The  Microsoft Personal Security Advisor now works with Windows XP.

7:49:06 PM    comments ==

From the Microsoft New Speech Dictionary:
"Knowledge Base" -(1)(n) - Microsoft's best attempt to provide technical information on the inner workings of its products, usually in response to a problem and its fix.

So sad and sooo true.

5:26:41 PM    comments ==

Recording some thoughts in response to "The DOJ abdicates its ethical responsibility" on advogato.

First the individual bullet points

1. This needs to be qualified with "under the law". The author implicitly assumes that microsoft is only good at threatening other companies with having control of windows. I think he needs to demonstrate where the settlement doesn't curtail Microsoft's threat power. Oem prices are fixed and have to be published, middleware uninstallable, protocols licensable under RAND, etc.
2. Integration is good buissness, tech and featurewise, but no gaureentee that you will be successfull in the next market. And if all the integration work is covered by RAND licecensing then the competitor can do the same work, or even better.
3. Buissness "Inovation" like the .com era, and free software? and which technical innovation can't you sell or download on the market, webrowsers like opera, or media players like real's, or mabye you are talking about AIM and ICQ? To overcome a dominant player, you need to be better then the dominate player in a way that matters to the end consumer. Sometime MSFT can do it, sometimes they can't, but when either side does, the end custimer wins.
4. Faulty assumption that for some set of products the domination comes solely through monpolist power. And again, what part of the power are you concerned with that the settlement doesn't cover.
5. This would be the first behavioral remedy I've seen with some bite. It's too early to judge the authors asertion.

Closing paragraph problems: The DOJ got alot of stuff overturned in the appeals court, with even the appeals court saying that even if they hadn't thrown away anything that the breakup wasn't appropriate. Then there is the question of the more clearly defined tying standard, which the DOJ didn't think it could meet. The AOL case seems to want to take a crack at it though.

11:32:02 AM    comments ==