A brief hiatus

I'm off the week of March 29 and won't be posting to this weblog again until I'm back at work April 5. Have a good week, everybody.

Gates and the mower

Interesting, or perhaps disturbing, juxtaposition in this Associated Press photo from Bill Gates' speech today.

MSN shows 'Blogbot'

An interesting Microsoft-related development today for the weblogging community: MSN Blogbot. It's essentially a tool for searching weblogs, set to debut later this year. MSN exec Yusuf Mehdi showed it briefly on screen during a conference on the Redmond campus today, along with MSN Newsbot, a news search engine also in development.

Mehdi was pressed for time and moved on quickly, so he didn't share many details about Blogbot. It's not yet clear, for example, if it will be based on RSS feeds, a la the popular Feedster, although that would make sense. I'll try to pass along more details as I get them.

Update, 3:30 p.m.: Here's what Feedster CEO Scott Rafer said when I asked him for his response to the Blogbot initiative:

"I think it would be really good for our business, frankly. There’s a sector-validation issue. … If you talk to our users, they’re thrilled about us. If you talk to large partners and the financial community and all these other folks, they’re like, well, how do we know RSS isn’t just a fad? … To have Microsoft actually go to the point of saying, hey, look, this stuff is even worth searching, (it's) fabulous."

Rafer added that he's "amazed" Microsoft is calling it "Blogbot," because RSS feeds aren't just about weblogs. They also come from news services and other sources of information. He said he's generally unconcerned about the Microsoft project, because "Microsoft as a brand is so unpopular with the core blogging community."

RSS feeds, for the uninitiated, are streams of information in a type of code known as XML. (Ours is over there on the right under the orange XML logo.) People subscribe to RSS feeds using programs called news aggregators, letting them access information from a variety of sources in one place. Feedster currently uses 520,000 of those feeds as the basis of its search engine.

Update, 6 p.m.: MSN product manager Karen Redetzki says the company will probably launch Newsbot in the first half of this year. Blogbot will also probably come in the first half of this year, although it will be launched seperately from Newsbot. I asked about the RSS angle, but Microsoft says it's too early to talk publicly about the technology the weblog-search engine will use. But it will be focused only on weblogs, leaving more traditional online news sources for the Newsbot service.

The company's main search engine is slated to launch later this year.

And then there's something else -- Answerbot. This will be a search feature that will retrieve answers to questions posed in natural language, along with links to related sites. This is probably a few years away from launch, Redetzki said.

Also, in our comments section, Technorati's David Sifry (or at least someone who says he's David Sifry -- you never know with these comments), points out my oversight: Technorati also offers a weblog search. In fact, the site says it indexes and searches more than 1.9 million blogs.

Ballmer on Net search

I'm over here on the Redmond campus this morning for the second day of the MSN Strategic Account Summit. On tap today are speeches by Yahoo CEO Terry Semel, advertising guru Donny Deutsch, and Microsoft's Bill Gates. Slate founding editor Michael Kinsley will also moderate a panel discussion.

The highlight yesterday was a speech by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. One of the most interesting parts came not during his official remarks but during a question-and-answer session afterward. Someone in the audience asked him to talk about the company's effort to develop its own search technology, a hot topic because it promises to pit Microsoft vs. Google.

We led our story this morning with part of his comments, but here's everything he said on the subject. (And yes, to anticipate your question, he really did use four "verys" in succession. He's an enthusiastic guy.)

"Search obviously is an important area. It's an area where we had for a long time essentially built a search strategy based upon components that were to some large degree outsourced. It’s probably the thing that I feel worst about over the last several years -- us not making the R&D investment ourselves up front, but rather outsourcing. It’s funny, people sometimes say Microsoft wants to do it all. This is a case where we actually didn’t do it all. Shoot, I wish we had done it all.

"It turns out, we have a lot of guys who are really smart about search. In our research group there were tons of PhDs and computer scientists who'd really thought about the problem. So we have a ton of talent there. We built a great development team to complement them. And we have set our goal out to be absolutely the best from a user perspective and from an advertiser perspective in terms of search with technology over time that we build internally, largely, as opposed to outsourced from vendors, largely.

"There's no magic in a sense about search. I just looked at the cover of this most recent Newsweek with the picture of the Google guys and you would think there was some magic looking at the cover of Newsweek, but there's no magic here. It's good, hard, go-get-em, do the best R&D, have the most relevant results, have the best customizability of the advertiser-type stuff. With the kind of stuff we have in this company – hardcore software developers – we’ll be able to do very, very, very, very well, and we are committed to doing very, very, very well. I think you’ll see a lot of really good competition in the search area. The competition will be good for all involved. It’ll certainly be really good for us right now, and we want to make it really good for those other guys, too."

Who is Bo Vesterdorf?

Here's a name you're likely to hear a lot in the next few months: Bo Vesterdorf. Why? He's the president of the European Court of First Instance, which means he'll decide the critical question of whether the European Commission's ruling against Microsoft will be suspended pending the outcome of its appeal. This Financial Times story has more about him.

Want Office with that?

Walter Mossberg's Mailbox question-and-answer column in the Wall Street Journal today is particularly interesting when considered in the context of the European Commission's ruling yesterday, challenging on antitrust grounds Microsoft's practice of bundling extra products with Windows. Here's the question one reader asked Mossberg:

I've been looking to buy a new Windows notebook computer for home. But none of them seem to come with Microsoft Office. Is that unusual? Does it suggest that I couldn't work on Word documents or Excel spreadsheets on these computers?

As Mossberg explains in his response, Office isn't bundled with Windows. But the reader assumed it was. Which raises a couple interesting questions: Is that because computer users want their operating system to come with as many extras as possible? Or is it because Microsoft's allegedly anticompetitive bundling practices have conditioned consumers to expect Windows to come with a bunch of additional programs? I'm not sure of the answer.

On a related note, be sure to check out P-I columnist Bill Virgin's piece today exploring the consumer angle of the European Commission's ruling. Also see this story by the AP's Allison Linn, which starts by recounting Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's famous assertion that Microsoft should be allowed to bundle a ham sandwich with Windows if it wants to.

European ruling links

Here's collection of links for info on the European Commission's ruling today against Microsoft.

• To access an archived video feed of Mario Monti's press conference early this morning in Brussels, go to this page on the European Commission site and, using the navigation bar atop the page, go to Wednesday at 12h22. Click on the time notation on the left of the item to view the video. Also see the EU press release and this Q&A.

• This page on the Microsoft site summarizes the company's response, with links to transcripts of comments made by CEO Steve Ballmer and General Counsel Brad Smith in conference calls with European and American journalists today.

• Here's Sun Microsystems' statement on the ruling. And here's the official statement by RealNetworks.

• See coverage by Steve Lohr of the New York Times, Paul Geitner of the Associated Press, and Curt Anderson of the Associated Press. Also look for extensive coverage in the P-I tomorrow morning.

Real says it's better

Here's an additional comment from RealNetworks spokesman Greg Chiemingo, as an addendum to this story from this morning's paper about the new MSN deal with Major League Baseball: "We love when our format gets to compete head-to-head because we have a superior format, and when consumers can see that and hear that for themselves, we are confident they will choose us."

RealNetworks is suing MLB Advanced Media to enforce a contract that calls for its format to be given equal treatment on the MLB.com site. RealNetworks also testified against Microsoft in the European Union case, alleging that Microsoft is abusing its Windows monopoly by bundling Windows media player with the operating system, to the detriment of competing technologies, including RealPlayer.

MSFT calls fine excessive

In more news out of the European Union, this story today from the Associated Press quotes Microsoft's chief European lawyer, Horacio Gutierrez, calling the proposed fine of anout $615 million excessive: "We believe it's unprecedented and inappropriate for the Commission to impose a fine on a company's U.S. operations when those operations are already regulated by the U.S. government," Gutierrez said. "The conduct at issue has been permitted by both the U.S. Department of Justice and a U.S. court."

Senior exec on EU ruling

Microsoft Watch's Mary Jo Foley, in Orlando for Microsoft's Convergence conference, has an interesting report on comments made by Doug Burgum, senior vice president for Microsoft Business Solutions, about the European Commission ruling. Among his comments:

"They (the EU commission) wanted a precedent beyond the filed case," Burgum asserted. "(Microsoft Chairman) Bill (Gates) and (Microsoft CEO) Steve (Ballmer) didn't have a choice. It's not about ego. It's about shareholders expecting us to innovate over time.

"We're a global company. We can't agree to something that would limit our ability to innovate in Europe," Burgum added.

Reports: $615 million fine

As explained in this story by the Associated Press, various news services are quoting sources out of Brussels who say the European Commission will fine Microsoft about 500 million euros, or $615 million.

If you're keeping score at home, that's less than 2 percent of Microsoft's 2003 annual revenue, which topped $32 billion.

The maximum penalty under EU regulations is 10 percent of a company's annual revenues. For an extra bit of context, remember that Microsoft paid AOL Time Warner $750 million last year to settle the private antitrust suit that grew out of the Netscape-Internet Explorer browser wars.

Time Warner: No deal

Time Warner is flatly denying this story in the New York Post today, which quotes unnamed sources as saying that the company has held talks with Microsoft about selling AOL to the Redmond company, which operates the competing MSN service. "That is just not true," said Time Warner spokeswoman Tricia Primrose Wallace, when I spoke with her this afternoon.

No harm done?

These things aren't scientific, but the online poll on seattlepi.com yesterday posed an interesting question: "Do you think Microsoft's anti-competitive practices have harmed consumers?" More than 2,600 people responded, and 53 percent of them answered no. Slightly more than 40 percent answered yes. Click here for the results. The question was based on this story earlier in the week, which quoted a lawyer for Microsoft apologizing to a Minnesota jury for the company's past anticompetitive practices.

European Union rundown

Microsoft and the European Union announced earlier today that their settlement negotiations had broken down. The turn of events sets the stage for a ruling against the company next week. Here's an AP story summarizing the situation. Also see my story in Friday morning's paper.

Microsoft and the European Commission were able to agree in principle on a plan to resolve the current antitrust complaints against the company, but the talks broke down over the commission's desire for a broader agreement restricting the incorporation of extra programs and features into Windows in the future.

Here's the official statement from EU antitrust commissioner Mario Monti. Get the official word from Microsoft in this press release.

Brad Smith, Microsoft's general counsel, has been in Brussels negotiating with EU officials, along with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. I was able to speak with Smith on the phone for tomorrow's story as he travelled back to Seattle this afternoon. Here are some excerpts from what he said:

• On the negotiations: "Basically we reached a point this morning where we had to agree to disagree. That sometimes happens in life. It’s not the end of the world. We’ll go forward. We can manage these issues and I suspect there will be a time in the future when we’ll have the opportunity to build on the personal relationships that we forged and with the help of the courts we'll find a way to work this out."

• On why the negotiations failed: "We were able to reach agreement on all of the issues in this case but we were not able to agree on a single formula that would address all possible future cases or other types of situations. And since we were not able to reach agreement on that, the commission decided not to settle and to move forward with its negative decision."

• On the tone of the negotiations: "We worked incredibly hard to reach a settlement in this case in part because we’ve been so focused on strengthening our relationship with governments. I’ve spent more days in Brussels in the last two months than I’ve spent in Redmond. ... We’ve had virtually non-stop, around-the-clock negotiations going for quite some time."

• On Microsoft's outlook: "I do think there's an important silver lining in the cloud. First, clarity from courts will ultimately benefit everybody, and I think we'll likely emerge at the end of this process with an outcome that will be quite a constructive one for us and for the industry. Second, we really have forged a very constructive relationship with the people at the commission."

• On the prospects for a future settlement: "To some degree it wouldn't surprise me if this case unfolds in one specific way like the case in the United States. We tried hard to settle the case with the Department of Justice and the states. We were not able to do that. Once the case went to the Court of Appeals, the Court of Appeals issued a decision and the case settled four months later. We may well see this case go to the courts, and once the court rules and we get some clarity it may well be possible to sit down and negotiate a settlement then. This is definitely not the last opportunity that we’re likely to have to sit down and talk in a constructive way."

An antitrust apology

In opening statements in the Minnesota consumer antitrust lawsuit today, a lawyer for Microsoft said the company was sorry for the anticompetitive actions that came to light in the federal antitrust suit against the company.

"The conduct involved competition that went over the line," said the lawyer, David Tulchin, according to an Associated Press account. However, he told the jury, "The question for you is whether or not consumers were overcharged" -- not whether the company's practices were anticompetitive. Read the full story here.

In related news, there was an interesting story in the Wall Street Journal today detailing, among other things, a 1997 e-mail exchange between Microsoft executive Jeff Raikes and iconic investor Warren Buffett. Among many other points, Raikes explained to Buffett that Microsoft has "pricing discretion" as a result of its strong market position, with profit margins in excess of 90 percent.

The exchange is expected to be used as evidence by the plaintiffs' lawyers in the Minnesota case. WSJ.com subscribers can access the story and the e-mails here. CNet News.com has its own summary here.

Meanwhile, in Brussels, it's not yet clear whether Microsoft will be able to settle with the European Commission prior to the expected conclusion of that antitrust case next week. See this Associated Press story for the latest.

Ballmer in Brussels

The Financial Times reports that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has flown to Brussels for last-minute talks with EU antitrust officials, aimed at settling the case against the company before an expected ruling next week. See also this Associated Press report. Bloomberg News is reporting separately that Brad Smith, Microsoft general counsel, also is participating in the talks, which have ended for the day and are expected to resume tomorrow. See this story from today's paper for more background.

It's shaping up to be a busy few days for the Microsoft chief executive. At last check this morning, Ballmer was still scheduled to speak Wednesday at the Microsoft Management Summit in Las Vegas.

Update, 6 p.m.: It looks like Ballmer will be staying in Brussels for a while longer. The company said this afternoon that Ballmer would not be speaking Wednesday at the Microsoft Management Summit in Las Vegas, as had been planned, due to "an unforeseen schedule change."

The message from Windows executive Bob Muglia didn't specify the reason for the change, and Microsoft didn't officially acknowledge that Ballmer is in Brussels, but the development suggests that the EU negotiations are continuing in earnest. A Microsoft corporate vice president, Kirill Tatarinov, will cover the material Ballmer had been expected to present at the conference.

Latest antitrust news

Today's developments on the antitrust front, via the Associated Press in Brussels and Minneapolis:

• Time running out for Microsoft: "The European Union's antitrust chief won critical backing Monday for a potentially landmark ruling that would force Microsoft Corp. to strip its Windows computer operating system of a lucrative component and make other changes."

• Antitrust case against Microsoft begins in Minnesota: "Microsoft Corp. improperly overcharged for licenses for its Windows operating system and two other popular programs, a lawyer said Monday as the first class-action, antitrust trial in a state court opened against the software giant."

Allchin plays the blues

In the process of searching for a file photo of Windows chief Jim Allchin to run with this story in today's paper, we ran across this great shot by a Bloomberg News photographer from the Windows XP launch. (Click on the image for a larger version.)

Allchin, as the photo would suggest, is an avid guitar player. This 1993 New York Times profile (republished on the Georgia Tech alumni site) pointed out that he "plays jazz or blues guitar, frequently jamming in the evenings with professional musicians in the Seattle area." In this interview, authors Alex Homer and David Sussman mention seeing him buying strings in a guitar shop. Allchin also talked about playing guitar -- and contrasted the music business with the computer industry -- at the beginning of this 1998 speech:

Most of you probably don't know this. I'm a fanatical musician. And I've been playing blues for probably, I don't know, a few decades. Just last weekend I went to Chicago to go to a few clubs. I also have a friend there that owns a music store. And the music store concentrates on vintage equipment. They also have the new stuff as well, but it's a lot of vintage stuff, which I happen to like, playing guitar. And while in the store, it was quite a contrast. We saw the very old and you saw the very new. And I got pretty enamored with a '54 Fender Stratocaster, which will play better, sounded better, and I almost bought it.

On the way back to Seattle, I started to think about how much innovation there's been in the PC industry and in the music industry. And it's tremendous. But I thought, you know, what are the similarities and differences, and I realized that there is one big difference, which is that there have been some compromises in the music industry. Old guys really like their Fender Stratocaster from 1954. The computer industry hasn't had that problem. With all the innovation we've done, things have just gotten better. You can write programs faster. The system itself is faster. It's less costly and it's more reliable. A lot has changed in the computer industry since that Fender Stratocaster in 1954 was created. It's pretty mind-boggling.

As John Markoff explained in the New York Times story above, it's not unusual for people involved in computer science to play guitar. Aside from Allchin, other high-profile Microsoft examples include the company's co-founder, Paul Allen, pictured in the Associated Press photo at right (click for a larger image).

Allen's love for music is well-known (i.e., his Experience Music Project in Seattle) and he's a very good guitar player himself. (His band, Grown Men, released its debut CD in 2000, to generally positive reviews.) In this item from our Insider column last year, we recounted a tale that a manager at Seattle's Trading Musician store told on Rewind, a locally produced public radio program. (The manager had handled the sound board at an event where Allen played guitar.)

Allen "played some of the most phenomenal Hendrix licks on a Strat that I have ever heard," the manager said. "The guy can really play -- definitely has a genuine love for music." Unfortunately for Allen, as we noted in that item, the manager wasn't exactly impressed with his singing.

I can't find any reference to Allen and Allchin playing music together, but that would obviously be pretty compelling from a Microsoft perspective. Next chance I get, I'll try to remember to ask if it has ever happened, or if it ever would.

SCO's semantic tap dance

If you've been following recent developments in the SCO Group saga, you may remember the company's statement immediately after open-source advocate Eric Raymond posted an internal SCO e-mail on the Internet a couple weeks ago linking Microsoft to BayStar Capital's $50 million investment in SCO. (The connection is intriguing because SCO is suing users of Windows rival Linux.) Here's the initial SCO statement below, to jog your memory. Note especially the part I've bolded.

"We believe the e-mail was simply a misunderstanding of the facts by an outside consultant who was working on a specific unrelated project to the BayStar transaction, and he was told at the time of his misunderstanding. Contrary to the speculation of Eric Raymond, Microsoft did not orchestrate or participate in the BayStar transaction."

Last week, it came to light that Microsoft executives had, in fact, called BayStar to suggest that it consider an investment in SCO. But doesn't that qualify as orchestration? I guess that depends on how you define the term.

SCO, for its part, is standing by the language it used in its initial statement. I connected via phone Friday afternoon with SCO spokesman Blake Stowell, who acknowledged that Microsoft executives had called BayStar but said he didn't consider that orchestrating the deal.

"Introductions were really where their involvement ended," Stowell said. "It was really not more than a phone call."

For the record, this was Microsoft's initial statement after the e-mail was leaked (emphasis mine):

"The allegations in the posting are not accurate. Microsoft has purchased a license to SCO's intellectual property, to ensure interoperability and legal indemnification for our customers. The details of this agreement have been widely reported and this is the only financial relationship Microsoft has with SCO. In addition, Microsoft has no direct or indirect financial relationship with BayStar."

Microsoft on ice

I got a chance to stop by Key Arena in Seattle on Saturday afternoon to watch a couple of the matchups in the Microsoft Hockey Challenge. (It's an annual event to raise money for local Ronald McDonald House charities.) The event got its start six years ago as a grudge match between Canadian and American employees in the Microsoft Exchange Server group, and it quickly grew into something much larger, with several teams from Microsoft participating, along with teams from other companies and collections of local and celebrity all-stars. (Read the full story in this article from a few years ago on the Microsoft site.)

As that article mentions, Microsoft Windows executive Brian Valentine hadn't played hockey previously, but he was goalie for the American team in that first game, standing on a strip of artificial turf. He's since learned to skate, and he has become a pretty good goalie. In fact, that's him in the picture above. (I took it during the Saturday game between Microsoft and the U.S. Navy -- click on the image for a larger version.)

Valentine and fellow Microsoft goalie Murray Law combined to nearly shut out the Navy team in that game, and Microsoft won by a wide margin (I think it was 10-1 ... I was honestly concentrating more on my soda and pretzel than on the score.) Valentine didn't do as well in the next game, however. He made some impressive stops, but he also allowed several goals. His all-star team lost to the other all-star team, 6-2, as I recall.

Microsoft divisions that participated included MSN, Windows, Microsoft.com, and Exchange. There was also a women's game Saturday between Windows and a Visual Studio/Developer Division team. I'll try to get a rundown of the official results from the games I didn't see, and update this post with them later.

Update, 3/16: Here are the scores, courtesy the Seattle Thunderbirds:

Saturday's games:

• MSN (Team 2) 1, MS.Com 10
  
• Windows Women 1, Visual Studio Women 0
  
• CommVault 1, WAMU 10
  
• Microsoft 10, US Navy 1
  
• Celebrity All Stars 2, Seattle All Stars 6
  
• Seattle Thunderbirds 3, Portland Winter Hawks 2
  

Sunday's games:

• MSFT 8, WAMU 6
  
• CommVault 6, Microsoft IT 5
  
• Exchange 3, Windows 2
  
• MSN (Team 1) 1, MS.Com 3
  
• Seattle Police 4, Seattle Fire Dept. 1
  
• Seattle Thunderbirds 5, Everett Silvertips 1
  

A SCO Group shocker!

The Register has a particularly amusing take on the latest in the Microsoft/BayStar/SCO Group saga. (Ours is positively straight-laced by comparison.)

Staying in San Jose

Looks like the fate of RealNetworks' antitrust suit against Microsoft will be decided by a jury in the Silicon Valley. The P-I's Dan Richman has the story on the judge's rejection of Microsoft's request to move the ultimate trial venue from San Jose to Seattle. Click here for the text of the judge's ruling. You can also follow the links in this earlier post for more background on the issue.

BusinessWeek SCO scoop

BusinessWeek has the latest revelation in the Microsoft/SCO saga. The key paragraph:

Lawrence Goldfarb, managing partner of BayStar, says that senior executives at the software giant had telephoned him about two months before the investment. Would he be interested in investing in SCO, they asked? Goldfarb wouldn't identify the executives, but says neither Chairman William Gates nor CEO Steve Ballmer were among them. He says Microsoft didn't put any money into BayStar or the SCO investment. A Microsoft spokesman says that the company has no "direct or indirect" financial relations with BayStar, but declined to comment when asked whether execs called BayStar to suggest investing in SCO.

Mossberg on security

The Wall Street Journal's Walter Mossberg has a great column today that sums up the frustrations of many computer users. It reads in part:

What we consumers need is a simple, unified protection plan to counter all of these threats. And the computer, software and Internet industries have badly failed us in this regard. They would rather dump the security mess in the laps of users than solve it at the level where a solution really belongs: in the operating system, or the hardware, or the online provider's servers.

Not only that, but members of the techie class that runs these industries, and the IT departments at big companies, have been quoted recently as blaming the security problem on average, nontechnical users. If only these stupid users wouldn't open e-mails with hidden viruses, the techies say, the trouble would go away.

Well, I have a word for these contemptuous techies: Save your energy for solving the problem instead of blaming its victims. Mainstream users shouldn't have to be IT experts to operate their computers.

Instead of lectures, consumers need Microsoft to build into Windows an effective, free, constantly updated security service requiring little or no user intervention. This service would fend off all kinds of threats and invasions of privacy, including viruses and spyware, without getting all tangled up in academic distinctions.

I don't mean the kinds of software-security suites now available -- bundles of individual programs. I'm talking about a truly unified, seamless service, controlled and maintained over the Internet, that would take on the whole problem.

Although what Mossberg envisions is certainly bigger than anything yet announced, it should be noted that Microsoft seems to be headed in the direction he suggests with its planned Windows Security Center, which was the subject of our Microsoft Notebook earlier this week. See Joe Wilcox's take on Mossberg's column here.

Latest spam lawsuits

For more on the anti-spam lawsuits filed today by Microsoft, America Online, Yahoo and EarthLink, you can access the video of their joint press conference on this page. Download the two Microsoft lawsuits here and here. Findlaw has links to the other companies' complaints here. Access the AP story here and the press release here.

An audio double feature

Enjoy the show ...

• Eric Raymond, the open-source advocate who was leaked the now-infamous SCO Group e-mail -- a.k.a. Halloween X -- will be interviewed on the Linux Show at 6 tonight (Pacific time). You can access the Internet broadcast via the show's home page. (An archived version should also be available afterward.)

• The audio of Charlie Rose's interview with Bill Gates, which aired on TV last week, has now been posted on the Charlie Rose Web site. Access the stream (and note the choice of audio format) on this archive page.

Real sues over MLB audio

RealNetworks today filed suit against Major League Baseball's interactive media company, MLB Advanced Media, over its use of Microsoft's Windows Media audio format, rather than Real Audio, to broadcast games on the MLB.com Web site. RealNetworks says this violates an agreement it reached with MLB last month, after their earlier contract expired. See RealNetworks' statement on the suit, issued today. You can also download the complaint here.

Patent on 'tilt wheel'

InternetNews.com reports that Microsoft has received a patent for what appears to be the "horizontal scrolling" technique that debuted with the company's new line of mice and keyboards last year. (The story's link to the patent text was going astray when I tried it -- you should be able to access the correct text here.) See also our original story and post on the subject of the tilt-wheel mice.

Among other revelations in the filing, it's interesting to note just how long the technology has been in the works. The original patent application, by Hugh McLoone and James Cauthorn, was in April 2001.

Bill & Steve? You betcha

One of the more intriguing aspects of the consumer class-action lawsuit against Microsoft in Minnesota -- aside from the fact that it's looking like it will be the first such case to reach trial -- is the fact that both Chairman Bill Gates and CEO Steve Ballmer are on the list of prospective witnesses. Unless there's a settlement in the meantime, opening statements in the case are expected this week, but the trial could take a few months, leaving the timing of their respective appearances uncertain for now.

See related coverage by the Associated Press (via the Mercury News), Reuters (via the LA Times), the Register, and John Paczkowski of Good Morning Silicon Valley, who, to his credit, couldn't resist a good cow-tipping joke (third item).

Microsoft in car country

Technology columnist Mike Wendland of the Detroit Free Press has an interesting piece today about Microsoft's "connected concept cars," which demonstrate how the company wants to push into the world of automotive software. (He reports that the Microsoft Hummer H2 will be appearing in Detroit this week for the Society of Automotive Engineers' 2004 World Congress.)

Wendland, who saw one of the concept cars at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, calls the Microsoft speech technology "the best I've seen anywhere." (For more information, including audio, see my related post from CES.)

But just as interesting as Wendland's column are the somewhat skeptical comments from readers at the bottom of his related weblog post. As we discovered through a seattlepi.com poll last year, it seems many people aren't quite ready to let Microsoft software into their cars. Writes one of Wendland's readers, "But how do you do CTRL/ALT/DEL while you're driving?"

SCO, Linux and Microsoft

For more background on the latest in the SCO Group saga, detailed in our story this morning, see the original post by Eric Raymond on the opensource.org Web site. For more context and commentary, see coverage by InternetNews.com, InfoWorld, eWeek, the Register, Paul Andrews, and Linux World. Groklaw has also reported consistently on this and other SCO-related developments. (See also the bottom of this Groklaw post for a non-annotated version of the e-mail.)

For additional background on the separate licensing deal between Microsoft and SCO, see this story written last May by the P-I's Dan Richman. As noted in our story this morning, this SEC filing by SCO in January shows that the licensing deal brought SCO more than $16.6 million last fiscal year, or about 21 percent of its annual revenue.

These paragraphs at the end of this morning's story may also add to the ongoing discussion of the issue:

Even if the e-mail means what open-source advocates allege it does, getting to the bottom of the situation may require investigation by someone with subpoena power and the ability to take depositions, said Bob Lande, antitrust professor at the University of Baltimore Law School.

"We can spin out possibilities, but they would all take investigation," Lande said. "Right now we have something that looks funny, and those of us who believe Microsoft is an unrepentant monopolist are suspicious, but that's all we have so far."

Theories about Microsoft aside, SCO's suits don't seem to be slowing Linux's growth, said Jupiter Research analyst Joe Wilcox: "As near as we can tell, anecdotally, SCO's original lawsuit has had no significant impact on the number of companies experimenting with Linux."

A big day for news

There has been a crush of Microsoft-related news today. Here are a few of the highlights:

• Microsoft says it is now planning to release an update for its Windows Server software before it releases the next major version of Windows for desktop computers. See reports by News.com, Information Week, and InfoWorld.

• Associated Press: "Opening statements are expected next week in a class action lawsuit accusing Microsoft Corp. of overcharging Minnesotans for its software. If a settlement isn't reached before then, it would be the first time a state lawsuit against the Redmond, Wash.-based software giant has gone to trial."

• The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office rejected the patent licensed to Eolas Technologies that previously led to a $521 million jury verdict against Microsoft over technology included in the Internet Explorer browser. See reports by Reuters and TheStreet.com.

• Microsoft and AT&T agreed to settle a separate patent dispute that had reached trial. See the press release and coverage by Reuters.
  

On the floor at TechFest

I spent a good part of yesterday walking the floor at Microsoft Research's TechFest, an impressive display that has become one of the more popular annual events for the company's employees. Here are some extra details that I wasn't able to fit in this morning's story.

As evidence of the event's popularity, some employees fly in specifically for TechFest from other Microsoft locations, while others try to time trips they'd be making to Redmond anyway to coincide with the event. More than 6,000 employees attended last year.

That's a big turnout, especially considering that Microsoft Research executives originally feared the event might flop. Dan Ling, vice president of Microsoft Research's Redmond lab, recalled yesterday that he and others in the research unit worried upon launching TechFest in 2001 that employees wouldn't be so interested. But their fears were allayed that year when they saw a line forming outside an hour before the doors opened.

One of the main attractions is the possibility of seeing the next big thing, or things, in computing and technology.

It's meant to be an internal Microsoft event, and therein lies much of the intrigue for outsiders invited to attend. Most of the work on display is still at the point that it can't be disclosed publicly. Each reporter who goes is accompanied for the duration by his or her own designated public-relations person, and it's an implicit condition of covering the event that you won't write about the off-limits projects.

A quick Feedster search shows that Microsoft employees are being extra careful not to reveal any confidential TechFest details. There are only a few posts about the event, one of them from Microsoft Research's Kevin Schofield, whose group organizes it. (I'm afraid I'm one of the reporters who contributed to his loss of voice.) Also see posts by Robert Scoble and Matt Goyer.

Even among the limited things I and the other reporters were allowed to view, there was some pretty compelling stuff.

One of the projects I mentioned in our story, but didn't have room to describe in full, is ZoneZoom. It's a program that lets you use a keypad to quickly zoom around a big document -- like a Web page, a spreadsheet or a map -- on the screen of a small device, such as a smart phone. Without the technology, smart phone users have to use a directional pad to point their way around a document. It's a relatively tedious process. The advantage of the keypad approach is that it takes you right to the quadrant of the screen that corresponds to the location of the number you press. As it takes you there, it zooms out and then back in so you don't lose your sense for which portion of the document you're seeing.

Employees who attended the event were also able to get their own cryptographic ID cards like the one Bill Gates showed at the RSA security convention last week. Judging from the line at the booth, those things are going to be a hit, at least among Microsoft employees. The technology incorporates the photo and the written information into the ID card's encrypted bar code, making it easy for someone with the right cryptographic key to detect any tampering or forgery.

Also see this page for more information about Zing, one of the more technical programs mentioned in our story. It finds errors that can occur in concurrent programs, when two sets of code are running simultaneously and competing for shared resources. The related program, KISS, stands for Keep it Simple and Sequential, a reference to the fact that it takes concurrent programs and turns them into a sequential program (with only one thread of code executing at a time) to detect the same type of bugs.

Allison Linn of the Associated Press highlights additional projects in her coverage of the event.

Notes from Gates' trip

Kevin Schofield, a Microsoft Research executive who accompanied Bill Gates on his university tour last week, writes about it on his weblog. He touches on many of the issues raised during the trip, and he comments on the experience of travelling with the Microsoft chairman.

"I feel very privileged that I got to do this -- both that the universities students and faculty welcomed us so openly, and that I got to travel with Bill for three days. I've been in dozens of meetings with Bill, but this is the first time I've travelled with him."

Seeing XP in Longhorn

During an appearance in Toronto last week, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer touched on topics including the transition to the new on-screen look and functionality -- also known as the user interface, or UI -- that will come with Longhorn, the next version of Windows. It's not a trivial topic, given the role that the user interface can play in convincing people to upgrade -- or not.

Michael Herman, founder of Toronto-based software company Parallelspace Corp., summarized one exchange with Ballmer in this report in his weblog (emphasis mine):

During Q&A ... one partner commented that "My client hasn't moved from Windows 2000 Workstation Pro to Windows XP (because) they don't like the interface, it's too 'cute' ".

Steve replied that customer feedback to Microsoft is that UI changes are one the the most expensive upgrade costs customers experience because of the amount of end-user re-training and re-familiarization required. He went on to say that Longhorn will support both the new Longhorn UI as well as the current Windows XP UI as options.

...and with his usual big smile, told the partner "That being said, unfortunately for your customer, Longhorn isn't going to support the Windows 2000 UI".

See also this story from the National Post.

Boston Globe on Gates

A few of the gems from a story by Robert Weisman of the Boston Globe on Bill Gates' appearances at Harvard and MIT last week.

• Bill Gates today may be as recognizable as the president or the pope, and his travels have some of the trappings of a state visit. Reporters invited to see him get advance calls from representatives of Harvard, MIT, and Microsoft, confirming details, laying down "ground rules," offering up "embargoed prebriefings" on what he might say.

• "I got a look at him," said Robert Turner, the cleaning crew chief for Maxwell Dworkin and the adjoining Pierce Hall. "People say he's ruthless, and maybe you have to be in his business. He's the richest man in the world. But to me, he just looked like a normal guy. I don't know why everyone goes bananas over him."

• John V. Guttag, a professor and head of the institute's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, clearly came away impressed from a faculty roundtable with Gates. "There's a technical depth there," Guttag said.

• "We had the buzz in the field in the late '90s," (Gates) acknowledged, leaning forward, gesturing with both hands, and rocking back and forth in his trademark manner. "And now we don't really have the buzz in terms of the people coming into the field, the diversity of people coming into the field. And that's a concern for us."