Microsoft’s war on GPL dealt patent setback. FAT not a banker By Andrew Orlowski . [The Register]
Software patents are an inherently bad idea, in my opinion, and
compounded and amplified in the US by an incompetent system that grants
frivolous patents that cost small fortunes to litigate. Software
companies should compete on features, on true innovation, and not on false claims of past inventions. That’s not how the software community has ever worked.
“Microsoft Corp.’s plans for a common set of services that promise its
server platform products will work better together are being met with
skepticism…” writes Peter Galli at eWeek.
Barbara Darrow, industry editor at Computer Reseller News, writes “Something interesting happened
on the road to and from software dominance. Microsoft, which always
delighted in displacing the old farts of technology, has become an old
fart itself.”
Slate magazine, which admirably discloses its ownership by Microsoft in this article, says there is “A Simple Plan: Virus-proof your PC in 20 minutes, for free.”
The three steps they advocate – make sure security is sufficient on IE,
get the latest Windows Updates and search for spyware – surely make the
machine more reliable than if those steps were not taken. But that is
not enough.
I think author Paul Boutin missed the mark in not considering the
possibility that there are many other browsers out there – Opera,
Netscape, Mozilla, Firefox and others – that don’t suffer from the
many, many IE exploits and will meet the needs of most users. Also,
slipped in among those three steps was the off-hand mention of
antivirus software, which ought to be a mandatory requirement for all
systems.
Speaking of which, ComputerWorld reports four new Internet Explorer holes have been discovered.
Mary Jo Foley covers VFP 9!. “On Microsoft Watch
today, Mary Jo Foley posted an update to an earlier article, talking
about Fox, its positioning within MS, and what its strengths are.” Link
via Garrett Fitzgerald’s Blog
Ken Levy, the VS Data Product Manager at Microsoft, reports “The Visual
FoxPro 9.0 public beta is now available for download! Download page
link at http://msdn.com/vfoxpro . The June letter is also online at http://msdn.com/vfoxpro/letters with VFP 9.0 beta details and other important VFP related news.”
A new letter of protest, asking Microsoft to give the Visual FoxPro
product its due, is making this rounds. Started in Brazil, it’s picked
up 500 signatures in the first few days worldwide.
VFPRevolutions-NewOpenLettertoMicrosoft.
“For all Visual FoxPro Developers community Although sometimes
happenings small jobs offering waves for the VFP developers, we feel
that in the last years had a big job offering or projects reduction
having like base the VFP, this in the world…” Link via the FoxForum Wiki
Paying Attention.
Bill
Gates finally speaks the ‘R’ word as he highlights the increasingly
strategic role of RSS in Microsoft’s seamless computing direction,
eWEEK’s Steve Gillmor writes.
More on Gates and RSS on IT Conversations’ The Gillmor Gang.
And more on IBM Workplace in my print column, Signal to Noise.
[Steve Gillmor’s Blogosphere]
An associate has a client that upgraded their file server to Windows
Server 2003 and broke my associate’s application. He has a DOS machine
at the client site that handles their faxing and EDI functionality, and
the client can’t get the DOS box to authenticate to the Windows Server
2003. Based on this KnowledgeBase article,
it looks to me like Windows 95 and DOS systems are out of luck if they
need to attach to Windows 2003 shares, as they lack the ability to
encrypt their authentication information. I wonder if Microsoft had
some legitimate reason to break backward compatibility, or if they did
it just to force obsolescence of older clients…
Fresh rivals take on Microsoft Office Goliath.
“China’s Evermore Software and Oregon’s Gobe Software have launched
products that take novel approaches to the productivity software
market, hoping to chip away at Microsoft’s dominance.” [CNET News.com]
Looks like the Office market may be heating up again. That’s good. Competition is a rising tide that lifts all boats.