At the risk of sounding old (thank goodness for spell check and copy editors or you'd see how senile I am), I cut my teeth at ComputerWorld when the coolest thing a microcomputer could do was emulate a 5250 (if you know what that is you probably went to Woodstock to see the music or make fun of hippies!).
Wyse was an upstart making terminals back then. They were cool. You see, you had this display, keyboard and this long wire that attached to a mainframe. And, by gosh, you could do some real, honest computing with one of these things.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 04/06/20123 comments
I've bought six Macs and five of them have been for my kids -- mostly because I don't have to fix them all the time. The only thing that breaks is the hardware. I've never reloaded an OS, installed security software or asked them to reboot the thing. One machine I left running for a year. I forgot it was on! I turned on the monitor, swirled the mouse around, and up came Photoshop! There must have been some kind of special sauce.
Hackers are getting tired of all this fun. It makes them look bad, so now they are getting serious about attacking the Mac.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 04/06/201211 comments
Readers sound off on the idea of Windows 8 not having the Start button:
There is no Start button. Period. But, the same features are found on the Metro Interface. Do you need another Start button? I do not think so. But, this OS does take some time to get used to, and I still have not gotten used to it. Some type of guide would have been nice for the beta test.
-Anonymous
Apart from the Metro UI being one big start button it also has a number of features that make it really easy to find stuff. Just start typing and it will narrow down your application search in real time. You can right click near the bottom of the screen and it will bring up a menu with all apps. Click on that and your apps will be grouped. Click the magnifying glass and it will show a summarized view of your apps. There is probably heaps more of this stuff to be found.
-Gary
Tell me how quickly a new user will be able to open a command prompt. Took me about 15 minutes of pure frustration to get to it.
-Austin
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Posted by Doug Barney on 04/04/20120 comments
Like SQL Server, Microsoft also chose an odd time to ship System Center 2012 (at least to volume licensees). Yes, readers of the previous item, this management tool also shipped last Sunday, which just happened to be April Fools' Day.
Formerly known as MOM (remember that?), this is Microsoft's long-time foray into the management market pioneered by feisty third parties -- many of whom have been forced to graze on other pastures not yet discovered by Redmond's ever-moving jaws.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 04/04/20120 comments
Microsoft chose an odd time to ship SQL Server 2012: April Fools' Day! But this puppy is no joke.
There are two bits of good news: First, the software is generally available. Second, you can download a free eval good for six months. That sounds like plenty of time to see if this is worth the dough.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 04/04/20121 comments
Financial analysts think they know when Windows 8 will ship. According to the latest scuttlebutt, there will be a release candidate (another term for a late, late beta) this June, a release-to-manufacturing version (this means it is ready to go if no show-stopping bugs are found) a month or two later and then we should all be able to buy a finished version in September or October.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 04/02/20126 comments
There is a lot of confusion about what is happening with Wintel PC and laptop devices. Before smartphones and tablets, these machines had around 95 percent of the market share, with Mac and Linux picking up the crumbs. Now that all kinds of new devices are counted as computers (Kindles, Droids, iPhones, and the like) Wintel share is down to about 36 percent.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 04/02/20123 comments
One reader gives his in-depth analysis of the current cybersecurity landscape:
I think the Internet is growing faster than we can keep up with it. I think people, as a whole, put too much faith into the Internet-based products and services they consume. I think most people use the Internet like many others drive their vehicles; it is a necessary convenience that tends to be abused and misunderstood up until a life is radically changed. Then we wake up to the problems with our abuse of the system the whole time.
The internet is not a secure place, and nothing you do on it is private. The security measures currently in place are like vaulted locking mechanisms on a sliding glass door -- they do an excellent job at keeping out honest men and someone that requires a lockpick set, but anyone with unconventional tools, like a hammer, can just barge right in (like firesheep).
Also, I hope everyone understands that, aside from script kiddies, most hacker groups and individuals are only able to continue doing what they do because they are far more intelligent than you are (not you Doug-- I mean 'you' the reader).
The malware that makes the news isn't the stuff we should be too worried about -- most well-adjusted, technically savvy people can pretty easily avoid such nuisances -- it's the malware that's on your machine right now quietly sending out small payloads a few times a year that we should be worried about.
I'll agree that most Internet-based services are a necessity these days -- things like e-mail, social networking and online banking are almost essential. Malware and exploits of these systems are just the big red flags that everyone walks past to consume such services. Just like vultures circle above a dead animal, malware and exploits swarm around broken software and protocols. But the real problem with e-mail, social networking, and online banking isn't their existence -- its their implementation (like most Microsoft Windows applications, Facebook, Google+, Twitter, SSL, and most EULA and privacy statements that no one ever reads).
As for where you, Doug, are torn -- I personally would never sacrifice personal freedom in favor of the 'greater' security. I would advocate for the rewrite of broken applications and protocols. To those doing the rewriting, I would like to remind you of Occam's razor -- for instance: IPv6 is not a suitable alternative to IPv4; IPv4.1, however, is.
-David
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Posted by Doug Barney on 04/02/20121 comments
Here are some more reader comments on Windows 8:
I have been playing with Windows 8 both with and without the addon that restores the Start button. I removed that software because I realized that I wanted to work with it the way most non tech savvy people will probably be using it. I have to say, it stinks. It is awkward and difficult to get to things that I access regularly and you are constantly flipping back and forth between the Desktop and the Metro Interface.
Some of the Metro apps, IE for one, are very inferior to the IE program. The Metro stuff is probably fine on touch devices but I do not like it on a regular computer. This is not an intuitive interface, unlike the Apple's IOS products. There seem to be many arcane ways of accessing things and they are not readily obvious. Please give me back a real Start menu and rational ways of accessing what I need.
I will keep playing with it but I really hope MS makes some serious changes for those of us who will use the OS on a PC -- changes like being able to hide the Metro stuff and use a real Start button. It doesn't even have to be a Start button, just some easy way to access all the programs without the Metro stuff or give Metro it's own link on the Desktop so that you access what you want as you desire.
-Andre
Initial impressions from just playing with Windows 8 are, for me, fairly positive. Once I figured out the keyboard shortcuts to switching between apps and such it became a little more enjoyable.
One thought I had was with the Desktop, and not the same one everyone else shares about the disconnect between it and the start screen. I wonder if it will be possible to launch multiple desktops, similar to GNU/Linux. In Windows 8, the Desktop looks like an app, so why not have two, three or more open with their own set of programs running, much the same way that you can have multiple Notepads open with their own files.
-Scott
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Posted by Doug Barney on 03/30/20121 comments
When Windows 7 first shipped, there was a lot of excitement. For power users and IT, Win 7 has a lot to offer. But for me, it is not enough. My first experience was with the beta and it was solid and snappy.
I have long since moved onto the production version. But like XP, Win 7 doesn't age well. The longer you use it the slower and flakier it gets. It is still perfectly serviceable, but hangs when the computer is sitting, freezes when it hasn't been rebooted for a few days and sometimes the cursor goes south for nearly a minute.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 03/30/201212 comments
If you are relatively young, you think protected mode is an IE feature that stops hackers from loading malicious code (or tries to) or changing your security settings (or tries to).
If you have graying hair and are overdue for a colonoscopy you think protected mode is a way of tricking an Intel 80286 processor into addressing more than 640K (yes kilobytes) of memory so it can run Windows.
IE 10 now has an enhanced protected mode (EPM), a feature testers will eventually stumble over.
The news is good and bad. Whenever you tighten security you harm user experience. Just look at what Maxwell Smart had to go through to get into Control headquarters (if you get this reference, you probably know the first definition of protected mode, something Bill Gates pontificated on at many gatherings.)
In the case of IE 10 and the Metro interface, there is the AppContainer Sandbox. The great part is this doesn't share cookies across apps. The bad part? It doesn't share cookies across apps, so you are putting in user names and whatnot to get base level functions from some Web sites.
The nice part? When a hacker hijacks one page, he can't steal your data from another.
Posted by Doug Barney on 03/28/20121 comments