Here's a couple of readers' takes on mobile hacking issues:
I'm not worried for me or my business as I'd never allow dollar-vulnerable transactions over any wireless or mobile device. Period. Hard-wired transmissions are vulnerable enough at other points along path and storage.
I shiver to think of twenty- and thirty-somethings who show off to friends all they can do with their snazzy smartphones. They expose their assets by using smartphones for banking, stock, commodity transactions and, of course, credit card purchases. And 99.9 percent of those are completely safe and uneventful.
Hackers aren't really interested in our medical information -- an area in which we hear so much alarm.
But allowing financial passwords into the wrong hands is guaranteed to be life-changing.
-Jon
OVERFLOW ATTACK? Have today's developers never heard of buffer capacity checking? Yes, Yes, I know, I'm one of those old fuddy duddys that wrote code in IBM Assembler 40 years ago. But you can rest assured that our logic, even though convoluted at times, did NOT experience the amount of OVERFLOW and/or MEMORY LEAKS that today's MODERN developers generate...
-Anonymous
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Posted by Doug Barney on 01/28/2011 at 1:18 PM1 comments
People defect from companies all the time. The typical high-tech resume is a who's who of vendors. If you ain't jumping ship, you probably aren't that good.
Usually there is no fuss. But when you go to a direct rival, trouble can be had.
Salesforce.com isn't Microsoft's biggest competitor, but they do butt heads in CRM, which is apparently why Redmond had a conniption when Matt Miszewski left his Microsoft job selling to the government to take nearly the exact same job at Salesforce.
The crux is that old bugaboo: the non-compete/non-disclosure clause. According to Microsoft, Miszewski has to wait a full year before competing against his old employer.
Microsoft further claims Miszewski has confidential info that Salesforce can use against it.
Have you ever run into non-compete hassles? Spill the beans at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 01/28/2011 at 1:18 PM0 comments
When Microsoft struck a deal to support ARM processors, most of the attention focused on mobile devices -- phones, tablets, etc.
But ARM can also power servers, and here there is potential to improve the efficiency of data centers since ARM processors suck so little juice.
Windows Servers used to support Alpha and other chips through its Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL), but Microsoft let that whole initiative languish. ARM may bring the concept back. In fact, some OEMs are already building early ARM servers.
I wouldn't expect to see real ARM servers 'til Windows 8 and its server companion ships in the next couple of years. Once available, cloud providers may latch on to reduce power costs and gain the stability that hopefully these system-on-chip machines should offer.
While the ARM stuff is interesting, I wouldn't exactly expect Intel and AMD to stand still. And since Windows has run on Intel-compatible chips for a couple decades, I'd say the advantage goes to them.
What say you? Are you ready to ARM your servers? Yes and nos equally welcome at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 01/28/2011 at 1:18 PM1 comments
Wow, so Microsoft is in trouble... Or so say the critics. In the latest quarter it only pulled in nearly $20 billion in revenue and over $6 billion in pure profit. What a failure!
Once again, Microsoft knocked it out of the park, handily beating Wall Street estimates.
Sales were up in nearly every part of Microsoft's business, with Windows 7 and Office being particularly strong.
There are some signs of caution: PC refreshes in the U.S. have slowed, and Netbooks have lost their luster to tablets.
When it comes to online, Microsoft is still in pure investment mode, losing a bit over a half a billion in the latest quarter. In fact, its online losses almost matched its online revenue!
The weird thing is, no matter how well Microsoft does, its stock never seems to respond.
Posted by Doug Barney on 01/28/2011 at 1:18 PM0 comments
Amazon started off selling books. Once its e-commerce engine was in place, it started selling pretty much anything that could fit in a FedEx box. Now the online giant is entering new territory – spam.
The company has a new service which it calls bulk e-mail delivery. I have mixed feelings about this. There is bad spam and good spam.
This newsletter, for instance, goes out to nearly 100,000 people. It's not spam because all you signed up. We also send subscribers e-mails about Web events and other items. That's how we are able to give you a free newsletter three times a week.
I hope Amazon imposes serious restrictions so the good spam goes through and the bad spam doesn't.
Do you have the same mixed feelings about bulk e-mail that I do? If so, send me a non-bulk message at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 01/26/2011 at 1:18 PM1 comments
Seinfeld fans probably remember when Kramer invented a perfume that smelled like the beach. Jerry liked the idea, but a friend of Kramer's didn't, remarking "Do you think people are going to pay $80 a bottle to smell like dead fish and sea weed? That's why people take showers when the come home from the beach. It's an objectionable, offensive odor."
Now a Microsoft sales VP has an equally silly idea -- money-scented perfume and cologne. Patrick McCarthy heard that in Japan they pump the smell of money into various workplaces making employees work harder.
McCarthy's theory is the smell of fresh cash will give the wearer more confidence. And how much will this morale boost cost? A mere $35 dollars. Of course if you want to save money, just rub that $35 dollars all over your body!
Posted by Doug Barney on 01/26/2011 at 1:18 PM0 comments
Microsoft Office is the biggest success story since the Ford Mustang. It killed WordPerfect and Lotus. And decades after its launch, Office still rules.
I'm not sure this is a good thing. I use it everyday, and there are still things I can't figure out. Like, if you import text that is double spaced and reformat as single space, it stays double. I end up Mickey Mousing it by pasting in single space text and writing over it. Autosave is also sketchy... Text that should have been autosaved simply doesn't exist when Word crashes on me. While esoteric features work just find, the fundamentals are still sketchy.
That's why I'm glad to hear about LibreOffice 3.3. This open-source suite is based on OpenOffice and came out of developer dissatisfaction with how Oracle was handling OpenOffice. Simply put, free software doesn't do much to put gas in any of Larry Ellison's mega-yachts.
While Microsoft Office rules the commercial space, open-source suites have a ton of users. According to Forrester Research, half a billion people use Office, while a third a billion use OpenOffice.
Do you use OpenOffice? If so, fire up your open-source word processor or e-mail client and tell me all about it at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 01/26/2011 at 1:18 PM3 comments
One reader shares his thoughts with the state of Google:
First, I don't think the top-level reorg at Google means much more than Larry and Sergey are grown-up enough now to take off the "training wheels" and do it themselves.
However, I don't know if they could walk into another corporation the size of Google and get those kinds of jobs -- Google is the company they founded and I'm sure Google's BOD is behind the changes.
Second, I agree that corporations that amass power and influence should be subject to scrutiny, especially if there is evidence that they are violating laws. You will recall that Microsoft was found guilty in federal court (2000) of violating the Sherman Antitrust Act. The court imposed remedies on Microsoft that many people felt would not significantly alter its behavior. If Google is breaking laws then throw the book at them...just like Microsoft.
Third, if you are unhappy with Google's business model then you should not use Google's products or services. There are other search engines to use and other online services you can make use of that are not owned by Google. For example, Linux and open-source software have given many of us alternatives to Microsoft's products.
Finally, I agree that Google has proven to be a disruptive business in many ways. A lot of "fat cat" corporations in the media and ad business have been knocked off their perch by Google. Newspapers were largely headed down the pecking order before Google even got going, but lets not confuse journalism with newspaper publishing, which depends of those same advertising dollars Google is getting today.
I generally like Google and what they are doing. The Internet is not private. If you give too much information to corporations who provide you with a free service you like using, then you don't have much room to complain if they mine it, sell it or feed it back to you in search. For the truly paranoid, encrypt everything you do on your computer and send over the Internet, and don't accept cookies from anybody.
-Tim
Share your thoughts with the editors of this newsletter! Write to [email protected]. Letters printed in this newsletter may be edited for length and clarity, and will be credited by first name only (we do NOT print last names or e-mail addresses).
Posted by Doug Barney on 01/26/2011 at 1:18 PM0 comments
The Windows Server Core is an interesting piece of software. It's essentially a Windows Server without the GUI, thus running faster and reducing the footprint and attack surface. And because many admins do everything through Powershell anyway, the GUI isn't missed at all.
Now Microsoft is putting a bit more muscle behind Server Core, promising to support .NET Framework 4 sometime this quarter.
.NET support will allow corporate developers to build managed code apps, thus increasing its flexibility and application library.
Do you use Server Core? Are you a Powershell junkie or a GUI fan? Share your views at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 01/24/2011 at 1:18 PM1 comments
Are critics too hard on Microsoft? Here are one reader's thoughts:
Critics have to write about SOMETHING...
The fact is that Microsoft is not Apple (nor Google, et al).
Apple's customers are loyal and upwardly mobile (have more disposable income than most). They are, not necessarily tech-savvy, but they are CONSUMERS. They are willing to pay for style as well as substance. Apple wants to provide them with a complete ecosystem and wants to keep them from straying from that ecosystem. Apple provides these customers with appliances -- not necessarily tools.
Microsoft customers are 1) OEMS who are competing for customers buying commodity computing products -- many of whom are more technical than most -- and 2) enterprise customers who are generally tech-savvy and who buy with TCO/ROI in mind. These customers look for value in functionality and productivity -- not style.
Like Apple, Google is a consumer-oriented vendor which has little to offer to the enterprise. Its business model gives consumers software for free in exchange for making its demographic information available to people who want to sell users stuff.
Linux is "free" (well, Linux LICENSES are free) but Linux requires far too much technical knowledge to find itself being adopted my many consumers. Enterprise customers buy vendor support and have lots of technical support in-house. They chose Linux for its strengths -- not its price.
Microsoft sells a handful of consumer products via retail channels but that is not where their bread-and-butter lies.
As for the ongoing saga of Microsoft's future, market-share and profitability speak volumes about its future. No, Microsoft will not stay on top forever but none of the current players are competing directly against Microsoft either. Its inroads are in niche markets aimed at consumers. As long as its offerings run on Windows computers, and as long as Windows computers are available at competitive prices, consumers will demand that OEMs offer Windows computers. This guarantees enterprise employers a virtually unlimited supply of potential employees who can sit down with a Windows computer and be productive with little or no training.
To dethrone the king, you have to play on the king's turf. Today, no one is playing on Microsoft's turf.
-Marc
Share your thoughts with the editors of this newsletter! Write to [email protected]. Letters printed in this newsletter may be edited for length and clarity, and will be credited by first name only (we do NOT print last names or e-mail addresses).
Posted by Doug Barney on 01/24/2011 at 1:18 PM1 comments
A security guru from Adobe has a dire warning about the cloud: According to Bryan Sullivan, hackers may, in the future, launch massive denial of service (DOS) attacks against the cloud, tying up resources and making cloud apps more expensive.
The cloud is designed to be resilient. When a single server suffers a DOS attack, it is brought to its knees. In the cloud, however, workloads can be shifted to another server. Therefore, these DOS attacks don't cripple the cloud -- they simply make the cloud provider use more resources.
According to Sullivan, these attacks are purely economic in nature.
It is an interesting idea, but I'm not sure DOS attacks will be widespread enough to change the economics of cloud computing.
Do you trust the cloud? Answer me that at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 01/24/2011 at 1:18 PM1 comments
Windows PCs are a huge hacker target for three reasons: there are a lot of them, the OS is big and vulnerable, and most hackers dislike Microsoft.
Now that mobile devices are in nearly every hand, and tablets are replacing netbooks as traveling devices, hackers are mining this fertile new territory, according to a recent report by Cisco.
Another reason behind the trend is that Windows is getting tougher to crack, and the new mobile devices are immature by comparison when it comes to security.
At the recent Black Hat conference, a researcher from the University of Luxembourg showed how to strike the iPhone with an overflow attack.
Are you worried about mobile hacking? Yesses and nos equally welcome at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 01/24/2011 at 1:18 PM0 comments