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Microsoft: You Want a Fixed IE? Pay us.

By on September 23, 2004 in Home Page

CNET News.com reports Microsoft to secure IE for XP only.

Microsoft this week reiterated that it would keep the new version of Microsoft’s IE Web browser available only as part of the recently released Windows XP operating system, Service Pack 2

Hello? Is anyone at Microsoft listening? What a great strategy! Let’s abandon the 200 million customers who chose not to upgrade and leave them with software known to be defective. Of course, Microsoft will backport its Avalon and Indigo subsystems from Longhorn to Windows XP because they see the uptake of Longhorn as too slow. Maybe it’s time for them to re-examine their business model and consider enticing customers to upgrade with carrots (like features!) instead of sticks (like abandoning them with buggy software).

It’s your choice. Upgrade for $99 to Windows XP, a new version of the operating system that may or may not work with your existing hardware and software. Or abandon the “free” browser and run something more secure. Microsoft has claimed the IE will always be “free,” so how can they demand $99 for the most recent version?

Take a look at Opera, Mozilla, FoxFire or Camino (for the Mac). These vendors haven’t abandoned Windows 2000.

Rick Strahl: IE is riddled with bugs, security holes and lacks standards compliance

By on September 23, 2004 in Home Page

Alex Feldstein links to Rick Strahl’s “Browser wars? Maybe not, but…” and Alex adds “Rick writes an opinion about the browser wars… I completely agree with what he says. I use IE at work (corporate standard) and the latest Firefox version at home. Although I personally like Firefox, I try to make my websites compatible with both… IE and Firefox both have some security problems, but IE’s are worse. There are many issues that Microsoft has to address, security being just one of them. Read the full blog at “Browser wars? Maybe not, but…“

I’m surprised by the strength of Rick’s writings, but agree whole-heartedly. IE is my last choice for browsing, after Camino, Safari, FireFox and Opera…

Chutzpah!

By on September 8, 2004 in Home Page

Accelerating the Delivery of Longhorn?. In an interview with ActiveWin, Microsoft Group VP Jim Allchin said: “We recently announced that we’re going to accelerate the delivery of Longhorn by removing dependences on things like the new file system.” Just goes to show one man’s delivery by the stated due date (2006) is another man’s “accelerated” delivery date. [Microsoft Watch from Mary Jo Foley]

The epitome of chutzpah is spinning the decision to cut major features from Longhorn to meet pre-announced shipping date as ‘accelerated delivery!’ That is, it is accelerated over the slipping date that they were not going to tell us! Wow!

Drinking the Kool Aid

By on August 30, 2004 in Home Page

Have some nice refreshing Kool Aid?Dave Winer blogs his reaction to the Allchin memo:

BTW, “Hard core” means “death march.” It’s the same trap that Apple fell into with Copland.
The devteam was always in death march mode, when one impossible ship
date was missed, they scheduled it for another impossible date. When
you ask a Microsoft person to say what Longhorn is supposed to do, you
get rambly hand-wavy words that mean nothing. A product with a purpose
has a two-sentence description that gets everyone so excited they can’t
wait. Longhorn isn’t designed to solve anyone’s problems. I think they
all know it, but they can’t say it out loud because they’ve all drunk
the Kool Aid on this.

Link via Scripting News

Longhorn to ship without features?

By on August 30, 2004 in Home Page

Microsoft announced Friday afternoon that “Longhorn,” the
next-generation Windows, was losing the feature code-named “WinFS” that
was to provide speedy searching and intelligent cross-linking of all
documents the machine had seen. In addition, Microsoft announced that
two of the other touted features, “Avalon,” a new graphical sub-system,
and “Indigo,” a communications sub-system, would be available for
Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 machines in the same timeframe as
the estimated release of “Longhorn,” currently 2006 for the client and
2007 for the server. Sounds like “slipping is a feature.”

The media has gone wild with speculation, of course. Mary Jo Foley must have put in overtime to post all these articles. A supposed memo from Jim Allchin is chilling in its NewSpeak terminology.

What does that mean for us? For most Windows developers, it should mean
two years of peaceful stabilization of the platform before the next
round of chaos, and a good long time to consider alternatives. If
Avalon changes everything on the graphical layer, is DotNet WinForms
dead? WinFS, which Microsoft insists never stood for “File System”
could be replaced by a half-dozen good third-party tools.

Microsoft needs to take a long, hard look at this, and realize that
“Operating System” no longer means “a way to tie people into all of our
software.” They need to stop adding things to their operating system,
and start removing things until nothing is left but the core, and sell
add-on features like searchable databases and graphical UIs  to
the people who need them as *products* and not as features. Sure, it’s
easier to sell one SKU than many. The Operating System should provide
the facilities for the computer to operate, read, write and
communicate, and offer open and documented APIs through which the
appropriate tools can be added to provide features above the OS level.

Andrew MacNeill sees this as a good thing, “gutting” Longhorn, and Robert Scoble says
“Longhorn wasn’t aimed at the sweet spot of the market anymore and our
customers were telling us to go in a different direction.” It will be
interesting to hear what direction that is.

Windows XP SP2 rollout continues, resistance is futile

By on August 20, 2004 in Home Page

Despite some glitches and Microsoft delaying the rollout for a week, Service Pack 2 is on its way to all Windows XP users via Windows Update. Many large installations have turned off or disabled the update out of concern for the many programs Microsoft has documented as not working or needing updates in order to work with SP2. Firewalls, VPNs and SQL Server based applications seem to be the primary casualties. FoxPro applications using DBF-based data appear to be unaffected.

Microsoft is enabling the firewall by default, a reversal of their earlier configuration. While it is a step in the right direction, the firewall is still far too weak to be the sole line of defense for a machine attaching directly to the internet. The firewall included with Microsoft XP doesn’t deserve the name. A firewall is an internal structure in a building that is designed to stop fires from spreading by imposing a solid barrier. In the Windows XP case, this firewall is one-sided, blocking some traffic from ourside, but letting anything exit from inside. So, if your machine develops a problem and starts broadcasting SMTP spam, or calls the mothership and transmits your last tax return, there’s nothing in the XP firewall to prevent it. That’s dumb. Look for better solutions elsewhere.

If you are connecting directly to the internet, or take your machine on the road and connect to foreign networks, look at a software firewall like Kerio or ZoneAlarmPro. I notice that grisoft.com is promoting a nice package of their excellent AVG anti-virus software with Kerio for USD $55. Worth looking into.

Those who fail to learn from history invent their own

By on August 15, 2004 in Home Page

Dan Gillmor’s eJournal journals How History Gets Twisted. “A short way into this review of a new book about Microsoft, a Boston Globe correspondent writes:

“A
guilty finding was overturned on appeal, and the government settled
with the company, imposing restrictions on its business practices. The
resulting introspection persuaded Gates to stand aside as chief
executive in favor of Steve Ballmer, who would be his partner in
remaking the company.”

“The number of misstatements in just these two sentences is fairly amazing.

  • The judge’s ruling that Microsoft had repeatedly violated the law
    was not overturned. (And there are no “guilty” or “not guilty” findings
    in civil antitrust cases to start with; this wasn’t a criminal matter,
    though it probably should have been.) The appeals court specifically
    agreed with Judge Jackson that Microsoft was a serial offender, though
    it did back Microsoft’s position in a small portion of the charges.
  • The Bush administration’s “settlement” was a cave-in, giving back what it had already won in court.
  • The “impositions” on Microsoft’s business practices are widely
    seen outside the company (and probably inside) as next to meaningless,
    and certainly haven’t had any visible effect on competition in an
    industry that Microsoft still controls.
  • Ballmer became CEO in 2000, before Judge Jackson
    ordered the breakup of the company, and long before the appeals court
    overruled him.
    I bring all this up mainly to point back to the first item — the
    notion that the company was cleared of wrongdoing. This has become
    popular “wisdom,” and it’s incorrect. Every judge that has had to rule
    on this has agreed that Microsoft broke the law to maintain its
    monopoly.
    Let’s at least remember that much. “

    • Microsoft Security Bulletins

    By on August 11, 2004 in Home Page

    Microsoft released their monthly securty bulletins identifying yet another cross-site scripting error, this time with the beleagured Outlook Web Access (OWA) in Exchange 5.5. OWA has a long history of issues. I don’t think that exposing Exchange via an HTML interface is a good idea. SMTP and POP with authentication, SSL, passwords and perhaps VPNs offer a far more secure way for clients to access Exchange remotely. Better yet, find a secure mail server. http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=29234 for more details.

    The second email I got was a “re-release” of MS04-020 showing that more products are affected. If you are running INTERIX 2.2 (what’s that?), you’ll want to review the bulletin at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/MS04-020.mspx

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