Microsoft

Overheard - VMware vs. Microsoft

“The video has ignited a longstanding debate within the partner communities of Microsoft and VMware over which company has the better approach to virtualization. In Microsoft’s view, virtualization is a feature of the operating system, while VMware represents an unnecessary — and expensive — extra layer. VMWare counters that Microsoft’s virtualization isn’t sophisticated enough for the needs of enterprises.” Kevin McLaughlin, VMware Apologizes To Microsoft For Hyper-V Bashing

Scott Drummonds, a technical marketing manager at VMware, admitted that he exercised bad judgment in posting the video and said he has removed it from Youtube. “Unfortunately, my intention to stir the pot with eye-poking banter has put my credibility and by association VMware’s credibility in question among some of you. For this I apologize,”

Bing - Your new verb

[Microsoft] is set to launch an $80 million to $100 million campaign for Bing, the search engine it hopes will help it grab a bigger slice of the online ad market. Abbey Klaasen, Microsoft Aims Big Guns at Google, Asks Consumers to Rethink Search

Microsoft has updated and rebranded LiveSearch with a new name. Bing. According to Ballmer,  they picked the name because it was short, it could be used as a verb and didn’t have negative connotations.

In spite of Ballmer’s good intentions, there’s a lot of buzz about “why THAT name?”

I don’t know….If someone said to me “I don’t know what iguanas eat — let me go Bing it,” I think it would sound ok.  I could see people using Bing as a verb.

I do wonder, though, if Microsoft people working on the engine secretly thought of Kumo (the old code name) as Beta Bing?  And btw, Abbey Klaasen is the only pundit I’ve read who describes the new search engine correctly — it’s a vehicle for generating ad revenue.

Windows 7 - Get your free ‘release candidate’ tomorrow

“The promise of Windows 7 is that laptops may be transported to work, become ‘business PCs,’ and be enrolled with all their enterprise-level Active Directory privileges; then be taken home, become ‘home PCs,’ and be open to all the family’s shared files, aggregate libraries, and other conveniences; and ne’er the twain shall meet.” Scott M. Fulton, III, Top 10 Windows 7 Features #10: Homegroup networking

Today’s WhatIs.com Word of the Day is Windows 7.  Microsoft is making the Windows 7 “release candidate” available to the general public tomorrow.  That’s about five months earlier than expected!

A release candidate is a ‘tween’ version  — it’s between the first Beta and the final release — and it’ll probably be the last version of Windows 7 that we’ll see before the final product ships in October.

The reviews for Windows 7 seem to be pretty good. Two features we’ll be adding definitions for in the near future: Windows 7 Homegroup and Windows 7 XP mode.

The Windows 7 RC license will only be available until July. The license will expire in June 2010, so that means you can have a pretty-close-to-final-version of Windows 7 free for a year.   Here’s a link to the official Microsoft 7 homepage.  And Ed Bott’s put together a great QnA for those of us who want to learn whether we have the right stuff to try it out.

Overheard: Azure grew out of Red Dog - gotta love those code names

The goal of Azure is to provide developers who want to write applications that run partially and/or entirely in a remote datacenter with a platform and set of tools. Mary Jo Foley,  Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform: A guide for the perplexed

Ok. So Azure isn’t all that new. It’s just Red Dog with a new name?

Overheard: The Microsoft Operations Framework is ITIL-lite

The Microsoft Operations Framework? I call it ITIL-lite. Same idea of a set of best practices but without the increasing complexity of ITIL. Niel Nickolaisen, sharing advice from a colleague in the tech tip The Real Niel: ITIL versus MOF

Overheard: AJAX, ARAX, APAX, APhpAX, etc.

If this [ARAX] is about using Silverlight to host client-side browser scripting in Ruby, it’s definitely an appealing notion, but the problem will always be about Silverlight being a Microsoft technology. Ben Galbraith, as quoted in  Johnson: Wrapping JavaScript in a loving Ruby embrace, and ARAX

 From InfoWorld:

Today, it is common for developers to use JavaScript in the browser. But with Microsoft’s planned release of Silverlight 2 later this year, developers could begin using Python and Ruby on the client as well. Ruby and Python already are being used for server-side development.

“What we’ve done through Silverlight is to make it possible to use Ruby or Python as an alternative to JavaScript for building the same types of applications,” said Brian Goldfarb, group manager for Microsoft’s developer division.  Developers could write code for Silverlight that is executed in the browser.

“All the browser needs to have is Silverlight installed and then developers can take advantage of these languages,” on the client, he said. Silverlight provides rich experiences with capabilities like video and graphics, Goldfarb said. It is viewed as rival to the Adobe Flash platform.

I can hardly keep these straight, although I’m thankful the names are so logical!

AJAX - asynchronous JavaScript and XML

ARAX - asynchronous Ruby and XML

APAX -  asynchronous Python and XML

APhpAX - asynchronous PHP and XML

Overheard: Where do you keep your honeypot?

The door to the room simply reads “the lab.” Inside are racks of hundreds of processors and terabytes of disk drives needed to capture the digital evidence that must be logged as carefully as evidence is maintained by crime scene investigators. John Markoff, A Robot Network Seeks to Enlist Your Computer

John Markoff gives a nice overview of what Microsoft is doing to help fight cybercrime — and why:

Just as gangs will often force a recruit to commit a crime as a test of loyalty, in cyberspace, bot-herders will test recruits in an effort to weed out spies. Microsoft investigators would not discuss their solution to this problem, but said they avoided doing anything illegal with their software.

One possible approach would be to create sensors that would fool the bot-herders by appearing to do malicious things, but in fact not perform the actions.

In 2003 and 2004 Microsoft was deeply shaken by a succession of malicious software worm programs with names like “Blaster” and “Sasser,” that raced through the Internet, sowing chaos within corporations and among home computer users. Blaster was a personal affront to the software firm that has long prided itself on its technology prowess. The program contained a hidden message mocking Microsoft’s co-founder: “billy gates why do you make this possible? Stop making money and fix your software!!”

Overheard: Who does Microsoft view as its competitors?

Interestingly, he [Ballmer] identified his top competitors as Google, Apple and Linux.  Secondary foes included IBM, Oracle, Amazon and SAP. Jeff Bussgang, Microsoft VC Conference - Steve Ballmer’s View On The World

I started out reading an article on Microsoft’s new Research and Development center for enterprise search, went on to read what Steve Ballmer said about the economy and how it’s going to affect IT and ended up at Jeff Bussgang’s blog. I think Jeff’s is the only blog post I’ve read in ages that gives Ballmer credit for all he’s accomplished.

Overheard: Windows 7 is just Vista with new shade of lipstick

Microsoft really is losing it. I can’t help but notice that the evil empire keeps making one business mis-step after another since Bill has left. May I suggest firing Ballmer once more? It really is for your own good. Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, You can put lipstick on a pig but it’s still Vista

Overheard: Excuse me, is that a supercomputer under your desk?

The CX1 is Cray’s new personal supercomputer. The unit is small — it’s meant to fit beside a desk — and it can be plugged into a wall socket on standard office power. Ian Miller, as quoted in Cray Unveils Personal Supercomputer

Lots of buzz about the Cray CX1 this week, although the idea of an office supercomputer is nothing new. NEC is probably the leader on that front. What’s different about this announcement is that Cray teamed up with Microsoft and these little babies come pre-installed with Windows HPC Server 2008.