By Robert X. Cringely | InfoWorld

A notable anniversary in the annals of personal computing is arriving this Sunday. Ten years ago, on Jan. 15, 2002, Microsoft’s then-chair Bill Gates penned the famousTrustworthy Computing Memo.

That was the day Microsoft finally woke up, smelled the hackers, and began getting serious about security. Gates wrote:

In the past, we’ve made our software and services more compelling for users by adding new features and functionality, and by making our platform richly extensible. We’ve done a terrific job at that, but all those great features won’t matter unless customers trust our software. So now, when we face a choice between adding features and resolving security issues, we need to choose security. Our products should emphasize security right out of the box, and we must constantly refine and improve that security as threats evolve. …If we discover a risk that a feature could compromise someone’s privacy, that problem gets solved first.

[ Also on InfoWorld: Redmond may be drawing to the close of a different chapter in "Microsoft + CES: End of an era." | For a humorous take on the tech industry's shenanigans, subscribe to Robert X. Cringely's Notes from the Underground newsletter. | Get the latest insight on the tech news that matters from InfoWorld's Tech Watch blog. ]

Of course it’s one thing to write a memo, another thing to make it real. The notoriously insecure Internet Explorer didn’t stop being a hacker’s plaything until the release of IE8 in 2009. During that time frame, Microsoft went from owning 90-plus percent of the browser market to less than 50 percent today. A lot of that had to do with IE’s notorious vulnerabilities and poor performance.

Vista’s User Access Controls, an ill-conceived effort to keep users from harming themselves, made computing more annoying, not more trustworthy. (It was also brilliantly parodied by Apple in its “I’m a Mac” commercials.)

Read the full article

By Peter Wayner | InfoWorld

Was it the philosopher George Santayana who said, “Those who don’t remember the past are condemned to repeat it?” Did he offer any hints for those of us who want to repeat the past, especially the successes? We’re beyond the teary elegies of 2011 and deep into making resolutions for 2012. If we’re going to stand half a chance of creating something great this year, it only makes sense to pause and celebrate what went right in 2011.

Here is our list of 2012 Technology of the Year Award winners, given to the hardware and software we reviewed over the past year that make life better for the people who toil in service of the enterprises and, it only follows, for the customers who are served by them. We spent several weeks arguing over the list and, in the end, produced our annual collection of tools we want to celebrate. Not all of the choices were unanimous, but all of them made us look two or three times because there was something amazing.

[ Read about the winning hardware, software, development tools, and cloud services in our slideshow, "InfoWorld's 2012 Technology of the Year Award winners." ]

Many of the winners — but far from all — are new to the list, but that doesn’t mean they’re new to us. One of the list’s most distinctive features is how much it repeats the past, illustrating how much technology builds on what came before. Even the new entries are several years in the making. They didn’t appear out of nowhere, but captured the strengths of trends that have been building for numerous years.

Yesterday and today
The most obvious example is Microsoft Office 2010, condemned to repeat its success here even though you’re probably searching for the commenting button already to make the perfectly good claim that the digits “2010″ don’t belong on a list for 2011. Fair enough, but we decided the Web apps from Google and others just weren’t ready to lead the parade. One editor said he wanted to assume that Office’s “days were numbered,” but then he took one look at Office’s record sales figures (which bear out the results of Serdar Yegulalp’soffice suite comparison) and changed his mind. While the Web apps are undeniably cool and easy to administer, all of us had to admit there was just something zippier and truly empowering about a native app you install on your computer. We’re not arguing for becoming grid-free survivalists, just realists about the limits of the cloud.

Microsoft has also been enhancing other tools with a grip on the enterprise. Lync turns the PC into a communications center, usurping some of the responsibilities of that increasingly idle phone that sits next to it on your desk. The smooth videoconferencing, now more flexible and easier to install in your office, is only a minor piece of the promise. TheWindows Small Business Server stack is also a winner here for all of the little enhancements that make it easier for small offices to start a full-service network and provide remote access through a Web interface. Microsoft shops can continue to sail into the future with a feature-rich environment that’s as current as can be found.Read the full article

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When working on a document, remember to save your work regularly. When you’ve finished with your work for the day, save your document to a jump drive, an external hard drive, or a network location of some kind. That way, if your computer crashes, you have a backup!

We can’t say it enough: save your work, and back up regularly.