editor Greg "Greggo" Shields pointed out a little
blooper in the Vista RTM event log. Instead of "browser," they talk
about a "bowser" event type. Wonder if Sha Na Na has heard the news?
Posted by Doug Barney on 12/12/2006 at 1:15 PM0 comments
OpenXML, a new format for Microsoft Office, was
approved
as a standard by Ecma, a Swiss standards group. This is good news, but having
good native support of the OpenDocument format would be better still.
I'll be curious to see how many ISVs build OpenXML into their apps. I'm not
expecting any huge lines.
Posted by Doug Barney on 12/12/2006 at 1:15 PM0 comments
Exchange 2007 didn't exactly live up to its name --
the
darn thing just shipped and last time I checked, it's still 2006. To be
fair, it was just released to manufacturing, which means it has to work its
way through this process before you can actually start installing the finished
goods.
Along with the messaging server, Microsoft is shipping a Forefront tool designed
to protect Exchange from viruses, hackers and malware. This Forefront product
is based on Sybari, a third party bought by Microsoft.
Posted by Doug Barney on 12/11/2006 at 1:15 PM0 comments
Microsoft has been on a product shipping tear. Going after the Web development
market (where Redmond essentially failed with FrontPage and Macromedia cleaned
up with Dreamweaver), Microsoft
just
starting shipping pieces of its Expression Studio line of products.
First up is a tool that lets developers build sites that work with key standards
(or at least Microsoft's take on what key standards are). Later, tools will
let developers fancy up these sites and protect proprietary content.
Posted by Doug Barney on 12/11/2006 at 1:15 PM0 comments
Microsoft is as serious about business intelligence (BI) as Einstein was about
relativity. Not only does SQL Server 2005 have a heap of BI features, but the
company is also building an array of separate tools such as the
Office
PerformancePoint Server 2007, now in beta test (oh, I mean in CTP, which
is a fancy term for a specific type of beta, though I can't quite remember the
difference). The new tool does business score-carding, and can work with an
array of structured and unstructured data types.
This could actually be a pretty sweet fit with the Dynamics products, where
ERP and supply chain whizzes need to understand what the numbers actually mean.
Posted by Doug Barney on 12/11/2006 at 1:15 PM0 comments
Tomorrow
is Patch Tuesday, so it's no surprise that Windows is getting its share
of fixes. But Visual Studio is also up for a plug for a "critical flaw."
There are also updates to Malicious Software Removal Tool.
However, reports are starting to bubble
that a fix for a show-stopping Word flaw may not make tomorrow's batch.
Posted by Doug Barney on 12/11/2006 at 1:15 PM0 comments
Remember the brouhaha over Microsoft Office and whether it would or would not
support the OpenDocument format, which would allow files to be easily interchanged
with the open source OpenOffice and StarOffice?
Microsoft didn't take the OpenDoc bait and instead promoted a new file format,
OpenXML. Like stubborn kids fighting, someone eventually had to give in and,
in this case, it
was Novell, which is adding OpenXML to its version of OpenOffice.
Posted by Doug Barney on 12/06/2006 at 1:15 PM0 comments
The SCO Group (now based in Utah, not Santa Cruz) just had the bulk of its lawsuit
against IBM
tossed
out. SCO claims that IBM took SCO's proprietary Linux code and simply gave
it to the open source community.
Here's where it gets weird: SCO wants IBM to show what code it supposedly stole
(I guess that's "innocent until you prove yourself guilty"). Also,
there's a question as to whether SCO gained any copyrights when it bought the
rights to Unix from Novell.
Posted by Doug Barney on 12/06/2006 at 1:15 PM0 comments
In the old days, AT&T (Ma Bell) dominated the U.S. telco market. After the
Telecommunications Act of 1996 there was real competition, and AT&T almost
entirely collapsed under its own monopolistic weight. The act, though far from
perfect, ushered in new companies and new services. With VoIP (once we can get
it to work) and the upcoming iPhone, we are on the verge of another revolution
-- and Microsoft wants its fair share. The company this week wrangled together
eight telcos and developers to support the
Microsoft
Connected Services Sandbox, a framework to help various services and tools
work together, creating "managed network mash-ups." So far, other
Web services vendors (like a little outfit called Google) have yet to sign up.
Posted by Doug Barney on 12/06/2006 at 1:15 PM0 comments