Adobe Patches the Stack

Without the patch, hackers can build a malicious PDF -- and once one is built, these creeps will pass it around like a bottle of Ripple in a hobo camp. This one bad PDF, then, could let hackers control literally millions of PCs.

Posted by Doug Barney on 11/06/20080 comments

Mailbag: The Election Edition

I think that many will be surprised at the election results this year. And as for the economy, I think we have more tough times ahead and getting the government involved may not be the best course of action, unless it is to encourage the banks to work with their customers to see what can be done to keep them in their homes. I believe that these business cycles will happen no matter what the government tries to do. All we can do is pray and vote.
-Raymond

The Austrian School of Economics' theory of the business cycle predicted America's current financial fiasco, and its proponents like Congressman Ron Paul not only recommended methods to avoid the disaster but have provided recommendations on how to get ourselves out of it. Unfortunately, neither of the leading presidential candidates (one of whom will be president-elect shortly after I send this message) seems to have ever heard of the Austrian School of Economics and probably wouldn't recognize that their own proposed "solutions" are merely warmed-over Keynesian or even Marxist/fascist ideas in some cases.

That said, I believe three things about the election: One, whoever wins will regret winning by this time next year. Two, nothing is going to fundamentally change for the better. Three, Americans are hosed (or should I say sheared?) regardless of the outcome. Also, government should leave IT alone. But I think government should leave everybody alone which would put all of those government busybodies out of work -- so that ain't gonna happen, is it?
-J.C.

You said: "Apparently, when you have a $10 trillion deficit and a collapsing economy, the answer is to increase spending and cut taxes. If I ran Redmond that way, it would be out of business; and if I ran my house that way, I'd be in a run-down apartment and my 1980 Porsche 928 would be repossessed."

I would like to point out that tax rates (I emphasize the word "rates"') are a lot like prices. When a business is not getting enough buyers for its products or services and its revenues are down, reducing the prices for those goods and services is often a good idea. It is often possible to get enough new buyers to bring overall revenues up. Government tax rates often behave in a similar fashion, which is why, for instance, capital gains tax rate reductions have usually resulted in increased revenues. I think you will also find that the last few times that income tax rates were reduced, revenue did not fall.
-Rich

Posted by Doug Barney on 11/05/20080 comments

Chrome Review, Takes 1 and 2

But if you want to really dive deep into Chrome, check out what you and your fellow IT pros had to say in this Reader Review More

Posted by Doug Barney on 11/05/20080 comments

It's the Economy, Dummkopf

This one could be even worse. And preparations, if not already underway, should be made soon. Smart IT folks like yourselves are proactive, finding ways to cut spending before bosses decide your salary is a great place to start. Upgrades may be downgraded, servers virtualized so they do more, little-used apps decommissioned, and perhaps cloud services eyed as replacements for expensive server-bound programs.

Posted by Doug Barney on 11/05/20080 comments

Obama, McCain and High-Tech

Obama is for network neutrality (so we can do pretty much what we want with our broadband connections), wants to expand these broadband networks to areas not currently covered, invest in the American high-tech industry, and use the Internet to let citizens track government more closely.

Posted by Doug Barney on 11/05/20080 comments

MagCloud.com

That's pretty cool, but what's cooler is that the site is testing out Azure, Microsoft's new cloud platform.

Posted by Doug Barney on 11/04/20080 comments

E-Mail Security Lax

In my opinion, this isn't an e-mail issue. Even if the mail is locked down, there are a million ways to ship out confidential information -- via an envelope, Gmail, thumb drive or CD. The real solution is to control access.

Posted by Doug Barney on 11/04/20080 comments

Election Day in the USA

I told my staff to figure out the best time to vote and to go ahead and do it -- don't worry about time away from work. I can't reach half of 'em by phone or e-mail so they must have chosen the busiest time and the longest line! Hey, anyone ever heard of a BlackBerry?!

I have no idea who'll win (could be a stunning Nader upset, eh what?), but I do know that the main candidates talked more about George W. and William Ayers than about our huge IT industry.

Posted by Doug Barney on 11/04/20080 comments

Mailbag: Thumbs Up for Vista

I use Vista Business Edition SP1 at work, and Vista Home Premium Edition SP1 at home. I have no problems at all with either of them. I can do all of my work just fine on the work system, and I play all kinds of graphics-intensive games on my home system. Vista works great for me, so I don't know what everyone is complaining about.
-Kyle

Don't be afraid of Vista! I am running all Vista boxes in my office, and have been for a year. I run both 32- and 64-bit machines without any problems. I do have to admit, however, that there are more issues with 64-bit boxes regarding driver functionality, but they're workable. SP1 was smooth as silk with 32-bit systems, but there were a couple of hangs in installing the correct 64-bit patch. Some of my customers for whom I've recently built new Vista systems are well over 65 and run Vista flawlessly. I receive very few help calls!

With Microsoft getting ready to retire XP soon, we are all feeling the pinch to switch over. If we were to wait for Windows 7, we would still be in the same "wait and see" boat, because I don't think Microsoft is ever going to have one OS hang around that long again (as in NT, for instance).
-Dan

I've been on Vista since day one, on a machine that was labeled as Vista-ready and that shipped with XP installed. And it's a x64 machine. I should have more problems than anyone, but I've been virtually problem-free. I think you guys all give Vista a very undeserved bad rap. -Anonymous

To be honest, I have no idea what the fuss is all about with Vista being deployed from an IT perspective. I'm currently working for a good sizeed corporation (800-plus employees) that owns a large base of financial institutions. We have a mixture of Windows XP and Vista Business Edition 32-bit SP1 deployed at the majority of our banks. Vista is working great with our bank applications and a majority of the older bank apps have been made to work with little effort. We in IT have welcomed the additional security added to Vista, like a more robust Group Policy that allows even better control over our users.

We are not waiting for Windows 7 as an answer to what's wrong in Vista (and we have yet to see many issues at all), as those will be fixed like anything. I would like to see Vista stop being treated like the ill-fated stepchild of Windows ME.
-Bill

We had been holding back on Vista rollout internally as our early experience with Vista was pretty discouraging. The net assessment was the gains from Vista were pretty even with the downsides, so why move from XP? But we recently acquired an HP laptop machine and discovered that it would not be easy to do with it what we usually do with a new machine, i.e., wipe what the manufacturer loaded on the hard drive and reload with an RTM version of XP SP3. The RTM version of XP did include disk drivers for the type of hard drive controller built into the laptop. We would need to locate the right disk drivers and hope they would integrate correctly into the XP installer.

It had been a while since we had looked at Vista, and we also were curious about 64-bit performance, so we elected instead to replace the Vista Home 64-bit version shipped with the laptop with an RTM Vista 64 Ultimate version. The Vista shipped from HP included all sorts of add-on "crapware" programs that killed its performance during boot-up. Replacing this with RTM Vista 64 Ultimate SP1 eliminated the add-on programs and their negative effect on performance. We were amazed at the high performance of RTM Vista 64 SP1 on this laptop. The hardware choices and Vista seemed tuned for each other. Vista 64 performed noticeably faster on this laptop than Vista 32 on desktop machines with faster hardware.

Our take is that Vista's bad reputation comes from insufficient hardware performance, operating in 32-bit rather than 64-bit mode, manufacturer-installed applications, and the many pre-SP1 compatibility issues. It is a shame that this OS is not more appreciated!
-Charles

I have run Vista since it was first released and have been pleased with it, although it's not without issues. The thing I noticed, though, is that most of the issues were application/driver-based and not with the core. Once the problem applications/drivers were updated, the issues went away and I can honestly say that Vista has run fine since then. The amazing thing is that my laptop in not a high-end machine like most Vista "haters" state you have to have, and I still have no real major issues.

SP1 has really helped with compatibility and performance and I really hope that MS improves the performance even more with SP2. The start up time is still too slow. I'd also like to see the SP2 include all the latest versions of the .NET Framework. This is important to me as a developer, since it helps make deploying applications I write.
-Shawn

Posted by Doug Barney on 11/04/20080 comments

Mailbag: Recession Security

It doesn't hurt to walk through security practices and settings. It may be a wake-up call to many of us. But I hope it doesn't create unfounded suspicions against fellow employees -- witch hunts, of sorts -- timely though it may be. We have enough bad feelings about our economic quagmire; we don't need to manufacture more.
-Barb

Posted by Doug Barney on 11/03/20080 comments

Office in the Sky

At PDC, Microsoft announced that Office would run in the cloud, bereft of a few hundred features or so, and be accessible by PCs and even mobile devices such as cell phones.

This might not take all that long to arrive, as Office Live Workspace is already in beta. Pricing isn't set, but it seems that it will run through existing volume licensing programs.

Posted by Doug Barney on 11/03/20080 comments

SQL's Future Is Cloudy

Running in this Microsoft-seeded cloud will be database services driven by a More

Posted by Doug Barney on 11/03/20080 comments