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Via The Macalope, Microsoft’s leaked reaction to Mac OS X’s new search capabilities:

Lenn Pryor:

You will have to take Vic’s disk…I am not giving mine up. Tonight I got on corpnet, hooked up Mail.app to my Exchange server and then downloaded all of my mail into the local file store. I did system wide queries against docs, contacts, apps, photos, music, and my Microsoft email on a Mac. It was f*cking amazing. It is like I just got a free pass to Longhorn land today.

Jim Allchin:

Yes. I know. It is hard to take. I don’t believe we will have search this fast.

The funny part for me as I read this is that they’re talking about Mac OS X 10.4 search. Mac OS X 10.4’s search worked, but it was very slow. Yet apparently, even that blew away what they had.

Still, it isn’t all bad for Microsoft: It looks like they at least realized the speed of search was important.

Macworld | A year after iTunes Plus, Apple faces stepped-up competition - Page 2

Music services shutting down may let DRM finally shows its teeth.
[...]
Microsoft is one company that’s recently had to deal with just this sort of problem. The company’s MSN Music venture stopped selling music in 2006, but only recently announced its intention to shut down the servers that let users continue to play purchased music at the end of this summer. Past that point, those users will only be able to play their music as long as they keep using the same computer and operating system. But if they upgrade either hardware or software, they’re out of luck.

Wait, wait. Back up just a bit. Is it possible that Microsoft shutting down MSN Music wasn’t just stupid, but calculated? There’s no question that MSN Music’s shut down has raised the profile of DRM a bit. At this point, could the labels themselves want people soured from DRM so they’re soured from the iTunes store?

Just a crazy conspiracy theory, right?

Why Microsoft’s Xbox 360 sales milestone isn’t so impressive

…So while Microsoft’s claim that being first will help them win may sound good to corporate ears, the truth is that the Wii is on track to outsell the Xbox 360 rather handily.

Ars has a nice graph of January-March sales for different systems, too.

And here I thought it was just a more advanced, more annoying version of cmd (that I’m hoping supports UNC paths¹).

But Microsoft seems to think it’s something else entirely. I’m not sure what, though. But whatever it is, it’s really really freaking dangerous.

Of course, PowerShell did not destroy my computer. That wasn’t the point. The point was that Microsoft’s fear mongering was over the top. There’s no good reason for an installer to recommend that the user close all other programs. As for backups, the user should be doing regular backups anyway. There’s no reason the PowerShell installer in specific should be dangerous.

I find installer text reminding me to do a backup to be an admission that the installer is not safe. If it’s not safe, pull it until you have one that you’re sure is safe. Disclaimers like this might make sense for service packs, but not for installing an additional shell.

1. Oddly enough, bash from cygwin supports UNC paths. [↩]

Gruber’s “plain English” translation of Yahoo’s “Ack! Microsoft!” memo is funny stuff.

A lovely quote from the Visual Studio 2005 documentation (found through searching index for /W4):

Level 4 displays all level 3 warnings plus informational warnings, which in most cases can be safely ignored. This option should be used only to provide “lint” level warnings and is not recommended as your usual warning level setting.

Not recommended is actually pretty strong, but I can see why Microsoft might say that. But the very next line goes on:

For a new project, it may be best to use /W4 in all compilations. This will ensure the fewest possible hard-to-find code defects.

So it’s recommended, then? Or would recommended be too strong a word?

It seems likely to me that these paragraphs were written by different writers, and whoever made the second change didn’t read the first writer’s work.

I decided to take Microsoft up on their offer of a free toaster. A few screens in to the installer, I see this:

Cool! So I get to click some of these options, right? I click Use recommended settings:

That’s odd, I muse. That option must be incompatible with the others for some reason. So I turn it off and try the next option, Install definition updates only¹.

At this point, I turn off the option and try the third option, Ask me later. I know what’s going to happen, I just can’t quite believe it. Nobody’s this stupid, right? Wrong.

And there you have it. When Microsoft first chipped the Windows logo in to cave walls, they must have chipped a check box under it.

I feel almost guilty pointing out Microsoft’s stupidities. It’s a bit like kicking a puppy. A puppy that when you stop kicking it will pee on your carpet, round the corners of your furniture with its teeth, bite your friends and dry hump your leg, but still a puppy.

1. Who writes these option names, anyway? Terribly complicated! [↩]

Microsoft offers a variety of exciting offers through “Windows Genuine Advantage Offers.”

I’m leaning towards the toaster.

Read about the recall of a Windows XP security patch.