Blogger insists 10-year wait for Microsoft tech support call 'not a hoax'
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Tech-support alumni around the Web continue to raise eyebrows and questions about the tale of the tech-support call that came a decade too late, but blogger "BIC" revealed further details about the incident by way of bolstering his claim.
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When I suggested in a recent column that a problematic 5 percent of employees account for 75 percent of the IT support burden, I expected a wave of âright on!â letters from IT support staffers. After the column was published, the letters did come â most of them disagreeing with my premise, with one reader suggesting that the real whiner was yours truly. I still think itâs outside the realm of overextended IT departments to provide training on basic computing skills (which I defined as âmanaging and finding files, and basic working knowledge of suites such as MS Officeâ). But my thinking was adjusted a bit by the thoughtful feedback.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft declined to comment Friday on post-Vista plans by releasing a comment -- a move bloggers attributed to buzz about a list of most-asked-for features to Vista's successor. The list was yanked from a Microsoft forum earlier this week. The company's statement, attributed to Kevin Kutz, director of the Windows client team, was among the shortest on record from the company. "The launch of Windows Vista was an incredibly exciting moment for our customers and partners around the world, and the company is focused on the value Windows Vista will bring to people today," Kutz said. "We are not giving official guidance to the public yet about the next version of Windows, other than that we're working on it. When we are ready, we will provide updates." Bloggers dedicated to tracking every Microsoft twitch said the comment on not commenting was prompted by speculation about user-requested features for the next edition of Windows. That list had been solicited from an invite-only group of Windows beta testers in a program dubbed "Early Feedback Program" that started in December 2006. It included such requests as integrated antivirus scanning, plain-English error messages, and several improvements to Internet Explorer that are fixtures in rival Firefox, such as session restore. On Tuesday, Windows beta tester Jamie Grant posted a list of the feature requests -- which blogger Long Zheng characterized as a bit like Dell's user-generated, user-ranked IdeaStorm -- on Microsoft's own enthusiast Channel9 site. The thread, however, was quickly locked by Channel9 administrators; Grant later deleted the post and list. But by then Channel9 users had seen the 70-some items, and bloggers like ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley began spreading the word. Some, like Zheng, didn't take the censorship well. "One would think, or at the least I would think, a list of product suggestions thought of by the people, written by the people, moderated by the people, and ranked by the people is a product of the people," said Zheng in an entry to his "istartedsomething" blog. "Under some unexplainable spell, some Microsoft employees insist this become company secrets, thus, protected by non-disclosure. I beg them to reevaluate what's at stake." Even Robert McLaws, a blogger who is usually supportive of Microsoft, took the company to task, albeit gently. After translating the Microsoft statement as, "Hey, we just spent five years working on this thing, we don't know what we're doing next. Why don't you guys go spend some time talking about that while we go figure it out, mmmk?" McLaws advised Microsoft that "instead of getting annoyed because we need something to do, you guys need to chalk it up as an unwanted side effect of taking five years to get your last product out the door." Microsoft's statement isn't a change from its official position, which has all along been to emphasize Windows Vista and downplay any future releases. For a time, that mum's-the-word approach went so far as to hedge whether a Service Pack would be created for Vista. Although executives soon relented and at least acknowledged a Vista SP1 would be forthcoming, they continue to push Vista. This week, in fact, as rumors spread that the beta of SP1 might pop up as early as Monday, COO Kevin Turner urged partners to focus on Vista and other 2007 products. "I see one thing in FY [fiscal year] '08; I see money," said Turner. "I see monetization. I can smell it and hear it, see it, OK, because this is the year that we're going to monetize that innovation."
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Truly trustworthy computing is still a few years off, HP exec says.
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Nelson Minar says he likes TechCrunch, but they're not journalists so be careful what you say to a TC reporter at a party. He cites two examples where he feels they acted unethically.  In one example, the reporter seems to use off the record comments exactly as they are supposed to. Most non-disclosures require that you keep the information confidential, but only until someone else discloses the information to you. If you get it from another source, on the record or off the record, the NDA is no longer enforceable. In this case they got confirmation from three off the record sources.  The other is just an example of a dumb story, not a violation of journalistic ethics. To say that a big company told a lie is hardly news. If it were about something material and not the age of one of the founders, then it would be newsworthy. But it's not an example of an integrity breach. (You can make a mistake and still have integrity. It's only a problem if you knew it was wrong when you wrote it.) Imho, too much is made of whether someone is a journalist or not. You read reports like this one in a highly reputed news organization, written by a journalist, that contain no information but leave a sensational impression for people who don't know the technology well enough to know that the reporter is talking nonsense. I'd rather read the opinion of a non-journalist who knows the subject and can defend his or her position, and clearly discloses their interest in the subject. At least I'd learn something, and no one would be misled into believing they were getting "news." However I do applaud what Nelson wrote because he had the guts to openly criticize TechCrunch. People from outside Silicon Valley must wonder why hardly anyone does, given that they are at or near the top of most lists ranking tech news sources. Why should they be immune to examination? Answer -- they shouldn't.
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Blames media, not own, confusion WPC Microsoft has delivered a spirited defense of its Windows virtualization roadmap, blaming misreporting - not internal disorganization - for causing confusion.â¦
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Microsoft is applying for a patent for an operating system that starts out crippled.  You must pay to do things like take the throttle off network speed, disk access, install drivers, install software, and more.  Trust me, I rarely even visit Groklaw, even if this is my second consecutive blog entry with a link to a Groklaw article. My VarLinux.org readers posted the article, A Brave New Modular World, and I had to share it.
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Microsoft will not demand the withdrawal of evidence submitted against it in a European antitrust case by two parties that have since dropped their support for the case, a spokesman said Wednesday.
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Blog: Here's a follow up to a blog of a few days ago outlining workaround until Google issues a patch.
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A top Microsoft Corp. executive defended desktop application software, the source of the company's revenue for three decades, arguing on Tuesday that even services-based companies such as Google Inc. still need it.
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With a little kick to Netscape's corpse Microsoft is pshawing claims that it needs another five years of legal babysitting.â¦
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They need help Comment Ashlee, I read you piece (NY Times bans Microsoft analysts from Microsoft stories) over the weekend and man did you hit a chord with me. I sweat this stuff, Iâm accused quite often of being a Microsoft shill and, as you point out, there is actually a cottage industry that has cropped up making that accusation to keep me from saying anything negative about OSS (open source software) or Apple. Since Iâve been doing the analyst thing for well over a decade, I think most journalists know I answer questions as honestly as I can and, while I do make mistakes, they are honest ones.â¦
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Shoulda happened sooner 10th birthday interview In an industry characterized by cold logic and technology, the contributions of real people often get lost.â¦
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Been scammed? Claim your Â£100,000 here We're obliged to the reader who alerted us to the agreeable news that Microsoft will compensate deserving 419 victims to the tune of Â£100,000 a head.â¦
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Microsoft Corp. will not say what went wrong inside of its Xbox 360 video game consoles that could lead to $1 billion (euro740 million) in repairs, but bloggers and their online readers seem to have their own answer:
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When a hacker going by the name Chujwamwdupe published attack code that exploited a recently patched bug in Microsoft Office 2003 earlier this week, it looked almost as if he were publishing the software out of spite.At the top of his submission, Chujwamwdupe wrote about an e-mail informing him that &quot;Unfortunately, Microsoft has refused to credit you using the name you requested.&quot;&quot;What&#39;s wrong with &#39;chujwamwdupe&#39;, eh?&quot; the hacker asked.Well quite a lot, it turns out, if you live in Poland, where it refers explicitly to a form of sexual intercourse.In the hacker world, where so much rides on reputation, Microsoft had been put into a tough position. The company generally goes out of its way to credit hackers who responsibly disclose software vulnerabilities, and by not crediting Chujwamwdupe, it may have put customers at risk by accelerating the&#160;release of attack code. After all, quickly releasing an exploit is the one way a hacker can back up his claim that he actually discovered the bug in question.Even though the flaw, which lies in the Works File Converter, was&#160;patched the day before the exploit code was released, it will be months before all of Microsoft&#39;s customers install the updates. This means that Chujwamwdupe&#39;s code could be misused by criminals.A member of Microsoft&#39;s security team flagged Chujwamwdupe&#39;s submission, a spokeswoman with Microsoft&#39;s public relations firm said in an e-mail message. &quot;One of them happened to speak the right language and brought the issue to our attention,&quot; she said. &quot;The finder&#39;s user name could have been perceived as offensive in another language, so we credited the vendor, VeriSign iDefense VCP, [Vulnerability Contributor Program] for reporting the issue to us responsibly.&quot;VeriSign pays hackers like Chujwamwdupe for vulnerability information so that it can give its customers better information on the bugs when Microsoft finally patches them. And while the majority of contributors use their real names, some do use hacker pseudonyms.Usually that&#39;s not a problem, said Matthew Richard, the director of iDefense&#39;s Rapid Response Team. &quot;It really doesn&#39;t come across that often. There really aren&#39;t that many handles that are offensive,&quot; he said. Chujwamwdupe is &quot;one of the very few that I&#39;ve seen,&quot; he added.3Com&#39;s TippingPoint division, which also pays hackers for vulnerability information, had to talk researcher Manuel Santamarina Suarez out of using a similarly offensive pseudonym, telling him, &quot;we totally get your originality, but we&#39;re professionals here,&quot; said Terri Forslof, TippingPoint&#39;s manager of security research.According to Forslof, who spent four years working for Microsoft&#39;s Security Response group, there are technical reasons why offensive terms cannot be included in the security bulletins. Such a word might cause the bulletin to be blocked by e-mail or Web-filtering software, she said, making it harder for Microsoft to communicate vital security information with its customers.Still, things would have probably worked out better for all parties if Microsoft and VeriSign had worked out some way to credit the hacker, she said. &quot;If Microsoft would have credited him, would he have felt the need to post that exploit code?&quot;&quot;I believe that there was a communication breakdown here,&quot; she said.&#160;
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CNET News.com's Charles Cooper says recent upset over Vista should put a rest to that lingering question.