That there is Thursday's IT Blogwatch: in which Steve Ballmer gets a surprise drubbing from an enraged Gartner analyst. Not to mention the "brilliant gadget" that Microsoft brought to the table...

Patrick Thibodeau reports from the land of the mouse ears:

ORLANDO -- For a few minutes during Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer's appearance at the Gartner Inc. Symposium ITxpo conference here, emotionless management-speak gave way to a mother's frustration with the Vista operating system ... [who] explained that she installed Vista for her daughter -- and two days later went right back to using the XP operating system ... Yvonne Genovese, an analyst who was interviewing Ballmer ... also argued that her experience with Vista is broadly shared.
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Ballmer was good-natured about the critique as he defended the operating system. "Users appreciate the value that we put into Vista," he said. But, as with earlier operating system releases, "there is always a tension between the value that end users see -- and frankly, that software developers see -- and the value that we can deliver to IT."

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It's Wednesday's IT Blogwatch: in which the Nobel Prize people recognize the scientists that helped make tiny hard disks storing loads of... stuff (yes, that is a technical term). Not to mention incomprehensible Dylan interviews...

Niklas Pollard eschews umlauts:

France's Albert Fert and Germany's Peter Gruenberg won the 2007 Nobel Prize for physics on Tuesday for discoveries allowing the miniaturization of hard disks in electronic devices from laptops to iPods. The 10 million Swedish crown ($1.54 million) prize, awarded by The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, recognized the discovery by Fert, 69, and Gruenberg, 68, of giant magnetoresistance, which has helped revolutionize computer data storage and retrieval.
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The two scientists' work made it possible to produce technology capable of converting tiny magnetic changes into differences in electrical resistance. Harnessing these tiny magnetic changes -- dubbed spintronics -- made it possible to pack much more data onto hard disks ... Fert and Gruenberg made their discovery independently of each other ... As Nobel physics laureates, Fert and Gruenberg join the ranks of some of the greatest names in science, such as Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, Niels Bohr and Wilhelm Rontgen, who won the first prize in 1901 for his discovery of X-rays.

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Woof! It's Tuesday's IT Blogwatch: in which IBM and Google help teach students how to use cloud computing paradigms. Not to mention making a Theremin...

Grant Gross reports:

Google Inc. and IBM have teamed up to offer a curriculum and support for software development on large-scale distributed computing systems, with six universities signing up so far. The program is designed to help students and researchers get experience working on Internet-scale applications ... [using] the relatively new form of parallel computing, sometimes called cloud computing, [which] hasn't yet caught on in university settings ... techniques that take computational tasks and break them into hundreds or thousands of smaller pieces to run across many servers at the same time [which] allow Web applications such as search, social networking and mobile commerce to run quickly ... A cloud is a collection of machines that can serve as a host for a variety of applications, including interactive Web 2.0 applications. Clouds support a broader set of applications than do traditional computing grids, because they allow various kinds of middleware to be hosted on virtual machines distributed across the cloud.

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Happy Thanksgiving, Eh? It's Columbus Day's IT Blogwatch: in which Target gets a spanking for not being accessible to the blind. Not to mention why grass snakes can be deadly...

Linda Rosencrance and Dan Nystedt are very much alive: [You're fired -Ed.]

A federal judge last week ruled that Target.com, the home page of retailer Target Corp., must be accessible to blind persons under California laws. The ruling could extend state and federal disabilities statutes to the Internet, experts said. At the same time, Judge Marilyn Patel, of the U.S. District Court in San Francisco, certified a lawsuit filed against Target by the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) as a class action on behalf of U.S. blind Target.com users.
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The national and California NFB organizations, along with blind college student Bruce “BJ” Sexton, filed a lawsuit last year alleging that Target had failed to make its Web site accessible to the blind and then ignored the issue when confronted with complaints. The lawsuit contends that Target.com violates the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) ... [which] require retailers’ Web sites to help blind patrons shop in a company’s physical stores ... and two California statutes ... [which] require that commercial Web sites allow handicapped persons to perform the same tasks as other patrons.

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Doctor it hurts when I write Friday's IT Blogwatch: in which Microsoft launches HealthVault (beta). Not to mention a hysterical twist on Dance Dance Revolution...

Grant Gross gives:

Microsoft Corp. has launched an online health care service designed to help patients take control of their health records and monitor their medical conditions. Microsoft's HealthVault, announced today in Washington, will allow users to store and share health records online, to collect and manage health data on a variety of home devices, and to search for health information.
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The HealthVault applications, available for free on the HealthVault Web site, are designed to allow patients to share their information safely and easily with health care providers and manage their health issues, such as weight loss and long-term diseases, Microsoft said.

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There-there. Don't cry, it's only Thursday's IT Blogwatch: in which Microsoft releases the source to .NET. Not to mention a periodic table table, made of wood...

Paul Krill feeds the whales: [You're fired -Ed.]

Opening up to developers, Microsoft Corp. is releasing its .Net Framework libraries under the Microsoft Reference License, which allows viewing of source code but not modification or redistribution, the company said on Wednesday. The release gives developers the opportunity to better understand the inner workings of the framework's source code, Microsoft said. Microsoft's efforts fall under the company's Shared Source initiative, which allows for sharing of source code; Shared Source has been viewed as Microsoft's answer to open-source, in which users can view selected source code.

Microsoft also plans to introduce a capability in the upcoming Visual Studio 2008 developer tools package to allow .Net Framework developers to debug into .Net Framework source code ... The final release of Visual Studio 2008, which is due later this year, will support the ability to configure the debugger to dynamically download the .Net Framework debugger symbols and corresponding source code from a Web server hosted by Microsoft ... Visual Studio 2008 also will include support to automatically retrieve .Net Framework source files on demand from Microsoft. This means source code for the ASP.Net GridView and BaseDataBoundControl classes cited by Microsoft do not have to be already installed on the machine before the debugger is started.

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Wow! It's Wednesday's IT Blogwatch: in which we're really, really excited about a laptop battery that lasts 30 years. Not to mention  an awful, awful performance from Commander Riker hawking enterprise IT automation software...

A breathless Next Energy News reports:

Your next laptop could have a continuous power battery that lasts for 30 years without a single recharge thanks to work being funded by the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory. The breakthrough betavoltaic power cells are constructed from semiconductors and use radioisotopes as the energy source. As the radioactive material decays it emits beta particles that transform into electric power capable of fueling an electrical device like a laptop for years.
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Betavoltaics generate power when an electron strikes a particular interface between two layers of material. The Process uses beta electron emissions that occur when a neutron decays into a proton which causes a forward bias in the semiconductor. This makes the betavoltaic cell a forward bias diode of sorts, similar in some respects to a photovoltaic (solar) cell. Electrons scatter out of their normal orbits in the semiconductor and into the circuit creating a usable electric current.

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It's Tuesday's IT Blogwatch: in which we set the wayback machine to stun and listen out for Sputnik. Not to mention an Australian TV ad...

Gary Anthes breaks out the candles:

Quick, what's the most influential piece of hardware from the early days of computing? The IBM 360 mainframe? The DEC PDP-1 minicomputer? Maybe earlier computers such as Binac, ENIAC or Univac? Or, going way back to the 1800s, is it the Babbage Difference Engine?

More likely, it was a 183-pound aluminum sphere called Sputnik, Russian for "traveling companion." Fifty years ago, on Oct. 4, 1957, radio-transmitted beeps from the first man-made object to orbit the Earth stunned and frightened the U.S., and the country's reaction to the "October surprise" changed computing forever.
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The public demanded that something be done. The most immediate "something" was the creation of the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) ... [inventing] an astonishing array of IT, from time sharing to computer graphics to microprocessors ... What began as a simple attempt to link the computers used by a handful of U.S. Department of Defense researchers ultimately led to the global Internet of today.

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It's Monday's IT Blogwatch: in which Microsoft launches its Google Docs killer: Office Live Workspace, a hosted SharePoint service. Not to mention the Insanity Prawn Boy prequel...

Eric Knorr knows the score:

Microsoft has taken another baby step into on-demand services, with a ... new offering ... Office Live Workspace -- a free, personal, Web-based document storage and collaboration space hosted by Microsoft ... Microsoft described [it] as “among the first” in a series of services that add Web functionality to Microsoft Office, [it] enables users to store documents online and provide password-protected access to others.

Workspace competes with similar solutions from Google, Yahoo, and others, and is designed to be an extension of the desktop Microsoft Office environment ... The rebranding adds a little clarity to Microsoft’s service smorgasbord. Microsoft Office Live -- essentially a Web site hosting service that includes content management, HTML templates, and other tools necessary to get a small Web site going -- has been renamed Office Live Small Business. For companies with 5,000 seats or more, Microsoft is selling subscriptions for hosted versions of Exchange, SharePoint, and Office Communications, all under the under a new “Online” brand.

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It's a phony Friday's IT Blogwatch: in which Apple's update is disabling iPhones, left right and center. Not to mention IKEA's new range of Ninja weaponry...

Gregg Keizer unlocks the news:

The iPhone firmware update released Thursday by Apple Inc. has disabled unlocked iPhones and wiped clean any evidence of unauthorized third-party applications ... Apple [had] warned customers that unlocked iPhones might be crippled, or "bricked" by the new upgrade ... it appears the company made good on its promise.
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iPhoneSIMFree, a group of unnamed developers who created the first commercial unlock hack, confirmed the bricking ... The 1.1.1 update also disables third-party applications installed on the iPhone using the popular Installer.app hack ... [as well as] non-iTunes ringtones, also added to iPhones using end-around software.

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ERROR. Failed to update Thursday's IT Blogwatch: in which more Windows Update problems appear, causing an in-place repair to be stuck in a timewarp. Not to mention MIT's Halo 3 prank at Harvard...

Gregg Keizer reports:

The contentious stealth update that Microsoft delivered to customers this summer blocks 80 patches and fixes from installing after Windows XP is restored using its "repair" feature, researchers said today. Scott Dunn, who first reported the problem in a story posted Thursday morning to the "Windows Secrets" newsletter, said that users who reinstall Windows XP with the repair option cannot retrieve the full set of updates from Windows Update (WU). The problem, he said, has been traced to the so-called "stealth update" to WU which Microsoft has acknowledged sending to users beginning in July.
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[It] affects any user who restores Windows XP using the setup CD's "repair" option, sometimes also called an "in-place reinstallation" because it reinstalls the operating system files without disturbing the applications and data already on the disk drive. Because repair is essentially a roll-back to XP's original state, the OS must be updated with all subsequent patches and hotfixes using WU ... After a repair, XP defaults to the "Automatic" setting for Automatic Updates, which means WU is immediately updated to version 7.0.600.381, the version pushed to PCs by the summer's undercover upgrade, said Dunn. Seven of the DLLs ... however, fail to register themselves with Windows. That, in turn, keeps XP from successfully installing approximately 80 of the most recent patches and fixes.

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Welcome to Wednesday's IT Blogwatch: in which Excel 2007 gets its sums badly wrong. Not to mention the discography of probably the best mashup DJ around...

Egan Orion reports:

Excel 2007 loses its grip with arithmetic that involves the number 65,535 ... perhaps the simplest of which is the calculation ( 850 X 77.1 ), which should produce 65,535 but instead returns 100,000.

There's all sorts of speculation as to how this bug occurred, postulating floating-point and rounding errors and the like, but it seems much more likely that some Excel developer simply punted at some point and the Vole's stringent quality control (cough) never caught it.

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Show me the money! It's Tuesday's IT Blogwatch: in which the One Laptop Per Child gang give in, allowing ordinary Joes to buy one. Not to mention the risks of medical treatment abroad...

Nancy Gohring (with fried egg) reports: [Stop making this silly joke -Ed.]

Some of the low-cost PCs designed by One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) for kids in the developing world will go to people in North America. That's the result of a program the group plans to launch on Monday that will let U.S. and Canadian residents pay $400 for one laptop to keep and one to give to a child in a developing nation.
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The offer will start on Nov. 12 and run through Nov. 26 ... Mass production of the laptops is scheduled for October, with the first units landing in the hands of kids around the world in early November ... The initial run will generate 40,000 units and production will quickly double and triple that capacity to meet demand.

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It's Monday's IT Blogwatch: in which Microsoft's Windows Ultimate Extras are still absent without leave. Not to mention a coffee table held up by the Alien (from, uh, Alien)...

Gregg Keizer reports:

Critics who blasted Microsoft three months ago for failing to deliver Windows Vista add-ons have again called the company on the carpet, this time for missing its self-imposed deadline to provide promised extras.

In late June, bloggers and users were already panning Vista Ultimate Extras as a bust. Extras, available only to customers running the top-end Vista edition, was one of the features cited by Microsoft to distinguish the $399 operating system from its $239 cousin, Home Premium. Microsoft's online marketing, for instance, touted Extras as "cutting-edge programs, innovative services, and unique publications" that would be regularly offered to Ultimate users.

But by June, Microsoft had not released any new Extras since it issued a beta of DreamScene, a video screensaver, in February. That infuriated some users; several days later, Microsoft tried to defuse the situation by promising to wrap up DreamScene and 20 unfinished language packs ... "By the end of the summer."

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