Computerworld News reports Microsoft set to patch IE, Windows, Office. “Microsoft is set to release five security patches for its products Tuesday, including an Internet Explorer fix that will address a bug that hackers have been exploiting over the past two weeks.”
Gee, is it that time again already?
From Garrett Fitzgerald’s Blog: “VMWars. Microsoft announces that it will give away Virtual Server. VMWare’s response? Not only are they giving away VMWare Player and VMWare Server Beta free, but they just opened up the specs for their Virtual Machine Disk format. *rubs hands gleefully* Ooh, this is gonna be good… hope VMWare’s smarter than Netscape was. 🙂 (Thanks to the /. folks for the pointer.)”
Over at Linux Watch: “One of the ironies of Microsoft’s PR move (giving away Virtual
Server) is that it really makes no sense to run a virtual machine on
top of Windows. Windows, as the forthcoming bloatware called Vista
shows to an extreme, takes up a lot of resource. As David Berlind
points out on his ZDNet blog, “One of the great advantages of Linux is
how, when you’re setting up a system, you can strip all of the bloat
except for only those components that you need to support whatever you
plan to run on the box.”
Looking forward to meeting the Xen folks at their booth at LinuxWorld this week!
OSNews post: MacOS 10.4.6 Released. “The 10.4.6 Update is recommended for all users and includes general operating system fixes, as well as specific fixes for the following applications and technologies: login and authentication in a variety of network environments; file access and byte range locking with AFP file sharing; network access when using proxy server automatic configuration files; searching iWork ’06 and Microsoft Office documents with Spotlight; creating Automator workflows for iPhoto 6; synchronizing contacts and calendars to .Mac and mobile phones; and much more.” There’s a delta update for 10.4.5, and a combo update for 10.4.0-10.4.5. Easiest method is to just use Software Update.”
SlashDot linked to a story that Sony More Trustworthy Than Microsoft that linked to an article on joystiq.com on Sony trounces MSFT & Nintendo in brand trust survey There’s an interesting graph on that second link. As best as I can see, this is a survey of customer’s impressions, and not a reflection on actual performance, reliability, features, nor quality of real products. It’s surprising to me that Sony scores so high. Their rootkit outrage is one that many people didn’t understand. They’ve tried as many proprietary attempts with MD disks and BetaMax(tm) as other vendors. Some folks think that Sony, Bose, Dell and Apple, all high scorers, sell over-priced, under-featured products. So, what does the graph tell us? Does marketing, advertising and branding trump reality?
The monthly meeting of CentraLUG, the Concord/Central New Hampshire chapter of the Greater New Hampshire Linux Users Group, occurs on the first Monday of each month on the New Hampshire Institute Campus starting at 7 PM. This month, we’ll be meeting in Room 146 of the Library/Learning Center/Bookstore, marked as “I” on this map. Further directions and maps are available on the NHTI site at http://www.nhti.edu. Open to the public. Free admission. Tell your friends.
This month’s meeting will feature David Berube of http://www.berubeconsulting.com presenting techniques to extract content from MS Office documents. From David:
“Microsoft Office documents are ubiquitous. However, the Microsoft Office suite is not available for all platforms and comes with a prohibitive cost attached to it. While a variety of open source readers are available to read the MS Office suite formats, you can‰t always count on the user having installed one these readers. On the other hand, PDF viewers are common, freely available, and have a much smaller footprint than an office suite. This presentation will show you how to programatically convert Word and Excel documents into PDF, using open source tools and PHP.”
More details at about the group are available at http://www.gnhlug.org.
Should be a great presentation. Hope to see you there!
Vista problems might be bigger than admitted.
(InfoWorld) – “More delays in the release schedule for Windows Vista revealed Friday hint that problems with getting the OS out the door may be broader than Microsoft has articulated.”
I’m sorry to see Jim Allchin’s departure from Microsoft marred by project Longhorn/Vista hitting the wall. The media went hysterical on Friday with predictions of the death of Microsoft. The parallel news story that Office 2007 is going to be released at the same time (whenever that may be) sent pundits flying to their keyboards with their pre-made Microsoft agendas.
An uncredited “insider” report that “sixty percent of Vista must be rewritten” is the closest thing I’ve read lately to “the sky is falling.” If that’s even within an order of magnitude of being true, the OS that’s been under development since – what, a year before XP shipped? – would not ship until… let’s see, 2001 to 2006, times sixty percent… well. That’s not a month’s shipdate-slip, that’s three years. Not gonna happen. While the product is supposedly in beta now, which should mean feature-complete and just killing showstopper bugs, it’s likely a feature or two (there are two left, aren’t there?) more could be cut to meet whatever arbitrary shipdate they pick. The fact that they have destroyed the trust of their hardware OEMs by missing the holiday season is a sign that something is seriously wrong. But the press hoopla of Friday is unlikely to have brought out the real reasons just yet.
While I think the current hysteria is pretty badly exaggerated, I continue to be deeply skeptical of any new OS that Microsoft thinks they can deploy into the marketplace purely based on hardware turnover and not upgrades. While workstation purchasers at office supply stores may not have another alternative, I’ve encouraged my clients to buy ahead now to lock their systems into Windows XP, avoid the Microsoft upgrade programs, and take advantage of OEM/ISV/Partner arrangements that can get them XP licenses as long as possible. I’ve heard fellow developers already telling their clients “No Vista until SP1!”
Microsoft’s got a tough road ahead.
OSNews reports Gates Says Services are the Future for Computers — and Microsoft. “Company makes plans to move away from prepackaged software and into web-based applications. As the Internet transforms the way people use computers, Microsoft founder Bill Gates has a message for the world’s biggest software maker: adapt or die. “We must act quickly and decisively,” Gates wrote in an Oct. 30 memo to Microsoft executives. “The next sea change is upon us.” More at DetNews.”
So, the Microsoft Roadmap bangs a left, taking Microsoft up on two wheels and tossing out Microsoft “partners” who were along for the ride but had invested their futures in rich client-side applications. How many times can Microsoft do that before people catch on? A redundant question, surely. In a recent ProFox mailing list post I wrote:
In the late 80s, I sat in a room back at the Park Plaza
Hotel in Boston while Microsoft announced the rollout of the NT
platform. During the Q&A session, a fellow came up to the microphone
and explained that he was a Microsoft “partner,” had subscribed to
their products and had spent years with a staff of programmers
developing an app not far from release, but targetted at OS/2. What,
he asked, was Microsoft going to do for him? His voice was unsteady,
and it was apparent that he was facing a disasterous failure. There
was an awkward silence when he finished as the crowd fell silent.
There was no noise but an occasional clink of crystal against
silverware. A Microsoftie finally managed to speak up, trying to
deflect the comment into a pitch for their new development tools. The
spell ended, but the impression remains to this day.I can’t lead another client down that path.
You know, these articles are so tired. A writer has nothing better to do that to trot out the tired history of DOS, Windows, Microsoft discovering the internet a few years too late and making a big deal of the latest announcement, whether it is Live or MSN or SQL Server 2005 or “Information At Your Fingertips” and making it the next Microsoft-bet-the-farm story. There’s so little new information (“news”) in the article: old news: Microsoft revenue growth is coasting to a stop, products are shipping slower and slower, diversification and lack of direction are confused. New news: Microsoft releases a BillG memo from five months ago.
It’s Microsoft PR. Bill wrote a memo in October they’ve decided to release now. As Matt Rosoff, an analyst at Directions on Microsoft, says at the end of the story, “There’s a bit of misdirection going on here.” I think the question is how customers will read this. Will they see “Microsoft is on to a new paradigm — I’ve got to jump onboard to get the early adopter advantage” or will it be “There goes Microsoft, thrashing about again — DotNet has almost gotten stable and they’re off on another wild goose chase.” Time will tell, but I’m hearing more and more from the later camp.
Microsoft Watch from Mary Jo Foley notes Vista Sheds Another Anticipated Feature?. “little explanation (so far at least), Microsoft has decided to cut from Windows Vista planned support for the Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI).” Isn’t EFI the next generation replacement of BIOS used in the Intel-based MacBooks? I think I’d feel more secure knowing I couldn’t boot Windows on my MacBook…
Computerworld News reports Microsoft to issue one critical patch Tuesday. “In its monthly patch release next Tuesday, Microsoft Corp. said it will issue one critical security bulletin concerning the Office suite and one bulletin on Windows that is rated important.”
Later on in the article, they explain, “Microsoft will distribute its updated version of the Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool via Windows Update, Microsoft Update, Windows Server Update Services and the Download Center… There will also be one non-security High-Priority Update on Microsoft Update and Windows Server Update Services. There won’t be any non-security High-Priority Updates for Windows coming over Windows Update or Software Update Services.” Well, that certainly clears things up.
InfoWorld: Top News is reporting Researcher hacks Microsoft Fingerprint Reader.
(InfoWorld) – “Never mind worrying about hackers stealing your password. A security researcher with the Finnish military has shown how they could steal your fingerprint, by taking advantage of an omission in Microsoft’s Fingerprint Reader, a PC authentication device that Microsoft has been shipping since September 2004.”
When you lose your password, you can get it reset. When your credit card shows suspicious activity, you can get a new and different one. What happens when your fingerprints are stolen?