Best of the blogs: Ed Foster asks one simple question in The Gripe Line: Why is Microsoft so reluctant to fix the messes it makes? That answer, of course, is never easy. Columnists’ Corner: The path new technologies head down toward enterprise adoption is not easy, either. SOA, for instance, is currently striving for balance between openness and effective governance, writes Jon Udell, in The tolerance continuum. Tom Yager points out that SQL Server could make the slogan “better together” ring true — and he suggests that Windows Server, Visual Studio and SQL Server could even impress hardened skeptics. VoIP: CES saw plentiful voice-over-IP announcements, including handsets, peripherals that ease connecting, and more in this round-up. The news beat: The U.S. Patent Trademark Office upholds Microsoft’s FAT (File Allocation Table) patent, meaning the company can continue to charge license fees for third-parties to use it. In the Bahamas, 55,000 customer IDs were stolen from an Atlantis Resort hotel. The chief executives of Oracle and Sun took the stage together to stress the common ground between the two companies, and try to make a few jokes. Open source: The Department of Homeland Security funds a three-year grant that will go toward auditing and monitoring more than 40 open source projects, including Apache, Linux, Mozilla, MySQL and PostgreSQL. Software Development