Microsoft has taken an extra step in its fight against software piracy by filing lawsuits against 52 alleged resellers of counterfeit software, and has referred 22 piracy cases to law enforcement agencies in 20 different countries. According to the company, 15 of the lawsuits involve software which has been traced back to what is believed to be the largest ever counterfeit software syndicate, which was broken up by Microsoft and law enforcement officials from the US and China earlier this year. Microsoft is also working with eBay to produce the "Microsoft Buying Guide" to inform consumers of how to safely buy software from sites such as eBay.

A recent stratified random sample poll of 100 independent retailers, commissioned by the trade paper MCV, brought back surprising results. 49% of those surveyed believed that the Xbox360 would eventually trounce the competition, despite the fact that the same retailers are having trouble keeping enough Nintendo Wiis on shelves to meet demand. 35% felt that the PS3 had a fair chance of nabbing the best console award, and a paltry 16% felt that the Wii had a chance. Of course, these figures are mostly based one current retail performance. If Microsoft did not have such blockbuster titles as BioShock and Halo 3, and if Nintendo had ample stock of the Wii, chances are we'd be looking at much different figures.

People hoping to jump on the Windows Vista bandwagon without paying a cent of hard-earned cash jumped for joy when Microsoft offered free software in exchange for the occasional survey and three months of observation. As of December 11th, anyone who was signing up for the program got a nasty surprise: no more free software. Microsoft is of course welcoming more test subjects to be monitored. However, Microsoft will not be giving these subjects anything in return for their time and privacy, except a marginally better product in a few years.

Anyone who signed up after the cut-off date date and time under the idea they were getting a free piece of software worth $400USD or more MSRP will be sorely disappointed. There is no word as to whether or not Microsoft plans on honoring the people who signed up before the cut-off.

Opera Software, best known for its free web browser, has filed an antitrust lawsuit against software giant Microsoft for abusing its dominant position by integrating its Internet Explorer web browser into Windows. Opera, which filed the lawsuit in the EU, is asking the European Commission to force Microsoft to unbundle Internet Explorer from Windows or include other browsers as standard. It is also claiming that Microsoft is not following accepted standards for Internet Explorer and is calling for it to adhere to them. Opera's Deputy General Counsel, Jason Hoida, said:

Our complaint is necessary to get Microsoft to amend its practices. The European Court of First Instance confirmed in September that Microsoft has illegally tied Windows Media Player to Windows. We are simply asking the Commission to apply these same, clear principles to the Internet Explorer tie, a tie that has even more profound effects on consumers and innovation. We are confident that the Commission understands the significance of the Internet Explorer tie and will take the necessary actions to restore competition and consumer choice in the browser market.

Some people may remember that Microsoft was forced to sell a modified version of Windows XP which excluded Windows Media Player back in 2004 after complaints about that being integrated into Windows, which was a similar case to this.

Samsung Electronics America Inc., a subsidiary of Samsung Electronics Corporation, today announced the release of its new 8" Digital Photo Frame SPF-83V, based on technology developed by Microsoft Research, in time for the holiday season. With this innovative addition to their photo frame lineup, customers can enjoy photos wirelessly in their home and display photos from sharing sites such as Windows Live Spaces or from personal collections on their PC.

A day after it released Windows XP SP3 RC1 to the public, Microsoft has done the same with the release candidate of Vista's first service pack. You can now download the standalone package from here, or alternatively you can download an applet which allows you to install the service pack via Windows Update from this site. As with XP SP3, this is not a final version, so it is recommended that you do not install this on your primary operating system.

Microsoft Corp. has acquired Multimap, one of the United Kingdom's top 100 technology companies and one of the leading online mapping services in the world. The acquisition gives Microsoft a powerful new location and mapping technology to complement existing offerings such as Virtual Earth, Live Search, Windows Live services, MSN and the aQuantive advertising platform, with future integration potential for a range of other Microsoft products and platforms. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

If you're eager to get your hands on Windows XP's third service pack you'll be pleased to hear that the first release candidate is now available for download from here. As this is not a final version it is recommended that you do not install this on your primary Windows installation, although it should be fairly stable and secure. Microsoft has also released the final version of Office 2007 Service Pack 1, available for download from this page, which includes a number of stability, performance and security updates.

Microsoft has made an interesting offer to PC users - in return for participating in its Windows Feedback Program, you can receive a 'free' copy of software titles including Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate, Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007, Microsoft Money Plus Premium Edition, Microsoft Student with Encarta Premium 2008 and Microsoft Streets and Trips 2008. However, as you would expect from Microsoft, this so-called free software comes with a price. If you participate Microsoft will ask you to do a survey once a week and will collect data about the following:

We are looking for information that will help us understand problems you encounter with Windows, how you have configured your computer and Windows, what hardware you are using, and general information about how you are using Windows and Microsoft Office products on your computer.

Microsoft will basically be collecting all sorts of information, including hardware details, Control Panel settings, file and folder information and usage statistics for Windows and Office as well any problems you encounter with them. So if you value your privacy less than a copy of Windows Vista, this could be for you. Or perhaps you could just install it on a secondary system and get a free piece of software for that?!

Update: Apparently Microsoft has already had too many people register, so it's reached its limit for free software giveaways. You can still register for the program, but you won't receive anything in return.

IBM made a major announcement today that they will be offering 32nm chips to their partners in the second half of 2009. This would mean that possibly the Xbox 360 could get even smaller chips than the 65nm "Falcon" CPUs. These new chips will up the power savings to 45% and speed boosts up to 30% over IBM's last generation of hardware. This will reduce the overheating issues, and maybe even make way for a smaller console. Consider this as rumour since there's no any official information from Microsoft, or any of the Xbox 360 OEMs.

Microsoft confirmed it has fixed a bug in its online file storage and sharing service Windows Live FolderShare after users reported problems that the service was deleting files without user authorization. Microsoft sent an e-mail to users Friday alerting them that it has fixed a bug that may have "accidentally moved" user files from their original folders into the FolderShare Trash folder, and that users should not delete files in Trash until they ensure they were meant to be deleted. It also advised users how to retrieve deleted files from the Trash folder. A copy of the information sent to users has been posted on the FolderShare Web site.

Microsoft today is beginning roll-out of the public beta of Office Live Workspace, a secure online workspace to which Office users can post Word, PowerPoint, Excel or PDF files directly from Office applications to work on remotely from virtually any web-connected PC and collaborate on with others.

With the company putting the finishing touches to no less than three major service packs at the moment, Microsoft has released a tool which will allow users to prevent them from being automatically downloaded. The Windows Service Pack Blocker Toolkit lets users block XP SP3 and Vista SP1 for up to one year, and Server 2003 SP2 until March next year. There are three versions - an executable, a script and a group policy template - so take your pick. This is recommended for any users worried about potential security and stability issues that may result from installing the service packs.

This is rather unusual story, at least for me, but according to a statement made by Michael Bay, producer of Transformers, Armageddon (1998) and other movies, Microsoft wants both HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc to fail "so they can be heroes and make the world move to digital downloads."

That is the dirty secret no one is talking about. That is why Microsoft is handing out $100 million dollar checks to studios just embrace the HD DVD and not the leading, and superior Blu Ray. They want confusion in the market until they perfect the digital downloads. Time will tell and you will see the truth.

I want people to see my movies in the best formats possible. For them to deny people who have Blu-ray sucks! They were progressive by having two formats. No Transformers 2 for me!

The story will finish with your opinions?

While Microsoft is putting their PR people to work showing the superiority of Vista to XP, Microsoft Watch is doing their part in educating the public on the other side of things. According to Microsoft Watch, you should not be listening to Microsoft, and know that Vista didn't too very well this year. Here are their reasons why, in order from most to least important. Please follow the source link for the reasons in greater detail.

• Windows XP stayed in the market too long; everything was built for XP and not ready for Vista.
• No compelling reason to upgrade from XP
• User Interface changes made Vista seem overly complex
• Bad timing; most sales occur between Thanksgiving and Christmas of any given year
• Too many people were in charge of designing Vista
• People were not ready for Vista
• Advertising campaign was confusing, and stopped as abruptly as it started.
• No obvious link between Office 2007 and Windows Vista
• Legal issues with the US Department of Justice and the EU.
• Way too many versions.

'Tis the season to be jolly. This must have been the mentality the coders of a Santa Claus instant-messaging bot adopted when creating it. However, it would seem that one of the coders was getting a little too jolly. A hardworking man from The Register walked in on his pubescent nieces discussing oral sex with "northpole@live.com", the address of the Santa Claus bot. Disturbed and appalled, the man led a journalistic expedition, and tried to find the cause of the tirade and isolate the language. After playing a certain pizza game, the Santa Claus impersonator was very quick to begin discussing oral sex with the man from The Register, and promptly proceeded to call him a "Dirty Bastard". On an entirely different occasion, when you tell Santa you want some "cake", he will respond "You don't need drugs when you're high on life!"

When The Register brought this to Microsoft's attention, the men at Redmond were very prompt in changing the words that the robo Santa said, and in lieu of more complaints, has decided to pull the bot altogether. They profusely apologized to the nieces that were jaded by the perverted Santa, and are doing an internal investigation to find out more about it.

Despite Microsoft initially blaming disappointing sales figures on software pirates, the company's Vice President of Windows Product Marketing, Michael Sievert, has now claimed that the piracy rate for Windows Vista is actually half that of XP. In an interview, he said:

While piracy rates are hard to measure precisely, we're seeing indications from internal metrics, like WGA validation failures, that the Windows Vista piracy rate is less than half that of Windows XP today.

Unsurprisingly, Microsoft is putting this down to the fact that Vista is harder to counterfeit. However, some analysts are suggesting that it may be linked to the fact that even pirates expect a stable operating system, and perhaps they choose to use Windows XP over Vista for reasons such as that rather than because they lack the means to pirate it. Of course, another explanation could be that software pirates have actually found a way to counterfeit Windows without being detected, which would also account for the lower rate of WGA validation failures.

Although the Windows Server operating systems aren't primarily intended for gaming, some gamers prefer to run them due to lower resource usage and, arguably, better security. Such people, and perhaps some others, will be pleased to hear that Microsoft has launched a public beta of Windows Server 2008 Release Candidate, where users automatically receive a 30-day trial and will need to register for a product key to continue using the software up to June 30th next year. You can download Windows Server 2008 and register for a product key here.

It seems work on Windows Vista's first service pack is almost complete, with Microsoft planning to make the Release Candidate (RC) version publicly available next week via Microsoft's Download Center. Microsoft commented that "the code has attained a significant level of performance and stability" and listed the following changes which have been made since the beta release:

• The size of the standalone installers have decreased significantly. For example, the standalone installer packages consisting of all 36 languages (x86 and x64 chip architectures) are smaller by over 50%. The standalone installer packages consisting of just the 5 languages (again, x86 and x64) slated for initial release are more than 30% smaller in size.
• The required amount of disc space for SP1 installation has also decreased significantly. Furthermore, with the RC, if more space is required to install SP1, an error message will now display exactly how much space is needed to complete the installation.
• Previous SP1 versions left behind a directory of files that wasn't needed after installation and occupied about 1GB of space; the RC includes automatic disk clean-up to remove this directory.
• Installation reliability has been improved based on bug reports and error codes reported from Windows Update (thanks, Beta testers!). Testing shows that these improvements have significantly increased the proportion of successful installations of the RC.
• We've improved the user experience of installing SP1 via Windows Update. During the Beta release, users installed without much guidance from Windows Update. The RC now contains a series of screens with detailed information on SP1.

The final version of Vista SP1 is on target to be released during the first quarter of 2008 - roughly a year after the operating system was publicly launched.

Upon hearing that nearly 75% of all Blu-ray drives people own are built in to the PS3, Microsoft decided that the Xbox360 was a great way to promote the adoption of HD-DVD. However, if the player costs too much, nobody will go for it. And so, Microsoft lowered the price of the HD-DVD add-in drive to $129USD. You can nab one for yourself at Amazon and Toys R Us, if you're looking for a low-cost HD-DVD player. The drive can also be plugged into any PC and work just like it would on the Xbox360.

While Microsoft is working very hard to make a good service pack for Windows Vista, it's not the only thing they're working on. Microsoft is reportedly working hard on Service Pack 1 for Microsoft Office 2007. Due for release on this month's "Patch Tuesday", or December 11th, the service pack was created mainly based on consumer feedback. While Microsoft is mostly very "tight-lipped" about what exactly is going to be in the service pack, there are a couple confirmed features:

• Improved support for VSTO v3
• Better Object Model documentation for coding
• Improved support for .NET v3.5
• PowerPoint animated text has been upgraded
• Compatibility issues with previous Office file formats have been corrected
• Changes have been made to DirectX video overlay

AMD has revealed that Microsoft will not be releasing several versions of DirectX this time round, as was the case with DirectX 9, instead it will focus on DirectX 11 after the 10.1 update for DirectX 10 is released. With DirectX 9, Microsoft released major updates a number of times to allow for different shader models (2.0, 2.0a, 2.0b and 3.0). However, Microsoft looks set to encourage graphics companies like ATI and NVIDIA to focus on increasing performance rather than adding more features for the next few years, at least until the launch of DirectX 11. This could potentially pave the way for NVIDIA and ATI to work on multi-GPU graphics cards without the need to keep adding functionality. Microsoft will almost certainly continue to provide minor updates for DirectX, just with no major changes integrated.

Microsoft has released yet another poor VGA performance patch. The Symptoms: in some scenarios, games and benchmarks perform more poorly than expected on a Windows Vista-based computer. This issue occurs when the games and the benchmarks use multiple display adapters in a Linked Display Adapter (LDA) configuration. A graphics processing unit (GPU) or part of a GPU link may incur a small scheduling latency on a new Direct Memory Access (DMA) packet. This is true if the DMA packet is submitted to the GPU that has previously run out of work and if another GPU in the linked configuration is very busy. In some scenarios, significant starvation of one or more GPUs in the linked configuration reduces the expected performance of an application. Dated December 3, 2007 more information for the hotfix including download link can be found here.

It's no secret that the Windows Genuine Advantage software, which is designed to protect legitimate users and stop piracy, does quite a lot of flagging and hindering legitimate users. While piracy of Windows Vista happens about half as often as piracy of Windows XP, you hear a lot more about Windows Vista WGA hacks that extend the grace period by several days/years. And so, Microsoft is going to change WGA so that there is less unjust flagging of legitimate users, and more pirate-catching. The new WGA will first fix the aforementioned grace period hack. Please click "Read full story" to see the exact methodology behind the fix. Another main thing that Microsoft aims to do is eliminate the Vista OEM hack, which tricks Windows into thinking it is being installed on a legitimate OEM system.

Jeff Jones, Security Strategy Director at Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing Group, following his recent report putting Windows Vista ahead of Linux and Mac OS X for security, has now placed Internet Explorer ahead of the open source Firefox browser in a long-term comparative study. According to his analysis, fewer security vulnerabilities needed fixing in Internet Explorer than in the competition. Jones explains in his report Browser Vulnerability Analysis (PDF), that Mozilla has fixed 199 security vulnerabilities since November 2004, when Firefox first appeared, of which 75 were critical, 100 medium and 24 of low importance. Over the same period, a total of 87 security vulnerabilities were fixed in Internet Explorer, of which 54 were critical, 28 medium and 5 of low importance. He also notes that security updates are currently only being released for version 2.0 of Firefox, while Microsoft provides full support for earlier versions of Internet Explorer.