In the comments to my previous post about a factually challenged bit of IE7 bashing over at Microsoft Watch, Michael Foote points out a new article on the same topic at eWeek, where West Coast News Editor John Pallatto is beating on the same broken drum. He alleges that users are being “involuntarily upgraded” to the new browser and are being cut off from access to the Internet.

He’s completely wrong, of course, for the same reasons I pointed out (with glorious full-color illustrations) in my critique of the Microsoft Watch post. (Based on his and Joe’s experience, it sounds like the Ziff Davis IT department decided to push out these updates through Windows Software Update Services. If that’s true, John, you should go yell at your IT guy, not at Microsoft.)

But I practically fell off my chair when I read this:

Microsoft Watch also reported on how changes to ActiveX controls actually increased security vulnerabilities in IE 7.

Uh, John? Go read that article you linked to again. It says exactly the opposite of what you wrote. In this case, at least, Joe Wilcox was exactly right:

With Internet Explorer 7, Microsoft made some hefty changes to ActiveX controls, turning off a bunch by default and flipping on the security warning switch for many others. If timing means anything, the ActiveX changes are possibly quite important. … [Based on a reported sharp increase in ActiveX vulnerabilities in 2006] Microsoft was right to turn off many ActiveX controls [in IE7].

I have no idea what’s going on at Ziff Davis these days, but it appears that all technically knowledgeable editors have left the building.

Oh, and please note that there is no connection between Ziff Davis and ZDNet. Thank goodness.

Call me crazy, but I think if you’re going to hold yourself out as a Microsoft expert and print critical comments from readers, you should make at least a minimal effort to fact-check those comments.

Today’s case in point is from Joe Wilcox, who took over Microsoft Watch from Mary Jo Foley a few months ago. In a muddled mess of a column about IE7, Joe includes this quote from a reader:

“IE 7 is horrible!” said Mark Brugler. The browser “crashed every time I tried to watch a video.” The technical director for a theatre in Tucson, Ariz. complained that he “didn’t like the fact that [IE 7] was forced upon me via Microsoft updates and I was not given the choice to install it.”

The reason this jumped out at me is I’ve been rebuilding PCs this week and I’ve run into the IE7 installation via Windows Update and Microsoft Update not once but twice. Joe’s reader is, to put it charitably, wrong. IE7 is not – indeed, cannot be – installed without the user’s explicit consent. In fact, there are three separate places where you have to provide that consent, or the installation fails.

This is true even if you have Automatic Updates turned on. Although IE7 is included as a Critical Update, it is not installed until you go through all of the following steps. (These screens are from Windows 2003, but they are identical in Windows XP.)

Continue reading “More fact-free journalism” →

Update February 20: Books are now in stock at Amazon.com and all existing orders should have been filled. If you have a copy, why not post a review? 

Juliana Aldous at Microsoft Press has photographic proof. I haven’t got my copy yet, nor has Amazon.com, but they should be available any minute now.

(Are they there yet? No? How about now? Not yet? Dang!)

If you’ve preordered a copy from Amazon, your copy will go in the mail as soon as the shipment hits the warehouse.

It’s always sad and strange when someone you know dies suddenly. When the circumstances are violent, the tragedy is tenfold. And when the loss is a kind and gentle soul who was also a consummate professional, well, the heartbreak is overwhelming. Like everyone who knew Rex Farrance, I was shocked and saddened to learn this news via PC World:

PC World lost a treasured colleague and friend Tuesday, when Senior Technical Editor Rex Farrance was killed during a home-invasion robbery attempt. For 19 years, Rex served PC World with professionalism and a passion for accuracy.

When Rex was hired at PC World, I was managing editor. It’s entirely possible that I hired him, in fact, although my memories of day-to-day events from nearly two decades ago are understandably dim.

My memories of Rex, however, are bright and clear. I remember my initial impressions: Who is this strange older man (40 years old!) taking an entry-level editorial position? Why does he wear such snappy clothes? What’s his story?

Over the next two years, I got to know Rex as a quiet, kind, slow-talking, hard-working man who had a thirst for knowledge that wouldn’t be fully satisfied until the first Internet search engines appeared nearly a decade later. It’s a tribute to his talent and persistence that he rose from those early days to become so well respected among his peers.

As the testaments on PC World’s page make abundantly clear, Rex possessed the rare talent for making friends and admirers the old-fashioned way. He earned the respect and admiration of his colleagues by pitching in and working hard and by performing acts of kindness with no expectation of reward.

My heart goes out to Rex’s immediate family for their devastating loss, and to my friends at PC World, who must surely be numb with grief.

I’ve been spending more time waiting for cabs and monorails than I have in front of the keyboard. If you’re looking for my latest reports on CES, you’ll find them at ZDNet:

Four small gadgets with big potential

My 42 minutes with Michael Dell

The ultimate Windows Vista notebook?

Connected homes aren’t just for the super-rich anymore

And be sure to check out cesblogs.com for more great coverage.

A post at DVR playground reports:

Apparently there are quite a few people having issues with DirecTV’s new HD DVR and DirecTV’s TiVo DVRs (such as the HR10-250) where people say the DVRs fail to record shows and mysteriously delete programs previously recorded.

I’ve been experiencing the same frustrating problems. (Read the details in DirecTiVo Amnesia?) For years, TiVo has been one of those products that just works. That’s no longer true, based on this experience.

DirecTV doesn’t want to fix or replace the TiVo-designed hardware that they sold me. (And the fact that it comes with only a one-year warranty means they’re within their rights, technically.) Instead, they want to take away the TiVo box I own and supply me with their own HR20-700 box (which gets generally lukewarm to crappy reviews) as a lease, with a two-year commitment. It is a more advanced box, with MPEG-4 support and at least the possibility of getting local channels in HD at the end of January, according to the DirecTV rep I spoke with. But I have no way of knowing whether I’ll be able to tolerate its interface or whether it will actually fix the problem. (At least one commenter at Media Central says it won’t.)

As customer support goes, this sucks. If your customer is having problems with equipment or service, do you use that opportunity to blackmail them? Yes, we’ll try to fix your problem, but only if you agree to pay our monthly charges for another two years. And if you don’t like the new hardware or it doesn’t fix the problem? Tough.

I’ll be talking with executives from TiVo and DirecTV at CES and will get the chance to ask them about these issues. If you’re experiencing similar problems, leave a comment.

The current tidal wave of spam is overwhelmingly focused on touting penny stocks, which promise quick riches with small investments. Any sensible person knows to run from these scams, but it’s useful to get hard data proving what a bad deal these things are. Which is why I was interested when I stumbled across the Spam Stock Tracker. Although the data is slightly outdated now (last update was August 2006), the lesson is pretty clear, and adding more data would probably just increase the confidence level rather than change the overall number.

On May 5th, 2005 (05/05/05 spooky!) I set out to determine just how much money I could lose by trusting SPAM.

What if I purchased 1000 shares of stock from EVERY stock tip mentioned in a SPAM email? Could we all really be missing out on a great opportunity?

Out of 105 stocks on the list, all but three lost money; 40 declined by more than 80% and another 30 went down 100% – in other words, to zero – meaning if you bought and held, you wound up with absolutely nothing from your original “investment.”

I would imagine the percentages are about the same for sites that sell phony Rolexes and prescription drugs. If you send money to someone trying to sell you something via spam, you’re most likely to get nothing. And if you send them your credit card number, you’re likely to wind up paying for that error in judgment for a long, long time.

Michael Miller, the longtime editor-in-chief of PC Magazine, is leaving to go work for a venture capital firm. He’s going to continue hs blog at PC Mag, though. Frankly, I found this disclosure statement pretty mind-boggling:

No investment advice is offered in this blog. All duties are disclaimed. Mr. Miller works separately for a private investment firm which may at any time invest in companies whose products are discussed in this blog, and no disclosure of securities transactions will be made.

But no one gave him a free PC, so it’s cool, I guess.