Microsoft Tidbits

Microsoft has had a busy day. Having a suit against them thrown out, attempting to use the VBI for their own good, and being written about in a fascinating Red Herring article. Read more... A Texas judge has dismissed the suit the State of Texas brought against Microsoft last year, a suit that attacked Microsoft for its ultra-secretive non-disclosure agreements.
Also, Microsoft is in talks with several TV content partners to discuss how the vertical blanking interface (a way of transmitting data through television signals, at about 9600bps, by my calculations) wil be used. Sounds as if exclusive content enhancment services will be available only to Win98 and WebTV users.
Finally, an amusing but fascinating article talks about how Microsoft is 'a good monopoly'. Aside from the obvious errors (I'm sure Microsoft forced SCO to include code in their OS to make it incompatible with Windows...). I particularly enjoyed the part about 'increasing returns', a concept that can be applied in other places besides economics, and one that I've been studying for a long while...