We might knock Microsoft every now again here at Redmond Report, but there
is one area where we go pretty easy: developer tools. After more than 30 years
in the development tools business (anyone who actually used Altair BASIC is
automatically enrolled in the Doug Barney Hall of Fame), Microsoft is getting
pretty good at the game.
Ironically, because Microsoft is a commercial enterprise and not open source,
it's free to establish a vision and push it to the hilt (incidentally, this
is an area our latest magazine, Redmond
Developer News, covers intensely).
One of our favorite tools is Visual Studio, which -- if not the best IDE out
there -- has to be in the top three. The
latest update makes Visual Studio more compliant with Vista, which is a
good thing. ISVs and corporate developers can and should build apps that exploit
Vista's new security features first, and user interface improvements second.
Posted by Doug Barney on 03/07/2007 at 1:15 PM0 comments
Microsoft this week
took
Google to task for using whatever content it can find -- regardless of copyright.
And as a writer, I've got to back Microsoft on this one.
Microsoft argues that Google often offers full access to books, movies, TV
shows and other types of media without compensating the creator.
In fact, as soon as I finish this newsletter (which I desperately hope Google
with pick up!), I'm going to finish my April Redmond print column where
I argue that Web sites are trying to kill print by stealing print stories and
offering them online. And if print was to be killed off this way, Google and
Drudge and all those hideous, amateur-hour blogs would have nothing to talk
about.
Tell me where I'm wrong at [email protected]!
Posted by Doug Barney on 03/07/2007 at 1:15 PM0 comments
Last week, we told you that Microsoft is refusing to license low-end versions
of Vista to run on the Mac in virtual machines. Microsoft cited security concerns,
which seemed like a pretty random argument to some critics (like me).
While I'm no expert in virtualization, the people at VMware are, and they also
saw a certain speciousness in Microsoft's contention. And like me, they took
their concerns to the Internet.
I found this all based on the fine reporting of NetworkWorld's John Fontana,
whom I hired for the newsweekly. VMware, Fontana writes, wrote an entire
white paper contradicting Microsoft's claims.
What's really amazing is that a large company can crank out an 10-page white
paper less than a week after the topic comes to the fore.
Microsoft didn't write a white paper in response. Instead, an executive wrote
a blog which reads more like a white paper. More interesting than the blog
are the fawning comments underneath from what are obviously Microsoft employees!
Here's
what Fontana had to say.
Posted by Doug Barney on 03/07/2007 at 1:15 PM0 comments
While Microsoft antitrust issues in the U.S. are mostly an annoyance,
in
Europe they are an unrelenting migraine. The European Union has been trying
to get Microsoft to fully open its communications protocols and make them available
to third parties and competitors. Now, the beef seems to be over how much these
protocols are worth. The EU wants them to be free, while Microsoft argues that
it charges far below what other companies charge for similar technology.
Fines of up to $4 million a day are possible. A few months of that could add
up to real money!
Posted by Doug Barney on 03/06/2007 at 1:15 PM0 comments
Before Vista was released, Symantec put out a detailed critique of Vista security.
It was a well-written though odd document, as it criticized some items that
were being fixed before final release, and even blasted some items that had
already been taken care of!
Now that Vista is out, Symantec has a new document, "Security
Implications of Microsoft Windows Vista."
The last missive, talking about pre-release software, was pretty scathing.
Even though Microsoft is going after a security market Symantec pioneered, the
new Symantec document is pretty dang balanced.
I walked away believing that Vista, while not perfect, is far more secure than
XP. And with more and more attacks going after applications and Web 2.0-style
technologies, it is harder and harder to argue that Linux and the Mac are intrinsically
safer.
We are doing a special report, "The True State of Vista Security."
Let me know, in detail, your thoughts and experiences in this matter. Also,
let me know if I can quote you and how! You know the address: [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 03/06/2007 at 1:15 PM0 comments
This letter from a reader was so well-done, I figured I'd run it verbatim rather
than making it worse by rewriting:
"I am an IT manager working for a medium-size law firm in downtown Seattle,
Wash. This last weekend, I installed several new patches on our servers and
was quite surprised to find Microsoft's Exchange Server DST patch broke our
BlackBerrys. Perhaps you could make others aware of this issue?
Microsoft
Exchange DST patch 926666, released Feb. 13, 2007, bundles two previous
patches, 912918 and 907434,
apparently because all make modifications to Exchange's store.exe file. However,
I had deliberately not installed the 907434 patch because it breaks the ability
for BlackBerrys to send e-mail, due to the removal of the Send As permission.
After spending all day on the phone with Cingular and RIM, and coming to
no resolution, RIM finally said I would need to contact Microsoft for a resolution.
At the behest of our president (currently outside the office and very unhappy),
I instead began removing patches that I had installed over the weekend, until
the issue was resolved at approximately 12:30 this morning.
As stated above, patch 926666, 'Update for daylight saving time changes in
2007 for Exchange 2003 Service Pack 2,' was the culprit, and once removed,
allowed our BlackBerrys to send e-mails again.
According to RIM, the resolution should have been to give BESadmin (our internal
BlackBerry Exchange Server administration account) rights to Send As for non-administrator-permission
users (e.g., domain users) in Active Directory. However, each time I did this,
within an hour the permissions were automatically removed. Per Microsoft's
knowledge base article on the 907434
patch, this is expected behavior and their resolution is as follows:
If you do this, you must prevent the AdminSDHolder from overwriting
permissions that are granted to a BlackBerry Services account on protected
groups. To do this, use the following command line with DSACLS:
dsacls "cn=adminsdholder,cn=system,dc=mydomain,dc=com"
/G BlackBerrySA:CA;Send As"
Note: In this command, BlackBerrySA is a placeholder for
the name of the BlackBerry Service account. Also, make sure that you do
not add a space between BlackBerrySA and ":CA".
Alternatively, we recommend that you do not use accounts that are members
of protected groups for e-mail purposes. If you must have the rights that
are given to a protected group, we recommend that you have two Active Directory
user accounts. These Active Directory accounts include one user account
that is added to a protected group, and one user account that is used for
e-mail purposes and at all other times.
I haven't attempted the above repair as of yet, due to time constraints,
but I would be interested if you knew whether it would resolve the issue or
were aware of another resolution.
-Rann"
Do you have another solution for Rann's problem? Let us know at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 03/05/2007 at 1:15 PM0 comments
Sometimes, when a person dies, some good comes of it -- lessons learned, the
world made better. In the case of a 330-pound Chinese man who played video games
for a week straight,
and
then keeled over, the lesson is simple: If you weigh 330 pounds, don't play
video games for a week straight!
Posted by Doug Barney on 03/05/2007 at 1:15 PM0 comments
Lieberman Software, a mainstay in the Windows marketplace, has a
new
rev of Service Account Manager. The software, as its name indicates, automates
the management of Windows services.
Version 5.04 of the tool "allows Windows administrators to change service
dependencies and set service security permissions and auditing settings, providing
greater oversight and control of users' activities and access to services,"
the company said.
Posted by Doug Barney on 03/05/2007 at 1:15 PM0 comments
I spent years covering databases for
InfoWorld and
Computerworld,
and perhaps the liveliest market of all was FoxPro. Originally a dBase clone,
it grew to outshine the Ashton-Tate tool and was eventually bought by Microsoft.
I even spent a week in Orlando at a FoxPro user group, and boy, those folks
were hardcore. Some looked like they hadn't left their keyboard in a decade!
Microsoft tried to kill off FoxPro in favor of both Access and SQL Server,
but users never let 'em.
So what is Microsoft to do? Build a
brand-new version that's .NET 2.0-compliant and works with Visual Studio.
With this kind of tweaking, I'd give FoxPro another 10 years, at least!
Posted by Doug Barney on 03/01/2007 at 1:15 PM0 comments
Exchange Server 2007 is far from being a year old but is
already
ready for its first service pack. The update, due for testing next month,
boasts new replication features, including Clustered Continuous Replication
and Standby Continuous Replication. I have no idea how these things work, but
I do know you'd better start buying bigger disks!
Posted by Doug Barney on 03/01/2007 at 1:15 PM0 comments
Ray Ozzie told Wall Street this week that
Google's
success is forcing Microsoft to respond, and respond fast! But while Google
rakes in billions from online advertising, Microsoft won't simply copy the Google
plan and go 100 percent Web.
Instead, Microsoft plans to complement existing hard drive-based tools like
Office with Web services, a model Ray calls "Software Plus Service."
If anybody else were driving this strategy, I'd be skeptical. But since Ray
is about a billion times smarter than me, I think it might just work.
Posted by Doug Barney on 03/01/2007 at 1:15 PM0 comments