2015 technology industry graveyard

2015 technology industry graveyard
Cisco, Microsoft, Google and others bury outdated technologies to move ahead with new ones.

Ba-bye
The Technology Industry Graveyard is pretty darn full in 2015, and we’re not even including the near-dead such as RadioShack and Microsoft’s IE browser. Pay your respects here…

GrooveShark
The self-described “World’s Music Library” is no more after shutting down in April in the wake of serious legal pressure by music companies whose songs GrooveShark allowed to be shared but had never licensed. Apple and Google had each kicked GrooveShark out of their app stores years ago due to complaints from music labels. Much more sadly than the 9-year-old company’s demise, however, was the death of co-founder Josh Greenberg in July at the age of just 28.

Typo iPhone keyboard
Not even the glamor of being co-founded by American Idol host Ryan Seacrest could help Typo Innovations save its iPhone keyboard, which BlackBerry said infringed on its patents. So instead, Typo bailed on the iPhone model and settled for selling ones for devices with screens 7.9-inches or larger (like iPads).

Amazon Fire Phone
With a product name like Fire, you’re just asking for colorful headlines if it bombs. And indeed, Amazon has stopped making its Fire Phone about a year after introducing it and media outlets were quick to highlight the company “extinguishing” it or remarking on the phone being “burnt out.” Amazon has had some success on the hardware front, namely with its Kindle line, but the Fire just didn’t distinguish itself and was going for free with a carrier contract by the end.

Interop New York
Interop Las Vegas carries on as one of the network industry’s top trade shows next May, but little sibling Interop New York is no more this year. The Fall show, traditionally held at the Javits Center since 2005, was always smaller and was discontinued for 2015 despite lively marketing material last year touting “More Than 30 Interop New York Exhibitors and Sponsors to Make Announcements in Anticipation of the Event.”

GTalk
Google ditched so many things in 2015 that we devoted an entire slideshow to Google’s Graveyard. So to choose just one representative item here, we remember Google Talk, which had a good run, starting up in 2005. But it’s never good when Google pulls out the term “deprecated” as it did in February in reference to this chat service’s Windows App. Google said it was pulling the plug on GTalk in part to focus on Google Hangouts in a world where people have plenty of other ways to chat online. However, Google Talk does live on via third-party apps.

Cisco Invicta storage products
Cisco has a good touch when it comes to acquisitions, but its $415 mlllion WHIPTAIL buyout from 2013 didn’t work out. The company in July revealed it had pulled the plug on its Invicta flash storage appliances acquired via that deal. It’s not unthinkable though that Cisco could go after another storage company, especially in light of the Dell-EMC union.

RapidShare
The once-popular file hosting system, begun in 2002, couldn’t withstand the onslaught of competition from all sides, including Google and Dropbox. Back in 2009, the Switzerland-based operation ran one of the Internet’s 20 most visited websites, according to Wikipedia. It shut down on March 31, and users’ leftover files went away with it.

Windows RT devices
This locked-down Microsoft OS for tablets and convertible laptops fared about as well as Windows 8, after being introduced as a prototype in 2011 at the big CES event in Las Vegas. Microsoft’s software for the 32-bit ARM architecture was intended to enable devices to exploit that architecture’s power efficiency, but overall, the offering proved to be a funky fit with existing Windows software. Production of RT devices stopped earlier in 2015 as Microsoft focuses on Win10 and more professional-focused Surface devices.

OpenStack vendor Nebula
As Network World’s Brandon Butler wrote in April, Nebula became one of the first casualties of the open source OpenStack cloud computing movement when it shuttered its doors. The company, whose founder was CIO for IT at NASA before starting Nebula in 2011, suggested in its farewell letter that it was a bit ahead of its time, unable to convert its $38 million in funding and hardware/software appliances into a sustainable business.

FriendFeed
Facebook bought this social news and information feed aggregator in 2009, two years after the smaller business started, and then killed it off in April. People have moved on to other means of gathering and discovering info online, so FriendFeed died from lack of use. It did inspire the very singular website, Is FriendFeed Dead Yet, however, so its legacy lives on.

Apple Aperture
Apple put the final nails in its Aperture photo editing app in 2015, ending the professional-quality post-production app’s 10-year run at Version 3.6. In its place, Apple introduced its Photos app for users of both its OS X Mac and iOS devices.

Secret
One of the co-founders of anonymous sharing app shared this in April: The company was shutting down and returning whatever part of its $35 million in funding was left. The company’s reality was just not going to meet up with his vision for it, said co-founder David Byttow. The company faced criticism that it, like other anonymous apps such as Yik Yak, allowed for cyberbullying.

Amazon Wallet
Amazon started the year by announcing its Wallet app, the company’s 6-month-old attempt to get into mobile payments, was a bust. The app, which had been in beta, allowed users to store their gift/loyalty/rewards cards, but not debit or credit cards as they can with Apple and Google mobile payment services.

Circa News app
Expired apps could easily fill an entire tech graveyard, so we won’t document all of their deaths here. But among them not making it through 2015 was Circa, which reportedly garnered some $4 million in venture funding since starting in 2012 but didn’t get enough takers for its app-y brand of journalism.

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Microsoft, U.S. face off again over emails stored in Ireland

The company has refused to turn over to the government the emails stored in Ireland

A dispute between Microsoft and the U.S. government over turning over emails stored in a data center in Ireland comes up for oral arguments in an appeals court in New York on Wednesday.

Microsoft holds that an outcome against it could affect the trust of its cloud customers abroad as well as affect relationships between the U.S. and other governments which have their own data protection and privacy laws.

Customers outside the U.S. would be concerned about extra-territorial access to their user information, the company has said. A decision against Microsoft could also establish a norm that could allow foreign governments to reach into computers in the U.S. of companies over which they assert jurisdiction, to seize the private correspondence of U.S. citizens.

The U.S. government has a warrant for access to emails held by Microsoft of a person involved in an investigation, but the company holds that nowhere did the U.S. Congress say that the Electronics Communications Privacy Act "should reach private emails stored on providers’ computers in foreign countries."

It prefers that the government use "mutual legal assistance" treaties it has in place with other countries including Ireland. In an amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief filed in December in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, Ireland said it “would be pleased to consider, as expeditiously as possible, a request under the treaty, should one be made.”

A number of technology companies, civil rights groups and computer scientists have filed briefs supporting Microsoft.

In a recent filing in the Second Circuit court, Microsoft said "Congress can and should grapple with the question whether, and when, law enforcement should be able to compel providers like Microsoft to help it seize customer emails stored in foreign countries."

"We hope the U.S. government will work with Congress and with other governments to reform the laws, rather than simply seek to reinterpret them, which risks happening in this case," Microsoft's general counsel Brad Smith wrote in a post in April.

Lower courts have disagreed with Microsoft's point of view. U.S. Magistrate Judge James C. Francis IV of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York had in April last year refused to quash a warrant that authorized the search and seizure of information linked with a specific Web-based email account stored on Microsoft's premises.

Microsoft complied with the search warrant by providing non-content information held on its U.S. servers but filed to quash the warrant after it concluded that the account was hosted in Dublin and the content was also stored there.

If the territorial restrictions on conventional warrants applied to warrants issued under section 2703 (a) of the Stored Communications Act, a part of the ECPA, the burden on the government would be substantial, and law enforcement efforts would be seriously impeded, the magistrate judge wrote in his order. The act covers required disclosure of wire or electronic communications in electronic storage.

While the company held that courts in the U.S. are not authorized to issue warrants for extraterritorial search and seizure, Judge Francis held that a warrant under the Stored Communications Act, was "a hybrid: part search warrant and part subpoena." It is executed like a subpoena in that it is served on the Internet service provider who is required to provide the information from its servers wherever located, and does not involve government officials entering the premises, he noted.

Judge Loretta Preska of the District Court for the Southern District of New York rejected Microsoft's appeal of the ruling, and the company thereafter appealed to the Second Circuit.

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Windows 10's usage share ascent routs Windows 7's

Early data shows Microsoft's new OS has come out of the gate faster than the venerable Windows 7 did six years ago

Microsoft's Windows 10 has easily surpassed the global usage share ascension of Windows 7 six years ago, putting it on track to become the company's most successful OS introduction ever.

Windows 10's usage share neared 6.6% on Sunday, data from analytics vendor StatCounter showed. That was a 23% increase over what the OS logged the Sunday prior, continuing the unbroken stretch of double-digit-or-more, week-over-week increases since Windows 10's July 29 debut.
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The operating system's usage share increase has comfortably exceeded that of its closest rival, Windows 7, during the latter's first 18 days of availability in the fall of 2009. Windows 7's high-water mark during that stretch was 3.8% by StatCounter's count.

StatCounter estimates what Computerworld has dubbed "usage share" by tallying page views, making the Irish metric firm's numbers a signal of activity on the Internet rather than of users.

Windows 7's uptake as measured by StatCounter was quicker off the mark than was Windows 10's, a fact that should not come as a surprise, since the former was released as a paid upgrade that users had been eagerly buying in the run-up to its Oct. 22, 2009, official launch.

Microsoft treated Windows 10 differently, choosing to not only give away the upgrade to hundreds of millions of Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 users, but delivering that upgrade to customer subsets over time, part of an effort to minimize stress on the Redmond, Wash. company's content distribution network and allow it to track problems, then presumably fix them, before triggering upgrade notifications for the next "wave."

By the fourth day after its introduction, Windows 10's usage share had topped that of Windows 7 at the same point in its post-debut schedule. Windows 10 has not relinquished the lead since then.

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A Linux user tries out Windows 10

I did the unthinkable – left Linux behind and lived in the Windows 10 technical preview as my primary computing environment. Here's what I learned.

Every now and then, it's nice to break out of your bubble, to really get outside your comfort zone and see how things are "on the other side of the fence."

I love Chinese food. Could eat Chinese food every day of the week. But, once in a while, it's a good idea to mix things up. You know. And order a pizza.

This is that time for me. Only instead of Chinese food, it's Linux. Instead of pizza, Windows 10 (Technical Preview). That's right. I'm a full time Linux user, and I just spent a few days trying to live in the preview edition of Windows 10.

One thing should be emphasized right off the bat: this is not a review of Windows 10, and it is not a list of every feature of the system (there are other articles for that). This is a Linux advocate taking some time out to see how things work in the upcoming major release of Windows and seeing what he can learn from that experience. Are there things Windows 10 does better than Linux, which we in the Linux world should take some cues from? (Every system has advantages, right?)

It should also be noted that I am focusing entirely on desktop functionality. I tested the Windows 10 Technical Preview on a Dell M3800 (which was previously running Linux) and a VirtualBox virtual machine (with 8GB of RAM dedicated to it).
See also: 9 Linux distros to watch in 2015

In other words: no tablets were harmed in the making of this article.

Really, I'm asking (myself) two questions here:
Is there anything awesome in Windows 10 that Linux can learn from?
Are there enough awesome things in Windows 10 that I, as a Linux user, am missing out on by not running it as my primary operating system?

Let's dive in to the areas I think are most noteworthy for helping to answer those questions. If I leave a feature out, it's likely because it was just not relevant to those two questions.

Windows playing catch up
There are two noteworthy new features in Windows 10 that many Linux desktop environments have possessed for years (nay… decades): Virtual Desktops, and effective, tiled window management.

I mention this because it shows that Microsoft is paying attention and implementing some excellent features found in competing systems. Sure, in the case of Virtual Desktops, Microsoft is a good four decades behind its competition… but better late than never, right?

The implementation of this feature in Windows 10 is completely, absolutely, 100% adequate. You start out with a single "desktop" and can add new desktops one at a time. Application windows can be moved between desktops, desktops can be removed… everything that you would expect. It doesn't feel quite as polished and smooth as the implementation in, say, GNOME Shell. But it's an acceptable first attempt at catching up with the Linux world.

Likewise, the improvements to window layout and management are nice. Called "Quadrant Snap," it's basically the ability to "snap" open windows to a "quadrant" of the screen. It's been updated in Windows 10 to be a bit more flexible – for example, one window can take up the whole left half of the screen, with the right half containing three windows stacked vertically, each taking an equal amount of vertical space. It's similar in many ways to the functionality of many of the tiling window managers out there, such as xmonad or awesome.

Nothing mind-blowing here, but good features that we've been enjoying on Linux since before the first episode of Friends was a gleam in Jennifer Aniston's eye.

Windows taking the lead

Perhaps that should read "Taking the lead… with caveats."

There are two areas where I feel Windows 10 is doing things that are better (or at least in a more ambitious way) than what we're doing on Linux. Unfortunately for Microsoft… they're not really nailing these features as well as they need to.

The first is "Cortana." This is to Microsoft what Siri and Google Now are to Apple and, well, Google – a sort of personal information search service with some support for natural language input and voice recognition.

In Windows 10, this functionality is interfaced with a little search box that sits right next to the Start menu (more on that below). Voice dictation is an excellent feature of any system. As is voice synthesis. And, heck, having a central spot to see things like your to-do list for the day, weather, traffic, etc… that's all quite handy.

Unfortunately, in my testing, Cortana was just not fun to use. And I'm not bashing it for lack of functionality (this is still a "Technical Preview" of Windows 10, after all) or bugginess (though it was plenty buggy). My issue with this feature is that using it to do just about anything was significantly slower than using a mouse, keyboard, or touchscreen to accomplish the same tasks.

For a great demonstration of how maddeningly inefficient Cortana can be, see this video from the WinBeta folks. Take note of how long it takes him to set a simple reminder alarm. This experience seems to be the norm.

You see? It has amazing potential… but if it's no fun to use, it doesn't much matter.
The second feature that is almost fantastic (emphasis on "almost") is the Windows Store.

It is exactly what the name implies. It's a software store, in much the same vein as the Google Play store or the Ubuntu Software Center. The design is fine – easy enough to search and navigate (many similarities to Google Play here).

But, and this is a big "but"... there's simply not a lot of software available, as it's limited to "Metro" style applications (read: not classic Windows software). This takes what could be an amazing feature and makes it rather…meh.

Right about now you may be wondering why I included this feature as an area where Windows 10 is "taking the lead" over Linux. And that is because the majority of Linux distributions lack a solid software "store" experience. Even the Ubuntu Software Center leaves a lot to be desired. It's rather slow, has a very limited selection of software for purchase, and what's there isn't overly easy to discover.

If Microsoft were to open up the "Windows Store" to applications built for classic "Windows"...this would be a very handy feature. And I see no reason why they couldn't do exactly that. Though, as it stands, I'll stick to my declaration of "meh."

Windows not doing as much as I thought
Which brings me to two features that were simply underwhelming, the ones that had been outed rather heavily and which I expected to be the shining examples of the quality and innovation of Windows 10: the new Start Menu and support for ultra-high resolution displays.

First, let's talk about the new Start Menu.
In Windows 8, Microsoft killed the Start Menu – that simple, nested menu that let you find and launch applications (a paradigm used in operating systems since the days of the Pharaohs). Microsoft opted instead for a full-screen display of animated tiles, which, as every four-year-old can tell you, was both annoying and stupid.

In Windows 10, the Start Menu is back… kind of. There's no more full screen of animated tiles (Windows users dodged a bullet, there). But what Windows 10 has now isn't all that much better. Other than the fact that it's not, technically, full screen.

The new Start Menu bears little resemblance to what you might remember. On the left side of the Start Menu is a list of all of the software on your PC. In alphabetical order. With no categories. Have a lot of applications installed? Too bad for you, because that list is going to get crazy long.

On the right side of the Start Menu you'll find the grid of animated squares that you had hoped were burned alive. No. That's not fair. This is an improvement. In Windows 8 you had a full screen of squares that accomplished nothing… in Windows 10 the Start Menu is simply filled with those squares – and is, hence, annoyingly larger and stupider-looking than it should be.

Luckily, the good folks at Microsoft provide a "full screen" button that makes this new Start Menu take up the entire screen. For those moments, I suppose, when you feel you could be more annoyed by the Start Menu… if only it took up your entire field of view.

The second feature to let me down, HiDPI support, really let me down in a big way.

I used the Dell M3800's 4k screen (3840x2160) and, based on the noise Microsoft has been making about support for upwards of 8k screens (!!!), I expected the experience to be awesome right out of the gate.

It wasn't. (It's not the fault of the M3800's screen…which is gorgeous.)
In order to make most applications usable – on that high of a resolution on a smaller screen, text and buttons can quickly become unusably small – I had to set the DPI scaling in the control panel fairly high. And even then, things weren't all roses and candy bars. (Is that an actual saying? "Roses and candy bars"? Probably, right? Hell with it, I'm sticking to it.)

Toolbars in some applications became distorted and unusable. Text in other applications became jagged and funky-looking. Other times, things simply became pixelated and ugly. (To be completely fair, sometimes the DPI scaling worked excellently well. But only sometimes.)

Windows 10 isn't alone in having issues with HiDPI screens.

MacOS X, last time I used it, had similar problems with many applications. Admittedly, this was several years ago, so that may have changed. I tend to not use Apple products. I respect myself too much for that.

And many Linux desktop environments encounter similar difficulties. GNOME Shell and Ubuntu's Unity, for example, both handle scaling to those ultra-high resolutions fairly gracefully… until you start using software that isn't bundled with the environment itself. Then all hell can break loose – buttons too small to click, mismatched text sizing within a single application, all sorts of shenanigans.

The fact that Microsoft is touting this HiDPI functionality so highly, yet not really providing anything more interesting than what Linux has had for a few years, is rather – what's the word I'm looking for – meh-worthy.

"Meh" seems to be a running theme in Windows 10. Which is quite the opposite of "awesome."

Did I answer my own questions?

Having a good-looking software store is pretty critical. And that's something still lacking in non-Android Linux-based systems right now. Even Ubuntu could use some serious improvements in its software store experience.

Am I missing out on anything by not running Windows 10 as my primary operating system?

Short answer: No.
Long answer: Are you kidding me? I couldn't repartition that drive fast enough and re-install Linux.

But I'm glad I spent the time in Windows 10 Technical Preview. Maybe when the final version of Windows 10 ships, I'll take it for another spin to see what they've improved. The reality is that, for being a "Technical Preview," this was fairly stable and quite peppy. Not Linux-levels of peppy, mind you. But not bad, either. Not "awesome," but not bad.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go hide in my bunker and hope that the steel-reinforced doors can keep the Windows fans at bay.

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Alleged tech support scammers come up with all kinds of alibis to counter complaints

Better Business Bureau records show companies blamed scammers, customers' Internet connections and new software for consumer grievances

Companies sued by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Microsoft for allegedly defrauding consumers with worthless Windows technical support have spun tales involving flakey Internet connections, it's-not-us-it's-scammers, new management software and unanswered emails to counter hundreds of consumer complaints this year, Better Business Bureau (BBB) records showed.

The four companies sued by the FTC in November and by Microsoft this month were reported to the BBB at least 318 times in the last 12 months, according to the organization's website.

Two of those companies accounted for the majority of the complaints: Customer Focus Services, a California company that operates a number of sites, including omnitechsupport.com; and Inbound Call Experts, a Florida company that ran advancedtechsupport.com and others. The BBB closed 124 complaints against Omni Tech Support in 2014, and 158 against Inbound Call Experts. The number of actual complaints filed may have been considerably larger, as the BBB only reports cases it considers resolved.

Consumer Focus Service was one of two technical support firms Microsoft sued in federal court earlier this month -- the other was Anytime Techies of Florida. Microsoft accused the two of infringing numerous Microsoft trademarks and practicing false advertising as they tricked consumers into paying for bogus help.

Inbound Call Experts, along with Vast Tech Support, both of Florida, were shuttered by a federal judge in November after the FTC filed complaints claiming they bilked Americans of more than $120 million.

All four allegedly operated telemarketing scams where consumers were told that their Windows PCs were infected with malware or needed to be optimized to work properly. Some consumers had contacted the companies themselves after seeing their websites or search result ads, while others had been cold-called by the firms.

The "help" provided was largely worthless, and in some cases the companies' representatives planted malware on the victims' PCs, the FTC and Microsoft charged. Customers were charged hundreds for the calls or fast-talked into expensive multi-year service contracts.

Such scams have become almost routine because the practice is extremely lucrative: Microsoft estimated that losses to U.S. consumers run $1.5 billion annually, and that a third of those contacted by scammers fall for the ploys.

While accounts of victims are easy to find -- Computerworld receives scores of emails each week about scams that readers fell for or narrowly avoided -- the alleged scammers' side is not. But their replies to customer complaints on the BBB website -- some, like Customer Focus's Omni Tech Support are actually members of the business trade group -- were illuminating, to say the least.

"The defense given by Omni over, and over and over again (it was given to me at least 12 times during my 6 1/2 hour 'chat' with them, as I was trying to set up services with them and had already paid their fee) ... is 'unstable Internet connection' or 'fluid Internet Connection,'" wrote Jane D. in a Nov. 30 complaint.

By Jane D.'s account, when she asked questions about Omni's extended service, the company representative balked at answering, instead telling her, "Just sign the contract." After she pressed for answers, Omni dropped the connection.

"It is my strong opinion that they use this 'poor Internet connection/fluid Internet connection' excuse as a way to wear you down, tire you out, and get your money," Jane D. said, referring to the numerous times she connected to the company's chat service and the several technicians she had to speak with.

Computerworld found several instances in Omni Tech Support's replies to the BBB complaints where it blamed customers' Internet connections for its inability to provide the services those people had already paid for. "Her Internet connectivity was weak and the chat session were getting disconnected, it was taking a longer time than expected," Omni said in response to a different complaint filed on Feb. 10.

InBound Call Experts, one of the two companies whose assets were frozen last month after the FTC lodged complaints, told a different story.

In a long reply to the BBB, which in February had asked Inbound for their "voluntary cooperation" in resolving complaints, Inbound threw its new computer software under the bus.

"The new [software] interface had new buttons that [representatives] were not used to and certain parts of the CRM [customer relationship management software] were in different locations," Inbound told the BBB. "With that said, our average handle time went from 19 minutes per call to 25 minutes per call. Because of this, our phone lines got backed up as we were not able to answer as many phone calls and many customers were calling back over and over because they were unable to reach us."

Inbound also claimed that its automated tools had a bug and so technicians had to "manually do some of the work that our automated tool normally did."

Vast Tech Support, the other company closed in the FTC-initiated action, blamed email when a customer said she had not received a promised refund earlier this year. "We have been communicating through email," said Katie M., a supervisor at Vast Tech Support, in a reply to an August BBB complaint. "The customer has not responded to my last email."

Not true, the customer countered. "I replied to each response this woman sent. I told her in our last email that I would update status [of the BBB complaint] upon receipt of refund."

But the most cynical defense by the alleged scammers was that they had not called people and pressured them into buying software and services. Who had? Well, other scammers.

In a familiar-to-victims account, one consumer wrote, "I do not use Omni Tech Support, terminated support more than 1 yr year ago. [But] for 4 months I have received multiple calls alleging that my computer is infected by virus. I have asked numerous times for supervisor to cease any calls because I am not interested in their product. These calls occur 2 and 3 times a day, including evening hours."

Omni Tech said it wasn't them. "It was a scam call. It was not us. We simply don't call people and tell them they have a virus," the company replied.

The it's-not-us-it's-them comeback was used by several of the firms in their responses to complaints registered with the BBB.

One grievance filed with the BBB said that the consumer had contacted Inbound Experts for technical support, which was provided. But just six hours later, the customer was called by someone claiming to work for Microsoft, who said that the Redmond, Wash. firm knew the user's PC was in trouble. In other words, a classic scam call.

"Obviously, since [Inbound Experts] knew when my computers were worked on, my name and phone number, this appears to be [an] inside issue," the complaint read. During a conversation with an Inbound Experts supervisor, the complaintant continued, "He said he was sorry about this and that many other customers have complained about this also, and supposedly the FBI was working on it. He was quick to end the phone call which made me even more suspicious. When I told him that this appeared to be an inside problem, he said it was possible."

Inbound's official response? "I can assure you that Advanced Tech Support [one of the names that Inbound used, the FTC said last month] is not a scam."

Neither Omni Tech Support's parent company or Anytime Techies have replied to Computerworld emails asking for comment about the Microsoft allegations. The two companies have until Jan. 8 to respond to Microsoft's lawsuit.

Omni Tech is a member of the BBB, but the organization did not give the company a grade-style "A" through "F" ranking. Anytime Techies is not accredited by the BBB, but has been given a "C" rating. Both Inbound Call Experts and Vast Tech Support were graded "F," and their BBB accreditation was revoked Nov. 26, a week after the FTC announced that they'd been closed by court order.

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Why January could be a big month for Windows 10

While people are banging away at the Windows 10 technical preview, Microsoft is preparing for a real big month come this January, including major updates and a wider release product.

Currently, Windows 10 Technical Preview is on build 9879, although there have been stories of build 9888 being out in the wild. This was described as an interim partner build of Windows 10, not meant for public consumption.

In that build, people noted that Microsoft changed the kernel version number from 6.4 to 10.0. A whole lot of fuss was kicked up over this change, but for the end user it means nothing.

Going forward, things will get interesting. Multiple sites report Microsoft plans to take the wraps off the "consumer preview" of Windows 10 in January 2015. A consumer preview would mean it's much more stable for casual users and much more feature-complete. This is how Microsoft has always done betas. It does the rougher beta for more technical-minded users who can provide adequate data feedback, then within a few months it comes out with a more stable release for the masses.

The more obvious time to release this preview would be the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), taking place in Las Vegas in early January. However, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella isn't among the keynote speakers. The CEOs of Samsung and Intel are.

ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley says there will be a press and analysts event at the Redmond HQ on January 20-21, which is when the January Technical Preview, as it is called, will be shown off. One of the key new features is expected to be Continuum, a feature that helps switch the UI on 2-in-1 laptops, so you get a different interface when the display is detached and when it is connected.

Foley and other sites also say that the January preview will be the first to feature Cortana, the digital voice assistant that first appeared on Windows Phone and is a competitor of sorts to Apple's Siri. Bringing Cortana over to the PC is a logical move, and Microsoft has made no secret of its desire to see Cortana everywhere.

This doesn't even touch on Windows Phone 10, which is reportedly planned for next year as well. Given how much code is shared between the mobile and PC versions of the OS, a close release schedule makes sense, but at this point it's all conjecture.

Foley claims there will be a monthly build release, which jives with earlier reports that Microsoft wanted to keep testers up to date with the latest builds. This would be contrary to the Windows 7 and 8 beta cycles, where we had one public test build and didn't see another until the release candidates hit months later.

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Microsoft drags customers 'kicking and screaming' into its world of faster updates

Mandates Windows 8.1 Update to receive future patches; evidence of commitment to constant OS refreshes, say experts

Microsoft's demand that Windows 8.1 users install this week's major update was another signal that the company is very serious about forcing customers to adopt its faster release strategy, experts said today.

"Microsoft is going to drag organizations and users into this new world of faster updates kicking and screaming," said Michael Silver of Gartner in an email. "Microsoft wants users to trust it to keep their systems updated. Maybe they figure forcing organizations to deploy [Windows 8.1 Update] will get them used to taking updates and keeping current."

Earlier this week, Microsoft shipped Windows 8.1 Update (8.1U), adding that to obtain future updates, including fixes for vulnerabilities distributed each month on "Patch Tuesday," Windows 8.1 users had to install 8.1U.

"Failure to install this Update will prevent Windows Update from patching your system with any future updates starting with updates released in May 2014," Microsoft said.

May 13 is the first Patch Tuesday that will require 8.1U.

That requirement got the attention of users. And not in a good way.

"What happened to Microsoft's Lifecycle policy with providing customers with a 24-month timeframe before ending support of a superseded operating system RTM/Service Pack?" asked a user identified as "wdeguara" in a comment appended Tuesday to Microsoft's blog-based announcement. "By immediately withdrawing all future security updates for Windows 8.1 RTM, in the eyes of most enterprise customers you are effectively performing an immediate End-of-Life on Windows 8.1 RTM.

"I know that Microsoft wants its customer base to adopt updates to its Windows platform faster, but immediately dropping security patching on the Windows 8.1 RTM release is just plain crazy," wdeguara added.

But to Silver, that is exactly Microsoft's intent.

Others see similar method to Microsoft's madness.
"The reality is that Microsoft is moving the OS toward a more service-oriented model," said Wes Miller, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft, in a Thursday telephone interview. "This reflects the fact that there are shifting sands, that Microsoft is trying to move toward one servicing model for a variety of platforms. They're trying to harmonize Windows Phone and Windows with one servicing model that works for everyone."

From Miller's perspective, Microsoft was striving for a mobile-style model for Windows that would not only rely on more frequent updates, but one with a goal of getting the bulk of users onto each new this-is-current update or version.

Other Microsoft customers joined wdeguara to criticize the forced migration, which had not been announced prior to Tuesday and which they saw as a betrayal of the 24-month rule that has given them two years from the launch of a service pack to upgrade from the original, called "RTM" in Microsoft-speak to reference "release to manufacturing."

"This is a massive shift from a patching perspective," said Julian Harper, an IT manager, in one of several messages posted to the Patchmanagement.org mailing list on the topic. "For years, we've had [two] years to plan service pack roll outs and now we're given one month. And this is on top of the fiasco that was Windows 8.1 for volume license customers."

Previously, Microsoft had said that the 24-month rule for Windows, once reserved for service packs, would apply to Windows 8 and its successors, including Windows 8.1 of October 2013, even though the latter was not labeled as a "service pack." Customers on Windows 8 RTM, which shipped in October 2012, would have until Jan. 12, 2016 to migrate to Windows 8.1. After that date, Windows 8 RTM will not be eligible for security updates and other fixes and enhancements.

"Microsoft has the most generous and transparent support policies, but everything depends on what they call the new code," said Silver. "A 'service pack' has a support policy. A 'version' has a support policy. Something with a different name, well, Microsoft can do what it wants."

Miller wasn't shocked at the complaints from enterprise IT personnel, like Harper. "It bothered me, too," Miller said. "The support lifecycle page doesn't reflect this, and it absolutely should," he continued, referring to Microsoft's support timetable for Windows 8 and Windows 8.1. "Customers need to be able to keep track of what they have to do for support."

Andrew Storms, director of DevOps at CloudPassage, a San Francisco-based cloud security firm, acknowledged the historic nature of the Windows 8.1 Update's deployment requirement.

"What was surprising to me was that there was no prior notification from Microsoft," Storms said. "But what was not so surprising was that they made this decision. The number of SKUs that they support is getting out of hand. Microsoft can only support so many products. At some point, they just have to cut it."

Storms sympathized with corporate IT administrators nervous about the rapid release pace.

"Given the environment they're in, the complaints were well justified," Storms said. Traditionally, that has been an environment where companies downloaded an update, tested it for weeks or even months, then slowly deployed it to devices.

"That's an ongoing process that's constantly in motion," said Storms of the practice. "But we know everyone needs to move to [a process] where you have to take the updates as they are. So this really calls for a new way of thinking. IT must rethink the environment that they're in."

In other words, enterprises may not like Microsoft mandating 8.1U but they'll have to learn to live with not only that, but future demands, too. "If the [software vendors] are moving faster than you can keep up with using the traditional methodology, you're going to have to just take [the updates]," Storms said.

Microsoft did not reply to questions, including why it mandated 8.1U and whether it believed the requirement is a change of its 24-month rule.

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The greatest security story never told -- how Microsoft's SDL saved Windows

'We actually had to bus in engineers.'

Microsoft has launched a new website to "tell the untold story" of something it believes changed the history of Windows security and indeed Microsoft itself - the Software Development Lifecycle or plain 'SDL' for short.

For those who have never heard of the SDL, or don't have the remotest idea why it might be important, the new site offers some refreshingly candid insights to change their minds.

Without buying into the hype, the SDL can still fairly be described as the single initiative that saved Redmond's bacon at a moment of huge uncertainty in 2002 and 2003. Featuring video interviews with some of its instigators and protagonists, the new site offers outsiders a summary of how and why Microsoft decided to stop being a software firm and become a software and security firm in order to battle the malware that was suddenly smashing into its software.

Few outside the firm knew of the crisis unfolding inside its campus but not everyone was surprised. Microsoft now traces the moment the penny dropped to the early hours of a summer morning in 2001, only weeks before it was due to launch Windows XP to OEMs.

"It was 2 a.m. on Saturday, July 13, 2001, when Microsoft's then head of security response, Steve Lipner, awoke to a call from cybersecurity specialist Russ Cooper. Lipner was told a nasty piece of malware called "Code Red" was spreading at an astonishing rate. Code Red was a worm a malicious computer program that spreads quickly by copying itself to other computers across the Internet. And it was vicious."

Others arrived in the following two years; the Blaster worm, Nimda, Code Red II, MyDoom, Sasser, and on and on. To a world and a Microsoft not used to the notion of malware being a regular occurrence, this was all a big shock.

By January 2002, with attacks on its baby XP humbling the biggest software firm on earth, Bill Gates sent his famous Trustworthy Computing (TwC) memo to everyone at Microsoft. From now on, security was going to be at the root of everything and so help us God.

That turned into the SDL, and it was given priority one to the extent that it took over the whole 8,500-person Windows development team for much of that year and the next. Its ambition was to completely change the way Microsoft made software so that as few programming errors were made that had to be fixed once customers were involved; "security could not continue to be a retroactive exercise."

Users had also started complaining. Loudly.

"I remember at one point our local telephone network struggled to keep up with the volume of calls we were getting. We actually had to bus in engineers," the site quotes its security VP Matt Thomlinson as saying.

The fruit of the SDL was XP's first Service Pack in 2002, followed up by the even more fundamental security overhaul of SP2 in 2004. By then, XP had been equipped with a software firewall, an almost unthinkable feature for an OS three years eariler.

It's arguable that despite the undoubted gains of the SDL since then, that the firm has yet to fully recover from the trauma of the period. Windows development has seemed less and less certain ever since, following up XP with the flawed Vista and more recent Windows 8 near-debacle. Microsoft still does operating systems but it's not clear that all its users do.

Still, the SDL programme has proved hugely influential even if it's not well known outside tech circles. It is now baked into everything. It has also influenced many other software houses and many have versions of the SDL of their own, many modelled on Microsoft's published framework on how to run secure development.

Whatever mis-steps Microsoft has made in the last decade, security has turned into a bit of a success story right down to the firm's pioneering and hugely important Digital Crimes Unit (DCU) that conducts the forensics necessary to track down the people who write malware in their caves. Both the SDL and DCU are seen as world leaders.

So let's hear of for Redmond, the software giant that launched an operating system years behind the criminals but somehow clawed itself back from disaster. Most other firms would have wilted but somehow Gates's memo rallied the cubicle army.

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Chromebooks' success punches Microsoft in the gut

Chromebooks' success punches Microsoft in the gut
Amazon, NPD Group trumpet sales of the bare-bones laptops in 2013 to consumers and businesses
Chromebooks had a very good year, according to retailer Amazon.com and industry analysts.

And that's bad news for Microsoft.

The pared-down laptops powered by Google's browser-based Chrome OS have surfaced this year as a threat to "Wintel," the Microsoft-Intel oligarchy that has dominated the personal-computer space for decades with Windows machines.

On Thursday, Amazon.com called out a pair of Chromebooks -- one from Samsung, the other from Acer -- as two of the three best-selling notebooks during the U.S. holiday season. The third: Asus' Transformer Book, a Windows 8.1 "2-in-1" device that transforms from a 10.1-in. tablet to a keyboard-equipped laptop.

As of late Thursday, the trio retained their lock on the top three places on Amazon's best-selling-laptop list in the order of Acer, Samsung and Asus. Another Acer Chromebook, one that sports 32GB of on-board storage space -- double the 16GB of Acer's lower-priced model -- held the No. 7 spot on the retailer's top 10.

Chromebooks' holiday success at Amazon was duplicated elsewhere during the year, according to the NPD Group, which tracked U.S. PC sales to commercial buyers such as businesses, schools, government and other organizations.

By NPD's tallies, Chromebooks accounted for 21% of all U.S. commercial notebook sales in 2013 through November, and 10% of all computers and tablets. Both shares were up massively from 2012; last year, Chromebooks accounted for an almost-invisible two-tenths of one percent of all computer and tablet sales.

Stephen Baker of NPD pointed out what others had said previously: Chromebooks have capitalized on Microsoft's stumble with Windows 8. "Tepid Windows PC sales allowed brands with a focus on alternative form factors or operating systems, like Apple and Samsung, to capture significant share of a market traditionally dominated by Windows devices," Baker said in a Monday statement.

Part of the attraction of Chromebooks is their low prices: The systems forgo high-resolution displays, rely on inexpensive graphics chipsets, include paltry amounts of RAM -- often just 2GB -- and get by with little local storage. And their operating system, Chrome OS, doesn't cost computer makers a dime.

The 11.6-in. Acer C720 Chromebook, first on Amazon's top-10 list Thursday, costs $199, while the Samsung Chromebook, at No. 2, runs $243. Amazon prices Acer's 720P Chromebook, No. 7 on the chart, at $300.

The prices were significantly lower than those for the Windows notebooks on the retailer's bestseller list. The average price of the seven Windows-powered laptops on Amazon's top 10 was $359, while the median was $349. Meanwhile, the average price of the three Chromebooks was $247 and the median was $243, representing savings of 31% and 29%, respectively.

In many ways, Chromebooks are the successors to "netbooks," the cheap, lightweight and underpowered Windows laptops that stormed into the market in 2007, peaked in 2009 as they captured about 20% of the portable PC market, then fell by the wayside in 2010 and 2011 as tablets assumed their roles and full-fledged notebooks closed in on netbook prices.

Chromebooks increasingly threaten Windows' place in the personal computer market, particularly the laptop side, whose sales dominate those of the even older desktop form factor. Stalwart Microsoft partners, including Lenovo, Hewlett-Packard and Dell, have all dipped toes into the Chromebook waters, for example.

"OEMs can't sit back and depend on Wintel anymore," said Baker in an interview earlier this month.

Microsoft has been concerned enough with Chromebooks' popularity to target the devices with attack ads in its ongoing "Scroogled" campaign, arguing that they are not legitimate laptops.

Those ads are really Microsoft's only possible response to Chromebooks, since the Redmond, Wash. company cannot do to them what it did to netbooks.

Although the first wave of netbooks were powered by Linux, Microsoft quickly shoved the open-source OS aside by extending the sales lifespan of Windows XP, then created deliberately-crippled and lower-priced "Starter" editions of Vista and Windows 7 to keep OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) on the Windows train.

But Microsoft has no browser-based OS to show Chromebook OEMs, and has no light-footprint operating system suitable for basement-priced laptops except for Windows RT, which is unsuitable for non-touch screens. And unlike Google, Microsoft can hardly afford to give away Windows.

But Microsoft's biggest problem isn't Chrome OS and the Chromebooks its ads have belittled: It's tablets. Neither Microsoft or its web of partners have found much success in that market.

Baker's data on commercial sales illustrated that better than a busload of analysts. While Windows notebooks accounted for 34% of all personal computers and tablets sold to commercial buyers in the first 11 months of 2013, that represented a 20% decline from 2012. During the same period, tablets' share climbed by one-fifth to 27%, with Apple's iPad accounting for the majority of the tablets.

"The market for personal computing devices in commercial markets continues to shift and change, said Baker. "It is no accident that we are seeing the fruits of this change in the commercial markets as business and institutional buyers exploit the flexibility inherent in the new range of choices now open to them."

But when you're at the top of the personal computing device heap -- as Microsoft was as recently as 2011 -- words like "change" and "choice" are not welcome. From the mountaintop, the only way is down.

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What Google killing IE9 support means for software development

Google's announcement that it won't support Internet Explorer 9 is a sign of a broader move toward rapid iteration in software development.

Let's start with this: I am completely OK with this. Sure, it may be a bit of a drag for people running Windows Vista (as newer versions of Internet Explorer – 10 and 11 – require Windows 7 or 8) but, let's be honest - nobody expects any company to spend the money and man-hours supporting every web browser for all eternity. And Vista users still have the option of installing another web browser, such as Firefox or Chrome.

So, if this isn't all that big of a deal, why am I bringing it up?

Web browsers are, in essence, platforms for running software.
Internet Explorer 9 was released in 2011. It’s only two years old.

That means that we have reached the point where complete application platforms are being deprecated, and left unsupported, after having existed for only two years. And, while that does bode well for the rapid improvement of platforms, it comes with a pretty steep price.

The most obvious of which is that end users are put in the position of needing to upgrade their systems far more often. This costs a not-insignificant amount of time (especially in larger organizations) and money. It is, to put it simply, inconvenient.

This rapid iteration of new versions of these systems also takes a heavy toll on software development. More versions of more platforms means more complexity in development and testing. This leads to longer, and more costly, development cycles (and significantly higher support costs). The result? The software that runs on these systems is improved at a slower rate than would otherwise be possible, and in all likelihood they will be of lower quality.

These are some pretty major drawbacks to the current “Operating Systems and Web Browsers are updated every time the wind changes direction” situation. But is it really all that bad? The alternative, for Windows users, isn't terribly attractive. Nobody wanted to be stuck with IE 6 for a second longer than was absolutely necessary.

I don't have a solution to any of this, mind you. Not a good one, at any rate – maybe we should make a gentleman's agreement to not release new Operating Systems or Browsers more often than every three years. (See? Not a good solution.)

I'm just not a big fan of how it's currently working.

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Microsoft dings Ballmer's bonus over Windows 8, Surface RT struggles

The penalty is equivalent to half the cost of a cup of coffee at McDonalds to the average American

Microsoft's board of directors reduced outgoing CEO Steve Ballmer's bonus for the 2013 fiscal year, citing poor performance of Windows 8 and the $900 million Surface RT write-off, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer (Photo: Microsoft)

The Redmond, Wash., company's proxy statement spelled out the salaries and bonuses of several of its top executives, including Ballmer, new Chief Financial Office Amy Hood and Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner, as well as now-departed managers such as former CFO Peter Klein and Office chief Kurt DelBene.

Microsoft paid Ballmer $697,500 in salary and awarded him a $550,000 performance bonus, for a total of $1.26 million for fiscal year 2013.

The bonus was less than Ballmer could have earned.

"Our Board of Directors approved an Incentive Plan award of $550,000 which was 79% of Mr. Ballmer's target award," stated the proxy. One hundred percent of the target would have been $696,000.

The 79% was considerably lower than Ballmer's comparable number for the 2012 fiscal year, when he was granted a bonus representing 91% of his target.

Microsoft's board cited both company wins and losses under Ballmer's stewardship, but the latter included some failures that were the root of its bonus decision.

"While the launch of Windows 8 in October 2012 resulted in over 100 million licenses sold, the challenging PC market coupled with the significant product launch costs for Windows 8 and Surface resulted in an 18% decline in Windows Division operating income," the proxy noted. "Slower than anticipated sales of Surface RT devices and the decision to reduce prices to accelerate sales resulted in a $900 million inventory charge."

Some analysts have speculated that the $900 million write-off was the proverbial straw that broke the board's back, and triggered Ballmer's ouster. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal last week, however, John Thompson, the lead independent director and the head of the committee in charge of the search for a new chief executive, backed Ballmer's explanation for his sudden retirement: He did not want to remain in the job through the long course correction to a "devices-and-services" strategy.

The proxy statement's commentary on the strategy change, as well as the corporate reorganization announced in July, was Ballmer-neutral. "The company continued to make progress in its devices and services strategy," the filing read.

Last year, Ballmer's bonus was pegged at 91% of his target as the board ticked off several issues during that fiscal year, including a 3% decline in revenue for the Windows and Windows Live Division, and a fiasco where Microsoft failed to offer a browser choice screen to Windows 7 customers in the European Union.

Ballmer's 2013 bonus of 79% was an even lower percentage than that of Steven Sinofsky last year. Then, the former Windows chief -- who was ousted in November 2012 -- received 90% of his target award, even though he, like Ballmer, was cited as responsible for the EU browser choice screw-up.

Other top-tier executives received 100% or more of their target bonuses for 2013.

Kevin Turner, the COO, received a cash award of $2.1 million, or 100% of his target, and Satya Nadella, who now leads the Cloud and Enterprise group, received $1.6 million, or 105% of his target. Amy Hood, the new CFO, was handed $457,443, 100% of her target incentive, and as part of her promotion, received a stock award in May of 103,413 shares that will vest over the next three years. At Thursday's closing price, those shares had a paper value of $3.5 million.

In total compensation for the 2013 fiscal year, Turner remained Microsoft's highest-paid executive at $10.4 million, down slightly from 2012's $10.7 million.

Eight of the company's top executives, including Turner and Hood, were handed additional stock grants Sept. 19, the same day Microsoft announced a retention bonus designed to keep upper management from jumping ship during the CEO search. Turner, for example, received grants currently worth $20.3 million. Hood's award was valued at Thursday's closing bell at nearly $3.9 million.

No one should cry for Ballmer's lowered bonus: According to the proxy, he controls 4% of the company, with stock holdings worth $11.3 billion at Thursday's price. Only co-founder and chairman Bill Gates holds more: 4.5%, or $12.8 billion.

The $146,000 that Ballmer did not get in his 2013 bonus is literally pocket change to the billionaire. The amount represented 0.0013% of Ballmer's Microsoft holdings, and an even smaller percentage of his total wealth. To put that into perspective, 0.0013% of $42,693, the U.S. per capita personal income in 2012, is 55 cents, or just over half the price of a coffee from McDonalds "Dollar Menu."

Ballmer and Gates are both on the directors slate for re-election next month when Microsoft hosts its shareholders meeting.

According to a report by the Reuters new service earlier this week, some of Microsoft's biggest investors have urged the board to push Gates out of the chairman's role because they are concerned he will block the board from making drastic changes and handcuff the new CEO to the devices-and-services strategy, which they question. Gates is also on the special search committee tasked by the board to recommend Ballmer's replacement.

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Who Are the Real Winners in the Microsoft-Oracle Deal?

Who Are the Real Winners in the Microsoft-Oracle Deal?
Microsoft and Oracle announced a wide-ranging partnership deal in late June. At first glance, the logic behind it was fairly baffling.

The agreement lets Oracle customers run its software-including Java, Oracle Database and WebLogic Server-on Microsoft's Hyper-V hypervisor, in its Azure cloud or on Windows Server. The Oracle software will be certified to run on Microsoft platforms, meaning both companies will work to fix any problems that might arise.

Microsoft, for its part, will offer a fully licensed version of Java, as well as development tools and Oracle Linux in Azure.

The deal was difficult to understand because the two companies compete in the enterprise database marketplace. Why would Microsoft welcome Oracle's database into its Azure cloud to compete with its own SQL Azure? And why would Oracle want to undermine its own Oracle Cloud by encouraging Microsoft to offer Oracle software on Azure?

Oracle Needs to Put Its Head in Public Cloud
To get to grips with what's going on, it's important to understand that Oracle Cloud is weak and getting weaker by the month, says James Staten, a principal analyst at Forrester Research. "The company's public cloud offering has really had very little success, so Oracle really needs to find another way to get its software into the cloud."

Amazon already resells Oracle technologies on its Amazon Web Services cloud platform, so it makes sense to look at Azure as well, Staten says.

"Oracle can't just stop at Amazon. Azure is the No. 2 public cloud and it is growing, so it is absolutely in Oracle's interest to get its technology onto it," he points out, adding that Oracle can still say that its technologies run best on Oracle Cloud to preserve its dignity.

Ellison: Ellison: Oracle Will Deliver World's 'Most Comprehensive Cloud'
Holger Mueller, principal analyst at Constellation Research, agrees that Oracle's motivation for the deal is to make its technology available beyond its own public cloud offering. "Oracle is getting its database onto the public cloud provider of the future," he says. "This is a major coup, as now Google is the only major public cloud that doesn't support Oracle."

Microsoft Needs Java (Hold the Cream and Sugar)
What does Microsoft get out of the deal? Mueller believes Redmond has been very keen to get access to Java. "Amazon's AWS cloud gets developer support because it offers Java, and Microsoft is desperate to do the same," he says. "It wants to become the No. 1 IaaS vendor, but if it has no support for Java, then that becomes almost impossible."

In the past, Microsoft has supported Java on its Azure platform, but customers have had to "bring their own" Java-and their own license for it. To be able to have Java set up and ready to go on Azure, along with all the necessary tools, Microsoft needed its own Java license.

When Sun owned Java, Staten says, it didn't want to license it to Microsoft because it didn't want to make Windows stronger. By putting Oracle's database on Azure, Microsoft has found a way to get a Java license from Java's new owner.

Where does that leave Microsoft's SQL database? Staten points out that, since Azure is positioned as Windows in the cloud, any software that runs on premises should also be able to run on Azure. "This deal means that no one is forced to give up Oracle if they want to run their applications in the Azure cloud," he says.

Related: Microsoft Bulks Up Azure, Makes it Easier to Build, Expand Cloud Services
In any case, SQL isn't seen as a direct alternative to the more powerful and scalable Oracle database by most organizations, Staten says. "But for Microsoft, at least Oracle customers may be exposed to SQL Azure or SQL running in a VM as a consequence of this deal."

The partnership is also good for Microsoft because it's exclusive: You can virtualize Oracle software only in an Oracle VM or using Microsoft's virtualization technology. There's no technical reason why Oracle can't run on a VMware hypervisor, but that company has effectively been left out in the cold. "Oracle appears to be betting against VMware becoming a leader in the public cloud space," Staten says.

Everyone's a Winner
As for the known details of the deal, Microsoft will likely have to pay Oracle a significant sum for the Java license. In financial terms, then, Oracle would seem to be the main beneficiary of the deal in the short term. Oracle also benefits by ensuring that its technologies can be used in what one day may be the biggest public cloud.

Looking further, though, Microsoft may be the bigger winner. That's because Azure and Hyper-V gain a great deal of credibility from being certified platforms for Java and Oracle's database. It puts Microsoft Azure on nearly equal footing with AWS and definitely gives it an advantage over VMware's public cloud efforts.

But perhaps the biggest beneficiaries will be Microsoft's and Oracle's enterprise customers. The deal makes Azure a more competitive platform for them, as Oracle software is now fully supported in Microsoft's cloud. Previously customers would have had to have gone to AWS for that kind of support. Plus, increased competition is invariably good for business.

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Why the Xbox One could be a hit with businesses

Microsoft's pitch for Xbox One in the workplace is a convincing one, assuming it doesn't kill employee productivity in the process.

No one can say Microsoft isn't trying to think outside the box in this post-PC world. It's pitching the Xbox One console as a solution for a number of problems and applications important to small business.

The post on Microsoft Small Business is quite clear and succinct: at $499, Xbox One, with its Internet connectivity and Kinect audio/video input, is ideal for networking and videoconferencing applications.

"What is being positioned as an excellent entertainment device can be just as enticing for you and your small business. In fact, it is entirely justifiable to make the Xbox One a business expense. The Xbox One, priced at $499, is an affordable option for small business owners, as there are many features built into the console that could help it rival even the most modest of videoconferencing and networking platforms,” said Marques Lyons, Microsoft Xbox MVP and the director of Consumer Camp.

The Xbox One will offer Skype, SkyDrive, IE and Office and Wi-Fi Direct, plus you can write your own apps for it. Since the Xbox One is powered by an x86 chip courtesy of AMD, most PC developers should not be overly challenged in writing custom apps.

The Kinect One audio/video detector will be the real selling point here, as it is much more advanced than any Webcam. We're talking wide-angle 1080p motion detection that can be operated by voice and gestures.

For some time, developers have experimented with different ways to use Kinect in non-gaming settings. One scenario features a doctor who uses Kinect to manually operate a camera while performing surgery. No Webcam can do what Kinect does, and that will be a strong point in its favor. Also helping Microsoft's pitch is that the Xbox One is compatible with Office Web Apps, which lets Xbox users view and edit Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents.

Wi-Fi Direct will allow owners of Xbox One to send presentations from a tablet or notebook to the console for display on the TV, and you can use the Smart Glass controller to navigate through the PowerPoint presentation or use a tablet to control Internet Explorer.

That's all out of the box. Since Xbox One will support third-party applications, you can build all kinds of custom business tools that utilize the hardware, including Kinect, and software.

It might prove challenging to get one when they launch in November, though. Ever since Microsoft got rid of its horribly misguided DRM, the Xbox One has been a hot seller and all launch consoles are sold out.

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Microsoft reorganization: A quick look at who's in charge now

Microsoft reorganization: A quick look at who's in charge now
Microsoft business reshuffling puts the spotlight on four execs

In a sweeping corporate reorganization to focus on the company’s shift from a software provider to a products and services business, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has announced changes to his executive team to support a new structure that divides the company into four divisions.

SECURITY: Microsoft: Windows 8, Internet Explorer, Office, Visual Studio, Lync are all vulnerable]

The new groups are Operating Systems Engineering, Devices and Studios Engineering, Applications and Services Engineering and Cloud and Enterprise Engineering.

Heading up these groups are:
Executive Vice President of Devices and Studios Julie Larson-Green (former Corporate Vice President of Windows Engineering);

Executive
Vice President of Operating Systems Terry Myerson (former corporate vice president Windows Mobile);

Executive Vice President of Applications and Services Qi Lu (former president of Microsoft Online Services);

Executive
Vice President, Cloud and Enterprise Satya Nadella (former president of the Server & Tools Business).

Larson-Green’s
previous role is trimmed back a bit, pulling away her responsibility for Windows and limiting her to running Microsoft hardware programs and development of games. That means she’ll head up the Surface tablets and Xbox, filling the void left by Don Mattrick when he left Microsoft last week to head up Zynga. Image Alt Text
Julie Larson-Green

Last fall
Larson-Green was vice president of program management for the Windows experience when then-president of Windows and Windows Live, Steven Sinofsky quit right after launching Windows 8 and introducing Microsoft’s Surface tablet. In the aftermath, she was promoted to head up Windows Engineering.

Until then her experience had been all in software, having worked on the user experience for Internet Explorer and managing programs, UI design and R and D for Windows 7 and Windows 8. In the past Ballmer has praised her technical expertise, design skills and communication abilities.

Terry Myerson
Myerson’s shift to head up engineering of operating systems gives him authority over not just Windows Phone but also Windows 8, which could help advance Microsoft’s goal of making it easier to write applications that run on both platforms. He is also in charge of operating systems for Xbox.

He led the Microsoft
Exchange team for eight years before running the Windows Phone division.

Lu is very important to business customers as his job puts him in charge of research and development for Microsoft Office, Office 365, SharePoint, Exchange, Yammer, Lync, Skype, Bing, Bing Apps, and MSN. He also heads up the Advertising Platforms and Business group. Image Alt Text
Qi Lu

His previous responsibility was for search, portal and online advertising efforts, which included Bing. Before coming to Microsoft he worked for 10 years at Yahoo, where he also worked on search and advertising.
Satya Nadella

Nadella’s role
remains pretty much the same, building and running the company’s computing platforms, developer tools and cloud services. He deals closely with developers and promotes Microsoft’s concept of the Cloud OS – a blend of Windows Server and Windows Azure cloud services to provide flexible cloud resources and support hybrid clouds.

Windows Server, SQL Server, Visual Studio, System Center and Windows Azure fall under his purview.

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Office on Surface Pro suggests a shift in Microsoft's sales strategy

Surface Pro tablets to be sold in Japan will come with fully-licensed copy of Office Home & Business 2013

Microsoft yesterday announced that Surface Pro tablets it will start selling in Japan on June 7 will come with a fully-functional copy of Office, a bundle one analyst said hints at a change in Microsoft's sales strategy for its homegrown hardware.

Both Japanese configurations of the Surface Pro -- one with 128GB of storage space, another with 256GB -- will include Office Home & Business 2013, Microsoft confirmed Wednesday. The productivity suite will be a fully-licensed version, not a time-limited trial.

According to a press release issued by Microsoft Japan, the 128GB Surface Pro will sell for 99,800 yen, including taxes, or $986 at current exchange rates. The 256GB model will cost 119,800 yen, or approximately $1,184.

The tablets sold in Japan will not be the first from Microsoft to bundle Office: More than a month ago the company launched a special edition Surface Pro in China that included Office Home & Student 2013. But the Japanese configurations will be the first to come with a commercial-use edition of Office -- one that can legally be used for work and in the workplace -- and on a tablet powered by Windows 8 Pro. The special Chinese Surface Pro bundle relied on Windows 8, the consumer-grade OS.

Microsoft has also included Office Home & Student RT with all Windows RT-powered tablets, its own Surface RT among them. Like the Surface Pro in China, however, Office on a Surface RT is not licensed for work, and lacks the Outlook email client. Outlook is included with Home & Business 2013.

Surface Pro tablets now sold in the U.S. come with a one-month trial of Office 365 Home Premium, Microsoft's rent-not-buy subscription service for the suite. That, too, is for personal use only, and not licensed for work.

The addition of Office Home & Business to the Surface Pro in Japan sparked speculation from analysts.

"I think it's possible this means Microsoft will do the same elsewhere to firm up the footprint [of the Surface Pro] in the market," said Ezra Gottheil, of Technology Business Research. "After all, the cost of goods for software is zero."

Wes Miller, of Directions on Microsoft, echoed Gottheil. "Definitely possible," he said of Microsoft tossing Office Home & Business 2013 into all Surface Pro tablets. "This could reflect a different angle on selling the Surface Pro."

Both analysts noted that the move would be in keeping with Microsoft's apparent strategy to use Office as a prime selling point for its Surface line, and Windows 8-powered tablets in general.

By using Office as a carrot for Windows, the theory goes, Microsoft has decided to forego revenue it would generate if it released versions for Android and iOS -- reportedly slating those editions for late-2014 shipping -- instead putting all its horses in Windows' traces.

Adding Office Home & Business 2013 would also reinforce Microsoft's implied contention that the Surface Pro is for work, said Miller. And it would be a concession that the Surface Pro's $899-$999 price can't compete in the consumer space.

The Japanese price for the 128GB Surface Pro is close enough to the U.S. price, said Miller, that if Microsoft does pre-load Office in America, it will probably maintain the current cost. "You'd get Office included for the same price," Miller said.

According to a Microsoft price sheet, the pre-tax price of the 128GB Surface Pro in Japan is 95,048 yen, or about $944, just $45 more than in the U.S.

Gottheil and Miller both said that if Microsoft does pull the trigger on bundling Office Home & Business 2013, it would almost certainly extend a deal of some sort to its OEM (original equipment manufacturer) partners for their Windows 8 tablets.

"They won't do this to hurt OEMs, so maybe Microsoft will define a set of products that compete head-to-head with the Surface Pro, and make those OEMs the same deal, or a price cut on Office," said Gottheil.

"I would expect some kind of similar pricing to OEMs," said Miller, "or Microsoft risks more conflict with OEMs."

Microsoft's relationships with its partners has been rockier in the past year, kick started last June when the Redmond, Wash. developer surprised everyone -- OEMs included -- by unveiling its Surface line, the first-ever computing hardware designed in-house. The lackluster performance of Windows 8 and Windows RT has further strained those relationships, with several long-time partners dissing the latter and Dell, the world's third-largest computer maker, blaming Windows 8 for some of its financial woes.

Japan's Surface Pro configurations -- 128GB and 256GB, with the current 64GB model missing -- may also signal that Microsoft will kill off the 64GB Surface Pro in all markets. That entry-level model has come under fire because the storage space available to users is a relatively meager 28GB.

The Japanese offering, however, may not herald a shift, cautioned Gottheil. "Microsoft may simply be experimenting with ways for a broader distribution of the Surface Pro," he said of the bundling.

And other problems surface -- no pun intended -- with the inclusion of Office Home & Business 2013, Miller added. "If they're branding the Pro as the business [system], what exactly is the Surface RT for?" he asked.

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The privacy organization has hidden its ties to corporate backers

After being accused of a lack of transparency by an independent watchdog, the European Privacy Association (EPA) has confirmed that Google, Microsoft and Yahoo are backers.

The Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO), which works to expose privileged access in E.U. policy making, said in a complaint Thursday that the European Privacy Association is working to represent industry interests in the debate on data protection in Europe, even though it has not listed any corporate backers on the E.U.'s "Transparency Register."

The register, which is operated by the European Parliament and European Commission, requires all signatories to disclose their interests, objectives or aims and, where applicable, the clients they represent.

The EPA is listed in the category of think tanks, research and academic institutions and claims to have only 10 private (non-corporate) members. However, EPA managing director Pietro Paganini confirmed to the IDG News Service that Google, Yahoo and Microsoft are members.

CEO campaign coordinator Olivier Hoedeman was not surprised. "A look at EPA's activities with regard to the ongoing debate on the overhaul of the European Data Protection rules shows that it favors a lighter regulatory touch and until recently the EPA advertised business membership at a cost of a!10,000 per year on its website," Hoedeman said.

He said that the name of the organization, with its pro-privacy connotations, conflicted with its very pro-industry stance, creating "a confusing, a mismatch." CEO has described the EPA as an "astroturf organization," or front group, defending the interests of large IT corporations.

Paganini refuted these allegations, saying that although the EPA listens to its members ideas and concerns, the reports it produces are independent. He claimed the failure to list the companies on the Transparency Register was an oversight.

Joe McNamee of EDRi (the European digital rights organization) said he had brought the issue to EPA's attention four months ago in January of this year but that nothing had been done. Paganini said that EPA did not know it was supposed to list any corporate members on the transparency register. was unfamiliar with the procedure in Brussels. However, EPA chairwoman Karin Riis Jorgensen is a former elected member of the European Parliament.

CEO says there is also evidence that the EPA has close relationships with two lobbyist consultancy firms, Competere Geopolitical Management and DCI Group, and is working to promote industry-friendly legislation in the new Data Protection Regulation that digital rights organizations say will undermine fundamental civil liberties online.

The CEO has laid out its allegations in a complaint to the secretariat overseeing the transparency register. The secretariat says it will examine the evidence put forward by CEO and by June 7 will announce a decision whether to impose sanctions or require the company to update its entry.

Google had no comment on the issue. Microsoft did not have an immediate comment and Yahoo officials were not available for comment.

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Microsoft responds to Larry Page remarks, but Oracle is quiet

Larry Page criticized both companies in response to questions at Google I/O, just after lamenting negativity in the tech industry

Microsoft has responded to a high-profile put-down by Google CEO Larry Page, but Oracle, at least for now, won't be drawn into a public fight with the executive.

Page criticized Microsoft and Oracle in response to questions after his keynote speech at Google's I/O developer conference in San Francisco Wednesday. Microsoft came under fire about instant messaging interoperability, while Oracle was singled out over Java.

Larry Page makes a surprise appearance at Google I/O.
"We've kind of had an offer forever that we'll interoperate on instant messaging," he said in response to a question. "I think just this week Microsoft took advantage of that by interoperating with us, but not doing the reverse. Which is really sad, right? And that's not the way to make progress. You need to actually have inter operation, not just people milking off one company for their own benefit."

Microsoft fired back Thursday via an emailed statement: "It's ironic that Larry is lending his voice to the discussion of interoperability considering his company's decision -- today -- to file a cease and desist order to remove the YouTube app from Windows Phone, let alone the recent decision to make it more difficult for our customers to connect their Gmail accounts to their Windows experience."

When asked about how Oracle's acquisition of Java might affect Android, he said, "I think we've had a difficult relationship with Oracle. Including having to appear in court as a result of it. So I think, again, we'd like to have a cooperative relationship with them, that hasn't seemed possible."

"And I think, again, money is probably more important to them than having any kind of collaboration or things like that. So I think that's been very difficult," he said.

Oracle declined to comment on the remarks.

CEO's criticizing competitors isn't unusual, but Page's comments came shortly after his speech in which he lamented negativity in the technology sector and said it was an inhibitor to growth.

"You know, every story I read about Google, it's kind of us versus some other company, or some stupid thing. And I just don't find that very interesting. We should be building great things that don't exist. Right? Being negative is not how we make progress," he said in the speech.

Page's comment on negativity got a round of applause from his audience -- around 6,000 of the company's developers -- but the Microsoft and Oracle comments that followed seemed guaranteed to generate just the kind of coverage he finds so uninteresting.

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Microsoft promises more Windows Embedded Compact 7 updates

Microsoft promises more Windows Embedded Compact 7 updates

Microsoft has revealed several Windows Embedded Compact 7 updates, one planned for the fourth quarter of this year and one for the second half of 2012. Next year's version will get an updated kernel, faster file system, and broader hardware support, according to an EE Times report.
A 9:30 a.m. keynote was delivered Oct. 26 at the ARM TechCon show in Santa Clara, Calif. by Microsoft's Dan Javnozon, group product manager for the Windows Embedded marketing group. At the time, we were up north in our Palo Alto batcave getting other news stories out, so we're grateful to EE Times for reporting on what transpired.

According to writer Rick Merritt, Javnozon spilled the beans regarding two pending updates to Windows Embedded Compact 7. Building on an "Windows Embedded Compact 7 Update 3" version that was released last month -- see later -- the revisions suggest that the Windows CE-based operating system won't be left forgotten in the wake of an ARM-powered Windows 8.

Microsoft's Dan Javnozon announcing Windows Embedded Compact 7 updates

Source: EE Times
Javnozon, pictured above, is said to have promised a Compact 7 update for the fourth quarter of this year, though apparently no details were provided. In addition, Merritt writes, he promised "Compact v.Next" for the second half of 2012 -- with an updated kernel, faster file system, and "broader hardware support."

Compact v.Next will also get boosted real-time capabilities, EE Times reports. But in a brief post-keynote interview, Javnozon declined to provide further specifics, the story added.

Microsoft's most recent revision to Windows Embedded Compact 7 operating system was announced on Oct. 17. "Windows Embedded Compact 7 Update 3" includes approximately 125 code defect fixes, several new tools for automating testing, and available Silverlight source code for the operating system's media player, according to the company.

Windows Embedded Compact 7 was first announced in June 2010 as a significant upgrade to the previous Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R3. New features included multicore support, an upgraded Internet Explorer web browser, Adobe Flash support, user interface (UI) development via Silverlight, and the ability to share and manage content across DLNA (digital living network alliance) devices.

The operating system runs not only on x86 processors like its big brother Windows 7, but also on other architectures such as ARM -- including the multicore Cortex-A9 -- and MIPS. (However, Microsoft notes, Hitachi's SH4 is no longer supported by this particular Windows CE variant, and ARMv5 is the earliest supported ARM architecture.)

According to an Oct. 17 blog entry by Olivier Bloch, chief software architect for Windows Embedded, Windows Embedded Compact 7 Update 3 is now freely downloadable. He wrote that the new release contains "approximately 125 code defect fixes" for the Compact 7 operating system, Platform Builder tools, and the Compact Test Kit (CTK).


The installer for Microsoft's Windows Embedded Compact 7
The CTK has two new tools, Bloch adds: The Compact Automation Tool Solution (CATS) for automating test scenarios, and The Compact Stress Tool for automating stress tests. Also now included is new Silverlight for Windows Embedded (SWE) sample code for the Compact 7 Media Player, which was previously provided only in binary format. A previous dependency on the compositor in the sample code has been removed, so Media Player performance should be improved across all hardware configurations, according to Microsoft.

Microsoft originally promoted Windows Embedded Compact 7 as "bringing the power of Windows 7 across ... specialized devices such as slates, portable media players, and others." Indeed, the operating system was shown off last year on an early version of the Asus Eee Pad EP101TC (below), a tablet that was later revamped to run Android instead.


The Asus Eee Pad EP101TC originally ran Windows Embedded Compact 7
Since then, both the progress of Android devices and the announcement of a pending, ARM-based version of Windows 8 has caused Redmond to lower its sights -- or so it would appear. Thanks to its low cost, simpler hardware requirements, modularity, and real-time characteristics, however, Windows Embedded Compact 7 will continue to find customers, or so its supporters argue.

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