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Having said this, I would like to note that there is a very good reason for bringing out Vista: plain old software engineering. The last thing I expected to do was to defend Microsoft from a software engineering point of view, but here goes.

I think it started when Jim Allchin (whom I much respect) had to report to Bill Gates that he would not be able to deliver the next Windows version (Longhorn) in time ... or at all (see http://software.silicon.com/os/0,39024651,39152715,00.htm and the original WSJ interview (subscription required) http://online.wsj.com/article/SB112743680328349448.html?mod=todays_us_page_one).

Why ever not?

Here is why: Jim Allchin, group VP in charge of Windows, told the Wall Street Journal he dropped the bombshell last summer, simply telling Gates "It's not going to work". Longhorn was so complex that Microsoft's developers would never be able to make it run properly, Allchin told Gates.

The root of the problem was Microsoft's historical approach to developing software - the so-called 'spaghetti code culture' - where the company's thousands of programmers would each develop their own piece of code and it would then all be stitched together at the end.

In other words: the design was so complex, so haphazard, and consisted of so many interlocking parts that it was no longer really modular.

In software engineering that's a killer. Because it's then impossible to really isolate problems. Let alone fix them. The remedy was as simple as it was brutal: stop the current line of MS Windows (i.e. kill Longhorn), start from scratch, and rigorously use good software engineering practice throughout.

The result is ... MS Windows Vista.

So ... did that approach work?

Yes it did:

As a result of this Microsoft received thousands fewer bug reports than usual when it released the beta version of Windows Vista this summer. Allchin's culture change also appears to be spreading through the rest of Microsoft. Gates said the new tools are now being used by the Office group. "I wish we'd done it earlier," he told the paper.

Unfortunately there is nothing about running current applications that Vista does that Windows XP can't do just as well. But then you don't always go by the best way to run current applications. Longhorn wasn't about that either. If it had been, you would be able to completely stop the development of Windows with XP and call it a completed work of art. Any takers?

It's not that Microsoft did the wrong thing or the right by moving to Vista. They did the *only* thing from a long-term perspective. Too bad the short-term payoff is a bit less rosy, but that's what you get when you redo the internals of a spaghetti-code system that works.

"You can build it, design it, and it will work great. The trouble begins when you want to add things to it, add some services and things like that. Because of the brittle nature of the platform, when you do that, other things break", Martin Taylor July 2005

"A number of studies by IDC and Gartner have proved our platform has a lower TCO than open source because there are no hidden costs."

'[Nick Barley] refuted allegations that MS security was lax, saying .. "We've spent a lot of time recently trying to educate the marketplace"', June 2004

"The study found that enterprises using Microsoft's .NET/Windows platform to build and support custom applications incur 25% to 28% less cost than those using J2EE/Linux platform during a four-year lifecycle", May 2004

The primary reason sending Word docs is irresponsible (as opposed to PDF or RTF) is security. There are so many things wrong with many versions of Word in the field, like the ability to plaster you with viruses or revealing lots of stuff you never intended to show. Bad enough even some recent versions of Word simply grab an image of the RAM surrounding your document and write it to disk - along with whatever else is in RAM nearby. This is how the original [Xerox] Bravo (the origins of Word) saved documents and Microsoft didn't feel the need to improve that for decades. Add to that what the other A/C said - you assume everyone has an expensive copy of Office or Word in a [proprietary] format compatible with what you're sending.

Neither you nor the GP are proving anything. You're merely sharing stories. And that's cool because we may be able to see a trend in what people are saying.
I don't know about the problems people encounter with Vista or in what number, but the industry and users ARE generally disappointed with Vista. And Vista sales are NOT great.

Supporting links:
http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jh tml?articleID=201201012 - MS lowers Vista sales projections
http://software.silicon.com/os/0,39024651,39164563 ,00.htm - Businesses wary of Vista
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,3928 7855,00.htm - Consumers wary of Vista

On the up side for your second point, Office 2007 is helping out the competition here! The required training for typical users moving to 2007 has proven to be extremely high, unlike almost all previous Office versions.

Gartner did a report on the issues, basically advising companies to hold back on upgrades. Some references to that can easily be found online (eg. http://software.silicon.com/applications/0,3902465 3,39159860,00.htm)

Perhaps now is a good time for people to move away from MS Office?

Here.
And here.
Also, here.

Note that the first one isn't even Microsoft 'stuffing channels' as you so often accuse them of doing - it's a small distributor, commenting that they've sold Vista at an alarmingly high rate since launch.

So much for that sleep, then, eh? I hope you had good dreams about you and RMS spooning on a penguin-shaped bed.

The British Government makes a shady tech sourcing decision?

There have already been a bunch - for example, Accenture acts as a 'Premium Partner' supporting the London bid then lands a contract for the back office systems.

it started with a vendor issue, and then RIM's software did not react well to that issue.

Given the nature of the technology I find the explanation of a 'fail-over' system failing to kick in a tad disingenuous. It's not like a generator kicking in when the mains electricity stops. And what kind of design decisions led to an upgrade triggering outages for the entire North America.

I would have thought they had multiple nodes at multiple locations with no single point of failure. Or at least three redundant and independent systems, a main system, a backup system and a system for testing upgrades. Or is it like most commercial companies they designed the cheapest system possible.

Tell me it's not like the Uks DOH system where power cuts in Kent lead to system outages in the north of england. It takes real genius to design a distributed database that borks because of a power cut. sarcasm.

More details(Score:3, Informative)

http://www.silicon.com/publicsector/0,3800010403,3 9164553,00.htm
Next time I'll just paste the URL eh?

http://www.tata.com/tcs/media/20060131.htm

http://news.com.com/Indias+outsourcing+industry+fa ces+labor+shortage/2100-1022_3-6040987.html

http://news.zdnet.com/India+faces+worker+shortage/ 2100-9589_22-5730972.html

http://www.silicon.com/research/specialreports/off shoring/0,3800003026,39123944,00.htm

It looks like they are going through the same cycle the US and Europe has.

I googled quickly before I posted and found the seven years. Now I can't find that link, but there are like 300k+ to sift through if you look for "sox e-mail retention".

Here is a link indicating 3 years is already standard practice in some industries (like mine).

      http://www.silicon.com/research/specialreports/com pliance/0,3800003180,39130615,00.htm

So it is not completely made up, though you could make a case for exageration :).

The craziest use of the tech surely has to be RFID chips for Marks & Spencer suits you couldn't pay most people to wear one of them."

From another article linked from the main article...
The RFID tags are contained in throwaway paper labels attached to, but not embedded in, a variety of men's and women's clothing items in stores. M&S uses mobile scanners to scan garment tags on the shop floor, and portals at distribution centres and the loading bays of stores allow rails of hanging garments to be pushed through and read at speed. and The retailer is aiming to use RFID tags to help achieve its goal of 100 per cent stock accuracy by ensuring the right goods and sizes are in the right stores to meet demand.

It sure would be nice of submitters did a little bit of basic research about their comic headline statements before publishing them. It's quite obvious that M&S aren't aiming to get people to wear the tags. They're using them to improve their stock accuracy, and have provided a simple and easy way to get rid of the tag if you don't want it.

The Xelibri reminds me of my wife's birth control pills' package....

http://hardware.silicon.com/pdas/0,39024643,391643 17-8,00.htm

WTF? The Xelibri looks like it should come with birth control pills!

http://www.silicon.com/i/s4/illo/photos/2006/Novem ber/design%20classics/xelibri%20(Custom).jpg

http://hardware.silicon.com/pdas/0,39024643,391643 17,00.htm This works better...

"The article you reference makes no mention of this. The power failure was in a poorly-specified and insufficiently cooled data centre in Kent that had an unreliable failover system in place"

'Most repairs to computer services in 80 hospital trusts that were downed by a power .. "We can report the recovery of computer services in the North West and West Midlands of England is now largely complete"'

There are mentions of power cuts, repairs and failures in the north of England. I don't believe the reasons given are the real ones. I think a system wide upgrade failed and all the rest is just a smoke screen. On the day of the alleged power cut I can find no mention of other organizations affected, curious that. How does a power cut require repairs to computers. How does insufficiently cooled data centre in kent affect systems in the North of England. Did they not allow for some failure modes.

"If ever a project was screaming out for a mainframe it was this one. But in this instance it runs on a middleware layer that does not scale, on VMWare ESX boxes with 30 (yes, THIRTY) SQL 2003 servers under Windows 2003 Server"

I disagree, in each ward/department an independent stand alone unit that provides all the necessary functionality. These are connected to central nodes in each hospital that are in turn connected to all other nodes in a peer to peer relationship. The system keeps track of the patents location and automatically forwards records to the relevent node. When a patent is moved the system automatically syncronizes the records. If the central node goes down functinality can be maintained. It's not as if patents are moved about daily.

"I was involved in the early stages of this"

What exactly failed. What hardware/software was chosen. Who were the contractors. What kind of network topology. How does a power cut in the north of England cause a distributed data base fallover in kent. Has something on this scale ever been done previously. If as you say they force prices down then where did the $12 billion go exactly.

was Re:Big surprise...

The source is MacRUMORS.

Hence, it's not confirmed....a RUMOR!

If your definition of "useless to them" is non-commercial, how about:

http://www.silicon.com/retailandleisure/0,38000118 42,39161922,00.htm

Whist I assume Goggle earth is haemorrhaging money at the moment, it certainly has potential.

Any abuse of this system could get pretty sinister, but it wouldn't be the first such abuse:
http://software.silicon.com/malware/0,3800003100,3 9123379,00.htm
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02/28/webcam_tro jan_case/
http://news.com.com/Webcam+virus+writer+arrested+i n+Spain/2100-7348_3-5541974.html

BAE in the UK have made a wallpaper to do just this. No word on if it is available to consumers though I bet there is a market in the paranoid EM fearing folk that live near 'evil' cell phone masts.

He's electronically tagged, although the curfew times are a joke- 12.30-7.30am weekdays and 13.30-10.00 on weekends. When the little blighter will be alseep...he's a teenager for crying out loud!

Oh and he is not 16, he was 18 (here, and here) but is now 19 (here).

He has been named and located though ....so any really irate ex-work buddies dont have far to look...

The government of the USA has already shown a proclivity towards watching its citizens. To be fair, this phenomenon isn't limited to the USA, but Bush has taken it to new levels.

We now know that the government secretly had printer manufacturers embed hidden ID codes on printer's output, thereby removing any possibility of anonymous document creation.

I wouldn't be surprised if some enterprising Bush-ite didn't see the possibility here of having *every* keyboard manufactured with some form of this technology embedded. Imagine if the government could tell what you were typing just by listening to your traffic.

Think of the terrorists we could stop! Think of the children!

Funny thing is, it's happened twice! First time was in 2002, when they did a Salvador Dali tribute, and second time was in 2006 with a Miro tribute. http://management.silicon.com/government/0,3902467 7,39158308,00.htm Both times the complaints were settled quickly when Google agreed to take down the logo, without admitting fault.

Dell asks you if you are a terrist. Better say no (the story)

Workers in London financial firms, which handle a lot more money than a credit union, ran CDs from total strangers on the street.

Kevin Mitnick has pointed out that an attack like this could be made virtually certain to work. Desperately ask the receptionist to let you in, just for 90 seconds, just to use the restroom, and drop a CD on the floor labeled "CONFIDENTIAL: Layoff List". Extra points if you got a copy of the company phone directory and copied some or all of it onto the CD for the finder to browse while the autorun program chugs away.

...and remember to put your microwave oven in an RF shielded cage. Hot coffee is not worth network downtime.
Also look into getting some anti radation / stealth wallpaper.




Got Debt?

http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/4515/945/

Apple had been offering and still continues to offer tech support from another third party BPO provider, TransWorks based here in Bangalore.

But sources claim that this has nothing to do with the kind of quality of service that the India tech support would offer. "I think it has more to do with financial feasibility of the centre rather than the quality of service. You have to keep in mind that no work had started - basically it was just mid-level support staff that had been hired apart from Kharbanda who was expected to grow this the Dell way."

http://www.ciol.com/content/search/showarticle1.as p?artid=84773

Many of the components used in the company's products are, in fact, produced by third-party vendors in Taiwan, China, Japan, Korea, and Singapore. Most of the company's portable products including MacBook Pro, iBooks, and iPods are manufactured by third-party vendors in China. "It makes sense for the company to invest and expand in these regions, instead of having a new facility in India," say analysts.

http://services.silicon.com/offshoring/0,380000487 7,39157100,00.htm
The company stressed it isn't cutting any US jobs, noting that its ranks are growing both in the United States and overall. The Apple representative said: "Our call centres in Austin and Sacramento also continue to grow."

Moaners can read this too :
http://www.computerworld.com/blogs/node/2648?sourc e=NLT_MGT&nlid=23

In a bizarre twist to the offshoring craze, The Boston Globe reports that some Indian high-tech companies that accept "offshoring" work from American companies are turning around and offshoring some of that work back to Americans. According to the May 30 story, INDIA TECH FIRMS SEEK US TALENT IN OFFSHORING TWIST, Tata Consultancy Services of Bangalore can't find enough workers in India to fill the 30,500 positions it needs to hire for this year so it plans to hire talent abroad, including 1,000 recruits in America. Some 9,500 positions out of 62,000 at Tata are Americans, according to the story.

According to this "Linux distributor Red Hat said on Monday that it signed an agreement to buy open source company JBoss for at least $350m, a move that expands Red Hat's product line and adds to its growth potential."

$350m sounds alot! Altough 40 per cent cash and 60 per cent Red Hat stock!

A. Nothing.

Intel's talking about "Kiosk" PC's - has noone from Intel ever travelled to a developing nation? PC's in Kiosk mode are everywhere allready.

What intel really need to do, is make a cut-down macbook style notebook and take Steve Jobs up on his generous offer to help third world children.

As long as the executives at Microsoft are capable of maintaining their OEM agreements with the popular brand name manufacturers, Windows will always be relevant.

And this may be on the decline.
http://www.silicon.com/software/os/0,39024651,3911 7247,00.htm
http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2004/10/will _att_ditch_windows.html
http://news.softpedia.com/news/South-Korea-Could-D itch-Windows-11302.shtml
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,184234,00.html

Good. Apple have been getting passes from the technical community on a few things. They've earned them. But they have no competition as targets for this kind of legislation, and someone had to fire the first shot. Good for the French.

Well if we follow the logic used to say Apple had a monopoly digital music

Why would we do that? The only antitrust lawsuit pending for Apple is the one in California as far as I know, and California is definitely not a member state of the EU. Virgin tried to sue Apple for anticompetitive behaviour in France, but the court ruled against Virgin.

That's a load of crap. When Microsoft was trying to get involved in this project, he thought it was great.

Now that the organisation making this laptop has rejected Microsoft, it's crap? Forgive me for being paranoid, but I don't think that's genuine concern...

From this article:
Even tech titans like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Michael Dell are talking to Negroponte about his plans. Jobs initially dismissed the laptop as a "science project" but is now contributing ideas. Dell had his staff vet the cost of the device's components. And Gates would like Negroponte to use Microsoft software rather than the free open-source alternatives that Negroponte currently favors.

... and this article:
Software behemoth Microsoft has also yet to determine its involvement in the $100 laptop scheme, although at present the use of open source software will preclude it from contributing a Windows operating system.
However, Bill Gates met with Nicholas Negroponte, founder of MIT's Media Lab, who is involved with the $100 laptop project, to discuss Microsoft's participation in the scheme, the WSJ reported.

Interesting how Microsoft initially wanted to be involved. Bill Gates wasn't mocking the project then, but now it seems Microsoft isn't involved, and even though the laptop itself hasn't changed, Bill Gates is having a go at it.

Interesting.

It is actually much more then originally afraid of: It is a 'squeeze' - and they G. cannot escape. ACLU will be the bad guy if they comply. They will be fined (x milllions a day) if they do not.: "If the Justice Department does win this case, Google is likely to face a second round of subpoenas from the American Civil Liberties Union (Aclu) for follow-up information. The Aclu is challenging the 1998 Child Online Protection Act, which makes it a crime for a commercial website to post material that some jurors might find "harmful" to any minor who stumbles across it. ... Aclu attorney Aden Fine told Ware that his organisation would "certainly need to know" additional information about how Google's search engine works, in order to rebut the Justice Department study. That information, he said, would include topics such as the number of servers and the number of web pages indexed" http://networks.silicon.com/webwatch/0,39024667,39 157220,00.htm Surprizingly, stock went up.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/07/25/id_card_go es_icao/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/ne ws/2006/01/28/nid28.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/01/28/ix home.html
http://management.silicon.com/government/0,3902467 7,39131459,00.htm

I suspect this will apply to the US version too we'll have to see. Politicians are very cagey about this one for obvious reasons.

I'm not sure public PKI is the thing that's about to take off. However, hardware security tokens are.. in the UK, there's been a lot of exposure recently of banking fraud and online security. Turns out the banks have decided (well, are deciding) that hardware devices are less daunting for the user, and easier to manage than certificates.

In this article I quickly found - tokens are about twice as popular than certificates for securing your bank transactions.

Seeing as this security stuff is suddenly fashionable within banking and IT circles, (even APACS is getting in on making a standard!) I expect to see something actually happen reasonably soon.

So.. for the RH engineer, I'd say more hardware authentication support is something to focus on. Look at the APACS standard (quick article) and support the card readers when they come out. The other thing to do is more management applications. The financial services organisations are using tokens because they're easier to manage than certificates, so make certificate management easier. I'd love to just stick my credit card in a ubiquitous reader and suddenly have secure access to all my banking and online services without having to generate a passcode (because it had a cert stored on it), but that doesn't look like its going to happen with the systems being put in place today.

Roll your eyes all you want but not all of us forget the past and curent practices of MS.
MS restrictions did not cover every piece of software and every licensee but it was a common practice and still would be today if it had not have been specifically restricted by the DOJ. Do you really think MS would have had a change of heart on their own?

Here is a clip from Computerworld

Microsoft today said that it built a clause into the recent licensing changes that forces PC makers to include the MSN icon alongside any third-party ones. Varma said that requirement was just an extension of a 6-year-old contract Microsoft's hardware partners are required to sign.

Another link here

The MSN icon issue referenced above was one that recieved the most attention but the licenses restricted the changes and software third parties could add.
The plans of preventing unwanted third party apps and icons was going full speed ahead until this:

Here is the actual ruling sent down from the district court regarding this issue, search or go to "C. Microsoft shall not restrict by agreement any OEM licensee from exercising any of the following options or alternatives:" in that page if you do not want to read the whole thing.

I guess you have not followed the issues in Europe with the bundling of MS Media Player and lack of choice by vendors either have you? Here are some links.

Jokes about hardened criminals stealing viagra aside, if the fake drug is manufactured badly then the dose could be wrong, or the drug contaminated in some way, or worse, not have any active chemical agent in it and lead to the death of the person buying it.

This is also a serious headache for the original drug manufacturer; imagine if vioxx was in fact perfectly safe but it was the knock-offs that had the problems.

"Walk this way, talk this wa-ay."

-- Intel chairman Craig Barrett

The most embarrassing executive antics of the year came early in 2005, as a tone-deaf, stiff white guy stepped up to the stage at the Consumer Electronics Show and joined Aerosmith front man Steven Tyler in a duet.

Watching the video, I was amused trying to determine who was actually the older white guy...

The whole demo with the crazy kids is pretty awkward too. Tyler gives a little speech to the audience... *shudder*

and hell, they've already started attacking us and our allies.

Biometric fingerprint-controlled door locks will guard entry to the Olympics IT control room run by the International Olympic Committee's technology partner Atos Origin. From here they will monitor the technology infrastructure and all the systems controlling accreditation, security and competition data and results for commentators and the media. A team of 250 Atos Origin staff will run the operation supported by some 800 IT volunteers.
Photo: Andy McCue

These guys must be into some serious overclocking by the look of their cooling system.

http://hardware.silicon.com/servers/0,39024647,391 54787-3,00.htm

With over 9.5 million Bluetooth devices shipping per week, Zigbee can only wish that it would be so sucessful.

The record companies may also update the list of search terms every two weeks. Once Sharman receives the updated list, it has 48 hours to act on the changes.

This might be the first in the US... but its miles from being the first available elsewhere in the world. Usually the US is a mobile backwater that lags the rest of the world by around 2 years or so, in this case its around about that mark again.

Japan and Europe have had legal download services for a significant amount of time either via 3rd parties or more recently directly, when it was being talked of as "what is next" in this market.

So like Sprint now do NFL, Europe has been doing Football (Soccer) goals for 3-4 years. TV on your mobile... yup got that... loads of crappy shit you never want... got that... and you'll be getting it soon.

Its expensive over in Europe too against iTunes et al, but that is down to the "convenience" factor (and normally lower quality) of the mobile downloads.

But "first"? Not by a long chalk.

Bad idea. I'm in favour of the millimeter wave solution, even though it might embarrass some people. It sees through your clothes - you know so that you can detect bits and pieces which shouldn't be there. I look forward to the wearable visor edition.

The term predates computers. In the original usage, any sort of mechanical device or system could have bugs.

http://www.silicon.com/software/webservices/0,3902 4657,10005407,00.htm

I just had to go search for more info on RFID implants because sooner or later bills will be proposed by somebody that they be introduced, initially on a voluntary basis....

Back in July silicon.com reported the following: "Tommy Thompson, the Health and Human Services Secretary in President Bush's first term and a former Governor of Wisconsin, is going to get tagged. Thompson has joined the board of Applied Digital, which owns VeriChip, the company that specialises in subcutaneous RFID tags for humans and pets. To help promote the concepts behind the technology, Thompson himself will get an RFID tag implanted under his skin." http://networks.silicon.com/lans/0,39024663,391505 25,00.htm/

December 2003 - Subdermal RFID chip provokes furore http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/12/04/subdermal_ rfid_chip_provokes_furore/

October 2004 - FDA approves computer chip for humans - nice pic of an implant next to George Washington... http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6237364/

This article was followed up in November 2004 http://slate.msn.com/id/2109477/
Verisign thoughtfully provide a method to save you getting your child swapped in the hospital. "The number of total switching incidents is as high as 20,000 per year in the U.S." But don't worry. In this case the tag is not implanted... http://www.verichipcorp.com/

...unlike the VeriKid service provided by the Mexican distributors of verisign technology: http://www.solusat.com.mx/index1.html http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,60771, 00.html

Although RFID implants have their detractors...

http://www.spychips.com/
http://www.notags.co.uk/page26.html
http://www.rfidconcerns.com/
http://www.shire.net/big.brother/digitalangel.htm
http://whiterose.samizdata.net/archives/cat_identi ty_cards.html
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/02/impl anting_chip.html

...they seem to be popular with body piercing fans: Amal Graafstra Gets an RFID Implant http://www.bmezine.com/news/presenttense/20050330. html
And the odd geek or two: http://www.x11.net/wiki/index.php/My_RFID_Implant He has mp4 video footage of the implanting procedure. It doesn't sound like he will want to remove this implant anytime soon - OUCH!

The Mexican Government - "Mexico's Attorney General required the Mark of the Beast in a 160 people. Thousands more are now planned..." http://www.tldm.org/News4/MarkoftheBeast.htm

And the European Parliament! "Brussels: 'Implants to track people are OK'". http://management.silicon.com/government/0,3902467 7,39128836,00.htm/

"Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely" Lord Acton (1834-1902)