Posts by aL

Verizon promises 4G for every American

Very american

very american indeed

(title spelling error for those of you that dont get it)

Apple preps Jobsian magic wand

uh.. so an wiimote?

i sure hope nintendo doesnt let this one slide..

Concerted Linux-netbook effort needed to beat Microsoft

eePc

didnt asus do this already?

everyone just installed xp on 'em and where on their merry way..

Windows 7 test build 'turns off' Internet Explorer 8

@robert cross

well actually, you'll only really be able to buy three versions of 7.. and the third, ultimate, wont even be whidly available.

i do agere on the package management though.. however alot of components arent installed at all anymore and instead moved to something they call Live applications or something like that

however they should also remove media player and movie maker (movie maker, wtf! the picture viewer isnt installed by default but movie maker is?)

windows is far from perfect but it has come a long way

typical reg..

as usual el reg jumps to unfounded conclusions.. :) obviously there is a lot more going on then deleting the exe file, even your sorce says that it "seems" to be the only thing happening, they dont really know

so does that mean that i know? no not at all :) but common sense implies that there a whole bunch of registry stuff going on an presumably a bunch of com fluff gets re registerd.

most likely the first reboot uninstalls ie and the second reboot installs a version of the com objects that are needed for legacy code (presumably some windows components) to run..

also, remember that this is just an interim build so things might change until RC :)

Win 7 and smartphones targeted in Pwn2own challenge

kind of random contest...

with all the stuff thats apparently going to be installed on the machines, this isnt really a competition between OS:es imo.. if there is a vuln in flash or ff for example its likely thats its there on all platforms, making the context more about luch and the preference of the attacker than system security..

they should have a separet contest for boxes with only the default installation and nothing else

EU says Microsoft violated law with IE on Windows

so..

let say windows has no browser included.. how would you get ff or opera? snail-mail them for a cd?

ALL os:es include browsers by default! microsoft has done a lot of bad thing but this is just stupid..

First Windows 7 beta puts fresh face on Vista

new od?

compared to what apple calls a "new os" 7 definetly is.. (apple listed the ability to have dvd

windows be always on top as a new os feature)

there is a new thread scheduler in 7 and several kernel tewaks to make it more scalable..

its not a massive release like vista but imo it definitly qualifies as a "OS release" especially considering what other thing passes for such a title

Apologies after teacher's 'Linux holding back kids' claim

"learn" windows?

whats there to learn? double clicking? the main sellingpoint of windows and the reason linux has failed so miseably on mainstream desktops is that you dont really need to "learn" anything.

you just pick it up and go

now there has been a lot of work done here on the linux side but putting the need to pick the right dist aside, for most people, linux is still harder to use than windows. linux is a milion diffrent things but windows is windows (more or less)

this also means that linux is not erally free. because linux is the way it is you generally need more experise to run it and that brings costs.

dont forget that nearly all linux dists are made by comanies and the goal of those companies is to make money. NOTHING ELSE. atleast microsoft is more honsest in that regard

Silverlight has serious side, says Microsoft

the usual MS fud

wow.. reg never ceases to amaze in their lack of objectivity when discussing things microsoft.. so, mr clarke cant get the page numbers to work the way hw wants in word so he takes it on him self to either misinterpret or flat out warp everything ms says.. lets get to it

"ms is tryign to force "yet another" media player on..."

ehm.. you mean ONE other besides flash? kind of like saying that linus is tryign to force "yet another" os on us.. Adobe has a monopoly on rias using a propriatary and non standardized language.. but i guess thats ok, as long as you're not microsoft

"bla bla olny for the microsoft stack and ie"

no not really.. microsoft has even sponsored the eclipse4SL project, no ms dev tools there. not to mention tht SL has been available for both FF and safari on both mac and PC since SL1 beta 1. windows only? nope..

"you can only use c# or VB"

no.. you can use any .net language, this includes ruby (with standard ruby libs) python, boo, f# or whatever.

there are alot of things to flame microsoft for, but scott guthrie and silverlight are not among them. guthrie is one of the people who is changeing microsoft from the inside bringing more open source stuff in and reaching out to other communities (just last week they annonced native JQuery support in VS. with the unmodified MIT licence.)

Google's IP anonymization fails to anonymize

OR

you could just not store the ip adresses.. that would anonymize them pretty well :P

microsoft may be evil but today in 2008, i think both google and apple are far more evil than microsoft is

US wireless pioneer to carriers: Don't be European

he's product of his stockholders

and pretty short sideed at that..

he's basicaly saying that you can screw the custumers out of more money if you lock them into your network/service/software. and thats perfectly true.

microsoft has done it in the past

apple is doing it now

it works.. it sucks for consumers, but it brings in the moola

World goes mad as Bill and Jerry eat churros

reg may know tech (sort of)

you you dont know marketing.. .:) ads have NOTHING to do with the products. its all about image. they dont have any anchorage in reality. its all about conveying an "feeling" about the company name first and a product name second.

one thing microsoft knows how to do is bounce back when sufficently challanged.. i think there are more commecials comming that are really aimed at joe-sicks-pack-regular-non-techie-user. and for that demographic, this commecial is exelent.

Microsoft Silverlight: 10 reasons to love it, 10 reasons to hate it

adobe

the thing is that you can, A) display svg files using silverlight or.., B)convert them to xaml. C) create your illustator / swg /fla files using whatever you want and then convert them to xaml(using free tools /exporters for the various programs)..

so you're not exactly required to use expression bled or designer..

blend is mostly used to hook up triggers (databind) to .net objects in a more visual way.. you can do it just as well from emacs

and just because it not fully supported on linux yet doesnt mean its a "windows-only" product its fully supported on the mac.. i like linux, but the sad fact its that its used by a tiny bit of end users and (as has been seen in these comments) many of those users arent iven interested in rias and consider both flash and sl to be blingy-kewln3ss-bloat

and why doesnt microsoft write the sl version for linux you ask? i ask in return, what linux user would trust such a release? not to mention the fact that microsft has very little experience in building linux apps and that there already exists a project for .net (mono)

if microsoft had written SL for linux i'll bet anything that the haters whould flame them for not acknowlaging mono..

J:

"That said, I wish Silverlight had never been thought of, that whoever had the idea had never been born even. Not because of the thing per se, which I don't even know. **And don't want to!!!** For me, it's reasons to hate #2 and #7, basically. Why, oh why another "standard"?! Now that the Flash crap works relatively well in every platform I've seen, they come up with another stupid format."

mark allen:

"That said, I wish Linux had never been thought of, that whoever had the idea had never been born even. Not because of the thing per se, which I don't even know. **And don't want to!!!** For me, it's reasons to hate #2 and #7, basically. Why, oh why another "standard"?! Now that the Windows crap works relatively well in every PC I've seen, they come up with another stupid OS."

love it :) some people refuse to get marks sarcasm but its such an exelent example of the double standards (pun) some people seem to have

Apple faithful snared in phishing scam targeting Mac.com users

re:matt

users are idiots.. we know that. apple knows that, microsoft and mozilla knows that.. part of browser safty is to protect users from their own stupidity, to say that the safari is fine and that its the users fault is therefor just escaping your responsibility as a browser vendor imo

this is a massive kick in the balls for safari and a minor poke for ff.. and soemtimes, thats a good thing. who would have thought ie would release a remotley standards compliant browser before ff? now ie8 is on they way, passing all kinds of compliance tests..

Windows XP crashes out of Olympics?

found some more pics

it appears atleast three people took pictures from a few diffrent places

check this out:

http://rivercoolcool.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!D6F05428A2B8CB48!1570.entry

i guess it would stillbe photoshopped because there where so many people there, but it seems unlikely..

what i find weird though is the location and angle of the bsod.. its on the -inside- of the birdsnest projected onto the ceiling.. you obviously cant see it above and there are beams and stuff in the way of the projection, so it sould appear as they didnt mean it to be projected there in the first place..

also, the angle would mean that the projector is somewhare down in the stands..

right now it seems more likely that this was just some one not affiliated with the olympics, doing something with a projector :P now why they brougt a projector to the olympics is another question :)

why now?

if this happend during the opeing ceremonies (watched by milions upon milions of people) and the bsod was up for an Hour(!) how come we're hearing about this several days later? i would think that the combination of the sheer volume of people watching and peoples general glee whensomething goes wrong with a ms product, would have spread this image all over the net with in minutes, not days..

people where snapping pictures from every angle of the arema constantly during the cermony.. shouldnt there be more pictures than this?

just seems fishy to me.. especially if the torch guy ran infront of the screen..

embarasing for ms (even if they are not at fault) and incredibly sloppy of the it guys over there to not take the monitor down for that long..

re: Lager And Crisps

and who in the "it world" would listen to/belive them? microsoft has to a poor reputation to pull that of.. people loove to hate microsoft :)

i rather think the opposite is true.. if it was linux there would be no headlines at all, people would just way its free and such things should be expected, but now that its microsoft however id expect it to be all over the net as you say..

iPhone 3G isn't necessarily

re orsonX

to awnser your question,

it has sub par 3g reception.

that doesnt mean that it doesnt work with 3g, just that it needs to be closer to an antenna to use it. it also means more packets are lost and general slower speeds

this is pretty serious.. it could mean mass recalls or even some legal action if it turns out that apple cut costs on purpose (regulators doesnt like it when you cheat on their tests)

Is Microsoft's Silverlight evil?

re Silverlight BetaMax

..what? either youre very ignorant or jut a big fat liar.. silverlight can be used on all the supported platforms (ie,ff, safari on win2000,xp,server2003,vista, server2008 and osx )

and your comments about servers is also completly off.. silverlight doesnt even run at the server. it runs only on the client. the only thing on the server are the assmblies of the app witch are then downloaded and run on the client..

double standards

its just staggering how people can bash the crap out of microsoft for having an monopoly on various things and also defend adobes monopoly over rias..

again and again the comments reads "SL is not needed, you can already "sort of" do that in flash" (thats not really true but anyway)

well in that case lets all just scrap linux and macs, because you can already do "sort of" everying in those os:es on windows!

if anyone can challenge the crapware that is flash, its microsoft..

re *

@tom: err get your facts strait.. silverlight DOES works win macs. both in safari and firefox. visual studio can even set breakpoints in silverlight apps running on a mac.

@various others

it is true that microsoft them selvs are not makeing a silverlight version for linux. however they have said multiple times that they are going to have linux support in the form of moonlight witch is being made by the mono guys. microsoft has contributed their entire test suite for silverlight to the moonlight project.. you are all right, microsoft has to proove that it means buisness. but they have enough attepmts to do that to not just dissmiss them imo.

they have realised that they do have to have linux support to get acceptance..

check out these sites if you dont belive me (silverlight2 is refferd to as silverlight 1.1 in the last article)

http://www.mono-project.com/Moonlight

http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2007/Sep-05.html

the question is..

is flash evil? flash currently has a monopoly on RIAs by any standard, it uses its own propriatary language(action script) and is closed on most platforms.

the core of silverlight is also closed source, but you can use any .net languange with it, you can use ruby, python,vb AND javascript (how is downplaying javascript again? that remark is simply untrue.. silverlight 1 is utterly dependant on javascript and silverlight2 offers far more interop with javascript than flash ever had) and the implementations of the dynamic languages are open source..

that remark by the adobe exec is also wrong.. infact silverlight does feature 3d and even does so on win2000 (for witch wpf is not even available) microsoft has said many times that it means to make silverlight a compatible subset of wpf..

(sadly that is not completly the case right now and that makes it abit of a pain moving back and fourth between wpf and silverlight)

its a mistake to think that the developer division of microsoft is the same as the windows and office division (who, i agree, can be quite evil, espicially the office teams).. there are alot of open source buffs in dev div as its called that are trying (and succeding) to change microsoft from the inside..

re dave

surely you dont blame microsoft for that.. look at it this way, had the page used silverlgiht it would have worked in ff, ie and safari, not just ie :) (opera is still not supported but they claim its on the way)

'Milestone' Microsoft service pack staples .NET's stomach

fyi

re: "alot of people are angry because thety have to download [to many] diffrent versions"

err.. those people are either idiots or not very familiar with .net and vs.. unless you develop for .net 1.1 (only the occational legacy app does this) there is only one, ONE version to download() in the other case, there are two.. in vs2008 you can choose what framework version you want to target, and if the app complies, it works for that version (barrnig any bugs the dev introduces ofcourse, but they would be there in any version)

fyi, the profile is just a bootstaping option.. its only there so that you dont need the full framework for quick deplyment.. if an app comes along that requires the full framework, the user is promted to download it

few people (none of the vista users) will have to download the full framework anyway.. most people use the webinstall that only downloads the new stuff, for 3.5 ~ 40 mb.. not to harsh imo..

windows has its problems, office sucks b44444411111s (seriously office is the worst ever...), but other than the size and bad naming, there is not much to bash .net for imo..

and for the last time vista is not written in .net.. infact it barely uses .net at all! calc, notepad, wmp, live messenger, aero, all win32 apps.. not .net.. they SHOULD be .net. the'd been a lot faster and better looking if they where.. aero can be recerated in like 5 minutes (including time to learn some basic hlsl) using .net 3.5 sp1..

hlsl shaders for any ui element (a new feature in wpf in .net 3.5 sp1) ftw

iPhone apps selling like hot cakes

doubt it..

they boys in cupertino are alot better at taking your money than giving it back..

again i would ask the questiong: "what if microsoft did it?"

what if microsoft could uninstall any app that ran on windows? suddely, before the launch of the next office, all the open office installaions are removed without explination.. they flamewar would be unfathomable.. yet, this Exactly what apple can do now..

bad smell i tells you.

Surfing Google may be harmful to your security

yes lets all forget about google

..because microsoft does that too y'know, lets all bash them instead!

jeez..

im not saying microsoft are angels but no one can claim there is not enough suspisions against them.. i dont think google or ibm or any other large company diservs any less scrutiny.. just my 2c

Man buys $1,000 worth of iPhone pixels by accident

genius..

that appdeveloper is a genius.. :P thats exactly the kind of stuff people buy.. "look my Jphone glows, i can be 47% snootier than you"

the real wtf is that ITunes doesnt verify that you want to buy something (or that such a warning can be turned off) now thats just praying on the clumsyness of your users to trick them to buy stuff.. what is your kid or cat or whatever mashes the keyboard? suddenly youve bought a bunch of stuff by mistake..

user unfriendlyness to improve sales? i think so..

Microsoft dyes hair orange to cheer SQL Server 2008 release

strange

why is it such a problem for people that there are diffrent versions of sql server/windows server?

i mean how many linux distros are out there seriously? choosing between them doesnt seem to be a problem although that is much more difficult since the all come from diffrent vedors and ther is no complete comparison of their features..

we use both lamp and wisp so i dont consider myself biased either way, just giving my 02..

re: various

@AC

so you mean there are other (presumably open source) databases where you can get deterministic resutls from queries using non-deterministic functions? thats a pretty neat trick..

@kevin bailey

OR you can use the free trial vpc:s of the diffrent versions and do your testing there.. nice and isolated too

@Peter Lee

wow really? that sucks :P i guess that means they better release vs sp1 soon

Microsoft promises SP 'milestone' for Visual Studio 2008

*sigh*

again, reg loves to NOT do any kind of research when writing about microsoft products.. lets clear a few things up shall we?

1 linq to entities is a object relational manager like actove record or nhibernate. the comparison between dreamwaver is just stupid (again, the microsoft marketing dept. show that they are asses) what makes link to entites special is that it transforms transforms the linq expression into a logical tree that then gets transformed into sql. this means that the engine has a much greater understanding of what the programmer wants to retrive and can generate much more efficient sql. linq to enitites also separates the objects from the relations meaning that a object model can be established and if the db schema changes, an external xml file can be edited and the program wont even need to be recompiled

2

you only have to install one version of the .net framework. 3.5. that includes both 2.0 and 3.0. those folders remain for compatibility. the only version that broke its predecessor was 2.0.

3

.net IS NOT VISTA SPESIFIC AND NEVER WAS. i dont understand why people keep insistnig that .net and vista are strongly connected. they are NOT .net is exactly the same on xp, 2003, vista and 2008. internally, there are few diffrences inside the clr, but that is not visible to anyone using .net. its all abstracted away.

vista should have used .net a lot more, it would have been a better, lighter os if they had, but they didnt. notepad, calulater, windows mediaplayer, explorer it self. they are all regular win32 apps in vista, just as they are in xp. no .net involved.

among the comments there are a few other ingnorant statements that i wont go into much detail on but vs is definitly not needed to program .net. sharpdevelop works just fine and the vs express editions work a treat. the person who suggested aptana should really stand in a corner for a bit.. apta must be the slowest editor on planet earth... it also frequentyl crashed while saving.. not that gr8...

Apple confesses MobileMe vanishing contact bug

re: Anonymous applefanboi

well because exchange is a product ment for large corperations, i highly doubt that is would have gained so much tracktion if microsoft let somethins as critical as dataloss slip by the testing..

also, if you charge 99 bucks for a serivce and also go all snooty and claim that "it just works" it better danm work.. apple is doing a fine job of ruining that reputation.. there hast just been one problem with mobileme. there are also the extremely crippled windows version (and lets get real, most iphone users are windows users)

besides, most features of mobile me arent new at all, they are .mac features.. so the argument that mobileme is new and therefore allowed to have problems like this, isnt valid at all imo

Apple is sorry (again) over MobileMe

quickly

fellow mac fans, point out their bad spelling and gramatics and throw in a few vista sucks posts!!

then they might forget about the mobileMe issues!

or not..

there is absolutly no excuse for mobileMes poor launch. most of the features come from .mac anyway so teething problems arent a valid excuse anyway

a cloud service that actually costs money for users (there arent that many of those on the web) and that comes from a company that consantly brags about how everthing they make just works and how much everyone else sucks, really REALLY should work better than this (and work at all in some cases)

Microsoft slams 'sensationalist' Vista analysis

re: danial and general vista fud..

i dont understand why people keep insisting that vista is insecure and an easy target for viruses and trojans..

vista has some issues but security is not oneof them. in fact vista is far more secure than xp ever was or ever will be. (check secunia if you dont belive me)

Yes it requres better hardware but so does every new operating system.

Yes its not exactly the same as xp and there are some new things you must learn, but again, this is true of any new os.

on vista level hardware vista is about the same if not slightly faster than xp performance wise, even though it contains alot more stuff.

its funny so see how everyone suddenly loves the crap out of win xp while just over a year ago they where bashing it to hellfor being so old, insecure and out dated.

vistas main problem is the marketing. thats the problem with microsoft in general imo.. their marketing sucks. simple as that. that said, there are other issues with vista as well, i can to this day not understand how it can take up 10gb of space. i just dont get it.

people looove to hate microsoft, and ive lost all hope that el, reg will ever publish an unbiast microsoft article, making things up that you know is not true is just FUD

yes, the very thing microsoft is always beeing accused of doing. (btw the "mojave" proect thing was really telling.. people only seem to hate vista if they actually know its vista)

why cant people simple express why they really think is bad about vista instead of making things up. thats just stupid childish fanboism..

Google unfurls less laughable Wikipedia

yes lets all trust google, they surely cant be evil, they say so them selvs

knol is an AWFUL lot like wikisource imo..

i personally think wikipedia does a pretty good job of presenting al the views on a perticular topic in its articles..

the risk of someone writing all kinds of bs (rasism, propaganda or worst of all, creationism) and presenting them as fact, seems far grater on knol than on wikipedia because the party with the most authors can drown the other parties posts..

for hightly debated subjects i foresee thousands of flamewar articles that are absolutly useless to someone who is trying to form a well balanced oppinion of the subject..

also, we all know how google feels about censorship..(google.ch anyone?) google is a massive corp and deserves no more trust tan microsoft or apple..

Consume .NET services without Silverlight

wcf server/client completly independent

<what you would expect from a single stack>

err, wcf is completly independent on the underlying delivery mechanism. calling a soap service, a .net service, a named pipe or iven a rest endpoint is almost identical from the callers view when using wcf.

the only thing you have to switch out is the binding object (and in the case of a rest service add an attribute saying where the arguemnts to the method goes in the url)

all the underlying stuff is encapsulated in the binding object.

the same holds true for hosting. if you want your spiffy .net service to become a soap service the only thing you have to do is swap out the binding object.

this can even be done with the built in config system so you dont even have to recompile your code..

so, if you feel the built in soapbinding isnt good enough, make your own, change 1 line in your config files and bam, your wcf server/client uses your own soap(or what ever else) implementation instead

dont belive me? check out msdn..

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms733027.aspx

re: end result of the .NET version be truly browser-independent

btw, silverlight Is truly browser independent.. it even wraps the javascript api of each browser so that you have a consistent api across all browsers..

(fyi, microsoft have contributed all their silverlight unit tests to the moonlight project, the aim is to have moonlight 100% complient with silverlight)

and no i dont work at microsoft, iand even if i did, what im saying is true and can be verified by 5 minutes of googleing (maybe 30 minutes if you use live search:P)