Posts by Mikel

The beast vanquished?

The fire isn't out until the ashes are cold and dead.

Just blow bubbles

No need for fancy heating.

This is not a repeat from last week

Nor is it a prepeat from next week. This is an article about a single incidence of Sony Pwnage. It differs little from the ones that went before, nor from the ones sure to come after except by the who and how, but it is a unique incident worthy of reportage.

That Sony's online security was weak and many people's information was compromised is not newsworthy at this point. But the specific ways that they were so compromised and their number is unique and so worthy of reporting.

Keep them coming!

When you aint got the skills to do everything

Then you do what you can.

At this point Linux is so well integrated into the ARM build tools that when you spec a new chip design, it automatically spits out a kernel. Before the bare slab of silicon is even wet you can have Android running in an emulator running 200,000 apps. By the time the Windows team has a Linux validated platform to start porting their OS to the Android OEMs have product in production. The Windows team has no choice but to limit variety as they start long after the race is over.

in hand

He could have announced the shift when he had new product to ship. He did not.

Best hold off on Windows 7 then

If Windows 8 is so revolutionary and wonderful and just around the corner, there's no reason to step halfway when you can just wait.

Let's see what they say after Christmas

The quad core ARM platforms are due out then. That may change Intel's stance on this issue.

Second thoughts

If Intel gets the money for fabbing the parts, that money helps pay for building and operating the plants and processes Intel needs to make to keep driving their innovation faster than their competitors. If Intel's competitors fab the parts, that money goes to building plants and processes that compete with Intel.

The choice is pretty clear.

Quite the point of the thing, what?

They used to distribute these bulky books with people's names and phone numbers - sometimes even their physical addresses. Just printed in a book for all to see: and they gave the book to everybody who would take one. Millions of trees were pulped to make this possible.

The point of publishing information online is, well, to put information online. The fact that this fine article - and even this comment - is out there on the Interwebs all indexed and indelible isn't destroying the author's privacy at all. Putting stuff online is what these services are FOR.

There were a lot of WP7 HW launch partners too

For some odd reason most of them have yet to release phones.

Ah yes

That would be SP2 then.

Oh, noes! Google is out to get us again

Is this a weekly thing with El Reg now?

How about you try and find some evil in their green power projects: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/19/ferc-google-project-idUSN1923684520110519

That would be sweet.

They're disappearing from the shelves

Having failed in the market it's hard to see how the presence of Nokia Windows Phones will make a difference. All the vendors that sell phones are pretty much scared off the product already. They only have so much shelf space and it's better to stock things people might want.

The future is broken

Now that Microsoft and Intel are having their little spat, the truths spill out so loud the neighbors can hear.

The future is broken.

All the folks who were counting on riding the WinTel thing to retirement have got about 8 months left to make that happen. Intel wants to survive, and that means they make gear and push it even if it doesn't run Windows. Microsoft wants to survive, and that means they push Windows on everything, even if it's not Intel.

Caught between the titans are the OEMs, who also want to survive. HP and IBM will side with Intel or play both sides, Dell will stick with Microsoft and Asus too: the CEO is a coward. Acer and the others? I dunno. The rest are up in the air.

Both Intel and Microsoft will be demanding fealty, which is exactly the wrong thing to do here. Both will be thrashing about harming their partners for no good reason. It's a power struggle 'twixt massive egos. At the same time they'll be struggling internally to avoid cannibalizing their traditional profit centers.

The ARM/iOS/Android vendors will remain laser focused on their target: to make products that delight and amaze; that enable and empower their users to do things that they want or need to do and stay out of the way the rest of the time. To make and sell products that people want. To win profits for themselves, their retail partners, their developers. To cannibalize all of every other business they can. In short, to compete for end-users, which is the field the actual battle is being fought on.

It's probably early to call a winner on this one, but that last bunch looks like they're on the inside track.

Miffed Microsoft?

If you didn't want your lover airing your linens you ought not a'been seeing other people.

Steve will need more help with the next one

The board is starting to figure out the plot.

Not quite the denial

We were looking for a denial that Intel would fab ARM for Apple. This was not that.

If the clients need matching servers we know what to do about that too.

Pleasepleaseplease

Please be true. This would be so awesome.

Global warming may impact your wi-fi

In the distant past and the distant future, it is/was possible to walk across the ice from Britain to France. The human habitable zone was/will be shrunk to within a dozen degrees of latitude from the equator. The maximum sustainable human population did/will number in the hundreds of thousands. When the cold comes it comes relatively sudden - with global temps dropping 6c below present in a relatively short period of time near as we can tell.

This past is some 9,000 years past. The future coldness may be closer depending on what we do. It's been a cyclical thing for some three billion years. Sometimes hotter than now, sometimes colder - mostly by far colder. On the average the Earth is not habitable by modern humans, even with our current science. Some say it's an Earth orbital thing, others that there's some cyclic pulsing to the sun, others that Sol's route through the galactic plane holds the answer, others would point to more local geological volcanic disturbances while still more mutter arcane gibberish about the flows of streams in the oceans. We don't agree about the cause, but all are agreed that we got from 100,000 to nearly 7 billion humans in a geologically brief temperate span 'twixt walls of ice and snow that were in the past and inevitably are in the future.

If the Earth's temperature rises 4c (oh, woe) it will test the heights it reached in the Carboniferous era - the period when all our fossil fuels were trapped. Some might say that by releasing the carbon trapped in that time we're pressing rewind to the time when the arctic was rich with ferns. It was a richly productive time, when temperate climates on Earth lasted for hundreds of millions of years rather than mere thousands because a deep blanket of CO2 staved off the ice ages from (various previously referenced possible causes).

If we free the trapped carbon from when the Earth was warmer and the Earth's temperature rises 4c some bad things will happen. Some islands, some coastal cities will fade beneath the waves over centuries. There will be more coastal flooding in a thousand years. Some equatorial areas will have to be evacuated over centuries. Some good things will happen too: the vast expanses of Canada and Russia become arable land to feed our teeming billions.

If we don't free the carbon and build the blanket then the cycle will come around again. The glaciers will march on our cities, our nations. They'll scrape the evidence of our civilization from the globe. The end will come quick as it has before with some of us frozen to death wandering through a field of daisies as some Mammoths were. As we fight over dwindling resources the 30M walls of ice will march on unconcerned with our quibbling.

No matter what we do it will be cold again. I would prefer though that it were a few hundred million years hence than it were a few thousand or hundred. That should give us time enough to figure a way to get off this rock and survive the ice when it inevitably comes. I have some kids and I'd like their offspring to explore the solar system and for some to venture further out.

If we release every last carbon molecule that was trapped (impossible, I know) in a warmer era we can make the Earth no warmer than it was then, and can't escape to Venus type runaway greenhouse effect because Earth just didn't have enough carbon to do that last time and it doesn't have any more now than it did then. The horrible uninhabitable "too hot" planet thing just cannot happen. No matter what we do the biosphere will eventually capture again all the CO2 we release. 'Twixt now and then we'd best be roaming the stars.

We need not hurry about it. There are other energy sources that work well like solar and geothermal that it's good to use because they give better local returns. But let's not panic about CO2.

Good luck getting your data out

Migrating to BPOS is a one-way trip.

You can't just buy ads of this quality

You have to berate, degrade and belittle the artsy types until they are driven to deliver the most sideways, awkward and deliberately unhelpful works their brilliant minds are capable of selling to your executive team.

RIM Bings Blackberry

Verizon Bings Android phones, RIM Bings Blackberry. Their poor customers have to work around this by Googling in the browser.

You have a product. The goal is to make the product more attractive, not less so. The vast majority of people prefer Google for mobile search and maps. People can get Google search and maps from your competitors. The only reason to Bing their phones and take their choice away because you were paid to do so - which is not going to make them like you nor inspire them to buy your products in preference to products that are more like what they want.

I am reminded of a recent reconnaissance trip I made of a Blockbuster video store. I went in there to find out how a company that grew so large so fast could be in such dire straits. The entire trip was so clearly engineered to make the experience as unpleasant and expensive at possible, giving the impression of extracting as many dollars as possible from everyone who dared enter. Once the door closed on you, you literally could not escape through it - you had to run the product gauntlet and be interrogated by staff to beat your retreat through a different portal. I won't be going back in there.

A similar trip to Best Buy yielded a similar result. There I actually bought a product because I needed it right away. The nonsense they put you through to buy a product is remarkable. It's no wonder Amazon.com is cleaning their clock.

Look, marketing is not some magic voodoo formula. You stock products that people want, and put as little friction between them finding it and them giving you their money as possible. If you can make the experience fun as well, much better. Your job is not to make the products and experience as bad as people will tolerate. You don't add shovelware like Bing. You don't Bing people's phones.

Dimension Z!

This is only the beginning of Dimension Z. Eventually we will layer the silicon in stacks hundreds high.

The breathlessly anticipated "Intel announces deal to fab Apple CPU" news is silly. You cannot expect Intel to announce that they're fabbing Apple chips. Apple deals don't work that way. If you can't keep your mouth shut, Apple is not going to work with with you. Apple makes their product announcements not years in advance on the component level, but on a stage with the CEO showing off products that are already manufactured and available for the press to fondle immediately after - with millions manufactured and available for order on a certain date in the near future at a certain price. In most cases somebody's got to buy the thing at retail and tear it apart with some sophisticated gear to find out what's in it.

Apple doesn't sell computers. They don't sell phones. They don't sell music players. They don't sell an OS. They sell "The Apple Experience," and part of that experience is that you don't get to peek in the oven and know what wonderfulness their gnomes are baking until it's done.

Tort lawyers

Once upon a time there was some benefit to class-action lawsuits. Not any more. These days the lawyers reap millions while the the injured parties get a $5 coupon for more product. The payouts are handled by insurance companies and they don't impact a company's behavior at all - they just drive the cost of everything up.

But what of the tort lawyers? There's an entire industry built up of just this sort of law practice and defending against it, and it seems it's just suffered an industry-wide tsunami. Won't someone cry for the lawyers who have just been made surplus?

Read the mini-msft link comments

As always that's where the 'softies disgruntle. It's precious, their disconnect. You would not believe how far they are from the real world unless you read them yourself.

Congratulations to Apple.

Apple continues to make and ship products that people want. That's so simple it's almost magical.

I wish others in the industry would apply some of this magic. They don't get paid for grand strategies, nor bold statements, nor FUD. They don't get paid by the press release for imaginary products from years hence - almost never to be realized. They get paid to make a product people want, and ship it. For most of them that's the only place their money comes from - but you wouldn't know it by how they act.