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The Weekly Round-Up: 05.08.05
So, so long Longhorn...

By silicon.com

Published: Tuesday 09 August 2005

It's been a busy couple of weeks for fans of Microsoft's operating system - and let's face it there must be a few out there.

Microsoft, operating system giant and web standards laggard (see below), has taken the wraps off the first beta of Windows Vista.

Last week, the company changed the name of the much-delayed follow-up. Windows Vista had been called Longhorn, which let's face it was a pretty stupid name for an operating system. After all, what possessed them?

By way of a digression (c'mon, it's Friday), a quick scan of a website called "Texas Longhorns: A history of longhorn cattle and guide to viewing the State of Texas' longhorn herd" (always the Round-Up's first port of call when indulging in a heady session of web surfing) yielded the following results:

"These Texas cattle had long legs, lanky bodies, with legs and feet built for speed." Why, it's Bill!

"It took a good horse with a good rider to outrun a Texas Longhorn." (Just change "good horse with a good rider" to "anti-trust lawyer" and we're back on track. "Their narrow faces, sullen expressions, and horns that swept out horizontally, gave these cattle a sinister look. And indeed, they could be mean." Hell yes, that's Bill alright.

The site adds breathlessly: "And the bulls... There was probably no meaner creature in Texas [Seattle] than a Longhorn bull. The slightest provocation would turn him into an aggressive and dangerous enemy." Two words: Steve. Ballmer.

Anyway, Longhorn is no more. It's been rounded-up into a makeshift corral made of XP boxes, shot and chopped up into hamburgers. And Windows Vista is here and that's just great. Yay! Except it turns out some people aren't very happy with that name either. Boo!

'Vista' was no doubt the 'idea' left at the end of a five-hour, Frappuccino-fuelled brain dump by Microsoft's senior marketing executives during which nobody heard the bright spark at the back asking, "Shouldn't we check that no other technology company uses that trademark already?" over the thunderous slapping of Armani-clad backs.

Which is a shame as it turns out that another technology company uses that trademark already. And the bad news for Microsoft marketing executives is that it's owned by a company representing the healthcare interests of old men with guns.

Two non-profit groups - The Vista Software Alliance (VA) and Worldvista - provide specialist software called Vista to hospitals, nursing homes and clinics which care for US military veterans.

(VistaWindows is also a PVC window company in Australia, as one of our Antipodean readers proudly points out, though he fails to highlight quite what the company's technology angle is.)

The groups have denounced Microsoft's choice of name and claimed (in a triumph of optimism over reality) that people will be confused between the Microsoft operating system and Vista's specialised software. A tad unlikely.

Meanwhile, silicon.com's CIO Jury isn't too excited about Vista either. At least not until they're convinced of the business benefits and return on investment by upgrading.

Most Jury members said they'd only consider taking the plunge after the first service pack update for the full release is out - and only then if the business benefits justify the upgrade cost. The old sticks in the mud.

Finally, another couple of people who had mixed feelings about the look and feel of the Vista beta are Richard A (a bloke from London) and the Round-Up.

After viewing the screenshots, Richard wrote in a reader comment: "Looks like Redmond did indeed start their photocopiers as Steve [Jobs] suggested. Not very good ones, mind you... "

A reference to Apple's jibe at Microsoft during the June 2004 Worldwide Developers Conference.

The Round-Up just nodded sagely in the background and wondered if Linux fans running the xcompmgr interface enhancer were thinking much the same thing...

Staying with everyone's favourite software behemoth, the company has come under both praise and fire this week following the long-awaited release of the first beta of Internet Explorer 7.

Microsoft had promised vast improvements to its World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards compliance in IE 7. However, despite assurances from the IE 7 development team in April the browser won't pass a stringent standards test that rivals have embraced.

In its browser blog this week, the development team acknowledged that IE 7 will fail the Web Standards Project's Acid2 test, which examines a browser's support for W3C recommendations including CSS1 (Cascading Style Sheets, which allows designers to separate content from presentation), HTML 4 (the basic language of web pages) and PNG (Portable Network Graphics - a web-friendly graphics format).

Chris Wilson, lead program manager for the web platform in IE, wrote in the blog: "We will not pass this test when IE 7 ships. We fully recognise that IE is behind the game today in CSS support."

The Web Standards Project was launched seven years ago to encourage Microsoft and Netscape to heed W3C recommendations. These days, rather than repeatedly kick Microsoft and Netscape's derrieres around the compliance paddock, the group takes a less confrontational approach and works closely with software companies like Macromedia and Microsoft before products are released. It welcomed the progress Microsoft was making.

"Three cheers for transparency! Three cheers for openness! Three cheers for standards in IE 7," it wrote cheerily on its website.

Given this high-level support for Microsoft's achievements, it would be churlish of the Round-Up to suggest that this really isn't good enough. But what the hell. This really isn't good enough.

Browser companies have had plenty of time to get their compliance ducks in a row.

This is 2005. CSS Level 1 was published in 1996, CSS Level 2 in 1998 and CSS Level 3 is currently a working draft. Meanwhile, HTML 4 has been around since 1997 and PNG since 1996.

Furthermore as the owner of the dominant web browser in the world, you'd think it would embrace the opportunity to lead the pack on best practice and compliance.

Firefox and Opera claim to be close to passing the Acid2 test, while Apple claims its Safari browser already makes the grade.

So yes, Microsoft is to be applauded but it’s the kind of ironic applause reserved for the laggard who finally boards the bus after keeping everyone else waiting and then discovers he's forgotten his ticket...

SCREEEEEEEEECH-CLUNK!

The loud screeching sound followed by the deafening clunk heard on Monday was the sound of the world spinning off its axis following news that Apple had released a multi-button mouse.

After years of refusing to give in to the clamour of Mac users saying that actually they'd quite like to be able to activate contextual menus using a mouse without also having to hold down the Control key, the Cupertino company has delivered (click here for pics).

Many PC users may wonder what all the fuss is about. After all, multi-button mice have been around for many a year. Not in Mac World. Apple has always stuck by its one button design principle, one of the few remaining user interface legacies that stretched back to the very first Macintosh in 1984.

Purists will be appalled at the company's capitulation to the un-enlightened masses who can't appreciate the Zen-like sound of one mouse-button clicking.

Being Apple, it's all done in the best possible taste. Mighty Mouse (yep, named after the retro, lycra-clad, cartoon super rodent) boasts a sleek, white enclosure with a dinky scroll ball perched on top.

According to the Apple website, it also features "Force-sensing buttons" which will come in handy if you suspect you have any malevolent Sith lords sloping about.

("At last, we will reveal ourselves to the Jedi. At last, we will have contextual menus.")

Another "retro" element that has appalled some Mac users is the unsightly USB cable Mighty Mouse needs to power itself - so not so mighty after all. Apple recently made the switch to Bluetooth mice and reintroducing a cable is being seen as a step backwards.

Luddite the Round-Up may be but surely a mouse without a tail is a hamster?

These are troubling times for Mac users as they watch the final few bastions of Mac-dom falling. Multi-button mice. Intel inside. What's next? Beige iMacs? Be afraid...

Given the perilous nature of hunting down insurgents and dodging car bombs in war-ravaged Iraq, it's hardly surprising that the US Army takes a dim view of one of its own troops posting details about military operations on his private blog.

The blog-happy trooper, Leonard Clark, was charged with violating two articles of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which prohibits soldiers from releasing or "encouraging widespread publication" of classified or specific information about troop movement and location, soldiers who have been attacked or hit, and military strategy.

Clark's site, which described him as a former Democratic candidate for Arizona governor and a kindergarten teacher, also made the schoolboy error of criticising the Iraq war.

His publish-and-be-damned attitude (or in this case, publish-and-be-demoted attitude) cost him his stripes and $1,600 in docked wages for placing "classified" information online.

Now the Round-Up has never served in the military, other than in a highly unsuccessful paintball day when it got shot in the face no less than five times. (Tip to would-be weekend paintballers: duck.)

However, it's not hard to imagine that this is exactly the sort of thing that would annoy the top brass. If it was a British soldier you could imagine handlebar moustaches quivering in rage (just think General Sir Anthony Cecil Hogmanay Melchett in Blackadder Goes Forth).

The blogosphere continues its inexorable growth, with a recent report by internet barometer Technorati claiming that a new blog (like a sucker) is born every second.

The removal of the blog and the US Army's heavy-handed approach (US military? Heavy-handed? Surely some mistake?) has caused outrage among other bloggers. Who have pledged support for Clark and denounced the enemies of free speech.

Blogging is here and it's great but there's free speech and then there's just plain stupid. Clark's kindergarten report card should probably read: Should have known better...

And finally this week, sympathy was pretty thin on the ground last week from silicon.com readers commenting on the untimely demise of Vardan Kushnir, a Russian distributor of spam - or spamski, if you like.

While, the Round-Up in no way condones the violent battery of online criminals who distribute unsolicited junk emails to millions of men, women and children, a wry smile creased its face as it read the following Reader Comment beneath the story:

"Dear Friend, I represent the lawyer handling the estate of the late Vardan Kushnir, who died leaving $2m in his bank account... "

A fitting epitaph for a spammer's gravestone if ever there was one...

Until next week, swoon in wonder and delight at the top stories of the week. Go on, it's Friday you'll have the weekend to recover...