Microsoft

Yet Another Browser Choice Fail

April 18, 2010

A few weeks ago I wrote about Microsoft’s “browser choice” ballot page in Europe, which in its debut used a flawed algorithm when attempting to perform a “random shuffle” of the browser choices, a feature specifically called for in their agreement with the EU.  This bug was fixed soon after it was reported.  But I [...]

14 comments Read the full article →

The New & Improved Microsoft Shuffle

March 6, 2010

A quick update on my post from last week on the “Microsoft Shuffle“, where I looked at how Microsoft’s “random” browser ballot was far from random. First, I’d like to thanks those who commented on that post, or sent me notes, offering additional analysis. I think we nailed this one. Within a few days of [...]

25 comments Read the full article →

Doing the Microsoft Shuffle: Algorithm Fail in Browser Ballot

February 27, 2010

March 6th Update:  Microsoft appears to have updated the www.browserchoice.eu website and corrected the error I describe in this post.  More details on the fix can be found in The New & Improved Microsoft Shuffle.  However, I think you will still find the following analysis interesting. -Rob Introduction The story first hit in last week [...]

175 comments Read the full article →

Monopoly Freedom Day

January 23, 2009

Each year the Tax Foundation, a 70-year old nonpartisan tax research group based in Washington, D.C., issues a press release on Tax Freedom Day, the day in the year where the average American worker has earned enough to pay their taxes for the year. In 2008 Tax Freedom Day was April 23rd. Of course, this [...]

5 comments Read the full article →

Embrace the Reality and Logic of Choice

April 30, 2008

Another neo-colonialist press release from Microsoft’s CompTIA lobbying arm, this time inveighing against South Africa’s adoption of ODF as a national standard. One way to point out the absurdity of their logic is to replace the reference to ODF with references to any other useful standard that a government might adopt, like electrical standards. When [...]

10 comments Read the full article →

The biggest media launch of all time?

September 27, 2007

The news from all directions is that Halo 3 had a big day, with “first day” sales of $170 million, which actually includes advance sales as well. Let’s take the report from the XBox.com web site as the canonical version of the tale: Microsoft today announced that Halo® 3 has officially become the biggest entertainment [...]

13 comments Read the full article →

Sometimes I need to remind myself

April 23, 2007

Tim Anderson has an interesting article up on his ITWriting blog, “Microsoft’s Jean Paoli on the XML document debate”. Of course, I treat anything Jean Paoli says on XML with such attention as I usually reserve for listening to the isorhythmic motets of Philippe de Vitry. Like de Vitry, Paoli can be understood on several [...]

22 comments Read the full article →

Microsoft on Standards

January 29, 2007

There are many delicious morsels in the many exhibits in the Iowa Comes v. Microsoft case. Maybe that is why the official website containing the exhibits was taken down within hours of the case being settled? Luckily websites like Slated Antitrust filled the void and host backup copies of these candid insights into Microsoft’s internal [...]

10 comments Read the full article →

The Formats of Excel 2007

January 8, 2007

I’ve installed the new Office 2007. This isn’t my preferred platform. In fact I find I’m not using heavy-weight editors of any variety much. For every page I compose in a dedicated word processor I author perhaps 50 pages in emails, blogs or wiki’s. However, since I do have a license for Office 2007, and [...]

28 comments Read the full article →

Lost in Translation

July 14, 2006

In the last installment I looked at the way the ODF Add-in for Word 2007 integrates into the Word UI. Now let’s drill down into an actual conversion and see what fidelity we get. I downloaded the code from SourceForce and installed on a machine running the Office 2007 beta 2. The Add-in pre-reqs the [...]

3 comments Read the full article →