Interesting Facts

Photographer Charles O'Rear took the iconic photograph, Bliss, that has adorned many computer screens around the world; the default wallpaper in Windows XP. https://plus.google.com/115724842162075287959/posts/WHHAYFpncaP (He took the photo 60 miles north of San Francisco in a wine region of Napa Valley called Carneros. It is now a vineyard, so that particular landscape no longer exists, but although the operating system is no longer supported by Microsoft, the image will live on for this generation. Estimates say that ‘Bliss’ may have been seen by over a billion people around the world, from Buckingham Palace in London, factory control rooms in North Korea to the situation room of the White House in Washington DC.)

April 8th 2014 Microsoft will stop support for Windows XP and Office 2003.

Facebook, PayPal, and Google have reward programs for advising them of bugs in their systems. (The bug has to be a potential security vulnerability, but the rewards can be substantial. Facebook pays a minimum of $500 for qualifying bugs, while Google pays from $100 up to $20,000! PayPal is coy about what it pays. Microsoft, encourages people to report bugs, but it doesn't fork out any money at all. Instead they "acknowledge" the person who reports it. I guess that's how Bill got to be so rich.)

Microsoft has redesigned its logo for the first time since February 1987. (The new logo will still be the familiar red, blue, yellow and green colours we are used to, but the colours will be square boxes instead of the curvy ones, and the Microsoft name will be a lighter font called Segoe. I just want to know how much it's costing them.)

Microsoft has posted its first ever loss since becoming a public company 26 years ago. (It has never previously reported a quarterly loss since the company's initial public offering in March 1986, but has been forced to do so after writing off almost the entire value of an online advertising service it bought five years ago, this led to a $492million loss in the April-June quarter.  That's got to hurt!) Source

Windows 7 has been banned in Germany! (Motorola has been granted an injunction against the distribution of key Microsoft products in Germany. The sales ban covers the Xbox 360 games console, Windows 7 system software, Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player, claiming that Microsoft has infringed two patents necessary to offer H.264 video coding and playback. . So as the patent wars rage on, I write this post on my now illegal operating system, waiting for a knock at the door as they come to confiscate my computer.)

Justin Bieber was Bing's (Microsoft's search engine) most searched-for term in 2010. (In fact, the Bieber also topped the list of the most searched-for musicians, but he was the only male artist in the top 10.   I think this says more about the kind of people who use Bing for search, than it does about popular music.)

Apple has more money than the US government. (As of July 27th, the US Treasury held operating cash of $73.7bn, whereas according to its recent financial results, Apple had a few dollars more (cue spaghetti western music) at $76.4bn. It seems that Apple, once the darling of the independent anti-Bill Gates movement, is now the big corporate giant that everyone accused Microsoft of being. It has been valued at $364bn, compared with Microsoft's $230.5bn. At the moment, there is only one other corporation in the world – Exxon Mobil – that is bigger. So how has this maker of toys for the well-heeled become so rich? Well, apart from making diamond studded iPhones, if you want your paper or magazine to be available on the iTunes subscription store, it will cost you 30% for Apple straight off. Let's face it, in the Apple economy, only Apple gets rich.)

Skype was purchased by Microsoft for $8.5 billion. (The popular VoIP platform was first launched in 2003, has been purchased by Microsoft for $8.5 billion. It was bought by EBay in 2005 for around $3bn, and in 2009 they sold the majority of the company for about $2bn (£1.2bn), keeping a 35% stake in the firm. What I want to know, is why they didn't sell it on EBay.)

Amazingly Microsoft is welcoming hackers with open arms. (They are opening up their Kinect technology so that amateur software developers can tinker with it. They have promised a development kit for personal development, but they have said they will release a commercial version in the future. At last! They are seeing the bigger picture!) <p> </p>

According to pollsters the Superbrands Council, Google is the brand Brits like the best. (The popular search engine took the top spot, and Microsoft came in second. Third on the list was Mercedes-Benz, followed by the BBC at number four. The fifth favourite brand was British Airways. Foods and supermarkets were quite low down, Coca-Cola at No 14, and Cadbury at 19th. Of course they probably didn't ask the residents of Broughton in Buckinghamshire, who recently spotted Google's Street View car entering their village, when they saw the camera-equipped vehicle a small mob gathered, and they forced the vehicle into a u-turn before it left the village. Seemingly they were worried about being burgled if people online saw their affluence.)

Microsoft has denied reports that viruses can already exploit its new version of Windows, dubbed Vista. (I see no viruses.)