I was digging through the Herman Miller site looking for a new chair (try eBay), and ran across a link to a QuickTime movie entitled "The Official Chair of Office Hockey". You'll have to go to the Aeron page to check it out (in the right-hand column).

Not surprisingly, Microsoft has filed for a number of patents regarding their .NET initiative. An article on CNet is reporting that at least one of these patents is very broad and may well make the entire API to Microsoft's .NET platform a patented product and therefore stymie the efforts of …

The Liberty Alliance Project released a white paper1 entitled "Liberty and 3rd Party Identity Systems", which aims to describe how the Liberty Project compares to and inter-operates with identity packages such as .NET Passport (Microsoft) and Verified by Visa (Visa). White paper no longer available. ↩

I don't know if it is true, but MacNN is reporting that Microsoft is trying to get together their own "switcher" advertising campaign. The article includes a snippet of an email message supposedly sent to users who have recently registered Microsoft products. The campaign is to be called "Sensible Solutions …

Microsoft appears to be having yet more fun with patches to their software. According to an article today on CNET, the software giant is release a new critical patch for Internet Explorer, right on he heels of pulling a patch for Windows NT, and the major patch fiasco that was …

CNet has an article on Microsoft's announced DRM platform toolkit for media companies and producers. The Data Session Toolkit (so-named because the intention is to store the DRM'd content in a second "session" of the CD with Data only flags) contains licenses for Microsoft's Media Player format and allows labels …

Not surprisingly, after last week's worm, security experts are faulting Microsoft for not providing enough active security measures and quality in their software. Over the past few years, Microsoft has increased their public statements about security, but most of them have focused on how users can cope with security problems …

I have to admit, when I first saw the announcement of this piece of software, I wondered: "What is Microsoft trying to do here?" For those of you unfamiliar with Microsoft Remote Desktop Client for Macintosh, it is a piece of software created and maintained by Microsoft that allows you …

In an article in InfoWorld, the reporter covers a debate between Sun Microsystems and Microsoft officials over the relative merits of each other's next generation programming tools. Read more for some background... .Net Microsoft's .Net architecture is based on the use of a Common Runtime Library (referred to as the …

Well, according to an article on CNet, Microsoft fell prey to their own problems with the MS SQL product (exposed this weekend through the latest internet worm). I can't say this is entirely related, but I installed XP (yeah, don't talk to me about it) on Saturday and it took …

OSNews has a great parody of the "It's time for Linux on the Desktop" articles seen appearing from time to time.

Due to overwhelming negative feedback about their new security technology, Microsoft has decided to relabel their much- discussed Palladium technology to the much-more-difficult-to-remember "next- generation secure computing base". It appears that due to the bad press that the Palladium technology has been getting for its privacy problems, the software giant …

Do you think that's an inflammatory enough title? I really think this is how the press should be handling information like the notification of this morning's net slowdown due to lax security on MS SQL servers net-wide. Discovered in July of 2002, Microsoft did provide a patch to this error …

In a move that might be the beginning of something interesting, or the end of IT in Houston, the city has decided to stop using Microsoft's Office products in lieu of SimDisk, a web-based package offered by a local (to Houston) company. The agreement will cost the city $9.5M …

CNET is reporting that a "coalition" of technology companies has formed to oppose the MPAA and its bid to get the government to impose regulations requiring intrusive copy protection be installed in computers and consumer electronics devices. The bill, proposed last year by Senator Fritz Hollings, D-SC, has not yet …

OK, I could be wrong here on this issue, but it seems to me that Microsoft has missed the point with their announcement this week that they will allow national governments access to their source code for the purpose of security audits. I'll admit that I may not be a …

According to this article1 on MSNBC, Microsoft has announced today that they have a new technology for copy protection of CD's. This will create a multi-layer CD which contains information readable by consumer devices (CD players) and differently by computers, so that copy protection mechanisms will work. I haven't …

In the following article on PBS's website, Robert Cringely theorizes that Microsoft would do well to follow Apple's lead and lay their next version of the Windows GUI on top of a Linux base. Something tells me, that ain't going to happen, but if the old VMS guys are gone …

As announced yesterday, Microsoft has reached a tentative agreement with the State of California to settle outstanding anti-trust claims made by the state against the company. Apple Computer has taken the bold step of opposing this settlement on the grounds that it may actually benefit Microsoft, due to the manner …