As usual, Microsoft has been in the tech press recently (when aren’t they?).

There are a couple of issues that caught my interest:

MS Temp Fired for Blog Contents

According to his own blog, Michael Hanscom was fired from his temp position at Microsoft.

His crime? Taking pics of Apple G5’s being unloaded at the MS Campus and publishing the pics – and the loading dock’s whereabouts – on his blog.

OK, a lot of people seem outraged.

Why?

Mainly because of kneejerk anti-MS feelings, apparently.

This guy – in all innocence, to be fair – took pictures at work, published them on the Web, and disclosed the contents of what was being unloaded, where the dock was, where he worked and so on.

This isn’t good – even if there is a certain paranoia on the MS campus, why would they risk keeping this guy (only a temp, as well)? What will he photography/copy and post next? Code samples, meeting agendas, manager schedules? Sure, that sounds paranoid, but you just don’t out your employer in this manner, unless it’s a matter of public safety (which is why there are whistleblower laws).

Hanscom even tips his hand – in his blog entry – that he felt that pictures and postings could cause issues:

But then he posts the pictures with information about where the dock was and so on.

I’m sorry, I don’t feel too sorry for this guy – he screwed up, and – true – he didn’t mean anything malicious. But he did screw up.

Play you pay…

Microsoft Bets the Company on Longhorn

Even C|Net is getting into the speculation that this latest acknowledgement (not that it’s new info) from Redmond that Longhorn is a “bet the company” move, calling the gambit a

gamble.

I don’t get it.

This is a fulcrum point for MS – they can either (try to) keep selling WinNT-based OSes and virtually identical new editions of Office (is there anything in Word2000 that you cannot live without that’s not in Word95? Not unless you’re trying to used Word as a Quark-substitute).

This is the next stage in the evolution of personal computing, one that actually is predicated on the needs of business – like it or not, the DRM features, new file systems, services support and so on are squarely targeted at businesses.

Because it will make it simpler for Web services to (finally!) become commonplace.

Which is an interesting statement (if true) because that means that Web services won’t become commonplace for another four years or so (Longhorn due sometime in 2006; widespread adoption will take another couple of years after that).

But as far as the gamble MS is taking; I don’t think so. By the time the OS (and support tools, such as Yukon [new SQL Server]) rolls out, businesses will be ready. Businesses have been slow to embrace XP – sticking to 2000 or NT (but support is now gone, since June, I believe). Unless the OS is delayed too much (always a possibility) and businesses finally move to XP, there should be a real need for a new tool.

Especially if the businesses want to jump onto this new-fangled XML/Web Services thingee…