It might be time to break out that old soldering iron as Dell has a challenge for you: If you can design the greenest computer ever made (green as in low power -- not olive, pea or pine) you could walk away with a cool thirty grand.
Get your design wrapped up by next April and send it on down to Austin.
Of course, if you really do design the most efficient computer ever, Dell will make billions -- and you'll make, er, about $30K before taxes.
Posted by Doug Barney on 10/29/2007 at 1:15 PM0 comments
A year or two ago, Microsoft regularly belittled the Google search engine and
talked of taking the top spot. Well, reality has set in. Microsoft still talks
about taking that spot, but CEO Steve Ballmer admits it may take some time.
Calling Microsoft
search "a precocious tot," Ballmer says his engine is a like a
3-year-old, while Google is like a pimply faced, hormone-saturated, pubescent
12-year-old (all right, I added the pimples and hormones). It make take MSN
search 'til it's 10 to take over, Ballmer argues. Doesn't that mean that Google
will be 19?
Hopefully for Microsoft, Google will totally lose its motivation by the time
it makes it to college. What would make you switch? And is there anyone that
doesn't prefer Google? Let the Redmond Report readers know by writing me at
[email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 10/22/2007 at 1:15 PM0 comments
Microsoft has about 80,000 employees, but the company supports far more people
than that -- 1,800 times more, according to
research
house IDC. Microsoft-related jobs account for over 40 percent of all IT
positions.
I tend to believe these numbers as they were nailed down by John Gantz, an
analyst I've respected since I got into this business 23 years ago.
Of course, the fact that it's Microsoft is almost irrelevant; almost any software
infrastructure vendor would have a flourishing ecosystem.
Posted by Doug Barney on 10/22/2007 at 1:15 PM0 comments
Apple has a new rev of its operating system
set
to ship late this week. According to my personal Mac guru (my son David),
Mac OS gets a major upgrade every two years or so, way quicker than Windows.
And Apple was also able to swap in an all-new kernel when it replaced the old
Mac engine with the Mach kernel from Carnegie Mellon.
That kernel is one of the key reasons the Mac is so stable. I restart my G4
every year or so just for kicks (I'm not a role model for green computing, I
admit).
The new $129 Leopard includes a version of Boot Camp that lets you run Windows
at the same time as Mac software, instead of having to reboot. It also has better
backup through Time Machine, which maintains up-to-date backup images of your
main disk on an external drive.
David also raves about Quick Look that lets you see a nice preview of the file
before you open it.
Posted by Doug Barney on 10/22/2007 at 1:15 PM0 comments
Last week, Microsoft had one of its classic press conferences: a huge stage,
lots of people, carefully scripted speeches and a big city -- in this case,
San Francisco. Bill even made an appearance.
Microsoft has been talking so much about Unified Communications that I reckoned
all this software had been shipping. But no; the press conference was to announce
the availability
of a bunch of pieces, including Office Communications Server 2007 (the core
platform for VoIP and other communications features), Office Communicator (the
client piece), a new rev of Live Meeting and a new video conferencing system.
I've been hearing about Unified Communications (we used to call it Unified
Messaging for over a decade). So why do I still have an office phone, a home
office phone, a BlackBerry and a laptop, all of which are barely on speaking
terms?
Are you a Unified Communications ace? If so, how'd you do it? Tell us by writing
me at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 10/22/2007 at 1:15 PM0 comments
Ever read
The Onion (
www.theonion.com)?
I've always liked satire, and
The Onion is the best thing since the 1970s
National Lampoon magazine. Unlike
The Onion,
NatLamp wasn't
able to make much fun at computers -- there's a limit to the jokes one can make
about an IBM 390!
The Onion was born on the Web, and so tech humor is
a mainstay.
One of my former employers, Network World, found out just how
The Onion gets it tech ideas and writes its comedy.
Here's
my favorite recent Onion tech story.
By the way, Network World continues to spread
the lie that Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams launched the Bill Gates for
President campaign in mid-November of last year, when we all know it was good,
old Redmond magazine a full six weeks earlier that started
the action. For some reason, Network World refuses to correct its
error, and instead keeps repeating it. Bad form, guys.
Posted by Doug Barney on 10/22/2007 at 1:15 PM0 comments
Patches are great for those who use them -- and install them quickly. But for
those who ignore patches, gosh help ya. The old hacker trick of dissecting patches
and exploiting the holes continues, and often it takes only a day for jerks
to build and release an exploit.
That's just what happened last
month and again last week, when exploits came out on the second Wednesday
of the month (and the patches on Tuesday). The advice here is to take patches
seriously and install them quickly.
What do you think? Is there something wrong with the patch process? And how
would you hunt down and punish the hackers? Let us know by e-mailing me at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 10/15/2007 at 1:15 PM0 comments
Steve Ballmer, a clear expert in the field of computing, is now officially a
media guru. At a recent speech, Ballmer claimed that in 10 years,
all
media will be digital, including all things print.
From the narrow world of technology, this is not an entirely ridiculous notion,
though a recent survey by Visual Studio Magazine shows that for many
subjects, readers prefer print to Web by a ratio of 2 to 1. Maybe in 10 years,
that ratio will become even.
Outside of technology, Ballmer's prediction really starts to sound like that
of an amateur. The No. 1 consumers of magazines in America are middle-aged mothers
and grandmothers from the Midwest. Are all these women going to read their cooking
and scrapbooking magazines online? Has Steve ever seen their collections of
magazines? Has Steve seen how fat Martha Stewart Living (the magazine,
not the woman) has been lately?
I see the future by looking at my own habits. For music, I have cassettes,
albums, CDs, an iPod and, yes, about a hundred 8-tracks. I read incessantly
-- on the Web, books I usually buy used, and enough magazines to clear a small
rain forest. I love the Web and, in case you forgot, this little missive is
entirely digital. And we're passionate about our Web sites.
But before you start believing that print is dead, think about how often you
print PDFs and Web content. In fact, what we really need are Internet-specific
printers so we don't have to ruin our eyes reading all day in 1024x768 pixels.
Posted by Doug Barney on 10/15/2007 at 1:15 PM0 comments
Sun has been pretty sassy as of late. Even though Scott McNealy is no longer
running things day-to-day, the company is still trying new things, pushing utility
computing, Java, open source, supercomputing and virtualization.
On the last front, Sun is fully supporting Xen, now owned by Citrix. Sun is
building its own hypervisor, which is really an extension of the Xen tool. Sun's
goal is to create a hypervisor that works great in heterogenous environments.
Xen is also getting support from Linux vendors and IBM (especially through
its System p servers). If you thought VMware totally owned virtualization, Xen
may have another thing coming!
Here's
what research firm Nemertes has to say about the Sun move (at least a brief
excerpt).
Posted by Doug Barney on 10/15/2007 at 1:15 PM0 comments
Hewlett-Packard is an interesting and often underrated software player. And
with so much software and so many server platforms, the company has long been
helping IT organizations look at their infrastructures from top to bottom and
devise a plan to make them more efficient (similar to Microsoft's three-year-old
Infrastructure Optimization model).
Now, HP is moving
parts of its Business Technology Optimization products to a services model.
This way, if you want to optimize through new HP products -- but don't want
to buy and manage a bunch of new services -- you can simply order up some services.
What about you? Is SaaS in your current or future plans? Why or why not? Tell
us all by writing me at [email protected].
Here's
HP's take on optimization.
Posted by Doug Barney on 10/15/2007 at 1:15 PM0 comments
Tomorrow is another Patch Tuesday, and Microsoft is getting set to
ship
seven patches, four of which are deemed critical. The patches run the gamut,
repairing everything from Windows Server to IE (it wouldn't be Patch Tuesday
if this puppy didn't get a fix or two), to Outlook and XP. The bulletins also
address SharePoint and spoofing.
Is Patch Tuesday working for you? Is there a better way? Let us know at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 10/08/2007 at 1:15 PM0 comments
A new exploit is aimed at
tricking
the world's highest-ranking executives into giving away precious corporate
secrets. The spam/phishing scheme is based on e-mails with the names and titles
of these bosses, and come with a Word doc promising a better job. Once opened,
the hackers can gain access to the computers of the rich and powerful, and thus
get at confidential files.
Tell your bosses they should be happy with their jobs and ignore these e-mails.
Opening one could be embarrassing in a couple of ways!
Posted by Doug Barney on 10/08/2007 at 1:15 PM0 comments