Actually, Microsoft taketh away (employees' jobs) and then giveth (severance packages). But after having given a bit too much severance to some workers, Microsoft wants to take away again by having ex-employees
refund some of their walking money
. We're holding our breath...
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Posted by Lee Pender on February 24, 20091 comments
In an industry so rife with overwhelming market share in so many areas -- operating systems, anyone? -- it's nice to see an old-fashioned battle shaping up in virtualization.
VMware still has the biggest plate at the virtual table, but this week Citrix and Microsoft announced an extension of their already close relationship that could help them take a chunk out of VMware's pie. Keith Ward, editor of Virtualization Review, offers up the news here and breaks it back down here.
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Posted by Lee Pender on February 24, 20091 comments
And we're not talking about another version of IE here, either. Redmond is working on
popping a whole new kernel
that could make browsing safer than ever before.
Posted by Lee Pender on February 24, 20090 comments
VMware now has its own
virtual campus for partners
, operating in no fewer than nine languages. The malodorous-sounding abbreviation "PU" seems to be the only drawback here, but hey, it works for Princeton and Purdue and probably a bunch of other schools.
Posted by Lee Pender on February 24, 20090 comments
No, they didn't try to drive after four vodka martinis (which nobody should ever do -- seriously), but Ingram's fourth quarter earnings ended in a loss due in part to "goodwill impairment." (We didn't know what that was, either, but for the truly intrepid there's an explanation
here
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Posted by Lee Pender on February 19, 20090 comments
Obama's pick to lead the antitrust division at the U.S. Department of Justice must have stirred some mixed emotions with her comment -- actually uttered last summer -- that
Microsoft is "so last century"
in terms of antitrust concerns. Christine Varney actually seems more worried about Google.
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Posted by Lee Pender on February 19, 20090 comments
A vulnerability -- that word always makes us chuckle for some reason -- in IE that Microsoft tried to patch last week is
still getting hammered
by hackers, apparently.
Posted by Lee Pender on February 19, 20090 comments
We're not totally sure what sparked this e-mail from Tom, but we like it:
"One of the problems with Live Search is the name. Multiple words make it harder to tell people the URL since you MUST use both words or else it is meaningless. Plus, if it cannot find what you are looking for, do you call it Dead Search? Google has become both a noun and a verb -- much to the chagrin of Google itself.
"Microsoft has NEVER designed a good name other than Windows for its products. Most of its names tend to be two to three words in length (or worse, that .NET moniker, which was and is horrible), and thus never flow when spoken or written. If Microsoft called its search engine or Web site DaVinci, that would have had cache -- and would be memorable -- but that is likely already taken.
"The best search engine name would be a single word of two syllables and evoke exploration, discovery or knowledge in English or a common European language (which we would easily adopt and recognize in English). But, alas, Microsoft marketing gets involved and ruins any good names that would be used."
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Posted by Lee Pender on February 19, 20091 comments
It's one of those statements that probably makes a lot of people say "duh," but when Steve Ballmer states the obvious -- that the economic slowdown will
affect Microsoft's sales
-- it might just be a not-so-subtle little warning that Redmond's next earnings report might be as relatively unimpressive as the
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Posted by Lee Pender on February 18, 20090 comments
Michael Phelps's recent and unfortunate reentry into the news got us to thinking about Windows Mobile. No, really.
Phelps has mastered one of those sports, swimming, that only really gets much attention every four years -- at least here in the U.S. It's the same for track and field or for downhill skiing in the Winter Olympics; most Americans only care about this stuff once every four years. Then it goes back being the domain of enthusiasts' and the participants' families. (Again, we're talking about the U.S. here; we're well aware that Australians love swimming and Austrians love skiing, for example. But we digress.)
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Posted by Lee Pender on February 18, 20090 comments
This thing really is out of control. Now Microsoft, heretofore unable, apparently, to team with the rest of the industry to get to the source of the Conficker worm, is
offering $250,000
to anybody who can track down the origin of the nasty little virus.
Posted by Lee Pender on February 17, 20090 comments