Posts by Doug Bostrom

Microsoft aims Windows Embedded 8 at $1.4 trillion market

More useless noise.

Late to the party, as usual, bringing nothing but friction and unnecessary expense. Look for just enough success in the market to make a pointless mess for customers, like Silverlight.

Nobody knows what to call Microsoft's ex-Metro UI

"But the really cool thing about all of this is that Microsoft is 90,000 people or so, so the fact that we're all behind this and we're all pushing down these design principles is something that's tremendously exciting."

Pretty much sums up everything wrong with the picture. Spend more time outside of the campus and don't waste those precious moments at hermetic MS events; perhaps this disastrous self-hypnosis wouldn't happen so often.

US trounces UK in climate scepticism jibber-jabber

Taxes!=science. It's helpful to keep them separate in your mind.

Microsoft offers workarounds for IE bug

Everything is an Experience at Microsoft

"Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit (EMET)." AKA "EMETic"

At Microsoft, you do not use the toilet, you have a "Metabolic Experience." If you have dysentery, you have a "Enhanced Metabolic Experience."

When you and your spouse get that special spark of an evening, you have a "Conjugal Experience." If it's extra-marital and stolen in the back seat of the car, it's an "Enhanced Interoperability Experience."

When you're being retained as CEO after a dismal job performance, you're having an "Enhanced Retention Experience."

Arctic ice panics sparked by half-baked sat data

More information

See here:

http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2012/08/more-news-on-cryosat-2.html

"1) The numbers are PROVISIONAL but are our best estimates right now. We are working hard to finalise (i.e. check the details of) the numbers at which point a paper will be submitted which will hopefully be published in due course. At that point everyone will have access to the whole story/figures etc.

2) The trends are from the period 2004 to 2012 and are obtained by combining CryoSat ice volume with ice volume from NASA's ICESat mission for years 2003-2008 (see Kwok et al, JGR, 2009).

3) The trends are for the two campaign periods which ICESat operated in each year that overlap with the times of year when CryoSat-2's provides data. That is a month during October/November (ON) and February/March (FM).

4) The numbers refer only to the central Arctic (the ICESat domain) and cannot always be compared with the PIOMAS "whole arctic domain" available on the PIOMAS website (i.e. there are times of year when some ice lies outside the central Arctic).

5) Both ICESat and CryoSat-2 measurements have been validated (checked) against data gathered by aircraft and undersea moorings."

Etc.

Windows 8: Download it, then speak YOUR brains

Re: Windows 8 isn't that bad...

"...change is what IT is all about, good or bad, or how are we supposed to progress?"

Not change for the sake of change, and progress is supposed to be an arrow pointing in the "better" direction. The "Modern Metro Monkey" interface is absurd for anything but a phone, diagonally-challenged display or food pellet motivational experiments with lower primates and the alternate desktop looks almost exactly like Mandrake ca 1999.

But the world needs optimists, so good on you.

Re: Yeh right........

Or, more precisely, you'll eat the dogfood that is put in your dish by your master, once you're sufficiently famished.

"It's only a big start button..."

Put another way, "it's only a big turd you didn't want, need or ask for, in the middle of your screen. Get used to it!"

Re: how I see it panning out....

"MS have already stated that enterprise versions of Win8 will have the ability to "side load" apps so that inhouse apps can be written and deployed."

And there's no problem with the notion that MS is moving the window of "normal" OS behavior to "here are the new, tighter caveats under which you may create or obtain software to be installed on your computer, restrictions you did not ask for but rather we are imposing you, unasked."

Amazing how people's concept of what's normal and acceptable can be slowly and subtly shifted beyond any recognition.

Do a mental exercise, imagine it's 10 years ago and Microsoft was launching whatever it was they launched back then. With that announcement, they drastically restrict how you may obtain software, where you may obtain, dictating even that you'll pay for the "privilege" of loading "unapproved' software at all. Would you have been ok with that?

Apple is author of the real-world implementation of this evil, of course. Goes to show that "think different" doesn't always mean "think well."

McIntyre: Climate policy crippled by pointless feel-good gestures

Oh, so tired...

It's summer in England. Tomorrow is likely to be warmer than a day in January. Can you say >exactly< what the temperature tomorrow will be? Because you can't, does that mean you also can't make a reasonable case it'll likely be colder in January?

Please, come up with something more original.

Simple is best

"Simple methods are all that is required to extract signals. If you have to use methods that are trickier than that - then in the hands of inexperienced or opportunistic scientists you can get results don't make a whole lot of sense."

Yeah. If you happen to have a bird's-eye view of the Arctic and you see that year-on-year ice in the Arctic is diminishing, you simply conclude that ice there is melting because the Arctic is getting warmer. No need to resort to tortured cycles of ice expansion, retreat, etc.

Ice melts when it warms above 0. Doesn't get any simpler.

Windows 8: Microsoft's tablet-desktop still painful to swallow

"Took me about 5 mins to get my bearings and after that no problems. "

Begging the question, "why?" Why are you dropped into a foreign landscape with your mental map crumpled?

Praise be that Microsoft is not in charge of the pencil. One day they'd be shipped in the form of pretzels, and we'd then be listening to optimists telling us "once you figure out how to push your fingers through the loop, no problem!"

Safety at last!!

"Windows RT, the ARM version, goes a step further by prohibiting desktop software installation completely. At last, a safe and secure Windows, at least relative to the standards of the past."

Microsoft has finally realized how to make us all safe from themselves: put us each in our own little jail, with Microsoft as jailer. They'll sell us breakfast, lunch and dinner as well, and allow us outside mail if the contents are ok with them.

Well done, MS, especially the part where we all know we're going to stumble into our cell and slam our own door behind us. You've pulled that stunt so many times, we just can't help it.

Nasa guides Mars Rover with Kinect

I was involved in a high school robotics competition this past year, as a mentor. Teams were given free Kinects to use for controlling these machines, which were competing in a sort-of-basketball game. A lot of beautiful software, loads of lovely hardware, many terrific implementations that would shame not a few professional builders but nary a Kinect to be seen controlling any robot, not in our division which included about 200 teams.

Kinect is largely useless for this type of work. The screenshot is not at all surprising.

Microsoft pops preview of 'biggest, most ambitious' Office yet

Re: Might have known

"... but now, you're just flailing about making mind-numbingly stupid changes like you're in some kind of death throes. It's _almost_ sad to watch..."

Like one of those infected ants that attaches itself to the underside of a leaf and dribbles fungal spores onto the other ants down below.

We're the other ants. No matter how we protest, we always catch the stupidity and grow it.

US county named 'area of outstanding natural stupidity'

Re: Locus of natural stupidity

RFID ring paired w/gun? Gun would need batteries, but then guns need bullets too and that does not seem to be an issue.

There's no perfect solution. In my mind, "well regulated militia" means that quite opposite from selling guns to random people who're often crazy, gun ownership should come with responsibilities including membership in "a well regulated militia" whether that be some form of corps where training must be completed before gun ownership can happen or a more permissive arrangement where "well regulated" means "you participate in paying for accidental mayhem caused by proliferation of guns."

Locus of natural stupidity

How about the US Supreme Court? Can't tell difference between a "well regulated militia" and somebody who leaves a weapon with a bullet in the chamber and the safety off for her kid to find.

SCOTUS can't parse a sentence with two clauses. Now that's stupid.

Gun owners in the US should be required to purchase and maintain insurance policies to pay for the mayhem they're causing.

Microsoft to announce new Office version on Monday

Microsoft Ultimate Dogfood Edition

"Office 365 Fully Packaged Product (FPP)"

Here in the US we can buy something yellow and waxy and slightly pungent, sold as "cheese"; look at the label closely and the actual proper name is "cheese food substitute."

Microsoft software product substitute. Yummy!

Please don't hit me again

Or for the denizens of the weird ecosystem, "please, hit me again, and harder; my 'experience' is beginning to leave me unexcited."

How nice for Microsoft that they own a bunch of compliant Sims and can toy with them at will. How sad for the Sims.

How wonderful it is that pencil and paper are pretty much safe from megalomaniacs bent on repeated transformation.

Facebook replaces non-Facebook mail addresses on Timeline

Classy address; "@aol.com"

Like?

Antarctic ice shelves not melting at all, new field data show

Better to read the complete press release. Fimbul is one of many ice shelves;

Release:

http://www.agu.org/news/press/pr_archives/2012/2012-31.shtml

Other ice shelves:

http://ess.uci.edu/researchgrp/velicogna/files/increasing_rates_of_ice_mass_loss_from_the_greenland__and_antarctic_ice_sheets_revealed_by_grace.pdf

Lewis knows this and now hopefully some other people do.

Amount of meat we eat will barely affect future climate change

Hall of mirrors

Sweet paragraph of self-cite Gish gallop at the end of the piece. Thank you for snapping me out of the impending hypnosis you induced, Lewis!

As usual I'm left wondering what else in The Register is credible.

Pegatron named as Microsoft Surface fondleslab foundry

Nokia is surely congratulating itself for tying its future to Microsoft.

Kill the children, rewrite the will for the new cuckoo in the nest, then- uh-oh.

I wonder if Elop is drawing two salaries?

Microsoft takes on tablets with keyboard-equipped Surface

MSChimera

The jackalope is considered "prior art" so MS has no patent worries on this one.

Windows Metro Maoist cadres reach desktop, pound it flat

Re: it's all about tablets

Shorter: prepare to squint.

Re: Has this become a bankruptcy race between Balmer & Elop?

Elop's the "Manchurian Candidate," same deal as the export to SGI was. Remember that debacle?

Re: Metro was designed by experts

Remember, Windows 8 and Metro were designed by Microsoft, the true experts in computing.

So -now- they're expert, having been ignorant for the past 20 years?

Could use a dollop of coherence.

Voyager ticks one box for interstellar arrival

Re: Consider this...

Last time I tried it (a couple of years ago) my Trash-80 still worked.

I just can't throw it away. I paid for it w/proceeds from a janitorial job; the damned thing represents more toilet scrubbing than I care to remember.

Apple 13in MacBook Pro to fall into line this autumn

New design paradigm

Actually will be a 13" model but that measurement does not reflect screen dimensions.

In point of fact, the new MacBook Pro won't have a screen. Apple is once again showing the way to elegance of form and simplicity of operation by eliminating the visual complication and frustrating content of a display.

Operation of the device will consist of placing it on a surface and staring at it intently; users will find they need make very little adjustment to the new paradigm.

Sometime next year Apple will provide a unified, seamless user experience across its entire range by eliminating the keyboard from the MacBook and the display from the iPhone. The resulting featureless slabs of plastic and metal-- sold in various sizes-- will be the ultimate expression of refined design sensibility, and coincidentally will be wildly profitable as they will require no electronic components for proper operation.

Retina Display detachment

My SO was just nailed by the ethernet cost-savings/Apple shareholder advantage program on the Air, on her last trip. Sheraton in Huntsville, Alabama: no wifi in rooms. It never even occurred to us to check the Air to see if it had an ethernet port before this; -all- reasonable equipment does, right? Nope. My wife was terribly thrilled and pleased that Apple helped her "Think Different" and stand out in the crowd by doing her do her email etc. down in the lobby of her hotel.

On the other hand she just took off on another trip this morning, equipped w/the $30 Apple super-duper speed retarding USB-ethernet adapter so at least somebody's smiling (not us, shareholders of course...).

No ethernet is stupid, only slightly less so than the people who return to buy this stuff a second time after the first go 'round. Once the Air dies we'll "switch," just like Apple would like.

Office 365: This cloud isn't going to put any admins out of a job

Amazing what a mess things become when the parasite load of shareholders becomes large enough. MS has a lot of of mouths to feed and it shows.

Foundering Nokia pushes 10,000 bods, 3 veeps overboard

Re: They're making the wrong one redundant

One sold fairly well considering it had no support, the other is selling quite poorly despite enormous resources.

Begging the question "why" but there's where we swerve into speculation.

Japan still in love with the fax

When dealing w/printed forms filled out manually, wretched software for scanners means it's actually much faster to drop the form in the feeder of a fax machine and punch in a phone number, as opposed to discovering whether or not the scanner driver has mysteriously gone tits up, necessitating a reboot.

HP's been selling "all-in-one" fax/print/scan machines for ~20 years now and over that period they've accomplished a remarkable feat: the software for these devices has grown steadily worse for the entire time. If they'd just freeze their product cycle for a few days or even just minutes and actually try eating their own rubbish they might get a clue as to why they're in a death spiral.

Windows 8: Not even Microsoft thinks businesses will use it

Re: Business users =! retards

"Using Metro isn't hard just different..."

Begging the question, "why?"

"The new arrangement of the clutch and brake pedal isn't hard, just different..."

Internal injuries

One Vista or 98ME per decade is tolerable but doubling or tripling the failure rate is not. W/this latest evolution the record of late for desktop OS at MS is "Late, late, fail, good, fail" or (including WinferFone) "Late, Late, fail, good, late, fail, fail."

Cleaning up the mess inside MS after this confirmation of unfit management is going to be painful, or should be, If no pain the company is in even worse trouble.

Windows 8: We kick the tyres on Redmond's new tablet wheels

Trainwreck

Final ascendancy of marketeers over engineers unleashes disaster. The dual monitor screenshot drives the point home nicely.

What a mess.

Study: The more science you know, the less worried you are about climate

Reg credibility plunges again

I'm left wondering if the article I just read here concerning a solid-state disk array is reliable. In that domain, I can't judge, I'm looking to El Reg for help. On the other hand, those of us who are familiar with the article described by Mr. Page know that his account is economical with the truth.

So, is anything I read at El Reg useful? How are we supposed to know?

Met Office cuts off Linux users with new weather widgets

When will they ever learn

"Unfortunately we had to stop providing weather gadgets for Linux Operating Systems because Adobe withdrew their support for Linux."

What a sadly oblivious remark. The Met didn't "have" to become a footsoldier in Adobe's plans for world domination, it just sleepwalked into that role. That unconscious action is trumped only by the failure of the Met to realize how it's been humiliated by allowing its public face to be governed by an overseas corporation.

When is it worth becoming a disposable bullet point in some rapacious marketer's business plan? Think first: "Is this tool really so great that it's worth surrendering my destiny?"

Fight global warming with Asimov-style Psychohistory - profs

Extra, heaping helping of clown today

The Register's pathetic slant on climate change is particularly apparent for those readers who happen to actually know the people mentioned herein as "trick cyclists." Stick to what you know or it'll become increasingly impossible to incur the risk of believing what's mentioned in articles covering your core competency.

BTW, isn't "trick cyclist" a term formerly exclusively employed by stereotypically buffoonish Royal Army officers of the type given to writing letters to the editor? Fashion tip: Bloviation looks poorly on the young.

Radioactive Tokyo tapwater HARMS BABIES ... if drunk for a year

Telegraph Junior

Keep it up! Perhaps the Barclays will begin inviting you through the front door, or even make an offer. At the present time, pathological optimism in Britain mostly begins in the newsroom of the Telegraph and ends between David Cameron's ears but the infection appears to be spreading down the food chain.

Google open video codec faces second challenger

You may communicate using only our brand of pencil

We don't care if one pencil is more or less as good as another, or if our superficially unique pencil features are pragmatically worthless in the daily course of your affairs. You -must- use our pencil when you wish to communicate. Failing entirely robbing you of the ability to inexpensively communicate with something that in the natural course of affairs would be a commodity with zero replication costs, we will make sure that every attempt at using a pencil becomes an enormous hassle for you, sapping your time and energy and offering you unending aggravation. Perversely, we will insist that this is happening not only because it helps you, but we'll even insist that you -demanded- we degrade you in this fashion.

Grief and disbelief greet Elop's Nokia revolution

SGI+NT=Wild Success!!

Then: "We will ditch IRIX and use NT, thus distinguishing ourselves in the marketplace!"

Now: "We will ditch Symbian and use Windows-Whatever, thus distinguishing ourselves in the marketplace!"

Common factor in both cases is an exported Wormtongue. How long before Elop returns to Saruman?

Sprint CEO admits WiMAX gamble didn't pay off

Fixed silver cloud

Presuming they can stay in business, for some of us Clearwire's shift to MarketingMax aka "WiMax" aka the rebranded modulation/coding mashup has been a boon. Here in my Seattle neighborhood the telco copper plant is too degraded to provide DSL at more than 256k while the other non-choice is to be stuffed into Comcast's trunk (boot) and taken for an open-ended ride. Meanwhile, the previous iteration of Clearwire was quite good, while after some teething problems the newer system is close to perfect. We're very thankful for the alternative.

Results might not be so good if more people were forced to use the service in our neck of the woods.

Elon Musk vs NASA and the US rocket industry - ding ding!

SpaceX is not really a standalone venture

Musk and Crew would be nowhere without research performed over the course of decades at such locations as NASA Dryden, where commercial firms have traditionally applied for help with arcana beyond the reach of commercial R&D efforts. Take a brief look at the engines used by SpaceX and the vast pyramid of previous effort invested at taxpayer expense supporting Falcon is immediately obvious.

Musk is simply in a good position and time to cherry-pick useful things created during the past 70 years and integrate them quickly and efficiently into the form of a working launch vehicle. There's nothing wrong with that, it's a natural progression, but to suggest that the successes of SpaceX reflect uniquely competent talent is oversimplification to the point of being simply wrong.

Conviction and confusion in Microsoft's cloud strategy

Conundrum

With 90,000+ employees and numerous internal divisions clamoring for continued paychecks and struggling to prove their relevance, as well as shareholders with entirely different requirements, it seems reasonable to say that puzzling complexity and cost will necessarily remain a conspicuous feature of Microsoft's offerings.

Meanwhile the promise of "The Cloud" is simplicity and savings. How will Microsoft and "The Cloud" mesh? Possibly a case of "too big not to fail."

Microsoft wishes it could be a Google number two

Take it to the bank

""There's no question we intend to make a profit.'"

Just in case there was some doubt about the fundamental nature of the company, he wanted to clear that up.

Somebody needs to help this fellow.

Microsoft gets in hosted services' face, causes headache

I smell a Master's degree

Here in the U.S. we have post-graduate degrees available in tax accounting. That's right, the tax code is so complex, it's like a force of nature that needs science done on it for full understanding.

Now comes Microsoft and its licensing arrangements. Which school will be first to jump?

Ballmer: no China exit for Microsoft's Bing

Vector

"Do Evil"

Google to mobile industry: ‘F*ck you very much!’

Outrage: Google not volunteering as enunuch

Oh, that bad, bad Google! They're not playing ball with carriers! That is to say, they've noticed that other vendors are expected to undergo orchidectomy prior to shifting product and they're not going along with the plan.

Manufacturers should complain to themselves, or change their arrangements.

Volt switches to smartphone maintenance

Overexperienced

"Experience". Won't it be refreshing when marketers move on to the next buzzword?

Verizon snuffs Google for Microsoft search

Excellent timing

Just as the FCC is finally taking a serious look at dictatorial, anti-choice practices by wireless providers, Verizon puts the boot in the face of Blackberry users, including countless congressional staffers.

Smooth move, Verizon!