Degoogling: Yes, It Is a Thing
June 8, 2020
Can free and open source software “degoogle”? Probably not easily or quickly. Nevertheless Reddit user TheEvilSkely wants to try. You can dig through the details, explore the GitHub information, and follow the links at this link. The challenge is that most of the whippersnappers are just okay with the Google. Like Amazon, the service is just wonderful. Why make a change if everything is A-Okay?
News flash: Open source is not just tangled with Googzilla’s feathers (dinosaurs, according to modern research by thumbtypers, had feathers, bright ones too). The Redmond contingent is into open source. Imagine Linux in the really easy to update Windows environment. Amazon is driving its Bezos bulldozer through the thicket of new growth saplings like Elastic as I type this post. If you listen closely, you can hear the bulldozer shift into a lower gear to push annoying old growth software into the dirt. One doesn’t need to have an oracle to understand the earth moving concept.
Open source is a target for these reasons:
- Community software lowers certain coding costs and has enough bugs to make proprietary fixes a money maker
- Young developers learn open sourcey ways in college and arrive ready to earn and burn in their virtual frat and sorority duds when they become WFHers and on prem contractors
- Big companies love open source because they can devote resources to tweaking the software and have enough money to pay legions of certified advisers help out, license open source optimized cloud environments, and pay for proprietary widgets that don’t change the “no handcuffs” idea of non proprietary plumbing.
Worth monitoring, of course.
Stephen E Arnold, June 8, 2020
Amazon Grinds into Teams and Rolls Across Its Playground Cracking the Asphalt
June 5, 2020
Distracted by an inability to deliver packages quickly, Amazon has revved the engine of the Bezos bulldozer. The giant online bookstore and the world’s richest human being is punching the gas pedal and lurching forward. The objective? The Microsoft Teams’ playground. The bulldozer will crunch over the feet of the nimble Zoomers and shove the Google toward the shower room, but the big orange diesel leaves a visible pathway, small creatures unable to avoid the metal treads and assorted debris similar to the storefronts on Main Street USA.
The action is described in “Slack and Amazon partner to take on Microsoft Teams.” DarkCyber does not want to argue which wonky online organizational, communication, and squabbling service is better. Amazon has the technical infrastructure to make almost anything work and to bill people for taking data out of its giant cloud environment.
The write up states:
On Thursday (4 June), it emerged that Slack and Amazon have forged a multi-year agreement, allowing all Amazon employees to use Slack. The news comes at a time when Slack has seen increased competition from Microsoft Teams. In a recent SEC filing, the company said that the Microsoft platform is its “primary competitor”. This is despite the fact Microsoft’s main focus is video and voice calling, while Slack is primarily used for text-based workplace chat. As part of the deal with Amazon, Slack will deepen its partnership with AWS by migrating its voice and video calling functions to Amazon’s Chime platform, in a bid to strengthen its video and voice calling offerings.
DarkCyber thinks this development is important for three reasons:
- The deal makes it clear that Amazon, although late to the game, is going to be trying to be like Zoom on steroids. (A side consideration is that Amazon employees will have a more zippy way to organize the two pizza parties when a fail safe system falls over.)
- The tie up means that Slack is not going away. Amazon can include Slack functions in a wide array of services. Imagine how much easier it will be to chase down knock off product information using a reasonably functional Slack and Chime service? Well, maybe not too aggressively?
- The inclusion of Slack means that Amazon’s oft-ignored policeware services get a useful tool for enforcement and intelligence professionals. DarkCyber thinks this is important, and possibly someone will notice before Amazon jumps out of its hidey hole and reveals that it powers much of the policeware infrastructure for low profile companies.
Worth watching even though the write up is content to point out:
By using Chime technology to run Slack’s video and voice call features, the company hopes to add new features. Armstrong said that the company is looking at bringing video calling to the mobile version of Slack, as it currently does not have this feature. He also said that Slack is looking into transcription.
Hitting the small nail squarely? Yes.
Stephen E Arnold, June 6, 2020
Coveo Enterprise Search: A Pivot and a Double Flip from a 15 Year Old Startup
June 4, 2020
DarkCyber noted this story in a New Zealand online information service: “Xero Partners with Coveo to Empower Small Businesses with Machine Learning.” The write states:
Xero has partnered with Coveo to empower small businesses with new functionality on its app marketplace search, powered by machine learning.
Before taking a look at the direct quotes in the article, DarkCyber needs to answer two questions.
First, what’s Coveo? According to the firm’s Web site, the company:
Provide effortless tailored journeys with the Coveo Experience Intelligence Platform. Imagine the experiences you could deliver by embracing the cloud, data, and AI today.
Got that? Coveo was profiled in the first three editions of the Enterprise Search Report as a vendor of Microsoft-centric search and retrieval. Over the years, the company has evolved or at least changed. The firm offered its search system as a customer support component and now it has evolved into providing “tailored journeys”. Let’s call this enterprise search.
Second, what’s Xero? The company’s Web site explains:
Xero is the emerging global leader of online accounting software that connects small businesses to their advisors and other services. Xero provides business owners with real-time visibility of their financial position and performance in a way that’s simple, smart and secure. For accountants, Xero forges a trusted relationship with clients through online collaboration and gives accountants the opportunity to extend their services.
Okay, the company wants to offer an online “store” to sell licenses to companies looking for accounting software.
Now back to the write up. The article quotes an executive at Coveo as saying:
Coveo CEO and chairman Louis Tetu says, “Creating intelligent experiences like Xeros [sic] app marketplace and Xero Central are critical to compete in today’s experience economy. Digital leaders run on data and AI to create the relevant, unified experiences their customers expect – while adding real business value. Few companies understand that better than Xero. Whether a small business is looking to move sales online, coordinate staff or manage projects, Xero’s app marketplace features an array of third-party apps to help with their unique industry and business administration challenges.”
DarkCyber thinks that this means that Coveo will provide product search for Xero’s online store. It is easy to be mystified by words like “intelligence experiences,” “experience economy”, and AI (artificial intelligence). Yeah, jargon is one way to get around the fact that Coveo is providing search and retrieval. (SLI Systems — New Zealand eCommerce search system — is probably surprised by the lingo as well.)
How does Xero explain search? One of Xero’s managers says:
“We’ve seen a 50% increase in people searching for cash flow apps from February to April this year, so we know making it easy to access the right technology is more important than ever…. Tapping into smart insights through machine learning, not only improves the journey for time-poor small businesses, but enables us to consistently evolve our offering to provide beautiful experiences for our customers.
Okay, jargon like “machine learning,” “time poor”, and “beautiful experiences” seems to be a bit of frosting on a donut.
The Canadian company has licensed its search system to a New Zealand accounting centric company to provide search and retrieval for about 800 products.
Interesting. DarkCyber assumes that the inclusion of the buzzwords and jargon is an attempt to make a fairly straightforward ecommerce service into something with a bit more zing. Did it work? You decide because eCommerce search features established options like Elasticsearch and new solutions from vendors like Luigis Box. Coveo was founded in 2005 as a spin off from Copernic desktop search. Luigis Box, on the other hand, was founded in 2017.
Stephen E Arnold, June 4, 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
Google Enters a Summer of Excuses
May 31, 2020
I wrote about the “dog ate my homework” and Google a few days ago. Now we have an Android release delay. The canine excuse was Covid. No dog this time. “Google Postpones Android 11 Unveiling amid U.S. Protests” reports the delay due to civil disorder, protests, and reprises of LA issues. No big deal, of course, but why not just say, “We’re not ready.” Is the new Google an excuse generation system? Are not software updates handled from the cloud? Does not Google have access to a video conferencing system? Interesting. Facebook, Microsoft, and Zoom services work okay for virtual announcements.
Stephen E Arnold, May 31, 2020
Oracle: We Do Open Source Just Like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft… Mostly
May 27, 2020
Silicon Angle published the PR-ish “Oracle’s Open Source Alter Ego Behind Some of Its Most Popular Products.” Oracle is creeping up to the half century mark. In Internet years or dog years, Oracle has been around so long that it is like comfortable shoes. The shine may be gone, but, by golly, those slippers work well indoors.
Oracle has its fans, and it has some detractors. Among its fans are the procurement officials in the US government who keep on renewing those contracts for the company’s flagship database. Among its detractors are some Googlers, licensees who struggle with integrating some of the company’s products into zippy new environments like NoSQL, and firms offering unauthorized Oracle training.
None of these considerations sully the Oracle open source article. We learn:
Oracle’s paid products and services are actually loaded with ingredients from open-source communities, including Linux, to which it is also a contributor. This circular ecosystem of contributing and borrowing back enables some of the versatility and cross-environment compatibility in the company’s latest database and hybrid-cloud offerings.
Why is Oracle into open source? Why are Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and other commercial proprietary software vendors embracing open source? DarkCyber finds this statement in the article interesting:
The use of Linux across Oracle’s portfolio, and as the underlying OS for its products and services, enhances end users’ experience.
The article includes a testimonial from the Oracle wizard of open source, who says:
When its contributions improve both the larger Linux community and its own products, a circular flow of innovation develops that helps everyone that uses Linux, according to Coekaerts. “It’s not so much about making my own world better and having Linux be better and Ksplice and so forth, which is important, but that becoming part of the bigger picture — that’s the exciting part.” — Wim Coekaerts, senior vice president of software development at Oracle Corp.
DarkCyber was under the obviously false impression that proprietary software vendors were embracing open source for these reasons:
- Shift some development costs to the community
- Link proprietary systems and methods to open source to provide a runway to commercial licenses
- Prevent other companies from capturing open source technologies and preventing others from using those technologies
- Respond to enterprise customers who view open source as a way to avoid the handcuffs of proprietary software by implementing a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” strategy
- Gain insight into individuals who might be good hires.
Obviously DarkCyber was incorrect. We acknowledge our error.
Stephen E Arnold, May 27, 2020
Amazon AWS Translation Notes
May 26, 2020
DarkCyber wants to say, “Good job” to the person who assembled “Amazon Web Services.” The write up is a list of more than 160 AWS services. Each service is identified by the often wonky Amazon name and followed by a brief description. The list is a medieval gloss for a 21st century cloud vendor’s service, product, frameworks, and features. The monks who compiled Psychomachia of Aurelius Prudentius would be envious.
Amazon wants to offer something for everyone, and as the company has emitted services, coherence has been a casualty. Worth downloading and tucking in one’s “We Want to Be Number One” folder. I assume a mid tier consulting firm or a WFHer will put the list into Excel and indicate which of these AWS offerings are available and mostly working from competitors like Google, IBM, and Facebook.
Stephen E Arnold, May 26, 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
JEDI? What JEDI?
May 21, 2020
The battle royale players are Amazon, Microsoft, White House officials, the Department of Defense, former employees of high profile firms, law firms, and consultants. The subject? JEDI. The procurement has been entertainment worthy of a William Proxmire Golden Fleece Award. (Remember Senator William Proxmire?)
DarkCyber spotted “Scoop: Google Lands Cloud Deal with Defense Department.” We know this is a scoop because the word “scoop” appears in the headline. Subtle.
The write up reports as a real news scoop:
Google Cloud has landed a deal to help the Defense Department detect, protect against, and respond to cyber threats, Axios has learned. The deal, with the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), is in the “seven figures…”
The main point is to make clear that it will be business as usual at the Pentagon. The single vendor idea is not making much headway when it comes to information technology.
What’s next? Awards to Hewlett Packard, IBM, and Oracle?
Good question. We thought we heard cheers from the buildings near the old SeaWorld in Silicon Valley. Maybe that was a party held at IBM Federal off Quince Orchard Road in Gaithersburg?
Probably our team’s collective tinnitus.
Stephen E Arnold, May 21, 2020
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