Kurt Shintaku's Blog: Commentary

COMMENTARY: What happened to Martin Taylor?

Thu, 29 Jun 2006 10:00:27 GMT

There's been enough conjecture around this topic that I thought maybe I'd riff a little about it. Basically, the story goes that Martin Taylor, a much heralded individual responsible for Windows Live - Microsoft's new Internet services technologies, departed from Microsoft under rather mysterious circumstances. The PR statement from Redmond was, "We have made the difficult decision to part ways with Martin, but we don't comment on personnel matters. We appreciate Martin's contributions at Microsoft over the past 13 years."

I personally don't know what happened, but I do perceive that there are around 4 actions that Redmond could have taken depending upon what was happening.

1) Martin was voluntarily taking a brief leave of absence because of a personal matter like a taking care of a loved one.
In this instance, the departure would have been friendly and Redmond PR could have made a statement, thanking Martin for all his work, talking about all the great things that he did, go on and on about his future being bright and junk, and basically pouring honey all over him to make sure he came back after his brief respite. It would be readily obvious to everyone that Martin was still welcome back at Microsoft whenever he wanted and that his reasons for leaving were completely his own.

2) Martin was forced to leave his job to deal with a personal matter that was going to consume too much of his time.
It's possible that Martin had a matter to tend to that was going to take serious time to deal with, and so he'd either be restricted from travel or would have to go part time, neither of which were acceptable for the position he was in as lead champion for Windows Live. He might have tried to negotiate something so that he could stay on in the same role while accommodating his personal matter but his role as the chief mouthpiece of Windows Live is so important in our online services battle that we couldn't have someone at the helm doing it only "part time", so Microsoft was forced to let him go quietly and quickly with regret.

3) Martin was voluntarily leaving Microsoft for a competitor like Google.
After all, it's not like this hasn't happened recently. 4 rather press-hyped names have left Microsoft in the past year for Google: Marc Lucovsky, Adam Bosworth, Kai-Fu Lee, and Vic Gundotra. In this instance, Redmond PR wouldn't have made a statement, but the competitor hiring him probably would have sent out press releases to every news outlet they could reach in order to get some free advertising like Google did with Marc Lucovsky & Kai-Fu Lee. Martin himself would likely be asked to say something about why he was changing jobs.

4) Martin was asked to leave.
This could be for any number of reasons. Because of the Martin's title and position within the company, this would be a very uncomfortable matter and one that would be difficult for both Martin as well as for the company's PR department. In this case, very little would be said however a statement would be made immediately to ensure that if the reason for his departure was one that could be damaging to all involved, an official statement was already submitted to the newswire and it couldn't be said that a "party line" hadn't been established.

At least that's what I'm thinking. Either #2 or #4 could fit the bill but I've been told that Martin was a very decent and principled guy so my thinking is #2: That he couldn't commit the necessary time to his job - a job that's very important here at Microsoft.

VIDEO: Billg on the Education Problem in the United States

Fri, 23 Jun 2006 09:44:08 GMT

BILLG ON BUSINESS WEEK

Business Week's cover story this week is about Billg's fight to improve high school education in America. Read about it here:

BUSINESSWEEK: Bill Gates Gets Schooled
Why he and other execs have struggled in their school reform efforts, and why they keep trying

LINK: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_26/b3990001.htm?campaign_id=nws_insdr_jun16&link_position=link1

BILLG ON OPRAH

Oprah Winfrey did a 2 part special with Bill & Melinda Gates about the crisis our schools are facing. If you're interested in viewing it here's some streams I made of the shows.

Episode 1: Oprah - "What Bill & Melinda Gates wants you to know"
VIDEO: http://www.evilkoala.org/media/BillGOnOprah1.wmv (82MB)
Episode 2: Oprah - "America Schools in Crisis"
VIDEO: http://www.evilkoala.org/media/BillGOnOprah2.wmv (52MB)

BILLG IN THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS

Most people wouldn't highlight a little article in the Dallas Morning News regarding Bill Gates. After all, the closest Bill ever got to officially setting up business in Dallas, Texas was Albuquerque, New Mexico when he started Microsoft, (or to be correct for the time period, "Micro Soft")... other than that, all his history outside of Harvard has been in the Pacific Northwest.

But one of their business columnists wrote a very nice article about what the Billg announcement did and what it implies moving forward, summarizing his contributions and how Microsoft handled business analysts. It's a very easy read and makes some good points.

Cheryl Hall: "Gates is revolutionizing philanthropy"

LINK: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/columnists/chall/stories/062106dnbusHall.13fba7a.html

COMMENTARY: Microsoft's ACTUAL Top 10 "flops"

Tue, 20 Jun 2006 01:08:27 GMT

Recently, a link-pandering hack decided to accent Bill Gates' announcement to transition to a part-time role at Microsoft by listing on the web what she opines are Microsoft's worst products, beating on old horses like Microsoft Bob & Windows ME.

Y'know, as strange as this sounds, I actually don't consider Microsoft Bob to be a "catastrophic flop". I would define a major flop as being a balance of significant resource investment, substantial marketing hype, and negative impact upon customers. The larger the hype or the larger the investment or the more poor the impact, the more significant the flop. Bob was in all cases, relatively harmless: It wasn't very costly relative to other work going on at the time like NT 4.0, it didn't receive a tremendous amount of marketing unlike Win95, and it really didn't impact users much - it was a UI substitute for $39.95. It's simply one of the more visible and memorable mistakes we've had so people kick it. (Did you know it still works fine on WinXP systems?)

The aforementioned hack's list was a good demonstration of her actual ignorance of Microsoft's history. In an effort to show just how far off she was, here's a list of products that I instead would categorize as being Microsoft's Top 10 Greatest Flops.

Microsoft's Top 10 Flops

Vizact 2000

Microsoft Vizact? Never heard of it? It was a fully launched Office 2000 product that shared billing along side the rest of the Y2K product, just like Microsoft's well-built but ill-fated PhotoDraw 2000. Vizact was a tool that "animated" documents and made them "interactive" by rendering the entire document in HTML and making sections collapsible using crosshairs, and making areas multidimensional to allow greater informational depth without scrolling down the page. the only problem was that no one ever asked for this in static Office documents: Having this in web documents was just fine for most, but within static docs lile .XLSs? Oh no. Vizact lasted no more than 6-9 months before disappearing. Today some of it's seeds still reside within the HTML creation engine of Word.

...Office level hype & marketing, absolutely no consumer uptake... that's what I call a flop.

Windows QoS

Windows Quality of Service (QoS) was technology between desktop & server to provide the world with the first managed end-point-to-router-to-end-point bandwidth controls that were isolated to individual user accounts and subnets. IT could ensure that "Bill Gates and his Comdex demonstration" would get 90% of the available bandwidth on a given pipe while "Joe User who was on the same pipe, reading Hotmail" would get only 10%, as a policy. But because Microsoft ran into the brick wall known as Cisco, who isn't fond of sharing control over their territory any more than MS is of sharing theirs, nothing ever came of the server & client technology that was to make this possible. It's all still there though: Waiting for someone to use it someday. ...to date, I've never once met an organization that used it since it's inception in 2000 and it's constantly maintained in the OS, and that's what I call a flop.

Microsoft Reader

Microsoft Reader was a VERY good framework for building eBooks & documents that a) were strongly digital rights protected, b) were not copy-and-pastable/printable, c) portable to multiple devices in a managed way, d) easily creatable using free or low-cost software like Microsoft Word, & e) very readable on LCD screens for a book-like experience, with bookmarks, highlighting, and inline user comments. In a phrase, it was superior in every respect to Adobe Acrobat eBooks. This however was a case of very bad product marketing & planning. Instead of actively marketing interesting & relevant books to lure in potential influential end users, (like the Da Vinci Code, Microsoft Reference books, Zagat Guide, Double Digit Growth, etc.) the folks responsible for Reader chose to exclusively focus their efforts on eBook vendors like Amazon.com & Barnes & Noble, hoping that these folks would make the eBook revolution successful basically out of the goodness of their own hearts. Needless to say, even with the availability of tools that enabled any Word document to be turned into a Reader eBook, it failed and today, Reader still exists and lives on as a great eBook platform but nonetheless, an fairly unused one.

...when you fail when you've got the world's two largest book vendors behind you, you've got yourself a flop.

Mobile Information Server
Mobile Information Server 2001 was the brainchild of Mobility VP Juha Christensen, a Nokia executive that came onboard Microsoft and implemented a cellular Mobility strategy that was, at best, myopic. MIS2001 provided WML-based mobile browser compatible web pages for WAP connections (particularly Exchange information) to cell phones with Phone.com's browser. (99% text content) This might have been interesting in Europe where Juha was from, but in the US, almost no one uses WAP/WML. MIS was eventually dismantled, its components fused into Exchange Server as a value add that we today call the "Exchange front end server", and the Exchange group has taken over it's development.

...the mere fact that there are 50 Million cell phone users out there an virtually none of their corporate companies bought MIS spells "FLOP".

Rare/Grabbed by the Ghoulies/Kameo/Perfect Dark Zero

This one hurts because I love these guys but... Rare, a game development studio acquisition, was a serious flop for Microsoft. Producing games such as XBoxClassic "Grabbed by the Ghoulies", Xbox360 "Perfect Dark Zero", & Xbox360 "Kameo", Rare has done little to date to warrant the acquisition costs paid for them. The lone bright spot in the acquistion was "Conker: Live & Reloaded", a moderately heralded rated-R console game for XBoxClassic. It looked good and had great game play but was rather light on the revenue otherwise.

...when you can't bring in enough revenue to pay for your own acquisition, that's a flop.

Taxsaver

Microsoft Taxsaver was Microsoft's answer to Intuit's TurboTax. It was a VERY nice piece of software that in most every respect, was superior to TurboTax at the time it was created but it has one seriously horrendous flaw: It lacked state tax filing. Yep - it was exclusively Federal tax only. Why we couldn't get this done or felt it was "optional", we'll never know. Suffice it to say that the product flopped but was sold to H&R Block who has since then added State Income Tax filing and is the #2 player in this market. Meanwhile, the aforementioned hack journalist mentioned Microsoft Money as being a flop instead of Taxsaver: Why would anyone mention Microsoft Money - a profitable & successful, highly acclaimed, and fairly beloved product amongst its users, when she could have mentioned Taxsaver?

...anyone that thinks the creation of a Federal only tax product is knowingly creating a flop.

Systems Management Server 2.0

As any truly experienced IT professional will tell you, the flagship management product from Microsoft's Management group from back in 1998 was so buggy, non-functional, and poorly written - even through it's Service Pack 2, the division almost never recovered. Fortunately for us, it did get stabilized after the hiring of Kirill Tatarinov, former CEO of BMC Software, was brought in to lead the division and create a vision for Microsoft Enterprise Management. SMS 2003's stability, strong ties to the Dynamic Systems Initiative, and the introduction of OS Deployment, Device Management, and other functional SMS additions are a testament to the intellect and drive of Kirill... one of the reason's his name is held in such reverence amongst Management specialists.

...I hope I don't have to explain why a 5 year old product that people were still trying to stablize at its end-of-life, is considered a flop.

Mac Internet Explorer 1.0

Besides being relatively featureless next to Netscape for Mac, Mac IE 1.0 had a moving Windows logo on it. Have you ever met a Mac user that wanted a "moving Windows logo" on their desktop? Nuff said. The logo was later removed and the new IE 4.0 "e" logo was used instead, but not before people condemned the product thoroughly. The product had to consistently improve over 4 versions before it overcame the stigma of 1.0.

...the silliness of releasing a big name hyped sister product on a Mac, with a Windows logo on it, in tandem with all the effort put into the product, garners it the designation of a 'flop'.

Internet Explorer 4.0

In an attempt to leap frog the competition, Microsoft produced Internet Explorer 4.0, a technologically superior product to Netscape Navigator in every feature and in every capability. Unfortunately, it was by my own personal experience, unstable a whopping 5% of the time and resulted in frequent crashes, slowdowns, and freezes... probably one out of every 10-20 times you ran it. Memory leaks galore. Microsoft gathered together 50+ sponsors from various major names on the Internet stating they supported IE 4.0 causing the great Browser Wars that we all remember from that era but it was only until IE 5.0 did we have a faster, more stable browser.

...the huge amount of money, hype, and the ultimate bad impact it had on users was what had me judge 4.0 as a 'flop'.

Windows NT 4.0 Option Pack

Anyone with IT administrative experience will read this and shout, "Oh YEAH. He's right." The Option Pack was a poorly tested, poorly implemented "feature pack" for Windows NT Server 4.0 that included Transaction Server, IIS 4.0, and a number of other technologies. When installed, it was virtually uninstallable and it had the uncanny propensity to ruin installations of Windows NT. What made it nefarious was that many admins and app developers really needed the components within the Option Pack, making it very popular to install - causing much diress amongst its users. The Option Pack was the reason we rarely ship features into Service Packs and instead provide web releases of new functionality.

...I still have a copy of this. It's such a flop, I'm thinking of eBaying the sucker for posterity.

COMMENTARY: "The Most Important Rule of Delivering Presentations"

Sat, 17 Jun 2006 06:21:09 GMT

I've recently noticed a fair number of my customers - many IT folks - that are finding themselves DELIVERING Powerpoint presentations and having to present ideas and concepts to management and peers. I'd like to provide one piece of advice with a little bit of supporting evidence.

There's a single fundamental truth to presenting that everyone should know. The first question I ask any new Systems Engineer working for Microsoft is:

"Which of the following is the most important element of presentation sales?"
a) having interesting & truly compelling presentation content
b) providing a customer-focused problem, a solution, and a executable next step
c) delivering technically accurate and business-relevant information
d) putting forth understandable & clearly comprehendable ideas

The answer is D. Nothing else matters if people can't understand you. Most people realize that but some retort that even though your audience may understand your ideas, it might not be compelling enough to maintain their attention. I would argue that that's more hypothetical than it is reality.

The book The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell states that researchers have discovered that children when tested, do not focus on attention-grabbing flash or captivating demonstrations or even amazing information or feats. They will only focus consistent attention on things that they understand - things that their minds can consume. It goes even farther than that: Children might even tune out during segments of an event that they find boring, but as long as it's understandable, they will return their attention when necessary AUTOMATICALLY to the extent that their brains will allow them.

The point is that children only have a certain amount of attention or focus that they can deliver and as long as the information in front of them is understandable, they will inherently provide the most optimal amount of attention possible to the event at hand. No amount of flash & distraction will boost or change this. The human brain has an automatic method of optimally delivering the maximum amount of attention possible.

I point this out because I've found throughout my career that my audiences are precisely like, well, these children. As long as the information being presented to them is understandable, I will get the maximum amount of attention possible from them, even if it's information they already know. A person's maximum level of attention is obviously something that's dependent on how the attendee's brain is wired, how much sleep they had the night before, if they have other more pressing things on their minds, whether they've had their morning coffee and donut, etc. However, most of this is out of my control.

The bottom line is that above all things, a presentation must be comprehensible by the most non-technical layperson. Never be afraid to repeat a point, never hesitate to define a term or an acronym, and most importantly, never commit the suicide of "deferring questions until the end of the presentation". You should have enough time to accommodate questions and if you don't, you should either extend the time allocated or if that's not possible, start working on making your message more concise... and trimming down your Powerpoint.

COMMENTARY: Thoughts on Billg's "upcoming" departure in 2 years

Fri, 16 Jun 2006 01:52:44 GMT

Here's a couple "givens" that I know personally:

1) Billg's still got plenty of passion & interest in computer software.

If you ever got to meet the man, you'd know that when you're one-on-one with him, he and his direct staff really believe that we've only just touched the surface of what software can do and will provide to consumers, businesses, and humanity. Their confidence has always been the reason I've laughed at people like Larry Ellison who've made comments about how "software wasn't where the most exciting work was being done".

2) Billg's VERY competitive.

All thoughout our history, very few people - SteveB included - have been more competitive and more keenly focused on our competition than Billg, and that competitiveness has not waned one bit. He still speaks very strongly when we talk about 'certain' competitors today in the same way that he spoke about WordPerfect, Lotus 123, Sun/Java, Novell/Directory Services, Netscape, etc. Trust me... he hasn't lost his edge one bit.

3) Microsoft still needs butt-kicking leadership.

Don't get me wrong: We've got some really truly amazing leadership in this company. I worked for both Visa International (Credit & Debit) and Hewlett Packard Company and let me just state for the record that I've never felt that a company was better led than Microsoft. In fact, our leadership is held to a standard that's far and above higher than most other companies. I mean, we're judged at the same level as Intel, GE, Disney, Boeing, and other major companies. Think about how well you think these other company's execs have done then compare that to Microsoft's execs. But we still need as many "equalizers" and we can get because our company's culture is one in which strong valid opinions clash, and the "equalizers" act as tiebreakers that are final and unquestioned.

4) Billg will be focused on his philanthropic foundation.

Billg stated that he would be spending his time on the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He didn't say anything more than that but his recent actions can tell you a few things about his intent moving forward.

- Melinda Gates, a person who's usually quite out of the spotlight, gave her first TV interview to Oprah along side with Billg.

- Bono (of U2 fame) is working with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to solve many world problems including hunger, disease, education, and transportation.

So here's the big question: Why would Billg leave now?

I have a theory about that.

SCHOOLS IN CRISIS

I think if you take a look at this episode of the Oprah Winfrey show, Bill reveals in his first "non-business" interview involving his foundation, a serious concern he has about the country's education system:

http://www2.oprah.com/tows/pastshows/200604/tows_past_20060411.jhtml

If I recall correctly, he describes the American education system as being one of the single biggest threats to the US's long term prosperity and competitiveness within the world economy.

He's so concerned about it that he and Oprah Winfrey describes our national education system as being a "complete failure" and in a "state of crisis". They don't really go into it but in previous discussions, they've described our challenge with education as essentially a championless cause because no one seems to solve the fundamental problem of "why our schools aren't teaching our kids". Some politicians want to throw money at it. Others want to enact laws that regulate curriculum and standardize education using national testing. Yet others want referrendums around teaching credentials and an invigoration of the drive for more accredited teachers.

He's concerned about this because America's nowhere near the sophistication of other countries when it comes to educating the next generation. With it's 50's style education techniques, America's gone downhill relative to the rest of the world. Our school system is ranked something around 24th worldwide, when compared with other country's educational systems. In other words, there are 23 other countries with better schools than we do - including Canada, Germany, France, Korea, Poland, Hungary, Slovak Republic, etc. It is predicted that America's workforce will be completely non-competitive with our 3rd world counterparts and ultimately we'll lose our status as a world power.

Our undereducated workforce will render the country irrelevant.

A LACK OF TECHNICALLY CAPABLE WORKERS

The most telling indicator that our educational system is a horrifically underperforming, is the fact that we - Microsoft - aren't finding the same pool of technical candidates coming out of college any more. Bill states in his interview that not just Microsoft, but all technology companies are having to reach out to foreign countries for technically competent recruits: America's not providing the workforce necessary to sustain it's high tech economy, and consequently, companies like Oracle, Cisco, IBM, and of course, Microsoft, are establishing offices and research centers in various parts of the world in the hopes of recruiting the best technical minds elsewhere.

I think ultimately the problem is so bad that Billg decided to go try and solve it himself with his philanthropy, his connections with people, and with others interested in moving the country's education system forward like Kevin Johnson (formerly of the Phoenix Suns) and Oprah Winfrey. He's seen that Microsoft is challenged in getting good technically educated talent from the US at the rate we need and it's so bad that we're growing our foreign staff recruitment at a far faster rate than our American recruitment.

So while his foundation provides much needed resources to save lives in impoverished countries by providing programs for vaccinations, medicines, and nourishment, I think Billg will actually be working on the US's issues. I think he's going to turn the educational system on its head in an attempt to reinvigorate America's education system before it's too late.

SUMMARY

We need kids that are well-educated and interested in math & sciences to remain competitive. And this issue has to be addressed as soon as possible... I repeat: AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. It's not something that we can wait for politicians to figure out. The country's competitive edge and overall relevance in the world is at stake and in an even larger possibly somewhat arrogant view, the world can't afford to not have America, the largest free democracy, not be successful along side emerging countries with "less developed" government infrastructures and "non-democratic" regimes.

Of course this isn't entirely altruistic. Microsoft itself, Billg's powerbase, suffers competitively because of the lack of math & sciences talent in America relative to China, India, and other emerging superpowers. We've established research centers in these countries to take their intellectual talent. (See http://research.microsoft.com) And more and more, we're depending upon these 3rd world research centers for new IP. And that's a scary thing because foreign workers strongly tend to work for companies based in their countries of origin - not American companies like ours. This means that our strengths - our smart people - are diminishing, and those of our foreign competitors are growing.

At the risk of sounding overly dramatic, with the success of America goes the success of Microsoft.

RUMOR: Various discussions around Playstation 3

Mon, 12 Jun 2006 10:39:34 GMT

I'm tracking this story 'cause it's like a big geek soap opera. I haven't seen so much "he said, she said" since the last time my wife turned on "Desperate Housewives". I'm kinda waiting for Ars Technica to chime in on this since they're usually the gurus of hardware analysis.

--------------------

PS3 hardware slow and broken
"...Someone screwed up so badly it looks like it will relegate the console to second place behind the 360. All the devs I talked to were lukewarm on the 360 architecture but universally negative on the PS3. Revelations like this go a long way to explain why you keep hearing about simmering problems from the Sony devs.
You end up with a console with half the triangle setup rate of the 360, a crippled CPU that is a bitch to program, and tools that are atrocious compared to the 360. To make matters worse, you have an arrogant set of execs telling us that twice the price is worth it for half the power, a year late..."

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=32171

--------------------

Top developers slam PS3 "broken" allegations

"...the site based its assertions on a claim that the NVIDIA-designed RSX graphics unit has a slower triangle setup rate than the ATI-designed part in the Xbox 360, and on a slide from Sony's Devstation event a few months back showing the memory access speeds within the console.

However, speaking to GamesIndustry.biz this week, several developers who are familiar with the PS3 hardware have rubbished the claims made by The Inquirer - describing both sets of figures as "entirely meaningless."

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=17547

--------------------

More PS3 Downgrades on the Way

"...He's back. The connected PS3-party wet blanket who brought us covert info on the PlayStation 3 has dug up some dirt from a phantom insider who claims the PS3 may see even more downgraded specs. From lower clock speeds to an external power brick to who-knows-what-else, one thing we know for certain is that we sure as hell won't be getting what was promised at E3 2005."

http://www.kotaku.com/gaming/sony/more-ps3-downgrades-on-the-way-179863.php#more

--------------------

Report: Square Enix working on PS3, Vista MMORPG
"The XBox 360 operating system shares enough similarities with Windows, he said, so that porting the Windows version of FFXI to the 360 was a fairly quick task. A PlayStation 3 version of FFXI, on the other hand, would require redeveloping the game almost from scratch, a process that Tanaka estimated would take two or three years. As a result, FFXI will emphatically not be a launch title for the PlayStation 3. In fact, Tanaka did not commit to bringing out FFXI for the PlayStation 3 at any time. He feels that the resources required to port the game to the PlayStation 3 might be better invested in a new game that's built from the ground up for next-gen hardware--but his team has yet to make a final decision one way or another."

http://videogames.yahoo.com/newsarticle?eid=452561&page

--------------------

Rumor: PS3 "slow and broken"?
"From the way that article was written, you can tell that the person doesn't do any PS3 development, as he isn't talking at all about the other smaller processors which surround the Cell," one developer said. "I am not sure if the final development kits are out yet (maybe to just a few developers), so I don't know what he is benchmarking against. Also, he is doing a lot of bashing, so it is hard to take him seriously. Basically, if what they say is correct, then the PS3 would be good with games like Fight Night, where you have a small environment with just a couple characters, but with big open area games, like Grand Theft Auto, it will have problems."

http://www.gamespot.com/news/show_blog_entry.php?topic_id=24691334&sid=6152391

--------------------

Update: Top developers slam PS3 "broken" allegations

"Yes, two cycles to set up a tri, 550Mhz/2 = 275. Same as every G7x, the same number latest NV GPUs have.
I nabbed these images from the SA thread on the original article, which should illustrate for the confused how the 16mb/s figure is a non-issue:"
PICTURE 1: (PS3) http://imagesocket.com/images/ps3mem3fd.png
PICTURE 2: (PC) http://imagesocket.com/images/pcmem2b7.png

http://boardsus.playstation.com/playstation/board/message?board.id=ps3&message.id=415586&view=by_date_ascending&page=3

COMMENTARY: One of our better web ads

Thu, 01 Jun 2006 21:37:28 GMT

Right now, the front page of http://www.microsoft.com has this JPG on it:

http://i3.microsoft.com/h/en-us/i/WMP11_4_10.jpg

...if this doesn't at least make you smile a little bit... <shakes head>

I get the feeling that the Windows Media team hired the advertising group that does our XBox ads.

COMMENTARY: "Why don't I post every training opportunity on this site?"

Fri, 26 May 2006 20:10:08 GMT

I was recently asked by a customer, "Why don't you post every training opportunity on my blog? Why do I send direct email still? Don't I trust the RSS feed generated by my blog?"

The answer is relatively simple:

Yes, I DO know about a lot of training and hands-on-lab opportunities that I do not post to this blog. The reason I choose not to post them however is because they either have limited space available to them, they're very expensive, or they are targeted toward a very specific group/type of individuals.

For example:

1) We have a 3-day hands-on-lab event coming up focusing on Management tools, Server Monitoring, and Virtualization technologies. The class is very comprehensive, very technical, and very expensive. And seating is limited.

2) We have an executive discussion coming up on Enterprise Project Management at a very posh location. The attendees for this event are supposed to be VP level and above.

3) We have a wine tasting event for customers coming up at a beachside location. Again - this is invite only, therefore not something I'm posting on the blog.

So, if I mail you an invite for some event or training opportunity, there's a good chance you're one of only 30 odd folks that I'm sending it to. My invite list for some of these other gigs isn't very long.

COMMENTARY: Windows Live Local & "Collections"

Thu, 25 May 2006 19:21:49 GMT

I like this thing. I'd give it about an 8 out of 10 right now.

Windows Live Local's new "collections" capability gives me the ability to create a collection of places/locations that I can keep alive as a "work in progress" on the Internet and share with others. I can enhance the list of places and everyone will be able to get the new locations when they revisit the collection.

Here is my first collection. It's a list of Japanese Restaurants that I've been sharing amongst friends and co-workers. Being that I'm Japanese and was raised with Japanese traditions and Japanese food all my life, I like to think I'm something of a authority on the topic.

http://local.live.com/?v=2&cid=DA410C7F7E038D!942

I have 5 beefs with the software however, and I've rolled all of these up the chain. I'd encourage you to do the same through the Feedback site: (http://feedback.live.com/eform.aspx?productkey=wlsearchlocal&local=en-us&P2=&P4=LIVE&P6=&P9=34.041609121994426/-118.459985&searchtype=Local%20Search)

Comments.
Why is it so hard to expose comments about a location? The creator's comments about the location are what add value to the collection - NOT the collection of locations itself. So what if there's a list of geographic locations? People will know how to get there but they won't know why they want to go there in the first place. Additionally, these comments should be persistent and well exposed. I should see them when I hover over the location, or I should at least see them when I right mouse click on the location.
URLs.
Why is there no easy way to expose a URL for each location to enable people to click to jump to an online review that I've written or a place to find more information about the location? This should be obvious in the same way that comments are obvious and the right-mouse menu would be the perfect place for it.
New/Updated locations.
If I update a collection, why aren't the new items tagged as "new" - maybe even with the date/time that it was added? My visitors need to know what's been added since the last time they visited. The whole point of putting this online is so that people can constantly get updated with new changes right?
Zoom Out on every Addition to the Collection.
Every time I add a new item to the collection, the map zooms out. What a pain!
Export
How do I export my location list to something like an Excel spreadsheet? Or an Outlook Contacts list? Why isn't this integration built in?
Alerts.
Why isn't this tied into MSN Alerts? People should be notified of when things have changed on my collection in the same way that people are notified of when my blog changes.
RSS.
Why isn't this list an RSS feed? This list should enable people to subscribe to it and then click on the link to see it geographically.

COMMENTARY: Apple's new "we don't have viruses" TV ad

Fri, 19 May 2006 23:19:18 GMT

I've watched quietly as Apple has taken potshots at us in their recent TV ads. But recently they released a TV ad talking about viruses between the MacOS platform and the Windows platform which to me is really deceptive about an issue that the entire computer community faces: Security.

Security is an area of technology that's a topic that crosses platforms and technologies. The concern for security is also not specific to the technologies marketshare: People should always be concerned at the same levels regardless of what OS or application they're using. Implying that you "don't have to worry" on a Macintosh or that you don't have to follow the same guidelines and procedures as on a Windows PC is foolish as any security specialist would tell you. One intrusion technique on one platform can usually be leveraged in some way on any other platform. It's not so much about the specific implementation of the vulnerability as much as it's about the technique used.

So why the dearth of Mac Viruses? Ctrl-Alt-Del posted this which pretty much sums up the fallacy of Apple's ad: http://www.ctrlaltdel-online.com/comic.php?d=20060513

In case, you don't believe this logic, here's a few sites to ponder:

Security scares mount for Apple Macintosh users
"In the past week, users of Apple's Mac computers — rarely touched by viruses, worms and other nasty stuff — have been warned of at least three security threats. This week, security experts detected a flaw in the way Apple software handles downloaded files. The flaw could give attackers back-door access to Macs if their owners open malicious files from bogus websites and e-mail."
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/computersecurity/2006-02-23-mac-security_x.htm
Apple Mac still potential Typhoid Mary warns McAfee exec
"A senior executive from a leading security vendor has warned that Apple Macintosh computers pose a potential threat to the security of networks because of their ability to harbour infected files that only attack Microsoft Windows systems and lax security practices from Mac users."
http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/3864/0/
Mac OS X web server security competition over in six hours
"Late last month, a Swedish Mac fan posted a web site that challenged all comers to "rm my Mac," referring to the age-old Unix utility used to delete files. The machine was a PowerPC-based Mac mini... ...Six hours later, the machine was hacked and the web page defaced.
"It probably took about 20 or 30 minutes to get root on the box. Initially I tried looking around the box for certain mis-configurations and other obvious things but then I decided to use some unpublished exploits—of which there are a lot for Mac OS X," the hacker said."
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060306-6321.html
Apple Releases a Whopping 43 Security Updates
Apple last week released a massive security update package for their Mac OS X operating system as well as updates for the QuickTime player bundled with Mac OS X. The update fixes a number of security issues including a number of code execution vulnerabilities that could allow an attacker to compromise Mac OS X and run undesirable programs.
http://www.dailytech.com/Article.aspx?newsid=2341
Apple OSX related viruses on McAfee Threat Center
http://search.mcafee.com/search?q=OSX&site=Virus&num=10&btnG=Search&output=xml_no_dtd&sort=date%3AD%3AL%3Ad1&getFields=description&ie=UTF-8&client=default_frontend&oe=UTF-8&proxystylesheet=default_frontend&=&partialfields=&getfields=description&filter=0

COMMENTARY: 8 Reasons why Japanese Airlines kick the butt of US-based Airlines

Tue, 07 Feb 2006 21:22:31 GMT

I'm in coach class right now on All Nippon Airways Flight NH05 and check this out:

...I have actual wireless Internet access from my seat. I'm getting bandwidth of about 160kbps down and 50kbps up. And YES, this blog entry is being made directly from my airplane seat at 12,000 feet in the air.

...I have a REAL power socket in my seat... not some "airport" plug.

...I just had an actual video conversation with a coworker of mine at Microsoft through the video camera on my laptop. How's that for I/O?

...I'm eating REALLY GOOD teriyaki chicken. Yes - that's right. I'm eating teriyaki chicken for lunch with good rice. Not that garbage United serves.

...the flight from Los Angeles left ON TIME and ON SCHEDULE.

...all the movies and video features are on-demand directly to my seat. I don't have to wait until "3:00PM" to see the repeat of "Mr. & Mrs. Smith". (Although we really have to work on getting these folks to hook up some XBox's here: The games are all old Nintendo junk and this plane would be sooooo cool to play Halo 2 multiplayer in)

...unlike Alitalia, this plane is very clean, and very comfortable. The air temperature is perfect... even my wife isn't complaining about the temperature.

...and the flight attendants are attentive, professional, and... uh... very nice. <grin>

(Attached is a photo taken by my Tablet PC video camera of my wife and I in our seats after we'd just done a video teleconference with Chandler Bootchk, the Real Time Collaboration specialist in Microsoft Los Angeles. Imagine his surprise when we told him that we were at an altitude of 12,000 feet.)

COMMENTARY: The 'Blackberry workaround'

Sun, 05 Feb 2006 09:22:42 GMT

It would appear that several people have written about the purported Blackberry workaround that RIM has planned in order to circumvent the restrictions placed on them by NTP's patents on messaging push/forwarding technology.

Now for the record, I know only what I've read on the Internet, but this is my take on what they're allegedly doing in a nutshell and what the implications may be... in my opinion:

THE BLACKBERRY WORKAROUND:

Current Blackberry devices will be switched over to a 'workaround mode' at RIM's NOC where a Blackberry device receives pushed "links" to email messages whose 'body' content are still stored remotely. These "links" themselves have the 'subject' and relevant To: and Cc: information in them to allow people to understand the email context. When clicked, the link pulls down the email body on-demand which takes 1-2 seconds.
This purportedly gets around the legal troubles RIM has had because allegedly the NTP patents cover one-way email messaging transmission only according to web sites I've read. They do not cover two-way on-demand pulls of email based on "header" delivery, which in it of themselves are not qualified as "emails", thus RIM never actually pushes an email to the device. The end user 'pulls' the email on-demand when they want to read it.

The upside of all of this is that no Blackberry ROM changes or Blackberry Enterprise Server changes are required. All changes are done at the RIM Network Operations Center.

There are however problems with all of this:

THE WORKAROUND'S DOWNSIDES:

Customers will find that they lose productivity by finding themselves reading email slower, and it'll be annoyingly apparent to every user. The opening of these links result in a 1-2 second delay as the content is pulled down over GPRS networks. This pause will probably make users 'less productive' in rapidly clearing SPAM and mails they don't care about. And let's not kid ourselves... clearing our Inbox through our mobile devices is supposed to be a quick process. Anyone that's done this knows what I'm talking about.
Customers will lose productivity by no longer having offline usage. Since the devices rely on having cellular access to pull down the body of email messages, if you aren't in range of the network, you can't read email. People that work in buildings... people that take the train... people that work part of the day in areas uncovered by their cellular network... they're all going to discover that their devices are paper weights during these time periods because they don't actually have email on them... just the headers and links to the body content.

WHY WINDOWS MOBILE?

Windows Mobile devices, like the Palm Treo 700w, the Samsung i730, and the Verizon/Sprint XV6700, all have great keyboards, small form factors, and rich interfaces with always-up-to-date email available on them through a Pocket version of Outlook. But what sets Windows Mobile apart is the manner in which mail is delivered:

For older Windows Mobile 2003 devices, Windows Mobile phones receive specially encoded/encrypted SMS text messages through the carrier network from the Exchange Server at your company. These text messages act as 'wake-up' calls to your phone to initiate a pull of new email from the server. This includes both the header as well as the body and it's attachments. The benefit of this is that the Exchange Server is extremely scalable and can handle 10,000 users or more while the device allows for offline email reading while delivering email nearly immediately. Additionally, no service charges outside of cellular data network charges are required, meaning customers don't pay RIM for anything. The one drawback is that each phone must purchase a plan with text messaging however many networks provide this service for free or at a low cost.
For newer Windows Mobile 5.0 devices, Windows Mobile phone establish a persistent HTTP connection between the Exchange Server and itself. The Exchange Server sends a 'ping' to the device to notify it that there is new mail available. Upon notification, the phone wakes up and pulls down any new email - headers, body, and attachments. The benefit of this is that new devices no longer need SMS text messaging services in their phone plans, they receive email almost immediately, and they also have offline usage of email on their devices. And again, no service charges outside of cellular data network charges are required.

Imagine not having to write a check to RIM every year for simple mobile email support. That's Windows Mobile.

COMMENTARY: USB-powered Drink Cooler

Wed, 01 Feb 2006 00:26:38 GMT

So I received my USB-powered drink cooler in the mail the other day from CoolIt. Microsoft is in the middle of moving offices so I'm having to do a lot of heavy lifting... and I thought the drink cooler would come in handy.

I was right. This thing is cool - if you'll pardon the pun. It gets down to a good 40-45 degrees Fahrenheit. The folks at http://www.thetechzone.com/?m=show&id=487 did an evaluation of the technology and I think they did a thorough job, but they were a little unfair about it's effectiveness. I suspect that if you have a metal cup or sorts, it would defintely be more effective in maintaining a cold drink but normal Diet Coke cans seem to work just fine.

COMMENTARY: "Why people sometimes get angry"

Fri, 13 Jan 2006 12:11:57 GMT

I've been in Redmond for the past week or so and I had the chance to hear from our company leaders, not the least of which being, Bill Gates & Steve Ballmer.

I found myself struck (once again) by the sudden realization that these guys are way, way, waaaaaaaaaay smarter than me, and Microsoft has some truly visionary & ingenius people leading it. I know it sounds like I'm cheerleading for our company as I usually do, but I'm just sharing a feeling I've had over the past 5 days.

I mean, these guys are damn smart. And remember that I have a somewhat larger-than-normal ego. I was truly humbled after hearing the recent "master plan" for successfully creating a richer software platform for our customer base that was revealed to us this week... or at least the little part of the master plan that they felt comfortable sharing with us.

This is the stuff that will make us & our partners successful with our customers, while competing against IBM, Linux, Google, Sony, Oracle, Firefox, Nokia, Salesforce.com, Apple, and other competitors.

It also brought upon a fascinating epiphany that I was kinda getting at but did a lackluster job explaining a few weeks ago (in an a blog entry about IE): "People who are fearful - in particular those that are fearful because they're forced to cope with a serious lack of information - are often the most angry. Not because they've been wronged in any way, but rather because they feel uncomfortably uninformed."

Yes, yes, yes. I know it's an Yoda-ism: "Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering." But it's really true... and even applies to technology.

Take Microsoft and Internet Explorer for instance.

Nobody really knows why Microsoft had such a long period between IE6.0 and annoucing IE7.0. People have been very angry over the fact that Microsoft has not updated the function set of Internet Explorer for a fairly long time. This includes people within Microsoft - certain Microsoft employee blogs have written rather unkind and unwarranted things about our movements around IE, accusing our leadership of "resting on our laurels", going against our company principles and "choosing not to innovate" and "having a lack of vision".

Now, as I stated before in a previous blog entry, much of the time "all is often not what it seems". Often times, things happen (like a delay in IE releases) and because we don't know why, we make assumptions about the rationale behind these occurences. Because we're guessing, we often think the worst - that Microsoft "got lazy after beating Netscape". I've noticed that this is very common amongst the young, new employees - usually hired within the last 3 years.

The other day, Steve Ballmer spent a not-insignificant amount of time with us on this topic and made it crystal clear why it's been such a while since anyone's seen a new release of Internet Explorer and where we're going with it - satisfying one of our biggest internal detractors I might add. The explanation isn't very fancy but it's still not something I'm comfortable putting into text publicly so if you know me and you're curious, stop me the next time you see me and I'll be happy to explain the situation to you and what we have planned offline.

If you're one of those "angry" folks, I think the explanation will "bring you back from the dark side".

COMMENTARY: MSN Spaces in China

Sat, 07 Jan 2006 10:04:28 GMT

This isn't really a comment from me but rather the comment from MSN Spaces program manager Michael Connelly on the issue in the news about MSN taking a Chinese dissident's space down by order of the Chinese government.

----------------------

As I have described in a previous post, there are two main ways we moderate content on Spaces:

Through the “report abuse” link at the bottom of every space. If you see inappropriate content, such as pornography, or out-right illegal content, like hate-speech or child pornography, let us know and we’ll investigate the problem and take appropriate action. Our main filter we use is, is this blog adhering to our Code of Conduct?
We ban a set of “naughty” words from blog entry titles, so those who are maturity-challenged don’t use the F word all over the place, and show up in search results and the updated spaces list, spoiling the party for everyone.

This system has been what we have been using since we launched Spaces, and we have not changed our practice, nor gotten more aggressive in the way we moderate. It’s been working for us, and for the Spaces community.

We are an international service, and we work hard to comply with the local laws (for illegal content) and local cultural norms (for inappropriate content) in all the markets we operate in. So, when using our two moderating techniques, we are cognizant of what market the content is published in. There are certain rules we have that generally apply to all markets: for instance, no pornography. We just didn’t want to go there with MSN Spaces. But, there are other guidelines that are more market-specific. For instance, the “middle finger” is a very obscene gesture in some areas, and is deemed culturally inappropriate, while in the United States, you would be hard pressed to see any photo of a bunch of college kids where one of them isn’t flipping the camera the bird. No harm, no foul. We don’t want to rule out the middle finger in all markets, so we just do it in the ones where it’s beyond the pale. And, even in the markets that don’t approve of the middle finger, we give the poster a friendly warning about the image, as opposed to taking the site down immediately.

In China, there is a unique issue for our entire industry: there are certain aspects of speech in China that are regulated by the government. We’ve made a choice to run a service in China, and to do that, we need to adhere to local regulations and laws. This is not unique to MSN Spaces; this is something that every company has to do if they operate in China. So, if a Chinese blog on MSN Spaces is reported to us by the community, or the Chinese government, as offensive, we have to ask ourselves: is this blog adhering to our code of Conduct? In many cases, the answer is “yes, this site is fine”. But, in some cases, the answer is “no”. And when an offense is found that actually breaks a national law, we have no choice but to take down the site.

A very similar issue was raised in the blogosphere in regards to how Google tackles this problem: a really good discussion on Slashdot ensued, it’s worth a read if you have some time.

-----------------------------------------

http://spaces.msn.com/members/mc/Blog/cns!1pAYdbIaVKO599siMnBpCTdw!927.entry

COMMENTARY: And you think YOU were ticked about IE's stale evolution?

Tue, 03 Jan 2006 11:27:57 GMT

I think I've mentioned this before to various people that have told me, "I use Firefox because you guys are lazy and refuse to update Internet Explorer!"

http://www.emailbattles.com/archive/battles/browsers_aacehieihi_gd/

...as you can see, even our internal employees, who frankly don't often know the whole story behind how things go at Microsoft, complain bitterly about this stuff.

The bottom line is that WE (as in myself and my constituents) want Internet Explorer evolved as well. WE would like to see various changes and features implemented. WE would love nothing more than to have IE kick ass over our competition. But let's be clear one important thing: Microsoft has to deal with something regarding product development that doesn't really hinder our competitors to the same degree... LAWSUITS.

Every time you think to yourself, "DAMMIT - why hasn't Microsofti implemented feature X? They're just sitting on their money pile doin' nuthin... damned monopoly!" try remembering the following. In order for an improvement to be made, the feature must be:

1) SPEED OR STABILITY RELATED

No one can accuse us to doing something bad to the market if we simply improve a product's speed or it's stability. This is the reason that improvements between point-releases are so 'speed' and 'stability' related.

2) SECURITY/PRIVACY RELATED

Anything that protects the public or serves the public's best interests really can't be argued against. We we able to incorporate cookie blocking into Internet Explorer because even though there were a variety of cookie-blocking add-ons available for IE and Windows, the improvement was made in the best interests of our customers security and we would have a strong base to stand on against any developer of a 'cookie-blocking' tool that claimed, "Microsoft is killing my business by incorporating a cookie blocker!" We couldn't do the same thing for Pop-up Blocking for the longest time (until IE 6.02) because pop-ups aren't security related but rather just an annoyance.

3) ALREADY INCORPORATED INTO A COMPETITIVE SOLUTION

If a competitor has incorporated a feature into their product, we can do the same under the auspices of "being competitive". This means that for ticky-tack features, we're likely always going to be behind. For example, tabbed browsing... we had to wait until someone incorporated it into their product. Another example: When Pop-up Blocking became a stock feature of Firefox and Opera, we were able to incorporate it into IE 6.02.

So wait: Why is it that Internet Explorer 7.0 is taking so long? Why hasn't Microsoft cranked out improvements to it's browser now that Firefox, Opera, and Netscape have released richer solutions?

Here's a few of the many reasons:

1) NEW DEVELOPMENT PROCESS

The much-publicized new development process that Microsoft follows ensures that products are developed without the infamous security holes and buffer overflows that have plagued Microsoft in the past. Internet Explorer 7.0 is no exception. What makes this product release so special however is that it's being developed from the ground up with this process, and while IE 6.0 code is being used, it's being processed through the same filters that new code is using. (Part of the process is a newly created computer-driven analysis filter that examines all submitted code and virtually eliminates the possibility of traditional buffer overflows.

2) API DOCUMENTATION & COMPLIANCE

All code has to be throughly documented. Gone are the days of undocumented features like "easter eggs" and other fun stuff. Microsoft is from what I understand tasked to ensure that every interface is documented and every feature is explained to comply to various regulations that I frankly don't know much about. All I know is that stuff exists that make documentation very important.

3) LOCALIZATION

This one is huge: All products have to be ported to 26 different languages and more importantly, modularly switchable between 26 different languages for all aspects of the product - including the menus and the help system. People literally have to be able to change the interfaces for the product from English to Japanese on the fly. In the case, of Internet Explorer, we also have to support various language character sets in the content of the browser which is big fun.

4) MANAGEABLE

The product has to be managable centrally for corporate customers. This means being able to set mandatory settings from a single point on a network and force them onto every PC within a company - for example, the ability to lockdown the home page of the browser to always go to a corporate portal.

There's even more than this but I hope it's clear that the burden that we have to meet in order to 'build a better browser' is a lot larger than what our competitors have to meet. Does this mean we're always going to be behind? Perhaps. Ultimately however, we believe that we'll be able to develop products that adhere to the letter of the law, while also addressing the needs of our customers in a deliberate and exacting fashion.