White House, citing waste, freezes IT projects - Computerworld. Wow... this was certainly good news, especially given my rabid views on the subject, as often expressed on Mars in the past. Federal IT spending is grossly mismanaged and embarrassingly costly, driven as it is by decisions made by IT "Beltway Bandits" rather than by knowledgeable Federal managers. Virtually all of the IT contractors are in bed with Microsoft, so you find a strong monopoly of Microsoft solutions at Federal agencies. And yes, Microsoft products are the most expensive to maintain over time, and Office is ridiculously expensive and overkill as a tool for every desktop. Worst of all, IT contractors typically sell solutions that further lock Feds into the Microsoft ecosystem, thereby shutting out the feasibility of implementing less expensive solutions based on open standards. A good first step... Now let's see what becomes of it.

FT.com / Technology - Google ditches Windows on security concerns. I do hope this turns out to be true. If so, it's about time some IT folks wised up about Windows. The myth that Windows security problems are all due to the OS' large market share continues to dominate mindshare, but it's just that… a myth. Microsoft is singlehandedly responsible for the Antivirus/Anti-malware growth industry, and all of the security patches needed to keep Windows secure is keeping a lot of IT guys employed. This doesn't mean that Windows insecurity is a good thing, folks.

Government going Apple? - Security Systems News. I guess I missed this little tidbit from last fall, courtesy of Security Systems News. If true, it sounds like there at least a few Federal IT execs who are beginning to listen to reason, rather than being always feeling like they're on the defensive about Macs.

Microsoft Word Sales Banned In 60 Days -- InformationWeek. Interesting tidbit, though I'm sure it will come to nothing with respect to Microsoft's monopoly word processing software. Still, it's good to see some focus on Office without feeling like they have smudged some sort of sacred cow. Me, I haven't used Word in at least 5 years and see absolutely no reason why I would ever need to do so. And yes, I work for an organization that relies on Microsoft Office. (Do you know of one that doesn't?)

Virtually every Windows PC at risk, says Secunia

There have been a rash of articles in recent weeks about a new Windows worm that takes several routes to PCs, including Facebook. Apparently, it is now building a huge "Botnet," a network of zombie PCs that can be commandeered to do various evil things, like sending junk mail.

In the midst of this, security firm Secunia now finds that 98% of Windows users work on PCs that already have some form of malware installed. Now, let's see... What percentage of Mac users have this problem? Oh yes, it's still 0%, but don't worry, as the "experts" have been telling us for years now, the hackers will get to the Mac platform eventually. Yeah, right.

Oops, I guess that makes me a "smug Mac user," right? How does that make me smug? Just stating the facts. Despite what they say, it's no accident... and no reflection on market share... that Mac OS X users aren't vulnerable to this kind of bull*hit. It's just good engineering and an attention to detail.

Microsoft looks to mimic Apple success, says Ballmer Dont'cha just love it? Microsoft mimicking Apple... now, where have I heard that one before? Ballmer is such a weenie, isn't he?

Microsoft: Forget iPhone; we're still No. 2 in business

After having failed in its attempt to stop Apple's success with the iPod, Microsoft is trying the same failed strategy again with the iPhone> Talk the thing out of existence. After having failed in its attempt to stop Apple's success with the iPod, Microsoft is trying the same failed strategy again with the iPhone

Seriously, how long has Microsoft been making mobile devices (phones or Palm-killers)? And how long has Apple been making them? Is it any wonder that Microsoft has a lead in this market? Likewise, it's no surprise that there are fewer iPhone apps at this point... it's been less than a month since Apple opened the iPhone app store! I also wonder how easy it is to install apps on your Windows Mobile device compared with the iPhone.

Speaking of apps, I don't know where the Microsoft spokesman is getting his figures. If you visit Microsoft's "Certified Software" at Windows Mobile Catalog website, you'll be surprised how few there really are. I did a quick tally of the Windows Mobile software (the site also lists software Pocket PC), and there are only 41 applications available... all but 6 of which are non-business-related. (There are perhaps 50% more apps for the Pocket PC platform... which means maybe 60-70.)

Microsoft's spokesman Rockfeld is engaging in the typical Microsoft strategy (It's called "lying"), since in less than a month, Apple has more than 10 times as many "certified" apps available for its mobile phone than Microsoft does. This despite the fact that Windows Mobile has been on the market for about 3 years now. I'm sure some reader will say, "But there are tons of Windows Mobile apps that aren't in Microsoft's catalog." To which I'll reply, "Yes, but that means they aren't certified to run on the platform." If Microsoft thought those apps were worth adding to its mobile platforms, don't you think they'd do so?

I've been using a Samsung Q1Ultra with Windows XP on it today, and I never want to touch the thing again. Compared with the iPhone, its touch interface is unbelievably clumsy, and I never did figure out how to adjust its screen brightness so I could use it on battery power. The pen is also horrible... I don't know about Windows Mobile, but on this thing, clicking inside a control is not sufficient. You have to make sure the cursor is there as well. Given these tiny controls, I can't imagine how anyone who's used an iPhone would ever be happy using this.

Microsoft is just desperate, since both RIM and Apple have better mobile devices than it does. This kind of Microsoft PR rubbish is simply not worth publishing, and Computerworld should exercise some judgment before merely passing baloney along to its readers.

PC World - Gartner Explains Why Windows Is Broken

Although hedged in a cushion of blather about the need for companies to upgrade to Vista anyway, it’s impossible to read Gartner’s latest predictions about Microsoft without either glee or anguish, depending on how closely your fate is tied to the Windows platform. Obviously, Martians view this possibility with glee, since it would strike a blow to the foul stench of lawbreaking, cheating, and imitation that has infected global commerce since Microsoft’s success became a model for others. This kind of behavior is not only bad for Microsoft’s competitors and consumers, it’s bad for humans as a whole, since they tend to emulate “winning” behavior and automatically assume that “winners” are doing something right.

Any study of human history informs readers that this is not the case, yet it seems to be a genetic failing that we Martians observe with a great deal of sadness and anguish. We recall not so long ago, in Earth’s “Middle Ages,” when humans believed that physical beauty reflected beauty of the soul and some sort of sanctification by God. The corollary was the ugly people were evil. This is precisely the same thought impulse that so many humans are afflicted with in modern times when taking stock of the actions of their business and political leaders.

But I digress…

This Gartner report is spreading like wildfire through the web and into corporate boardrooms, and hopefully someone will eventually make the terrified-of-change monkeys in their IT department begin to consider alternatives to Windows before it’s too late. Certainly, I’ve been banging my head against that brick wall for too many years now, with no results other than major brain damage. (Nothing permanent, I hope. )

Even if Microsoft hangs on for awhile with the help of its warlike action against Yahoo, the company is doomed so long as it’s led by people like Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. They truly believe their success is due to some genius on their part, rather than to bad business behavior combined with extraordinary luck in timing. And ever since, their modus operandi has been to acquire innovative products from others rather than build their own. When that strategy has failed, they’ve taken steps to make sure the product itself fails.

From Mars, it’s clear that this is precisely the behavior humans are emulating, and it’s essential that the behavior be condemned—if by no other means than by the final downfall of its most accomplished practitioners—or humans face a long, deadly Darwinian struggle that will end up stifling cultural, spiritual, and intellectual growth for centuries.

Of course, it’s also possible that failure to act to reverse their damage to the Earth’s climate will destroy human civilization before their own behavior towards one another does the job.

Gone in 2 minutes: Mac gets hacked first in contest The fact remains that neither I nor any other Mac user has ever had our machine infected with a virus, a worm, or any of the numerous forms of malware that Windows users have suffered from since 2001, when Mac OS X was released. The single biggest risks users have faced online during this period are (a) running Windows XP, (b) running Internet Explorer, and (c) running Microsoft email software. Why? Microsoft has called it various things over the years, but I know it best as Active/X. Microsoft argued in the aborted antitrust trial that tying IE tightly to the OS was in the best interests of consumers. Right. It certainly has been good for IT security firms. Heck, this gave rise to an entire industry that would never have existed without Microsoft's highly vulnerable system, and it made consumers and businesses spend billions of dollars on antivirus/antimalware software to combat the problem. Plus it created a generation of people who are afraid to use the web to the fullest, and who are neurotically suspicious of hyperlinks in emails... even when they come from people they know and trust.

Even if you believe these things would have happened if Apple's OS held the monopoly (which is a demonstrably false opinion), the burden of computer security has fallen exclusively on Windows users over the last 7 years. Exclusively... not just 90-95% of the burden. I have never spent a dime on security software or subscriptions, nor have I spent a moment worrying about going online. I've never had my machine hijacked by malware, or had my browser go haywire because I visited the "wrong" website. I take sensible precautions about suspicious emails, and I don't download files from suspicious websites.

If someone has developed a true exploit for hacking Mac OS X, I'm sure it'll be quickly squashed by Apple. And one or two such exploits in 7 years is a far more intelligent risk than dealing with thousands of such exploits a year over that period, don't you think?

Computerworld: Microsoft admits it knew about, didn’t patch, bugs

OK, Microsoft apologists, take a healthy bite of this one and see if it doesn’t taste as bad to you as it does to me. When are you guys gonna realize that Microsoft is only out for itself and cares nothing for anything but money and maintaining its illegally obtained monopoly? The fact that our government (I mean, specifically, the Bush Administration) has chosen to look the other way is just one more example of how our country has abdicated its moral leadership in economic, political, military, and environmental affairs.

Daring Fireball: The iPhone's Funny Price Now that they've lost round one in the mp3 player wars, Microsoft is using the exact same FUD strategy that failed it in fighting Apple in the upcoming "smart phone" wars. It's doing this while simultaneously continuing to fight with nothing but pure FUD in the "home theater" wars. Meanwhile, Apple has released the Apple TV unit, an actual product in the home theater wars that's providing customers with some real value over existing solutions, and the iPhone is a brand new category unlike anything else on the market. This is one thing Microsoft still doesn't understand--or wants to make sure you're confused about--the iPhone is only a phone in name. To consumers like me, who actually don't give a hoot about its telephone creds, the iPhone is first and foremost, a huge-screen iPod. Close behind, it's a wifi internet device for browsing the web, checking email, weather, etc. while traveling. And finally, it's the first step in the development of an actual new Newton, a tiny computer that will ultimately replace things like the Treo. Unlike those other smart phones, you don't even have to get phone service to use the iPhone... nor do you need to subscribe to a data service, if you already treat the web as your data source. Ballmer would like you to think it's not a competitor for the touchpad PCs they've been trying to sell, but it ultimately is. And as John Gruber points out in this recent editorial on Microsoft's latest nastiness, Microsoft itself has nowhere near the market share in the smart phone market that it does on desktops. He quotes Wikipedia's stats that measure Windows Mobile at having only a 6-percent share of the smart phone market, behind 17 percent for Linux and 72 percent for Symbian. Yet Ballmer has the necessary evil to try to say Apple would be wasting its time going after that market, because they could never get more than 2-3 percent of it. As long as Microsoft lets a guy like Ballmer speak for the company, I will continue to have absolutely nothing to do with it, and I hope others feel the same way. This is no way to conduct business in a modern, adult society. It's the playground tactic of a middle-schooler, which apparently is the state of development at which Ballmer stopped.

Microsoft’s Flash-killer Silverlight steals the show at MIX07

Ars Technica had better can some of these guys who have become blatant cheerleaders for Microsoft, or they’re going to start losing readers. In response to this biased piece on Microsoft’s new Silverlight technology, which is specifically designed to compete with Flex, Apollo, and Flash, I left this little message as a comment:

Regardless of how good or bad Microsoft’s version of Flash (or Ajax, or JPEG, or MPEG, or PDF, or you name it) may be, the fact is that Microsoft has a monopoly on corporate desktops, one that it won illegally by the way but has never been brought to task for. Its technologies should be avoided entirely unless you really want to see Microsoft extend them to the entire range of computing environments eventually.

In other words, unless you really want competition and innovation in computing to grind to a halt, you should always look for alternatives to whatever Microsoft is selling. And please avoid playing Microsoft cheerleader in a serious technology journal like Ars Technica would like to be. The point is, new Microsoft standards aren’t necessary… we have plenty of good ones already. Every time Microsoft comes along with another of its proprietary versions of existing standards, it only serves to confuse the market and slow the adoption and use of web technologies. Look at what happened when they crushed Netscape in the late 1990’s… it’s taken 10 years to recover from that, so that we’re finally seeing the kinds of web interfaces I, for one, was ready to deliver in 1998.

Not only that, but each Microsoft technology takes up mindshare that squeezes out genuinely innovative ideas from much smaller, potential competitors. And small companies, as everybody who’s taken Econ 101 knows, is where innovation occurs in this economy. Every time Microsoft buys up a small company with a good idea (think: Vermeer and FrontPage), it ruins a tool that could be really useful (it didn’t take long for FrontPage to turn the web into a bunch of pages that didn’t work in non-IE browsers, or non-Windows platforms, for example, by injecting Active/X controls and proprietary IE tags into the pages it created… the same is true of every MS development tool, for that matter).

If you’re really in favor of open competition in our economy, you’d never select a Microsoft product as the basis for anything. If they didn’t already own the desktop, it would be different. Since they do, they need to be simply ignored in technologies they don’t already own. Remember, regardless of what their sometimes sympathetic spokespoeple may say, Microsoft’s entire product line is designed to extend the Windows platform as far as possible. That’s it.

I think a lot of people believe it’s extended far enough already, thanks. If you agree, just say no to Microsoft’s latest candy. That includes you, Microsoft apologists who write for Ars Technica.

Research points the finger at PowerPoint - Technology - smh.com.au It's only been---what---20 years or so since esteemed information-presentation guru Edward Tufte began his campaign to rid the world's meeting halls of PowerPoint slides. So far, besides myself, I've never encountered a soul who took that advice seriously. Blogger/scientist Les Posen has been hammering the blogosphere with the same message for awhile now (in fact, he has a post on this subject on his home page today), and I've chimed in with a few "Amens!" now and again, but nothing has changed.

Even well-meaning, intelligent colleagues of mine who have nothing but disdain for PowerPoint still dutifully prepare their bullet points in PowerPoint whenever giving a presentation. Me, my first act was to just use HTML and a web browser. This was back in the mid-1990's, and I used nothing but HTML (including dynamic HTML, Netscape-style) until Apple released Keynote a few years back. Since then, I've been using Keynote and QuickTime movies.

So it's gratifying to see yet another study pointing out that PowerPoint slides are not only a lazy way to give presentations, they're bad for your audience. Nothing could be more boring (or laughable, if you're from Mars) than watching somebody read along with the bullet points on the screen, trying to make it seem as if they aren't just reading them. Meanwhile, the audience sits with its eyes glued to their printouts, which have the exact same information in the exact same form. No wonder so many people fall asleep in meetings!

I wholeheartedly concur with author John Sweller's conclusions, and hope whoever reads this or any other missives on the subject will step back and think about doing something different next time you step up to a podium:

"The use of the PowerPoint presentation has been a disaster... It should be ditched."

Seriously, if you're a Mac user, get Keynote. It's not just hyperbole to say Keynote is everything PowerPoint should have been. Get one or two of the amazing templates that are available from Apple or third parties, and you'll rediscover the joy of making a truly great presentation slideshow again. Save the bullets for your note cards... use the presentation to show the audience something that actually illuminates what you're trying to say. If you don't believe me or Posen, get a copy of Tufte's books on the subject. Or read the new study by researchers at the University of New South Wales.

Slashdot | Microsoft Sued Over Vista Marketing

I wondered if someone would get angry at Microsoft over this. I’m still waiting for the FTC to sock it to Dell some time over the same sort of issue. These guys are absolute crooks, swindling home and business buyers alike with their fraudulent sales tactics. Don’t we have laws against selling snake oil and claiming it’s medicine, or love potion? To those of us watching from Mars, it’s amazing that they get away with so much. With Windows Vista, Microsoft divided the one product line into four “editions”, not counting the “Enterprise” edition and a special “Starter” edition for third world countries. (WTF?) Each comes in a different color box (Woah!) and are named “Home Basic,” “Home Premium,” “Business,” and “Ultimate.” No word on whether “Ultimate” is for Home or Business use, and the matrix doesn’t include the Enterprise edition, so I wonder if it’s the same as “Ultimate”? Who knows? Who cares?

Well, actually, a lot of consumers care once they realize they forgot to read the Vista footnotes on that new computer they just bought. The computer says it’s “Vista Ready,” but that’s only if you think an operating system that looks and talks like Windows XP but has a Vista label is really Windows Vista. The low end of the OEM market—all those cheap computers that some tech writers claim are evidence that Windows PCs are cheaper than Macs—is dominated by machines that only run “Home Basic,” which, as the footnotes so clearly state, does not support Windows Aero and Windows Flip 3D navigation, the Mac OS X copycat eye-candy that’s one of the main distinguishing features of the product. Oh, you also don’t get the new Windows DVD Maker, HD support for Windows Movie Maker, or the cool new Windows games (Chess Titans and Mahjong Titans). But that’s not all! You also don’t get Windows Media Center software, backup and restore tools, fax and scan tools, scheduled backup, and so on.

Did I mention that all of these features are standard parts of Mac OS X in the one non-server edition of that product? And that Mac users can run Mac OS X 10.4 on the same hardware they’ve been using for years? The only thing you might absolutely have to upgrade is your video card and RAM. It’s ridiculous that Microsoft is trying to establish a new class system based on which version of Windows you can afford. Geez. When will they learn?

What is it Puck says to Oberon at the end of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream?

Lord, what fools these mortals be!

CNet says Oscar-winning "An Inconvenient Truth" made in Powerpoint. Can you say FACT CHECK! Les Posen gives the facts to a bunch of dimwitted reporters who probably never heard of Keynote... They reported that Al Gore used PowerPoint in making his Oscar-winning documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," without even bothering to check the facts. Probably made the PC-prejudiced assumption that since they use PowerPoint, everyone does. Ah, the casual abuses of the majority.

Slashdot | New Microsoft Dirty Tricks Revealed What's frightening to contemplate is the number of dirty tricks Microsoft has played over the years that no one has evidence for. Just as frightening--if not more so--is the attitude of a lot of the Slashdot readers who are in an "Everyone does it, so what?" mode about Microsoft's misdeeds. People who talk that way must have ditched their moral compass along the road at some point... and unfortunately they seem to be in the majority at the moment. Good thing we don't allow this kind of foolishness on Mars!

Daring Fireball: Lies, Damned Lies, and Bill Gates If anybody is confused about whether this guy is honest or not, or thinks he might have turned over a new leaf since his wife is giving lots of money to charity, get a load of what he told Newsweek in a Vista-promo interview:

Nowadays, security guys break the Mac every single day. Every single day, they come out with a total exploit, your machine can be taken over totally. I dare anybody to do that once a month on the Windows machine.

As John Gruber at Daring Fireball points out, "Gates’s claim about Mac OS X security is simply false. Flabbergastingly false." And that's just the latest example. This guy will say anything to win. Is that OK nowadays? Is "unscrupulous" an OK personality trait in today's world? Let's remember what "unscrupulous" means: "having or showing no moral principles; not honest or fair." In my book, that's a bad thing, which is why I continue to boycott Microsoft products and encourage others to do the same.

Just like Hit--you know who--ler, Bill Gates and his buddy Steve Ballmer are masters of telling the Big Lie to get their way. Heck, it's worked for them in the past, so now they're convinced no one will ever call them on it. Just like the Newsweek interviewer, who let the statement roll right on by without question! As Hitler discovered, people will believe Big Lies before they believe small ones. Too bad humanity has advanced so little since that experience that people are still willing to be misled like this.

AppleInsider | Vista dawns, world yawns Here's a good summary of the typical reactions I've read about to Microsoft's much-ballyhooed launch of its equally over-ballyhooed Vista operating system. On a related note, Apple has a link on their news page to a delightful article in Monday's Pioneer Press (TwinCities.com) summarizing Vista, which does an excellent job explaining how Vista's best features are simply ripoffs of Mac OS X. The only thing that St. Paul newspaper writer gets wrong is the impression that you can't effectively use a Mac as a DVR "media center" like Vista can. I'm here to tell you this is plain ignorance. Of course you can... you just can't get a built-in TV tuner. (But who wants that anyway... seriously?)

Slashdot | Microsoft Copies Idea, Admits It, Then Patents It Just more evidence for why I boycott Microsoft products. The company is corrupt, bereft of its own ideas, and a bully to the rest of the IT world.

Slashdot | Why South Korea Is Shackled To Windows Good grief. Clearly, South Korea sees no disincentive to being an IT fiefdom of Microsoft, but I certainly won't buy anything made solely with Microsoft software. I haven't bought Microsoft products in years as a personal boycott of the company. If everything imported from South Korea has been built by the Microsoft Monopoly machine, it simply won't be coming into my household. Obviously, one little guy boycotting Korean products isn't going to make a difference. But the same is true of my Microsoft boycott, yet I continue to hope that one day more of my peers will realize that we have a government-sponsored monopoly running our computers, and all the money for the monopoly is going to that monopoly company. Is this right? Can anybody still say, "free enterprise" with a straight face? IT, computers, and software now touch everything we touch, and it's just not right to let it be controlled by a single private entity that has no accountability. I do hope others will join me in letting South Korea realize there are consequences to its IT decisions.

Slashdot | Developers As Pawns and One-Night Stands Is anyone surprised about this? If so, you have been reading Microsoft's developer propaganda rather than using your brain. Microsoft would be nowhere today without its huge developer community, and this testimony makes clear exactly how the company views that community. Remember your mother's warning about taking candy from strange men in fancy cars? Apparently, a lot of guys figured someone as rich and well known as Bill Gates couldn't be strange... or bad.

Review: Mac OS X Shines In Comparison With Windows Vista - News by InformationWeek It's very gratifying to see a review like this in the "mainstream" IT press. Not that it will make any difference to the idiots who continue to keep their heads in the Windows sand. Some people simply have too much invested, both personally and professionally, to acknowledge that computing life beyond Windows is actually an improvement. Maybe someday... and at least, I think the rebellion is making some progress against the Empire these days. Articles like this are evidence that more tech writers are willing to speak their minds without fear that advertising dollars will dry up.

Slashdot | Microsoft Bribing Bloggers With Laptops Why does this not surprise me? Now, do I think anyone who should care will care? Of course not! This is just "competition", isn't it? Well, if you're someone who thinks so, you flunked your business ethics class.

A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection This is a very disturbing analysis of the underlying---and largely hidden from discussion thus far---content protection system for "premium content" from Blu-Ray and HD-DVD sources. The author argues that Microsoft's scheme will end up raising costs for everyone, even those who use Linux and Mac OS X, because it will drive up costs for HD content and players. Not only that, but it will effectively grant Microsoft a monopoly on HD content distribution since the HD content providers will be forced to adhere to Vista's system.

The "executive executive summary" of the study is "The Vista Content Protection specification could very well constitute the longest suicide note in history." My only question is, who will be killed in the end? I don't get the impression that the author thinks it will be Microsoft. Nor does he think this future is avoidable if Microsoft's desktop monopoly were reduced, either as a whole, or for just the Vista portion if Windows users refuse to upgrade.

It's also a shame that he thinks there's a parallel between Apple's success with iTunes/iPod and Microsoft's desktop monopoly. I totally reject any such comparison, since Apple's success was achieved against all odds and on the merit of its products and services, whereas Microsoft's monopoly was achieved largely by the fortunate accident of riding on IBM's coattails, as IBM's mainframe and typewriter monopoly was essentially transferred to Microsoft on corporate desktops. The merits of Microsoft's products had virtually nothing to do with it... nor were consumers ever really given a choice, since their employers ended up dictating their choice of a home computer.

Vista Wins on Looks. As for Lacks ... - New York Times This is a must-watch for Apple fans: Pogue "proves" that Vista is not a rip-off of Mac OS X.

Hands On: A Hard Look at Windows Vista A "Hard Look"? My *ss! Admittedly, I haven't read the whole thing yet, but the first half is decidedly spin, spin, spin. Giving Microsoft credit for adding things like live thumbnail icons, transparency, window layering, 3D interface features, systemwide search, navigation controls in Explorer, and much more, these writers never once mention the fact that all of these have been part of Mac OS X for the last 5 years! Now, don't you think Computerworld's readers deserve to be told the truth here? This kind of glossing over Microsoft's user-interface ineptitude and tendency to take credit for the ideas of other companies is worse than dishonest. Have you ever heard of the Sin of Omission, Scot Finnie and Preston Gralla?

Windows development chief: 'I would buy a Mac if I didn't work for Microsoft' OK, this says it all, doesn't it? Allchin backpeddled today when his 2004 email came to light, but what do you expect? He does still work at Microsoft.

Macworld: News: Ballmer: Linux users owe Microsoft Unbelievable. Microsoft is rotten to the core, and that rotten core is Steve Ballmer. Microsoft will always be rotten as long as Ballmer is in charge.

Josh Smith: Universal Music Group CEO Says iPod Owners Are Theives Hmmm... Here's a guy who clearly is looking for a boycott. If you're interested in registering your protest, this website has some starters for figuring out which artists and motion pictures are handled by Universal. What an idiot! He wants everybody to buy Zunes because Microsoft is giving Universal (and some of the other studios) a cut off the top. Ah! So that makes everyone who doesn't use a Zune a thief, right? I get it. Now, Mr. Doug Morris, CEO of Universal Group, get this: You just lost yourself a few million customers. I hope the Zune revenue makes up for it.

AppleInsider | Zune incompatible with Windows Vista Oh my god... can these guys be any more lame? The screenshot AppleInsider posts is priceless, and they say the background photo is not people cracking up over the irony of the situation... it's the standard Zune background. (Visit the AppleInsider site for a better copy of this screenshot.)

CNN.com Video: Microsoft’s New Zune

I saw this on TUAW, and had to share it here as well. This is a hilarious video that all Apple/iPod lovers will get a kick out of. While looking sheepishly like a Microsoft-paid spokesman, the New York Times fellow shows off the new Zune to a somewhat skeptical pair of CNN anchors. Then, at the end, one of the anchors whips out her new iPod shuffle and pins it to her lapel. Everyone agrees it’s much sexier than the Zune, and the other anchor wonders why Microsoft “can’t get some good designers in there” because the Zune is so “clunky” looking. Priceless!

Slashdot | Time For Anti-Trust 2.0? This question is spot-on. Microsoft remains totally out of control, apparently believing it can crush whatever competitor it likes and being intolerant of any competition whatsoever. No standards are good enough for Microsoft, which must always invent its own as a way of controlling the standard. They're still going at this whole-hog, and except for Apple and its iPod/iTunes combo, nothing has beaten Microsoft when it enters a market. Google may yet win the web search/online apps game, but that still leaves Microsoft with huge shares of critical pieces of IT infrastructure, as well as a monopoly on corporate desktops. Yes, please! Let's resume the antitrust trial once the Republicans go away.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Zune problems for MSN customers Can you hear me laughing? It turns out that MSN customers who bought music for their "Plays for Sure" Microsoft devices are finding that they can't use that music on Zunes. Is that ridiculous, or what? It sounds like Microsoft is setting Zune apart from the "Plays for Sure" pack, thinking that will make it distinctive somehow. How totally lame... but not altogether inconsistent with the Microsoft world view.

Playlist: Microsoft's Zune isn't music to everyone's ears Here's a funny one... apparently when Microsoft says "Zune", some Hebrew speakers think they're just cussing.... in Hebrew.

Tom Yager, InfoWorld: Is Windows inherently more vulnerable to malware attacks than OS X? I was on vacation when Yager wrote this terrific article in late August... It's the best attempt I've seen to document in detail the many vulnerabilities in Windows that simply don't exist in Mac OS X. It also lists the built-in security features of Mac OS X that are missing from Windows. Absolutely essential to anyone who wants to have a serious talk with their Windows IT guys about letting Macs in the office door.

Rob Pegoraro - If Only We Knew Then What We Know Now About Windows XP - washingtonpost.com Rob Pegoraro, who covers technology for the Washington Post, does a good job looking back at all the things that were wrong about Windows XP, but which didn't become obvious until too late. He wonders out loud whether there are similar problems lurking in Windows Vista...

The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW): Wal-Mart bullying Hollywood over iTS movie downloads? This is a nice summary in TUAW about recent claims and counterclaims regarding Walmart's actions in response to Apple's launch of the iTunes video store. From everything I've read, it certainly sounds likely that Walmart is using its near-control of the retail DVD market to pressure movie studios not to do business with Apple. Isn't that illegal? Sure it is. Will our lawmakers do anything about it? Naw... they owe Walmart too much in campaign contributions. Besides, these guys seem to think that all's fair in love and commerce. (By the way, I refuse to spell Walmart the way the company wants. It's silly and gramatically indefensible.)

Slashdot | Microsoft's Masterpiece of FUD? Microsoft's boys are at it again, turning their sites on Linux this time with a "study" about how horrible it will be for Europe if they interfere with the rightful launch of Windows Vista. Be afraid, Europeans, be very afraid. Just remember who you need to be afraid of.

Entourage Vs. Mail.app This is an interesting account of a Mac user who felt forced to switch to Entourage because his company moved to a Microsoft Exchange server.  That's a sad state of affairs, but I do understand.  Fortunately, I haven't felt compelled to use Outlook calendaring here at my office, where Exchange also rules.  I do miss the full directory search, but I think there are solutions to that so I can keep using Apple Mail.  Anyway, his article---and its followup---make for interesting reading.

AppleInsider: Windows Vista Beta 2 features bugs and blue screens Great article from AppleInsider... be sure to check out the TopTechNews article they reference, for more from the Jupiter Research analyst's opinion of the latest Vista release from Microsoft.