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Criticism Of Microsoft
Microsoft has been criticized for various aspects of its products and business practices. Issues with ease of use, robustness, and security of the company's software are common targets for critics. In the 2000s, a number of malware mishaps targeted security flaws in Windows and other products. Microsoft was also accused of locking vendors and consumers in to their products, and of not following or complying with existing standards in its software. Total cost of ownership comparisons between Linux and Microsoft Windows are a continuous point of debate. The company has been the subject of numerous lawsuits, brought by several governments and by other companies, for unlawful monopolistic practices. It was the subject of the landmark 1998 United States v. Microsoft Corp. American antitrust law case, during which Microsoft CEO Bill Gates was called "evasive and unresponsive" and the company's officials were found on a number of occasions to have falsified evidence. In 2004, the Europ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reuters
Reuters ( ) is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide writing in 16 languages. Reuters is one of the largest news agencies in the world. The agency was established in London in 1851 by Paul Reuter. The Thomson Corporation of Canada acquired the agency in a 2008 corporate merger, resulting in the formation of the Thomson Reuters Corporation. In December 2024, Reuters was ranked as the 27th most visited news site in the world, with over 105 million monthly readers. History 19th century Paul Julius Reuter worked at a book-publishing firm in Berlin and was involved in distributing radical pamphlets at the beginning of the Revolutions of 1848. These publications brought much attention to Reuter, who in 1850 developed a prototype news service in Aachen using homing pigeons and electric telegraphy from 1851 on, in order to transmit messages between Brussels and Aachen, in what today is Aa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Groklaw
''Groklaw'' was a website that covered legal news of interest to the free and open source software community. Started as a law blog on May 16, 2003, by paralegal Pamela Jones ("PJ"), it covered issues such as the SCO-Linux lawsuits, the EU antitrust case against Microsoft, and the standardization of Office Open XML. Jones described ''Groklaw'' as "a place where lawyers and geeks could explain things to each other and work together, so they'd understand each other's work better". Its name derives from " grok", roughly meaning "to understand completely", which had previously entered geek slang. Other topics covered included software patents, DMCA, the actions of the RIAA against alleged illegal file sharers, and actions against free and open software such as Android and Linux. Origins According to a 2003 interview with Jones, the blog was started to cover legal news and to explain it to the tech community. The first article, titled "The Grokster Decision – Ode To Thomas J ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
International Organization For Standardization
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO ; ; ) is an independent, non-governmental, international standard development organization composed of representatives from the national standards organizations of member countries. Membership requirements are given in Article 3 of the ISO Statutes. ISO was founded on 23 February 1947, and () it has published over 25,000 international standards covering almost all aspects of technology and manufacturing. It has over 800 technical committees (TCs) and subcommittees (SCs) to take care of standards development. The organization develops and publishes international standards in technical and nontechnical fields, including everything from manufactured products and technology to food safety, transport, IT, agriculture, and healthcare. More specialized topics like electrical and electronic engineering are instead handled by the International Electrotechnical Commission.Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica. 3 June 2021.Inte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
OOXML
Office Open XML (also informally known as OOXML) is a zipped, XML-based file format developed by Microsoft for representing spreadsheets, charts, presentations and word processing documents. Ecma International standardized the initial version as ECMA-376. ISO and IEC standardized later versions as ISO/IEC 29500. Microsoft Office 2010 provides read support for ECMA-376, full support for ISO/IEC 29500 Transitional, and read support for ISO/IEC 29500 Strict. Microsoft Office 2013 and later fully support ISO/IEC 29500 Strict, but do not use it as the default file format because of backwards compatibility concerns. Background In 2000, Microsoft released an initial version of an XML-based format for Microsoft Excel, which was incorporated in Office XP. In 2002, a new file format for Microsoft Word followed. The Excel and Word formats—known as the Microsoft Office XML formats—were later incorporated into the 2003 release of Microsoft Office. Microsoft announced in November 2 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Total Cost Of Ownership
Total cost of ownership (TCO) is a financial estimate intended to help buyers and owners determine the direct and indirect costs of a product or service. It is a management accounting concept that can be used in full cost accounting or even ecological economics where it includes social costs. For manufacturing, as TCO is typically compared with doing business overseas, it goes beyond the initial manufacturing cycle time and cost to make parts. TCO includes a variety of cost of doing business items, for example, ship and re-ship, and opportunity costs, while it also considers incentives developed for an alternative approach. Incentives and other variables include tax credits, common language, expedited delivery, and customer-oriented supplier visits. Use of concept TCO, when incorporated in any financial benefit analysis, provides a cost basis for determining the total economic value of an investment. Examples include: return on investment, internal rate of return, economic v ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Independent Software Vendor
An independent software vendor (ISV), also known as a software publisher, is an organization specializing in making and selling software, in contrast to computer hardware, designed for mass or niche markets. This is in contrast to in-house software, which is developed by the organization that will use it, or custom software, which is designed or adapted for a single, specific third party. Although ISV-provided software is consumed by end users, it remains the property of the vendor. Software products developed by ISVs serve a wide variety of purposes. Examples include software for real estate brokers, scheduling for healthcare personnel, barcode scanning, stock maintenance, gambling, retailing, energy exploration, vehicle fleet management, and child care management software. An ISV makes and sells software products that run on one or more computer hardware or operating system platforms. Companies that make the platforms, such as Microsoft, AWS, Cisco, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, R ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Windows API
The Windows API, informally WinAPI, is the foundational application programming interface (API) that allows a computer program to access the features of the Microsoft Windows operating system in which the program is running. Programs can access API functionality via shared-library technologies or via system-file access. Each major version of the Windows API has a distinct name that identifies a compatibility aspect of that version. For example, Win32 is the major version of Windows API that runs on 32-bit systems. The name, Windows API, collectively refers to all versions of this capability of Windows. Microsoft provides developer support via a software development kit, Microsoft Windows SDK, which includes documentation and tools for building software based on the Windows API. Services This section lists notable services provided by the Windows API. Base Services Base services include features such as the file system, devices, processes, threads, and error handl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Embrace, Extend And Extinguish
"Embrace, extend, and extinguish" (EEE), also known as "embrace, extend, and exterminate", is a phrase that the U.S. Department of Justice found was used internally by Microsoft to describe its strategy for entering product categories involving widely used open standards, extending those standards with proprietary capabilities, and using the differences to strongly disadvantage its competitors. Origin The strategy and phrase "embrace and extend" were first described outside Microsoft in a 1996 article in ''The New York Times'' titled "Tomorrow, the World Wide Web! Microsoft, the PC King, Wants to Reign Over the Internet", in which writer John Markoff said, "Rather than merely embrace and extend the Internet, the company's critics now fear, Microsoft intends to engulf it." The phrase "embrace and extend" also appears in a facetious motivational song by an anonymous Microsoft employee, and in an interview of Steve Ballmer by ''The New York Times''. A variant of the phrase, "embrac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Network Effect
In economics, a network effect (also called network externality or demand-side economies of scale) is the phenomenon by which the Value (economics), value or utility a user derives from a Goods, good or Service (economics), service depends on the number of users of compatible products. Network effects are typically positive feedback systems, resulting in users deriving more and more value from a product as more users join the same network. The adoption of a product by an additional user can be broken into two effects: an increase in the value to all other users (''total effect'') and also the enhancement of other non-users' motivation for using the product (''marginal effect''). Network effects can be direct or indirect. Direct network effects arise when a given user's utility increases with the number of other users of the same product or technology, meaning that adoption of a product by different users is complementary. This effect is separate from effects related to price, suc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Application Programming Interface
An application programming interface (API) is a connection between computers or between computer programs. It is a type of software Interface (computing), interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how to build such a connection or interface is called an ''API specification''. A computer system that meets this standard is said to ''implement'' or ''expose'' an API. The term API may refer either to the specification or to the implementation. In contrast to a user interface, which connects a computer to a person, an application programming interface connects computers or pieces of software to each other. It is not intended to be used directly by a person (the end user) other than a computer programmer who is incorporating it into software. An API is often made up of different parts which act as tools or services that are available to the programmer. A program or a programmer that uses one of these parts is said to ''call'' that ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
United States Army
The United States Army (USA) is the primary Land warfare, land service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is designated as the Army of the United States in the United States Constitution.Article II, section 2, clause 1 of the United States Constitution (1789).See alsTitle 10, Subtitle B, Chapter 301, Section 3001 It operates under the authority, direction, and control of the United States Secretary of Defense, United States secretary of defense. It is one of the six armed forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. The Army is the most senior branch in order of precedence amongst the armed services. It has its roots in the Continental Army, formed on 14 June 1775 to fight against the British for independence during the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783). After the Revolutionary War, the Congress of the Confederation created the United States Army on 3 June 1784 to replace the disbanded Continental Army.Library of CongressJournals ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
