* Posts by Doug 3

273 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Jul 2009

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Trying out Microsoft's pre-release OS/2 2.0

Doug 3

Re: curated app store

Yes, I figured since the iPod was kicking butt in the industry and got iTunes pre-installed on all Windows PC that when the iPod Touch shipped, formfactor of first iPhones it was a small step from iPod Touch to iPhone. And that was a time when PDAs had faded and the best PDA/phone was the Handspring phones with a 320x320 display mostly running 160x160 resolution apps.

IMO Apple is where it is today because they beat Microsoft at the MP3 market with the iPod and iTunes and it was the mastery of Steve Jobs at UI design simplicity with the iPod Touch then iPhone which took their financials into the stratosphere.

Doug 3

Re: Very Different

Apple was in serious financial trouble and Microsoft could have dragged out the court case until only the Apple lawyers were left.

Why Microsoft settled was because there was an anti-trust case against them which was calling for Microsoft to be split up AND Netscape was becoming the compute platform and ran on all platforms.

Microsoft kept Apple alive with $150M, kept showing Microsoft Office on Mac showed they were not a monopoly, and Apple immediately started pre-loading Microsoft Internet Explorer for Mac when Apple still had a decent share of the education market.

But it's a good story to think Apple lawyers beat Microsoft lawyers and got them to pay $150M. I wonder if Corel lawyers thought the same when Microsoft settled that Wordperfect law suit and got $125M from Microsoft. Oh and Corel had to discontinue selling Corel Linux and all of the Corel apps for Linux but I'm sure that too was all about Microsoft lawyers also losing to Corel lawyers.

Doug 3

Re: Very Different

but IBM's OS/2 v3( Warp ) was an amazing compute platform. Windows NT not so much. OS/2 Warp had full client and server networking capabilities and shipped with a ton of networking servers and clients. But it was the CORBA based desktop and fast multi-threading in the kernel which made OS/2 Warp a great compute platform. The system UI was hardly ever stalled with an hourglass when an application was busy. If an application wasn't multi-threaded(all OS/2 apps were required to be ) you could switch to another app while that one finished doing its work.

Even the web browser, Web Explorer was heavily multi-threaded so you could start reading pages while other features on the page was loading and rendering.

Aslo based on CORBA was the OpenDOC application platform which also had no equal 20 years later and application windows are still square.

And when you put the multi-processor capable server kernel on the Warp desktop OS it outperformed all other OS's on the same hardware.

I can still see the video of the Microsoft employees bowling down a row of OS/2 Warp product boxes when Windows 95 finally shipped a year later.

Not even LinkedIn is that keen on Microsoft's cloud: Shift to Azure abandoned

Doug 3

Re: "but... but... but... it's almost free!" "Nah, we're good."

"If Linkedin can't use Azure at steeply discounted / possibly free pricing, then what does that say to anyone else considering using Azure?"

It was stated that Microsoft does NOT give discounts to other Microsoft companies and they must pay full retail prices for Azure.

So your one assumption you based your whole comment on isn't valid, ie they'd get such cheap hosting it doesn't make sense not to do it.

And remember, LinkedIn was created in 2002 and went public in 2003 and Azure first showed up FIVE years later. AWS was launched in 2006 so just maybe LinkedIn developers built their platform to scale off a clustering technology which is close to the metal and doesn't work well or at all in the virtualized environment cloud environments which came years later.

Doug 3

Re: Server

LinkedIn may have been started on a Beowulf cluster in Reid Hoffman's living room and they just moved it and expanded it.

Since nobody has ever said 'let's make a Beowulf Cluster out of Azure VMs' I'll add another commonly stated phrase possibly heard within the walls of LinkedIn,

'you just can't get there from here'.

They'll probably just do what they did with hotmail and put a front end load distribution configuration on LinkedIn, running in Azure, and claim its migrated to Azure is complete.

Microsoft's code name for 64-bit Windows was also a dig at rival Sun

Doug 3

It was the dirty trick of licensing Win32 to a handful of UNIX software dev houses so they could license out the Win32U libraries allowing a Win32 codebase to create 'native' UNIX versions which killed Sun and HP's UNIX workstation markets. If you don't know, find all the articles written about Win32U and Bristol Technologies and you'll understand the story of how MS licensed out the Win32 API to get must-have UNIX apps ported to Win32 and then they pulled the rug out from under them all except Bristol Tech so none of the must-have UNIX apps could get version upgrades. Microsoft was well versed in the US court systems so they hired one of the Win32U licensees to port Internet Explorer to Solaris for gobs of money thus funding their ability to pay the massively increased licensing fee which killed all the others.

Microsoft touts Visual Studio Code as a Java juggernaut

Doug 3

How do they know 2.5 million MS VS Code users are doing Java projects? Did they do a survey or something?

And really, who would even trust a Microsoft development IDE near Java after all the shady things Microsoft did to divert Java developers to their own proprietary language?

And that tactic was what triggered the fall of Borland which was a well respected software development vendor. Sure it's all old news but it is the same Microsoft.

Just look at the tricks they are playing to lock out developers on Windows from using non-Microsoft cloud services.

That zebra has the same stripes today as it had 30 years ago.

Tenfold electric vehicles on 2030 roads could be a shock to the system

Doug 3

Re: No shit

Distributed solar(roof top) and storage(battery/inverters) are the solution but that empowers the public and removes the utility companies from having total control of the electric power system.

Can't have centralized distribution threatened because too many local, state and federal governments have investments in those utilities they keep allowing to charge more and more when the solution is distributed energy generation and storage.

Doug 3

Re: No shit

If only there were something like rooftop solar and battery storage which would greatly offset home peak energy usage during "peak" demand but they haven't invented that yet.

Oh wait, that already exists. Too bad public managed utilities are allowed to limit distributed solar and battery storage while collecting billions to add centralized solar and storage which do NOTHING to help with the local xformer loading.

Microsoft opens sources ThreadX under MIT license

Doug 3

Re: Before the flood...

Not generally into replying to anonymous posts but since the author did here goes.

Microsoft has always gone to great lengths to find and keep ways of measuring market penetration of threats to its market share. It's been said many many times that Microsoft is a marketing company first and a technology company second. They have not been able to get Windows on the Raspberry Pi in any way such that it affects the flow of Windows users and developers to learning Linux because of some Raspberry Pi project or interest(robotics and AI are things these days). So it would not surprise me if there weren't mechanisms in the purchase of Express Logic which would have given Microsoft bean counters a stream of numbers showing monthly sales of Raspberry Pis.

I'm reminded of a lawsuit Microsoft was in years ago where a company had originally licensed some small bit of software from Microsoft, it became obsolete but Microsoft refused to release the vendor from the per-unit license no matter if they shipped with or without the software. The income from the license was miniscule but it's real value was knowing exactly the sales numbers of the product tied to the license.

Or they just wanted Lamie or both. But somehow his lawyers were some of the only ones in history to have outsmarted Microsoft lawyers and the contract's fine print had the escape clause they missed.

Anyone tied to the purchase missing from Microsoft's employee roster at the time of Mr Lamie's departure?

Doug 3

I've followed Neucleus, ThreadX and Lamie for years and the MS purchased curious as to their motivation. They're moves have generally been market blocking protectionism at its best.

I had not noticed that ThreadX was in all the rPi OS images upto v4 and seeing how Microsoft has seen the rPi as a thorn in its side for years it might have been all it took to get the purchase approved.

Think about it, Micrsoft purchased Express Logic/ThreadX in April 2019 and the Raspberry Pi foundation released the Raspberry Pi v4B+ in June of 2019.

I don't know if Microsoft has insiders in the Raspberry Pi Foundation but it could be someone didn't do the work needed to know there'd soon be no way to track rPi sales numbers and licensing fees but for the older versions. And worst, no strings attached to the new products.

All speculation on my part based on the history of Microsoft's attacks on products which moved developers to the Linux APIs as opposed to being trapped in Micrsoft Windows APIs.

Either way, ThreadX appears useless to them and Bill Lamie walked away smiling and continues geeking out on his next embedded RTOS project.

USB Cart of Death: The wheeled scourge that drove Windows devs to despair

Doug 3

What was left out of the story was the OS/2 Warp 4 PC on the cart which was used to show how USB support was supposed to work.

IIRC, USB support was added to OS/2 Warp 3 as a free update, not a new release of the OS. But the upgrade treadmill was in full swing at Microsoft.

Vote now on who should take the lead in Musk: The Movie

Doug 3

a vote for Lewis Black

I was thinking Lewis Black would make a quite amusing Elon.

Microsoft calls time on Windows Insider MVP program

Doug 3

Maybe because it's not impossible to be a developer and drink only 100% pure Microsoft KoolAid. Even Microsoft can no longer drink only their own KoolAid and has Linux running inside of Windows on many of its expanding services. Being loyal to Microsoft as much as you had to be to become a MVP member means cutting off your businesses legs and arms so it's no wonder the MVPs are few and far between.

Their Marketing Programs are still going strong though so the promotion of Microsoft based anything can still become a revenue stream for many ISVs and corporate devs.

CEO Satya Nadella thinks Microsoft hung up on Windows Phone too soon

Doug 3

sounds like some's still dreaming of what could have been instead of what happened.

Because it had nothing to do with Windows CE( aka WinCE ) and was only about the Microsoft Windows Phone OS which was a renaming game years after WinCE became a joke. Later, the Microsoft Windows Phone OS was migrated away from the WinCE codebase but how many decades do they get at failure?

WinCE was only created to kill PalmOS and was successful via massive expenditure of bags and bags marketing money dumped on doorsteps of Windows desktop OS licensee's. After that success it was pushed as a media player in the early age of MP3 players but about 5 years of memory leaking APIs, switching APIs and forced developer tool changes other MP3 players made it to market while WinCE versions floundered. Apple iPod killed the WinCE market and became the standard MP3 player to have.

When Apple grew the iPod to a bigger screen with the iPod Touch it was a no brainer to make a phone out of it. Handspring had shown that a phone built into a good PDA can be quite useful. So along comes the iPhone and Googles entry of Android purchase is quickly switched to the full screen design. Along comes Microsoft again with WinCE devices made into a phone OS but again they are dictating size, resolution, etc instead of letting developers innovate. You know, like they control all aspects of the desktop computer UI turning PC vendors into hardware assemblers. They were once both hardware and software vendors creating lots of desktop productivity enhancements vi UI applications.

Talking only about how the last version of Microsoft's phone OS, the Windows Phone phone OS died is lame since its death started almost two decades before that.

Maybe they should post a disclaimer that the interview was about dreams they had and not reality.

Intel stock stumbles on report Nvidia is building an Arm CPU for PC market

Doug 3

Re: What's with

Or maybe Microsoft has approached them with a few million dollars to pay them to do it because a whole shit load of developers are growing up using Linux on ARM in robotics around the world and that has been leading to Linux on their Windows based PCs. You do know that Microsoft knows exactly the number of times you run WSL and which applications you are running right?

My guess is that it's Microsoft funding this move by NVidia and AMD. Who knows, maybe it'll be originally only for gaming PCs with a new Windows OS and game engine optimized for ARM with NVidia and AMD GPUs. Either way, follow the money and it'll probably lead to Redmond.

Doug 3

I wonder why it's not popular then if it works and run fine. Is it just the OS which runs fine but running any applications requires lots more RAM than is typical of an ARM solution today?

Or is there some other reason why many are not running power sipping ARM boards aren't running Windows all over the place?

Attorney sues Microsoft for $1.75M, claiming his email has been useless since May

Doug 3

well, maybe this lawyer should try another email system as soon as access is restored. Maybe this one will send a message:

https://docs.linuxfoundation.org/lfx/my-profile/know-your-individual-dashboard/about-me/email-management/purchasing-linux-email

Microsoft has made Azure Linux generally available. Repeat, Azure Linux

Doug 3

Re: Azure

I don't believe that comment, "for the myriad workloads engineers were running on Azure" was about only Microsoft engineers. The world+dog have been moving to Linux year on year and their cloud platform would stall without supporting Linux.

First ever 64-bit version of Windows rediscovered … and a C compiler for it too

Doug 3

Re: ...the people creating NT were poached from DEC

Weren't the Cairo projects in response to the Taligent project at IBM and Apple? So much amazing capabilities died on the vines when that battle played out and as many times before it, death by Microsoft resulted in none of the innovations moving forward in the consumer or business software sector.

Not to mention how virtual machine software for running Windows on other OS's ended up saving Windows in the server room. Prior to virtual machine software, Windows OS and software constantly imploding meant EVERY business service was a two-server setup. The business expense of all these Windows server and all the people to support them had many starting to wonder why they moved from UNIX. The consolidation virtual machines enabled solved the problem of corporate IT expenses pulling the whole business down.

OpenDoc, Bento filesystem, Taligent, CORBA, etc were game changers but being cross platform made them all a Microsoft target.

Arca Noae is modernizing OS/2 Warp for 21st century PCs

Doug 3

Re: MS still playing catch-up

"Windows still way behind some of the features in the Workplace Shell."

And Linux too. It pains me so much to still have to deal with the fact that every application has a little file system viewer built-in so that you can open and save content. The Template system used in the WPS and the desktop metaphor was so seamlessly familiar to how our brains manage physical data storage it just felt like the right way to do things.

Of the things I wish survived from the days of OS/2 Warp, Taligent, OpenDoc, etc I wish the Workplace Shell survived. The attack on Netscape really was one of the key turning points since it took years before anyone took Mozilla serious and so Microsoft's Internet Explorer became THE standard for businesses and that also meant only Windows thrived.

OpenDoc is the 2nd thing I wished had survived since it would have opened up the ISV market to include tons of specialized component vendors instead of every ISV having to recreate world plus dog in every application.

Running OS/2 back in the day allowed me to not only run OS/2, DOS and Win16 or Win32s applications, it also allowed me to run *nix applications including XWindow applications via XFree86 and EMS(?). For a time, I developed UNIX apps on my OS/2 machine and later ported them(recompiled) to run on full blown UNIX workstations. And the ability to run so many other OS APIs felt seamless. Not like running in a VM sandbox.

Google datacenters use 'a quarter of all water' in one US city

Doug 3

Re: Cost

I wonder how they are getting away with that in California or do they not have any data centers in California.

.NET open source is 'heavily under-funded' says AWS

Doug 3

Re: Waste of money

yes and it's all about the fools who drank the Microsoft coolaide and instead of using open standards for their applications they continued with Microsofts "new and greatest thing since sliced bread" marketing trick called Microsoft .Net. It was promoted as was Win32 back in the day when Microsoft temporarily licensed Win32 to UNIX software vendors and then pulled the rug out from under them.

Suckers have money too and Amazon wants some from those who realized Microsoft's cloud sucks.

A match made in heaven: systemd comes to Windows Subsystem for Linux

Doug 3

Re: Better idea.

"Don't get me wrong, I'm a UNIX/Linux guy at heart, but there are good solid reasons for running a Windows server and desktop system"

Job security. Always something to fix with Microsoft. Always.

In Rust We Trust: Microsoft Azure CTO shuns C and C++

Doug 3

If only there were ways for companies to implement processes and procedures to help protect their software from developer neglect in the design and implementation phases. It must be something nobody has thought of yet or else Microsoft would have been doing this with their OS developers for decades. It has been over 25 years since desktop computers have been connected to the Internet and every new version of Microsoft Windows is pushed as being the most secure OS or at least the most secure version of Windows.

But maybe it's better to just quickly try to hide the fact they have failed at building a development system which puts security as a priority and point to the shiny new thing which will surely save all of us and be the next greatest toaster.

Microsoft is pretty funny since they've become the platform also-ran.

Get over it: Microsoft is a Linux and open source company these days

Doug 3

They had no choice

They tried to extinguish Linux and spent hundreds of millions of dollars attempting it with marketing ads( Get the Facts ), by funding SCO to threaten anyone who uses Linux, their deal with OpenSuse and Netware along with sweet licensing deals when their threats failed and they used financial incentives to move the targeted company back to Microsoft software. But it didn't work as companies were getting strangled by Microsoft based IT department budgets and they had no money to move forward so their developers were bringing in Linux and developing solutions at a fraction of the cost it would have taken on Microsoft's platform.

They put a version of Linux inside of Windows so they could keep track of who was doing what because they lost all accounting when Linux was on the iron AND when it was running in a VM. Azure was showing them it was the Linux stack which customers were running instead of Windows stacks so again, Microsoft had no choice but to bend. They are bending further by purchasing things like github, pushed out Atom for VC Code etc. Embrace, Extend, Extinguish still exists only they can't Extinguish like they used to so the Extend part is getting massive push because when it's not longer looking like the original open source stack, it's a Microsoft stack they can once again control and direct developers towards running only on Windows Desktop or Server and ties into Microsoft's other software APIs.

So yes, Microsoft is an open source company these days but they have not changed and it is all about Windows, "does anyone remember Windows?" is still ringing in the halls at MS HQ even without Bill Gates to say it.

Gtk 5 might drop X11 support, says GNOME dev

Doug 3

Re: Gnome devs who drank the Wayland coolaid...

I think this is being brought up so that Linux fits better inside of a Microsoft Windows subsystem for Linux.

Cripple the Linux desktop and then it'll work just as good in Windows as directly on the metal.

Gnome constantly does what makes Linux suck instead of doing what makes Linux great. It's as if it's run by Microsoft fanbois or something.

Doug 3

who made this comment

It sounds like something an MS-Gnome developer would say. It would be listed under the heading: What things can we do to make user experiences worst?

Jeffrey Snover claims Microsoft demoted him for inventing PowerShell

Doug 3

How Microsoft operates internally reminds me of how Trump operates. If you are not making Windows look good then you are Fake News( bad for Microsoft and bad for Windows ). No doubt PS acted too much like the *nix commandline even if more in intent than execution. Linux is bad because it is not Windows and anything which validates something other than Windows makes Windows look bad. Trumpanze thinking and this thinking has been instilled in Microsoft management ever since their split from IBM.

GNOME, Mono, Xamarin founder Miguel de Icaza leaves Microsoft

Doug 3

Re: On that note...

Stephen Elop is at Digital.ai as CEO and on their BoD too.

Eclipse boss claims Visual Studio Code is an open-source poseur – though he would say that, wouldn't he?

Doug 3

Re: But it is quite good!

Regarding PlatformIO, when I first started using it Atom was still the default editor but I was thrown off by all the flags being waved saying that VSCode editor was preferred over Atom. Something smelled fishy about how aggressive the warnings were. Then Microsoft purchases Github.com and quite quickly Atom is pushed off the cliff.

Something just seems odd about how much effort and how much money Microsoft is putting into getting ties to open source developers. And I'm really surprised nobody's yet done a DeepFake of Satya Nadella jumping around on stage yelling Developers, Developers, Developers. Microsoft doesn't have a benevolent card in its deck, so there is a plan we've not seen or exposed yet.

A Snapdragon in a ThinkPad: Lenovo unveils the X13s

Doug 3

This is clearly a Microsoft funded design so thinking that Qualcomm or Lenovo will do any work on their own(unfunded) to ship a version with Linux( if it is even allowed ) is what's called a pipe dream.

Doug 3

Re: Seduced and abandoned by yet another attempt at a non-x86 Windows?

I couldn't help but think this is all because there are so many with the Apple M1 systems showing great performance and battery life while their Microsoft Windows friends look sadly at their mains connected hotbox running Windows. And there's all the ARM news with systems running Linux doing robotics and thousands of other tasks and their Windows running friends look at their x86 hardware with a heatsink the size of a grapefruit and battery 2x that size. Surely Microsoft has to show something with Windows running on ARM. This laptop is for all those Windows users looking next to them seeing their buddies doing amazing things on ARM hardware without Windows.

It'll probably get a $100 million in marketing dollars or maybe even $200 to show the world Microsoft can do ARM too. And then it will fade and Microsoft execs check off the box for another 5 years.

What do you mean, 'Microsoft doesn't care about Windows on Arm'? Here's a cheap, underpowered test rig

Doug 3

Re: Forethought?

"M$ and ARM are working on a proprietary ARM chip optimized for Windows."

Is this is why NVidia is trying to purchase ARM. ie maybe to flush it down the toilet for Microsoft and with Microsoft's funding behind it?

HP's solution to running GPU-accelerated Linux apps on high-end Z workstations: Rely on Microsoft's WSL2

Doug 3

HP is a Microsoft shill, solution is moronic

So put Windows on the machine for the NVidia drivers and then run Linux in a VM to access the GPU?

That is so freak'n moronic I can't believe anyone is buying into this.

Why not put a version of Linux on it with the latest supported NVidia driver supported and then let the user run things like Docker, VMs, etc with GPU passthru.

Oh right, HP is a Microsoft shill. They really should have lead with that instead of putting it all the way at the end of the very long windowed artcle.

Windows Subsystem for Android: What's the point?

Doug 3

Re: Subsystems for everyone

Wasn't there an IBM and Apple OS which was designed to run OS personalities? If you ran Mac OS native you could run Windows and IBM OS/2 personalities seamlessly. Likewise if running OS/2 as the host the Mac and Windows personalities could be run. I think the actual OS personalities were hidden and what you were supposed to get is seamless windowing of apps.

All on PowerPC hardware at the time. CHRP comes to mind.

But Microsoft is not interested in that. They must have Windows dominating the corporate office and back office even if it requires them to provide ways to run and monitor other virtualized OS's. They will have their marketing department figure some special little thing they'll add to their version of the virtualization and tell them customers this is why they should run MS-Linux or MS-Android, etc on their Windows subsytem for X, Y, Z.

Microsoft: Behold, at some later date, the next generation of Windows

Doug 3

Re: Where are the walls?

so Microsoft will not add MS-chocolate_bar for WSL and make sure every user of WSL knows it's there and really tasty? Oh and BTW, MS-chocolate_bar for WSL only runs within WSL.

Nah, Microsoft would never do that, they have never done anything like that before. LOL

ignorance is bliss, enjoy it while you can.

Microsoft revokes MVP status of developer who tweeted complaint about request to promote SQL-on-Azure

Doug 3

Re: Good for him!

They have been doing this for decades. Research on how Microsoft got their MS Office Open Document Format an ISO standard for just one example. Hint: they asked partners to become voting members of ISO around the world, funded them and provided statements they should use in the meetings.

Microsoft is 50% marketing, 20% software development, 30% bullshit.

Dev creeped out after he fired up Ubuntu VM on Azure, was immediately approached by Canonical sales rep

Doug 3

LOL, naive dev didnt think Microsoft would sell his information

Spinning it like it was Ubuntu's fault but AZURE is Microsofts game and they are the ones who sold off the contact information.

Blaming Canonical is pathetic.

Barbs exchanged over Linux for M1 Silicon ... lest Apple's lawyers lie in wait

Doug 3

Re: What am I missing here?

but remember, each iDevice keeps you playing in the iWorld and purchasing more iProducts. So there is a motivation to keep said iDevice hardware running iSoftware.

Microsoft to rethink crash-prone Visual Studio extension model, shift towards cloud

Doug 3

Re: Extensions are "difficult to write"

Aren't they the professional software development company which invented ActiveX controls?

For a technology company they sure seem to suck at writing software but we already knew that since UNIX and even Linux were stable OS's back in the 1990s while Microsoft was still rewriting how the Ctl-Alt-Del buttons were used and picking the color of the crash screen. Now, we see them leveraging open source software to replace their failed attempts( Internet Explorer -> MS Edge built off of WebKit ).

Relying on this company and their treadmill is one way to keep paying the bills if you are a software developer and like things breaking all the time. Or you work in IT support. Once I'd switched customers over to Linux I was feeling like the "Maytag Repairman".

Xen Project officially ports its hypervisor to Raspberry Pi 4

Doug 3

Can you imagine a Beowulf Cluster of one of these!

Chrome suddenly using Bing after installing Office 365 Pro Plus... Yeah, that might have been us, mumbles Microsoft

Doug 3

Re: Antitrust

Yes, it was so hard to see that check box to install Chrome right there on the dialog box above all other dialog boxes. Nothing like how easy it is to find the check box buried in the Microsoft Windows Registry or in the admin tools folder with thousands of other options.

How dare Google have that option put right there in the installation process instead of buried in some other software settings page of another tool. Soooo evil!

Good news – America's nuke arsenal to swap eight-inch floppy disks for solid-state drives

Doug 3

Re: Is it really obsolete ...

New requirements are that it must have virus protection and recent contracts state that can only be supplied by Microsoft. Therefore, they have to get a Microsoft Windows box and because of that it also needs to be on the Internet for updates for both the OS and the virus protection. What could possibly go wrong?

Microsoft's only gone and published the exFAT spec, now supports popping it in the Linux kernel

Doug 3

tracking every one

Microsoft is famous for tracking what their competition is doing. This sounds like yet another way for them to try and track what Linux distributions are doing.

Still waiting for them to apologize to Barnes & Noble and the many others they threatened because of fake patent claims.

Microsoft Surface users baffled after investing in kit that throttles itself to the point of passing out

Doug 3

User: My Windows computer is running slow.

Tech Support: Have you rebooted the computer recently?

User: it's a Microsoft Slate

Tech Support: Have you forced a shutdown and restart recently?

User: yes, I've shutting down both applications and I have shut down and restart Windows and it slows down again after a few hours.

Tech Support: You should reboot while holding down the ESC and F1 keys and when the menu pops up chose option 2, Restore Operating System

User: but won't that replace everything on my computer.

Tech Support: Yes, that's why it is there.

Tech Support: Is there anything else I can help you with?

User: Will this thing run Linux?

The Year Of Linux On The Desktop – at last! Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 brings the Linux kernel into Windows

Doug 3

Just use VmWare and get the real thing

Instead of screwing around with Microsoft compatibility and kernel tweeks just use the real thing via VmWare Workstation and be done with it.

Who doing Linux web or other development would keep getting jerked around with partial implementations and who knows what kinds of under the hood hooks they are adding? Virtual machines have been around for a long long time and they work so if you have to run a host on MS Windows, use a vm to run Linux and get back to work.

Is this cuttlefish really all that cosmic? Ubuntu 18.10 arrives with extra spit, polish, 4.18 kernel

Doug 3

Re: "the system has a more modern and 'flatter' look"

Yup, Microsoft has had to go flat to lower CPU and GPU loads to help with battery life. If you don't recall, Microsoft Windows on portables has always been a big battery hog compared to all other OS's. So with Microsoft going "flat" that seems to be what some people think is "modern".

Linux distros should always stand up and stand out for what's better. Following Microsoft is never a good thing.

Microsoft to make Ubuntu a first-class guest under Hyper-V

Doug 3

Redhat

let me guess, trying to split away some of the power Redhat has by promoting Ubuntu.

Not a surprise but generally Microsoft just wants to be able to keep track of what their customers are doing. If some are migrating machines to Linux then they would rather they migrated in a way which allows them to track what is going on. A full on removal of Windows is what they have been willing to do illegal things to prevent. Probably some of the same going on here.

Stephen Elop and the fall of Nokia revisited

Doug 3

Re: "Elop's time at Nokia cost him his marriage, don't forget."

No, the collapse of Nokia happened too slowly since Elop had to have the plan to deliver Nokia to Microsoft.. It just took longer than they planned and so the result was less time at home, etc, etc.

If there was any other motivation for Elop than there was a complete and utter failure in the Nokia board to understand who they were hiring to run the company. I mean you don't publicly announce your OS being shipped on millions of phones each day is being replaced with incompatible software and OS. A department store manager knows that sales will plummet immediately. You don't pick that new OS to be one with single digit market share even after the company making the OS has spent billions marketing it. And you don't say that using the most dominant OS, which is open source and free, is no choice because nobody can make money competing when there were dozens of companies making profits doing just that.

You don't do those things. That is unless you want to harm the company enough to make it a tasty choice for Microsoft to purchase. And BTW, people were saying this since day one of his hiring at Nokia.

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