Anybody?

Anybody participating in the current Microsoft bribe you to use our search engine scheme?  I was doing the club bing, that was all word games and you use the search engine to solve the puzzles until it closed down recently.  For me it was a pretty decent deal, in a few years I managed to get 2 xbox 360's (well I earned one and they cannot keep track of anything so the sent a second one) and a kitchen aid mixer and some other miscellaneous garbage.  I'd say that puts the net at around $800 or so dollars in money I didn't have to spend.  They capped you at 500 tickets a day, but if you where efficient you could do that in about an hour.

The current scam is faster to complete (especially if you just keep using search autocomplete) and caps you at 10 points for searches and they have some daily offers of 3-50 points you can complete.  You're out maybe 5-10 minutes a day, and can earn points to redeem towards xbox live subscriptions, or xbox live points.  I think they have some other crap in there, but it's of no real value to me.

Pretty sad, I think.  Here at Microsoft we are not above bribing you to use our products....

Sounds a lot like a hit piece funded by M$

Symantec has an article being highlighted by Redmondmag about android malware infections.  Here's the thing I skeptical taking info from a security company that isn't even sure what happened when they got hacked.  I'm disinclined to believe they have the vaguest of clues about a platform they only just started supporting, and particularly suspicious of the Redmond magazine (a blog and magazine that focuses on Microsoft) publishing this info.  Linux vis-a-vie android isn't windows Symantec, and your old bed buddy buying a negative study on a competitive product is not a new idea.

I really hope this isn't true

Geeksaresexy.net has an article speculating about rumors on the new xbox.  They say that there are rumors floating about that it would prevent you from playing used titles, and if there is any merit to the rumor that Microsoft is considering it I thought I would say here and now that, this would be a deal breaker for me.  I would not buy it, and would recommend anyone that asked to not buy it.  I use my xbox 360 pretty much daily, either listening to music, playing games or watching windows media center.

This is the type of thing that companies need to know is insidious and we will not stand for it.  They are trying to use drm to undermine first sale doctrine, which still carries force of law and has been upheld by the US supreme court.  I'm fairly certain that the EFF, should absolutely peruse this one as it has the inevitability of Microsoft loosing as terms of service cannot make you sign away rights granted to you buy the federal government.

Good luck and if its true fuck off Microsoft.

Stop it MS Research

Alright a slightly long video and then some discussion on this vision for the future.




Things that are being worked on that could be workable, some day in real time. One example is the real time translating glasses. They would link to something (say your smartphone) that had computing power, but this is something that is being worked on (interestingly by a Microsoft competitor). I do think that this could be a viable, and useful product in the future.

 Awesome and bittersweet, but kinda makes me sad. In her hotel room the lady picks up a dual screen device that looked too much like the God Damn murdered in its sleep most awesome product concept that Microsoft has had in a very long time and should fucking make it The Courier.

 Really hard, like really, really hard: smart objects interacting (the taxi cab passenger window for example). This is actually got sub-parts to make it work so: Proximity based real-time networking? It wasn't made apparent, but how did that smart object (taxicab window) know about her meeting? Have you ever tried to sync your phone to a bluetooth device? It is never that easy. Somehow that communication had to be brokered, and someone or something had to make the decision that it was an acceptable risk to pair her information hub (smartphone) to an object in a public space. The Smart object had to be smart enough to speak the language of the phone (woman in the video is native English and the country she is in is not, but also now how to look at her datebook and appointments (which had to have the address of her meeting entered correctly) then determine the physical location of the taxicab and use some locator device to know that that building was in view of the passenger to show them this information. The amount of backend intelligence to make that (near pointless) little infographic on a taxicab window blew my mind. Mapping services are somewhere between ok and shitty most of the time, standards for communicating datebook info are "loose" shall we say (hey vcard and vcalender) gps and triangulation are spotty in cities (spotty is being somewhat generous as far as I'm concerned) and orientation let alone identifying a building on the outside of the car that is a great distance away, God Damn. Cool, but very hard.

 Next up the visiting worker that collaborates with that other man. He walked in took out a tablet and throws information to another device. Again real-time proximity networking. Have you ever tried to get on someone else's wireless network? It sucks, some people have made QR codes for quick connecting to networks on smartphones (the security implications of this make me want to cry and again I chuckle that it is Google's android that has a working prototype of a quick connect technology). I made some assumptions so bear with me, but the colleague with the tablet is from out of town, and this is the first time he has been to this office. From that assumption set I think that he had to bet onto the local Wireless network, assuming they work for the same company (a possibility) two locations are very, very unlikely to have the same wireless password, let alone ssid, and security setup. But assume that the security setup was following best practices, you can get onto the wifi and get to the internet, but to work with other devices that are on the wired network you have to use a VPN to get to those devices (security isolation of WIFI is common in large companies). All of the details of how they connected aside what he actually did is mind boggling. He took information from an open document on his device (assume the connection details where worked out) and pasted into an open document on a different computer! Holy batshit, not real-time editing the same document from two locations, he pasted across applications across computers! God I hope no one works on a product to make it do this, the insecurity of this model scares the living daylights out of me!!!  Similar types of interactions are made in the home where the daughter takes info from her tablet and moves it to the counter. I'm willing to assume that some setup and implicit trust brokering could be pre-configured for those devices. I can tolerate that this type of interaction could not only happen, but someday will. In the future, in your house. At work, your IT department would have a stroke reading the speck sheet.

Happy IPv6 day

Are you ready for IPv6 Day?

Google has a handy little test to see if you are going to have any issues with the cut over.

For those of you that don't know about it, IPv6 day is the 24 hour test run for Google, Facebook, Yahoo!, Akamai and Limelight Networks and some of the major organizations that will offer their content over IPv6 for a 24-hour test period. The goal of the Test Day is to motivate organizations across the industry – ISPs, hardware makers, operating system vendors and web companies – to prepare their services for IPv6 to ensure a successful transition as IPv4 addresses run out.


You can read more about it on World IPv6 Day.

Microsoft Groove Does stuff ---Update------

I never actually got around to saying what it was that Groove did in the last post so I thought I would finish the thought (3 years later) with what I have figured out since then.  It turns out that Groove (now Sharepoint Workspace 2010) is both a client for Groove Servers (now Sharepoint Server) and an Ad Hoc Sharepoint like software. The principle of what Groove does centers around document stores (just like Sharepoint is all about lists of documents).  The key difference with Groove what that you didn't require the infrastucture to be put into place for you it could be implemented in a peer-to-peer system with documents stored and synced on individual computers local drives. Source

Hope that helps for people that wonder what the hell Groove does, I really think that Microsoft has failed to articulate what the hell is going on with their byzantine product matrix, and doesn't do a great job of selling the features to the non-technical world.

Microsoft Courier

I have been watching the demo videos for the Microsoft Courier and reading the opening thoughts about the device for a few weeks now and have come to the conclusion that I do want this damn thing. As a early adopter of tablets, and a believer in the power of digital handwritten text to change the way that I interact with the world this could be huge for me. Toys like Evernote and Onenote on a Tablet push the idea of digital note taking, but because they are designed for keyboard and mouse to be the primary interface both still fall short of creating an experience that is complete. The flaws around the edges show, and it becomes frustrating. If the consumer electronic space has taught us anything it is that people don't want to deal with the edge cases where you move from one type of usage to another and have to fiddle with some setting to make it work.

The need for seamless transition from browsing to note taking to drawing and back again will make or break this product for the intended users, so while the demo makes it look like the process is very smooth I will reserve judgment until the product is in the wild. The demo video, and media Gizmodo presented makes it look like the user experience for the single user that was portrayed was well scripted out, but I would like to see how they think someone is going to take a picture with that camera on the back.... I don't believe that anyone will use it in that manner based on the images because it will be extremely awkward, so the camera might make more sense as a front facing or swivel camera for video conferencing and eye tracking applications. Another usage question I have is how does one use this while walking, the folded in half layout that would traditionally make sense for a notebook might have interesting implications given this is a touch screen we are talking about. I imagine that the use of accelerometers and magnets could be used to determine which position the machine is in to change which screen is active and accepting touches. Rough edges like that would need to be ironed out before the product goes to market

The form factor looks to be very attractive as long as the size is not too large, and the weight would have a huge impact on where people want to take this device. The screens will need to be OLED to keep the power draw low enough for whole day usage, and I think that inductive charging for this device is a must. I realize that inductive charging isn't ubiquitous and still needs work, but without the ability to drop this on my desk and have it charge in between meetings, or overnight the battery capacity will have to be amazing.

Random bonus link on OLED and E Ink.

Via Gizmodo

Zune, Analysts, and Navel Gazing

Zune, man do you get some hate out of the Apple fanboy camp. I will wager that few if any of them have used the damn device, and all they can say is that it sucks. I can say from using both that either will play your music, and games with the only real difference being the software and pricing options for music. The Zune pass is pretty damn compelling for the younger set, I remember buying several cd's a month in High School I have to imagine that there are several parents that would find this a cheap alternative (though Pandora and Last.fm may make this moot).

The analyst in this article thinks MS should buy Palm and try to emulate Apple seems all kinds of off base with his recommendations, given that the Zune software is not a mobile telecommunications device, and Palm's historical response to those types of situations (remember HandSpring) is not positive. Couple all of this that the stand alone media player may be going the way of the Dodo Bird even the Zune HD coming, we may see the Zune device folded into Mobile offerings I doubt much would come of Palm talks or at best a partnership with Palm so that their device can sync with the Zune software.

tech savy

This is a photo of the reset button that was located under the battery of a Creative Zen Media Center Portable that I am getting ready to sell. The reason I show this is that I was struck by the things that I just do, that would have overwhelmed most consumers, to keep electronics running. This device has not been plugged in for such a long time that it was fully dead, it wasn't in deep power sleep or something it had no juice. I plugged in the power supply and the charge light did not come on, so I started by checking the voltage output on the charger to ensure that it hadn't gone bad. I got out my multimeter and striped a wire because the charger was a barrel connector type that required positive voltage to be measured from inside where the probe on my multimeter would not reach. After verifying that the charger was giving steady 5v output, I pulled the batter cover off and lifted the batter to see if the posts on the battery had corroded. Realizing that Li-poly batteries don't corrode, I started looking for a hard reset button and found it while I had the cover off. This immediately started the unit and the charge light came on when I re-inserted the battery. I didn't read a manual or do a google search on why there was no power I started to troubleshoot, and was totally fine with not only the process but the outcome.

Most consumers would have come to the conclusion that it was broken, and called the manufacturer. Given how far out of warranty this device is, they would have been frustrated by the general lack of support they would have been offered, and likely would have pitched it into the landfill or sought help from a whiz-kid via craigslist (assuming they even knew that you could get that type of help). I came to own a Samsung Media Center portable under very similar circumstances, the owner never figured out how to turn it on. Apparently the device shipped in "locked" state. Flipping over the device there was a cover that exposed a hard "on/off" switch, sliding the switch to on, and pressing the power button on the front brought the device that he thought was broken to life. These are engineering decisions that lead the consumer to be confused and annoyed, often to the point that they give up. Apple certainly makes CE devices that are better about this than most. They are not flawless for instance because there isn't the familiar power button leave my mother baffled how to turn off her iPod. Sure it will go to sleep eventually so you could just lock it and it will time out, but she didn't know that.

These type of design logic flaws come up again and again, the 30gig Zune for instance when you plug it in after the battery has completely drained does not begin charging, but rather displays a image on the screen that does not mean anything to the user. After unplugging the device and getting it to power on you can plug it in to resume charging, the device will not charge fully with the unintelligible symbol displayed. This is a design/logic flaw, that took me a few minutes of troubleshooting after letting the device charge for half the day, and booting it up to find that I did not have anywhere near a full charge! After the device was up and running it started to rapidly take a charge, but not until the software had initialized. Never having owned an iPod, I asked and was not tickled to hear that they handle the low power state much more elegantly. I own the original 30gb zune so I cannot speak to if the new ones handle it better, but it is a pretty glaring error in my opinion.

I hope that this insight sticks with me for a while when I think about the consumer experience with Electronics. I have classified most of the experience as acceptable up until recently, but everything needing to be fiddled with is starting to get old.

Notification emails from Windows Live team

So like many users of the Windows Live services (hotmail, club.live, and .net passport) I have chosen not to be bothered by the promotional notices from the various product teams that I have singed up with to try out. I consistently and purposefully choose to not be a marketing target, because almost universally I don't care, nor will I buy what they are selling. Having to delete the messages just takes up my times (and back in the day the limited email space I was allocated). Today I got the following letter from Windows Live

Dear Windows Live User,

We are contacting you regarding your communication preference settings for Windows Live and MSN.

Currently, your settings do not allow Microsoft to send you promotional information or survey invitations about Windows Live and MSN. We would like to communicate important product updates to you, so if you would like to change your settings, please visit your account profile here to change your preferences.

Sincerely,
The Windows Live Team

Note: You can also change your Account settings by going to your browser and typing in: http://account.live.com. After logging-in to your account, look for 'Additional options' and click 'Marketing preferences'. Then uncheck the top preference box and click 'Save'.
Microsoft respects your privacy. To learn more, please read our online Privacy Statement.
Microsoft Corporation
One Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA 98052

I suppose that my consistent choice to opt out of communications wasn't clear enough for them. Do announcements about your settings count as unsolicited, and unwanted notices? It is not a product announcement so I cannot say it is spam per say, but it certainly feels like spam asking them to let them spam me.

My Vista Experience

I now have a few machines running Microsoft Vista, and after sufficient testing in the "real world" have come to many conclusions. If you want to have a machine that works, and faster on the hardware with no apologies get Vista Business. Flat out faster, and more stable on my old P4 laptop than XP with the native drivers from Toshiba. The only reason I uninstalled and put XP back on the laptop is the screen was never bright enough in Vista. The laptop has a light sensor that determines the correct brightness for the screen, but because Toshiba never released drivers for Vista the screen was constantly at the bottom of the possible lumens. The brightness could not be turned up because the keyboard function keys where not supported without drivers, so I was stuck with a laptop that didn't support an external monitor, that was too dim for low light browsing, but was about 1.5x's faster than it was running XP.


Other than the speed difference I pretty much never noticed what OS I was in (I run a browser 90% so who cares).

Microsoft Windows Server Update Services (WSUS)

After the recent "patch alarm" sounded by Microsoft I decided that I have had enough of so many machines on all different patch levels. As I have worked in IT for several years I was aware of WSUS and getting one setup in my current environment had long been a goal of mine that just kept getting put off. Having recently setup Sharepoint Services on an underutilized virtual server, I thought it would be a good fit for running WSUS as well. If you pay attention the first time you will notice that because Sharepoint disables the Default website, that WSUS services will be running on port 8530, and it even tells you that in the setup dialogue.

After the WSUS is setup, then you need to create a group policy that points users at your WSUS. I only created one and then manually moved machines to the correct groups after the fact, but you can get as fine grained and fancy as you like here specifying the group for users to join at the OU level. If your like me and couldn't use the default website be sure you include the port in your group policy, and know that when testing that if you gpupdate /force this change will require you to reboot, but won't require a reboot as it propagates naturally.

In any event, if you have been waiting to pull the trigger on WSUS for fear that the setup is complicated, or that you will see little benefit from the exercise, fear not. I achieved 87% compliance on the workstations in my environment with a single group policy and the number is probably higher, as I clean up machines that are no longer on the network in my Computers OU.

So I forgot to say I do own a 360...

Right so remember my trashing the Xbox360 a while ago... yeah I do own one now, but I didn't pay for it. I didn't steal it either, but I am proof that MS is giving you stuff to play that silly Club Live. I played enough to earn 35,000 tickets and they did in fact send me and Xbox. I am not so sure if I would do it again for the 55k tickets they want for the same package, but what do I know.

So verdict, I bought Xboxlive account, own a Zune, and otherwise suckle at the teat of Microsoft. Sell out or whatever, I love TF2. I suck for the most part, but still enjoy the crap out of it top score of 16 points an engi is proof of my failure.

In spite of having received my prize I still play the damn Club Live, because I actually enjoy word puzzles, and I may eventually win another interesting prize.

TouchSmart does not Signal a move away from Windows

I find it amazing the absolute state of denial some Linux users live in. I saw this article posted on Slashdot.org and really just had to shake my head. Given that the Touch UI runs on Vista, and makes use of the .Net platform (specifically WPF) I have to assume that this person just assumed that because make can make stuff pretty, and windows doesn't seem to that the UI had to be made for Linux.

Don't believe that this leads to tighter not looser MS integration? How about you read about the evolution of the UI from one of the developers. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 .

Short form, is the fanboys need to take a hit of oxygen, as the brain cells are dying up there.

One reason not to rush to XP SP3

I was reading an article in InfoWorld about how Vista users are rushing to get the Service Pack 1(SP) but XP users where not speeding to get the SP3. They offered that the reason is the pent up frustration with Vista. I personally use Vista Business daily and have be impressed with what it has done to the battery life of the venerable old Tecra M1 I use for home internet access, I now get about 4 hours of real runtime on the balanced power profile up from 2.5 in XP. I feel that this is a good improvement on a P4@1.4ghz, and the performance is very acceptable.

I wanted to offer a different reason that some users may not be rushing out to get the SP3 update. If you remember the bomb MS lobbed at us with SP2, you probably are appreciably cautious as the changes where quite drastic. Others may fear application compatibility, even though requirements normally read SP(level) and normally mean SP(level) and above. I may be in the minority here, but I think I did find an edge case that prevents you from wanting to upgrade to XP SP3. I have been running Nimbus MySan for testing mounting the bulk of my Media Centers' storage into a dedicated storage host. MySan lets you quickly and easily setup an ISCSI Target in you home on a XP SP2 machine (server 2003 as well). In my testing we managed to corrupt a machine that was running the MySan software (unable to access the operating system even in safe mode) when we upgraded to SP3. I need to test some more to verify that this was the cause, but our trouble started at reset after running updates, a separate install that have not been updated to SP3 have not exhibited the behavior we got from the failed machine.

MS vs Yahoo et all

I am really amused every time I read another wrinkle in the Microsoft trying to buy Yahoo Saga. I am starting to think of Balmer as Biff from Back to the Future, and Yahoo as Marty's mother; the more Yahoo says "No" the harder Balmer presses to get in her panties. Fan-Freaking-Tastic, if/when this deal goes down it will be the bitterest pill Microsoft has ever swallowed. The best part is I don't believe Blamer's ego will let him step away from this; he committed the company he thinks of as his toy and regardless of the shareholder value his ham fisted approach is destroying I'm not sure he sees his own bumbling.

Deep inside I am hopping this is some skillful jockeying to get at a goal that doesn't make sense to me yet. I doubt Steve has the fineness to pull a "every buddy look right while I juke left" strategy off, but I can only hope that Gates would have stepped in by now if he wasn't. Until then I think the best analysis I have read of the whole mess so far was Engadget's Thomas Ricker

Make no mistake about it, this is corporate war and will likely end with Yahoo's best engineers working for Google.

source

Exchange Migrations suck

I realize that the Exchange 5.5 Platform has been end of life for a while, but I cannot believe the lack of information, or how high the degree of difficulty is to migrate from the unsupported to supported. What really surprises me is that Microsoft is so disinterested in taking my money to help me move off of their old software onto their new software.

I paid a "Migration Specialist" to come in and consult and he had even less success than I did in playing with migration (he deleted all of my executive staffs email boxes by mistake). I am getting close to completed which is good, and I will be using the tool from Priasoft to migrate our mail boxes. The software that I demoed was fantastic, and it looks to be a great time saver. I will report back after the 20th on the success or failure of this little project.

Moving back to Windows from Mac

Infoworld has and article about why one Mac evangelist moved back to Windows for work. I am glad that one engineer sees the light. IT shouldn't have to work twice as hard for a tiny faction of rebels. This has been my experience everywhere I go that I am forced to support Mac hardware; Mac users refuse to acknowledge the work they require IT to sustain just for them to run their pet OS. At the end of the day my hourly rate may be a sunk cost, but it isn't free and until it is Mac costs most businesses more money than it saves.

You know what would make The Microsoft Surface cooler?

If it was released!

I was reading Hugh's posts and noticed he keeps bringing up The Microsoft Surface which I think is an IT workers wet dream.

I don't develop software much as a general rule, mostly because it negatively affects my health. I don't let go of problems that don't have a simple solution. Most general help desk questions can be answered, and relatively quickly. Once answered, they no longer nag at me and keep me up at night. I would pretty willingly set that aside for the chance to develop on the Microsoft Surface.

So my suggestion to Microsoft is don't play all Apple on us with this one boys, release the damn thing and let us sort it out. Trust me anything that runs on your Vista or XP will have and endless number of kinks (though so many fewer on XP), most of the people that will have to work on this type of project know that. We are ready, and my drool is starting to dry (gadget ADD is kicking in, and I have seen other cool things that could occupy my attention).

Afterthought:
I also am wondering when Microsoft Marketing was going to start eating its own dog food and use MS software(Silverlight) for the product pages? I hate Flash and really really hate Flash 9.

Xbox 360, meh?

For the geeks on the internet the entrance of Microsoft to the console arena a few years ago was a blessing and a curse. It challenged Sony to get off their collective ass, and gave Nintendo continued reason to innovate (well hello Wii, wanna stop by my place later for some multi-player?). In all Microsoft was the grown up coming to the cool kids party, sure they had lots of money and bought you beer(Halo) to make you think they where cool deep down you knew they wanted to use you(for money you sicko), and you where using them to have a good time. On the whole during the last console round this I-wanna-use-you-while-you-use-me relationship worked but I was in college and roommates/dorm mates made Halo(and MarioKart64)better it was social and fun. I never got into the XboxLive and doubt I would enjoy it for the same reason I don't enjoy WoW, yelling at people is more fun when your spittle has the potential to contact them.

Where does this leave the Xbox360 for me? Well I am married, and my wife was never any good at FPS game play, or really anything that isn't frogger. Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo all have identified that gaming is increasingly social, each attacking that value proposition from a different angle. Microsoft in typical Redmond fashion aims to suck every dollar they can from that potential revenue hole with the large and looming Xbox Live infrastructure and content delivery platform. They want to own the living room with your Xbox as the portal. From the ecosystem perspective, I see how this could be a successful endeavor if only I didn't feel so shackled by it. I am not only on board the Media Center bus, I also drink most of the koolaid they hand out, and yet I resist the urge to buy a 360. It would fit nicely in my home theater setup, is one of the cheapest HD-DVD players the market, has lots of games that let me shoot and destroy things, and once that movie content distribution system thing gets worked out beats having to go get someone else's Set Top Box.

Still I resist. I don't have a great set of reasons for it, but I do have a few.

• I don't actually have all that much time to devote to gaming any more, it is an excessively antisocial (yes talking to strangers you meet on Xbox live still counts as anti-social) hobby


• I own a home and projects to improve that take precedent over entertainment


• Married, and want to stay that way

In order of toys I want Everun, Neo1973, 42-52" LCD, a Core2 Duo or Quadro pc (I'm easy) , then a Wii, then Xbox360. Sure the 360 is on my list, but it is like $6000 dollars down the list.

If Microsoft wants to climb my list they could do a few things

• Make the internal drive HD-DVD


• Fix the reliability issues (few people like having to RMA things)


• Make it cheaper (this should be a no brainer)

Tags: Xbox360, Wii, Microsoft, Console Wars, Home Entertainment