Down in East Texas, there's a large area known as the Piney Woods, given that it's home to pine trees that aren't exactly common in much of the rest of the state. There's some real beauty to East Texas; Caddo Lake, the state's only natural lake, has a certain swampy appeal, and Tyler -- native city of football legend Earl Campbell -- is home to famous rose gardens.
But East Texas can get a little scary, too. Those Piney Woods get awfully dark at night, and some say that the town of Jefferson is haunted. But the scariest thing about East Texas has nothing to do with ghosts, shadowy lakes or even a circa-1978 Earl Campbell barreling through a defense like a runaway train. Oh, no. The scariest thing about East Texas is that it is home to the "rocket docket," a court district that is the setting for an unlikely number of patent and intellectual property cases.
It was down in East Texas that Microsoft lost a patent lawsuit and got slapped with a ban on selling Word, the application your editor is using to type this newsletter right now. And it's in East Texas where a company called EMG is now trying to take a bite out of Windows Mobile (although we're wondering how much there really is to nibble on there).
So that's more legal fees for Microsoft and more hassle for everybody involved with the company. Although we figure Microsoft can afford it, we're no fan of patent squatters. Whether these cases fit into that category or not, we're not sure (although the i4i Word case seems to have lots of characteristics of patent squatting), but it really doesn't matter. The good folks of East Texas do a nice business getting companies to sue each other down in the Piney Woods, so plaintiffs are likely to keep winning these battles.
Of course, it's not really the fault of your editor's fellow Texans that these patent cases keep popping up. While we're no expert on software patent laws (otherwise your editor would be rushing around Marshall, Texas, right now), some clear-headed reform does seem to be in order. We're virulent defenders here of intellectual property and the ability of companies to protect it, but we'd prefer that those companies that claim it actually do something with it rather than waiting to pounce on a firm that's actually trying to make and sell something.
First things first, though: Microsoft has to try to stave off the Word-sales ban which is its priority right now. After that, maybe legislators, judges, the software industry as a whole and even the good folks of East Texas can re-think how software patent laws work. To twist (and possibly misuse) an old expression, it seems as though right now a lot of folks can't see the Piney Woods for the trees.
Are patent lawsuits out of control? How does it affect your business when Microsoft has to defend itself from this sort of thing? Sound off at [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on August 19, 200910 comments
The big distributor has signed a load of deals that focus on (to quote its statement rather directly): "mobile computing, security, video production, document management, virtualization and professional IT services solutions." Wow, that's a lot of stuff. There's more detail straight from Tech Data here.
Posted by Lee Pender on August 19, 20090 comments
This could be a lot of fun. Just hear us out on this. As we know, the recent denial-of-service attacks on Twitter (whole-heartedly welcomed by RCPU, despite our own membership http://twitter.com/leepender) and other Web sites appear to have been the work of a bunch of Russians attempting to knock one Georgian guy off the Web.
Well, apparently, "the Russians," as we simply called them back during the Cold War, have been up to more than just messing around with Twitter. A couple of them were allegedly part of the biggest ever identity-theft case, which U.S. officials now say they've cracked and which led to the reissuing of your editor's debit card (there's a Hannaford grocery store down the street from RCPU's home office).
But that's not all. U.S. officials said this week that the Russian civilians who carried out denial-of-service attacks against Georgian Web sites last year did so with the cooperation of both the Russian military and organized crime. This, American officials said, could be the new face of war -- cyber attacks carried out to coordinate with actual attacks, with everybody from generals to consigliore (or whatever they're called in Russian) involved. And apparently, the Russians are at the forefront (such as it is) of this sort of thing. We at RCPU, of course, see this news as being absolutely, completely...awesome!
The Russians are back, baby! After two decades of boring Olympics and real terrorist attacks that got really scary, Cold War icons like Ivan Drago can officially be bad guys again, except without the hammer-and-sickle emblem, which was, objectively speaking, one of the better-looking logos of all time.
Finally, we'll get back to decent spy movies (or even spy-slash-gangster movies -- spectacular!), NHL players coming from places like Quebec and Minnesota, and the rebirth of the greatest sports rivalry ever: the U.S. versus the USS...actually, versus Russia, but a bad Russia that does nasty things online and really doesn't want Georgians starting Web pages. Yeah! John Hughes and Michael Jackson might not be around to see it happen, but the '80s are coming back.
There are negatives to all of this, of course. Without Russian players in the NHL, the league will be less exciting -- although the Bruins might actually have a real shot at the Stanley Cup -- and we'd hate to lose TV access to all those lovely Russian female tennis players. (Seriously, how much has the image of the Russian female athlete changed over the last 20 years or so?) But some sacrifices are worth it, and these days we like the old Cold War better than the hot wars we're engaged in now.
So, break out your throwback 1980 USA hockey jersey, watch Red Dawn on VHS (if you still can) and get ready for it to be us vs. them again, but this time online. It'll be an even colder war than before, with the weapons in this one being cyber attacks and malicious code. We're pumped about the 2012 Olympics already (let's face it -- 2010 is a lost cause, as they almost always clobbered us in the Winter Games, anyway). USA! USA! USA!
OK, OK. We're just kidding about all of this. Seriously. Yes, it's a little scary that U.S. officials are saying that Russian civilians are carrying out cyber attacks with the cooperation of their country's military and mobsters. But we have nothing against Russians at all -- really, we don't. Your editor has Russian friends, loves Russian food (and drink...) and has a brother-in-law who is fluent in Russian and used to live there. No kidding, there's no real hatred here, only a lame attempt at humor. We were just trying to spice up an otherwise dull August news day. After all, how could we not like the Russians? They're the ones who knocked out Twitter -- at least for a while.
What's your biggest concern about cyber security? What concerns do your customers or users share with you most? What's your favorite moment in U.S.-USSR Olympic history other than the 1980 hockey game, which was obviously the greatest sports moment ever? Answer any or all questions at [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on August 18, 20093 comments
Finally, some time in 2010, "Entourage" will be nothing for Mac users but a fairly entertaining HBO sitcom. The e-mail client in Mac version of Microsoft Office will be Outlook, at last.
Posted by Lee Pender on August 18, 20090 comments
One study says that 40 percent of what's on Twitter amounts to "pointless babble." The other 60 percent, of course, is RCPU updates at http://twitter.com/leepender. That is, if the Russians haven't taken down the site altogether.
Posted by Lee Pender on August 18, 20090 comments
It's all good news on this mid-August day, right? Microsoft, in a bolt of wisdom, has signed a deal with Nokia to offer Office on Nokia handsets.
Finally, Microsoft is admitting that Windows Mobile isn't ever going to be what Windows is on the desktop. Not even close, in fact. (Well, OK, Microsoft is still giving Windows Mobile lip service, but let's face it -- the mobile operating system is something of a dud and is getting less popular, not more.)
In letting Office break free from the shackles of Windows Mobile, Microsoft, with Nokia (which runs its phones on the Symbian mobile OS), can launch an assault on the BlackBerry (in fact, that's an actual headline in The New York Times) and carve out a profitable niche in the mobile market with a product everybody knows and lots of people love. So, that's all good, right, partners? A nice little moneymaker there?
Um, maybe. Or maybe not. Because, as you might have read by now, a judge in your editor's home state of Texas has banned sales of Microsoft Word as part of a ruling in a patent case. No, seriously! Not only does Microsoft owe the perhaps appropriately named i4i Inc. $290 million, but the judge in the case (which i4i obviously won) has stopped sales of Microsoft Word in the U.S.
Or he will, anyway, in 60 days, when the ban will take effect -- which means he probably won't because Microsoft will surely appeal the ruling and will likely win. So, Microsoft mobile partners and Office fans, you'll probably be free to buy and sell Word and the rest of Office for a Nokia cell phone (or for anything else that runs Office) for the foreseeable future, even 60 days from now. And that is some good news on a mid-August day.
What's your take on Microsoft's mobile strategy? Is the Nokia deal the end of Windows Mobile? Should it be? Sound of at [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on August 13, 20092 comments
Apparently unimpressed with VMware's plan to buy SpringSource, a Microsoft executive this week went to great lengths to explain to investors why the purchase will fail. VMware, of course, might have a different take on the matter...and is, after all, still the undisputed king of the virtualization mountain. So, let's not forget about that.
Also this week and on a not-unrelated note, Microsoft's general manager of investor relations laid out some of the company's financial strategy -- which, if recent earnings reports are any indication, needs to get better.
Posted by Lee Pender on August 13, 20090 comments
After RCPU lauded readers last week for playing down Browser Wars II, we got rather a brush-off e-mail from reader Andy:
"Browsers are not an application -- they are a platform. And no one wants Microsoft to use one monopoly to gain another monopoly. Please go on and talk about something new."
Rather than talking about something new, though, your editor asked Andy what difference it would make if a company created a monopoly for a free product. His answer might be old hat to some of you, but it was educative for me (call it a "teaching moment"; I even drank a beer while reading it), and it might shed some light on the browser issue for others, as well. Said Andy:
"Browsers are now like operating systems in that 'Web applications' are written to be run on a limited set of browsers. The developers cannot afford to test on all browsers, and while there are standards that browsers are written to, it's kind of like the old 'UNIX standards.' Not all UNIX operating systems had the same tool sets, and not all browsers support all the same extensions -- think ActiveX controls as one example, Flash as another, JavaScript extensions as another. That's why enterprises get stuck on one version of IE, and why Firefox didn't take off even faster.
"Microsoft used to play this angle much harder before all the European pressure -- pushing, through Visual Studio tools, technologies that only IE could support. Now, it's becoming less of an issue as the browser standards are broadened considerably to support ever more advanced JavaScript processing, but the underlying issue is still the same. Web application developers have limited time and money to test all the different browsers. So, if you're not one of the 'big market share browsers,' the developers will ignore you.
"And it's not like this is all under the control of an individual developer or even a team of developers. Development today means using a set of development tools, and those tools in turn have dependencies on specific browsers. Try running IE 5 or old Opera or Netscape browsers today. The 'Web apps' are constantly evolving and require more and more sophisticated browsers. That's one of the primary reasons the Web appliances (think 3com's Audrey, etc.) failed.
"Now, everyone likes to preach about 'standards' -- that 'real soon now,' all the Web apps will be written to the limited set of HTML/script standards that are supported equally in 'ALL browsers.' But that will probably not happen. Think of the promise of Java itself -- the old 'write once, run anywhere' has been complicated dramatically by the constant evolution of the Java platform versions. You can't count on the response from all the different Java flavors. So, as a developer, you end up demanding specific versions because that's all you are able to test around."
OK, that makes a lot of sense. It's about development tools and platforms, which do generate revenue, not about the browsers themselves, which only sort of do (given that default-search deals can bring in some cash). Those of you who have always understood that can roll your eyes, but for the rest of us, Andy's e-mail was useful. And we understand what Andy's saying. Opera (for example) doesn't have a chance of gaining market share if developers of Web-based applications don't bother testing to see whether their apps will work with it. (Incidentally, Microsoft partners who do development work or push Microsoft's development platform might not mind IE helping their cause. Just a thought there.)
Actually, that leads us quite well into a story that has emerged this week. Apparently Microsoft's forthcoming Office Web Apps (we'll call it OWA here, although we don't think Microsoft calls it that), supposedly Redmond's online answer to Google Apps, won't "officially" support Google Chrome, Opera, the Windows version of Safari...or even IE 6.
That's not to say that OWA won't work in those browsers; it might, Microsoft is saying, and the software giant also says that it'll expand its officially supported browser options for OWA after it releases the product. Still, though, this is the kind of thing that we hate to see, and we think that it's kind of stupid. This seems like a ploy to strongly encourage users to use recent versions of IE (Firefox, we suppose, was too big to not make the list, and Safari for Mac made it to appease the Mac crowd).
Microsoft is potentially cutting more than half of the browser market, if we believe some metrics, from its list of officially supported browsers. Even with Andy's explanation and argument about Microsoft trying to win developer revenues through IE, how much sense does it make to potentially alienate more than 50 percent of Web users? What kind of a way is that to launch a set of Web-based applications that are supposed to compete on ubiquity and access from anywhere? Surely Microsoft could have somebody test these things for Chrome and Opera, even if those browsers don't represent an enormous portion of the market -- for now.
We say and always have said boo to any company that doesn't try to be as ubiquitous as possible with browser support, and we frankly think that Microsoft can be more ubiquitous with OWA than to not even support its own browser (IE 6). Did Redmond not learn from the Vista mess that it can't necessarily force people to upgrade anymore the way it always did in the past? Beyond all that, your editor surely can't be the only person who uses multiple browsers fairly regularly. Expanding browser support for Web applications just seems like good business.
Let's get back for a minute, though, to Andy's point about browsers being vehicles for selling development platforms and therefore generating revenue. That really only seems to be an issue for companies that have major development platforms, like Microsoft and Google. If anything, Microsoft has used the ubiquity of Windows much more than it has used IE to lock down development revenues. We're still not sure how much damage it does for Microsoft to include IE in Windows.
Are people really going to stop developing for IE (and using Microsoft development platforms) if the browser isn't included in Windows? No -- it's Windows that attracts developers, even on the Web, not IE itself. Would devs pay more attention to browsers with smaller market shares -- and therefore branch out from using Microsoft development tools all the time -- if IE weren't a Windows default? Maybe, and that's probably the strongest argument for decoupling IE from the OS. We get what Andy's saying there.
Still, we're not sure how much sympathy we have for some of the also-rans out there. Look at Google, which -- while not having been declared a monopolist (yet) in search the way Microsoft has been in the OS game -- had a massive Web presence with which to launch its Chrome browser almost a year ago. Yet, Chrome still has low-single-digit market share at this point. In fact, the only browser that's challenging IE in any significant way is Firefox (RCPU's preferred browser), which has no operating system on which to ride and no overwhelmingly popular search engine to support it.
If anything, the success of Firefox weakens the argument that inclusion in Windows is an unfair advantage for IE. Firefox is a product made by a midsize company that ultimately falls under the umbrella of a non-profit organization. Its success, more than anything else, is a testament to innovation, tremendous viral marketing and Mozilla Corp.'s ability to mostly stay one step ahead of its bigger competitor in terms of stability, speed, security and functionality. Firefox competes the old-fashioned way, and we like it. (And, yes, Mozilla whines a lot about IE, too, but we're ignoring that for now.)
What we don't like, though, is the lack of respect for browser standards (or the lack of real standards themselves) that Andy alluded to. Browsers should be commodities -- it really shouldn't matter that much which one someone uses, and Web-based applications should work as well in one as they do in another. We're not just being magnanimous when we say that, either. It makes good business sense for Web applications to work in as many formats as possible and support as many browsers as possible. Cutting out or alienating chunks of users -- even small ones -- isn't a wise move.
Besides, who knows how long IE will rule the browser roost? Chrome could make a run at some point, and Firefox is continuing to gain popularity. Beyond that, Windows itself, while still dominant, doesn't have the absolute chokehold on users that it used to. (Need we mention Vista again?) So, Microsoft, Google and friends -- do try to play well together. You'll all be better off in the end for it.
Since we've spent so much time talking about browsers, here's a little more browser news. Google has a new Chrome beta out, and Microsoft issued a patch yesterday that changed IE's default settings.
What's your take on how browsers generate revenue? Do they make any money for your company? As a partner, does it matter to you which browser a customer uses, and if so, why? Answer these questions or drop any comment you like to [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on August 12, 20093 comments
Your .NET 4 and Visual Studio 2010 betas could be at risk if you upgrade to Windows 7. But since this problem only seems to affect Vista users, there probably aren't many of you who care.
Posted by Lee Pender on August 12, 20090 comments