Tag Archives | Microsoft

Microsoft Watch from Mary Jo Foley reports Microsoft Suggests Workarounds to Block SP2 Flaw. “Microsoft released a security advisory and some suggested workarounds for a new potential denial-of-service flaw in Windows XP SP2.”

It’s a good idea to double-check systems that ought to have RDP disabled. As part of chasing down a different problem, I was reviewing the Services tab of a WinXP workstations’s Adminstration interface, and noted all the Terminal Services items running. Disable Remote access on an individual box by right-clicking “My Computer” and selecting “Properties.” On the “Remote” tab, ensure the “Allow users to connect remotely to this computer” is off.

Alex Feldstein blogs “Andy Kramek, a well-known software developer writes a very insightful article on why .NET could be a big problem and a failure for Microsoft. He contends, that aside from ASP.NET (which is what ASP should have been from the beginning), there is no compelling reason for developers to jump to .NET… I tend to agree.”

Microsoft Watch from Mary Jo Foley notes Feeding the Voracious Microsoft Beast. “Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer may love Microsoft’s partners. But that doesn’t mean he has any trepidation about continuing to chip away at their markets.”

Microsoft has always loved their partners: they’re crunchy and taste good with ketchup.

It’s pretty well-known that announcing a “strategic partnership” with Microsoft means, if you’re lucky, the company will get swallowed whole and you might walk away with cash or, if you’re less lucky, Microsoft will suck the blood, sweat and tears out of the company and leave a cold dead husk. With maybe a shot at an intellectual property infringement suit and a billion-dollar out of court settlement. And maybe not.

Microsoft Watch from Mary Jo Foley reports Microsoft Reconfirms Longhorn Targets. “Beta 1 of Longhorn is still on track for this summer, Sanjay Parthasarathy reiterated that Longhorn Beta 1, which will not include the new user interface bits, is due this summer. Beta 2, which will showcase the new interface, is due out some time in the first part of 2006. The final Longhorn client release is still, as of now, due out in the latter half of 2006.”

Isn’t that curious. Microsoft has previously used “Beta” like much of the rest of the software industry for a feature-complete product with testing required but all major features in place. In particular, Microsoft’s “Marketing Betas” to the public were primarily used by the MS Marketing teams to determine how to pitch the product and how to respond the the FAQs. This beta is more likely what most would consider an alpha, with features yet to be completed, making evaluation of the product more difficult. This comes across to me as primarily a PR effort to show that Microsoft is still in the game. With the dropping/delay of major features (WinFS), release of others separate from the Longhorn OS (Avalon and Monad) and the addition of others (RSS), Longhorn still feels like too much of a moving target and not a product with a fixed feature list. It will be interesting to read how the industry press reviews this “beta.”