I'm a Google Orphan – Epiphany

Sigh... I'm a Google orphan, that's the sad epiphany I had the other day.

• Google Reader is closing and no online application seemingly reaches the level. If you cross one, please let me know.
• With the fall of Google Reader, I'm really worried for the future of RSS feeds, which were a founding pillar of free communication on the internet.
• The need to share and sync files from anywhere made me try Google Drive. I clearly find that Drive is made to satisfy an all-Google user's need but not that of someone else. If all you want to use is Google applications and phones, then it's fine. But I'm not buying into that. Dropbox is far superior and even easier to use.
• Google Search isn't anymore a powerful tool. It finds the same results as other engines and I sometimes miss the old days of Altavista, where you could simply type the precise words you wanted and there was no kind of "intelligent" understanding of requests. Between the multiplying intrusions of states, copyright holders and commercial customers of Google services, the Google Search engine is really going into garbage and the user is the looser. And the "intelligent" handling of requests is frustrating me: I know what I want better than machines, stop correcting my orthograph, using synonyms, etc.!
• I'm satisfied with my Android phone as a tool for mobility. E-mail, SMS, web have never been so easy. But I'm appalled when I see the new ads they broadcast on every major TV channel: they show it as something funky, graphical, fashionable... it's not! and I don't want it to be.

So I'm a Google orphan.
Google – as I saw it – is dead. Or, at least, an era is over... and Google now resembles Microsoft 10 years ago.

Why Windows 7 will not crush Linux

Sorry, just a rant against a nonsensical piece "Why Windows 7 will crush Linux" from Ron Barret who, surprisingly, usually has good technical articles and a few interesting non-technical articles.

This one piece shows, very clearly, a lack of knowledge of how things work outside the Microsoft world. Let me comment point by point, before I make more general statements further down. Quotes are in italic.

Okay it is no secret that Linux has not been able to crack the desktop, either at the home or at the workplace. Not to ignored either is that Windows lost some desktops last year (a little over 3%),but let’s not panic just yet, Windows still owns over 88% of all the desktops according to leading research.

Why does Ron Barret concentrate on "crushing" Linux when he could attack the main marketshare grabber: Apple? Does he really think of panicking or is that just an expression?

[...]Windows 7 installs easier, has simpler configuration of user settings, greater availability of software, support (you could argue that all support is awful, which is probably true) Windows support is easier to get when you need help. Gaming, MP3’s,… I could go on and on.

• Windows 7 installs easier, but by the installation you get only the OS, not the office suite, the usual programs, the good media players, the image manipulation programs, etc.
• Windows 7 has simpler configuration of user settings. But simplicity isn't the only question since you can get the MacOSX perverse effect : too many hidden options, which makes that anything a little more complicated than usual cannot get done from the interface, you have to go commandline. So my question is quantity of settings VS simplicity VS good explanation VS automation of whatever can be automated. And here, if whoever has any precise comparison list, I am listening carefully.
• Windows 7 has greater availability of software. Depends on what you want to do. When my WAMP solution claims that a WAMP is only for testing and that a production tool should be a LAMP, what should I do? I am also a firm believer in centralized depots, and I find that the way to install software under Linux (like Synaptic) is much more modern and efficient than Windows software install.
  

To real Linux die hards… terminals rule.

Yeah, conquering die hards is the crucial problem when you're getting after marketshares!?

So Powershell presents an interesting argument for Windows adoption by the Linux user.

The very idea that an experienced Linux user could switch from the Unix philosophy to the Windows philosophy "disguised" as a command line drains tears of laughter from my eyes. Words or icons are just means, but the Unix philosophy that transpires through bash, csh or perl is a cement stronger than any interface tool.

Some people want free software (even if support is limited or non-existent).

RedHat sales are going higher and higher, is that a coincidence or does support just exist?

Applications like Firefox, Open Office, MYSQL, GIMP… wait all these applications are now available for Windows.

OK but with the exception of Firefox, most of them still run better and integrate better under Linux than under Windows.

Moreover, they are easier to install in Windows then they are in Linux.

Complete idiocy: once you have installed Ubuntu, the applications like Firefox, OOo, GIMP... are already installed. Concerning MySQL, you just have to go to Synaptic, check the "mysql" checkbox and click "install". Far easier than under Windows.

Windows 7 has solved a long-standing thorn in Microsoft’s side, How to deliver a feature rich OS without killing resources?

Okay, so Ron Barrett just confesses that Windows has long lagged behind competitors in terms of resource usage. Fine. Thanks.

Linux users have no reason to hold back anymore. Windows 7 is well placed to crush and put an end to the penguin.

Except complete programming station, polyvalent kernel that puts it everywhere from DVD players to car computers to mainframe servers, freedom from unwanted "home calls", complete view on the software from the kernel to the application, ready and working middlewares such as Apache, very good support (with full source access) like those of RedHat, IBM, HP and others...

Now that I could calm down, seriously, why would anything change about Linux users? There are two major situations:

• Those who were fed up with Microsoft or wanted specific freedom and they will not change anything because of Windows 7.
• Those who use Linux because it's at work or because they have a specific technical reason and they will not change either. At best they will consider changing, but whether that will be worth the migration, I doubt.
  

Yahoo! and Microsoft

Yesterday, Microsoft released GPL code, and we now know that there was nothing altruistic in that. Today, they ally with Yahoo! What now?

...

Search on the web is a wicked problem, so one typical methodology is to build multiple attempts of solution to the problem and let them evolve, compare... That was the case with multiple search engines.
Now we will have only two major ones: Google and Microsoft. I don't know if I should rejoice because the evolution has come to an end, or if I should cry because monopoly problems get in the way of solving the websearch problem.

...

Anyway, if Yahoo! ditch BSDs to favor Redmond technologies, they get onto my list of companies to avoid as much as possible.

Microsoft fallacious IE8 campaign

Is the market of browsers so opaque, obscure, for non-technical people, that Microsoft think they can fool them with a simple table?

To summarize the history of facts, Microsoft once had a monopoly in web browsers because the software shipped with their operating system, Windows, which is ubiquitous. They then sat on their laurels for a while (roughly from the end of the nineties to 2006) and lost a part of their market shares to more secure, faster, more flexible browsers, such as Mozilla's Firefox. They finally reacted and released Internet Explorer 7 and Internet Explorer 8, fixing a lot, but, to many eyes, not climbing to the level of quality of their rivals.

And now, they try to get their market shares back by a marketing campaign, with an awfully simplified and fallacious comparison table.

Now, let's return to normal. Below is their table, with my remarks or modifications in orange.

I do not comment on Chrome, because I have used it too little.

		Internet Explorer 8	Firefox 3.0	Google Chrome 2.0	Comments
Security					Internet Explorer 8 takes the cake with better phishing and malware protection, as well as protection from emerging threats. And so can say anyone. But with intimate relations between the operating system and the browser, Internet Explorer puts the system at a greater risk against malware.
Vulnerabilities					The time to fix vulnerabilities once they are public is the shortest in Firefox. Internet Explorer has got the worst record of critical vulnerabilities, sometimes not patched long after they are public.
Privacy					InPrivate Browsing and InPrivate Filtering help Internet Explorer 8 claim privacy victory.
Ease of Use					Features like Accelerators, Web Slices and Visual Search Suggestions make Internet Explorer 8 easiest to use. Some might say it's a question of taste. I feel like Internet Explorer is rigid while Firefox is flexible.
Web Standards					Firefox and Chrome have more support for emerging standards like HTML5 and CSS3, but Internet Explorer 8 invested heavily in having world-class, consistent support for the entire CSS2.1 specification. I don't deny Microsoft made big improvements, but almost any web developer still frowns the eye at the very name of Internet Explorer. Yet, they did improve.
Developer Tools					Internet Explorer 8 has the most comprehensive developer tools built in, including HTML, CSS and JavaScript editing, but also JavaScript profiling; other browsers have developer tools available, but either require you to download them separately, or aren't as complete. You could also argue that the simplicity of XUL, Firefox's development language, is one reason it's been such a success.
Reliability					Only Internet Explorer 8 has both tab isolation and crash recovery features; Firefox and Chrome have one or the other. Only Internet Explorer crashes when too many pages are open at the same time.
Customizability					Sure, Firefox may win in sheer number of add-ons, but many of the customizations you'd want to download for Firefox are already a part of Internet Explorer 8 – right out of the box. I have never found for Internet Explorer precisely the equivalent of what I use in Firefox.
Compatibility					Internet Explorer 8 is more compatible with more sites on the Internet than any other browser. That's certainly true because of Microsoft long record of purposeful incompatibility which, in the past, encouraged developers to not develop for other browsers. However, I do not know one of the sites that I use today that is not compatible with Firefox.
Manageability					Neither Firefox nor Chrome provide guidance or enterprise tools. That's not true. With the tools provided by Frontmotion, you can achieve a similar manageability (for instance, centrally from an Active Directory server) and I would say you get a more precise customizability of what's managed.
Performance					Knowing the top speed of a car doesn't tell you how fast you can drive in rush hour. To actually see the difference in page loads between all three browsers, you need slow-motion video. This one’s also a tie. Whatever recent benchmark shows Internet Explorer as the last of the last browsers in matters of speed.

I was not the only one to notice that :-)

• Savio Rodrigues (IBM) at his blog
• also a post on Royal Pingdom

Some comments are worth reading.

EDIT 06/29/2009:
They're going to some extremities for their marketing... in my natal region, they advertise on pizza boxes, and also have a look at this one in the US:
http://www.browserforthebetter.com/index-htm.html#getie8:6qmoqjtZ9pH

EDIT 07/28/2009:
I have found some pictures of those IE pizza boxes here and here.

Raw unrefined suggestion about firewall rules

Since now we see attacks from inside intranets, using zombie networks, I think it could be a good idea to turn on the firewalls on each machine in the network (including on Windows stations, which I know is sometimes a problem) and to set up a detailed set of rules for them.

My problem was: how to figure out which rules for such a complex problem, so many machines?
My suggestion: why not propose a standard for a single file giving the positive rules necessary for a software to operate?

One file per application, that would come shipped with the application, and would describe all the things that need be open, for the application to work. The file would not describe what set of rules to put on which firewall, but simply what needs to be open.

If we have a look at the TCP/IP layers

This picture from Wikipedia under the GFDL license.

we see that simple firewalls operate on the Internet and Transport layers. Modern firewalls and proxies also operate on the Application layer.
I guess a simple XML dialect could be created to describe which things need be let in and out, on which layer. If this gets standardized or at least RFC'ed, there is a good chance to see opensource software adopt it, both on the application and on the firewall sides. On which case, since opensource is biggest marketshare on infrastructure, others should follow.
(All that raw and unrefined.)

Kill Microsoft and you don't need to virtualize

Yeah, sometimes, I lose my tempers at Microsoft. But I'm not the only one. Today a colleague told me that the day Microsoft was removed, we would not need virtualization anymore.

:-?

"Yeah. Of course!
Look, why do we virtualize? To reduce the costs of having so many machines and reinstalling them.
Why do we have so many machines? Because they are different, we can do different things on each of them. Yet, we need to do a little of each of these things.
Why are they so different? Because one player: Microsoft, doesn't play the game of compatibility, but plays the game of anti-compatibility."

"So, take the problem in reverse order", he said
"If Microsoft disappears, almost only Unix-like players remain. They can homogeneize their differences very quickly. If they don't, small layers of compatibility can be added quickly, because the root differences are small.
If we can do very similar things on these different systems, we will choose those we need for the things we need. We will not be forced to have all of them.
Then we can have fewer machines. Regroup small tasks on a single computer. Without virtual machines! No need neither to buy a specific system nor to run a virtual machine in order to implement a specific software.
Goodbye VMWare, goodbye Java, goodbye wine!"

That's, of course, very optimistic. But it's nice to hear someone optimistic these times. When I come to think of it... remove SQL Server incompatibilities, and you can run almost any application choosing the database you will use! And with the broad (in average) compatibility of C and C++ software, you can use the same software whatever the OS... That's what I call saving money.
Sounds promising. When do we start?

7^W12 years old vulnerability

I blogged last week about Microsoft patching a seven-years old vulnerability. Was irritating.

According to Sid, the vulnerability was known since 1996. (The link is in French.) 12 years-old. Is irritating.

Desperate security guy

In case you missed it, Microsoft released a patch for a seven years old vulnerability. Said shortly, the Windows file servers could be hacked into by about any attacker with a tenth of luck and a hundredth of patience.

Well.

I'm often grumbling against Microsoft behaviour concerning security, but that goes too far. Once more.