Microsoft will be pushing Vista hard this holiday season. It has
new
TV commercials and a big retail campaign coming. Part of the retail strategy
is
hiring
hundreds of gurus to work in stores and talk to you all about Vista.
Then again, the word "guru" might be a little strong. If you're hiring
hundreds of people to work in big electronics stores, you're not going to find
too many true gurus. Trust me, I've met some Mac geniuses and their IQs are
far from Mensan.
Want to read about real Windows gurus? Read my cover story here.
Posted by Doug Barney on September 11, 20080 comments
The almost-long-awaited
Jerry
Seinfeld ads for Microsoft
finally
debuted. And like so many Super Bowls (especially when the Patriots lose),
the "Sopranos" final episode and the new Guns N' Roses, the Seinfeld
ad (at least the first one) was a colossal disappointment.
Jerry showed flashes of his former brilliance, and Gates was pleasantly goofy
(as the script called for). But man, oh man, were the jokes flat. Jerry had
a groaner about taking a shower in your clothes (you're dressed, and you're
clean; open the door and go about your business), and the piece ended with Jerry's
dream of a moist and chewy PC you could eat like cake. That line was as big
a bomb as Windows ME, Bob and the Yahoo deal put together. Interestingly, Gates
was funnier that Jerry!
Did you love or hate the new commercial? High praise and catcalls both welcome
at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on September 10, 20080 comments
There must have been some interesting dinner conversation after Diane Greene
was fired as CEO of VMware while her husband and co-founder, Mendel Rosenblum,
stayed on as chief scientist. Now, on the eve of VMworld,
Rosenblum
has left the company, as well.
My guess is that Rosenblum's departure was only a matter of time. I think he
was mentally ready to leave after his wife was ousted, but out of loyalty to
his troops he stayed on to ease the transition.
The couple made many millions, but neither seems like the type to drift off
into the sunset on a 250-foot yacht. What would you like to see from this dynamic
duo? Suggestions welcome at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on September 10, 20080 comments
Earlier this week, I talked about the
new
atom collider in Switzerland that some scientists think will create microscopic
black holes that will swallow our world. The topic was clearly controversial,
as I got nearly as many letters as when I talk about Vista or the Mac. Have
a look:
I am a science buff, not a scientist, so I can't "do the math"
on the risk of black holes going postal. I doubt that anyone can. Arguments
against permanent black holes are persuasive but they are anecdotal, not objective.
Picture the Manhattan Project with massively (no pun intended) greater energies
involved. I did not sleep very well last night.
-Jim
The same henny-penny scenario was discussed when the first fission experiments
happened under the University of Chicago in the '40s. Look how well that turned
out!
-Brian
Wouldn't it be the ultimate irony if the scientists, the same ones that
have been telling us that we are destroying the planet through global warming,
beat us to the punch?
But it won't happen. Technically (if I understand it correctly), all
black holes are much smaller than microscopic. They are infinitesimally small
points of mass. It is the size of their gravitational influence that grades
their size. If their gravitational influence is microscopic, then the likelihood
of them swallowing anything is as unlikely as the black hole at the center
of our own galaxy reaching out and swallowing us. These things will most likely
disappear as quickly as they are created. The scientists' biggest problem
will be to pull useful data from them before they do disappear. I'd be real
interested in hearing from someone with the proper credentials on this topic.
-T.W.
Want to see what the experts think? Go here.
Anyway, if one of the scenarios listed there or some unknown scenario occurs,
we probably won't be here immediately afterward.
I'd be more worried that after all that money has been spent, humanity is
no closer to understanding how the universe is put together at the subatomic
level. We should all hope that new understanding is gained from the CERN experiments.
Nine thousand physicists could be wrong, but what are the odds of that?
-Mike
The collider has the potential to create microscopic black holes. It's
not worth the risk of destroying a billion-plus people on the Earth because
a very small minority wants to be God. It's totally ridiculous.
-Ken
It's just a bunch of people practicing their religion, nothing more.
-Anonymous
I think there's an opportunity to see the bright side on this one. If
we're ever going to get the chance to see the inside of a black hole first
hand, it'll be tomorrow. Certainly no one wants the Earth to be swallowed
up, but at least it would be a more interesting demise than many alternatives
-- like being hit by a bus. Eat, drink and be merry (and you know the rest).
-Dave
And Dave also chimes in on the slightly more sobering topic of backward compatibility:
For John,
the Mailbag writer who rightly worries about access to electronic documents
in the future, here's
an article I found interesting. It's about the PDF/A format for archiving
PDFs. One of the more interesting points is that converting a PDF to PDF/A
can result in loss of fidelity to the original.
And John, try to dream of more pleasant things, remembering that it might
be all over after tomorrow, anyway.
-Dave
Got something to add? Let me know! Leave a comment below or drop me a line
at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on September 10, 20080 comments
As expected, Microsoft
sent
out four patches yesterday, all to fix eight holes that could allow for
remote execution attacks. While there are only four patches, all are deemed
critical.
A hole in Windows Media Player that could let someone use a media file to take
over your machine got plugged. The Windows graphics engine, GDI+, also got a
hole filled that affects everything from SQL Server to Office. This hole is
one analysts expect to be heavily attacked, so patching is of the essence.
The last two remedies are aimed at Windows Media Encoder 9 and a remote execution
flaw in Office.
Posted by Doug Barney on September 10, 20080 comments
It worked with browsers -- so does that mean it will work with hypervisors?
Microsoft apparently thinks so, as it's now
giving
away Hyper-V.
We've called Hyper-V virtually free since it was only supposed to cost $28
(a strange price indeed). Now it's literally free. The $28 price cut was made
during a huge Microsoft virtualization rollout announcing the imminent delivery
of the standalone rev of Hyper-V.
Trying to match the attention this is getting, VMware in turn announced that
customers were eschewing the Microsoft tool (which hasn't even really shipped)
in favor of ESX. The VMware
press release pointed to a couple of companies that recently had large-scale
ESX rollouts. Not sure how that turns into "VMware Momentum Builds as Customers
Select VMware Platform over Microsoft Hypervisor"!
Posted by Doug Barney on September 09, 20080 comments
John writes that while new technology is great, backward compatibility is nothing
to sneeze at:
I had a nightmare this past weekend. I dreamed that Office 2007 would
not read all the old Microsoft Word documents. This was particularly terrifying,
because I work at a courthouse and we have more than 10 years of historical
and legal electronic documents from various Word versions that we may have
to read and print. If the most recent version of Word won't do this, we will
have to keep older systems and software versions for that purpose.
For 10 years, I have been telling people to move to a paper-less world,
but the threat of unreadable electronic documents scares me. There has been
a lot of noise in the past few years about electronic document standards.
Microsoft seems resistant to the idea. The threat of having unreadable electronic
documents in the public or private sector is very real and should scare people
to think about standards. I have been using personal computers for almost
30 years and have many documents at home on hard-sectored 5 1/4-inch and 8-inch
floppy disks. I suspect I may never see these documents again. Already, the
3 1/2-inch floppy is fading from use, but how many home computer users have
photos and documents on such disks? New technology is great, but we must have
a backward eye for both legal and personal reasons.
-John
And Dave thinks that you can pan
Apple's Newton all you want -- it still had a few things going for it:
In a recent article, you spoke about Apple's Newton as a big mistake,
and rightly so. Even so, take a moment to reflect on what Apple got right.
No matter what else Apple missed with Newton, one thing it got right was the
form factor. Right now, it would be the ideal size to replace my ultra-Micro
PC and my iPhone. In landscape mode, we could have a virtual keyboard that
we could actually type on. In either mode, we would have a screen big enough
for useful free-hand drawing. Don't get me started about how much better it
would be for videos or the maps we use in navigation. Ideally, we could have
it use cellular IP for everything, including phone and answering service.
With the newer technologies used in producing the MacBook Air, we could have
the whole package in a slim, light tablet. Wow.
In the world of personal computing, the future's so bright, you gotta
wear shades.
-Dave
Share your thoughts by filling out the comment form below, or sending an e-mail
to [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on September 09, 20080 comments
The greatest virtualization company you've probably never heard of is
now
part of Red Hat.
Qumranet was unknown to me before Redmond magazine Editor Ed Scannell
did an interview
with its CEO. I found out from Ed (and CEO Benny Schnaider) that Qumranet
has an open source Type 2 hypervisor. That means the hypervisor runs on top
of an OS (in this case Linux) and the OS runs against the processor.
Red Hat, which paid just north of $100 million for Qumranet, is now hoping
to push this hypervisor, called KVM, as the primary solution for Linux. With
Red Hat's muscle and Xen owner Citrix's love of Hyper-V, Red Hat might just
get its way.
Red Hat also gets a commercial desktop virtualization product out of the deal.
There are quite a few of those in the market already.
Posted by Doug Barney on September 09, 20080 comments
The new multibillion-dollar supercollider in Switzerland has many scientists
excited about discovering the origins of our universe -- and others claiming
it will spell
our doom. The collider has the potential to create microscopic black holes,
which turn into larger black holes that could literally eat the earth alive.
My take? The thing is probably safe, but when you're manipulating the very
structures that created the universe, you better be darn sure you know what
you're doing.
Is it worth the risk? Are the fear mongers crackpots or the only ones making
sense? Hurry and send your thoughts to [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on September 09, 20080 comments
Google has had it easy for the last few years. Everyone seems to love this cuddly
company with the kooky name. Its new browser, Chrome, is beginning to change
all that. Fact is, Google is gaining more power and reach -- and with that comes
controversy
and criticism.
Let's start with Chrome. Soon after the beta came out, security researchers
reported a denial
of service vulnerability. The same day, a researcher demonstrated how a
"malformed URL" could take the browser down. All this a day after
the beta came out!
Then there's this: The original license gave
Google the rights to anything you might create with Chrome. That didn't
go over too big.
And there are still fears about how much Google knows about us -- and, more
importantly, will know. For example, some believe that Google does deep-packet
inspection, letting it see everything we do on the Web. I'm not sure about this
deep-packet inspection, but I do know that Google isn't backing down from things
like Street View, which lets strangers see what's going on in your yard and
sometimes right inside your own house.
As you'll see in our Mailbag, Redmond Report readers have mixed feelings about
Chrome. Some see it as fast, simple and slick. Others complain about the lack
of features and how it isn't that friendly with some Microsoft technologies.
Who would have thought? More Chrome impressions welcome at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on September 08, 20080 comments
Tomorrow's Patch Tuesday is nice and light. Only
four
fixes are scheduled, all designed to repair remote execution vulnerabilities.
Office, Windows Media Player and Media Encoder all get plugs. Like this item,
Patch Tuesday
should be short and sweet.
Posted by Doug Barney on September 08, 20080 comments
Is this is a coincidence? Next week is VMworld, VMware's annual trade show hosting
over 10,000 customers, press and partners. This week, Microsoft has a
massive
virtualization launch event focusing on old products, current products and
products yet to come.
The biggest news, in my view, is the release of a standalone version of Hyper-V.
Until now (actually, it doesn't ship for another month) you had to buy Windows
Server 2008 to get it.
Microsoft is also getting serious about management, promising to ship System
Center Virtual Manager 2008 in the next 30 days. The company is also expected
to make noise about Live Migration, a feature it needs to truly compete with
VMware on the high end.
So, is this timing with VMworld a coincidence? Given that the big products
Microsoft is talking about won't be out for a month, I'd say yes.
Is Hyper-V a true competitor to VMware? Yes and no answers welcome at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on September 08, 20080 comments