An unregistered Trademark is usually enforcable only within a relatively small geographic area. They were not marketting their brand nationally, in fact , their brand has nothing to do with search or web design, their brand is not registered, in short, it fails virtually all of the tests needed to enforce an unregistered trademark.

This truly feels like yet another attempt to get free cash from Microsoft. IMHO they have a better chance of getting that cash from Bing Cashback purchases then from the lawsuit...

Cobol is NOT conducive to literate programming. Yes, it uses 'english' names for common operations, but this is not what makes a program 'literate'. The data division with it's cryptic layout, level numbers to specify subdivisions, Sections with differing rules and syntax do not lead to literate programming.

The Procedure division allows for english-like statement "Move a to b." instead of "b=a;", however neither of these statements are any better at explaining to a human what we want a computer to do. It can be argued that Cobol is more clear to an English speaking non-programmer, a subset of 'human beings', and generally not the target audience of a computer program. It can also be argued that "b=a;" has more universal understanding among the subset of 'human beings' called 'developers' that make up the target audience.

I started with COBOL, I wrote COBOL code for many years (started programming in 68), and I can assure you, Knuth is NOT referring to language semantics in his statements.

The poster's title is misleading. TFA does NOT say that Windows 8 work begins next FY. Those familiar with Microsoft and the industry know that planning for the next release ALWAYS begins before the current release cycle is complete. Otherwise you'd end up with a bunch of developers and testers waiting around for project planning to take place. With planning in place, developers can hit the road running immediately after the current product is RTM. What the article CLAIMS is that recent job postings give an insight into what is planned for Win8. The first posting is for a WinSE position (Sustained Engineering) that is the group responsible for maintaining the current and prior versions of Windows. No Win8 help there. Another posting for a training/documentation senior lead, no help there. One for a security position, to help Win8 improve it's security 'pillar', wow...big news... Closest thing to a disclosure is one position to help develop a new user experience for Server 2008 computer management.

The claim on that site that 'Robert Morgan' is doing an 'exclusive interview' on Windows 8 with a blogger is a pretty good indication that this may be a hoax. The Microsoft address book has no Robert Morgan in R&D, and unless he is willing to break all the MS non-disclosures, company policy and forfeit his job, this seems highly unlikely.

Microsoft Research does a LOT of this type of investigation and research. However, there is a world of difference between researching compatability and 'planning to add'. Whether or not he really works for Microsoft, the claim that he is in R&D makes the claim that Win8 will provide 128 bit support a major stretch. Very misleading headline.

http://www.seattlepi.com/business/22433_chicago10.shtml Lots of reasons for the move, but tax breaks was a major consideration for Boeing deciding to move. Sure they still build planes in Seattle, but their corporation is now located in Chicago. No reason at all that Microsoft could not do the same. This article is trying to make something illegal that is clearly not.

Why should the costume makers have to foot the bill for the rest of us? I truly doubt that they are using more bandwidth than the rest of the population. I'm really getting tired of all the hate against such a minor profession. Add a teen-tax. Problem solved.

"It's worth underlining what a strong statement Microsoft is making by not using the Safe Browsing list. They're not just saying that their own list is better. They're saying that the Safe Browsing list is of such low quality that adding it to their own product would actually make the product worse" Talk about a major leap. Completely ignores all the business, competitive, financial and other reasons that Microsoft may not choose to use it, then states the only interpretation is that Microsoft thinks the list is of low quality. Given the authors ability (or lack thereof) to reason, this article sounds like nothing more than self-adulating hype.

Software has been licensed looooong before Microsoft. Back to the earliest mainframes, you purchased licenses to use business software and development tools. The Operating systems were created by the computer manufacturers and bundled with the hardware, there was no choice as to which OS you can use. What Microsoft 'might' be blamed for is selling an OS that can run on hardware from a wide variety of manufacturers, I think the first company to become commercially viable selling 'just' an OS. They used the same licensing model that had been used for decades before that.

Microsoft has greatly approved their testing process, with automated regression testing on literally thousands of machines. Full regression tests that used to take 3 weeks now take 4 days, with three of those days being failure investigation. You can read the Windows 7 team blogs for information on the process, but one key component is that daily builds off the main branch should be of very high quality, as close to release quality as feasable. This, along with the improved testing, allows regression tests to be run on virtually all desired interim builds and integrations, so that by the time RTM testing is hit, there are very few surprises.

The Microsoft Press Release can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2009/jul09/07-22Windows7RTMPR.mspx

My guess is that the argument would be that this move does not make up for the past violations. Sure, they will not be able to stop Windows 7 shipping due to it not having a browser, but they could still attempt to have Microsoft 'pay' for the earlier violations. This could be by fine, or by ordering them to include other browsers as a startup option in current and future OSes. One way or another, it does not end the EU's action.

Microsoft has already stated that they will provide IE free of charge to any manufacturer that wants to pre-install it. If they were try to enter into any 'exclusivity' agreements, or tieing the requirements to other non-MS software, they would be in direct violation of the prior anti-trust judgements. Just not gonna happen. On the other hand, as a manufacturer, I would be a fool not to include it on any computer I sold mass-market, and whether I included any other browser would depend solely on how it would help my computer sales. For special orders it might make sense to include the option, but I really don't see that supporting multiple browsers out of the box would be a make/break decision in the customers mind.

Okay, then to compare apples to apples...Microsoft had one fix for IE in this patch, Apple had 50 for Safari. Again, where is the apple headline?