Are you interested in the Zune? This "new" logo is one persons interpretation. Please see end of article for source of image.

There are reports that Microsoft is also having issues with another handheld devices app.  This time it being ZuneHD and its Twitter application and before we go any further lets cast our minds back to new year 2009 when Zune was reported to have had an unfortunate incident with a “bug” reportedly causing it to freeze.

If recent reports are correct then Zune’s Twitter application is censoring explicit words without giving its users the option to turn off the feature and thus giving Zune attention once again as we approach the new year.

Lets hope that Ballmer doesn’t Tweet with Zune, since if the allegations about his behavior are correct then he doesn’t mind using a four letter word every now and then.  If you are interested in an allegation relating to Ballmers latest “outburst” then check out the article below and see what Ballmer has to say when you don’t get into the spirit of Bing.

I digress since this post is in relation to ZuneHD and whilst its failed (IMO) to achieve the popularity of Apples counterpart, its still a piece of tech that sits (somewhere) in the marketplace.   Microsoft have alleged to say on the subject:

The recently released Twitter for Zune HD application has been abbreviating some explicit words in tweets when viewed on the device. However, these explicit words do appear in their full text on the Twitter site or on any other Twitter client. We have identified the issue and are taking steps to update the application as soon as possible to ensure Twitter for Zune HD users are able to view tweets in their original state.

You can read more about this subject at http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/20919.cfm but for me is reinforcing that which I asked in the article here regarding Microsoft losing control of its projects.  If we look at the last few months alone we see allegations of GPL violations, code being “lifted” from other companies products, issues with an iPhone app and now this.  Is the wheel coming off the might Microsoft?  Have they “bitten off more than they can chew”?

For me I believe that Microsoft is fighting a battle on far too many fronts.  Whilst users rumbled about Vista and other Microsoft products in general, other companies took the opportunity to release some really great products and start building a loyal user base.  We see examples of this with Firefox eating away at IE (along with other browsers)  we see Apple going from strength to strength with its products and in addition we see Google showing Microsoft how search is done as well as making in-roads into other areas which once were almost the sole remit of Microsoft.

In my opinion Microsoft see’s itself in a battle with all these products.  Consumer choice is now commonplace in the PC market and even a reliable cash-cow like MS Office is, (IMO) being threatened by Open Office, Google Docs et al.  We are now in a world (IMO) where when a software product doesn’t live up to expectation theres plenty of choice to simply move on.  This can’t be good news for Microsoft (IMO) who once could almost guarantee that the majority of apps people running were theirs.

The logo in this article came from: http://forums.macnn.com/103/ipod-iphone-and-apple-tv/317449/the-one-only-microsoft-zune-thread/ and if the creator would like to name themselves in the comments section, I’d be more than happy to credit this original piece of work!

Goblin – bytes4free@googlemail.com

or, Its all bing going wrong at Xmas?

Microsoft, the industry leader who has seen its fair share of bad news in the last few months is now experiencing problems with its scheme of bringing Bing to the iPhone.  iBing was released on the 16th December which for Microsoft was good news and the usual Microsoft excitement rolled into action with Justin Jed making these comments in regards to its touted feature “voice search”

Our investments in voice search (you may have played with them on Windows phones or BlackBerry already) continues in our iPhone App…

Great news so far?  Yes?…..Well no.

It took one day for some cracks to show in iBing when Microsoft said:

we’ve also heard about a couple of issues that we’d like to address….

Anyone would be forgiven for thinking that they were refering to a couple of minor bugs of little consequence.  So lets look at what the couple of “issues” actually are:

Using voice search outside the U.S. crashes the app.

In my opinion thats a little more than an “issue” is that not a major flaw?  Well IMO according to Microsoft its not, as the “issues” continue:

App doesn’t work on 1^st generation iPod Touch

Ok, so having a first generation iPod Touch means the app is useless, ok. In my opinion slightly more than an “issue” but lets carry on.  Readers to this blog may question why Microsoft said iBing has a “couple” of issues when we are getting to our third one.  I can’t answer that.  I should maybe contact the Bing team and explain that a “couple” usually suggests two.

No search results outside the U.S.

So in my opinion what Microsoft are really saying (when you cut through the softening and PR) is:

If you live outside of the US or have a 1st generation Ipod Touch, iBing doesn’t work.

Need we say more?  Is this really the release Microsoft or the Bing team wanted?  Im sure Google will be worried. The blog post for these is here. The one thing that has surprised me here though is there does not seem to be any blaming….yet.   So since there is no 3rd party blame (yet) does that mean its Microsoft’s fault? I doubt it.

Keeping this all in mind though it was interesting to see a user called Brianm76 making the following comment on the Bing blog:

i am experiencing crashes at least 50% of the time when i search either by typing or through voice search and i am in the us with my settings set to us.  i experience a crash each time i use photo search and so do 2 of my co-workers with iphones.

But then maybe they just haven’t found the US bugs yet as a result of “listening to early good reports” [1]

Microsoft now parasitic?

This Bing news comes off the back of the reports that Motzilla is allegedly talking about Bing as being more “private” than Google, news which Microsoft must have been happy about since their own browser market share is being eaten up by Firefox (IMO).  If FF is to become the browser of the future then Microsoft will want at least a little piece of that.  Is Microsoft now happy to settle for the scraps that fall off the table of Mozilla too?

You can read more on the story of Mozilla and Bing here.  But lets consider for a moment the act of Microsoft developing products for other platforms.  Theres no doubt in the popularity of iPhone so is Microsoft settling for whatever scraps fall from Apple’s table?  I would say so, one only has to look at previous deployments of WinMob to see peoples opinions of that platform.  I myself suffered WinMob on an MDA Mail for a while, a shocking experience which almost convinced me that a mobile phone was not fit for purpose for anything other than phone calls.

Lets look at a definition of Parasitism:

is a type of symbiotic relationship between two different organisms where one organism, the parasite, takes favor from the host, sometimes for a prolonged time. …

That, in my opinion sounds exactly like whats happening here.

IMO to be fair to Microsoft we can’t blame them for Bing.  They even try to warn you of the Bing product in its name.  Lets look (again) at the dictionary definition of the word “Bing”:

Bing, noun -  a heap or pile.

So lets not be too hard on Microsoft this time.  Although maybe we should? Heres an allegation from a claimed ex-Microsoft employee who didn’t get into the spirit of “Bing”

Notes

[1] – Blaming listening to early good reports is what its alleged Steve Ballmer said in relation to Vista and the subsequent reception it received.

Goblin – bytes4free@googlemail.com

Twitter Trends for 2009 – Microsoft beaten by Apple and Google?

The Twitter blog is showing the most popular trends for 2009.  What is interesting is that in the technology section it shows Snow Leopard ranking 2 places higher than Windows 7.

This surprises me for a couple of reasons.  Firstly I would think (from seeing them in action) that Microsoft has far more Twitter accounts (official and un) than Apple.  Secondly the IMO awful Windows 7 party ads that computer users from Linux/Windows/Apple camps found disgusting didn’t manage to push #Windows 7 as high.  Is that saying something about the consumers choice in the high street?

After Vista can Microsoft really manage to take another hit? and especially one on its Vista 7? You can see all the popular trends from Twitter here:http://blog.twitter.com/2009/12/top-twitter-trends-of-2009.html

Its worth noting though that the most popular technology trend was Google Wave.

Whilst we are on the subject of Twitter, on their blog they also announce that they are now looking into services for business.  You can read more about that here: http://blog.twitter.com/2009/12/feature-test-with-businesses.html

Noooooo! Its “evil proprietary drivers”!?!

Nvidia have today released their updated Linux/BSD Solaris drivers both in 32 and 64bit flavors.  Visit the official homepage: http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html For me the one piece of proprietary that is always with my distro!

Take the 5th Microsoft!

Cnet speak with Microsoft in relation to its EU anti-trust issues and in my opinion the answers you get are pretty much the ones you would expect, IMO trying to suggest everything is “cosy” between Microsoft and the anti-trust body.  One answer though was of interest and it was in regards to the Plurk fiasco we covered the other day.  When asked if there was some agreement to be reached between Microsoft and Plurk, the response was:

I wouldn’t want to say anything that goes beyond the public statement we put out.

Probably for the best.

You can read that article here: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10416714-56.html and of course this article was written in addition to the news that the EU has settled with agreement on its anti-trust case.  You can read that article here.

Paris Hilton’s Linux distro?

I wouldn’t think so, more someones idea of a joke, buts its a rather humorous article on Paris featuring Tux.  Observers of Paris said:

Many Linux users said they appreciate the exposure a star like Paris Hilton can give to the Linux movement, and added that they can “appreciate someone who can compile without panties on.”

You can read the full “article” here: http://www.bbspot.com/News/2006/08/paris-hilton-tinkerbell-linux.html

Android making inroads into iPhone apps?

Its being reported that Android apps has hit the 20,000 mark, going some way to reaching the 100,000 of Apples offering.  Big news?  Well as an owner of neither (nor do I believe the need for these mobile apps/games) I wonder if 100,000 apps is better than 20,000? and in fact to go further than that, is 20,000 apps (a silly amount of choice IMO) really anything to be proud of?  I wonder of the all those apps/games are decent pieces of software and how much of it is rubbish?

Goblin – bytes4free@googlemail.com

Its been a busy and productive year for Google.  The biggest talking point of which seems to be (at the moment) ChromeOS, however lets not forget the ever increasing popularity of Google Apps, Google Wave which is currently in beta (and been a firm favorite of mine), GoogleDNS which despite being subject to privacy questions (by some) continues to be a rather fast DNS service which is free for everyone, now Google has another product to release to the world.

Here’s introducing goo.gl a URL shortening service, much in the similar to that of TinyURL and the plethora of others we’ve covered here.  At present time its not available for general use, being only available to Google Toolbar and FeedBurner:

…we may eventually make it available for a wider audience in the future.

and I would bet that “eventually” will actually be soon. Do TinyURL et al have anything to worry about?

The goo.gl does pose a few questions, some directed at Google some more general.

The first question I would like to ask is where are all these leading?  We often speak of Microsoft and its attempts to get involved in everything you do (IMO) but without anyone paying much attention, Google is penetrating many facets of our computing life either directly or indirectly.  Let me give you an example, I use Chromium, Google apps, have a google email address, been using 8.8.4.4 GoogleDNS (as a secondary) and use Google for search.  Thats alot of Google and it appears whilst I am busy advocating alternatives, Ive become “Googlified” without even noticing.  So is this a problem?

For myself and at the present time, Id say no.  There are concerns by some over privacy, thats a topic that Ive covered before but in respect of URL shortening it asks another question, is it safest with Google?  There are some great URL shortening services, these services are provided free and whilst some will be nearly household names and others won’t, whats the risk with using a URL shortening service?  Quite a lot if the service is removed and all the links in your Tweets are then broken (for example), this also makes me wonder if goo.gl are ultimately going to charge for their service.  Also consider that the URL and stats on clicks are also going to be of great worth to Google in terms of monitoring market trends (IMO) and are we really sure we know where that will lead?

Ive often said Ive been very happy with the Google services I use, but there is a saying about not putting your eggs in one basket and I can’t help thinking that maybe we should keep that in mind.   Im not suggesting for one minute to turn our back on Google, but maybe consider (just like you would with large sums of money) that there may be a benefit in “spreading yourself around”.

That being said (and slightly worryingly), if goo.gl takes away from say TinyURL and their service stops, we could have millions of links effectively worthless.  Google is afterall almost part of our vocab and goo.gl is certainly simple to remember.

Goblin – bytes4free@googlemail.com

From cloaking devices to Tweeting in Klingon, its all here in my favorite sites for this weekend!

Ive often come across many links and sites that I could not write an article on but do deserve a mention.  Where I can I try to showcase them on Twitter & Identi.ca , but often I am juggling several things at once.

With that in mind, here’s some of the sites, services and software that Ive used this weekend.

Rupom.net – Your URL shrinker – http://rupom.net/

Another free URL shrinker service which offers the shortest URL’s Ive come across in a long time.  I only found this one today as a result of an incoming visit to the site.  Worth checking out and will shortly be replacing TinyURL in my browser.  You can visit the blog of Rupom here.

Incognito 2009.0beta – http://www.browseanonymouslyanywhere.com/incognito/

A Gentoo based LiveCD using DE KDE 3.5.9 aiming to give you complete anonymity whilst surfing.  Without going into details of exactly how it manages that (if you’re interested you can visit the site) what I will say is it worked very well.  Browse, use BitTorrent sends emails, you can do so with you own IP “cloaking device”  (For a Klingon related link see last link).  Whilst the distro does indeed work very well, contain a plethora of desktop tools (such as Kword) I often wonder the reasons behind someone wanting to hide their identity so completely.

I had promised myself months ago I would look at this project and now I have I can put the matter to rest.  One observation I will make is that you should not expect as fast a browsing experience as you do now.  Due to the way that Tor “protects” your identity, I saw on my test rig (with a dedicated 8mbit connection) slow to almost a dialup crawl.  Unlucky? maybe, but it makes me pleased that I don’t feel the need to hide my IP identity when online, so I’ll pass on using it.

Linux Basement Podcast – http://linuxbasement.com/

I am ashamed to admit that I had never heard of this podcast so it was a pleasant surprise to find the content interesting, fun and accessable.  Currently in its 47th episode, whilst not a polished IMO in terms of production as Linux Outlaws, its the content thats important and in that respect it was damn good.  Check them out and give them your support!

Nitrotracker v0.4 – http://nitrotracker.tobw.net/

A soundtracker utility for the Nintendo DS that can be used with an R4 or similar.  Currently in v0.4 with apparently the source to be released very shortly, its a great little util for music generation on the DS.

Tweet in Klingon – http://tweetinklingon.com

Ok, it’s slightly old news but Ive only had the chance to look at it properly this weekend.    Visit this site, let it connect with your Twitter Account and you will be able to convert a Tweet into Klingon.  Great for StarTrek fans, a pain in the neck for those that are not.  I’ll let you decide which category you fall into.

Goblin – bytes4free@googlemail.com

Clean, simple and a fast booter (even from a live CD)

A look at an out-of-the-box, Ubuntu based Linux distro with a bias towards computing in the cloud!

No matter if you are a Linux user or not, everyone seems to talk about the new GoogleOS which is due to arrive next year.  These “big name” steps that are being taken to providing cloud computing will change the way we look at our net experience, where we store our data and more importantly answer the question is it possible to live off and be happy with an online apps solution.

Looking at xPUD, which is currently in an early release of 0.9.2, the first thing to strike you is the size of the download (and subsequent space it requires for a HD install) which is 60 meg approx and 50 meg approx respectively.   After burning the .iso you are ready to rock and roll, so lets take a look at this tiny distro.  Which has already some competition from other tiny distro’s out there.

xPUD is Ubuntu based, which usually means theres at least a “minimum standard” to expect.  I don’t think theres much debate that Ubuntu has taken the Linux platform far with it being one of the most popular distributions available.   Couple that with a lightweight xfce DE and you’re in for a treat.

Booting in approximately 8 seconds, you are presented with a simple, clear interphase.  Having covered other “browser based” distro’s here, the first impression is that xPUD is very polished and the custom menu system which “protects” users from going astray is very nice.  The four large icons to the left of the screen pretty much contain the features you would expect.  The settings tab includes plain English (or the language you selected at bootup) and simple interfaces, making configuration of your hardware easy.  Theres no real room for error with the simple setups for your network, display can easily be changed as can sound & language.  Its in the settings tab that you can install more software (to your HD if you require), although if this is being used in a kiosk scenario that probably would not be needed.  For those that are wanting more packages for maybe an HD or SSD install, Opt-Get handles that task, again with a simple UI.

You also have the file tab which offers you a GUI file manager which is handled in this instance by PCMan 0.5.1.

Hardware was detected flawlessly at bootup and there were no issues on the test machine whatsoever.  9 seconds to boot and be net ready is fantastic for a LiveCD in my opinion.

Applications

The default packaging of any distro is important in my opinion, with this being an intended browser based distro, its only right that the first thing we should cover is the web browser, which is handled by Firefox 3.5.5 the latest version.  Since running Chromium, I have not kept up with Firefox but in this implementation it operates very quickly and has no  issues.  You have an option to call up a terminal should you wish and theres also an installed media player (gnome-mplayer 0.9.8)

Now we move onto the web apps.  Since you have a browser its pretty academic what web apps you use but there are links on the menu tab for Facebook, Google Calendar, Meebo and Youtube.

Conclusions

Compared to other browser based distros that Ive covered here, xPUD is extremely polished.   The menu that greets you is clean, attractive and simple.  Even the most IT challenged would have no difficulty in getting to grips with it in a very short space of time.   Hardware was recognised without issue and the bootup shutdown times are without doubt the fastest Ive seen in a distro to date.

So now I need to say what I think was missing, since this is still early in its release, these are not complaints or critisms about xPUD, infact all of the suggestions are minor and can be achieved by the user themselves at runtime.  Lets take a look at some of those things.

Online Apps – I expected to see a Google apps link as default on the menu system.  Youtube is pretty much a household name and really I don’t think it needs its own shortcut.  Meebo is fine, however I don’t believe there is IRC access with that and I would have either liked to have seen a bundled small IRC app or atleast a link to a web based one.

Display – The display settings are easily changed which is good, however it would probably be wise to have a timer “reset to default” in case your chosen resolution is out of range of your monitor.  (Having said that with a 9 second boot, its hardly an issue)

Install options – Obviously this is a LiveCD although there is an optional .exe to install from Windows.  What is missing is an install option as default through the LiveCD itself.  It can be installed although messing with Grub is not the simpliest of beasts for those who don’t like the CLI or have little Linux experience (IMO)

At the end of the day though, I strongly recommend this distro.  Provided you have no hardware issues this is ideal for a friend or family member that wants to get online without the hassle of learning anything.  Its great in a kiosk environment and I can see this being fantastic for my little Acer One Netbook (I will be looking at this shortly)

Visit the home of xPUD and support this project!  What a fantastic piece of work and a real credit to the devolopers who have obviously spent alot of time making this Linux experience as painless as possible.

http://www.xpud.org/

Goblin – bytes4free@googlemail.com

What another great reason to use Microsoft Office!?! It is being reported that Microsoft have warned customers on December 11th that there may be issues with running protected documents (RMS protected), most notably on Office 2003.  When we use the word “issues” its probably fairer to say barriers as Microsoft is warning users that they may get the error message (this is alleged to happen for both opening and saving):

Unexpected error occurred. Please try again later or contact your system administrator

For me though after years of using Microsoft products, there was no such thing as an “unexpected” error.  My experiences of Microsoft products (in comparison to the choices I have now) can best be described as a pitched battle between me and my computing needs and Microsoft’s idea of what it thought I needed.

We’ve yet to see a “Microsoft blames…” comment in relation to this, but what is being said:

We are working to resolve this issue as quickly as possible and we will provide customers a solution as soon as we can. Any new updates and we will post the information here.

Source: Technet

We’ve covered alternatives to Microsoft Office (which are available for Windows)  Most notably Openoffice and Abiword, both of which are free and both of which have excellent communities.

I asked the question recently “Why fear the cloud with your data when we have so many people reporting issues with Microsoft products?” You can read that here.  Its quite fitting then really that when we look at some of the issues being written about in regards to Office that there is some (IMO) similarity.

Lets for a minute look at what some people reckon of Microsoft Office, keeping in mine that IMO its a massive cash cow for Microsoft.

Microsoft recently sent an “important” update regarding piracy of Office Home and Student 2007. I refused to install the update. Approximately ten days after receiving the update, they removed my purchased copy of Office Home and Student 2007 and placed an activation icon on my desktop. They did not have my permission for this.

So here we have not only a problem with Office, but Microsoft allegedly fiddling with a computer system WITHOUT permission.  Lets move onto another:

I received the windows 7 upgrade and installed it on Wednesday Nov. 18th, 2009. Yesterday the 21st a message popped up stating that windows could not be activated due to some error code so I called Microsoft and spoke to John……

Now its alleged that customer service had a little attitude problem, which (IMO) to me comes as no surprise when we look at some of the lengths people go to when you offer an alternative to Microsoft products or dare to suggest they have issues.  Heres what happened next:

…He had the worst attitude that I have ever come across in customer service, he should be fired, he obviously hates his job, mind you I did not raise my voice to him or argue etc. he was mean instantly and would not help me, kept on saying ‘never mind’ when I asked him to repeat himself, he ended by saying “I know who can help you” and sent me to a Spanish speaking voice message that ended by hanging up on me. This is not acceptable in any business EVEN Microsoft, they are money gouging, rude people who need to be taught a lesson in respect. Apparently my problem is my upgrade is an OEM version and Microsoft refuses to help me unless I fork out more cash to enable Windows activation. Well they don’t know me, I am extremely tenacious and do not plan on cowtowing to this entity full of over blown egotistical bullies with no manners. Here we go. Good luck to the rest of you who have to suffer the arrogant ignorance of these people in Microsoft customer service, you will need it.

Source: Consumeraffairs.com

Microsoft arrogant? Never!  ”bullies with no manners” We’ll we’ve never seen behaviour like that from the MS faithful have we?!?  When will people learn to just keep buying Microsoft products theres no alternative, Microsoft is always right and Microsoft knows whats good for you?!?? Back to being serious, yet again the above comment shows someone else who has had a similar experience to me and is maybe a reason why we are seeing alternatives to Microsoft products having an increase in usage?

Two alternatives you can use for free, which I am sure the majority of readers already know about:

http://www.openoffice.org

http://www.abiword.org

It was a spokesperson for the French Police (who have allegedly migrated away from Microsoft Office) who said:

When he saw OpenOffice worked just as well and was available for free, it was he that decided it should be installed on all 90.000 desktops.

That was reported in an article on Openbytes.

and in respect of Open Office, its being reported that in the city of Vienna:

Of the city’s total 32,000 PCs……..Some 15,000 PCs in the city have OpenOffice installed.

Source: Osor.eu

French Military Dump Outlook

I covered before the news about the French Police moving to FOSS.  Its been one of my most popular articles (in terms of unique reads) and now it appears the French Military is following that trend.  You can see my original article here.  Lets also remind ourselves of what Mr Guimard (speaking for the Gendarmerie) said at the time:

Since July 2007 we have bought two hundred Microsoft licenses. If one of us wants a new PC, it comes withUbuntu. This encourages our users to migrate.

Not just France? Heres what they have to say about open source in Austria:

Already since 1989, we have been using open source software used with much success. Examples include the use of this type of software for print and file servers, Internet and intranet sites and for running major parts of the security infrastructure. In 2007 we spent about 600,000 euro on open source projects…

Source: Osor.eu

Conclusions

Speaking as a Linux/FOSS user, none of this comes as any surprise to me at all.  Since my move from Microsoft in the home (as a result of repeatedly being let-down, then blamed for failing software) I have experienced first hand the advantages of migrating to FOSS.  This is not because the software is free (to me thats just an added bonus) but the days of me constantly fixing, correcting, scanning, cleaning up my system have come to an end.

One only has to look at any IT related forum to see users running many different FOSS projects.  For some its on a Windows platform, for others they have, like me moved away completely.

For those Microsoft customers reading this, I’d ask you to look at your own systems.  How many packages do you run that are not Microsoft?  We can see by the reported declining market share of Internet Explorer that somethings changing, users are trying alternatives and all the while we are getting more and more choice.  I won’t predict that 2010 is going to be the year of the Linux desktop, but I certainly predict that the trends we are seeing will only continue to grow.  That will (IMO) force everyone to “up their game” and as far as the end user is concerned, that can only be a good thing.

Goblin – bytes4free@googlemail.com

]]> http://openbytes.wordpress.com/2009/12/12/microsoft-woes-bugs-openoffice-french-military/feed/ 4 openbytes http://openbytes.wordpress.com/2009/12/09/microsoft-and-google-to-appear-in-court/ http://openbytes.wordpress.com/2009/12/09/microsoft-and-google-to-appear-in-court/#comments Wed, 09 Dec 2009 23:38:44 +0000 openbytes http://openbytes.wordpress.com/?p=2514 ]]>

Dictionary definition: Bing - Noun, a heap or a pile.

and maybe proof that as far as Microsoft is concerned the dictionary definition of Bing has never been more apt?

Yes, its another file sharing topic!

Its being reported today that Microsoft and Google are both being sued by Blue Destiny Records over facilitating and enabling copyright material on their service.  In my previous coverage of file sharing, I made the point that if TPB and other tracker sites were being faced with takedown notices, shouldn’t at the very least the same be applied to search engines and their respective results since there appear to be (in some cases) a relationship between some of the sites and search engines. (IMO)

That being said though, this case is to do with Rapidshare and its advertising arrangements with both Microsoft and Google.

Of course Rapidshare is not BitTorrent and in these days of numerous reports of takedown notices on Torrent Trackers, it makes it a little of a different story.

It is stated in the suit:

RapidShare generates revenue by selling subscriptions for its high-speed download services, and through advertising dollars generated by its advertising partnerships with Google and Microsoft….

and further on:

RapidShare’s business success is accomplished only with the knowing assistance of these two top search engines – Google and Microsoft’s Bing.

We all know what Microsoft thinks about the Piracy/File sharing issue.  No? Lets remind ourselves of some of the comments.  Here’s Bill Gates when he talks about the piracy of Microsoft products:

They’ll get sort of addicted, and then we’ll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade

and what about:

As long as they are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours.

So maybe this flippant (IMO) disregard for intellectual property comes from its own ethos of being happy with people “stealing” products?  I’ll let you make your own mind up on that, but in the meantime it will be interesting to see if this makes it into the courtroom without one of those out of court settlements and may be another point for Microsoft shareholders to consider when looking at MS’s figures in the last few releases.  If a precedent is set, how many other labels/companies will come knocking at the door of Microsoft to get their compensation?

Of course Google is also mentioned and it would be unfair simply to pose the file sharing article at just Microsoft, however one has to wonder when Bill Gates makes statements like the one above, how seriously does Microsoft take the file-sharing issue?  Well going back to the suit involving Rapidshare, it goes on to say:

MS Bing goes a step further than Google by allowing users an immediate preview [of] deep linked content on the underlying website without actually opening the website link

Mr Ballmer doesn’t seem to (IMO) and reportedly he made a comment he made in respect of  Windows having the largest market share, followed by pirated Windows, words to the effect of “they have a great product, but we are working on it.”

which was strange because when talking about Vista in 2007:

Piracy reduction can be a source of Windows revenue growth, and I think we’ll make some piracy improvements this year….

although he now seems to think that the issues of Vista were because they listened to “early good reports”.  We covered that here recently and if the allegation by a claimed ex-Microsoft Engineer is to be believed then we can see why the reports were good.  You can read that article here.

At the end of the day, it is uncertain if there is a case here until its either put to the courts (or more likely IMO settled out of court)

In my opinion though when you look at Google stomping over Bing and its search market share, coupled with the fact that there is now a suit involving Bing, the dictionary definition of the word Bing (as far as Microsoft is concerned) is very apt (in my opinion)

–noun British Dialect.

a heap or pile.

Source: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/bing

Goblin – bytes4free@googlemail.com

Vulnerability in Internet Explorer Could Allow Remote Code Execution

….An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could gain the same user rights as the local user.

Taken from the Microsoft Security Advisory posted on 23rd November 2009.

We are beginning (IMO) a new era of computing, the once merely discussed computing in the cloud is starting to come into fruition.

For me the “turning point” will begin with Chrome OS and its retail release.  success or failure, the idea of trusting the cloud for your computing needs will be one step closer to something which I believe will be commonplace in the home.  Why do I think this?  Lets look a little earlier in history and consider when the Internet was gathering pace, I remember the concept of “always on” net access was feared as being the harbinger of death and destruction with the idea being an exercise in exploit suicide.  Those days are long in the past however as a throwback of that “fear”, out of habit I still switch my computer off after use and unplug my router!

The first quote of this article is in relation to the latest set of patches to be released on “Patch Tuesday” or as I call it “Catching up Tuesday”.  Microsoft is allegedly releasing 6 security bulletins on the 8th of December.   Lets look at how the latest round of (finally) discovered exploits is described by Zdnet:

Microsoft urged customers to pay special attention to the IE update because of the availability of public exploit code and the fact that attackers could launch malware attacks to take complete control of a Windows machine running a vulnerable browser

So what does this have to do with the subject of Cloud Computing?

One of the arguments that I see when people are stating the case not to move to the cloud is fear over the security of their data.  I ask that this article is read on the basis of the home user and not enterprise merely because the diverse needs and sensitivity of data would mean that talking about all permutations within enterprise and their suitability for the cloud would make a never ending article.

If we agree that Microsoft Windows has a majority “chunk” of the market (at the moment ) and we agree that people have a fear over the security of their data, what on earth does this say about the future of Microsoft Windows? Time and time again exploits are discovered, fixed and then the whole process starts over again.  A reader Richard made a remark to me about retracting a comment I made in relation to Microsoft blaming a 3rd party for a Windows exploit and I think that highlights a very important point.  Are customers not paying Microsoft money for a system that is secure?  Sure, the exploit may have been a product of another party but does Microsoft not have any blame for allowing that exploit in the first place?  and even if its proved that there was nothing Microsoft could have done, is that any consolation to the user who has fallen victim to a Windows exploit?

Now if a fear regarding Cloud computing is security of data then surely this is a reason to avoid Windows? Lets remind ourselves of some of the Windows exploits stories for 2009 (keep in mind though this is a very brief and far from complete summary of all the Windows issue this year)

Conficker

Early in January this year we had reports that one in ten Windows machines were not patched to protect themselves from the worm that was the source of so many articles.  If we think of the number of machines worldwide that run Windows, then you are looking at massive number of machines infested.  The Register ran an article on that here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/01/19/conficker_worm_feed/

Tolken Kidnapping

March this year saw a story break regarding a one year old exploit which Microsoft had allegedly done nothing about and we saw headlines of sites such as “Why Microsoft Puts Our Nation At Risk: Year Long Un-mitigated Risk, Now In The Wild” and the same article reported that:

What makes it even worse is that it work on both Windows Server 2008 and Server 2003.  The exploit creates a backdoor shell after it steals the SYSTEM token.

This was also said at the time:

This is yet another example of a black-eye that Microsoft could have avoided.  To repeat, the company had notice about this issue one year ago and despite evidence of proof-of-concept code, there is not patch for affected Windows users.

Its BSOD time again for Vista users!

9th of September 2009 saw an old friend hit the headlines again.  Its time for the Blue Screen of Death! this exploit attacks machines that have the Server Message Block 2.0 protocol enabled and presents users with a BSOD!  It allegedly affected Windows 7, however it was reported to NOT affect the retail Vista 7

Windows 7 users – Don’t worry! you’re next!

Vista 7, the only pig outside of the Muppet Show to wear lipstick (IMO) is now getting a little taste of the exploit action. On November 16th Slashdot reported a 0-day Windows 7 exploit affecting Windows Server 2008 r2 and Windows 7.

Microsoft at the time were alleged to have said (as reported in the article):

Microsoft said it may patch the problem, but didn’t spell out a timetable or commit to an out-of-cycle update before the next regularly-scheduled Patch Tuesday of December 8. Instead, the company suggested users block TCP ports 139 and 445 at the firewall

Which for those who enjoy computing as a hobby or professionally makes perfect sense.  I wonder what the average user made of that afvice….clear as mud?  Which maybe explains why so many exploits where only a workaround is offered are allowed to run rampant.  The exploit described at Slashdot allegedly allows a hard crash of a vulnerable system.

You can also read about that exploit here

But wait! Theres more!

If the few highlighted exploits of 2009 were not enough[1], there was (in June 09) reports of Microsoft taking control of your PC with a bugged forced update!  Windows secrets reported:

Many readers have reported seeing updates being installed at shutdown or reboot time without any notification, much less an opportunity to select which updates will or will not be applied

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes of ZDnet allegedly said:

I have been receiving reports of these stealth updates for a while now

which is not as worrying as an observation made at the time:

Perhaps it’s well past time Redmond respects who owns the computers they commandeer and who is in the best position to know when updates can safely be applied!

So it appears you can lose control of your PC to Microsoft as well as a vulnerability in their software.  Still think the cloud is any more of a risk than this sad chain of events?

You can read that article here: http://windowssecrets.com/2009/07/02/03-Forced-updates-plague-Windows-users-worldwide

Conclusions

So those were but a few of the issues Windows had this year.  There were plenty of others.  People say that we shouldn’t trust our data to the cloud (or at least without some promises from the service provider) I ask is your data any safer when running a Windows system?

Chrome OS is due out next year, we are seeing the rise in popularity of services such as Ubuntu One and Dropbox, online apps are coming to the fore with Google Doc’s and Twitter to name a few…how much longer are we to rely on a locally based storage medium?

I don’t believe local storage will disappear over night, there is (IMO) a consumer hunger for “owning” media and good examples of this hunger can be found with the proud owners of TB’s of MP3/OGG files or disks crammed with Xvid/DivX video.  Security of data?, sure its secure on your storage device, but how secure is your OS? What about the apps you are running and what promises can Microsoft make that the data stored on your hard disk is any more secure than that stored on the cloud?

Is not the argument to “not trust the cloud” more of an argument to get rid of Windows? – I’ll let you decide.

Questions I think which will be answered very shortly when ChromeOS hits the shelves.

I often see:

Yes, but Windows has more attacks because more people use it! Thats why Linux doesn’t!

A point with maybe a small amount of truth.  I’d suggest though, thats of little comfort to a Windows user who has fallen victim to another security hole in their OS.

If security of your data is a reason why you don’t want to consider cloud computing why are you using Windows and what about considering Linux? – Just an idea.

Notes:

[1] There were so many Windows issues this year, I have detailed only a very small amount.  They are included to make a point.  You can find more for yourself with a quick Google.

Goblin – bytes4free@googlemail.com

Mr Ballmer has allegedly got plenty of those. Did he really believe them about Vista?

Theres been a lot of blaming this year by Microsoft in my opinion.

From blaming a 3rd party for a GPL violation in their code to the Black Screen of Death or countless other issues.

Regular readers here may remember that a while ago we saw Steve Ballmer blaming IMO the beta testers for the “early good reports of Vista” as if it was some justification for unleashing Vista on the public.

Lets remind ourselves what he said, with Bloomberg reporting:

Microsoft Corp.Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer says the company got the wrong impression from early positive feedback on Vista….

So now thats out of the way, have a look at an open letter to Steve Ballmer from what appears to be a legitimate long time Windows user.

Whilst the content of the letter is nothing that hasn’t been covered here before, what is interesting is a comment a little further down the page by a claimed former Microsoft engineer.

You are so right. As a former engineer at Microsoft since the early days, I witnessed a change in General Manager and Regional Vice President level management, where they punished converyors of realistic feedback and only escalated good feedback to show good results on their commitments so they can get promoted and get good performance reviews, then move on to higher paying jobs. It got worse around the Vista timeframe. From what I hear from my former friends, this has not gotten any better.

Their actions helped advance their careers, while customers suffered, and their actions effected the company’s bottom line and public pereption on Microsoft’s core competency product.

So lets look at these comments.  ”Punished realistic comments” I expect most people who have a blog and have posted dissatisfaction in Microsoft products have been “punished”.  There certainly a lot of that going on at comp.os.linux.advocacy when a post is made that upsets someone with a Microsoft opinion.

Another poster made the comment:

Ballmer dumping blame on testers is pathetic he’s CEO doesn’t he use this stuff, where was Gates? Beta testers are good for that last 10% you have to be 90% sure of your product based on your own testing and Microsoft has the resources to test it on a wider variety of hardware and applications than anyone else.

and I would agree.  My opinion is that Steve Ballmer was well aware of the Vista shortcomings prior to it hitting the market, but by then far too much money had been spent on “the project” and they were committed for release, at the very least to recoup as much of their investment as they could.   The good early reports are convenient since Mr Ballmer can put that as a justification for releasing Vista and in my opinion explains why the claimed Microsoft engineer was stating the good comments were made to further careers.

So to summarize, in my opinion there are only two alternatives here (and please anyone correct me here is there are more)

1. Either Ballmer really was that clueless about Vista which would pose the question, is he suitable in his current role?

or

2. Ballmer knew exactly what Windows was and wanted the good early reports in order to use as an “excuse” when Vista was slated publically.

Please help me here if there are any more you can think of.

Whats most concerning (if the source is genuine) is the following comment:

…..From what I hear from my former friends, this has not gotten any better.

"Mr Ballmer sir, everythings great with Vista, that BSOD is nothing, its just one of the features"....Does anyone really believe Mr Ballmer would have not known the extent of Vista's problems early in its life? I'll let you decide.

Vista, like ME is mostly in the past now.  I don’t think there are many who are going to be tempted by Vista and will instead opt to keep XP, upgrade to 7 or migrate to another platform.  However whats going at the moment?  What was the policy with 7, keep in mind that we were going through a recession and Microsoft was laying off staff, I wonder who would have been brave enough to be critical of Windows 7 if they discovered issues? – I’ll let you answer that as you imagine yourself in their position.  Let us remind ourselves of what the claimed Microsoft engineer said: “they can get promoted and get good performance reviews, then move on to higher paying jobs” and also “…they punished converyors of realistic feedback…” What would you do in their position?

Going back to Vista and Mr Ballmer allegedly “buying into” the early good reports, it makes me wonder then why Microsoft ran the Mojave Experiment.  Surely if, as far as Mr Ballmer was concerned Vista was great, why did he feel the need to trick (IMO) users into trying Vista under the guise of it being something else.  Didn’t Mr Ballmer at the time wonder why they were doing that?  It seems to me that we only get a half admition of the problems of Vista when Microsoft wanted to sell you 7.  I wonder what issues 7 will have and what will be said when 8 is ready for sale?  You shouldn’t have too long to await allegedly because according to Microsoft roadmap they will be trying to push 8 on you in about 2 years.

Goblin – bytes4free@googlemail.com