Posts by jim 45

Windows Metro Maoist cadres reach desktop, pound it flat

I think it looks cool and feels fresh. What's happened is that MS has finally put some people with design sensibilities in control, something Apple did years ago.

All you guys who think Windows should look like 1993 until the end of time, you have nothing to worry about., Just go to Ebay and spend your Social Security checks on some 386s running 3.11, and you'll have your comforting, familiar 3D edges on everything to keep you nice and oriented. Myself, I like what's new and different, just because. By the way, I've been in this since before DOS. Maybe I'm in that 'second childhood' I've been looking forward to.

I hope MS just tunes out all this noise and goes right ahead, and brings in a whole new generation of users who could care less about "Z-order".

Windows 8: Not even Microsoft thinks businesses will use it

what happened?

When did we all stop liking what's new and different, and decide we can't handle any more change?

Dell Windows 8 tablet, hybrid details leak

Re: buzzword needed

"Headstone".

buzzword needed

Something this heavy and thick needs its own category - 'tablet' is taken. Jeez I just had a scary thought - is there a cooling fan? What is this but a laptop in 2 pieces?

Microsoft drops 'risky' Windows 8 preview on World

you mean someone actually managed to download it?

I gave up after numerous attempts that stalled out.

Lumia sales fail to set world alight

what Phoenix50 said

A year ago I walked into a Microsoft store expecting to fiddle with a Windows 7 phone for 2 minutes and walk out laughing at it. Instead I tried it for 5 minutes and walked out the door owning it. WP7 is a clean, unified, intuitive, uncluttered and very modern looking platform. My wife likes it too, and when her contract is up she's ditching Android and getting WP7.

E-book reader sales to boom as prices plunge

before you buy an eBook reader...

... check the prices on some of the eBooks you think you want. If they don't choke you, then go ahead. Otherwise you might end up like me - with a Kindle I seldom use, because eBook prices are too high.

Kindle Fire: An open letter to Jeff Bezos

what a drag..

... to have to evaluate a product so carefully before buying, trying to find out if it will actually do the things that it so obviously looks like it should be able to do.

I guess we need a new product catgory name, since we can't call these things 'tablets'. They're actually captive devices, more like thin clients for specific applications run by the companies that sell them.

Who has the time or energy to figure this all out in advance? I'd advise Best Buy to get ready for a lot of returns.

Bill Gates strangled Microsoft's 'tablet for creatives'

remember Gates in front of Congress...

...pontificating about the furious pace of innovation at Microsoft?

Massive study concludes: 'Global warming is real'

a sure sign

At least one association is clear: 100% of 'climate skeptics' also profess hard-core right-wing political views. This isn't a coincidence. I'd also like to see a study of the statistical linkage between denial of climate science and denial of evolution. I suspect that correlation is also extremely high.

This argument isn't about science.

Windows 7 overtakes XP - finally

In hindsight, I think MS would have been better off...

... if they'd never even released Vista.

Microsoft gets trademark for retail store plans

I'm in Minneapolis, near their big store in the Mall of America. It is actually pretty cool, and is exactly opposite the Apple store. The massive array of monitors is impressive. Yes, they do need some new products to draw people in. They need them desperately, and they know that. Windows 8 with 'Metro', on a tablet that doesn't weigh 8 pounds and have a whining fan, would be a good start.

Android's scariest nightmare: resurgently sexy Microsoft

don't worry...

... Microsoft will blow this opportunity, as they always do, because there are 2 things that will never change.

One - they'll never release anything more a shell/skin/UI over creaky, bloated old WIndows.

Two - their wonderful "partners - like HP and Acer - will always add their boatload of cr@pware, demos, "free trials", and a giant tapeworm of fake "security" from Symantec or McAfee.

Microsoft staff savage Ballmer at company confab

good points

As a developer, I feel that the great job MS did on .NET and its associated tools showed the real power still in the organization. I guess I actually hope that Win8 turns out to be great. I use a Windows phone and the Metro UI is also a nice piece of work, fully the equal of anything coming out of Apple.

They just tried to milk Windows for far too long.

If they'd started - 10years ago - building a totally new, flyweight OS - realizing that eventually Windows would be sinking of its own weight - they could be in a great position today, with phones and tablets. But I'm sure that internally, no 'competitor' to 'real Windows' could ever get started. Now they're trying desperate tricks to reduce the boot time to something under 90 seconds for a version of Windows that's still a year away... and they have nothing for tablets...and Windows Phone 7 is too little, too late.

Amazon intros $199 movie Kindle

excuse me but...

What is a "f***-off web proxy"? And why the sophomoric profanity? 2 separate questions, I guess.

HP sued by investor over PC and TouchPad antics

call me obtuse...

... but I don't get this. When you buy shares in a company, you're buying risk. The prospectus spells that out. We can't just sue every time a stock loses money, and it doesn't matter how incompetent the management might turn out to have been - you voluntarily gave them your money to play with.

Microsoft touts Windows 8 fondleslabness

bellweather

I hear the claims about boot time. Will they be rendered moot by the preinstallation of the standard boatload of cr@pware?

WIll Microsoft finally stop letting their "partners" totally deface their product before it reaches the customer?

In a nutshell: if it comes with Symantec software preinstalled, forget it. The party's over before it begins.

Microsoft COO: Our greatest enemy is old Windows

it's a ritual

It seems like every week now a top MS exec is telling the world that it's time to upgrade, it's important, let's move ahead, we need it, you need it, you'll like it. Then I look at the price to upgrade Windows on my PC and it's about $125, like always. And at that price my interest is zero.

Don't a lot of you feel the same way?

MS to WinXP diehards: Just under 3 more years' support

maybe

They could try some reasonable upgrade pricing...

Kindle Store awash with auto-generated crap 'books'

AGC

Google searches are already overwhelmed by AGC. ("Auto Generated Crap"). How can a search engine even begin to detect actual 'value' in content?

Microsoft's patents shakedown betrays spirit of Gates

where were you guys?

The idea that Microsoft used to be a major innovator is just phony nostalgia for a past that never was. Starting with DOS,the big products and ideas were acquired from others. They bought DOS, then they bought their a C compiler. They did a useless 8-bit knockoff of the Apple (Xerox) windowing system, and it went nowhere until a summer intern got that toy running in protected mode and someone at Microsoft got interested. The story continues in a similar vein. Now they're sitting on a mountain of cash managed by business-school grads like Phelps who have no real love for computers, software or even technology.

How to... change sleep-screen pics on your Kindle

out of date

As far as I know, this jailbreak technique doesn't work with the latest Kindle firmware (3.2.1).

Microsoft fails to turn punters on to WinPho 7

I have one and I like it...

... but it's missing some important stuff. Skype, for example; and not being able to run Google Maps hurts. No Flash.

A lot of stuff has been vaguely promised in an update later this year. A lot is riding on that. If it's a big disappointment I think a lot of us will jump ship.

I bought it because of the clean, readable, sharp looking UI. If they let 'partners' like Nokia glop it up with their no-value-added cr@p, then likewise we'll assume it's headed down the well-known Windows road and isn't a long-term prospect.

Google floats monthly subscriptions to Chrome OS notebooks

DOA

The price is a complete non-starter.

Barnes & Noble answers Microsoft's anti-Android suit

disappointing...

... to see the Reg correspondent dredging up reasons why we should think this makes sense. It's pure corporate BS and everyone knows it.

Amazon to lend Kindle books at 11,000 US libraries

another thing...

This article omits the fact that libraries' ePub/Overdrive books are already supported on the Nook and are a major reason for its success against Kindle.

is it just me?

I don't understand this announcement and haven't found any coverage adequately explaining it. My local library already has ePub books, for which I assume they paid the publishers. Will Kindle now accept them? Or is Amazon thinking that libraries will now happily buy the same books again in Kindle format?

Fukushima situation as of Wednesday

no real attribution

An article like this needs some context. Who is the author, really? What does "posted in Physics" mean? We can't find out, because the link to "Physics" is bad.

Feeling heat from Macs, Microsoft sells PCs sans crapware

WOW

WOW. I mean WOW. And it only took them - what - 5 years to figure this out. That's how long I've been telling friends and relatives to buy Apple, so I didn't have to come to their house and spend an hour uninstalling cr@p. Microsoft is indeed listening! But they're listening from somewhere about 5 light-years away.

Microsoft polishes Windows Phone 7

and no I am not a shill, thank you for asking

I walked into a store to try a W7 phone, expecting to hate it, and ended up buying it. It's a very nice UI: simple, clean, obvious and readable.

But MS has always, for reasons that are hard to fathom, allowed their hardware "partners" to turn the product into a steaming pile of pre-installed crapware that takes 5 minutes to boot and never stops tormenting you with inane popups. So let's see what happens. I'm pessimistic about the long term.

Google, Verizon offer net neutrality proposal

drawing a box

It's simple. These companies want to put the internet today, and everything that's on it, in a box, and not devote any new resources or bandwidth to that box. Instead they'll develop new ways to deliver content over digital networks, and provision those services with new investment and equipment, and charge whatever they want for it.

We'll still have the internet - or rather, the internet as of today - but it will stop evolving and growing because it won't get any new bandwidth.

These corporations have one, and only one, motivation and we all know exactly what it is.

Google faces trial on ageism claims

I'm 58

and glad I don't work at Google. Sounds like a nasty bunch of kids.

Proprietary software puts pacemaker users at risk

I don't understand this.

Patients, doctors and even technically knowledgeable outsiders couldn't possibly evaluate this code in any useful way. You'd get about 500,000 lines of uncommented C or C++, the writing of which was based on decades of proprietary knowledge which is NOT 'open source' and without which the source code alone will tell you nothing.

It's fine to have the FDA auditing these companies to ensure they're working in ways that makes good engineering sense. But beyond that, we have to simply trust the makers of medical devices and accept our fate.

Patch Tuesday sounds death knell for Win XP SP2

not gonna happen

There's only 1 thing that might get people still using XP to upgrade: a reasonably priced upgrade. MS is still thinking they can scare those hordes of XP users into coughing up $125, to change the OS on computers that do nothing but run a browser. And it's not going to happen, ever.

I have 2 XP systems here at home, and no intention of 'upgrading' them. I have plenty of other uses for that money.

Telco sets honey pot for nuisance marketers

joy

Pure joy. May the suffering of telemarketers only increase.

Why we love to hate Microsoft

2 things

1. Announce a vastly lighter 'personal' version of Windows that boots in 10 seconds and runs built-in browser and email, and some sort of app store. And looks cool. Duh.

2. Bring their upgrade prices for mainstream Windows into reality - say, $25 - so that we all actually buy Win7, and Win8 and stay on board.

Microsoft's Windows 8 goals revealed

As others have pointed out...

... it's really a non-event for many of us, because their upgrade prices are sky-high, and we don't need new computers right now, thanks. I have Vista only because I needed it for development work and my employer provided it. I have no interest in paying $219 for a Win7 Ultimate upgrade, and I probably won't be buying Win8 either.

So after 15 years as a Windows developer, I'm not even interested in a new release. And apparently Microsoft sees this as normal and fine.

gotta be kiddin me

I guess there's no longer any point to keep saying "these guys just don't get it."

Facial recognition? Is this April 1? Who the heck needs, or wants, yet another buggy layer of software preventing them from getting Windows started? I actually worked on facial recognition some years ago. It is in no way, shape or form ready for a consumer product. Who cares about multi-user personal systems anyway? Who cares about "user desktop preferences"? No one I know.

They can't solve Windows' performance problems, and they can't produce a light, fast version, so they're offering a souped-up reset button? Am I SURE this isn't April 1?

Google's OS is going to boot in 7 seconds. Is anyone at MS even aware of that?

Neuroscientist: iPhone 4's 'Retina display' not bullsh*t

this is not news

The print industry has known this for ages: there is no need to go beyond 300 DPI, the eye can't tell the difference.

The Reg guide to Linux, part 1: Picking a distro

an infinite time sink

Yes I too found I could do everything I needed to do with Linux instead of Windows. It just took 20 times longer.

Hacker charged with threatening US VP using neighbour's PC

minneapolis is a city

Blaine is in a city Minnesota. It's not "in" Minneapolis.

Intel answers Microsoft's Linux 'noise' with MeeGo show

we just have to adapt

The highly portable tablet will replace the desktop PC and associated keyboard and monitor. But first, human eyes and hands will have to be modified to match the ergonomics of the new platform.

Facebook boss admits privacy 'errors' and promises revamp

sorry but...

... referring to your users as "dumb f#cks" is not something you can simply undo by planing a puff piece in a newspaper.

Google hails Pac-Man with retro gaming homepage

am I missing something

Huh? All I get is a static graphic, which links to a Google search on "PAC-MAN 30th Anniversary".

Carmakers boost e-car noise standards for vision-impaired

hysteria

An hysterical over-reaction to a problem that probably won't even exist. Electric cars aren't silent, and people will quickly learn and adapt to the new sounds. Pass a nonsense regulation like this now, and we'll be stuck forever, with streets full of whining cars. Make it loud enough so a person can easily hear one car coming - now multiply that by 100 on a crowded street - guess what, it's a nightmare.

Apple in shock talks with Reg reader

an app that couldn't say No

So - it isn't just me.

iTunes for Windows has that authentic "Windows" flavor - a catchall for every sales gimmick and product tie-in that the marketing guys could come up with since day 1.

Nokia: digital SLRs are doomed

good article

Thanks for deflating this marketing balloon.

Israel confiscates visiting iPads

corruption, pure and simple

I have a dollar right here that says those iPads aren't locked up in a cabinet. They're either being sold on a black market, or handed out as perks to politicians.

It's iGraft.

Google tweaks search results with mystery site speedometer

irrelevant

This has nothing to do with search relevance - it's all about Google providing a "great user experience", i.e. self-promotion. The idea is to keep users on the Google page longer, clicking more search links, and hopefully looking at more ads.