Yesterday wasn't a great day for stockholders, workers, politicians or taxpayers.
In fact, the only folks who made money on Monday are the ones who sell red ink.
So far, Microsoft hasn't been clobbered by the Wall Street fiasco, meltdown,
mess, debacle, scandal or disgrace. In fact, Microsoft went on the record denying
that it was freezing its hiring. As many companies are laying off thousands,
not freezing hiring sounds pretty dang good.
Is this economy affecting your shop, and if so, how? Stories of gloom and perseverance
welcome at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on October 07, 20080 comments
Last week, Doug wrote about a survey that showed .NET's popularity is
on
the rise, after lagging behind Java's for some time. David explains what
may be behind the change:
I am not a developer, but from a system admin point of view, I do not
care for Java. With .NET, you have 1.0, 1.1, 2.0, 3.0 and soon 4.0. With Java,
you have 10 or 12 JRE releases per 1.6.xx release. This becomes very cumbersome
because most apps are tested against a certain Java release so each time that
changes you have to deploy the new JRE (I called it the 'JRE chase'). I had
this issue with a company that developed health care software. As a company,
they did not seem to care much.
With .NET, you only have a handful of releases and they can be easily
deployed with WSUS.
-David
Readers chime in with more of their thoughts on scareware,
and their suggestions for fighting it:
I hate scareware! Had a machine last year with this problem. A user was
clicking on the supposed 'problem' messages.
I think Centurion or another type of freezing software that puts the
computer back to a clean state upon restart is one of the best ways to deal
with it in a large deployment. Of course, keeping users from having install
rights and user education are effective tools, as well.
-Jason
Have PCs that you maintain for friends or family? You would do them a
huge favor if you set up multiple accounts in Windows, with the accounts that
access the Internet having limited privileges. For adults, provide them with
clear instructions on the only times they can log in to an administrative
account to install well-known software.
My two children would be tempted to do the same thing many other computer
novices do when these types of pop-ups occur, or they just want to add that
required software to run games on their browser. Secure it and then lock down
all the possibilities to find other ways to install executables. We haven't
had a single virus for years on a family computer that's actively used by
four different accounts.
-Joe
These stories are all reasons why people should NOT be surfing the Web
using an account with administrator privileges! This means setting up the
PC from the very beginning with an administrator's account and a limited-user
account, and doing all of your normal work with that limited-user account.
Of course, how many people not in the IT field would know about this?
Should companies that sell computers do a better job of educating the general
public about this?
-Steve
And Doug's daughter chimes in with her advice:
How do I prevent the scareware pop-ups (and all pop-ups)? I got a Mac,
and have maybe had one single pop-up since.
-Lauren
What do you think? Leave a comment below or send an e-mail to [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on October 07, 20080 comments
There's a pretty big battle in the world of high-performance computing (HPC)
and hopefully this will soon affect those of you in IT.
HPC has long been the purview of designers, engineers, 3-D renderers and data
miners. These high-performance boxes cluster massive arrays of processors, often
x86 (and GPUs for the graphics-inclined), and aim it all at a small set of specialized
applications. It's very cool, but unfortunately a bit of a niche.
And many of these systems -- in essence, commodity supercomputers -- have been
running Linux. It's free and nice and scalable across clusters, multicores and
multiprocessors. Windows Server is also showing some spunk in this market, and
the availability of either Linux or Windows means you may be able to apply this
muscle soon to more common data-processing tasks.
Red Hat doesn't want to miss this opportunity and has a new
bundle -- a software stack, if you will -- that includes Linux itself along
with clustering tools and a job scheduler. With so much great commodity hardware,
this should form the basis of expensive and utterly ripping HPC systems.
Can you see a use for this style of HPC/supercomputer? Super-smart answers
accepted at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on October 07, 20080 comments
Users of recent model Mac Pro desktops have apparently had to live with a
strange
smell (the computer smells, not the user). A French scientist believes the
odor is actually benzene and could give you cancer. Apple says not to worry,
but is looking into it anyway.
What ever happened to our CRTs giving us all cancer with their radioactive
effulgence? Do you fear your computer, your cell phone or the high tension lines
that power them? Fears and comforting thoughts both welcome at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on October 06, 20080 comments
Amazon wasn't satisfied with just selling books online, so it started hocking
everything from music to clothes to bike parts. Then it looked around and realized
it had a rather massive datacenter(s)...so why not sell computing power, as
well?
Many of Amazon's cloud services have apparently been Linux-based. But Linux
isn't enough for many customers who want to run Windows Server and SQL Server
remotely. Amazon is more than happy to oblige, and is now beta
testing these two platforms.
Microsoft itself is widely expected to announce a cloud of its own later this
month. Will clouds change the role of IT? And what services would you most want
up there? Wise answers welcome, as always, at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on October 06, 20080 comments
HP is a major player in virtualization. It has a couple of lines of servers
it virtualizes, a thin client strategy, plenty of management tools and a whole
bunch of storage. It has so much in the virtualization space, it took me about
a month to figure it all out and write
this
feature.
HP is strengthening its virtual storage hand by shelling out $360 million to
buy
LeftHand Networks, an up-and-coming maker of iSCSI storage.
I think storage is the next frontier in virtualization, but the industry has
to work on overall definitions, standards and tools that are easier to install
and manage. What is the reality of virtual storage? Shoot your thoughts and
experiences off to [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on October 06, 20080 comments
Have you been hit by scareware? These readers share your pain. As pomised, here
are their stories about how they got hit, and how they dealt with the problem:
We're a non-profit providing low-cost computers to low-income disabled
and low-income seniors. The majority of our clientele are new to computers,
and when presented with a big warning in large letters, they will click "Fix
it!" This is a real problem, since our people have no clue as to how
to remove the infection (and I've done it and it isn't easy or quick). What
a pain!
-Paul
I just finished a full factory restore on a friend's laptop because he
clicked on a pop-up for Antivirus 2008. This "free" virus checker
completely trashed his machine. Luckily, I was able to save most of his documents
prior to the machine becoming completely unusable.
-Ron
I am an IT pro, have been for 30 years. There is a lot to be said for
the old dumb terminals that did not have Internet! Since Aug. 1, we have had
15-plus machines get the Antivirus 2008 or some variant thereof at work, and
at least that many employees' personal home machines, which has earned me
some additional pocket money.
But my own personal machines at home (two) also got it -- the first thanks
to one of my daughters, and the second I have to take the blame for. And before
I found a great tool for removal, I spent days trying to clean them up. In
fact, for the one my daughter did, I accidentally deleted some files in the
Windows folder that from that point prevented me from logging back into the
machine, period. I had to change hard drives and make the original C drive
D to be able to back up the 75GB of stuff she had on it. Another week of restoring
and re-installing, and she was back up. Lawsuit is not punishment enough --
theses companies should be tarred and feathered!
-Harry
One of our office machines was playing music from the Internet through
Media Player and a window popped up declaring, "You have been infected
with horrible Trojans, you need to download this now." Thankfully, I
was there and they asked me what was going on. I found out that this was that
bogus Antivirus 2009 that has been showing up in various places. What really
surprised me was that this site not only showed up as an advertisement on
the site Media Player was pointed to, but was a sponsored site on Google and
Yahoo and probably other search engines. I am truly amazed that these search
sites don't screen their advertisers better than this. Apparently, these scammers
are willing to pay to appear on search engines because we are gullible and
will fall into their trap.
The other thing that surprised me was that even while I was telling the user
that this was bogus, they kept saying, "It looks so official, so genuine."
I pointed out that they would hardly make it look fake if they really want
to fool people, and they still kept saying, "It looks so real."
Yes, it does.
-Anonymous
I'm there right now with a PC hit by scareware. Our HR manager brought
in his home laptop and he swears he only visited the GA Bulldog Web site.
The laptop has been taken over by one of those "Your PC is infected"
scams. It's infected, all right! I'm at the point now where the only recourse
is to erase the hard drive. I hope there will be teeth in whatever is done
to go after these companies!
-Buz
XP anti-spam, or something similar, got onto my daughter's computer. I
used Symantec's eradication instructions, but it took days of effort, and
I learned more about registry than I wanted to know.
-Bill
I had a situation recently where my son got attacted by one of these programs.
I did eventually fix it, but it took three days, a lot of investigation and
a copy of bootable Linux to get to the root of the problem. It was almost
as bad as a rootkit to get rid of. Normally, I would probably have just reformatted
the hard drive and reinstalled, but I was bound and determined that some punk
was not going to get the best of me. Since then, I have heard of a number
of other people infected with this crap, and I just wish I would have documented
what I had to do to fix it and post the fix on the Web. Maybe next time.
-Rusty
One of our employees approached me and said his home computer had gotten
some type of virus and had become unusable. Being the compassionate IT manager
that I am, I told him to bring it in. When I turned it on and booted it up,
I could not do anything but stare in disbelief, and then laugh. Basically,
his background wallpaper was red with a virus symbol and the words "You
have a virus" or something to that effect. A pop-up box with a bogus
scan started running and messages started popping up everywhere saying all
types of virus and spyware were detected. I watched amused as Norton AntiVirus
helplessly tried to get things under controll, but it was way out of its league
and was probably making things worse. I could not click or open anything except
a dialog box that popped up saying that I needed to buy the full version of
Vista Antivirus 2008 to fix the problem.
Apparently, while he was surfing the Web he came upon a site that popped
up a dialog box that would "scan his computer for free" for viruses
and spyware. My solution for him? Boot from the XP CD, stay away from questionable
Web sites and do not click on links that promise to clean your PC. Well, you
can guess...the rest is history.
-Asif
I am a division chief with a south Chicago suburb fire department and
also the IT manager for the same municipality. I have had about 30 PCs that
have been infected by these seemingly legitimate pop-ups. I advise my users
to just pull the power plug when one appears, no matter what they're doing.
For the unfortunate ones that didn't, or just clicked the "X" in
the top-right corner, they paid the ultimate data processing price. Their
hard drives went to alphabet heaven. A few were recovered by purchasing other
anti-virus software and these actually did clean up the mess. Most weren't
so lucky. The impact of this is that a lot of these firefighters have had
to use their personal PCs for training. Hours and hours of PowerPoint presentations,
movies and lessons that firefighters and paramedics use went up in smoke.
The problem with this latest round of "You're infected" pop-ups
is that they have the look and feel of a real Microsoft window. When a virus
takes on the look and feel of an operating system, the average user is not
going to have the tools to decide between "Oh, this one is real"
and "Uh-oh...yank the plug." Microsoft and the DAs of the states
-- if not at the federal and international level -- should hunt these authors
down and prosecute them fully with felony charges.
-Tom
Got a comment of your own you'd like to share? Let us know! Leave a comment
below or send an e-mail to [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on October 06, 20080 comments
Yesterday,
Doug wrote about Larry Ellison's criticisms of cloud computing. Here are some
of your own thoughts:
Cloud, shmoud. Yes, the cloud is way overhyped. I'm already tired of
hearing about it. Isn't this just another name for client/server computing?
Ho-hum. Been there, way past that.
Oh, and the day I would trust our company's data and/or applications to the
cloud is the day the entire Internet decides to take a dump and I would be
shown the door. No thanks.
-Phil
I think that anyone dismissing cloud computing as hype doesn't know what's
going on around them. We're going through another swing toward "mainframe"
computing, but this time instead of using thin clients to access user sessions
on beefier servers, individual servers are being virtualized on large servers,
and the new thin client is the browser.
I would recommend that people look into hosted cloud offerings such as
Mosso.com, Amazon's EC2 and others to get an idea of what utility cloud computing
really is. You pay for what you use, and your environment scales dynamically
to meet your usage needs. You no longer need to spec out individual pieces
of hardware for hosting certain applications. You just put your applications
online and go. You pay for the disk space, bandwidth and CPU time that you
use. Cloud computing is service on-demand. Many SaaS providers are hosting
on these types of platforms to dynamically scale their application as they
add subscribers. The mainframe is getting much smarter. We apologize if it
has a catchy name.
-Jeremy
A recent survey suggests that .NET
is making gains against Java. Readers share where they stand:
A lot depends on what you are doing and what you need to do. We use both
.NET and Java; some of the tools we use are .NET-centric and some are Jave-centric.
The tools perform very well and play nicely with each other. Here's my take,
though: If Microsoft doesn't start lowering the prices, I think it's going
to end up pricing itself out of the market. Yes, its tools are well-polished,
but it's not like the average programmer can pick up a copy and play with
it. You used to be able to do that with VB and still afford lunch, but that
day has disappeared. Plus, the toolset has gotten a lot more complicated and
more pricey. I can download any number of IDEs for Java development and pick
the one that suits me. With .NET, I'm pretty much limited to MS -- especially
if what I'm doing is mission-critical.
I used to have an MSDN subscription, but I honestly can't justify the
cost to my boss. In fact, I'd rather have them spend the money and give me
a standalone SAP system, which is another thing I develop for. I don't even
need to worry about .NET vs. Java in that environment; I just use what they
provide and it all plays nicely together. So if you're developing the latest
tool for Symantec, then yeah, .NET and MSDN is the way to go. But if it doesn't
matter what builds your app, I think MS has a LONG way to go to justify the
cost.
-Bruce
As far as .NET vs. Java, we are a custom software dev shop in Austin,
Texas that USED to do both Java and .NET -- but we have not had a single customer
requesting Java in more than three years! Every project where the customer's
RFP specifies the base technology, it has almost always been .NET (and occasionally
PHP on Web projects). And where they have not specified, I cannot remember
a single project that ended up being a Java project. The only Java developers
I still know are some guys who are evolving a five-year-old application for
Pitney Bowes, and even they are starting to move to .NET for future versions.
As for us, we are now pretty much exclusively a C#/.NET house.
-Shaune
A few more of you chimed in on VMware and its plan to create a datacenter OS:
VMware's plans for the datacenter OS are great ideas if it can make them
work. This would allow us to use some of our older hardware for the processing
power that otherwise have gone to the scrap heap. It could also lead to faster
results and provide a better user experience. In terms of moving this eventually
to the cloud, I believe there are going to be many reservations and there
will have to be some high-level SLAs to justify this move.
-Andy
Not so long ago, I worked for a litigation support company with a close
relationship with EMC, a relationship that was doomed because EMC eventually
decided to be a competitor and the litigation support company was acquired
by a search engine vendor without a single clue. During the EMC days, however,
we had VMware forced down our throats at every opportunity, first on our development
machines and later with the enterprise edition forced into our datacenter.
I hated it on the development machines, both because of its effect on peformance
and because we repeatedly lost significant amounts of development due to virtual
machine issues. (I eventually refused to continue using VMware on development
machines, switching fully to Virtual PC for improved performance and greater
stability.) Use of enterprise editions of VMware in the datacenter proved
nearly catastophic. The servers on which it was deployed suffered severe performance
degradation and increasingly erratic behavior. It was yanked from all production
servers shortly thereafter.
In my opinion, VMWare enjoyed success in the virtualization market as an early,
major player with few competitors, a level of success that's quickly fading,
in part because it lacks the technical and business expertise to effectively
compete with later-arriving players and because virtualization is a technology
best embedded in the core operating system. I fully expect Microsoft to reduce
VMware to "also-ran" status in the virtualization market -- and
I look forward to it doing so.
-John
Philip shares his thoughts on exactly what Microsoft's High
Performance Computing (HPC) Sever is capable of doing:
The whole HPC issue is a little muddied since the cores of current desktop
and server machiens are plenty busy due to them being dispatched by the large
number of concurrent threads running on the typical machine. Sorry to disagree
with you -- and also Microsoft -- on this issue. Microsoft's HPC push is designed
to deal with the next generation of processors that will have MANY more cores
(dozens, hundreds), and there may not be enough work via a typical multithreaded
application and operating system to keep the cores busy
In essence, the HPC push is an educational and technical push to get developers
to break up their applications into smaller subunits of execution (which is
not possible or practical with current compiler and OS technology). HPC is
also a necessary evolution of Microsoft's .NET technology to provide it with
better scalability and also some unique distinctions so that it is a more
attractive platform for high-end/high-performance applications.
-Philip
And Fred thinks there's more to Microsoft's recent $40
billion stock buyback than meets the eye
I wonder whether this is Microsoft buying back assorted shares of lots
of small investors on the open market...or Bill and Steve cashing in by having
Microsoft buy back some (or all?) of THEIR shares before the market implodes
on them.
-Fred
We want to know what you think! Leave a comment below or send an e-mail to
[email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on October 02, 20080 comments
Over a decade ago, I covered unified communications; back then, everyone from
Microsoft to Novell was talking about not just blending voicemail and e-mail,
but tying all your devices -- like cell phones, pagers and Palms (remember those
things?) -- together.
The emergence of VoIP should've made all this much, much easier, but when it
comes to UC, we
aren't really any closer than we were 12 years ago.
Some of you have figured all of this out and have effective UC strategies.
You're a minority, and I'm envious. Most of us still have unintegrated pockets
of contacts, messages and data -- work phones, home phones, home office phones,
cell phones, corporate e-mail and private e-mail. How do you make all this work
together? Solutions welcome at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on October 02, 20080 comments
Charles Simonyi is famous in a few largely unrelated circles. PC vets know him
as the man behind Word and Excel. Celebrity stalkers know him as the boy-toy
who picked up Martha Stewart from jail. And space junkies know him as the man
who spent millions to go into space as a private citizen.
Simonyi either liked space so much, or has so much cash to burn that he's
heading back up. Good luck, Chuck!
Posted by Doug Barney on October 02, 20080 comments
I know you've been there. Your computer is happily chugging along, and all
of a sudden a pop-up warns of a virus, critical performance problem or some
other such catastrophe. Being the IT guru that you are, you ignore it, knowing
it's all a scam.
Not everyone is so smart. Plenty click on the pop-ups and buy the unnecessary
-- and often bogus -- security software offered. I had a whole machine destroyed
this way, and I never even clicked the link! I swear!
Microsoft is working with the state of Washington to sue
companies that exploit Windows to deliver these misleading pop-ups. I hope
Microsoft and the state attorneys kick some major pop-up butt.
Have you or anyone you know been victimized by this garbage? Horror stories
welcome at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on October 02, 20080 comments
Yesterday,
I brought you news about Visual Studio 2010, and also argued that Microsoft
treats developers particularly well. There are a few complaints that some tools
are overpriced and don't support enough non-Microsoft technologies, but overall
the programmers I talk to are pretty happy.
That may be the reason .NET
is on the rise, taking a few chunks out of Java's market share. According
to a new report by Evans Data, 60 percent of developers will invest more in
.NET. Developers are a finicky lot, so Microsoft is either doing something very
right or the Java camp is doing something very wrong.
Where do you stand -- behind Java or Microsoft? Tell me what you think at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on October 01, 20080 comments