Microsoft's Brazilian subsidiary has initiated legal proceedings against the Brazilian government official credited with developing the country's open-source strategy, saying he defamed the software giant in statements published in the magazine Carta Capital.
The filing, called a "Demand for Explanation," asks the court to order Amadeu to publish a retraction of his comments in Carta Capital, at his own expense.
In the article, written in Portuguese and made available in English on the Web log of Stanford University law professor Lawrence Lessig, at http://www.lessig.org/blog, Amadeu is quoted likening Microsoft's business practices to those of a "drug dealer" and accusing the company of a "strategy of fear, uncertainty and doubt."
One of Microsoft's popular licensing programs will end Wednesday, and the question now is what these customers will do next. Upgrade Advantage, a licensing program that allowed companies to upgrade Windows and Microsoft applications fairly infrequently, will come to an end on June 30, according to Cori Hartje, director of marketing and readiness in the worldwide licensing and partnering program at Microsoft.
Microsoft is planning to deliver data about the location of cell phones to developers through a partnership between its MapPoint Location Server and several U.K. network operators.
The partnership deal means that developers will be able to create services and applications based on the position of a person's cell phone much more easily than was previously possible.
When U.K.-based Zingo created a taxi-hailing service that matches mobile phone location data with GPRS positioning systems mounted in black cabs, the company had to approach each network operator separately. At the time, Zingo's managing director, Mark Fawcett, said the process was time-consuming, mainly because of a U.K. data protection law that makes network providers very cautious about sharing positioning data.
Bill Gates said Tuesday that Microsoft will hold talks with Asian governments to offer tailored, cheaper versions of its Windows operating system geared toward bringing computer skills to millions of poorer people.
The discussions will grow out of a project Microsoft announced last week to offer a version of Windows, dubbed Windows XP Starter Edition, in Malaysia and Thailand under government-sponsored programs to provide more affordable personal computers to new users.
Microsoft kicked off its Tech Ed Europe conference in Amsterdam Tuesday to the thundering cacophony of thousands of developers and other IT professionals beating on small African drums. The fact that the drums were provided by Microsoft could be seen as a move by the company to get customers dancing to its beat, but for many attendees it represented a change in Microsoft's tune -- the software giant was finally listening to them.
Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates has labeled bootlegged software a greater threat to his company than open-source programs.
"You know what my toughest competitor is?" Gates asked reporters at a media briefing here Monday. "It's pirated software...If you really look around, you'll find way more pirated Windows than you'll find open-source software. Way more."
Gates said Microsoft's software represented a "dramatically higher, better choice than anything you'll get in the open-source realm. It's true the press has taken a few design wins and said, 'Hey, look at that.' And you know, that's great; it's almost helpful to us to have a few of those, where people try that out.
Two years after Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates handed out the first Xbox game console at a Tokyo video store, the machine's Japanese sales trail those of Sony's rival PlayStation 2 console by 48 to one.
That's partly because Japanese Xbox owners have about 160 games to choose from, compared with more than 6,000 for the PlayStation 2. Microsoft, the world's biggest software maker, plans to gain on Sony by releasing new games tailored for Japanese users with the next version of the Xbox, said Norman Cheuk, head of Microsoft's game-development division in Tokyo.
Microsoft has reached a preliminary settlement in a class-action lawsuit in Arizona, which alleged that the company abused its Windows monopoly to overcharge customers in the state for its software.
The deal provides Arizona software buyers with up to $104.6 million in vouchers that can be used to buy computer hardware and software, Microsoft of Redmond, Washington, said in a statement Monday.
The Redmond software vendor is targeting the18 million 'wannabe' programmers with its new Express line. On Tuesday, Microsoft officially took the wraps off a new line of low-priced tools aimed at non-professional programmers.
The first betas of both the full Visual Studio tool suite and the so-called "Express" versions of Visual Basic, Visual C#, Visual C++, Visual J# and SQL Server (as well as a new product, Visual WebDev Express) will be available this week for download from the Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) site here. (Visual Studio 2005 Beta 1 will be available to MSDN testers only; the Express betas will be open to anyone.)
Interestingly, Microsoft provided some new evidence this week to support the company's claim that bundling WMP with Windows hasn't harmed competition. Citing strong sales of the Apple iTunes Music Store, which recorded 800,000 paid downloads in its first week of availability in just three European countries, Microsoft lawyers argued that "this market is vibrant." The company also pointed to Dell's music-software licensing with Musicmatch and similar deals as proof that WMP isn't harming competition.