Discussions

6 hours ago, kettch wrote

@Bass: Oh, you will welcome them. Google Glass, from the instant I first saw it has always reminded me of this:

Ha Ha!  Yeah, that probably comes bundled.

@Ian2:I would think that a Surface Phone would be more likely ... but you never know.  IMO, 7" is too small for a tablet anyway.

It wouldn't be too unthinkable to expect new phone and Xbox hardware showing off APIs that are better integrated with W8 (i.e. more merging together of the platforms).

@kettch:  Could be worse.  I can't even accept anything over $50, period.  I can't accept more than one free meal.  The trip has to be approved not only from the travel budget but also by an "ethics" review board from human resources (for conflicts of interest or potential bribes), and it has to be approved by a Vice President by the second week of January for anytime in the year.  You can't just pop in a month before the event and say "I want to go".  Not that such a trip would ever be approved anyway.

If I want to go to an event like this, it is on my vacation time and on my dime.  Thank goodness for the Ch9 coverage of these events.

I don't expect there will be much swag this year anyway.  Probably just a flash drive with Windows Blue on it.

It's pretty black and white.  If you are using someone else's wireless connection (whether secure or insecure) without their knowledge and permission, than you are in the wrong both morally and, in most places, legally as well.  Even with the owner's permission you are still not in the clear.  Many large service providers, like Comcast, explicitly prohibit any sharing of the network connection in their terms of service.  Most service providers also do have bandwidth caps or variable cost plans.  Throw in liability concerns, risk of infections or data theft, etc., and it's just a bad idea.

Congratulations Sven.

2 hours ago, ZippyV wrote

*snip*

Yes, I think WinRT will be extended to desktop applications. I believe Microsoft focused on Metro apps first for the Win8 release because it was the most urgent one (tablets) while desktop apps already have an existing ecosystem. Now the focus is on bringing WinRT to the desktop so that these new apps can be integrated with the App store and communicate with other WinRT/Metro apps.

I agree.  It took a huge effort, and all available resources, just to get Win8 and related products out the door.  They obviously chose to defer desktop updates to get the new products out the door, as would anybody.  I expect it was in the plan all along that the next wave would move some attention back to the desktop.  WinRT (or some variant of it) will be extended to bring the same programming models and APIs to the desktop.  XAML (and HTML) clearly will play the same role there.  .NET is no different than it was other than targeting WinRT now.  It only matters to the compiler.  Write in a .NET language or a native language as you wish, it doesn't matter.  I think (hope) that the next releases will show a lot of unification and cleaning up of the rough spots.

The big problem has been a string of developer-relations disasters.  So, they wanted to keep the details of Win8 a secret -- fine.  But a series of poorly worded statements, followed by deafening silence did a lot of damage with developers.  Products that people were deeply invested in have been orphaned without any real direction of where things are headed.  Old technologies still work, but for how long?  Microsoft used to be so good about developer/product roadmaps -- one of the best companies I have ever seen for laying out the plan for where things were going and when they would arrive.  We need that back.  A lot of confidence has been lost.  We all know how much harder it is to bring customers back after you have lost them.  MS needs to let the world in on the secret sooner than later, before programmers slip any further away.

My old Linksys gear was pretty reliable ... until a series of power company surges fried it all.  Linksys became a mess when Cisco took over, so Belkin could hardly do worse.  Prices should go up by a factor of ten overnight if they follow the standard Belkin pricing, so nobody will buy the stuff anyway.  I'm mostly using dlink stuff at the moment, which has been reasonable.  The DIR655 is a pretty good wireless router.  Options for consumer-grade network equipment have been pretty weak lately.

I think the naming is an attempt to distinguish the Surface Pro from Surface RT in order to address some of the customer confusion about capabilities ('this device runs Windows 8 Pro").  But I would expect that for those customers, knowing Pro vs. RT doesn't really help any in answering their questions.  The naming also creates a very awkward problem for dealing with later versions of the OS.  Just taking the number out of the name -- i.e. Surface Windows Pro instead of Surface Windows 8 Pro would be better.  But at that point, you should just drop the Windows too and go right back to the SurfaceRT and Surface Pro we had before.  MS has been using "Windows 8" as a brand, most likely to emphasize the departure from previous versions.  But highlighting the change from older versions makes it more awkward for future versions.

Microsoft has always had the worst product naming of any company in the history of time.  Most of the products would be much better off to stick with the internal development names.

That's no coincidence.  Amazon search products show up in other ads all over the place.  I've seen that many, many times.  (They are far from the only ones doing it too.)  It's more than a little creepy.

1 day ago, SteveRichter wrote

Where is the driverless forklift?

The driverless forklift very much does exist and has in some places for years.  (I know a guy who works on them,)  Fully automated picking is used in some places to great effect.  Amazon certainly could build such a system if they decided to do it.  The fact that they still use humans says that they have found that to be more efficient/cost effective.  For something on that scale, I imagine that it would be more efficient to let humans handle it.  Otherwise you would have to have a smart conveyor system that would make UPS look like grade school.