metty's blog

Bill Gates' 50th birthday today

mschiffer — Fri, 28 Oct 2005 20:28:00 GMT

A remarkable person with quite an impact on what happens on this planet has reached the symbolic age of half a century. Let's see how much impact this personal experience has on what he will do professionally. Noticeable, at least.

It's a celebration - Windows 95 was introduced 10 years ago

mschiffer — Tue, 23 Aug 2005 22:45:00 GMT

On August 24, 1995, Microsoft started selling Windows 95 to the public in the U.S.. What an interesting anniversary!

Wal-Mart's Kevin Turner becomes Microsoft's new COO ("Chief Operating Officer")

mschiffer — Fri, 05 Aug 2005 21:58:00 GMT

This is Kevin Turner who, as their new COO starting at September 8th, takes Microsoft's third most important position after Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates.

The COO position at Microsoft had been vacant for about three years (provisionally taken by Kevin Johnson, currently group vice president of worldwide sales, marketing and services). As a COO, Kevin is going to be responsible for Microsoft's sales, marketing activities, service and the company's internal IT infrastructure according to Ballmer.

He receives 7 million US$ for joining Microsoft, a 570,000 US$ salary, an additional yearly bonus up to the amount of his salary and 320,000 Microsoft stocks (over a couple of years - currently worth approx. 9 million US$, let's see how much he makes out of that ;-). Naturally, he'll also take part in the Microsoft bonus program for executives.

Before joining Microsoft, Kevin was president and CEO of Wal-Mart's business Sam's Club, a business for small businesses. During his 19 years at Wal-Mart (starting as a cashier during his studies), he has become an incredibly successful manager.

Microsoft PressPass has some additional information.

Longhorn is history - here comes Windows Vista!

mschiffer — Fri, 22 Jul 2005 20:22:00 GMT

Today, Microsoft have officially announced that the next Windows platform, codenamed "Longhorn", will be released as "Windows Vista".

Read more at Microsoft PressPass and at the official Windows Vista website. Actually, this doesn't come as a huge surprise. For example, Microsoft Germany has registered the domain windowsvista.de as early as April 12, 2005. Still, I haven't seen much coverage of it until today. Not bad, Microsoft.

Beta 1 of Windows Long... Vista, primarily targeted at professionals, is announced to be available by August 3, 2005 - in less than two weeks.

What they haven't released to the press is how they are going to abbreviate the product. So, let's make some suggestions: WinV sounds a bit lame (to me, at least) and there is that "opposite-Pentium-4-problem" that might mislead people into thinking about Windows 5, while Vista's major version number is actually 6.

How about WinVS (suggested pronounciation "WinVis")?

Looking for new IM software (MSN Messenger refuses to work w/o upgrading)

mschiffer — Tue, 15 Feb 2005 20:51:00 GMT

It happened last week or so: "MSN Messenger" popped up a window telling me there's an update. I didn't want one, as the all of the previous updates I downloaded introduced more and more advertisement-orientated tabs to the software and reduced functionality rather than enhancing it. Additionally, the update's new features described on the product website looked meaningless, if not ridiculous.

I can currently no longer log into the Microsoft Directory for MSN Messenger using my current version 6.2.sth of MSN Messenger. As I have learned by researching the MSN Messenger problem (why on earth do I have to do that on my own?), I have been running software exposing my infrastructure to security risks (published to a broad public by Microsoft) for at least one week without getting to know about the security flaws in MSN Messenger.

What joy.

To make things even worse, I am now being forced to download an update if I want to continue using MSN Messenger. That is after having been exposed to known and even communicated security flaws for quite a while. I do feel irritated about who decides what regarding MSN Messenger.

Perhaps it's only me, but that does remind me we do urgently need strong competitors in this industry.

Windows Forms Sourcecode for .NET Framework 2.0

mschiffer — Tue, 08 Feb 2005 22:25:00 GMT

In his blog, Microsoft's Shawn Burke writes he intends to release the sourcecode for Microsoft Windows Forms within the upcoming .NET Framework 2.0 to the public. It's not that I'm eager to deeply dig into that source, but it would sure make certain debugging scenarios easier for any customer. Go, Shawn!

Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool (you can’t clean a compromised system!)

mschiffer — Wed, 12 Jan 2005 18:08:00 GMT

Microsoft have released a tool to remove well known software worms affecting their platform; they call it the "Malicious Software Removal Tool". The tool runs on Windows 2000, XP and 2003 only (Windows Me, which you would think to be a widespread consumer OS run by people most in need of any such software, is obviously out of date).

New releases of the "Removal Tool" are planned on a monthly basis for the second Tuesday of each month. What an interesting concept. Obviously, we will see the next generation of Windows worms on the second Tuesday of each month - guaranteeing them at least 30 days of worldwide attacks with the users interested in this offering wrongly feeling safe.

Wrongly feeling safe is worse than being at risk!

Microsoft's current Security Program Manager, Jesper M. Johansson, seems to look at things slightly differently, as he reveals in a Microsoft TechNet article - and this guy is actually right here, without any doubt: "You can’t clean a compromised system by using some “vulnerability remover.”"

SQL Server 2005 Express Edition - December Community Technology Preview

mschiffer — Tue, 07 Dec 2004 22:34:00 GMT

The latest public build of the next version of the Microsoft Database Engine (MSDE), SQL Server's little brother, is now publicly available. Grab the 39MB "SQL Server 2005 Express" preview download here. Please do make sure to follow the installation instructions on the download page (scroll down)!

You might also be interested in getting to know Microsoft's "SQL Server 2005 Express Manager", which is a product aimed at simplifying database management by providing features to simplify, automate, and reduce the complexity of database support and administration. Naturally, it is very closely related to SQL Server 2005 Express. The product has its own preview available as a download here.

As always, these preview software evaluation bits come without official support of any kind and no warranty is being made. Remember to run evaluation software on dedicated testing machines only.

SQL Server 2005 Express Edition - Community Technology Preview

mschiffer — Sun, 17 Oct 2004 10:41:00 GMT

Microsoft have released a new preview version of the upcoming SQL Server 2005 (codenamed "Yukon"), with the full product expected for the beginning of 2005.

The Express Edition of the product comes as a pure database engine, just like MSDE (MicroSoft Database Engine) came as a scaled down version of previous versions of SQL Server. Actually, SQL Server 2005 Express Edition is the followup product to MSDE 2000.

This "Community Technology Preview" version shows you the latest incorporated technology only - it is less stable even than a beta version (as it has undergone less testing prior to its release to the public). So install these preview bits on dedicated testing machines only. Also, take care to exactly follow the instructions on the download page for proper installation.

Visual C++ 2005 Tools Refresh updates VC++ 2005 Beta 1

mschiffer — Sun, 05 Sep 2004 11:02:00 GMT

The Visual C++ 2005 team has fixed some bugs and extended the functionality of their Beta 1 bits. This update also works for the VC++ 2005 Express Beta.

The 36 MB download is available at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=afd04ff1-9d16-439a-9a5e-e13eb0341923