From the category archives:

Microsoft

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 [...]

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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 thi 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 on the Slovakian [...]

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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. [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 .NET [...]

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