Microsoft is just gushing with openness today after releasing a wordy press release that reads like the old fashion corporate standards that you know and love them for. Microsoft has announced that they will be publishing documentation on all of their high-volume product APIs free of charge, will be detailing all the patents it holds, their application protocols, and will provide a “covenant not to sue open source developers for development or non-commercial distribution of implementations of these protocols.” According to the notes from CenterNetworks of the conference call, “We are opening up but still retaining important patent property rights”. Their buzzword of the day? Interoperability. Strategic interoperability. It can’t all be puppies and kittens.

Photo credit: onesevenone at Flickr

I asked my Twitter friends today “What computing tech/hardware/software apps are the bane of your existence & make your life *harder*?” Here are the results:

lucidquiet “I hate Windows and I hate Java and I hate all programs that FORCE me to use Windows” — @linuxchic (”ditto” — @lucidquiet, me).

feedback87 @linuxchic lol oh man windows. you cant live with it but you cant live without it

zemote @linuxchic you can’t forget active X, that is the bain of my existance

beaker133 @linuxchic I work on a win98 box. enough said

beaker133 @linuxchic plus barracuda firewall, and in house test machines that i fix before fixing customers crap :)

Penguin @linuxchic Internet Explorer, and anyone who uses it as a primary browser.

techpickles @linuxchic Windows, and most things Java (I’m looking at you Eclipse!)

RaggedEdge @Linuxchic: Siemens APT, it’s a DOS program, it sucks, it runs in 640K low memory with a special graphics driver loaded high.

RaggedEdge @Linuxchic: Can only use the serial port to download programs to a special controller, takes 45 to 50 minutes for big programs.

RaggedEdge @Linuxchic: During about half of the downloads, it locks up, thus requiring to start over. Fun when a whole brewery is waiting on you.

btn @linuxchic - Anything that requires me to fire up Windows in VMware - even worse if it requires me to actually boot the machine into Windows

feedback87 @linuxchic got to be twitter so far lol you?

vgan @linuxchic I nominate Altiris and Iron Mountain Connected Backup (Server and Clients). Citrix Metaframe XP would be a runner up.

linuxchic My most hated? Windows is my default answer. Most hated software varies depending on the day. :P

nikolaidis @Linuxchic: Symantec Antivirus (now known as Endpoint Security).

HighDef @linuxchic No doubt about it; MS Windows is definitely both a standard AND the crappiest piece of crap hindering technological advancement!

danielho @linuxchic Are you goading me into saying that I hate Windows? OK OK, I do!!! Esp. Vista and MS’s idiotic server software. Go certify that!

PodCamp MidWest has begun and if you are in the Kansas City area it’s not too late to head over. I am posting photos to Flickr, SnapFoo, and updating Twitter live. Twitter friends lunch meetup today, check out the tweets to find out where.

• Flickr Photos
• SnapFoo Pics
• Twitter

Read the blog post covering all the sessions I attended at Alternageek.com.

My family has been passing the flu bug around to each other so I have been mostly offline and playing nurse Mom as well as patient the last several days. Making sure I am not totally out of the loop, my phone lit up like crazy yesterday as I started getting SMS messages and direct Twitters from friends making sure I knew about the deal with Microsoft and Danger Inc. This one plays a little close to my heart as I not only have a Sidekick3 (we actually have several in our house) but I have a developers SDK for the Danger OS.

Danger, Inc. is the company behind the T-Mobile Sidekick smartphone platform. While they don’t make the hardware (the SK3, ID, and previous models were produced by Sharp and the current Sidekick Slide is being manufactured by Motorola) they are the company behind the OS that runs the devices and manage the closed software/ringtone catalog for the smartphones sold only through T-Mobile. Although the Sidekick is in the smartphone category it is more a consumer driven device than a business class phone. Prominent features of the Sidekick devices are instant messaging (MSN, AIM, and Yahoo IM), email (t-mobile branded email addresses as well as the ability to add external accounts with POP), a web browser, a camera, and the ability to purchase themes and customize the phone. It has been marketed to the younger (hipper?) crowd whereas smartphones such as the Blackberry have been prominently used by professional business people.

As a Sidekick 3 owner, one of my favorite features of the Danger OS has been the fact that it is constantly synchronized with the (T-Mobile/Danger) server. As long as there is a data connection available my Sidekick keeps my address book, my calendar, my notepad items, my email, my SMS messages (and my pictures if I am storing them locally rather than on a SD card supported by the device) syncronized. Should my phone be broken, replaced, lost, or whatever the circumstance, I can sign on to My T-Mobile and view my device through a web browser and if I get a replacement SK all my data is retrieved once I insert my SIMM card. I never lose my data. The major downside to the Danger OS is that is an extremely restrictive platform and is not friendly to developers. I had to jump through a lot of hoops to get the SDK and the only way I can get my apps in the download catalog is if they are completely my own, there is no open source build ups allowed. I have purchased a few apps for my SK3 including the Terminal app that lets me SSH in to servers and manage my systems remotely from my phone (although not the fastest method going across the EDGE network). Most apps are more consumer driven including a lot of games, audio mixers, theme modifiers, and diet apps. Besides selling third-party software, Danger’s primary source of income is the recurring Sidekick subscription plan on the T-Mobile network.

According to GigaOM Microsoft shelled out a whopping $500 million for Danger, Inc. My guess is that they want to use Danger’s OS mobile service platform to integrate and deliver Microsoft branded services perhaps in competition with the Google Android platform. While I am sure there are a lot of financial reasons Microsoft purchased Danger, Inc. I am really not surprised that they did from a platform perspective. Microsoft is closed source (even if they have been trying to jump on the open source bandwagon) and Danger is as well. Due to that, I don’t see them as any threat to Android even though we have yet to see the fruits of Google’s labor. Taking two companies that have always done business on a closed platform it takes reworking not only on the business side but also on the software side to open the platform up. I don’t see that happening any time soon but I think if they hope to really compete they would be wise to open it up.

Another aspect to the purchase shows that Microsoft is making a move towards the consumer smartphone marketplace. While they have the Windows Mobile platform it has been primarily in the business smartphone class. With the recent Zune changes, the Zune marketplace, and the continued success of the XBox platform, I would not be surprised to see a continued move towards the consumer market with modifications in the smartphone platform area. Hopefully they don’t try to make the Sidekick into a Zune phone any time soon but no matter, with all the smartphones integrating full keyboards like the SK3 has and even the Blackberry now including a camera, I am moving out of my SK3 within six months or so anyway. Microsoft can have it.

According to Bob Sutton’s blog, Work Matters, a new article in the Harvard Business Review by Professor Boris Gryosberg states that further research on a past article that superstars aren’t portable shows that while male superstars may show a decrease in performance at a new firm, female superstars continue to shine after changing companies. Two possible explanations listed:

• Unlike men, high-performing women build their success on portable, external relationships—with clients and other outside contacts.

• Women considering job changes weigh more factors then men do, especially cultural fit, values, and managerial style.

I have always held the belief that when I am interviewing for a new position at a company, they aren’t just interviewing me, I am also interviewing them. Turning the tables on the interview not only gives me more confidence and helps to reduce my nerves but it also reminds me to ask important questions and be honest in my expectations with the company.

I have had the experience of starting with a company that I always thought I wanted to work for and I was so star struck I didn’t ask everything I should have. I took the position and it ended up that the company was awful to work for. I spent the rest of my time there planning my exit. Not getting the offer or even a call back isn’t necessarily a rejection of your skills or talents but a sign that you two don’t fit and can sometimes be a huge favor. Women tend to take this more into account than men and it helps them to succeed in the positions they are in and the companies they work for. I don’t believe in working at a job that makes you miserable all the time, we all have miserable duties sometimes, but there isn’t anything worse than dreading getting up in the morning.

Apparently the ELSPA has decided to take a page out of the books of the MPAA and RIAA and make up crazy statistics to boost their cause (as well as their pocketbook).

From Escapist Magazine:

John Hillier of the European industry group Entertainment & Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA) has claimed that 90 percent of Nintendo DS owners in America are using pirated games.

Not only does that number sound ridiculously bloated, but that would mean that nine out of ten DS owners in the US are using illegal games on a modded DS. According to those numbers I would then have to assume most of my friends that have the Nintendo DS are pirates especially since they are technical types who are more into modding their tech. Out of the 25+ people I know with a DS, not one of them are playing pirated games and no one is using the R4 chip as stated later in the article.

Speaking to the Sunday Post about the R4 “pirate chip” for the DS, Hillier, manager of the association’s Intellectual Property Crimes Unit, said, “In America it’s thought 90 percent of Nintendo DS users are playing pirated games because of R4s. Takings from Nintendo DS games in the U.S. are lower than any other console and no doubt it will have a similar impact (in the U.K.).”

See there, “in America it’s thought”… THOUGHT - in other words, we make up the numbers because people aren’t buying the sucky games we sell for bloated costs. I am applying for a high ranking job in one of these companies because I can make up ridiculous numbers for shock value  therefore justifying my expenses and salary (see resume under skills and qualifications: grossly inflate statistics to scare consumers into sending us money).

How many awesome games have come out for the DS? Animal Crossing WW was a big hit, that cooking game, Brain Age… just because your sales are down, does not mean people are stealing rampantly. Apparently the new business model is to support an old failing business model by screaming piracy and collecting unearned profits from people too afraid, too monetarily restricted, or too uneducated to defend themselves from the false prosecution. See also patent trolls and other such business models that requires little actual innovation or work but has the potential to reap big rewards. This is a modern scam artist tactic under a big corporate umbrella of legitimacy.

Pirate:

• commandeer: take arbitrarily or by force
• Piracy is robbery committed at sea, or sometimes on the shore, by an agent without a commission from a sovereign nation. Although the terms are often used interchangeably, the difference between a pirate and a privateer is that the privateer was commissioned by a government and the pirate was non-commissioned. (See Privateer)

Who’s the pirate now?