Empire Strikes Back – Microsoft vs. Apple

Microsoft is finally striking back! For the past decade or so, Apple’s been eating Microsoft’s lunch through “I am Mac, I am PC” campaign.  It was full of wit, and funny to watch. Everyone liked it. So, did I However,  word on the street is that the Emperor is opening his wallet and buying smart p.r. guys to fight back the Apple corp. m$ is, supposedly, spending un-God-ly amount of money to tilt the public perception that the Vista OS is, in fact, good. The idea is, using old perceptions that were wrong, e.g. earth being flat, to compare current VIsta perceptions.  From what I hear, they will tell some lame stories like truth being ever lasting or so. What ever the idea they may have, I have a better idea. They can use it, for a small fee, of course. Here we go.

The scene is a simple space, dark background with two people. The first one is a man dressed in dark suit, white shirt and a red tie. Next to him is this artistic, femenine and fashionable person dressed in colorful outfit ,wearing a hat. There is a strong hint of gayness in him ( only as a character ). He has a european accent, like French or German, can’t really tell, and is tastefully dressed from head to toe.

The suit says ” I am VIsta”

The other says ” I am a leopard” – “Meow” – acting a scratching motion with his hand.

The suit says ” I do my work using any software from thousands available to me,”

The other says ” I don’t need thousand choices, any of my five programs are better than all of his. Like I say, more choices you have, more confused you get.”

The suit says ” When I go home, I play games from a library of thousands of  games made for Vista”

The other says “Games are for losers. That’s why they dont waste time making games for my meow.”

The suit says ” I often become a knight in shining armour, saving princesses from another part of the world.”

The other says “Why should I be someone else? I am me and I love myself. I don’t have to be someone else.”

The suit says “I can do all of these on $300 laptops as well as on $3000 tablets”

The other says “Cheap is garbage. Good taste cost money, like Channel, Gucci and Armani. I have good taste and I, moi, tell people what they like.”

The suit turns around and says “How do you get a way with that?”

The other whispers to the suit ”They are all suckers”

Looking at the camera, the suit says “ And the fruit can’t even spell his name right.”

Scrolling on the bottom is “The apple you eat is McIntosh Apple” 

This is a perfect 15 second commercial that Microsoft can use.

Matter of fact, they should do this.

 

 

p.s. please, this is a joke. I love Apple computers. And, I am not offending gay community either. I love gay community.  I ,also, did not offend French, German or artists. It is a simple satire. So please relax….   and  don’t do it.

Hacking Ethics 101

Recently, on Hackint0sh.org blog site, there has been a heated discussion regarding Zibri, one of early hacker member who released Ziphone software. It seemed to me that everyone hated his “stealing” of code from the community. In otherwords, Zibri took the code available to him, and created his own software “Ziphone”. Now, normally, this would not be a problem, since it is an open source community, but the way he went about was the cause of heated discussion.

So, I began thinking about the “Hacking Ethics”. Just like any other community, hacking community have many devoted members, who works for nothing but a credit in the end. A small write up of credit section mentioning their name for the effort, would satisfy anyone of those devoted hackers. The issue gets complicated when there is a split in the group.

How does one keep track of whos contribution resulted in what hacking method? When everyone is banging ideas, left and right, where does the “source” of method become recognized? Anyone who has participated in many  software developement group sessions can attest impossibility of keeping track of ideas. Sometimes, it comes in staircase forms, where no progress is made for a long time and suddenly, a fresh flow of ideas pour in. Under those conditions, how do we keep track of origin of ideas?

When an open source group is split into two groups, for whatever the underlying reason might be, how can we call one group a “thief” and another a owner? With millions of open source projects on line, is this a things to come? Are we headed for an ending feud and litigation era? Legally, I believe they both have rights. As long as they indicate the contribution of entire group members, anyone should be allowed to modify and release software. But, that’s not what we see with Zibri today.

Putting his personal charms aside, Zibri did take code available to him, modified and released under Ziphone label. Ethically speaking, he did this on his own, without an approval of the group. And this is where my question of ethics comes in. We all know  it was a wrong thing for him to do. But, was he bound by the ethics, when, in fact, the sole purpose of the group was “Hacking” of the iPhone? Is there honour among thieves? Is this far fetched?

Of course I know my right from wrong. I know there is an ethical way to behave in hacking community. But, lets suppose that, Zibri and the group both had a solution to unlocking they were sweating over. If Zibri’s plea for the release of the method was ignored ( I am still supposing it ), is it wrong for him to do it on his own? Let’s say that the group felt the method needed more testing. If Zibri felt that it was ready, was it unethical for him to release it? We see half baked software everyday. ( The flip side of this is a rock solid software in perpetual beta – Gmail )

I guess I would never know the true story of ZiPhone, but I think it is important that someone keeps track of these events, for the history, if nothing else.

Has fanboys turn on Apple?

Something strange happened last week. iPhone 3G launch was criticized by many Apple Fanboys. Now, if I said this would ever happen, before the iPhone launch, I would have been called crazy. Since Apple has the worst rabid fan base of any product in history, this was a shocking event! To put this in perspective, up until they changed the CPU to intel processor, they all claimed PowerPC to be better and faster than Intel processors. They endured, crawling speed of Photoshop rendering on PowerPC, just because it was from Apple. Now, Apple uses Intel processors. For the first time, fanboys can see the speed improvement of  applications. But, th epoint is that, they would plunk down twice the money for half the speed for the apple logo. This was true for almost fifteen years. Imaging the shock, when I heard the criticizism of its launch from fanboys.

So, what ticked them off? Well, apple never anticipated the amount of traffic to handle all the activation process, I think. I don’t think Apple was prepared for that. Additional cry was for its launch of mobileMe brand. Apparently it was not available for a day.

Ok, I see the problem. Apple is having scaling problem that fluctuates radically. This is nothing new. Ask any financial institution IT manager. At 930, when stock exchange opens, the network traffic goes through the roof. We all have been there and done that. But, apparently, Apple has never been exposed to this. Eventough they had the launch last year, the sheer amount of traffic was overwhelming for apple. Well, is it a learning curve? Sure it is. I remember the first time I had the codered attack. My switches were rebooting from over utilization. I had to cut off the trunk and deal with sections at a time. I learned then.

So, why is it that Fanboys cannot treat it as a learning process for Apple? Well, apparently, Apple cannot do anything wrong. They are a perfect company that cannot mess up like Microsoft messes up. So, they are mad at Apple for the fiasco. They should have known better, is what I am hearing.

I think Fanboys are right. They are entering enterprise arena now, so lets hold them to same criteria as mission critical datacenter devices. We expect five 9 uptime – that is 99.999%, I think that is 5 minutes per year down time. I designed my network for every possible redundancy; Apple should start behaving the same way – as if each second of downtime will cost them millions of dollars in loss. When the market is volatile, a trader who cannot execute his sell order, will lose more than a few dollars for the delay. Let’s hold them accountable.  

Let’s suppose that someone is relying on MobileMe for medical applications. The failure can result in death. If Apple is aware of that, would they do anything different? I believe they do. I believe, Apple would go back to basic and make reliable services instead of making things prettier. I think it is time Apple learn from their launch fiasco.

iPhone 2.0 in Corporate USA

I simply cannot get away from this over saturation of iPhone 2.0 frenzy. Everywhere I go, I hear iPhone 3G / 2.0 related coverage talks. Weblogs are buzzing with reviews, tear downs, hacks, cries and praises and I am sick and tired of hearing about it.

Don’t get me wrong, I have been an avid user of the iPhone for the past year or so. I love the device and I am glad to see the AppStore being available now. But, in the end, it is a phone we are talking about. And until we treat it as a such, we will be just another fanboy. However, with firmware 2.0, Apple is making entry into a corporate world where many big boys eat each other for snacks. Throwing in a simple ActiveSync won’t cut it. Here is why.

Inventory – As IT departments deploy devices, some way to inventory the devices is a must. It means a central deployment software that can read devices and populate database.

Software/App control – This means a way to easily push out the applications and updates from central deployment software.

Encryption and Remote Wipe – Many financial institutions will require encryptions for client data. This is a must for devices that carry sensitive data. Remote wipe is also necessary for lost devices.

Central Management – This is not same as deployment software. Central management means config changes, monitoring of spaces and CPU, scanning of devices and lots more. This usually requires a client agent that talks to the server.

Corporate Tunneling / VPN – This is a sticky point for many IT profs. Due to a presence of WIFI and 3G Network, many devices coming in to VPN device are seen as “dual homed devices”. Depending on the capabilities of its ip stacks, packet forwarding might allow rogue packets flowing into the corporate network. This is a huge security risk. Allowing Cisco VPN means there is no way to remediate compromised devices. Restricted proxy access would be a partial solution, but there has to be a more secure agent on the device.

ActiveSync – ActiveSync is a kludge. It never worked right. The new push feature on exch 2003 and 2008 is only a half baked solution. Either, Microsoft breaks the activesync portion into a separate server, or new third party should write the software. As is, exchange server is a mixed salad. They began breaking it into roles – a good idea, but they need to go further. They really must let each server run one dedicated process only, all reading database from a database server. Front end/Back end servers are a start, that is a wrong way to go. They should have a “client access process server” that does nothing but a client connections management. I’m sure they can figure this out; they are mighty smarter than I am.   Apple made a big mistake by going activesync. They sould have used Goodlink instead. Not wanting companies to buy another server, is understandable. But, allowing all the Goodlink customers to simply swap Palm devices to iPhone would have been good. Mind you, not many companies open their firewall for direct activesync traffics. Besides, I don’t even know if the traffic is encrypted. If it is not, do not expect any corp to use it.

I have a few other pet peeves about the Apple’s approach to corporate IT. But, I think they are all minor points. I think iPhone 2.0 can be made to penetrate corporate USA given enough time to mature, like PocketPC was.

Goodluck iPhone 2.0

Stross vs. Thurott

Strange things happen when someone starts receiving paychecks from a company he is reviewing. I do not dare say that one’s integrity is tarnished, but I ask how much of it is based on his next bonus. Thurott, a well known writer on M$ paycheck list, recently blew his stack on the TWIT podcast. Thurott went as far as calling Stross, a respected NYT writer, “Jumping a shark”, akin to calling an athlete a lame. 

So, what started all of these harsh words? Nothing. Stross simply reviewed the status of current Windows and Thurott did not think it was funny. I guess he took it personally, the part about the Windows being a monolithic and all. Well the better argument would have been “What’s wrong with a monolithic OS?” With the status of CPU, memory and storage being what they are today, I don’t see anything wrong with a monolithic OS where each component layer is tightly coupled together. Matter of fact, this is how, during NT 4 days, M$ was able to move video subsystem from ring 3 to ring 0; don’t try that home kids.

Matter of fact, before the loadable module days, simple parameter change needed a new kernel recompile in Linux. Does anyone get any real benefit from modular OS? How often do you trim OS to fit target platform? So what if there is 1 GIG worth of extra code sitting on my harddisk? My 1 Tb hard disk cost me $200. Even if all the extra code were loaded into my ram, it would be less than 1/2 gig! And my quad core CPU needs some extra things to keep it happy! Not, that any of these are true, but what if they were?

I can remember all the unnecessary waste of paper in my time. Starting with Expanded memory vs. Extended memory. Risc vs. Cisc. Basic vs. Pascal. 32bit vs 64bit, Big Endian vs little endian, I can go on for ever. But in the end, what matters is enablement. It is what we can do that matters more than why it is better to do with blue shirt on.

I think Vista is a good OS. It is solid and stable. Sure, it is slower than the XP since it does more. Matter of fact, it is a lot slower since it does a lot more. Just take a look at all the services running!  Modern operating systems need to do lots of services. That’s the price we pay for “Auto-magic” functions we love so much. However, the condition was always offset by faster CPUs and cheaper memory chips. This has been the case with Linux, OsX and it is the case with the Vista. So, what is the problem?

I would never ask my family member to upgrade XP to Vista. Upgrade is a bad idea, unless you have a fast machine to begin with. However, a new machine is a different story. Vista on quad core machine purrs like my Abyssinian cats. I can’t see a big company with 50,000 seats upgrading to Vista, but a new purchase should keep Vista on. It makes no sense to wipe out and install XP on the new machine.

So, in the end, I sort of understand why Thurott thought Stross was wrong, but Thurott should have been more specific in defending his boss. Saying things like “Windows was re written during NT days!” just doesn’t cut it. Stross is not a technical person like Thurott is. Stross is echoing what most educated people believe. Thurott should not take it personally.

BillG’s Day Out

Bill Gates’ last day came and gone. I see no difference in my WIndows products. But, wait. What did I expect? Did I expect my Word to crash? No, I exppected nothing from BillG’s exit. Then what’s this fuss all about?

Today, I read someone listing Bill’s best and worst 10. I think they never used more than 10% of Bill’s products. I have. I used almost all of Bill’s products. So, here I list my Bill’s 10.

Worst 10

DOS 6.2 – This was a bloated dog.

Drivespace – No one ever used it.

HIS ( SNA Server ) – no comment

Windows 2 (aka Windows 286)

LIM Aboveboard

Keyboard that split

Windows ME

Access

IE6

Bob/Clippie

Best 10

Windows for Workgroup

DOS 5

Exchange

IAS

NetIQ/MOM

Mouse

Excel/Word/Powerpoint

WIndows386/Windows95/Windows 2000

Basic/QBasic/Visual Basic

Active Directory