Regarding: 'MICROSOFT'

Tom Preston-Werner on how GitHub came into being and leaving Powerset after the Microsoft acquisition: “When I’m old and dying, I plan to look back on my life and say ‘wow, that was an adventure,’ not ‘wow, I sure felt safe.’”

tom.preston-werner.com 11:08

Don't give Microsoft the remote control —

Short and exceptionally well written take on Microsoft’s Vista DRM strategy. I’m really enjoying the FSF going on the offensive with sites targeting very specific issues (badvista.fsf.org).

badvista.fsf.org 12:11

The day the music died —

“Apple calls these songs ‘iTunes Plus’, because it sounds so much better than calling everything else ‘iTunes Minus.’”

diveintomark.org 18:43

That Vista Thud is the sound of executive layoffs —

eWeek: “… Nearly every Microsoft executive associated with the Windows Vista launch has left the company. Vista has proven to be a career-ending enterprise …”

cincomsmalltalk.com 10:21

Translation From MS-Speak to English of Selected Portions of Joel Spolsky’s “Martian Headsets” —

Mark contributes the obligatory fisking.

diveintomark.org 09:37

Translation From PR-Speak to English of Selected Portions of Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang's Company-Wide Memo Regarding the Microsoft Takeover Bid —

“Welcome to Microsoft.”

daringfireball.net 07:21

USPTO Patent Database Search Results: Yahoo! —

96 patents with assignee name “Yahoo! Inc”

patft.uspto.gov 11:52

Ballmer: I'm completely out of ideas —

“… Ballmer is an old-school kind of guy. He’s not really a tech guy. […] He’s a Big Three automaker kind of guy. And this is a Big Three move. It’s Ford buying Jaguar and Land Rover and Volvo because they can’t think of anything else to do.”

fakesteve.blogspot.com 02:23

Dear IE6, I hate you —

“There comes a time in every old browser’s life to pack up shop and, well, fuck off. This time has come and gone for IE6 …” Also: “42% of global users are still browsing the web with IE6.”

contrast.ie 17:18

Microsoft Boy Announces His School Homework —

“What is catching users' eyes? Legibility, correctness, conciseness…. the list goes on and on. Simply put, this history essay is a significant release for me – one that builds on all of the great things that I was able to deliver last year […]”

simple-talk.com 15:34

“The Bug Count Also Rises” by John Browne —

“Hernando who worked down the hall and who was large with microbrews came to him and told him that the ship day was upon them but the bugs were not yet out. The bugs which were always there even when you were in Cafes late at night sipping a …”

workpump.com 15:04

What should Microsoft do instead? —

Holy crap, this is insane. Just let people run IE6 and IE7 as separate standalone browsers side-by-side with IE8. As James said in my previous post, they can even rebrand it as “Intranet Explorer” :)

dbaron.org 08:43

The Standard Trolls —

Microsoft missing the point with regards to “standards”? Inconceivable! Every time I read stuff like this I wonder if it’s intellectual dishonesty or if the folks over at MS are really this ignorant. You have to lean toward dishonesty here, I think.

robweir.com 01:47

Run Internet Explorer 5/6/7 Natively in OS X —

This trumps Leopard for most important Mac development this year as far as I’m concerned. Words cannot explain the hatred I’ve developed for booting up multiple Parallels VMs to get at IE.

macapper.com 22:42

WS-* is to REST as Theory is to Practice —

Dare talks about his transition from WS-* to REST proponent. This mirrors a lot of people’s experience, including my own.

25hoursaday.com 03:17

Microsoft 'evidence' turns against them [tectonic.co.za] —

“The market needs to understand that the study Microsoft is citing actually proves the opposite of what they claim it does.”

tectonic.co.za 02:53

Relevance: Silverlight, the DLR, and thee —

“The general thrust of this argument is that having a full-fledge rich-windowing experience in the browser is going to put a stop to all that amateurish mucking around with JavaScript and the DOM. … that’s hogwash.”

relevancellc.com 02:42

Charles Nutter - Big Plans [headius.blogspot.com] —

“And yes, I’ve seen the Microsoft news … If Sun did something like this I’d resign.”

headius.blogspot.com 10:35

Dell joins the Microsoft-Novell alliance, hopes for Windows / Linux harmony —

I’ve read the following line five times but it refuses to compute: “… and now it sounds like Dell will be buying SUSE Linux Enterprise Server certificates from Microsoft …” Huh? Looks like I should have further researched the MS/Novel deal.

engadget.com 08:01

Silverlight trumps Web Standards (and Flex)… —

“As for me, I’ll take some more Microsoft kool-aid, please.” — I said almost exactly those same words in 1997 regarding Microsoft’s OS/Browser integration (I’m quoted in an article on C|Net as proof). There’s nothing I regret saying more.

allthelayers.com 08:42

Did Microsoft just patent sudo? —

What’s next? which(1)?

ubuntulinuxtipstricks.blogspot.com 01:58

Silly season [diveintomark.org] —

“Sigh. I used to have the strength to argue against such foolishness. Nowadays I’m reduced to nothing more than Grey’s-Anatomy-esque catchphrases. Seriously? Seriously? Do I really have to explain why this is a bad idea?”

diveintomark.org 14:30

How the vi editor would seem if it has been made by Microsoft —

“It looks like you are trying to do a regular expression. Do you need some help with that?”

blogs.sun.com 18:49

Fun with Vista's Speed Recognition [innoq.com] —

Press caps locks. Press caps lock. PRESS CAPS LOCK! Press capital I. Delete I. Press capital I. DELETE I SCROLL THIS CONFLICT. DELETE ADULT SCROLLS CONFLICT FOR C … THANK YOU! Delete THINK YOU.

innoq.com 18:31

Bill Gates (clearly on crack): "Nowadays, security guys break the Mac every single day." —

“Every single day, they come out with a total exploit, your machine can be taken over totally. I dare anybody to do that once a month on the Windows machine.”

simonwillison.net 06:35

W3C Markup Validator Results for "You, me and the W3C (aka Reinventing HTML)" —

Chairing the WG is one way to fix your validation issues! (yes, I’m just being mean now — ignore me. no but seriously.)

validator.w3.org 07:40

Microsoft exec called software developers 'pawns' —

“I mean, all through this presentation previously, I talked about how you’re using the pawns and you’re going to screw them if they don’t do what you want, and dah-dah-dah. You can’t let them feel like that.” and “So you can’t let them feel like pawns, no

computerworld.com 00:46

demoroniser - correct moronic and gratuitously incompatible Microsoft HTML —

“The demoroniser keeps you from looking dumber than a bag of dirt when your Web page is viewed by a user on a non-Microsoft platform.”

fourmilab.ch 18:47

IEs4Linux —

Whose going to get this running on OS X? I guess it doesn’t really matter. I can always X over to a Linux box…

tatanka.com.br 08:09

Whatever Happened To The Zune? —

“I have yet to find a women who wants to be squirted with a Zune. I’ve stopped asking.”

medialoper.com 17:55

SeamlessRDP —

Seamless window support for rdesktop (and perhaps Cocoa Remote Desktop). Similar to Parallel’s Coherence Mode for RDP.

cendio.com 05:27

Cocoa Remote Desktop —

A Cocoa port of rdesktop. Universal Binary, multiple concurrent sessions, no X11 makes it the best RDP client for Mac on paper.

cord.sourceforge.net 05:24

Leo Laporte hates the Zune! (video) —

I need to get back into following free culture. The anti-DRM sentiment is unprecedented.

youtube.com 13:55

The Problem of Open Source in the Microsoft World —

I’m sorry but it is just baffling to me how developers and cough evangelists can put up with this kind of behavior as being the sort-of default mode of operation at MS. The company needs to consider massive sweeping changes in the way they treat develop

ayende.com 07:56

A conversation with Jon Udell about his new job with Microsoft —

I guess this could be good thing. Good people have a tendency of being taken advantage of in ways they wouldn’t expect at MS though so I have to give the whole deal a respectful thumbs-down.

weblog.infoworld.com 07:08

Microsoft versus FOSS Configuration Management —

“Dependency management is probably the most important contribution of open source to software engineering.” — I don’t know about that but it’s definitely up there. It’s mind boggling that MS hasn’t developed some form of package management.

cogito.blogthing.com 00:50

UniveRSS - a 3D Vista RSS reader —

Prediction: Microsoft will use 3D nonsensically and egregiously for the next two years. 3D notepad!

microsoft.com 06:55

Microsoft Vista and .NET —

They ripped a bunch of .NET code out of Vista, replacing it with C. Interesting.

grimes.demon.co.uk 21:11

Comic Sans was a mistake —

What a surprise!

connare.com 10:12

Bill Gates shouts at Sony CEO that his crappy DRM is less crappy —

I miss this Cory Doctorow: “…a stupid DRM standard for suck-ass next-gen DVDs, arguing that Microsoft’s sellout suck-ass next-gen HD-DVDs are better.”

boingboing.net 04:19

Microsoft blames Sun —

haha. this cracked me up…

jtauber.com 00:52

Squawkbox: Corporate Use of MSN Spaces-- check out CNBC. Rant alert —

Damn, looks like Microsoft is back to their old ways again…

redmonk.com 05:41

Microsoft makes web feeds easier —

Looks like RSS will finally be coming to “everyone else” now.

news.bbc.co.uk 14:51

Microsoft releases under Creative Commons ShareAlike —

Holy shit Microsoft is copylefting stuff. What’s going on?

lessig.org 06:50

Greasemonkey FUD —

Hi, we’re Forrester Research, a division of Microsoft. — I really didn’t expect Firefox to get this much FUD thrown at it.

simon.incutio.com 01:56

IronPython 0.7.1 is released to the world! —

Jim Hugunin announces Microsoft’s first official release of IronPython. Let’s be absolutely clear: Microsoft just released a respected free software project.

blogs.msdn.com 17:43

MIT Backs Brazil's Free Software over Microsoft —

I’m seriously considering considering moving to Brazil. That country is really starting to get their shit together and the gov seems close to the people.

eweek.com 10:17

Microsoft to Demo at EclipseCon 2005! —

wtf: “Visual Studio lead program manager Jason Weber to show how to build extensions for Microsoft’s IDE.”

oneclipse.com 06:10

Microsoft's first explicit anti-GNU/Linux ad —

From Oct 23, 2000 issue of the German language magazine c’t

www-swiss.ai.mit.edu 06:15

Bill Gates and other communists —

Stallman cutting through the bullshit.

news.com.com 07:30

R.I.P. Microsoft? —

That’s a big prediction for having a “bad smell” but whatever…

abcnews.go.com 14:52

Gartner urges caution before downloading Firefox —

Redefining the concept of making sense: “some of the factors that make Firefox more appealing than Internet Explorer are likely to go away as the browser gets to be more popular”

computerworld.com 09:35

Opera to MS: Get real about interoperability, Mr Gates —

That about nails it.

theregister.co.uk 09:23

Linux in Government: Another Look at Linux in the MS Infrastructure —

Samba eating Microsoft’s lunch. I smell a patent infingement case…

linuxjournal.com 05:43

MSFT refuses to give 15 XP licenses for tsunami relief related work —

I almost puked when I read this. I hope there’s just been a mix up or something.

lug.lk 18:42

Gizmodo Gates Interview Part Four: Communists and DRM —

Gates backpetals on the previous “creative communist” remarks and talks about DRM as a speedbump… caugh strawman caugh

gizmodo.com 10:27

Truth and Bill Gates —

Dan Gillmor comments on Gates' creative communist statements..

dangillmor.typepad.com 06:14

We're Creative Commonists, Bill —

Wired’s Katie Dean on the recent Creative Communist fiasco.

wired.com 06:13

Bill Gates: Free Culture advocates = Communists —

At least we got a cool flag out of the ordeal..

boingboing.net 00:11

Audiobook of Cory's DRM talk —

Buy it: $1. Proceeds go to the EFF.

boingboing.net 06:55

What's Next for Google —

Is google the next netscape?

technologyreview.com 17:22

Microsoft Attempts To Shutdown MacSlash —

dumb.

macslash.org 08:42

New file system (WinFS) has long road to Windows —

It’s not going to happen you guys…

news.com.com 17:52

MSN Spaces: seven dirty blogs —

BoingBoing tests the MSN blogs censors..

boingboing.net 23:28

Netcraft Results for beta.search.msn.com —

Maybe Balmer could include the fact that msn search runs on Linux in his next “Get The Facts” campaign.

uptime.netcraft.com 07:40

Is Microsoft using 'Halo 2' to thwart Xbox hackers? —

How to be wrong: “I would argue that Xbox Live is a great experience for the end user precisely because it’s a closed, controlled environment, and anything that threatens that is a real concern for Microsoft.”

news.com.com 01:21

Why I Like Windows —

IE team on Firefox 1.0 release. The comments have me rolling on the floor. I can’t believe microsoft is letting these guys keep comments on.

blogs.msdn.com 14:49

Is Microsoft Ready to Assert IP Rights over the Internet? —

Microsoft is claiming some form of IP rights over “a total of 130 protocols which Microsoft is offering for license.” The list includes TCP/IP, DNS, DHCP, Bluetooth, FTP, HTTP, SSL, etc. Looks like a new FUD strategy.

eweek.com 18:51

stopie.com —

“Help stop Internet Explorer, the world’s most popular and worst internet browser.”

stopie.com 23:15

Ballmer: Comparing Windows with Linux and UNIX —

for some reason, anytime I’m reading ballmer, I always get that charlie-brown-on-the-phone-voice in my head. — Wah wah.. Wah wah wah wah, wah wah…

microsoft.com 07:07

Every 5th Call At Dell Is Spyware-Related —

Dell Exec: “Spyware installed on roughly 90% of computers.”

slashdot.org 16:17

Can a resurrected Netscape compete with IE? —

No. Netscape as a brand/browser is irrelevant. Anyone with a cluestick care to drop by cnet and whap those monkeys around a bit? Some decent history here though.

news.com.com 14:53

Microsoft warns of 22 new security flaws —

come on now.. this is silly. leave windows. it’s sunny and warm and beautiful over here.

news.com.com 14:36

The Browser Wars Are Back? —

yes. they are. IE is the new Netscape 4.7.

slashdot.org 03:30

Linux cannot compete with Longhorn —

History of WinFS (hint: OFS)

newsforge.com 09:05

Red Hat Executives Blog: The Latest Joke from Redmond —

Red Hat Exec Michael Tieman’s comments on Microsoft’s weird move into the open source mindview.

blogs.redhat.com 09:44

A New Program for the Enterprise —

OMFG Python is reaching critical mass.

baselinemag.com 15:51

Microsoft slammed over misleading Windows Linux claims —

“The ad contained a graph comparing the cost in US dollars between Linux running on two z900 mainframe CPUs and a Windows Server 2003 image running two 900MHz Intel Xeons chips.” Since when are mainframe chips only 10 times more expensive than x86 chips?

theinquirer.net 15:49

Backdoor dynamic languages —

Ted Leung explores recent developments that seem to suggest that both Sun and Microsoft might be thinking about hijacking Python. If Jython and IronPython grow large followings, the library support has split three ways: Standard Python Libraries, Java Lib

sauria.com 01:18

Ryan Tomayko

IE8 To Make Tender Chickens —

WS-* == Windows Services Dash Star? —

Shysters —

This word - "Web" - I do not think it means what you think it means. —

Parallels Makes IE Testing Suck Less, Melts Power Cord —

The Battle of the Less Clueless —

The factors that led them to choose IE.. —

Weapons and Coding —

How I Turned Down $300,000 from Microsoft to go Full-Time on GitHub —