"When passenger of foot heave in sight, tootle the horn. Trumpet him melodiously at first, but if he still obstacles your passage then tootle him with vigor."
Microsoft hopes to make such mangled translations--this one's from a Japanese car rental brochure--a thing of the past with a new software tool that understands the rules and patterns of English.
Dubbed the English Writing Wizard (EWW), the tool is available now in the Chinese enterprise version of Microsoft's Office 2003 productivity package, which is a pan-Chinese package that supports several language groups. EWW is likely to be adapted for other non-English versions of Office in the future.
Continuing a string of settlements, Microsoft on Tuesday said it will make available as much as $31.5 million in vouchers to end a class-action lawsuit in New Mexico. Under the settlement, preliminarily approved by a New Mexico court last week, consumers in the state who bought certain Microsoft products during a specified period will be eligible to receive vouchers that can be used to buy computer hardware and software, Microsoft said in a statement.
As Windows users plagued by security problems eagerly await Microsoft's oft-delayed Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) release, signs have finally started indicating that the wait, at long last, is coming to a close. First, Microsoft Australia mistakenly reported that SP2 had been released to manufacturing (RTM), and then quickly retracted the announcement. And this morning, I've been told by sources that Windows Update V5, the next-generation version of Microsoft's software updating service upon which the software updating features of SP2 are based, has been completed. Taken together, these two events suggest we should see the Web release of Windows XP SP2 within a week.
Microsoft this week reduced the worldwide price of its Office System product OneNote from $199 to $99, significantly enhancing the value of this note-taking and management application. Previously, the company had offered customers in the US and Canada a $100 rebate on the purchase of OneNote, but you had to pay full price up front and then fill out some paperwork to get the rebate.
The projects on display on the second day of the Microsoft Research Faculty Summit, as university researchers from around the world showed some of the work they've been doing, much of it in collaboration with Microsoft researchers, or with funding from the company.
Most of the projects at the "DemoFest" were focused on classroom or campus settings, but many of them also had possible applications in the broader world.
Although the primary focus of the projects is research, some of the technology from them ultimately could find their way into commercial products. That's one of the ways that Microsoft's collaboration with universities can work out for the company.
"It's not like when you see presidential debates you hear them talk about the number of engineering degrees being received in the United States," Gates said. He cited the possible need for a "crisis moment" that brings attention to the issue.
All joking aside, the issue of computer-science enrollment was one of the main topics of discussion on the opening day of the Microsoft Research Faculty Summit, an annual event that draws university researchers from around the world to the company's Redmond campus -- the "world's largest software factory," as Gates described it to them.
Software is magic and it can change the world, Bill Gates told a crowd of academics gathered for the Microsoft Research Faculty Summit. As Microsoft moves forward on building the next version of Windows, extending the possibilities of wireless and embedded systems, and moving enterprise systems to Web services, it looks to the academic community for high-level research and a supply of newly minted computer scientists.
The proposed operating-system migration of the city of Munich's 14,000 desktops from Microsoft to Linux was placed in jeopardy Friday, when a Munich alderman petitioned the Bavarian city's mayor to examine the status of software patents in the European Community.
The issue was raised by Green Party Alderman Jens Muehlhaus, who warned that patent issues could grind some of the city's departments to a halt in the future. The issue involves a proposed directive on software patents that is being considered by various European governments, including Germany, France, and the U.K.
Intel this week made its first foray into the world of so-called x64 computing, releasing its first x86-compatible microprocessors that can take advantage of a massive 64-bit address space. Intel's first x64 offerings, a set of new Xeon chips, are compatible with earlier processors from AMD, including the Athlon 64 and Opteron. And servers based on any x64 chip mix and match 32-bit and 64-bit operating systems and applications, all of which run at full speed.
Microsoft plans to deliver a new version of its popular MSN Messenger client by mid-2005 that will let users create a more customized instant messaging (IM) experience, the company said last week.
Aside from the user experience, MSN Messenger also has to bring in more money, the company said. Microsoft has yet to really tap the online advertising opportunities in the client, Yusuf Mehdi, corporate vice president of Microsoft's MSN Information Services & Merchant Platform division, said last week at a meeting with financial analysts at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington.