Well, the big-wigs at Microsoft are at it again. As if tracking cookies weren’t bad enough, Microsoft has recently filed a patent that would ” look at what’s on your hard drive and serve you targeted advertisements based on that data.” The patent application notes that the software in question could be a part of Windows or a stand-alone app: An advertising framework may reside on a user computer, whether it’s a part of the OS, an application or integrated within applications. Applications, tools, or utilities may use an application program interface to report context data tags such as key…
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I stumbled across this Wikipedia article earlier this week while doing some other research on Netscape. I thought this was interesting… Netscape Mercury is a standalone e-mail and news client in development by Netscape. Announced on June 11, 2007, the program is intended to accompany the web browser Netscape Navigator 9, and is based on Mozilla’s Thunderbird. The software is named after the ancient Greek god Mercury, the messenger. It replaces the former Netscape Mail & Newsgroups client included in versions 4 to 7.2. I guess Netscape is trying to get back to the all-in-one web browser, instant messenger, e-mail…
Next time you are giving a presentation or just trying to show someone something on your computer and it starts acting up, simply use the stall-tactic “I think it’s a problem with Vista“. That is what happened the other day as a team of students from Korea showed Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Craig Mundie its entry in the company’s Imagine Cup competition. Of course it wasn’t just Gates and Mundie, there was also a ton of media looking on too. The presentation started off well, until the team launched into its demo, and the computer stalled momentarily. That was when…
Got $10,000 laying around that you don’t know what to do with? Invest in a ‘Big Ass Table’ with Microsoft Surface… [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZrr7AZ9nCY] Note: If video does not start when clicked, reload page and try again.
Sounds as if the Ubuntu founders either think Microsoft is bluffing with the threat of patent infringements or could be they are not falling for Microsoft’s patent protection deal (blackmail) . Novell, Xandros, Linspire … and Ubuntu? Nope, it’s not gonna happen, says Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of the popular Linux distribution, debunking rumors that Ubuntu will be the next to agree to a patent protection deal with Microsoft. “Allegations of ‘infringement of unspecified patents’ carry no weight whatsoever. We don’t think they have any legal merit, and they are no incentive for us to work with Microsoft on any…
Found this interesting item on Todd Bishop’s Blog. It seems the Desktop Search program which comes with Vista does not play well with Google’s own Desktop Search. Especially when the two are running simultaneously . This is causing the user’s system to slow to a crawl. Further unlike Vista’s Start-Up Sound this search feature can not be disabled. Here’s the interesting thing though, Google launched the complaint late last year but Microsoft Lawyer’s would not reveal the source of the complaint. Even in March of this year, “Plaintiffs reported that they had just received a middleware-related complaint.” But again it…
You can get a few just by doing a simple Google search, ‘buy Vista’. Here are some interesting results (note these results are a few days old so your’s may differ). Info Source: One Post At A Time
Earlier today I posted Microsoft: Free Software Violates Patents!. Todd Bishop has a lengthy article on his blog today about this topic. However the article is more about the Free Software Foundation and it’s draft of the General Public License Version 3 (GPL, the license under which many open-source programs are distributed). Eben Moglen is the legal counsel to the Free Software Foundation and had this to say: The recent “saber-rattling” further illustrated the importance of protecting against Microsoft’s attempts “to disrupt free software production through the inculcation of a large inventory of most-likely invalid patents.” There also appear to…
Microsoft must be losing lots of money to free software such as Linux and OpenOffice.org, as they are now whining that “Free Software Violates 235 Patents”: The Linux kernel – the deepest layer of the free operating system, which interacts most directly with the computer hardware – violates 42 Microsoft patents. The Linux graphical user interfaces – essentially, the way design elements like menus and toolbars are set up – run afoul of another 65, he claims. The Open Office suite of programs, which is analogous to Microsoft Office, infringes 45 more. E-mail programs infringe 15, while other assorted FOSS…
From the Microsoft’s Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) in Los Angeles, Todd Bishop snaps a picture of the “light bub” PC which took second place at this Microsoft-sponsored PC design competition. Interesting concept, the device is suppose to sit on your desk in the cut-out normally used thread cables through from the floor. It would sit upright with the ports pointing upwards. In theory you are suppose to be able to connect your mouse, keyboard, monitor and other peripherals into this device. This looks more like a hub then an actual “PC”. Also looks like it would connect to your…