c0t0d0s0.org

This isn´t something i expected to read in regard of Desktop Computing:

Sun shows Microsoft how it's done -Time Slider is what Vista's Previous Versions should have been.

Wenn man dieser Umfrage der Computerwoche glaubt, dann hat Vista ein kleines Adoptionproblem.

This was not unexpected, but this made my day: Alex Ionescu writes in his blog, that he is able to break the digital rights management of vista. He was able to deactivate driver signing and thus he can inject a driver that circumvents the copyright protection mechanisms. If this is true, this has two interesting implications:

• Strictly interpreted the keys for Vista to play HD content must be revoked and all new HD medias need a new key for windows. This is not exactly the stuff you want to hear promptly to the general availability of Vista
• Driver signing was touted by Microsoft to be an protection against malware. This proctection didn´t even survived the GA day. Can you really trust Microsoft that they are able to build a secure OS?

I hope that his breach will be confirmed soon. They had five years to develop the next version of XP, and weren´t able to make it right. One question: Who were the NSA employees who helped Microsoft? The janitor and the till girl in the cafeteria? Sorry for the spitefulness, but i expected more from the allmighty National Security Agency.

How absurd must the mininum requirements for doing wordprocessing, data entry and spreadsheet get to force companies to rethink their perpetual upgrade cycle of Windows Machines. Heck, you can´t even start Vista on a machine, that was capable to run Wing Commander, the mininum graphic card to start Aero has vastly more compute power than the supercomputers used to calculate the european weather forecasts in the early nineties and you need more memory to start Vista than my computer i´ve used to layout the "Abiturzeitung" of my brother 11 years ago had as harddisk.

The usabiliy doesn´t got that much better since Windows 95. We have still no decent build-in speech recognition, the Apple Newton handwriting recongnition worked quite as good as on 100 Mhz ARM than on a Intel C2D with 25 times the processor frequency.

Essentially we have the same things and thoughts in the windows world as in 1995, only in true color, with antialiased fonts and when we make an error, we get an 16-channel polyphonic Dolby Digital 7.1 EX boing.

Vista is only a bad ripoff of the operating system from the Infinite Loop in Cupertino. Really? Look at this video to learn the naked truth!

The one and only feature that i would call more than a 10.4-ripoff in Vista is now offically dead. Here is the report of an microsoft developer in mabushi speak. Or as an independet view : The Fishbowl or Developing on the edge.

There is one inevitable rule in software project management: For the real date of completion ask one of the old die-hard project managers, not a high ranking people manager.
You find an very interesting weblog entry about the delays for Windows at Philip Su´s weblog: Broken Windows Theory. He wrote an long but good essay about the internal problems of the Vista Development. He is an insider, because he works for Microsoft. So he should know it.
Whenever a schedule isn´t controlled by the needs of the project, you seed a forseeable failure. Either you cat abyssal quality and missing features galore or you will miss your schedule. Or both like in the case Microsoft Vista ... (Does anybody remember WinFS?).
Microsoft stands not alone with such problem. At several high profile delays (like the german toll collect), the rumour mill goes, that the internal project plans forecasted the ultimate date of finalization astonishingly correct, but out of some reasons a much earlier date was presented to the outside.
PS: I like the phrase "processes going thermonuclear". And every company is vulnerable to this, when there are no designed-in shortcuts in the processes that helps to keep the processes under control. There is no sense to completely reiterate an approval process when you only changed the color of your car. In any normal family you will discuss the colour, not the complete descision to buy the type of the car.

Okay, Microsoft will give his employees 100 Dollars for every bug they find in Vista. Okay, based on my experience with Microsoft products many employees will get really rich really fast and Microsoft will be the next Chapter 11 candidate

With Two-Factor-Authentcation removed from the Vista-Release yet another feature was killed. But when each interesting feature in won´t make it in Vista, the rationale of migrating to Vista is more than questionable. Why should someone migrate from XP to Vista? Only for a nicer GUI with more bells&wistles? An operating system with new bugs, new security holes, a new interface, but without any real advantage. From my point of view Vista will be the biggest flop since the construction of the tower at Babel.