Posts by Eadon
2483 posts • joined Monday 3rd August 2009 06:33 GMT
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Re: "I've been hacked"
Good point :-)
Love it when PR stunts backfire!
"has blamed a hacker for posting an update to her Twitter account using an iPhone" - probably a weak password.
This reminds me of the US talk show host, Oprah I think her name is, who was sponsored by MS to plug the Surface. She used an iPad to post to twitter saying how much she "loved" her Surface. Hehehehe
It will be fun to see how much market share Blackberry gains now it's next gen models are out. They are very much the underdog and despite their past self destruction, I wish them well. They compete on merit and not on buying the market.
Unlike Google, MS and Apple, Blackberry are 100% focused on phones with no distractions, so they should be formidable in terms of not having to compromise their strategy.
Re: Der Herrengestrümpfen Grossenstreichen shall NEVERRR prevail!
@Cthoolhio
I deleted my own post this morning, as I had had a couple when I posted it last night, and it was a bit trollish on sober reflection (even though it was rather good) :-)
As for the Surface being unrepairable, I agree with the sentiments that making kit unrepairable is bad for the environment, it is irresponsible. I could make the obvious observation that the Surface is so broken it is unrepairable anyway but I'll refrain :-)
Strategy mixup
MS are trying to be two things.
A) Supplier of Enterprise systems and services
B) Supplier of Consumer gadgets.
By going after market A, then people associate them with boring Excel spreadheets at work. So the last thing they want is to be reminded of "work" when they look at their phone or tab.
In the olden days (90's and 2000's) people went with Symbian, then also Blackberry / iPhone. They also went with Windows CE because in those days MS had a positive brand image in Windows. Too bad the phones didn't work...
In the new days, people are going after Android and iPhone and Blackberry in a wobbly way. They are avoiding the Windows branded phone. This is probably a combination of the brand - it's just not cool to have windows running on your phonoe - and the UI - the UI looks completely ridiculous.
These problems are fundamental, MS has to change the brand or the UI or, preferably, both. The big problem they have is that the Smart Phone market is now sown up. MS have to do something extraordinary to invade it. And tweaking their Win Phones is going to fail because the strategy is wrong in the first place. They need a new vision.
However to go from new-vision to market will take several years
Conclusion: Microsoft have lost the Mobile wars in the same way it lost the browser wars. It will be a niche player, and it will have a fanatical following from a few poor misguided saddos who think MS, ribbons and metro are groovy.
The next war is be ChromeOS vs Windows on the DESKTOP. That will serve to distract MS from mobiles as it defends it's home turf. MS has wars to fight on too many fronts. Phones, Tablets, Desktop, Servers, Office, Clouds, Databses, Search, IT Services, Games Consoles.
It's competitors on each of these fronts are focussed. Google, IBM, Sony, Samsung, Blackberry, Amazon, Oracle, Nintendo. All of them are competing with MS. MS will collapse before the end of the decade, Nokia style.
So MS need a plan B and fast but they do not have one.
Open source ONLY can be a defence against back door attacks.
Another reason to use OPEN SOURCE - the only practical and pragmatic defence against backdoor attacks.
"built a lithium battery that provides three times the power capacity of conventional designs, with a recharge time of just ten minutes and a predicted long life-span"
Great, so maybe they can make a Windows 8 tablet that can play half a movie before the 1kg battery runs flat.
Desktop in decline
means that the desktop will be all but abandoned by those that want growth market segments.
What is left is to those desperate enough to chase diminishing returns.
Re: Another argument ..
Joe Montana - that is incorrect because it implies that security by obscurity works. It does not.
The ONLY way to be safe from attacks is to have a secure system in the first place, and one that is accountable - i.e. you can check the source code - ie open source.
Eadon might be single
Line up ladies, your tech geek Linux God is awaiting to titillate you with tales of bash shell heroics.
Re: unknown details on Microsoft Nokia deal
@dogged - that there is a conspiracy here is not rocket science. If you cannot see it, then you must be blind as well as dumb.
This is Microsoft we are talking about, not the Mother Theresa!
Re: Higgs Hunt??
@Ru "There are a couple of tentative observations of what might be a new boson"
You are 18 months behind. The boson has exactly the properties of a Standard Model Higgs, it's now inconceivable that the boson is an impostor. The only hope of something interesting about the boson appearing is a 2 sigma discrepancy in the Atlas detector in the gamma-gamma channel. The CMS detetcor sees nothing odd at all in any channels.
Posted in Red Hat revs OpenShift Enterprise to 1.1
Battle of the open clouds
We are seeing fast evolution in this space. The beauty of having an open source solution is that your engineers can hack it to make it do whatever you want it to do, without the permission of the vendor.
Re: ELOP FAIL
@AC 14:32 "latest Gartner figures show that WP phone sales are still climbing steeply "
The reg reported that Gartner's figures for last quarter were that MS lost 20% of its mobile customers. 20% of your customers is a lot to lose in 3 months! Especially a 3 months where you launch your flagship product (Win Pho 8).
Re: ELOP FAIL
@dogged
"Desktop linux is held up by"
"1) Nobody cares about it"
People buy PC's and use whatever OS comes with it, they don't care as long as it is not Windows 8 ;-)
MS disallows Linux to be installed on OEM's desktops. "Nice windows discounts you have there, Mr OEM, shame were something to happen to them..." It's called strong-arming.
"2) Lack of productivity software. "
So what are LibreOffice, GIMP, Blender, Scribus, Inkscape, Evolution, fast OpenGL, choice of Windows managers etc, various programming IDE's and all the other cool Linux apps then? Techies are more productive on Linux than on Windows as Linux is a better dev environment. It has proper terminal shells for starters. And most office workers would get by fine with LibreOffice. Windows is really not needed, it's something of a toy operating system, you're going to tell me that Metro and Ribbons are productive? Most office workers need a simple word processor, maybe an email client, a browser and they're good. Cost? FREE! Quality? Superior.
Re: Can we get something clear
@boltar
--- and what do Hypervisors run on?
It's not very PC
To call a spade a spade....
If Apple were really desperate (and had no taste)
They could always call their shiny gimcrack something like... iOS Phone 8
Posted in Apple refreshes MacBook Pro range
Retina displays
Some reviewer was saying they do make a big difference. I'll have to pop into an Apple shop,...
Re: ELOP FAIL
@dogged
"post a valid criticism of the Zune beyond market share" - long story short - Zune was a bad copy of the iPod with a poor UI. It bombed.
"And remember that market share applies to linux and desktop Windows as well, you hypocrite"
Desktop Linux is held back by the MS monopoly. It will take Google's marketing power to change that with Chrome OS. Linux is winning on non-desktop platforms, note.
Your predilection for pompously saying, "citation needed" is just trolling. This is a comments section, not wikipedia. If you don't agree with my analysis then explain why.
"because any more than one alternative would be a CRIME AGAINST GOD right"
You are putting words into my mouth. Remember MS have to make huge profits to support their R&D and
operations overheads. MS cannot indefinitely continue to afford to come forth or lower in this race.
"making a profit is a huge failure, everyone knows that"
Nokia are being given a billion dollars per year from MS. If/when MS turns off that life-support machine, Nokia will be bankrupt in next to no time. As the article says, Nokia are back to the size they were in 1998 - a regression of 15 years and counting. Nokia's share price is now junk value, a small fraction of what it was.
"However, repeating a lie doesn't make it true"
- no, but being right does make it true.
finally, please wash your mouth out with soap, your swearing and insults are intellectually bankrupt, but they do give me a good laugh as you struggle to refute my facts.
Re: ELOP FAIL
@Thomas 4 - Win Pho 7/8 did not "crash" as that implies they were once OK. In reality Win Pho 7/8 were never successful in the first place. They sold small numbers in a Zune-like way.
Regarding BB - I hope that they succeed. They are virtuous competition and not Microsoft-style throw-money-at-it dirty tricks buy-the-market "competition".
Re: Still Hope for Nokia
@JDK - Nokia are now enslaved to MS. But if they did make an Android, I'm pretty sure their know-how would be enough, plus Google would doubtless help them make their product a polished experience.
I would definitely buy a Nokia Android (especially if Nokie ditched that snake Elop), but there's not a chance in Hell I'd buy a Nokia with Windows Phone 8 on it, even if it was a good OS, due to the evil-doing of killing off Meego, Symbian etc. Contrary to myth, they were actually in a very good state before Elop came along.
And because Android requires far fewer resources to run, then it could be made into a lighter, more powerful phone with a smaller battery and improved battery life.
But sadly, Nokia are already another MS partner that got crushed under the brontosaurus foot of MS. If they hypothetically divorce MS, then they might have a chance at another roll of the dice, like Blackberry, based on their brand.
Re: Hmmm - Blackberry ressurgence
@I ain't Spartacus
Interesting post, if I may say so. Regarding the Blackberry,. that mobile shops are pushing this is really interesting, it means the shops still have some freedom on what they promote.
One reason for pushing Blackberry's is that, traditionally, Blackberry's may have a much lower return rate than Windows Phones. I've heard of Windows phones being returned quite a lot, and phones shops do not like it when customers return phones.
Now that Android is maturing, a new Blackberry is a big event, and it might be that there have been quite a lot of back-orders for these beasts. If so, then this may give the shops confidence in pushing the phone.
Blackberry are good competition, I think, for Android and iPhone. Unlike MS, Blackberry don't have a huge marketing budget so it's reassuring to see that they seem to be being promoted based on merit, instead of ads.
This year might also see Ubuntu appearing on phones - I'd bet tempted by one of those! Also we might see Firefox OS phones appearing at the low-end of the market.
ELOP FAIL
The Win Pho 7 and Win Pho 8 are to the iPhone and Android what the Zune was to the iPod.
That these phone operating systems would fail was beyond all reasonable doubt.
So when taking a deep risk, it's best to have a Plan B, but Nokia has no Plan B. At least not officially. There is no hope for a recovery of MS in the mobile market as that market is maturing now and the existing players are controlling it, Apple at the prestige end (more or less) and Android has the rest wrapped up, with Blackberry providing the 3rd place alternative.
Nokia's entire strategy has failed. It was known to have failed with the Win Pho 7 but they repeated the same recipe for disaster with Win Pho 8 - with even more dire consequences I predicted all this on the Reg two years ago and a few times in the intervening months :-) Truly, my friends, It is not even a hyperbolic exaggeration to point out:
NOKIA WIN PHO EPIC FAIL.
Higgs Hunt??
The "Higgs hunt" halted when they found it last year. There are two missions left - explore the properties of the Higgs and search for signals from new physics. Sadly no new physics has shown up. Even the Higgs was "known physics" to the extent that it was an extension of the normal physical model of subatomic particles, the Standard Model.
No new physics is a disaster for theoretical physics, they need clues as to how the Universe behaves beyond what we now have, to answer various maddening puzzles.
Re: Yahoo!
"They're a Bing rebrander." - they did sell out to MS, indeed. But it goes to show that even Yahoo's brand is stronger than the Bing brand despite all the money and marketing behind Bing.
Legal copyright violation is not stealing
It's copyright violation. The MAFIAA are doing a great job at spreading FUD.
Meanwhile the court case shows another situation of IP madness. Oracle are almost as bad as MS - who are also suing Android.
If you are successful - you get sued.
Mobile market
The smart phone market has now reached maturity and the easy growth is over. MS were two or three years too late with Win Pho 7 and five years too late with win pho 8. Now they face fighting established players in a mature market with an unpopular OS.
Oh dear. Overall, MS market share of the mobile market is actually falling, though you'd think it had nowhere to fall lower to!
The next big war will not be over smart phones (though that war will certainly co-exist) but, paradoxically over the desktop. Google Chrome OS vs Windows. And it's going to get really nasty, mark my words. And when Chrome OS disrupts the desktop, Linux will benefit from a weakening of the MS monopoly hold over the OEMs.
MS MOBILE FAIL
Webkit is open source with a snag
If everyone uses webkit then web page makers will test against webkit instead of w3c standards. But the fact that webkit is open source is reassuring as, unlike the case with IE willfully bending "embracing and extending) the standards, webkit can be forked if corruption sets in.
The open source model, though, is powerful.
It's a matter of time before open source wins the Office wars and the desktop wars also. But with open source there will always be competition - a darwinian, capitalist scrap, someone will always compete, either by forking or by creating from scratch.
Re: Yahoo!
@chemist - "Remind me what do they actually do ?"
They manage to beat Bing in the search engine rankings.
Re: Linux is a strong solution
"Do you enjoy collecting downvotes"
I simply point out the truth. If others downvote me, that's down to the windows group think around here.
Linux is more secure even with external trojan threates, because, unlike windows, it does not execute stuff by default and does not hide file extensions. (juicy-model.jpg.exe looks like juicy-model.jpg in windows.
The downvoters simply refuse to accept what everyone else knows, that Windows is not to be trusted on the Internet. I didn't say that Linux is absolutely impenetrable, only that it is more secure and safer.
Anyway, back to your groupthink Wintards! Downvoting Eadon may make you feel better, but in effect you are hoping to censor the truth. How does it feel? Good, I know :-)
For sensible discussions on tech, for those with a clue, this is not the forum, but it's quite a lot of fun.
Samsung took over the Nokia market
MS (via their exec, Stephen Elop) had hoped to do this, but they forced Nokia to use a crap phone operating system (Win Pho 7 and Win Pho 8). Therefore Nokia rapidly became a has-been.
Samsung swept in and took over Nokia's market and then expanded it at the cost of MS's share and even some of Apple's share.
This is a shame, as Nokia are a European company, it's sad that they allowed themselves to be destroyed like this.
On the bright side, Android is Linux-based and open source, we have a winner that is relatively open.
Another reason I don't watch TV
The damned thing might be watching me!
It's beyond spoofing, it is pure ORWELL!
TV FAIL
Big Data is about data management
People misunderstand it. But one thing we know for sure, to do serous data management you need Linux Server for the post-terrabyte era, you need scalability, memory management that works and a decent file system. And you need the open source tools that are available on Linux, such as Hadoop etc.
Bing losing ground
Bing is behind Google (which it is a copycat of), Badu, Yandex and also Yahoo itself.
This abject failure is costing MS two billion dollars every year and has done for several years. Once MS's cash cows drop dead, it will have no way to sustain services such as "Bing".
It's curious that Google, not un-evil as they are, find it easier to move from search to mobile than MS has found it to go from desktop to mobile. Also Chrome OS is eating MS's desktop lunch at an accelerating rate, where as Bing is not a threat to Google's lunch, it's simply dragging MS down, rather than Google.
BING FAIL!
Re: Yeah, Oracle reaching out to the community, that'll work...
Oracle screwed up their open source inheritance from Sun, and they missed huge opportunities by alienating the Java guys, the open source guys and so on.
Sun were a really enlightened company, they invested heavily in open source, survived on profits far longer than the other UNIX companies, such as SCO, and they sold themselves at a very high price at the end.
Sun were great, I miss them.
Re: This looks like a solution in search of a problem
Java is the most-cross platform system. Stuff like Unity is a hack, but strong for games. Also there are licence fees to pay. Java is open source, no licence fees, no licence management.
Linux is a strong solution
It's much more difficult to attack *nix systems due to their foundational security architecture.
Java FX is a niche product
Java FX was originally brought out in response to Flash / Shockwave, If I'm not mistaken. It will be used here and there to solve specific problems that pop up here and there, including by enterprises.
FX is worth having around. In general Java suffers bad press from its 90's applet incarnations, which were considered slow. In the 2000's Java became fast due to JIT compilers dynamically optimising the code. And Java became huge in the Enterprise, starting with Servlets and then quickly followed by EJB's.
Later in the 2000's Java diversified via non-EJB enterprise frameworks in so-called lightweight containers. And open source frameworks exploded around Java, which has perpetuated its success, helped by the explosion of Linux in the data centre.
Then Java found its way onto blue ray of all places. And MS tried to kill that with a competing disc standard (HD something) but that failed. And now Java is on Android, a masterstroke of genius by Google, one that isn't appreciated for its tactical prowess.
And Java FX has always been a funny one, on the side lines, yet useful here and there. Rather like Groovy and Scala. It might suddenly take off thanks to some killer app, one never knows. The best thing is, it's an open source technology and therefore it will maximise it's usefulness even if that usefulness is not as mainstream as other technologies.
Security skills
This is another reason why we shouldn't be teaching Windows to school kids. Generally if you teach kids hackable systems, such as Linux, theyi're more likely to tinker and in this way learn more about security systems. It is more likely to create a hacker mentality. Raspberry Pi is an excellent way forward here too.
This is similar to when computers first came out and kids were hacking their spectrums and ZX machines etc. This gave rise to a plethora of coding geniuses. You don't get that when learning Excel. So forget teaching kids Office skills for "work" (which is a BS argument). We should be teaching them real computer skills with real computer set ups, not just Window's UI's.
Posted in Microsoft's Azure SQL Reporting FAIL
We need an "Of Death" Subriquet
Blue Screen Of Death
Red Ring Of Death.
Permit me to suggest:
"Azure Cloud Of Death"....
Re: Where are the register Linux server guides
@AC you say, Windows is better at "mail serving or Directory Serving"
Bullshit.
Compare the speed, security, robustness, TCO and scalability of a Linux server performing those tasks compared to Windows and Linux will run hands down.
Perhaps what you meant to say is that Windows is better at running Exchange server because Exchange only runs on Windows. Yes, I'll give you that. But then again, Windows is "worse" at running systems that are compiled for Linux. So it's an empty point.
I mean, seriously, the stuff that you Windows guys come out with beggars belief. It's truly scary in its naivete.
Re: @jake: "Ban personal devices from the workplace. Simple."
@Chris Miller "Security is always a trade off against effectiveness/efficiency"
- that depends. If a system has security designed into it from the start then it will be more secure than another system that does not. Not all security is created by using up CPU cycles and memory.
Threats to freedom
The lobbyists that buy the politicians will never rest in their quest to make the lives of citizens into a living hell.
Re: Munich doesn't pay more. It uses Linux and open source
@AC 11:59 - it's a myth that civil servants can't figure out Linux and LibreOffice. The differences are pretty minor. As I say, in Munich they have so far saved 11 million Euros, so the "training" issue is obviously not an issue.
Re: Better not show this article to Paul Thurrott
Thurrot has always been an MS cheerleader. That's how he makes a living.
Re: No desirable 128GB versions and too many 64GB ones
@moeluk - you make an excellent point, that few people seem to understand. Because MS uses up all of the resources of its hardware for its own bloat and crap, then you have to resort to work arounds that require technical knowledge and also work juggling memory cards, and synching everythng.
Now people used to say that Linux was user unfriendly, and it was, ten years ago. But now it evolved into something that's incredibly user friendly.
Where as Windows systems are going in the opposite direction. You have to type the name of your app into a search box. You have to know where to swipe to close an app. and with Surface you have to muck about with external memory.
It's all very bizarre.
Re: @Eadon BYOD is a way of avoiding lockin
@Evil Gav - it's a well known fact that Linux is faster on the same hardware as windows, it is less bloated, it has better memory management and is a better engineered system. Torvalds / Unix is better than the bloated COM-based and Win 32 API based crap that comprises Windows. Windows is badly architected.
If you doubt this, then ask yourself why Windows tablets require so much heavyweight hardware compared to Linux / Android tablets or iOS tablets. It's the same on servers.
Ask any admin that knows both Linux and Windows equally which one can do more work on a server and they will tell you, it is Linux. This is irrefutable.
