Category Archives: Microsoft

LOL – Ballmer Got It Wrong

Oh I love it … just a followup to my previous post about Microsoft’s FUD … turns out, Ballmer must have misunderstood the facts somewhat massively…

Open source faces no more, if not less, legal risk than proprietary software. The market needs to understand that the study Microsoft is citing actually proves the opposite of what they claim it does.

eWeek – Author of Linux Patent Study Says Ballmer Got It Wrong

<raising glass> Here’s egg on your face, Stevie.

Microsoft – More FUD

At Microsoft’s Asian Government Leaders Forum, Steve Ballmer said …

Someday, for all countries that are entering the WTO (World Trade Organization), somebody will come and look for money owing to the rights for that intellectual property … Linux violated more than 228 patents

Reuters | Microsoft’s Ballmer Warns Asia of Linux Lawsuits

… with regard to government organizations that are switching from Windows to Linux. Of course he did not provide any detail on the alleged violations.

Uh huh … it’s a fine thing to slap down the threat of law suit … tends to scare top level people (which I’m sure is what SB was aiming for) … but put your money where your mouth is, Stevie baby. IDENTIFY the IP violations!

Wouldn’t it be a fine thing if people were required to provide documentation, for alegations made, within a reasonable time period … say 72 hours?

Windows XP SP2

Well, if you are one of the 5 people in the computer world who doesn’t know yet … Microsoft has released Windows XP Service Pack 2.

I’ve downloaded it … but I’m going to hold off on installing it for a while. Probably 2-3 weeks. For some undefinable reason … I just don’t trust MS to have tested it as well as it should be. Go figure.

Thanks to Mike Wills for pointing out the official download location early yesterday.

Video capture card problem — RESOLVED!

Well, the video capture card problem has been resolved.

I ended up going over to Frys yesterday and picked up a motherboard, cpu, and memory (2 motherboards, actually, more about that later).

The upgrade went smoothly … Linux adapted to the new hardware without a problem. Windows XP, however, wouldn’t even boot. I had to reinstall. I kind of expected that.

However, the capture card is seen by the PCI bus now, and is fully functional in XP. I need to figure out how to make it work in Linux though.

Continue reading

Switch to Firefox!

Get FirefoxFound another link on Mike Wills site about promoting the switch from IE to Firefox .

After IE crashed on me a few times while trying to actually write blog entries … I decided to give Mozilla Firefox a try.

So far I’m convinced … it hasn’t crashed once, and I really like the extensions that are available.

I had started using Mozillia Thunderbird for my email some time ago … it’s nice, but there are a few things I’d like to see in it.

Right now I’m using Firefox at both home and work without any problems. I only have run into a few sites that don’t work quite right, and one site that outright blocks anything but IE (which I think is incredibly stupid … but it takes all kinds).