JEDI Winner Continues to Excel in Software Updates
June 25, 2020
Will the US Department of Defense be happy with updates to a JEDI system that cause crashes? Probably slightly unhappy. “New Windows 10 Update Fail Breaks Some of Its Best Features” reports:
people have been complaining that after installing the Windows 10 May 2020 Update (also known as Windows 10 version 2004), they cannot access files synced to OneDrive – even if they can be seen in Windows 10.
The write up adds:
Even more embarrassingly for Microsoft, it seems this bug has been around for months in early versions of Windows 10 May 2020 Update, with Windows Insiders, who can try out versions of Windows 10 before other people in order to spot bugs like this, complaining that OneDrive no longer works.
Visualize this. You are in a fire zone. You need cloud data. Bad actors ranging rounds are getting closer.
Take a deep breath and follow this procedure:
Press Windows Key RKey this string: %localappdata%\Microsoft\OneDrive\onedrive.exe /resetAccess needed data.
No problemo. Microsofties may ponder this when they grab a carry out lunch at Bai Tong’s. Stephen E Arnold, June 25, 2020Microsoft Search 365: Just Wonderful Wonderful
June 22, 2020
Analyses of Microsoft’s long romance with enterprise search forget some bad dates. There was the era of dozens of search systems; each unit at Softie HQ knew how to make information findable. Remember Outlook Express? Then there were acquisitions. What about that search system in NCompass? How about that earth shaker Powerset? Yeah, I thought you would remember the spilled chocolate shakes, the slapped hands, and the angry parents.
What about Fast Search & Transfer? Quite a buy in 2008! So what if the Fast senior management had to dodge legal eagles for a few years? Does anyone recall the refusal of some customers of the Fast ESP refusing to pay their bills? The financial fancy dancing. No, why bother.
I could go on, but I won’t. The write up “Microsoft Search in Microsoft 365: A Valuable Enterprise Search Engine” does not bring up the past. Nobody cares. Enterprise search is a joke. No one in his or her right mind wants a company search engine to wander hither and yon to find semi relevant information. Those using enterprise search — remember, it’s a myth, gentle reader — want to locate the PowerPoint the crazy sales manager changed for yesterday’s presentation in Reno. Where is it? Well, it sure isn’t in an enterprise search system. What’s in the enterprise search system is the angry email from the customer in the presentation audience who heard the sales wizard reveal the actual pricing of the deal. That customer wants the sales manager’s head, not a list of search results. And you, gentle reader, are trying to find the presentation in the Enterprise 365 whatever. Well, good luck with that.
The write up asserts:
Before a user can use Microsoft Search, they must be logged into Microsoft 365. Once logged in, the user needs only to open their browser, go to Bing.com, and enter the search query. Upon doing so, Bing will return both public and private search results.
There you go, JEDI fans. There’s nothing like snagging a laptop and having access to a search system that displays the user’s view of an organization’s data. That access control works like a champ just like Microsoft’s Windows 10 updates.
Plus you get links to lots of stuff. Particularly useful is “All” which presents any oddball hit that the system knows is that PowerPoint which has not been indexed and is therefore unfindable unless you meet the sales wizard at the airport.
Are there flaws in the 365 search? Sure there are. The author identifies one the size of a pre extinction brontosaurus:
In my opinion, the most significant limitation associated with using Microsoft Search is that the search engine does not index your file servers. It assumes that most of your file data reside in SharePoint Online. The only way that Microsoft Search can index files stored on-premises is if you have a hybrid SharePoint deployment and the files that you want to index are stored within SharePoint.
Yeah, but what about that “all”? Seems like a logical fallacy, doesn’t it. All with notable omissions. Oh, well, home economics courses don’t spend much time of stuff like logic. Chopped onions, yes? Logical Grand Canyons? Nah.
Net net: Microsoft has been lost in search space for decades. Will the company deliver a system that mostly works? Hey, the purpose of enterprise search at Microsoft is the generation of work for Microsoft Certified Professionals. Those experts don’t need something to work to subscribe to a Porsche. That means Microsoft’s enterprise search mirrors the enterprise search industry quite well, thank you.
Stephen E Arnold, June 22, 2020
Microsoft LinkedIn: An Infusion of Skype or Zune?
June 15, 2020
Skype mostly worked. Then the interface became more like Bob’s. The JEDI knight of updates tries to be on the cutting edge of technology. Despite early attempts at video interactions, Microsoft has managed to remain a few paces off the lead. TechRepublic shares the late party invitation addressed to Microsoft’s professional social media platform: “LinkedIn Unveils New Virtual Events Feature For Communities To Stay Connected During COVID-19.”
LinkedIn’s new teleconferencing feature is Virtual Events and it allows organizations to connect in real time, so it is basically the same as Zoom. Does Microsoft want those looking for a job or consulting gigs to make the shift from Zoom or the interesting Google services? We noted:
“Rishi Jobanputra, head of product for Linkedin pages, said Virtual Events allows brands to target a specific audience and design a more personalized experience while making it easier for brands to share and archive their video content so users can easily find it. This not only extends the shelf life of the event but also allows organizations to target industries with content that may have may have been missed.”
LinkedIn is also integrating the Pages, LinkedIn Live, and Events so they will seamlessly fit together.
Several big companies have already successfully used Virtual Events, when in-person events were forced to cancel. But some virtual conferences, meetings, and hook ups have not delivered. Human interaction remains popular among many people; for example, those without sufficient bandwidth, a computing device, or an interest in the virtual world of experience.
Worth monitoring? Perhaps the events will be on Twitch or Microsoft’s Mixer? Wait! Isn’t Mixer a virtual meeting operation too?
Okay, Zune that and out.
Whitney Grace, June 15, 2020
How to Spark Interest in Desktop Linux? Microsoft Tries a Fresh Approach
June 12, 2020
DarkCyber noted “Removing “Annoying” Windows 10 Features is a DMCA Violation, Microsoft Says.” The write up asserts:
Ninjutsu OS, a new software tool that heavily modifies Windows 10 with a huge number of tweaks, mods and extra tools, has been hit with a DMCA complaint by Microsoft. According to the copyright notice, the customizing, tweaking and disabling of Windows 10 features, even when that improves privacy, amounts to a violation of Microsoft’s software license.
The write up presents a list of Ninjutsu enabled functions which violate the DMCA (digital millennium copyright act):
- Customize Windows 10 with powerful tweak and optimize.
- Protect your privacy by tweak and customize Windows 10.
- Disable many of the annoying features built into Windows.
- Unwanted Windows components removal.
- Remove/Disable many Windows programs and services.
The implications of this Microsoft action are interesting to contemplate. DarkCyber believes that Microsoft may have found a way to increase usage of Linux on the desktop.
Stephen E Arnold, June 12, 2020
Microsoft: Some Employees Express Discontent
June 12, 2020
Microsoft — yep, the outfit which cannot update its Windows 10 operating system without killing some computers — has another hillock obscuring its vision of cloud dominance. The obstruction is not Redmond’s other friendly jungle environment Amazon.
The mound of woe may be composed of employees objecting to whom and which entities the masters of JEDI sell the ever-reliable and entertaining digital products and services. Taking a less than 365 view, “Microsoft Employees Urge Nadella to Cancel Contracts with Police” reports:
Several Microsoft employees have written a letter to CEO Satya Nadella, urging the company to cancel contracts with the Seattle Police Department (SPD) and other law enforcement agencies in the wake of police brutality episodes during the Black Lives Matter protests. The internal email with the subject line “Our neighborhood has been turned into a warzone” seen by the portal OneZero, nearly 250 Microsoft employees have asked the tech giant to formally support the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and calls for the resignation of the Seattle mayor.
Interesting. Similar employee “suggestions” have been respectfully and not-so-respectfully submitted to other high-technology outfits.
The basic idea is that employees either perceive the right to influence what the company sells and to whom and which entities.
DarkCyber wants to note:
- Employees may have a hand in creating software like Windows 10 which, when updated, fails. It seems reasonable that [a] the employees cannot do work that “works” or managers cannot manage so that products and services “work”.
- A company with internal difficulties is likely to find itself vulnerable to sabotage or work slowdowns on certain projects which staff determine do not deserve full commitment. If this assertion is accurate, some entities may lose confidence in the Redmond outfit, assuming that confidence has not begun to erode due to other factors. (Possibly the Zune effect?)
- An operating environment which increases uncertainty can undermine stakeholder confidence. The appearance of “management effectiveness” is necessary to prevent feedback which escalates uncertainty. Such uncertainty can influence the behaviors of partners, shareholders, prospects, existing customers, and employees. (Yikes, employees.)
Net net: A small perturbation may presage a larger seismic event. To be frank, it is more difficult to envision worse news that Forbes’ Magazine publishing “Microsoft Confirms New Windows 10 Upgrade Warnings.” Imagine a news service for business people warning that a forced upgrade will kill devices and services like Internet connectivity.
Didn’t Microsoft roll out Bob (a graphical interface for Windows) and the big, bright, and failed Windows Phone?
Yeah. Management, governance, confidence — a trifecta.
Stephen E Arnold, June 12, 2020
The Presumed JEDI Contract Winner Knows How to Catch Attention
June 3, 2020
Yep, Microsoft. If “Microsoft Puts Windows 10 May 2020 Update on Hold for Most Devices” is accurate, the creators of Bob and Vista are matching their previous technical achievements. DarkCyber highlighted this passage:
Microsoft’s latest May 2020 update is on hold for most devices as the company works to resolve a raft of issues… The company even added a prominent warning in Windows Update over the weekend. If you’re on the previous version looking to get the May 2020 Update (Build 2004), Windows Update will remind you that your device “isn’t quite ready for it.”
What happens if Department of Defense personnel require a stable version of Windows. Sometimes, not always, it is life and death for the user of a computing device, a laptop, or a cloud service.
Updating that kills a user’s system may have other — wait for it — consequences. Ah, Microsoft. Good enough even when it isn’t.
Stephen E Arnold, June 3, 2020
Microsoft: Rationalizing Is a Synonym for Good Enough Search
May 25, 2020
On May 16, 2020, Microsoft — the JEDI champions and the target of amusement for Google’s Action Blocks — updated its “Rationalizing Semantic and Keyword Search on Microsoft Academic” page. One notable change is references to everyone’s favorite pandemic and bandwagon for virtue signaling: Covid 19.
What’s Microsoft saying about its Microsoft Academic Search?
The write up points out that the four year old method for delivering “results that best matched semantically coherent interpretations of user queries, informed by the Microsoft Academic Graph (MAG)” is fixed up. I assume this means the fixing up which Longhorn required before it became semi ready for prime time.
Microsoft points out (mostly in a mist of misinformation) that the competitors just do keyword matches. I won’t repeat what I have written in my three Google monographs, the New Landscape of Search, and numerous columns and blog posts.
Well, Microsoft does allow some stupid, old fashioned, and hopelessly archaic keyword searching. The new search will avoid returning pages with null results or zero hits. FYI, gentle reader, learning there are “no hits” is high value information for many queries. Just ask someone running scientific, technical, engineering, and medical queries. Those quite specific searches with no hits are informationized payloads.
Keyword matching is now “rudimentary.” And what’s better? Okay, Boolean lovers who know how to formulate specific queries created after a reference interview by the light of an oil lamp in a damp cave in Eastern Europe:
To put it simply, we’ve changed our semantic search implementation from a strict form where all terms must be understood to a looser form where as many terms as possible are understood.
What’s this mean? Irrelevant, or at best tangential information. But without the explicit mechanisms of a faceted based search system. (Endeca, Endeca, why did you beat up on those who wanted to perform “guided navigation?” Are you wizards to blame?)
The write up presents some before and after queries. Guess what? You get more results, more to scan and review, and more time burned because the search system is being helpful.
Ah, no, thank you.
There is zero search system of which I know capable of “knowing” how to relax a query to provide the specific information for which I am looking. I prefer to formulate a query, scan, reformulate the query, scan, and hone my attention to the content object which in my judgment a useful nugget of information can be found.
Microsoft presents data and “distance” as evidence their new and improved system works. Better than sliced bread? For Microsoft search experts, the answer is a chorus of “yes indeeds.”
The result is another modern system which makes a person less skilled in retrieving “academic” information get a “good enough” answer.
Remember. This Microsoft outfit is going to be in the warfighting game. How does “good enough” information retrieval intentionally displaying content not directly related to the query meet the needs of an analyst in one of the more academic units of the Pentagon?
Oh, I bet this new system is not intended for that PhD. That individual uses a next generation information retrieval which provides specific tools to locate on point information.
Microsoft wants to be the search champion. Too bad it is emulating the king of irrelevant results and doing it without the payoff of massive advertising revenue.
Need academic information? Gentle reader, try iSeek, Qwant or Swisscows or your library’s online commercial databases. Include Microsoft’s offering, but supplement, analyze, and aggregate. You know like do research, not accept what the JEDI crowd offers up.
Stephen E Arnold, May 25, 2020
Microsoft: Good Enough Is Not the Standard We Need
May 25, 2020
Imagine the topic options swirling around this weekend: A mass marketish iPhone jailbreak procedure, Amazon allegedly selling to blacklisted companies, Joe Rogan either pulling off the podcast coup of the year or falling into the black hole of irrelevance.
What catches DarkCyber’s eye?
Microsoft Acknowledges Internet Error in Windows 10 Cumulative Update KB4535996
Three points related to the allegedly accurate statement.
First, the problem affects some WFHers. Those are people who need the Internet to do work and get paid. Bad.
Second, the problem originated in February 2020, and it is only now (May 24, 2020) being “acknowledged.”
Third, Microsoft fouled up its magical online upgrade process.
So what?
Microsoft is gung-ho on the cloud, its “building” for the future, its reinvention of apps, and its partner flogging.
Maybe the company should consider that good enough is not good enough.
Even Amazon — a firm with some issues — steps up and says, “Hey, our vaunted speedy delivery is going to work like a horse drawn cart now.”
Microsoft appears to have embraced its good enough, and it is not.
I am tired of going to my office which has Linux, Mac, and Windows machines. There I see the Windows machine waiting for me to enter a secret code or press a button to update. Yesterday one of these machines reported that it couldn’t reach my Microsoft account?
These guys are going to do warfighting?
Good enough is not. Not for Google, not for Facebook, not for Amazon, and not for Microsoft.
Good enough. Does that mean excellence today?
Stephen E Arnold, May 25, 2020
Microsoft and Its Latest Search Innovation: Moving Past Fast? Nope
May 22, 2020
I read “Microsoft Search: Search Your Document Like You Search the Web.” Perhaps Microsoft did not get the reports about the demise of the Google Search Appliance. That “invention” made clear that searching a corporate content collection like you search the Web was not exactly the greatest thing since sliced bread. There were a number of reasons for the failure of the GSA. It was a black box. You know that mere mortals could not tune the relevance component. You know that it produced results that left employees wondering, “Where is the document I wrote yesterday?” You know that the corpus of Web content is different from the fruit cake of corporate content. Web search returns something because the system is rigged to find a way to display ads to the hapless searcher.
Contrast this with documents in the cloud, in different systems like that old AS/400 Ironsides application used by the warehouse supervisors, and content tucked away on employees’ USB drives, mobile phones, the oldest kid’s iPad, and on services a go to sales professional uses to store PowerPoints for “special” customers. Then there are the documents in the corporate legal office. The consultants’ reports scanned and stored on the Market Department’s computer kept for interns.
Nevertheless, the article explains:
We’re utilizing well-established web search technologies, such as query and document understanding, and adding deep learning based natural language models. This allows us to handle a much broader set of search queries beyond “exact match.”
Okay, query expansion, synonym look up, and Fast Search’s concept feature. But there’s more:
With the recent breakthroughs in deep learning techniques, you can now go beyond the common search term-based queries. The result is answers to your questions based on the document content. This opens a whole new way of finding knowledge. When you’re looking at a water quality report, you can answer questions like “where does the city water originate from? How to reduce the amount of lead in water?”
May I suggest that Microsoft and dozens of other enterprise search vendors have promised magical retrieval?
May I point out that the following content types are usually outside the ken of the latest and great enterprise search confection; for example:
- Quality control data on parts stored in an Autodesk engineering document
- Real time data flowing into an organization from sensors
- Video content, audio content, and rich media like photographs
- Classified or content restricted by certain constraints. (Access controls are often best implemented by specialized systems unknown to the greedy enterprise search indexing system.)
- Documents obtained through an eDiscovery process for legal matters.
Has Microsoft solved these problems? Sure, if everything (note the logically impossible categorical affirmative) is in an Azure repository, it is conceivable that a user query could return a particular content object.
But that’s Microsoft fantasy land, and it is about as likely as Mr. Nadella arriving at work on the back of a unicorn.
Microsoft feels compelled to reinvent search every year or two. The longest journey begins with a single step. It is just that Microsoft took those steps decades ago and still has not reached the now rubbelized Fred Harvey’s.
Stephen E Arnold, May 22, 2020
Microsoft and Jack Dorsey: Chasing Zen Land?
May 20, 2020
We spotted “Permanent Work from Home Damaging for Workers Well-Being: Nadella.” The write up reports:
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has warned that making remote work permanent could have serious consequences for social interaction and mental health for workers as virtual video calls cannot replace in-person meetings.
Nadella asked these questions:
What does burnout look like? What does mental health look like? What does that connectivity and the community building look like? One of the things I feel is, hey, maybe we are burning some of the social capital we built up in this phase where we are all working remote. What is the measure for that?”
What company acts in a manner that will destroy well being? What company pushed employees to burnout? What company tears down communities?
DarkCyber’s research team believes that Jack Dorsey, the multi tasking CEO, fosters these negatives. As you may know, the capitalist tool, shared “Twitter, Square Announce Work From Home Forever Option- What Are The Risks?”
Microsofties can enjoy commutes, chasing around Microsoft’s facilities looking for guests, and sitting in meetings where Windows 10 updates, Amazon’s encroachment on Windows World, and waiting for the US government to award JEDI to the firm which developed Bob, the user interface of the future.
Disagreements about work are interesting. However, concerns and opinions from commercial real estate companies might be more helpful.
Amusing nevertheless. Nadella and Dorsey arguing about worker welfare. When monopolies collide, the well being of workers becomes ascendant.
Stephen E Arnold, May 20, 2020
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