Slashdot Mirror

nandemoari writes "The beta version of Windows 7 has been widely distributed through torrents and other file sharing systems. But now some commentators claim Microsoft deliberately allowed the package to get into the hands of pirates. 'I'm not being critical here, as some Microsoft Watch commenters will surely claim. It's rather smart marketing. Microsoft fills a big news void with something bloggers and journalists will write about. The suspense of stealth downloads from torrents and races to post the best screenshots first make the Windows 7 leak buzz all the more exciting. For other people, there is delight in seeing Microsoft squirm because Seven leaked early. Not that I see much squirming going on.'"

theodp writes "If you're a PC, you may be unfamiliar with The Dock, the bar of icons that sits at the bottom or side of a Mac and provides easy access to Apple applications. But don't count on it becoming a standard on the PC. On Tuesday, the USPTO awarded Apple — and inventor Steve Jobs — a patent for their User Interface for Providing Consolidation and Access, aka 'The Dock,' after a rather lengthy nine-year wait."

MrKaos writes "Windows 7 is already being reviewed by U.S. government technical appointees. Under the terms of Microsoft's November 2001 Justice Department settlement, and final court judgment issued about a year later, a government-sanctioned 'Technical Committee' has been formed to oversee Windows development. The TC is responsible for ensuring that Microsoft complies with the terms of the final judgment, investigating complaints about Microsoft abuses and regularly reporting on the company's compliance."

Futurepower(R) writes "Even though I have Automatic Updates turned off, on August 28, 2007, between 3:49 and 3:51 AM PDT, Microsoft installed new files on my Windows XP computer." Nine files are updated on Vista and on XP SP1, a different set of on each, relating to Windows Update itself. Microsoft-watch.com's Joe Wilcox and ZDnet's Adrian Kingsley-Hughes confirm the stealth update.

rs232 writes "Not a week goes by when Microsoft doesn't manufacture a little fear, uncertainty and doubt about something. Yesterday's financial analyst conference was full of it ... Our approach is simple: We look at who said what and why it's FUD. Lots of companies engage in FUD, and we only single out Microsoft because we're Microsoft Watch"

Overly Critical Guy writes "Microsoft's figure of 40 million Vista OEM licenses sold has less impact when weighed against the expanded size of the PC market, according to IDC numbers. The myriad of factors involved in determining success in the market makes Microsoft's constant comparisons to Windows XP less reliable as a growth indicator — particularly with Microsoft refusing to reveal the number of actual activated Vista licenses. 'HP reported year-over-year PC sales growth of about 24 percent, or about twice worldwide PC sales growth. Whatever HP is doing right, it's more than just Vista ... If Microsoft wasn't so hung up on XP comparisons as the benchmark, it could really demonstrate that Vista sales are increasing. The first 20 million figure really represented four months of sales, and that could have been positive data because Microsoft protected its customers' holiday investments. For free! Instead of making that point, Microsoft got carried away with making comparisons back to XP.'"

Piracy Support Line writes "Russian principal Alexander Ponosov will not be visiting Siberia any time soon, at least not for the allegedly illegal Microsoft software that were preloaded on the computers they bought and Microsoft supported the reseller's story. Although Bill Gates rejected Mikhail Gorbachev's personal appeal for mercy on behalf of the teacher, the judge was kinder. Judge Elvira Mosheva decided to dismiss the case because 'Microsoft's financial damage is too insignificant for a criminal investigation.'"

capt turnpike writes "It's no secret that Windows technology evangelist Robert Scoble (of Scobelizer blogging fame) is leaving Microsoft for a startup, but Microsoft Watch's Mary Jo Foley has the first exit interview with Scoble. Topics range from what Microsoft could have done to keep him spreading the word and building out MS's Channel 9 community site, where he sees MS going and more. From the article: 'There were times when I knew I was taking risks. I didn't know what would happen when I told Steve Ballmer that his leadership on the gay rights bill wasn't good.'"

gambit3 writes "From Microsoft Watch: The MSN team is working on a new Windows Live service, code-named Live Drive, that will provide users with a virtual hard drive for storing hosted personal data. From early accounts, it sounds an awful lot like Gdrive, the still-as-yet-publicly-unannounced storage service from Google."

turnitover writes "The future's not all Firefox, Deer Park and Camino, insists Microsoft. At its Mix '06 conference in Las Vegas, reports Microsoft Watch, company execs insisted that there's a bright future for IE. They not only distributed a 'layout-complete' build of IE 7.0, but offered hints about what the new version of the browser geeks love to disdain (yes, it will include ActiveX) will include. Also shown: tools to test IE compatibility. But with what? Standards or IE 6?"

writertype writes "Apparently Microsoft researchers are also DDR enthusiasts, for their StepUI research project uses a dance pad to stamp out spam from email, scroll through photographs or perform other functions. 'People really like stomping with two feet to delete spam,' said Kevin Schofield, general manager of strategy and communications at Microsoft Research." Given my inbox, I'd be ready for the '08 Olympics. If only they would make Spam Stamping a sport.

vitaly.friedman writes "Microsoft has published the due date for Windows XP SP3 (Service Pack 3) on its Windows Lifecycle Web site. The preliminary due date (the latter half of 2007) for the next collection of fixes and patches for Microsoft's desktop operating system is as more than a year later than many company watchers were expecting."

IZ Reloaded writes "The Microsoft Watch has a top 10 list of the biggest Microsoft surprises of the year. Among the surprises are Internet Explorer rising from the dead, Microsoft gets RSS and Microsoft Office team blogging. From Microsoft Watch: MS 'gets' RSS: While some folks were less than overjoyed that Microsoft was tinkering with the "little orange RSS box," Microsoft ended up looking like a company with a clue when it came to outlining its company-wide RSS strategy in 2005. RSS support will be built into not just Internet Explorer 7.0, but also Outlook 12 and Windows Vista itself. Almost all Microsoft blogs and sites have RSS feeds these days. RSS is gospel in Redmond these days."

linumax writes "Microsoft has lost one of its high-profile hires to an open-source consortium. Mike Milinkovich, executive director of the Eclipse Foundation, announced on Monday that Ward Cunningham is leaving Microsoft to join the staff of the open-source tool consortium. Cunningham's new title is Director of Committer Community Development.Cunningham, the father of the Wiki concept, joined Microsoft about two years ago. At Microsoft, he was not involved directly in social-networking-software development. Instead, Cunningham worked as an architect with the company's Patterns & Practices Team."

Microsoft Linux Lab Manager Bill Hilf has been mentioned on Slashdot before, not to mention (as you might expect) on Microsoft Watch. His latest high profile coworker, Daniel Robbins, has also gotten a bit of Slashdot attention. Got any questions for Bill he hasn't already answered elsewhere? Post them below (one per post, please). We'll send him 10 - 12 of the highest-moderated ones and post his answers next Monday.

soldack writes "Microsoft has been working on a technology for full offload of TCP/IP processing in windows to a smart NIC. It was due to arrive in an update to Windows Server 2003 but never made it. Now know why: it appears they have been sued by Alacritech for patent violation and Alacritech has won an injunction. See this article on Microsoft Watch for a story on it and here for Alacritech's view on it. It is pretty interesting to see a little company trying to take on Microsoft for seemingly ripping them off and getting this far. It probably helps that they were founded by Larry Boucher, who "led the engineering team that developed the SCSI interface at Shugart Associates" and also founded Adaptec. See Alacritech's site for more. Lots of TOE/RNIC companies were effected by this since they were depending on Microsoft's software and do not have their own solution. This technology is becoming more important as the industry moves to multiple 1 gigabit interfaces and single or multiple 10 gigabit interfaces. It may be critical for technologies like iWarp (RDMA over TCP/IP) and iSCSI (SCSI over TCP/IP) to perform well."

Atryn writes "According to this C|NET article, Microsoft is planning to release its XP Starter Edition in Brazil. Could the pressure of Brazil's overtures toward Linux be forcing Microsoft Brasil to compete?"

Ritalin16 writes "Many web developers may be disappointed to hear that Microsoft decided to hold off on full CSS2 support with IE 7.0. As said by Microsoft-Watch: 'One partner said that Microsoft considers CSS2 to be a flawed standard and that the company is waiting for a later point release, such as CSS2.1 or CSS3, before throwing its complete support behind it.'" More commentary available from ZDNet. Generally related to the IE 7 Acid Test thrown down by Opera.

Varg Vikernes writes "Microsoft Watch has a story about new features we can expect in IE7 (code named 'Rincon') which they gathered through Microsoft's key partners. Apparently we can expect 32 bit PNG support, native IDN support, new functionality that will simplify printing from inside IE and, of course, tabbed browsing. The new browser also will likely include a built-in news aggregator. Apparently an important factor is security."

ScooterMcGoo writes "According to a Microsoft Watch blog, WinFS is being back ported for Windows XP. From TFA: WinFS isn't dead, Tom Rizzo, Microsoft's director of product management for SQL Server, recently told Microsoft Watch. In fact, Microsoft is planning to provide an update on the technology at this year's Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in September, he said. Rizzo said that Microsoft is busily back-porting the WinFS file-system technology to Windows XP. It's unclear if Microsoft also is porting WinFS to Windows Server 2003, but such a move would be likely, given that the Redmond software vendor is doing so with Avalon and Indigo."

galdur writes "Microsoft Watch reports Marc Lucovsky, one of Microsoft's key Windows architects has defected to Google. His confidence in Microsoft's ability to ship software seems to have waned, too. Some hypothesize Google working on an OS but in the wake of Google's inroads into Ajax tech applications (GMail, Suggest, Maps), I think Google may have other plans for the chief software architect for Microsoft's .Net My Services ("Hailstorm")" CT Many users are reporting 404s on the Microsoft Watch article, but its working fine for others. Hopefully they'll fix their server soon.

Mark Stone writes with a thoughtful look back at the year 2004 in open source, pointing out both major gains and inevitable uncertainties. He writes "2004 stands out as a year in which open source consolidated its position as a valuable and accepted approach to business and technology policy. A less obvious but significant trend underlies all of this: even as open source business models join the mainstream, the open source development model remains a mysterious process on which large technology companies struggle to capitalize. Key issues and developments have played out in four areas: legal, policy, business, and technology." Read on for the rest. Legal

The biggest non-story of the year was SCO's legal efforts. So far SCO has not been able to make substantial headway with a single one of its legal claims, and indeed has suffered a number of significant setbacks in court.

This is certainly good news for Linux and open source. Going back five or six years, clearly one of the major obstacles to widespread adoption of open source software was the uncertain legal status of both the software and the licenses. While this aspect of open source is still an unfinished saga -- more on that shortly -- the inability of SCO, through either legal or PR channels, to undermine Linux gives reason for confidence about the future.

The real story about SCO in 2004 has in fact been the telling of that story. While mainstream media coverage of SCO has varied widely -- sometimes accurate, sometimes resembling coverage of the OJ Simpson trial -- Groklaw has emerged as a steady voice of reason and objectivity adeptly defusing all attempts at "FUD" PR around the case.

2004 has been, especially as an election year, a controversial year for the phenomenon of blogging. Whether blogging will provide a sustainable alternate voice in journalism is very much an open question. A few blog sites, however, have shown what a handful of dedicated individuals can do in the face of much larger, and better funded PR machines. Groklaw is an outstanding example of the positive journalism effect that blogging can have.

The legal front brought other good news for the open source community. Norway's Supreme Court acquitted Jon Johansen, and the Norwegian Economic Crime Unit opted not to appeal the decision. In the United States the Digital Millenium Copyright Act still remains the law of the land, but the Recording Industry Association of America has made little progress in forcing ISPs to disclose the identities of alleged file swappers.

A more troubling legal trend is the shift in debate about the intellectual property status of open source software. The principles behind the "copyleft" approach have gained continued acceptance, and have even been leveraged as an integral part of some business models. The debate now, however, centers more around patents that copyright.

IBM has been out in front of the patent issue. Their open source license was the first to explicitly address patent licensing as an issue above and beyond copyright, and they've taken steps, even recent steps, to see that open source development is unencumbered by patent concerns. IBM is not the only company putting patents in the open source domain. Sun Microsystems recently announced they will make patents available under their recently approved Common Development and Distribution open source license (CDDL).

All of this would seem to be good news for the open source community, especially given that Poland's objections have put a temporary halt to the Europan Union software patent initiative. Appearances can be deceiving, however. IBM is a supporter of software patents. Sun's gesture is in fact intended to create a competitive advantage for OpenSolaris over Linux, since the patent protection Sun offers applies only to work licensed under the CDDL -- in other words, not Linux. In a recent News.com commentary, Bruce Parens said, "So while claiming to make the patents available to open-source developers, Sun can sue folks who work on Linux rather than Solaris."

The biggest patent concern comes from Microsoft. In a speech in Australia, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer claimed that Linux violated more than 200 patents. While this may be more hype -- or hope -- than fact, it does tip Microsoft's hand in terms of what tactics they are willing to use to meet the Linux competitive threat.

Policy

All other things being equal, customers prefer an open system to a closed one, and vendor choice over vendor lock-in. In the IT world in general, and between Windows and Linux in particular, all other things are not equal, which makes platform choice complicated. More and more, however, organizations are seeing Linux as a viable platform choice that

• Lowers up-front licensing fees
• Has the support and backing of significant technology vendors, whether small, medium (Red Hat), or large (IBM, Novell)
• Avoids vendor lock-in at both the platform and application level

These claims are independent of the more controversial claims about improving security and lowering total cost of ownership. 2004 has added an interesting additional element to the mix: the desire of government organizations outside the United States to not be dependent on a large, American technology company whose revenues exceed the gross national product of most nations.

This software declaration of independence has taken several forms. Sometimes it seems simply to be a negotiating tactic to force Microsoft to lower prices. India may be an example.

Sometimes, however, price is not the issue. Munich, for example, committed to making the switch to Linux despite direct lobbying efforts by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. In the case of a high tech country like Germany, this decision is probably influenced by the reluctance to be dependent on an American company guilty of monopoly practices.

The situation in the developing world is somewhat different. Unshackled by significant requirements of backward compatibility, emerging economies like Venezuela's have a chance to make a clean start and avoid what they perceive as the pitfalls and inefficiencies in older IT infrastructures.

The policy approach in China is even more alarming to traditional technology vendors. China clearly does not want to build an economy dependent on outside production or services, whether it's factories or satellite launches. In the software world China has made it clear that it can and will build its own platform and application stack leveraging open source components, if that is what it has to do to maintain control of its software destiny.

Business

The North American market for computer technology has, in many ways, reached the saturation point. A Pentium 4, to say nothing of a 64-bit processor, is already overkill for most office desktop applications. Older versions of the Microsoft Office suite, and older versions of Microsoft Windows, are often quite adequate for business productivity needs. The problem for traditional technology vendors is aggravated by the fact that Linux, Open Office, and other open source software may now be good enough.

On the one hand this accounts for why policy issues and the international technology market have become so important: this is where technology vendors see the biggest opportunity to grow new business. On the other hand, open source is forcing some significant changes in the software market domestically.

The most visible effect of open source has been the commoditization effect. Microsoft, as we've seen, has been forced to acknowledge the competitive impact Linux is having, and to cut prices overseas in response to this competition. Yet even companies like BEA acknowledge that open source will have an increasing commoditizing effect, meaning that they will cede lower levels of the application stack to freely available open source software and seek to add value further up the stack.

The most dramatic concession to commoditization in 2004 has been the announcement that Sun is open sourcing Solaris. Said one Sun executive who asked to remain anonymous, "Do you think we'd be open sourcing Solaris if we had any other way to compete with Linux on price? Of course not."

If anything, the opening of Solaris reinforces that Sun has been unable to find a business model built around Linux. Given that competitors like IBM and HP have, with varying degrees of success, been able to integrate Linux into their business models, one suspects that there are deeper problems at Sun than the opening of Solaris can solve.

The bottom line is that Sun is still trying to compete with, rather than embrace Linux. The CDDL doesn't extend patent protection to anyone working under a different open source License, and the CDDL is incompatible with the GPL, meaning none of the Solaris code can be used to benefit Linux.

This move, of using a license as a competitive tool, is one of the more subtle but more important business trends to emerge from open source in 2004.

The most common approach is a dual-licensing scheme, utilized by Trolltech (for Qt), Sleepycat (for Berkeley DB), MySQL, and newcomer db4objects, among others.

In each case the company makes its core product available under the GPL, or else under a similar viral-type license. Since each of these software products is intended to be embedded within or combined with other software to create a derivative product, companies are forced to make their own product available as open source, or to approach the originating company about separate licensing under proprietary terms.

The result is a very low-cost distribution mechanism for the open source companies, as well as a cheap in-bound sales channel of pre-qualified leads.

Of course, to be able to dual-license, you must have created all the code in question, or have full rights granted to you for all the code in question. Thus this very successful open source business model is incompatible with the open source development model; each of the companies using the dual-license approach does all, or nearly all of their software development in-house.

Technology

What then of the open source development model? Has it enjoyed the growth and widespread acceptance that open source business models have?

Certainly 2004 saw a number of significant releases for open source projects. GIMP 2.0 was finally released, as was Gnome 2.6. Large companies as well as individual projects made strides. IBM announced the release of its Java database, Cloudscape, as open source. Novell released SUSE Enterprise Server 9.

The year's most significant releases were the 2.6 series of Linux kernels, and the 1.0 release of Mono. With 2.6, Linux now has many of the features needed to compete as an enterprise-class server: better multiprocessor support, failover and hot-swap support, better journaling file system support.

Mono is absolutely critical if the open source community is to compete in the application development market. C# and .Net will be important application building blocks for the forseeable future, and Linux and open source need to be viable approaches.

The Debian Project has undergone an interesting evolution in the last year. Long-time Debian users have often complained about the slow pace at which Debian moves, favoring security and stability over feature growth. The result is a very solid server system, but one that, for the end user, often lacks support for advanced hardware.

The solution, which seems so obvious now, is independent distributions that leverage Debian as a base but target the end user with ease-of-use features and hardware-support features that have yet to make it into Debian. Two successful projects heading down this path are Ubuntu, which follows the Gnome approach to usability, and Mepis, which follows the KDE approach to usability. Either distribution will give you an easy install, access to Debian packages and apt-based network updates, but with more advanced hardware support and an improved UI over stock Debian.

By far the biggest development story of the year, however, has been Firefox, the browser component of the Mozilla project.

Timing is everything. Security, privacy, and spyware have become major concerns in 2004. Microsoft has refused to significantly update Internet Explorer (IE) until Longhorn is released, which could be in 2006 (as in "Santa Claus could be real"). The Mozilla Foundation capitalized on this opportunity with a major fundraising blitz for the foundation and PR blitz around Firefox; this included a full-page New York Times ad.

In November, Firefox 1.0 was released, and to date downloads exceed 10 million. Mozilla has raised over $250,000 in its fundraising campaign. While IE's market share still hovers around 90%, Firefox has rapidly grown to 5% market share, and put a dent in IE's market share for the first time in years. Industry analyst Gartner Group has looked at the results of 2004 and declared the browser war open again.

Looking ahead to 2005, it's interesting to ponder the tech sector's differing response to open source business and open source development models. The business models are reasonably well understood and generally accepted now. Not everyone is leveraging open source as a business play, but everyone understands it is one viable strategy to pursue.

On the development side, however, the results of open source continue to confound the establishment. Why did no one see the Firefox phenomenon coming? Equally important, why isn't anyone (AOL) attempting to leverage Firefox's market success and technology advantages?

With Solaris, it's interesting to note that even supporters of OpenSolaris admit it sees no real development savings to opening Solaris; the benefits are all on the marketing side. Ben Rockwood blogs "It's going to take Sun more work to maintain it open source than it will to just leave it closed."

Yes, open source has become mainstream. But that mainstream presence needs to be more than a commodity benefit to companies willing to leverage the results of open source. Will mainstream technology companies figure out how to anticipate and collaborate with open source development as a deep part of their technology strategy? That's a big question that 2005 may answer.

Mark Stone is an open source consultant and freelance writer living in the Sierra Nevada region of Northern California. He can be reached at mark.stone@gmail.com.

Martin Taylor is Microsoft's global general manager of platform strategy, but he's best-known as the man the company trots out to refute claims of Linux superiority. Here are links to several interviews he's done in the past two years: vnunet.com; CMP; Computerworld; and one on Microsoft's own site. As usual, please submit one question per post. We'll present 10 - 12 of the highest-moderated questions to Mr. Taylor about 24 hours after this post appears, and we expect to publish his answers within the next week.

waynegoode writes "Do you want to let Microsoft check if your copy of Windows is legit? How about if they promise it's anonymous? How about if they give you some free stuff? Recently Microsoft launched their Genuine Advantage Program to let you (and Microsoft) check if your OS is legal. They hoped for 20,000 responses but received 800,000 without offering anything but piece of mind. Now they are throwing in a bunch of free and discounted stuff including Photo Story 3 and the Holiday Fun Pack to try to get more volunteers. Read more at news.com and Microsoft Watch."

cbnet2004 writes "Microsoft Watch is reporting that when the upcoming Office 12 is released (what product reaches 12.0?), Microsoft will have a server version of Excel, Visio, and several other products along with it. So if you thought Microsoft was trying to dominate your desktop, now you'll have to watch out for your severs, too. According to the article, the new servers will fortunately not be for new "thin client" solutions."

cbnet2004 writes "Microsoft Watch is reporting that when the upcoming Office 12 is released (what product reaches 12.0?), Microsoft will have a server version of Excel, Visio, and several other products along with it. So if you thought Microsoft was trying to dominate your desktop, now you'll have to watch out for your severs, too. According to the article, the new servers will fortunately not be for new "thin client" solutions."

An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft has set late 2006 as the deadline for shipping Longhorn, but to make that date, it had to delay the full implementation of WinFS, an ambitious file system geared at letting users search through all of their files at once. In this interview with Bill Gates, he provides a summary of why Microsoft decided to drop WinFS, saying: "WinFS, I'd be the first to say, is very ambitious. Nobody has ever brought together the world of documents, media and structured information in giving you one simple set of verbs that lets you richly find, move around and replicate those things." Meanwhile, MS Watch has published Longhorn head-honcho Jim Allchin's memo on why some Longhorn features had to be axed."

prostoalex writes "Technology Review has a feature story on Miguel de Icaza, currently Novell VP of Product Technology, but more known as the leader of Gnome and Mono projects. Miguel is the man Don Box would like to see joining Microsoft for his "amazing amount of raw energy". If you read through the Technology review article, you will see that de Icaza was actually turned down by Microsoft at some point."

prostoalex writes "The head of Microsoft Windows client division claimed there will be 1 billion Windows users by 2010, while nowadays there are 600 million of them, Microsoft-Watch reports. 35% of Microsoft's enterprise customers are still running Windows 9x and they are ripe for upgrade. Currently Microsoft's desktop PC market share is at 96%, with the closest rival - MacOS from Apple Computer - being installed on 2.8% of the desktops."

zlel writes "Microsoft has decided on an official name - 'Windows XP Starter Edition' - for the stripped-down, cut-rate version of Windows that it first began offering in Thailand last summer."

grooveFX points to this CRN article which starts "After a year of tackling the Windows security nightmare, Microsoft has killed its Next-Generation Secure Computing Base (NGSCB) project and later this year plans to detail a revised security plan for Longhorn, the next major version of Windows, company executives said..." grooveFX writes "Glad to see they actually listen to the gripes from the media and users." Update: 05/05 19:13 GMT by T : phil reed writes "Oops. According to this article on Microsoft Watch, Microsoft really isn't giving up on NGSCB (aka 'Palladium') after all. Microsoft spent much of Day 2 of its Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) here refuting a published report claiming the company has axed its Next Generation Secure Computing Base (NGSCB) security technology."

greg_barton writes "At first I thought this was a joke, but this article from Microsoft Watch confirms it: 'Microsoft is expected to recommend that the 'average' Longhorn PC feature a dual-core CPU running at 4 to 6GHz; a minimum of 2 gigs of RAM; up to a terabyte of storage; a 1 Gbit, built-in, Ethernet-wired port and an 802.11g wireless link; and a graphics processor that runs three times faster than those on the market today.'"

worm eater writes "Microsoft Watch reports that Microsoft officials are now aiming for a 2006 release date for Longhorn, the follow up to Windows XP. Microsoft has been hyping aspects of this OS to its partners since 2001. I'm beginning to wonder if the industry will be in a far different place than Microsoft envisions 3 years down the line."

securitas writes "Martin Taylor was recently appointed as Microsoft's open source and Linux strategist and is responsible for Microsoft's open source and Linux test lab, mentioned on Slashdot last week. Taylor says his goal is to change Microsoft's competitive strategy by pursuing a fact-based approach instead of continuing the previous discredit-and-undermine strategy that was characterized by calling open source and Linux software 'a cancer, un-American and bankrupt' among other things. Taylor says he plans to focus on (and fund) studies that 'will highlight Microsoft's advantages in areas such as security, feature-completeness and total cost of ownership.'"

dotnothing writes "microsoft-watch.com has an interview with Chris Stone, who is the Vice Chairman of Novell. Stone says that Novell will be introducing a Linux distribution with Novell products and the Ximian desktop, but that they are not out to compete with Microsoft. He also expressed some gratitude to Red Hat for countersuing SCO."

Sophrosyne writes "Microsoft Watch has presented an article on Longhorn, which is due not before 2005, and compares it with Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther), which may be released this September. The article touches on some of the areas where Windows is ahead in operating system design and technologies, as well as how Panther plans to compete. Included in Microsoft Watch's article were links to a Extreme-Tech article on Desktop compositing, and 3D User Interfaces. It also contains videos of Longhorn's 3D Quartz-like user interface in action." If processor power is so important, why are we so willing to waste it on making windows do funny things when we move them around? Just wondering.

Sophrosyne writes "Microsoft Watch has presented an article on Longhorn, which is due not before 2005, and compares it with Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther), which may be released this September. The article touches on some of the areas where Windows is ahead in operating system design and technologies, as well as how Panther plans to compete. Included in Microsoft Watch's article were links to a Extreme-Tech article on Desktop compositing, and 3D User Interfaces. It also contains videos of Longhorn's 3D Quartz-like user interface in action." If processor power is so important, why are we so willing to waste it on making windows do funny things when we move them around? Just wondering.

1010011010 writes "According to Microsoft Watch, Microsoft will be demonstrating Palladium (also known as 'Next-Generation Secure Computing Base') at WinHEC in May in New Orleans. The 'trusted root' is now called the 'Nexus' by Microsoft. Developers wishing to write 'Nexus-aware' applications will apparently have to pay a licensing fee to do so. The product manager for Palladium, Mario Juarez, says, 'It's important to note that nexus-aware applications will not hinder any apps or anything else running in the regular Windows environment.' I'm sure you can all hear the word 'yet' at the end of that sentence. There's talk of phasing in Palladium, starting with Longhorn Server in 2005. I wonder how Microsoft will convince consumers that loss of control is a good thing, and how long the convincing will take. I, for one, am already planning to transition my company away from Microsoft software. Hopefully that won't get messed up by and dumb mandatory-palladium legislation from the Fritz types."

RadBlock writes "Microsoft Watch has a story on a recent change in Microsoft's shared-source licensing... I guess the main difference is that programmers do not have to send back any changes made to the source code. But they can't combine any of the Microsoft code with other software. Here's the full text of their new license agreement." The article claims that Microsoft is "inching closer -- at least in spirit -- to the GNU GPL" with these license tweaks, but it doesn't look that way to me.

RadBlock writes "Microsoft Watch has a story on a recent change in Microsoft's shared-source licensing... I guess the main difference is that programmers do not have to send back any changes made to the source code. But they can't combine any of the Microsoft code with other software. Here's the full text of their new license agreement." The article claims that Microsoft is "inching closer -- at least in spirit -- to the GNU GPL" with these license tweaks, but it doesn't look that way to me.

conaone writes "According to a Microsoft Watch, there is a feature in the leaked Office 2003 called "Information Rights Management." A lot more control over documents with this... the story says: "Microsoft is threading DRM throughout the Office 2003 suite, allowing restrictions to be set on Outlook mail messages, as well as on Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents. Using "permission templates," document authors can determine restriction policies to be applied to entire categories of documents, according to Microsoft's site." Here's a link to the whole story."

conaone writes "According to a Microsoft Watch, there is a feature in the leaked Office 2003 called "Information Rights Management." A lot more control over documents with this... the story says: "Microsoft is threading DRM throughout the Office 2003 suite, allowing restrictions to be set on Outlook mail messages, as well as on Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents. Using "permission templates," document authors can determine restriction policies to be applied to entire categories of documents, according to Microsoft's site." Here's a link to the whole story."

spydink writes "The Radio Netherlands website http://www.rnw.nl has a good hour-by-hour listing of potential local time live webcasts from around the world. May be helpful for those who want to raise a glass to the New Year every hour on the hour." (And there's some good news about that, too.) Read on for a few more end-of-year items, which you'll no doubt be seeing more of besides.

SkeeterMac writes "CNN ran an article today listing the top dubious achievements in personal computing for the year... raising again the point that PC speed can not be measured only in megahertz! Too bad the author doesn't think so, because they slam Apple for pricing the iMac around $1,500 for "chugging along at 700 Mhz"..."

cwill1004 writes "Mary Jo Foley has written up a set of predictions for Microsoft in 2003. She suggests that the tablet PC will be a bust, MSN gaining on AOL, and Microsoft getting more flak for its DRM (digital rights management) offerings, much like it did for the Windows Product Activation. It's on Microsoft Watch."

angkor links to Shift's "stupid web moments of 2002."

And the good news -- sulli writes "Just in time for New Year's, the New York Times (register now, use a workaround, or forever hold your peace) discusses at length the health benefits of alcohol. Prevent heart attacks, not with drugs or diet, but with a good California Zinfandel! Avoid strokes with a Perfect Gin Martini! Just don't overdo it, and you'll be fine - too much alcohol, like too much caffeine, has well-known effects. But in moderation, bottoms up!"

Update: 01/01 01:07 GMT by T : Here's another. An anonymous reader submits: "The BBC News has an amusing article titled the 'E-cyclopedia's glossary of 2002'. One wonders what future generations will make of our 'Bollotics' and 'Euronating'... Even Slashdotting gets a mention."

spydink writes "The Radio Netherlands website http://www.rnw.nl has a good hour-by-hour listing of potential local time live webcasts from around the world. May be helpful for those who want to raise a glass to the New Year every hour on the hour." (And there's some good news about that, too.) Read on for a few more end-of-year items, which you'll no doubt be seeing more of besides.

SkeeterMac writes "CNN ran an article today listing the top dubious achievements in personal computing for the year... raising again the point that PC speed can not be measured only in megahertz! Too bad the author doesn't think so, because they slam Apple for pricing the iMac around $1,500 for "chugging along at 700 Mhz"..."

cwill1004 writes "Mary Jo Foley has written up a set of predictions for Microsoft in 2003. She suggests that the tablet PC will be a bust, MSN gaining on AOL, and Microsoft getting more flak for its DRM (digital rights management) offerings, much like it did for the Windows Product Activation. It's on Microsoft Watch."

angkor links to Shift's "stupid web moments of 2002."

And the good news -- sulli writes "Just in time for New Year's, the New York Times (register now, use a workaround, or forever hold your peace) discusses at length the health benefits of alcohol. Prevent heart attacks, not with drugs or diet, but with a good California Zinfandel! Avoid strokes with a Perfect Gin Martini! Just don't overdo it, and you'll be fine - too much alcohol, like too much caffeine, has well-known effects. But in moderation, bottoms up!"

Update: 01/01 01:07 GMT by T : Here's another. An anonymous reader submits: "The BBC News has an amusing article titled the 'E-cyclopedia's glossary of 2002'. One wonders what future generations will make of our 'Bollotics' and 'Euronating'... Even Slashdotting gets a mention."