Okay, I'm not seriously suggesting Microsoft is paying off Netcraft to produce positive survey results (although this is certainly a standard operating procedure for Microsoft). But something is odd, if not rotten, in the state of Netcraft.

This article is one of the worst pieces of fud I have ever seen. It's not bad because it works. It's bad because it's so poorly thought out. The author's ignorance borders on mind boggling. Feel free to bury the story, but consider visiting the site and posting some feedback to the author. While I doubt he will care, anyone reading it will at least see the responses.

We shall see. Vista is no where near ready for deployment and adopters should—as always—wait until there are several service packs for and the server variant of the OS before upgrading. In the meantime, let me recommend an alternative or two.

Microsoft partners think it's great that the vendor has been aggressively battling software piracy. But some partners say the task of ensuring that their clients are in compliance with Microsoft's Byzantine software licensing structure is steadily growing more difficult.

Microsoft's James Plamondon's: "It is our job to ensure that those choosing [software] are presented with an overwhelming abundance of evidence and reasoned argument in favor of our standards."

"So I have a new word to add to my open-source lexicon: source-open (reference). It's when you start an open-source company and back-pedal on your original license when you reach a certain critical mass..."

While I think this is a difficult challenge, I don’t think it is an insurmountable challenge. Microsoft can afford an army of lawyers and hopefully some of them are extremely bright and can come up with creative solutions that might allow Microsoft to leverage and even bundle Open Source software in a safe manner.

Multimedia browser plug-in Silverlight targets Adobe, aims at bringing animation, video and other rich media to Web-based applications.