Microsoft's MOM goes out the door
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Software giant takes big step toward October release of Microsoft Operations Manager 2005.
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Microsoft has some serious questions to answer....
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A generation of mothers has begun a consciousness-raising that is almost old-fashioned except for the technology involved.
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Software maker has its eye on consumers who might be ready to make the switch from Windows.
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Windows Media Player 11 will allow families to move songs or movies from one home device to another.
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SEATTLE: For people trying to get their ageing parents on the web so they can read email and get digital photos of the family, Microsoft Corp has a message: Don&#39;t give up.
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Gates tries to sell The Daily Show's Jon Stewart on the new operating system, as Office takes a backseat.Photos: What's in the Vista swag bag?
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Drowned by the hoopla surrounding SP2 for Windows XP, Microsoft announced yesterday that both versions of Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 (MOM 2005) were released for manufacturing, the final step before they become officially available.
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I'm back, with a very interesting topic too!  Joel Spolsky, ex-Microsoft Manager and software engineering guru has a new essay, How Microsoft Lost the API War that is creating quite a big storm in the blogging communitiy.  Joel posits that the priests in the holy Temple of Microsoft have lost their way, because it has split into two factions, and the wrong faction is winning. One faction worships on the alter of backward compatibility, while the other is led by fervent priests who are proselytizing to raise up the new gods of .NET and Longhorn. Joel suggests that the new gods will cause the destruction of the holy Temple because Microsoft's great victories were built on the altar of keeping customers happy with backward compatibility. Furthermore the old gods of the Windows API continue to grow more grotesque and cruel with the passing of time, driving former worshipers into the arms of the friendlier gods of World Wide Web.  This story sounds extremely plausible. I must admit that i fit the profile of the developer who used to develop on the Window's API, is familiar with COM and Win32 who now develops mostly using PHP and Python. However I continue to develop and maintain Windows apps that keep our customers happy, and we still plan to develop new Windows apps. Some points:  Temple of the Blind? Firstly, Microsoft is still a compelling place to work for to people who feel that they can make a difference. The Temple continues to attract talented people with a Unix background. For example we have the recent hiring of Ward Cunningham, author of the Wiki.  Microsoft is still able to keep talented people like Raymond Chen, and others like him who continue to look after the Windows API, and Longhorn apparently will still give high priority to backward compatibility. Open sourcerers like Miguel Icaza are sufficiently attracted to the .NET vision to stake their careers on Mono. Longhorn and .NET are compelling technologies, so even if Win32 is not so cute anymore, M'soft is providing something that remains very attractive.  What i do see M'soft doing wrong is that they aren't disseminating the .NET runtime fast enough. It remains an optional install in XP Service Pack 2 for example. Also their IE dev team appears to be hog-tied due to political reasons; nevertheless IE remains good enough, particularly when I can embed IE as an activeX control, something I cannot do with Mozilla (AFAIK) - Update: I'm wrong.  Temple of the Spider?  Secondly, people don't merely use a web browser. They run the web browser in the OS.  So let me ask you, if you are using DreamWeaver or HomeSite or Photoshop or vi or emacs or Gimp, how many of you are willing to give it up for a java applet (or whatever your favorite technology is) running in your web-browser? Precisely.  Temple of the Abandoned?  Third, Joel makes the claim that developers are not developing to the Windows API. Well he could be right. But I bet a lot of them are still calling Win32.  If you are using a framework or IDE like Delphi or wxWindows (or .NET or VB) then you certainly are insulated from the Windows API, but that doesn't mean that you're not calling the Windows API all the time. I don't see Borland dropping their Windows version of Delphi at any point in time.   In fact, the fact that many developers are using some form of framework is a compelling argument for Microsoft to enhance the .NET framework to attract developers who are using other frameworks.  Today, not that many students learn x86 assembler, but that doesn't mean that Intel lost the CPU wars. Just because fewer people are learning Win32 doesn't mean Microsoft has lost the API wars, if the frameworks run predominantly on Win32.  Temple of the Lost  Joel even warns you in the beginning that "because I'm talking about big trends, I need to exaggerate and generalize". But you still get sucked in because Joel Spolsky is a first-class writer, in the same order as Philip Greenspun or Eric Raymond. That makes him so persuasive and plausible. But this is not Indiana Jones and doomed temples, but Steve Jobs and reality distortion fields.  Other opinions:  Harry Fuecks (PHP is ASP's upgrade path),  Dennis Hamilton (M'soft is just covering all bases), Robert McLaws (Joel is wrong in 7 points), Oliver Travers (the web is not good enough), One Run-time to Rule them all....
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Jeff Raikes, a 26-year veteran of Microsoft, plans to retire later this year and the company announced that it was reaching outside its ranks for his successor.
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Windows Live OneCare Family Safety is designed to help parents keep certain Web from reaching their children.
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When my daughter turned 3, my in-laws bought her a cute, brightly colored laptop called a LeapPad to help with her growing vocabulary.
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Backdoor drafts, security moms and up-armoring
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CNET reporter confirms her family's home phone records accessed without her permission.
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The longtime software executive, who came over from Apple in 1981, says he's not sure what he'll do when he leaves Microsoft in September, but it will probably be outside of tech.
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An entrepreneur has made caring for her autistic son and for others like him her third business.
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The former TIME correspondent talks about his mother, a pioneering television journalist