* Posts by Mikel

2643 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Oct 2008

HP has another crack at fondleslab market

Mikel
FAIL

Goodbye HP

Nothing interesting in mobile until 2013 and you've seen your folly yet again? It seems you've opted to follow Nokia and RIM into the dark. Oh, well. It was to be expected. Redmond's got you by the short curly ones and they're steering hard.

Asus looks to deliver more of what we want from mobile on 11/9/2011, and others will follow. It's not like if you and Dell won't give us what we want, nobody else will. Not any more. Those days are done. We get what we want no matter what you do.

So farewell and thanks for all the tech.

Google TV receives (much needed) upgrade

Mikel
Thumb Up

Looks cool

Think I'll be getting it. Wish it would link over wifi and let me use the touchscreen on my phone or tablet though, and USB or wireless game controllers. And Market should have a toggle for "Coddle me" and "Leave me choose."

Would be cooler still with Tegra 3 for awesome bigscreen gaming.

Nokia: The first year of the Elopcalypse

Mikel
Devil

New motto

Licking the hand that misleads IT.

El Reg in email address blunder

Mikel
Black Helicopters

No biggie for me

Knew better than to give out my right name for a comment forum anyway. Regrets to all those who lost out on this one.

Leaked Nokia WinMobes ready for midrange scrum

Mikel
FAIL

Lame

The OS can't support multicore, among many other modern features. Retailers don't want it. Nokia died a year ago.

Massive study concludes: 'Global warming is real'

Mikel
Childcatcher

Unanswered question

Is it a bad thing?

No, really. The prior trend was cooling on a course back into the frost. We have seven billion mouths to feed, so that's just not going to work. Sooner or later it will cool again anyway.

For me and mine I vote "later."

Hadoop: A Linux even Microsoft likes

Mikel
Windows

Say it with me now...

Embrace...

Dennis Ritchie: The C man who booted Unix

Mikel
Unhappy

C is a beautiful thing

Brilliant man. We could use more like him.

Win 8 haters are just scared of change, say MS bosses

Mikel
Devil

Stick to your guns, Microsoft

Clearly you know best. These whiners wouldn't know a good UI if it bit their fingers off. Tell the users what they're going to get, and they'll come around to being raving fanatics just like they always have.

Teehee.

Furious HP staff stage protest over job cuts

Mikel
WTF?

One percent per year?

Why do they even need to "announce" this? Is their turnover so low that this level is noteworthy? Why would anybody protest that 1 percent of their coworkers might be redundant? In a dynamic field like tech that number seems unbelievably low.

Amazon's Kindle Fire is sold at a loss

Mikel
Happy

Heard a funny joke I wanted to share

"Windows tablet."

Android's scariest nightmare: resurgently sexy Microsoft

Mikel
Happy

Hilarious

Somebody's slipped Matt a mickey. I hope he's ok in the morning.

Matt, drink lots of water. You're going to be fine.

Microsoft, IBM tussle for tech value runner-up

Mikel
Devil

Ballmer is doing great

I hope he stays put, executing his vision. I like where he is taking the company.

The day he decides to "spend more time with his family" his wealth should double though. That's hardly a just reward for the quality of his service.

Microsoft takes the Android profit, the Wonkas take the pain

Mikel
Facepalm

Speculation

We honestly don't know the full content of these agreements. They are fully covered under Non Disclosure Agreements. For all we know, the net money is flowing the other way as Microsoft gets licenses for other patents across their whole range of software and services and has to pay more for those on balance.

Given the history, to attempt to put a number on these agreements is plain foolishness. The analysts and tech writers know this, but do it anyway. It's all a bunch of nonsense.

Nokia axes another 3,500 jobs

Mikel
FAIL

Turned over EU distributors too

Burned the bridge to retail in europe, and it will need to be rebuilt.

HP networking boss leaves after less than a year

Mikel
Pint

Lots going on at HP right now.

It's going to be an interesting next year for the HP crew.

Microsoft’s Mango update falls from tech tree

Mikel
Go

Ah, launch day. Time to reorg the devs.

This is an odd spin on it... a bunch of folks clamoring for the already announced features and responding to each other that "it's in there." I guess that's one way to call out the feature set without being too obvious a spambot. Subtlety's a nice touch.

Ah, Late summer in Redmond is a happy-sad time. This is the time of year that each Volista gets placed in his "bucket" for the prior year. There are five buckets and each is roughly a fifth of their merry crew. Do well, currently a 1 or 2, and you're well rewarded with bonuses. The middle of the pack gets a little gravy too, but are on notice that they need to step it up. The 4's are in career peril and cannot transfer from the toxic group that finds them unuseful. And our sad last quintile? Some of them receive their news in the presence of HR and are marched promptly off the premises. A few have a few months to put their affairs in order first. The remainder are on career rehab unlikely to last the year. It's a forced curve, meaning that even if they hired only Nobel Laureats who gave their all 90 hours a week for a year, even then a quintile is voted off. Think of it as your thanks from the company that for some (probably political) reason, eventually you'll be labelled "good attrition". Apparently there's a "Young Up Microsoft" campaign rolling now that makes retirement from there unlikely even if you play this game well. But on product launch, to stay true to my Title, there is almost always a development team "reorganization" that scatters the team, best and poorest, throughout the company to prove themselves anew or find themselves the sacrificial lambs next fall. Must be a great place to work.

I'm really looking forward to the outstanding levels of fail to be brought forth in the coming months from this thing. Typical statistical samples survey a few thousands, but by tracking Facebook new users we can get a sample in the millions per week range, as Panglozz (not me) does. If you care to, follow along here: http://j.mp/gl6Fom+ You will find on "Share of New Users" tab, in columns F and G, Windows Phone native client and Windows Phone Facebook client respectively.

Last week's numbers show 0.5 and 0.4 percent and trending down. You will find these numbers in line with credible reports, but out of sync with IDC and Gartner, and they track weekly with instant updates each week so you can see in near-real-time how it's working out. Know future article content in advance! Will this be the version of Windows Phone that finally turns it around and rockets one of these numbers above 2 percent? Or will this much-heralded version suffer the same fate as the similarly trumpeted prior two? Stay tuned.

Microsoft emits WinPhone seduction pack

Mikel
Pint

Moto gives something interesting

The current phone makers could all drop Android in preference for something else - probably as a secret sunset provision of their patent licensing contract. By buying Moto, Android can't be forced out of the mobile OS market by swaying manufacturers in the same way alternatives to Windows are made unavailable on PCs. And if Android phones are available we'll buy them, which makes it suicidal for other handset makers to drop it.

Now Google needs a carrier, preferably one with service in my area. Then I'll never fear being safely googly again.

Mikel
Holmes

What developers need

First and foremost: Buyers for their products. Good luck finding that in Windows Phone.

Microsoft: Mango arrives in two weeks

Mikel
FAIL

"Malware vendors" ?

That was a little snarky even for ElReg and I'm not a WP7 fan. It's fair to call the thing "negligible", but "malware" implies some specific malicious intent against the user rather than negative competitive maneuvers in the marketplace. Maybe "nullware" would be more appropriate, representing market share, developers, and common interest without explicit malice focused on the end user.

WP7 globally had last week 0.5 percent market share of new users: http://j.mp/gl6Fom+. For every Windows Phone that sold 80 Android phones, 50 iPhones, and 40 other phones sold. It's amazing we're even talking about this WP7 thing. How many articles has ElReg had about Samsung's Bada, which has bigger market share? In the last year even Windows Mobile 6.5 phones have sold better, and promise to continue to do so. Where are the articles about the thriving Windows Mobile 6 ecosystem?

This new OS obsoletes all the old phones by supporting front side camera. Retailers have to be ecstatic about that. I bet they can't wait to stand up their unsold stock that isn't moving units against the new inventory that promises to do the same, but has that feature.

Microsoft: No Windows 8 ARM support for x86 apps

Mikel
Happy

Truly delightful.

I've known all along what this was, but dared not say it before it came to fruition, lest I scared them off it. Now they've taken their leap of faith and I can point and laugh - but first to the prior AC...

AC Friday 16th September 2011 00:07 GMT

Intel doesn't make operating systems. There's nothing anticompetitive about optimizing their processors for Google code, any more than there's been anything anticompetitive about optimizing for Microsoft code this last quarter century. Track layers must cooperate with train makers or the freight won't roll.

One might complain if their documentation weren't so appallingly complete, verbose and correct. But I doubt if they made it secret any could call it illegal: we don't have the magic interfaces for WinModems yet, do we?

And on to the subject to hand.

Windows 8 is more properly named after 7&7, the preferred anesthetic of the discotheque barfly to dull the pain of knowing she's going home with whoever's buying. Obviously whoever came up with this idea had had a few.

The OS is Windows 7 desktop (7), with(&) the Windows Phone 7 "Metro" interface (7) - and a couple minor tweaks just for garnish. At least on Intel Architectures it is. So you get the popular desktop OS, with the usability features that have made Windows Phone 7 a runaway hit (yes, that's sarcasm.) Because Microsoft knows that what we crave is their 0.6% market share phone OS on everything. We just don't know it yet because we haven't tried it. They'll alleviate that by making us try it on every desktop and laptop shipped in the world. They're sure this will only increase uptake of their desktop OS as well as secure their passage to the Mobile promised land. Oh my.

On ARM it's just Windows Phone 7, with a few minor tweaks. Microsoft get to claim that the Intel Architecture tablets can run both legacy applications from your desktop and Windows Phone - and they can. They know people will take this (and retail advertisers will milk the ambiguity even more than they) to mean that the much less expensive long battery life W8 ARM tablets also will, when they won't - because they have the SAME NAME. Which leads to confustion, disappointment and mistrust. A perfect way to preserve brand value!

And the Samsung tablet they gave away at BUILD? The best of both worlds (sarcasm again - one mustn't be too subtle on the Internet): A tablet with a full Windows Desktop just like the ones that have been selling by the dozens for years - but with the WP7 "Metro" interface. Because it was the lack of a Windows Phone interface that's kept full Windows tablets from taking off like the iPad did.

In summary, the company has gone schizophrenic, manic and suicidal all on the same day. Looking back it seems like they've been getting sketchier by the year, but when Ballmer only got half his bonus from the Board they just completely lost it. This isn't an Android killer or an iPad killer. It's a Windows killer.

It's going to be a great two years, starting now.

Microsoft bans all plugins from touchable IE10

Mikel
FAIL

0.6% share = nothing of value was lost

Android does flash. People like flash for, er, "web content". You know - the kind the Internet Is For. Android gives you the whole web, on your terms. It doesn't try and tell you what parts of it you should have. I mean, who would put up with that from their phone?

So all this does is make Windows Phone less attractive against Android. If WP were going anywhere our little green mechanical buddy would get a boost from that. But at 0.6% of global sales Windows Phone just doesn't have a gnat's whisker of extra lift to offer Android anyway.

The end of flash? I think not.

RIM profits nearly sliced in half

Mikel

No going back now

This was the point of no return. They could've done Android, but they were too proud. Now it's too late.

Intel-Google love-in leaves MeeGo going nowhere

Mikel
Happy

Not a commitment

At best a second date.

And that's OK. When tech giants pair off it's the rest of us that get no love.

Microsoft touts Windows 8 fondleslabness

Mikel
Pint

It's up early

I'll give it a go tomorrow. The server is groaning already.

A lighter touch would go nicely in a VM.

Intel, Google 'optimize' chips for Android

Mikel
Thumb Up

It is a big deal

The perception of performance in hand with battery life is not just a hardware or software thing. The two teams have to dance together. For a while now ARM platform vendors showed up to dance with Google, but Intel and AMD didn't. That is ending. That is a very big deal.

Best keep it under wraps though, like they did the Intel Macs. Lots of griefers in their midst would like to leak it or shut it down.

Fujitsu Stylistic Q550 Windows 7 tablet

Mikel
FAIL

How clever. Another Windows tablet

With a stylus again even. What with a glut of product in that category on sale unwanted, it's not a task I would put engineers to. But what do I know? Congratulations Fujitsu on your Vision and daring to take tablets down the same old road we don't ever want to see again. Good luck with that.

PC sales tank on fears of Meltdown, Part Deux

Mikel
Pint

Transformer

Still pretending the Asus Transformer doesn't exist, I see. No matter. It's almost time for the Transformer 2, with 5x the horesepower and even better battery life. Better if that is a grand surprise.

The tablet is a PC. And apparently PCs are doing quite well. It's just that they are made to seem not by pundits whose sacred cow is Windows PCs. These folk can't call the iPad a PC, lest they give away that Apple has a full fourth of PC sales now, and the Lion's share of the profits - just as in mobile.

British warming to NUKES after Fukushima meltdown

Mikel
Windows

So the UK has a plan for waste disposal?

Over on the other side of the pond we haven't sorted that yet, and can't "weigh the costs" until we do.

Typo-squatting domains can harvest corporate emails

Mikel
FAIL

Had this happen to me once accidently

Picked a likely name for a blog, set up a site, all mail forward to my regular address.

First day got thousands of emails from servers all over the planet. Turns out some enterprise server backup vendor had mistyped the domain name to send the backup logs to in their example configuration. And end users were using it unmodified. Awkward.

‘We save trips to the library’ – Google

Mikel
Pint

Reaching

Ah, it must be horrible to try to come up with an article that snarkily "bites the hand that feeds IT" when this is the subject. How does one apply piercing wit to the idea that a global company with vast datacenters serving perhaps billions of people, does so without generating any net carbon emissions whatever?

That's quite a challenge, and it's clear you struggled with it. But you have it behind you now, and the next few will be easier.

IBM, 3M glue chips into silicon skyscrapers

Mikel
Thumb Up

Dimension Z here we come

Wait 'till they figure out how to deposit a flat layer of silicon o'ertop of a fabricated wafer. After that it's off to the races again.

IBM opens Power8 kimono (a little bit more)

Mikel
Thumb Up

Thanks for the update

I haven't been interested in the Power line for a decade, but it's good to keep up with what the other kids are doing.

The reminder about the Xeon E5 launch was particularly helpful. That answers the question about "where do we go when one server can virtualize the SMB?" The answer is "Cheap."

The reminder about the impending launch of the 20-22nm node was also nice.

Tablet wars set for Apple vs Amazon head-to-head

Mikel
Pint

Cheap Android tablets sell well

Cheap Android tablets sell well in Brazil, Russia, India and China. That's where nearly half of the people in the world live. They sell so well that hundreds of manufacturers are killing each other with low margins to get market share, or just even a little profit. Some of their output is even leaking out here on eBay. Cheap Android tablets sell well in other places too, but in BRIC they're rocking the world.

Android tablets may be the platform that brings the rest of the world online. It's got everything: low power, long battery life, low cost, high utility, wifi, carryability, hideability. Some of them can be read in harsh sunlight. Yes, the poor response of the resistive displays and low-spec processors make Transformer's poorer cousins unsat for Western use. But if your village has poor or intermittent power and you need to Google how to pump a well or find out if these red bumps on your skin are fatal, you don't care if the thing can play Angry Birds. In a nation of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. To most folks in this world the ability to Google stuff is of far more value than NetFlix, iMovie and GarageBand.

When they come online I, for one, am eager to hear what they have to say - to meet them online and engage with them. They have as many smart people among them as we do, and the global conversation may be improved. I hope we don't scare them off.

And in those nations amongst the few who have good money, the iPad sells well too, as it should - it's nice gear. Where most of the world lives money isn't something easily got for most people so for the rest it's nice there are these other things that can be had that are so useful.

Seven lessons from the HP Touchpad fire sale

Mikel
Pint

Liar, liar?

>Anyone who says they expected the fire sale of HP touchpads to turn into a global gadget grab is a liar.

Did you think to look through the comments thread on the "HP Kills WebOS Tablet thread" before writing that? There you might have found this: http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/1/2011/08/18/hp_kills_webos_tablets_and_phones/#c_1150545

"DrXym: Firesales ahoy → #

Posted Thursday 18th August 2011 22:08 GMT

In HP murders webOS tablets, phones

I think those tablets will be sold eventually. After all they are still tablet devices that more or less do what they say albeit not at a price point that justifies buying them. So they'll get deep discounted to clear them out. I wouldn't be surprised if someone hacks Android onto it at some point either."

Note that the sales hadn't started yet, and several similar posts in there. What do you suppose was meant by those?

Apple shares drop after Jobs resignation

Mikel
Go

Ooh look - prophecy delivers early

Apple has already passed Exxon again to re-take the top of the S&P 500 as of now, and it hasn't even been 48 hours since I wrote that original comment. That crash didn't last long. A lot of people just found their "great time" to get into AAPL, is all this was.

http://247wallst.com/page/real-time-500/

They'll trade back and forth for a while, but by year end the race will be over and Apple will be solidly ahead.

Mikel

Lot of downvotes on that top comment

But dawn broke, and The Street agrees.

Mikel
Pint

Fools and their money.

Apple will exit 2011 on top of every other company in the S&P.

BlackBerry handsets will be able to run Android apps

Mikel
Thumb Up

Android?

Wonder where they got that idea. Good on ya RIM, to not go quietly into the dark. Put up the good fight.

Steve Jobs resigns as Apple CEO

Mikel

Farewell Steve

A class act, Steve Jobs bows out at the top. Maybe as Chairman he'll see the company go on to more great things.

About the patent trolling I don't agree - but if that's all there is to complain about, his success is amazing.

Windows Phone may be cheaper than Android - Inq boss

Mikel
FAIL

Windows Phone 7: 1 percent

Windows mobile is still selling more phones than Windows phone, ten months after being binned. WP7 at 1 percent and falling is already in "other" territory. It's fringe. It is not seing the adoption they had hoped for. Perhaps the persistent "the next version will be good! Trust us!" messaging of their oft-delayed updates has something to do with this.

Meanwhile iOS and Android are shipping, between them, a million phones a day. Leveraging vast app marketplaces and developer bases these two deliver an ecosystem that holds more value than the product when it comes out of the box.

WP7 is toast. Nokia's phones won't sell well either, and the company will collapse. Microsoft will continue to pour money on this bonfire because they dare not give up. But there's nothing to be done. You snooze, you lose.

ARM vet: The CPU's future is threatened

Mikel
Go

Dimension Z

He spins a likely tale. But we are beginning to explore the potential of the vertical dimension. Moore's law is safe enough for a good while.

I like the heterogenous cores idea, as I've said here long ago.

Lenovo chiefs chortle over decision to buy IBM's PC biz

Mikel
Facepalm

Re: Thin margins

@Mondo the Magnificent - As this the overall company's quarterly report, it would include "add-on services, imaging and sysprep" and every other thing and way that Lenovo made money. Microsoft, Intel and AMD marketing monies too. Even after all that, Lenovo earned a profit of $8 on a $400 laptop. And they're happy about that. Ecstatic.

No wonder HP wants out of here. These people are just crazy. When Windows 8 hits this is just going to implode. Much better to get your shareholders to safety while you can. IBM was the bigger winner here, at least getting some money out of selling their PC biz before it was too late and skipping out on exposure to Vista entirely.

HP murders webOS tablets, phones

Mikel
Facepalm

3 players?

@Bugs R Us - You must be joking. How much investment is it going to take over the current level to pull mobile Windows up from 1% market share to something that makes a difference in the real world? $5B a year? 10? Has Microsoft even got enough money to pull this off?

Mikel

Waiting for the woot

This is going to be a screaming deal on geek toys.

Microsoft begins cagey Windows 8 disclosures

Mikel
FAIL

Be still my heart

An entire blog, with daily updates and everything, detailing the lack of information available about a future product? Exquisite. Gather 'round friends! This is the dearth of information we've been waiting our entire lives for.

Has Google wasted $12bn on a dud patent poker-chip?

Mikel
Go

It will all be fine

Let's not get our knickers in a twist. Moto needed a little help, and Google needed some patent mojo. Now together they can show AppleSoft their pimp hand, and we all get neat new Android stuff.

Everybody's a winner.

Google SHOCK! Snaps up Motorola phone biz for $12.5bn

Mikel
Thumb Up

Google has no interest in physical products.

They will take the patents, license them back to MMI and spin the freestanding company back out so fast nobody will have time to change their voicemail greeting.

IBM PC daddy: 'The PC era is over'

Mikel
Pint

30 years is a generation

It was a good run. You did well, PC. Now it's time for a party and a gold watch to remember us by. Head down the to tav and take up corner stool and you can wow the crowd with tales of how things used to be.