UNIX System Administration: Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, Tru64, BSD.

Microsoft released .NET Core as open source. Find out what's inside!

2014-11-13T12:38:00.002+02:00

Microsoft announced that .NET Core will be open source, including the runtime and the framework libraries.
There are several open source Microsoft .NET projects on GitHub and CodePlex:

.NET Core 5 (corefx) - foundational libraries that make up the .NET Core development stack;
.NET Core 5 buildtools - Build tools that are necessary for building the .NET Core project;
.NET Compiler Platform (Roslyn) - open-source C# and Visual Basic compilers with rich code analysis APIs;
EntityFramework - Microsoft's recommended data access technology for new applications in .NET;
ASP.NET vNext Home - The Home repository is the starting point for people to learn about ASP.NET vNext;

So what's in this stuff, anyway? Let's dissect it using sloccount and cloc (count lines of code) and find out!

Grab the code for Roslyn:

$ GIT_CURL_VERBOSE=1 git clone -v https://git01.codeplex.com/roslyn

Cloning into 'roslyn'...
error: RPC failed; result=56, HTTP code = 200
GnuTLS recv error (-9): A TLS packet with unexpected length was received.

Whatever - no time to rebuild git against OpenSSL. Let's use a workaround:

$ mkdir roslyn; cd roslyn; git init
$ git remote add origin https://git01.codeplex.com/roslyn
$ git checkout -B master origin/master

Great. Now let's grab the .NET Core dev stack, libraries and build tools (github clones fine):

$ git clone https://github.com/dotnet/corefx.git
$ git clone https://github.com/dotnet/buildtools.git

Analyze the .NET Core 5 (corefx) and buildtools

$ cloc --xsl=1 --xml corefx/ buildtools/

Language	Files	Blank	Comment	Code
C#	565	17312	24750	104192
XML	2	0	7	4456
MSBuild scripts	15	54	90	1820
SKILL	2	11	0	52
Visual Basic	1	17	1	43
ASP.Net	6	0	0	32
C/C++ Header	1	5	1	7
DOS Batch	1	0	0	5
Total	593	17399	24849	110607

Analyze Roslyn

$ cloc --xsl=1 --xml roslyn/Src

Language	Files	Blank	Comment	Code
C#	4138	186147	131956	1173792
Visual Basic	1767	178277	140738	981301
XML	4	1870	1920	12451
MSBuild scripts	74	0	216	10066
C/C++ Header	15	1607	428	7361
SKILL	33	888	0	4954
C++	12	322	186	1698
XSD	3	74	217	401
ASP.Net	44	4	0	351
XAML	3	3	1	128
DOS Batch	6	22	11	79
PowerShell	3	7	0	13
Total	6102	369221	275673	2192595

$ sloccount roslyn/Src

Total Physical Source Lines of Code (SLOC)                = 1,205,824
Development Effort Estimate, Person-Year (Person-Month) = 343.86 (4,126.29)
 (Basic COCOMO model, Person-Months = 2.4 * (KSLOC**1.05))
Schedule Estimate, Years (Months)                         = 4.93 (59.14)
 (Basic COCOMO model, Months = 2.5 * (person-months**0.38))
Estimated Average Number of Developers (Effort/Schedule)  = 69.78
Total Estimated Cost to Develop                           = $ 46,450,431
 (average salary = $56,286/year, overhead = 2.40).

So - what have we learned?

sloccount COCOMO estimates are just that - estimates;
We have over one million lines of C# to play around with;
Porting this thing will likely depend on Mono and will require quite a lot of work;
It still doesn't make up an ecosystem - there's work to be done here to turn this into a cross-platform .NET environment;
Microsoft is most likely pushing for the clouds - this open source seems consistent with their recent partnership with Docker.

Set up a highly available firewall and load balancer in the IBM cloud

2013-02-21T06:04:00.004+02:00

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/cloud/library/cl-setupfirewalloncloud/index.html
Summary: Set up a highly available (Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol) firewall and load balancer (Linux Virtual Server IP Virtual Server) using Keepalived for Linux and the IBM SmartCloud Enterprise virtual IP and anti-collocation features.

QEMU and kpartx to perform bare metal recovery or forensics on cloud instances

2012-10-20T00:09:00.000+03:00

Using qemu or kpartx to perform "bare metal" instance recovery or forensics on KVM cloud instances:

Use QEMU on IBM SmartCloud Enterprise to recover images after system disasters

HP to Contribute webOS to Open Source

2011-12-11T17:24:00.001+02:00

Looks like after killing their TouchPad tablet, HP open sources WebOS:

http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press/2011/111209xa.html?mtxs=rss-corp-news
http://developer.palm.com/blog/2011/12/open-source/
I wonder.. https://github.com/hpwebos

Might mean the TouchPad will make a comback. We'll see.

Review: 1Q84

2011-12-11T14:26:00.001+02:00

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I can't quite put my finger on it, but this books keeps reminding me of things I've forgotten or ignored.

I must say I've enjoyed Book 3 the most.

Well, that's it. For now at least - I'm out of Murakami :-(.

View all my reviews

Review: Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

2011-10-25T12:15:00.002+03:00

Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I've been using the methods and techniques described in GTD along side mind mapping in practice for over 8 years (mostly due to tools like OneNote, Emacs ORG mode, XMind/Fremind, etc). Reading this book has definitely helped optimize my workflow and planning into something quite a bit more efficient.

Right now I'm still looking to overhaul my tooling, OneNote isn't available on UNIX-like system (though it mostly works with wine), and Emacs ORG mode isn't practical for pasting images, screenshots, video, audio, files, etc. and such for reference.

It's tried a bunch of Java tools (Thinking Rock and GTD Free) but they're not very good for reference, note taking and reminders / calendar stuff. So far it's proving hard to beat the OneNote + Outlook + Project combo.

One tool I've been using for a while now (probably an year or so) along side OneNote is Tracks . It's a RoR webapp that covers most things in the GTD workflow. Although import/export isn't yet available as of version 2.0, it gets the job done. It's also available from Bitnami as a pre-installed stack.

If you're into GTD or just like to organize yourself with TODOS, tasks, projects and such, Tracks is worth a try.

View all my reviews

Convert AWK to Perl using a2p

2011-05-26T21:27:00.003+03:00

Automatic conversion of AWK scripts to perl.

A little awk script that numbers lines:

ls -la /usr | ./linum.pl
  1 : total 240
  2 : drwxr-xr-x+  12 root root  4096 2010-06-21 06:47 .
  3 : drwxr-xr-x   22 root root  4096 2011-05-11 12:06 ..
  4 : drwxr-xr-x+   2 root root 69632 2011-05-24 14:07 bin
  5 : drwxr-xr-x+   2 root root  4096 2010-05-05 11:33 games
  6 : drwxr-xr-x+   5 root root  4096 2010-06-21 06:47 i586-suse-linux
  7 : drwxr-xr-x+  52 root root  4096 2011-05-13 04:17 include
  8 : drwxr-xr-x+ 156 root root 69632 2011-05-24 14:07 lib
  9 : drwxr-xr-x+  10 root root  4096 2010-06-21 06:47 local
 10 : drwxr-xr-x+   2 root root 12288 2011-05-24 14:07 sbin
 11 : drwxr-xr-x+ 213 root root  4096 2011-05-23 13:19 share

Let's convert this to perl using a2p.

echo '{ printf("%5d : %s\n", NR, $0) }' | a2p > linum.pl
chmod +x linum.pl

Let's try it out:

ls -la /usr | ./linum.pl
  1 : total 240
  2 : drwxr-xr-x+  12 root root  4096 2010-06-21 06:47 .
  3 : drwxr-xr-x   22 root root  4096 2011-05-11 12:06 ..
  4 : drwxr-xr-x+   2 root root 69632 2011-05-24 14:07 bin
  5 : drwxr-xr-x+   2 root root  4096 2010-05-05 11:33 games
  6 : drwxr-xr-x+   5 root root  4096 2010-06-21 06:47 i586-suse-linux
  7 : drwxr-xr-x+  52 root root  4096 2011-05-13 04:17 include
  8 : drwxr-xr-x+ 156 root root 69632 2011-05-24 14:07 lib
  9 : drwxr-xr-x+  10 root root  4096 2010-06-21 06:47 local
 10 : drwxr-xr-x+   2 root root 12288 2011-05-24 14:07 sbin
 11 : drwxr-xr-x+ 213 root root  4096 2011-05-23 13:19 share

The code block looks pretty good:

while (<>) {
chomp;      # strip record separator
printf "%5d : %s\n", $., $_;
}

NSA Operating Systems Security Configuration Guides

2011-05-26T13:35:00.002+03:00

NSA published some rather interesting OS security guides:
http://www.nsa.gov/ia/guidance/security_configuration_guides/operating_systems.shtml

The RHEL Security Guides are quite good.

I've used these along with the Security Guide and the Security-Enhanced Linux guides from RHEL.

IBM SmartCloud Enterprise tips: LVM and FTPS

2011-05-20T16:58:00.002+03:00

IBM SmartCloud Enterprise tips:

Learn how to set up a 64-bit Linux® instance (starting with a Bronze-level offering) with the Linux Logical Volume Manager (LVM), capture a private image and deploy a new instance as a different offering (a Platinum tier) and then grow the LVM volumes and file systems to accommodate the new physical volumes. This article also shows how to configure and manage LVM across physical volumes using Linux LVM-type partitions:

Configure the Linux LVM and file system to accommodate larger physical volume offerings

Set up a Microsoft® Windows™ Server 2008 R2 on the IBM Cloud so that it can act as a file server. This article details the steps to configure an FTPS and SMB file server using persistent storage; this enables the cloud user to upload and download files to and from instances in the cloud and facilitate data exchange:

Configure an FTPS/SMB file server on a Windows Server 2008 R2 using persistent storage

Microsoft Mathematics Add-In for Word and OneNote

2010-10-10T03:06:00.002+03:00

Heh, this one is pretty awesome. Calculus and plotting in Microsoft Word :-). Best of all, it's a free add-on.

Microsoft Mathematics Add-In for Word and OneNote

And while we're on the subject of educational software:

Biology Add-in for Word

Chemistry Add-in for Word

You can even grab the source code for this: http://chem4word.codeplex.com/

Mount hfsplus and hfs read write on Linux

2010-10-02T14:11:00.005+03:00

Mount HFS+ rw on Linux (at your own risk...)

# Install HFS+ support

aptitude install hfsplus hfsprogs hfsutils

# Keep an eye on your dmesg:

tail -f /var/log/messages

# Get an idea on what partition you'd want to mount

cat /proc/partitions

# See what filesystems are supported

cat /proc/filesystems

# Check for a hfsplus LKM

modprobe -l | grep hfsplus

# Load it

modprobe hfsplus

# Check to see if it's loaded

grep hfsplus /proc/partitions

# Mount the HFS+ partition. If it's journaled, we don't need -o force.

mount -t hfsplus -o force -o rw /dev/sda2 /mnt/test

# Verify it

/dev/sda2 on /mnt/test type hfsplus (rw,force) touch /mnt/test/selftest ls -la /mnt/test/selftest

# If we're not allowed to mount with the write option, check dmesg

# If required, fsck, then remount.

/sbin/fsck.hfsplus -f /dev/sda2

# As an alternative, you can disable the journal on a MacOS:

# GUI: hold option while clicking the menu in Disk Utility. CMD:

diskutil list

sudo diskutil disableJournal /Volumes/Yourdisk

ClusterSSH alternative, broadcasting to multiple terminals

2010-08-24T22:29:00.004+03:00

Gnome "Terminator" is basically similar to ClusterSSH, dsh, kanif or such but runs all terminals in a single window you can split and such somewhat similar to screen.

It's also a bit more configurable (eg: gnome-terminal).

http://freshmeat.net/projects/gnometerminator/?branch_id=70626&release_id=268543

ThinkPad fingerprint scanner - Linux PAM setup

2010-08-13T13:50:00.003+03:00

Using fingerprint scanners for login is cool. Sure, it's insecure, but who cares about that :-). It's awesome!

Do enroll more than one finger, and have a fallback mechanism though...

# Install fingerprint software.
# You can play around with fprint_demo to try it out...
sudo aptitude install fprint-demo libpam-fprint libfprint

# Enroll the index finder. See pam_fprint_enroll --help for details
pam_fprint_enroll --enroll-finger 7

# Edit your PAM configuration to enable fingerprint login
# Fallback to password if it fails.

# emacs /etc/pam.d/commond-auth
# Add something like:

# Fingerprint
auth sufficient pam_fprint.so

You could also require both, but that's just awkward :-). And if finger print scanning breaks, it's a PITA.

Emacs: Different fonts in different modes

2010-07-26T01:44:00.007+03:00

I love monospaced fonts (such as Terminus or Consolas / Inconsolata), but they can be harder to read when it comes to documentation or simple conversation.

So, let's make Emacs use different fonts (monospaced and variable) depending on the mode we're in (eg: Info and ERC should not be monospaced), and let's add some shortcuts to change font type /size easily. You can do something like this with a bit of elisp in your init.el / .emacs.

;; Insidious Black Magic Bits:

;; Use variable width font faces in current buffer

(defun my-buffer-face-mode-variable ()

"Set font to a variable width (proportional) fonts in current buffer"

(interactive)

(setq buffer-face-mode-face '(:family "DejaVu Sans" :height 100 :width semi-condensed))

(buffer-face-mode))

;; Use monospaced font faces in current buffer

(defun my-buffer-face-mode-fixed ()

"Sets a fixed width (monospace) font in current buffer"

(interactive)

(setq buffer-face-mode-face '(:family "Consolas" :height 100))

(buffer-face-mode))

;; Set default font faces for Info and ERC modes

(add-hook 'erc-mode-hook 'my-buffer-face-mode-variable)

(add-hook 'Info-mode-hook 'my-buffer-face-mode-variable)

;; Control + scroll to change font type

(global-set-key [C-mouse-4] 'my-buffer-face-mode-fixed)

(global-set-key [C-mouse-5] 'my-buffer-face-mode-variable)

;; Shift + scroll to change font size

(global-set-key [S-mouse-4] 'text-scale-increase)

(global-set-key [S-mouse-5] 'text-scale-decrease)

And the results:

Note that you can also Shift + Left Click on a window to set fonts / font sizes.

Converting Perforce depots to Mercurial repositories with hg convert

2010-07-18T22:56:00.004+03:00

Converting Perforce to Mercurial repositories is fast (4-5 seconds for a 500MB repository with 300 revisions).

You'll also want to start p4d and log into P4V before, so it caches credentials.

1. Setup your p4 client:

export P4PORT=localhost:1666

export P4CLIENT=your_client_here

2. Enable hg converter by adding to ~/.hgrc

[extensions]

hgext.convert=

3. Start p4d

./p4d &

4. Convert the depot:

You need to specify a revision. Look it up in the p4 client (depot-details-revision). @all might also work.

hg convert //depot/...@307 converted-perforce path/to/hg-repo

5. Look at the history

hg history

6. Look at diffs and history with a graphical tool. This should give you a better idea of branches and such.

hgview

7. Clone your repository

hg clone /path/to/hg-repo

8. Publish your repository via the web interface

hg serve

9. Browse around

http://localhost:8000/

Additional notes:

Keep an eye on:

http://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/RepositoryConversion#Perforce

Memory Scanner and Editor for Linux

2010-07-11T07:26:00.003+03:00

If you're familiar with ArtMoney, MemEdit or Cheat Engine on Windows, then you know what it's used for :-).

Basically, it lets you search for variables in the memory of a running process, then refine the search further (eg: give higher, lower or fixed values). You can use this basically to cheat at games. Look for the health, money or mana values, refine the search, then freeze or set the value to whatever you want.

ScanMem is a simple commandline tool on Linux that lets you do the same. There are other uses, but this one is the most common...

Nautilus Location Bar - Fix Text Mode

2010-06-07T20:46:00.005+03:00

Gnome keeps getting dumber and dumber all the time. First the "Open in Terminal" right click option was gone, now the address bar.

Before at least you had a crayon button to toggle it. Now you need to type / and start typing or Ctrl-L to show it. Makes it a bit harder to copy/paste stuff to it.

Here's how you fix it:

gconftool-2 --type=Boolean --set /apps/nautilus/preferences/always_use_location_entry true

VIM: The Matrix Has You

2010-05-21T22:50:00.005+03:00

(click for gif animation)

This is pretty much the coolest thing I've seen all day.

A "Matrix" screensaver for VIM. It's amazingly realistic too.

http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=1189

Share GNU screen sessions with a different user

2010-04-06T13:27:00.004+03:00

Here's something cool you can do with screen. Share a screen session with multiple terminals. "screen -x". Of course, this only works if you're using the same user.

Let's say you want to do some cooperative debugging with another username. Simple:

1. Set screen setuid flag:

chmod +s screen

2. Start a new screen sessions:

screen -S mihai

3. Set multiuser

Ctrl-A

:multiuser on

4. Add the user to join your session to the ACL list:

Ctrl-A

:acladd jimbo

5. Now connect as jimbo and join cmihai's session (called mihai):

screen -x cmihai/mihai

Now you can share you screen session with that user :-).

Unpack functions and BSDProgress - progress bar for your archives.

2010-01-03T04:09:00.006+02:00

A colored unpack script using bar:

A little KSH93 function for your .profile. Now you can augomatically unpack most archives while watching the pretty progress bar.

You need bsdprogress (Solaris and Linux port of NetBSD's progress). With a bit work it also works on AIX.

I just re-wrote this for progress, so I didn't check the cpio and such yet.

# Mihai Criveti - Unpack function:
# Progress Unpack - unpack using GNU tar and bsdprogress.
function up {
for archive in $*; do
  print $archive;
  case $archive in
       (*.tar) progress -f $archive gtar xpif - ;;
       (*.tar.gz) progress -f $archive gtar -zpixf - ;;
       (*.tgz) progress -zf $archive gtar -ipxf - ;;
       (*.tar.bz2) progress -f $archive gtar -jipxf - ;;
       (*.tbz) progress -f $archive gtar -jipxf - ;;
       (*.gz) progress -f $archive gunzip -;;
       (*.bz2) progress -f $archive bunzip -;;
       (*.tar.Z) uncompress -c $archive | tar gxvf - ;;
       (*.cpio) cpio -icd < $archive ;;
       (*.Z) uncompress $archive ;;
       (*.rar) unrar x $archive ;;
       (*.zip) unzip $archive ;;
  esac
done
}

Let's say we want to unpack files that end in *bz2 (it will automagically detect .tar.bz2 or tbz2), *gz and a specific tar archive:


cmihai@phobos:/home/cmihai/build$ up g*bz2 c*gz Python\-3.0.1.tar
gnupg-1.4.10.tar.bz2
100% |**********************************************************************|  3330 KB  296.95 KB/s    00:00 ETA
gnupg-2.0.14.tar.bz2
100% |**********************************************************************|  3888 KB  340.20 KB/s    00:00 ETA
ccache-2.4.tar.gz
100% |**********************************************************************| 86363     201.51 KB/s    00:00 ETA
Python-3.0.1.tar
91% |********************************************************               | 43320 KB  787.63 KB/s    05:00 ETA

See:

http://netbsd.gw.com/cgi-bin/man-cgi?progress++NetBSD-current

http://mac.freshmeat.net/projects/bsdprogress/

It builds fine on AIX (Makefile tweaks), Solaris and Linux. Native on NetBSD.

Other versions:

http://clpbar.sourceforge.net/

http://freshmeat.net/projects/progress

Screenrc hardstatus line

2009-12-26T14:28:00.002+02:00

Here's a pretty neat hardstatus line for your .screenrc:

hardstatus alwayslastline "%{-b ck}%?%-Lw%?%{bg}%n*%f %t%?(%u)%?%{wk}%?%+Lw%? %= %{r} %H %{g} %D %d/%m/%Y %0c "

Codepad and Ideone - a new kind of pastebin

2009-12-23T05:27:00.004+02:00

Codepad and Ideone are pastebins that let you execute code. Ideone also accepts input:

http://ideone.com/P7WKrT2I

http://ideone.com/o1GGFBV4

http://codepad.org/

This would make an awesome learning tool for schools and such. Make it into some kind of appliance, add a bunch of examples, problems, tests and such and it can teach kids collaborative debugging and the basics of programming.

If I had to guess it's running User Mode Linux (or some similar jail) and ptrace (or some similar systrace or syscall tracer).

I poked a bit with perl "Config" (eg: perl -V) and it looks like they're running Gentoo.. all accounts seem to be on the same instance (nobody). So it's most likely a jail.

osname=linux, osvers=2.6.28-gentoo-r5, archname=i686-linux

uname='linux devel 2.6.28-gentoo-r5 #1 smp sun apr 26 22:00:57 cest 2009 i686 intel(r) core(tm)2 quad cpu q9550 @ 2.83ghz genuineintel gnulinux '

It looks like they did a very good job though, especially with the number of people poking around or running forkbombs :-).

BSOD analysis simplified with BlueScreenView

2009-11-02T23:34:00.005+02:00

Sure, you can do a lot more than a simple !analyze -v with WinDbg, but if you're doing tech support and keep getting spammed by minidumps or just want to solve something quick and easy, you can use BlueScreenView.

Basically, you can see the drivers found on the stack at the time of the crash, a list of all drivers loaded in the kernel or XP style BSOD as it would appear in the crash. You can also create HTML reports to send to your clients.

The process is simple. You point BSV at a bunch of minidumps, you look at what driver is on the stack - then you upgrade it (oh, look, it's NVIDIA, time to upgrade). Or uninstall it (oh, look, I'm running some daemon tools thing pseudo-driver, to time remove it). Then you see if Windows stops crashing. If not, go to plan B - WinDbg, Driver Verifier, etc.

IntegraTUM WebDisk on RHEL 5.3 x64 using Tomcat 5.5.28

2009-08-16T14:45:00.008+03:00

WebDisk lets you push CIFS to HTTP via an application server.

Here's an example install on RHEL 5.3 x64 / Tomcat using Sun Java JDK.

Instalation is very much identical on Windows (Replace with C:/tmp/webdisk for example).

In this example we assume an application server gets installed on 192.168.1.4 and 192.168.1.2 is the CIFS server.

Create the tomcat users:

useradd tomcat

passwd tomcat

su - tomcat

Download and unpack tomcat:

wget http://apache.mirrors.evolva.ro/tomcat/tomcat-5/v5.5.28/bin/apache-tomcat-5.5.28.tar.gz

gtar zxvf apache-tomcat-5.5.28.tar.gz

Add the tomcat manager role (replace with your password).

ed apache-tomcat-5.5.28/conf/tomcat-users.xml

27i

Add the following roles (inside tags of course):

role rolename="manager"

user username="tomcat" password="tomcat" roles="manager"

Setup Java

Download and innstall Java (if not installed) - Java SE Development Kit 6u16 from http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp

chmod +x jdk-6u16-linux-x64-rpm.bin

su -c ./jdk-6u16-linux-x64-rpm.bin

rpm -ql jdk-1.6.0_16-fcs | grep bin

echo "export JAVA_HOME=/usr/java/jdk1.6.0_16" >> ~/.bashrc

. ~/.bashrc

echo $JAVA_HOME

/usr/java/jdk1.6.0_16

Start TomCat:

./startup.sh

http://192.168.1.4:8080/

Install IntegraTUM WebDisk

cd ~

wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/webdisk/webdisk/0.44/IntegraTUM_WebDisk_0.44.tar.gz

gtar zxvf IntegraTUM_WebDisk_0.44.tar.gz

mv IntegraTUM_WebDisk_0.44 ~/ba

Create ba.xml:

ed ~/apache-tomcat-5.5.28/conf/Catalina/localhost/ba.xml

Create web.xml:

cd /home/tomcat/ba/webapp/WEB-INF/

cp web_default.xml web.xml

ed web.xml

1,$s/YOUR_SERVER_IP/192.168.1.2/g

Create /tmp/webdisk:

mkdir /tmp/webdisk

chmod 777 /tmp/webdisk/

Restart Tomcat:

cd ~/apache-tomcat-5.5.28/bin/

./shutdown.sh

./startup.sh

You should now see ba Display Name: IntegraTUM WebDisk in http://192.168.1.4:8080/manager. Make sure it's started.

Access your application: http://192.168.1.4:8080/ba/base/

You login with the username / passsword on the CIFS server OS. Make sure a "username" folder is shared.

You may also want to check out Davenport WebDAV SMB Gateway:

http://davenport.sourceforge.net/

Microsoft banned from selling Office in the US by Texas Judge

2009-08-13T14:56:00.004+03:00

Here's something you don't see everyday.. Texas judge bans Microsoft from selling XML based products like Office 2007 in the US:

http://news.prnewswire.com/DisplayReleaseContent.aspx?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/08-12-2009/0005076218&EDATE=

http://files.newswire.ca/816/CourtDocuments.pdf

This creates a pretty nasty precedent... remember, OpenOffice does the same thing too...

The patent:

http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/5787449/fulltext.html