This is funny. Engadget has a brief summary of the Apple iPod patent ruckus, the short, short version of which is that Apple's patent was refused because a Microsoft employee had previousy filed for a too-similar patent, but now it turns out that iPods were shipping before the Microsoft patent was filed. What I'm wondering is does this knot (which ( Read more... )

this makes me think about this and giggle.

Trawling jobsites this morning, I stumble across this gem in someone's list of job responsibilities:use Microsoft Project as part of Project Management and in documentation of developed code
Urk. Microsoft Project as documentation of developed code?

The company will adopt "industry standard" XML as the file format for popular applications like Word in the next major release of Office, codenamed Office 12 and expected in 2006. The implementation is called Microsoft Office XML Open Format. (link)
I have no joke here.

possibly the funniest microsoft document I've ever read.

How the hell are you supposed to *correctly* parse this sort of crap?www.multimap.com/map/browse.cgi?lat=3D51.9643
=3D100000
&icon=3Dx> &lon=3D-7.8603&scale=3D100000&icon=3Dx=20

I mean, if you've got a HTML-capable mail client, you shouldn't need to worry about long, unwrapped URLs; if you've got a non-HTML-capable client, the above is unusable ( Read more... )

Our favourite geek monopolist insists that more software research should be done, despite the fact that his company is busy reorienting itself to make more money from patented techonology, i.e. preventing people from using innovative things like "sorting images by date" as a basis for further research unless they license it first.

For a moment, I thought I'd be able to ditch my multi-network software in favour of a single IM client.

Skynet, v1.0

From Wired's RSS feed (with my emphasis):Microsoft says the upcoming release of Windows XP Service Pack 2 will make it much harder to sneak deceptive software onto users' computers. Is it game over for spyware authors? By Amit Asaravala.
Indeed. Because everyone knows that Microsoft always comes through on these promises, and that they've never ( Read more... )