Simon Willison’s Weblog

92 items tagged “microsoft”

2007

How much is that standard in the window, the one with the lovely tale? “The real loser in this could be ISO’s reputation itself.” Simon Wardley summarises the embarrassing shenanigans surrounding ISO’s rubber stamping of Microsoft’s OOXML. # 3rd September 2007, 4:49 pm

It Is Estimated That NBC Could Not Have Screwed This iTunes Thing Up Any Worse. NBC’s request that Apple “stiffen anti-piracy provisions” is down-right scary. # 3rd September 2007, 1:42 am

H.264 support coming to the Flash player. It looks like this is a response to the higher video quality offered by Silverlight. I wonder if YouTube knew about this when they started transcoding their videos to H.264 for the Apple TV and iPhone. # 21st August 2007, 8:28 am

I’ve been using Vista on my home laptop since it shipped, and can say with some conviction that nobody should be using it as their primary operating system—it simply has no redeeming merits to overcome the compatibility headaches it causes.

Joel Spolsky # 20th August 2007, 3:58 pm

Fixing GC issues on IE 6: New IE download. Microsoft have released Windows Script Host / Script Runtime version 5.7, which apparently cleans up a bunch of IE 6 memory leaks. # 17th August 2007, 11:50 pm

Windows Live ID Web Authentication Released! Passport lives again! Who’s going to be first to build an idproxy.net for it? # 17th August 2007, 10:20 am

Open source is neither an industry fad, nor a magic bullet.

Microsoft FAQ # 13th August 2007, 1:54 pm

Does the idea of redefining the role of the Internet browser appeal to you? Do the terms HTTP, RSS, Microformats, and OpenID, excite you? If so, then this just might be the opportunity for you.

IE Team Job Ad # 18th July 2007, 7:43 am

Could someone please send, to whomever the hell teaches communication skills/techniques at Microsoft, a copy of the Chicago Manual, and perhaps a sixth—grade grammar text? I swear, there’s almost no one from that company who can write a proper English sentence.

John C. Welch # 12th July 2007, 6:23 pm

Mobile Device Connectivity to Exchange using IMAP vs Exchange ActiveSync (via) I count 14 instances of “experience” in this 1,000 word blog entry. Do real people talk like this? # 12th July 2007, 5:17 pm

The Sarcastic Gamer: MS Surface. “Your next computer will be a big-ass table.” # 21st June 2007, 11:42 am

The One True Object (Part 2). Jim Hugunin describes how the DLR let’s Python / JavaScript / Ruby talk to each other using a message passing abstraction. # 5th May 2007, 1:27 am

Microsoft’s XUL. My take on XAML from back in 2003 seems strangely relevant. # 4th May 2007, 11:40 pm

Migrating Microsoft Hotmail from FreeBSD to Microsoft Windows 2000. I’d like to see them try that with Yahoo!’s 100+ properties. # 4th May 2007, 5:54 pm

MSFT and Yahoo: two icebergs, roped together. Yahoo!’s engineering platform and culture is Open Source pretty much all the way down. Microsoft’s isn’t. I wonder how that would pan out. # 4th May 2007, 5:50 pm

Dynamic Language Runtime. Miguel de Icaza describes how Microsoft’s new Dynamic Language Runtime lets you call JavaScript and Visual Basic functions from Ruby. Looks like they beat Parrot to the punch. # 3rd May 2007, 10:29 pm

How to debug JavaScript with Visual Web Developer Express. Microsoft’s best kept secret: a decent free debugger for Internet Explorer that doesn’t require you to install Microsoft Office. # 2nd May 2007, 2:06 pm

Internet Explorer Application Compatibility VPC Image (via) Microsoft have made free VPC images of IE 6 and IE 7 available for testing, but they expire in August. # 20th April 2007, 4:47 pm

Microsoft saw the danger of Javascript and tried to keep it broken for as long as they could. But eventually the open source world won, by producing Javascript libraries that grew over the brokenness of Explorer the way a tree grows over barbed wire.

Paul Graham # 7th April 2007, 8:22 am

i’m Home. “Every time you start a conversation using i’m, Microsoft shares a portion of the program’s advertising revenue with some of the world’s most effective organisations dedicated to social causes.” Microsoft are now getting their marketing ideas from spam e-mail forwards. # 2nd March 2007, 10:43 am

Introducing Windows CardSpace. I incorrectly stated in my talk yesterday that CardSpace was a feature of Vista; it’s actually available for XP as well as part of the .NET 3.0 framework. # 22nd February 2007, 11:47 am

CardSpace & OpenID: Working together. A more detailed explanation of what the Microsoft OpenID collaboration actually means. # 7th February 2007, 1:58 am

Microsoft & OpenID. HUGE news. Microsoft are officially supporting OpenID, through integration with CardSpace. # 7th February 2007, 1:56 am

Microsoft confirms Vista Speech Recognition remote execution flaw. “I have verified that I can create a sound file that can wake Vista speech recognition, open Windows Explorer, delete the documents folder, and then empty the trash.” # 1st February 2007, 5:19 pm

Microsoft Breaks HTML Email Rendering in Outlook 2007. They’ve dropped the IE renderer and replaced it with... Microsoft Word! No CSS background images, no floats, no CSS positioning, no forms. Wow. # 10th January 2007, 8:18 am

IE JScript Performance Recommendations Part 3. Once again, Microsoft’s official advice is to avoid closures entirely rather than learn how to use them safely. Sigh. # 9th January 2007, 11:48 am

2006

A conversation with Jon Udell about his new job with Microsoft. Jon wants to bridge the gap between the alpha geeks and the mainstream. # 8th December 2006, 2:16 pm

Microsoft versus FOSS Configuration Management. Why the Free Software world’s source control works and Vista’s apparently doesn’t. # 7th December 2006, 9:28 am

2004

Transcript of Bruce Sterling at Microsoft Corporation (via) Bruce Sterling on scaling up his annual SxSW party. I can’t believe I missed it htis year. # 22nd May 2004, 8:35 pm

2003

Microsoft Security FAQ (via) Point your less technical friends here # 17th December 2003, 2:50 am