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============== Microsoft Woes
Microsoft lost its appeal of the European Community's anti-trust judgement, meaning that Microsoft will have to unbundle some of it's applications from Windows -- particularly Windows Media Player. Meanwhile, IBM announced that they were providing 25 full-time programmers to the Open Office project and that they would bundle their own version of Open Office (which they call Symphony) with all IBM computers. Most analysts believe the EU ruling will cost Microsoft significant market share as well as give EU authorities encouragement to launch other attacks on Microsoft and Windows. With IBM's support and endorsement of Open Office, Microsoft may well suffer lost sales of their second most profitable product, Office.
Microsoft has weathered other storms in the past, but these two appear to be more difficult for Microsoft to counter. The heart of the EU ruling was that Microsoft had harmed competitors by its actions. In the US, regulators had to prove that Microsoft had harmed consumers by its actions. It is much easier to prove that Microsoft harmed Real Networks than it is to prove that they harmed you or me. Several much smaller companies have complained that the basis for the ruling also threatens them. This storm is going to be much more difficult for Microsoft to duck than previous ones.
More interesting, however, is IBM throwing its support behind Open Office. Open Office is an open source freeware program that has been available for several years without making much of a splash. Microsoft has continued to charge several hundred dollars for its Office produce when users could have downloaded and installed OO for free. Quite a number of tech writers have said that OO is as good or better than Microsoft Office, but nothing has yet moved public opinion. IBM doesn't have the same respect from public that it once had, but they are still an awfully influential force. If consumers begin to migrate from MS Office to OO is large numbers, it's going to hurt Microsoft considerably. And there isn't much Microsoft can do. Any attempt to bash OO will simply make the public more aware of it. Microsoft has been quite successful so far with the strategy of completely ignoring OO. If any other computer manufacturers fall in behind IBM, it's going to be incredibly difficult for Microsoft to maintain the current profitably of Office, much less continue to increase revenues and profits.
For those of you with a sense of computer history, the name "Symphony" must strike a chord. Lotus, the creator of Lotus 1-2-3, decided they needed to integrate their flagship spreadsheet into an office product, which they named Symphony. It was marginally successful, but Lotus sold out to IBM when it had become clear that Lotus was becoming a second-tier player. Not too long afterwards, IBM dumped the Symphony product and name. Now they have resurrected "Symphony" as their name for their new Open Office version. Other than integrating it with Lotus Notes, however, it will be the same Open Office you can download.
============== Late Breaking News
Several news organizations are opening their news reports up to the general public to post breaking news items. They are doing this because non-traditional news sources have scooped them with important news items. They are losing market share (web page viewers) to blogs and other places where people post fast-breaking stories.
The problem is going to be how to differentiate public, unverified reports from carefully researched, professional news stories. Some of us stick with traditional news sources because we don't mind being a little behind the times as long as the story is probably mostly correct. Sure, traditional news makes errors, but not that often. A post by one person who may well have an agenda is nowhere near as reliable. If the public has trouble discerning what is confirmed news and what is essentially rumor, they are going to go elsewhere.
It's one thing for an online encyclopedia like WikiPedia to have publically submitted articles. There is time for other eyeballs to add, amend or delete information to what is, after all, a perpetual reference source. Not so with news. Before anyone can make meaningful changes, the item is no longer news. There will be a huge temptation for those with an agenda to try to create news rather than report it. How well the news organizations combat this issue will determine the fate of the concept. But anyone who has spent any time fighting spam knows that dedicated spammers will sneak through the best blocking attempts of constituted authorities. Expect pretty much the same with news.
============== New Mail Server
If you are using our mail servers, you may have noticed that some things have changed. Messages will sometimes have the subject modified to display SPAM-HIGH, SPAM-MED or SPAM-LOW. Every time a message comes into our new server, our server queries several lists of spammers. If the sender of the message is on one list, you get a LOW reading; two hits gets you a MED and three receives HIGH. You can create Rules in your email client to route these messages to Deleted Items or other folder. Our help page at http://vccomputers.com/spam.cfm provides more information.
============== Rick's Rant: It Comes And Goes So Fast Even I Get Lost
Greetings faithful readers! I say that because I know at least two people who read this rag. I took somewhat of a month off from my precocious pontificating to get me some time to get inspired. It was everything I could do to find some crummy out-of-date article to put in as a placeholder. I apologize for the lack of inspiration last month, but I did find reading some of the, albeit, out-of-date remarks amusing nonetheless. I also received one inspiring email from a reader commenting on the service they received from Fry's as compared to service rendered closer to home and heart. I now know how my Pastor feels getting all those emails after a controversial sermon. Keep those cards and letters coming as they are given the consideration they are due. Given that, let's get on with something worthwhile.
I was saving a whole slew of spam that I received last month that had to do with eCARD, funny eCARD, egreetings, thank you card, americangreeting.com, animated card and so on and so on. These were popping up in my mailbox regularly, and even my SPAM filter was not catching them.
As I deleted these bothersome items, I wondered how many people actually opened them thinking they really got a card. If you were one of them, try not to feel bad. I won't make fun of you, and even I was tempted just to click one time to see what my card said. But for once I was strong and resisted temptation and stayed the course, avoiding any possible pitfalls to my curiosity.
And, wouldn't you know it, just as I had gleaned enough of these to make some semblance of sense of it all, they miraculously stopped appearing. Now, Toby could probably give us all a rational explanation of why this happened as the Internet police finally caught up with the culprits and shut them down. Also, our Spam filters finally caught up with the stuff. So by the time I grabbed a pen the worldwide funny eCARD crises was all over. So there goes my material for this month.
Things seem to be improving all the time for PC users, so it's getting harder to find things to complain about. Spyware is being handled pretty well. Viruses are less common, and people are better protected. Even Phishing and e-mail scams are on the decline as people get savvier to the nefarious ways of these people. It's getting damn hard to really find something good to rant about except my customers. This is where Toby puts the lid on my comments, and I shall go no further in this vein.
Finally, it was great to do the PC clinic last month. It's an enjoyable experience even if it's a little exhausting. We ran into a couple of problems we could not fix. I appreciate the challenge, so bring it on. We had a Windows ME machine in which we were unable to get the necessary software installed as it had no networking card and our flash card would not install drivers as we had no floppies. This drove poor Michael crazy for awhile. Since then, we have decided that to rid the world of as many ME PC's as possible we are offering a bounty of $50 per machine good for the purchase of a new PC (from VCC, of course) just to rid the world of this scourge. So bring in your old unit and save money on a new one. I had to add that comment because if I didn't some wise guy would come in to get his $50 and go to Fry's just to watch me squirm. You're not going to catch me that easy.
See you next month hopefully with something really good to complain about.
============== CIPCUG Notice
You don't have to be a member of CIPCUG to subscribe to this E-letter, but we do make a short notice of upcoming events.
This Saturday, August 22, Access-Smart will be demonstrating their computer password protection program. Use it and you'll never have to remember a password again.
October 27: The Simon Wiesenthal Center will be talking to us about Antisemitism, Hate and Terrorism on the Internet.
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