With the release of Windows 7 set for October 23rd, Microsoft marketing marketer Richard Francis says computer manufacturers may not be able to ship Vista once Windows 7 is available.
Outrage at the news was rapid. Microsoft quickly backtracked, claiming it would remain available until at least 2011 ("we kept 98 support up for 18 months when XP was out"), but customers were not mollified by promises that Windows 7 buyers would be allowed to downgrade ("we call it an upgrade”) to Vista.
A "Save Vista" campaign has been organised by InfoWorld. "We detected a deep anxiety over Vista among technologists and consumers alike," said editor Galen Gruman. "We decided to do something about it, launching a petition drive to ask Microsoft to keep selling Vista after the planned October 23 end-of-sales date." The petition has already gathered over ten signatures (most recent signatories: L. Torvalds, S. Jobs, M. Shuttleworth).
"Just how long was extended support for Microsoft's greatest success ever, Windows ME? Microsoft talks about Windows 98 as being succeeded by XP — just as if ME never existed! ME's many, many fans will be outraged at such an omission, and we're afraid they'll treat Vista, Microsoft's second-greatest success ever, the same way.
"And how about extended support for Microsoft's third-greatest success ever, Microsoft Bob? By the wife of the founder, no less! I think we should be told."
I'm appalled Computerworld doesn't mention Microsoft's greatest success ever, Windows ME. Just how long was the extended support for that operating system? They talk about Windows 98 as being succeeded by XP - just as if ME never existed! ME's many, many fans will be outraged at such an omission, and suspect they would treat Vista, Microsoft's second-greatest success ever, the same way.
And how about extended support for Microsoft's third-greatest success ever, Microsoft Bob? I think we should be told.
"Microsoft recognizes that customers care most about real-world interoperability in the marketplace, so the company is committed to continuing to engage the IT community to achieve that goal when it comes to document format standards. It will work with the Interoperability Executive Customer Council and other customers to identify the areas where document format interoperability matters most, and then collaborate with other vendors to achieve interoperability between their implementations of the formats that customers are using today."
They knew precisely what interoperability would require in this case, they promised it, then they pretty much perfectly dodged any practical interoperability while keeping to the letter of the spec.
Hearst newspapers will be holding back content from their papers' free websites, instead charging for some digital news and information. "We are fully confident that both readers and Google will come to the party and give us money," said Hearst president Steven Swartz, "and not just laugh and ignore us henceforth."
Newspapers plan to fight back against the avaricious parasitism of Google in telling people where to find content the newspapers had put up on the Web for free with a new e-book reader, a variant on the Amazon Kindle. "For only $300, readers can read DRM-locked down versions of our content that they're paying a subscription for on top. We can't see how this could possibly fail to work."
Murdoch's Wall Street Journal has been notably successful in selling valuable original financial reporting that cannot be obtained anywhere else. "So there's no reason people won't pay for recycled Associated Press feeds, corporate-backed op-eds, funny cat stories and pretence at holding the government's feet to the fire."
Hearst also advocates new advertising and revenue models. "The technical press on the Web shows the way forward: blatant and obvious gutter-slut crack-whoredom. Subtlety doesn't pay the bills any more — we must enthusiastically welcome the corporate cock into our throats. Also, I'd like to mention that everyone should use the Windows 7 beta. HLAGH HLAGH HLAGH," added Mr Swartz, wiping off his chin.
When they were writing the spec for POSIX, they did a thought exercise: "what if someone implemented all of this to the letter of the spec with no thought for it actually working?" They called this 'Weirdix.' Then Microsoft came along with their POSIX for NT... and they'd basically implemented Weirdix.
Moral: there's very few standards that are bulletproof against someone making an actively malicious implementation.
What you mean is that ODF 1.1 is not written sufficiently robustly against the actively malicious. Of course, it's arguable they should have expected active malice...
Interix is actually pretty Unixy (particularly as the software is largely GNU *cough*). Feels like using Unix from the 1990s. The biggest interoperability problem I've found with it is that it uses PE-COFF binaries and most open source assumes ELF. If Microsoft wanted a Unix certification for Windows, they could achieve good compliance fairly easily.
The reason they picked ODF 1.1 to emulate rather than ODF 1.2 was specifically so they could do things the opposite way to OpenOffice. e.g. formulas in spreadsheets - 1.1 doesn't specify how to do them, OOo does them a particular way, so MS's ODF export uses ambiguity in the spec to deliberately do it differently. That's the "extend" bit.
The terrorists, representing an organisation calling itself "Microsoft," apparently used insecure third-party contractors to put a virus-running platform called "Windows" into critical systems in the hospitals, in order to extort money from them on an annual basis.
It is understood that a large percentage of all businesses are infected with the virus, wasting up to 25% of employees' working time and opening the companies to further attacks from related criminal organisations demanding to see all their licenses.
The virus in question, W32.SHILL/SCHOFIELD, takes over the host's IT systems, leading to aches, pains, nausea, vomiting, pumping out prodigious quantities of faeces and a terrible compulsion to spread the infection to others. The patient also walks with a shuddering stumble and asks for their hospital meal to include tasty, tasty brains. Recovery has commenced when they have an overwhelming urge to throw their computer out of the window. "Getting this stuff out of the system makes MRSA look like a walk in the park," said one cleaner, waving his shit-encrusted hands about for emphasis.
When the infection became known, ambulances were diverted to other hospitals. "We have maintained a safe environment for our patients throughout the incident," said a spokesman for Barts NHS Trust, "keeping them in the Clostridium difficile culturing lab rather than risking exposing them to 'Windows.'"
Beleaguered Internet advertising phirm Phorm is hitting back at critics with StopPhoulPlay.com, in an attempt to lure Internet activists into herniating from laughter.
"It is clear that the campaign against Phorm originates in the sinister manipulations of Alex Hanff and Marcus Williamson," said Kent Ertegun, CEO of Phorm, "who have used mind control lasers and the killer robot armies of the Open Rights Group and FIPR to deceive millions of Britons into a Communistic fervor of hatred against the engines of the free market and customer demand, the salesmen and marketers, the true creators and enablers of objective value."
The website, designed in Microsoft Word, uses the public relations format so successfully put into play by the ReligiousFreedomWatch.org site of the Church of Scientology, a community institution of flawless repute. StopPhoulPlay.org reveals how:
* At the age of five, Hanff REFUSED to share his crayons with the little girl next to him, saying she was "poopy" and would only draw a picture to be used against him.
* At age twelve, Williamson accepted MONEY from his mother to buy sweets, but not to tell schoolmates in case they wanted some.
* Hanff and Williamson may have attempted to access POTENTIALLY ILLEGAL images blocked by the Internet Watch Foundation.
* Hanff and Williamson have used WIKIPEDIA at least once in their lives.
* Hanff and Williamson INVADED POLAND in 1939.
"Given the persistence with which they propagate incorrect information, we cannot rule out the possibility that a competitor is involved," he said. "The competitor goes under the name 'reality.' Needless to say, we have no tolerance for an entity of such limited possibilities.
"These people are privacy pirates -- people who steal privacy online, off the coast of Somalia. With Internet guns! And drugs! And child pornography!"
Mr Hanff and Mr Williamson said they were unsure whether to sue Phorm into atomic dust for gross defamation or to just let them continue with their infallible public relations work. Phorm shares have dropped from 405p to being declared a serious infection risk by the World Health Organization.
Yeah, it's the downside of writing really good FAQs. They filter out anyone (a) with simple problems (b) smart enough to read. So you only get calls from idiots who couldn't take in information anyway. Great.
No, it was an actual 68LC040 emulator in software.
In fact, large chunks of the System were still written in 68040 code for a long time. So new releases of the OS would actually run faster and faster as that code was replaced with native versions.
After eight years as a sysadmin, the other month I crimped a cable for the first time. Why? Our shitty, shitty ordering system would have taken several weeks to get us the cables we needed a week hence. (Planning? That's what other people don't do.)
OVER 60 MILLION GOT SERVED, Mexico, Friday (NNN) — A new strain of swine flu, H1N1, has killed up to 60 people in Mexico.
The virus is a mixture of swine, bird, human and computer viruses. Symptoms include fever, fatigue, lack of appetite, popup ads, coughing, sore throat, a slow connection and an urge to throw one's computer out of a high window. The disease is thought to have started as a Windows virus on 4chan, a CIA entrapment message board for online activists, and can spread using the current Windows 7 beta.
Center for Disease Control officials looked at their huge stockpiles of H5N1 bird flu vaccine and said, "... shit."
Citizens have panicked at the prospect of bacon being put into quarantine and substituted with some soy-based shit. "Damn that Conficker!" shouted R. MacDonald of San Bernardino, California. "Damn it all to Hell!"
"This comment from me looks photoshopped," said Bruce Schneier, an American computer security expert safely employed over in the UK. "I can tell by the pixels and having seen a lot of shops in my time. I suspect this is the work of a viral botnet spider agent replicating Trojan comments across news services until their functionality is completely destroyed. WHATEVER YOU, DO DON'T LOAD OR READ MY COMMENT. p.s.: I love you."
Insufferably smug Macintosh user Arty Phagge was sanguine. "We know how to use condoms. And I'm a vegetarian." The Free Software Foundation announced the launch of OpenSwine, a disease generation and detection kit available for all to use and develop in perpetuity.
Britain will be protected from the swine flu virus by comprehensive filtering of the British internet, shutting it down entirely as needed. "Would you want your husbands, your servants, accessing the Internet?" asked Home Secretary Jacqui Smith. "I put it to you that you would not."
Slashdot Mirror
(You inspirational bastard. Credit on post.)
With the release of Windows 7 set for October 23rd, Microsoft marketing marketer Richard Francis says computer manufacturers may not be able to ship Vista once Windows 7 is available.
Outrage at the news was rapid. Microsoft quickly backtracked, claiming it would remain available until at least 2011 ("we kept 98 support up for 18 months when XP was out"), but customers were not mollified by promises that Windows 7 buyers would be allowed to downgrade ("we call it an upgrade”) to Vista.
A "Save Vista" campaign has been organised by InfoWorld. "We detected a deep anxiety over Vista among technologists and consumers alike," said editor Galen Gruman. "We decided to do something about it, launching a petition drive to ask Microsoft to keep selling Vista after the planned October 23 end-of-sales date." The petition has already gathered over ten signatures (most recent signatories: L. Torvalds, S. Jobs, M. Shuttleworth).
"Just how long was extended support for Microsoft's greatest success ever, Windows ME? Microsoft talks about Windows 98 as being succeeded by XP — just as if ME never existed! ME's many, many fans will be outraged at such an omission, and we're afraid they'll treat Vista, Microsoft's second-greatest success ever, the same way.
"And how about extended support for Microsoft's third-greatest success ever, Microsoft Bob? By the wife of the founder, no less! I think we should be told."
I'm appalled Computerworld doesn't mention Microsoft's greatest success ever, Windows ME. Just how long was the extended support for that operating system? They talk about Windows 98 as being succeeded by XP - just as if ME never existed! ME's many, many fans will be outraged at such an omission, and suspect they would treat Vista, Microsoft's second-greatest success ever, the same way.
And how about extended support for Microsoft's third-greatest success ever, Microsoft Bob? I think we should be told.
Here's the press release:
"Microsoft recognizes that customers care most about real-world interoperability in the marketplace, so the company is committed to continuing to engage the IT community to achieve that goal when it comes to document format standards. It will work with the Interoperability Executive Customer Council and other customers to identify the areas where document format interoperability matters most, and then collaborate with other vendors to achieve interoperability between their implementations of the formats that customers are using today."
They knew precisely what interoperability would require in this case, they promised it, then they pretty much perfectly dodged any practical interoperability while keeping to the letter of the spec.
o_0 Yeah, just ignoring Microsoft's entire history and most of the discovery in Comes v. Microsoft. Not even circumstantial.
If you have a camera, please get a few good photos for that Wikipedia article!
The important thing to keep in mind is that the Daily Mail (Associated Newspapers) own 20% of ITN, the direct competitor to BBC News.
Hearst newspapers will be holding back content from their papers' free websites, instead charging for some digital news and information. "We are fully confident that both readers and Google will come to the party and give us money," said Hearst president Steven Swartz, "and not just laugh and ignore us henceforth."
Newspapers plan to fight back against the avaricious parasitism of Google in telling people where to find content the newspapers had put up on the Web for free with a new e-book reader, a variant on the Amazon Kindle. "For only $300, readers can read DRM-locked down versions of our content that they're paying a subscription for on top. We can't see how this could possibly fail to work."
Murdoch's Wall Street Journal has been notably successful in selling valuable original financial reporting that cannot be obtained anywhere else. "So there's no reason people won't pay for recycled Associated Press feeds, corporate-backed op-eds, funny cat stories and pretence at holding the government's feet to the fire."
Hearst also advocates new advertising and revenue models. "The technical press on the Web shows the way forward: blatant and obvious gutter-slut crack-whoredom. Subtlety doesn't pay the bills any more — we must enthusiastically welcome the corporate cock into our throats. Also, I'd like to mention that everyone should use the Windows 7 beta. HLAGH HLAGH HLAGH," added Mr Swartz, wiping off his chin.
It's BSD-licensed. You fail at thinking.
No, it's their second. They wrote the CleverAge plugin as well. Somehow they managed to go backwards for Office 2007. It's inexplicable, I'm sure.
When they were writing the spec for POSIX, they did a thought exercise: "what if someone implemented all of this to the letter of the spec with no thought for it actually working?" They called this 'Weirdix.' Then Microsoft came along with their POSIX for NT ... and they'd basically implemented Weirdix.
Moral: there's very few standards that are bulletproof against someone making an actively malicious implementation.
What you mean is that ODF 1.1 is not written sufficiently robustly against the actively malicious. Of course, it's arguable they should have expected active malice ...
Interix is actually pretty Unixy (particularly as the software is largely GNU *cough*). Feels like using Unix from the 1990s. The biggest interoperability problem I've found with it is that it uses PE-COFF binaries and most open source assumes ELF. If Microsoft wanted a Unix certification for Windows, they could achieve good compliance fairly easily.
A report on Groklaw.
The reason they picked ODF 1.1 to emulate rather than ODF 1.2 was specifically so they could do things the opposite way to OpenOffice. e.g. formulas in spreadsheets - 1.1 doesn't specify how to do them, OOo does them a particular way, so MS's ODF export uses ambiguity in the spec to deliberately do it differently. That's the "extend" bit.
It was a Hail Mary pass. It might not work, but it was certain nothing else would.
A terrorist attack on the NHS has brought three London hospitals to a halt.
The terrorists, representing an organisation calling itself "Microsoft," apparently used insecure third-party contractors to put a virus-running platform called "Windows" into critical systems in the hospitals, in order to extort money from them on an annual basis.
It is understood that a large percentage of all businesses are infected with the virus, wasting up to 25% of employees' working time and opening the companies to further attacks from related criminal organisations demanding to see all their licenses.
The virus in question, W32.SHILL/SCHOFIELD, takes over the host's IT systems, leading to aches, pains, nausea, vomiting, pumping out prodigious quantities of faeces and a terrible compulsion to spread the infection to others. The patient also walks with a shuddering stumble and asks for their hospital meal to include tasty, tasty brains. Recovery has commenced when they have an overwhelming urge to throw their computer out of the window. "Getting this stuff out of the system makes MRSA look like a walk in the park," said one cleaner, waving his shit-encrusted hands about for emphasis.
When the infection became known, ambulances were diverted to other hospitals. "We have maintained a safe environment for our patients throughout the incident," said a spokesman for Barts NHS Trust, "keeping them in the Clostridium difficile culturing lab rather than risking exposing them to 'Windows.'"
(really - look at StopPhoulPlay.com. It's really special.)
Beleaguered Internet advertising phirm Phorm is hitting back at critics with StopPhoulPlay.com, in an attempt to lure Internet activists into herniating from laughter.
"It is clear that the campaign against Phorm originates in the sinister manipulations of Alex Hanff and Marcus Williamson," said Kent Ertegun, CEO of Phorm, "who have used mind control lasers and the killer robot armies of the Open Rights Group and FIPR to deceive millions of Britons into a Communistic fervor of hatred against the engines of the free market and customer demand, the salesmen and marketers, the true creators and enablers of objective value."
The website, designed in Microsoft Word, uses the public relations format so successfully put into play by the ReligiousFreedomWatch.org site of the Church of Scientology, a community institution of flawless repute. StopPhoulPlay.org reveals how:
* At the age of five, Hanff REFUSED to share his crayons with the little girl next to him, saying she was "poopy" and would only draw a picture to be used against him.
* At age twelve, Williamson accepted MONEY from his mother to buy sweets, but not to tell schoolmates in case they wanted some.
* Hanff and Williamson may have attempted to access POTENTIALLY ILLEGAL images blocked by the Internet Watch Foundation.
* Hanff and Williamson have used WIKIPEDIA at least once in their lives.
* Hanff and Williamson INVADED POLAND in 1939.
"Given the persistence with which they propagate incorrect information, we cannot rule out the possibility that a competitor is involved," he said. "The competitor goes under the name 'reality.' Needless to say, we have no tolerance for an entity of such limited possibilities.
"These people are privacy pirates -- people who steal privacy online, off the coast of Somalia. With Internet guns! And drugs! And child pornography!"
Mr Hanff and Mr Williamson said they were unsure whether to sue Phorm into atomic dust for gross defamation or to just let them continue with their infallible public relations work. Phorm shares have dropped from 405p to being declared a serious infection risk by the World Health Organization.
Indeed. Facts, pfeh! You can use "facts" to prove anything that's remotely true.
Nope. They started with an emulator. They never had native 68k in the chip.
Yeah, it's the downside of writing really good FAQs. They filter out anyone (a) with simple problems (b) smart enough to read. So you only get calls from idiots who couldn't take in information anyway. Great.
No, it was an actual 68LC040 emulator in software.
In fact, large chunks of the System were still written in 68040 code for a long time. So new releases of the OS would actually run faster and faster as that code was replaced with native versions.
After eight years as a sysadmin, the other month I crimped a cable for the first time. Why? Our shitty, shitty ordering system would have taken several weeks to get us the cables we needed a week hence. (Planning? That's what other people don't do.)
It has the additional functionality of a fetching red ring and many E74 errors.
OVER 60 MILLION GOT SERVED, Mexico, Friday (NNN) — A new strain of swine flu, H1N1, has killed up to 60 people in Mexico.
The virus is a mixture of swine, bird, human and computer viruses. Symptoms include fever, fatigue, lack of appetite, popup ads, coughing, sore throat, a slow connection and an urge to throw one's computer out of a high window. The disease is thought to have started as a Windows virus on 4chan, a CIA entrapment message board for online activists, and can spread using the current Windows 7 beta.
Center for Disease Control officials looked at their huge stockpiles of H5N1 bird flu vaccine and said, "... shit."
Citizens have panicked at the prospect of bacon being put into quarantine and substituted with some soy-based shit. "Damn that Conficker!" shouted R. MacDonald of San Bernardino, California. "Damn it all to Hell!"
"This comment from me looks photoshopped," said Bruce Schneier, an American computer security expert safely employed over in the UK. "I can tell by the pixels and having seen a lot of shops in my time. I suspect this is the work of a viral botnet spider agent replicating Trojan comments across news services until their functionality is completely destroyed. WHATEVER YOU, DO DON'T LOAD OR READ MY COMMENT. p.s.: I love you."
Insufferably smug Macintosh user Arty Phagge was sanguine. "We know how to use condoms. And I'm a vegetarian." The Free Software Foundation announced the launch of OpenSwine, a disease generation and detection kit available for all to use and develop in perpetuity.
Britain will be protected from the swine flu virus by comprehensive filtering of the British internet, shutting it down entirely as needed. "Would you want your husbands, your servants, accessing the Internet?" asked Home Secretary Jacqui Smith. "I put it to you that you would not."
Or you could, y'know, listen to music instead ...