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Were you just not paying attention lately?

Partner sources say Microsoft is wavering on the extent to which it plans to support CSS2 with IE 7.0. Developers have been clamoring for Microsoft to update its CSS support to support the latest W3C standards for years. But Microsoft is leaning toward adding some additional CSS2 support to IE 7.0, but not embracing the standard in its entirety, partners say.

Microsoft's opposition to fully supporting CSS has been on the table for discussion for days. I'd hardly that's "conformance to standards". Plus, IE7 won't pull back. I really, really doubt that people will just say "Oh, look! IE7's out! It looks exactly like Firefox when it came out a year ago! I guess I'll switch back!" Not going to happen. The only way it'll pull back is if current FF users buy new computers with IE7, and don't bother to get Firefox for said new computers. Meanwhile, it's almost a sure thing that the dozens of bugs in security holes revealed in the first year are going to push people over to Firefox still.

This caused me to wonder about some of the technologies that they have actually created all by themselves, and would therefore be OK by us /.ers to patent.

So far, my list of genuine Microsoft innovations includes:
1. The Blue Screen of Death
2. Talking Paper Clips
3. Those other two keys between Alt + Ctrl
4. That marquee screen saver that's been around since Windows 3.1
5. 640kb of conventional memory
6. the mouse wheel (that's a good one, I'll admit)
7. A 'Start' button that allows you to shut down your PC
8. right clicking (Well, at least I know for sure that MS didn't steal that one from Apple)

So instead of focusing on stealing up other people's innovations, we can see that there is still plenty for MS to legitimately patent.

Still, I'm sure that this time next year we'll see a patent pending approval for tabbed-browsing www.microsoft-watch.com
And I thought this was the same company that said that nobody wanted to use tabbed-browsing?

Yes Google Desktop Search is no longer beta. The 1.0 release officially is out. Here is the link
http://www.microsoft-watch.com/article2/0,1995,177 3249,00.asp?kc=MWRSS02129TX1K0000535

It's 2005 today, but it's still earily in 2005. Back in April 2004, MS said (and I'm quoting Microsoft Watch, which is where a the hoo-rah started):

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.

So that's what Microsoft Watch says Microsoft said, so I can't tell you for certain if Microsoft believed it at the time, and I can't tell you if they still believe it now. I'd say that in mid-2006, that sounds more like a high-end system than a mid-level system. Intel has slacked off the rate of speedup, but I'd believe a 4 GHz dual-core would be available (if not common) in 18 months. (Moore's Law says speed doubles every 18 months.)

2 gigs of RAM sounds like a bit much for an average system, since today a quarter that much is sufficient even for MS bloatware for the average user. I don't know enough about video processor speeds to comment on them, but I'd believe that gigabit ethernet and wireless could be common in 18 months.

So yeah, it sounds like MS was being rather optimistic with those numbers, at least for Longhorn launch time. But by the time Longhorn has been out for a year (which will be only a fraction of the way through it's lifecycle) those systems should be common.

It sounds like MS is telling its developers to come up with something neat for a very powerful system. Whether they're talking revolutions, eye candy, or lazy programming, we'll know later this year when the betas appear. I'm betting it'll be a bit of the former and rather heavy on the latter two.

Who needs it? Windows users will soon, and that's before spyware.

I just read an editorial suggesting that M$ should opensource NT4 http://www.microsoft-watch.com/article2/0,1995,175 3592,00.asp and perhaps even opensource last spring's leaked source http://www.microsoft-watch.com/article2/0,1995,152 7013,00.asp

Thoughts, anyone??

I just read an editorial suggesting that M$ should opensource NT4 http://www.microsoft-watch.com/article2/0,1995,175 3592,00.asp and perhaps even opensource last spring's leaked source http://www.microsoft-watch.com/article2/0,1995,152 7013,00.asp

Thoughts, anyone??

It made a great story, but it looks like, seeing the transcript, that MS was not in the wrong in asking for a retraction. Ballmer did say some awful things, which is to be expected, but if you look at the transcript, Reuters did take some things out of context. I'll leave RTFA as an exercise.

I read that the BSOD happens if your computer is infected with adware when you install SP2.

• A dual-core CPU running at 4 to 6GHz
• A minimum of 2 gigs of RAM
• A terabyte of storage
• A graphics processor that runs three times faster than those on the market today

Try getting that for $100

Yesterday I was reading an interview from Joel Spolsky (You probably know him from Joel on software) and I found the following quote interesting:

In my ("How Microsoft Lost the API War") essay, I quoted a Microsoft guy (and Longhorn Avalon team member) named Joe Beda. I quoted him saying "Microsoft is making a big bet on the rich client." And now he works at Google with Adam Bosworth. I'm sure what they're doing is a new browser. It's the IE (Internet Explorer) team reconstructed inside Google.

Hmm, not on Mary Jo Foley's list of MS community links.

Then again, neither is Paul Thurrott, apparently not a favorite of hers.

This will change in OS X 10.4, or so I've heard, which will, like Longhorn and Cairo, use the GPU for 2D rendering acceleration.

Market share isn't the point. The point is what else is available.

Consider other monopolies. If you are a monopoly on, let's say, diamonds, it's not hard to maintain your monopoly. You just raise prices, and purchase any newly discovered diamond mines. That way you can control supply, and keep it restricted to inflate prices and create a false sense of shortfall. This is how DeBeers can corner the market, even though they hold about a 80% stake in the market. Even though 20% of the market is held by other companies, they still hold a very firm monopoly position.

In MS's case, they can't buy up the supply, because the supply works for free or almost free. The supply of OS's - namely Linux - cannot be stopped. Even if the top developers were hired off, new developers are being minted every day. In the diamond world, DeBeers can raise and lower prices without regard to any other economic factor. Since they hold so much of the supply, other supplies cannot make up for the cut in productions. Meaning, if DeBeers cuts production in half, the other producers cannot make up the shortfall, and prices will rocket.

The fact that MS is not a monopoly is perfectly clear by any reasonable standard. 6-years ago if you wanted to negotiate prices with MS, they laughed at you, and told you to sign on the dotted line as-is. Now, all you need to do is mention "Linux" and a special reaction squad kicks into gear and sharpens their pencil to come up with a more competitive offer.

Read this article for more details on that.

What does all this mean? It means that, even though only 1-3% of home users utilize Linux, it can effectively compete with MS, and force MS to be more competitive than ever in terms of pricing, support, and especially quality.

The bottom line being that since Linux costs basically nothing to produce, nothing to distribute, and very little maintain the relative effects of it's small marketshare are multipled greatly.

I could care less if Microsoft produced a cut-rate version of their software. I could care less if they give it away. They are a competitor and they have to respond to the market. The market now says "OSs are commodity". Microsoft will continue to capture all the revenue they can from that stream as long as they can. Remember, Microsoft initially wanted to be a computer language company. DOS was going to be the cash cow they relied on to continue their development of assembler, fortran, C, etc.

What pisses me off is that the Thai government is going to HELP Microsoft in spreading the deployment of XP Lite. I know that many Microsoft supporters will chime in about Munich's recent decision to move forward with Linux. This is different than a government making a purchasing decision for themselves and coming up with XP or Linux as the OS choice. Instead, the Thai government is helping with the deployment in non-government settings.

Nothing annoys me more than corporate welfare. The Thai government is supporting one of the richest companies in the world.

Fuck you Microsoft.

I really don't see what Macromedia has to lose here. Does it cower to MS? If so, then shouldn't Macromedia be just a little more than worried about "Sparkle?"

Maybe they're trying to get publicity for it, and will apply it later down the line to more than just web browsers. Active X works for other things too like databases, which is really useful. If Linux and Mac OS had a similar standard, it could be applied in other programs on both platforms. That kind of functionality is missing on both platforms at the moment, I think. Apple, IBM, and Lotus tried to establish OpenDoc ages ago but it didn't catch.

Macromedia must also be getting into this because Microsoft sees Flash as a threat to their control of the interface and plans to push their own standard, "Sparkle". Flash seems to have accomplished what Java applets were supposed to do on the web, providing a cross-platform programming language that actually works without interference from Microsoft, and can be used for more than just animation. Macromedia Central was supposed to allow Flash to be used for making applications that can work independently of a web browser, seamlessly across different platforms, but I don't know why that hasn't caught on either.

This is an edited version of an article from the February 6, 2004, issue of the Microsoft Watch newsletter.

On the one hand, virus writers are aggressively pursued and prosecuted with claimed damages of billions of dollars; on the other hand, these losses are not included in the TCO of Windows! What gives?

Once again /. breaks a month-old story.

I'd say it's primarily preparation for getting in bed with media content providers, and being positioned as THE way to deliver content to the paying masses.

Except it's NOT being dropped according to a WinHEQ talk.

Microsoft-Watch has details,

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. "NGSCB is alive and kicking," said Mario Juarez, a product manager in Microsoft's security and technology business unit.

Who to believe?

Interestingly, at the same time as this article pops up in feedreader, I get this link from e-week that refutes the claim. Net: microsoft says palladium is still very much alive.

I will ask this question to PDA phone mavens at Mobile Showcase Showcase, which I am attending. You can see the result once I've gotten to ask some of the notables present.

However, Linux bears the seed of its own lack of progress; who's going to water the tree from which it grows?

PDA phone development is not just hacking code to throw on a PC, whose architecture is planned years in advance at every WinHEC and painstaking documented in dozens of new titles every year (my fave being Robert Bruce Thompson's PC Hardware in a Nutshell).

Utterly different devices, PDA phones are. Since they are phones, their internal radio architecture is morphing on incredibly rapid cycles, as the cellular carriers are pushing the bleeding edge with new modulation systems as rapidly as their supply of 'the most important engineering material' (money) will permit.

PDA phones also must be approved before market by the FCC Stateside, and similar regulatory agencies Elsewhere, using standards far more involved and rigorous than are applied to PCs. More delays, more money.

There's no Linux sugardaddy like PalmSource or Microsoft to push that progress, is there? Maybe that explains why Linux phones don't exist.

Look at PDA phones. Right now, the US market distribution (as per IDC) is:

Smartphones:

PalmOS has 32%, Other OS have 24%, Symbian has 23% and Microsoft has 11%. Linux is 0%.

Handhelds:

PalmOS has 65%, WinCE/Pocket PC has 34% and Linux has 1%. One per cent.

But, you really don't _need_ a manufacturer, anymore. Samsung and other PalmPhone makers are turning loose their specs and firmware source to developers.

If you want a Linux PDA phone, go right ahead. Write the code to turn a SPH-i500 into a Linux Phone.

Me, from my Olympian perspective, I and I think it won't happen. By the time it could, the cellular mutant of the PSTN will be replaced by an ubiquitious IP cloud, through WiFi and WiMAX, and Linux devices will wirelessly use IP telephony, the heirs of Skype, to enulate telephony, and skip right over the idea of a LinuxPhone.

You read it here first.

What the artcile didn't say was that this computing power was needed primarily for a new feature of Longhorn - the Microsoft Streaming Patch System or MSPS.

If one graphs Microsoft's patch releases over time, it is clear that the time between patches approaches zero. No one likes to patch a aysstem, just to see the next day a new patch or twelve have been released over night!

So the MSPS will stream patches to all servers in a continuous feed. Of course, to install these patches takes bandwidth (1 GB Either), to download, both CPU power (dual 4GHz) and ram (2 GB) to install and a lot of room (1 TB to be exact) to store them all.

+1 Sarcastic

here

It may well be. It seems the DOJ may not be too happy with MS's media packaging, either. You woud have thought they would have learned by now.

Oh, wait, no, they wouldn't, since the last time the DOJ tried to smack MS upside their heads, MS bought off the government and went right on their merry way. My bad.

I know a lot of /.'s American readers might not care so much, but as a belgian, I'm glad this has finally started. I read a story about this a few days ago, and it was still undecided how MS would proceed. I wonder how the EU will see this in light of the recent warning from america's government about the Shop for Music mess. Feature my arse. Anyway, we europeans have got to do our part to fight software patents and monopolies, and I'm glad to see the EU might be up to the task.

Well, it'll have to be a 32-bit quantity until late-2004... :)

http://www.microsoft-watch.com/article2/0,4248,134 3111,00.asp

Whatever they decide, with the Windows world stalled until 2006, now's the time for the *NIX based solutions to make hay, whatever their CPU architecture of choice...

What will Novell do if MS threatens to sue them for a couple billion $ similar to what SCO tries with IBM? What makes you think that Novell won't drop Mono like a hot iron? Remember how Novell vice chairman Chris Stone said in an interview "We just hope Microsoft isn't against the idea." With dotGNU being based outside the US, that project has much better chances to weather any storms that M$ might throw against them.

Really!

Sony's profits are down 98%.

Microsoft's game division is down 42 percent.

Nintendo posts a 11.5 billion yen profit for the quarter. That's about $1 MILLION A DAY or $12 a second.

Who's the loser here? Console sales aren't instant profit. Games are what matters, and with Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire selling 9.5 Million worldwide(Who said it was dead?), Nintendo can afford to make the games they want without having to copy anyone else to make a quick buck.

Microsoft Watch: Are you worried about SCO taking you on further, now that you've made your intentions to be a Linux player more obvious (with the Ximian deal)? Red Hat just sued SCO today...

Stone: It's great they sued them. That takes the heat off us. Go Matt! (Szulik, Red Hat, chairman and CEO) SCO doesn't have any friends left. And remember, we never said the copyright thing between us and SCO was over. We'll see."

Red Hat's countersuit is only beneficial to Linux. Even Chris Stone, who is moving Novell ahead with it's own desktop Linux distro, seems to think so.

Of course Red Hat is going to countersue. The Linux kernel has a lot of code that THEY developed and spent money on.

Microsoft is taking on Sourceforge. Here's the article

June 12, 2003
AOL Connects AIM, ICQ Users
ByÂCraig Newell

America Online Inc. has released an alpha version of its ICQ messaging client that allows for instant messages to be exchanged between ICQ and AOL Instant Messenger users for the first time.

The software, ICQ Lite build #1211, was released Monday, according to ICQ's Web site.

Usage of ICQ has declined as of late, with many instant messaging users opting for AOL Instant Messenger. According to data from ComScore Media Metrix, only six million Internet users used ICQ in May, while more than 33 million used AOL Instant Messenger during the same period.

Several instant message users who spoke with eWEEK thought the introduction of messaging between AIM and ICQ was too little, too late. One joked, "This AIM/ICQ compatibility won't do me much good as I stopped using my ICQ account shortly before retiring my TELEX number."

In May, Microsoft and America Online announced that they would collaborate for interoperability between MSN Messenger and AOL Instant Messenger. ICQ was not mentioned in the agreement.

In Fall of 2000, a test version of AIM was released which allowed for ICQ users to message each other using the AIM software, though there was no interoperability between the two networks.

AOL bought ICQ parent Mirabilis Ltd. in 1998 for $287 million.

America Online did not respond to requests for comment.

Looks like Microsoft is trying to do something similar to a couple of its former employees (ala Foundstone to Glaser):

Microsoft to Take Spinoff to Court?

Of course, we all know Microsoft is no saint.

Is The 'Soft Going Soft on Open Source?

By Mary Jo Foley
Microsoft's newest shared source license seems to be inching closer -- at least in spirit -- to the GNU GPL.

The open-source faithful have been harsh critics of Microsoft's shared source licensing plan and justifiably so. They have claimed that Microsoft has attempted to ride the coattails of the GNU General Public License (GPL), while simultaneously slamming the GPL as contaminating everything in its path.

Even some of Microsoft's own employees, such as David Stutz, the former Microsoft manager in charge of Microsoft's Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) Shared Source program, have expressed frustration with Microsoft's licensing rhetoric.

One More Time: Stutz's 'Sanitized' Goodbye Note

But is there a case to be made that Redmond is slowly but surely learning from its past mistakes?

Exhibit No. 1: Instead of trying to blur the lines between open source and shared source, this week, Microsoft is presenting (against a back drop of open-source protest) its shared source program as an "alternative" to the GPL at the Washington, D.C. e-Government pow-wow on open standards and open source.

Check Out the e-Government Agenda Here

Exhibit No. 2: With no fanfare, the company recently has added a new shared source licensing option to its stable that removes some (but definitely not all of the more onerous licensing clauses from Microsoft's contracts.

The new license -- called simply, the "ASP .Net Starter Kit License" -- is much streamlined and simplified, weighing in at a single page in length. Under the licensing terms, developers and users are permitted to download the ASP .Net Starter Kit source code for free, to develop on and around the code and redistribute it, commercially or internally, without paying Microsoft any royalties.

ASP .Net Starter Kit licensees do not need to return to Microsoft any changes they make to the code, Microsoft execs say. Under the GPL license, developers are obligated to submit back to the community any changes they make to the code base.

But don't start thinking that The 'Soft has gone soft on open source. There is wording in the ASP .Net Starter Kit license that prevents developers or customers from GPLing the Microsoft code, according to Microsoft execs.

"You are not allowed to combine or distribute the (ASP .Net Starter Kit) Software with other software that is licensed under terms that seek to require that the Software (or any intellectual property in it) be provided in source code form, licensed to others to allow the creation or distribution of derivative works, or distributed without charge," reads Microsoft's new license.

For the Whole Text of the New License, Click Here

What's your take? Do you think Microsoft is genuinely interested in adopting some of the positives from the open source model? Or is the company hiding behind seemingly more liberal terms and conditions? Write me at mswatch@ziffdavis.com and give me your two cents.

I was just browsing Microsoft blogs and came across this article on what Microsoft is doing about people being able to do what they want with their existing computers without buying XP and Word 2003.

Computerworld

Cnet

Internetnews

Infoworld

And, of course, Microsoft Watch.

Mary Jo Foley's article is worth a read, and free too! (You don't to know how much the Microsoft Watch Newsletter will cost you, trust me, it'll make your eyes water). And the predictions look to be spot-on too.

The E-cyclopedia is worth a read too, although some of the words probably won't make sense if you don't live in the UK (eg. 'archery' refers to Jeffrey Archer, sent down last year for perjury).

PS. 2003 in da house! (UK)