Vista bugs not stable yet

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From Good Morning Silicon Valley…

Some of Microsoft’s closest friends are warning the company in public what they surely must have been telling it privately — that the long-awaited and long-delayed Vista update of Windows still needs a lot of work. And if that’s true, Microsoft is impaled on the tines of a Morton’s Fork.

Robert McLaws, a .NET developer and Vista beta tester and blogger lays out a picture of a still-unstable Beta 2 version vs. a deadline crunch that just invites mistakes. “I’ve been defending Microsoft’s ship schedule for Windows Vista for quite some time. Up to this point, I’ve been confident that Vista would be at the quality level it needs to be by RC1 [Release Candidate 1] to make the launch fantastic. Having tested several builds between Beta 2 and today, I hate to say that I no longer feel that way. Beta 2 was a disappointment on many levels. It was nowhere near as stable as it should have been, and was a huge memory hog.” McLaws advises pushing the launch from January (see “Don’t you know Lunar New Year is the new Christmas?”) to the end of February, adding a Beta 3 version and taking the inevitable heat. “Don’t defend it, just announce it. There’s no point in trying to put a PR spin on it, because nobody is going to listen anyways. Let your thousands of beta testers cheer you for making the right decision, and tell Wall Street to go to hell,” he writes. Among those bobbing in agreement was Robert Scoble, until recently Microsoft’s voice in the blogosphere. “If this ships [to the factory] in October, I will recommend not installing it and waiting for the first service pack. There’s no way the quality will be high enough to trust it if it ships early. I hope Microsoft takes the time to do this right.”…

And if, like me, you were wondering what Morton’s Fork was, well here’s the Answers.com explanation:

Morton’s Fork is an expression that describes a choice between two equally unpleasant alternatives, or two lines of reasoning that lead to the same unpleasant conclusion. It is analogous to the expressions “between the devil and the deep sea” or “from the frying pan to the fire”.

The expression originates from a policy of tax collection devised by John Morton, Lord Chancellor in 1487, under the rule of Henry VII. His approach was that if the subject lived in luxury and had clearly spent a lot of money on himself, he obviously had sufficient income to spare for the king. Alternatively, if the subject lived frugally, and showed no sign of being wealthy, he must have had substantial savings and could therefore afford to give it to the king. These arguments were the two prongs of the fork and regardless of whether the subject was rich or poor, he didn’t have a favourable choice.

Hmmm… I’d have said Hobson’s Choice if I’d been writing the piece.

Later… The learned Bill Thompson writes:

The fork is a more appropriate metaphor than Hobson’s choice since it’s not that Microsoft has no choice – as the good innkeeper would have it – but that it is going to suffer whether or not it delays shipping. A real dilemma – a thesis that has two solutions :-)

He’s right, as usual.

A death at sea

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I went into Killybegs this morning to buy the papers and parked by the quay. Just after I arrived, two police cars and a coastguard jeep arrived. The cops sealed off the slipway. Shortly after that a hearse arrived, followed by a priest. It was clear that there had been a death at sea and they were waiting for the body to be brought ashore.

After about 20 minutes, a coastguard launch appeared, and a body was carefully lifted ashore. There was a pause while the priest said some prayers over the body, which was then placed in a plastic coffin and loaded into the hearse, which departed quietly. Only then did I notice a small group of men, standing smoking and talking quietly at the end of the slipway.

As I left, they were led off by the cops to the local police station. My guess is that they were the dead man’s shipmates. The consensus on the quay was that they were from a Russian ship which was anchored round the coast near St John’s Point. It was all very quiet and dignified and efficient. An everyday tale of life and death at sea.

Evening in Donegal

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The kids and I are on holiday in Donegal. We’re staying in a lovely house which looks out on the Atlantic. One of the great pleasures of the place is a stroll down to the sea at the end of the day, passing this inlet. The wonderful thing about the West coast is how long the daylight lasts. This was taken at about 9.40pm on July 31st. It was light until well after 10pm.

The passion of the Mel Gibson

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The NYT usefully draws attention to the fracas surrounding Mel Gibson’s arrest for drunk driving.

Almost as stunning as Mel Gibson’s anti-Jewish tirade when arrested on suspicion of drunk driving in the early hours of last Friday was the speed at which the scandal unfolded, doing serious damage to one of Hollywood’s most valuable careers along the way.

In a little over 24 hours, Mr. Gibson’s arrest and subsequent behavior in Malibu had already prompted talk of a claimed cover-up, an exposé, worldwide news coverage, an apology and then a full-blown push for alcohol rehabilitation, even as his representatives and executives at the Walt Disney Company rushed to catch up with the event’s effect on the filmmaker’s movie and television projects with the company…

The key factor in igniting the storm, says the Times, was that the news appeared not via the usual mainstream media channels but because on last Friday evening a celebrity website, TMZ.com, posted four pages of a sheriff’s report describing what the arresting officer said was Mr. Gibson’s belligerent behavior and a series of noxious remarks, including several deeply offensive comments about Jews.

Disney has — surprise, surprise! — cancelled a proposed miniseries about the Holocaust starring Mel! And the mutterings about the implicit anti-semitism of his film, The Passion of The Christ, have resurfaced. It’s tough being a global celeb.

I avoided the ‘Christ’ film for two reasons. As the child of a fanatical Catholic household, I had had quite enough of the so-called ‘passion’ to last me a lifetime; and I thought the second definite article in the title was a typo.

Billy Bragg and MySpace

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Interesting piece in today’s NYT…

When he is not writing or performing protest songs, the British folk-rocker Billy Bragg is apparently reading the fine print.

In May, Mr. Bragg removed his songs from the MySpace.com Web site, complaining that the terms and conditions that MySpace set forth gave the social networking site far too much control over music that people uploaded to it. In media interviews and on his MySpace blog, he said that the MySpace terms of service made it seem as though any content posted on the site, including music, automatically became the site’s property.

Although MySpace had not claimed ownership of his music or any other content, Mr. Bragg said the site’s legal agreement — which included the phrase “a nonexclusive, fully paid and royalty-free worldwide license” — gave him cause for concern, as did the fact that the formerly independent site was now owned by a big company (the News Corporation, which is controlled by Rupert Murdoch).

Mr. Bragg said that he himself had kept most of the copyrights to his recordings, licensing them out to the various record companies that have released his albums over the years. “My concern,” he said in a telephone interview, “is the generation of people who are coming to the industry, literally, from their bedrooms.”

About a month later, without referencing Mr. Bragg’s concerns, MySpace.com clarified its terms of service, which now explain who retains what rights. A sample line: “The license you grant to MySpace.com is nonexclusive (meaning you are free to license your content to anyone else in addition to MySpace.com).”

Jenny Toomey, executive director of the Future of Music Coalition, an advocacy group for musicians that focuses on intellectual property rights, said the Internet could help musicians warn one another about potential contractual problems. “Information is now shared in a different way,” she said, “and artists who are getting a bad deal can connect with each other.”

Mr. Bragg, who said he never had any direct communication with executives from MySpace, has put some of his music back on the site. And he offered some praise for the site’s effectiveness in spreading his message. “That’s the amazing thing about MySpace,” he said. “If you say something, word gets out.”

The Baghdad shell game

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Well, well. According to the New York Times,

BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 29 — The State Department agency in charge of $1.4 billion in reconstruction money in Iraq used an accounting shell game to hide ballooning cost overruns on its projects there and knowingly withheld information on schedule delays from Congress, a federal audit released late Friday has found…

Now, why are we not surprised by this?

The book of Jobs

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Nick Mathiason and I collaborated on a piece about a corporate corporate succession problem even more intriguing than that currently obsessing the board of BP — namely what happens when Steve Jobs finally decides to spend more time with his money. Sample:

Microsoft without Bill Gates seemed unthinkable until last month when he announced he was stepping down. In retrospect, we can see that a good deal of planning went into it. First he split his role into two and made Steve Ballmer chief executive, taking the software overlordship for himself. Then he brought in Ray Ozzie to be groomed for the software role over two years. And finally, he has choreographed his exit so that it takes place over a two-year period. The result: a decision that would once have sent the share price through the floor has been received with little disruption.

There’s no equivalent to Ballmer or Ozzie at Apple. Or, if there is, the public has never seen them. Whenever there is a spotlight on Apple, Jobs is in the centre of the beam. His regular keynote speeches at Mac Expos are more like rock concerts than corporate events. If there are cool new products to be unveiled, the chairman is the one who does the demos. ‘He’s absolutely integral to the success of company,’ said Conrad Roeber, partner at media consultancy Mediatique.

Jobs’s identification with Apple is, if anything, more fascinating than Gates’s with Microsoft, because Jobs was expelled by a 1980s boardroom coup from the company he co-founded in 1976. In those early days, Apple was a fantastically innovative, off-beat company with a counter-cultural corporate ethic. A celebrated Silicon Valley joke asked: ‘What’s the difference between Apple and the Boy Scouts?’ Answer: ‘The Boy Scouts have adult supervision.’..

Microsoft to unveil $100 laptop killer?

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Hot on the heels of the news that the Indian government has rejected the ‘One Laptop per Child’ idea comes an Engadget story that Microsoft, stung by the OLPC team’s decision to adopt Linux rather than Windows CE, is going to release a ‘foneplus’ — i.e. a mobile phone with port for connecting a TV screen and a keyboard. No pics, and maybe it’s just a rumour, but…

Amazon blues

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From Good Morning Silicon Valley…

In Amazon territory, the natives are getting restless. Investors who had stuck it out through quarter after quarter despite were already worried about margins and spending. When CEO Jeff Bezos reported Wednesday second-quarter earnings were down nearly 58 percent and lowered the 2006 outlook, then announced more spending and deeper price cuts, shareholders did a double-take and said, “Not with our money, you don’t.” The stock price plummeted more than 20 percent and is now bouncing around its three-year low. The backlash chopped more than $3 billion off Amazon’s market capitalization. “I think a lot of the frustration today is because this company perpetually seems to be in a heavy investment mode,” said Philip Remek, an analyst with Guzman & Co. Analyst Dan Geiman with McAdams Wright Ragen added, “It’s gotten to the point where you just don’t know what those returns are going to be. It’s just hard to measure.” Analysts also worried that the company was spreading itself too thin and adding low-margin businesses like groceries. “What’s the competitive advantage that Amazon brings to delivering all the types of Jell-O that you could possibly want?” asked David Garrity, an analyst with Dinosaur Research.

Bezos and team defended the spending, especially on services that encourage customer loyalty like the annual flat-rate deal offered on two-day shipping, as necessary to Amazon’s longterm health. With instant price comparisons available, loyalty to an online retailer is tenuous, he said, unless the company can use service and technology to build a compelling relationship with the customer. And some analysts are still willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Bob Toomey with E.K. Riley Advisors said, “People who follow the stock closely know or should know that Amazon’s strategy is and has been to be investing in the business for the long term.” The question is how many shareholders it will lose along the way.

Remember what Keynes said? “In the long run we are all dead”.