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.
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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.
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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.
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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:
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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Posted by Doug Barney on September 08, 20080 comments