Posts by ThomasW

Back off, Siri! Microsoft debuts Halo beauty Cortana

"Cortana .. powered by Bing.. understands the entire internet. You could say she understands everything about the world." -- Joe Belfiore, corporate VP of Microsoft's operating systems group.

What a bloated sack of sales shit this guy is.

New Development. Where do we go?

Re: Go C#

Microsoft stack is "okay", but proprietary & will cost you (up to mega-bucks) in license fees. Many many enterprise level applications are built in Java, as it runs from desktop to server up to mainframe.

I wouldn't build an enterprise level app in Microsoft.

I will note that Microsoft copied C# and the "virtual machine" almost entirely off Java, originally, and that major libraries like Hibernate and JUnit were invented for Java -- then ported. The poster is wrong -- Eclipse is one of the best & most powerful IDEs ever made. Java was the first modern language, and has advanced constantly.

Have a look at the recruitment ads. You should consider Java and open-source platforms, but definitely not rule out Microsoft. MS are still a major player, but the days of proprietary lock-in are ending.

A proper development stack would look like:

- HTML, CSS and jQuery for the front-end

- Tomcat (Java, free, excellent, globally used web-container) or IIS (proprietary, buggy & difficult)

- Java or C# (either is fine)

- Hibernate or Hibernate.Net (persistence layer)

- PostgreSQL, FireBird, MySQL or SQLite (database)

Open standards, non-proprietary technology & open-source enable a vast amount of intellectual innovation, technological development & advancement. (As well as making it possible to clearly see & debug everything). MS can only try & counter this with "fear, uncertainty & doubt".

It costs $450 in marketing to make someone buy a $49 Nokia Lumia

Slashing prices in desperation

Nokia's recent price cut on their flagship phones, betrays utter desperation. They're burning over a billion dollars a quarter, while still trying to establish a range.. which is about to be rendered obsolete, by the upcoming Windows Phone 8.

The need for Nokia to successfully build, market -- and most of all sell -- a new series of flagship phones, coming off the effective failure of the current generation, places Nokia's recovery strategy & entire business model at risk.

Is this the beginning of the end? Can such a company still survive?

Nokia drops Lumia 900 price to $0 in response to bug outrage

Enjoy famous Windows 3.1 & outdated, unreliable C++ engineering!

Hey, it's <MS>. They don't know how to write secure or reliable code -- witness the appalling engineering practices they teach in *every single* MSDN example.

Google enjoy elegant code & map-reduce, I like OO composition & the strategy pattern, Microsoft are stuck back in 1983 at the IF statement with a hell of C-structs and undiagnosable pointer errors.

Didn't you notice how their advertising promised 'snappy performance'?

Where Google and Apple run LLVM or JVM virtual-machine opcodes, giving a fairly reliable & secure system.. Microsoft by comparison has unleashed its most junior team of Windows 3.0 C++ hacks. And you will suffer :-(

Blue screen of death, enjoy it on your Windows Phone, malware, viruses, coming here! Step right right up.

Activist supplied illegally obtained docs to DeSmogBlog

Global Warming is real.

Contrary to the "doubt & controversy" line being pushed here, if you go to a University & speak to real scientists you'll find that they almost universally think it's real & are very very concerned about it.

Human civilization extinction- level concern about it, actually.

This is not a minor problem. Sea levels rising 3-5 meters in the first century, then to 20 meters, then to 30-50 meters will wipe out all coastal real estate, cites & vast amount of food production.

Nor is this based on 'modelling'. Sea-level predictions are based on PAST HISTORY of paleoclimate and CO2 levels. This is well established science. Search for 'paleoclimate CO2 sea level', etc.

http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2011/20110118_MilankovicPaper.pdf

http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0804/0804.1126.pdf

Nokia's Brave New World is (almost) Finn-free

Microsoft shouldn't be allowed *near* software.

Sorry, just read any MSDN example -- Microsoft fail most elements of basic software-reliability & engineering practice. Logging, fault reporting, configurability.

And this is what they teach others.

On to business practice & software examples. Subverting and undermining "standards" to try & lock-in customers to their bug-ridden proprietary software. "Active Desktop" as a radical mis-design, turning the desktop into a webpage & HTML into something that "runs".. introducing a whole new galaxy of viruses & malware.

If IE had been written correctly as a *parser* to "view" HTML, not an "executor" which dangerously "runs" HTML, the world would have only about 8 to 10% of the current torrent of viruses & malware.

Back to mobiles & WP7.

The real problem is Microsoft's much-vaunted low processor & power requirements. Basically, the way they get those is by allowing uncontrolled native code to run. Hello viruses & malware, device drivers, DLL version crashes.. all the BS the world hates.

Android doesn't do this, it uses a virtual machine and is likely to be inherently far more reliable & secure. I get good usability & battery life with Android, too -- after 9 hours at work and one or two calls, I still have 82% battery.

Windows 8: Microsoft’s high-stakes .NET tablet gamble

probably a strategy to split the standard.. again.

Microsoft's a**hole strategy is probably to try & split the standard again, to 'join up' & then bastardize and debase it -- to lock people in.

IE is the biggest load of turd, and entry point for 85% of malware & viruses currently on the net -- use Firefox, it's faster, better & more useable anyway. IE can't even listen properly for a Ctrl-T new tab command. Lazy piece of turd.

MSDN is full of ratshit examples, Microsoft don't know how to build software, you couldn't possibly learn proper software techniques from these. Resources, exception handling, logging, reliability.. come to the Java platform and look at Spring, Hibernate, Apache if you want a real industrial platform.