Microsoft Adds Depth to Security View

• By Doug Barney
• 09/22/2008

There's the model for development itself, which is free. On the paid side, Microsoft has SDL-trained consultants you can hire and a Threat Modeling Tool for sale this November.

As problems with Chrome, VMware, the Mac and Linux have shown, all software can be subject to hacks. It's clear that Microsoft is trying to do something about it.

Speaking of Chrome, are you using it? I'm writing an article about end user experiences and would love to talk to you. Shoot me a note with your thoughts and impressions to me at [email protected].

Was It Something I Said?
I admit I was pretty rough on the first Gate/Seinfeld video. In fact, I thought Bill was way funnier than Jerry. I hope the ad whizzes at Microsoft didn't take too much of that to heart and that critics like me aren't the reason there will be no more episodes of the Bill-and-Jerry show.

That's right: After three installments, Microsoft is shelving the Jerry commercials in favor of a new batch starring a guy that looks like the PC guy from the Apple commercials.

I'm actually pretty bummed. The second and third installments were darn good, and way different from your average TV fare (with four kids, I know a lot about average TV fare). Just as there have been petitions to bring XP, how about one to bring back Jerry?

Clouds Ain't Always Cheap
Cloud computing is supposed to save us all tons of dough. You do away with your servers, disks, interconnects and air conditioners, and run all your software over the wire from a cloud. You presumably save on hardware, energy and management.

But cloud services don't magically configure themselves or keep themselves up-to-date. Some, like BitCurrent analyst Alistair Croll (I imagine Alistair with a pipe, a smoking jacket and a shelf full of dusty old books), believe it can actually be more difficult and expensive to manage this remote software. Not only will admins have to administer this software, but their companies may add more and more applications to the mix -- increasing complexity and admin time.

Do you care about clouds? Have you found any good Web sites that cover cloud services or teach you how to build your own clouds? URLs welcome at [email protected].

Mailbag: Good Riddance, Seinfeld
Doug may be sad to see the Gates-Seinfeld commercials go, but James thinks the whole endeavor was a failure from the get-go:

I saw the first commercial and thought, "Wow, that has to be the lamest commercial I have ever seen! They should fire whichever agency sold 'em that load of crap." Then I saw the second commercial and I realized why Vista sucks so bad. It's because Microsoft has a bunch of morons working for it. If it can't see how lame those commercials were, they should all be fired and bring in some people with enough sense to say, "Hey, those commercials suck, let's go hire that company that made the Apple ads. At least they have a sense of humor."

Now I hear that Microsoft is scrapping the Seinfeld commercials because they "accomplished what they wanted," which I guess was proving that MS is out of touch with reality. OK, so tell me another one. More like Microsoft finally saw that people were only laughing at how ridiculous its commercials were, especially compared to the Apple commercials (I thought the latest one with PC in the pizza box was the best one so far). If MS doesn't pull their collective heads out of their behinds, they are going to end up digging such a deep hole, they will never be able to climb out of it.
-James

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