Mary-Jo has a post about the release of our Hyper-V drivers for Linux entitled Pigs are flying low: Why Microsoft open-sourced its Linux drivers , it’s one of many out there but the title caught my eye: I thought I’d give a little of my perspective on this unusual release. News of it reached me through...

One of the questions which comes up on our internal distribution lists for Hyper-V is “when will such and such and OS be supported on Hyper-V” and the somewhat frustrating response is usually in the form “We’re talking to OS vendors, but we can’t talk about contract negotiations while they are going...

When Ray Noorda ran Novell he coined the term Coopertition to describe their relationship with us. Microsoft's Kevin Turner described this as "Shake hands but keep the other hand on your wallet". We would love customers to buy ONLY Microsoft stuff (support would be SO much simpler), and competitors...

I've decided to go ahead and post the PowerShell library I have been working on to Codeplex . I wanted to explain various bits of it here before pulling it all together, but that is taking more time than I wanted. I've provided early copies to a few people - John Kelbley  used them to good effect...

Perhaps it's a bit strong to say "if complete and utter chaos was lightning, Jeff Jones would be the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armour and shouting 'All gods are bastards' " (as a favourite quote has it) but you must admit it's a better opening than "Blimey, XP was...

Silly me believing stuff I read on the Internet. First there was the The register's story about only 26,000 iphones being activated in the UK . Next came Electronics weekly's usual " Made by Monkeys " e-mail - I'm not sure how I ended up on the list for it, but I haven't unsubscribed because once in...

I had to check the URL for Port 25 in the last post (is it technet ... or MSDN ? its http://port25.TECHNET.com ), and in doing so I spotted a post I'd missed from a few days ago. The Virtual Machine Additions for Linux 2.0 download is now available. This is to provide better support for qualified distributions...

This would normally be one for Steve, but he's got a few days away... Kim Cameron's blog got hacked; normally I'd just say "Blog hacked: Film at Eleven ". Except Kim is a big noise in the Microsoft security world. ZDNet broke the story , and the comments to it show Anti Microsoft folks out there laughing...

This article has been removed. The article implied a number of traits about Mr Richard Morrell which are entirely without basis. I apologise for both the factual inaccuracy and the offence caused to Mr Morrell through this article.

A couple of days ago I wrote about our online Petition to the BSI concerning Open XML, it's always nice to be noticed by Mary Jo Foley but she asks Am I the only one, in reading Microsoft's rationale for ISO standardization, who finds it ironic that Microsoft is citing "customer choice" and "interoperability...

Back in February I wrote about IBM and their attempts to throw a spanner in the works for the Open XML used in office 2007 The key bits of the story are IBM has long campaigned for Microsoft to open up it's file formats - which we have done in Office 2007 with the Open XML format. IBM thrown its weight...

One of those odd coincidences. Back in January 26 when I was blogging about IBM FUD , I mentioned an Information Week Article where IBM made the assertion that " a so-called "open XML" platform file format, known as OOXML, is designed to run seamlessly only on the Microsoft Office platform.". This is...

A little culture to lead into the weekend. A quote from Voltaire no less. I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: "O Lord make my enemies ridiculous." And God granted it. Someone sent me a link to story " Rivals Attack Vista As Illegal Under EU Rules ". We've heard of the...

Most people, I think, know that Hamlet does not say "Alas Poor Yorick, I knew him well", and Mae West never said "Come up and see me some time". When I was active in Microsoft's private trainer newsgroups, a misquote from George Orwell would come up frequently in the form "But, Thomas, we have always...

Here's Something I bet most people most people thought they'd never see. (Thanks to Information week ). We're making sure we help Firefox development. We have an Open Source Software Lab in Redmond - they have an interesting web site at http://port25.technet.com . It makes a good story to portray Microsoft...

Last week I posted about an advance notice of announcement that is was due that this week - it was far from clear.. A few hours later I got advance notice of the Virtual Server news which came out yesterday, which was a model of clarity. Item 1: On Monday April 3rd, Virtual Server 2005 R2 Enterprise...