By far the strangest part of this story is the fact that a company called Cactus
is based in Canada. Other than that, this is a
tidy
and interesting read
about how one Microsoft partner is playing a big role
in the development of Commerce Server.
Posted by Lee Pender on 08/09/20070 comments
Given that most of the talk about patents in the last eight or nine months
has
revolved
around Microsoft and Linux
, you might have forgotten about the patent case
that was going to completely reshape the world as we knew it: Alcatel-Lucent's
"successful"
MP3
patent case versus Microsoft
.
Well, it was successful -- until this week, that is. A U.S. District Court
judge in San Diego this week laid a big "I don't think so" on a ruling
that would have required
Microsoft to fork $1.5 billion over to Alcatel-Lucent for patent infringement.
And just like that, the French company's dreams of suing everybody who ever
released an MP3 or made a portable-music player -- as well as of filling its
coffers with a billion-plus of Microsoft's dollars -- came to an end.
More
Posted by Lee Pender on 08/08/20070 comments
It's been way too long since we've made a
Pirates
of Silicon Valley
reference here at RCPU. So, with this week marking
the 10th anniversary of Microsoft's big investment in Apple (which happens at
the end of the movie -- not to give it away or anything), we couldn't resist
typing once again fictional Bill Gates' famous words to fictional (but not Fake
--
that's
Dan Lyons
More
Posted by Lee Pender on 08/08/20070 comments
Fun little story here about Nicolas Sarkozy, the still-new president of France
and noted firebrand,
going
off on a couple of American photographers
during Sarko's vacation in New
Hampshire.
We throw this in because: 1) Your editor lived in France for almost five years
and is a bit of a Francophile; 2) Your editor has also been to the lake where
Sarko is vacationing (as have, we're guessing, most New Englanders); and 3)
Sarko is crashing at Michael Appe's pad, and Appe is a former Microsoft executive,
making this entry entirely relevant for RCPU. Or at least as relevant as
More
Posted by Lee Pender on 08/07/20070 comments
Let's not even pretend that we'll have a bigger story than this one this week.
This one is right up there with "Microsoft Makes Major Investment in Apple"
(which happened, by the way, 10 years ago this week) and "Bill Gates To
Transition Away from Microsoft" (well,
sort
of
).
After 14 months of stealth
parody of Apple's iconic leader, we
now know who the Fake Steve Jobs has been all along. The decidedly old-media
New York Times unmasked the legendary blogger and new-media meme as...Forbes
Senior Editor Dan Lyons, who just happens to be one of your editor's former
colleagues! (OK, so your editor worked at the same publication as Lyons about
10 years ago and met him once -- it still counts! And we at RCPU can confirm
that Mr. Lyons is a very funny guy.)
More
Posted by Lee Pender on 08/07/20070 comments
Almost as soon as the
first
entry in yesterday's RCPU
about mysteriously disappearing Vista fixes went
out, we had an e-mail from Stuart (although not the Stuart whose e-mail appeared
yesterday):
"Get your facts straight, Lee. The fixes you describe are certainly
NOT the bulk of what will be available in SP1 and as of today, 8/1, they're
still available to Connect subscribers."
More
Posted by Lee Pender on 08/02/20071 comments
Note the asterisk -- because Works isn't just free,
it's
ad-supported
. Then again, this is the first time anybody has had a reason
to write about Microsoft Works in about 10 years. It had joined Corel in the
"dead or alive" (or, in Corel's case, "dead, alive or Canadian")
category.
Posted by Lee Pender on 08/01/20071 comments
Perhaps (although probably not) rattled by RCPU's indictment of Microsoft's
coolness (or lack thereof), Ray Ozzie has been
defending
Redmond's forays
into the consumer world. The three(!) guys who write
this
blog
have a pretty good take on Ozzie's comments. We'd have written something
similar here at RCPU already, but we have only one writer; we're simply outnumbered.
Posted by Lee Pender on 08/01/20070 comments