While there are smart tech people all over the world and all over the U.S.,
it's clear there are pockets where these types tend to congregate: Silicon Valley;
Redmond, Wash.; Austin, Texas; Raleigh, N.C.
But do you know where the spreadsheet was invented (by VisiCalc) and then reinvented
(by Lotus)? Where the minicomputer was born (remember Data General, Wang and
DEC?). Good, old Massachusetts, my home state.
Microsoft bought a bunch of Massachusetts' best brains by buying Groove and
Softricity, and got some bright New Hampshire bulbs when it bought Desktop Standard.
Now, Microsoft wants to tap into New England research minds by creating
a lab in Cambridge, Mass.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 09/24/20080 comments
Unlike Doug, readers don't seem too sad to see the Seinfeld ads go. But at least
one of you thinks the new ads are a vast improvement:
The Seinfeld commercials were an abomination (I can't say what I said
when I first saw them aired). I'm neither a PC apologist nor a MacManiac;
I'm a user of the Wintel consortium products. Those commercials should never
have made it off the storyboard, and the agency who created them should be
immediately cuffed and tossed in jail for abuse of our sensibilities.
-Benjamin
To heck with the Jerry Seinfeld TV spots. I think that Microsoft is onto
something with its new 'I'm a PC' campaign that gives us quick cuts to some
pretty cool people, both famous and un-famous, that all claim, "I'm a
PC." This is a subtle yet powerful way to steer consumers away from the
attitude that PC users are "squares," which was brilliantly depicted
in the original Mac spots.
I saw this 'I'm a PC' spot a couple of times over the weekend, and was
more impressed the second time I saw it than I was at first look. I think
Microsoft is right to have a campaign that, unlike the Seinfeld spots and
the "Seinfeld" show itself, is actually about something.
-Ken
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Posted by Doug Barney on 09/24/20080 comments
Microsoft's stock is not the high-flier it was throughout the late '80s and
early '90s. Many investors earned their yachts, Porsches and retirement homes
on the backs of this baby. And thousands of employees became Microsoft millionaires,
driving the prices of homes in Redmond to near-Silicon Valley heights.
Since the tech crash of 2001, the stock has been stuck. Like a rocking chair,
it's going nowhere. But Microsoft thinks its own company is a pretty good deal
and is buying
back $40 billion in shares. That's like buying a Yahoo's worth of stock.
And that's on top of the $40 billion buyback already completed.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 09/23/20080 comments
Microsoft's play in the world of high-performance computing doesn't get the
same attention as Vista, Bill Gates' wealth or attempts to buy Yahoo. And that's
a shame because Microsoft has been doing some rather exceptional work in this
area, with much of the innovation coming directly from the geniuses at Microsoft
Research.
The core product here is Windows High Performance Computing (HPC) Server 2008,
which was just
completed.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 09/23/20080 comments
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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Posted by Doug Barney on 09/22/20080 comments
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.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 09/22/20080 comments
To make its products safer, Microsoft programmers have
designed
a Software Development Lifecycle (SDL) process
that makes security a part
of every stage of development. Microsoft wants ISVs and corporate developers
to be equally safe and is packaging up its internal tools for outside use.
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.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 09/22/20080 comments
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.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 09/22/20080 comments
All week, the financial news has been bleak. Lehman Brothers saying uncle,
stocks falling faster than a base jumper, the doom-and-gloom analysts getting
unlimited air time...
But I was living in a different world. At VMworld, there were some 10,000 customers
looking to transform their shops, over 200 third parties creating a brand-new
and vibrant market, and a company, VMware, looking to do revolutionary things
-- doing it all with a fair bit a class and savvy.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 09/18/20080 comments
One reader is optimistic about VMware's
virtualization
ambitions
:
A Datacenter Operating System? I think that'd be wonderful if implemented
correctly. From my experience, most datacenters have a tendency to have a
server per application to ensure the reliability of that application and that
multiple applications won't tread on each other's territory. It also makes
it easier to plan upgrades, patches and new releases.
With everything running under a virtual environment, we open up a new
possibility. If all you are going to run is a Web server, then why not have
an OS that is designed from the ground-up to be a Web server? You could have
the same for a file server or a print server. I know that Windows Server 2008
has headed in this direction by only installing the roles needed, but there
is probably still a LOT of unnecessary code that allows this one OS to be
everything to everyone. Without this extra code, the OS would run much faster
and would be much easier to secure. I think the time is right for someone
to develop operating systems that are designed from the ground-up to maximize
the benefits of a virtual environment.
-T.W.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 09/18/20080 comments
Everyone, it seems, is trying to crash VMware's big VMworld party. Microsoft's
shenanigans this week are well-documented, but Citrix (also a pioneer in thin
client computing) made some noise, too -- right in VMware's back yard: Citrix
unveiled
server virtualization tool XenServer 5.
Some have questioned Citrix's commitment to XenServer given that the company
is so close to Microsoft and such a fan of Hyper-V. Perhaps XenServer 5 will
help answer that question. New features focus on monitoring, disaster recovery
and more options for third-party programs.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 09/18/20080 comments
Sun is one of the pioneers, if not the pioneer, in thin client computing. While
the "Network Computer" that Scott McNealy and Larry Ellison talked
about for years never quite materialized, the Sun Ray line is a very effective
thin solution.
But just as Sun made up with Microsoft, it apparently isn't religious about
thin client and other virtual tools. This week, in fact, Sun agreed
to sell and support VMware's Virtual Desktop Infrastructure and Virtual
Desktop Manager.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 09/18/20080 comments