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The Weekly Round-Up: 07.03.08
Vista problems you say? Nah, it's fine...

By silicon.com

Published: Friday 07 March 2008

Are you worried that Windows Vista Service Pack 1 will render your precious applications unusable? Well you shouldn't be. After all, Microsoft isn't, so why should you?

The company's chief operating officer is particularly insouciant about the fuss that started a couple of weeks back when Vista users - note surprising use of the plural - who had downloaded the service pack reported that some applications failed to work following the update. Even more so than before, which frankly is just adding insult to injury.

Despite the apparent discontent, Microsoft's chief operating officer Kevin Turner admitted to being very excited about SP1. Clearly, this is a new application of the word 'excited' that the Round-Up was previously unaware of.

Fielding questions from his chaise-longue at the CeBit trade show in Hanover, Turner told the assembled masses (the Round-Up imagines them angrily waving CDs with printer drivers and redundant security software) that the company was not at all concerned by the problems SP1 has encountered with some third-party apps.

Turner's unruffled approach seems to be the accepted corporate line on all things Vista, at least if you believe a report from The Sydney Morning Herald. The Round-Up, being the impressionable type, believes anything published on the internet.

It quotes some private emails from senior Microsoft executives which had emerged in a recent US court case. The emails indicate that even the company's own executives struggled to get Vista running properly on their machines.

One executive claimed he was "burned" by widespread compatibility issues to such an extent that he was left with a "$2,100 email machine".

The executive in charge of Windows, Steven Sinofsky, struggled to get his own home printer working with Vista according to the paper. Other execs reported incompatibility with their scanners and printers.

The final word on the debacle comes from CEO Steve Ballmer who was also copied in on the email trail. And what was the loquacious response from the big man to the long list of errors and glitches reported by his teeth-gnashing executives?

"Righto."

Steve's not worried. Kevin's not worried. You shouldn't be either. Honest.

In response to the disclosure of the emails a harried-looking Microsoft PR officer offered the opinion that the executives had raised concerns with Vista to make the program better for customers. Even the Round-Up isn't that impressionable.

In related news, Microsoft this week dropped the price of the various blends of Vista by a roughly 25 per cent.

Righto...

Screeeech! Brum! Brum! Brr-Brrrrrr...

Can you tell what that was? No? It was the sound of the government's controversial ID card bandwagon coming to an abrupt halt and executing a rubber-burning u-turn. Obvious, really.

The government has finally deigned to listen to the public uproar, having first checked the balance sheet and looked at the recent opinion polls ahead of a looming general election - you decide which. It’s only gone and announced it is ditching plans that would have forced people to get a biometric ID card when they renew or apply for a passport.

Furthermore, the Parliamentary vote to make ID cards compulsory will now be put back to 2015.

So good news for the most of us - but not all of us. The government said it was still planning to force foreign nationals living in Britain to register their biometric details on the National Identity Register and carry an ID card by the end of the year.

People working in airports and other security risk areas are also unlikely to be breathing the free air for much longer. Whitehall is planning to make the cards compulsory for them from 2009. Although not if the trade unions have their say. Which they probably won't. Bah!

After that the next people to be targeted are the youth of today and students. They have the option of volunteering to get a card from 2010. So something for the kids to look forward to, then.

There are a few more bits of empty posturing from the government here but overall it’s a significant victory for opponents of ID cards, which, let's face it, is pretty much everyone who lives in Britain who doesn't read the Daily Mail or the Daily Express or hasn't lost track of their senses...

Last week, silicon.com's editor had lunch with a technology company CEO. He came away from the meal with three things: the bill, a bloated, gassy feeling in his stomach and an intriguing perspective on the vocational resilience of the modern CIO.

Essentially, the crux of the pinot noir-fuelled argument is that of all the senior managers in a business, the CIO is the least likely to get the sack.

The argument goes thus: the role and responsibilities of the CIO and the IT department are so Byzantine it's hard for the rest of the business to work out whether the CIO is actually doing a good or bad job - or indeed anything at all. Brilliant.

Not convinced? Consider this: the sales director can be judged on whether that team has sold enough widgets and whether his/her expenses claim is marginally less than the GDP of Ecuador.

The finance director can be judged on whether the figures add up. Easy. Dull bunch accountants but very accountable.

HR directors can be judged on the sheer volume of pointless, soul-draining forms and procedures they manage to foist upon company staff. By the way, sacking your HR director isn't that difficult, you just need to be SMART about it.

However, CIOs are wise and wizened corporate arachnids, hidden in dense webs of jargon and service level agreements, tangles of multi-coloured cables and stuttering, blinking lights that the rest of the business simply can't comprehend. Or, at the very least, can't be bothered to try and comprehend.

So given the existence of the bullet-proof CIO, it's no wonder that insanely tech-savvy kids are having problems getting jobs in IT these days.

After all, there's a serious log-jam of lifers in the system already.

Luckily, the Round-Up has more than enough material this week to not have to write up the latest news in the Microsoft-Yahoo! would-be merger, which is just as well as most people have probably lost interest in it. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer hasn't. He still thinks it's a pretty nifty idea, although the Round-Up suspects Bill Gates doesn’t share the sentiment.

Why? More on that in a moment...

First, farewell and adieu to Netscape. Parent company AOL has released its last ever update for the veteran web browser.

The browser, which was instrumental in getting a fair few of us on to the web in the 1990s.

The browser wars between Netscape and Microsoft were the mainstay of technology news in the second half of the 1990s. Most tech journos favoured Netscape. It gave us a moral grounding in a bewildering and exploding environment. Also, it was easier to use.

Those were the heady days when websites would be plastered with statements like: 'Best viewed in Internet Explorer' or 'Best viewed in Netscape Navigator' as the two companies engaged in a battle royale and largely failed to comply with W3C standards as they added more and more proprietary code to their browsers in an attempt to win over customers.

Alas for Netscape, Internet Explorer trounced it good and proper and its once-dominant market lead was eroded to the point of virtual non-existence.

In recent times, the Mozilla project has taken up the cause and many of the same principles and technologies endure so the battle is back on. In the mean time, thanks for the memories, Netscape.

That's about it for the Round-Up for another week - all that remains is a swift look at the other epoch-shattering news from the week.

Some truly shocking news: after a Bryan Adams-esque 13-year-run at the top of the world's richest chart, departing Microsoft bigwig Bill Gates is no longer the wealthiest man on Earth.

Some of this is related to the 15 per cent plunge in the company's share price since the Yahoo! bid was tabled by Ballmer and his shrieking, winged minions. In fact, Bill's not even the second richest man in the world. The Round-Up told you it was shocking.

Want to find out who's top of the heaving pile of fat cats? You're just a mouse-click away.

The Tories, leaping from policy opportunity to policy opportunity like a well-turned-out, Eton-educated mountain goat, have come up with a spiffing idea to win them the next general election. Frankly, it's foolproof.

Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer - him again - has gone all green and claimed that more efficient use of IT is one of the company's main priorities for the future.

Ever wondered what a virus would look like if it was turned into a work of art using the malicious computer code which forms it? If you have then this really is your lucky day.

Podcastastic fun available here.

And don't forget to get your entry in for the caption competition.