fdoge516
04-01-2011, 04:02 AM
The final bits of my Thanksgiving tofurkey are history. Here’s a quick survey of some of the Microsoft news from the past few days about which I didn’t have a chance to blog. One more time: Is there an Office ‘Kill Switch’? So is there or isn’t there an Office 2007 (http://wwww.msoffice2007key.com/) “kill switch” that is designed to punish alleged software pirates? Since I wrote about new Office 2007 (http://www.office2007key.eu/) reduced-functionality-mode information that Microsoft shared via a Knowledge Base article earlier this month, company officials have been trying their best to explain the difference between validation and activation – but still failing to answer definitively when and if Microsoft will merge the two. After reading more articles and blog posts on this than I can count,Office 2007 Professional Plus Activation cl�� (http://www.microsoftoffice2007key.net/), I’d say it sounds like Microsoft does, indeed,Microsoft Office 2007 Pro Plus (http://www.key-office-2007.de/), plan to use the same kind of mechanism it has added to Vista to block those it considers to be pirating Office 2007 (http://www.office2007-key.us/) and future Office releases. If Microsoft is not planning to do this, it seems like officials should outright deny it. Microsoft and Novell: Could the $40 million payoff be a ruse? The Microsoft-Novell technological partnership continued to baffle industry observers. My ZDNet blogging colleague David Berlind suggested a new – and what I considered at first to be a totally crazy – theory regarding why Novell is paying Microsoft $40 million if there supposedly is no infringement by SuSE Linux on Microsoft patents (as Novell claims). Berlind asks the provocative question: What if it’s just a ruse? What if Microsoft got Novell to agree to pay the money simply to plant doubt in current and future customers’ minds that there might be cause for a Microsoft patent-infringement suit? The more I thought about Berlind’s idea, the less nutty it seemed. (Or maybe it’s just the chocolate-cream-pie sugar high that’s clouding my thinking?) And from the better late than never antitrust files: Microsoft filed more interoperability documents to the European Commission on November 23. The latest batch of information,Office 2007 Pro Plus Serial (http://www.microsoftoffice2007key.net/), which Microsoft officials classified as a “revised version” of the existing documentation required under terms of the 2004 antitrust ruling against Microsoft in the EU, stipulate how “non-Microsoft work group servers … achieve full interoperability with Windows PCs and servers." Meanwhile,Office 2007 Activation Key (http://wwww.office-2007-key.co.uk/), on the U.S. antitrust front, the U.S. Department of Justice has ruled that Windows Vista doesn’t merit further antitrust scrutiny. A couple of interesting factoids were buried in the periodic joint-status report filed last week. Microsoft has been offering a downloadable program to third-party developers that “serves as a single source for all the registry settings needed for applications ‘to attain equal visibility on Windows XP and Vista systems,’” enabling companies to achieve Vista-readiness earlier and more easily. And since May 2006,Microsoft Office 2007 Pro Plus Activation Key (http://wwww.office2007key.eu/), “government attorneys said they received 25 complaints alleging antitrust concerns about competing middleware but said they concluded that none of those gripes had merit.”