Tag Archives | Microsoft

Andrew MacNeill reports Microsoft Releases Windows 2003 SP1 quickly followed by
Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 – Can’t Find Server and other upgrade woes “It’s this kind of thing that makes upgrades so traumatic for users. ” and Windows 2003 SP1 Broke My ASP.Net. “ARGH!! The saga continues… Back in December I had this problem before – Andrew MacNeill – AKSEL Solutions: Reinstalling DotNet/ASPNet on a Windows 2003 Server Now, after upgrading to Windows 2003 SP1, the problem has returned. ”

In many organizations, it’s considered wise to wait for the first service pack to allow Microsoft to work out the bugs in their DotZero release, bugs that never seem to come out in their extensive beta testing. In the case of Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1, you may want to wait to see if the Service Pack needs some tweaking before it is ready for primetime.

Microsoft Watch from Mary Jo Foley reports “Microsoft’s Grand Plan To Go Vertical. Can Microsoft transform itself from a product-focused company into a solutions-oriented one? Top brass are betting that it can.”

Microsoft is wise to diversify. From consumer products like MSN and Xbox to hardware like mice and keyboards, Microsoft is spreading its bets around. They make operating systems for home users and for big servers. They sell games. They sell development tools. We’ll see if the “plan to go vertical” realigns the OS, servers and desktop products divisions or just becomes yet another diversification.

What a bizarre idea! The Boston Area Windows Server User Group has announced a Malware UnloadFest, an all-day lecture and lab, taking place on Saturday, April 9th at the Microsoft Offices in Waltham, Massachusetts. They are chargine $30.00 admission. I wonder if there’s a money-back guarantee. What’s Microsoft’s liability on this? I can’t believe the User Group members are going to try to “clean” (their word) compromised machines. How can you tell a compromised machine is cured? You can’t. Clean? Dust ’em out, fine. Then FDISK them. Boot them with Knoppix if you have to, to rescue files for which you haven’t a backup (tsk, tsk), but the OS is history and none of the files can be trusted. What a dangerous idea.

Eric Sink, lead benevolent dictator at SourceGear maintains Eric.Weblog() and regularly posts interesting materials, including the draft chapters of a source code control book he’s writing. In Comments on the pricing of Team System, Eric writes:

“I observe that most MSDN Universal subscribers have an expectation which looks something like this:

As an MSDN Universal subscriber, I get everything Microsoft sells.

Given this expectation, it is easy to understand why people are upset.  For these people, the world is about to change.”