Serial cybersquatter refuses to give up

Meet Alf Temme. His portfolio of more than one thousand trademark-violating typo domains has landed him numerous lawsuits over the years from a range of companies. These include Dell, Air France, and America Online. He admits to being a typosquatter, using names like d3ell.com to sell exercise machines on his website. Now Microsoft is going after Temme, and once again, he refuses to give up.

The Redmond company initially sued Temme last month for trademark violation. A number of his domains, including ho0tmail.com and hot5mail.com, are allegedly confusing users of Microsoft services. The firm originally asked for $2.4 million, but has now offered to settle for $500,000. Despite admitting to violating the Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, Temme sees nothing wrong with his actions. “OK, so I did a naughty, right?” he said. “But a punishment that’s the same as the death penalty? That’s ridiculous.”
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Microsoft to end Itanium support

Microsoft has announced that it will end software support for Intel’s Itanium processor. Windows Server 2008 R2 will be the last version to support the architecture that once promised to be one of the most powerful. The Itanium was once touted as the ideal server architecture by HP, and the company still produces servers that run Itanium processors or IA-64, as it was known.

But the 64-bit processors faced an uphill battle against AMD’s x86_64 processors, which maintained compatibility with 32-bit x86 processors. Intel found itself competing in that market, leaving the Itanium cold and neglected.

While many Unix-like operating systems will most likely continue to support the Itanium at least for a while, Microsoft’s cold shoulder will be viewed by many as the architecture’s last gasp for breath. Microsoft’s support for Windows 2008 R2, which supports the Itanium, will continue until July 9, 2013, and extended support will continue until July 10, 2018, which is plenty of time for server owners to wait until their next upgrade to switch, but for the Itanium, it only means that its days are numbered.

Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons

Microsoft wins Bing domain names

Corporate giant Microsoft won a complaint it filed with the National Arbitration Forum over seven domains: bingcamera.com,bingfinancing.com,directorybing.com,drugstorebing.com,girlsbing.com,marketingbing.com and mediabing.com.

The company claimed that the domains were confusingly similar to its Bing search engine trademark. The registrant, Yaoxin Liu, did not contest Microsoft’s claims.

Personally, I don’t see why Liu registered the names in the first place. What do drug stores, girls, and financing have to do with a search engine? This is just another case of a foolish domainer thinking that just because a domain contains the name of a valuable product it is valuable.

Source | Domain News
Photo | Flickr

What is Mono?

As its website describes it, Mono is a “cross platform, open source, .NET development framework.” .NET is a framework originally created by Microsoft, and the Mono developers from Novell created Mono to be interoperable with .NET applications. The result is .NET compatibility across Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.

With Mono, developers can create C# and .NET applications that will work on almost any platform. What this means for server administrators is the ability to provide their services to various clientèle without having to make multiple versions of their applications. It is also a way to distribute their content even in virtualization environments.

Mono is free and open source software and is available for most Linux distributions, although its Novell origins mean that SUSE Linux Enterprise Server supports it out of the box. To install Mono on RHEL/CentOS/Fedora, simply open a terminal, login as root, and type:

# yum list mono*

You can then see which mono applications you want to install or install them all with:

# yum install mono*

Source: Mono Project

Microsoft says IE9 will support HTML5

Just as we predicted, Microsoft has announced that their latest incarnation of Internet Explorer, version 9, will included support for some HTML 5 elements, including video. Much to the chagrin of Mozilla and other open standard advocates, however, the new demo build of the browser only supports h.264 video, following Google and Apple’s insistence on avoiding the open Theora codec.

Among the other improvements are support for scalable vector graphics (SVG), CSS3, and built-in hardware acceleration. It is not clear if Theora support will be added (Google Chrome supports both h.264 and Theora). Microsoft joins the list of browser makers that includes Mozilla (Firefox), Apple (Safari), Google (Chrome), and Opera.

For years, Microsoft neglected web standards and increasing security problems with their Internet Explorer 6 browser. The emergence of Firefox and other competitive browsers has encouraged the software giant to slowly adapt and reignite IE development. Nevertheless, up until now, Microsoft had resisted HTML 5 adoption, but with Google pushing it on YouTube and other sites like Vimeo following suit, they could not ignore it.

Microsoft to cut future data center costs by 50%

You would be wrong to think that a company like Microsoft with billions in profits doesn’t care about data center construction costs. The company, which has previously been accustomed to spending $500 million and up on new facilities, will now try to reduce construction costs on new facilities to $250 million.

Microsoft will be able to meet its target while still maintaining the power and speed needed because of advances in efficiency and scalable technology. New data centers will consist of a wall-less open-air structure full of server-packed containers. They’ll be “containerized” so to speak.

As more computing juice is needed, more containers can simply be shipped and added to the mix. This ease of expandability significantly cuts down on up-front costs.

Source | Data Center Knowledge

Microsoft may soon step up its HTML 5 game

Just days after we posted news about Google’s acquisitions that position it to make a large impact on HTML 5 video development, suspicion is floating around the tech world that Microsoft is planning a big announcement for Internet Explorer 9, the next installment of their declining browser.

If Microsoft intends to keep their commanding share of the browser market, they will need to continue to adapt to web standards. At their MIX 2010 developer conference in Las Vegas, experts predict that Microsoft will unveil a new IE version that takes into account HTML 5 elements, including support for vector graphics like SVG.

Even with IE 8, the current version, Internet Explorer is still far behind competitors like Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Apple Safari, and Opera. If ever there were a time for Microsoft to make a game-changing play, that time is now.

Source: Webmonkey

The HTML 5 video debate revisted

Website owners should always be concerned about the latest news and developments with the web browser wars and Web standards. Decisions made by these third parties can directly affect how your website is presented to your viewers and whether you need to make adjustments.

Our original post centered around Apple and Google’s unwillingness to adopt the open Theora format, citing its inferior performance quality to the proprietary and patent-laced H.264. This is still the case with both Apple and Google producing browsers that support the video tag from HTML 5 but do not support Theora. Youtube has added support for it, but it does not work in Mozilla Firefox, which, as an open source browser, cannot distribute H.264 technology.

It seems dismal, and Microsoft has still added little to the discussion, although they have at least joined it. All of this, however, might be about to take an unusual turn for the better. The Theora format was created by On2 Technologies and then released as open source later. On 17th of February, their stockholders approved a merger with Google and possibly future development on open video formats. This could be good for all parties in the end.

Source: On2 Technologies

Test Windows Server 2008 with MBSA

Microsoft provides a tool for Windows Server 2008 that tests for security misconfiguration. It comes with a graphical interface and a command line interface for both local and remote scans. It looks for vulnerabilities, performs assessment checks, and checks SQL Server 2005.

In addition to Windows Server 2008, MBSA runs on Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP, and Windows 2000 systems. It scans for misconfigurations on Internet Information Server (IIS), SQL Server, Internet Explorer, and MS Office.

MBSA is available for download from the Microsoft website. It is free to download and use on Windows systems. It comes with a readme.html document containing information on system requirements, scan options, and tool support options.

Source: Microsoft

Photo: Flickr

Microsoft wins dispute over wapbing.net

In yet another dispute regarding its Bing.com search engine, corporate giant Microsoft has won the domain wapbing.net.

The Redmond company claimed the name violated its trademark for “Bing” and filed a complaint with the National Arbitration Forum. Microsoft also claimed that the registrant intended for the domain to be deliberately confusing and was thus using it in bad faith.

According to the case documents, the name was registered by Xin Net Technology Corporation, a Chinese domain register notorious for its spam activities.

Source | Domain News
Photo | Flickr