What happened and why open formats matter! Tucked in with the many security updates (and the restoration of one’s ability to paste text from a web page into a Word document!), a very interesting modification to the Office 2003 software waits quietly for installation with Service Pack 3. These events with Office 2003 should act as a cautionary tale of proprietary product, vendor, and platform lock-in.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen... this is Microsoft we’re talking about, and if its proposed acquisition of Yahoo signals anything, it serves as a confirmation that Microsoft’s glory days are in the past.

Microsoft creates FUD as it reports that Windows Vista has logged fewer vulnerabilities in its first year than XP, Red Hat, Ubuntu, and Apple Mac OS X did in their first years.

"The Committee on Culture and Education of the European Parliament is preparing to vote on a draft report basis about cultural industries in the context of the Lisbon strategy. Some amendments taking again the main guidelines of the Olivennes mission have just been registered. As a matter of fact, we have sent the following message to MEPs of the culture committee..."

"As you may recall, the European Parliament's forthcoming report on the Cultural Industries has become the latest target of lobbying by the recording industry. First, they attempted to insert language that advocated that European ISPs filter and block their own users on the basis of suspected infringement. As we explained to European Members of Parliament..."

"Microsoft is developing Big Brother-style software capable of remotely monitoring a worker’s productivity, physical wellbeing and competence..."

A team of Microsoft people flew out to Cambridge, Mass. to meet with engineers from the OLPC Foundation yesterday

There are some important questions regarding OOXML’s upcoming ISO bid that Microsoft cannot answer or just simply won’t. From 25-29 February 2008 in Geneva, Switzerland, the ISO community will hold a Ballot Resolution Meeting (BRM) of the National Boards to discuss and vote finally on OOXML as an ISO standard. This article raises questions that Microsoft should answer to the satisfaction of the ISO community as part of the deliberation leading up to the BRM vote.