Archive for July, 2007

Could Microsoft tackle piracy through Open Source?

Published
by
FrankP
on 25/7/2007
in Microsoft, Open Source and Technology
. 13 Comments

Tom’s on holidays, I’ll be your host for today. My name’s Frank P, you might remember me from such blogs as “BifSniff.com”,” FestivalShirts.net/blog” and “Aonach.com/chatter”.

Updated due to lateness of the hour when posting originally ;)

Well, despite being on holidays, Tom is not completely cut off from things technical - when I was talking to him today he had heard about the huge piracy bust in China today.

It seems Microsoft are chuffed with themselves for their part in the busting of two pirate software groups in China… the piracy groups were “in possession of illegal software with an “estimated retail value” of close to $500 million.”

“This case represents a milestone in the fight against software piracy—governments, law enforcement agencies and private companies working together with customers and software resellers to break up a massive international counterfeiting ring,” said Microsoft senior VP Brad Smith in a statement.

Lovely, says Tom, but if Microsoft really want to have done with people pirating their software Operating System they should just open source it.

Tom reckons battling piracy on a case by case basis like this is much like the little Dutch Boy sticking his finger in the dam - except in this case while the Dutch Boy celebrates, the dam is destined to burst in any case…

Open sourcing the software OS would indeed make pirating the software it redundant - if it’s freely available for a cost of zero, who’s going to go to the trouble of pirating it?

This is not the first time Tom has brought up the possible benefits to open sourcing for Microsoft.

Unfortunately, here’s where this post stops… this isn’t really my area of expertise, and Tom doesn’t have proper internet access going at the moment… this story really bugged him though, and while we were chatting about it, I said I’d get something up on his behalf - however I don’t know enough about the area to make a meaningful contribution.

I’m sure Tom will revisit on his return… but in the meantime, it’s over to you - what do you reckon? Should MS look at Open Sourcing their software OS? What would the benefits be? How would affect profits? How would any negative impact on profits be offset?

I look forward to being educated :)

Telephone hell with Dell…

Published
by
FrankP
on 18/7/2007
in Technology and customer service
. 25 Comments

Tom’s on holidays, I’ll be your host for today. My name’s Frank P, you might remember me from such blogs as “BifSniff.com”,” FestivalShirts.net/blog” and “Aonach.com/chatter”.

If you fancy being bounced around in telephone hell for a little while, try and call up the Irish Dell Outlet Store about the possibility of purchasing a machine on the UK outlet Store…

First you go through the usual press 1,2 or 3 etc… you’ll get through to teleperson one who will half listen to you and put you through to ’someone who can help’… teleperson two will then half listen to you in a very bored manner and explain that you are through to the wrong person and if you want to buy a refurb machine you need to speak to someone in the Outlet Store. After you explain that you were through to the Outlet Store originally, you will be put through to teleperson three who turns out to be from the UK Outlet Store. He will listen to your question and explain that if you’re in Ireland you need to call the Irish Outlet Store - this is the UK Outlet store. He will patch you through to where you started, and after pressing the appropriate numbers you will be through to teleperson four - an Irish lady who talks to you as if you are stupid, stupid, stupid. At this point you will be bored and frustrated and, because of the day that’s in it, somewhat amused. The Irish lady will explain that there are two sites. One for the UK, and one for Ireland. No, of course you can’t purchase a machine from the UK Outlet store, that’s for people in the UK. There are no words to describe the patronising manner in which she will explain this to you.

If you’re in the mood, you can pretend to be as stupid as she believes you to be and keep her on the line for at least as long as you were in telephone hell for.

Firefox’s marketshare now 27.8% in Europe?

Published
by
FrankP
on 16/7/2007
in Browsers and Technology
. 10 Comments

Tom’s on holidays, I’ll be your host for today. My name’s Frank P, you might remember me from such blogs as “BifSniff.com”,” FestivalShirts.net/blog” and “Aonach.com/chatter”.

Damien asks us what our site stats for Firefox are after reading the results of a survey by XiTi monitor which shows Firefox having 38.6% marketshare in Ireland.

You can read more about the survey and it’s findings on itWire.com

A study of nearly 96,000 websites carried out during the week of July 2 to July 8 found that FF had 27.8% market share across Eastern and Western Europe

With regard to Damien’s question: For BifSniff.com Google Analytics puts Firefox at 39.54% for the month of June - that’s for all traffic not just European traffic (Northern Europe accounts for 50.48% of that traffic with Ireland accounting for 18.59%).

Welcome Frankp - my blogsitter

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 15/7/2007
in Personal
. 5 Comments

I’m off on a three week house-swap holiday tomorrow morning bright and early with the family (if I remember to bring the right passports this time!).

In my absence I have asked good friend FrankP to look after the blog for me (to free up comments which have ended up moderated or in the Akismet queue inadvertantly).

I have also told Frank to feel free to go ahead and put up a few posts if he feels so inclined but as Frank already posts on Bifsniff.com and has a day job, he may not find time to do so.

In any case, I’m delighted Frank agreed to babysit the blog for me. I can head off now knowing the blog is in safe hands.

Thanks Frank.

More rumours of O2 iPhone deal

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 13/7/2007
in Telecoms
. 6 Comments

Forbes Madrid are reporting this morning that O2’s parent company, Telefonica have signed an exclusive deal with Apple for iPhone distribution rights in the UK.

This is the second time this rumour has emerged in the last two weeks. Both times from very credible sources.

It makes sense. Vodafone don’t need Apple (and the sales boost iPhone exclusivity would give them) as much as O2 does. This deal obviously doesn’t stop Apple signing deals with Vodafone in other European countries.

I’ll be interested to see who gets distributorship in Ireland!

Windows Live OneCare is crap

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 12/7/2007
in Microsoft and Vista
. 37 Comments

I have talked about what a piece of sh*t Windows Live OneCare is previously.

OneCare is Microsoft’s entry into the security arena. I have serious reservations about the ethics of Microsoft selling OneCare. It suddenly gives Microsoft a financial incentive to write buggy software. You can just imagine if, up to now, there was a financial dis-incentive for Microsoft to write buggy software and the quality of the software was poor just how bad the software will be now that they are selling OneCare.

That may go some way to explaining the many bugs in Vista!

Having said all that, I was contacted by Microsoft yesterday to tell me that they were sending me a new version of OneCare to install on the Vista laptop they sent me earlier this year.

I’ll give it another go, I said. Just to try it out and see how effective it is. Silly me.

I spent four hours today trying to get this piece of crap to work on the laptop. The last two of those four hours I was on to Microsoft tech support. They eventually gave up at 3:30pm and said they’d have to escalate it and I would get call back in an hour. That was eight hours ago. I’m still waiting for the call.

OneCare Startup Error

The number of re-starts required for this was completely ridiculous. It seemed like any time any change at all was made to OneCare, a re-start was required.

When nothing else worked, I had to uninstall Norton Internet Security. Restart required.

Onecare Cleanup Tool

To install OneCare, if you have a previous version installed (working or not) you have to uninstall the previous version. To uninstall OneCare, you have to download something called OneCare Cleanup Tool! You find this out after you do a normal uninstall and it still doesn’t uninstall properly. Seriously! How bloody difficult would it have been to build the Cleanup Tool into the installer?

Even Microsoft don’t know what the errors OneCare throws up means. At one point I received the error “No plans available”
Onecare- No Plans Available

Of course, copying the error text and putting it into a search box on OneCare support yields the helpful answer “We did not find any results for ….”
no plans available?

Windows Live OneCare is unusable. Don’t even bother wasting your time trying it.

UPDATE: It is now 30 hours since Microsoft tech support told me they would ring me “in an hour” and still no-one has called me back.

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