Business Intelligence Network Business Intelligence Resources

Blog: Pete Loshin

Main

September 10, 2007

Windows: Defective by Design

I've got to say, I truly wonder why so many corporations willingly cede complete and utter control over their software infrastructure to proprietary software vendors.

Let's face it, when you are a proprietary software vendor, your entire business rests on how good you are at preventing people from using your software unless they've paid for it. The only practical way to do that is to build extra software that makes sure only authorized users use the product software.

In other words, part of what you are paying for with proprietary software is an extra piece of software that decides whether or not you can use the software you've paid for. If that software doesn't work right, you can't use your own software. Even if you've done absolutely nothing wrong, until the vendor fixes the problem.

Got it?

That's how Microsoft's Windows Genuine Advantage works. If the server goes down (as happened recently, read the comments for some great user opinions on the MSDN blog entry about it here), or if something else breaks, you can't use your software.

If I had to run Windows, I would seriously consider buying a pirated version (in addition to the "legal" version) just so I wouldn't have to worry about just this kind of thing.

This isn't news: twenty years ago, PC support staff at small/medium sized companies routinely used commercial copy-protection cracking software so they could re-install Lotus 1-2-3 (et al) when the users lost key diskettes or misplaced their activation codes. If you were big enough, you could get more special-purpose software to manage your licenses; if you weren't, you had to go out and spend a few hundred bucks every time your users trashed their systems and needed to replace their applications.

Just in case you had any illusions about what your software is doing and who is in charge, consider this: Windows Update updating without permission! Basically, the story here is that the blogger didn't want Windows Update to update without permission, but the fact is that the EULA for Windows says that Microsoft is in charge of how that software works, not you. But it is galling nonetheless.

This little titbit, I Warned Ye... may be flip, but it sure is true: don't go rushing into the latest and greatest for no other reason than your vendor wants you to. Vista may be the greatest thing since sliced bread, but according to this report from W3Counter.com, Vista has only about 3.46% market share, versus 83.48% for Windows XP (Linux is climbing, having just beat out Windows 98 at 1.34%).

So what are you paying your software vendors for?

Posted by at 6:00 AM | | Comments (0)

April 30, 2007

How's this for total cost of ownership, Microsoft?

If you've been following any of the discourse on security, cryptography and the Internet over the past ten or fifteen years, the name Peter Gutmann will definitely ring a bell.

So you've to give credence to his recent report, A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection.

In particular, consider the Executive Summary:

Windows Vista includes an extensive reworking of core OS elements in order to provide content protection for so-called “premium content”, typically HD data from Blu-Ray and HD-DVD sources. Providing this protection incurs considerable costs in terms of system performance, system stability, technical support overhead, and hardware and software cost. These issues affect not only users of Vista but the entire PC industry, since the effects of the protection measures extend to cover all hardware and software that will ever come into contact with Vista, even if it's not used directly with Vista (for example hardware in a Macintosh computer or on a Linux server). This document analyses the cost involved in Vista's content protection, and the collateral damage that this incurs throughout the computer industry.

In other words, Vista is designed to protect "premium content" such as music or movies. Vista's design thus places the corporate goals of maximizing profit ahead of the goal of maximizing user value.

Not cool, Microsoft.

Posted by at 7:00 AM | | Comments (0)

April 16, 2007

Is Vista a Win for Microsoft (or anyone else)?

After years of waiting, is Vista worth it, to Microsoft or to anyone else? The jury is still out, but so far it's not looking that good. Slashdot reported Survey Finds Few Intend to Upgrade to Vista, pointing to a Harris Interactive poll that concluded Most Potential Buyers of Microsoft’s Vista Take a Wait and See Attitude.

The Harris poll, conducted last month, showed that 87% "of those online" were "aware" of Microsoft's Vista upgrade, only "12 percent of online adults who are aware say they intended to upgrade."

Uh-oh.

Hardware vendors aren't happy either, according to an earlier Slashdot item, PC Makers Say Vista Is Not a Seller. That links to a Gizmodo article, PC Makers to Microsoft: "Vista Is Not a Seller. You Suck".

More bad news for Microsoft, despite their optimistic PR, as reported in Slashdot, in MS Says Vista Selling At Twice XP's Pace. The early news coverage on Vista sales apparently derived from Microsoft press releases; the higher numbers may not be that impressive when you consider that there was a big backlog of orders for Vista, as well as a much larger market for PCs this year than five years ago when XP came out.

If that's not enough drama, Slashdot also reported Microsoft Sued Over Vista Marketing, according to an article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Microsoft sued over Windows Vista marketing.

Apparently, some folks think it's not cool to call a computer "Windows Vista Capable" unless it can actually support signature Windows Vista features.

The bigger question, of course, will be whether this kind of bad news will turn into good news for Linux--can those promoting open source operating system alternatives actually leverage these missteps into competitive advantage?

Posted by at 8:00 AM | | Comments (0)

March 12, 2007

Microsoft's Open Source Resource

Just in case you thought I thought that Microsoft was evil incarnate, you're wrong. Not far wrong, but still.

Anyway, Microsofties aren't dumb, and they do a lot of open source-y stuff. If you're interested in what they've been doing, check out Port 25 to see what's been going on in their Open Source Software Lab.

There are some useful articles, such as MySQL Conference 2007, PostgreSQL on Windows: A Primer, and HOW-TO: CONNECTING SQL SERVER 2005 JDBC to JBOSS, and more (but not too much more) about open source coexistence with Microsoft software.

Posted by at 7:00 AM | | Comments (0)

March 9, 2007

Bring It On, Says Red Hat

Check out this Slashdot item about Red Hat's Matt Szulik saying, go ahead and take Microsoft's money and get it over with. And dittos for Oracle, apparently.

Here's Matthew Aslett's article at CBR Online, Take Microsoft's Linux money, says Red Hat.

Bravo, Red Hat, that's just the right attitude, and I'm not being sarcastic at all here: try the low-priced spread and you'll go back to Red Hat if you care about quality.

Posted by at 7:00 AM | | Comments (0)

February 21, 2007

Microsoft Virtual PC 2007--Free Download

Well, in case you were waiting for it, Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 is now available. And if you try searching Microsoft's site for "Virtual PC 2007" Linux, the number one result you get is the Virtual PC 2007 page, on which Linux appears only hidden in the page source.

I love the part of the blurb that says, "Use virtual machines to run operating systems such as MS-DOS, Windows, and OS/2." As if those are the only OSes you'd ever want to run.

Actually, it's a reasonable way to retain legacy applications running under, say, MS-DOS or Windows 98, that you haven't already been forced to upgrade. And the fact is, if you want to run Linux as a virtual machine, you probably won't have any problems, at least not based on the results published at What Works and What Doesn't in Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 site.

Bottom line is you'll probably do better with VMware, which actually, offically, supports Windows and other Microsoft OSes as well as a wide range of open source OSes.

Posted by at 7:00 AM | | Comments (1)

February 12, 2007

Sounds Like a Scheduled Patch Release to Me

Check this out: Microsoft: Vista Follow-up Likely in 2009. According to Robert McMillan, IDG News Service, we can expect to see Microsoft's follow-up to Vista in just a couple of years or so.

Considering how many years (five, in case you weren't counting) we've been waiting for Vista, it seems odd that Microsoft would be in such a rush to roll out a new version. I predict that whatever it is, it won't be a full-blown upgrade to Vista: think Vista 98, or maybe even Vista Service Pack 2.

Read about how Vista was originally supposed to deliver "...radical changes to Windows, including a new file system and a reinvented user interface," but got knocked off schedule when Microsoft's product line was "...hit by widespread worm outbreaks in 2003." As a result, Microsoft had to redirect "...almost its entire engineering effort to locking down Windows with the XP Service Pack 2 release."

Here's the punchline: according to Ben Fathi, corporate vice president of development with Microsoft's Windows Core Operating System Division, "It's too early for me to talk about it," with "it" referring to the coolest new feature in the next version of Windows. He goes on to say:

"We're going to look at a fundamental piece of enabling technology. Maybe its hypervisors, I don't know what it is," he said. "Maybe it's a new user interface paradigm for consumers."
So, get ready to board the FUD bus again, as Microsoft tries to figure out what it needs to do to retain nervous corporate customers in 2009.

Posted by at 7:00 AM | | Comments (0)

February 7, 2007

Maybe the Vista EULA Isn't THAT Bad

Scott Gilbertson posted Windows Vista EULA: Is It That Bad?, an interesting--and more even-handed--take on the horror stories about Microsoft's many-versioned, and many-EULA-ed Vista.

For example, Scott highlights the entirely-non-technical limitations that Microsoft places on the consumer's privilege of running Vista Home/Home Premium with virtualization technologies. You can't. But the reason has nothing to do with anything other than Microsoft's marketing plan. If you buy Home or Home Premium, Microsoft says, you're not the kind of person who should be fiddling around with virtualization.

Go read the article, as Scott points out some of the other peculiarities of Vista licensing, such as how you're not permitted in any case to use DRM-"protected" data in a virtualized instance of Vista, what Vista "security" software is likely to flag and de-install as spyware or malware, and how/whether you can re-install your version of Vista if you upgrade your PC.

One more thing Scott points out is a very useful link that Microsoft provides: Find License Terms for Software Licensed from Microsoft. Not a very interesting page title, though. Should have been called something more like, "Links to PDFs of all our EULAs". Just in case you wanted to see what your license actually entails.

Posted by at 8:00 AM | | Comments (0)

December 12, 2006

Red Hat on Oracle, Microsoft: No Problems

Go check out this article on Computer Business Review Online: Red Hat dismisses threat posed by Oracle and Microsoft. It's nice to get a balance from the gloom and doom purveyors (like myself, sometimes):

Red Hat Inc's executive vice president of worldwide sales, Alex Pinchev, has dismissed the impact that Oracle Corp's entry into the Linux support business could have on Red Hat, insisting Oracle does not really know what it is doing.

Snap.

As for Novell? See for yourself:

Pinchev was even more dismissive of the Novell-Microsoft deal, describing it as a non-event. "People know what it means for a company to partner with Microsoft," he said, suggesting it would not be in the best long term interests of Novell, while also dismissing the suggestion that Microsoft will ever bring a patent infringement suit against an IT user.

'Would you sue your own customers? I wouldn't and I don't believe Microsoft will ever do it," he said, while also rejecting out of hand Microsoft's attempts to do a similar deal with Red Hat. "For us the open source community is not for sale," he said. "Innovation is not for sale."

Posted by at 10:00 AM | | Comments (0)

December 5, 2006

Microsoft Vista EULA Concerns

It's too bad that "clickwrap" end user license agreements have become the de facto standard for commercial software licensing. It's just too easy to get away with outrageous demands on customers.

Anyway, the good people at SecurityFocus are keeping an eye on things for us.

First off, there's Scott Granneman's piece, Surprises Inside Microsoft Vista's EULA. What's interesting is that after Scott (and the others he mentions in his column) uncovered the dirty dealing, Microsoft went back and changed their EULA to take out some of the worst bits--but not all of them.

Scott goes into some of the interesting issues about Microsoft's six different Vista versions, as well as how the EULA deals with virtualization. It's not good. But I really liked what Scott has to say about licensing in general:

"I had the adults in "Technology in Our Changing Society" read both the Windows XP EULA and the GNU General Public License. When I asked them what they thought, one woman said, "The EULA sounds like it was written by a team of lawyers who want to tell me what I can't do, and the GPL sounds like it was written by a human being who wants me to know what I can do." Nice.

Then, check out Mark Rasch on Vista's EULA Product Activation Worries. He cuts right to the chase, pointing out that Vista's EULA allows Microsoft to:

...unilaterally decide that you have breached the terms of the agreement, and they can essentially disable the software, and possibly deny you access to critical files on your computer without benefit of proof, hearing, testimony or judicial intervention. In fact, if Microsoft is wrong, and your software is, in fact, properly licensed, you probably will be forced to buy a license to another copy of the operating system from Microsoft just to be able to get access to your files, and then you can sue Microsoft for the original license fee. Even then, you wont be able to get any damages from Microsoft, and may not even be able to get the cost of the first license back.

There's lots more about how Microsoft goes about deciding whether or not you are in complance with the agreement, and what can happen if they do. So check it out!

Posted by at 7:00 AM | | Comments (0)