Entries for LarryOsterman

Where do you go to ask for support? [Where do you go to ask for support?]

LarryOsterman — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 21:23:16 GMT

Cross posted from my blog:

One of the things I'm currently working on is analyzing our community efforts, so I'd like to turn the blog around and ask:

When you have a technical question about a product, where do you go to look for answers?

Places I know about (in no particular order):

My blog :).
Other Microsoft people's blogs :).
The MSDN Support forums.
The Microsoft Newsgroups.
Google/Live Search/Yahoo/pick your favorite search engine.
Paid Support.
Mailing lists (wdmauddev is a great example of this)

I'm not just looking for programming questions - even questions like "where do I get a driver for my <whatever> card" or "how do I do <blah>" count.

Any and all answers would be appreciated - I'm just trying to understand the landscape right now.

Btw, for those of you who would propose: "Google" as the generic answer, what happens when the answer isn't on the search engines?

Also, in which forums do you look for answers? I listed a couple above, but there have to be more than just that.

in reply to Where do you go to ask for support?

Re: Windows and the Internet: Unsafe at any speed revisited [Re: Windows and the Internet: Unsafe at any speed revisited]

LarryOsterman — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 19:50:30 GMT

shooby wrote:

I took a locked down, firewall-ed, antiviruse-ed, anti-spyware-ed, and ran a limited account and, well, randomly browsed the internet, clicking on whatever popped up.

Within an hour, it was sick -- unable to add bookmarks, unable to save to disk, unable to print.

Locked down <==> Running as a non-admin. It also means completely up-to-date with patches.

You're saying that you had this happen as a normal user onXP SP2 with all the patches? Fascinating, that's not my experience at all.

in reply to Re: Windows and the Internet: Unsafe at any speed revisited

Re: Ultra mobile PC [NOT] [Re: Ultra mobile PC [NOT]]

LarryOsterman — Sun, 19 Mar 2006 16:04:02 GMT

shooby wrote:

Not surprising given Bill G. diatriabe on that mobile MIT PC thats been in the news.

Hey Bill, take a billion or 2 of your own personal wealth and instead of tightening the nuts and bolts of the Microsoft monopoly, use your money to help them -- or arent you smart enough? I know you Bill, and your just an A** looking for people to dump on - or prove me wrong.

I love you too!

xx00

shooby

Shooby, I love you. I haven't spewed coke on my monitor laughing in a long time, thank you.

You do know what Bill's done with some 20 BILLION of his own personal wealth, right? Ever heard of the Gates Foundation? The charity with the largest endowment on the planet? The one that's primarily dedicated to health issues in the 3rd world?

That one?

I think he has done a bit more than that.

in reply to Re: Ultra mobile PC [NOT]

Microsoft releases Windows Source Code [Microsoft releases Windows Source Code]

LarryOsterman — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 15:46:45 GMT

Yup, that's right, according to MSNBC.

Just wanted to get here first with that. /. hasn't noticed yet :)

in reply to Microsoft releases Windows Source Code

Re: 3000 MS Jobs Moving to India [Re: 3000 MS Jobs Moving to India]

LarryOsterman — Wed, 07 Dec 2005 17:10:59 GMT

shooby wrote:
All you MrSofties, take note.

Soon you'll be MrOutsourced.

Still love Bill?

http://in.rediff.com/money/2005/dec/07gates1.htm\

I love you too!

xx00 shooby

Don't know how to break it to you, but I didn't see anything there about 3,000 jobs being cut in the US to counter those 3,000 jobs created in India.

Microsoft has a bunch of development centers scattered around the word - off the top of my head, I know of ones in Ireland, Israel, China and India, and I'm sure there are others (there are several in the US, for example)

Large portions of product development are done overseas, that's been true for more than 10 years.

in reply to Re: 3000 MS Jobs Moving to India

Re: Wobbly Open GL Window Manager [Re: Wobbly Open GL Window Manager]

LarryOsterman — Mon, 05 Dec 2005 17:39:40 GMT

shooby wrote:
All,

Hey, this is so cool.

http://ftp.gnome.org/mirror/temp/seth/blog-images/monkey-hoot/MovieOfMovie.avi

note, its transparent, 'wobbly' and the playing a movie.

And it's FREE..

I love you too.

xx00

shooby

IMHO, it looks cool for about 30 seconds. Then users will start to get seasick and look for how to turn it off.

Schwoopieness works fine if it's a transient feature (think of OSX's "blend to the tray" animation), but not as a primary window manager feature (again, IMHO - I'm not a UI designer).

in reply to Re: Wobbly Open GL Window Manager

C9 Suggestion... [C9 Suggestion...]

LarryOsterman — Mon, 19 Sep 2005 14:45:51 GMT

Scramble the videos on the front page. If you look at the "view" count, the video that's given the top slot is viewed orders or magnitude more than the other videos.

If you scramble the videos, that shouldn't happen :)

in reply to C9 Suggestion...

Re: The End of an Era [Re: The End of an Era]

LarryOsterman — Wed, 06 Apr 2005 15:55:56 GMT

shooby wrote:

Oh, by the way, you people probably don't even know this, but Microsoft didnt write DOS, they stole it from a company called Seatle Microcomputer, for 50k, and sold a slower, less architecturally sound version to IBM, then stole OS/2 from IBM, called it Windows 286, and....well, the innovation continues.

Not stolen, Sold fair and square by Seattle Microcomputer products to Microsoft. And they were paid quite handsomely for the product.

shooby wrote:

Enjoy the karma, dirt bag.

Ah, adhominums. Always the mark of a winning debate style.

in reply to Re: The End of an Era