A Prediction
Windows 8 with be adopted by enterprise computing with almost as much enthusiasm as they used to greet Windows Vista.
Posts by Snert Lee
203 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Jul 2007
Microsoft tears the wraps off Windows 8 Enterprise
Pre-release Windows 8 code hits PC makers
Microsoft loses chief software architect Ray Ozzie
Tuesday 19th October 2010 22:40 GMT
MS's New Source of Innovation
Microsoft's next source of innovation will be a reality show/competition called Innovate!, or Die!
Loser's will be treated to a demonstration of just how much damage Steve Ballmer can coax out of a standard office chair, while winner's will go on to make promo ads where they take credit for specific OS features that Microsoft would prefer not to be responsible for.
Microsoft ID guru slams 'duplicitous' Apple
Apple app police anoint un-Flash code translation
Dead Pink phone fallout hits Microsoft's top brass
Saturday 10th July 2010 05:28 GMT
Synergy Denied
Well, poot. I had hoped, in my ignorance, that there would be some sort of amazing controller synergy to be announced between the Kin phone and the Kinect input device. Seems hard to believe that two similarly named devices could be introduce by the same company in the same time frame and have nothing in common than the name.
Fusion reactor eats Euro science budgets
Secret forum reveals Oz firewall backroom dealing
Facebook farms out 'social graph' to Microsoft and chums
Facebook prepares for another privacy row with its users
Tuesday 30th March 2010 09:05 GMT
Some highlights
Payment info to be stored on opt-out basis, instead of opt-in, but they will allow you to delete it after it's been stored.
"Authorize" becomes "connect with".
"Facebook-enhanced applications" becomes "applications on Platform"
Removes suggestion to review default settings.
In the Rights and Responsibilities document:
Adds "You will not create more than one personal profile. ", so get your sockpuppets built now.
Adds prohibition against inciting violence. Take that, Tea Party.
If you cancel an ad you've bought, you owe them for showing it between the time you cancel and the time they actually stop.
FB claims to own the words Face, Poke, Wall, and the number 32665.
MSI tells 97,000 customers to 'Read The F***ing Manual'
Dedicated Vi device vies for buyers
Whatever happened to the email app?
Monday 8th March 2010 21:57 GMT
In the good ol' days...
In the old, old days, the only email client was system supplied, whether it was a user hostile thing layered over EMACS, such as was on the System360 in the late '80s (the program's name has been blotted from memory but the terminal client of choice was Kermit), or a BOFH inspired tendency to delete anything it regarded as too old (pine on HP-UX in the same era). There wasn't a choice of email client as such, just a set of step for downloading the text files.
The in the merely old days, along comes commercial ISPs, and you use a client because you want to receive email, not just have an address. Then usable web clients began to appear, and you still needed an email client to download and archive.
Today, unlimited storage is the norm and, for the casual user, there's just no compelling reason to have a stand alone client, until something terrible happens and all their data goes poof.
Where the icon for nostalgic reminiscings?
Is it ta-ta for Flash?
Thursday 4th March 2010 23:15 GMT
But really...
Does Steve Jobs care about the technical perfection, or lack thereof, of Flash? Or does he want to close an uncontrollable content hole?
Further, it makes me curious if Apple has some sweetheart licensing deal on H.264, as in they're already paid up forever, or better yet, so invested they might see returns off wider adoption.
Climategate hits Westminster: MPs spring a surprise
Tuesday 2nd March 2010 22:37 GMT 
Climate changes.
Climate changes. I don't think anyone really denies this. (Which is what makes the "denialist" label so irksome that it tends to provoke increased response, instead of the "sit down and shut up" reaction that comes from better ad hominem attacks.)
Why, how much, and will it change back are the real questions, but any answers more refined than lots of reasons, some, and probably open the door to debate.
No doubt, lots of amazing deductive techniques have been developed in the efforts to document climate history, and in analyzing the components of climate and weather. But for each part so far that's been reduced to something more concrete that statistical probability, there's a glob of iffy speculation gluing it to the next data point in the AGW/sky-is-falling-and-it's-all-our-fault tapestry.
Proponents of this point of view seem to be willing to gloss over the cumulative effects of serial what-iffing because, hey, if the sky really is falling then it's for our own good, right?
But, with the advent of An Inconvenient Truth, climate science let the marketing department take over public relations. Instead of duly noting milestones of discovery and understanding, the science was sold, an active campaign to change the average consumer's awareness of, and opinion about, these matters, this global warming, later rebranded to the more flexible climate change.
Accuracy is not the sales guys' primary concern. They have been known to stretch the truth and exaggerate the occasional embellishment, as long as they make the sell. Or in this case, as long as public opinion is changed. And if they gather agreement by allowing the public to misunderstand, well hey, they didn't lie, exactly, and it's for our own good, isn't it?
My personal beef with it is that, in the long run, these tactics undermine science, not just climate science, but all science.
Like most disputes, I am sure it will be easier to resolve by adding more light, not more heat.
Forgot your ThinkPad password? Get new hardware
Tuesday 2nd March 2010 20:10 GMT
Why
Because, if you're under warranty and you've forgotten the supervisor password, then the solution is to come up with different reason to get the systemboard exchanged under warranty. ZeroStat, anyone?
So rather than provide an easy fix for a security-thru-obscurity situation, Lenovo ensures an expensive fix.
Motorola Droid - the not quite iPhone killer
Wednesday 24th February 2010 22:09 GMT
me2 4droid
Got one. Like it a bunch. Only have two beefs with it so far.
One is somewhere about two months after they came out in the US, the default behavior was changed so that bringing up the soft keyboard in landscape orientation became more difficult. But a pleasant little thing called Home++ took care of that and brought some other nice feature, too.
The other is the waiting for Android 2.1 to drop. I think it'll raise the over all level of polish on the Droid, and am looking forward to it.
Favorite app? Nethack. A bit awkward, sure, but none too difficult if you're familiar with terminal or PC versions.
Best battery drainer? Parallel Kingdom. An interesting idea, but anything that works the GPS a bunch also quickly drains the battery, Full charge is good for about 90 minutes of play. (A full charge would probably keep Nethack going for several days at least.)
Echelon computers can't cope with bad lines
Thursday 18th February 2010 00:56 GMT
Incongruent coincidence?
So while Google, recently partnering with the NSA, makes steady progress improving its voice to text/voice recognition services, ...
And at the same time the Dept of Justice is arguing in a federal appeals court that citizens don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy, with regard to both content and location, on mobile phones because they've seen movies where the gov't eavesdrops on mobile phones ...
Darpa jumps up and says don't worry, none of that stuff really works anyways?
umm... color me skeptical.
'Electronic fags' are useless - US prof's startling claim
Opera plays chicken with Apple iPhone police
Friday 12th February 2010 18:31 GMT
Now with More Cloud
Since the server is the browser engine and the phone piece is just the display, doesn't that mean that Opera now has the cloudiest browser available?
On the other hand, it also puts the Opera servers in the prime spot for adding some user focused advertising to whatever pages are passing through.
Prisoners chucked off Facebook
Friday 12th February 2010 16:57 GMT
rights for those convicted of wrongs
Your mileage may vary, especially when measured in kilometers, but anyways...
But around here, if your convicted of a felony, you don't have much in the way of rights. Depending on the state you're in, this condition can persist for a number of years even after the sentence is served, until a formal process for the restoration of rights has been performed.
Adobe apologizes for festering Flash crash bug
Wednesday 10th February 2010 20:41 GMT
no crash
IE7.0.5, FF3.5.1, Flash 10.0.42.34, bluebox.swf
No crash. IE7 is rather stubborn about opening the flashcrash page in two tabs of the same window, but aside from that, no ill effects. (It's not that IE7 won't open the flashcrash in two tabs, but that the second tab takes 10 - 20x longer to load than the first tab did.)
FF had no problems with it.
Google (Voice) solves universal translation soonish
Bishop Hill: Gonzo science and the Hockey Stick
Monday 8th February 2010 20:19 GMT
For example
A post that appears as a rebuttal, yet contains no facts or contrary arguments. It merely attempts to cast aspersions of bias on both the author and the subject of the article. It does not attempt to shed light or foster understanding. Its only goal is to shutdown discussion of the favored topic.
I call this a faith based argument because it relies on nothing beyond the poster's feeling for what's right and what's not. Remarkably, most folks who make faith based arguments are convinced that their expressed opinion is not faith based, but merely draws upon well known facts which anyone, if right thinking and properly informed, need not have referenced.
It's a bit like saying, "People who agree with me already know I'm right, whereas people who disagree with me are either misinformed or delusional, because if they weren't, then they'd agree with me."
Carly Fiorina unleashes 'demon sheep'
Sunday 7th February 2010 10:39 GMT
almost works
It's a bad ad because the intro pretty much requires you to already have an opinion on the other guy to get the joke, which means the uninformed probably won't take the hook. And FCINO will never work without a catchy way to say, like RINO and DINO and ... fuh'psy-no ? Or maybe with a hard C like fuh'k-eye-no.
Would make better ads for HP than their Harry Potter typography does. Seems to say HP always thinks it's Halloween, or some such.
Obama plagiarist has a legal posse
iPad forces operators to shave their SIMs
Friday 5th February 2010 16:36 GMT
function and form
The etsi.org seems to prefer a space between the mini or micro and sim.
Is the U in USIM supposed to stand for micro, a la greek lettering conventions?
Aside from that, it appears that features are not a function of form factor.
The three different sizes seem to mean nothing more than how much plastic is wrapped around the working bits and contacts.
Apple vs the iPad Bedwetters
Thursday 4th February 2010 23:33 GMT
Market Segments
I suspect that in the long run, ipads will be the hallmark of people with more money, and more desire for the appearance of cool, than good sense. Netbooks can do more for less.
And I think Apple is about to get a comeuppance in the near future when Adobe tells them Apple can either figure out how to make Flash work, or they can take their tiny market share and shove off.
(k, k, their phone share is more significant than their computer share, but folks are not going to be buying ipads to replace their phones.)
Microsoft wishes it could be a Google number two
Microsoft 'offered sex and drugs to distributors'
California school pulls 'oral sex' dictionary
IT spending to rise in 2010, says Gartner
Second US man admits DDoS attack on Scientology
Super-soldier exoskeleton to get 3-day fuel cell powerpack
US Army's robot kill-chopper chopped
Ex-AMD exec called own company 'pathetic'
Friday 15th January 2010 17:48 GMT
Intel's Argument?
So Intel is saying their predatory monopolistic practices were ok because the victim's former head of sales said they had a poor product?
Is that supposed to excuse bad actions on Intel's part, or just make them look all the sadder because they couldn't compete fairly against AMD even though AMD's products were allegedly awful?
Police cuff citizens for videotaping arrests
Thursday 14th January 2010 19:43 GMT
Reasonable expectations
IANAL, k? And, the devil's in the details, as they say, but...
The whole thing seems to hinge on the concept of reasonable expectations. As suggested by the phrase "two-party consent", the law against secret recording came from folks who, having participated in a one-to-one conversation on the phone, or other private setting, and believing that in that scenario they had a reasonable expectation of privacy, had their expectations upended by the other party, or some third party, making audio recordings of the conversation. In other words, it protects private individuals who believe they are conducting private conversations from having their expectations abused.
However, a police officer, as a public servant who, among other functions, is tasked with creating public documents, tickets, citations, incident reports, arrest reports, etc., would have no basis for forming a reasonable expectation of privacy in the execution of the officer's public duties.
Audio vs visual recording, concealment of microphones, etc. are just red herring issues for derailing the logic train before it pulls into Common Sense Station.
The charge of the alternative gadget chargers
Trouser-bomb clown attacks - how much should we laugh?
Lenovo demos mini laptop with slip-out screen
Friday 8th January 2010 00:04 GMT
heeztory
Tablet is the original term for the form factor used by the iSlate, amongst others. Laptops with rotating displays came about, and were called tablets also, mostly because it was too hard to fit all the necessary bits into the keyboardless form and because the IT industry, when presented with two markets, always tries to pick both.
At one point around that time, Microsoft had a RDP like protocol which would let a user detach the touch or digitizer enabled display from the rest of the system, so you could wander around with the tablet and then come back to the base for sync and recharge.
Welcome to the out-of-control decade
Crypto snafu grounds 3D Avatar screenings in Germany
'CRU cherrypicked Russian climate data', says Russian
Friday 18th December 2009 00:40 GMT
No, no, /you're/ in denial.
I think if you'll look more carefully, you'll see the "denialists" have been steadily gaining momentum for the past four or five years, though they might never have been heard over the hue and cry of the "alarmists" had it not been for the leak of the CRU data and emails.
Data and emails which has really thrown open the question of just who has "years of abusing normal scientific process purely to delay and harass."
At this point in time, it seems like the science of Anthropogenic Global Warming has a lot in common with the Emperor's New Clothes. Can't you see the hockey stick? All the smart and worthy of funding scientists can see it, can't they?
Friday 18th December 2009 00:39 GMT
Science by Consensus
Once upon a time, there was a vast consensus of opinion that said the Earth is the center of the universe and shaped like a pancake. There was considerably more debate on whether the flat earth was held up in space by resting on the backs of giant turtles, elephants, or on elephants who were in turn standing upon giant turtles. This third opinion being, of course, the compromise consensus.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
