Over the holiday break, I came across an
article from The Hindu news service about some Wall Streeters suggesting that Microsoft jettison nearly 10,000 employees. Why anyone would listen to Wall Street these days is beyond me. Shouldn't Wall Street listen to Microsoft, a company that has more than proven it knows how to run a business?
In any event, it didn't take long for layoff rumors to swirl. The rumor mills upped Wall Street numbers, and had as many as 15,000 pink slips (with Vista logos?) sent out (via Hotmail or Exchange, I wonder). Steve Ballmer himself contributed to the conflagration by telling shareholders that Microsoft was "looking to reduce head count." But now, some of these shoot-from-the-hip bloggers are backing away from their layoff predictions.
There are lots of ways for Redmond to shrink the workforce. It can let contractors go and not fill the jobs of all the retiring Microsoft millionaires. Layoffs? I'll believe it when I see it.
Posted by Doug Barney on January 07, 20090 comments
We've had a lot of executives on the cover of
Redmond magazine, and sometimes our timing is perfect. Turns out the cover of
Redmond is either a path to riches or the kiss of corporate death. We
interviewed Ray Ozzie days after he joined Microsoft, and not long thereafter Ray took over Bill Gates' job as chief software architect. Then we put
VMware's Diane Greene on the cover and, despite being a fine executive, she was deposed shortly thereafter.
Our latest cover features Microsoft's Bob Muglia. Just as the issue shipped, Mr. Muglia got himself promoted to president of the Servers and Tools Division. Bob has been around Microsoft for years, and was a guy I covered 15 or so years ago at InfoWorld. In my view, he's a tough, smart and eminently reasonable business and technology leader, and so I congratulate Bob on his new role.
Who's your favorite and least favorite high-tech exec? Ballots readily received at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on January 07, 20090 comments
Yesterday, Doug wondered whether
six-and-a-half years in a Chinese prison is too harsh a sentence for software piracy. But most of you think that sounds just about right:
As a founder in a software company and a former police officer, I have no sympathy for software counterfeiters or anyone who chooses to commit any kind of crime. They steal from people who put in the time and energy to create something of value. I wish we could give all counterfeiters/criminals what I hope is an absolutely miserable prison experience for those guys.
-Veijo
Frankly, 1.5 to 6.5 years in prison for piracy seems far too lenient. You have the lost tax revenue to the U.S. (gee, touchy subject right now), you have the lost revenue to the reseller channel (which in turn trickles down to the individual level), you have the time lost by companies and individuals who were gullible enough to purchase the counterfeit software (assuming they even know they are running illegal software; many counterfeit versions are hard to detect), and of course you have the lost revenue to Microsoft (which, much like the reseller channel, trickles down to individuals). And for all of this, 11 people got these short prison terms?
While admittedly I don't know the full details of the case, $2 billion lost and 11 individuals serving up to 6.5 years -- that's still about $30 million per individual per year served. I have to assume there is a financial fine that these individuals will need to pay, and they probably didn't charge full price for the software they sold...but still, that's hardly sending a tough message to counterfeiters!
-Cynthia
There is more than one side of the "pirated software" story. Besides the loss of revenue that Microsoft experiences, what about all of the unsuspecting consumers who purchase software that cannot be supported or even patched? These pirates are making tons of money, and for every copy of a program that is sold, the impact is the same as if they walked into a store and stole it off of the shelf.
I have long thought that as long as the government continues to slap software pirates on the wrist, there will be no incentive for the behavior to stop. Knowing that they may face 6.5 years of incarceration may well deter the next pirate from embarking on an illegal career.
-LouAnne
Given the value of human rights in China, they would've gotten sentenced to death if the Chinese were really serious about deterring counterfeiting. A man in the U.S. was sentenced to four years in jail for spamming. Granted, an American prison is a country club compared to a Chinese one, but this was just for spam -- an inconvenience.
Software counterfeiting is outright stealing and, when done on what sounds like a similar scale, should be considered worse, according to this armchair judge. I am by far not the biggest fan of China, Microsoft or intellectual property law, but in my opinion these 11 guys got lucky.
-Jon
If the pirates didn't want to go to a Chinese jail for their crimes, they shouldn't have done it in China. They should have done it in France or Switzerland or somewhere where the jail doesn't force you to make 1,000 pairs of shoes a day.
-Randy
These guys broke the golden rule that's well-established in kindergarten: Share! I have not heard of any fines levied. These guys will need to spend some of their bread on prison protection, which will hopefully balance out if they partnered with Microsoft and shared their slice of the pie. Now, that would be justice.
Seriously, don't cry for millionaires that will be treated like royalty, albeit in a nasty prison. They may finally appreciate an honest day's work.
-Jim
And after reading a recent Wired article about Ray Ozzie titled "Saving Microsoft," Doug wondered if Microsoft really needs saving in the first place. One reader thinks Wired makes a good case:
Guess you missed the fourth paragraph of that Wired article:
"Not an easy job. Yes, Microsoft still rakes in the dollars from Windows and Office. But the stock has been flat for years. Microsoft used to be regarded with fear and respect -- Lord Voldemort with market share. Now people downgrade their computers to avoid Vista, tech luminaries write blog posts with titles like 'Microsoft Is Dead,' and the public face of the company is the hapless loser in the Apple ads. Oh, and this year, after a 25-month transition, Gates, the once-omnipresent cofounder, left the building."
Qualifies the title in my mind.
-Anonymous
Tell us what you think! Leave a comment below or send an e-mail to [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on January 07, 20090 comments
The holidays were a bit strange this year. The economy was tough, malls were empty, and we in America awaited a new and very different presidential administration.
My own family here in North Central Massachusetts also had an odd time. Due to a massive ice storm and an inept power company, our electricity went out and I had no heat for 15 days. It didn't crank back up 'til the day after Christmas (though many, including the elderly and poor, had it far worse than I did, so no complaints here). My family huddled around a space heater on Christmas morning and were none the worse for wear.
But Christmas wasn't entirely without gifts. Wall Street had $700 billion to play with, our next president talked about an extra trillion dollars or so a year in federal spending (deficit, what deficit?) and hackers blessed the world with a new SQL injection attack.
Apparently, no systems were actually hit and no patch has been released. The news leaked out only because a security researcher let it out, leading experts to rightly criticize the disclosure.
Posted by Doug Barney on January 07, 20090 comments
Doug recently
called out Apple for not doing enough to expand its market and asked readers how they would bring Apple products to enterprises and low-income consumers. Here are some suggestions:
Why, license OS X to hardware vendors, of course. But that would kill Apple's moneymaking proprietary hardware business, so it'll never happen until it has profitability problems -- at which point it would probably be too late.
-Ed
I would do one thing that would immediately expand the Mac market: drop the whole company in a waste basket and set it on fire. Mac has never been a user-friendly OS or company and should fall to the wayside. Just my thought on the matter.
-Joe
And Mark thinks that when it comes to multi-core, Microsoft comes up a little short:
We have been working with multi-core server and desktop systems from the moment they were available. While no single application becomes dazzlingly fast, we have noted how much more consistently software on all-multi-core systems tends to behave. Single-core systems exhibit too many long user interface pauses as more recently developed software, primarily from Microsoft and Adobe, puts too much demand on very limited processing resources.
There is something fundamentally wrong with the Microsoft OS kernels that is mitigated by the presence of multiple CPU cores. Process management should be Kernel Architecture 101 by now, but for some bizarre reason, Microsoft just doesn't get the fact that users expect real-time software interaction at all times. If the interaction is not real-time, users tend to think that their computers and software are broken. To be fair, Apple's OS X, Sun Solaris and Linux also present dysfunctional user interface pauses and even go out to lunch when sufficiently loaded. The threshold is just much higher than we experience with all versions of Windows.
-Mark
Share your thoughts by leaving a comment below or sending an e-mail to [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on January 05, 20090 comments
I have a great interest in supercomputers. I'm not smart enough to really use them or completely understand all the ins and outs, but I'm fascinated by just how much power can be jammed into a single box. And nowadays, you don't have to pay millions for this horsepower. Commodity chips, memory, storage and operating systems mean these puppies are affordable to the average shop -- or even the average yuppie.
That's right: Supercomputing may now be in the realm of the average cheese-eating, pimply-faced, yuppie teenager. Thanks to Dartmouth College, the Playstation 3 (actually, eight of them) can form a single supercomputer. Pretty cool.
You could actually argue that a single PS3 is already a supercomputer, as is an Xbox 360. The PS3 uses an IBM cell processor which is already (as I understand) eight-core, while the Xbox has a custom three-core Intel Xeon. Both of these consoles make a basic -- and more expensive -- PC look like a Radio Shack TRS-80.
The coolest part of the PS3 supercomputer? Like an old Heathkit, you can build it yourself!
Posted by Doug Barney on January 05, 20090 comments
Software counterfeiters in China have long been a thorn in the side of Microsoft bean counters (who never actually saw a lot of beans coming from China). Years ago, one could argue that few Chinese could pay for legit copies of Windows and Office anyway, so what's the harm? But now that the balance of trade with the U.S. is tilted so far in China's favor, you could argue the Chinese can better afford these prices than debt-ridden Americans.
This all serves as a bit of context for the news that Chinese authorities have sentenced 11 software pirates to up to six-and-a-half years in prison, an event that Microsoft celebrated with a congratulatory press release.
I felt a bit nauseous thinking of six years in a Chinese hoosegow and initially thought it bad taste for Microsoft to gloat over these sentences. On the other hand, there's a massive economic impact from all this copying: Microsoft claims that up to $2 billion in potential revenue was lost.
What do think? Sentences too harsh? Too soft? Your judgments welcome at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on January 05, 20090 comments
The Windows 7 beta has
leaked out beyond the small base of testers Microsoft originally intended, and I for one don't think Microsoft is the least bit upset.
In fact, Microsoft seems to be talking more about Windows 7 than about its shipping products. And its Vista commercials mention Mojave (the code name for Microsoft's Vista taste test) way more than Vista itself. Let's face it: Vista is the Blagojevich of the PC market. Everyone wants to steer as clear as possible.
So far, the beta reports for Windows 7 are pretty positive -- all the more reason for Microsoft to want broader distribution. If you're jonesin' for Windows 7, check out BitTorrent now, or just wait a bit for when Microsoft itself has a broader release.
Have you tried the beta? If so, how's it going? Reports welcome at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on January 05, 20090 comments
SQL Server is in the news this week nearly as much as Gov. Blagojevich. No, SQL Server didn't try to sell a Senate seat, refuse to leave office and go for a jog. Instead, SQL Server gained a new beta of what will probably be SQL Server 2010 and got a bunch of new security tools for the current version and a new service pack.
Starting with what's shipping today (or near-abouts), we have beta versions of two SQL Server security tools. Both the Anti-Cross Site Scripting Library and the Code Analysis Tool are built to deflect SQL Injection attacks.
Closer still is SQL Server 2005 SP3, which came out Monday. This service pack is largely a roll-up of bug fixes (if you want new features, Microsoft would be happy to point you to SQL Server 2008), but also includes database engine and replication tweaks.
Furthest out is Kilimanjaro, which isn't due for a couple of years. For those that just have to have what will become SQL Server 2010 now, a preview is scheduled next month.
Posted by Doug Barney on December 18, 20080 comments
Despite Apple's reputation, Macs need protection, too -- as these readers will attest:
I get weekly reports from US-CERT about cyber threats. One of the recent ones was about OS X. Actually, most of the weekly ones are about open source software and, increasingly, OS X. I guess in the downturn of the economy, folks figure they are getting a bargain buying their software at the "dollar store" (OK, Macs from Neiman Marcus). I guess you get what you pay for -- disposable software or a gated community with holes in the fence.
-Dan
Many years ago, a friend gave me a disk of files for my Mac SE. At least one of the files was infected with a virus. My Mac became infected also. I immediately bought an anti-virus program and removed the virus. That lesson taught me the importance of running an anti-virus program, and I have done so ever since. I've never had a problem since then.
-Anonymous
And one reader pokes some holes in Utest's recent contention that the IE 8 beta is currently the safest browser:
Um, the report says 356 uTesters evaluated Internet Explorer 8 and identified 168 bugs, including 9 percent that were classified as showstoppers. Also, 514 uTesters evaluated Firefox 3.1 beta and identified 207 bugs, including 24 percent that were classified as showstoppers. That's from the Utest Bug Battle page. So Firefox testers averaged 0.4 bugs each with access to source code, and IE testers averaged 0.47 bugs each despite using a proprietary browser.
Also: "During this first Bug Battle, the uTest community discovered one bug every 15 minutes in the three leading browsers; the good news, however, is the fact that no showstopper security flaws were found." The bugs that were found were mostly not security bugs, and no major security flaws were found in the course of this testing.
As far as I can tell, the bug lists aren't posted, so there's no indication what was actually found. Concluding that IE is "the safest, most bug-free browser" is not just a bit of a stretch, it's like stretching one piece of taffy from Florida to California. If you want numbers that actually relate to security, try Secunia: 30 percent (10 of 33 Secunia advisories) of the IE security flaws it's aware of are unpatched, and "The most severe unpatched Secunia advisory affecting Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.x, with all vendor patches applied, is rated Extremely critical." As for Firefox, 14 percent (1 of 7 Secunia advisories) are unpatched, and "The most severe unpatched Secunia advisory affecting Mozilla Firefox 3.x, with all vendor patches applied, is rated not critical."
-Anonymous
Meanwhile, Stephen has some more general grievances with the IE 8 beta:
Much as I like the auto-fill of the URL, the number of sites that already do not function with this version has become so numerous that I'm using Firefox far more these days. The RAD editor we use all the time in IE 7 simply doesn't work in IE 8. If you have a number of IE 8 windows (not tabs) open and click on an e-mail link from some support sites, the page opens in EVERY window! I've resorted to "Always run in compatibility mode" but Fidelity.com gets a permanent "NO! Site under maintenance" page for any log-in attempt. "Back" used to simply be a matter of going "back" -- but no, the geniuses at MS now make it an expired-page-retry 90 percent of the time. Logging in to a Web-commerce site used to be autonomous per IE 7 window, but not now! Testing our site is now a multi-machine affair, thanks to IE 8 -- and that's WITH "compatibility" on. Finally, it's ridiculously simple to drop down the URL history and hit the red X when you actually want to use the URL, not delete it! What -- no "Confirm delete from URL history" option?
Perhaps IE 8 has very few security bugs, but for usability I'd give it no more than 6, and the "fear factor" of uninstalling the beta (which was Microsoft's solution for a reporting services rendering issue) is more massive than I can say. Do I really want a hosed machine? Prior IE and MS uninstalls have left me with chills!
-Stephen
And finally, Rob closes out the year with a few good words about a Microsoft product that's taken plenty of shots in 2008:
I have installed over a hundred copies of Vista on newer PCs (no older than one year). Honestly, I have not had an easier time with an OS install before, ever. I waited over three months after RTM for Microsoft to patch the immediate bugs and get their ducks squared away (like XP and 2000, history shows every new OS has glitches to hurdle over before it's stable).
My first reaction was that it's a fast OS. It has a few quirks here and there with device drivers and legacy apps, but overall, it's slick. Then came SP1...WOW. I remember the first install on an HP Pavilion. Twenty-seven minutes to install, found the Wi-Fi, all peripherals and external HDDs, and just worked. No third-party driver installs. Simple. Easy. Fast. Slick. Love it. And I still do. I love Vista. I believe in it. I sell it daily and although I get the daily grinding calls about XP and its sad demise...well, some people don't like the new Honda Civic, either!
-Rob
Redmond Report is adjourning until next year, but keep sending us your letters! Leave a comment below or send an e-mail to [email protected] -- we'll resume posting them in January.
Posted by Doug Barney on December 18, 20080 comments
Let's say there's a big independent convention that does nothing except gather your customers and promote your products. Oh, and they offer you the keynote so you can shock the world with amazing new products. "Where do I sign up?" you might ask.
But if you're Steve Jobs, you'd ask, "How can I bail?"
That's what Apple and Jobs are doing with Macworld. Job cancelled his keynote and next month's Macworld will be the last Apple will support. Instead, Apple will push its own events. Can you say proprietary?
My beef is that Apple isn't reaching out to new markets. It's not reaching out to the enterprise (we've offered Apple opportunities to talk to you Redmond readers, but it had little interest). It's not reaching out to middle- and low-income consumers (or the Third World) with aggressively priced products. And now it's not even reaching out to its own customers!
What would you do to expand the Mac market? Suggestions welcome at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on December 18, 20080 comments
Cisco -- or, for the purpose of this story, Captain Obvious -- released a study showing that hacker attacks are
getting more sophisticated. Doesn't this happen each and every year?
Diving into the details, Cisco says spam makes up about 90 percent of all e-mail traffic. (Since my e-mail is published everywhere, including in this newsletter, spam is about 99 percent of all my mail.) There's also a new form of personalized spam; this way, phishers trick you into thinking the mail is truly legit. Botnets are also getting trickier, the network giant says.
Posted by Doug Barney on December 18, 20080 comments