Microsoft has been trying to become the Google of Web search, first with MSN
search and now with Windows Live Search, which, last time I checked (two minutes
ago), gave an ego-deflating 3,928 results for "doug barney." But it
did have a
cool
first result
.
Meanwhile, Google returns a more gratifying 17,100 pages.
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Posted by Doug Barney on March 13, 20070 comments
I wish that this could be a new tradition -- Patch-Free Tuesday.
That's right, patchers: Tomorrow you can take the day off as there are no
patches on Patch Tuesday!
While that sounds great, the news is not 100 percent good. There is still an
unresolved Word zero-day exploit that Microsoft is working on.
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Posted by Doug Barney on March 12, 20070 comments
If any one feature has caused Vista controversy, it's User Access Control. It's
even the butt of the latest round of Apple ads. Basically, Vista asks for permission
before you can do just about anything. Disable it, and all that malware comes
diving on in.
BeyondTrust, a new company formed by former DesktopStandard chief John Moyer,
has an answer. Privilege Manager 3.0 lets IT fine-tune application privileges.
Essentially, users operate with least privileges, but if more rights are needed
to run a certain app or do certain things, this can be set up by IT. There's
a lot more to it than that, so if you want to know more, wander over here.
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Posted by Doug Barney on March 12, 20070 comments
Dell, currently getting its hat handed to it by HP, is contemplating
Linux
as an option for desktop and laptop computers
. This is great news for Linux
lovers, and could be a market-changing event. But for Linux to make desktop
headways, I need to see real ease of use and some serious low-ball pricing!
Posted by Doug Barney on March 08, 20071 comments
Critics have long charged that Microsoft gets little for the billions it spends
on research. I've covered this area and am convinced that Microsoft is right
in not looking at it in terms of pure dollars and cents. Microsoft researchers
aim instead to push the frontiers.
At
this year's TechFest, researchers showed off a way to make custom sticky
notes, a way to convert a handwritten sticky note into voice mail, a new approach
to WiFi advertising and a video game that introduces kids to the fundamentals
of programming.
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Posted by Doug Barney on March 08, 20070 comments
SQL Server 2005 got a bunch of new features and fixes two weeks ago with the
release of Service Pack 2. Now, there's a fix for the fix. Apparently, there
was a problem with integration services and some cleanup tasks.
Get the skinny
here
.
Posted by Doug Barney on March 08, 20072 comments
We might knock Microsoft every now again here at Redmond Report, but there
is one area where we go pretty easy: developer tools. After more than 30 years
in the development tools business (anyone who actually used Altair BASIC is
automatically enrolled in the Doug Barney Hall of Fame), Microsoft is getting
pretty good at the game.
Ironically, because Microsoft is a commercial enterprise and not open source,
it's free to establish a vision and push it to the hilt (incidentally, this
is an area our latest magazine, Redmond
Developer News, covers intensely).
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Posted by Doug Barney on March 07, 20070 comments
Last week, we told you that Microsoft is refusing to license low-end versions
of Vista to run on the Mac in virtual machines. Microsoft cited security concerns,
which seemed like a pretty random argument to some critics (like me).
While I'm no expert in virtualization, the people at VMware are, and they also
saw a certain speciousness in Microsoft's contention. And like me, they took
their concerns to the Internet.
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Posted by Doug Barney on March 07, 20070 comments
While Microsoft antitrust issues in the U.S. are mostly an annoyance,
in
Europe they are an unrelenting migraine
. The European Union has been trying
to get Microsoft to fully open its communications protocols and make them available
to third parties and competitors. Now, the beef seems to be over how much these
protocols are worth. The EU wants them to be free, while Microsoft argues that
it charges far below what other companies charge for similar technology.
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Posted by Doug Barney on March 06, 20070 comments
Before Vista was released, Symantec put out a detailed critique of Vista security.
It was a well-written though odd document, as it criticized some items that
were being fixed before final release, and even blasted some items that had
already been taken care of!
Now that Vista is out, Symantec has a new document, "Security
Implications of Microsoft Windows Vista."
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Posted by Doug Barney on March 06, 20070 comments