Reality Check | Ephraim Schwartz » December 2006

December 26, 2006

Early adopters uncover Vista flaws

TAGS: OS

Not to pick on Microsoft (heaven knows it is so easy) but the latest flaws found in Vista as published in the New York Times, "Flaws are Detected in Microsoft's Vista" remind me once again that most software companies use the public as its final beta test site.

Especially with a program as large as Vista, millions of lines of code, I suppose it is very difficult to find all the bugs unless you have millions of people pounding on it.

It reminds me of the robot arm GE uses to test how many times you can open and close a refrigerator door before it falls off its hinges. The robot just keeps slamming away, simulating the general public, especially in football season, opening and closing the fridge door. Too bad Microsoft doesn't use robots.

So, as reported in the Times, a Russian programmer found a flaw that allows a hacker to increase a user's rights and privileges on a company's OS.

Coupled with flaws in IE 7, the Times article says, "it would make it possible to alter files and potentially permanently infect a target computer."

Other flaws have been found by Determina, a company whose business is based on finding flaws in programs and reporting them to the ISV.

While the public becomes the final beta site most major corporations have gotten wise to the ploy and usually wait at least a year before they install a new Microsoft OS. They need to make sure all the bugs, or at least the most obvious ones, have been patched and eliminated.

Unfortunately, once the OS is available to the public it will be pre-installed on the PC unless you ask otherwise, in which case there would probably be an additional charge.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on December 26, 2006 10:08 AM

December 26, 2006

Talkback: Sea change at SAP

TAGS: Talkback

So, the poster child for software complexity will leverage the emerging Web to keep it simple in the new year?

If you're a financial analyst, a budget analyst, a PR rep -- anyone who has to make decisions -- this approach is all about how you work. And though I find it tinged with a bit of irony coming from someone at SAP, I do wholeheartedly agree with SAP's Moore when he says, "Frankly, either you know how to use it without training, or you are not interested."

If that isn't an indication that competition spurs change, I don't know what is.

Who's next? Will your company use Internet apps or do they prefer them on the server and desktop behind the firewall?

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on December 26, 2006 09:57 AM

December 21, 2006

H-1B visas will not destroy America as we know it

TAGS: None

When companies misuse the H-1B visa program to keep wages low I am the first to write about it.

See "The H-1B Swindle" and "Homeland Security Probes L-1 Visa Abuses."

However, when the H-1B program is used as a platform for spreading fear about America being taken over by immigrants I draw the line.

This link will take you to a perfect example of what I am talking about.

And here is yet another pitiful example. Congressman, Virgil Goode, R-Va, see Lawmaker Fears 'More Muslims' in Office is so afraid he says, Muslims will be elected and "demanding to use the Quran unless immigration is tightened."

The people who believe this kind of stuff obviously have zero confidence in the U.S.A.

Don't they realize immigrants have been coming into this country for hundreds of years and the same thing happens over and over again.

It is American culture, habits, beliefs that immigrants adopt not the other way around. In other words, our culture rubs off on them.

I am really a bit shocked that some Americans who believe the United States of America is so great don't have more faith in their own country. They don't have faith in their own political and social system. They don't believe that it is our system that will be adopted by them and their children.

The only thing we seem to adopt here in the States from immigrants is their cuisine, whether it is a burrito or tandoori chicken.

To those who fear immigration and worry it will destory America as we know it, I say bull. If you believe in your country you should demonstrate more confidence in its ability to change immigrants into Americans.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on December 21, 2006 02:35 PM

December 20, 2006

Adobe wants to make desktop apps sexy again

TAGS: None

The buzz among the technorati is all about Adobe's forthcoming Apollo project.

Apollo will enable Web applications, sometimes known as gadgets, to be installed on the desktop.

According to a podcast Michael Arrington did with Kevin Lynch, Adobe's chief software architect, on TalkCrunch, Apollo can help a user "do things that previously had been limiting in a browser," Lynch said.

Lynch goes on to explain that a desktop application gives you access to great local storage, and, most startling of all, it will run regardless of whether you have any Internet connection.

With an icon on your desktop for notifications, it even allows for a "closer relationship with your users," Lynch said.

Google "Apollo project" and you'll get hundreds of hits with bloggers all talking about Apollo as if this were some revolutionary idea, a program that runs locally.

I'll say one thing. It is nice to see the backlash concerning Web-based applets or gadgets setting in so early. It is happening even before these gadgets have completely taken off.

Perhaps Intel was way ahead of its time when in 1996 it introduced the idea of Hybrid Applications (apps that combine data taken off the Internet with desktop compute power). Hybrid sounds a bit like Ajax and a lot like Apollo.

Andy Grove, then CEO at Intel described a hybrid application as one that runs locally while getting its content from the Web.

"The hybrid application is what we will use for a long time to overcome the limits of the available bandwidth. Such applications involve, for instance, ways of compressing and downloading data via telephone lines and then storing that data on a PC hard drive for accessing later," Grove said.

The technorati are quite excited about Apollo's ability to create RIAs (Rich Internet Applications) for the desktop. Isn't that what SaaS (Software as a Service) is all about? You can run and use Salesforce.com online as well as off.

When I read this stuff sometimes I feel like I'm Patrick McGoohan in The Prisoner. Somebody, please let me out.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on December 20, 2006 10:50 AM

December 18, 2006

The blogosphere has too many unquestioning fans

TAGS: None

I had dinner over the weekend with Steve Gillmor of Gillmor Gang fame and of course we got into a discussion about the blogosphere and its value.

Gillmor called me a conservative because I always question the value of the latest technology coming down the pike.

I countered with my belief that the blogosphere, especially in high tech, is made up of fans. You know, rah-rah-our-team-can-do-no-wrong kind of unquestioning fans, and for me that reduces its value.

The blogosphere has too many true believers who think that whatever technology they've fallen in love with at the moment will change the world.

Over the years we've seen this kind of over-reaction most vociferously when someone questions anything done by Apple or within the open source community.

But I even got hate mail when I questioned the value of IEEE 1394 [Firewire] on a PC.

As a journalist and a reporter for InfoWorld for the past 11 years I've been trained to question, to present the other side or at least other possibilities.

For example, the blog I posted last week, Gadgets Can Be Dangerous to Your Coroporate Health, questioned the value of gadgets, those small, Web-based applications or rather applets that are supposed to make your computing life easier.

See that blog for a definition, more examples, and why I remain skeptical.

Frankly, I just don't understand why many bloggers refuse to look at technology and innovation with a more critical eye. Maybe someone out there can tell me.

Now, to be fair, although I believe the blogosphere needs more dispassion when it comes to technology, I also admit the mainstream press is also guilty of not doing its job.

We write far too many news stories that are simply rewritten press releases.

If IBM comes out with a new RFID reader technology, why should it be the job of the mainstream press to take the IBM press release, rewrite it, get a complimentary quote from an analyst, and put that up as news?

That is not news. That is marketing.

At the risk of being called a nattering nabob of negativity, I think the mainstream press, and that includes me, needs to dig deeper and leave the pure announcements of technology to a company's marketing department. Meanwhile the press should go off and uncover the challenges that the new technology, revision, or application present to users, corporate or consumer, depending on the audience, the Web site, or publication the technology is intended to address.

Well, that's it. I've had my say. I await the full frontal assault in equanimity.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on December 18, 2006 11:13 AM

December 15, 2006

Gadgets can be dangerous to your corporate health

TAGS: None

With SOA and Web service APIs on the back end and AJAX on the front end, the age of DiY (do it yourself) software appears to be upon us.

Over the past few days I heard from software companies both big and small, all extolling the amazing DiY capabilities of gadgets, widgets or just plain applets.

The Microsoft gadgets Web site has as good a definition as any so here it is:

"Gadgets are a new category of mini-application designed to provide information, useful lookup, or enhance an application or service on your Windows PC or the Web. Examples might include a weather gadget running on your desktop or on your homepage, an RSS Gadget that pulls in your favorite feeds, or an extension of a business application providing just-in-time status on the pulse of your business."

From startups such as Coghead to the giants like Microsoft and SAP, vendors seem to be falling over themselves to show how hip they are about gadgets.

According to the true believers ordinary users, not programmers, can build out their own special piece of functionality, build their own applications or build extensions to core functionality thanks to the gadget paradigm.

Here's what it says on the Coghead Web site.

"The revolutionary Coghead application delivery service provides an intuitive drag-and-drop development environment with specialized templates for creating a nearly limitless range of applications."

"Limitless range" is what has me scared.

I met with SAP this week and they were all aglow telling me about their latest gadgets that can give you an alert box for an RSS reader that tracks business events rather than just news or blogs.

There's also an SAP gadget that allows a sales manager to track when a sales rep closes a deal, as well as a gadget that sends alerts for KPIs [Key Performance Indicators] and a workflow gadget that shows the purchasing manager the queue for all the requisitions waiting for approval.

Look, I'm all for the idea. I just want to apply the brakes a wee bit.

All of this sounds great and if you’re a weather watcher, go ahead and build a gadget for yourself that tracks the next storm.

But I question the long-term benefits of gadgets if you are part of an enterprise-sized company with thousands of employees that all need to be eating off the same plate.

Where is the quality control in these DiY applications? How do you know you're getting the right information?

What kinds of decisions are you making based on this data? Is it available for e-discovery in case of a law suit?

And finally, can it scale? Can 10,000 employees all ping the warehouse management system simultaneously to see if there are any pink widgets left?

The concept of embedding software in software has its benefits, but what is good for a single user is not necessarily good for thousands of users. Scale changes everything. Just remember that.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on December 15, 2006 03:25 PM

December 14, 2006

07 Predictions: Salesforce.com and SaaS will go off shore

TAGS: None

My two bold predictions for 2007 are this, one, Salesforce.com will take its business offshore, opening up data centers mostly likely in Bangalor, India.

Two, off shore data centers will realize they don't just need to host somebody elses applications. Look for the off shore companies in India and elsewhere to take what they've learned about software and start to compete with companies right here in the States.

The first offers obviously will target Salesforce.com and other SaaS providers. But over time, as SaaS and off shoring grows, the skies the limit on off shore home grown apps to compete directly with U.S. and German giant software companies.

More on Salesforce.com

They have two data centers now, one in California and another just opened on the east coast.

They couldn't have gotten worse press when their West Coast center went down for several hours, twice in 2006, so the thinking goes [my thinking, I am only guessing at what they are thinking] why not get another low-cost backup system somewhere else.

And with competition getting stiffer, SAP, Oracle and the companies they gobbled up like Siebel and PeopleSoft, all offering SaaS [Softwae as a Service] solutions, Salesforce will be looking to lower its prices.

Since Salesforce is the defacto leader of the SaaS industry, you can bet others will follow.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on December 14, 2006 12:46 PM

December 12, 2006

Predicting human behavior is not an exact science

TAGS: None

A recent article in the Philadelphia Inquirer on the use of predictive analytics to determine which of Philadelphia's parolees were likely to commit murder caught my attention.

A broad definition of predictive analytics would be the process of matching statistics with historical data in order to predict future events, mainly human behavior.

The news out of Philly reminded me of the movie Minority Report, in which the government's Pre-Crime Department could predict a crime before it was committed. In the movie, police are sent out to arrest the future perpetrator prior to the commission of the crime.

Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love, is reviewing the work done by University of Pennsylvania criminologist Richard Beck, a statistician who believes he can use data on parolees from the probation department to determine who is most likely to attempt murder.

Whatever the outcome in Philadelphia, this got me to thinking about the use of predictive analytics in more benign areas such as business and IT.­

CopperKey, a company that offers hosted software for predictive marketing campaigns, represents a new trend in predictive analytics. CopperKey CEO David Castillo calls it "leapfrogging," in which the analysts with the Ph.D.s are bypassed and the tools are put in the hands of end-users.

CopperKey's solution takes a black-box approach to predictive analytics. A company uploads its customer list, saying, in essence, "Here are the people responsible for putting bread on my table, find me more like these." Within minutes, a list of potential customers similar to existing customers is spit out.

Josh Mellberg, president of Senior Advisors Wealth Management, says that the CopperKey black box increased the response to his company's direct-mail by nearly 40 percent.

IT is also using predictive analytics to combine network-related data -- measurements you take off the network to gauge its activity and health -- with business information to improve the bottom line.

For example, data about customers dialing in to a call center to complain about poor cell phone coverage can be correlated with what the network equipment is doing and will do at a certain location, under specific weather conditions, at a particular time of year. By putting these sets of data together, the carrier can take practical steps to improve quality of service before the customer decides to try another vendor.

IT is also using analytics to understand and predict usage patterns across thousands of servers in order to ease capacity planning. With predictive analytics in place, IT can optimize its assets, notes Anne Milley, director of technology product marketing at SAS.

Of course, all is not rosy. What is still needed, Milley says, is a way to put analytics to work faster -- or, as Milley puts it, to reduce the difference between data latency and decision latency.

Part of the problem is that, although getting data out of systems is fairly straightforward, putting the new data back in can be tough. How do you feed the forecasting information back into your inventory replenishment and planning systems? In most cases, there are no standard APIs to make use of, which means more integration work for IT.

Milley also believes that although predictive analytics may support decision-making, there is no guarantee that it will lead to the best decisions.

"Somebody, somewhere has to wallow in the data and validate it," Milley says.

And that is true whether it is a marketing campaign or a parolee’s future.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on December 12, 2006 11:14 AM

December 11, 2006

SKIL Bill on H-1B visa increase tabled until next year

TAGS: H-1B visas

It looks like Senator Cornyn and co-sponsors in the Senate were unable to bring Senate Bill 2691 to a vote last Friday as I reported last week.

However, with a strong lobbying effort from many high tech firms this is probably only a temporary pause in the action. Washington insiders continue to predict its passage.

You can track which high tech companies are paying what lobbyist firms, how much they are paying them and what subjects they are paying them to lobby for by going to this Federal Government link.

Click on Access the US Lobby Report Images for All Years and you will be given search criteria. If you hold the CRTL key down you can search on multiple criteria.

Once in the report see Item 16 for Lobbying Issues.

Please post in comments on any interesting discoveries.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on December 11, 2006 10:59 AM

December 08, 2006

H-1B may face Senate vote

TAGS: H-1B visas

It looks like Senator John Cornyn, Republican, Texas, is still trying to push through the SKIL [Securing Knowledge Innovation and Leadership] bill, as of late Friday, December 8th.

Pro H-1B visa law firm Siskind, Susser, Bland, immigration law specialists, posted notice on Friday that "a strong push is still being made to address green card shortages for nurses," and "too few H-1B numbers…"

At the same time opponents are trying to rally the troops to stop any last ditch effort at getting it brought to the floor of the Senate tonight.

A blog at Web site, Common Sense Junction, is telling its readers that Microsoft lobbyists are behind the big push to get this through the Senate before the Senate adjourns.

According to the post, "Late last night it was rumored that [Senator] Frist was considering bringing it to the floor today in spite of the holds."

It seems Senate colleagues of Frist tried to put a hold on it coming to the floor.

At another site opposed to increasing the numbers of H-1B visa applicants allowed in the country, a blogger calling herself Cowgirl, from Texas, had this to say.

"A swarm of Mircorsoft loggyists, surely reeking of musty giant wads of campaign contributions--buzzed and stung their way through Senate offices Wednesday, demanding that they and others of their ilk be given hundreds of thousands more foreign workers next year."

If passed the SKIL bill will double the number of H-1B visas next year and then increase that by 20 percent each succeeding year if the quota for the preceding year is filled.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on December 8, 2006 12:48 PM