Bayosphere

ZDNet: ‘Code Red’: What went wrong?
The Internet was lucky this time, as this particular Code Red program squandered its advantage and left itself vulnerable to security measures. That will not always be the case, said Vern Paxson, staff computer scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, who analyzed Code Red’s quick spread.

The Internet doesn’t need to be this insecure. We just don’t care enough to prevent the trouble.

One story this morning said only 10 percent of Microsoft Internet Information Server installations — the only ones this worm attacks — had bothered to install the patch. I can tell you one reason why more don’t. There are so many patches these days from Microsoft that it’s almost impossible to keep up with them.

And MIcrosoft’s architecture isn’t amenable to hot fixes that actually stick. I downloaded and installed the Microsoft patch, which told me at the end that it would need to be reinstalled if I ever made another patch to the operating system. Gee, thanks.

It’s always interesting to read the legal disclaimers. Here’s the one Microsoft puts at the end of its security postings:

The information provided in the Microsoft Knowledge Base is provided “as is” without warranty of any kind. Microsoft disclaims all warranties, either express or implied, including the warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. In no event shall Microsoft Corporation or its suppliers be liable for any damages whatsoever including direct, indirect, incidental, consequential, loss of business profits or special damages, even if Microsoft Corporation or its suppliers have been advised of the possibility of such damages.

Gives you the warm fuzzies, doesn’t it…

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It didn’t take me long in Mac OS 9.1 to run into stability problems on my new Mac iBook, needless to say. So I’ve been running Mac OS Xthrough the paces.

After using it for several days, I can verify the typical complaints — it’s painfully slow at times, particularly in booting, and launching and switching among applications. Driver support isn’t terrific. But it’s rock-solid, as you’d expect for an OS based on Unix (BSD in this case).

If the upcoming version 10.1 speeds things up sufficiently, as online reports suggest (Accelerate Your Mac), I’ll move over full-time. At the moment it’s just a little too slow.

But this is a truly amazing effort on Apple’s part. Now let’s hope for the follow-through on the part of the development community — and on the part of Apple’s developer-relations team, which hasn’t been the company’s best feature over the years.

I have to wonder if it will matter in a world so thoroughly dominated by Microsoft. But I’m going to keep on trying for some measure of independence.

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Wall Street Journal: Microsoft wants MSN icons on some PCs. The requirement seems to run contrary to the Redmond, Wash., company’s move two weeks ago to give computer makers more flexibility in configuring their Windows XP screens.

Not even the smallest opening for competition can survive Microsoft’s power-grabbing tendencies. After offering a pretense of openness, an almost meaningless offer at that, now Microsoft is showing again why no one should ever take at face value anything the company says.

Which makes all the more puzzling the remarks from Steve Ballmer and others, complaining about AOL’s plans to buy its exclusive way onto desktops. Microsoft has argued, without any sense of irony, that AOL is being anticompetitve by doing the same kinds of things for which Microsoft is so notorious.

Then again, what do you expect from our favorite monopolist?

The Privacy Foundation’s Richard Smith has written an excellent explainer on why the Digital Millennium Copyright Act is a bigger threat to security than most people realize. Clearly, Congress had no clue when it passed this dangerous law.

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I can’t remember precisely when I first tried shopping online. My initial reaction was that this was going to be a useful addition to the customer experience.

Even as the technology implosion continues, there are still some excellent reasons to note why cyber-retailing is with us for good. The dot-coms are hurting, but the concept is not.

More in my Sunday columnM.

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My thoughtful colleague Scott Herhold is a skeptic about the idea that there was anything seriously wrong when investment banks got fees that were much higher than normal after allocating hot technology IPO stocks to investors willing to pay those higher fees. Scott wants to know who the victims were, or whether these practices were even illegal.

It may well have been legal, another example of the truism that it’s often what’s legal that’s the scandal, not what’s illegal. But it wasn’t right, in part because it cynically fed hot air into a speculative bubble that was bound to collapse.

The victims were all of us, and especially the people who rely — obviously foolishly — on the idea that the markets won’t be gamed by insiders. The IPO mania was all about shifting risk from the well-informed insiders, the people who surely knew they were selling garbage companies, to the less-informed public shareholders. Yes, the latter were greedy, and to some degree deserved what they got. But they didn’t know what kinds of games were being played by the insiders.

Scott talks about “choreographed” IPOs. That’s a good word. The insiders were doing their best to ensure that stocks would go up the first day, creating the impression of a company that everyone just had to own. The folks who paid high fees to get shares tended to flip the shares, getting easy and quick profits. The banks got their fees coming and going. Who lost? The little guy, as usual.

Maybe, as Scott suggests, a truth commission is a better idea than a hanging. But here’s one bit of truth we don’t have to hold hearings to learn — the insiders helped each other make billions, and the suckers lost big-time.

I worry about the corrosive effect all this will have on future investors. I hope it doesn’t sour an entire generation on responsible investing.

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I ordered an Apple iBook in June from the Apple Store Web site, which told me it would arrive in 15 days. I checked the order status on the 15th day and learned it was “being assembled.” A phone call revealed that there were more orders than anticipated, and besides, according to the person who spoke with me, the 15 days meant 15 business days.

“Why doesn’t it say that on the site?” I asked.

Maybe it should, said the salesperson.

OK. On the 15th business day I called again, and was told the computer might be shipping the following week. Maybe.

I waited a few more days and learned that Apple was still not sure when it would ship. At that point I checked an online dealer and found that the model I wanted, the system with the DVD drive, was in stock. I ordered it, and cancelled the Apple Store order.

Then I ran into Bill Campbell, a member of the Apple board of directors, at a gathering for another company where he’s a board member. “The day Microsoft learns humility will be the same day Apple understands how to forecast demand,” I told him. He didn’t disagree.

Anyway, it’s here now. And for the most part I love it.

The iBook strikes me as a nearly ideal combination of form, price and function for a notebook computer. It’s light, under 5 pounds. It’s powerful enough, with a 500-MHz G3 processor. I added 256MB of RAM, bringing the total to 384MB, which is good enough for the time being. The 10GB hard disk is a bit small, but liveable since I’m not planning to put lots of music or video on this drive.

Mac OS X looks lovely, and runs acceptably with this configuration. But I’m not using it for regular work. The “Classic” environment really slows things down, and since I’ll be using Virtual PC I’ll have to wait in any event for Connectix to get VPC for OS X out of beta.

I’ve downloaded iCab and Opera, which most people consider the two best Mac browsers apart from Internet Explorer. But I have to say, based on using all three, that I find IE superior in key ways. The Mac team has done a great job with this.

Because my company uses Exchange for e-mail and calendaring — and has disabled POP3 access to the server — I’m locked into at least one Microsoft solution. I downloaded the Outlook Mac client, which is new. It’s not nearly as good as the Windows version in a number of ways.

Having installed Virtual PC and a copy of Windows 98 from a machine I no longer use, I’m now planning to install the Windows Outlook client. Maybe that will be the best answer — running Outlook in a Windows session while using the Mac 0S for everything else.

For word processing I’m leaning toward Nisus, recommended strongly by John Markoff, though I’ve found Appleworks 6 to be acceptable. Nisus looks like it has a steep learning curve to find all the tricks, but it also looks extremely powerful.

The Logitech Optical Wheel Mouse is a joy to use with the iBook. I can’t believe — especially now that Apple has adopted Unix in OS X — that the company still insists on selling people that brain-dead one-button mouse. The right button is a major productivity tool.

Speaking of brain-dead, Apple’s Software Update needs reworking, too. I just ran it and selected several updates. After a couple of long file downloads, it froze on the Open Transport update. When I rebooted, the previous update — the DVD player — hadn’t taken effect, so I have to do it all over again. Guess I’ll have to do these one by one, then reboot each time. What a drag.

Now I’ve got to get an ADB-USB connector so I can use the keyboard from my older Mac. At home I’ll use the Mac with the Samsung flat-panel display and outboard mouse/keyboard. Works fine in clamshell mode, I gather.

More later…

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Craig Burton finds it ironic that I installed Virtual PC on my new Mac. “Virtual PC is a cool product as it lets you run Windows on your Mac,” he says. “Here is the irony. It comes with Windows. To run Virutal PC, you must install Windows on your Mac. Virtual PC is not a “Windows” emulator, it is a “PC” emulator.”

Here’s the real irony. Virtual PC doesn’t come with Windows. It’s a PC emulator that comes with PC DOS, not MS-DOS and definitely not Windows.

I installed it, and then installed an older Windows that came with a PC I no longer use. Microsoft didn’t get a nickel in this transaction. Maybe that’s re-direction….

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SiliconValley.com: Microsoft says it doesn’t expect objections to delay Windows XP. Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer accused America Online of “limiting the marketplace” by insisting that computer manufacturers delete new Microsoft Internet features from its Windows XP operating system.

So this is the new line from Microsoft, a company that has done more than any other to limit choice in computing. You have to wonder if Ballmer was laughing inwardly as he said this.

Probably not. Redmond is pretty much an Irony-Free Zone, at least among the Microsoft leadership.

For Ballmer and Gates and their lieutenants, competition in the PC industry exists solely within the confines of the Microsoft empire. PC makers are permitted to offer Microsoft Windows machines with ever-so-slight tweaks of the hardware configuration. And other software companies battle it out for the relative crumbs Microsoft leaves on the table.

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Nick Petreley: Microsoft’s Bait and Switch. I believe that Miguel de Icaza’s enthusiasm for porting the Microsoft .NET development environment to open source as a project called Mono to be naive and potentially dangerous to the open-source movement.

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