The second installment in the SD Times exclusive on on Midori, Microsoft’s next-generation operating system, has just been published.

Part 2, aka “Microsoft maps out migration from Windows,” by David Worthington, will be followed shortly by an exploration of the security aspects of Midori.

You can also read the first installment, “Microsoft’s plans for post-Windows OS revealed.”

The Wikipedia contains a fascinating article, “Features removed from Windows Vista,” describing things that were in Windows XP that aren’t in its successor.

The long list of removed features is broken up into 15 main categories:

1 Windows Shell
2 Windows Explorer
3 Internet Explorer
4 User account rights and logon
5 Win32 console
6 Networking
7 Multimedia
8 File system, drivers and memory
9 Boot, shutdown, power management
10 Windows applications and features
11 Legacy applications and features
12 Graphics, DirectX and video
13 Installation and servicing
14 Kernel
15 Other minor changes

As someone who uses Window XP and Windows Vista only occasionally these days, I haven’t noticed many of these things myself. Regular Windows user may know most of this stuff.

It is noteworthy that Microsoft removed Services for Macintosh, which provided file and print sharing via the obsolete Appletalk protocol. This could affect Windows Vista users on a network that has old Appletalk file servers and printers.

According to Alex Neihaus, VP of marketing for Active Endpoints, “US companies have become too caught up in the complexity of their current systems.” Why? Because you haven’t download a trial version of his company’s business process management software — and companies in Asia have.

As Alex wrote to me, “Since we shifted in March from focusing on OEM sales of our visual orchestration system to marketing it directly to end users, downloads have been dominated by emerging economies like India and China. Informal conversations with my colleagues with similar models confirm the pattern is industry-wide. We’re not trying to be jingoistic. Instead, we think, as we said in the message below, that this should be a wake-up call to the US development community that change is risky, but stasis is fatal.”

He sent me an “open letter” that Active Endpoints is sending to 30,000 U.S. developers. Here it is, unaltered. What do you think of his admittedly self-interested message?

Dear Developer,

We are emailing you because we are concerned about you. We’ve learned something about the state of middleware technology in the US, its impact on outsourcing and US business competitiveness that we felt strongly we should share with you.

Since early March, we have been offering downloads of our new ActiveVOS visual orchestration system at www.activevos.com. With ActiveVOS, you can automate, control, adapt and manage your services-based applications in ways you never dreamed were possible. And, you do it in a 100%-standards based environment, at breakthrough pricing.

As you might imagine, we watch our download statistics very carefully… sometime hourly. We expected to have downloads from all over the world, but the shocking truth is that a majority of our downloads are coming from outside the US, especially from India and China. A conversation I had with a marketing director at a major open-source ESB provider confirmed that company is seeing fully half of its downloads from India and China.

At first, we couldn’t believe it. And we were surprised, because the US market for app dev products is several orders of magnitude larger than in these developing markets. Then, we started asking ourselves questions like “Why is this so pronounced a trend?” And “what do these developers, business analysts and companies know that US enterprises don’t?”

The answers are clear. US companies have become too caught up in the complexity of their current systems… too content to be dictated to by proprietary middleware vendors… too comfortable with their status quo. Meanwhile, companies without legacy issues – and without the temptation to use those issues as inertia – adopt the most effective and modern middleware technologies rapidly.

Is it any wonder, then, that US developers are increasingly frustrated by the slow pace of change, the threat to their jobs, and the technical and political paralysis created by so-called enterprise architectures?

Clearly, we hope you will be the agent for change in your company and download ActiveVOS at www.activevos.com. We hope you will take advantage of our education center to update your skills. We hope you will join the hundreds of developers who have watched the replay of webinar we hosted called “BPEL for Java Developers.” (You can find it on our blog at www.vosibilities.com or in our podcast feed in the iTunes Store; search for “VOSibilities.”)

But mostly, we hope you will carefully consider the fact that the status quo in application development in your company is a very dangerous proposition. No matter how daunting change may seem, it’s better than the alternative: a world in which your company and you personally have been eclipsed by external competitors.

Thank you.

Alex Neihaus
VP Marketing
Active Endpoints, Inc.
email hidden; JavaScript is required

Should we buy new home movies in the high-resolution Blu-ray format, or in the lower-res, but more widely accessible, standard DVD format? That, Detective, is the right question.

When we rent movies from Netflix, we get them in Blu-ray format if they’re available. That’s best for movies that we’re going to watch as a family, since our big LCD TV is hooked up to a Sony Playstation 3. We purchased that player in May specifically to watch Blu-ray movies. (See “Say Hello to Playstation 3.”)

There are some movies coming out that we’d like to purchase. But in which format?

• On one hand, we ought to buy movies in the highest resolution possible, and that means Blu-ray. However, we can only watch Blu-ray discs on the big TV hooked up to the Playstation 3. We can’t watch them on any other television. We can’t watch them using our portable DVD player. We also can’t watch them using any of our current personal computers, including laptops while traveling.

• On the other hand, we should buy movies as DVDs, which will play everywhere, and which are also cheaper. However, they won’t look as good on the big TV, and perhaps some day we’ll be kicking ourselves for not taking a longer-term view of the question.

In five years, I’ll bet, this won’t be an issue, when Blu-ray players become less expensive and more pervasive. What should we do until then? Your opinion, please:

1. Think long-term, buy Blu-ray movie discs now.
2. Focus on the immediately practical, buy DVDs.
3. Stop buying discs, and just rent from Netflix.

If you’re looking for AgitarOne, you can get it from McCabe Software.

Agitar essentially went out of business in May, as has been discussed in a couple of previous posts, “Agitar is having a going-out-of-business sale” (May 12) and “Agitar: The market’s not big enough” (May 20).

Several of Agitar’s competitors, beginning with Instantiations and Parasoft, jumped in to offer a migration strategy for nervous Agitar customers. That was a good opportunity for both those companies and those wondering whether their unit-test tools would survive.

However, as reported earlier this month in SD Times, McCabe Software has acquired Agitar’s assets. As reporter David Worthington wrote,

McCabe announced the acquisition yesterday and vowed to provide a smooth transition, with Agitar customers receiving uninterrupted customer service and product support… McCabe’s flagship products are McCabe IQ and McCabe CM, solutions that, on one hand, report on code complexity and quality, and on the other, manage and track the application life cycle.

This is good news for Agitar customers. McCabe’s press release said,

McCabe Software announced today that they have acquired substantially all of the assets of Mountain View, CA based Agitar Software, Inc., makers of award-winning software test automation solutions. McCabe’s and Agitar’s tools are used by sophisticated developers and testers at Fortune 500 companies, and by leading defense, aerospace, and technology companies around the globe.

“Agitar has won a multitude of industry and technology awards over the years and the company has a passionate following in the marketplace, particularly in agile development circles,” says David Belhumeur, McCabe’s CEO. “McCabe has always kept on eye on Agitar because our products are complementary and we have many customers in common. With our 30+ year track record, McCabe is the perfect home for Agitar, whose customers will continue to enjoy uninterrupted product support, customer service, and innovative engineering, enhanced by the resources that McCabe Software brings to the table.”

“Agitar’s and McCabe’s customers have a strong need to develop bug free software and a thirst for world class tools to reduce costs and improve quality”, says Ken Pereira, McCabe’s President, “and there is a consensus in the industry that the Agitar technology successfully delivers on those goals in both the traditional and agile software development arenas.”

The Agitar technology is the result of over $35 million of investment by the previous owners who decided in April to place Agitar in a trust so that a transaction such as this acquisition could be consummated to drive the company forward in a non venture-funded environment.

“We have the good fortune of acquiring not only industry-leading, cutting edge technology but also acquiring the experience and expertise of existing Agitar personnel. They know the market quite well, have an exhaustive understanding of the technology, and an unmatched ability to support it,” says Dale Brenneman, McCabe’s VP of Technology.

Here’s a new picture of Juno, the Greater Swiss Mountain Dog, already world famous from the video, “Juno found the dog bones.”

What a clever dog! But where does he shows up on SD Times’ BPA audit statement?

>> Correction: That’s not Juno, and it’s not a new picture either. That’s Juno’s “nephew,” Mr. Big, dreaming about what he wants to do when he grows up. The photo was taken when Mr. Big was eight weeks old. I thought he seemed a bit small to be Juno!

>> I’m told that this would appear in the audit statement on line K-9.

My son — still depressed that I learned about Potter Puppet Pals — has decided that he needs a new guitar, and sent me this link.

It’s not like he doesn’t have enough instruments, but what do you think, should I get him one?

If the Swiss Army had a guitar, this would be the one. And at £749, it’s a good deal.

Disk defragmenting is generally good thing. However, some would argue that depending on the file system and disk access patterns on your rotating media, any performance improvements aren’t worth the effort.

Take the Macintosh, for example. In “Defragmenting your Mac’s hard disk,” updated just yesterday. Apple says that

The file system used on Macintosh computers is designed to work with a certain degree of fragmentation. This is normal and does not significantly affect performance for the majority of users. You should not need to frequently defragment the computer’s hard disk.

In reality, however, the nature of the files, the nature of the work you are doing, the nature of random-access disk mechanisms, and the exact order in which the files are segmented can all have a bearing on the resulting performance. In general, there is not significant degradation of performance from normal use of your computer.

If you create and delete a large number of files, your hard disk may become fragmented to the point that you may see a slight slow-down of file system performance.

I defrag my Macs’ hard drives about every six months or so, or after a major system update (like going from Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger to 10.5 Leopard). The defrag tool that I use is iDefrag, a $34.95 utility from Coriolis Systems.

What about solid-state disks, like the ones in the MacBook Air, or increasingly, in servers? Is defragmenting a good idea? Or is it worthless? Worse, could the intense I/O (and heat) associated with defragging cause undue wear to an SSD?

That’s the topic of a story by Alex Handy, “Do Solid State Disks Need Defragging,” published in the July 15 issue of Systems Management News. Frankly, I’d not thought about the topic before hearing that Alex was working on the piece. I believe you’ll find it interesting to read the discussion and the conclusion.

My family really enjoyed The Dark Knight, which we saw at 10:00 am on Saturday. The movie deserved all of its many accolades.

We prepared for the film by re-watching Batman Begins the week before. However, if you truly want to get into the mood for the latest Batman movie, you should watch Bat Thumb, a half-hour film made by Steve Oedekerk in 2001.

You can buy Bat Thumb on its own, or you can get All Thumbs: The Complete Collection. That’s what we have. (All are available from Netflix.)

The best of the series is Thumb Wars. You’ll love the zany adventures of Luke Groundrunner, Princess Bunhead, Oobedoob Scoobydooby Benubi, Black Helmet Man, Gabba the Butt, and of course the mischevious astro-droid Beep-Boop-Beep.

The new songs from Journey on their 2008 album, Revelation, are a delight. Okay, I’ve never left the 1970s and 1980s — queue up Bowling for Soup’s catchy song, 1985.

Even so, it was with some trepidation that we ordered Revelation, the new disc by Journey. Would the band sound like Journey, or like a bunch of has-beens trying to recapture their former glory?

Fear not: It’s the same old Journey. (You can read about my adventures in ordering the album in, “Great job, Walmart, with digital downloads. Not.“)

Revelation is a three-disc set.

The first disc consists of new songs, mainly written by Neal Schon and Jonathan Cain, with vocals by the wonderful Filipino singer Arnel Pineda. If you like the classic Journey hits, you’ll be delighted with many or most of these, which are in that same style. The very first track, “Never Walk Away,” brings you right back to the height of Journey’s popularity in the early 1980s.

If someone handed you disc 1, and said it was a long-lost Journey album from 1982, you’d believe it.

Skip disc 2. The band re-recorded many of its greatest hits with Pineda’s vocals: Wheel in the Sky, Don’t Stop Believin’, Only the Young, Separate Way, Open Arms, Who’s Crying Now, and so-on. But you know what? It sounds like a cover band. Those songs were definitively sung by Journey’s former lead vocalist, Steve Perry. Pineda (pictured) uncannily imitates Perry, but adds nothing to those songs.

All the songs from disc 1 are now on my iPod. None of the songs from disc 2 are going there.

The third disc is a DVD. We haven’t watched it yet.

Microsoft has very quietly pushed back the date when it will discontinue its support for Windows XP. The new cutoff date is August 4, 2014.

The decision came without fanfare; you won’t find an official announcement. But on a page called “Windows XP: The facts about the future,” Microsoft now says that “After careful consultation with our customers and industry partners, we’ve decided to proceed with our plan to phase out Windows XP in June. It’ll be a long goodbye. We plan to provide support for Windows XP until 2014.”

Until recently, support for Windows XP was scheduled to end in 2011. Microsoft has extended this deadline several times, most recently to 2014. The company stopped selling retail (shrink-wrap) licenses of Windows XP on June 30, 2008. Some hardware makers can preinstall Windows XP through January 31, 2009.

For a bit more detail about the support, here’s a mini FAQ from Microsoft:

Q: My business relies on Windows XP. What’ll happen after June 30 if I have technical problems?

A: We understand some of our customers aren’t ready to upgrade their PCs to Windows Vista. Although Windows XP will disappear from stores, we’ll continue to offer Extended Support for the operating system for six more years, until April 2014. Your PC maker can also provide technical support for your PC. Please contact them for more information. For more details, see the Microsoft Support Lifecycle.

Q: I’ve heard about two types of Windows XP support—”mainstream” and “extended.” What’s the difference?

A: Mainstream support delivers complimentary as well as paid support, free security updates and bug fixes to all Windows customers who purchase a retail copy of Windows XP (i.e. a shrink-wrapped, not pre-installed, copy). Mainstream support for Windows XP will continue through April 2009. Extended support delivers free security updates to all Windows customers. Customers can also pay for support on a per-incident basis. Extended support for Windows XP will continue until April 2014. New bug fixes require the Extended Hotfix Support program.

The comments about support applying only to shrink-wrap copies is not new. Pre-installed OEM versions of Windows and other Microsoft applications are supported by the hardware manufacturer. I.e., if you purchased you purchased a computer with Windows XP preinstalled from HP, then it’s HP’s responsiblity to provide Windows support. Policies on providing support for Windows vary from manufacturer to manufacturer. That’s something to consider when you’re buying a new PC.

The Microsoft Support Lifecycle page shows a wealth of details about which versions of Windows XP are supported – in short, all of them. Not supported, however, are service packs 1, 1A and 2.

I was a lot younger on July 18, 1968. We all were – and many of you weren’t even born when the company that changed the world was founded.

Intel has become a powerhouse since Gordon Moore (of Moore’s Law fame) and Robert Noyce created the company.

Starting out manufacturing RAM chips, the company – whose name is a portmanteau of Integrated Electronics — originally lived in the shadows of giants like Fairchild Semiconductor. That all changed when the company brought out its 4004 microprocessor in 1971. It was followed by the eight-bit 8008 and the general-purpose 8080.

Intel burst into the IT scene in 1981, when Big Blue chose the 8088 processor for the IBM Personal Computer. Intel’s chip wasn’t the obvious choice, and arguably wasn’t the best choice; Motorola’s 6800-series processors were arguably better. But Motorola was an IBM competitor, and so IBM chose Intel. Thus, the first member of of “Wintel” was ready for world domination. The rest, as we say, is history. Even computers from Apple and Sun use Intel chips these days.

That’s not to say that Intel’s path has been a smooth one. The company had many missteps, as with the 80186 chip and famously brain-dead 80286 processor. Let’s not even talk about the Itanium, shall we?

Intel also flirted with monopolistic practices, including many scandals where it was said that Intel wrote aggressive sales contracts to stop customers from buying competing chips from AMD, Cyrix and other manufacturers.

AMD has been a perennial thorn in Intel’s side. For years, the company released clones of Intel’s processors, but the roles were reversed in 2003, when AMD debuted the 32/64-bit Opteron processor, and then dual-core chips in a year later. It was Intel who was forced to play catchup – in the face of damning lawsuits, no less.

But Intel has overcome its challenges, and today is stronger than ever. Part of that is due to incredible missteps by AMD’s executives, who took their eyes off the prize by an ill-fated acquisition of graphics chipmaker ATI in 2006. With AMD’s brass distracted, and finances tanking, a reinvigorated Intel blew past them with its Core 2 processors, and then by releasing quad-core processors long before AMD.

That makes it ironic that yesterday, Intel might have received its best birthday present ever, as AMD whacked its CEO, Hector Ruiz, after announcing yet another terrible quarter, with US$1.19 billion loss and a stock price that has dropped from its 52-week high of $16.19 to only $4.90.

Happy Birthday, Intel!

Remember SCO? Judge Dale Kimball does. And so does Novell.

It’s been a while since I’ve written about SCO. But my last entry on the subject, “The SCO Group files Chapter 11,” didn’t mean that the case was closed. Au contraire.

Yesterday (July 16), Judge Kimball issued a ruling that covered a wide range of agreements between Novell and The Santa Cruz Operation, between Sun and SCO, and involving Microsoft. I urge you to read the 43-page ruling but here are some interesting highlights, copied verbatim from the document:

• The Court concludes that SCO breached its fiduciary duties to Novell by failing to notify Novell and account for and remit the revenue it received from Sun as a result of modifying the confidentiality provisions of Sun’s SVRX buy-out agreement with Novell. (page 38)

• Novell held equitable title to the SVRX Royalties under the APA. SCO’s failure to pass through to Novell the SVRX Royalties due under the Sun Agreement was a wrongful act inconsistent with Novell’s rights. The Court concludes that Novell has established SCO’s conversion of the revenues due under the 2003 Sun Agreement (page 38)

• SCO was unjustly enriched by retention of the revenue under the Sun Agreement and Novell is entitled to restitution. (page 38)

• The Court has considered SCO’s equitable defenses and finds them without merit. (page 39)

• SCO has not shown any conduct by Novell that was in bad faith or wrongful. The Court thus concludes that these affirmative equitable defenses do not preclude Novell from receiving equitable relief. (page 41)

Here’s the money part (pages 41 and 42):

The court, therefore, concludes that Novell is entitled to the revenues paid by Sun under the 2003 Sun Agreement attributable to the release of the SVRX confidentiality provision in the 1994 Agreement. While the parties debated the value of this provision at trial, neither established a specific value for this particular provision. Nonetheless, the court believes it is appropriate and equitable to grant monetary relief in favor of Novell.

SCO contended that, for a variety of reasons, Novell is not entitled to both monetary and declaratory relief. The Court was not persuaded by any of these arguments with respect to the 2003 Sun Agreement.

Under the 2003 Sun Agreement, SCO received from Sun a total amount of $9,143,451. The court concludes that the release provision in Section 12 of the Sun Agreement is worth an equivalent amount to the similar release provision in the Microsoft Agreement, or $1.5 million. The remaining portions of the Agreement is divided between the UnixWare license, the associated UnixWare and OpenServer drivers, and the release of the confidentiality provisions contained in the 1994 Agreement. Because SCO bears the burden of allocation on this issue and the law recognizes that the court is to resolve every doubt against the agent and in favor of the principal, the court divides the remaining portions of the Agreement equally. Therefore, Novell is entitled to one-third of $7,643,451, or $2,547,817 as revenues paid by Sun under the 2003 Sun Agreement attributable to the release of the SVRX confidentiality provision in the 1994 Agreement.

And the judge’s order:

After considering all of the evidence and the law as it applies to this case, the court awards Defendant and Counterclaimant Novell $2,547,817 on its Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Claims for Unjust Enrichment, Breach of Fiduciary Duty, and Conversion.

SCO naturally disagrees, and posted on its site a response:

We are reviewing today’s ruling by Judge Dale Kimball with our counsel and will be assessing the next steps over the coming days and weeks. This ruling is an important step in our ability to pursue the appeals to try to get all of our claims heard by a jury as soon as possible. We are pleased, however, that the court agreed that Novell is not entitled to anywhere near the more than $20 million dollars it was seeking.

Importantly, the court ruled that Novell has no right to any royalties from UnixWare or OpenServer sales by SCO, which is where the bulk of SCO’s revenue is earned. This is also an important step forward in the capitalization and reorganization plan for SCO that will allow us to emerge from Chapter 11. We continue to disagree with the premise of this trial and believe that Novell is not owed anything, but that they have interfered with SCO’s UNIX rights.

This badly written faux story came in a couple of months ago from a company that sells writing software. It looks like news, but it’s a company-issued press release.

Below is a straight copy/paste. I left in the numerous grammatical and punctuation errors. How many can you find? This really makes you wonder about the company’s “turbocharged writing engine.”

(Incidentally, an electronics hobbyist magazine called Nuts and Volts ran a slightly different version of the faux story verbatim, and without attribution, in its June 2008 issue. The version below is not from Nuts and Volts, but from the press release I received from WhiteSmoke.)

Cellphones have been blamed for car crashes, cancer, and boorish behavior.

People now blame cellphones for their poor spelling.

A recent survey by WhiteSmoke, Inc. revealed that most adults can’t spell everyday words. When asked why, 68% of the 2,500 randomly-selected participants claimed technology was to blame — particularly mobile phone predictive spelling and text speak abbreviations.

Apparently using CUL8TR for see you later, contributed to 38% of people forgetting how to spell definitely and accommodate. Likewise, 40% could not spell questionnaire and nearly a third were stumped by liaison. This is according to the research conducted by WhiteSmoke, Inc. developers of a turbocharged writing engine that relies on patented language processing to check spelling, grammar and punctuation in context (www.whitesmoke.com).

Despite dismal spelling skills, the survey revealed that only 59% of adults age 18-60 bother to use their spellchecker before hitting their email send button. “Surprisingly,” noted Amit Greener, vice president of sales and marketing for WhiteSmoke said, ”A third of adults questioned regard their spelling skills as excellent and another 46% claimed their spelling was good.”

Even receive was misspelled by 15% of respondents who likely forgot the lesson covering, “I before E except after C.” and calendar left 19 % of the participants scratching their heads, according to the English language grammar and writing software firm headquartered in Wilmington, DE whose product enhances writing by suggesting synonyms, adjectives and adverbs. The product also includes writing templates for a wide range of business and professional applications

Test your spelling against the WhiteSmoke Survey Participants with Spelling Quiz here or online at www.whitesmoke.com.

Correct answers and percentage of errors appear below.

1. Calendar Calender Calandar
2. Embarrass Embaress Embarass
3. Necassary Necessary Neccessary
4. Accomodate Accommodate Acommodate
5. Separete Separate Seperate
6. Occured Occurred Ocurred
7. Existance Existence Existance
8. Liaision Liason Liaison
9. Definitely Difinately Definitly
10. Ocurence Ocurrence Occurrence
11. Questionairre Questionaire Questionnaire
12. Referring Refering Refferring

1- a (19%) , 2 – a (24%), 3 – b ( 3.5%) , 4 – b (38%), 5 – b (27%), 6 – b(27%), 7 – b (30%), 8 – c (31%), 9 – a, 10 – c(29%), 11 – c (40%), 12 – a (28%)

0 Wrong – You are a champion speller
1 – 4 Wrong – Average – Use spellchecker and proofread carefully
5 – 8 Wrong – Use spellchecker, proofread carefully and learn one new word a week
9 – 12 Wrong – Use spellchecker, get someone else to proofread and learn one new word a week