Posts by Ian Easson

The world will be a much better place if the Five Eyes disappeared.

They are there to spy on you. Are you happy with that?

The big story....

Is that the Conservative government is prioritizing industries by the damage they will suffer post-Brexit.

Not economic damage, of course. Political damage to the Conservatives.

Concept cars

Have you ever, ever in your life seen a concept car whose concepts have ever made it to market?

Nor me.

All mapping software depends on external data

So, what's your point?

Doesn't work

Flash stopped working for me yesterday, on all sites.

Details: Windows 10, both IE and Edge browsers.

So I went to the adobe help site for flash. It told me they can't determine what version of flash I am running. They said:

- I either don't have flash installed, or

- It is disabled.

Following their recommended procedure, I determined that flash is indeed installed and it is enabled. (Just as an experiment, I disabled it and re-enabled it.. No help.)

The next solution they suggested was to turn off ActiveX filtering on a site-by-site basis. I tried it. It didn't work.

The final proposed solution was to upgrade to the latest version.

When I went to their web site for this, it told me that flash is integrated into my browser, so I don't need to update it!

Colour me frustrated.

(And by the way, Adobe offers no support for flash other than their user forums.)

Failure IS an option

As Musk said, if you don't fail, you are not trying to succeed!

Nonsense

"And just about everyone installs recommended updates automatically because Microsoft insists on it."

Nope, they don't. Prove your accusation by citing actual facts.

(People have options; they have choices.)

And besides, Microsoft doesn't "insist" on it. You just made that up, because for some reason you don't like it!

Only 30% a week?

A new browser grows its base by *only* 30% a week (and now at 50 million users after only two weeks), and you're putting it down?

Talk about bias!

Pay now ... Pay later .. a Little Later

Your choice.

The Laughing Curve?

You're actually basing this pseudo-analysis on the "Laughing Curve" (aka the Laffer Curve):

- Which doesn't exist, because it is just a bunch of randomly scattered data points

- Was actually created in 1974 by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and his deputy press secretary Grace-Marie Arnett (reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve)

???

This is the new Microsoft

Let your partners in, but not so much they can destroy the whole foundation.

Russia is collapsing...

Just as the Soviet Union before it collapsed, and for many of the same reasons.

It will not be over in a day, a week, a month, or a year. But it will eventually be over.

But this is an extremely dangerous process, not just for Russians but for all of us.

IBM has been trying to get back to relevance for years

Most recently, the latest buzzwords.. The Cloud, Big Data, Analytics, and so on.

Maybe they will succeed. Maybe they won't.

But judged by their track record of the last few decades, they won't.

Just my opinion.

Last minute revisions are just that...

Anyone who has ever worked on a detailed document of hundreds of pages knows you don't publish the daily drafts.

Not an attack on open source

"But Morris said that the idea of starting with open source didn't last long in Redmond because Microsoft wanted to control its own code."

He didn't say that at all, not at all. That's just your spin on what he really said, which is the need for speed of delivering an interoperable engine faster, as he said in the very next sentence of your post:

"Given the engineering effort required, we found that we could deliver an interoperability focused engine to customers significantly faster if we started from our own engine (especially if unshackled from legacy compatibility concerns), rather than building up a new browser around an open-source engine.,"

Why is Google being given preferential treatment?

After all, both Intel and Microsoft had to pay Billions of dollars to resolve their anti-trust behaviour with Europe.

Another Open Source security problem

What the hey?

But, but, there are MILLIONS of eyes scrutinizing all Open Source software every day, finding vulnerabilities within minutes, and reliable patches are available within a day or so...

In your dreams, buddy.

Some perspective on this

Yes, the engines were "refurbished".

But, consider that:

- They were designed and built in the 1960's, for the failed lunar mission by the Soviet Union (the only flights of which spectacularly exploded)

- They were refurbished and renamed by a Ukrainian company in the 1990's

- Orbital bought some of the limited supply of them, because they had no engines or rockets of their own.

- Orbital outsourced all other aspects of their efforts. They were at best a systems integrator.

When you put these facts together with Orbital's lack of experience in rockets, you have to wonder why NASA awarded them a contract in the first place.

This is an ideological post opposed to an ideological book.

Choose your morality.

Then decide.

US is far behind the technology curve in IT Infrastructure

The real reason is not competition.

It is that the US, as a nation, is nowadays far less advanced than most other advanced Western and Asian countries in terms of IT infrastructure.

We can debate why this is so, but you cannot deny the fact.

So, someone encounters a small bug in a word processor (Word) having to do with scrolling, reports it to the producer (Microsoft), producer acknowledges it is a bug and promises to fix it soon, and then the person declares the product to be ”a tyrant of the imagination” and bemoans its use in the publishing world..

Overreaction, anyone?

What are we going to do when the super-solar flare arrives?

Sometime in the next several decades or a bit more - on a probabilistic basis - there is going to be a ginormous solar flare aimed at the Earth. It is expected to fry all electrical systems (including all computers and all of the Internet) for one to two years.

What will the world do then?

Hypochrisy?

So, tell me.

Did the General Authority of Islamic Affairs and Endowment issue a fatwa many years ago, telling Muslims that they should not be suicide bombers, because it was against the Koran to kill yourself?

Why is Google Getting Special Treatment?

I don't get it.

Both Microsoft and Intel had to cough up billions in fines for PAST indiscretions in Europe, in addition to changing their business practices. But Google gets to only change it business practices, with no multi-billion fine for its past behavior?

Your assertion in this post that the recent conflict between Rockstar and Google has anything to do with Android is totally, absolutely, 100% false. You think you would have the integrity to check the facts before publishing this post, instead of re-echoing what the echo chamber says.

The patents involved all have to do with search, not Android.

Here's a reference:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/180685266/13-10-31-Rockstar-Patent-Complaint-Against-Google

Stallman is a total Luddite.

He doesn't use a PC anything less than a decade old (because it might compromise his "open software" philosophy), and he doesn't use the Internet at all (he asks his friends to surf on his behalf, and then send him the results via email).

Why should anyone pay any attention whatsoever to his pronouncements?

Windows XP was considered a failure when it was first introduced

This is the only thing wrong with your otherwise good post.

It was only 2-3 years after XP came on line that it really began to take off. That was about the time of SP2.

And, let us not forget, Windows XP SP2 (with its total reworking on the security infrastructure of Windows) was in fact a quite new version of Windows, not at all a service pack. Microsoft merely called it a free service pack so that everyone would upgrade to the new, more secure, version of Windows.

Quite Sensible: Don't Throw the Baby Out with the Bathwater

There are many reasons to criticize the current patent system in advanced economies.

The knee-jerk reaction is to simply get rid of patents, or, to get rid of them in certain specific areas of innovation (most typically, software).

Regardless of whether or not you agree with Microsoft's latest suggestions, I think that the worst thing that could be done is to eliminate patents altogether, or to eliminate them for certain broad types of innovation.

It's tick-tock all over again

I suspect the best analogy for what Microsoft is doing is Intel's "Tick-Tock" approach.

They release a new version of Windows (and all other software, like Office) in the Fall. Then, a year later, they significantly update it. It's a free "Feature Pack" (as opposed to a "Service Pack" that just fixes bugs).

Then. the next year, two years after the release, they come out with a new release (which, of course, you have to pay to upgrade to).

Simple, and far more oriented to the consumer market than the enterprise market.

Microsoft's "Contoso" is not a fake company

It is designed as an archetype of a major company that uses Microsoft technologies, a hypothetical example. Everyone who knows anything about IT knows this.

To suggest that it is a fictitious company that Microsoft refers to, like the other companies that are referred to in this article, can only be an attempt to slur Microsoft. Readers of this article should understand the motivations (or ignorance) of the author.