Jimmy's weblog

Microsoft Office has a useful feature called “Track changes” that allows tracking of the contributions multiple editors make to documents. It allows identification of what changes were made and when, as well as allowing the changes to be easily accepted or rejected. If you use this feature, you need to be careful as the changes are not removed when you save the document (otherwise they would be useless). Many people have learnt this when, to their embarrassment, the changes are viewed after distribution. It appears that SCO (the company suing the entire Linux world) wasn’t aware of this.

A Microsoft Word document of SCO’s suit against DaimlerChrysler, seen by CNET News.com, originally identified Bank of America as the defendant instead of the automaker. This revision and others in the document can be seen through powerful but often forgotten features in Microsoft Word known as invisible electronic ink.

More at http://news.com.com/2100-7344_3-5170073.html.

Tools to remove this information can be found at Microsoft’s website or at http://www.docscrubber.com/download.html.

While we’re speaking of SCO and Microsoft, it’s well known that Microsoft purchased a Unix license from SCO for US$11 million, despite the fact that they have very little to do with Unix products. Many people viewed this as a form of financial support for SCO’s legal attacks on Linux and open source software. It now appears the Microsoft has been funneling far more than first thought - about US$75 million more in fact! It’s good to see that anti-trust settlement with the United States Department of Justice is having an effect on Microsoft’s behaviour…

Excuse me, did we say in Halloween IX that Microsoft’s under-the-table payoff to SCO for attacking Linux was just eleven million dollars? Turns out we were off by an order of magnitude — it was much, much more than that.

The leaked email can be found at http://www.opensource.org/halloween/halloween10.html.