Microsoft News Tracker

Microsoft’s Ken Levy has the news:

Download Visual FoxPro 9.0 Service Pack 1 (SP1). SP1 provides the latest updates to Visual FoxPro 9.0 combining various enhancements and stability improvements into one integrated package.

In another post he points to the December 2005 FoxPro Letter which has more details and more FoxPro news including Mary Jo Foley’s Redmond magazine article, FoxPro Not an Endangered Species.

John Ribeiro at Infoworld reports that Bill Gates is still talking up my favorite Microsoft idea (previous story here):

Microsoft Corp. will share a part of its advertising revenues from its search engine with users, the company’s chairman Bill Gates said in a panel discussion on an Indian television channel.

Gates said that search engines like Google Inc. get their revenues from advertising because people use these search engines. “Google’s business model is not based on free software,” Gates said. “Their business model is based on advertisements from which they make a lot of money.”

But they don’t share these advertising revenues with the end users who help them get the revenue, Gates said. “Google keeps all of the money with itself,” he added.
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In its bid to share revenues with users, Microsoft may give free software or even cash to users, said Gates, who did not discuss further details.

Maybe Bill can persuade my local newspaper publisher to pay me to read his product too!

Nate Mook and Ed Oswald at BetaNews:

International technology standards organization Ecma International voted Thursday to approve the creation of a technical committee to begin looking into standardization of Microsoft Office’s Open XML document format. The effort has been backed Apple, Intel and Toshiba.

The vote to create the committee would have been unanimous, however OpenDocument supporter IBM voted against the proposal while HP abstained. Critics outside of Ecma questioned the organization’s move to standardize what they consider to be a proprietary format.
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The first meeting of the Office Open XML technical committee is set to take place on December 15.

They also point to Andy Updegrove’s commentary on the decision:

So there we have it. A “standards” committee formed to standardize a single vendor’s product, and only one vote against proceeding as requested by Microsoft.
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It would appear that Microsoft has chosen its venue quite well. It has also shown its hand at the last possible moment to limit the possibility of organized external opposition, and will be driving the process hard to end true to its beginning.

All of which makes the contrast to ODF rather stark: in contrast, that standard was developed by a community process that decided what should and should not be included and which had no constraints imposed upon it by anyone; it is supported today in multiple product offerings; it is not only open source friendly, but already implemented in open source; it is already in the voting queue at ISO; and it has no dependency, formal or de facto, that will require it to track any individual vendor’s product in the future.

There’s no denying that Microsoft is a great strategist and extremely thorough in its execution, and therefore likely to succeed in its effort to produce an Ecma branded standard . The question is, when that standard comes out with the Ecma rubber stamp at the top, will the market adopt it to the exclusion of ODF?

More by following both links.

Press release:

Microsoft Corp. today made available an integrated solution for small-business retailers in the U.S., combining Microsoft® Office Small Business Accounting 2006 with Microsoft Point of Sale or Microsoft Retail Management System. This free software add-in allows retailers to transfer point-of-sale data, such as transactions and purchase orders, directly into their financial management software. In addition to dramatic time savings and the reduction of manual data entry, the key benefit to small-business retailers is the ability to manage cash flow more effectively, thus helping improve profitability.

A good idea and yet another tie-in between Office and Microsoft Business Solutions. See the web pages for SBA, Microsoft Point of Sale, and Microsoft Retail Management System for more.

The US Department of Justice weighs with some criticism for the judgment of the S. Korean Fair Trade Commission in the Microsoft Anittrust case. Stephen Lawson at InfoWorld:

The judgment, in which the Korean agency fined Microsoft 33 billion won (US$32 million) and ordered it to offer two different versions of Windows in South Korea, among other remedies, could stifle innovation and harm consumers, the DOJ’s Antitrust Division said in a statement.

“The Antitrust Division believes that Korea’s remedy goes beyond what is necessary or appropriate to protect consumers, as it requires the removal of products that consumers may prefer,” said a statement attributed to J. Bruce McDonald, deputy assistant attorney general for the Antitrust Division. “The Division continues to believe that imposing ‘code removal’ remedies that strip out functionality can ultimately harm innovation and the consumers that benefit from it.”

The FTC ordered Microsoft to offer two versions of Windows in South Korea. In one version, Windows Media Player and Instant Messenger software must be removed; the other version must include links to Web sites that allow consumers to download comparable software offered by competitors. The FTC also demanded that the Redmond, Washington, company send CDs to existing users of Windows, allowing them to replace Windows Media Player and Instant Messenger. It also ordered Microsoft to unbundle Windows Media Service from the Windows Server operating system.