Posts by Doug 3
166 posts • joined Friday 3rd July 2009 04:59 GMT
watch it they're going to throw Metro in your face
lol, it would not surprise me if they did pull something like sticking Metro on everyone's Win7 PC and then say it was a programming bug that'll take 6 months to fix.
high pressure systems to low pressure systems
winds generally move from high to low pressure systems so it's not like a turbine farm in CA is going to effect wind in Colorado. And besides, these turbines are relatively close to the surface where friction with land and vegetation down wind would also bleed off energy. Again, this is just surface energy and there's lots of atmosphere above a wind turbine.
I'm thinking there are gross miscalculations on both sides now.
Posted in Linus Torvalds in NSFW Red Hat rant
Re: RE: Pete Spicer
@rcorrect, you think Linus was conversing with the general public? I really wish that were the case considering the topic but 98% of the population wouldn't know what they were talking about. If people can't understand the context then maybe they should, as you put it, STFU? huh?
FYI, the web is public but what you see isn't often targeted to the general world+dog. Besides content there's this thing called context. While proprietary businesses and governments may do these things behinds closed doors and disguise them as private matters, that's not how the OSS world works. Those coding GNU/Linux probably could care less what the "public" thinks when they are writing code but the public is welcome to look at it. Again, OSS is not old school business with lots of protectionist mechanisms disguised as corporate policy and politeness.
Microsoft and IBM legally had to play two different marketing games
Microsoft could and did use illegal and ruthless means to get not only the OEM's locked into Dos/Windows then Win95 but also the press. Microsoft fed the press misinformation about what Chicago / Win95 would have and also had their fingers on who articles were written. One author once wrote how his article was edited so what the name OS/2 as left off the cover page and only bits about Microsoft's OS was covered on page one. Then there was the physical/paper press of the time where as inaccuracies were corrected over a month later in little comments pushed to the back of the magazines. Damage done won the day.
IBM, they were under anti-trust obligations and couldn't do things like false advertising or even pre-announce software capabilities etc. They had already lawyered up and had lots of layers looking over all the marketing.
So what you had was a boxing match with IBM having to play fair and cautiously against a ghost which could apparently do everything, be everything and the press made it looks like it was everything.
so it'd be easy to support the few thousand users who would be clinging onto that old hardware at that point.
As you know, this is really just some attempt to sooth some management nerves about a product with no market share and no hope of a market share. It's better than buying a RIM device but not much.
Brookstone
looks like something bound for SkyMall or Brookstone mags.
Re: RIM are not the threat
no, remember that Elop delivered lots of patents to Microsoft . The same could be what Microsoft would look for in RIM since they are or were _the_ enterprise device company before most others.
another one or two die shrinks maybe
so they've cut out lots of old desktop and OS code and Windows 8 is almost slim enough to run on phones and tablets with the same feature set as the desktop version. Well, not quite but a few more die shrinks and not only will memory densities increase enough but so will CPU performance while power usage goes down.
In the meantime, companies like Apple, Google and others have used *nix variants, mostly GNU/Linux and have done this for years. GNU/Linux scales from super computers, mainframes, laptops, netbooks, phones and even watches. But be proud Gill Bates, you'll eventually be correct about Windows. Too bad so many fewer will care.
Re: Nokia throws html 5 against the wall
because Steve Ballmer saying that Microsoft is becoming a device and services company does not mean they plan to own the "device" part of his business plan?
Does not their history show they would gladly toss away dead carcasses of partners to end up owning that which those partners helped nurture?
win95 vs win8
Windows 95 was significant, risky and had a huge marketing cost for Microsoft because there was that IBM thing going on at the time. They'd been riding the coattails of IBM and moved into the OEM market as that grew but the big threat was their split with IBM and the OS/2 product IBM was then pushing. Should they had lost the customers and developers to OS/2 Microsoft would be an office software company today and relatively tiny.
fast forward 17 years to 2012 and what do we have? We don't have Microsoft growing in double digits anything like the '90s, the PC sector is saturated and then there are these portable handheld devices which do most of what people outside of business want a computer to do. They are not fighting off someone trying to take a bite into their main market, desktops, but it is Microsoft who is trying to get into the smartphone segment and the tablet segment. Very different than the days if Windows 95 where they owned the market and a big OS shift was used to keep another vendor from taking their market.
It is very interesting to see Microsoft forcing a change on the users of their market stronghold, desktops, in order to win entry into the portable device segments. Interesting because a loss or failure in those segments comes with lots of disdain from the desktop users. They're trying to push current users to the edge and hope the mobile segments are won over but if not, it'll be very dangerous with Apple and possibly some Linux there to pick up the pieces. I'm already seeing lots and lots of consumers telling me they have dumped "the PC" and are Mac users now and won't go back.
So it may be as critical to Microsoft's future as Windows 95 was but it sherley is not the same game and they are not in the same position as they were back then. They are still very cocky to be forcing such a UI change on developers and users at a time when it seems the world+dog is in love with Apple products. And that includes the press.
Re: You say false advertising, I say lack of understanding of technology.
it is someone else's responsibility, not the user who only cares about being a consumer and being able to throw it out the window so it disappears when done. Why on Earth would anyone expect people to know complex things like basic technology? It's like the car, when something smells or breaks it's time to pay someone to help me make it all better. I don't need to know the basics of how brakes work to know that the screeching sounds for the past month every time I hit the brakes were indicators of a problem. When I hit the back of the car in front of me when I couldn't stop was all the indication I needed to know.
Silly geeks.
let me guess, the chemical is also found in chocolate
it's funny how a chocolate here or there enhances the female mood.
As for the condoms, if there's anything to these findings, look for the new version with ribs and doped with the OIF/NGF. And new lubes too. Go science!
Re: Grand Challenge
the difference might be fuel and GPS. Very little energy/power on this rover for high speed travel and without GPS, they really have to keep tire slippage down to nil.
It's just a guess but this speed is probably the result of conserving power, limiting wheel slippage, and the 14 minute data delay.
So why are they not putting up a little GPS network I wonder.
you had better believe it. Remember how many billions they throw down on the XBox and only recently started pulling in a positive cash flow on the product line. Wasn't it $3 billion they wrote off in just one year due to faulty hardware designs?
Microsoft will spend billions on this because they need to shut Apple and Android growth down or risk more of the Windows revenue streams losses to those competitors.
and not a peep about the ARM version of Windows 8 causing this
binary blob you say? would that x86 binary blobs? Well don't ya think that with all this ARM version of Windows 8 stuff they are ready to drop millions promoting has anything to do with that when it can't run those x86 binary blobs?
I think the clue wagon just rolled into the station and it's got Windows RT on the name plate.
doesn't help the original Metro platform is flopping like a shot pleasure replicant(Pris)
Microsoft has used the Metro name throughout their marketing of the Windows phone OS's new tile UI and that dates back close to 2 years. Now, they want to stick this on the desktop and all of a sudden the name is a problem with a partner? This is after allocating hundreds of millions on marketing of the Windows phone OS.
Sure Microsoft, it's all about someone else having a problem with the name. It couldn't have anything to do with the old phone platform failing badly and you don't want to associate the "new" Windows 8 with that old product. Nope, never.
Re: Pah...
this is probably why you don't see Windows with device located drivers like what Sun Sparc systems had in the 1990s. There was talk of Java having this functionality via something called Jini but we all know how violently Microsoft opposed and fought off Java.
The solution really is an OS which can ask the device for its driver, get the driver in a language which is platform neutral( Forth, Java, Python, etc ) and provide the subsystem for the running of the driver in the OS. It's not going to happen with Microsoft around that's for sure.
Re: Evidence
I'm wondering if the judge is not pissed because she knew it was evidence because Apple used it in their properly submitted evidence. She had to reject it as Samsung introduced evidence because they submitted it too late and they shouldn't have kept bugging her to admit it when Apple already had it.
Then again( and not being a lawyer or even close) Samsung would have to wait until Apple brought it up in court before they could use it and if they didn't then so too Samsung could not use it.
One would have thought that the first thing Samsung would have done was to find all their phones and other manufacturers phones which used the "bar type" format having a large screen.
Re: Misunderstanding
"future computers" is the key phrase. That sentence is not about any existing computers, just the new ones and those would be the ones OEMs would care about. Remember, OEMs don't make any money off previous sales, only future sales.
Re: Touch...
maybe something with labels representing the target action with colored backgrounds and connecting flows to more relevant data on that action? And have these touch surfaces all over the ship^h^h^h^hplace so anyone can use them. This means a login system known everywhere and maybe even a communications mechanism via voice. While we're at it, lets have a little comm pendant we can just talk to and ask "the computer" questions and get nice female voices answering us. Too bad nobodies thought of that before.
Re: I think I'd have been tempted to switch...
so far I've not seen any company with the balls Barnes and Nobel showed when they published all correspondences with Microsoft and refused to sign their NDA's just to see the patents which must be publicly available. These deals being signed are always inclusive of some other license or cross licensing but because they include the Linux word, they get press from Microsoft. Because it is all a stunt after all and too few have the balls to stand up to them.
really? special access to exclusive development documentations? sign me up
if you think they are holding back documentation for developers just so they can pay off some devs looking for freebies you are a sucker and the one they are looking for.
as for getting access to their "engineers", I've been there and it wasn't pretty but the customer really felt important that a real "Microsoft employee" was on the phone with them. If the hundreds of millions spent on advertising Windows Mobile 6.5 was effective(it was not ) then there might be a chance of some Metro app paying customers but with even more millions spent on advertising Windows Phone 7 and still nothing but single digit market share, it's like becoming a RIM developer. Echos heard in a big empty room.
does marketing see marketing
what I want to know is if those marketing people saw what was said as marketing and how much they really think is true?
seeing through all the fluff, it's too little too late the way I see it. But Metro everywhere is too much to many places so that'll hurt them too.
really? pay $6.3 billion and 5 years later write off $6.x billion?
that just seems like some very creative book keeping as in they have losses in other divisions they don't want shown on the books. Seriously, how does a $6.3 billion company/division go to zero unless somehow all their customers disappear? Is BING still such a failure it's losing over $1 billion per year?
They are a publicly traded company so this should be questioned and clarified.
Re: He's dead wrong...
it'll just be more expensive than the laptop and have less power. you just got youself another niche product Bill.
And I'm thinking Bill Gates just discovered Star Trek and noticed they mostly use only "surface-like" devices.
Microsoft used to dictating the UI and dev APIs along with marketing incentives
On the desktop they have decades of pushing their agenda and most every case was about making sure developers were locked into the Windows economy at the API layers. The UI locks(licensing restrictions starting with Windows 95) initially prevented 3rd party desktop innovations and later it looked like it was just a way to tie patents to the most used desktop UI platform. All this worked for them because they had 100% control of the market with Windows desktop licensing at the OEM level.
They are trying this same approach with the phone platform because it is all they know how to do. They crushed Palm with OEM marketing deals tied to Windows PocketPC, migrated that to the phone and then sat on that when Palm and its Treo phone platform failed to get a real OS under the PalmOS UI. They were dealing with problems Windows Vista presented when the iPhone and Android busted out and all they did was refresh to Windows Phone 6.5 and use marketing money to try and block OEMs from a big Android opening. But, WP6.5 was a yawn and Android with the Verizon Droid marketing push knocked Windows Phone almost off the map and started the assault on the AT&T/iPhone juggernaut. They are no longer in the position to dictate anything in the phone segment and the phone is not tied to the desktop. Nokia will learn this too late to remain as anything more than another phone vendor until they drop exclusivity with the Windows Phone platform.
Re: @Paul
do you really think Microsoft didn't make them sign something which ties them to Windows Phone OS for years _exclusively_? Nokia's blood will be all gone by the time that symbiotic relationship is over.
Re: Positive Spin?
and so the obvious answer is to go with Microsoft and their Windows CE based phone OS? A platform which not only was/is crashing and burning at v6.5 but they planned on a redesigned UI(WP7) with no market share and that'll be followed shortly by another OS upgrade(WP8).
yes, that was their only choice and a the right one. Is there an evil Kirk in your universe?
Re: Good article
find a copy of HP NewWave and install that on top of Windows 3.1 and then compare it to Windows 95/98/ME/2K
long file names, folders in folders, document templates and more. It was still Microsoft DOS and Windows under it but it was a great add-on. Windows 95 license restrictions ended all the 3rd party desktop add-ons so from 95 onward it was what Microsoft decided you got instead of the market doing it.
'your laptop AND phone' was ready - ie he'd have to give up his phone to get the laptop
It seemed to have gone over everyone's head that the Microsoft guy was willing to make things correct as long as the guy gave up his Android phone and took the laptop AND the Windows Phone phone.
well, almost everyone. ;-)
Now I wonder if he'll take the deal and trade the new phone for some other Android phone. And besides, we know Microsoft, Nokia and AT&T are basically paying people to take the Windows Phone phones to gain market share. Aren't they still below 2% after a year of Windows Phone 7 being on the market? Not good and with Windows Phone 8 in the pipeline it's not going to be an easy message to get across.
Posted in Tourists follow GPS, drive into sea
island
One would think every Japanese citizen would understand what the word "Island" means. Was there a sobriety test done?
no reason stated for why they have to put MS Office on iPad
there is nothing compelling them to put MS Office on the iPad. Please to not say money. As was stated by Matt, if they were to put MS Office on the iPad they would help gut MS Windows sales and losing that means a slippery slide downward for desktop market share. The numbers don't pan out since desktop $$$ are more valuable than iPad tablet $$$ to Microsoft.
They will not port MS Office to the iPad but they will do so for their MS Windows on ARM(WOA). But of course that will also make WOA required lots of RAM, CPU and Flash storage space(didn't they just tell us Flash is slow?) or even spinning HD space. ie the WOA tablets will be battery sucking hogs compared to the iPads and Androids out there. But with MS Office, they'll get some sales before they are shoved into desk drawers as useless for getting work done.
Please define Fair and Reasonable Mr Microsoft
Because I think Barnes and Noble have an issue with your definition of that. ie you want to charge them more then you charge for your entire OS license yet the patents claimed are for minute parts of the OS.
I for one am glad to read that Google finally has a club to hold over these other companies head. the game is and has been a game of mutual assured destruction and it sucks.
Re: Re: Elop wrong?
Elop is stating that single core processors are fine because he bet on an OS which only supports a single core. So he's justifying his poor choice by making stuff up.
Re: Re: So...
and guess what? those grasses are already used to hot dry August months so what we're really talking about is a bit more heat. Wow, big surprise their slow growth or no growth period isn't effected by a little more heat.
I almost LOL'ed when I saw that "if" statement.
Re: So... subset of all plants
it was about a small subset of plants, those found in prairie grasslands and not "plants" in general.
And whats also strange about these "boffins" leap to conclusion is that it was about heat waves in a single month, August.
Now I don't know about prairie grass but another plant in the grass family is bamboo and it goes through cycles of root growth, nutritional accumulation and greenery growth. So one would hope that these boffins would know what growth cycle their grasses are in and how prolonged hot weather for that month would effect that cycle.
And off the top of the head guess is it would have little effect since August is already a dry hot month so getting hotter isn't going to mess with the plant growth cycle much if any. Now throw in things like early recovery from dormancy because of consistently mild winters and early spring and you might start seeing changes in the grasslands. Possibly a change in which varieties of plants are at what ratio.
It sure seems like quite a jump to go from 'wow, heat waves in August don't effect grasses and we thought they would.' to 'everyone should rethink climate change.'.
Microsoft hired a co to do the Linux work and that co was purchased by Citrix
Citrix stopped the support for the Microsoft technology and Microsoft must have forgotten that they had hired that company to do their work because it floundered and got booted and they never noticed.
This all makes me wonder how good really is anything Linux based which reliant on Microsoft in any way shape or form?
or they don't want confusion around WP7 as they push Win8
think about it, if they posted now that WP8 will be a whole OS change and a newly ported OS at that while they are telling everyone WP7 is what devs and users want, it'll stall WP7 sales. As low as they already are, they can't afford to stop that. Add to it how long it will take to get Win8 cut and chopped down so it won't need 8 ARM cores and 4GB of RAM to run they have to try and pull the plug on any discussion of WP8.
tough place to be as they are ramping up Windows 8 and targeting tablets with that marketing. Thanks to Android and the iOS, tablet OS's are implicitly tied to phones and phone apps. They really must dump the WindowsCE OS to compete so no matter what they say, WP8 has to have a new kernel from somewhere and it is far more likely to be attempted to use Win8 kernel. No matter what they say to the public.
beginning of the iPad version of MS "Get The Facts" campaign?
this read 'paid Microsoft research' all over it. Besides, Bill Gates had been trying to get the world+dog to use Windows based cement blocks of slablets for years and those things weighted way more than todays iPad or Android versions. So why is this _new_ research is just now being done? Oh wait, Microsoft has nothing to compete with but is telling everyone they will, real soon now, so they're attempting to slow the expansion of the existing devices so there's hope of them selling a dozen WinPads come Dec 2012.
Smells like the old business practices are MS are still being read off the stone tablet they were written on so many years ago.
nuclear because they've already been failing in a big way.
Posted in HUD's up! Ubuntu creates menu-free GUI
wasn't this in Warp 4.0 which was voice enabled
I recall the last IBM OS/2 version released publicly was voice enabled(v4.0?) back in 1996. There was one voice enabling menu added to apps which accumulated commands in the menu bar so the user could tell the computer what to do. This Ubuntu mechanism sounds interesting but if it means eliminating the menu bar they might want to wait a few revs before jumping off that bridge.
buy buy buy
up 25% and they see a 10% drop in price? buy buy buy because that's some great growth and they even dropped their ad prices to boot. If anything it should be good for a quick flip.
Posted in NT daddy turns his hand to Xbox
I smell a fork
it would guess that Microsoft forked W2K when they did the XBox and have not kept it updated because as a game console it's multi-tasking of processes and resource usage wasn't of much concern given the tightly controlled gaming API's and single tasking nature of a "game console". Now, Microsoft wants the "game console" to also do TV and DVR functions, network streaming, social media events, etc. So maybe Dave is getting called in to help bring the aging W2K kernel up to date for this.
Or the next version of the XBox is going massively parallel(CPU or GPU or both) and again, the kernel needs rebuilding.
but didn't Michael Dell just say tablets are not effecting PC sales?
that means they have been doing just that. At the coffee shops I used to see lots of laptops and now I see lots of tablets so something is happening even if Dell says it isn't. And here Microsoft is without any kind of options for selling into the tablet space. 2012 is not going to be kind to Microsoft it seems.
Where's Microsoft
and where are their fanbois saying that children need to be learning the Windows user interface and software because that's what they'll be using once they get out of school? What? Windows is moving to yet another user interface and software application framework? No wonder they're keeping their mouths shut this time.
If only Negroponte listened to all the people(inside OLPC and outside) who said that Microsoft on the XO was nothing but a stalling technique and they never intended to produce a viable product.
The tablet looks great and the video showing the Sugar Labs Sugar interface and applications looks great. They also put lots of effort into design again with how the connectors can or can't be covered by the protective cover and how an external battery can recharge the device.
they can't afford "success" like XBox with WP
The XBox project has cost them 10s of billions and is just now bringing in some quarterly profits. But you know what? Android licensing fees brings in more money. So if that is success, I don't think Microsoft can continue to lose billions annually on the WP project over the next 10 years.
and what would you expect Elop or Microsoft to say if it were true? I guess by saying there will be no smartphone sell off it could mean there'll be a complete sell out or some other form of sell out.
"eat this" because the story was more fluff than stuff.
release in March 2012. When will the Windows Phone 8 ads begin?
Microsoft is all into Windows 8 these days and their "leaked" Windows Phone road map talked about a superphone in late 2012. Can we really believe that the WindowsCE based Windows Phone 7 is capable of being a "superphone" and with the timing of Windows 8( for ARM too ) I wonder if Nokia can survive this mess. Microsoft is still pushing a crusty OS layer on WP7 and while Nokia is spending on ads for that, Microsoft will be singing the praises of Windows 8. And that'll include Windows 8 on ARM tablets and netbooks too. With iPhone OS(iOS) and Android runnign on smartphones, tablets and netbooks how can anyone miss the connection between Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8?
Nokia is doubly screwed here. So it goes, they have made the bed and must now lie in it.
side topic: US market - seems a number of Android devices missing US market
Anyone notice these marketing dollars are for the US market? What could also be tied in with some of Microsoft's money is how we see a number of Android devices getting released outside of the US market with no mention of any release into the US market.
As we've seen many times before, Microsoft marketing deals often are tied in with exclusionary elements regarding competing products. This goes back as far as the DOS and OS/2 days and hasn't stopped.
we won't see or hear about its hardware
because Windows Phone 7 does not support the current generation of phone hardware( dual core CPU and 1GB+ RAM ). They will have to do "branding" style of marketing or market Windows phone. so this should lead to some rather poor ads but maybe some funny/haha ones too.
Posted in Intel gets Atoms out ahead of CES
didn't Intel help start the netbook segment with the ClassMate PC
IIRC, OLPC started the tiny laptop craze and the concept of creating a low cost laptop-like device. Intel freaked because OLPC would not use power hungry Intel chips( Microsoft freaked too and also spent millions attacking OLPC ) so they came out with their own laptop for children. It was called the ClassMate PC and while it did not have many of the features of the OLPC XO, it was a small cheap laptop which ran either Microsoft Windows XP or GNU/Linux. I think there was even a story about thousands of ClassMate PCs getting shipped where Microsoft got involved and signed a deal putting Windows on them even when the CTO wanted GNU/Linux. They then sent the Windows ClassMate PCs to a 3rd party who then put GNU/Linux on them.
Had Intel, and Microsoft, not gone all ape over the OLPC devices I don't think we'd have seen the netbook market when we did. Too bad Intel and Microsoft both then went and set artificial limits on what an OEM could do in making a netbook using their hardware and software.
And where the heck are the Tegra 2 or Tegra 3 based Netbooks?
McFly
"which contains the kernel portion of the Windows user interface"
Really, user interface elements in the kernel might be a problem.
