Sargeant, follow that man and report back.
Mood:  caffeinated
Now Playing: 'Cold Duck' Yankee turncoat turned spy turned counter-spy gets job at Polish deli in Detroit. cast of unknowns (Drama Rama)
Topic: Microsoft and VCSY

Next time use a pea-shooter. Make sure he doesn't inhale.

TalkBack Central: Users don't buy the Microsoft .Net concept

By Tom Gladstone, Special to ZDNet
Published on ZDNet News: March 20, 2001, 4:00 PM PT

Mary Jo Foley's recent article on the future of Windows XP, Office XP, and the Microsoft .Net strategy was a very interesting read. The thought of paying for the use of software exercised quite a number of people, mostly of the anti-Microsoft bent. The feedback comments were damning Microsoft for being greedy, but I think they missed Microsoft's point.

Microsoft faces diminishing revenues and a cyclical business environment. Microsoft counts on high initial sales of new products and upgrades. In the corporate world, there are no real "killer apps" that require a company to upgrade from Windows NT 4.0 to Windows 2000. The one feature that might have done the trick, Active Directories, has not been easy to implement and most companies have avoided it like the plague. As for the home user, most applications work fine on Windows 98 or 98SE, there are no compelling reasons to upgrade to Windows ME. Even the switch to the NT kernel in Windows XP will not be reason enough for the average home user to upgrade. With sales of new computers heading somewhere below sea level, Microsoft needs some way to make up the revenue difference.

Enter Software as Service. Copyrighted material is in its most basic form just bits, whether it is a CD-ROM, a book, or even an opinion column. The owner of any copyrighted material would love to charge the end user each time he or she uses or looks at or uses those copyrighted bits. Instead of getting payment once, the producer of the intellectual property gets a revenue stream that continues as long as demand continues. Secondly, if the product is no longer capable of being stored by the end user, the producer does not lose sales to the gray market, OEMs, piracy, or private sales of used bits. Microsoft knows these things and that is why they want to charge people for the use of those bits.

The only problem is, it won't work. I'll give you some reasons why:

1. People want to own software. Never mind the fact that due to the licensing agreement, no one really "owns" the software they have purchased. People want to receive something tangible, like a CD, when they plop down their money. Especially when they buy something they consider a product. We see cable as a service. We see software as a product.

2. Users do not want to pay monthly fees just to get their computers to run. If you have no cable, you can use an antenna and your TV still functions. But if we were forced to use Microsoft's new model, the moment you decided you didn't want cable any longer, your TV would cease to function. Even worse, if you were to write a Word document and then decide you no longer wished to use Word XP and terminated your service, you would not be able to edit your document any further until you paid and downloaded the necessary Word XP components. While I am sure there would be some basic functionality left on the system, you would not be able to just fire up a document and edit it freely without paying a toll.

3. The infrastructure just isn't there yet. In the business environment, system administrators have enough on their hands just keeping local traffic moving along. Imagine the problems that will occur when 10,000 users (not an unrealistic number in my company) try to access WordXP and have to download a new module to get it to do their bidding. At the home user level, only a small percentage of residences are wired for broadband access. If you go to use a feature that hasn't been already installed into your cache, you'll have to download it at 56kbps or less. That is not something the average user is going to have much patience for.

4. Technical support will be a nightmare. Documentation for Windows9x and ME is already pathetic. To get help, you have to plod through the online support system, assuming your computer will function enough for you to get there, hoping against hope that something will appear that is remotely similar to your problem. The alternatives are the newsgroups or paying $50+ for a book that may or may not be of help. Now imagine that your OS and applications are kept on a separate server, a server you have no direct access to. If the software as service does not take into account the quirks of your system or network and does not run, your only alternative will be to contact Microsoft for support. These are the same people that have already stopped giving away free phone support for their products.

5. People want privacy. Right now, there is an ongoing battle regarding the right of the individual to privacy on the Internet. Many people don't see what all the fuss is about, if you go to a site and view free content, you should be willing to give up a bit of privacy. Others feel giving any information to potential marketers is a bad idea. If people are already upset about cookies and confidentiality, how do you think they'll feel when Microsoft maintains all your personal correspondence, checkbook records, and personal finance records? Do you really trust Microsoft to maintain your privacy when they store your data files on their servers? Keep in mind; this is the same company that is responsible for all the security holes in Microsoft Outlook and Exchange. Even if they did promise you security, would they be capable of following through?

I can't argue with Chairman Bill's logic. They need to find a way to keep the revenue torrent flowing and Microsoft feels that .Net is the answer. They see constant income and a way to innovate on the fly, allowing upgrades on an ongoing basis. But for the average user, we will see a loss of privacy and a loss of control over our own computers. I just don't think we'll buy it.

Tom Gladstone is an Automation Specialist for a very large insurance company located in Winter Haven, Florida.

Disclaimer: 'Your Turn' is a commentary column written by a ZDNet News reader. The opinions expressed herein are those of the author, not those of ZDNet, ZDNet News nor its editors.

 

So I says to myself, 'Self? What better way to make a statement than to pop a confederate in the behind?'
Mood:  spacey
Now Playing: 'Chuckle Hill' Confederate forces storm hill only to find letter addressed 'To: John Cheese' (Twilite Zone - Horror Nonfiction)
Topic: Microsoft and VCSY

Alax Woodie opines on what's heppening.

'Viridian' Beta Delayed. Is Longhorn Next?

Published: April 18, 2007

by Alex Woodie

Work on "Viridian," the codename for the hypervisor virtualization technology that Microsoft is developing for Windows Server "Longhorn," is going slower than expected. As a result, Microsoft says the first public beta of Viridian, which had been scheduled for release by the end of June, will now be delayed to the second half of the year. Despite the importance that Viridian poses to Longhorn, Microsoft says the delay won't have any impact on the current schedule to ship Longhorn by the end of the year, but questions remain.

Product delays are nothing new in the software business, and they affect nearly all consumers of IT. One rarely hears about products that ship earlier than scheduled, assuming that the vendor has even released a development timeline or a roadmap. In fact, that's the primary reason many IT vendors don't publicize details about their product release schedule, because they know they're probably not going to honor it, and that diminishes their credibility. As time moves forward, as the bits pile up and the complexity of compatibility with past and current products grows, the problem only seems to be getting worse, and the product delays continue.

Microsoft, as the most important software provider for the majority of the world's computer users, has no choice but to publicize a timeline, but it does so only for some of its products, and often using vague six- or 12-month release windows that provide plenty of room for error. The software giant prefers to develop products at its own pace, and to finalize code when managers feel the product is good and ready, as opposed to accountability to an externally defined schedule.

But because thousands of companies have paid Microsoft millions of dollars with the expectation that they'll receive product updates and new products as part of their multi-year maintenance agreements, Microsoft, like other enterprise IT providers, must strive to find a happy medium, and--most importantly--try to ship products in a timely manner. Even the best of intentions can't stop delays from happening, of course, but the company must show that it's making an effort.

And that is the rock and the hard spot that Microsoft currently finds itself between: The commitment to deliver Longhorn with all the promised good stuff (like the Viridian hypervisor, but also features like Server Core, Network Access Protection, IIS 7.0, and better cluster failover) before its largest customers' Software Assurance contracts expire, and the reality that developing new operating systems and virtualization technology is tedious, time-consuming, and difficult.

On Thursday, Mike Neil, general manager of Microsoft's virtualization strategy, announced the availability delay of the first public beta of Viridian from the first half of the year to the second half. He also announced that the release of Virtual Server 2005 R2 Service Pack 1 (SP1) will ship in the second quarter, not in the first quarter as previously scheduled. Neil made the announcement on the Windows Server Division WebLog.

Neil says the delays around Viridian--which Microsoft is developing with help from open source virtualization software provider XenSource--have to do with performance and scalability. Microsoft's internal goals for the performance and scalability of Viridian are not being met, Neil says. "We still have some work to do to have the beta meet the 'scale up' bar we have set," he says. "Also, we're tuning Windows Server virtualization to run demanding enterprise IT workloads, even I/O intensive workloads, so performance is very important and we still have some work to do here."

Microsoft has set some fairly high scalability and performance goals for Viridian. "We're designing Windows Server virtualization to scale up to 64 processors, which I'm proud to say is something no other vendor's product supports," Neil says in his blog. "We are also providing a much more dynamic VM [virtual machine] environment with hot-add of processors, memory, disk, and networking as well a greater scalability with more SMP [symmetric multi-processor] support and memory."

This appears to be the first time Microsoft has committed to completely virtualizing big 64-way X64 machines. That would give Viridian an edge over its competitors in the X64 virtualization world, including VMware, XenSource, and Virtual Iron. But it still wouldn't trump the virtualization capabilities that are available in the RISC world of Unix, Linux, and i5/OS servers.

Other Viridian details previously released include the addition of virtual I/O capabilities, an expansion of the limit of the amount of memory each VM can handle from 4 GB to 32 GB per VM, and the capability to support up to eight processors per VM (macro-partitioning). Still unknown is how many VMs it will support per chip (its micro-partitioning limit, which is the real virtualization target), if there will be a cap on the number of VMs supported per SMP machine, disk limits, and which file systems and operating systems will be supported.

Neil also attempted to quell any question that the Viridian setback will spill over into Longhorn. "Up front, it's important to know that Windows Server 'Longhorn' remains on schedule for beta 3. [Beta 3] will be this half and RTM [released to manufacturing] in the second half." Despite the delay in ending the private beta of Viridian and moving onto the public test, Microsoft is sticking to its plan to deliver Viridian within 180 days of the release of Longhorn.

There is no doubt that Viridian is critical to Longhorn. Perhaps more than any other new capability, the new hypervisor comes closest to being the "killer feature" that companies will pay to get, even if it won't be available for six months after Longhorn ships. Of course, we thought similar things about how important Windows File System (WinFS), the replacement to the NT File System, would be to Windows Vista and Longhorn Server. Microsoft ripped WinFS out of Longhorn a long, long time ago and set it on a separate development path, but not much is heard about WinFS anymore.(It went to beta 1 20 months ago, where it died; current plans call for WinFS features to appear in "Katmai," the next version of SQL Server, where it won't have nearly the impact it would have had if it were included as part of the operating system.

Could the same thing that happened to WinFS be happening to Viridian? Probably not. The market for virtualization software and the impact a good virtualization product will have is much more defined than the benefits WinFS would have brought.

Just the same, Microsoft faces some tough choices about what it can do with Viridian. It could delay the product, which would seem to be the most likely scenario (and, ironically, one that Microsoft bristled at just weeks ago following an errant, but eerily prescient, report out of the MMS 2007 conference that Viridian had been delayed). Secondly, it could limit its scalability and performance ambitions for Viridian, thereby delivering a hypervisor more or less on time, with commitments to improve it down the line. Or it could delay Longhorn to give its development team more time to work out the kinks in Viridian, which seems unlikely.

Alternatively, Microsoft could crack the whip on its developers and demand they burn the midnight oil, Windows XP SP2-style, to deliver Viridian on time, with all the features and capabilities Microsoft has internally committed to. Or, Microsoft could deliver the software ahead of schedule, with more capability than anyone ever expected, pleasing both its customers and the industry at large. But I wouldn't hold my breath on that.

 

So I sees this Johnny Reb bending over to pick up a roll of toiletty paper...
Mood:  caffeinated
Now Playing: 'Shootin $#!@' Raucous and bawdy Billy Bob Teebones and Warran Bob Baker talk turkey. (Lowbrow comedy)
Topic: Microsoft and VCSY

http://www.pegasusnews.com/news/2007/apr/22/fort-worth-based-vertical-computer-systems-inc-fil/ 

end article

 

Would it be to VCSY's shareprice advantage to NOT announce news Monday and let Microsoft answer a few questions? I mean, this is like we're getting to watch a car crash and we could get to watch it happen in slow motion.

A tough SOB like Wade willing to hold back on announcing his products until finishing this trial and he's been at it since 2003?

The Chinese want to crush Microsoft anyway. Is that obvious or what given the way China allows pirating of Microsoft products?

CDC needing to avoid criminal indictments. Criminal indictments in a Chinese anti-corruption system is like breaking your leg out in the Mongolian Desert. Yeah, you might survive for a while but you'll probably wish you hadn't.

$3million? When the judge and the jury would have given at least that much and without damages even being assessed Wade settled with CDC for the least he could get?

I doubt it.

I wonder how valuable information is. What do you think? Is information more valuable than money or time? Information can allow you to do so many things... would you rather have money, or time or information? 

 

I got this here rifle ball in the War 'twixt the States. Shot me in the butt whilst I was was bending over to reload they did.
Mood:  vegas lucky
Now Playing: 'Whistling Dixie' Johnny comes marching home and makes a detour in 'red light' districts of the French Quarter. (Musical)
Topic: Microsoft and VCSY

From ProgrammersHeaven bone yard of defunct posters.

ShellShock's Guestbook

Posted by: Portuno_Diamo 2007-4-21 14:47:33

I guess now the first shoe is on the floor. I wonder what the next one will be. CDC down Microsoft to go and others. If Microsoft used such technology in Vista Longhorn or Viridian, they won't be able to drag this out as it is necessary to address the alleged infringement before the software goes out for beta. How long is Microsoft willing to delay releasing their software to the public?

portuno

Mister Murphy! Johnny got his nuglets hung up in the pipe vise!
Mood:  don't ask
Now Playing: 'Horror High' Shop teacher finds furniture made from body parts. Hedda Parted / Armand Torso (Classic Horror)
Topic: Microsoft and VCSY

OK Son. Say yer prayers, grits your teeth and hang on for dear life. This is gonna hurt.

 

United States Patent	6,826,744
McAuley	November 30, 2004

---

System and method for generating web sites in an arbitrary object framework

Abstract

A system and method for generating computer applications in an arbitrary object framework. The method separates content, form, and function of the computer application so that each may be accessed or modified separately. The method includes creating arbitrary objects, managing the arbitrary objects throughout their life cycle in an object library, and deploying the arbitrary objects in a design framework for use in complex computer applications.

 

'Happy Hockina', Leon. So you'll be hockina jewels and hockina watches and ... what this?
Mood:  caffeinated
Now Playing: 'Once You Were Mine' Lost love resurfaces as a bowling ball in a bag. Vic Duhmoan / Westley Cripes (Unseen Korean Ware footage)
Topic: Microsoft and VCSY

The attached article below details some of the more complex system interconnects IBM is able to do using XML and a combination of home-grown, partner-owned and somewhat acquired intellectual properties detailing the gluing, shaping and actuating that can be done with a 'pure XML' approach. And by 'pure XML' I mean your middleware between your proprietary new and legacy systems does nothing amongst themselves that is not an XML-based functional activity. And I don't mean just transporting XML as RSS does.

I think it's probably unfair for me to insert this IBM information to compare Microsoft's XML position (and then we go to that ridiculous Ballmer blather about 'workng in the cloud'. He better hope that cloud of obfuscation deceit and delusion doesn't blow away. Cheez Whiz, I hope the cloud around Microsoft's current efforts and non-efforts of the past don't blow away or I will be forced to see 'dos steveos con nada pero los conkachitas y pickelo' as they say south of the border. Well, at least that's how my relatives say it.) as some may argue IBM is a software eveloper and service provider.

The argument will continue that Microsoft let's the developer come up with his interconnections because there's no way to know all the possible things he would need in each disconnect so it's better to give him general purpose parts and he can make his own.

And THAT view of joins between datastores is precisely the 'glue' or 'goo' approach businesses must spend millions on. The developers make the interconnects.

IBM provides the interconnects out of a box. Think this all through and I am confident you will come to the same conclusion: 'Out of the box is better for the user than re-invented wheels'

So we know Microsoft XML tools to their developers are fairly primitive given Microsoft hasn't produced any significant XML-based products since 2001 and they are only now making said tools available to developers (they must think a semantic distinction such as designer/developer will convince a judge a 'designer' works with content and form and a 'developer' works function). LOL

Maybe six years ago Steverino. Today there are XML experts like Charles Goldfarb and his colleagues who will explain quite simply to the court what's going on here with demonstrated capability and vacuously offensive brain-gas.

Oh I know the argument. Microsoft builds software and their independent developers do the actual 'integration'. That's great. Mind footing the bill for some advertising for some of those top-flight developers using Microsoft tools to pull off anything comparable to what IBM is showing in hardware under software controls for server farm energy management?

Using XML technology properly, it no longer takes a rocket scientist to actuate graphic form's and content. That is what Adobe Apollo demonstrates to us... another example of a company that made their R&D budget count instead of letting the 'partners' count on the R&D budget for jobs.

Do I say Microsoft doesn't use XML? Absolutely not. I am saying they do not use XML properly in the most optimum and empowering ways demonstrated easily (any 14 year old kid can grasp what XML can do between applications if the kid is allowed to read that kind of stuff. Parental control can be so stiffling. It's usually exerted to make sure the kid doesn't do something to embarrass the family or bring on a liability in the form of a lucky lawyer lottery... if there are IP pitfalls in the mix, SOMEbody is going to fall in the hole. Then you have to find some wrecker service to pull his obviously gophered can out of there. Phew. Better have big hambones to be able to hold the whole developer community when it isn't just one but hundreds and thousands that find themselves at the receiving end of a paper shotgun loaded with thousands of little spitballs:

Dear __(Insert name of company here__ . According to __(Insert Affidavit Here)__ , you got what we thought AND you loan what we own. Therefore to wit: 'cease' 'desist' and 'turn it all over' 'Sincerely IP Owner's Counsel, Thus, Thus and Fiddlywits.) 

So Somewhere out there is a land where some companies are able to put XML based systems together easily and easily achieve the kind of' wow' type advances hinted at within XML-based information theory.

And then Somewhere out there are caves situated next to a volcano somewhere where folks work with XML and they work on it years and years and they still can't do any better than cutting a rock into a circle and poking a hole through it.

'Mmmm. Call Wheel. Latest. Best. Big money develop. No make XML. XML too hard. Hit head bleed. Make wheel. Mmmm.'

The problem with some teams is they never update their common knowledge base. Oh, they become educated as individuals and as a group they grow in knowing but they never inculcate said new knowledge into the team culture. At least, I say 'never' because it appears many of the tenets of XML theory have only recently bonked Microsoft leadership in the head after all kinds of happy hosre$#!@ swinging around over their heads since at least 2001. That's a long time to have your fuzzy funnies sat on in the colddead seat while the rest of the club is bebopping and hopping all over the XML dancefloor.

 

 

Complex Event Processing with DB2 for Linux, UNIX, and Windows and Coral8 High-speed XML event processing requires a "pure" approach Level: Introductory John Morrell (johnm@coral8.com), Director of Product Marketing, Coral8, Inc. 19 Apr 2007 Complex Event Processing (CEP) is a new approach for building applications that process and analyze high-speed event streams. Learn how the pureXML™ capabilities in IBM® DB2® work together with the Coral8 engine for high-performance processing of high-speed event streams. This article also includes an FIXML example. Introduction CEP engines are being used to drive a new breed of applications, such as low-latency financial market data analysis for algorithmic trading and trade compliance monitoring, radio frequency identification (RFID) and sensor network analysis for asset tracking and supply chain logistics, and Web click-stream analysis for customer experience management and process optimization. CEP applications are rarely stand-alone components. They often involve a combination of infrastructure components including a CEP engine, database, and messaging software. Effective implementation of a CEP application requires seamless integration between these components in both the development environment and run-time platform.

MORE AT URL

Who broke the tater peeler?
Mood:  cool
Now Playing: 'When Once We Met' Aged actress Fifi Sinamon takes final bow into giant bowl of pudding.
Topic: Microsoft and VCSY

Microsoft's Internet Do Or Die

By J. Nicholas Hoover
InformationWeek
Apr 16, 2007 09:00 AM (From the April 16, 2007 issue)
In the summer of 1998, newly promoted Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told industry analyst Rob Enderle that Microsoft's long-term future would be in Internet services. At that time, however, Ballmer said the technology wasn't sufficiently developed--and the world wasn't ready--for an Internet services revolution.

That was then. Now, with the increasing use of Web tools like Ajax, JavaScript, Flash, and XML, the technology is ready. The popularity of application services such as Flickr, Google Maps, and iTunes on the consumer side and Salesforce.com with businesses suggests that the world is ready, too. The remaining question: Is Microsoft?

Today, the company faces one of the biggest challenges of its 32-year existence: Risk disrupting a massive installed base of users and developers--and cannibalizing its primary revenue source--by spending most of its energy and resources developing Web services, or get left behind as the world embraces Internet-oriented computing.

Microsoft, of course, wants to eat its cake and have it, too, calling its vision "software plus services," a convenient reworking of the "software as a service" phrase. That Microsoft has done a poor job of articulating that hybrid strategy is evidenced by the fact that even developers close to the company don't understand it. "I'm trying to get my arms around this," says Tim Huckaby, CEO of application development firm InterKnowlogy and a Microsoft MVP. "If I can't understand, and it's my job to understand, then CIOs are going to have a devil of a thing with this."

Some light may be shed at a sold-out conference in Las Vegas at the end of this month called Mix 07. Billed as Microsoft's conference for Web designers, developers, and decision-makers, it features sessions such as "Accessing Data Services In The Cloud" and "Front-Ending The Web With Microsoft Office." The keynote speaker and the exec charged with piloting Microsoft into the wild blue yonder of Web services is Ray Ozzie, chief software architect since Bill Gates turned over the title to him last year. Microsoft won't comment on what Ozzie plans to talk about at Mix 07. In fact, Microsoft representatives repeatedly tried to talk us out of running this story, at least until after the conference.

Ozzie hasn't been talking much, at least publicly, in the two years since Microsoft bought his company, Groove Networks, but it's clear he's serious about the effect online services will have on Microsoft's business model. In an October 2005 e-mail to employees titled "The Internet Services Disruption," Ozzie expressed the same urgency Gates did in his famous 1995 "Internet Tidal Wave" e-mail. "We must respond quickly and decisively," Ozzie wrote, or "our business as we know it is at risk." But he also was optimistic that "with such a broad variety of products and solutions, we are well positioned to deliver seamless experiences to customers, enabled by services and service-enhanced software."

SERVICES TO THE CORE

Microsoft's strategy for maintaining its dominance in an increasingly services-oriented environment is emerging slowly, in pieces, and in very general terms. "Sometimes people think about this just at the application level," Ballmer said at a financial analysts' conference in February. "But we think about [it in terms of] core infrastructure for storage, for transaction processing, and computation." Ballmer talked about providing "foundation services" such as directory functions and network protocols, "just like we have in Windows Server." And the fact that Microsoft's online application services will be key: "There will be application services for things like electronic mail, instant messaging, that people can build on."

At the center of Microsoft's online services drive is its 2-year-old Live brand. Despite the nomenclature, Office Live isn't an online version of Office but, rather, a set of tools for small businesses to help with Web hosting, online storage, e-mail, and Web analytics. Similarly, Windows Live is a collection of online services such as e-mail, file synchronization, security, messaging, search, and maps. Several of the Windows Live options are rebranded MSN services, and future products include an online clipboard, a collaboration tool code-named Tahiti, and a storage service known as Live Drive.

It doesn't sound impressive. But remember, Windows wasn't very impressive when it came out in 1985.

MORE HERE

 

 

Pecked to death by chicken lips.
Mood:  amorous
Now Playing: 'Guacamole Sunrise' When you're so sick of green it looks like you got sick on green
Topic: Microsoft and VCSY

Microsoft builds data centre for the internet age

Reuters
Published: 16 Apr 2007 09:40 BST

 

In a century-old farming town in central Washington state, Microsoft has built a farm for the internet age.

But rather than corn or cows, this farm teems with computer servers and data-storage systems that will serve as the backbone of Microsoft's effort to combat escalating competition on the web from Google and others.

Microsoft's new data centre in Quincy, Washington, is its largest "server farm" to date — big enough to house seven football fields — and a physical manifestation of the company's giant ambitions to be a force in the world of web services.

The world's largest software maker will officially flip the switch on tens of thousands of computer servers at the Quincy facility on Monday, and Microsoft is already at work on a massive $550m data centre in San Antonio, Texas.

Those facilities are among the first new data centres to come online since Microsoft surprised investors last year with an aggressive spending plan to enhance its web services business.

It is a strategic shift for a company that built its business selling out-of-the-box software, and a testament to the growing threat posed by software applications from Google and other web-based rivals to Microsoft's Windows and Office monopolies.

"Data centres are the basic infrastructure that enable web services, so if Microsoft wants to compete in services this is the price of admission," said Morningstar analyst Toan Tran. "The software industry is headed toward web services, so this is what Microsoft has to do."

The data centres provide the base infrastructure upon which Microsoft can create a range of web services such as its Xbox Live online video game system to its upcoming CRM Live business software.

Web heavyweights such as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft are competing to engage internet users with a variety of web services from online video to hosted email to news. The growth of online marketing has made web services supported by advertising more lucrative than ever.

At the same time, the cost of computing power and data storage has fallen sharply, encouraging deep-pocketed companies to build enormous data centres to handle and control all the traffic.

At a Goldman Sachs conference in February, Microsoft's chief software architect, Ray Ozzie, said the company will continue to invest in new data centres, building enough capacity to eventually allow other companies and developers to build web services on top of its infrastructure.

It's a strategy that online retailer Amazon.com has already embraced.

The software industry is traditionally a low capital expenditure business, but the building of these facilities is changing that business model.

Morningstar estimates that Microsoft's capital spending will rise 50 percent to $1.5bn this fiscal year and expects that figure to grow another 50 percent next year to $2.3bn. It is still only a small portion of Microsoft's estimated $50bn in revenue this fiscal year.

Data centres are nondescript buildings filled with racks and racks of computer servers, data storage and network systems. Since all that computing power gets very hot, they require elaborate cooling systems to prevent overheating.

Operating costs, however, are quite low since most of the work in the data centre is automated. A large chunk of the operating costs come from electricity to power the facilities.

The Quincy facility will consume up to 48 megawatts of electricity--enough to power 40,000 homes.

Microsoft has a system for finding potential data centre sites. It takes 31 factors into account such as access to cheap, renewable electricity and fibre optic connectivity before coming up with a handful of locations.

"I kind of view it as a treasure map," Mike Manos, Microsoft's director of data centres, said in an interview.

The company discloses the bare minimum about the facilities since it views every aspect of the data centre from location to layout as a competitive advantage.

Microsoft is not alone in its reticence. Google's annual report with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) acknowledges that the company operates data centres in major regions of the world, but reveals nothing about exact locations or costs of operations.

Google and Yahoo are also actively building data centres all around the world. In fact, the two companies are building facilities in the US Pacific Northwest — home to some of America's cheapest electricity.

 

 

If me head were in a bucket, Love, there would still be leaks.
Mood:  energetic
Now Playing: 'The Pleasure is Yours, My Dear' Guy Crinkely Orchestra with this medley of 80's disco hits.
Topic: Microsoft and VCSY

This may be useful reference information for those of you trying to understand the process of getting information between a proprietary datastore and the XML world. Now, I can understand needing to demonstrate you're relevant in the XML and virtualization world but this does not do that. This demonstrates how much needs to be done to configure an interconnection. A very high level markup language such as MLE  doesn't need all that complexity as all that lower level construction is done once and then virtualized everywhere as an arbitrary object/application/agent. If something better comes along, a SiteFlash system would replace the central example of the best service and the new usage and enhancement would be propagated throughout the system on the very next use. No can do that with the following techniques, but SOMEbody has to feed all those developers Microsoft cultured as a userbase rather than a freedom quotient for users. To Microsoft, the developer IS the user. You get what they make... when they can make it. 

Writing Data in XML File Using dotNet

Process Data With in XML File By Arshad Raheed. Process Data With in XML File	Generic Windows, .NET Win32, VS, ASP.NET Dev Posted: 29 Aug 2006 Views: 5,688
Note: This is an unedited reader contribution

Introduction

This Article Illustrate how to process data within XML File. For this Article I have developed a small Application that allows users to:

·         Read Data from XML file and display it in the ASP.NET DataGrid Control.

·         Write Data in XML File.

·         Updating Data in XML File.

 

Getting Started

There are 2 main files:

1.     Products.xml

2.     ItemXML.vb 

XML file (Products.xml) contains three elements

   1. ItemID ‘ functioning as a primary key
   2. ProductName
   3. Price

(1. See code example at URL - dedacted for clarity)

ItemXML.vb contains all the business logic that I have used to process XML File

1. GetAll ( Return All the Items from XML File)
2. Insert
3. Update
4. GetByID (Its Takes ItemID return the requested item detail from XML File)

Reading Data from XML file and Binding it with DataGrid

 

I have used DataSet Object’s ReadXML method to Read data from XML file and then bind it to DataGrid control.

 

(2. See code example at URL - dedacted for clarity)

 

Variable ‘Path’ contains Server.MapPath(“/”) .. The Server.MapPath is not Accessible from the Class file, that is why I have sent it from the code behind file.

Inserting Data in XML File

(3. See code example at URL - dedacted for clarity)

Insert function takes 3 parameters (ProductName, Price, Path).

Item ID will be generated automatically by incrementing the last item ID in XML file by using the code:

 

dr("ItemID") = CType(ds.Tables(0).Rows(ds.Tables(0).Rows.Count - 1)("ItemID"), Long) + 1

 

ds.Tables(0).Rows.Count -1 gives the last index value of the DataSet object

 

 

For Writing to the XML File, I am using WriteXml method of the DataSet that takes the path of the file as a Parameter.

 

Note: set permissions on the directory, if you do NOT want to make ALL files writeable, you could probably get away with setting the permissions on the Products.xml file itself.

Updating Data in XML File

 

To achieve the updating process, I have used quite similar process as I have done in the Insertion. Here I am getting the Item ID from the QueryString and then compared it with all the ItemID’s from the XML file. If the ItemID exists, insert the new row at the same index value.

 

ObjXMLData.Update(Request.QueryString("Product_ID"), Txt_ProductName.Text, Txt_Price.Text, Server.MapPath("/").ToString)

 

(4. See code example at URL - dedacted for clarity)

About Arshad Raheed

End Article

Why is this a news item?  Why does someone seem compelled to have to point out dotNet needs a whole lot of developer cobbling to get you from the dotNet data structure within the Microsoft proprietary application set out to the XML world in a enabled, virtualized, transacted, tracked, managed and governed fashion?

So each developer using Microsoft tools must build their own entrance and exit ramps from dotNet to the XML highway? In this day and age? And after $20bullion in research and development and all Oz has is an RSS hose and not an out-of-the-box node interconnection in sight. ????? I guess nobody finds that odd... that each developer would have to scrap around in the textbooks and find some way to get from proprietary dotNet to XML.

Oh, what am I saying? They have plenty of support! They have Raheed kicking ass with it here... 2007... six (6) years after Hailstorm... or hailstone as the case may be. Somebody must have got struck on the head with an icy baseball and they've been non-productive all these years.
 

 

When do you think something will crawl out of the kitchen?
Mood:  hungry
Now Playing: 'Think Tank' Soul searing combat on the lines of Normandy and Napa.
Topic: Microsoft and VCSY

Joe has an interesting comment here in. Obscure little comments are all that's really needed when the subject matter and the resulting bottleneck of misunderstandings and bad steps become clear.

I place this article here under Microsoft and VCSY to demonstrate continually the area where one would most likely find an architectural or systemic use of the kind of technology VCSY has mastered and Microsoft struggles with.

Yes, I know the article is about Apple operating system Leopard, but, like Doctor House, Doctor Barn believes with increasingly ill-tempered  conviction, the same affliction affecting Leopard is the same malady that struck down Longhorn. That's right. IP Envy.

The following article may explain some of the symptoms.

 

See also related 

April 13, 2007 11:20 AM

Leopard is One Stubborn Cat

Apple released no new version of iLife or iWork in January as expected and as had been past practice. Some insider sites, like ThinkSecret, have indicated that the software's absence had to do with features tied to Leopard. Apple could cede some marketing and sales to Vista, if iLife doesn't release until Leopard ships. Now, or very soon, would be a good time for Apple to pop out iLife and iWork. (above excerpted - more at URL)

Maybe part of the treatment should be to drop an iBall.