I’ve been installing a lot of different operating systems recently for testing different things, and there’s an interesting issue going on with the location of the ‘traditional’ terminal or command prompt.

I’ll admit, I’m a command line junkie after years of first DOS and then Unix. Despite being a complete Mac zealot as well, the first application I start after a browser and email when OS X starts up is either the Terminal or Apple’s X Windows System implementation.

But I’m noticing something odd. On Linux and Solaris the ‘Terminal’ application is often hidden away under the ‘System Tools’ or ‘Administration Tools’ part of the menu within whatever interface you choose. I suspect this is because these operating systems have been pushing for the ’standard’ (read not power or developer user) who don’t want to use a shell to use their OS.

Relying on a soft client running on Windows as my sole resource for making important calls has been a recipe for disaster. Plain old telephone service may be old fashioned, but you know what? With POTS, 99% of the time the phone just works. The same can’t be said for my current voice over IP setup, which I am relying on in my new office.

I am in my third week of a pilot VoIP project. My setup now includes a Plantronics cordless headset in conjunction with Siemens "soft phone" client software on my laptop.

One issue is call quality. It’s either great or it just plain sucks.

Wild, wide Wednesday’s IT Blogwatch: in which Intel makes it easier to program for quad-core CPUs. Not to mention the annual list of least influential Americans…

Jon Stokes has the scoop:

Intel announced today that they’re open-sourcing their cross-platform Thread Building Blocks 2.0 (TBB) template library. While the company contributes code to open-source project like the Linux kernel and drivers, the opening of TBB marks the first time that Intel has taken a commercial tool and open-sourced it, making it Intel’s largest open-source commitment to date.

The aim of TBB … is to make it easier for coders in C++ to express task-level parallelism. TBB works by abstracting parallelism above the level that most programmers are currently used to, especially those coders who use POSIX or Windows threads. Coders can use the TBB template library in conjunction with the platform’s native threads, and the different pieces of the project (task scheduler, mutex locks, atomic operations, containers, etc.) can be used independently of one another.

Comments Off

Seven days after a zero-day vulnerability surfaced that involves both Internet Explorer and Firefox, the Firefox developers at Mozilla have released a patch for the vulnerability. Microsoft, for its part, says the security hole in IE is a feature, not a bug.

For a week after the problem surfaced, security pundits were taking sides to pin the blame on either Firefox or IE. The rest of us, especially people in corporate IT, didn’t want to hear that — we just wanted it fixed. Finger-pointing (as in "the problem isn’t in our product, it’s in the other guy’s product") is as old as IT, and it’s always a sign of a vendor that cares more about playing games than about what’s good for customers.

Where is Wednesday’s IT Blogwatch? In Denver, where Microsoft launches a Salesforce.com-killer. Not to mention building Scott Hanselman’s ridiculously fast PC…

Marc L. Songini reports:

Years after nimble upstarts like Salesforce.com Inc. broke ground in the on-demand CRM business, Microsoft Corp. is finally set to launch its own, much anticipated hosted offering today at its Worldwide Partner Conference in Denver. The offering from Microsoft’s Business Solutions unit is based on the next version of its packaged CRM application, code-named Titan, which is due to ship in the fourth quarter.
…
The hosted service will come in two versions — Professional and Enterprise Editions. The Professional Edition will include all the customization, sales, service and workflow capabilities of the Titan software. The service will be offered without charge through the end of 2007, and then will be priced at $39 per user per month during 2008 and $44 thereafter … The Enterprise Edition includes the same capabilities and allows users to continue working in an application independently of the service. Once the user logs back on to CRM Live, the data on the laptop is automatically synchronized with the online database … available in April 2008 … at $59.

Comments Off

It’s Tuesday’s IT Blogwatch: in which the state of Massachusetts thinks it likes Office 2007 after all. Not to mention why not to mess with two yuppies in a BMW…

Eric Lai has the scoop:

Massachusetts today released draft specifications that would allow state workers to continue using Microsoft’s Office Open XML (OOXML) format. The latest proposal comes about two years after state IT officials kicked off a raging political battle by unveiling  specifications that would have required state workers to use applications that support only "open" technologies like the OpenDocument format (ODF).
…
According to pages 18-22 of the proposed Massachusetts Enterprise Technical Reference Model 4.0, OOXML, along with ODF, plain text and HTML formats, meets the IT division’s criteria for an open document format. Other formats that are not considered open but could be used by Massachusetts state employees include Adobe Corp.’s Portable Document Format and Rich Text Format.
…
Microsoft has played hardball by lobbying hard in Massachusetts and other states, and to the federal government. On the other side, ODF supporter IBM has also lobbied governments.

Comments Off

That’ll be Thursday’s IT Blogwatch then: in which Microsoft responds to Google’s antitrust complaint about Vista’s desktop search features. Not to mention the seven most annoying things about the future…

Gregg Keizer reports:

Microsoft Corp. has agreed to make changes to Windows Vista’s desktop search and indexing tool, but it did not concede, as Google Inc. charged, that the feature violated a 2002 antitrust settlement … In Vista SP1, Microsoft will allow users and computer manufacturers to select a default search program by using the process already in place for choosing a default browser or media player.
…
Google’s complaint revolved around whether Vista’s search was a new feature, as Google claimed, or an extension of a feature in earlier editions of Windows, as Microsoft said. The point was important, since by the 2002 settlement agreement … Microsoft must help rivals build software that runs smoothly on Windows.

Comments Off

Patent, patent on the wall, who’s the scaredest of them all? It’s Friday at IT Blogwatch where Microsoft taps its baton and Linux distros sign. Not to mention, a space shuttle monitor suburban-style …

Linspire’s press release says:

Today Microsoft Corp. and Linux desktop provider Linspire Inc. announced a broad interoperability, technical collaboration that also includes intellectual property assurances.
…
Through the agreement, Microsoft and Linspire have developed a framework to provide patent covenants for Linspire customers. The patent covenants provide customers with confidence that the Linspire technologies they use come with rights to relevant Microsoft patents.

Groklaw’s not kidding around:

It’s IT Blogwatch in which we ask: Why? Why would anyone think Windows users need another browser? Not to mention an unusual Cold War missile defense strategy…
Gregg Keizer saw it happen:

For his traditional last-minute surprise near the end of the Worldwide Developers Conference keynote today, Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs announced that the company is releasing a beta of its Safari browser that runs on the rival Windows operating system.
…
In a brief pitch, Jobs claimed that the beta of Safari 3 is more than twice as fast as Internet Explorer on Windows XP, and 1.6 times faster than Firefox. "What we’ve got here is the most innovative browser in the world, and the fastest browser on Windows," said Jobs, according to a transcript posted to the Engadget Web site as the keynote unfolded.

Apple Gazette’s first impressions were quick, but Safari wasn’t:

‘Twas a busy weekend of finger pointing with the DoJ pointing to Google, which pointed to Microsoft, which beckoned its former attorney — at the DoJ! Not to mention effective procrastination …

Joe Wilcox blows the whistle:

Back in November, a mystery company filed a legal complaint about Windows Vista. The company has been revealed to be Google, in a breach of legal protocol.
…
Suddenly there is chatter about the Google complaint, as seen in a New York Times story posted [Saturday], with a Sunday dateline. The public disclosure, which fingers Google as the November complainant, violates the court’s protocol for protecting the privacy of companies filing complaints. Apparently, there is division among some states and the Justice Department about the Google complaint.
…
As for the complaint: Apparently, Google contends that Windows Vista’s built-in search feature is anticompetitive because the search indexer can’t be turned off. So, for people choosing Google Desktop Search, there would be two indexers running, which allegedly would degrade performance and the overall end user experience.