Not programmable
So do I get this right: it's not programmable, i.e. it's not a computer at all, it's just a machine that is optimized for some special problem? Than what is the problem that it solves so fast?
/Zane
112 publicly visible posts • joined 14 May 2009
In German, people like to call it "Schweinegatter" (pig fence), for obvious reasons.
When I was small, I was taught it is the number sign - as apparently Brits wrote #1, #2, ... meaning number one, number two,...
I always though it was called "pound sign", as it was used for British pound on typewriters that didn't have a pound sign, due to the fact it was at the same position. Well, I learned typewriting on a machine with the pound sign, which I think was however rather unusual in Germany.
Then I know people who call it "railroad crossing", I guess for obvious reasons as well.
Why it's called a hash, I have no idea. Then people call associative arrays hashes, which is confusing the specification with the implementation. So I guess people like to use the word hash when they don't know what they are talking about.
Yep, it then it seems a lot of people call it sharp, that's why C# is pronounced C-sharp, isn't it?
/Zane
Yep, invaildates warranty. However, a rooted phone can normally be brought back to its original state, so hard to prove you've rooted it.
Main problem with the stuff is that they are very different levels of complexity. Some phones can be unrooted with one-click solution, others need much more work. Find your phone+provider on the net, for most flavors you get tons of how-to's. Take your time to read them - it pays out!
/Zane
who has rooted a Galaxy 2S with T-Mobile Branding and 2.3 Kernel (I'd claim it doesn't get harder).
I did not think about it before, but now it has become clear that women are just more expensive than men due to geometrical reasons. I'm so sorry for having had silly ideas about the reasons before - now I understand the poor creatures just can't do anything about it.
So consequently, women need higher pay than men.
/Zane
Very good point here.
I am not so worried about Google having my data, but then there are some plans that online access to government services is only available through a special government account, that needs to be verified blah blah. Whatever they say, what they want is control. I don't need that.
With the industry, there normally is an opt-out, and mostly its anyway an opt-in. Not scary. You should just be aware what you are giving away. Do you get money for value?
Biggest problem is: politicians have already started diversionary tactics to make the people believe Google (or whoever) is the enemy. I know too many people who believe that politcians are really here to make this a better place, so they don't get what's going on.
/Zane
The talk about "subscribers". So it's the number of subscriptions, not the number of users. Does not say anything about the terminal.
So basically it's the number of SIM cards. And for the backbone, it doesn't matter if you use a mobile or a tablet. They make profit on your usage in both cases.
/Zane
> Red goes to red + amber
Not everywhere.
> You certainly don't wait for green to begin gear selection, or if you do, then please refer yourself to your nearest driving school for some further tuition.
Never heard that you must not wait for green.
But it looks like you have never been in second row before the traffic light.
There are quite some drivers who will need more than one second.
Oliver,
you have no idea how precise these platoon maneuvers can be. They can be done literally without any safety gap.
You will never see a human doing this. Not even on a German autobahn. Not even if the driver is completely.
But you might be right - maybe we'll get used to it.
You'd be surprised how bad the "human level AI" compares to some rather simple algorithms
for coping with the situations you mention.
Humans are not very good at driving cars.
Two simple examples:
- parking: normally, in about 30% of the cases where the car would have fit into the parking lot, the driver is too afraid it won't or thinks it will be too complicated, or just doesn't have a good 3dimensional view of the situation to get it done. The algorithms to get a car into every parking lot if it fits is pretty simple - I worked with guys who have written this kind of software, it works amazingly well.
- breaking: a lot of accidents happen because drivers are too shy to break hard enough. In fact, if you have moderately modern car, there is already a lot of software involved when you break, which will make sure that the car really stops and does not break out. Software is very good at breaking your car hard enough so it does not touch anything.
/Zane
...but you have no idea what you are talking about.
Is this a serious article, or did I miss the irony tags?
This article is so full of silly assumptions, it's the worst thing I've ever read on El Reg.
The authors have not the least idea how automatic driving works. And for theircounter arguments
they use scenarios which are stupid.
Do you really believe that the first (human) at a traffic light
always starts within less then a second after the light becomes green?
Do you even understand that everyone in the row adds to the delay when crossing the traffic light?
Just one example that is plain silly.
Automatic driving works pretty well - and it has done so for quite a time. Most things a machine can do better than a human, but it seems you want to tell me that you can cut anything better than a laser beam will.
The real problem with automatic driving will be with laws (who's in charge when an automatic car causes an accident?) and with human psychology (ever seen a car being added to a platoon at 120 mph? Looks pretty dangerous).
/Zane
It's funny with all this stuff - even with Xboxes, I know far more people with whatever non-XBox play stations than people with XBoxes (but, yes they do exist).
I know one person who owned a Zune (when still working at Microsoft 8^)
A know three people with a Windows Mobile: 2 got it from the employer, and as they are using it for email and calls only, they have not even noticed it sucks - one really bought it for himself. Well, the first time he called me we had to switch to the fixed phones (true. really really true. I laughed my ass of for the rest of the day... "Was that your Windows mobile? What was going on?"- " Err I don't know, but now, after a reboot, it works normal again")
I haven't seen anyone with a Surface yet. I know someone who knows someone who has a Surface, and he says it looks cool.
So where are all these people buying MS devices like mad? Just afraid to show the devices in public because they are so uncool?
/Zane
"the division works on long-term ideas that take a while to feed into products"
good to see that El Reg knows quite something about MS Research 8^)
Wonder if anyone has a number how much of the MS Research ideas ever made it into a product.
Should be a small number.
Research labs are not about driving product innovation - they're here to file patents.
/Zane
I'd really like to know which 25 markets you are speaking of.
Maybe you should read The Register: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/04/29/microsoft_nokia/
Windows Phone is starting losing on the US market - that's quite an indicator they will lose in most other Western markets as well, the US is just a little ahead.
And even if Windows Phone increases market share, there's quite a way to go in some markets.
/Zane
No, this guy is just a good engineer.
He used months as unit when talking about the other CIOs. Months is a good choice here, as it was less than a year, but much more than several weeks.
He then re-used the unit when talking about himself. Makes it easier to compare when you use the same unit.
He could've used weeks or days instead. That would look like nitpicking, wouldn't it?
/Zane
Tried to work with Powershell for about 6 months.
And I was really upset with it, and thought exactly the same: there must be a better way to use this.
If there is, then nobody shares it on the internet.
Compared to Unix shell, powershell doesn't come near. The object-orientedness is a nice concept, but in practice it's not that helpful.
What I used instead:
pyshell - much nicer, but I'm not a python fan.
gitbash (needs mingw) - just feels home when you are used to Unix shell scripting. Using that now for about 18 months, and I'm happy with it.
Sorry that I do not have a better answer. But I think that fellow posters show that this is as it is.
/Zane
OMG - true AI. Yes. But maybe it would be good to read a little about physics and mathematics beforehand...
The universe is not a clockwork, it's not a machine, and it's not a big computer.
Even worse, mathematics cannot ever completely model (or even explain) reality (which came as a shock when Gödel found that out in the last century)
Our mind is not a clockwork orange - there's even a good book on this.
There is quite some evidence - not only Penrose' book - that living and thinking is something that can't be built by engineers. See e.g. http://arxiv.org/abs/1108.1791.
And anyway - Buddha knew all of this before.
/Zane
Have you read the article?
It's about people against using religious traditions of heterosexual marriage at a gay marriage:
"I'm not going to walk down the aisle to Mendelssohn wearing white in a church and throw a bouquet and do the first dance,"
I don't think they are gainst your right to get a Green Card for your partner in case you are a citizen yourself.
/Zane
One of the reasons I never was fond of the Euro (yep, I'm from the continent) is diversity of coins. I always liked all these funny different ways you can shape coins, and it's more fun the more different currencies you have. So be glad you still have your pound and can fool around with it.
/Zane
BTW a 12-based system for money is better than a decimal system - but you are not going to change that in the foreseeable future, are you?
Really nice article.
And it mentions certain things not specific to the Win 8 or Surface Pro, but that have been around with Microsoft software since always: complicated to install, and inconsistent in design. Seems most people only notice now that they see that others can do better.
Zane
Seems to me that the whole thing burns down to a very simple truth - Microsoft cannot write at HTML5 compliant version of the app, while others can.
Seems we have seen this thing before. Microsoft cannot implement standards. As most programmers can, it follows that there no programmers at Microsoft.
/Zane
"Outlook is a pretty decent email client".
Hm. Can you give me a reason for this. I need to use it at work, and I normally need to restart it several times a day. Calendar cannot handle repetitive appointments, when details are changed a lot of colleagues need to delete the old appointment and make a new one.
My favorite Outlook feature is that it is unsure about the exchange connection. I try to access my emails, and it tells me that I should reconnect, as it is not connected to the exchange server. Nevertheless, it displays "connected to exchange server" in the status bar.
I think I have used around ten different email clients in the last years, and none of them was that bad.
/Zane
Any evidence for your claims? I still want to meet someone who likes ribbons or metro 8^)
Microsoft taking risks? I have no idea what you mean. They are stuck with an OS that is still single user focused with lousy networking capabilties, slow and resource hungry.
So the only the risk they are taking is "let's see if people pay for low quality". Surprisingly, a lot do.An in that, it's not a risk then anymore 8^)
/Zane
My thoughts 8^)
But on the positive side, we must that M$ did not ruin those like they did in so many other cases.
And we have no idea what they lost on the Skype and Hotmail deal. Amazing how much money they seem to be making in the few success areas. But this will work for a limited time only.
/Zane
So you think a Mac is to a PC what a BMW is to a Vauxhall?
More like what a plane is to a car...
Had to switch back to WinWhatever after years on a Mac, first reaction is: why is the mouse frozen? Huh, is the machine dead? Working on a Mac is so fast and swift...
Too bad it's too expensive for me to use it at home. But my archlinux is also much more responsive than Win7. So yes, I can't afford the plane. Neither the BMW (too posh anyway). But their affordable solutions as well 8^)
/Zane
Good point.
But that was the problem of Microsoft from the beginning.
Word and Excel are just computer-versions of the paper-and-pen versions.
Probably that is the reason of their success: you can use a "new" technology without learning anything new.
That's on the other hand also their problem: Microsoft users stay computer illiterates.