“Microsoft Corp.’s plans for a common set of services that promise its
server platform products will work better together are being met with
skepticism…” writes Peter Galli at eWeek.
Archive | June, 2004
Is the new Microsoft the old IBM?
Barbara Darrow, industry editor at Computer Reseller News, writes “Something interesting happened
on the road to and from software dominance. Microsoft, which always
delighted in displacing the old farts of technology, has become an old
fart itself.”
A Simple Plan to virus-proof your PC?
Slate magazine, which admirably discloses its ownership by Microsoft in this article, says there is “A Simple Plan: Virus-proof your PC in 20 minutes, for free.”
The three steps they advocate – make sure security is sufficient on IE,
get the latest Windows Updates and search for spyware – surely make the
machine more reliable than if those steps were not taken. But that is
not enough.
I think author Paul Boutin missed the mark in not considering the
possibility that there are many other browsers out there – Opera,
Netscape, Mozilla, Firefox and others – that don’t suffer from the
many, many IE exploits and will meet the needs of most users. Also,
slipped in among those three steps was the off-hand mention of
antivirus software, which ought to be a mandatory requirement for all
systems.
Speaking of which, ComputerWorld reports four new Internet Explorer holes have been discovered.
eWeek: SCO Loses Attempt to Move Novell Case to State Court
SCO has taken a serious hit here, according to eWeek, Groklaw and Slashdot. Good. Let’s get this over with, and get back to work. Groklaw is exuberant: “Remember all the experts who told us SCO might win this? They were mistaken.” and “I love this judge” and ” This just isn’t SCO’s day.”
RSS: the instant newspaper
An interesting illustration of the power of social software came up
while I was giving my RSS presentations at the DevEssentials
conference. I explained that years ago there used to be
science-fiction-like predictions of the future with magic-like
electronic newspapers that updated themselves as the news broke. Then I
showed them Radio Userland’s news aggregator, with postings from the
FoxForum Wiki, the FoxCentral announcements, my web site, and Craig
Bernston’s posting while in the session.
The future is here.
They got it.
Google mulls RSS support
c|net reports that Google is reconsidering RSS. Good. Get out of the middle of the standards wars.
Craig: Bernston: We’re Blogging
We’re Blogging
As
I write this, I’m sitting here at DevEssentials in Ted Roche’s session
on blogging and RSS. It will be interested to see if this shows up in
Ted’s aggregator during the session. From Craig’s ::FoxBlog::
Microsoft Watch notes VFP9 beta release
Mary Jo Foley covers VFP 9!. “On Microsoft Watch
today, Mary Jo Foley posted an update to an earlier article, talking
about Fox, its positioning within MS, and what its strengths are.” Link
via Garrett Fitzgerald’s Blog
DevEssentials 2004 Day One
Scott Ambler warmed up the crowd last night with a provocative keynote on agile development. No one was left unmoved.
Ken Levy did the keynote this morning showing off the new public beta
of Visual FoxPro 9. His presentation was a mixture of the keynote
previews he’s been doing for the last year, combined with full
disclosures on the new features, especially the report writer.
Here are a few bullet points:
– VFP 9 was based on customer wish list feedback.
– Primary goal to maintain backward compatibility.
– Enhanced language and data types
– Additional end user UI features
– Increased developer productivity
– Significant report writer enhancements
– Extended DotNet and SQL Server interoperability
– More reliability.
– Scheduled released is Q4 2004
Sessions going well. More notes as I have the chance.
On the road again
No posts today, on the road to the DevEssentials conference.