A marvelous rant from InfoWorld: Application development: Microsoft remains clueless about fixing IE. “Amazing. Article after blog after newsgroup message on why an increasing spike in the population graph is switching from Internet Explorer to Firefox or some other Web wanderer. All easily summarized like so (picture me shouting at the great Northwest): Because with Firefox we don’t need to worry about some nameless virgin’s virus experiment eating our hard disks like a pile of wet sushi. We just want to click on an icon and get a Web browser, not a menagerie of problems, exploits, downloadable patches, and reboots. For systems administrators, we can add user support calls at the end as well.”
Tag Archives | Microsoft
Finally, Microsoft patches IE for non-XP systems
IE SP1 patched today. Garrett Fitzgerald blogs “Microsoft today released a patch for the recent IFRAME exploit that was used on some ad-serving sites recently. If you use IE and haven’t updated to Windows XP SP2, you want to go to Windows Update and grab this patch ASAP. ”
In other words, if you are one of the 300 million not running Windows XP, this patch is for you.
Microsoft to offer blogging tool in MSN Spaces
MSN Spaces Blogging Tool Ready to Roll. Microsoft Watch from Mary Jo Foley reports “MSN has been beta testing its blogging service in Japan since August. According to our sources, MSN will give MSN Spaces a red-carpet rollout later this week.”
It will be interesting to see Microsoft’s… innovations.
Would you be quiet for ten million dollars?
“The antitrust settlement between Microsoft and the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) announced earlier this month included a payment of $9.75 million to the CCIA’s president, according to a report published Wednesday.” Read the full article on the InfoWorld site.
Microsoft v. Linux patent update
Meant to update last week’s posting, but it slipped through. In eWeek on Saturday, the author of the original study on Linux and possible patent violations took Microsoft to task for misrepresenting the findings of that study:
“Open source faces no more, if not less, legal risk than proprietary software. The market needs to understand that the study Microsoft is citing actually proves the opposite of what they claim it does.”
Throwing down the gauntlet
Did Ballmer Drop the Linux Patent-Violation Bomb?. “Did Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer say that Microsoft believes Linux violates 200-plus software patents? Or was Ballmer simply citing a study claiming that same fact? In either case, Ballmer found himself on the Linux hot seat for remarks he made to a group of Asian government leaders in Singapore on Thursday.” From Microsoft Watch from Mary Jo Foley
The irony is that Microsoft is likely to violate just as many patents, if not orders of magnitude more, but that’s a lot tougher to determine with closed-source software.
Microsoft claims they will indemnify their customers, but the limitations of that indemnification make it look pretty flimsy to me. Big tip of the hat to http://www.groklaw.net for the insight into this one and many other legal issues.
First, Microsoft dissed Linux as amateurish. Then, Linux was “viral” and “un-American.” Next, Microsoft twists studies to “get the facts.” Now, they have resorted to threatening their customers. I find this trend disturbing. What’s next?
Is email retention a good thing or a bad thing?
“Burst.com says Microsoft destroyed evidence. In court documents made public this week, Burst.com accused Microsoft managers of telling employees in 2000 to destroy evidence contained in old e-mails.” From Computerworld News
Robert X. Cringely wrote about this case back in October:
One huge issue in Burst v. Microsoft is missing e-mails that should have appeared in the discovery portion of the case, but didn’t. Burst knows there are lost messages because many of them were to and from Burst, itself, so they have their copies. But not only are the known messages lost from Microsoft’s e-mail archive, so are any messages on the same subject that may have been sent between the Microsoft people, themselves, and not shared with Burst — messages that Burst only believes to exist, but it’s a pretty fair assumption that some such mail did happen. I have written about this before, and it plays back to a haphazard corporate e-mail retention policy at Microsoft that seems to conveniently lose any damning evidence.
Novell "Truth" vs. Microsoft "Facts"
Novell has posted a web page “Unbending the Truth: Things Microsoft Hopes You Won’t Notice” to counter Microsoft’s “Get the Facts” campaign, which I’ve ridiculed before. Microsoft’s campaign includes paid research that uncovers such startling facts as “five Dell servers cost less than a mainframe” to argue for Microsoft’s advantage in the Windows vs. Linux debate.
New MyDoom variant exploits an unpatched Internet Explorer flaw
New MyDoom variant exploits IE flaw. “A new variant of the MyDoom worm that exploits an unpatched flaw in Microsoft Corp.’s Internet Explorer (IE) browser is in the wild and posing particular risk to home and small business users, security experts warned this week.” Posted at InfoWorld: Top News.
Yet another good reason to look at FireFox.
FireFox 1.0 Released
Mozilla launches Firefox 1.0 browser. “The Mozilla Foundation has released Version 1.0 of its Firefox browser, an open-source product that has generated lofty expectations that it will offer real competition to Microsoft Corp.’s ubiquitous Internet Explorer.” Posted at InfoWorld: Top News.
Use BitTorrent, if you can, and the download goes faster than greased lightening.