http://www.osnews.com/ Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2008, David Adams OSNews version 4 donotreply@osnews.com (Adam Scheinberg) donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Sat, 17 May 2008 06:18:53 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com/ 120 http://www.osnews.com/story/19753/Open_Letter_to_Standards_Professionals_Developers_and_Activists/ http://www.osnews.com/story/19753/Open_Letter_to_Standards_Professionals_Developers_and_Activists/ Peter Hintgens, writing at Freesoftware Magazine, explains why the adoption of Microsoft's OOXML as an ISO standard is a dreadful development, and explains how some open standards partisans are organizing to combat insufficiently-open "open" standards. Sat, 17 May 2008 03:35:43 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (David Adams) Microsoft 3 http://www.osnews.com/topics/23 News pas de calais http://www.osnews.com/story/19728/Microsoft_To_Appeal_Record_EC_Fine/ http://www.osnews.com/story/19728/Microsoft_To_Appeal_Record_EC_Fine/ In February 2008, the European Commission fined Microsoft for the record-breaking amount of 899 million Euros, for not complying to the 2004 ruling from Brussels. Today, Microsoft announced it has decided to appeal the fine. "We are filing this appeal in a constructive effort to seek clarity from the court. We will not be saying anything further," the company stated. Fri, 09 May 2008 20:24:55 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Microsoft 43 http://www.osnews.com/topics/23 News http://www.osnews.com/story/19712/Microsoft_Withdraws_Proposal_to_Acquire_Yahoo/ http://www.osnews.com/story/19712/Microsoft_Withdraws_Proposal_to_Acquire_Yahoo/ Earlier this year, Microsoft offered to purchase search engine company Yahoo, however, the board of directors of Yahoo shot the offer down beause it 'massively' undervalued the company. This ignited an acquisition dance that took a few months, and rumours were abound as to what either of the two would do next. Sun, 04 May 2008 07:19:33 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Microsoft 36 http://www.osnews.com/topics/23 News sonic2000gr http://www.osnews.com/story/19673/Ten_Things_To_Know_About_Microsofts_Live_Mesh/ http://www.osnews.com/story/19673/Ten_Things_To_Know_About_Microsofts_Live_Mesh/ "What, exactly, is Live Mesh and what do developers, customers and partners need to know about it? Here are 10 things that grabbed me about Live Mesh, after distilling my notes from chatting with some of the Softies involved in bringing Live Mesh to fruition." IN short, Live Mesh is "a Software + Services platform for synchronization and collaboration." Wed, 23 Apr 2008 16:27:15 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (David Adams) Microsoft 20 http://www.osnews.com/topics/23 News WillM http://www.osnews.com/story/19654/Microsofts_Ozzie_Talks_Open_Source_Mesh/ http://www.osnews.com/story/19654/Microsofts_Ozzie_Talks_Open_Source_Mesh/ Microsoft has "dramatically" changed because of open-source software, the company's Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie said Thursday as part of a wide-ranging discussion during the annual Most Valuable Professional summit in Seattle. He also talked about Microsoft's mesh concept and the importance of virtualization. Fri, 18 Apr 2008 16:19:56 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (David Adams) Microsoft 10 http://www.osnews.com/topics/23 News WillM http://www.osnews.com/story/19635/Fat_Fatter_Fattest:_Microsofts_Kings_of_Bloat/ http://www.osnews.com/story/19635/Fat_Fatter_Fattest:_Microsofts_Kings_of_Bloat/ "What Intel giveth, Microsoft taketh away. Such has been the conventional wisdom surrounding the Windows/Intel (aka Wintel) duopoly since the early days of Windows 95. In practical terms, it means that performance advancements on the hardware side are quickly consumed by the ever-increasing complexity of the Windows/Office code base. Case in point: Microsoft Office 2007, which, when deployed on Windows Vista, consumes more than 12 times as much memory and nearly three times as much processing power as the version that graced PCs just seven short years ago, Office 2000. Despite years of real-world experience with both sides of the duopoly, few organizations have taken the time to directly quantify what my colleagues and I at Intel used to call The Great Moore's Law Compensator (TGMLC). In fact, the hard numbers above represent what is perhaps the first-ever attempt to accurately measure the evolution of the Windows/Office platform in terms of real-world hardware system requirements and resource consumption. In this article I hope to further quantify the impact of TGMLC and to track its effects across four distinct generations of Microsoft's desktop computing software stack." Tue, 15 Apr 2008 20:12:30 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Microsoft 88 http://www.osnews.com/topics/23 News Craig Barth http://www.osnews.com/story/19625/Microsoft_May_Be_Barred_from_EU_Procurement_Procedure/ http://www.osnews.com/story/19625/Microsoft_May_Be_Barred_from_EU_Procurement_Procedure/ "The undeclared war between the Microsoft and the European Union has been relatively quiet for the past few months; we haven't heard much from either party since the EU fined Microsoft USD 1.36 billion. The scarcely settled cauldron between the two organizations, however, is about to receive a good stirring, due to the actions of EU Parliment representative and Green Party member, Heide Ruehle. Ruehle has filed a question with the Parliament, raising the issue of whether the EU's legal findings against the company preclude it from taking part in future public procurement discussions." Mon, 14 Apr 2008 17:15:50 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Microsoft 55 http://www.osnews.com/topics/23 News SReilly http://www.osnews.com/story/19599/Microsoft_Makes_Office_2007_Protocols_Available/ http://www.osnews.com/story/19599/Microsoft_Makes_Office_2007_Protocols_Available/ "Microsoft will make available the preliminary versions of technical documentation for the protocols built into Microsoft Office 2007, SharePoint Server 2007 and Exchange Server 2007. This documentation, which defines how these high-volume Microsoft products communicate with some of its other products, is 14000 pages and is in addition to the 30000 pages posted when the software giant first introduced its new Interoperability Principles last month. They will be made available April 8." Tue, 08 Apr 2008 20:14:14 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Microsoft 42 http://www.osnews.com/topics/23 News http://www.osnews.com/story/19580/Interview:_Why_Nick_White_Left_Microsoft/ http://www.osnews.com/story/19580/Interview:_Why_Nick_White_Left_Microsoft/ "Earlier this week Nick White, Product Manager for Windows Vista and blogger at WindowsVistaBlog, announced that he was leaving Microsoft. We previously interviewed Nick about what SP1 for Vista was all about, so we sat down with him yesterday to get the details behind his departure, his proudest moments at Microsoft, a few regrettable moments, and more." Fri, 04 Apr 2008 20:07:02 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Microsoft 14 http://www.osnews.com/topics/23 News http://www.osnews.com/story/19563/AT&T_First_to_Introduce_Microsoft_Surface/ http://www.osnews.com/story/19563/AT&T_First_to_Introduce_Microsoft_Surface/ From a Microsoft press release: "AT&T will become the first company in the world to bring Microsoft Surface to life in a retail environment, giving customers the ability to explore their mobile worlds using touch and device recognition technology. Microsoft Surface is the first commercially available surface computer from Microsoft. Beginning April 17, customers can experience Microsoft Surface in select AT&T retail locations, including stores in New York City, Atlanta, San Antonio and San Francisco. Based on the success and learning from these initial pilot deployments, plans for further expansion across AT&T's 2200 US retail stores will be determined." Wed, 02 Apr 2008 17:57:11 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Microsoft 4 http://www.osnews.com/topics/23 News JJ http://www.osnews.com/story/19534/Consumer_Version_of_Surface_Could_Hit_by_2011/ http://www.osnews.com/story/19534/Consumer_Version_of_Surface_Could_Hit_by_2011/ In targeting casinos, restaurants, and hotels, Microsoft knows it is barely scratching the surface of the demand for its tabletop computer. The company is convinced there is a mass market for an interactive touch-screen computer, but perhaps not in its current USD 10000 version. CEO Steve Ballmer told financial analysts last month that Microsoft had a plan to speed up the arrival of a consumer version of the tabletop computer Surface. Thu, 27 Mar 2008 18:13:53 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Microsoft 9 http://www.osnews.com/topics/23 News http://www.osnews.com/story/19442/ActiveX_in_IE_8/ http://www.osnews.com/story/19442/ActiveX_in_IE_8/ "Conspicuously absent from Microsoft's annual MIX conference here was any discussion by the software giant about whether it plans to change the way ActiveX will run in Internet Explorer 8 . . . Some security experts, like Will Dormann, a vulnerability analyst at the Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute CERT/CC, are calling for ActiveX to be disabled from running by default in IE 8." Sat, 08 Mar 2008 00:15:04 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (David Adams) Microsoft 24 http://www.osnews.com/topics/23 News Punktyras http://www.osnews.com/story/19418/Gates:_Google_Does_Not_Understand_Business_Needs/ http://www.osnews.com/story/19418/Gates:_Google_Does_Not_Understand_Business_Needs/ Microsoft chairman Bill Gates says Google's tools are no threat to SharePoint, and that Google Talk is hardly changing the world. Google really does not understand the special needs of businesses, as its model is based around consumer search, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates told attendees at the 2008 SharePoint conference here March 3. On a related note, Ballmer will retire in nine years. Mon, 03 Mar 2008 23:19:52 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Microsoft 46 http://www.osnews.com/topics/23 News http://www.osnews.com/story/19395/EU_Fines_Microsoft_Record_899m_EUR/ http://www.osnews.com/story/19395/EU_Fines_Microsoft_Record_899m_EUR/ "Microsoft was fined a record 899 million euros (USD 1.35 billion) by the European Commission on Wednesday for using high prices to discourage software competition in the latest sanction in their long-running battle. The executive arm of the European Union said the U.S. software group defied a 2004 order from Brussels to provide the information on reasonable terms. Microsoft has now been fined a total of 1.68 billion euros by the EU for abusing its 95 percent dominance of PC operating systems through Windows." Wed, 27 Feb 2008 18:33:21 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Microsoft 114 http://www.osnews.com/topics/23 News JJ http://www.osnews.com/story/19372/Microsoft_Commits_to_Greater_Interoperability/ http://www.osnews.com/story/19372/Microsoft_Commits_to_Greater_Interoperability/ Microsoft rolled out its big guns, including CEO Steve Ballmer and Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie, to underscore its commitment to the set of new interoperability principles announced Feb. 21 that are designed to increase the openness of its high-volume products and drive greater interoperability. In fact, Microsoft's long-term success depends on its ability to deliver a software and services platform that is open and flexible and provides customers and developers with choice, Ballmer said during a media teleconference. The EU is skeptical on Microsoft's pledges, according to Ars. Thu, 21 Feb 2008 21:51:57 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom Holwerda) Microsoft 45 http://www.osnews.com/topics/23 News Xaero_Vincent