The Zeitgeist

Apparently, the self-described International Intellectual Property Alliance, which includes perennial bad actors such as the  MPAA and the RIAA as member is now pushing a rules change in the US export/import controls that would brand Open Source Software as pirated goods and that in fact Open Source software is a “threat” to the very existence of capitalism.

The Guardian is reporting today that the IIPA are pushing for a “section 301″ rules change to US law which would put goods from Brazil, Indonesia, and India (to name a few) on trade watch lists because they make or sell product using Open Source software and because these governments have pushed the use of Open Source systems/software  for use inside their own governments.  It would effectively criminalize the use and importation of Open Source software.  Think about that for a moment, will you?

The idiocy here cannot be over stated.  Open Source Software packages, literally RUN the digital economy the world (and the US in particular) now depends  upon…

Let’s look at the short list of what the IIPA is attacking, shall we?

Linux and/or BSD Unix is the heart of (for starters…)

• All US banking operations
• All US trading, settlement and back-office systems
• Most wireless routers
• All set-top cable boxes
• 90% of DVD/BluRay Players
• In-flight entertainment systems
• MP3 players
• Hand-held gaming systems
• All smart-phones (including the iPhone and Google Android as well as the Palm Pre and new Motorola phones)
• 97% of the top-500 super computers in the world
• All large e-comerce platforms created and used by everyone from Amazon to to WalMart
• All of Google
• All of Yahoo
• All of Facebook
• All of MySpace
• Most all software used in animation/rendering farms to make Hollywood blockbusters

Software written by or donated to the Apache Software foundation:

• Secures 98% of all internet e-commerce transactions (OpenSSL/TLS)
• Runs 80%+ of all web servers (Apache)
• Accounts for over 50% of all non-Sun supplied Java utility packages used to create the majority of enterprise software in the US and around the world

Other Open Source software such as Ruby on Rails, Python, Groovy, Scala, PHP and Erlang and all of the tools created using them power  almost all of the powerful new software, applications and web services that are re-shaping every aspect of online and offline life, culture and business: from Twitter  and BaseCamp, to Facebook, and MySpace… the list goes on for so long it would takes weeks to recount all of the applications that are changing our world and powering our future that are built with or are themselves Open Source software.

All of this built on the extraordinary creativity and generosity of programmers and corporations  around the world, including companies like IBM and Sun (and even Microsoft!) who have opened up their impressive patent portfolios to ensure that Open Source packages can remain open and can continue to be used to drive innovation for everyone.

And all of this is somehow “a threat the capitalism?” Seriously?  A pretty large bunch of capitalist companies seem to be making a LOT of money thanks to all that commie Open Source software.

And yet.. and yet the IIPA  slyly and disingenuously attempts to brand Open Source software and the countries and companies that use it, and the people/corporations that create  it as some kind of pirates intent on destroying the value of software.  If they want to see “pirates,” the IIPA needs only to look in the mirror…

Maybe the IIPA needs to get with the program and join the rest of us in the 21st century and create some value.  Go do something of value, present something other than the face of a bunch of scared, old businesses/businessmen too tired and spent to represent anything other than old broken business models and a bunch of  opportunistic fear-mongering thieves who would slit the throat of the future in a feeble attempt to undo history and line their own pockets.

Tags: apache, apache software foundation, BSD, copyright, IIPA, intellectual property, iPhone, Linux, open source, Palm, Patents

Life’s weird,  it puts you in odd, uncomfortable situations and occasionally out of the chaos potentially wonderful opportunities materialize when you least expect them.  For example:

This week I am winding down a consulting gig that got cut short by the client’s management who decided 2 weeks ago to cut the budget on the project I was on.  Really  disappointing given the effort the firm made to drag me in (and the things I put on hold in order to take the gig!), and of course there’s the loss of the income.  (*sigh*)… but  this is the life of a consultant. Stuff happens, gigs occasionally get pulled out from under you.

The day after that happened (10 days ago) I got a call from a recruiter in San Jose about an interesting opportunity with a company in the South Bay.  A  few days later I had  a good phone interview with the CTO. Then, I got to the next stage: a phone interview this past week with one of the firm’s directors which went spectacularly well and was one of the most enjoyable work/intro conversations I’ve had in a long time.  So interesting in fact  I am flying out to San Francisco next week to drive down and meet the whole team to see if the chemistry continues.

(And, because of the insanity of airline ticket pricing I’ll have to stay in SF for a week or the ticket prices go thru’ the roof.  [yes, yes, poor me: a week in SF!]    I am trying to  arrange a few more interviews to fill out the week: anyone having interesting gigs I might be a fit for  in San Francisco — see my LinkedIn profile — should feel free to drop me a note!)

But, as the saying goes “Wait!  there’s more…”  At the end of last week a good friend of mine called with the news that a mutual friend of ours would like me to help out with a new firm-wide architecture development plan he’s working on at a major financial firm.  That would be very cool too.

Last week also saw my other little side venture, MacIndie (a very nifty resource for Mac and iPhone/iPad Developers) start to gain some  traction with several hundred new readers and a bunch of new followers on Twitter and mention in a few other developer blogs.  (more like this please!)

Then, to make matters even more interesting (wait, there’s still more…)  – I just starting playing with an idea that could turn into the #1 killer business app for the new Apple iPad. I can’t give away any details, but suffice it to say this would be to enterprise and mobile productivity what Excel was to accounting/business-analysis or Photoshop was to graphics design.  Of course it’s one of those things that’s big enough that I can’t do it alone – it’s going to require at least some Angel or  a small amount of VC funding to pull off and a couple of other  programers (there’s only so much code I can write by myself) and a really good user-experience designer, but if I can get it rolling, it’ll be big.  Really, really, really big.

What to do .. what do do… ?  Two possibly great leads in the span of 1 week, some good MacIndie traction and one really freakin’ huge, monster killer idea.  Coolness.

One door closes, other doors open.  The hard part is knowing which door(s) to step through, and keeping your balance (and your wits about you) until you do…

Tags: Angel Funding, anticipation, Apple, Business, consulting, crossroads, iFund, ipad, iPhone, iPhoneOS, jobs, Life, opportunity, Startups, unexpected, VC, Venture Capital

Golly, CEO’s say the darndest things!  Qwest CEO Ed Mueller‎ is quoted as responding to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s call for upgrading the US broradband infrastructure to 100Mbits to the home in the next decade saying: “100 meg is just a dream, we couldn’t afford it.”  He went on to add ”First, we don’t think the customer wants that. Secondly, if (Google has) invented some technology, we’d love to partner with them.”

Wow.

I mean, just WOW – where do you even begin to try to get inside the head of such a stellar intellect?

Given the US is 19th in broadband deployment and speed, lagging behind South Korea and Japan where nominal network speeds to the home start at around 20Mbits/sec, Mueller‎s’s assertion is either tragically naive  or criminally negligent, or both.

The problem with people like Mueller‎, and in fact most CEOs is that they are disconnected from the day to day reality of what’s happening in the world.  The modern world and all of the things we do in it revolves around access to data.  It’s highly unlikely he has any experience developing the kinds of tools and services that would make use of such a high speed network: Movies on demand, games, online books/libraries, ecommerce, e-learning, medical and scientific visualizations and simulation  – you name it, it uses the Internet and it demands high-speed networks.  The higher speed, the better.  The online economy is nolonger a speculative future facing possibility – it represents over  1/2 trillion dollars/year in the US economy alone – and growing by double digits every year.

The idea that consumers don’t want 100Mbit (bi-directional) broadband is absurd: the applications people want to use today range from games and video on demand to simulations and tele-presense services like VPNs and video chats.   And, you know what?  They want to do them all at once:

The Time: Today, 2:30 PM; the Place: Chicago, IL  –  Mom, a consulting surgeon, is connected to her hospital’s VPN reviewing MRI imagery and moving 50 gigabyte files back and forth across the net making life and death decisions while  kid #2 is talking via video conference with kid#1 who is away at college.  Kid #3 is streaming  HD movies while Dad is collaborating and running real-time interactive simulations for a new system he’s building with his company’s development partners and engineers in 8 cities around the world.

Does 100mbit/sec still seem far fetched?  Hardly. Come to think of it, 100mbit/sec to the home should be the bare minimum speed that’s  acceptible – 1Gbit/sec would be better, 10Gbit better still.

These kinds of applications are not some part of some far off future – these are things people do now:  Today.  Right. This. Very. Minute.  They just have to do them a smaller scale or kick the rest of the family off of the paltry 5-10Mbit/sec cable-modems and DSL lines we all suffer with(*) — and pay premium prices for — today.

The  notion that we “can’t afford” to build out such an infrastructure and provide these high-quality services thst will drive our economy is as close to a bald-faced lie as one can get without physically having your nose grow longer with each syllable you utter.  The US consumer pays among the highest telecom fees and taxes in the world and get the fewest and slowest services of any industrilaized nation in return.

Verizon, AT&T, and the other major telecom companies demanded and were granted rate increases, tax credits and were the beneficiaries  of infrastructure development fees under the Telecommunications Act of 1996 that has netted them billions of dollars.  They were supposed to be building fiber to the curb to the majority of American homes to enable exactly the kinds of capabilities I described above.  The Results?  Nada. Zilch. Bupkis. They took the money and ran.  They paid it out in bonuses to the likes of  Ed Whitacre and Ivan Siedenberg while their infrastructures languished.  And, to secure their markets, they got the George W. Bush administration to allow them to cut off potential competitors at the knees by reversing the Clinton era colo equal access provisions that spurred the  first broadband boom in the late 1990s.

Make no mistake, 100Mbit and faster speeds (and unfettered, uncensored access to the Internet) are not a “nice to have” luxury – they are critical to our national survival.  If Ed Mueller‎ isn’t creative or insightful enough to see this, he needs to be fired. Gone. buh-bye.  Ditto for any other telecom  exec who would sacrifice our future on the alter of their own arrogance and lack of vision.   Seriously, we have no more time to waste in this country with idiots like this   …unless of course the idea of being the first “post-modern agrarian society” is an appealing one.

*

There are exceptions to this dismal picture: CableVision on Long Island, NY has a 101Mbit/sec network called OptimumOnline Ultra and Verizon has been rolling out its 20Mbit/sec FIOS system in very small and selected areas around the country — but these are exceptions that service maybe 10-15 MM people out of a country of over 350MM.

Tags: 100mbit, bandwidth, Ed Meuller, future, Google, Internet, qwest, telecom Act

Maybe one day I’ll be cool enough to get a TED invite and i can see stuff like Oblong’s demo of their g-speak interface.

As eye candy this is wickedly cool, and, naturally since its developed by the guy who did the design of the imagined interface for Speilberg’s Minority Report, everyone thinks it’s the future of computing. Don’t hold your breath tho’ as an interface so far they haven’t shown how it could be practical or frankly very efficient. Lots of gestures, very complicated and very little actual output. In the future will everyone need to have studied with the Martha Graham Dance Company? I think Apple’s got it nailed… small gestures; subtle motions. Obvious, and direct actions tied to obvious direct goals …not interpretive dance.

Tags: future of computing, GUI, oblong, TED

Iiiinteresting. Twitter seems to, despite previous assurances from co-founder Biz Stone that it wouldn’t, be going after app developers using “Tweet” as part of their app names.

Now, if Twitter actually had a trademark on the term “tweet” it would be one thing, but to be sending takedown notices for something you don’t own isn’t just a matter of bad faith its actually illegal. It’s an act of fraud.

Imagine getting the local sheriff to evict a family from a house you’ve put a bid on, but don’t yet own.   We’d never stand for that, yet Twitter just got  TweetKnot removed from FaceBook with a fraudulent infringement notice for a  trademark it does not own.

Furthermore, the USPTO has so far refused  to grant Twitter’s application for a service mark for “tweet”  and in fact if the rules were applied fairly, Twitter should not be granted a mark for “tweet” since its was the twitter users themselves that coined the term, not Twitter the company, it is in fact  like Kleenex or Coke now a term in common use and by definition not trademark-able…

So, what should happen to companies that play these tactics? Perhpas we need an IP Penalty Box for such miscreants – maybe suspension of ability to obtain trademarks or patents for 3 years?   Same thing for media companies that falsely file DMCA takedown notices, or app developers (as in the iTunes AppStore) who send fraudulent copyright infringement notices purely to harm their competitors by having their apps removed from sale.

What about lawyers who knowingly participate in such takedown/infringement notices?  Isn’t it their jobs as officers of the court to advise their clients they they cannot just make stuff up and then attempt to use the law as a bludgeon?  Maybe a 3 year suspension of the law licenses of offending lawyers might be a good start here too.

Something’s gotta’ change – we can’t keep having this stuff happen, its making developers skittish about releasing apps and by extension killing innovation  …and in the tech industry  we need more innovation, not less.  Especially if we’re going to get our economy moving again.

Tags: dmca, lawyers, Patents, penalty, trademarks, twitter, USPTO

I’ve been thinking more over night about the whole Google Buzz fiasco, and the more I think about it, the more horrified I am.

What Google’s done in not thinking through the implications of the auto-follow defaults for Buzz will not be known for some time – but exposing everyone’s social network in this way was probably a boon for intelligence agencies all over the world, including some who would like nothing better than to identify and neutralize human rights organizers, dissidents and others, and Google gave them a great gift in all this mine-able info opened up by Buzz.

Make no mistake, this is a lot more serious than when some security breach spills a few hundred thousand social security numbers onto the web; this is the real deal here … people are going to get hurt or killed in the real world because of this.

I don’t see any way for Google to undo this either – and what I don’t get given Google’s deep knowledge of the the interconnections between people that can be exposed by combination of GMail + Google Reader + Buzz is how they didn’t see this was going to happen? So far their rather tepid response isn’t addressing the scope of this potential disaster.

The right thing to do would have been to apologize, turn Buzz off immediately and delete all its data. They need to start again from the ground up with an eye toward Buzz not as a free-for-all of social connections, but how its information can be contained and controlled by Buzz users and only enabled/propagated on an explicit opt-in basis.

I doubt Google will be so forthcoming, but it would be interesting to know how many 3rd party systems have been mining Buzz data since it became available? What kinds of, and how much data has been collected and by whom?

Google’s unofficial motto is “Don’t be evil” – Maybe it should be “First, Do No Harm”

Tags: buzz, data, data mining, Google, intelligence, Privacy, Social Networking, surveillance

So, Google is going after Twitter and Facebook it seems with Buzz.   Buzz could be an interesting platform, but here are 4 key reasons why it’s probably not going to take off just yet:

• Google doesn’t get user experience.
• People are already invested in Twitter and Facebook
• APIs Matter
• Poorly Thought Out Defaults

Quantitative vs. Qualitative

Google is a data driven company.  How could they not be?  They’re primarily a search engine; everything they do to make money revolves around measuring aspects of how people interact with various parts of the Internet.  Numbers can be illuminating but they’re also cold, unfeeling things.  They can tell you how many pages link to some other page, or how often people click on one ad versus another, but they can’t tell you why some people love their iPods and don’t by Zunes.

What Google doesn’t do at all well is user experience (UX), and it’s not because they’re not filled to the brim with scarily smart people, it’s because a good user experience requires qualitative nuance; it takes tons of time and patience and, most importantly  it takes living with ambiguity and constantly re-imaginging and re-adjusting your product in the face of changing tastes.  From Googles perspective, one would have answer the question “How do you objectively measure good user experience?”  Well, unfortunately for Google,  You can’t: all qualitative things are subjective.  Even user testing only tells you what your  testers like.  To mangle a metaphor, the proof of the pudding is in the large-scale use of the product…

The only true measure of a good user experience is the voice of the marketplace.  And, so far, Google has shown no interest in investing in the squishy, touchy-feely world of UX, as is evidenced by all the very spartan aspects of their apps: Gmail, Gdocs, Google Spreadsheet … all very minimalist. All very  functional, but boring as hell.. (Their search page is an exception to this rule – the lack of any substantive UX on this page clarifies its function – the brevity IS the User Experience – its pretty obvious what you’re supposed to do in the search box on google.com.)

I’d Rather Fight Than Switch…

Another thing that’s going to slow Google from gaining fast traction with Buzz is the fact they’re very late to the party. Twitter has been around since 2007, and FaceBook since ~2004, and for Facebook at least they have some 400,000,000 users around the world who have uploaded 10s of billions of pictures, played untold trillion games of Mafia Wars, Farmville, and Scrabble™, and have super-poked each other until their virtual bruises have virtual bruises.

Funny thing about people is they get set in their ways and you really have to offer them a compelling reason (read: user experience) to get them to leave something they know for some thing new. In the words of that old Tarrington cigarette’s ad “I’d  rather fight than switch…”

The API’s the Thing

Next, there’s the issue of APIs – this ties in to both user experience and emotional/time investment people have in Twitter and FaceBook; so far Google has not released a Twitter compatible API for Buzz. The latest on this as reported by Dave Winer seems to be that Google is claiming the Twitter API spec isn’t “Open.” Hmmm… there are a lot of Twitter clones out there from Laconi.ca and Yammer to Present.ly – I haven’t heard tell of Twitter suing anyone for implementing a Twitter-compatible API

The API thing plays into the point above about people being already invested in these platforms and accessing those platforms with tools they like. By forcing developers to create new tools just for use with Buzz, Google is forcing both the developers and regular users to make a choice between things they like and access to Buzz. That’s not going to work out so well, I think.

From a development perspective, it’s also a pain in the tail to support multiple protocols/APIs; eventually someone will get smart and abstract Buzz and Twitter (and whatever else comes down the micro-blogging pike) into a single facade, but that only works well if the underlying semantics and feature-set are roughly aligned, but for now there are going to have to be a mess of new clients and slap-dash shoe-horning of Buzz APIs into existing clients.
However even all these points are not as bad as the final thing that’s working against Buzz…

Choosing. Bad. Defaults.

When you write any application or develop any platform one of the hardest things to do is imagine what the best starting settings, or “defaults” are for the users of your application/platform. You always want to err on the side of caution, not turning on every option, rather giving your user some safe settings that show what you can do with your system without endangering your user (perhaps by damaging their work  or opening up their data to prying eyes) or overwhelming them with features they’re not ready for or may never, ever have a need for.   In the case of Buzz, Google really didn’t think about the implications of their “defaults” for Buzz very thoroughly if they did so at all…

Why do I say this? Well, when Google activated Buzz they opt-ed in everyone’s gmail account, and had Buzz auto-follow just about everyone you communicate with, then did the inverse “follows” for everyone you follow… At first blush this sounds innocuous, but what about people who didn’t want their bosses, or boyfriends to know their entire social network? What about women who are trying to avoid abusive spouses or boyfriends? How about human rights activists? How about whistleblowers? Or, anyone else whose safety, security or work will be compromised by having their communications network exposed for no good reason and without their permission.? Clearly Google didn’t consider what the “good” defaults for Buzz would be before turning it on.

Think this last bit is over the top? Not for a lot of people who have a expressed their outrage at Google’s lack of in-depth thinking here. Google itself is pretty much reeling from the blowback and trying to figure out how to undo the obvious PR and goodwill nightmare by potentially separating Buzz from GMail and making Buzz opt-in only, but the damage is already done, the horse is out of the barn, etc.

Buzz may yet be a worthy addition to the whole social network arena, but Google first has to gain its user’s trust back, then it has to understand that the users are in control, from choosing the tools they like because he APIs are compatibe (and again, Google needs to make it easier to switch than fight…), and then experience has to be one that is compelling enough to make people want to switch.

Tags: api, buzz, client, FaceBook, Google, Privacy, safety, Security, sns, Social Networks, twitter

You’d think with a far-out name like ZEITGEIST, this site would see very few visitors.  I mean, with the exception of native German speakers, who can even spell it..?

Well, it turns out that for a variety of reasons, including a very wacky conspiracy-oriented movie of the same name, this site literally sees thousands of visitors per day.  Of course keeping this site up – even though it has a pretty low post-volume – costs a surprisingly large amount of money.  And, as I am about to start upping he output here as well as on its sister site MacIndie, I thought I’d conduct a little social experiment.  Can this site maintain itself through the generosity  of its visitors?  I’ve put a little PayPal tip-jar over in the side bar — not looking for a lot, how about US$0.50 -US$1.00?  So, what do you say  can we keep these sites going?   I’ll let everyone know how this experiment pans out.

Tags: paypal, user funded communities, User Funded Content

Well, the cats been out of the bag for a few weeks, but I completely forgot to blog here about one of my new projects: MacIndie.

MacIndie is a resource for Indie Mac andiPhone developers: our goal is to provide Indie Devs with a lot of resources and info ranging from a catalog of free and Open Source software and a directory of service providers (Artists, UX people, e-commerce platform providers, etc) that can be used to accelerate your app development to well as articles on operations and marketing.  We’re also planing extensive articles on coding and development practices to help you advance your skills and create better applications.  Go on over and take a look – and let us know what you think….

Tags: development, indie dev, indie developer, indie deveopment, iPhone, macindie, macindie.com, macosx

The fact that it seems most if not all SideKick customers are in extreme danger of losing all their data is being cited be all sorts of technical pundits as an example of the “dangers of cloud computing.” Others are now warning that Microsoft’s black eye will taint the still nascent cloud computing business and scare the bejesus out of IT execs…

I would like to call BS on this and fast: Microsoft is not running a cloud computing operation – just because all Sidekick data was stored on servers at Microsoft doesn’t make the Danger service a “cloud” service that can be lumped in with the likes of Amazon Web Services (EC2/S3/EBS et al), SalesForce, or any of the dozens of other cloud computing and storage services.

Microsoft committed what appears to be one of the most egregious, sloppy, incompetent and probably criminally negligent acts in modern computing services history. I say “appears” because no one (probably even Microsoft) knows the true timeline of what actually happened yet. It appears from what can be gathered from the leaks and other “insider” reports that both the Microsoft staff and their outsourced SAN vendor Hitachi failed to follow the most basic of data operations management practices: failure to back up critical systems.

Backups and disaster recovery are the mother’s milk of anyone working in data intensive, mission critical businesses. I worked on Wall St for the better part of 20 years and the most mission critical systems are actually NOT those running in production – the real “mission critical” systems are the backup mechanisms that allow you to fail over in case of a production failure. Anyone running a large enterprise knows that systems fail all the time – it’s your ability to recover from a failure — ANY failure — that proves how well you have written your “run book,” and how you teams respond to even the smallest outage that will show how well engineered your environment actually is.

What makes Microsoft’s Sidekick/Danger environment different from “the cloud?” Well, first off, we have come to think of the cloud as a distributed set of systems spread out across the Internet. SalesForce.com (SFDC), and Amazon Web Services (AWS) are all actual cloud services. They exist in multiple redundant data centers: You can see their respective documentation of how (in general) these systems are constructed; they have what’s known in the biz’ as “geographic and route diversity” (read: their data centers are in different places and interconnected by several different ISPs). They have multiple, redundant backups of their (and your) data. And, most importantly, for the purposes of this discussion they allow you to back up all of your data to your own off-line storage if you wish (either down to your personal computer to another online provider).

In contrast, according to the reports the Microsoft/Danger service was hosted in a single Microsoft Data Center. On a Single SAN (Storage Area Network) that, apparently, wasn’t ever backed up. (How do I know that you might ask? Well, clearly if it was ever backed up they could at least restore user’s data back to some date in the past when the last backup was done – since they cannot it was clearly NEVER backed up – Oh, and don’t buy the “rougue disgruntled employee who wiped that backup tapes” rumor – that’s just childish and poorly executed ass-covering – and if it were true Microsoft has an even larger and scarier issue than just this fiasco…think about it…).

What Microsoft failed to do was apply the basic data hygiene (read: common sense operational practices) that they recommend to every single one of their enterprise customers. They compounded their mistake by making their customers dependent upon them to the point where they could not even back up their own data on their own personal computers.

So, this isn’t a story about the supposed dangers surrounding or failure of “the cloud,” but rather a story of arrogance, hubris, disregard for customers, and at the end of the day what amounts to a simple, and what will surely be for Microsoft an extremely costly, bit of professional negligence.

[Update: Newer reports now are adding an interesting twist to this story - the new bit is that Microsoft may have been trying to convert the Sidekick service onto some flavor of Microsoft replacement platform they'd developed to replace the software/services they got when they bought Danger (makers of the Sidekick). If this is true they committed even more cardinal computing sins: not only didn't they have backups, but they 1) didn't have a back-out strategy for this "upgrade." And, 2) they upgraded (again, without backups) their production system rather than running a "new" (replacement/duplicate) system in parallel with their old one. I mean this is one of the richest tech companies in the world - they couldn't spend a few million to replicate the hardware to install their new software on..? Oh, Puh-leeeze...

Think about that for a second: If this new bit is true, they assumed they had backups (no one bothered to verify this) AND they were upgrading their LIVE system to a new collection of software that had never been run in production with NO WAY to go back if it didn't work!

Wow. I mean, WOW. In most of the business world they wouldn't find enough of the team that pulled such a disastrous stunt to identify even with DNA analysis.

If these new allegations are true there's gonna be a lot of blood and money on the floor -- and there will need to be a criminal investigation into all of Microsoft's operations: How much of Microsoft's operation runs in this way? A sad but true fact is a LOT of the world's critical infrastructure runs on all the various flavors of Windows, MS SQL Server, and all of their other products. Could the ability of Microsoft to maintain and release new versions of Windows disappear in a botched SAN upgrade with no backups? Are we one poorly planned internal Microsoft upgrade from oblivion? I'm not sure I want to know...]