If you thought Novell partnering up with Microsoft was shocking news, then you probably don't want to read the rest of this story. Just remember, we warned you.
The Software Freedom Law Center, a nonprofit organization that provides pro-bono legal services to protect and advance open-source software, filed a brief Dec. 15 with the U.S. Supreme Court in support of Microsoft's appeal of a software patent decision.
Yes, Microsoft.
In the case of "Microsoft v. AT&T," the SFLC is asking the Supreme Court to decide against U.S. patents applying to software that is copied and distributed overseas. The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, a specialized patent court known for allowing patents on software and business methods, originally decided in favor of AT&T.
Microsoft's latest keyboard and mouse driver releases are now officially Vista-compliant, so if you've got a Microsoft mouse or keyboard, head on over to the company's Web site. There, you'll find the new IntelliPoint (mouse) and IntelliType (keyboard) driver downloads. What hasn't been updated, sadly, is the driver for Microsoft's line of LifeCam Web cams. Vista-compatible drivers for those devices will ship in January 2007, according to Microsoft.
Microsoft has quietly released an update for Internet Explorer that fixes a problem with the browser's phishing shield.
The feature that protects against fraudulent Web sites, new in IE 7, in some cases could bog down computers running Windows, according to an article on Microsoft's support site published Tuesday. This could happen when a Web page contains many frames or when a user browses many frames in a short time, the company said.
"When you use Windows Internet Explorer 7 to visit a Web page, the computer may respond very slowly as the Phishing Filter evaluates Web page contents," according to Microsoft. "Internet Explorer 7 evaluates the whole Web page when you browse a frame. Therefore, CPU usage may be very high."
Microsoft by Monday plans to release Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1, which bundles an assortment of bug fixes and performance enhancements.
But for Windows Vista early adopters, Visual Studio 2005 SP1 won't fix dozens of bugs that pop up under the new operating system. For those fixes, users will have to wait for the Visual Studio 2005 SP1 Update for Windows Vista, scheduled for release after Vista's consumer launch on Jan. 30.
A full list of Vista compatibility issues is posted on MSDN. Problems range in severity from slow operation and missing buttons on some screens to certain templates vanishing in the upgrade process
A beta version of Visual Studio 2005 SP1 Update for Windows Vista will be released simultaneously with Visual Studio 2005 SP1.
Late this afternoon, Microsoft dispatched a press e-mail about PDC 2007. Santa Claus has delivered his first present.
Microsoft will bring developers back to Los Angeles, Oct. 2-5, 2007, for another developer conference.
These events tend to coincide with work on major operating systems releases. Windows Longhorn/Vista and new developer tools headlined PDC 2003 and 2005; the more recent event also covered Office. So, it's no brainer that Windows Server "Longhorn" and next version Visual Studio will headline. Surely, Microsoft will have something to say about Windows Live and developer opportunities around Web services, too.
Thanks to Microsoft I could tell old St. Nick exactly what I want for Christmas this year.
Microsoft is promoting Windows Live Messenger by offering chances to instant message with Santa. His IM handle is Northpole@live.com. Santa also has his own Windows Live "Santa on Spaces." Sadly, as of this morning, Santa only has five friends on Windows Live Spaces. Maybe he should try MySpace.
Companies that advise customers to purchase Microsoft's new and expanded line of Forefront security software will have extra
financial incentives from the vendor through an expansion to the company's security partner program.
Microsoft said Thursday it would offer higher financial payouts to members of its Security Software Advisor program. Microsoft's security channel partners can now earn as much as a 30 percent margin by advising companies to buy select products
in Microsoft's security portfolio.
After watching its market share for the North American desktop PC market slip in a soft third quarter, Advanced Micro Devices
Inc. will seek greater profits in 2007 through a new family of quad-core server chips and its acquisition of graphics chip maker ATI.
"From a customer perspective, our integration is completed," said Henri Richard, AMD's chief sales and marketing officer during
the company's annual analyst meeting in New York on Thursday. The companies still face several years of work to reach their
goal of launching a combined processor and graphics chip called Fusion, but since closing the deal in October, they have already
combined sales forces, supply chains and manufacturing facilities.
Microsoft has teamed up with Chinese search site Baidu in a strategic partnership centered on paid search listings.
Under the terms of this agreement, Baidu's paid search listings will appear on the search results pages of the Chinese versions of Microsoft sites such as MSN and Live Search. This is expected to go into effect later this month.
Baidu, which recently announced a decision to expand its reach to Japan, is the largest Chinese-language search engine. According to Web traffic-ranking site Alexa, it's also the fourth-most-visited site in the world. Microsoft is by no means the first United States-based company to show an interest in partnering with such a major player in China's growing Web market: indeed, Intel's Chinese division inked an agreement with Baidu earlier this year.
Fourteen bloggers met with Microsoft executives yesterday, including an hour with Chairman Bill Gates. Their reactions: Priceless.
Signature moment: "Seeing the look on Gates' face when he walked into the room and every single one of us had a Mac open on the desk in front of us--Niall Kennedy had also set up a makeshift wifi network using an Airport," Mike Arrington, TechCrunch.
Gates responds to Macs: "Q) Do you despair at the number of Macs in the room?; A) We're happy about it. We sell a lot of software for the Mac!" Steve Rubel, Micro Persuasion.