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Microsoft puts its stamp on e-mail security
Date: 06/06/06 (Security) Keywords: software, security, microsoft
As part of a broader move into the security arena, Microsoft updates and rebrands Antigen e-mail security software.
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Google Spreadsheets Takes on Microsoft Excel With Online Collaboration
Date: 06/06/06 (Java Web) Keywords: web, microsoft, google
Google released a limited test version of Web-based spreadsheet program to make it simple to edit and share lists and data online. It comes barely months after Google bought a small Silicon Valley company called Upstartle, creators of a Web-based word-processing program called Writely. And you thought only Microsoft was targeting Google’s turf? Google Spreadsheets, is [...]
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Google guns for Microsoft
Date: 06/06/06 (Application Development) Keywords: microsoft, google
Google Spreadsheets targets Office, but analysts say Microsoft probably shouldn't worry...until the consumers begin to influence the enterprise.
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McAfee's 'Falcon' to come in four flavors
Date: 06/07/06 (Security) Keywords: software, security, microsoft
Due out this summer, the consumer security software will rival Microsoft's recently launched Windows Live OneCare and Symantec's products.
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New Net neutrality plan may ruffle feathers
Date: 06/09/06 (Web Technology) Keywords: yahoo, microsoft, google
Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft want to regulate broadband providers, but they won't like those rules being applied to them.
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Microsoft TV enters European market first
Date: 06/09/06 (Web Technology) Keywords: software, microsoft
IPTV offered by French arm of Deutsche Telekom will feature Microsoft TV software capable of delivering video on demand.
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No fix for 'critical' hole in Windows 98, ME
Date: 06/09/06 (Security) Keywords: microsoft
Repairs would require so many changes to the older OSes that it might break applications, Microsoft says.
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Microsoft: Zombies most prevalent Windows threat
Date: 06/12/06 (Security) Keywords: software, microsoft
Over 60 percent of PCs scanned by a Microsoft tool are infected with bot software. Rootkits, though, aren't widespread.
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password manager
Date: 06/12/06 (IT Professionals) Keywords: database, microsoft
I was recently approached by my boss for suggestions on storing our company's system account/passwords and other information in some secure fashion. Right now, most of the information is kept in a password protected excel spreadsheet on the boss's laptop.
I can create a small database that I can lock down and put on the network, but I would prefer an out of box solution. I know that there are plenty of personal password managers out there, but I would like to find something that we can install onto our network so that multiple people can access the information, if given permissions. Something that would tie into Microsoft AD would be great. Does anyone have any suggestions?Source: http://community.livejournal.com/itprofessionals/39173.html
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Le développement de l'offshore en Russie
Date: 12/14/04 (Offshore Programming) Keywords: programming, software, offshore, technology, microsoft
Can Offshore Programming Thrive in Russia?
By Alexander Osipovich, Russia Profile
Every weekday morning, Tatyana Burtseva flashes her ID to the guards at the entrance of the Kurchatov Institute, where the Soviet Union developed its first nuclear bomb. But after walking through the institute's wooded grounds and entering the modern, corporate office building where she works, what she does is not top-secret. Burtseva is currently working on a project for a U.S. client - Boeing, America's largest maker of commercial aircraft. The 26-year-old software tester is one of over 850 employees at Luxoft, one of Russia's leading companies in the field of offshore programming. Besides Boeing, Luxoft has tackled software projects for major corporations like IBM, Microsoft and Deutsche Bank.
In 2003, the Russian offshore programming industry earned total revenues of $546 million, according to figures compiled by CNews Analytics and Fort-Ross, an association of Russian software companies. The same report projected growth rates of 30 to 40 percent for the next few years, meaning that the industry could cross the $1 billion mark by 2006.
These rapid growth rates, and the prestigious nature of the industry, have not gone unnoticed. President Vladimir Putin has mentioned offshore programming as a promising agent of economic diversification, while Leonid Reiman, the minister of information technologies and communications, has touted the industry in public appearances. "We have a tremendous number of highly qualified professionals," he said during a recent address to the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia. "Our task is to convert this human potential into a new source of national income."
But the Russian offshore programming industry faces some daunting challenges. Above all, it pales in comparison to its better-developed cousin in India. According to NASSCOM, an association of Indian software companies, India now earns $12.5 billion a year by exporting high-tech services. This represents close to one-fifth of the developing nation's total exports. For many Western executives, the term "offshore programming" is virtually synonymous with outsourcing work to India, while Russia remains an obscure, second-tier competitor. This has led to a great deal of soul-searching in the Russian press about whether Russia can catch up to India.
Can Russia Catch Up?
In the eyes of many experts, the greatest asset of the Russian offshore programming industry is the high quality of its technical specialists. The Soviet Union left behind a world-class system of science education. As a result, Russia now has up to 40 percent more scientists per capita than Germany, France or the United Kingdom, and 20 times more scientists per capita than India, according to Forrester Research. Russians have won numerous gold medals at international programming competitions. At this year's ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest, the best-known event of its kind, the winning team was from the St. Petersburg Institute of Fine Mechanics and Optics.
This pool of scientific talent has led several Western companies to open wholly-owned offshore development centers in Russia. Such companies include technology leaders like Intel, Sun, Motorola and Siemens. Intel alone has over 800 Russian employees, mostly based in Nizhny Novgorod and the former closed city of Sarov. According to Alexander Palladin, a spokesman for Intel in Russia, they solve difficult problems for the company's research and development wing. "In the eyes of Intel's management, Russian specialists are very highly regarded for their scientific knowledge," he said.
Unfortunately, Russia is not so blessed when it comes to business skills. A frequent complaint is the lack of English, although this has improved in recent years. When it comes to project management, Russian firms have a reputation for letting their programmers' creativity take precedence over good business sense. In some cases, programmers have been known to delay a project until they can achieve technical perfection. Other problems stem from a culture clash between Russian firms and their Western clients. "The biggest difference is that Americans devote more time to communication," said Alexander Sambuk, quality director at Luxoft. "Russian project managers need to learn to communicate more with clients, and not just stew in their own juices."
Another obstacle to acquiring new clients is the small size of Russian firms. Russia's largest offshore programming companies, Epam Systems and Luxoft, have less than 1,000 employees each. This is small potatoes compared to the largest Indian firms, such as IT giant Wipro, which employs over 27,000 people worldwide and has annual revenues of $1.2 billion. Smaller companies have a hard time marketing themselves and are less attractive to large corporate clients. Given this situation, it might seem that the market is ripe for consolidation. But firms have been reluctant to merge, says Kirill Dmitriev, managing director of Delta Private Equity Partners. "Each one hopes to develop by itself, but economic logic mandates that they need to consolidate," he said.
Perhaps a more intractable problem is Russia's negative image in the West. Russia's reputation as an unstable, crime-ridden society makes it a hard sell to wary customers. "This is a country where there's a war going on, where [former Yukos CEO Mikhail] Khodorkovsky is in prison, where terrorists are killing children in Beslan," said Dmitry Loschinin, CEO of Luxoft. "Obviously, this affects us negatively."
Loschinin also believes that Russia's education system could be better suited to today's IT market. Although it churns out an impressive number of physicists and mathematicians, it rarely teaches them the most up-to-date technology skills. "What we receive is a half-finished product that we need to spend some time finishing," said Loschinin.
Another problem is that Russia's education system produces programmers in all the wrong places. Thanks to the legacy of Soviet central planning, some of the nation's top scientific talent resides in far-flung cities like Tomsk and Novosibirsk. Less than a quarter of Russia's programmers live in Moscow and St. Petersburg, where the offshore programming industry is concentrated. The result is that wages are high and jobs are plentiful in the two capitals, while out in the regions, programmers are underpaid or jobless. The logical conclusion is that programmers should move to where the jobs are. But Russians - for a variety of legal, economic and cultural reasons - are often reluctant to move.
A City Of Programmers
The offshore programming industry is taking steps to attract them. IBS, the holding company which owns Luxoft, is planning to open a "technopark" in the town of Dubna, a one-hour drive from Moscow. According to Loschinin, programmers will be enticed to move to Dubna by a package that includes jobs, mortgages and a pleasant, academic living environment. "We want to create a city of programmers," he said.
The Dubna technopark will not be alone. The IT and Communications Ministry will soon launch technoparks in St. Petersburg and Novosibirsk, with tax breaks and an up-to-date communications infrastructure, says Reiman. These ideas are not new. A decade ago, India used similar policies to stimulate the IT industry in Bangalore. Today Bangalore is the center of India's offshore programming industry; the city is often called the "Silicon Valley of India."
The Russian offshore programming industry is emulating India in other ways. It recently formed an analogue to NASSCOM, the Indian software association founded in 1988 to promote the nation's IT industry. RUSSOFT, which recently merged with Fort-Ross to become the predominant association of Russian software companies, has been following a path blazed by NASSCOM in the 1990s. It puts on "road shows" in the West to promote Russian firms, holds training events and lobbies for improvements in government policy.
There is clearly a need for lobbying, because government policy is unfriendly - if not hostile - to offshore programming companies. Valentin Makarov, president of RUSSOFT, says that companies face a crippling burden from taxes and regulations. For example, to export $50 worth of software, companies spend an additional $30 on paperwork and taxes. This drives up their prices, making them less competitive, and keeps many in the "gray" zone. Makarov argues that this is bad for everyone. "Our task is to make companies go white," he said. "Companies want this, because you can't live under the constant threat of tax investigations. This prevents you from signing deals with foreign corporations."
Yet Makarov insists that he is not looking for tax breaks, which are controversial due to their widespread misuse in the 1990s. Instead, he wants the government to adopt a more streamlined and rational tax structure. So far, however, RUSSOFT's lobbying efforts have produced few results. "Our government isn't used to dealing with associations - just with oligarchs and individual companies," he said. Nonetheless, Makarov is optimistic. He believes that the industry will gain more influence as it grows in size. In terms of the total value of its exports, it has already surpassed the Russian automobile industry. Soon, Russia will earn more money by exporting software than by exporting nuclear technology.
Makarov predicts that the Russian offshore programming industry will grow until it reaches annual revenues of $2 billion but, from then on, growth will level off unless the government provides substantial support. He points out that the governments of India and China (another up-and-coming offshore service provider) are extremely proactive in boosting their nations' IT sectors. For example, they pay for companies to participate in international trade shows - something that the Russian government has never done.
So can Russia catch up to India?
Most experts doubt that Russia can beat India in terms of volume. But in terms of quality, Russia already presents a strong competitor. According to a 2001 report from the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia, Russian programmers are well suited for complex projects. "Indian programmers... do not have such wide experience with different technologies," said the report. "Their experience is typically limited to working in large software development factories." Makarov thinks that Russia cannot compete with India or China on cost, but in the niche of high-end solutions, it could become a world leader - as long as the industry gets government support.
"We can't do it ourselves," he said.
Oct 27, 2004
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SQL Server ODBC driver?
Date: 06/13/06 (SQL Server) Keywords: sql, microsoft
Does anyone know of a place to grab the single file any more? Microsoft has taken down the page for it, and the MDAC 2.8 files don't seem to want to install on XP. They say that all of the components are already available, but SQL Server does not show up in the "available drivers" when I try to create a new DSN. (My computer was wiped and redone from scratch a few weeks ago.)
In any case, I need the SQL Server ODBC driver, and Microsoft doesn't want to give it to me. Anyone have it?Source: http://community.livejournal.com/sqlserver/49579.html
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Microsoft objects
Date: 06/13/06 (Open Source) Keywords: microsoft
How far is Microsoft going, really? How much is it giving, not just in terms of code but in terms of license terms, against what it's expecting to get from the community?
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TableAdapters and mapping parameters
Date: 06/13/06 (C Sharp) Keywords: asp, sql, microsoft
Hello, guys. Experts-exchange couldn't help. Microsoft support couldn't help. Though, the problem seems easy to solve, just a technicality.
When you program for ASP.NET 2.0, you can use TableAdapters in Visual Studio 2005 to connect your program with the stored procedures on the SQL Server 2005. Like, you need a function for getting a client by his id. You go to DataSet designer, and add a new TableAdapter. You choose the pre-made stored procedure in the "SELECT" field, and everything is perfect. Here's the problem: when you try to create a TableAdapter for "INSERT" or "UPDATE", it asks you to map the parameters to columns in some datatable. But even if I add a new datatable to the DataSet designer, and create columns corresponding to parameters in my stored procedure, I still can't select them when wizard asks me to map them. These colums are simply not there. How can I map something in my program to those Stored Procedure parameters through TableAdapter? Please, help.
P.S. I realize this isn't an ASP or VS.NET community, but this subject is very popular within c# circles, so hope I'm not causing any inconvenience. -
MySpace to solicit bids for search
Date: 06/14/06 (Web Technology) Keywords: yahoo, microsoft, google
News Corp. will tap Microsoft, Yahoo or Google to provide search-based advertising for social networking site.
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Help
Date: 06/15/06 (Computer Help) Keywords: web, microsoft
I've been trying to download the Korean language pack from the Microsoft website so I can actually read the text on Korean websites rather than see rows and rows of squares. The Microsoft website kept mentioning that the language pack needed Microsoft Office, which I don't have. (I have something called Wordperfect.) So there's a link on the page that said, "If you don't have Office XP, download here." I clicked and it downloaded (I think), then there was a pop-up that said it wasn't going to work with my computer or something...
I swear I'm not a blonge bimbo, I'm just not talented with computers...could somebody help me?Source: http://community.livejournal.com/computer_help/639510.html
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Beta out for next-generation McAfee tools
Date: 06/16/06 (Security) Keywords: security, microsoft
'Falcon'-based consumer security products promise integrated protection to rival lineups from Symantec and Microsoft.
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mlargh. taskbar being mean.
Date: 06/19/06 (Computer Geeks) Keywords: software, virus, microsoft
okay, so, this has been happening to me since i downloaded BearShare. Whenever i open a program that is non-microsoft, it will not appear in the takbar, except for my Wi-Fi router monitoring software. here are some pictures to describe what i mean.
It is very annoying, seeing as i use photoshop and premiere very often as a (very) ametuer film maker. Is there any way i can stop this, and also, any free anti-virus software that can run on 98 SE? Thanks much.Source: http://community.livejournal.com/computergeeks/938382.html
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Microsoft’s iPod Competitor Headed by ex-iPod Development Head
Date: 06/19/06 (Java Web) Keywords: microsoft
Microsoft Corp. is developing a music and video device to compete with Apple’s iPod and creating its own music service to rival Apple’s iTunes, sources familiar with the plans said on Friday. Robbie Bach, a rising star at Microsoft who headed development of the Xbox video game business, is overseeing the project, one source said. The company [...]
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Microsoft aims to end 'phone tag'
Date: 06/20/06 (Application Development) Keywords: microsoft
Microsoft has some products that it says will bring us closer to that reality of unified messaging.
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Textcopy in SQL 2005? (inserting BLOB/CLOB data)
Date: 06/21/06 (SQL Server) Keywords: database, sql, microsoft
Hi folks. Anyone know if TEXTCOPY is still a viable utility in SQL Server 2005?
I've just installed SQL Server 2005 for the first time and I'm trying to populate a database using the same scripts and batch files that work fine for me in SQL2K. The batch files I use to insert BLOB and CLOB data use TEXTCOPY...and fail. On searching the SQL2005 folder hierarchy, I see no evidence of TEXTCOPY at all. I've tried general Googling, but have found no explicit mention on SQL2005 and TEXTCOPY (on way or the other) and, of course, TEXTCOPY is an undocumented utility to begin with :)
UNDER SQL2K: c:\program files\microsoft sql server\mssql\binn\textcopy
UNDER SQL2005: ???
If TEXTCOPY is no more, perhaps someone can recommend an alternate straightforward method of populating BLOB/CLOB data in SQL2005?
Cheers.Source: http://community.livejournal.com/sqlserver/50041.html
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