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
Microsoft and Cyber Security: Popping Up a Level?
May 15, 2020
Remember when Microsoft “invented” DOS? What happened to Gary? Nothing good.
Remember when Microsoft “invented” compression? What happened to those Stacker people? Poof.
Remember when Microsoft “reinvented” enterprise search? What happened to Fast Search & Transfer’s UNIX licensees? Hasta la vista, muchachos.
Now Microsoft seems to be preparing to convert the cyber security vendors into Microsoft partners. We noted “Microsoft Opens Up Coronavirus Threat Data to the Public.” Another virtue signaling story? Maybe.
The article reports/asserts:
Microsoft is making the threat intelligence it’s collected on coronavirus-related hacking campaigns public…
That seems useful. Here’s another piece of information presented as a quote from the head of the Cyber Security Alliance:
“Overall, the security industry has not seen an increase in the volume of malicious activity; however, we have seen a rapid and dramatic shift in the focus of that criminal activity,” Daniel, a former White House cybersecurity coordinator, told CyberScoop. “The bad guys have shifted their focus to COVID-19 related themes, trying to capitalize on people’s fears, the overall lack of information, and the increase in first-time users of many on-line platforms.”
The article points out:
The 283 threat indicators Microsoft has shared are available through Microsoft’s Graph Security API or Azure Sentinel’s GitHub page.
Open information. Github. Partnering. Fighting disease. — How much goodness can one services firm deliver?
DarkCyber believes that Microsoft is dropping apples that do not fall far from the DOS, Stacker, and Fast Search UNIX tree.
Microsoft wants to be in the thick of cyber security in order to surround and benefit from the money flowing into a starting-to-consolidate cyber sector.
Only this week, a Florida based vendor of investigative software started beating the bushes for a buyer. Consolidation has begun and is accelerating.
How can Microsoft benefit? Those cyber security outfits make darned good Microsoft partners. Installing, tuning, and customizing Microsoft services (on premises and in the cloud) makes good business sense.
Maybe DarkCyber is misinterpreting an act of sincere common good as a dark pattern?
On the other hand, we could ask Gary, a Stacker person, or a Fast Search UNIX licensee. Err, maybe not.
Stephen E Arnold, May 15, 2020
Deindexing: Does It Officially Exist?
May 14, 2020
DarkCyber noted “LinkedIn Temporarily Deindexed from Google.” The rock solid, hard news service stated:
LinkedIn found itself deindexed from Google search results on Wednesday, which may or may not have occurred due to an error on their part. The telltale sign of an entire domain being deindexed from Google is performing a “site:” search and seeing zero results.
Mysterious.
DarkCyber has fielded two reports of deindexing from Google in the last three days. I one case a site providing automobile data was disappeared. In another, a site focused on the politics of the intelligence sector was pushed from page one to the depths of page three.
Why?
No explanation, of course.
LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft. Is that a reason? Did LinkedIn’s engineers ignore a warning about a problem in AMP?
Google does not make errors. If a problem arises, the cause is the vaunted Google smart software.
DarkCyber’s view is that Google is taking stepped up action to filter certain types of content. We have documented that one Google office has access to controls that can selectively block certain content from appearing in the public facing Web search system. The content is indeed indexed and available to those with certain types of access.
What’s up? Here are our theories?
- Google is trying to deal with problematic content in a more timely manner by relaxing constraints on search engineers working in Google “virtual offices” around the world. Human judgments will affect some Web site. (Contacting Google is as difficult as it has been for the last 20 years.)
- Google wants to make sure that ads do not appear next to content that might cause a big spender to pull away. Google needs the cash. The thought is that Amazon and Facebook are starting to put a shunt in the money pipeline.
- Google is struggling to control costs. Slowing indexing, removing sites from a crawl, and pushing content that is rarely viewed to the side of the Information Superhighway reduces some of the costs associated with serving more than 95 percent of the queries launched by humans each day.
Regardless of the real reason or the theoretical ones, Google’s control over findable content can have interesting consequences. For example, more investigations are ramping up in Europe about the firm’s practices (either human or software centric).
Interesting. Too bad others affected by Google actions are not of the girth and heft of LinkedIn. Oh, well, the one percent are at the top for a reason.
Stephen E Arnold, May 14, 2020
JEDI Warriors: Amazon and Microsoft Soldier On for Money
May 11, 2020
DarkCyber noted “Bid High, Lose, Try Again. Amazon Continues to Push for a JEDI Re-Do.” The main point of the write up is to point out that Amazon is not happy with the disposition of the Department of Defense’s decision to award JEDI to Microsoft.
What’s interesting about the article is that Microsoft implies that it is the provider of the “latest and best technology available.” The author is a corporate vice president of communications. The viewpoint is understandable.
The blog post points out:
Amazon has filed yet another protest – this time, out of view of the public and directly with the DoD – about their losing bid for the JEDI cloud contract. Amazon’s complaint is confidential, so we don’t know what it says. However, if their latest complaint mirrors the arguments Amazon made in court , it’s likely yet another attempt to force a re-do because they bid high and lost the first time.
That’s an interesting assertion. If the bid data were available, perhaps some characterization of what “high” means in this context would be helpful.
DarkCyber understood that Amazon lost the procurement because of a combination of factors, not “price.” Factors included alleged interference by the White House, Amazon’s assurances that on premises and cloud systems would work in the security environment required / envisioned by the DoD, and a lack of support for essential applications like PowerPoint. Price is an important factor, but data about the fees is not floating around in the miasma of rural Kentucky.
Microsoft’s PR VP states:
This latest filing – filed with the DoD this time – is another example of Amazon trying to bog down JEDI in complaints, litigation and other delays designed to force a do-over to rescue its failed bid. Think about it: Amazon spent the better part of last month fighting in court to prevent the DoD from taking a 120-day pause to address a concern flagged by the judge and reevaluate the bids. Amazon fought for a complete re-do and more delay. Amazon lost. The judge granted the DoD’s request for a timeout in the litigation to address her concerns. And now Amazon is at it again, trying to grind this process to a halt, keeping vital technology from the men and women in uniform – the very people Amazon says it supports.
The conclusion of the blog post is that Amazon should tip over its king and concede defeat.
DarkCyber finds this procurement to be interesting. Neither side is likely to walk away.
The reason, however, has little to do with technology or concern with the DoD, war fighters, or any other uplifting notion.
There are 10 billion reasons or more plus additional payments as a result of scope changes, engineering change orders, and ancillary tasks.
The battle is less about ideals and more about money, prestige, and the JEDI deal as a Dyson vacuum cleaner for more government work. The best technology? Yeah, right.
Stephen E Arnold, May 11, 2020
Microsoft Monetizes Asian User Database
May 8, 2020
Retail companies are out to sell their products and services to customers, so they hit up social media platforms and other large networks willing to sell customer information. Private organizations, on the other hand, guard their clients’ information, but Microsoft is about to take advantage of its large client base to generate more profit says IT Brief: “Microsoft To Monetize Huge Windows 10 User base.”
During the COVID-19 pandemic, many Microsoft users are working remotely, 33% are in Asia, and Microsoft sees an opportunity to make money via its office suite. Microsoft is rebranding Office 365 to Microsoft 365 and they are adding Windows 10 upgrades for enterprises and new items for Microsoft Teams. Microsoft 365 will continue the subscription based service for both individuals and enterprises.
New offerings in Microsoft 365 are:
“ ‘In terms of inclusion of features, Microsoft 365 Business Premium does offer more than Zoom or Slack: it includes the Office apps, 1 TB of cloud storage, Outlook with a 50 GB mailbox per user, device and data protection tools, upgrade rights to Windows 10 from previous versions, and of course Teams, which competes with Zoom and Slack. The pricing, in addition to the bundling of Windows 10 upgrade, is likely to resonate strongly with the price-conscious Asian market in the shrinking economy,’ says [Nishant Singh, head of technology and telecoms data at GlobalData.]”
Microsoft attempted to monetize Windows 10 in Asia through the Microsoft Store, but it was not successful. Instead Microsoft will make an enterprization of consumers through Microsoft 365, who need to replicate a business enterprise through their own systems. Microsoft is less likely to make revenue through Windows as the only thing left for the OS is newer releases, but if Microsoft charges for Microsoft 365 and apps sold through it the profit margins will be bigger.
It also means that Microsoft could implement the pricing method used by airlines: Pay per bag, buy a snack, pay for another four inches of leg room.
Whitney Grace, May 7, 2020
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