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Pardon the interruption, and sorry I'm a little late to the party, but I wish they would link the quick loading single page version of TFA rather than five ad-laden three paragraph apiece pages.

I avoid infoworld and many other such sites because of this cluelessness. Annoying your readers is a grat way to keep them from coming back. This is the first infoworld article I've read in quite some time; now I remember why I quit going there.

Agreed. Right in TFA, it clearly shows IE is running WAAAY behind every other browser by far.

(Read the "print" version of the article, instead of the "tiny blocks of text spread over many pages of ads" version.)

I have misgivings about HTML5. It gives the page more control, and the user less. That's been a trend in HTML for years, and it's getting worse.

I'm dreading "canvas". Ad blockers need to get smarter. Noticed that popups are winning over Firefox's popup blocking? We're also going to see pages that use 100% of the CPU just for display. We're going to need a browser option for "don't run canvas code for windows that aren't on top.

The "input type" mechanism for forms is lame. There are a number of standard types like "tel", but it's just text with no line breaks. They should have provided for either regular expressions or syntax like the COBOL Picture clause ("CREDIT_CARD_NUMBER PIC 9999-9999-9999-9999").

Dynamically-loaded fonts have been working for some time now in all the mainstream browsers. (IE6 and Firefox 3.5 were the last mainstream browsers not to have it.) We've been playing with that for our steampunk site. Downloadable fonts without anti-aliasing turn out to look ugly for small font sizes, because most of the display-type fonts have too much detail and not enough hinting for small font sizes. (In an annoying piece of Apple incompatibility, the iPad requires fonts in SVG, of all things. Everybody else, including Microsoft, is going to Web Open Font Format.) I'd recommend against using this feature much unless you have a good sense of typography. (Bad example: our steampunk search engine.)

You guys are getting this all wrong, according to Dell,

"The AIT lawsuit does not involve any current Dell products. Dell is responsive to customer issues and we continue to remain focused on our customers, their needs, and our growing record of superior customer service," Frink wrote.

Ref.: http://www.infoworld.com/d/the-industry-standard/dell-knowingly-sold-faulty-pcs-711 The bold emphasis is mine, of course.

In fact, just a few months ago (in December) I ordered (online) a computer from Dell that was supposed to come with a free promotional external hard drive. After I ordered it I noticed that the invoice appeared to have a charge on it for a HDD, so I phoned customer service who told me that I shouldn't worry because my HDD was already shipped. After calling again I was told that Dell is not giving away HDD's (though their Web site said otherwise). I called Dell customer service a few more times, most of the time the customer service representative said she would phone me back with more information, but they never did. I finally asked one customer representative that I wanted to talk to her manager, but I was told that I was not allowed to talk to a manager or a supervisor, so then I sent various emails stating that I would sue the company and tell the Better Business Bureau about them (the BBB already had lots of complaints about Dell when I checked their Web site, after the problems occurred). At least one time a Dell representative hung up on me (I was not be rude or aggressive, but just asked a question that they refused to answer, which was "When would I get my refund back?". [I had already canceled my order by this time [the day after I ordered it], but they said they would still ship the product anyways]). The credit card company also stated that they wouldn't give me a charge back because they could be sued by Dell. The CC company claimed that because they don't have any proof of wrong-doing on Dell's part (it was just my word versus Dell's word), they would side with Dell.

So after a few days and lots of (legal) threats, Dell finally canceled my order with no processing fees. This goes to show you that you can deal with Dell, and get what you want. Like that say, "Dell is responsive to customer issues...". Which is true, Dell did respond to me as a customer, for which I thank them.

They seem to agree on this, and think Flash is the way to go (see http://www.infoworld.com/print/125721). Either that is BS or this article is BS, they can't claim both. Everything they say could be said for Flash and vice-versa.

Sure they can have it both ways, just as long as it increases page hits on the infoworld website!

They seem to agree on this, and think Flash is the way to go (see http://www.infoworld.com/print/125721). Either that is BS or this article is BS, they can't claim both. Everything they say could be said for Flash and vice-versa.

The link you really wanted where everything is on one page: http://www.infoworld.com/print/128080

yeah, right. they weren't forced to disclose it and play good guys since european authorities have an eye on them...

href=http://www.infoworld.com/d/adventures-in-it/wikileaks-part-ii-adrian-lamo-responds-580-0?page=0,1

and

href=http://www.infoworld.com/d/adventures-in-it/spies-wikileaks-and-hackers-oh-my-443

Highlight of the reply from Lamo:

You have a number of questions that could be answered by contacting me. I politely request that you consider doing so via my publicly-available contact details in the future - and if you did & I was somehow unreachable, I retract this & apologize.

I would suggest that Manning is neither a whistleblower nor a spy (although he may be guilty of espionage, which is a different animal in some circles.) I was aware that KLP had little interest in keeping my identity secret.

Whether I was right is not for me to globally judge (though I believe I did the right thing, which is also a different animal. Yes, I'm splitting that hair mighty thin.)

Poulsen knows I've been around the block a couple dozen times, and I've been a bona-fide confidential source, albeit never for Poulsen. I don't feel taken advantage of. If I was pressured, it was up to me to exercise my right & ability to resist.

I object to your characterization of Asperger's as a "disability" - it's more-often described as a "syndrome" or "condition" in psychiatric circles, and in a less pejorative fashion to boot.

I know Poulsen isn't my friend. We don't socialize. We don't go clubbing. He's the most highly ethical journalist I know. If I were unaware that he considers me a source, not a friend, I'd be taken advantage of. I am however quite aware of this.

The government - and this is important - never asked me to be a source for them in the Manning case, in terms of eliciting information in furtherance of prosecution. This request would be improper, and I would decline in the interests of justice.

I have no reason to lead me to believe that Assange is on the run from anything larger than his own PR machine. It's perverse that this story has increasingly drifted from focusing on Manning to focusing on Assange.

I hope this clarifies things for you from my end. I've been entirely candid with you, and hope you'll update with a clarification from my end.

href=http://www.infoworld.com/d/adventures-in-it/wikileaks-part-ii-adrian-lamo-responds-580-0?page=0,1

and

href=http://www.infoworld.com/d/adventures-in-it/spies-wikileaks-and-hackers-oh-my-443

Highlight of the reply from Lamo:

You have a number of questions that could be answered by contacting me. I politely request that you consider doing so via my publicly-available contact details in the future - and if you did & I was somehow unreachable, I retract this & apologize.

I would suggest that Manning is neither a whistleblower nor a spy (although he may be guilty of espionage, which is a different animal in some circles.) I was aware that KLP had little interest in keeping my identity secret.

Whether I was right is not for me to globally judge (though I believe I did the right thing, which is also a different animal. Yes, I'm splitting that hair mighty thin.)

Poulsen knows I've been around the block a couple dozen times, and I've been a bona-fide confidential source, albeit never for Poulsen. I don't feel taken advantage of. If I was pressured, it was up to me to exercise my right & ability to resist.

I object to your characterization of Asperger's as a "disability" - it's more-often described as a "syndrome" or "condition" in psychiatric circles, and in a less pejorative fashion to boot.

I know Poulsen isn't my friend. We don't socialize. We don't go clubbing. He's the most highly ethical journalist I know. If I were unaware that he considers me a source, not a friend, I'd be taken advantage of. I am however quite aware of this.

The government - and this is important - never asked me to be a source for them in the Manning case, in terms of eliciting information in furtherance of prosecution. This request would be improper, and I would decline in the interests of justice.

I have no reason to lead me to believe that Assange is on the run from anything larger than his own PR machine. It's perverse that this story has increasingly drifted from focusing on Manning to focusing on Assange.

I hope this clarifies things for you from my end. I've been entirely candid with you, and hope you'll update with a clarification from my end.

I liked Bob Lewis' commentary on Nicholas Carr. First he says IT doesn't matter, then the cloud is everything (er, um, IT matters after all) and now, IT matters but it's evil.

Lewis lumps Carr into those who throughout history have proclaimed that X (where X=radio, movies, talkies, television, calculators, computers, video-games, cell-phones...) will be the ruination of society. And somehow society continues. I'm getting a bit tired of Carr and his ever failed proclamations.

From the books by Pinker that I have read, he is a fascinating writer with a gift for clear explanations.

http://www.infoworld.com/d/adventures-in-it/self-proclaimed-experts-predict-ruination-new-technologies-ignore-them-489?page=0,0

"Again: People who use terms like "M$" tend to get downmodded. People who create posts which are 50% inflammatory bullshit, 10% interesting, and the other 40% just a boring repeat of those 10% get downmodded on pretty much any topic." - by SanityInAnarchy (655584) on Wednesday June 02, @12:43PM (#32433552)

Again, who are you trying to "b.s." here? Not I, take a read:

"So, who are you trying to fool here? Me?? I've been around here for oh, 8++ yrs. or more, & I know the score here..." - by Anonymous Coward
on Wednesday June 02, @09:19AM (#32430414)

And, per this article from TODAY NO LESS? So do others (in respected publications no less - take a read):

---

http://infoworld.com/d/adventures-in-it/faith-in-numbers-six-more-tech-cults-846

(Dated TODAY no less, supporting my points/suppositions on the "open SORES" & "Linux zealots" around here (& other fanboys like firefox fans too))

Faith in numbers: Six more tech cults:

Tech cult No. 1: The Slashdot Samurai
Established: 1997
Gathering of the tribes: /. (Where else?)
Major deities: Linus Torvalds, Neil Gaiman

Some "choice quotes" from said article that merely evidences you are full of it SanityInAnarchy, & that others see what I have here for nearly a decade now (I'll rephrase via a quote of my point in reply you responded to in fact on that note here right now again):

"So, who are you trying to fool here? Me?? I've been around here for oh, 8++ yrs. or more, & I know the score here..." - by Anonymous Coward
on Wednesday June 02, @09:19AM (#32430414)

Ok, that's been MY 'take' on the KNOWN /. anti-microsoft (Pro-*NIX fanboys, firefox fanatics, & open sores zealots etc.), again requoted from the post you just replied to & here was what the folks @ INFOWORLD also realize, the same as myself:

"Pity the fool who wanders blithely into a discussion and says, "What's the big deal with Linux? Windows works just fine." His online remains will later be hauled away in Chinese takeout boxes."

---

LOL, "yea right"...

Funny, but it seems that SanityInAnarchy is the one who was "hauled away in a Chinese takeout box" here, because after all? HE "TOOK OFF"...

(He had to, no questions asked, so, so much for the "/. 'samurai' wannabes" around here... proofs in the pudding & results!)

APK

P.S.=> "too, Too, TOO EASY", & tomorrow (MS 'Patch Tuesday') will doubtless seal off the SSL security vulnerability in Windows 7, as well as the AERO GLASS issue as well (but, this has a working safe work-around already)... apk

Holy scriptures: The Lord of the Rings; Programming Perl (aka "The Camel Book")

No surprise, the editors put the wrong link in the article. All three links link to last year's article. Here is the new article.

The first link should go here or, for a printer-friendly version, here.

The first link should go here or, for a printer-friendly version, here.

Well,
I have no doubt that there are issues with the way Apple handles this. However I consider this article as bad journalism. About much stuff I have a clue, and the article makes no attempt to give any explanations on how or what is going on and what is so bad about it.

However articles like this one: http://infoworld.com/d/developer-world/how-get-rejected-the-app-store-854?page=0,0/ only lead to confusion and are not really helpful (as half the claims there are arguable wrong)

I work down the list as presented in said article.

1. we all agree that (crashing) software like that has nothing to do on my mobile device, I assume?
2. I agree with Apple. Why should they allow to have several Mail, SMS and what ever programs on the device that ruin the platform look and feel?
3. Well, neither the article, not the linked article make clear what this is about. So I would call this bad journalism. Again: what exactly is the Wi-Fi synch thing wee are talking about here? You want to tell me if I want to synch my iPhone with my Mac it wont work over Wi-Fi? Are you sure? And Apps that make this possible get rejected? Are you really sure? If that is the case, we have a point here, but if that is truly the case what is so hard in making this explicit for noobs like me?
4. Execute interpreted code. Your comments are wrong. It has absolutely nothing to do with "interpreted" or "not interpreted". Apple considers the iPhone an End-User-Device. You can not program on it, and you should not. That is their stand of view. It has nothing to do with interpreted. Imagine a C64 Emulator that has access to the Mac OS X API and is able to "format" the "HD" of the iPhone. Nightmare!
5. Use too much bandwidth. The whole explanation makes no sense at all. First of all internet radio streams only us 2 or 3 times the bandwidth a phone call does. Secondly, a provider like AT&T perfectly knows which connections over his network do what. So instead of dropping a phone call because of network saturation the provider easily can drop a true bandwidth hogger. Blocking an App because it might use bandwidth makes no sense ... that sounds like bullshit to me.
6. No idea about this. All I can find about this is pretty weird. I had expected that the author of this article had worked on that so we as his readers get an ida what is really going on. However: The App Store is no democracy, which might be why Apple doesn't feel inclined to support free speech. First off all: Free speech or not free speech is something different. Supposed there is a ruler and some citizen says: "that ruler sucks." In a society honouring free speech that citizen can say this unharmed. In a society not honouring free speech the ruler might call for his head. Why do you want to imply that an App that does not get published, for what reason ever, is somehow violating "free speech principles"? Claims like that are a slap into the face of people all over the world that fight for free speech in their countries. You dare to compare a not published App in a Store that belongs to Apple, where Apple has all rights to do what they ever want (not rights: privileges even) with "free speech issues"? Hello, get a real live man!
7. Use Apple's APIs (without permission). Oh my god. The biggest bullshit in this article. First of all the (without permission) part. It implies that some Programmers have the permission to use those APIs. If you have an App on your iPhone, you expect it to continue to work after a system upgrade, or not? If that App uses a "secret API" and that API got changed during the upgrade, the App will likely crash, or not? Whom do you blame? The stupid moron who used secret/unofficial/undocumented APIs or the System Upgrade? Stuff like this bullshit only one who has no clue about programming can write.
8. Use someone else's stuff. No comment about this but I doubt the

My Counterpoint: The same article, with only 1 flash ad. Otherwise it's 28 Flash ads...

http://infoworld.com/print/125721

macs are good for all kinds of tasks, not just art, electronic design, filmography, or music p

Thing is, the writer of this question is wanting a real world idea. And not to knock the Mac, but in most businesses Windows rules and so I'd say Windows would be the best bet. Sure Mac could be done, but it's not done. There are also other signs that Apple has no interest in real world business options.

just does it with company names they acquired. *cough* FaceBook *cough*.

FYI, Google didn't buy Facebook. There was a April Fools Day story to that effect, although easy to believe since Google had been in talks. However, it's Microsoft that followed through and bought a chunk of Facebook stock, although still only a minority, but in a deal that gave it some special influence.

Otherwise I agree with the spirit of your post as well :)

Unfortunately, they got fired: http://www.infoworld.com/t/platforms/openbsd-contract-suspended-due-world-events-727

This isn't the first time the German government shows respect to F/OSS:
Matthias Ettrich, founder of KDE was knighted late 2009.

Some German cities announced in 2003 that they'd be moving away from Microsoft, towards Linux. (source)
Munich is one city that I know of that has actively been moving their infrastructure towards F/OSS. (source)

(Disclaimer: I'm not German, I'm just going by what I read on the internet.)

Back in January of 2009, various news articles announced that former Sun CEO Scott McNealy was to become the Obama administration's Open Source Technology adviser.

Actually, the one news article linked from the text "various news articles" in the summary, as well as every other web source I can find, indicates McNealy was asked to write one position paper on the use of open source software by the administration, and that was apparently presented to the Administration shortly after the request was made (this article from late February discusses some actions that occurred after the paper was presented.)

The issue was never about McNealy being hired as for the position of "Open Source Adviser", it was about McNealy providing one-time advice on the use of open source software.

These are pretty good.

in the corporate world, yes....but in govt?
especially SF city?
sorry...that's just asking for trouble.
It's like handing a gun over to your mob boss...and the moment u do, the gun goes off...killing his son or whatever...and he then blames you for it.
gg...noob.

and guess what...the moment after he did give the password, the city govt idiots published it, publicly.

A good article to read is on infoworld which has detailed accounts of everything and emphasizes how the charges don't hold up to scrutiny.
Especially on page 3...the city entered into evidence, the password list....and in doing that, it was made public. DUH!
Man...that is why he was the sole, always-on-call admin for the FiberWAN...there are so many incompetent, computer-illiterate people who work for the city's IT department, it boggles the mind.

in the corporate world, yes....but in govt?
especially SF city?
sorry...that's just asking for trouble.
It's like handing a gun over to your mob boss...and the moment u do, the gun goes off...killing his son or whatever...and he then blames you for it.
gg...noob.

and guess what...the moment after he did give the password, the city govt idiots published it, publicly.

A good article to read is on infoworld which has detailed accounts of everything and emphasizes how the charges don't hold up to scrutiny.
Especially on page 3...the city entered into evidence, the password list....and in doing that, it was made public. DUH!
Man...that is why he was the sole, always-on-call admin for the FiberWAN...there are so many incompetent, computer-illiterate people who work for the city's IT department, it boggles the mind.

Until a company gives you sign-off for using IE7/8 with their application, they basically say "No, don't upgrade". The problem is when you have a set of users who can do 90% of their work without IE6 but still need that 10%, how can you convert them over? You can't.

Managers don't push so hard about IE6 because they simply don't care. If it works, they don't want to bother with it. I have managed to upgrade about 50% of our users but now I'm stuck because the rest of our users have issues with IE7/8. Hell, I upgraded our users to IE7 because some vendors won't even sign off on THAT.

The simple fact is that management pushes applications that are cheap and crappy (this is rather universal) and then IT is stuck with the job of supporting them and ensuring they work. They start to build business processes around these horrible applications, and then find later down the road that the cost of conversion to a better, more useful piece of software (that probably is better coded and works in IE8 because it's more standards-aware) will cost many times over what the initial cost of the system implementation was. But do they care? No -- they bill it back to the business side, while they collect bonuses year to year about how great a job they did that ONE year. It's not about ROI, it's about one year results that you can pin a medal to.

This is the inherent problem with corporate IT as a whole. Read this article and you'll see what I mean: http://infoworld.com/print/108477

We aren't talking about rolling vs fixed releases here. We're talking about fixed release dates.

Since you speak of Microsoft in comparison, the obvious difference here is that release dates for MS aren't set in stone - if there are problems with the product such that shipping it as previously announced unacceptably compromises quality, it will be postponed. To give a recent example of that, Visual Studio 2010 release slipped by three weeks, because customer response to a publicly released beta was broadly negative with respect to performance and polish, and it was felt that additional time was needed to rectify that.

I found this article helpful:
http://www.infoworld.com/d/data-management/sorting-out-fact-fiction-in-terry-childs-case-310

You hawks would be funny if some of you didn't hold power.

Microsoft paid CCIA official as part of the antitrust settlement.

On January 28, 2010, Neil Mcallister published this article: http://infoworld.com/d/developer-world/oracles-big-bear-hug-java-bodes-really-well-021 He concludes the article by saying: "But at the very least, [Java developers] can rest a whole lot easier." Someone can't make up his mind about Java. The rest of us have, and know that -- while not perfect -- Java is an extremely powerful tool that ain't going anywhere.

Posting anonymously because I'm an employee, but in the short-term, this is simply a way of extracting more money from existing customers who will be forced to pay the "Oracle tax". Oracle raised prices in 2008 and 2009, but this year we were told "you have to increase revenues, but can't just keep raising the product prices". The solution? Sell more of existing product or sell new products. The trouble is, any new products (either developed or acquired) need some time to get traction. What better way to boost revenue than to find critical Oracle-owned components that we aren't charging for and beginning to charge? Sure, customers have a choice technically, but in reality any company heavily invested in Solaris will find it too costly to switch in the short term.

A corporation wants to make profits? *gasp* I've never heard of such a thing!

BTW, if you check out the submitter, snydeq, you can easily see that he is a mouthpiece for Infoworld, the corporation that is publishing the article in question. What sinister plans does Infoworld have for its latest push for profits?

Let's not over-characterize a company trying different ways to make profits as being "Big Brother". That term has a specific meaning related to the government, go read some George Orwell if you've forgotten exactly what it means. Yes, some companies may use slight-of-hand and other tricks to get more money out of you but it's far from being "Big Brother".

This is especially true when you spread your article out a few paragraphs at a time across 4 different pages. We know that trick, it's called padding your ad revenue with additional page views. Oooooh, who's the Big Brother corporation now Infoworld?

Like this? http://www.cio.com/article/514673/Kiss_Microsoft_Office_Goodbye_Three_Alternatives_to_Office_2010

Or this? http://www.infoworld.com/d/applications/better-office-alternative-softmaker-office-bests-openofficeorg-445

So in fact it seems Miguel was right all along - right about the need, right about the solution, right that Microsoft would not attempt to "destroy Linux" by leveraging patents. Instead they specifically promised in writing not to do that. Why? Probably because they don't care about Linux anymore. The world has moved on, what once seemed like a threat to their business no longer is.

Right, it's not a threat to their business, and they've been insightful enough to realize that. Which is why they haven't leveraged their patents against Linux in any way. Have you been living in a cave for the last 5 years?

On the other hand, there's no evidence from all of the above saber-rattling that Linux is infringing upon any of their patents. If they really have a credible infringement case, why haven't they sued Canonical, Red Hat, Mandriva, or any other company that hasn't agreed to "build bridges" with them? One also could wonder why they haven't publicly stated which patents are infringed, but the answer is of course that with or without a credible case, publicly stating which patents are infringed upon would allow the FOSS community to fight back with workarounds or invalidations of those patents.

I'm going to come at this from both angles since I don't know both sides and am reading up on it now. It seems that both sides are at fault here; I think they are FAR too hard on Childs (two years in prison? He didn't do anything to warrant that. Go arrest a child diddler instead and stop wasting tax money criminalizing this guy. It's obviously a civil matter). I think they should pursue it as a civil matter though, because of how he configured some items to be totally reliant on him (see below on flashing)

Firing

It's not his responsibility after being fired to guide city officials through administration of various components of the city infrastructure. His responsibility to them, aside from handing the password over to the respective individual (apparently the mayor in this case, but if that wasn't it, blame city council for not having a pecking order in place with a trustee assigned to this information) ended when he was fired. Why should he have to explain how to reconfigure routers, smart switches, servers, and the like, or how to enter passwords or to clear IP filter lists they tripped when they kept typing the passwords wrong (presumably with capslock on?). if they wanted all of that documented they should have paid him to document it (either as part of his job description or after the fact), or allowed him to hire enough assistants to document it all (which in turn can introduce security holes with more people than necessary knowing the passwords and the network architecture), or maybe they could have just visited www.google.com and do their own job.

Heck, if you read some of the older news on this, it appears Childs attempted to get policies in place for protecting and storing backups and credentials but city officials did not accept it (the "Not Invented Here" syndrome; if it's not done by overpaid hack officials, it's not good enough). From http://www.infoworld.com/d/adventures-in-it/why-san-franciscos-network-admin-went-rogue-286?page=0,3

(When I asked Terry if we could get a copy of the City's network security policy some months ago, he told me, 'I've been trying to get them to approve one for years. I've written ones up and submitted them, but they don't want to do it, because they don't want to be held to it.')

Now granted, that is his word against theirs, but truly competent system administrators are often almost paranoid about whom they share passwords with, and are sticklers about following policy/procedure when it comes to handing over those credentials (and backups which may contain those credentials in easily retrievable format or otherwise provide an easy way to compromise a device).

Flashing

However, this should weigh against Childs in most people's minds, including the more technical (from http://www.infoworld.com/d/adventures-in-it/why-san-franciscos-network-admin-went-rogue-286?page=0,4 ):

“At one point he was concerned about the security of the FiberWAN routers in remote offices, so he had them set up without saving the config to flash. 'If they go down, I'll get alerted, and connect up to them and reload the config.' Great, except we have power outages all the time in this city, some of those devices aren't on UPSes, and what happens if you're on vacation? And what about the 15 to 60 minutes it might take you to connect up and reload? He eventually conceded and (ahem) decided that disabling password recovery was sufficient security.”

As you can see, Childs may have had the city's best interest at heart when it came to sharing the passwords and changing configurations on a moment's notice, but not writing the configurations to flash? How ridiculous is that? What would have happened if he became sick enough to not be

I'm going to come at this from both angles since I don't know both sides and am reading up on it now. It seems that both sides are at fault here; I think they are FAR too hard on Childs (two years in prison? He didn't do anything to warrant that. Go arrest a child diddler instead and stop wasting tax money criminalizing this guy. It's obviously a civil matter). I think they should pursue it as a civil matter though, because of how he configured some items to be totally reliant on him (see below on flashing)

Firing

It's not his responsibility after being fired to guide city officials through administration of various components of the city infrastructure. His responsibility to them, aside from handing the password over to the respective individual (apparently the mayor in this case, but if that wasn't it, blame city council for not having a pecking order in place with a trustee assigned to this information) ended when he was fired. Why should he have to explain how to reconfigure routers, smart switches, servers, and the like, or how to enter passwords or to clear IP filter lists they tripped when they kept typing the passwords wrong (presumably with capslock on?). if they wanted all of that documented they should have paid him to document it (either as part of his job description or after the fact), or allowed him to hire enough assistants to document it all (which in turn can introduce security holes with more people than necessary knowing the passwords and the network architecture), or maybe they could have just visited www.google.com and do their own job.

Heck, if you read some of the older news on this, it appears Childs attempted to get policies in place for protecting and storing backups and credentials but city officials did not accept it (the "Not Invented Here" syndrome; if it's not done by overpaid hack officials, it's not good enough). From http://www.infoworld.com/d/adventures-in-it/why-san-franciscos-network-admin-went-rogue-286?page=0,3

(When I asked Terry if we could get a copy of the City's network security policy some months ago, he told me, 'I've been trying to get them to approve one for years. I've written ones up and submitted them, but they don't want to do it, because they don't want to be held to it.')

Now granted, that is his word against theirs, but truly competent system administrators are often almost paranoid about whom they share passwords with, and are sticklers about following policy/procedure when it comes to handing over those credentials (and backups which may contain those credentials in easily retrievable format or otherwise provide an easy way to compromise a device).

Flashing

However, this should weigh against Childs in most people's minds, including the more technical (from http://www.infoworld.com/d/adventures-in-it/why-san-franciscos-network-admin-went-rogue-286?page=0,4 ):

“At one point he was concerned about the security of the FiberWAN routers in remote offices, so he had them set up without saving the config to flash. 'If they go down, I'll get alerted, and connect up to them and reload the config.' Great, except we have power outages all the time in this city, some of those devices aren't on UPSes, and what happens if you're on vacation? And what about the 15 to 60 minutes it might take you to connect up and reload? He eventually conceded and (ahem) decided that disabling password recovery was sufficient security.”

As you can see, Childs may have had the city's best interest at heart when it came to sharing the passwords and changing configurations on a moment's notice, but not writing the configurations to flash? How ridiculous is that? What would have happened if he became sick enough to not be

MS fixed the problem, but not before being called out on it. If it were intentional, that would be expected but probably some serious antitrust concerns would be valid given the default search preferences on IE/windows, which dominates the market, and is branching out into other devices. It's getting better, proving that it can improve even if it doesn't have the huge number of searches to data-mine. Further, is anything stopping MS from looking at Google's search trend pages? Last, there was an article not too long ago about how Google tries to contextualize searches. Publically available, and easily implemented in a way which wouldn't infringe on their patents.

The alternative is even worse - that the biased results were unintentional. Sure it's been fixed, but if your initial launch has results skewed in favor of the owning company and it wasn't on purpose, that's a gigantic pile of fail rolled up in a little humiliation pastry and covered in skank sauce.

gp's point was that MS is complaining about having fewer searches to data-mine, but can't even get the existing search results "fair and balanced". In other words, they need to improve before whining. GGP of course was indicating that Google's method of competition is to produce fair results, while Microsoft's method would be to bias everything towards Windows. Of course we got here by GGGP suggesting that Google's high marketshare will always continue to guarantee high market share because they have more search data for research.

The whole point of all of this is that if Microsoft has good technology and good results, people will be exposed to it through vendor lock-in, one way or another, and eventually discover for themselves that it either sucks or doesn't suck. Microsoft's best strategy is to focus on getting good results with the data they do have, not whine about a better algorithm getting more hits. Of course it will have more market share, Google's ranking algorithm is extremely mature, apparently unbiased, and constantly improving.

Of course, the irony of the king of lock-in complaining about being locked out when they have Bing as default on Windows as well as increasing numbers of phones is delicious like a very expensive dessert. That the initial roll-out of Bing was so fundamentally flawed the GP post still remembers how skewed the results were and feels the need to comment on it should be a clear sign that Bing has an uphill battle, even if they got a live streaming copy of every Google search, legally and with Google's blessing.

Or in other words: Red herring.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/169750/bing_search_reveals_promicrosoft_results.html
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1496589/can-trust-bing

Verizon require Blackberry default search be Bing, and not changeable. You can visit google.com of course, but that requires extra typing.
http://www.infoworld.com/d/mobilize/verizon-forcing-microsoft-bing-search-blackberry-users-100

Illuminating comments thread
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1252533&cid=28175167

I took a look at coiledsnake's comment and noticed something odd
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1558288&cid=31224858

There are 3 links in his comment, and all to frequent submitters of stories that get put up on slashdot.

One link: http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/23/1710245
submitted by "Stony Stevenson"

Another link: http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/09/02/1418252
submitted by snydeq which links to http://www.infoworld.com/

and another link: http://tech.slashdot.org/tech/08/08/18/2016228.shtml
submitted by CWmike which links to http://www.computerworld.com/

Why would these frequent story contributors link their nick to publications? (hope I got the links right)

Yes, as we all know XP was 40% faster than Vista!

Oh wait...

ZDNet, an InfoWorld competitor, was about to go public with an exposé on Randall C. Kennedy and Devil Mountain Software, but InfoWorld actually beat it to the punch by disclosing the matter itself.

InfoWorld's editor in chief, Eric Knorr, should be commended for dealing this matter quickly and decisively when he discovered Mr. Kennedy's deception. At the same time, he should think very carefully about the series of decisions that led to this outcome.

Randall C. Kennedy was an InfoWorld blogger known for his outrageous, inflammatory posts. Often these posts appeared to disregard the facts, overinflate the issues, or otherwise ignore the tenets of basic journalism in favor of sensationalism and manufactured furor. Doubtless InfoWorld appreciated the traffic such posts drove to its site. What it should have realized, however, was that beyond contributing to InfoWorld's success, Mr. Kennedy had a personal incentive for generating that traffic: promoting his own company, Devil Mountain Software. With that as his motive, he had far less incentive to consider InfoWorld's journalistic integrity when crafting his blog posts. Preserving that integrity was the job of InfoWorld's editorial staff. They failed to do so.

Compounding the issue is InfoWorld's decision to partner with Mr. Kennedy on the "Windows Sentinel" project, InfoWorld's in-house branded version of Devil Mountain Software's exo.performance.network Windows monitoring product. The original post announcing Windows Sentinel is currently hidden behind a password, but the Google cache clearly shows that InfoWorld was aware that Mr. Kennedy was behind Devil Mountain Software all along:

Today, I'm happy to announce the beta version of InfoWorld Windows Sentinel, a joint project with the exo.performance.network founded by InfoWorld Contributing Editor Randall C. Kennedy. ... According to Randall, the main point is "to develop a more concise picture of the Windows computing landscape.

InfoWorld's editorial staff should have seen that allowing a contributor to use InfoWorld's brand to promote his own company's products and/or services constituted a conflict of interest at best, and at worst, a serious breach of InfoWorld's responsibility to provide truthful, unbiased reporting to its readers.

InfoWorld needs to think very carefully about how to proceed in future if it hopes to recover its integrity after this incident. In an age where publications are under increasing pressure to demonstrate their power to drive revenue, it is more important than ever that editors take a stand for the paramount importance of high-quality, thorough, accurate reporting and editorials, untainted by financial interests or the pursuit of personal gain. InfoWorld stumbled by continuing to support Randall C. Kennedy when it should have, at the very least, questioned his judgment. It can and must do better.

http://infoworld.com/print/112907

Can the iPad display 8 questions in HTML without having to spread them across 6 pages festooned with advertisements?

It sure can! Just direct its browser here: http://infoworld.com/print/111972 . Magical, no?

Btw, please don't tell me you missed the Print link... or that you didn't even look for it.

...someone they can scare with random stuff that never really happens...

• Yes, I suppose that
• you must be entirely
• right, despite the
• easily Googled evidence
• to the contrary.
• Of course, Googling is a rare skill, and one can't
• expect everyone to grasp it.

That, by the way, was a hit directly on your head with the clue-bat. :)

Microsoft might be doing more than you think. TFA brings up Protected Mode Internet Explorer, but Microsoft is incorporating sandboxing-type ideas into Office 2010, too. For example, before it opens files, Word 2010 will validate them against known-good and known-bad schema. The idea is to detect potentially risky files/actions and run them with reduced privilege. So if a given file was created using an old version of Word that includes implicit vulnerabilities, for example, Word 2010 will open it in read-only mode with macros disabled, while giving the user a button to activate the disabled features (with an "it's your funeral" warning message).

This is not exactly "sandboxing," but it serves the same purpose: It helps to keep bad things from happening accidentally or out of user ignorance. In the past, if a user tried to open a file with dangerous macros, the app might throw up a warning message: "OMG if I open this file all hell will break loose!" But the user really wants to see what's in that file, so he just clicks "OK," and the damage is done. With Office 2010, there are more situations where a file will open with a slightly degraded user experience (no macros, etc), which lets users do 90 percent of what they want to do -- read the text, or copy and paste it into a new file -- without putting them at risk.

http://www.infoworld.com/d/security-central/porn-filters-use-em-959

"in order to use patents as weapons."

I wish I had the balls to make random baseless claims. Clearly you must have seen the future being a wizard and all...

Well then, you shouldn't have let Microsoft's company nurse cut them off just so you could post here. If you're dishonest enough to shill for Bill, take it a step further and just tell him you're shilling and take the money and stop posting here. It saves you work and save our time. If you're shilling for ideological reasons and not getting compensated then maybe it's time to take up a more socially redeeming hobby than shilling.

Microsoft has using software patents offensively for years. The suit over FAT and the suit against TomTom are just two examples from this year. A quick trip to Google will show you more from this year and many other years. If not Google, then Cuil.

I agree, that would be quite great. It could help eliminate the abiguity described in this article.