In a press release today Microsoft has given its answer to the objections of the European Union’s Competition Commissioner to the company’ slowness in complying with EU demands.

“BRUSSELS, Belgium — Jan. 25, 2006 — Today, Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith announced Microsoft’s decision to license all the Windows Server source code for the technologies covered by the European Commission’s Decision of March 2004. The company is making this voluntary move in order to address categorically all of the issues raised by the Commission’s December 22, 2005 Statement of Objections.”

“Today we are putting our most valuable intellectual property on the table so we can put technical compliance issues to rest and move forward with a serious discussion about the substance of this case,” said Brad Smith, Microsoft Senior Vice President and General Counsel. “The Windows source code is the ultimate documentation of Windows Server technologies. With this step our goal is to resolve all questions about the sufficiency of our technical documentation.”

With today’s announcement, Microsoft is going far beyond the European Commission’s March 2004 decision and its legal obligations to provide companies with the technical specifications of its proprietary communications protocols.

Blackcomb, the projected successor to Windows Vista, yet to ship, has been renamed Vienna. Given the labyrinthine development of Vista, naming it after the capital of the old Austro-Hungarian empire is perhaps more apposite than it first appears.

In a statement to CNET News.com, Microsoft said:

“The ‘Blackcomb’ code name has been changed to ‘Vienna,’ but we do not have any other details to share on timing or focus. This does not reflect a big change for us; we have used city code names in the past, which are derived from cities/locations in the world known for great ‘vistas’–the kinds of places we all want to see, experience and that capture the imagination. Vienna fits with this concept.”

The code-name for Windows XP was Whistler, a ski resort in Canada. Blackcomb was ditto, while Longhorn (Vista’s early code-name) came from the Longhorn Saloon, which was apparently mid-way between Whistler and Blackcomb. What’s in a name, eh?

While no details have been given, it seems likely that a shorter timescale is planned for Vienna, and that WinFS, the file storage system pulled from Vista, will make its appearance in Vienna.

Vienna Schnitzel’s all round.

Steve Gibson, a security researcher, has suggested that Microsoft may have placed the recent Metafile bug code into Windows in order to access users’ PCs. The company has denied this.

InformationWeek reports Gibson as saying: “This was not a mistake. This is not buggy code. This was put into Windows by someone,” Gibson said in the podcast Thursday. Gibson went on to hypothesize that Microsoft created this back door as a way to add code to users’ machines whenever it wanted to.

“For example, if Microsoft was worried that for some reason in the future they might have cause to get visitors to their website [sic] to execute code, even if ActiveX is turned off, even if security is up full, even if firewalls are on, basically if Microsoft wanted a short circuit, a means to get code run in a Windows machine by visiting their website [sic], they have had that ability, and this code gave it to them,” Gibson said.

“I don’t see any way that this was not something that someone in Microsoft deliberately put into Windows,” he concluded.

With Google aiming to dominate the person-specific ad market when IPTV becomes a reality this year, Microsoft has also been active in the field. Reports suggest that researchers as MS labs have developed the technology to embed adverts in video.

With video added to Google’s pay-per-click technology, Microsoft believes it can woo customers like never before.

The BusinessOnline reports: “Microsoft will not only offer pay-per-click search ads via its MSN search engine, but has developed the technology to take full advantage of the interactive television and video services that will start being streamed into consumers’ homes via broadband this year.”

The most eye-catching of the 40 technologies currently under development is a video hyperlink that can detect products displayed on a television screen during a program or commercial, allowing viewers to zoom into products featured on the screen and click through to detailed product descriptions.