Friday, March 05, 2004 Patent Central to Microsoft Case Invalidated. Thanks, Sodajerk. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has invalidated a claim to Web browser technology central to a case against Microsoft Corp., a move that could spare the software giant from paying more than half a billion dollars in damages, according to documents obtained on Friday. Last year, an Illinois jury delivered a $521 million verdict against Microsoft for infringing on technology developed by a privately held firm, Eolas Technologies Inc., and the University of California. [ActiveWin.com Headlines] I have written about the Eolas patent before so I was glad to see the patent invalidated. I believe the previous art in the area was very substantial and should not be ignored. The major contribution of Eolas to the world remains in forcing the patent office to try and do a better job. 9:55:54 PM    Comments [] Unix and 2003 Active Directory Building Security and Directory Solutions for UNIX Using the Windows Server 2003 Active Directory Kerberos and LDAP Services. This guide provides prescriptive guidance to enable Microsoft™ Windows Server® 2003 to be used for authentication and as an identity and authorization data store within heterogeneous Microsoft Windows® and UNIX environments. The guidance covers evaluating, planning, building, and deploying a security and directory infrastructure based on Windows Server 2003. The guidance will be valuable for business and technical decision makers, IT architects, and systems administrators participating in infrastructure consolidation or integration projects. [ActiveWin.com Headlines] This is a long document so I printed out Part 2 Build which is approximately 170 pages long. I had started work on this earlier but stopped when I upgraded to 2003. I would like to use my 2003 Active Directory to authenticate userids on my linux box. I think other folks with heterogeneous sites would like to do the same. 10:39:26 AM    Comments []