Recently a peer and I were talking about the phrase in the title of this post. We both heard it at Microsoft, and I know I heard it at startups after I left too.

If you haven’t heard it before, the idea is as follows. There are three properties of a product:

• Delivery date
• Key features
• Product quality

But the more we discussed it, the more we realized that these attributes are actually sides of the triangle. That is, in a well balanced product that you’ve planned well, kept the quality bar up on, and set a realistic ship date expectation, your results look like this:

But the reality is that most products look like this (with one of the properties on the short side, anyway):

Fundamentally, though, the product will always be an isosceles triangle. If it isn’t balanced on all sides, at least two will be equal. Generally even if two side start getting cut, the third does as well. So if you cut features and quality to a certain bloodletting point, odds are you’ve screwed your ship date anyway, so you’re back to an equilateral – if smaller – triangle.

I’ve asked repeatedly for more information on Windows for the ARM platform. Today, I got it. I still have a few questions, and I have some nagging concerns still. But they did answer a few key questions.

In his blog post today, Steven Sinofsky discussed quite a bit, but you can break it down into roughly 6 areas:

1. Windows on ARM (WoA) fundamentals (what it is, and what it isn’t).
2. The Consumer Preview (and the role – or lack thereof – of WoA in it).
3. The importance of working with partners for WoA’s success.
4. The infrastructure of WoA, and the types of devices it been designed and tested to support.
5. How WoA was ported, and how it is built and tested.

I’ve had a few people ask me, “what does it mean?” It was a lot to absorb. But for this post, I’m going to focus solely on point 1 and 4 that were discussed in his blog.

What is WoA?

From an end-user’s perspective, at first glance, WoA is the same as Windows 8 on an x86/x64 processor. Both consists of the following three components:

1. A Start Page
2. Metro (WinRT-based) applications, purchased from the Windows app store
3. A desktop

Yes, a desktop, But not as you know it. WoA’s desktop constists of Windows Explorer, Internet Explorer 10 for the desktop (no mention of Silverlight), and most other Windows desktop features (likely cmd.exe and components that use it, control panel components that still call out into Win32 applications to perform some task, etc). But the big thing is that for certain actions that simply make more sense with Explorer (file/folder copy/move/delete,etc) or even a simple network ping in cmd.exe, you have a means to do so.

We also found out that WoA will include desktop versions of Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. This doesn’t preclude the fact that Office 15 could have Metro-based versions of these applications, but it sure makes it sound unlikely. A separate conversation for another blog post another day.

Back to the desktop itself. Other than the presence of the desktop itself, the next big question has been, “What apps will run? Can I port my own over?” If you were hoping so, sit down. This next part may hurt a little bit. Direct quote from the blog:

Yes, that’s right. Abandon all Win32 code ye who enter here. Your apps won’t run.  But this desktop is not extensible. No third-party Explorer or Internet Explorer plug-ins/controls, no third-party applications at all. Got old apps? You have two choices:

1. Buy x86/x64 Windows 8 tablets.
2. Port your apps to Metro/WinRT.
3. Deploy them onto Remote Desktop Services and have users access them remotely.

This may sound bad. But the reality is,

1. We have no idea what ARM or x86/x64 tablets will cost, or what the weight/performance/battery life will be as you compare the two. So 1 may be a draw – we’ll see.
2. If you were looking at deploying iPads, you would need to port to Objective-C anyway for native apps.
3. If you were looking at deploying iPads, you either had to write native apps or deploy them over to Remote Desktop Servers anyway.

Regardless, you won’t be able to run old-apps “as-is” on WoA-based tablets – same as an iPad. If you were contemplating deploying iPads but having your users access the same (non-touch-optimized) Win32 applications remotely, you were doing it wrong to begin with. Now you have more answers to help guide your purchasing decision, and you may want to wait for Win8 tablets to see where the price/weight/form factors land.

But… why did they do that?

Listen. The reality is that ARM is a processor architecture that inherently focuses on power efficiency over performance. Cool, unless you’re trying to be bring forward 20+ years of applications that bet the farm that the processor running them next year would be more powerful than the one they’re being developed on today. That’s not the case. Every Win32 application – including Microsoft’s own – were designed with Moore’s Law in mind. As the Windows Shell team and Office 15 teams began optimizing their Win32 code to run on ARM, I imagine much the same experience many of us had during the great Security Push of 2001-2002 and beyond. The experience where you had to start looking at code written buy a guy or gal who retired several years ago, and ask, “WHY? WHY DOES IT DO THIS?”. Easy – because like  manageability in the late 1990′s and security in the early part of the 2000′s, nobody had explicitly focused on it from the bottom up and ensured that applications were designed to use only the power they needed, when they needed it.

Add into that the other benefits:

1. No Win32 malware eating clock cycles, confusing users, and screwing up computers.
2. No Win32 antimalware eating clock cycles, confusing users, and screwing up computers.
3. Not having to evangelize this “performance push” to third-party partners and having to either test and approve their applications, or deal with the ramifications of poorly ported applications.
4. A consistent application experience moving forward (Metro/WinRT)

What about the hardware?

In so many ways, Microsoft is using WoA as a clean-break from some previous designs. In particular, the diversity (insanity, some might say) of device support is gone. WoA is designed to take advantage of the following device types:

• Mobile broadband network*
• Printer*
• GPS and other key sensors
• Bluetooth
• MTP (Media Transfer Protocol) connectivity to connect with phones and other devices over USB or IP-based networks

What’s not here? Joysticks. MIDI. Your ancient printer. Your old serial-based peripherals. Will that make a difference? Perhaps to you. But not to the consumers who will be buying this device instead of an iPad.

Indeed, the fact that it DOESN’T include that extensibility means it also doesn’t include the sharp edges that come with that level of device (or application) legacy compatibility (or the ability to run malicious Win32 code). Microsoft does stand a chance of delivering an experience, not a computer. Perhaps not what techies want, but techies aren’t the ones buying iPads instead of low-end PCs.

Open questions

The key questions to me is still where we see devices land in terms of the iPad. What do Windows 8 tablets do do that the iPad can’t? What do they do better? How are they a better value? Are they cheaper? Did everyone really want an 11″ or 7″ iPad, but couldn’t get it, and will from a WoA OEM? Would enterprise customers rather write for WinRT over Objective-C, if they want low-powered tablets? We’ll see.

My biggest concerns are how WoA handles user experiences when certain things aren’t available. How is a user informed that their old printer won’t connect? When I download winzip.exe from www.winzip.com (or any other executable from the Internet – signed ones or not), what is the experience? As a user, am I greeted with a friendly dialog telling me this is for an older version of Windows? Or a hex-code based error?

No matter how the difference is handled, there likely will be some end-user confusion, given that some Windows 8 tablets on the shelves at Best Buy will run old applications, and some won’t. How is that clarified so that users don’t buy (and return, disappointed) the wrong device for their needs and their expectations? The use of the term Windows kind of implies “it runs the old applications”. Setting user expectations and focusing on this divide between WoA and x86/x64 experiences accordingly will mean the world to how this platform succeeds.

Lots of questions to answer still. A few answered today, and that’s good. But more to go.

For more than 10 years, I’ve used Microsoft’s 10 Immutable Laws of Security as a “debate ender”. The 10 Immutable Laws is an article that can help unlock some simple security fundamentals in a manner easily digested by those new to security.

I’ve been getting more and more irritated with the people “running” my government lately. I say “running” because enough of us vote for these people to get them in to federal, state, and local offices. But once they are in office, too many of these people are more concerned with getting reelected and building up their retirement than actually maintaining a sound democracy driven by the public interests of American citizens and the interests of future generations of American citizens. No, it’s all about the dollar. In many ways, we no longer live in a democracy, we live in a corpocracy, where dollars, not a representative democracy of American citizens, decide how a career politician (what a horribly toxic term) votes, and what legislation they will introduce, support, or knowingly try to kill to keep the money flowing their way.

Below, I’ve taken Microsoft’s 10 immutable laws of security, and modified them to address governmental integrity instead. I believe I’ve left much of the spirit from the original thesis in place.

The below list isn’t how government should function. But this is how it largely does function. We have a handful of noble, democracy-driven politicians left, but they are rare. These problems are also not isolated to one political party or the other, and they aren’t isolated to America either. Any time human beings in leadership positions let money and power, not freedom and the Constitution, rule their mind and their decisions, our republic is at risk. This corruption tends to infect broad swaths of our government, regardless of political party affiliation (or independence from any political party).

The 10 Immutable Laws of Governmental Integrity

• Law #1: If a corporation or organization can persuade your legislator to create, promote, rally for, and pass legislation, it’s not your government anymore.
• Law #2: If a corporation or organization can modify your government to steer public policy to suit their needs, not the needs of the democracy at large, it’s not your government anymore.
• Law #3: If a corporation or organization has unrestricted financial access to your legislative, judicial, or executive branches, it’s not your government anymore.
• Law #4: If you allow a corporation or organization to put industry veterans into governmental positions, it’s not your government anymore.
• Law #5: Voter apathy kills a strong democracy.
• Law #6: A government is only as democratic as the leader has integrity.
• Law #7: Laws are only as democratic as those enforcing them.
• Law #8: Voting for a politician because they agree on a single issue with you is only marginally better than not voting at all.
• Law #9: Crime “not existing” isn’t possible, in real life, or in government.
• Law #10: The Constitution is not a panacea.

Law #1: If a corporation or organization can persuade your legislator to create, promote, rally for, and pass legislation, it’s not your government anymore.

As we have recently seen with SOPA, corporate interests can buy and sell the interests of legislators who put their own re-election and financial interests ahead of the interests of American citizens at large. While we can stand up, fight, and sometimes win when this occurs, it is important to vote for politicians who repeatedly promise, and demonstrate, self-sacrifice over their own financial betterment. Currently legislation is all too often about short-term profit to prop up industries that instead hurts all of us with their short-term thinking.

Law #2: If a corporation or organization can modify your government to steer public policy to suit their needs, not the needs of the democracy at large, it’s not your government anymore.

This has been a problem forever, but I believe the last 30 years or so have been crucial to this collapse. From laws discarding environmental protections in order to enable the rabid drilling of natural gas wells that emit toxic fumes into the air and toxic chemicals into the water, to a lack of laws governing genetic modification of the innumerable components of foods, regulation of livestock, agriculture, and dairy, “policy makers” put in at the behest of industrialists have spun policy to suit their needs, not the needs of Americans at large. Look no further than the Transportation Security Administration buying devices lobbied in for sale by the former head of the TSA. Devices that irradiate Americans (which cannot even detect the security threat vector they were bought to help protect against). The list goes on and on. Corporate interests will buy and sell government positioning with corrupt elected officials to get the equipment they want to sell bought, the war fought that they want to continue, or the laws passed that enable them to destroy the environment for future generations. Destruction long-term doesn’t matter if it means a dollar now. This is a problem across industries, and across political parties. It isn’t just agriculture, medicine and food, but those are hugely troubling areas where our government is willing to turn a blind eye for short-term profits.

Law #3: If a corporation or organization has unrestricted financial access to your legislative, judicial, or executive branches, it’s not your government anymore.

Even with legislation designed to prevent it, the revolving door that separates the legislative branch from K Street spins faster and faster, with money flowing back and forth. Unqualified politicians get elected because they tell industrialists they’ll vote for what the industrialists want, and donations from wealthy executives (and corporations, thanks to Citizens United). They get re-elected based upon the same lies to citizens, and promises to lobbyists. Through funding from lobbyists to legislators, corporations get the legislation they want introduced and often passed, and can often kill legislation that works against the best interests of American citizens, or future generations on this planet. The legislative branch is the most apparent – but it’s not the only branch with a troubling record here.

Law #4: If you allow a corporation or organization to put industry veterans into governmental positions, it’s not your government anymore.

Surely you’ve seen the pretty Venn diagrams generated recently that visualize the inbreeding from Monsanto to our government and back, or from Goldman Sachs into the federal government and back. Corporations pay good money to get legislators and executives elected, and continue to pay good money to ensure that public policy from federal agencies serves their interest, not necessarily the best interest of American citizens as a whole (or again, future generations). For many of the people in these positions, it’s about making money for themselves, and keeping their own jobs – not about creating public policy that serves the best interest of the planet and future generations. Short-term gain, long-term pain. It is toxic.

Law #5: Voter apathy kills a strong democracy.

Unfortunately, the corpocracy “machine” has been working so well that many American citizens simply feel apathetic, and either don’t participate, or do so half-heartedly, which is toxic. “My vote doesn’t matter” – which is just slightly worse than “I voted along party lines” is a powerful demotivator to the American voter. Citizens all too easily give up the right to vote, stop fighting for candidates who aren’t corrupt and won’t sell us all out simply to ensure they can get re-elected and retire from government more wealthy than they went in. Now, we see legislators across this country trying to prevent voting by American Citizens that would oppose the interests of these legislators – under the basis of laws to fight (undemonstrable) voter fraud or illegal immigration. Americans need to get out, learn their candidates early, understand how they stand on the issues and the ethics that these individuals have lived before they ran for office. Americans also need to stop voting for a person just because of what an adversary’s ad said on TV or radio. Campaign ads are drivel. They are crap. They are paid for by special interests to make you think just enough to make a decision, but not think enough to make an informed decision. Know your candidates based on how they stand – not based on what the idiot box tells you about them, or about their opponent.

Law #6: A government is only as democratic as the leader has integrity.

If the executive in charge of your country says they will veto an issue, and then when faced with that issue, reverses charge and says, “we’ll undo it later”, you likely have an integrity problem. If the executive pushes for, and passes, legislation tearing away Constitutionally-based freedoms, you likely have an integrity problem. Laws, especially in this politically heated federal legislature, are incredibly hard to pass if they don’t suit lobbyist’s interests and help ensure legislators can get re-elected and grow (or keep) their legislative majority. A law that is passed is very hard to reverse. Regardless of their party affiliation, question an executive who is willing to pave over the Constitution and the freedoms that true patriots fought over two centuries ago. Especially if those freedoms are lost in the name of fighting an unwinnable, unending, “war on terror”.

Law #7: Laws are only as democratic as those enforcing them.

Is a government that imprisons an American citizen for years without a trial, without charging him with a crime a democracy? Not in my book. Is a government that silently imprisons someone who isn’t an American citizen, forever, without trial, a democracy? Not in my book. Our nation was founded upon the premise of trying to be be better than the places most of our ancestors came from in terms of freedom and integrity. We are failing.

Law #8: Voting for a politician because they agree on a single issue with you is only marginally better than not voting at all.

If all you know about a politician is that they “support issue X” and you also “support issue X”, or “he’s in the same party I always vote for”, please – stay home and don’t vote. Either get to know how candidates really feel about issues that matter, and understand their motivation and integrity, or don’t vote. Voting for a candidate who knows how to pander to you by saying they support what you support to the point you support them is no different than giving in to simple high school peer pressure. The candidate you voted for based on them “supporting issue X” disagrees with you on another issue. It could be welfare, it could be a corporate tax holiday. It might be term limits, it might be rules on campaign finance reform. But they disagree with you on something. You need to know what that is – because what they disagree with you on is infinitely more important than the issue or two they do agree with you on. In the end, elected officials who are voted in based purely on their stance aligned “with party lines” will, like the movie War Games mentioned above, either end up destroying everything in a legislative pissing contest with their opposition, or simply take the money offered to them in line with their party’s industrial, environmental, and commercial beliefs.

Law #9: Corruption “not existing” isn’t possible, in real life, or in government.

It’s nice, and idyllic, to imagine a world where every elected official represents the best interests of the citizens who elected them, not the corporations that contributed significant sums of money to pay for the ads that got them elected by misleading those citizens one way or the other. But the reality is, no matter how hard we try to elect officials who care about citizens, the environment, and the future of our planet, someone’s going to make it into office who is willing to short-sheet the Constitution, your rights, the environment, and mortgage the future of our children, children’s children, ad nauseam so that they can make money in the short term. It would be great if the officials we elect recognized that, like a dream, when you die, you can’t take the material things with you, that the best gift you can give to the future is a future. It breaks my heart to think about how the true patriots that fought, and those who died, in the Revolutionary War, would hang their head in shame to see how low career politicians today will sink to get re-elected and retire wealthy. But until we collectively elect a better government, we have to communicate with our representatives, tell them when we disagree with them, and remind them who put them there – and who will remove them from office if they don’t start representing the interests of American citizens – both present and future.

Law #10: The Constitution is not a panacea.

The documents created by, intent of, and rights outlined by, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, are key to the freedoms we have enjoyed for over 200 years. But as you can see if you look very closely at all, special interests will offer to buy, and legislators will sell, our freedoms, our rights, and the integrity that our Founding Fathers fought to outline as the foundation of our country. These documents are not enforced every day. You have to fight for them, and remind our elected officials what they were hired to stand for. These documents and what they outline are the foundation, the bedrock, of our democracy. While legislators may be willing to pass legislation that waves the finger at the Founding Fathers and what they fought for, it is up to us to remind these elected officials that in doing so, they are not representing us, or what this country was founded upon, and what it stands for.

I know. This post was kind of a downer. But frankly, I’m rather upset. I can find a handful of elected officials who are willing to represent the interest of Americans over American companies. In DC, and in Washington state, my officials are not willing to stand up to special interest money to preserve my rights, to preserve the integrity of our food, our environment, and the future of our planet – and I’m tired of it.

This fall, get to know your candidates. Turn off your damn TV during September, October and November of 2012. Seriously. Turn it off. Get off your couch, and go meet the candidates who are asking you to elect (or re-elect) them. Ask them deep, probing questions. Interview them like you were hiring them for a job that your life, and the lives of future generations depended upon. And VOTE. Vote like your vote matters in their hiring decision. Because you are hiring them, and many of the decisions they make can, and in some cases will affect the lives of everyone else on this planet – forever. Stop electing people who are willing to sell out our country on you, your family, your friends, and future generations of Americans.

I was able to find  a customer on the Office 15 Technical Preview, and confidentially asked them 10 questions about the Technical Preview, based on just a few days of use. The results are below, and I think you’ll find them both surprising and informative.

Q1: What are you most excited about in Office 15?

“Without a doubt, we are most excited that Office 15 will run on both redacted and redacted“

Q2: Is there a feature that you think will make Office 15 a must-have upgrade over Office 2010?

“To me, Microsoft finally addressing redacted redacted redacted redacted redacted redacted will mean that customers who have to redacted redacted redacted redacted redacted redacted redacted redacted as often as I do now have a way to redacted“

Q3: What change to Office 15 surprised you the most?

“Ever since Office 2007, I’ve found redacted redacted redacted redacted to be a little bit more work than I thought it needed to be. With the brand new redacted, I’ll save lots of time every day. Microsoft said in their usability testing labs that they saw a re% improvement, which means you could save as much as re minutes per day! I find that amazing.”

Q4: Is there any change in Office 15 that has disappointed you?

“I had kind of hoped that Microsoft might redesign the redacted but they told us that there wasn’t much of a chance of that, since they’d need to also change redacted redacted redacted redacted redacted redacted redacted redacted redacted redacted. I guess I can understand why that would be the case. I asked if they could maybe redacted redacted redacted redacted instead, and they said they’d look into it and let me know before the beta arrives.”

Q5: Do you think Microsoft will require a specific version of Windows to run Office 15?

“I think it’s a no brainer that Microsoft will probably want to make sure some of the features show off some of the value of redacted, and Microsoft said it will support redacted and probably won’t support redacted or redacted. I’m more curious if they will support for redacted, redacted, or redacted“

Q6: I know a lot of people are curious – how did you get on the Office 15 Technical Preview? Lots of people tried when they found out about it, but it was too late.

“Lots of people have asked me that. I’ve had several people ask me who I had to redacted to get on the technical preview. We’ve just been a valuable redacted redacted redactred of Microsoft redacted for redacted years, so our redacted got us on the Technical Preview since he new we’d redacted redacted redacted redacted“

Q7: Is there something you don’t see yet in the Technical Preview that you hope is addressed before the beta or final release?

“The other day I was testing how well redacted integrated with redacted and the scenario seemed a little bit redacted. I’m hoping they can fix that before the beta.”

Q8: Is there a particular device you’re excited to use with Office 15?

“I think the key value Office 15 delivers is redacted redacted redacted redacted, without question. For that reason, I think the thing I’m most excited about is how easy Office 15 makes using documents on my redacted. I had hoped the Technical Preview would also run on redacted, but it doesn’t yet. I’m hopeful of seeing that at or near the beta.”

Q9: When do you think Microsoft will ship Office 15?

“They haven’t indicated anything yet, but I can’t imagine them not shipping it by redacted. I mean, if you ship it just after redacted then you have plenty of time to redacted and redacted, which will be really important for a redacted marketing strategy. But we’ll have to see, won’t we?”

Q10: What do you think Microsoft will name the final version of Office 15?

“Like the ship date, Microsoft has been quiet around this, but I think they’ll call it redacted. Another customer on the Technical Preview said he thinks they’ll call it redacted, but I think that’s redacted. I guess we’ll all find out at the same time, which should be redacted.”

I’d like to thank redacted redacted from redacted redacted for taking the time to provide me with candid answers that will help everyone realize how important of a redacted redacted to the redacted redacted Office 15 is.

Last October, I noted on Twitter that an unusual (I mean highly unusual) number of spammers on Twitter used an avatar photo of a woman. But not just any woman. In addition, many spammers seemed to use a photo of a woman specifically with cleavage showing.

Since I have been doing some research on criminal domains that involves a fair amount of REST querying anyway, it didn’t take much work for me to build a query engine where before reporting them for spam, I could log these accounts to keep record of them and analyze later. So, since early November until last week, I have cataloged every Twitter account that either 1) directly spammed me, 2) was a spammer that autofollowed me (even if it didn’t interact with me other than that), or 3) that I saw when searching for a specific topic (the Tweet stream for the DLD conference last week in particular became infested with two different “strains” of spammers.

What I did then was use Twitter’s REST API to pull down the profile XML for each account as close to the moment I interacted with them as possible, while also pulling down their full-size and normalized Twitter avatar pictures.

Without further adieu, here are the results:

1. Total potential spammers cataloged: 260 (I believe I’ve found at least 3 that I would consider false positives, looking at them again)
2. Spammers using the default profile background image: 136 (52.3%)
3. Spammers using the default “egg” avatar: 98 (37.7%)
4. Spammers using an avatar with a woman in it: 148 (56.9%)
5. Spammers using an avatar showing cleavage: 71 (27.3%)
6. Percentage of female avatars with cleavage showing: 47.9%
7. Spammers with avatars that aren’t default or female: 14 (5.4%)
8. Maximum number of times seeing the same, non-default avatar: 3
9. Number of times encountering accounts with same, non-default avatar: 3

There were 32 accounts that I would describe as “lewd” (potentially arguably, anyway NSFW things you might be uncomfortable if your boss saw if they stepped in to your office), and 11 avatars which had not one, but two women in them (often falling into that same lewd category).

There are a few other interesting points that I may provide in time, but for now I’ll be handing over to Twitter so they can, if they elect to, take some corrective action on them (without me schooling spammers on how to avoid getting their accounts blocked).

Do the engineers who design the electrical supplies for electronic gadgets hate their customers? Am I wrong, or doesn’t it seem like this 20+ year passive/aggressive game of inconsistent sizes, voltages, wattages, and connectors , along with designing AC adapters that block AC wall outlets or take up two or more spaces on a surge suppressor has gone on too long?

I’m cleaning my office today. At least I’m trying to. I’m getting rid of two old Netgear WiFi routers, a few old external hard drives, and trying to clean up a few other external hard drives. Thing that’s killing me? Finding the right power supply for one particular Seagate FreeAgent drive. I swear it’s 12v DC, but I plug in one supply that fits (after trying some with smaller and larger outer plugs and smaller and larger inner plugs), and it just sits there slowly blinking orange. I guess I should be thankful it doesn’t go up in smoke – I blew an external disk once by connecting the wrong voltage. Not the drive, just the case.

I understand why we can’t get universal power supply connectors across the entire industry – companies don’t like to work together like that (as we can see with the cell industry until the EU forced the issue). But it boggles my mind why some company hasn’t at least bothered to color code, or uniquely shape, their DC connectors and AC adapters.

I love my Apple TV. One of the things I love best? No wall wart. iPhones? Tiny little AC/DC convertor. I realize that these are very low voltage units, and the same can’t necessarily be done for 12 volt DC devices like many hard disks and wireless routers.

I’ve always wondered why someone didn’t come up with a standardized 12-volt DC surge suppressor, with universal connectors, and try to evangelize it across the industry. Wall warts are end-user hostile, and waste energy when you’ve got 5 or more 12 volt devices running at near the same wattage,  but identical voltage. They also create massive amounts of heat performing the conversion.

If you’re in the electronics industry, give it a moment of consideration. If you can’t come up with the standardized, simplified approach above, at least make your own devices less end-user hostile. Spend a bit of time saying “this is a Brand X Power Supply that goes with Brand X Hard Disks”, or color or shape code the thing.

I realize that so much of the electronics industry is driven by raw cost. But understand that as Apple moves into your turf, this is the exact tact they will take while picking your lunch up off the table and eating it; taking tasks that you made difficult because you were cheap or lazy, and making them easy so that customers find the experience memorable. Even stupid things like a power supply.

While reading a friend’s Windows 8/ARM article on Forbes, I had what is often described as a BFO (Blinding Flash of the Obvious).

For a year now, we’ve all been theorizing (err… guessing?) what Windows 8 on ARM would look like. The biggest question has been the will they/won’t they of the Win32 desktop on ARM. Early on I thought it’d be there. Then later last year I thought maybe not. Now, I think, I’m all but certain it won’t be. This is unfortunately all still supposition, since we have no more info to go on yet – but regardless, let me explain.

On my blog yesterday, a reader named Sebastien pointed out that Gartner has expectations for over 404M PC’s to be sold this year, and that ARM tablets would be additive to this. I was doubtful, and I even commented as such. Rather than Windows 8 ARM tablets taking sales from iPads, I felt that they would nibble at the Windows 8 x86 desktop/laptop market instead. Depending on the price that the ARM tablets land at, the price x86 tablets land at, and how far WinRT apps go in meeting consumer’s day-to-day needs, this could still be the case. However unless they offer distinct value above the iPad (not counting screen size or other “specs”), they need to be price competitive to the iPad (, without carrier subsidies) in order to steal sales from it.

However, I don’t believe that Microsoft is going into this game without a game plan. I think they have a strategy to try and ensure that there is still a PC market and a tablet market for Windows, and that these markets behave distinctly, ideally with a minimal amount of “cross-cannibalism”.

Android tablets have been criticized for many things, but like the HP TouchPad, a chief complaint has been price. Windows OEMs have complained before about the cost of both Windows licenses and Intel processors. By supporting Windows on ARM, Microsoft made some of that expense disappear (the cost of the Intel processor and any additional required components), and provided a platform that focuses on delivering battery life over performance, likely saving money on cooling and battery components as well.

But what about the Windows desktop? I think it may not be on ARM tablets. I probably sound conflicted here, as less than two months ago I said:

 I strongly believe the Windows desktop (or as errantly referred to, “the desktop app”) will remain.

The Windows desktop is the Windows experience. It has been for over 20 years, and though it is “over there” (imagine me pointing to your right, where the desktop now lives – stage left from the Start page) it isn’t going away on x86/x64 desktops (or possibly x86 tablets) anytime soon.

However, if Microsoft were to hide not include the Windows desktop on Windows 8 for ARM (Win32 is still semantically there, but minimalist), it could offer OEM partners a way to cut costs there as well, by charging less for the license (which would in turn reinforce my belief that Windows 8 for ARM will be OEM only).

However, by not including the desktop, Microsoft does something further. It creates a psychological boundary. It creates the boundary that Windows 8 ARM slates are, in fact, lesser cousins to Windows 8 x86/x64 PCs. While you will be able to run your WinRT apps on either platform, and even seamlessly authenticate on both, and sync documents and settings over Windows Live between them, the ARM slate clearly becomes something you need in addition to a Windows PC if you need to continue to run Windows desktop apps. You’ll need a Windows 8 ARM slate plus a PC. All of a sudden that whole PC Plus* mantra makes sense.

Another interesting angle is that it actually doesn’t pit ARM against x86, at least not directly. ARM systems will likely wind up at the low end of the cost spectrum, and Win32 compatible and performance-focused x86/x64 desktops and laptops at the opposite end. Depending on the price points that Intel (and perhaps AMD) are able to hit with certain tablets, it could still pit x86 against ARM, but the latter needs to prove that it has the energy efficiency to go head-to-head against ARM tablets on very low-cost, lightweight devices.

Whether most customers will take Microsoft up on purchasing both an ARM tablet and an x86 PC in the short term until the WinRT platform is proven is a question, as well as whether most “touchless” desktop users will truly take advantage of Metro apps and the Start page. Regardless, if executed as such, it could come back to agree with Sebastien’s (and Gartner’s) belief that the Win8 ARM sales would be additive to the existing PC sales projections – unless too many consumers find that WinRT-based apps are good enough for all of their needs, which is a possibility, in which case ARM-based Windows 8 tablets could nibble away at the bottom of the PC market, as netbooks (and possibly the iPad itself) have done in the recent past.

This also means that I also believe the next version of Office will continue to be Win32 – needed for desktop/mobile power users, but we may well see a Metro-based version of Office that, like Windows on ARM, could cost less, be touch-focused and, like Microsoft Works used to be, much more constrained to casual productivity tasks instead of trying to shift (and shove) all of Office over to the Metro user interface, which I believe would be a mistake.

*Intriguingly, while searching for references, I ran across this article in which Bill actually coins the term “PC-Plus” back in 1999 during a similar era when analysts were questioning the PC’s future.

This shouldn’t need to be said – but everything in this post is pure conjecture on my part, and it is my personal opinion. I do not have enough information to form the factual finding that I do at my normal job in my daily writing. But I believe it is important to get this thesis out there for discussion. I hope you found it interesting.

I’ve mentioned before how much time I spend investigating spam. It’s allowed me to observe some pretty interesting, sometimes amusing, often annoying, criminal behavior. I also enjoy analyzing Twitter spam as well, and have built a pretty interesting collection of spammer examples. One of the most common things I see on Twitter, though, is spammers using shortlinks to try and pull off their crime.

Shortlinks (goo.gl, bit.ly, etc) have made sharing links handy, especially on character limited communication mediums such as Twitter. Though you don’t see them as often in e-mail spam, shortlinks are also a critical component of Twitter spam, and often on Facebook as well, as they provide a way to not only fit the text limitations, but a URL like (http://bit.ly/kiZs18) appears much more benign than a URL such as (http://www.somelamedomainyouveneverseen.info).

While they can be useful, shortlinks can also be incredibly evil. Yeah, I know, you’ve heard you should always be careful what you click on (most people aren’t), and perhaps you run anti-malware that investigates what you click before you navigate to it (most people don’t). Personally, I question the efficacy of most software that purports to do this). But personally I believe the worst kind of malicious shortlink is a smart malicious shortlink.

All shortlinks work the exact same way – simplistically, when you request their URL, they provide another URL back as the location that your browser needs to redirect to (they actually tell the browser that the document you have requested has moved).

So what do I mean by a smart shortlink? Most smartlinks are simple – you request navigation with the short URL, and one, perhaps 2 levels of indirection later, you’re at the actual document you want. So when you click (http://bit.ly/kiZs18), it navigates through Google’s Feedburner (feedproxy.google.com – this is another problem I’ll talk about another day) and finally to www.wired.com. But smart shortlinks, which are inherently malicious, lie to you if you get too close while you’re investigating them.

Surely you can think of a location where the local police have established a constant patrol for speeders (a “speed trap”)? Say one where you’ve been by for months and months, and 50% or more of the time, there was a highway patrol car there? What do you do? You likely a) get ticketed or b) become conscious of your speed every time you drive by to avoid getting one. Grifters on the Internet are no different. They also like to avoid getting caught.

There aren’t speed traps on the Internet, sure. But there are services that “unshorten” URLs, such as unshort.me or unshorten.com so that you can see where you’re going to before you click that short URL. To the bad guys, these are speed traps. Many times, I have tested URLs through unshorteners, and saw the final URL returned as “google.com”, “youtube.com”, or similar generic, benign URLs (usually without any actual further path information such as a specific page, making it look even more suspect). But if I pasted that same URL into a browser (within a victim virtual machine), it would navigate to an actual hostile URL.

How does it work? Grifters put a teeny bit of logic into their redirection code, and if they recognize the source of the HTTP request as an unshortener (or I can only imagine, most anti-malware link checkers), they lie about the destination. If it comes from elsewhere, they assume it is someone to hit with their grift, and provide the hostile URL.

I don’t believe any URL unshortener can defeat this at the present time without developing pretty explicit countermeasures – once the bad guys spot a common source of destination URL sniffing, they’ll demarcate it in their redirection logic, and lie to it. The only safe solution is to use special software that sniffs the link from the client itself but doesn’t complete navigation (a special script or app), or navigate from an isolated VM/a machine you’re willing to potentially risk losing, or send all requests through Amazon EC2 or perhaps Windows Azure, which are so expansive it becomes hard for the bad guys to blockade completely without risking the potential effectiveness of their crime. Though Twitter’s t.co “unlinker” is supposed to help keep you safer, I’m not sure if, or how they have protected against this kind of explicit attack vector.

From when I joined Microsoft in 1997 until I left in 2004, and even since then (but especially during the heady days of the DOJ lawsuit), accusations flew fast and furious accusing Microsoft of misusing the word “innovation”, that Microsoft couldn’t innovate, or didn’t innovate.

To a large part, I don’t agree with that. Sure, you can say that Windows Phone 7 was a reaction to the iPhone and Android, but it wasn’t a clone, and it attempts to offer a unique usability value proposition versus iOS or Android. Even Windows 8 and the WinRT framework, while in some ways surely inspired by the iPad, it does so in a unique way as well, and will likely be seen in a diverse breadth of devices, versus the iPad’s “one size device fits all” strategy.

However, the past is littered with what I have sometimes referred to as “premature innovation”. Technologies created by Microsoft (or sometimes acquired by Microsoft) way ahead of their time. So far ahead, in fact that to many people, they don’t make sense – and as a result, either die on the vine or fail to sustain themselves in the market after release.

Voice (1995-Present) - TTS and SAPI. Do those mean anything to you? They do to me. Text To Speech and the Microsoft Speech API. Before I joined Microsoft in 1997, I built a PC for the first time. It had a sound card, a horrible microphone, and some speakers I had kept from an old Acer. At Slate, I helped build a custom audio version of Slate, generated using text to speech. It was shelved after I left since it sounded so robotic. Microsoft has been beating the speech and text recognition drums for decades, only to see Siri, a quirky, accent-fussy smart agent (there’s a term you probably haven’t seen in a while) steal any and all thunder that Microsoft had even thought of years before, but not in a mobile context. Speech is complicated. Speech recognition (hearing) and text to speech (speaking) are also two separate problems. Microsoft has moved these so far forward since 1997, it’s truly amazing. But frankly we’re still at a point where text to speech still results in inhuman vocalization (“Robby the Robot”, as Kinsley called it at Slate), and speech recognition is most usable for short form commands (Siri, or Sync), not reciting out a novel. SAPI was also used by the Microsoft Agent technology derived from Microsoft Bob (another conversation for another time), and is still used by Speech Server. The emphasis of Microsoft’s speech technology development appears to be on the server side today, but SAPI still works on client operating systems.

Killer? Not dead.What has held it back? Processing power, and the fact that computers interacting with speech is just a complicated problem.

WebTV (1997-~2002) – In 1997, Microsoft acquired WebTV for $425M. The idea of the Web on television surely appealed to many, and when combined with a DVR, conceptually made sense. But the fact that Web content for WebTV was custom, the amount of the Web actually available, and then how usable it actually was, given the state of televisions in the late 1990′s, led to low adoption. Today, the product is effectively dead. Yet here we are, 15 years later, and Google is still trying to resuscitate the idea, with multimedia content and apps intertwined. If Microsoft had run a different course with WebTV, it could have possibly gone further and might be something today. What’s left of WebTV? Well, in many ways, WebTV was the progenitor of UltimateTV and Mediaroom (the IPTV infrastructure solution licensed from Microsoft for BT, DT, AT&T U-verse, and several other telephony-based broadcast solutions. Not dead, but not mainstream, and most people wouldn’t ever associate Mediaroom with WebTV.

Killer? TV resolution, need for custom content, lack of broadband, lack of ubiquitous streaming video standard.

Mira (2002-2003) – One of my favorites, because I held out so much hope for it. You don’t remember Mira? Mira, also called a “Smart Display” as Mira was a code-name, was an attempt to create a tablet-style computer that you could use anywhere, but that featured the power of your Windows desktop. Using wireless connectivity, you can undock your “Smart Display” and take it with you around the house, using Windows Remote Desktop from the version of Windows CE built into the device. In many ways, Mira was cursed to begin with. Due to the state of technologies at the time (wireless, LCD displays, memory, CPUs), it was far too expensive in 8″, 10″, or 15″ models. It also couldn’t serve as your primary monitor because it was both too small, and when you disconnected it, nobody else could use the PC, since there was no monitor. Even if you had another monitor, because Windows client operating systems have only ever allowed one interactive user at a time (a rule that was bent for Media Center Extenders, which enabled more than one interactive user at a time, but in a very fixed function user interface), it was still limited to a single user at a time. Mira shipped, and you can even find used models around (that still cost too much, frankly). You could build Smart Displays today and, if packaged well, might even sell. But I’m not sure users today would want tablets that require a tether to a Windows PC in their home, as well as the difference between useful tablets (7″-11″) and home displays (generally 19″+).

Killer? Cost of components, lack of ubiquitous wireless home networking, windows single interactive user limitation, and frankly, a confusing use case.

Tablet PCs (2000-Present) - Mira was in many ways an early, and yet late, foray into tablets for Microsoft. Tablet PC Edition was, of course, the big coming-out party for Microsoft. Like Mira, Tablet PC was significantly more than a traditional laptop, yet often required a compromise in display size or performance. It also required significant buy-in from the user in pen-based input. Ink searchability has gotten significantly better over time, but like voice, pen/digital ink still isn’t a way to write voluminous amounts of text. Tablet PC predated the iPad by almost a decade. Yet Tablet PC sold at a trickle, while the iPad has established a distinct market niche. Why did it fail? The exclusive bet on ink, while not evangelizing a framework for tablet-centric apps (the opposite tact of what we see happening with WinRT, where the framework, not the device, is the most important aspect), but again, cost was a huge factor. Consumers wouldn’t choose a Tablet PC over a traditional laptop, and while IT pros might, it was often a hard argument to make in procurement, “I need to pay more for a computer so I can use a pen”. I experienced that one myself. Pen-based Tablet PCs are still around today, bought by users specifically looking for them, and sold into verticals such as the medical industry or into other industries with specific point-of-service needs.

In Louisiana, there is a bridge on Interstate 55 that crosses the Manchac Swamp. One of the world’s longest bridges, it’s over 22 miles long.

I mention that because I think it’s important that you be visualizing a very long bridge, because that is, in so many ways what Microsoft is building with Windows 8. Win8 on the legacy (x86/x64) architectures and Win8 on ARM are in many ways two different platforms, and WinRT is the (very long) bridge that Microsoft is trying to build between them to help Windows on ARM succeed.

When discussing the potential of Windows 8, especially the opportunity for developers, Microsoft touts numbers such as “450 million” or “500 million” as a potential market for Windows 8. But is the immediate potential really that large?

A key strength that has repeatedly sold Windows upgrades for more than two decades is application compatibility. That is the premise that last year’s (or last decade’s) applications will still run on next year’s version of Windows.

This has traditionally been especially important when discussing complex, custom-built line-of-busines applications. Enterprises expect to keep running the same applications with as little (as close to no) modification as possible on a new version of Windows. It is important to not dismiss application compatibility, because no version of Windows that didn’t have flawless application compatibility has ever been commercially successful, as I’ve said a couple of times before. The Intel Itanium architecture took a while to deliver the performance value proposition that was initially promised, and – very importantly – had a very, very bad Windows application compatibility story for existing applications throughout it’s entire life. Conversely, the AMD/Intel x64 architecture delivered exceptional performance relatively early on, at a marginal cost premium over x86, with almost no application compatibility cost. True, drivers were an issue, and led to Windows XP x64 having very little uptake, but Windows Vista largely resolved this, and Windows 7 all but removed any hurdles of running x64 Windows. Today you can buy an x64 system and, unless it has esoteric (or crappy) piece of hardware or software, ancient 16-bit applications, or VB 6 applications, you don’t pay a price to run Windows natively on x64 hardware.

Let’s look at a couple of facts about x86 PCs running 32-bit Windows 7:

1. You can run almost any legacy application, going back over 20 years.
2. You can use ancient hardware peripherals, as long as you have a relatively current driver.
3. You can use ancient utility or security software, as long as you have a relatively current driver.
4. The majority (almost all) applications available to you today are not optimized for touch, or even for stylus-based input.
5. The majority (almost all) are either a desktop PC or a laptop. Very few are tablets.
6. The processors in the system are designed with an emphasis of performance over efficiency.
7. The applications (especially legacy applications) on the system give very little consideration to power management, efficiency, or not running unnecessary, inefficient, or repetitive/looping background tasks.

In addition, the odds are that if you looked at almost any PC in use today, it also doesn’t have a digitizer – which means it doesn’t support touch or a stylus. Some do, it’s true. But the cost has left these devices to be an edge of the market, far from mainstream.

If you imagine the same x86 PC upgraded Windows 8, every single fact above remains true, though the new world of Metro applications begins to help by providing a touch-first, well-managed, power-sensitive application framework (but does so on a PC without touch in most cases).

Microsoft’s take is that every x86 PC that can run Windows 7 is an upgrade candidate to Windows 8. That’s absolutely true.

But let’s look at what would happen if you were to buy a brand new Windows 8 device with an ARM processor. How many of these facts still hold true?

1. You can’t run any legacy applications. None. You might be able to modify them to run on ARM if Microsoft provides some level of tooling and libraries they depend upon are available, but as of right now, that doesn’t appear to be something Microsoft wants you to do. Visual Basic 6 applications, in particular, are forbidden under the terms of Windows 8 application certification.
2. You can’t use any hardware peripherals, unless a new driver (with driver signing) has been created (same problem originally faced by x64).
3. You can’t use any utility or security software, unless a new driver (with driver signing) has been created (same problem originally faced by x64).
4. All applications (unless Microsoft renegs and provides a Win32 application migration story) are Metro apps, provided through the Windows App Store. These are inherently optimized for touch, but work with pen. These can be frustrating to use with a mouse.
5. The majority are likely to be tablets, very few are likely to be desktop PCs or even conventional laptops or “Ultrabooks” until Windows on ARM has proven it’s viability.
6. The processors in the system are designed with an emphasis of efficiency over performance.
7. The applications must conform to the WinRT framework, and as a result are very constrained as to what they can do in the background (for better or worse), but are generally efficient, secure, and tightly managed.

Before I go any further, I’d like you to try 2 levels of Cut the Rope in Internet Explorer, or 2 levels of Angry Birds in Google Chrome; but I want you to do me a favor. If you have a stylus or a touch-enabled system, don’t use those. Use a mouse. Don’t cheat – just use the mouse, like most current PC users would have to. Ready? Go on, I’ll wait.

You’re back? Great. Now, if you’ve ever played Angry Birds or Cut the Rope on iOS or Android, I want you to think for a moment about the experience you just had.

Was it fun? Sure.
Was it novel? Meh – you’ve probably played these both on other platforms. That’s why Microsoft and Google paid to have them ported to the browser – it’s important that well-known titles like these be on their respective platforms to begin with.
Was it the best experience you’ve ever had with these games? Probably not. Besides some performance compromises to go from native compiled code to HTML/JS, both of these games compromise the gameplay because you need to use a mouse, not the more intuitive touch user interface that both apps succeeded because of.

Now, you might be saying, “But Windows 8 will be touch-based! People will have tablets!”

That is the plan – and this version of Cut The Rope will probably be a great experience on a touch-enabled Windows 8 tablet, regardless of CPU architecture. But reconsider that 450M-500M number mentioned earlier. Almost every x86 PC in existence included in that number does not have touch.

Any Windows 8 PC can run the Metro user interface. Absolutely. But I can tell you from my personal experience that Metro and the new Start page are very frustrating to use with a mouse instead of touch. Frankly, they’re rather difficult to use. Personally I’ve been contemplating whether Kinect for Windows could help here – it may. That aside, while consumers and enterprises may upgrade to Windows 8 in time, I have to think that there may be some initial hesitance to upgrade, especially on those exact “legacy” systems touted because the user interface is such a fundamental shift – even if existing Win32 applications “just work” on Windows 8 x86 systems as they did on Windows 7.

I worked on Windows XP. I saw enterprise customers become emotional – become angry about the new Start Menu in Windows XP. It had to have an option to disable it and turn theming off. People have become used to it, but the shift to the Start page and Metro are far more jarring than a new Start Menu or Windows theming were.

Now you might be thinking, “Well, fine. Consumers will buy new tablets, largely with ARM, but possibly with x86, processors, optimized for touch.”

But then we have the opposite problem. Early on in this post, I highlighted how significant of a role Windows legacy application compatibility plays in businesses deciding to upgrade to a new version of Windows. Windows 8 on x86 and x64 continue to offer this value proposition, thus indeed resulting in a potential for Windows 8 uptake on many existing systems (that don’t support touch). But honestly, x86-based tablets are a longshot to remove the iPad’s lead, due to the iPad’s name recognition, performance, value prop, battery life, weight, and low cost. Windows 8 on ARM, conversely, throws away the entire “legacy application” value proposition, but begins to counter the iPad (the key details then being the build quality, performance, weight, battery life, and cost of Windows 8 ARM-based tablets – all of which are completely unknown at this time).

Let me summarize:

1. Legacy PCs running Windows 8 will run legacy applications, but deliver a suboptimal experience when running touch-centric Metro/WinRT-based applications.
2. New x86 tablets running Windows 8 will run legacy applications, will deliver the optimal experience when running Metro/WinRT-based applications, but may compromise battery life and/or weight and/or cost over an ARM tablet. This isn’t a guarantee, but at this point, this is the way product offerings have panned out in the past.
3. New ARM tablets running Windows 8 will not run any legacy applications, but will deliver the optimal experience when running Metro/WinRT-based applications, and will quite likely deliver the best weight/efficiency/cost.

I’ve said before that Windows 8 will live two lives. It’s critical to understand this. Desktops/laptops running Win32 and some WinRT applications, and tablets, running mostly or all WinRT applications.

I’m not saying the quoted 450M/500M number is completely incorrect. I’m also not saying that Windows 8 won’t succeed. I hope it does.

I am saying that I believe it may be a false syllogism to link the current market entrenchment of Windows 7 and earlier on x86/x64 desktops and laptops running Win32 applications, to any guaranteed explosion of sales for Win8 tablets which require an entirely new generation of WinRT-based applications.

The notion that “Lots of people run Windows today, therefore Windows 8 will succeed on ARM tablets and outsell the iPad” or “Lots of people run Windows today, therefore Metro application authors are guaranteed to make money” are both false syllogisms to just assume at this point.The current – gigantic – installed base of Windows x86/x64 systems running Win32 applications does not, by definition, mean that you can assume an immediate, or definite, success for Windows 8 on ARM running WinRT applications. The iPad is young, and it’s anybody’s game.

People do own PCs, and many are likely to continue to buy Windows 8 PCs or Ultrabooks. However without touch, they are, I personally believe, not the best candidates to run Metro. Conversely, consumers can buy Win8 Metro/touch-focused tablets when available, but then will abandon legacy Win32 apps.

We’ve yet to see what the stimuli are that lead consumers to prefer a Windows 8 tablet over an iPad (Apps? Form factors? Performance?). Microsoft may well have some secret sauce here that we’re not yet privy to, but as of this point, they are running silent and running deep, and not discussing Windows 8 go-to-market strategy at all.

Correction/clarification (1/18/2012, 11:00 AM) I have had several readers and followers on Twitter note that the 400M+ number specifically speaks to the current run rate of PCs continuing to sell as it has – not the installed base at all. Stupid on my part to incorrectly state that. However that actually only accentuates the issue above, as that run rate needs to continue or grow, while also including iPad competitive ARM and low-powered x86 tablets in the sales mix.