It's Election Day in the U.S.
I told my staff to figure out the best time to vote and to go ahead and do
it -- don't worry about time away from work. I can't reach half of 'em by phone
or e-mail so they must have chosen the busiest time and the longest line! Hey,
anyone ever heard of a BlackBerry?!
I have no idea who'll win (could be a stunning Nader upset, eh what?), but
I do know that the main candidates talked more about George W. and William Ayers
than about our huge IT industry.
And of course, both lectured about the economy, but seemingly none (except
maybe the Libertarian) passed second-grade math. Apparently, when you have a
$10 trillion deficit and a collapsing economy, the answer is to increase spending
and cut taxes. If I ran Redmond that way, it would be out of business; and if
I ran my house that way, I'd be in a run-down apartment and my 1980 Porsche
928 would be repossessed.
And you have to run your IT shop within a budget, and can't justify massive
deficits by quoting John Maynard Keynes. Unlike you and me, our candidates love
to focus on Keynes' idea that deficit spending stimulates the economy, forgetting
that he advocated paying off these debts during prosperity. Oops.
That said, I personally like and admire the two leading candidates. I'd defend
each with equal ferocity in a bar fight. (Who would be a tougher tangle and
why? Place your bets at [email protected].)
What can the U.S. to shore up the economy, and should it even mess with what
might be natural business cycles? And what about tech? Should politics get involved?
Hanging and non-hanging chads welcome at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on November 04, 20080 comments
Remember the bank guard on "The Andy Griffith Show," the old coot
who was always asleep and whose gun fell apart every time he drew it? Well,
it seems that's far more protection than many of us give to our e-mail systems.
An
IDC
survey shows that almost no shops control the data sent out over e-mail,
which may or may not contain corporate secrets.
In my opinion, this isn't an e-mail issue. Even if the mail is locked down,
there are a million ways to ship out confidential information -- via an envelope,
Gmail, thumb drive or CD. The real solution is to control access.
The survey also found that only one in 10 shops use anti-spam software. The
implication is this is a bad thing. But I'm not so sure. Spam filters have to
be set up very, very carefully. I've had 'em where the quarantine held all my
important e-mail, and my inbox stored all my spam. Do you have any spam filter
horror stories? Send the scariest tales to [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on November 04, 20080 comments
HP is trying to reinvent the world of magazine publishing with wholly-owned
MagCloud.com, a Web site and system that
makes it almost as easy to publish a magazine as it is for an amateur (to be
kind) writer to blog.
That's pretty cool, but what's cooler is that the site is testing
out Azure, Microsoft's new cloud platform.
MagCloud.com uses HP printing technology to print these rags on the fly. I've
long had what I think is a better idea: Have home printers built to print magazines
and Web sites formatted as magazines.
Here's what I wrote
in April 2007: "I think the computer industry can and should save print,
and here's how. We get HP, Lexmark and all the other printer companies to make
inexpensive printers that can take a digital publication, print it in all its
four-color glory, staple it and let you take it to where the real learning takes
place -- the bathroom."
Posted by Doug Barney on November 04, 20080 comments
Microsoft
released
Vista SP2 in limited beta last week, prompting Doug to ask readers what
they've thought so far about SP1. From your responses, it looks like it's faring
better than expected:
I use Vista Business Edition SP1 at work, and Vista Home Premium Edition
SP1 at home. I have no problems at all with either of them. I can do all of
my work just fine on the work system, and I play all kinds of graphics-intensive
games on my home system. Vista works great for me, so I don't know what everyone
is complaining about.
-Kyle
Don't be afraid of Vista! I am running all Vista boxes in my office, and
have been for a year. I run both 32- and 64-bit machines without any problems.
I do have to admit, however, that there are more issues with 64-bit boxes
regarding driver functionality, but they're workable. SP1 was smooth as silk
with 32-bit systems, but there were a couple of hangs in installing the correct
64-bit patch. Some of my customers for whom I've recently built new Vista
systems are well over 65 and run Vista flawlessly. I receive very few help
calls!
With Microsoft getting ready to retire XP soon, we are all feeling the
pinch to switch over. If we were to wait for Windows 7, we would still be
in the same "wait and see" boat, because I don't think Microsoft
is ever going to have one OS hang around that long again (as in NT, for instance).
-Dan
I've been on Vista since day one, on a machine that was labeled as Vista-ready
and that shipped with XP installed. And it's a x64 machine. I should have
more problems than anyone, but I've been virtually problem-free. I think you
guys all give Vista a very undeserved bad rap. -Anonymous
To be honest, I have no idea what the fuss is all about with Vista being
deployed from an IT perspective. I'm currently working for a good sizeed corporation
(800-plus employees) that owns a large base of financial institutions. We
have a mixture of Windows XP and Vista Business Edition 32-bit SP1 deployed
at the majority of our banks. Vista is working great with our bank applications
and a majority of the older bank apps have been made to work with little effort.
We in IT have welcomed the additional security added to Vista, like a more
robust Group Policy that allows even better control over our users.
We are not waiting for Windows 7 as an answer to what's wrong in Vista
(and we have yet to see many issues at all), as those will be fixed like anything.
I would like to see Vista stop being treated like the ill-fated stepchild
of Windows ME.
-Bill
We had been holding back on Vista rollout internally as our early experience
with Vista was pretty discouraging. The net assessment was the gains from
Vista were pretty even with the downsides, so why move from XP? But we recently
acquired an HP laptop machine and discovered that it would not be easy to
do with it what we usually do with a new machine, i.e., wipe what the manufacturer
loaded on the hard drive and reload with an RTM version of XP SP3. The RTM
version of XP did include disk drivers for the type of hard drive controller
built into the laptop. We would need to locate the right disk drivers and
hope they would integrate correctly into the XP installer.
It had been a while since we had looked at Vista, and we also were curious
about 64-bit performance, so we elected instead to replace the Vista Home
64-bit version shipped with the laptop with an RTM Vista 64 Ultimate version.
The Vista shipped from HP included all sorts of add-on "crapware"
programs that killed its performance during boot-up. Replacing this with RTM
Vista 64 Ultimate SP1 eliminated the add-on programs and their negative effect
on performance. We were amazed at the high performance of RTM Vista 64 SP1
on this laptop. The hardware choices and Vista seemed tuned for each other.
Vista 64 performed noticeably faster on this laptop than Vista 32 on desktop
machines with faster hardware.
Our take is that Vista's bad reputation comes from insufficient hardware
performance, operating in 32-bit rather than 64-bit mode, manufacturer-installed
applications, and the many pre-SP1 compatibility issues. It is a shame that
this OS is not more appreciated!
-Charles
I have run Vista since it was first released and have been pleased with
it, although it's not without issues. The thing I noticed, though, is that
most of the issues were application/driver-based and not with the core. Once
the problem applications/drivers were updated, the issues went away and I
can honestly say that Vista has run fine since then. The amazing thing is
that my laptop in not a high-end machine like most Vista "haters"
state you have to have, and I still have no real major issues.
SP1 has really helped with compatibility and performance and I really
hope that MS improves the performance even more with SP2. The start up time
is still too slow. I'd also like to see the SP2 include all the latest versions
of the .NET Framework. This is important to me as a developer, since it helps
make deploying applications I write.
-Shawn
Speaking of things you'd like to see in Vista SP2, here are a few more:
There are a couple of things that I'd like to see in the new SP2 update,
namely:
- The Vista Media Center TV Pack 2008 included and not remain an OEM-only
add-on. This is core functionality that would increase the adoption of Vista
Media Center and thus Vista as an OS. Microsoft has a real jewel with Media
Center and some of us geeks migrated to Vista just for the added functionality,
only to see it get lost in the shuffle.
- The ability to Remote Desktop into Vista Premium PCs re-added. With
a Premium edition, you expect to have the features you had in Windows XP
Professional, and more. To remove this ability and only make it available
in the Ultimate edition was simply a bad decision.
- Addition of hooks to support the Motorola CableCard software edition.
Since it will soon be available (if it's not already), this would be a better
solution to providing multi-stream decoding in multi-tuner setups than CableCards
on the individual tuners themselves. Besides, CableCard tuners are more
expensive.
- The ability to share a single physical multi-stream CableCard on one
tuner among all tuners in the system.
May it be so!
-Anonymous
Tell us what you think! Leave a comment below or send an e-mail to [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on November 04, 20080 comments
Last week, Doug wondered whether tough economic times mean
companies
should be extra careful to protect their data against inside threats. Barb
thinks it's a good idea -- but companies should tread lightly:
It doesn't hurt to walk through security practices and settings. It may
be a wake-up call to many of us. But I hope it doesn't create unfounded suspicions
against fellow employees -- witch hunts, of sorts -- timely though it may
be. We have enough bad feelings about our economic quagmire; we don't need
to manufacture more.
-Barb
Tell us what you think! Leave a comment below or send an e-mail to [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on November 03, 20080 comments
Google Docs is a low-end set of productivity apps that run on the Web. So what's
Microsoft's response? Turn Office into a low-end set of productivity apps that
run on the Web!
At PDC, Microsoft announced that Office
would run in the cloud, bereft of a few hundred features or so, and be accessible
by PCs and even mobile devices such as cell phones.
This might not take all that long to arrive, as Office Live Workspace is already
in beta. Pricing isn't set, but it seems that it will run through existing volume
licensing programs.
While I like the idea, I want to make sure I can still retrieve all my data,
even if my license happens to expire. What would it take for you to put your
files in a cloud somewhere? Answers can be blown into [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on November 03, 20080 comments
There was so much news last week at PDC that I'll probably spend the bulk of
this week bringing it all to you. We've already talked about
Azure,
Microsoft's cloud operating system/platform. Besides being a development platform,
Azure is also a set of services that will run in the cloud. In this case, Microsoft
defines the cloud as one of its own rather massive datacenters.
Running in this Microsoft-seeded cloud will be database services driven by
a revamped
version of good old SQL Server. Interested folks can get a sneak peak at
these services by looking at Microsoft projects hosted on the SQL Services Lab
Portal.
Posted by Doug Barney on November 03, 20080 comments
Usually IT waits until a new product gets its first service pack before adopting.
In the case of Vista, many are waiting for SP2, SP3 or maybe Windows 7. We'll
soon know, though, if SP2 is compelling or repelling as
preview
code is being sent out to a select group of users.
There are a bunch of new features in the pack, such as better Wi-Fi, Bluetooth
and search. But the key, or course, is in the fundamentals -- compatibility,
performance and reliability. I'm still on XP, but if Redmond Report readers
like what they see in Vista SP2, I'll go for it.
How is Vista SP1 and what do expect in SP2? Cheers and jeers both readily listened
to at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on October 30, 20080 comments
Earlier this week, we told you about an
out-of-cycle
patch for Remote Procedure Call flaws in Windows Server 2000, 2003 and XP.
If that didn't make you nervous enough to start patching, maybe this
will: Microsoft is now warning that the code to exploit these flaws is written
and as available to hackers as Jolt, pimple cream and Craigslist personals where
hackers find most of their dates. The time to plug this hole is now.
Posted by Doug Barney on October 30, 20080 comments
Windows Azure made big waves when Microsoft
officially
unveiled it in PDC this week. But a few of you have some misgivings about
the OS in the cloud:
I'd like a few more details, such as what you have to agree to in order
to use this. Since Microsoft owns the computers and the equipment in which
the data and created applications will reside, who controls this now and in
the future? How would you go about getting your "property" should
something change in the future? How much will this cost now and in the future?
What is to prevent the Big M from taking what you create as its own?
Security worries me any time you do not control the equipment in which
the applications and data resides. The idea of being able to access this from
any location sounds great -- but so could someone else. Hackers would have
a field day with this. I could be totally wrong about Azure, but I won't be
taking that chance. There is too much to lose, in my opinion.
-Les
I agree with your statement: "I like to have ownership
of the files I create, and don't want somebody controlling my access. And
I would never want them taken away."
Also, you city dwellers don't realize this, but there are still vast
areas of this country with NO Internet access (unless you count dial-up, which,
with today's large data transfer requirements, is quite useless). A major
problem with cloud computing is that you must have Internet to use it. Even
in the city, I've found Comcast to be somewhat unreliable. No Internet, no
application. Very frustrating.
-Mike
Check in with us next week for more reader letters! In the meantime, share
your own thoughts by leaving a comment below or sending an e-mail to [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on October 30, 20080 comments
Google is now officially in the operating system game with Android, the open
source OS currently used in its new phone. And being in the OS market means
one thing: security problems.
Researchers now say that Android
has a security flaw, but won't say what it is 'til it's fixed. If only security
researchers were as kind to Microsoft!
Posted by Doug Barney on October 30, 20080 comments
While Microsoft is
promoting
Azure, its new cloud development platform, rival Yahoo put some more meat
on its development platform bones: the
Yahoo
Open Strategy. This platform is responsible for creating the most self-indulgent
acronym ever (Y!OS). Does Yahoo really expect the press to use this monstrosity?
The Yahoo plan is to have developers exploit already-existent Yahoo services
and offer these apps to what is still a substantial user base. Developers can
tap into Yahoo's query language, application services and social features.
Can developers turn Yahoo once again into a contender? What apps would you like
to see? Thoughts welcome at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on October 29, 20080 comments