* Posts by Richard Plinston

2608 publicly visible posts • joined 27 Apr 2009

Ha! Win 10 preview for Raspberry Pi 2 pops out of the Microsoft oven

Richard Plinston

Re: A cunning plan?

> Except that Powershell has been widley ported to just about every other OS including Linux...

You show that you fail to understand the word 'ported'.

Powershell has not been ported anywhere, the source code for it is not available for that to happen. There is a _partial_ separate implementation that appears to be able to run on some other OSes.

Richard Plinston

it runs GUI apps written for Microsoft's new Universal App Platform (UAP)

The implication of Universal Apps is that they will run anywhere. IoT apps tend to be _very_ hardware specific. In fact W10 IoT is said to support the Arduino Wing API which would seem to be the whole point of it. These IoT apps won't run on any other version of W10 and it would seem pointless to run non-IoT apps on this hardware.

Richard Plinston

> Five years ago, I would never have imagined Microsoft doing this...

Microsoft jumping on another bandwagon is a surprise to you?

Just about everything Microsoft has ever done has been where others have led the way and started to succeed, either to take control or to kill off using their billions and their contracts.

Microsoft: It's TRUE, you'll get Android and iOS apps in WINDOWS

Richard Plinston

> WINRT ... it was safe to say that it would include x86 emulation and run at least some x86 Windows apps. But it didn't.

I don't think that it was ever safe to say that. An x86 emulator on ARM was never a starter. That didn't stop winfans claiming it would be so, though.

> I'd *hope* it would run (at least well-behaved) APKs unmodified, but perhaps apps will have to be ported.

According to careful reading of the announcement W10 will _not_ run APKs at all. The idea is that Android apps could be modified and recompiled into being W10 Universal apps. It is likely that the UI would have to be reengineered into XAML or HTML5.

Richard Plinston

> A new law forcing the break up of compulsory publishing restrictions on devices and forcing of open install rules in order to block monopolistic practices.

I am not sure who you are aiming this at. Microsoft restricts what apps can be published on their own app store (for example they will not publish anything that competes) but they are no where near being a monopoly on phones. Android, on the other hand, can download from different sites so anyone can get their apps published somewhrere (see F-Droid) and Google does less to restrict apps being published (eg Microsoft Office is in Google's Play Store).

PICTURE-TASTIC: Microsoft woos devs to HoloLens virtuo-goggs

Richard Plinston

Re: Oh Please! This is worse than 3D TV

> At least MS is trying something.

Putting stereoscopic projections onto goggles (not googles) into real world space has been done since a quarter of a century ago. It happened that it required hugely expensive computers to drive it back then, plus cables to the viewer.

I recall reading about heart valve research watching computer generated flow while walking around the 3d image.

Hololens is just a further development of stuff that has been around for ages.

The only claim to holograms is that these are used in creating the lens, what is seen have nothing to do with holograms.

'Android on Windows': Microsoft tightens noose around neck, climbs on chair

Richard Plinston

Re: Times change, business does not

> The only advantages it has over WindowsPhone is a) it was first to market

Microsoft has had phones since 2000 or so. If 'first to market' is an advantage the MS have screwed up big time.

> I can see why MS think they can build a better phone os....

Maybe they can but they haven't so far.

Richard Plinston

>> Windows Phone 7 - Ok, you'll need to rewrite all your apps for Windows Phone 8

> Nice theory except that neither of those actually happened.

See: "Breaking changes in Windows Phone 8" at

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/jj206947%28v=vs.105%29.aspx

Richard Plinston

> an Android emulator on Desktop Windows

http://www.bluestacks.com/about-us.html

Welcome, stranger: Inside Microsoft's command line shell

Richard Plinston

Re: piping

> Are you SURE it went to a temp file and not RAM? I know at least once I overloaded a pipe which you wouldn't expect to happen with a temp file given enough free space.

Yes. If it went to RAM during the first program then when it tried to load the 2nd program it may not fit - or more likely would overwrite the data.

Richard Plinston

Re: @ Alan Sharkey

> On the original IBM PC,

On the _original_ IBM PC (5150 Model A) it would only support 256Kb max, no mattter how many cards you could afford. Base memory was 16Kb for ROM BASIC and Cassette port. Model B (I have one here) supported max 640Kb.

> MS/PCDOS could use 760K(ish) of so-called "low-mem", before it ran into IBM's built-in hardware stoppage.

IBM reserved the areas above 640Kb for hardware adaptor memory. The CGI card occupied addresses at 640Kb. If only a MDI or hercules card was used then another 64Kb could be used to give 704Kb. Anything beyond that required memory management hardware such as an EMS or EEMS card that could switch address spaces around.

However, later MS-DOS (5 or later), DR-DOS, QEMM or others on a 286 or later could emulate EMS and could shift the OS into high memory or beyond 1Mb.

> Eventually, we figured out how to use nearly 950K of low-mem.

Not on a 8088 based PC or PC XT you didn't. There were machines that could support almost the full addressable 1Mb of a 8086/8088. SCP Zebra series for example, or other S100 bus based systems. The Sharp MZ-5600 that I have here also could utilise 512Kb for OS and programs the other 512Kb address space was reserved.

I do have other 8088/8086 machines that can use the full 1Mb but they run Concurrent-CP/M-86 on several serial terminals.

> Which was an IBM hardware issue, not a Microsoft coding issue. Eventually, we figured out how to use nearly 950K of low-mem.

Richard Plinston

> Unix specifications at the time did not require that pipes be implemented in any particular way, and the Microsoft way would have been suitable, although less than ideal.

Named pipes are a feature of the Unix (and Unix like) operating systems. They provide arbitrary data connections between programs. It happens that various shells can use pipes to connect stdout of one program to stdin of another. MS-DOS doesn't have pipes but the shell can provide an emulation in some cases.

Richard Plinston

Re: Pipes

> Just like (while I'm here), DOS 3.x did support "partitions larger than 32 MB", through resident driver chaining, and from DOS 2.x supported large disks through installable block devices drivers.

Not from Microsoft it didn't. There were 3rd party add-ons. Some OEMs modified the system, in different ways, to support larger partitions, for example I used 'Wyse-DOS' 3.31 with this. IBM was annoyed that other OEMs had features that were not in PC-DOS (or standard MS-DOS) so they wrote code to create PC-DOS 4.0 and gave it back to MS for MS-DOS 4.0x

http://www.os2museum.com/wp/dos/dos-4-0/

"""Perhaps the most significant change in DOS 4.0 was the introduction of 32-bit logical sector numbers and the consequent breaking of the 32MB partition size barrier. That change wasn’t strictly speaking new, having been first introduced in Compaq’s DOS 3.31 in late 1987. However, beginning with DOS 4.0, every OEM version (starting with IBM’s) supported large partitions."""

Richard Plinston

Re: Windows under DR DOS?

> I didn't have problems with windows under DR DOS 6, but then the last versions of DR DOS were overshadowed by DOS (er) 5 (?) that actually had some advanced features.

DR-DOS 3.4x supported large disk partitions when MS-DOS was stuck with 32Mbyte per partition (some OEMS (Wyse, Compaq,..) also had large partition support).

DR-DOS 5 offered EMS and HiMem and many utilities and was contemporaneous with MS-DOS 4.01. 20 months later MS caught up with MS-DOS 5. Then DR-DOS 6 added task switching and better memory management which took the best part of a year to almost catch up with MS-DOS 6. In the meantime MS contracted its OEMs with illegal 'per box pricing' so that users had to pay for MS-DOS even if they bought DR-DOS.

DR-DOS 7 (later Novell-DOS 7) added real multi-tasking as well as task switching.

The other feature that DR-DOS had is that it would _run_ from ROM and not just load. This made embedded systems much faster and more secure.

I don't know what you thought that MS-DOS had that was 'advanced', it was always behind.

Richard Plinston

Re: Microsoft didn't really "get" the idea

> changing everything, telling us it is for our own good,

If MS didn't change stuff then there would be no reason to buy the next version.

Richard Plinston

Re: Upgrading Windows programming with NIX concepts

> condemned the non_Windows OS as "stone age" and unsophisticated,

Microsoft worked hard to make their CLI very poor so that they could point out how useless it was in order to convince users to switch to GUI. Even when MS wrote a semi-decent CLI enhancer for Windows 95/98 they didn't install it automatically, didn't mention it in the manual and hid it away.

They even seem to have removed command line options from programs (such as net) so that users were forced to use the GUI rather than have a batch file do stuff automatically.

If hypervisor is commodity, why is VMware still on top?

Richard Plinston

Re: Why Hyper-V is a non-starter in all situations

> you've ignored security patching and maintenance for 5 years?

Having an uptime of 5 years does not mean that "security patching and maintenance" has not been done.

Windows has a file system with a flaw (or feature!) that a file cannot be deleted and replaced while the file is open. This is because the directory entry has both the filename and the start of the allocated file space. When a file that is open, such as a DLL, is to be updated it cannot be done while the system is running. It needs to be closed down and rebooted. The final part of the updating is done by a script when the system restarts.

In Unix like file systems the directory entry has the filename and an inode number. The inode is used for the actual file access after the file has been opened. When a file is deleted the directory entry is removed but the inode remains until all file opens on that inode are closed. This ensure that the allocated space for the file is not overwritten. A new file of the same name can be created with a new inode and file blocks. Any new opens of that filename will get the new file.

So, except for the core kernel, all system files, and all other files, can be updated 'in flight' without any problem. This is something that Windows can never do (until it adopts a Unix like file system).

Windows admins and users think that rebooting is something that needs to be done on a regular basis, not just for updates. Unix/Linus/BSD, Novell Netware, and others think that reboots only happen when the power fails or hardware is to be upgraded.

Google versus the EU: Sigh. You can't exploit a contestable monopoly

Richard Plinston

Re: So....

> Now, are those results biased by design

Yes. The results page is divided up into several sections, separated by rule offs. The first section is related advertising: paying the bills. The next section(s) may be 'in the news' or 'image results' or similar and then there are the general results.

Of course Google advertises its own services alongside other paid adverts.

Your complaint (and the EU one) is like complaining that a commercial TV station shows promotions for its own programs and doesn't show (free) promotions for programs on other stations.

Richard Plinston

Re: So....

> and it would be very difficult to download Firefox without one.

http://www.mattsilverman.com/2009/06/how-to-download-firefox-without-a-web-browser.html

Sysadmins, patch now: HTTP 'pings of death' are spewing across web to kill Windows servers

Richard Plinston

Re: The real joke here is...@TheVogon/Richto/AC

The usual TheVogon/Richto/AC lies.

> Estimated by HP at about €30 million.

The HP report was funded by Microsoft and made no reference at all to what Munich actually spent, they just made it up. For example they included costs for replacing computers frequently while, in fact, Munich reused their computers that were running NT. It also ignored the costs of retraining from NT to XP to Vista to Windows 7, and from Office 1997 to 2003, 2007, 2010, ... The report is a complete work of fiction.

> And that's without the cost of the millions IBM spent on the project to develop and maintain Limux

IBM may well have spent many millions developing Linux OS (for example for their mainframes) and their applications for Linux (eg Websphere) but that was supporting their sales of billions and was nothing to do with Munich.

> The Munich quoted cost 'savings' only refer to licensing costs which of course is a only a tiny part of the picture.

Exactly, there were many more savings.

> The fact that they are investigating the options of how to reverse course and are costing it up says it all

There is ONE new deputy mayor that wants to reverse course.

> if Linux really was cheaper it would be being adopted en mass, whereas in reality it hasn't moved over 2% desktop market share ever.

There are now more Linux based personal computing devices then all others combined.

Richard Plinston

> The Altair BASIC is a VERY skilled piece of code,

It is interesting that you claim this. The source code has never been released in spite of Bill saying that he would. So how are you able to make this claim? Bill's word ?

Bill worked on DEC machines at Harvard, including writing BASIC programs. It has been alleged that Bill had access to the source code of a public domain BASIC interpreter. The Intel 8080 development tools ran on DEC and it may be that Bill used the PD interpreter as the basis for Altair BASIC (and derivatives). Bill also never paid for the development time he used on DEC machines.

MIT also thought that they had purchased the interpreter but MS continued to resell it, or derivatives, to others.

> early Windows versions like 1.0 and 2.0 were pretty impressive on the crap PC hardware of the time.

But not as good as GEM which preceded those.

Richard Plinston

Re: Raise your hand...

> it's Apache that's been trending downwards for a number of years.

The slow decline in Apache's share is mirrored by Nginx's rise. In many cases this is because there is a performance incentive in using Nginx as a front-end proxy server to an Apache server farm where Nginx can satisfy simple page requests and load-balance requests back to the heavy lifting Apache servers. As Nginx is the front-end for the domain that is what is counted in the stats. There is no actual decline in Apache usage.

Richard Plinston

Re: Raise your hand...

> rather than placeholder pages held by domain speculators).

It has been claimed that Microsoft are 'buying' these placeholder sites by, at least, giving hosting sites free hardware and software to host those inactive domain names to boost the statistics. They may also be paying the host for this. The implication is that IIS is perfect for sites that have no content and no traffic.

The Internet of things is great until it blows up your house

Richard Plinston

> it becomes very appealing.

You misspelled 'appalling'.

WHAT did GOOGLE do SO WRONG to get a slapping from the EU?

Richard Plinston

Re: Microsoft was different

> You went to the wrong shops. I went to shops, bought hardware and built my own. No Windows tax there.

So did I, but that is not what 99% of people who wanted computers were capable of, or wanted to do.

Richard Plinston

Re: Microsoft was different

> Nobody was forced with a gun to buy a Windows PC

If you went into a shop the only products available were Windows PCs (maybe a few Apples at high prices). While you weren't forced to buy one, it was almost impossible to buy anything else.

This was because of several things:

Contracts: OEMs could buy Windows at a discount as long as they were 'loyal' and all computers of a particular model were built with Windows only. 'Per Box Pricing' was a variety of this, MS was paid even if a machine was made with another OS and no MS software at all. These made other systems more expensive.

Profit: Shops put on the shelf what made the most profit. Apple has a big markup. Windows machines gave opportunities for much profitable add-ons, plus upgrades and replacements.

Anti-competitive: Per box pricing was one. DR-DOS was killed because MS announced 'Advanced Server' and said that Novell Netware might not be supported in the next MS-DOS/Windows. Novell bought DRI so that it could offer DR-DOS clients for Netware if MS-DOS failed to work with Netware. MS 'conceded' by continuing to support it if Novell killed DR-DOS (and also DRI's Multiuser-DOS).

The reason that Linux, and derivitives ChromeOS and Android, have survived is that MS could not just buy them and kill them.

Richard Plinston

> The billions of desktops don't know how or don't desire to switch engines tomorrow, that's the problem!

Type "Search engine" into Google and it lists heir competitors. Wiki is top of the list then DuckDuckGo, Bing is 4th. They don't _desire_ to change because Google does a good enough job without being annoying and they don't care about your dogma.

> I know someone who, instead of putting in company name and adding a .com to the end will fire up Google and put in company name in there, every single time.

Not all company web sites are company.com. They may be .co.uk, or any of the many other .co or .com or even newer top levels. They may even not be 'company' but some combination. Google works this out and saves trying several arbitrary combinations which fail.

> Have you actually tried to write a competitor site and then tried to actually get it promoted?

Type "Search engine" into Google. Do they block competitors ?

Cram my freebies into Android phones and get a royalty discount, says Microsoft (allegedly)

Richard Plinston

> Maybe Google should have worried a bit about patents before convincing all the equipment manufacturers to pile in to Android. If they had, Microsoft would not have this leverage.

It was the manufacturers, and their customers, that decided to 'pile in to Android', Google just made it available. For example Amazon, Barnes and Noble, many smaller companies and even Nokia made Android phones that avoid Google and use their own services.

Barnes & Noble challenged Microsoft over the 'patents' and got a $300,000 'investment' from MS, apparently because they did not want them tested in court. The main 'patent' is on FAT32 long filenames which runs out soon. If an SD card is included it seems that it is easier for the manufacturer to pay a couple of dollars.

Radio 4 and Dr K on programming languages: Full of Java Kool-Aid

Richard Plinston

Re: C should have been described

> But making claims about "dominant" programming languages is nearly as bad.

Statistics about language 'popularity' are rather shonky. For example one set measures web accesses to language tutorials. They are measuring the 'popularity' based on the number of people who _don't_know_ the language. Another counts the number of adverts for programmers of particular languages. This bases 'popularity' on the number of empty desks.

Richard Plinston

Re: “Goto statement considred harmful”

> Any statement that can cause premature exit from a basic block complicates program flow of control, both for determining things like data flow, and for a human reader studying the code.

Exiting early from a block (return, continue, break) is relatively easy to understand in terms of logic flow, in exactly the same way that an if .. else .. divides code into bits being done and bits not being done, the limits of which are _within_ the block being examined.

The problem with a label is that the logic flow may be from any number of other blocks outside the blocks being examined. These may even have a bad effect on the stack.

> then you have longjmp.

The only time that I ever had to use this was when calling a file handling subroutine (part of a COBOL system that I think you were familiar with) from a C program. The subroutine managed to screw up the stack so I had to surround the call with a routine that did a longjmp back to itself.

> Unfortunately, not always true, due to the complex semantics of PERFORM in some conforming COBOL implementations. That's why we in fact recommend always putting PERFORMed code in a separate SECTION, rather than simply making it a paragraph - SECTION has stronger control-flow requirements.

In my experience having PERFOMs of SECTIONs is always a bad thing. From the late 60s when SECTIONs were used to overlay code the PERFORM could reload the overlay which resulted in very bad performance. The _only_ reason for PERFORMing a SECTION (or worse, using THRU) is to allow the use of GO TO. If GO TO is not allowed than there is no need for any procedure label to be a SECTION. This means that certain errors can be eliminated by using grep to ensure that there are no SECTION (in PD), no GO, no THRU. By reducing the range of constructs allowed reduces the complexity of understanding the code and reduces errors (by eliminating whole classes of errors).

> But that works precisely because it becomes an idiom and a reader can expect and recognize it.

What is more easily understood is what you are used to. The problem with idioms is that they may be skipped over because a casual glance may meet expectations, but there may be a subtle error. For example in COBOL with PERFORMed SECTIONs it is typical that they have an XX-EXIT label at the end to which an early exit is GO TO XX-EXIT. I have seen code where the wrong XX was used in an error condition that very rarely happened. In particular this was to the XX-EXIT above the SECTION so the code dropped back into the section read the next record and the program continued normally. Because it was an idiom no one had bothered to check if it was correct.

Richard Plinston

Re: “Goto statement considred harmful”

> GOTOs complicate the programmer's task by obscuring the logical structure of a program.

No. It is not the goto that complicates the program. When studying some program code the effect of a goto is perfectly obvious. It is clear what will happen. The problem is not there, but the goto requires a label as the target and that is where the problem lies.

When examining some code and there is a label it is not obvious at all where the logic paths lie. It is necessary to examine all the code within that label's scope to determine the logic that will access this label. This is especially a problem in COBOL where there are section labels and paragraph labels and these may be dropped through, performed and performed thru, or be subject to a goto in various combinations. In other languages, such as C, procedures and functions are different types of labels that cannot be dropped through or subject of a goto. Also, in languages like C, a label's scope is local to the function or procedure.

With COBOL, if there are gotos (actually GO) in the program code then, when examining a part of the code, every label must be searched for in the whole program to check whether it is the subject of a perform, a thru, or a go, or is within the range of a perform and is dropped through. By eliminating GO, PERFORM THRU, and SECTION labels the only constructs for accessing code out-of-line is the PERFORM and the CALL. This eliminates the complexity of determining the logic flow of the code, paragraph labels can be treated as if they were procedures (functions in C) with the only entry from a PERFORM and the return to that at the end of paragraph.

In some ways it is possible to evaluate the complexity of program code by counting the number of labels and the number of ways each label can be accessed. With C, a function name can only be accessed by invoking it so each name has a complexity of 1. With labels (including case labels) they can be accessed by a goto or from a switch or by being dropped into (because of there being no break before it), therefore every label adds a complexity factor of 2.

Microsoft dumps ARM for Atom with cut-price Surface 3 fondleslab

Richard Plinston

Re: The usual

> Rare is part of Microsoft.

Rare is _now_ part of Microsoft because they bought them to get the software.

> Link for the claimed 1970s "Hololens" invention? Or it didn't happen.

"Hololens" is just the latest iteration of technology that started to be developed and used in the 1970s. Being able to see the real world while having an image projected into a local space via goggles and having a computer keep track of your movement and hand gestures has been around since then. It was just horrifically expensive.

"""What you see isn't a holograph or a hologram; it's a projection - but it's being projected onto holographically printed lenses, which lets Microsoft produce very cheaply the extremely complex lenses that turn the projection into the 3D image you see. """

Richard Plinston

Re: The usual

>> "Pretty much everything Microsoft does now is late, not quite finished, derivative - albeit with the odd good idea, and an expensive copy of something better already out there."

> Like HoloLens for instance? Or Kinect?

I am not sure if you are supporting the original poster or attempting to provide counter examples.

Kinect is a product licencesd from an Israeli company with software written by Rare in the UK. I remember from New Scientist in the 70s reading about headsets that projected 3D images that merged with reality. In that particular article it was used to study computer generated images of blood flow around heart valves. Obviously the technology has improved over the 30 years or so but Hololens is just another step.

Richard Plinston

Re: MS is trapped

> On seeing what was going on, the idiot then in charge at DEC (Bob Palmer), let MS get away with it,

Microsoft paid DEC a settlement of 65 to 100 million.

""" "Why the Fastest Chip Didn't Win" (Business Week, April 28, 1997) states that when Digital engineers noticed the similarities between VMS and NT, they brought their observations to senior management. Rather than suing, Digital cut a deal with Microsoft. In the summer of 1995, Digital announced Affinity for OpenVMS, a program that required Microsoft to help train Digital NT technicians, help promote NT and Open-VMS as two pieces of a three-tiered client/server networking solution, and promise to maintain NT support for the Alpha processor. Microsoft also paid Digital between 65 million and 100 million dollars."""

Richard Plinston

Re: @h4rm0ny - @h4rm0ny - Great news!

> MS is not preventing manufacturers from selling ARM devices with undisablable Secure Boot anywhere I'm aware of

Your lack of awareness is not relevant. Microsoft imposed a requirement on ARM based Windows RT that it have secure boot without the ability to turn it off.

"""However, ARM machines don't have this same stipulation. In fact, they do the reverse; Secure Boot is mandatory and permanent on ARM machines, including Surface."""

> a Windows version for Rasberry Pi

It is an 'Internet of Things' version of Windows 10. This is not really 'Windows'. While some form of 'Universal Apps' may run later the primary API of IoT is the Arduino Wiin API. There will be a subset of Win32. The current IoT version does not have a UI nor any display.

It is unlikely that the Pi will have a 'secure boot' for IoT.

Richard Plinston

Re: Wintel4evah?

> I guess nobody told the Raspberry Pi Foundation, eh?

Windows 10 for the Pi2 is just the IoT (Internet of Things) version.

Richard Plinston

Re: MS is trapped

> And when it did run, it was ported by the manufacturers of those other architectures, not by MS.

Actually Windows NT was initially written on and for MIPS (after i860 was evaluated and discarded) and was ported to x86. At the time the best x86 was the 386 and was probably 20MHz - too slow to be any use in development.

It is likely that manufacturers had a high involvement in porting to their chips but Microsoft was heavily involved.

Richard Plinston

Re: MS is trapped

> Surface Rt can actually be used to DO stuff on, not just view funny cat videos.

I am not sure why you think that iPads (and Androids) can't be used to "DO stuff". It must be because you know nothing about what is available for those. There are plenty of office apps (see especially WPS), code editors, even complete IDEs. What languages can you code, develop and run _on_ a Surface RT ? There are several for iPad and Android tablets.

Please do provide _evidence_ for your snear, list what you can DO on Surface RT that can't be done on iPad and Androids.

Richard Plinston

Re: MS is trapped

>> "Layers upon layers of ossified x86 code doomed any exit for Microsoft from the Intel platform a long time ago."

> You do realize that 99.9% of Windows code is C/C++ etc., not x86 assembly language, don't you?

That is not what was referred to. NT ran on many different architectures: MIPS, Alpha, Itanium, .. but that didn't solve the problem which is the thousands of applications that are locked to x86/x86-64.

> None of that makes any sense.

Your inability to make sense of it is not a constraint.

> Windows server made it on to several other architectures - MIPS, DEC Alpha, Power PC, Itanium.

But the applications did not. Office ran on Alpha in x86 emulation mode. Users don't buy machines to run the OS, they buy them to run their applications. Even in C/C++ it can be hard to get running on a different processor, and of course if the application is not open source (or in-house) then converting and recompiling is not even an option.

Richard Plinston

Re: MS is trapped

> MS didn't produce a feature-complete Windows for ARM. That might have been due to ARM's reduced power vs Intel, but it was a mistake.

It seems to me that RT/Windows On ARM achieved its objectives. At the time HP were about to release the ARM tablets running WebOS and Dell had ARM Android tablets. MS controls its OEMs via 'loyalty' discounts. If the go too far away from MS they get their discounts on all products removed. It worked for Netbooks when XP was brought back from the dead - Vista was never going to run.

With WOA MS could wave 'discounts' at WebOS and make it go away, and at Dell to kill their Android projects. Job done so now RT can fade away.

Android lands on Microsoft's money-machine island fortress

Richard Plinston

Re: No License Fee?

> If it is Android then Microsoft will still want its license fee, for all those "patent infringements".

The only significant 'patent' is for FAT32 long file names. This is only used when SD cards are required to be compatible with other devices. No SD card, no 'patent', no payment to MS. (which is why Nexus devices don't have SD slots).

> In fact it will probably cost more than the free Windows 10.

The 'free' Windows 10 does not apply to businesses. They will still pay for Software Assurance and could get Windows 10 through that. It is also only 'free' for the _supported_ life of the _device_ (after the first year). If the device is out of warranty than it is no longer a supported device and is no longer 'free'. It also does not apply to XP, let alone any Embedded versions.

Is this what Windows XP's death throes look like?

Richard Plinston

Re: @Cristopher Lane

> Vendors MD 'also, we cannot sell them other high margin products, like office, which is where we make most of our money'

Exactly. Nor do they bring the Linux computers back after several months complaining that they run now dead slow so that they can be sold re-installation, upgrades, or faster replacements.

Retailers and support make far more money selling Windows machines. They also get a higher margin and more revenue from Apple sales.

Sell a Linux computer and the purchaser won't be seen for several years. Sell Windows and there will be repeat business and much profit ( = cost to the user).

Richard Plinston

Re: He who laughs last, laughs best.

> For March, StatCounter recorded 124 countries with GNU/Linux exceeding Vista in data for all OSs they track..

It should be noted that StatCounter does not record 'site visits' as such it records browsers that allow Statcounter's JavaScript to gather user information, log it, and send the data to the collection site.

https://statcounter.com/how-it-works/

I run NoScript and thus none of my Linux machines are recorded in the stats. It seems likely that Linux users are more likely to block these types of recorders and to visit sites that do not run statcounter, while the average Windows user will not even know what Javascript is let alone that their site visits are being monitored.

Richard Plinston

Re: Windows 365?

> Do some research Peter. This is public domain information and you are, once again, utterly wrong.

What you seem to ignore is the parts of the announcements that qualify the 'free' with 'for the supported life of the device' or perhaps just the word 'supported'. You are eager to equate this to 'forever' or to 'the life of the OS'.

Microsoft haven't explained this qualification yet, and have stated they will do so sometime in the future. It seems likely that 'the _supported_ life of the _device_' equates to the manufacturer's warranty period.

Microsoft have also stated that 'versions' will become a thing of the past as they move to 'Windows as a service' with continual feature enhancements along with updates. The 'as a service' implies very strongly a subscription model like 'Office as a service 365'.

After the first year after release it may well be that machines outside their warranty will require annual subscriptions to keep it running.

Doing some research shows that Microsoft acknowledges that they haven't explained what will happen nor the phrases they have used. You have made up your mind what Microsoft will do in spite of them not deciding it yet, or at least not telling us.

Were you the one that was insisting that Windows Phone 7 phones would get an upgrade to WP8 ? or that Surface tablets would be cheap ?

Richard Plinston

Re: Oh wow...

> The cause, a new GPU. The BIOS had mapped the GPU into a 64-address space

So you swapped the video card, the BIOS misconfigured it and Linux had nowhere to output a visible message !

Would Windows have done a better job of this ?

"Regular users" don't usually swap around the guts of the machine.

Google takes ARC Welder to Android, grafts on Windows, OS X

Richard Plinston

Re: This is VERY good and important

> I'd have preferred it if it worked on the desktop myself.

www.bluestacks.com/

Or the AMD derivative of this:

http://community.amd.com/community/amd-blogs/amd/blog/2012/09/27/announcing-amd-appzone-player-powered-by-bluestacks

Richard Plinston

Re: Yawn

> Is there a single phone app I'd like on my PC? Android or iOS? Can't think of one.

Your admitted inability to think is not a constraint on others.

> How long until <strikeout>Google</strikeout> Microsoft* sinks too much effort into these crap app ecosystems and falls into irrelevancy?

*reference to WP6.x, WP7, WP8, Metro, Windows RT, ... app ecosystems.

Richard Plinston

> It's Dalvik on Android 4.4.

http://www.cultofandroid.com/52210/enable-art-android-4-4-kitkat/

"""In Android 4.4 KitKat, Google has introduced a new experimental runtime — ART a.k.a Android Run Time. Being in nascent stages, Google did not replace Android’s current runtime — Dalvik — with ART. Instead, it has hidden it under Settings for developers and tinkerers to play around with and probably get some feedback. """

South Korea to NUKE Microsoft ActiveX

Richard Plinston

Re: If you thought the browser wars didn't really matter...

> Oh come on. Netscape lost because it was a) much more expensive than "free"

Netscape was available for free to most users. Businesses were expected to pay for it. Many Windows OEMs loaded Netscape, along with other software, onto their machine - until Microsoft gave an extra $5 discount for _not_ loading it.

IE was 'free' at Spyglass's expense. When Microsoft asked Spyglass to write a browser for them (which became IE) they were to be paid for doing so by a cut of $5 for every copy _sold_. By giving it away for 'free' (though it was part of the price for Windows) they avoided paying Spyglass. Spyglass sued and won a small settlement but had meanwhile gone broke.

Microsoft kills their 'partners' as well as their competition.

> and b) it became increasingly shit as the iterations went on. Communicator was dire.

Microsoft paid sites to incorporate incompatibilities into their pages. They bought Frontpage and then 'enhanced' it to produce Microsoftisms that only worked well in IE. It wasn't Netscape that went 'shit' it was web sites. Now users are paying for that by being still locked into old versions of IE.