MetaFilter posts tagged with technology and Microsoft

The virtual dice rolling has got to go.

lazaruslong — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 14:27:35 -0800

The Microsoft Surface was the subject of much ridicule. When Gabe and Tycho from Penny Arcade had the chance to sit down with one at Carnegie Mellon's Entertainment Technology Center, known colloquially as the ETC, they saw potential for the Surface to become an amazing tool for Dungeons and Dragons tabletop gaming. They offered some suggestions to the team, and months later, SurfaceScapes is the result. Video. Wired Article with some more info on the ETC. The project is the work of a team of designers from the ETC. Currently, they only have a basic Game Master tool set programmed, but the researchers are working to enhance the player experience.

"If you can't make it good, at least make it look good."

Blazecock Pileon — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 15:06:51 -0800

Bill Gates files a bug report: "There's not a day that I don't send a piece of e-mail ... like that piece of e-mail. That's my job."

delete what they end to all of the loop press

Blazecock Pileon — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 23:17:57 -0800

delete adult scroll conflict for (or: 10 minutes of Perl scripting with Vista)

Where is Jim Gray?

BLDGBLOG — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 22:37:15 -0800

Wired presents an extraordinary look at "one of the most ambitious search-and-rescue missions in history," after one of Microsoft's researchers, Jim Gray, and his boat, the Tenacious, went missing in the Pacific Ocean outside San Francisco in January 2007. Cartography meets law meets 2.0 technology. "First the Coast Guard scoured 132,000 square miles of ocean. Then a team of scientists and Silicon Valley power players turned the eyes of the global network onto the Pacific." Eventually, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, the US Navy, NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium jumped in – "as did astronomers from leading universities." To this day, Jim Gray has never been found, and his disappearance cannot be explained. Read Wired for more.

A race of atomic supermen which will conquer the world

Smart Dalek — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 08:51:36 -0800

An' all the hot cats on the block have been doing it too - c'mon now, honey, I wanna do it with you. Anyone hoping to build their own Death Probe without dismantling the vaccum cleaner or floor waxer can rejoice. The creators of Roomba and Scooba have released a barebones version. Add-on software from Microsoft is available, should more ambitious types decide to pair iRobot's tech with LEGO MindStorms pieces.

Buy now, pay later.

davehat — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 04:50:33 -0800

FlexGo™. Microsoft targets emerging markets with pay as you go and subscription models.

WSYP

H. Roark — Thu, 20 Oct 2005 10:58:57 -0800

Microsoft WSYP A very exciting and promising new technology coming from Redmond. [movie - .asf (windows media)]

#1-Google, #2-Apple, #3-Microsoft

spock — Wed, 27 Jul 2005 19:32:59 -0800

"A look at the average number of page views per title reveals that Microsoft gets about half as many page views per title as compared to Google and Apple" a strong indication of where reader interest actually resides." - ZDNet. Intelliseek's Blogpulse reveals similar numbers: #1 Google: 473K, #2 Apple: 381K, #3 Microsoft: 262K. Venture capitalist, Ed Sim, says: "While the OS is important, Microsoft has lost its complete and utter dominance as we move to a service-oriented world where broadband is everywhere, apps are in the cloud, and the browser becomes king."

Today Norway, tomorrow - Ultima Thule!

tannhauser — Tue, 28 Jun 2005 06:05:31 -0800

Norway's Ministry for Modernisation has declared for Open Source formats. Speaking at eNorge, the Norwegian Minister for Modernisation, Morten Andreas Meyer, has said that "proprietary formats will no longer be acceptable in communication between citizens and government". Although he did not mention Microsoft by name, he did say that this was the last time he would be streaming his speech using the current (WMP-based) technology.

The Ministry for Modernisation may sound quaint, but it was founded in 2004 with a broad remit, and 200 employees, not a small number in a nation of less than 5 million souls. Although Norway's spending on IT may not be great compared to the US or China, as one of the wealthiest and most technologically developed nations on Earth (not to mention the emphasis on long-distance communications robustness created by a large country with terrible weather) it sets a precedent about what a tech-savvy first-world nation might do with Open Source, not because it cannot afford proprietary formats but because it does not want them. Microsoft, meanwhile, might be wondering why it bothered to translate Office into Sami. Will this be the first domino, or can it be written off as the actions of an oil-rich rogue state that will soon be brought back into the global consensus?

Google to Search Your PC For You

tranquileye — Wed, 19 May 2004 08:40:02 -0800

The John Markoff of the New York Times [registration required] reports that Google plans to roll-out a text and file search tool code-named Puffin for finding information stored on PCs. The move is seen as a defensive one; Microsoft plans to include PC searching in its new operating system, scheduled to be released in 2006 (at the earliest).

Virus replication is a feature!

tbc — Tue, 07 Oct 2003 13:17:50 -0800

Virus replication is a feature! "If you are using a Macintosh e-mail program that is not from Microsoft, we recommend checking with that particular company. But most likely other e-mail programs like Eudora are not designed to enable virus replication." The original URL is 404. I wonder if Microsoft will be exerting their copyrights to force archive.org to remove this.

What software version numbers really mean

jeremias — Mon, 29 Sep 2003 07:14:58 -0800

What software version numbers really mean. Not sure who started the latest trend of dropping version numbers from software. We could always blame Microsoft with Windows ME . But Macromedia is at fault too with the whole MX thing. And MX doesn't even stand for anything. Now Adobe is getting into the mix. There will be no Photoshop 8 or Illustrator 11. Just CS . So is this a good thing? Version numbers may not be exciting but it sure did make it easy to keep track of the latest upgrade.

Yet another reason to buy a mac

jonson — Fri, 13 Jun 2003 12:15:21 -0800

Microsoft to discontinue development of IE for the Mac... Surprisingly this apparently isn't being done because of the low market share for Macintosh, but rather as a side effect of the increasing integration (whether real or alleged) between IE and the Operating System, which on the Mac is closed, so MS can cease development as support for their claims of mandatory integration between browser & OS. I await the next step, mandatory integration between email & OS? IM? Media tools? Net access?

Wi-Fi vs. FM?

psychomedia — Fri, 25 Apr 2003 00:31:46 -0800

With Tungsten C - it's most powerful handheld ever (according to themselves) Palm is making some aggressive moves to turn its business around and brings wireless 802.11b-based connectivity to the Palm family of devices. Microsoft, on the other hand, is to use FM radio waves for news, weather and traffic, etc - on your watch. Is this a race or PDA technology diversity at its best? ...and here I'm sitting around with my stone age Visor.

Microsoft still king of the hill

riffola — Mon, 02 Dec 2002 15:26:16 -0800

Liberty Alliance conceded defeat last week to Microsoft .NET Passport. AOL, a key player in Liberty Alliance, just disbanded it's Magic Carpet team, whose memebers were also the AOL point people for the Sun-led Liberty Alliance Project, and played a very active role in its progression. How long do we wait until they start complaining about Microsoft having a monopoly in unified authentication systems?

Hackworth — Mon, 01 Jul 2002 19:05:15 -0800

Did you install it yet? You may want to think twice. That new software update for Windows Media Player isn't just a security update, if you read the End User License Agreement carefully, it states:

"In order to protect the integrity of content and software protected by digital rights management 'Secure Content', Microsoft may provide security related updates to the OS Components that will be automatically downloaded onto your computer."

Does anyone know anything more about this? How about recommendations for a suitable replacement for WMP?

kasnj — Mon, 04 Mar 2002 10:30:36 -0800

MS Windows for your car? Let me make sure I'm getting this...cell phones in cars = bad, BSOD in cars = good?

justlooking — Wed, 06 Feb 2002 00:45:47 -0800

Microsoft announced a month long moratorium on new coding in order to fix bugs. Purcell,their privacy chief is quoted as saying Gates "is really annoyed by the incredible pain we put everyone through in computing" . Microsoft's bug problems and security vulnerabilities have lately been getting out of hand. There has also been rumours last month that Gates wants the entire company reoriented towards ..well providing bug free products. Do you think that serious changes are underway in Microsoft? What does it really take for an sofware development enterprise the size of Microsoft to have to provide secure, reasonably bug free products? (via GMSV)

machaus — Thu, 18 Oct 2001 07:20:40 -0800

Is it sloppy programming, or do full computer security vulnerability disclosure make it too easy for hackers? Microsoft has a personal interest in minimizing the exploit of their code, but the evil you know is better than the evil you don't. Others have weighed in on this debate in the past, or provided a fair but vague blueprint for the computer security community. Do you think that a middle ground exists?

m.polo — Fri, 31 Aug 2001 08:18:40 -0800

In the midst of being indignant over the death of the BeOS, Scot Hacker talks about Microsoft's OEM license with hardware vendors. Although Microsoft claims the terms of the agreement are a "trade secret," preventing it from making appearnce in the DOJ circus, apparently it prevents OEMs from installing any non-Microsoft OS along side a Microsoft OS... If true, the "browser integration" thing's just a minor annoyance - this would be monopolistic and anti-competitive... via rc3.org

rcade — Mon, 30 Jul 2001 08:30:11 -0800

Slate's Mickey Kaus and the Washington Post ask the question: For all the claims of illegal monopolies and unfair advantage, is the tech industry counting on Microsoft and Windows XP's Oct. 25 release to save its bacon?

ed — Tue, 17 Jul 2001 12:04:28 -0800

Win XP's Product Activation as a breeze to hack. Provided that RC1 still ships as is and you keep your RAM locked at a fixed number of sticks, it's simply a matter of keeping a backup of a DBL file. For all the ballyhoo, it's amazing that something this obvious slipped under the cracks. With WPA this sloppy, is this the only half-hearted facet of Windows XP?

Steven Den Beste — Mon, 09 Jul 2001 23:06:07 -0800

Someone reverse engineered the Win-XP activation mechanism. It's not as bad as many people thought. It's certainly no cause for paranoia.

fil! — Thu, 05 Apr 2001 12:48:30 -0800

Internet Explorer 6 and Standards Microsoft says they'll have 100% CSS1 and DOM (I assume level 1) support. A step in the right direction? Too little too late? Discuss.

harmful — Wed, 07 Mar 2001 14:18:18 -0800

The last computer you'll ever own. With the entertainment industry pushing electronics manufacturers towards closed, proprietary hardware, how soon will we be limited to strictly "renting" media, serives, etc.?