Windows XP is still pretty cool

Twelfth in a series. Here’s a dirty little secret: I’m still using Windows XP.

That’s right. A technology analyst -- independent, mind you; not working for a firm that requires a specific load -- and I’m voluntarily using XP. In fact, I’m writing this article on it. I’ve been using it so long, I almost stopped noticing, and as XP crossed the 10-year anniversary of its official launch this week, I thought some about my own experiences with it.

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Now, before you condemn me as a total luddite, let’s be clear: I’ve got lots of Windows 7 and even Vista machines running around the office (and a couple of Macs, for that matter), and I use them as well, all synched up with SugarSync (the one they never mention these days when they’re talking about how cool DropBox is).

But the old AMD desktop powering two big monitors is still my base system. It’s odd, in a way, because I have not one, not two, but three Win7 desktops piled up next to this one, ready to go when it dies.

So, why do I cling to XP when most others have moved on? Here are a few of the reasons.

I like to have each folder view retain its own setting. So, in the My Documents view, I prefer to see midsize icons in alphabetical order. Down at the My Documents\vendors\Chip Companies\Intel level, I can see files in Details view in reverse chronological order (newest first). In the My Pictures view, I like thumbnails. I prefer the subfolders to stay out of the way when I’m viewing by chronology.

In Win7, all folder views change at once whenever I change any of them, which means I am constantly having to adjust my view -- every time I want to see anything. Extra steps. Why can’t the folder just remember how I viewed it last time and stay that way? As it does in XP.

When I want to launch Word in XP, I hit two buttons: Start and the letter “w” and up comes a blank doc. In Win7, the sequence is Start, “w,” and Enter -- three buttons. Extra steps.

In XP, I use the My Documents folder as my desktop. Sometimes I put files or folders in a certain order for specific reasons. A folder containing my work in progress may be on the bottom right, separated from the other folders, because I’m working on it. Files that I’ve saved out for further study are in the order I want to read them. In XP, these items stay where I put them.

But Win7 is much smarter than me, and it thinks they should be in whatever view I last told all my folders to be in. I cannot move things around on my desktop. Win7 has a death grip on all my stuff.

And while we’re on folder views, what the heck is the difference between arrange, sort and group? In Win7, I have all these "choices" and within each, more choices: arrange by author, sort by name, group by date modified. Who has time for all these extra steps? And anyway, once I’ve spent all this time (which I can’t bill back to Microsoft) setting my view just right, it simply changes next time I adjust my view somewhere else in the file system. Why go to all that trouble just to have the OS throw my work out?

Why break things that work? Why bother with extra steps? Why is Microsoft still developing software that is convenient for the company rather than for its users?

It’s not like there are no improvements in Win7. Maybe people, including me, have praised it extravagantly.

Windows XP takes a lot longer to boot, but it’s been years since I established a protocol of powering on before going into the kitchen to make coffee and coming back when SugarSync is finished scanning my hard drive.

Win7 has cooler utilities and media handling, but many of these apps are available through Windows Live, making XP still pretty cool.

If I may observe, the process of continuously developing software and obviating older software seems analogous to the process that movies go through. In 1969, Henry Hathaway made a John Wayne classic called "True Grit" that embodied Wayne’s persona as a tough, dry wrangler trying to do the right thing. Why, in 2010, should the Coen brothers remake the same movie, a retread which, while fine in its own right, will never be a classic? Why downgrade a work of art that was already all it could be?

Because living artists need to eat. Plain and simple. John Wayne is done eating, but the Coen brothers need to put that new pool house on the side deck near the recreation area. In the Maslovian hierarchy of needs, the Coen brothers are way beyond needing to eat. But you get the idea.

Microsoft brings out new editions of Windows because it needs to eat, not because users need better software.

I leave you with this YouTube video, a lovely low-production-value musing on the nature of operating systems and their continuous frenzied development:

Is Facebook already more profitable than Amazon?

Facebook’s financial details may not be public, but estimates show it could already be more profitable than Amazon. Revenue is a different story.

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How profitable is Facebook? Since the young company is still private, nobody knows for sure. Still, estimates indicate the social networking giant could already be pulling in more profits than the online retail giant Amazon. If it isn’t already, it will be by the end of the year, at least according to unofficial numbers.

Facebook’s revenue passed $1.6 billion in the first half of 2011 and saw around $800 million in operating income (although net income was reportedly just under $500 million). Uncrunched points to Amazon’s financials for the same time period: $322 million operating income in Q1 and $191 million operating income in Q2, or $513 million for the first half of 2011.

Palo Alto’s revenue and profit is rising at an estimated 50 percent clip every six months. In other words, $2 billion in operating income for 2011 is entirely possible.

It’s important to remember that revenue and profit are two completely different beasts. While Facebook may be passing Amazon in profit, it’s nowhere near when it comes to revenue. Amazon saw a total of $34 billion in revenue for 2010. Facebook’s revenue for last year is estimated to anywhere from less than $1 billion up to nearly $2 billion.

Amazon’s market cap is $107 billion. Facebook has accepted investments at a valuation of at least $50 billion. The latest valuation from third-party investors was $70 billion, while the highest valuation private markets have given the social network has been $80 billion.

Cue the speculation on whether Facebook is undervalued or overvalued, and remember that Amazon probably deserves the same type of scrutiny.

Reports about Microsoft's annual proxy statement focus on Steve Ballmer's paltry 2 percent pay raise. The big news is with the other Steve

Microsoft's annual proxy statement arrived on Monday, and most of it's a snooze. It's largely forgettable, repeating numbers we've seen in the annual report -- until you get to the parts about shareholdings and salaries for Microsoft's biggest wigs. It gets even more interesting when you compare this year's report with last year's (DOC).

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According to this year's proxy statement, Steve Ballmer got a 2 percent raise, to $2,047,000 for fiscal 2011. At that rate, "the Board believes Mr. Ballmer is underpaid for his role and performance."

Lest you're worried that Ballmer might appear on a street corner near you, hat in hand and begging for nickles, take a look at his stock holdings. One year ago, he held 408 million shares. In the past year, he's sold 18 percent of his holdings and now owns just 333 million shares. Last November, I wrote about his pending stock sales and how they might presage a long-term departure plan. It looks like Ballmer sold all of the 75 million shares he reported, for about $2 billion.

Bottom line: $2 million in salary, $2 billion in stock sales. Not bad for a year's work.

The really interesting story, though, isn't with Steve Ballmer. It's with Steve Sinofsky.

Last year, Sinofsky didn't make the list of named shareholders. Microsoft is only required to report the stock holdings of directors, the CEO, CFO, and the three highest-paid executive officers. Last year, Sinofsky didn't make enough money -- he isn't a director -- so we have no way of knowing how many shares of Microsoft stock he held.

This year Sinofsky's compensation put him among the top three executive officers: almost $650,000 in compensation, a $1.3 million bonus, and $5.3 million in stock options. Since he's now one of the top three, Microsoft has to report his stock holdings.

Turns out Sinofsky is the fourth-largest reported shareholder, behind Bill Gates, Ballmer, and venture capitalist David Marquardt. Sinofsky has "beneficial ownership" of more than 1.1 million shares of Microsoft, including more than 600,000 vested shares that apparently haven't been exercised yet.

That doesn't make Sinofsky the fourth-largest Microsoft shareholder -- not by a long shot. Microsoft is required to report the total number of shares held by all executive offices and directors, and that group of 17 people holds a whopping 879 million shares.

Still, 1.1 million shares makes a pretty nice nest egg, eh? Especially considering Sinofsky isn't yet a member of the board.

Microsoft: BPOS components average 99.9-plus percent uptime

The hosted applications in Microsoft's Business Productivity Online Standard Suite (BPOS) have averaged uptime of 99.9 percent or better in the past year, according to the company.

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BPOS, a collaboration and communications suite hosted by Microsoft and sold with partners, includes Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Office Communications Online and Live Meeting.

Last week, Google touted a 99.98 percent uptime for its hosted Gmail service in 2010, for both individual account holders and people who use it as part of Google Apps, a BPOS rival. Google didn't provide the uptime rate for the other Apps suite components, like Docs and Calendar.

Google and Microsoft offer a 99.9 percent uptime guarantee for their Apps and BPOS suites, respectively. When that service level agreement (SLA) isn't met, Google offers affected customers credits and extends their subscriptions, while Microsoft offers cash reimbursement.

Google announced last week that it was modifying its SLA to count every instance of downtime; previously, it logged only outages of 10 minutes or more. It also tweaked its SLA to include outages due to planned maintenance work, which previously wasn't counted against the 99.9 percent uptime commitment.

According to a spokesman for Microsoft, the BPOS SLA counts "any service issue as downtime, from the minute it starts to resolution."

"We also count issues for any number of impacted users, not just if 'enough' users are impacted," he said via e-mail.

The competition between Google Apps and BPOS has been heating up in the past year. Google has been updating its suite with capabilities aimed at large enterprises and their CIOs. Google Apps has traditionally been aimed at small and medium-size businesses.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is beta testing a big upgrade to BPOS called Office 365, whose applications will be based on the latest 2010 versions of their on-premise counterparts. Office 365 will also include versions that come with Office Web Apps, a hosted version of Microsoft Office, and with the option of the full-featured Office suite itself.

Because BPOS and Google Apps are cloud-hosted suites, their performance and uptime are critical aspects to their respective customers, most of whom rely on the suites as their primary workplace e-mail service.

French gov't will train SMEs to use Google, Microsoft tools

Microsoft and Google recruited a new sales force of sorts on Thursday: a network of business counsellors and IT trainers partly funded by the French government.

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Microsoft and Google recruited a new sales force of sorts on Thursday: a network of business counsellors and IT trainers partly funded by the French government.

The companies have struck an agreement with the government allowing them to promote productivity tools such as Web analytics, document sharing and unified communications, including their own product offerings, through a government-backed IT training plan for small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs).

The government wants to help the country's small businesses use IT to increase sales and become more profitable, and last month renewed the program intended to achieve that, "Passport for a digital economy," for a further three years.

The Passport program delivers free training courses and offers other benefits to startups and businesses with fewer than about 20 employees that have followed three of the courses. Those benefits include discounts on IT products and services, and access to government-backed financing for IT purchases.

Some of the training courses will be written by Google and Microsoft under an agreement signed Thursday morning with Hervé Novelli, the secretary of state responsible for SMEs, and Yves Fouchet of CEFAC, a government-funded agency that delivers training and support to small businesses.

Google will contribute three training modules written by the company's marketing and product teams, said Mats Carduner, the company's managing director for Southern Europe. The courses will teach businesses how to create a Web site, attract an audience and optimize the site to increase sales using tools such as Google Analytics. "We'll make the modules available to CEFAC, but we won't do the training," he said.

Microsoft, a supporter of the Passport program since it began, will offer training materials on Web site creation, along with additional modules on unified communications products and Microsoft Office Live Small Business, its online office productivity tool, said Eric Boustouller, CEO of Microsoft France.

The company is also a participant in the government-sponsored buying guide for small businesses, he said.

"It's not just about Microsoft products. We're open to any products that work with ours, whether from Google or others," he said.

Google and Microsoft are not the only IT vendors backing the Passport program: others include Cisco Systems, Dell, Fujitsu Siemens Computers, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, PayPal and Yahoo.

Since the launch of the program, 45,000 businesses have signed up for help, according to Fouchet.

However, that's just a small fraction of the 2.7 million microenterprises in France, said Novelli. One of the limiting factors for the Passport program is how to reach them all, as the network of small business advisers doesn't have sufficient geographic reach, he said.

That's why the government is almost doubling the number of advisers, said Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, secretary of state for IT.

She also wants to see improvements in the quality of IT training, and said the government is looking at a system of certification for trainers. With the level of demand for IT expertise today, "IT advisor" needs to become a recognized profession that people can put on their CV, she said.

Microsoft prepares new 'Next' website

Microsoft appears to be preparing to launch a new website called "Next" where it will share information about new technologies it and others are developing.

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"It's Microsoft's home for stories and conversations about what's new and on the horizon," according to the "about" page.

For now, the main page says that the site is "coming soon." The only blog post says: "Congrats if you found this site already...you weren't supposed to! We'll be back soon."

It was written by Steve Clayton, who has worked at Microsoft for 13 years and, according to his profile, recently moved to the company's Redmond, Washington, headquarters "to work on storytelling."

The site will offer stories about people at Microsoft and the technologies they are developing, according to the "about" page. "It's not all about Microsoft though -- we'll look at where technology is going, how it will impact our lives and what the important trends are. Innovations and innovators of all types are fair game here and we'll shine a light on them as well as on Microsoft," it says.

Microsoft will welcome feedback about the kinds of topics it should cover on the site, it said. "The site is ultimately for you, to show you who we are, what we're about and where we're headed," it says.

The main page also includes a list of items posted on Twitter from Microsoft's Twitter account. The URL links the site to Microsoft's TechNet blogs, which often cover technical topics related to the company's products.

Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the site or when it will go live.

Microsoft's plan for bringing its BI tools to iOS, Android, and Windows 8 devices

Microsoft outlined its mobile BI roadmap, which includes support for Microsoft business intelligence tools on iOS, Android and Windows 8 over the next year-plus.

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While Microsoft’s coming Hadoop distributions may have been the biggest announcement from the Microsoft SQL PASS Summit last week, there were a couple of other hidden gems.

One of these was Microsoft’s mobile business intelligence (BI) roadmap. Microsoft is taking its BI capabilities and offerings to non-Microsoft platforms in calendar year 2012, officials said during last week’s confab.

Microsoft’s “BI solutions” include everything from PowerPivot and Excel, to SharePoint search and PerformancePoint capabilities, to reporting services. They’re the tools and add-ons that complement SQL Server.

The steps on the Microsoft “Mobile BI” roadmap (which is illustrated in the Microsoft slide above):

1. First half of calendar 2012: Enable Microsoft’s “existing corporate BI Web-based solutions” — including SQL Server Reporting Services, PerformancePoint and Excel Services –to run in browsers on Apple’s iOS and Windows devices. (I’m assuming “Windows devices” here means Windows Phones and Windows 7 PCs, but am asking just to make sure.)

2. Second half of calendar 2012: Add touch support for data exploration and visualization capabilities of those BI offerings on iOS, Microsoft and also Android platforms. (Again, this seemingly means iOS-based iPhones and iPads; Windows 7 PCs and Windows Phones; and Android phones. Not sure if it also means Android tablets. I’ve asked and will update if/when I hear back) Update: Microsoft officials demo’d this at PASS on Windows Phone Mango, the iPad 2 and an Android tablet. (Thanks @pradeepviswav)

3. Post-calendar 2012: Adding support for Microsoft’s BI offerings for Windows 8 slates. (Even though Windows 8 is expected by most company watchers to ship by the fall of 2012, Office 15 isn’t expected to be done until some time after that, and possibly not until 2013. Given Microsoft’s BI offerings include Excel and SharePoint, I’m assuming this is a reference to the “Wave 15″ version of those offerings.)

A note on the Microsoft Business Intelligence blog adds that items 1 and 2 will “ship outside of the final release of SQL Server 2012 in a separate ship vehicle the details of which are yet to be finalized.”

Microsoft officials did acknowledge last week that some key touch-centric features of Power View (the new BI tool formerly codenamed “Crescent,” which Microsoft is developing alongside SQL Server 2012, a k a, SQL Server “Denali,”) are going to ship in the latter half of 2012, months after SQL Server 2012 itself. Power View is a browser-based Silverlight application launched from SharePoint Server 2010. A first version of Power View (minus touch functionality) will ship alongside SQL Server 2012 in the early part of 2012.

(I’m thinking BI Mobile Radmap Item 2 is a reference to Power View touch and maybe also Data Explorer — a SQL Azure Lab tool for mashing up Azure Marketplace data with other data sources.)

There are also a couple of other interesting tidbits regarding Microsoft’s Hadoop announcement from last week from another Microsoft blog post.

In addition to enabling Microsoft BI tools to work with the two Hadoop distributions (Windows Azure and Windows Server) that Microsoft and partner Hortonworks are building, Microsoft also is going to provide other integration points between its Windows public/private cloud and Hadoop.

“Both distributions will offer simplified acquisition, installation and configuration experience of several Hadoop based technologies i.e. HDFS, Hive, Pig etc., enhanced security through integration with Active Directory, unified management through integration with System Center and a familiar and productive development platform through integration with Visual Studio and .NET – all of this optimized to provide the best in class performance in Windows environments,” according to a post on the SQL Server team blog.

The promised Community Technology Preview (CTP) of Hadoop for Windows Azure — due out before the end of this year — will include a Hive ODBC Driver and Hive Add-in for Excel, the post noted. And in terms of what kinds of contributions Microsoft is planning to offer back to the Apache/Hadoop community, one example is work around making “JavaScript a first class language for Big Data by enabling the millions of JavaScript developers to directly write high performance Map/Reduce jobs.”

Microsoft launches public sector magazine

Microsoft has quietly created a new group, the office of civic innovation, as well as a new online magazine designed to promote its public sector initiatives.

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The new office of civic innovation is a seven-person team based in Washington, D.C., and part of Microsoft's Public Sector division, said Mark Drapeau, editor and chief of the new online magazine, Publicyte, and a member of the new team. The company first talked about the group at a launch party for the magazine in Washington, D.C., earlier this week.

Workers in the office of civic innovation will try to innovate the way the Public Sector group sells products and communicates with customers, he said.

Drapeau hopes to make Publicyte, the digital magazine, "a great source of creative thought leadership on technology and innovation for different public sector verticals" like government, education and health care. "We want to present Microsoft in a new light to influential people in the public and civic sectors and through the media that covers it," he said.

Drapeau will contribute articles to the site as will other Microsoft writers and outside contributors. "It's a Microsoft website so it's going to be Microsoft-friendly, but we have a lot of latitude about the kind of content and opinions that are expressed," he said.

Microsoft did not officially announce the magazine. "It's a bit under the radar. I want to build an audience organically," he said.

Publicyte will be successful if it influences public and civic sector professionals, he said. "If we can change the way people think about issues like social media and government, we've done our jobs," he said.

Drapeau started out as a researcher studying animal behavior and their social networks and he said he can apply some of that work to his current position running Publicyte. He's been working in Microsoft's Public Sector division for about a year-and-a-half.

Microsoft has been in a heated battle with Google over the past couple of years for contracts to offer products and services to public sector organizations, like government agencies and schools. Publicyte and the civic innovation office appear aimed at shaping Microsoft's image and boosting its success in the sector.

Microsoft fails to credit Kelihos takedown partner

Microsoft grabbed headlines Wednesday with its report about the successful takedown of the Kelihos botnet, but while the company detailed the achievements of its Digital Crimes Unit, it failed to mention the major role security firm Kaspersky Lab played in the operation.

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Microsoft's Kelihos takedown announcement centered on the fact that its specialized team of lawyers succeeded in naming defendants in a botnet-related federal court complaint for the first time -- such cases usually involve unknown parties.

The named defendants were Alexander Piatti and his Czech-based company dotFREE Group SRO, which operated a second-level domain (SLD) registration service in the .cz.cc name space. This service was abused by the botnet's operators to set up hosts for their control infrastructure. A temporary restraining order was obtained by the Digital Crimes Unit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, forcing VeriSign to suspend the cz.cc domain.

Microsoft did not disclose any technical details about how Kelihos was hijacked from its original operators because Kaspersky Lab handled that part of the operation. The security company's experts explained Thursday in a lengthy blog post how they took control of the botnet, but they probably didn't appreciate being left out of the story in the first place.

"Hey @msftmmpc [Microsoft Malware Protection Center] why didn't u mention all truth about Hlux/Kelihos botnet taking down?" Dmitry Bestuzhev, head of Kaspersky Lab's global research and analysis team for Latin America, wrote on Twitter.

"Kaspersky Lab played a critical role in this botnet takedown initiative, leading the way to reverse-engineer the bot malware, crack the communication protocol and develop tools to attack the peer-to-peer infrastructure," said Tillmann Werner, a senior virus analyst with Kaspersky in Germany. "We worked closely with Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit (DCU), sharing the relevant information and providing them with access to our live botnet tracking system," he added.

Even the antivirus vendor's co-founder and CEO, Eugene Kaspersky, linked to his company's blog post with the message: "The flipside of the Microsoft's takedown of Kelihos (Hlux) botnet."

Kaspersky Lab currently operates the only server where computers infected with this malware connect to, which effectively puts it in control of the botnet. The company has the resources to keep this so-called sinkhole operational for a long time, but the end goal is to reduce Kelihos' size as much as possible.

Sending commands to clean the infected systems remotely would be illegal in most countries, so this won't be an easy task. Microsoft has added detection for the Kelihos malware family to its Malicious Software Removal Tool (MSRT), which is distributed to computers worldwide via Windows Update, but the effects have yet to show.

The software giant claims that not crediting Kaspersky Lab in its original announcement was the result of poor communication between the two companies. "Due to an unfortunate miscommunication between Microsoft and Kaspersky prior to the announcement, Microsoft was operating under the belief that it was Kaspersky's desire to not be proactively mentioned in the announcement --- as some partners commonly request and which we understand and respect given the sensitivity of these situations," said Richard Boscovich, a senior attorney with the Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit.

"However, we were very glad to see Kaspersky subsequently come forward with their role in the operation, because we very much want to give them the credit they deserve. Their research and unique, in-depth insight into the botnet was invaluable in this case and we are grateful for their support and determination to make the Internet safer for everyone," he added.

Apple, carriers launch iPhone 4S pre-sale

Verizon Wireless today beat Apple and its carrier rivals to the iPhone 4S pre-order punch, kicking off sales just after midnight PT.

Sprint followed about 20 minutes later.

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But while Verizon's site appeared to be working normally -- and responded promptly to orders that were aborted at the last minute -- Sprint's was initially sluggish and displayed a "site is temporarily unavailable" message when one of the iPhone 4S models was chosen.

By 12:35 a.m., however, Sprint's site accepted an order.

Apple's online store reopened around 12:30 a.m. Pacific after its usual pre-launch maintenance, and appeared to be operating normally at first, although Computerworld was not able to place an order as a new customer with any of the three carriers. In fact, after selecting Sprint, a message appeared saying that the iPhone 4S could only be pre-ordered by existing Sprint customers, and told others that they would have to purchase their phones at an Apple retail store.

But within 30 minutes, Apple's pre-sales site started acting erratically, at times returning a generic "Not Found" error message and at other times refusing to allow a carrier choice. At 1:15 a.m. those problems appeared to have been largely resolved, but Apple's site was at times lethargic, likely because of the traffic load.

AT&T did not begin taking pre-orders at its website until nearly 1:00 a.m. Pacific.

Today's pre-order launch had been set Tuesday when Apple CEO Tim Cook led a launch event that unveiled the long-rumored smartphone.

Much of the commentary about the iPhone 4S, particularly on Twitter, was negative that day, with many expressing disappointment that the smartphone didn't offer a larger-sized screen or support the faster LTE networks that AT&T and Verizon are deploying.

It's impossible to know whether the negative reaction will mean fewer sales, but most analysts have predicted that it will have little impact and remained confident that Apple will sell a record number of iPhones during the fourth quarter.

Last year Apple sold 16.2 million iPhones in the fourth quarter.

Apple is selling the iPhone 4S at three prices -- $199, $299 and $399 -- rather than the two prices of earlier versions. Also today, Apple and carriers kicked off sales of the $99 8GB iPhone 4.

The company has departed from past practice in another way: It kept alive 2009's iPhone 3GS, which it and carriers will offer to customers free when they commit to a two-year service contract.

iPhones ordered online today are to be delivered by Oct. 14, said Apple, the same day in-store sales will begin. Apple has said its retail stores will open their doors next Friday at 8 a.m. local time, an hour earlier than usual for most of the outlets.

Also today, Apple told customers they could order an unlocked iPhone 4S -- one not tied to a specific carrier or connected to a contract -- in November for prices ranging from $649 (for a 16GB model) to $849 (for a 64GB phone).

Steve Jobs on Education

Everyone is talking about Steve Jobs this morning. The acknowledgement of how he improved the human condition while also making billions in profits for himself and others almost makes the Al Copeland Humanitarian Award unnecessary this year. Steve Jobs embodied the entrepreneur as humanitarian — not because he gave away his wealth as if to cleanse himself of the sin of having earned it, but because he created and promoted consumer items that significantly improved our lives while justly generating enormous wealth for himself, his employees, and shareholders.

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In addition to embodying the spirit of “The Al,” Jobs had quite a lot of smart things to say about education reform. I’m grateful to Whitney Tilson for reminding me of this. Here are some selected remarks from Steve Jobs on education:

[On Unions]

I’m a very big believer in equal opportunity as opposed to equal outcome. I don’t believe in equal outcome because unfortunately life’s not like that. It would be a pretty boring place if it was. But I really believe in equal opportunity. Equal opportunity to me more than anything means a great education. Maybe even more important than a great family life, but I don’t know how to do that. Nobody knows how to do that. But it pains me because we do know how to provide a great education. We really do. We could make sure that every young child in this country got a great education. We fallfar short of that…. The problem there of course is the unions. The unions are the worst thing that ever happened to education because it’s not a meritocracy. It turns into a bureaucracy, which is exactly what has happened. The teachers can’t teach and administrators run the place and nobody can be fired. It’s terrible.

[On Vouchers]

But in schools people don’t feel that they’re spending their own money. They feel like it’s free, right? No one does any comparison shopping. A matter of fact if you want to put your kid in a private school, you can’t take the forty-four hundred dollars a year out of the public school and use it, you have to come up with five or six thousand of your own money. I believe very strongly that if the country gave each parent a voucher for forty-four hundred dollars that they could only spend at any accredited school several things would happen. Number one schools would start marketing themselves like crazy to get students. Secondly, I think you’d see a lot of new schools starting. I’ve suggested as an example, if you go to Stanford Business School, they have a public policy track; they could start a school administrator track. You could get a bunch of people coming out of college tying up with someone out of the business school, they could be starting their own school. You could have twenty-five year old students out of college, very idealistic, full of energy instead of starting a Silicon Valley company, they’d start a school. I believe that they would do far better than any of our public schools would. The third thing you’d see is I believe, is the quality of schools again, just in a competitive marketplace, start to rise. Some of the schools would go broke. Alot of the public schools would go broke. There’s no question about it. It would be rather painful for the first several years

DM: But deservedly so.

SJ: But far less painful I think than the kids going through the system as it is right now.

[On Digital Learning]

The market competition model seems to indicate that where there is a need there is a lot of providers willing to tailor their products to fit that need and a lot of competition which forces them to get better and better. I used to think when I was in my twenties that technology was the solution to most of the world’s problems, but unfortunately it just ain’t so… We need to attack these things at the root, which is people and how much freedom we give people, the competition that will attract the best people. Unfortunately, there are side effects, like pushing out a lot of 46 year old teachers who lost their spirit fifteen years ago and shouldn’t be teaching anymore. I feel very strongly about this. I wish it was as simple as giving it over to the computer….

As you’ve pointed out I’ve helped with more computers in more schools than anybody else in the world and I absolutely convinced that is by no means the most important thing. The most important thing is a person. A person who incites your curiosity and feeds your curiosity; and machines cannot do that in the same way that people can. The elements of discovery are all around you. You don’t need a computer. Here – why does that fall? You know why? Nobody in the entire world knows why that falls. We can describe it pretty accurately but no one knows why. I don’t need a computer to get a kid interested in that, to spend a week playing with gravity and trying to understand that and come up with reasons why.

DM: But you do need a person.

SJ: You need a person. Especially with computers the way they are now. Computers are very reactive but they’re not proactive; they are not agents, if you will. They are very reactive. What children need is something more proactive. They need a guide. They don’t need an assistant. I think we have all the material in the world to solve this problem; it’s just being deployed in other places. I’ve been a very strong believer in that what we need to do in education is to go to the full voucher system. I know this isn’t what the interview was supposed to be about but it is what I care about a great deal.

(Source: Smithsonian Institution Oral and Video Histories)

The above interview was from 1995, but it is clear that Jobs did not significantly change his mind over time. In 2007 he reiterated that unions and lifetime employment for teachers were at the heart of the problem. This is from PC World:

During a joint appearance with Michael Dell that was sponsored by the Texas Public Education Reform Foundation, Jobs took on the unions by first comparing schools to small businesses, and school principals to CEOs. He then asked rhetorically: “What kind of person could you get to run a small business if you told them that when they came in, they couldn’t get rid of people that they thought weren’t any good? Not really great ones, because if you’re really smart, you go, ‘I can’t win.’ “

He went on to say that “what is wrong with our schools in this nation is that they have become unionized in the worst possible way. This unionization and lifetime employment of K-12 teachers is off-the-charts crazy.”

After Steve Jobs made these comments I wrote an op-ed for the NY Sun, which stated:

There is a price to be paid for this kind of frank analysis and Steve Jobs knows it. “Apple just lost some business in this state, I’m sure,” Mr. Jobs said. Of course, Apple sells a large portion of its computers to public school systems. By taking a stance against school unionization, Mr. Jobs may lose some school sales for Apple.

Sharing the stage with Mr. Jobs was Michael Dell, the chief executive officer of Dell, a competing computer manufacturer. By comparison, according to the description of the event, Mr. Dell “sat quietly with his hands folded in his lap,” during Mr. Jobs’ speech while the audience at an education reform conference “applauded enthusiastically.”

Mr. Dell followed Mr. Jobs by defending the rise of unions in education: “the employer was treating his employees unfairly and that was not good. … So now you have these enterprises where they take good care of their people. The employees won, they do really well and succeed.”

Whether Mr. Jobs or Mr. Dell is right about the role unions have played in public education, one thing is perfectly clear – attacking the unions is a controversial and potentially costly choice for corporate CEOs.

The safe thing is to make bland declarations about the need to improve the quality of education without getting into any of the messy particulars that might be necessary to produce a better education. Changing the status quo in education almost certainly requires ruffling someone’s feathers, but doing that is almost certainly bad for business.

In part this is why we see highly successful entrepreneurs who survive in a world of ruthless competition abandon these business principles when they turn to education philanthropy. People who would never endorse the idea that businesses should be granted local monopolies, offer workers lifetime tenure, or pay employees based solely on seniority, embrace a status quo public system that has all of these features.

While some CEOs may sincerely believe that education is somehow different from the rest of the world in which they live, others have been cowed into submission. Teachers are a very large, well-organized, and relatively affluent consumer and political bloc….

Steve Jobs has embarked on a perilous path, but with solid evidence and persuasive arguments, he can move all of us toward higher quality schools. He should be applauded for having the courage to say out loud what scores of other business leaders are too sheepish to say.

Unfortunately, Steve Jobs will no longer be with us as we try to advance on this perilous path of education reform.

Microsoft to ship last service pack for Office 2007 this month

Microsoft yesterday announced it will ship a third and final service pack update for Office 2007 before year's end.

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It appears that Microsoft will deliver Office 2007 Service Pack 3 (SP3) this month.

"The October 2011 release provides a six-month window to test and deploy the release prior to exiting mainstream support," Microsoft said in a blog post Thursday.

Office 2007, which went on general sale in January 2007 alongside Windows Vista, exits what Microsoft calls "mainstream support" in April 2012.

The suite will continue to be updated with security fixes for another five years after that, through April 11, 2017, during the "extended support" phase.

The biggest difference between the two support phases is that extended, non-security fixes are provided only to companies that have paid for special support contracts.

Microsoft, however, never issues service packs -- which are mostly composed of past security and other patches -- once a product is retired from mainstream support.

Office 2007 SP3 will be offered using Microsoft's now-standard procedure. Initially, the service pack will be available as a manual download and through Windows Update as an optional install. Three months later, the company will kick SP3 into Windows Update for automatic distribution and deployment.

Microsoft also usually gives corporate customers another heads-up about 30 days before it starts serving Office service packs through its update services.

Service Pack 3 is Office's 2007's first SP since 2009's SP2.

Not surprisingly, Microsoft touted the newer Office 2010 as an option for customers who want to retire Office 2007 or the even-older Office 2003.

Office 2003 has more than two years of life left in it: The suite won't be retired from security support until April 2014.

Arabs, Jews Study IT Together

Nazareth, Israel
Orgad Lootsky heard the bombing near here that killed 20. But Lootsky, who has trained IT professionals for seven years, still believes he can forge links between Arabs (Christian and Muslim) and Jews.

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In this northern city, which has an Arab section and a Jewish one, called Nazareth Illit, high school teenagers from the Nazareth Baptist School and its Jewish counterpart come together to earn their Cisco Certified Networking Associate (CCNA) certificates in classes taught by Lootsky.
These young adults exhibit seriousness preparing for their futures, but what's compelling is how they trump the political pressures that make any mixing of Arabs and Jews potentially confrontational.
Haya Samaan, a 15-year-old 10th-grader at the Nazareth Baptist School, has been in the program for two months. "I want to make a difference," says Samaan, who considers Bill Gates a hero. "I want to fulfill my dreams," she adds, explaining her studies for the CCNA certificate. She's also excited about the connections she's making with Jewish classmates.
The program has backing from local educators such as Ousama Moalem, principal of the Nazareth Baptist School; parents; and scholarship help from Salesforce.com/foundation, individuals and Nazareth Illit-Yezreel Technological College, which hosts the sessions on its campus.
Zika Abzuk, who established the program in Nazareth and is business development manager at Cisco in Israel, said that after a suicide bombing, tensions were high, and some parents and officials were dubious about the plan. "But we felt this is time people should show there are many good things we can do together," she said.
Moalem, whose school of 1,060 makes do with 20 computers and lacks networking equipment and teaching space, agreed: "The students are excited, the atmosphere is comfortable, and I look forward to more cooperation with the Jewish school."
But as with IT projects in the business world, reality tempers enthusiastic visions. Iris Klein, general director of the Nazareth Illit-Yezreel Technological College, said on a day when people were visiting bombing victims in the hospital that she wholeheartedly supports the program and will find money to keep it alive, but that this alone will not change the enmity in the region. "This is a small program, and we would be happy to enlarge it," she said, "but we have to be realistic."
And yet the attitude of Alex Etkin, a 17-year-old 11th-grade Jewish student in the program, should encourage more optimism. "We're all here to learn," said Etkin, who has dreams of being an artist as well as an IT professional. "It doesn't matterif you are Arab or Jewish, we want to learn together."

Security Log

NCipher Introduces Security Module
NCipher PLC, a Cambridge, England-based vendor of cryptographic security management products, has announced a network-attached hardware security module that supports encryption, decryption and signing functions. The product has been independently verified to conform with the Federal Information Process Standards, according to a company spokesman. Pricing starts at $30,000.
Security Bookshelf
CCNA Certification Library (CCNA Self-Study, exam #640-801), by Wendell Odom; Cisco Press, 2003.

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All information security is built on a foundation of a secure network, so anyone who hopes to do well in a security career had better understand networking. This is a comprehensive beginner's guide that covers everything you need to know to pass your Cisco Certified Network Associate exam. It also includes a cut-down version of Boson Software Inc.'s NetSim practice test software on CD-ROM. Netsim lets you practice the network skills you learn from the books on a virtual network on your PC.
The books are clear, and they cover every key concept in depth. Although focused on Cisco Systems Inc. products, the skills learned are universal to networking -- and critical for anyone serious about security.
There are many books on the market to prepare you for exams. Some are so focused on helping you cram for the exam that they aren't useful for anything else. I haven't taken my CCNA exam yet, so we'll have to see how useful this book is in that regard.

The real value of IT certifications: Education

I got my first certification in the 90s on Windows 98. I did it solely because I was tired of hemming and hawing when my clients asked if I was certified. After all, I'd been working and playing with technology in various forms since the 1960s. I didn't need to prove myself to anyone and besides, all certification would prove is that I had good test-taking skills. I was surprised, however, after going through the preparation and testing process, at how much I learned on subjects not directly related to Windows 98. Since then, I've added CCNA, MCSE, Linux+, MCT, and CCNA Security as a means of broadening my knowledge base and keeping my skills sharp. I'm also pursuing certifications in non-IT areas for the same reason: education.

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Here are two rarely spoken benefits of certification:

1) Broaden my overall knowledge base.

I realized that preparing for and taking the test forced me to fill in the gaps in my knowledge. For example, I had very limited experience with NetWare, but the test had questions about IPX/SPX. In order to pass the test, I had to gain a basic familiarity with Novell NetWare, so I got a trial copy of NetWare (I think it was 3.12) and began to experiment. There were questions about Unix and even mainframe integration. Admittedly, there weren't many questions on those subjects, but without knowing exactly which questions would be asked, I was forced to study each of the subjects enough to be comfortable with the fundamentals. My overall knowledge base was increasing because I wanted to pass a Windows 98 certification exam.

2) Narrow the gap between what I think I know and what I really know.

I rarely know as much as I think I do on any given subject. The certification process provides a reminder of the vast amount of information that is absent from my brain.

We've all read the myriad articles extolling the benefits of IT certifications: Make more money, get faster promotions, earn the respect of your peers. Many organizations reimburse testing fees and even offer pay increases when you achieve certification. There's no doubt that certification has its benefits, but I've never read an article that discusses the real benefit of certification. The real benefit lies in forcing me to follow a prescribed course of study, filling in gaps in my knowledge, and widening my overall knowledge base. (This, by the way, is not about "paper" certifications where you memorize questions and answers and pass the test without having any real knowledge. Please don't do that.) Even if your employer doesn't pay for certs, most employers like having qualified people on staff who are interested in expanding their knowledge.

I had a client who said he didn't care if we were certified or not, but he did care that we went through the process of preparing for certification. He wasn't talking about attending a boot camp or memorizing questions. He was talking about sitting in a lab, experimenting with configurations, breaking things and troubleshooting, and fixing them.

I really don't like taking tests. I'd rather do almost anything than take another certification test, but I know that the process of preparing for the test will make me a better trainer, writer, and IT person. It's not about piling up a long list of initials after my name, it's about piling up the hours of study, experimentation, and real-world experience that those initials represent. That way, when I design a system, it will usually work as expected. Similarly, when some component fails, I've got a real chance at identifying the problem and fixing it.

How do you see the benefits of certification? Am I the only one who thinks of the certification process as having educational value?

I still don't know as much as I think I do, but preparing for and passing a certification exam gets my actual knowledge base a little closer to my perceived knowledge base.

Certs: Added value or minimum requirement?

I've got a Bachelors Degree in Information Systems Management, my Certified Information Security Systems Professional (CISSP) certification, the SANS GIAC Systems and Network Auditor (GSNA) certificate and I used to be a CCNA. I spent two years getting my B.S. by attending night courses, the CISSP took me 6 months of constant study, the GSNA required a week's worth of intense instructor lead study, and I spent the better part of a school year taking the official Cisco course work at the local junior college before taking the test. And with the exception of the CCNA, the time I spent earning my degree and getting my certifications was aimed strictly at filling in a check box on an HR person's list rather than learning something. Not to say I didn't learn something in studying for each, but my goal was fulfilling a job requirement instead of education.

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I have mixed feelings about certifications in the IT and security professions; certifications show that someone has the minimum knowledge required to pass a particular test. It shows they understand their profession well enough to know what certificates are going to be required to get a job in their field. It shows that the person is dedicated enough to their profession to take and pass these tests. But what it doesn't show is real-world knowledge of security.

Obviously I'm not opposed to certifications, since I hold several myself. But I've never liked the fact that many people think certification and skills are the same thing. The fact that having the right certification can mean a significantly higher level of pay for professionals who otherwise are of the same skill level only further complicates the situation. It encourages people to accumulate as many different certifications as possible to help bolster their income, something I'm as guilty of as anyone else.

I remember the early days of the Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer and "paper MCSE's" who had passed all the tests, but could barely remember how to change a password when they got their first job in the real world. I often hear accusations that the CISSP is heading in the same direction, despite increased efforts by the ISC2 to validate candidates and verify levels of experience. But I think both of these miss the real point of certification; they show that someone has spent the time and effort to pass a test, not that they have the skills required to work in the real world. After all, no one expects a kid fresh out of college to know everything about their chosen career, so why should a certificate be any different?