Eleventh-hour bugs have held up the production of One Laptop Per Child's XO machine and the production hiccup is going to throw a monkey wrench into the non-profit's 'Give 1 Get 1' fundraiser, according to Reuters. Production has been pushed from October until November 12, the day OLPC was supposed to start taking orders for the novel little machine in North America.

For all the badmouthing it gets, Microsoft keeps trudging gloriously on - this time far enough out to tickle its stock out of its usual quagmire and score a multi-year high of $35.72 after hours, up 11.6%. The company posted revenues of $13.76 billion for the September quarter, a 27% increase year-over-year, calling it the 'fastest first-quarter revenue growth since 1999' and chalking it up to PC demand, Vista and the Halo 3 video game, not to mention happy 'worldwide economic expansion,' particularly in the BRIC countries.

Microsoft, which has decided not to appeal the Court of First Instance's September 17 ruling in favor of the European Commission and its 2004 antitrust order against the company, has also agreed to bend its terms to the open source business model and slash the price of its server communication protocols - just like the Samba Project wanted. If Samba, which has played a leading role in Microsoft's significant losses to the EC, had its druthers it wouldn't pay Microsoft a dime - it thinks that little of the software giant's IP claims - but it can live with the compromise that the EC Commissioner Neelie Kroes and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer struck early Monday morning.

In the past year, Apple stock has been +115%, vs Microsoft +7%. Over the last five years, Apple stock has been +2270%, vs Microsoft +21%. And in the last ten years, Apple stock has been +4314%, vs Microsoft +89%. Those extraordinary statistics emerged during the week as the blogger community discussed the relative merits of money invested in Apple versus the same amount invested in Microsoft.

The word on the rumor mill is that Mac OS X Leopard will be shipping on October 26th. While this is good news for some people, this is freaking great news for me. Why? Because after the 26th I will finally be able to do blog posts that contain information on Leopard, I'll be able to post code samples in Objective-C 2.0 and distribute the source code to them. So, in just around 10 days, I expect the floodgates to open and all the Cocoa blogs and sites will start dumping tons and tons of ridiculously cool Objective-C 2.0/Xcode 3.0 samples. The only problem for me now is waiting 10 more days!

Enterprises frequently have to deal with part of their infrastructure that doesn't have the privilege of uninterrupted connectivity. Such system environments designed using Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) need a way to manage uncertain connectivity. SOA as an architectural paradigm depends on a set of services providing business functionality. These services may be distributed over different domains or geographical boundaries. SOA, characterized by independent and self-sufficient services primarily needs to handle the issue of data inconsistency that may result from a disconnect in such environments.

Just this morning I saw a blog post containing some details about Microsoft's new and upcoming MVC framework for ASP.NET. I'm actually a little shocked - the sheer amount of 'stuff' that is being piled into the Visual Studio 2008 release is positively staggering, though technically this looks like it will be released as an 'add-on' to Visual Studio 2008 sometime in early '08.

Microsoft released a beta XP SP3 to testers on Sunday and, besides a veritable multitude of 1,073 fixes and patches, according to a blog by NeoSmart Technologies, it apparently contains more backported - presumably life-extending - Vista security features than it was supposed to - stuff like the keyless Vista Product Activation Model, Kernel Mode Cryptographic Module (KMCM) algorithms, 'Black Hole Router' protection against rogue routers that discard data, and the expected Network Access Protection (NAP) so only security policy-abiding widgets can connect to a network.

Ballmer then went on to say: 'There are plenty of other people who may also have intellectual property. And every time an Eolas comes to Microsoft and says 'Pay us,' I suspect they also would like to eventually go to the open source world. So getting what I'll call an intellectual property interoperability framework between the two worlds I think is important.' Ballmer also said, 'I would love to see all open source innovation happen on top of Windows.'

SharpDevelop has released version 2.2. Version 2.2 is mostly a bug fix release, but also adds support for newer versions of Boo (0.7.8), NUnit(2.4.1) and Wix (2.0.5325), Cecil (0.5), additional templates have been added, and SharpDevelop Reports 2.2 are included while support for the old SharpDB Tools has been dropped.

'Our Windows Live Hotmail, in and of itself, doesn't generate much ad revenue,' explained Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer during a Microsoft Startup Accelerator Programme speech this week. 'So we've had to put, essentially, a whole portal around it because the traffic around it is very valuable but it's not very easily monetized in the context of mail.' Then he added: 'Google's had the same experience, even though they read your mail and we don't.'

Over the last few months I've written a series of blog posts that covered some of the new language features that are coming with the Visual Studio and .NET Framework Orcas release. Developers can use LINQ with any data source. They can express efficient query behavior in their programming language of choice, optionally transform/shape data query results into whatever format they want, and then easily manipulate the results.

Microsoft could do more multibillion-dollars deals like its $6.1 billion acquisition of online ad house aQuantive, CEO Steve Ballmer said at a press conference in Zurich. Reuters quotes him as saying, 'We do not rule out any more deals like this. But this something we are not doing every day.' According to figures just released by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers, US online ad revenue hit nearly $10 billion in the first half, up 27% year-over-year, with the top 50 sites collecting 90% of the money.

Earth Class Mail, the start-up with the vision of traditional posts opening the mail and delivering it electronically, announced a relationship with Microsoft from Post Expo 2007 in Barcelona this week. Earth Class has moved its Linux-based platform to .NET, as it hinted it would, reportedly picking up speed in the process and using SQL Server. It will also mean integrating with Microsoft SharePoint and Outlook 2007 (for its keyless encryption) as well as Microsoft's mobility applications (to deliver to PDAs) along with the possibility of using Windows Live Hotmail and an MSN back-end to deliver documents securely via e-mail.

A flaw that allows hackers to use rigged PDF files to take control of Window XP computers with Internet Explorer 7 installed, remains unpatched. The exploit has been known since April at least, yet neither Microsoft nor Adobe have yet patched it. To protect Windows XP systems with Internet Explorer 7 installed from this vulnerability, administrators can disable the mailto: option in Acrobat, Acrobat 3D 8 and Adobe Reader by modifying the application options in the Windows registry. Additionally, these changes can be added to network deployments to Windows systems.

The ability that I will have to debug code within Visual Studio 2008 will be unprecedented. Why? Because now instead of having to use third party tools to dissasemble Microsoft libraries so that I can get a deep stack trace and figure out exactly where something blew up so I can find out what information I passed incorrectly, or what edge case I didn't know about - now that source code will appear automatically within Visual Studio 2008, on-demand, when the error occurs. This is fantastic, and has long been one of my pet peeves of writing code on the .NET Framework.

Having spent so much of my life working with real, live, production-running ASP.NET applications (which includes real, live, production-sized headaches!) I am definitely curious about this new MVC framework. Admittedly I'm a little jaded because I figure any enterprise-class web application development environment that ships without the ability to create a pure MVC environment is incomplete and broken. So, while I must consider this MVC framework a patch to an incomplete ASP.NET implementation, I'm still pretty damn excited about it.

Microsoft recently released the Interop Forms Toolkit 2.0 in order to allow 'developers to incorporate VB.NET Forms and Controls into their VB6 applications' (www.mi crosoft.com/downloads/det ails.aspx?FamilyID=934de3 c5-dc85-4065-9327-96801e5 7b81d&DisplayLang=en).

Infragistics has released Infragistics NetAdvantage for .NET 2007 Volume 3, which includes toolsets for both ASP.NET and Windows Forms, giving developers the tools to create compelling user experiences in line-of-business applications. NetAdvantage for .NET 2007 Volume 3 reduces development time, allowing enterprises to go to market faster and enterprise software development teams to concentrate on the business logic of the application rather than building reusable components themselves.

Microsoft says it's going to release the source code for the .NET Framework libraries with the .NET 3.5 and Visual Studio 2008 release later this year.nThe code will be released under the read-only Microsoft Reference License (MS-RL) generally used only for debugging. Not exactly open source but something that indicates the influence of open source on Microsoft's mindset. VS 2008 will have the debugging support.

In a move widely interpreted as a response to Google, Microsoft inched Office a tad closer to the web Sunday when it started accepting applications to play with some webby beta functionality it intends to introduce later this year called Office Live Workspace. When the widgetry comes out - and it's designed to carry advertising - a user will be able to upload Office documents to a free, personal, password-protected web site where they can be shared, stored and commented on - with or without Office - but not created or edited.

Showing its strong commitment to the Sybase community, the International Sybase User Group has announced that it will be taking to the road with a series of PowerBuilder-focused events under the banner 'Leveraging PowerBuilder in the .NET World.' These hands-on technical seminars will introduce and educate attendees on methods to use PowerBuilder both as a .NET tool and alongside other .NET tools.

SYS-CON's Readers' Choice Awards program, widely considered to be the most prestigious award program in the software industry, is a community-driven process in which the products participating in the program are nominated by the industry's vendors, customers, and users, as well as by the readers of SYS-CON Media's industry-leading i-technology publications.

I think we'd all be able to stomach the lack of SDK if Apple gave us the impression that they were working on it. Instead of throwing the AJAX pacifier at us and saying 'Sweet.', they could have simply said that they were working on a real SDK and that AJAX would be a good temporary fix. Everyone understands how difficult it is to make an SDK that is secure, stable, reliable, and won't cause programmer-introduced bugs to reflect poorly on Apple. They could have made it, as Wil suggests, that you could void the warranty on your phone in order to run third party code. This would be fine by me and I might actually go out and buy one of these things if I could get an SDK in exchange for no tech support.

Playing catch-up Microsoft says it's going to undercut salesforce.com later this quarter when it trots out Dynamics Live CRM, its first in-house hosted customer relationship management software. Microsoft's already got third parties hosting Dynamics CRM, which explains the rationale for the price cuts. However Salesforce claims the third-party hosting isn't more expensive given discounts.

I feel as if there is a calm on the .NET waters at the moment and it's a rare and somewhat uneasy sensation. Most of the developers I know are playing with Blend and Silverlight and all the cool WPF stuff, even if their specialty is back-end database work. We all know there is another wave coming and it will probably be a big one, so you better get the exploring out of your system now while you can. The summer is also a time when most businesses and development shops rest and recoup, though our network and storage admin friends use this time to do major projects that are unthinkable near year end.

This article talks about the ease with which DataWindows can be designed and consumed in a Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 environment. The DataWindow .NET version 2.5 has the infrastructure to support this concept. With the earlier versions of the DataWindow .NET, such as 1.0, 1.5 and 2.0, the .NET developers had to depend on a standalone DataWindow Designer tool to design DataWindows before consuming it in the .NET Windows Form or ASP.NET applications.

Software development tools-maker Iron Speed Inc. has released Iron Speed Designer Version 5.0, the latest version of its application generator. Iron Speed Designer generates interactive data entry and reporting Web applications for .NET. New features such as PDF report generation, data export to Excel and an interactive search function will help IT departments generate productivity-enhancing applications.

Bluespring Software has released BPM Suite - SharePoint Edition, designed for businesses looking to deploy SharePoint in an environment with complex process or workflow needs. BPM Suite - SharePoint Edition comes pre-packaged with the right amount of SharePoint, SQL Server and Office 2007 licenses to get you started.

As you know, Silverlight is a new RIA enabling technology from Microsoft. Slightly less publicized but no less impactful is another technology from Microsoft - Astoria. Astoria is a tool that combines the power of the ADO.NET Entity Framework with the new enhanced power of RESTful POX services using WCF. In short, an Astoria service is a WCF service that sits on top of an Entity Model that allows you to hit services with URLs that look something like this:

Europe's antitrust chief Neelie Kroes got ticked off over the criticism that the US Justice Department leveled at the antitrust verdict handed down Monday against Microsoft by Europe's second most powerful court, the Court of First Instance (CFI). In a written statement Assistant Attorney General Thomas Barnett said the DOJ was 'concerned that the standard applied to unilateral conduct by the CFI, rather than helping consumers, may have the unfortunate consequence of harming consumers by chilling innovation and discouraging competition' and mentioned that the US protects competition, not competitors.

I will be attending the Ajax World Conference next week in Santa Clara. I will also be at the opening reception on Monday and the conference party on Tuesday. Over the weekend Jesse Liberty blogged about this as well 'If you are going to be at AJAXWorld, look for me on Twitter, and let's see if we can set up a meeting or a lunch.' Other faculty members, according to the Ajax World website, who will be at these parties include...

While these experts differ on issues like the importance of SOA ROI, how to calculate SOA ROI (if at all), and why we don't have more/better of it, they all seem to agree on one thing: 'Enterprise-wide support for SOA hinges on the ability to demonstrate value to the business at large - more growth, revenue opportunities, and all that good stuff.' (Joe's words, not mine.) And that's where your job is at stake. Or, at least, the long-term support of your SOA efforts.

UBS thinks that Linux fever may have mitigated. After surveying a bunch of CIOs it found that the half (47%) who aren't using Linux already pretty much intend to stay Linux-free - at least this year - a deviation from the historical trend. Usually only 60% say they aren't planning to deploy Linux. This time it was 90%. UBS analyst Heather Bellini concludes, 'We believe it should be expected that Linux operating system growth will slow from the significant growth rates of the past few years.' Meanwhile, UBS figures IT spending will be up 3% this year.

The so-called California Group, the hardcore collection of state attorneys general who fought Microsoft's 2002 antitrust settlement with the US government down to the wire, has, as expected, asked the court to extend its oversight of the company until 2012, five years past the November 12 deadline when the consent decree (or at least most of it) is supposed to end. The states say they want to be sure Vista complies with the consent decree. The Justice Department, which has little use for the California Group, says it does.

In the first, possibly serious, quasi-defection to the online software-as-a-service Google Apps Premier Edition, Capgemini SA, the $10 billion French consultant, said Monday that it will recommend the stuff to its clients which include major outfits like Eli Lilly and PricewaterhouseCoopers while continuing to support Microsoft Office. Perhaps installing Google next to Microsoft. Citing Gartner research Capgemini said that the SaaS market could grow 25% by 2010. Peddling $50-a-seat-a-year software in lieu of Microsoft isn't going to do much for Capgemini's bottom line.

I've been a big proponent of smartphone technology for a long time, and have been chasing the 'perfect smartphone' for a while. Specifically, I've been hooked on using Windows Smartphone devices, because of the seamless integration with Outlook and the resulting automatic synchronization of all my contacts, calendar entries, tasks, notes, and e-mail over the air. And my favorite Smartphone so far was the Cingular/AT&T 8525. To meet a new business partner on the road, enter their contact details into the smartphone, and find the same person automatically in Outlook when you get back to the office is simply great - same goes for calendar entries.

Infragistics has released a free reference application for Microsoft Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). Named Tangerine, the application employs best practices to help developers, enterprises, and e-commerce vendors experience and leverage the capabilities of the WPF platform such as vector-based graphics, subtle animation, and high-stylization capabilities.

Microsoft has a new set of technologies called Silverlight that are meant to bring rich multimedia to browsers and portable devices. They have released two versions: a full release of version 1.0 and a beta version of 1.1. Version 1.0 is not very interesting, but the 1.1 beta is totally different and is making a big splash. It is .NET based, and of course Mono is working furiously on it. In fact, after Miguel saw Silverlight for the first time at the Microsoft MIX 07 conference in Las Vegas and was offered the chance to demo Moonlight (the Mono version of Silverlight) at Microsoft Re-MIX 07 in Paris in 21 days, the whole Mono team started on a 21-day death march to implement Moonlight in time to demo it in Paris. After which, Miguel said 'The past 21 days have been some of the most intense hacking days that I have ever had and the same goes for my team that worked 12 to 16 hours per day every single day -including weekends - to implement Silverlight for Linux in record time.'

It was an idea that the company, which has maybe $14.8 million in the bank and debts of $7.5 million, had been kicking around for at least a week after it was advanced by its fancy New York lawyers Boies Schiller as a way to escape the disaster they were sure would befall them if they remained in the court of Utah Judge Dale Kimball. Kimball's the guy who decided on August 10 that Novell owns the Unix copyrights, a summary judgment that cut the ground out from under both SCO's case against Novell and its more important $5 billion case against IBM for putting Unix code in Linux.