One thing that the NBC Universal--Comcast thing taught me was that "inaccurate" != "false". (They said news about the merger was "inaccurate". They merged anyway.) Here we go again.

In short, I'm not convinced that either system will survive the axe, and you should probably just polish your HTML5-optimized-for-Metro-or-whatever-it's-called-now (or OpenGL?) skills if you still want to make games for Windows:

1. They never reversed the actual decision to retire the two from the award program.
2. They did not mention that XNA or its MVP award...status...program...thing would not be axed.
3. "Microsoft is actively investing in DirectX as the unified graphics foundation for our key platforms, including Xbox 360, Windows Phone and Windows. DirectX is evolving and will continue to evolve. For instance, right now we’re investing in some very cool graphics code authorizing [sic] technology in Visual Studio." - it's great that they're still developing it now, before April 1, 2014, but what about after?
4. "We have absolutely no intention of stopping innovation with DirectX, and you can quote me on that." - this didn't start because we thought would somehow "[stop] innovation with DirectX" (a concept as nebulous as fuck, because they could be taking it to mean that, e.g., they'd try to actively prevent people from using a newly-deprecated API, instead of just deprecating it). No, we wondered whether they'd stop developing, supporting, and maintaining the platform after the stated date, aaaaand *crickets and a coquí or two*.

So will both die on April 2014? In the words of $got_talent_judge, "I vote Yes."

What exactly are they going to be using the graphene for?

Hmm...let's start our fact-find quest by reading the summary...

...something something Nokia mumble mumble Graphene Flagship Consortium, grumble blahblah...

...ah, "Consortium"! Something that involves patent pooling and money exchanges and no-poach agreements (that never happened of course but we'll just agree to the settlement because no wrongdoing) and lots of nicely- (or less-so) worded requests for even more money from governments and end users. Also something about Nokia, so it'll probably ultimately be nothing of value or absurdly durable or, somehow, both. Now to the article...

Nokia is proud to be involved with this project, and we have deep roots in the field – we first started working with graphene already in 2006," said Henry Tirri, EVP, CTO of Nokia. "Since then, we have come to identify multiple areas where this material can be applied in modern computing environments. We’ve done some very promising work so far, but I believe the greatest innovations have yet to be discovered blahbitty blahblahblaaah... industrial value chains and other such megacrap."

...which I gather means that even Nokia's xVPs and CxOs have no idea what graphene stuff will appear in the public marketplace but it'll involve tech and research and stuff and maybe also phones because they're involved with that sort of thing but [yet another rant about the whole Windows Phone thing, with my opinions].

(I obviously hope for better on all those points but through Slashdot I've learned to feel depressed about the current state of tech-business affairs, even and especially wrt Slashdot. Yay! *buries head in hands*)

I for one smell a hint of YTMND.

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
That's why I attack with
Raw magic instead.

--Archmage Robert Frost, "Fire and Ice and Arcane"

Don't wait on it. They're still too busy harassing YouTube users to show their Real Name, and tweaking the same to look more like Facebook (noticed those pics next to the comments? --oh who am I kidding, I'm trying to get people to read YouTube comments to make a point...silly me).

Tough to stop employees from doing something when it's the company goal.

Carrier Grade

adj., patently obsolete; low quality; ridiculous; fucked up.

WTF!? He just one-hit killed me. That's some Carrier Grade bullshit right there.

At DeweyCheatam&Howe, we are committed to combining Carrier Grade customer service with Wall Street Grade executive profits.

Come on, dude, stop driving that Carrier Grade '60s clunker and get a real car!

She's my ex-girlfriend now, because that Carrier Grade whore was in our bedroom with some poolboy from down the block.

I think backslashdot's talking about the sudden rise after the fall. These days you can very safely read "back off its strategy of aggressively discounting drives to gain market share, allowing its rivals to raise prices, as well" as "work with its rivals to keep prices high so they don't have to worry about those pesky 'competition' or 'can't pay their CEOs bonuses this quarter' things".

Whether by government fine ("unfortunately, we have to pass the costs of onerous government regulation on to the consumer" and such bullshit), continued corporate collusion, or both (because fines don't stop determined white-collar criminals from just speaking in a new code), the days of hope for reasonable SSD prices will be (if not are) over. Oh well.

I'd rather have both services die. Even @Blogger is #BetterThanThatMarketerFloodedConstrainedCrap.

Where the hell does Intel get off telling its customers what they have to build with their chips?

"Nice wholesale chip prices you got there. Shame if anything were to raise them..."

Just as long as they're not "super heroes", or they'll have a whole different royalty problem.

Close. The six strikes don't quite give them that power. Instead the management will hire their tech-gofer grandsons to

1. replace the CPUs inside the offending PowerPoint laptops with Celerons for a few days,
2. add a bunch of toolbars to their browsers-of-choice, and
3. tell the MPAA the slides used Comic Sans.

That'll learn 'em.

Dear Sirmadam President,

You might have removed our Glorious People's Technology from your nuclear reactors, but we know everything that happened in there now. The nuke codes, the aliens, the frat parties you held above the spent-fuel pool with that "Lohan" girl because the glow was supposedly aphrodisiac...pah! We're way ahead of you there!

We have better nukes. Scalier aliens. Even more of your tech. And when we call in your debts...we'll have the blackmail videos from the party to make you pay! I hear some of your Cabinet members were...deeply embedded that day! Haaa hahaha*continues to laugh and cough all Sephiroth-like*...

On behalf of the People's Republic,

[signature]

Big Hoojie

PS: YES WE SPELLED "SCALIER" CORRECTLY. Our aliens are like fucking Draconians, not those starved green bean dolls with potato heads and shit.

There ought to be a meeting between big browser makers to come up with a standard version of HTML that fixes this platform-specific web app mess. Maybe one of Google's employees can author it.

I've definitely seen a bunch of chromebook ads (mainly "For Everyone") here in the US. (At least twice as many Windows 8 ads though, and mainly the "Artist" ad.)

Well, they did the "find whoever was responsible" part, but I'm not sure you'd be happy with what they actually did with one instead.

Sadly, even Qt is slowly rolling down the Psycho Control Freak UI Designer road (see Qt Quick). I think we need more widget standardization, not de-emphasis.