Compatability, Microsoft style

Posted on December 6, 2006 by jjn1

Microsoft has pledged to make its new Office 2007 file formats accessible within the company’s other products, but the timeline for that support varies widely.

Although the company already has converters available for older PC versions of Office, the Mac translation tools are still in development. Microsoft now doesn’t expect to have the tools available until late March or April, the company said Tuesday.

“We realize this will be an inconvenience for some of you,” Microsoft acknowledged in its Macmojo blog. Folks in the Mac software unit at Microsoft say they have experienced the pain firsthand, now that a good percentage of Microsoft employees are using Office 2007.

Meanwhile, Microsoft’s Windows Mobile unit said in an e-mail on Tuesday that its PocketPC and Smartphone devices won’t be able to read and edit the new formats until the middle of next year….

This won’t stop Microsoft executives dissing OpenOffice for its alleged inability to read MS-formatted documents, though. Monopoly isn’t just a social and economic problem; it’s a state of mind.

Vista: the torture begins

Posted on November 26, 2006 by jjn1

This morning’s Observer column…

Next Thursday, 30 November, is the feast day of St Andrew, the patron saint of Scotland. Pity he’s not also the patron saint of computer users, because soon they are going to need all the divine help they can get.

How come? Well, 30 November is also the day that Microsoft releases Vista, the new version of Windows, to its corporate customers. Because companies don’t squeal, we may expect the occasion to pass off reasonably peacefully. The screaming proper will only start on 30 January next year, when the system is released to consumers.

Vista, you see, is a new kind of beast. It’s not enough just to install it on your computer; you must also ‘activate’ it…

That Vista licensing agreement you were thinking of accepting

Posted on November 22, 2006 by jjn1

Mark Rasch, an IT lawyer, has a wonderful essay on the problems raised by the Vista EULA. The nub of it is this:

The terms of the Vista EULA, like the current EULA related to the “Windows Genuine Advantage,” allows Microsoft to unilaterally decide that you have breached the terms of the agreement, and they can essentially disable the software, and possibly deny you access to critical files on your computer without benefit of proof, hearing, testimony or judicial intervention. In fact, if Microsoft is wrong, and your software is, in fact, properly licensed, you probably will be forced to buy a license to another copy of the operating system from Microsoft just to be able to get access to your files, and then you can sue Microsoft for the original license fee. Even then, you wont be able to get any damages from Microsoft, and may not even be able to get the cost of the first license back…

Worth reading in full. Many thanks to Chris Walker for the link.

Novell’s Faustian bargain

Posted on November 22, 2006 by jjn1

Very good openDemocracy piece by Felix Cohen and Becky Hogge on the implications of the deal between Microsoft and Novell (memorably summarised by Dana Gardner at ZDNet in the headline “Fox marries chicken, both move into henhouse”)…

On 2 November, Novell and Microsoft announced a “broad collaboration on Windows and Linux interoperability and support”. The main aim was to provide reassurance and support to companies that required Linux and Windows to operate on the same hardware, in so-called “virtualisation” environments. But the small print revealed a patent licensing agreement and mutual covenant not to sue over patent infringements. This, many feared, would give Microsoft vital fresh ammunition for its steady fire of unsubstantiated claims that Linux infringes Microsoft’s patents. In effect, Microsoft had asked Novell the classic loaded question “when did you stop beating your wife?”, and Novell had unwisely attempted an answer…

A forecast of Vista consumer adoption

Posted on November 13, 2006 by jjn1

Forrester Research, a consultancy, has published A Forecast Of Windows Vista Consumer Adoption. Alas, it costs $249. But the online flyer says that it contains the following illustrations:

Figure 1: Consumers Keep Their Computers Forever

Figure 2: Consumers Are Moving To A Multicomputer Era

Figure 3: Income Is The Biggest Predictor Of Multicomputer Ownership

Figure 4: Forecast: US Windows Vista Adoption, 2007 To 2011

Allchin recants, er, clarifies

Posted on November 13, 2006 by jjn1

Further to that earlier post, Jim Allchin has been, er, clarifying his remarks about Vista and anti-virus software.

During a recent discussion with journalists about the release to manufacturing for Windows Vista, I made a comment about how attacks on the Internet are getting more and more sophisticated, and some of the security features in Windows Vista really help our customers. This somehow morphed into people thinking I said customers shouldn’t use antivirus software with Windows Vista.

When the articles and blogs started appearing, I asked the PR folks to send me a copy of the transcript of the call so I could read it over and see if I said something I didn’t mean. After reading the transcript, I could certainly see that what I said wasn’t as clear as it could have been, and I’m sorry for that. However, it is also clear from the transcript that I didn’t say that users shouldn’t run antivirus software with Windows Vista! In fact, later in the call, I explicitly made this point again, because I had realized I wasn’t as clear as I should have been. It’s important for me that our customers are using the appropriate security solutions for the right situations, whether that’s security functionality integrated in the operating systems, or add-on products.

The point I had been trying to make (albeit unclearly) is that Windows Vista includes new security features that can dramatically help improve our customers’ security for certain situations. I was asked a question about how I rated the protection provided by Windows XP with Service Pack 2 and whether or not it was still effective. I ended up telling a story about how the machine my seven-year-old son uses has no antivirus software installed because it runs in a very locked down configuration, which includes only being able to visit websites on an approved list (approved through the parental controls feature in Windows Vista). He also has no access to email or instant messaging and he doesn’t run as an administrator of the machine. In fact, parental controls in Windows Vista requires that the user you apply controls to is not running as an administrator. Email, phishing, and other social engineering attacks are definitely among the most prevalent attacks that home users experience today, and his machine has been locked down in these regards.

My point in bringing up this extreme example was really meant to emphasize that importance of defense-in-depth measures we put in Windows Vista—both the number of defenses and their combined effectiveness.

Now, the comments have unfortunately been cited out of context implying that I said Windows Vista users shouldn’t use antivirus. I want to be clear, most users will use some form of antivirus software, and that will be appropriate for their scenarios. In fact, Windows Security Center, a great feature in Windows Vista, specifically encourages the use of antivirus software.

Hostages to fortune

Posted on November 12, 2006 by jjn1

Jim Allchin, Microsoft VP, quoted on Good Morning Silicon Valley, talking about Vista.

In my opinion, it is the most secure system that’s available, and it’s certainly the most secure system that we’ve shipped. So I feel very confident that customers are far better off by using Windows Vista than they are with anything that we’ve released before.”

Earlier, he had said that he was so confident in the operating system’s security measures that he believes there’s no need for Vista users to run any third-party antivirus software.

Stay tuned.

LATER… Bill Thompson has written an insightful column about this. Excerpt:

Vista will ship with Kernel Patch Protection – also called PatchGuard – which checks to see if the core has been altered in any way. This should make it a lot harder for viruses, trojans, rootkits and other types of malicious software, or malware, to install.

PatchGuard will be backed up by support for the Trusted Platform Module, a hardware component built into many new computers that gives the operating system a way to store and use secured information.

The new approach should make life more difficult for malware writers, but it is also going to get in the way of legitimate security software vendors such as Symantec, which has already pointed out that its anti-virus programs rely on being able to modify the Windows kernel, something which will no longer be allowed.

Microsoft’s response is to argue that “kernel patching”, as the process is called, is not needed and that the standard security tools are all that are required.

It may be right, but it’s hard to tell because we don’t actually know much about what is going on inside the Vista kernel. Microsoft, like many other commercial software developers, prefers to keep such details secret.

“If severe flaws are discovered in Vista”, Bill concludes, “and there already signs that the lockdown is far from perfect, then users may well wonder why they have put their faith in the ‘benign dictator’ approach to security.”

Microsoft’s earth is flat

Posted on November 8, 2006 by jjn1

Hmmm… According to Playfuls.com,

A comparison between Google Earth and Virtual Earth 3D is inevitable. And the conclusion is that Virtual Earth is so restrictive that it cannot even be considered a Beta version.The first annoying thing that all users outside the US or England will probably encounter is that you are not allowed to install Virtual Earth 3D yet in your native language.

In order to be able to install Microsoft’s VE3D you’ll have to change your settings (if you are in Windows XP) from Control Panel-Regional Settings and make your computer have a default English language. I haven’t yet had the opportunity to test the program on Linux, Solaris or Mac, but I am not that naïve to think it will work on those operating systems…

My apologies to Microsoft if that is not the case…The second annoying thing makes me again remember why everybody considers MS’s policy as arrogant, tyrannical and often stupid. You will not be able to view 3D maps if you don’t have Internet Explorer 6 or 7. To tell you the truth I do have IE7 installed on my computer but I don’t use it because I am a FireFox and Opera user. Well, Microsoft thought at that and made me cry in anger when I first tried to download the .msi installer for VE3D: nothing budged!… I asked through Skype a friend and he told me the same thing about FF: no pop-up, no warning, nothing! He eventually gave up but I had more patience and in the end I discovered that only IE is available (for now, I hope…) for this option…

If only it didn’t run under Windows.

How many times can you sell your soul?

Posted on November 3, 2006 by jjn1

Mitch Ratcliffe on the Novell-Microsoft deal…

The announcement that Novell and Microsoft will work together to improve interoperability between Windows and Novell’s SuSE Linux, as well as cross-promote and support one another’s products strikes me as eerily like one of those movies with Christopher Lee as Dracula.

Every time you see an old Dracula film, the same fool is making a deal with Drac to achieve eternal life, a life you know, as the viewer, is going to be awful and short. “Don’t do it!” you want to shout at the screen, and so it is with this deal between the maker of Windows and the acquirer, as Novell once staked its future on UNIX, of SuSE Linux.

I’m not saying Microsoft is evil, only that it makes these interoperability deals to defeat its partner, not help them. In the 90s, when both Windows and Novell Netware were under assault by IP networks, they tried to co-exist. Microsoft started making Netware-compatible versions of its local area network management and operating system software.

[…]

Linux may win someday, but Novell looks like it will be found dead one morning with mysterious bite marks on its neck. But we can see that now, because we’ve seen this movie before.

‘Windows Genuine Advantage’? Bah, humbug!

Posted on October 29, 2006 by jjn1