Details at ars technica
Microsoft has filed another patent, this one for an "advertising framework" that uses "context data" from your hard drive to show you advertisements and "apportion and credit advertising revenue" to ad suppliers in real time. Yes, Redmond wants to own the patent on the mother of all adware.
Have you tried Ubuntu, the free alternative to Microsoft Windows?
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The Pump Handle's Liz Borowski put up a nice post summarizing the key points of the >400-page Food and Drug Administration Amendments Act of 2007 (
The Journal's Cynthia Crossen gives an overview of political battles surrounding billboard advertising today.
Bloggers, under new guidelines issued by the Federal Trade Commission, you must disclose gifts or payments for products that you review! Also your endorsements cannot be false or misleading!
The FTC's release advises:
If I were Microsoft, I would try to turn this into a positive, "We patented the advertising framework specifically to prevent others from employing it on your computer."
... I wish. No way Microsoft is going to leave that goldmine untouched.
I have been using Linux along side Windows for the last 3 years, and have only been heavily getting into it in the last year or so. Ubuntu is a great distro and I highly recommend it to anyone.
But my greatest geeky accomplishment was getting my fiance on Ubuntu. She said no way at first, but I bought her a laptop from a friend that put Ubuntu on it. She loves the laptop and Ubuntu and has no desire to go back to Windows. How I did it I have no idea. My guess is a mixture of dumb luck and timing. :)
I have a sneaky suspicion that Gates knew more than he's letting on, and the timing of his departure wasn't coincidental.
Microsoft ought to try patenting 'suck', given how much of it is being squeezed into Windows Vista.