Posts by Paul Shirley

@AceRimmer - how do you use non-existent code?

"The third party start menu applications work by activating hidden/deactivated features of the the Windows GUI."

Please tell us how they invoke Start Menu code that Microsoft deleted from Win8 a week before RTM? It's simply not there to be used. They also tried deleting some of the OS hooks replacements use but that just wasted days of dev time working around the sabotage.

Why did they remove it so completely? Because people kept turning it back on all the way through the Win8 test period! A sane company would see that and conclude disabling it was a mistake. MS physically excised the option and it's rumoured Sinofsky ordered engineers to delete the history from revision control so it can't be brought back - insanity.

Microsoft are trying to use their desktop monopoly control to promote other products but when did it start making sense to piss off users trapped by the monopoly? Degrading my desktop will not endear me to WP8 or any incarnation of Metro on other devices.

Re: Xbox One

That RAM latency has little effect on most functional units, either because they feed on streams (GPU) or have internal caches (CPU). That latency issue has been getting data from core to core and historically getting it into the right chunk of RAM. Unified RAM removes half the problem while fast core<->RAM streaming simplifies everything.

PS4 has an advantage here because it's simpler with no accelerated transfer systems to deal with. It's going to have less bottlenecks and more predictable behaviour. And it really doesn't hurt that not pissing away transistors on ESRAM let them build in more cores!

Given that both systems seem to have broadly comparable basic hardware, I'll expect better gaming performance on the one with more cores. The PS4 looks like it will outperform even high end PCs for most of it's life, not convinced the Xbone will.

Re: "only links to other search engines"

I may be imagining it but the Fairsearch Jihad against Google seems remarkably coincident to Google making progress against the tidal wave of SEO, link farms and those fscking annoying recursive mazes of search engines pointing at search engines.

I'm 110% convinced Google has materially damaged the business of countless people. But it's a good thing, in the same way the police materially damage the business of criminals.

I wouldn't go so far. After XP->Win8 I'd describe it's stability as 'different', not better, not lower, just falls over on different things... although right now it's still showing lower uptimes than XP SP3 AND I deliberately detuned the hardware a while back to rule out hardware problems, with no improvement.

Michael Strorm:"the problem with the Amiga is that Commodore sat on their laurels"

The Amiga line was hamstrung by management that couldn't decide what they wanted it to be. Designed as the super console of its time, management stripped the chip RAM that delivers most of its performance, shrank the base RAM too far and gave out mixed messages about whether it was a gaming or office machine for its entire lifetime.

When I wrote for it, the OS used enough RAM to make life difficult porting from the Atari ST (so many of us just dumped it in the game boot loader) and multitasking was a fun demo but not much use in real office work.

Windows and the IBM PC proves you can survive bad products with the right management, the Amiga was mismanaged to death.

Re: @Tom 13

" In short it's a win for everybody but the users."

Put more bluntly: 500mil users need to suffer so 1000 Microsoft engineers can be lazy.

Except the localisation work is incremental and mostly already done in any Windows iteration. It's happening now because marketing demands that all products in their plan be reduced to the lowest common factors, otherwise the Win8 everywhere message doesn't work. Somehow they overlooked that the resulting products don't work either.

Re: @Danny 5 - "how is someone NOT using windows 8 a valid source"

Win8 fanbois started pushing this line long before Win8 launched. There's not a single thread anywhere about Win8 where complaints aren't casually dismissed 'because you haven't used it enough/at all'. Even now, 6 months after launch it's only slowed down, there's still always a trickle of denial.

Here's a clue: after using it since the launch day my opinion has changed very little and is *more negative*

Everything I expected to dislike before using it, I do indeed dislike, only tolerable because most of the worst offences can be avoided or patched around.

Summed, the performance and feature improvements are roughly balanced by the things they broke in the desktop mode. Some breakage sucking away most of the speed improvement.

My USB devices work better (or more accurately don't bring Win8 to a grinding halt like under XP) but less of my hardware works at all. Win8 driver support is fscking appalling, with a download service stocked with obsolete and/or broken drivers.

As time passes I continue to find more bugs and annoyances, Win8 suffers the usual gradual Windows slowdown and my opinion continues to slowly worsen. If I didn't want more than 4Gb RAM and plugging my phone in didn't crash XP, I'd switch back. (Being able to use more than 4Gb RAM means the one compelling Win8 feature of better use of RAM doesn't matter!)

re:"who's even heard of foundem?"

...enough to trigger the Streisand Effect ;)

Re: yep

3 times more popular than Kin!

I really, really want to hear some Microsoft spin on that ;)

Re: @Ken Hagan

Ken, I've rarely found an available machine with 'person-sized interface' available in hard core hacker venues like pubs, public transport or outdoor. To be fair the urge to do some misguided command line hackery while sitting with a pint is best resisted, rarely needed however badly botched up the phone is.

But it's better to have but not use than need but not have ;)

Re: Where is Eadon when you need him?

As far as I can see Microsoft have said absolutely nothing about reverting anything meaningful at all. Its one interpretation they've let the press run riot with but vague hints about responding to feedback could easily cover new ways to change the ui.

Till it launches we won't know how cosmetic fixes are, how misguided this batch are, how much more education users can have forced on them.

The only one I feel confident will be there is a Start Button. Leading straight to the Metro Start screen not anything useful.

Re: HOW DARE YOU!

"It was also easy to copy the tapes with my Dad's Amstrad tape-to-tape deck, not so the C64 tapes with their crappy turbo loaders"

Any difficulty in copying was completely intentional ;)

I think the reason it worked better at making copies fail on C64 is better hardware. A suitable hardware timer and nothing stealing CPU cycles meant we could use much tighter timing. I remember setting turbo speeds based on its effect on copying as much as the speed improvement. It's a miracle anything every loaded!

Re: @Asok Asus

I think you're missing the big issue: with horizontal screens comfortably within reach, where would I put my coffee?

Come to think of it, where would the keyboard go? Or would I be swapping a cheap physical keyboard for wasting expensive screen estate on an inferior touch version...

Re: oh dear AC, you forgot MS instrumentation...

The fact they've waited so damn long to pretend to offer concessions (Start *button* not the *menu* we actually want for example), all the while denying there's a problem, all go to demonstrate they weren't listening to 'shouty people' when it was hatched, weren't listening to them after it launched and aren't pandering to them now.

The underlying reality is: MS justified vandalising the XP then Win7 UIs based on instrumenting Windows installs and logging user usage patterns. If change is coming it will be driven by the same sort of feedback. Given the overarching 'by hook or by crook, Win8 everywhere' corporate plan, there must be a serious difference between actual usage and what was expected/planned to trigger any backpeddling.

Can't help MS that the 'shouty people' are so pissed off this time many deliberately opted in to the usage feedback to make sure the weasels at MS can't hide behind the same excuses. The majority of users may well be using a tiny fraction of the UI or OS and careless about what their PC reports back to MS, that's still not an excuse to take it away from those that use more.

Re: @Homer 1

Though I hate to give the impression I'm defending them, the phrase that kicked off the shitstorm was 'always on', not 'online only'. The 2nd is a sensible extrapolation based on current industry practices that Microsoft chose not to deny.

My personal belief is Microsoft gave no serious consideration to whether misuse of online as DRM was an issue for customers and had no policy either way. It is however a serious issue for shitty developers Microsoft cannot ignore, like EA, so it will be allowed.

The social network features of Durango (video sharing, in game messaging etc.) clearly do require a permanent connection *for them to work*. Microsoft leak still doesn't clarify completely whether that will be used as camouflage for DRM or whether we can disable that and still play games.

Re: Hops

The problem is *oxidisation* of lipids to form trans-2-nonelal, not bacterial action. You stop it by removing oxygen and live yeast does a good job of sucking it up in live beers - draught or bottled. The last thing commercial factory lager producers want is anything live in their 'product' and the near total absence of flavour makes faults easy to taste.

Hops are used less for preservation than flavour nowadays. However they react badly to UV light, officially the flavour is 'skunk', I normally describe it as cat's piss. Which probably helps explain why beers often drunk outdoors in a sunny country are notoriously devoid of hops ;)

The problem is Microsoft bet the future on RT. More accurately they bet on the wall garden RT brings and perceived user lockin that creates.

Pro doesn't really help that. Yes having an RT mode is part of the crazy cross promotional, Win8 everywhere plan but 'full fat' Windows doesn't really help the walled garden part. It's hard to see Pros actual appeal extending much beyond use of desktop mode.

Re: "One million shipped..."

Innovation is driven by *effective* competition, the stronger the better.

I see Google innovating Android under Apple pressure.

Apple innovating legal theory under pressure from Android.

I cant see anything suggesting WP or BB are creating any competitive pressure or driving innovation outside their own products... and for one of them that innovation seems headed in the wrong direction!

In reality Google have consistently demonstrated that they buy very good legal advice before doing anything, set corporate policy and external contract terms from it, then walk right on the edge of what's legal based on it.

They've also been remarkably good at getting light punishments when employees overstep policy (the WiFi slurp) or contractors ignore their contracts (Java v Android). Probably because the legal system and regulators seem to believe those many mistakes are just that, not malicious.

Who do you want to believe: poorly informed chatter from outsiders, impotent politicians and Fairsearch sponsored lies OR the professionals that actually investigate each incident? Google aren't good guys but they aren't evil either, just doing what they can legally get away with for their own good first but with less of the corrupt shit we've come to expect from the Microsoft,Apple&Oracles of the world.

Re: buying in innovation ain't as cheap as it was

Here we have another effect of excess polish fumes on thinking ability.

Many of today's smartphones are indeed rapidly converging on the artists mockup I remember of what pocket PC's would look like, a mockup printed in a PC magazine back in the 1990's. They haven't yet dispensed with the bezel around the display or gone for a solid glass body but the grid of icons, the touchscreen control, the ability to make phone calls (yes, that was predicted), they've achieved all that. At the time the only slightly surprising prediction was putting a voicephone in the device, everything else looked pretty obvious.

And of course polish fumes wipe out memory, of things like the LG Prada, so like the iPhone Apple were accused of copying it. A phone shown publicly *before* any iPhone details were revealed.

Apple are so very good a polishing they've completely polished away history for so many of you. Those of us that lived through the entire Apple era remember a lot...

Re: Lag?? @ Paul Shirly

"should manage it (rotation) itself", while I appreciate having 180&270deg rotation without relying on devs explicitly supporting it. I think we can assume at least some would manage to display upside down if they tried ;)

Non-standard rotations few have available but so very useful if your OEM foolishly put the notification LED in the power button on the phones top edge, carefully hidden from sight!

Re: "if somebody managed to port something like Go Launcher"

And right there is one strength of Android, if you don't like something about Android or it's UI, there's a good chance ordinary users can install a replacement and change it. Very few phones run stock Android, whether it's a carrier mangled, OEM skinned (which many users like) or user hacked version.

Want to do that on WP,iOS or BB? Not an option. In the Android ecosystem users have direct influence on how Android evolves while others get to take what's given them and try to like it.

Over the years my Android phones have looked/behaved like iOS, WP7, HTC Sense, whatever Sony call their Xperia skin... and half a dozen 3rd party home replacements including truly different 3D launchers. Rarely lasts long before choosing something closer to stock Android.

I've drawn the line firmly at trying Facebook Home though and didn't like Go Launcher at all ;)

Re:"MS stock price went up significantly after they posted their results last week."

...and then promptly sank back the next day. Probably when the herd of speculators noticed profits had actually fallen substantially after accounting for deferred revenue.

I'm actually surprised they didn't drop further. Some of that deferred revenue was Win7 sales MS wanted to book as Win8, use of the $14.99 upgrade voucher magically converting the sale into a full price Win8 sale with bragging rights attached. The silence from MS tells me that didn't work, that MS couldn't even fake Win8 sales.

Investors apparently haven't noticed that yet, more accurately most haven't. But the more volatile the stock gets the more gamblers will flock to exploit it and todays news could easily signal the start of the stampede.

Re: It's not a tax ...

I fear you complete misunderstand what's really going on here. There are very, very few actual holes in the laws they passed because most of the holes were intentional.

What's stirred them into mock outrage is multiple realisations:

Half the MP scum realising that their friends and financial supporters aren't the only ones benefiting (as intended). They aren't in control of the handouts any longer.

That they've botched the whole bent enterprise so badly it's now possible to completely avoid contributing any value back to the country even as a side effect - and that removes the fiction they justified much of the plan with.

That the public have started asking awkward questions that won't stop at preventing excessive avoidance, killing quite a few retirement directorships for the crooks in parliament if their 'friends' actually end up paying tax.

The system is working almost as planned, they just expected not to get caught. ES has done us a big favour, by being so open and outspoken the politicians are forced to respond and not just with the usual bullshit. They need to decide whether the things they said to justify enticing internationals to the UK with tax reductions are bullshit or real, but neither position is compatible with the squealing complaints now emitting from parliament.

Re: @Paul

They might not be as good but they can do the job 'well enough' for many, especially if the cabling is good. Hell of a lot cheaper than hiring an installer to fit a masthead system unless you're already replacing the aerial. A lot quicker as well, quick trip into Argos and seconds to plug in for instant gratification.

There must be millions of them from the years of reduced power digital transmission though arguably just disconnecting them will solve the problem. I suspect the owners will find it more appealing adding a filter than removing a redundant booster though!

There are also distribution amps, sometimes it does make sense keeping them close to the receivers, cuts down the downleads needed. I have a 4 way one feeding my HTPC, could probably just get away with going passive since the least sensitive tuner died.

Re: Switching off the washing machine?

"How would switching off a washing machine save electricity?"

Saving electricity is not the point, saving the fuel used to generate it (supposedly) is. Reducing demand peaks allows less excess capacity to be on standby wasting energy. Standby generators that may be less fuel efficient than base load stations.

In reality it allows less *expensive* standby capacity to be used and ultimately less to be even built. Energy suppliers are so keen because they can save a lot of money on capital expenses and a bit more on running costs. They still come out ahead even if somehow (despite their best planning) they end up selling less electricity.

Re: Take a look... a long disappointed look

Just tried typing 'Euston Flyer' into the search on that new page. No results. Epic fail.

Since my main use of mapping is to get me to and from pubs I may only know by name, StreetMaps is a non starter. The steady alcoholic intake makes a usable navigation mode another essential and again they fail.

When some of those pubs are in the middle of Belgium, I think I might pick some other, more comprehensive service...