The extent of Microsoft's generosity to its open-source patent partners has been revealed in Novell's latest financial statement.

Microsoft has warned users of its new Windows Home Server that the device could corrupt data when saving files from certain applications. The results could ruin family photos, small-business records or anything else users save on the system. The problem is the latest of three significant quality-control fumbles Microsoft has committed this year, said analyst Michael Cherry.

In the past, I’ve noticed that reviews of the various GNU/Linux OS distributions have frequently made point of their downfalls when compared to one Microsoft OS or another. This doesn’t make much sense in the grand scale of things, because most-if not all-of Microsoft’s advantages come from being the long-time

market leader, not the better OS.

Face it, now that the dam has broken with the OLPC, the EEE PC and now the prospect of Everex’s Cloudbook coming out in January at CES, Microsoft is really feeling the heat from Linux in this market. It also doesn’t help that people have reacted to Microsoft’s UMPC hardware offering with either loathing, disbelief ($1100 for THAT?!) or just plain ignored it.

In an effort to win quick converts to its bid to have Microsoft Open Office XML (MOOXML) accepted as an ISO standard, Microsoft is deprecating parts of its widely-criticized MOOXML. But whatever the new Microsoft OOXML file format with deprecated parts will eventually look like (if such a format ever appears in an actual application), these cosmetic changes don’t really make a difference for Microsoft or the world.

Do you know why do I admire Microsoft’s marketing whizzes? They made a deity out of their corporation. No, seriously. No figurative speech. Not a metaphor nor a parallel. Those nameless heroes did it literally.

"...All Microsoft did was produce a screenshot ostensibly demonstrating MSIE8 passing Acid2. They distributed no code for people to verify this alleged standards compliance for themselves, not even proprietary code. To me this represents a significant low in how many people are willing to give credit for something they can’t verify, something typically called vaporware..."