No, it's not the dreaded Windows Genuine Advantage rearing its terrifying head 
  again. This time, Microsoft has actually come up with an anti-piracy service 
  that it's selling to ISVs, and it looks pretty darn useful at first glance. 
  Keith Ward fills in the details 
here
. 
And that's not all that Microsoft's doing on the anti-piracy front this week. 
  Yesterday, it announced the 
 More
	
Posted by Lee Pender on October 03, 20070 comments
          
	
 
            
                
                
 
    
    
	
    Adobe is reaching into your editor's new hometown of Waltham, Mass. (also home 
  to Novell, incidentally) to buy a company that'll give it a 
Flash-based 
  online word processor
. 
And if going after Microsoft Word wasn't enough, Adobe's also teaming with 
  business intelligence heavyweight Business Objects in 
 More
	
Posted by Lee Pender on October 02, 20070 comments
          
	
 
            
                
                
 
    
    
	
    We just love using "ink" as a verb. 
Ingram 
  will boldly go
 wherever the Geek Squad can't get the job done.
 
	
Posted by Lee Pender on September 25, 20071 comments
          
	
 
            
                
                
 
    
    
	
    Oh, we try hard, so hard, not to pile on with this Vista stuff. It's just that 
  every time we think it's getting old to talk about what a, uh, "mitigated 
  success" (yes, we're being kind) Vista has been, something else comes out 
  that demonstrates that this operating system is about as popular as 
New 
  Coke
 was once upon a time. (By the way, thank you, Internet and Wikipedia, 
  for providing us with more information than we ever thought existed on New Coke. 
  What was life like before the Internet? We don't remember...and we don't care.)
 
More
	Posted by Lee Pender on September 25, 20074 comments
          
	
 
            
                
                
 
    
    
	
    Steve Ballmer 
pulled 
  in about $1.3 million
 in fiscal 2007, 
a 
  pittance
 according to Microsoft.
And, really, it doesn't seem like that much money for a guy who heads a company 
  that made more than $50 billion in the same fiscal year. Our favorite part of 
  this story, though, comes from the second linked article (the one from Australian 
  IT):
 More
	Posted by Lee Pender on September 25, 20070 comments
          
	
 
            
                
                
 
    
    
	
    The first release candidate for Windows Server 2008 came out today, as did 
  the initial public beta for Vista Service Pack 1. 
Keith 
  Ward has all the details
, including a note on how Vista and Windows Server 
  2008 seem to be keeping the same schedule (no doubt recorded in their Outlook 
  calendars) these days. 
 
More
	Posted by Lee Pender on September 25, 20070 comments
          
	
 
            
                
                
 
    
    
	
    That's 
Houston 
  in July.
 And for those of you who haven't been to Houston in July, well...don't 
  bring a jacket.
 
	
Posted by Lee Pender on September 25, 20070 comments
          
	
 
            
                
                
 
    
    
	
    Oof. It's never easy staying on top -- not even for Microsoft, which has dominated 
  the software industry for so long that it's hard to remember when IBM was the 
  "evil empire" of technology. 
It was bad enough that last week, Google 
  and Capgemeni got together to try to rope and tie Microsoft's cash cow, 
  Office. Now, though, Google appears to be going 
  after Outlook, too, and it's not the only competitor trying to carve out 
  a bigger 
  slice of the e-mail pie. Nor is Google the only Microsoft rival to take 
  a fresh run at Office, now that IBM 
  has a free suite of its own. 
 More
	Posted by Lee Pender on September 21, 20071 comments
          
	
 
            
                
                
            
                
                
 
    
    
	
    Does 
this
 
  seem like a fair trade for Yao Ming? Probably not, if you're a Microsoft executive.
 
	
Posted by Lee Pender on September 21, 20070 comments
          
	
 
            
                
                
            
                
                
 
    
    
	
    We were all prepared with a joke along the lines of, "And in other news, 
  the earth continues to rotate on its axis..." but there's no use piling 
  on. 
Here's
 
  the study.
 
	
Posted by Lee Pender on September 20, 20070 comments