There are way too many lawyers. These two articles prove that. Good Technology Sued over Wireless Patents NTP, having had its patents invalidated countless times has taken a stock in Visto and opened another litigation front, this time against Good Technology. I guess they coulnd't completely drain RIM's pockets so they have taken on additional fish. Microsoft Changes Blog Shutdown Policies Yup, we're world wide with this blogging thing. Microsoft is saying that they will notify visitors when the content has been removed and will in some cases actually move it elsewhere to make local (censuring) governments happy. Nice duck and cover. Is it just me or is this censure and legal action instead of innovation becoming a little too prevalent?

I wonder how many phone calls this post is going to generate but rest assured: If you call me, I will be asking the questions. Why such a polite post? Well, it appears that our friends from SurplusComputers are back selling Microsoft Windows 2003 Small Business Server Premium NFR for $169 with free shipping. Note the NFR tag which means, ironically enough, not for resale. How does that make sense, how is someone selling software thats not for sale? You already know the answer to that question. Now riddle me this: Why has Microsoft done nothing to stop this? Here is how a fellow Microsoft Certified Partner reacted to the news of this:

How they are able to continue doing this without Microsoft coming down on them with a lawsuit I have no idea - hence my utter frustration with Microsoft. I am making this note not to inspire piracy, but rather to BEG anyone from Microsoft to please stop this. It really impairs our ability as legitimate partners to consult and deploy the product (charging $2k or more for the deployment) when the software itself can easily be obtained for $170!!! Not only that, but unethical computer people go in, sell the illegal product, and then we're called in to fix or deploy and we have to give clients the bad news that they have an illegal copy!!! I'm including the link so that Microsoft can (hopefully) take swift action.

Now what would have certainly sent Rick right over the edge would be the news that I reported this very same company to Microsoft and BSA back in October (as a matter of fact, the blog post on mssmallbiz.com is a direct consequence to us informing the Microsoft small business licensing watchdog about Surplus Computers who at the time was selling the SBS NFR for $169 and Office XP NFR with the GE mouse for $69). So lets face it - Microsoft has done nothing - yet.. I'm sorry, Surplus Direct is a major electronics outlet in United States and believe you me, it does not take months for someone in Microsoft to write a cease and desist letter. So don't deceive yourself with the "well, I am sure its happening, we are just not plugged in to the behind the scenes of Microsoft legal and licensing enforcement." We are not talking about something that started last week, last month… We are talking over three months here. So I'll get to my point: Where is Surplus Direct obtaining Microsoft NFR software? How is it that a major electronics outlet is allowed to illegaly distribute Microsoft software for months, and more importantly, where are they getting such a big stock of NFR media? Microsoft Licensing - please stand up and protect your partners and your customers before you lose both.

No "strings" attached And if you don't get the joke then you should really seek a refund from your engineering school. Here, for your Monday reading, is the fundamental unified theory of IT economics when it comes to a hardware purchase of any kind:

CHEAP + FAST != GOOD GOOD + CHEAP != FAST FAST + GOOD != CHEAP

Think about that when you make your infrastructure purchasing decisions.

"Ah crap, he's not gonna talk about Linux again is he?" echoed somewhere in Redmond as this headline popped up in their aggregator. Relax! I'm just posting that the interview Bob with with me a little bit over a week ago is now on the web at theworkingnetwork.com. Hop over there and take a listen, Bob is trying to put together interviews with IT Professionals who blog and what drives them to do it.. I've talked about it on here a number of times but do check it out if this is the first time you're hearing about it.

Of note, Vlad didn't give me permission to use his photo, or to refer to him as the Mayor of Vladville — so I'll probably end up suffering somehow. Anyway, as Vlad points out in "Meeting Bob…" we had a chance to chat last week and I recorded it (MP3 version, WMA version) — I should've probably told him I was wearing a wire huh?

The fact that we will someday be related is suffering enough, I'm sure.

We talked about the essentials of networking and Active Directory. About IP addressing, layers, routing, switching, subnetting and so on. JJ Antequino from Microsoft talked about the basics of Active Directory domains, trusts, master operation roles, active directory troubleshooting and editing. We wrapped with basic TCP/IP network troubleshooting and various tools to help you pin the fault on someone else. This was as basic and as low of a topic as we’ve ever had (or ever will have) and after it was all said and done most felt it was at or below their expertise. I hope it functioned as a good refresher on some of the concepts and gives you an incentive to find a mentor and study more. Why did I just tell you this? Well, we recorded it and depending on how the sound comes out we will turn it into SBS Show like podcast so those of you that miss meetings for some business reason….. will not miss out on anything but networking opportunities and group discussions.

Our buddy Eric Ligman must have built a pretty good bomb shelter up in Redmond as he has started seeking input from Partners on what has or has not worked so far. Click here to respond Eric is one of the few Microsoft people that continuously seek feedback and actually do something with it. In his own words "Send me the bad, Send me the good, Send me your wishlist, Send me your best of and worst of" so if you're in small business and you do things with Microsoft this feedback directly impacts how Microsoft can help you!

Oh thats a good post title and you know you love it! Last Friday I had a great time touring the Microsoft PSS (CSS for Exchange and SBS, support guys) HQ in Las Colinas, Texas. It was quite an experience for me to actually meet some of these guys that I have an immense amount of respect for. After seeing what they do that respect has almost doubled. Below is the picture with the SBS podcast team of Inside SBS, and I have some inside info: Inside SBS podcast will be back very soon. In this pic, from left to right: Vlad, Damian, Peter, Mark and Justin playing the center. Now this guy, despite having met him for the very first time, is the person that contributed the most to Vladville by writing excellent high level Exchange articles on the Microsoft Exchange EHLO blog. His name is Nino Bilic and he is the Tech Lead for Exchange 12. Dilbert fan too (go figure, they live in Cubeville) but the coolest thing was that we grew up in the same country and speak the same language (actually spoke it in front of Mark). How cool is that? It was awesome meeting these guys. I did not get any Koolaid served, but I did get the free Microsoft coke. Very much like the Redmond campus, except this one has soda machines that drop cans 2 feet so they can eventually explode on the Microsoft Small Business Specialist shirt yours truly was wearing. I saw a lot of cool stuff on how Microsoft support works… most of which I will have to take to my grave. And I saw the test lab. My, oh my, oh my. When they say dog-food, they mean dog-food! P.S. Thanks to Melissa Travers for hooking me up and to Mark Stanfill for giving me an awesome tour of the campus.

Certain someone said they would pay for this picture. So before it ends up on eBay I'm just going to out myself. I'm a total and complete idiot. I managed to lock myself in our datacenter cage and had to call to get help. In the meantime, this wonderful picture was snapped. Yup. I am that brilliant. Yup… global network. 2,000 servers. Locked myself in a cage. I have no excuse.

yoda.msmvps.com is perhaps the most personal server in the world not just because it has its own email address and a blog, but also for being capable of holding Susan Bradley and a ton of other MVP's online. Yoda lives in one of my data centers in Texas and I snapped this picture of him chilling with his Ray Bans, sipping on Mountain Dew.

Yesterday brought the news of Windows Vista requiring, here's some jargon:

"Vista driver developers must obtain a Publisher Identity Certificate (PIC) from Microsoft. Microsoft says they won't charge for it, but they require that you have a Class 3 Commercial Software Publisher Certificate from Verisign. This costs $500 per year, and as the name implies, is only available to commercial entities."

How is this a bad social move? Well, there are several factors that play into this both from the standpoint of rights you have to run software of your choice on your PC/OS but also from the PR point that makes this look very disheartening towards the x64 archtecture. Lets look at them one by one. Social Problem When you purchase a computer should you be allowed to make a decision on whether or not you trust a piece of software to work on your PC and OS? Microsoft does not think so. There are far too many security implications which make this move more than valid but it effectively eliminates the ability for open source developers (read: kids playing around with software development at home) to publish software. The trouble for Microsoft is two fold now: it looks bad for discouraging young people from developing software for the Microsoft platform and it deals a blow to the open source movement which is thriving even for the Windows world. This is not a short-term bad move that you're accustomed to, this is a long term move of further encouraging software developers to seek more open platforms. Windows will be more secure though. Valid tradeoff? Business Problem Microsoft, right after Intel, should be blamed the most for the lack of 64bit adoption. They sided with Intel Itanium (or Itanic) chip on the server and nobody showed up. Same was done with the 64bit Windows XP but AMD X64 effectively cornered that market with cheaper, cooler and more powerful chips. But I challenge you to find people that are happy with Windows XP 64bit or that have had a positive experience. You will not find many. So what do we have here, enforcement and restriction of development on the 64bit platform while the 32bit one is free to roam. Is this a good business move for the platform that you are trying to encourage everyone to upgrade to? Certainly not. So what we have here is a tradeoff between security and rights of use, public relations confusion over whether to upgrade to X64 now or never. I have to admit, it bothers me, but I'll be fine with X64 and signed drivers. There will always be a way to pirate stuff even with the DRM junk. No more dealnews hardware though