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Comment Brings a tear to my eye (Score 3, Interesting) 342

by xwwt (#39548167) Attached to: 25 Years of IBM's OS/2
I spent may hours working in the ICLUI interface building apps for OS/2. For the most part it was good at memory management, tools were mature and the interface was object oriented. I was always frustrated about the MS & IBM split on the interface and I think MS took the wrong route in getting to Windows. Had the alliance stuck around who knows what would have happened to this OS.
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft Windows Phone Problem (gottabemobile.com)

Submitted by xwwt
xwwt writes: Microsoft is struggling to find an appropriate place for its new phones including the upcoming Nokia Lumia 900 and the HTC Titan II. Some advertisements have show MS employees going head-to-head with other platform users to "prove" that the Windows mobile platform outperforms other devices and platforms. But is this the right strategy for Microsoft which has often brought hardware to market only to fail in user interface and eventually abandon the user base and technology?

In an article by gottamobile.com, slides of Microsoft's go-forward strategy have surfaced showing MS will be trying to position its mobile devices with at $10M spend over three years to "ringfence" developers into building apps to draw users to the platform. You have to ask though, will having Instagram or Pandora really going to drive users to purchase the platform?
Google

Submission + - Our Fear of Google Is Four Million Years Old (vice.com)

Submitted by hellboundunicorn
hellboundunicorn writes: Excerpted from opinion piece:

Despite the common fears regarding overt censorship on the Internet – Twitter blocking tweets, SOPA and the like, and even the general Disney-ification of our mobile lives by Apple’s draconian iTunes submission policy – we tend to fret over the rise of Big Data. For many of us, myself included, Google knows everything about our lives: All of my correspondence and searches are crawled for ad data, and the Goog knows where I am at all times.

This nagging distrust and feeling of being swindled is so stressful simply because quitting Google seems like a massive pain in the ass. Google’s got me by the balls because it offers all these services, all working in concert, for the heft cost of zero dollars. Therein lies the root cause of my paranoia: Aside from Google storing all of my strange searches on a server somewhere, handing out all this capability for nothing more than a few ads. It feels like I’m walking slowly into a big set of jaws that are about to snap shut. Why? Because we’ve evolved to distrust anything that’s free.

Submission + - Bandwidth Overage Fee Notice From Cox Was In Error (multichannel.com)

Submitted by
mike2400
mike2400 writes: "Multi-Channel news reports that “Cox Communications said a message apparently displayed to broadband customers on its website indicating they would be billed overage fees for exceeding monthly bandwidth usage was a mistake.” Currently Cox says there are limits for each tier of service but the user is not charged if they go over their limit. Cox certainly has the infrastructure in place to measure bandwidth use and could easily convert that information into additional charges for their customers. A spokesman from Cox said in the report from Multichannel news that they will “continue to evaluate service delivery and billing options as the industry and needs of the customer evolve.” Multichannel news states that “about 3% of Cox customers exceed the monthly data allowance for their tier.” Other large national broadband providers are billing users for going over the advertised data cap. It will just be a matter of time before Cox follows the same trend."
Social Networks

Submission + - Play to the crowd: Crowdsourcing works for science and businesses alike (patexia.com)

Submitted by
techgeek0279
techgeek0279 writes: "When you’re trained to be a scientist, you learn the fundamental process of experimentation: The scientific method. New-generation scientists see enormous potential in crowdsourcing this revered method. Their attempts to crowdsource science have been successful and even better than some traditional methods using super computers and standard practices."

Submission + - The most spartan image search (napilt.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Hi, out of my own need I created the most spartan image search engine I could think of — www.napilt.com. The website is buttonless. If you find it useful I would appreciate if you could spread the word. If not ... well I respect that as well.

Cheers,

Indrek
Power

Submission + - Is the electric car dying? (extremetech.com) 7

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes: "Electric cars and plug-in hybrids took a beating on reliability, testing, and sales over the winter: $40,000 Tesla batteries bricking, a Fisker dying at the hands of Consumer Reports testers, a bit player going under, production suspended for five weeks on the Chevrolet Volt. Taken together, critics say, it proves electric vehicles (EVs) and plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) have finally been exposed as overpriced frauds. In reality, though, it's more likely that these events are just randomness, and bugs caused by new, relatively untested tech. The Chevrolet Volt, for example, has probably just run out of early adopters (it's too expensive for mass market) — and the Fisker Karma, which famously had a full system failure the first time Consumer Reports reached 65 mph, is a classic case of immature tech (and an immature startup) that hasn't been fully tested. The fact is, electric cars aren't dying — they're just hitting a few speed bumps, like all new tech."
Games

Submission + - Wil Wheaton New Show Tabletop (typepad.com)

Submitted by xwwt
xwwt writes: Wil Wheaton is working with Felicia Day on a new show called Tabletop on the YouTube Channel Geek and Sundry. The show will be about board games and gaming in general.
The first show airs April 2nd.
Facebook

Submission + - Facebook goes down by two-hour blackout (technewest.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Facebook Inc, the world’s biggest social networking site, said its service was unavailable in some European countries on Wednesday morning because of technical problems. Users reported problems accessing Facebook.com in many countries, including the UK and Ireland, for about two hours.
Government

Submission + - Wikileaks and Anonymous Join Forces to Reveal How Dumb Our Intelligence Is (vice.com)

Submitted by
pigrabbitbear
pigrabbitbear writes: "The most recent bombshell of confidential documents dropped by infamous watchdog organization Wikileaks is already looking to have an enormous impact on our understanding of government security practices. Specifically, intimate details on the long-suspected fact that the U.S. has been paying a whole lot of money to have private corporations spy on citizens, activists and other groups and individuals on their ever-expanding, McCarthy-style naughty list. But perhaps more importantly, the docs demonstrate something very interesting about the nature of U.S. government intelligence: They haven’t really got much of it."
Math

Submission + - Digital Newton Manuscripts at National Library of Israel (nli.org.il)

Submitted by xwwt
xwwt writes: The National Library of Israel has recently uploaded manuscripts created by Newton and help to uncover some of his personality and thoughts, especially around his feeling about the esoteric nature of some of his studies. In general Sir. Isaac felt that there were mystical secrets to be uncovered as evidenced in his attempts to unlock scientific secrets from the Bible and Talmud. Of particular note, this collection contains several manuscripts on the topics of alchemy and religion.

Other sources of these kinds of manuscripts can be found at the Newton Project or Chymistry of Isaac Newton.

Be prepared to break out your Hebrew and/or Latin dictionary for some of the links/work

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I tell them to turn to the study of mathematics, for it is only there that they might escape the lusts of the flesh. -- Thomas Mann, "The Magic Mountain"

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