Today, August 12, I came across a twitter post saying “Microsoft banned” so I looked it up. Apparently a Texan Court has ruled in favor of i4i the company who owns the patent on the technology that Microsoft Word uses to read and write XMLbased files. These filetypes include *.xml *.docx *.docm. Will this be the first of many patent lawsuits against the software leviathan? I will post more information as I find out more.

*update*

Here are some videos which show examples of the new features Windows 7 has to offer. If you can remember in an earlier post I just provided a list and basic descriptions of the features. Well here is Microsoft showing them off at the 2008 Professional Developers Conference.

I ask this because they have actually been putting good features into Windows 7 RC1.

These New Features include:

• Windows XP Mode (not emulation, but the SP3 core is integrated)
• Dual touch zoom (yeah i know its copying apple, but apple users shouldn’t be the only ones to get that goodness.)
• They fixed the UAC so it can have its levels set to be less of a nusance.

As some of you might know domains with active directory are a great way to make sure that your users are able to have a consistent experience across any machine they login to, while also providing adequate security. If you didn’t know that, well now you do.

You might also know that a copy of the Microsoft products to do the job aren’t cheap, and aren’t cost effective if you have a small business or want to set up a domain at your home.

I will start off by saying, I was once a beta tester for Microsoft with a project known as Longhorn (Vista is what its now known by). I will also start off by saying that had it stayed the way it was and not undergone the swift lobotomy that Microsoft imposed on it, it would have been a truly revolutionary operating system.

That being said I am not a Windows user.

I am happy to proclaim that I am a Mac OS and Linux user. My main machine is a happy little Macbook running OS X Leopard, it is a fantastic little machine and is quite capable of do anything I need it to do, be it video editing or building the latest add-on for All That’s Evil or any of the many other sites I work on.

A while ago, we wrote about how Microsoft was attempting to corrupt the standards process.

Well, part of their attempt to corrupt the standards process was to coerce many countries to join the Document Format and Languages committee of the ISO/IEC.

In addition, several countries traded their membership status up to Principal level, in order to gain additional influence with the committee.

There’s just one tiny problem with that.

“An editorial written by Don Reisinger over at CNet’s News.com takes Microsoft to task for the outright failure of Vista.

He suggests that Vista may be the downfall of the company as, despite years in development, Vista was delivered to market too early.

Microsoft just came clean, they admitted that someone at their Swedish Office bribed their partners to join in and vote for the standard!

Microsoft claims that they did not know that this person had done this. Since then they have notified the SIS and they have  nullified the vote.