Software Customer Bill of Rights. As the software infrastructure has been going through chaos, reporters (and others) have been called me several times to ask what our software-related legal rights are now and what they should be. I propose 10 rules that are more modest than other suggestions but that could go a long way [...]

IEEE's “Body of Knowledge” for Software Engineering. The IEEE Computer Society has been developing its own statement of the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge (SWEBOK). They are now calling for a review of SWEBOK, which you can participate in at www.swebok.org. SWEBOK pushes the traditional, documentation-heavy approaches. I have read several drafts of it over [...]

Best value conference?. Here's a great analysis of some techn conferences….. [thanks Jason] The Science of Conventions. Great breakdown of tech conventions…. [Jason DeFillippo's Journal] Putting a Value to a Conference In the past days there has been some discussion about the registration cost of professional conferences, especially the PDC ($1700) and BloggerCon ($500).  The [...]

theinquirer.net – Microsoft software 'riddled with vulnerabilities”, trade body claims. Dept of Homeland Security should avoid Microsoft The US Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) has urged the US Department of Homeland Security to avoid using Microsoft software. The Washington based association, which represents members that generate over $300 billion, has issued an open letter [...]

On Business Models. Don Park and Tim Oren are engaged in an interesting discussion of business models in the wifi world. Don kindly makes a suggestion to have Access Point hardware vendors subsidise the price of the wifi Access Point (AP) by bundling it with a services oriented business model.  It's like a blast of deja [...]

More pleasant surprises, please. I want to be pleasantly surprised by software that notices when message patterns indicate the formation of a group or project, and volunteers to set up folders and filters for me. Likewise, I want to be pleasantly surprised by an RSS newsreader that notices how I save and organize items from [...]

SMTP Virtual Server Learning…. The're's a new tutorial over at MSExchange.org that's definitely worth a read “SMTP Virtual Server Uncovered”…. The article provides “some insight into better SMTP queue management to improve your ability to cope when your queues get swamped with spam and… [MS Exchange Blog]

Exchange 2003 Deployment. Microsoft have published an Exchange 2003 Deployment Guide… it's available here…. [MS Exchange Blog]

Microsoft's new IM Server. “Microsoft Readies Messaging Server – Development ends on Office Live Communications Server, shipping in weeks.” (PCWorld.com) With instant messaging functionality not having been included within Exchange 2003 as it was with Exchange 2000, the Live Communications Server 2003 is Microsoft's… [MS Exchange Blog]

Exchange 2000 Rollup Patch. Another Exchange 2000 Post-Service Pack 3 Rollup Patch has been released… it “resolves problems that were found in Exchange 2000 since SP3 was released.”… [MS Exchange Blog]