Stories by: Mark Gibbs

Last week I suggested that the IT world, particularly when it comes to marketing, is crazy, and I cited as evidence Microsoft's recently announced US$10 million plan to use comedian Jerry Seinfeld to hawk Vista.

The IT world has a certain level of craziness that is remarkable, and nowhere does it show up more than in how various companies market their products. I have all sorts of examples to illustrate this, but given that I have limited space I'm going to concentrate on what I consider to be the 800-pound gorilla of marketing crazy: Microsoft.

If you missed the recent news it appears that Google has gone, in effect, head to head with Wikipedia, but with differences.

Over the last few months it has become clear that you readers really don't like Microsoft Vista much. I have yet to get feedback from a reader along the lines of, "All my prayers have been answered." I haven't even received a comment like "it's not that bad." If your collective response to Vista has been unenthusiastic to date then I'm guessing it is not going to be getting better any time soon.

The Internet is just shy of its 20th commercial birthday. Given that, and the fact that the Internet is based on technologies that are open, well-documented, and well-understood, you'd think that all serious enterprises that connect their e-mail systems to the Internet would be capable of ensuring their security and protecting their assets.

Intellectual property, or IP, in the form of patents is, in theory, how we reward those who break new ground, explore strange new technologies, geek out new algorithms and new gadgets, and boldly go where no techie has gone before. In practice, the whole field of IP has become a complete mess with patents being awarded for things that no sane person would call "novel" -- once a key requirement for patentability.

The Merriam-Webster Online dictionary defines slavery as "submission to a dominating influence," while Wikipedia notes that "slaves -- are ... compelled to perform labour or services." I mention these definitions because I believe we have become enslaved by badly designed Web-based user interfaces.

I know you know this but I'll say it anyway: Virtualization is the hottest ticket in the IT biz. But some people don't understand there are multiple ways to virtualize a computing environment.

What will your IT department look like in, say, five years? This is an important question, because we're at the beginning of an array of major changes in the how, where and why IT is done.

Today, it is exactly 23 years, nine months, 19 days; or 8693 days; or 751,075,200 seconds; or 12,517,920 minutes; or 208,632 hours; or just less than 1241 weeks since the launch of the original IBM PC on August 12, 1981.

Was that the first of the year that went rushing toward the horizon with its tail on fire? I’d better make some New Year’s resolutions pronto ... hmm, let’s see ...