The judge on the class action lawsuit against Microsoft for those Vista handi-capable stickers unsealed a bunch of super-juicy internal emails exchanged between Microsoft higher-ups (including Ballmer) on Vista's suckiness. They weren't oblivious to the fact that "Vista capable" machines were horrible—but they let it slide, according to exec John Kalkman:
"To help Intel make their quarterly earnings so they could continue to sell motherboards with 915 graphics embedded."They even screwed HP to make Intel happy.
Apparently, HP had made "significant product roadmap changes to support graphics for the full Vista experience," specifically conditioned on Microsoft's "100% assurance that [Microsoft] would not budge for Intel," according to one of the emails. But they did. (And thus ensues a bunch of placating emails and explanations to HP.)
Windows-chief-at-the-time Steven Sinofsky knew the 915s were not up to the task and that labeling machines carrying them wasn't a good idea:
"The '915' chipset which is not Aero capable is in a huge number of laptops and was tagged as 'Vista Capable' but not Vista Premium. I don't know if this was a good call. But these function but will never be great. Even a 945 set has new builds of drivers coming out constantly but hopes are on the next chipset rather than this one."One exec, Mike Ybarra, actually did stand up against this bit of complacent bullshit: "We are allowing Intel to drive our consumer experience...I don't understand why we would cave on this..." Obviously his (right on) calls weren't heeded.
Absolutely ridiculous—hosing customers to fatten Intel's bottom line. Apple fanboy or not, one thing they wouldn't do is shit on their own OS (partially out of vanity, true) so that Intel could dump a bunch of aging chips. [The Docs (PDF), Seattle PI]
When first reading the headline, "Google Gives All SF Homeless Free Voicemail" on our Digg feed, we didn't get it. Why the heck would the homeless want free voicemail? Aren't there more vital things the homeless need?
Perhaps in our over-cellular phone'd society, we overlooked the importance of having a way for people to reach us. Google recognized the need for the homeless to have some connection to loved ones and plan to do something about it. According to the Chron:
Internet giant Google announced on Wednesday a plan to partner with all the homeless shelters in San Francisco and offer free phone numbers and voice mail accounts to homeless individuals, giving people the ability to distribute their own phone numbers and retrieve voice mail messages left for them whenever and from wherever they choose.
The plan is to help those who are homeless get back on their feet by giving potential employers and family a way to reach them and get their life on track. Hopefully, this'll be a way to get them started.
Photo by Ohad*.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Much like Homer's makeup gun, this Glitter Gun allows you to apply sparkly bits to your woman in record time, allowing long waits on the couch while she's getting ready to become a thing of the past. The gun is a bit tricky, however, seeing as one glitter shot is not quite enough, and two glitter shots activates "drunk, horny slut" mode, so aim carefully. [Drink Stuff via Nerd Approved]
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice goes to China next week. Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang is insisting she press for the release of Shi Tao, the Chinese dissident Yahoo helped to imprison. He wrote her a letter to say so. And Yahoo lawyer Michael Samway published it on Yahoo's corporate blog. Which isn't a distasteful public-relations gimmick at all! Especially when you consider that the terms of a settlement with Shi Tao's family requires Yang to lobby for his release. Here's the letter:
Click to expand the image.
You might hate your job, but you've got it better than the office plants at AOL's former headquarters in Dulles. A tipster writes:
I work for AOL in Dulles. AOL celebrated the start of the new year by cutting the budget for watering all the indoor office plants all over Dulles. We came in to find "adopt a plant" posters hung up in the common areas with a corny rhyme about not letting the plants die. Now they're starting to wilt and go black, leaning helplessly against nearby walls or concrete pillars. It's pathetic. Some people inquired about taking them home (there are nice established ficus trees and palms etc.) and were told to either water them, or let them die, at which point they would be removed. I hate symbolism at work.
Another tipster tells us that a "friend of mine who worked at Lexmark said that they fired their janitorial staff. Told employees to take out the trash. Now instead of paying someone $5 an hour to do it, they were paying him $30 an hour." Excellent cost-saving measures all around.
(Photo by brionv)
Can someone please tell me why we don't have 90% market share? Or at least, like, 50%? Anyone? Bueller?
I know this is incredible geeky, but I just had to post this.
Of course, since I am working with Microsoft development languages, I would write it as (much easier):
Update: Thomas Watson pointed out that Ruby is even faster.
Update: And, António takes it further with Python.
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thing-a-day no. 12:
Continuing with Ranjit’s suggestion, I went ahead and drew a z-wolf an den zwölften Tag because IT’S STILL FUNNY! LARF LARF LARF
Thing-a-day no. 11!
T-A-D poster Ranjit suggested that I draw an elf für dem elften Tag, and so I did, because it’s funny. Yuk it up, you Deutsch-sprechende yokels! This drawing is in tribute to Rice Krispies. Surprisingly, it also fits one of this week’s thing-a-day themes, little people.
(mechanical pencil then 005 sakura micron pen, and Higgins Black Magic ink and cheap sable brush for the tree, on shit sketchbook paper, then scanned and colored with the magical blood of forest nymphs … in Photoshop)
I know the drawing is too wide, and it broke the blog for those of us with tiny computer screens, but I DO NOT CARE
The one Cody's Bookstore remaining from their overly -- some say foolishly -- otimistic period of expansion, the one on Berkeley's upscale 4th St. shopping street, will close by the end of March. The company will reopen in downtown Berkeley, on Shattuck near the BART station. This means moving from a very large store in an upscale yuppie shopping area to a smaller store in an area with much more foot traffic, of both UC Berkeley students (who never go to 4th St.) and residents.
Continued reading Cody's to move back to downtown Berkeley...
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This college grad decided to live on the streets with just $25 and a gym bag to see if he could make it without any of the trappings of his upbringing, privileges, or contacts. After 10 months, he was moving into an apartment, bought a pickup truck, and had a savings of around $5,000. The point of the story is supposed to be that people are poor because they have bad attitudes. Which is technically true, but maybe he should do an experiment to see what being born poor will do for your "positive outlook."
(Thanks to Scott!) (Photo: CSmonitor)
Link (via The Shifted Librarian)
Patrons were invited to make good on unpaid fines by donating canned and packaged foods for the local soup kitchen or by entering a dance competition, “Dance Dance Revolution.”To sweeten the pot, during most of the day the library served coffee, bagels, pastries and ice cream, donated by area businesses.
By midafternoon, the cans and packages were piling up on a table inside library director Michelle Sampson’s office while circulation assistant Katie Spofford was setting up the video dance game on a PlayStation in a carpeted room upstairs.
(Image: Johnny)
Luigi is mad as hell and he's not going to take it anymore! This vengeful cross stitch has shown up on one of my favorite video game craft websites SpriteStitch.com and was created by the site's owner John. If you'd like, you can even make it your very own as the piece is available for purchase on eBay for a mere $10 (for now). Since I'm poor, I'll be sending this along to Maggie along with an email begging her to make me one for free. If she doesn't agree, I'll simply blackmail her into it with those incriminating photos from the Kotaku Kompany Kristmas party. Oh wait, those were of me. Damn, I really need to stop drinking whiskey...
Bitter Luigi cross stitch! [SpriteStitch]
An insightful essay on understanding geeks called "The Nerd Handbook" isn't a life hack for you, it's for your family and friends. If you're reading Lifehacker, chances are you're a nerd, and technologist and software manager Michael Lopp articulates the workings of your psyche to the tee. The Nerd Handbook explains to nerds' loved ones how the geek thinks, the importance of the nerd's "Cave" and our chase for "The High" that comes from solving problems, our finicky attention span and our insatiable appetite for information. If you're a nerd, print this out and give it to your non-nerd spouse to teach 'em "advanced nerd tweakage."
By Dale Dougherty
"The telegraph made it possible for people in different places to read the same news."
-- Valerie Komor
We take news for granted. At the Money:Tech Conference today, speakers were talking about how to deal with real-time newsfeeds, which continues to drive the financial world. Brian O'Keefe of Panopticon said "we're collecting and disseminating news at a greater rate than our ability to consume it."
On a visit this week to the Associated Press, I had the opportunity to meet Valerie Komor, the archivist for the AP, and explore the fascinating history of the AP. The AP was founded in 1846 when five NY newspapers decided to share the costs of transmitting the news of the Mexican War from the port at Mobile, Alabama to the southern terminus of the telegraph, near Richmond, and on to New York. Thus was the "association of presses" formed. The brain behind the idea was Moses Yale Beach (1800-68), second owner of the New York Sun.[clarification from VK.]
Later the same five papers agreed to form the Harbor News Service to share the costs of a rowboat used to retrieve the news of Europe from incoming ocean liners. They hoped also to avoid some of the problems of intercepting the new -- the many press boats were crashing into each other.
The AP, established as a cooperative and owned by newspapers, grew and developed into a national news organization that gathers and distributes news on behalf of its subscribers. It was the technology of the telegraph and the teletype that got it started.
You can read more about the AP's history on its site. I particularly like this tidbit about using carrier pigeons from 1849: "Daniel H. Craig, pigeon trainer and news entrepreneur, begins operations out of Halifax, Nova Scotia to meet ships arriving from Europe. Craig is able to telegraph stories over the Nova Scotia telegraph line before ships dock in New York." See the FedEx Super Bowl commercial featuring carrier pigeons. Early newspapers were in the "express" business, investing first in a pony-express operation between New York and Boston, and later in express trains on the same route. Before the telegraph, a lot of news arrived in newsrooms and homes as letters delivered by the postal system.
The Teletype system came along in the 1920's, built by the Teletype Corporation of Skokie, IL. (See Wikipedia on teletype and telex systems; a telex is a means of routing messages between teletypes but the word telex seems to be used the way we used fax to refer to the machine and its output.) The teletype terminal above is shown with keyboard; there were models without keyboards for receiving only. An ASR terminal (automatic send and receive) had a paper tape reader and hole punch system. This tape was frequently edited by cutting sections and taping them together, an early form of "cut and paste."
Teletype transmissions were very slow by today's standards at sixty words per minute. Yet that's how news was sent from one city to another through the 1960's and later.
Valerie pulled out a file and showed us the telexes from the day of the Kennedy assassination. These were sheets of paper that were ripped out the Teletype, as each fragment of the news story came to them. An AP photographer on the scene called the Dallas bureau and they began transmitting the news as it happened -- in real-time -- to the Kansas City bureau, which was the regional hub.
The telex reads:
Photographer James W. Altgens said he saw blood on the President's head.Altgens said he heard two shots but thought someone was shooting fireworks until he saw the blood on the President.
Users of the teletype system developed concise forms of communication because every word was precious. “We all spoke in telex jargon. You had to shorten everything you said,” said Gustavo Bottan in the MIT Sloan School Alumni Newsletter (Spring/Summer 2006). “I remember spending a lot of time writing the telex message and then shortening it.”
The Teletype had its own "wirespeak," the name of a book documenting it by Richard Hartnett. "--30--" meant "end of story" or "end of transmission." It's a convention that many writers continue to use today. "--73--" meant "thanks" and "--88--" stood for "love and kisses." Add telex jargon to the odd history of abbreviated communication that today includes emoticons and SMS acronyms.
A recent Economist story, "A Faint Ping", talks about the diminishing number of telex systems in use. Yet some stubbornly survive.
Many of the remaining customers are banks. Telexes, unlike ordinary e-mails, are legally valid documents (being to all intents and purposes impossible to fake). “The telex network is closed—you can't get in unless you are part of the club,” says Peter MacLaverty of SwissTelex.
As newspapers look to re-invent themselves, they might learn as much from their past as they can from worrying about the future.
By Dale Dougherty
"The telegraph made it possible for people in different places to read the same news."
-- Valerie Komor
We take news for granted. At the Money:Tech Conference today, speakers were talking about how to deal with real-time newsfeeds, which continues to drive the financial world. Brian O'Keefe of Panopticon said "we're collecting and disseminating news at a greater rate than our ability to consume it."
On a visit this week to the Associated Press, I had the opportunity to meet Valerie Komor, the archivist for the AP, and explore the fascinating history of the AP. The AP was founded in 1846 when five NY newspapers decided to share the costs of transmitting the news of the Mexican War from the port at Mobile, Alabama to the southern terminus of the telegraph, near Richmond, and on to New York. Thus was the "association of presses" formed. The brain behind the idea was Moses Yale Beach (1800-68), second owner of the New York Sun.[clarification from VK.]
Later the same five papers agreed to form the Harbor News Service to share the costs of a rowboat used to retrieve the news of Europe from incoming ocean liners. They hoped also to avoid some of the problems of intercepting the new -- the many press boats were crashing into each other.
The AP, established as a cooperative and owned by newspapers, grew and developed into a national news organization that gathers and distributes news on behalf of its subscribers. It was the technology of the telegraph and the teletype that got it started.
You can read more about the AP's history on its site. I particularly like this tidbit about using carrier pigeons from 1849: "Daniel H. Craig, pigeon trainer and news entrepreneur, begins operations out of Halifax, Nova Scotia to meet ships arriving from Europe. Craig is able to telegraph stories over the Nova Scotia telegraph line before ships dock in New York." See the FedEx Super Bowl commercial featuring carrier pigeons. Early newspapers were in the "express" business, investing first in a pony-express operation between New York and Boston, and later in express trains on the same route. Before the telegraph, a lot of news arrived in newsrooms and homes as letters delivered by the postal system.
The Teletype system came along in the 1920's, built by the Teletype Corporation of Skokie, IL. (See Wikipedia on teletype and telex systems; a telex is a means of routing messages between teletypes but the word telex seems to be used the way we used fax to refer to the machine and its output.) The teletype terminal above is shown with keyboard; there were models without keyboards for receiving only. An ASR terminal (automatic send and receive) had a paper tape reader and hole punch system. This tape was frequently edited by cutting sections and taping them together, an early form of "cut and paste."
Teletype transmissions were very slow by today's standards at sixty words per minute. Yet that's how news was sent from one city to another through the 1960's and later.
Valerie pulled out a file and showed us the telexes from the day of the Kennedy assassination. These were sheets of paper that were ripped out the Teletype, as each fragment of the news story came to them. An AP photographer on the scene called the Dallas bureau and they began transmitting the news as it happened -- in real-time -- to the Kansas City bureau, which was the regional hub.
The telex reads:
Photographer James W. Altgens said he saw blood on the President's head.Altgens said he heard two shots but thought someone was shooting fireworks until he saw the blood on the President.
Users of the teletype system developed concise forms of communication because every word was precious. “We all spoke in telex jargon. You had to shorten everything you said,” said Gustavo Bottan in the MIT Sloan School Alumni Newsletter (Spring/Summer 2006). “I remember spending a lot of time writing the telex message and then shortening it.”
The Teletype had its own "wirespeak," the name of a book documenting it by Richard Hartnett. "--30--" meant "end of story" or "end of transmission." It's a convention that many writers continue to use today. "--73--" meant "thanks" and "--88--" stood for "love and kisses." Add telex jargon to the odd history of abbreviated communication that today includes emoticons and SMS acronyms.
A recent Economist story, "A Faint Ping", talks about the diminishing number of telex systems in use. Yet some stubbornly survive.
Many of the remaining customers are banks. Telexes, unlike ordinary e-mails, are legally valid documents (being to all intents and purposes impossible to fake). “The telex network is closed—you can't get in unless you are part of the club,” says Peter MacLaverty of SwissTelex.
As newspapers look to re-invent themselves, they might learn as much from their past as they can from worrying about the future.
It's invisible ink, officials said. The scanner will count it.Link (Thanks, Kerry!)But their votes weren't recorded after all.
"Part of me was thinking it does sound stupid enough to be true,'' said Amy Carlton, who had serious doubts but went ahead and voted anyway.
As it turns out, Carlton was one of 20 voters at the precinct who were given the wrong pen to use. They were also then told, apparently by a misinformed judge, that the pens have invisible ink, elections officials said.
As a result, the votes were not counted. But officials insisted there were no dirty tricks involved.
A few months earlier in the same airport, a tech engineer returning from a business trip to London objected when a federal agent asked him to type his password into his laptop computer. "This laptop doesn't belong to me," he remembers protesting. "It belongs to my company." Eventually, he agreed to log on and stood by as the officer copied the Web sites he had visited, said the engineer, a U.S. citizen who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of calling attention to himself.Link (Via Consumerist)Maria Udy, a marketing executive with a global travel management firm in Bethesda, said her company laptop was seized by a federal agent as she was flying from Dulles International Airport to London in December 2006. Udy, a British citizen, said the agent told her he had "a security concern" with her. "I was basically given the option of handing over my laptop or not getting on that flight," she said.
...
"I was assured that my laptop would be given back to me in 10 or 15 days," said Udy, who continues to fly into and out of the United States. She said the federal agent copied her log-on and password, and asked her to show him a recent document and how she gains access to Microsoft Word. She was asked to pull up her e-mail but could not because of lack of Internet access. With ACTE's help, she pressed for relief. More than a year later, Udy has received neither her laptop nor an explanation.
San Francisco citizen, code monkey, sketch comedy player
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