Cody Taylor

Back in 2002, Jim Allchin was co-president of Microsoft’s Platforms and Services Division and was, in his own words, “scared” of the momentum behind Linux, as noted in an email sent to several of his direct reports.Why scared? Because Windows was starting to lose to Linux

Ars takes Microsoft’s new song generating software out for a test drive. We also talk with the people behind it about how it works, and what’s in store for future versions.

Da Massive writes in with another possible answer to a recent Ask Slashdot about FOSS replacements for Microsoft AD server. “Enterprise networks now have an alternative choice to Microsoft Active Directory (AD) servers, with the open source Samba project aiming for feature parity with the forthcoming release of version 4, according to Canberra-based Samba developer Andrew Bartlett. Speaking at this year’s linux.conf.au Linux and open source conference in Hobart, Bartlett said Samba 4 is aiming to be a replacement for AD by providing a free software implementation of Microsoft’s custom protocols. Because AD is ‘far more than LDAP and Kerberos,’ Bartlett said, Samba 4 is not only about developing with Microsoft’s customization of those protocols, it is also about moving the project beyond just providing an NT 4 compatible domain manager.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An eight-year-old boy has become the world’s youngest IT professional after passing an exam with Microsoft.

Microsoft was formally charged with monopoly abuse by Europe’s top antitrust authority, the European Commission, over the way it bundles the Internet Explorer browser with Windows.