A collection of stories tagged 'microsoft' from Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/ Copyright 2006 RoomforMilk.com. RoomforMilk is not affiliated with Slashdot.org. Fri, 21 Nov 2008 04:57:21 EST Today, Microsoft launched the New Xbox Experience for Xbox Live. The list of new features includes the streaming of TV shows and movies through Netflix, the ability to install games to the HDD, an avatar system, and the Community Games platform. The launch itself was shaky at first, but most issues have been smoothed out. Sony-owned Columbia Pictures immediately pulled their movie selection, though it may return when a licensing deal gets worked out. Halo 3 developer Bungie pointed out that not all games will run faster when installed to a HDD because of the way the games already interact with the drive.Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26282 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/HzPqUiM35IM/article.pl Thu, 20 Nov 2008 05:05:00 EST Wow, that's some news this week at SuperComputing 08. Apparently Microsoft Windows HPC Server 2008, with a Chinese hardware OEM (Dawning), made #10 on the Top500 list, edging out #11 by only 600 Gflops. Folks were shocked to see Microsoft getting so serious around HPC; I think we are only beginning to see a glimpse of Microsoft in the HPC field."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26278 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/QAYug8rEam8/article.pl Wed, 19 Nov 2008 20:05:17 EST Gregg Keizer sifted through many threads of e-mails released under the 'Vista Capable' lawsuit to dig up this jewel...More than a year before Windows Vista's release — and long before Apple started poking fun at the OS — Microsoft officials were already worried about comparisons between Mac OS X and Vista. An e-mail thread from October 2005 showed that an article in the Wall Street Journal by Walt Mossberg grabbed the attention of managers at Microsoft. In a column headlined What PC to Buy If You Are Planning On a Vista Upgrade, Mossberg alarmed one Windows manager who forwarded a bit from the column.... 'You won't have to worry about Vista if you buy one of Apple Computer's Macintosh computers, which don't run Windows,' Mossberg had written. 'Every mainstream consumer doing typical tasks should consider the Mac. Its operating system, called Tiger, is better and more secure than Windows XP, and already contains most of the key features promised for Vista.' Warrier added a comment of his own: 'A premium experience as defined by Walt = Apple. This is why we need to address [the column].'"Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26270 http://rss.slashdot.org:80/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/yP79XK7MJyc/article.pl Wed, 19 Nov 2008 18:05:40 EST Wow, that's some news this week at SuperComputing 08. Apparently Microsoft Windows HPC Server 2008, with a Chinese hardware OEM (Dawning), made #10 on the Top500 list, edging out #11 by only 600 Gflops. Folks were shocked to see Microsoft getting so serious around HPC; I think we are only beginning to see a glimpse of Microsoft in the HPC field."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26262 http://rss.slashdot.org:80/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/QAYug8rEam8/article.pl Wed, 19 Nov 2008 18:05:09 EST Gregg Keizer sifted through many threads of e-mails released under the 'Vista Capable' lawsuit to dig up this jewel...More than a year before Windows Vista's release — and long before Apple started poking fun at the OS — Microsoft officials were already worried about comparisons between Mac OS X and Vista. An e-mail thread from October 2005 showed that an article in the Wall Street Journal by Walt Mossberg grabbed the attention of managers at Microsoft. In a column headlined What PC to Buy If You Are Planning On a Vista Upgrade, Mossberg alarmed one Windows manager who forwarded a bit from the column.... 'You won't have to worry about Vista if you buy one of Apple Computer's Macintosh computers, which don't run Windows,' Mossberg had written. 'Every mainstream consumer doing typical tasks should consider the Mac. Its operating system, called Tiger, is better and more secure than Windows XP, and already contains most of the key features promised for Vista.' Warrier added a comment of his own: 'A premium experience as defined by Walt = Apple. This is why we need to address [the column].'"Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26255 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/yP79XK7MJyc/article.pl Wed, 19 Nov 2008 13:05:20 EST The good news is that Microsoft have announced free anti-virus software for consumers, dubbed Morro, available late next year. The bad news is... well, exactly the same. Although Microsoft's anti-malware products are pretty good, this move could drive many competitors out of business and create a dangerous security monoculture; major rivals will be lawyering up already. On the other hand, many malware infections could be prevented even by basic software. So is this going to be a good or bad thing overall?"Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26242 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/-NBYiFEmKP0/article.pl Tue, 18 Nov 2008 23:05:00 EST More documents are coming out in court proceedings over the Vista Capable debacle. Internetnews.com has good coverage of HP's fury over Microsoft lowering the requirements for a Vista Capable sticker, at Intel's request. "Intel officials may have been pleased that Microsoft lowered standards for obtaining the company's Windows Vista Capable logo program sticker, but the same can't be said about HP's execs. 'I can't be more clear than to say you not only let us down by reneging on your commitment to stand behind the [device driver model] requirement, you have demonstrated a complete lack of commitment to HP as a strategic partner and cost us a lot of money in the process,' said one e-mail from Richard Walker, the senior vice president of HP's consumer business unit, to [Microsoft executives]." PCPro.co.uk follows the trail of accusatory emails inside Microsoft from there: "HP's email prompted then Microsoft co-President, Jim Allchin, to send a furious email of his own to company CEO Steve Ballmer. Allchin's email suggests the decision to lower the requirements was made in his absence by Ballmer, following 'a call between you and Paul [Otellini, Intel CEO].' 'I am beyond being upset here,' Allchin wrote to Ballmer. 'What a mess. Now we have an upset partner, Microsoft destroyed credibility [sic], as well as my own credibility shot.' Ballmer, in turn, blamed another Microsoft executive, Will Poole, in a rather erratically typed reply to Allchin."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26233 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/84i4fvotNTM/article.pl Tue, 18 Nov 2008 14:05:01 EST JagsLive was one of several readers to point out Jerry Yang's departure as Yahoo CEO. He's not leaving the company; he will return to his former role as Chief Yahoo, whatever that entails. Yang has been under fire in recent months from investors for his handling of Microsoft's recent acquisition attempt."Yahoo, under fierce financial pressure, has begun a search to replace company co-founder Jerry Yang as chief executive, the company said Monday. 'Jerry and the board have had an ongoing dialogue about succession timing, and we all agree that now is the right time to make the transition to a new CEO who can take the company to the next level,' Chairman Roy Bostock said in a statement."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26225 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/MTdX0GcC9TQ/article.pl Tue, 18 Nov 2008 04:05:03 EST Intellectual Ventures (IV) will be setting up shop at the top of a Four Seasons this week as Headline Sponsor of the Ready to Commercialize 2008 conference hosted by the University of Texas at Austin. It's the patent firm's 100th university deal, though some, such as Professor Michael Heller at Colombia University, warn against such deals. '... their individual profit comes at the cost of the public ability to innovate. The university's larger mission is to serve the public interest, and some of these deals work against that public interest.' It's a follow-up to the conference IV sponsored last summer for technology transfer professionals entrusted with commercializing their universities' intellectual property, and should help IV, a friend of Microsoft, snag even more exclusive deals (PDF)."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26198 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/Jkkpm0hvEN4/article.pl Sun, 16 Nov 2008 15:05:01 EST Confirming recent comments by Microsoft's Steve Ballmer, an independent report released Friday found that OpenOffice.org's free office suite is five times more popular than Google Docs. This was according to a survey of 2,400 adult Internet users conducted between May and November. Microsoft's share was 10 times that of OpenOffice.org. Microsoft hopes to cement that lead with its upcoming Office Web, as well as online versions of its Exchange and SharePoint products to be announced on Monday. OpenOffice.org may provide some resistance, however. The latest version, OpenOffice.org 3.0, had a strong first week in October, with more than 3 million downloads. After one month, OpenOffice.org 3.0 had been downloaded 10 million times." And reader Peter Toi informs us of the open source release of yet another office suite, Softmaker Office. Its claimed advantages are its compactness and speed (making it suitable for netbooks), its excellent MS Office filters, and the fact that it can be installed to USB flash drives.Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26187 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/MPB-9WIYtao/article.pl Sat, 15 Nov 2008 21:05:01 EST Microsoft today called its first month of predicting whether hackers will create exploit code for its bugs a success — even though the company got its forecast right just 40% of the time for October. 'I think we did really well,' said Mike Reavey, group manager at the Microsoft Security Research Center (MSRC), when asked for a postmortem evaluation of the first cycle of the team's Exploitability Index. 'Four of the [nine] issues that we said where consistent exploit code was likely did have exploit code appear over the first two weeks. And another key was that in no case did we rate something too low.' Microsoft's Exploitability Index was introduced last month."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26159 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/y2-kxB142iQ/article.pl Fri, 14 Nov 2008 12:05:05 EST As previously discussed, Microsoft's attempt to shield itself from further discovery over the Windows Vista Capable debacle has failed and more internal emails have been released. Although Microsoft has successfully kept CEO Steve Ballmer away from the witness stand on grounds the he 'has no unique knowledge of the facts in this case,' emails suggest otherwise. An email was released in which Intel CEO Paul Otellini thanks Ballmer for listening and making changes to the program allowing their 915 chipset to pass the grade: 'I know you did it.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26156 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/Mjkvy_L-YfQ/article.pl Fri, 14 Nov 2008 12:05:00 EST Gregg Keizer reports Microsoft has clarified that its upcoming Office Web service will be available to users running Mac OS X and Linux, as well as from Apple's iPhone. The key to this cross platform-friendliness: Office Web will run in Firefox and Safari browsers, in addition to IE. Introduced last month, Office Web is a lightweight version of its Office suite that runs as an online service. I think it's time for Google to embrace OpenOffice.org to take on Microsoft head-on, as CW blogger Preston Gralla has argued for and described how to go about it."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26139 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/4TFVCglAB-Q/article.pl Thu, 13 Nov 2008 18:05:05 EST Microsoft has denied paying a Nigerian contractor $400,000 in a bid to retard Linux's movement into the government sector. Media reports alleged that Microsoft had proposed paying that sum to a government contractor under a joint marketing agreement last year, in order to persuade the contractor to replace Linux OS with Windows on thousands of school laptops. Although a joint marketing agreement was drafted to document the best practices for using technology in education, it was never executed, said a Microsoft regional manager for Africa. It became clear, he added, that one customer wanted a Linux OS."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26103 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/erJpFMazGzA/article.pl Tue, 11 Nov 2008 20:05:09 EST Marco Cappato, a Liberal member of the European Parliament, wanted to inspect the EU's contracts with Microsoft. His request was denied. '...the [divulging] of [this] information could jeopardize the protection of commercial interest of Microsoft.' Apparently the European Council sees no clear public interest in the release of such contractual material, and so 'the Secretariat general concludes that the protection of Microsoft's commercial interests, being one of the commercial partners of the European institutions, prevails on the [divulging] for the public interest.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26101 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/8-9iiFaDHm8/article.pl Tue, 11 Nov 2008 17:05:24 EST TechFlash reports that Microsoft bigwigs like Craig Mundie and Bill Gates (when he still worked there) have been secretly moonlighting at Intellectual Ventures (IV), the 'patent extortion fund' run by Bill's pal Nathan Myhrvold. A Microsoft spokesman confirmed that its technologists have been sitting in on IV-sponsored 'innovation sessions,' where their pearls of wisdom were captured and turned into patent applications for Searete, an IV shadow corporate entity. And if all goes well, Searete will soon enjoy exclusive rights to the fruit of the brainstorming, which includes processes ranging from determining and rewarding 'influencers' to treating malaria, HIV, TB, hepatitis, smallpox, and cancer."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26099 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/sbnbcjLvreA/article.pl Tue, 11 Nov 2008 17:05:12 EST InfoWorld's Randall Kennedy examines Windows 7 from the kernel up, subjecting the 'pre-beta' to a battery of benchmarks to find any signs that the OS will be faster, more responsive, and less resource-intensive than the bloated Vista, as Microsoft suggests. Identical thread counts at the kernel level suggest to Kennedy that Windows 7 is a 'minor point-type of release, as opposed to a major update or rewrite.' Memory footprint for the kernel proved eerily similar to that of Vista as well. 'In fact, as I worked my way through the process lists of the two operating systems, I was struck by the extent of the similarities,' Kennedy writes, before discussing the results of a nine-way workload test scenario he performed on Windows 7 — the same scenario that showed Vista was 40 percent slower than Windows XP. 'In a nutshell, Windows 7 M3 is a virtual twin of Vista when it comes to performance,' Kennedy concludes. 'In other words, Microsoft's follow-up to its most unpopular OS release since Windows Me threatens to deliver zero measurable performance benefits while introducing new and potentially crippling compatibility issues.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26093 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/vlr3MzyXLCU/article.pl Tue, 11 Nov 2008 06:05:01 EST I've been using Usenet searches since about 1995 to get programming information, sample code, etc., mostly for those standard APIs that are never documented well enough in the official documentation. At first I used dejanews, and now Google Groups (Google bought dejanews). Over the last few years, I've noticed a steady decline in the quantity of search results on programming topics on Usenet from Google, increasing difficulty with their search UI and result pages, and today I find I'm completely unable to get a working Usenet search on their advanced group search page. I'm used to searching on 'microsoft.*' or 'comp.*,' sometimes supplemented with variations like '*microsoft*' or 'comp*.' As an example, try to find a post from the 1996-1998 time period on 'database' in either the comp.* or microsoft.* hierarchies, and if you can do it, please show your search expression. There should be thousands of results, but I'm getting the result 'Your search — database group:comp.* — did not match any documents.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26064 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/gV33zDJY3sM/article.pl Sun, 09 Nov 2008 17:05:05 EST Microsoft is working on a software distribution scheme along the lines of Apple's iPhone App Store, CEO Steve Ballmer said yesterday at a developer's conference in Sydney, Australia. 'There's not much money being made, but the general concept of giving developers a way not only to get their code distributed, but to really get visibility for the code, is a good idea,' Ballmer said. Ballmer hinted that something similar would be coming soon from Microsoft. While he said Micrsoft was not ready to detail the works in progress, he said '... fear not, we're hard at work, and you'll see some of the benefits [of that] with some of the concepts, particularly Facebook's.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26052 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/Af06B-y01dc/article.pl Sat, 08 Nov 2008 19:05:01 EST Analysts at Bloomberg noticed the tumble in Microsoft's traditional software sales last quarter and blamed it on netbooks: 'The devices, which usually cost less than $500, are the fastest-growing segment of the personal-computer industry — a trend that's eating into Microsoft's revenue. Windows sales fell short of forecasts last quarter and the company cut growth projections for the year, citing the lower revenue it gets from netbooks. When makers of the computers do use Windows, they typically opt for older and cheaper versions of the software. Equipping Linux on a computer costs about $5, compared with $40 to $50 for XP and about $100 for Vista, according to estimates by Jenny Lai, a Taipei-based analyst at CLSA Ltd.' This is why, MS declared war on the segment last year and palm top computers in previous years. While they may have successfully tamed the Asus EEE PC but, they can't hold back everyone who wants to make a buck on cheap hardware and free software. Analysts have predicted the fall of MS's business model when computers break below $250/unit retail. We are there now, and it has shown in the bottom line."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26048 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/zzf6vUMIcFM/article.pl Sat, 08 Nov 2008 15:05:01 EST The Google-Yahoo advertising deal has been rejected by the Department of Justice, and Google has pulled the plug on a search-ad partnership with Yahoo that would have given Yahoo major new revenue, but that raised antitrust concerns. Now, Yahoo has said the 'For Sale' sign is still on its front lawn and that Microsoft should buy the company. The internet portal's co-founder and CEO Jerry Yang made this comment despite the fact Yahoo rejected a $33 a share offer from Microsoft back in May. What a huge loss for the share holders. Microsoft was quick to respond that their buyout efforts were a thing of the past, but left the door open to a search partnership."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26044 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/jUyIsbNdzIQ/article.pl Sat, 08 Nov 2008 10:05:02 EST 'Why is IE still relevant and why is it worth spending money on rendering engines when there are open source ones available that can respond to changes in Web standards faster?,' asked a young developer to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in Sydney yesterday. 'That's cheeky, but a good question, but cheeky,' Ballmer said. Then came the startling revelation that Microsoft may also adopt an open source browser engine. 'Open source is interesting,' he said. 'Apple has embraced Webkit and we may look at that, but we will continue to build extensions for IE 8.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26016 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/0-6q8y3kHvs/article.pl Thu, 06 Nov 2008 21:05:03 EST Eric Brechner writes a best practices blog called Hard Code for Microsoft under the name I.M. Wright. His most recent post sounds like an endorsement of open source development (and does end with a call for Microsoft developers to participate in the shared source community). But even better is his advice regarding patents: 'When using existing libraries, services, tools, and methods from outside Microsoft, we must be respectful of licenses, copyrights, and patents. Generally, you want to carefully research licenses and copyrights (your contact in Legal and Corporate Affairs can help), and never search, view, or speculate about patents. I was confused by this guidance till I wrote and reviewed one of my own patents. The legal claims section--the only section that counts--was indecipherable by anyone but a patent attorney. Ignorance is bliss and strongly recommended when it comes to patents.' Interesting advice from inside Microsoft. I wonder if Ballmer would agree that ignorance should be 'strongly recommended when it comes to patents'?"Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/26009 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/uN3ybj6eRd4/article.pl Thu, 06 Nov 2008 16:05:07 EST Microsoft has confirmed that there will be a widespread public beta of Windows 7 in early 2009, while urging device manufacturers to start immediate testing with its pre-beta release to avoid the widespread hardware compatibility problems that contributed so much to the negative perception of Vista. 'There is not another WinHEC planned before Windows 7 is released,' Microsoft has warned them. Better hope that testing goes well."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/25996 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/hIwVhybqyYA/article.pl Thu, 06 Nov 2008 00:05:11 EST The BBC reports that, as of last Saturday, Microsoft is no longer issuing licenses for the 18-year-old Windows 3.x. Many here may well be surprised to learn that anyone still has use for the antiquated software, but it seems to have found a home in a number of embedded systems — including cash registers and the in-flight entertainment systems on some long-haul passenger jets (Virgin and Qantas are cited). Considering Linux's credentials as an embedded OS, this news could very well indicate the possibility of more migrations in the pipeline."Read more of this story at Slashdot. http://www.roomformilk.com/launch/25975 http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/Lmdj4XuknGw/article.pl Wed, 05 Nov 2008 02:05:01 EST