A File Format Timeline
,----[ Quote ]
| Like any durable goods monopoly (and few things are as durable as
| software) Microsoft's largest competitor is their own install base.
| Microsoft has made many attempts at moving beyond the binary formats
| in the past, with Office 2000, Office XP and Office 2003. But in each
| case it failed. These were all false starts and abandoned attempts. So
| we should look for signs that OOXML is actually Microsoft's real
| direction and not another false start or dead end.
`----
http://www.robweir.com/blog/2007/06/file-format-timeline.html
They are now going after Adobe, which is more cross-platform-friendly.
An AIR of Invisibility: Adobe has Microsoft in its sights
,----[ Quote ]
| Microsoft Windows still hasn't made it, though html and zip encoding have.
| In terms of software applications, I can think of only two that have
| reached the point of ubiquity and hence invisibility -- Flash and PDF,
| both of which come from the same company, Adobe Systems, the promised
| subject of this week's column.
`----
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070629_002360.html
Related:
Adobe could still sue Microsoft: paper
,----[ Quote ]
| Microsoft's new Vista software, due to be released early next
| year, contains a version of fixed document formats which would
| compete with Adobe's PDF format. Microsoft has pledged to make
| changes to its version.
`----
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061118/tc_nm/adobe_microsoft_dc
Microsoft absent from open standards movement around SOA
,----[ Quote ]
| Now, a new series of SOA standards is headed to OASIS, ones that could
| create a whole market segment around SOA common programmatic principles,
| but Microsoft is nowhere in sight. The absence of Microsoft from the
| Service Component Architecture (SCA), and its sibling Service Data
| Objects (SDO), definitions process can mean one thing: Microsoft will
| pursue its proprietary approach of baking pseudo-SOA into its
| operating system stack as long as it can.
`----
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Gardner/?p=2483
Halloween Memo I Confirmed and Microsoft's History on Standards
,----[ Quote ]
| By the way, if you are by any chance trying to figure out Microsoft's policy
| toward standards, particularly in the context of ODF-EOXML, that same
| Microsoft page is revelatory, Microsoft's answer to what the memo meant when
| it said that Microsoft could extend standard protocols so as to deny
| Linux "entry into the market":
|
| Q: The first document talked about extending standard protocols as a way
| to "deny OSS projects entry into the market." What does this mean?
|
| A: To better serve customers, Microsoft needs to innovate above standard
| protocols. By innovating above the base protocol, we are able to deliver
| advanced functionality to users. An example of this is adding
| transactional support for DTC over HTTP. This would be a value-add and
| would in no way break the standard or undermine the concept of standards,
| of which Microsoft is a significant supporter. Yet it would allow us to
| solve a class of problems in value chain integration for our Web-based
| customers that are not solved by any public standard today. Microsoft
| recognizes that customers are not served by implementations that are
| different without adding value; we therefore support standards as the
| foundation on which further innovation can be based.
`----
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20070127202224445
Liberty Alliance, Microsoft discuss identity protocols
,----[ Quote ]
| "We have finally put down the boxing gloves and are trying to figure
| out how to solve our customers' problems," said Roger Sullivan, the
| newly elected president of the Liberty Alliance and vice president
| of Oracle's identity management section.
|
| The Liberty Alliance, whose participants include HP, Sun and IBM,
| backs the ID-Web Services Framework (ID-WSF), a set of protocols
| for Web services. Microsoft supports another set, WS-Star.
`---- ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
http://www.linuxworld.com/news/2007/011007-liberty-alliance-microsoft-discuss-identity.html?fsrc=rss-linux-news
,----[ Quote ]
| [Microsoft:] ...we should take the lead in establishing a common
| approach to UI and to interoperability (of which OLE is only a part). Our
| efforts to date are focussed too much on our own apps, and only incidentally
| on the rest of the industry. We want to own these standards, so we should
| not participate in standards groups. Rather, we should call 'to me' to the
| industry and set a standard that works now and is for everyone's
| benefit. We are large enough that this can work.
`----
http://www.os2site.com/sw/info/comes/px09509.zip
Diverse technology usage could cause chaos?
,----[ Quote ]
| Adoption of open source software platforms like Linux is on the rise
| despite the government's refusal to officially endorse the technology
| as other emerging markets have done. However, the government wants to
| make clear in its national E-governance policy that "no compulsory
| open source" does not mean "no unified document standards."
`----
http://www.moneycontrol.com/india/news/business/diverse-technology-usage-could-cause-chaos/285854
http://tinyurl.com/yo88va
FLOSS Weekly 14: Jeremy Allison of Samba
,----[ Quote ]
| 'In the section of the interview from around 33m30s to 39m00 Jeremy
| Allison reports how he was told that the Microsoft team implementing
| SMB2 were ordered to "f**k with Samba".'
`----
http://www.twit.tv/floww14
Microsoft needs REST
,----[ Quote ]
| Yaron Goland defended his Microsoft colleague, Dare Objasanjo, as a poor
| sitting duck. He justifies the decision to scrap APP as tactical and not
| strategic. He states: “We considered this option but the changes needed to
| make APP work for our scenarios were so fundamental that it wasn’t clear if
| the resulting protocol would still be APP… I also have to admit that I was
| deathly afraid of the political implications of Microsoft messing around with
| APP.” According to Goland, “we couldn’t figure out how to use APP without
| putting an unacceptable implementation and performance burden on both our
| customers and ourselves.”
|
| The implications for this APP vs. Web3S debate can potentially be enormous.
| Just as we are on the brink of creating simple architectures that are
| interoperable using simple standards, the industry risks splitting into
| separate, incompatible camps again. It is probably no coincidence that we
| have Microsoft on one side and Google, IBM and Sun on the other. This will be
| a fundamental problem for enterprise customers if Microsoft extends this
| strategy into any REST architectures that it introduces into the enterprise.
| Any enterprise systems that expose their data using APP, which is likely in
| the near future, will be incompatible with any Microsoft system that expose
| their data with Web3S.
`----
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Newton/?p=14
Researcher: PatchGuard hotfix stitches up benefit to Microsoft
,----[ Quote ]
| Microsoft has come under fire for quietly releasing a fix to
| its controversial PatchGuard kernel protection software in
| order to improve the performance of its Virtual Server 2005
| product.
|
| ...But it has also broken some legitimate software programs,
| leading to complaints from software vendors including Symantec
| and McAfee.
`----
http://news.yahoo.com/s/infoworld/20070120/tc_infoworld/85291
Vista to give HD Photo format more exposure
,----[ Quote ]
| Microsoft is looking to supplant the ubiquitous JPEG with an image format
| of its own--and it's hoping the debut of Windows Vista will help do the
| job.
`----
http://news.com.com/Vista+to+give+HD+Photo+format+more+exposure/2100-1045_3-6153730.html
'Microsoft broke anti-trust agreement,' prosecutors claim
,----[ Quote ]
| It's claimed Microsoft's engineers used at least 500 undocumented APIs
| to ensure Microsoft's applications worked better with Windows than
| those of competitors.
`----
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/01/18/microsoft_breached_antitrust/
Microsoft used undocumented Windows APIs - Iowa testimony
,----[ Quote ]
| 'All I can say is holy API batman...I'm not kidding...we are talking
| about literally 500-800 APIs here, no joke,' he wrote.
|
| Alepin had earlier claimed that Microsoft ran special demonstration
| programs whose sole purpose was to crash rival products and alleged
| that the company had subverted developers who used Microsoft's
| version of Java 'thinking they were developing multi-platform
| applications, but were actually developing Windows-specific
| applications'.
`----
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/101947/microsoft-used-undocumented-windows-apis-iowa-testimony.html
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.linux.advocacy/msg/cc1ad063dcc0400d
,----[ Quote ]
| Wow, this is absolutely devastating! As near as I can tell, the poor
| guy at Microsoft has been trying to support open standards against
| management. He doesn't say much about the history, i.e. the fact that
| Microsoft didn't do anything with IE until they were recently forced to
| by Firefox competition. The feedback is amazing. Example:
|
| Quote:
| -------------
| So if you believe that the reason for IE's lack of standards support is
| something other than malice of forethought to strangle other browsers,
| you are wrong. If you have followed the anti-trust trial you would have
| seen the actual evidence for these decisions. Microsoft is an
| anti-competitive company run by unethical shitheads.
|
| This won't change until the workforce is slashed and the entire company
| culture changes. Steve Ballmer is the king of the shitheads, so when he
| goes things might get better. But until then, expect MS to only do the
| absolute minimum to defuse the worst criticism. Remember my words:
| unethical shitheads.
| -------------
| End quote
|
| Erik cited this same guy's blog a few days ago to support the notion
| that Microsoft is dedicated to standards compliance and is doing the
| reasonable thing (I think that's why he cited it). The way this story
| has developed, it shows exactly the opposite, and is very revealing
| about sentiments out there in the developer world.
`----
Jury Hears Microsoft Competition Suit
,----[ Quote ]
| A judge on Friday told jurors they must accept as fact that a
| federal court found in 1999 that Microsoft holds a monopoly over
| computer operating systems and that it restricted computer
| manufacturers' ability to use competing systems.
|
| [...]
|
| She said she'll show that the company used its monopoly power
| to exclude competition and control prices and that it conspired with
| other companies to restrain trade, maintaining what she called a
| chokehold on software competitors and computer manufacturers.
|
| "It isn't illegal to be successful," Conlin said in opening
| remarks. "We applaud that. ... But you can't freeze out competitors
| and punish and retaliate against people who cooperate with
| competitors. Microsoft did all that and more."
|
| Conlin warned jurors that she would say some unflattering things
| about Microsoft and its billionaire founder Bill Gates, who
| serves as company chairman.
|
| [...]
|
| Conlin's first 3 1/2 hours of opening arguments delved deeply into
| computer industry history and how Microsoft fought off competitors
| attempting to design rival software.
`----
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/061201/microsoft_trial.html?.v=1
The Formats of Excel 2007
,----[ Quote ]
| The "Excel Macro-Enabled Workbook" option saves as an "xlsxm"
| extension. It is OOXML plus proprietary Microsoft extensions.
| These extensions, in the form of binary blob called
| vbaProject.bin, represent the source code of the macros. This
| part of the format is not described in the OOXML specification.
`----
http://www.robweir.com/blog/2007/01/formats-of-excel-2007.html
ECIS Accuses Microsoft of Plotting HTML Hijack
,----[ Quote ]
| An industry coalition that has represented competitors of Microsoft
| in European markets before the European Commission stepped up its
| public relations offensive this morning, this time accusing
| Microsoft of scheming to upset HTML's place in the fabric of
| the Internet with XAML, an XML-based layout lexicon forn
| etwork applications.
`----
http://www.betanews.com/article/ECIS_Accuses_Microsoft_of_Plotting_HTML_Hijack/1169824569
Software rivals say Microsoft's Vista illegal in Europe (at CNNMoney.com)
,----[ Excerpt ]
| Software manufacturers, citing 2004 European Commission finding,
| contend the operating system violates server laws in Europe.
|
| [...]
|
| "Vista is the first step of Microsoft's strategy to extend its market
| dominance to the Internet," the ECIS statement said.
|
| It said Microsoft's XAML markup language was "positioned to replace HTML,"
| the industry standard for publishing documents on the Internet.
|
| Microsoft's own language would be dependent on Windows, and discriminatory
| against rival systems such as Linux, the group says.
|
| They said a so-called "open XML" platform file format, known as OOXML, is
| designed to run seamlessly only on the Microsoft Office platform.
`----
http://money.cnn.com/2007/01/26/news/international/bc.vista.microsoft.eu.reut/index.htm?source=yahoo_quote
Windows Vista Product Guide: Free to Download, $149 to Read
,----[ Quote ]
| 'Windows Vista Product Guide' was released in two formats:
|
| Microsoft Office Word 2007
| The standard .doc format isn't good enough, you need to be able to
| read a .docx file, so all those users of Office XP are just plain
| out of luck on
| this one.
|
| XPS
| What the heck is XPS? I hadn't heard of it before now, (a quick
| Google tells me XPS is Microsoft's proprietary rival to PDF)
| but apparently you need a special reader for it (which is
| kindly enough built into Vista, but nothing else).
`----
http://itsvista.com/2006/12/windows-vista-product-guide-free-to-download-149-to-read/
|
|
