Tech talk, cold comfort.

Rumors have been swirling recently that Microsoft is considering combating Android by giving users the option of it or Windows Phone on their smartphones, but a new report claims the company is considering an even more drastic option: allowing Android apps on both Windows and Windows Phone.

According to a report by The Verge, Microsoft executives are having a heated debate as to whether allowing Android apps on its operating systems would be beneficial. The report states that "some inside Microsoft favor the idea of simply enabling Android apps inside its Windows and Windows Phone Stores, while others believe it could lead to the death of the Windows platform altogether." Almost no additional information is given on Microsoft's alleged Android consideration, however, likely indicating that such talks are preliminary at best.

Microsoft allegedly considering Android apps on Windows, Windows Phone.

What Microsoft does not understand about why their WinRT (Windows 8 Store) and Windows Phone lacks all of those juicy applications. Simple, simple simple: THERE IS NO MOTHERFUCKING OPENNESS. (Some use the Orwellian term "sideloading"). It isn't about the money. It is about disliking Microsoft or any other big corporation having control over my applications and my profit. Being forced to ask permission to deploy an application, your application, to a device of your choice is just PURE AND UTTER BULLSHIT! Fuck you and fuck your store guidelines.

I have started to learn Android development and will probably just buy a Delphi XE license because Google's tools for Android development suck goat balls. Funny how I left Delphi to go to C# and .NET... and yes, I am crawling back to Delphi.

Now, why am I going to Android when I have all this knowledge in C#/.NET and Windows? Well, BECAUSE I CAN "SIDELOAD" IN ANDROID AND YOU (YES, YOU PEOPLE AT MICROSOFT) MOTHERFUCKING BASTARDS HAVE LOCKED DOWN WINDOWS TO A POINT WHERE I CANNOT DEPLOY MY OWN APPLICATIONS THE WAY I LIKE!!! You think I am going to be dependant on you fucktards to "allow" me to deploy when, how and what? To "allow" me to just keep 70% of my profits? To "allow" me to keep MY application until "whenever the hell" YOU want? What a piss poor life to wake up every morning and worry "maybe today is the day they will remotely remove and delete my application". GO FUCK YOURSELVES! GO FUCK YOURSELVES 10 WAYS FROM SUNDAY!

Go to hell! GO STRAIGHT TO HELL AND BURN FOR ALL ETERNRITY!!!

I WILL NEVER EVER... NEVER EVER... DEVELOP A WINRT APPLICATION. I WILL NEVER EVER... NEVER EVER DEVELOP AN APPLICATION FOR A PLATFORM WHICH IS LOCKED DOWN!

ARE YOU HEARING ME BILL GATES? NEVER EVER!

Your rants are awesome but I especially like your picture choices.

Non Hic wrote:I have started to learn Android development and will probably just buy a Delphi XE license because Google's tools for Android development suck goat balls. Funny how I left Delphi to go to C# and .NET... and yes, I am crawling back to Delphi.

Yep, Delphi XE and C++Builder are very good but their price is crazy.

Very true. The price is high but remember that Delphi never really was free and things like Visual Studio, they aren't really "free" either. Microsoft wants you to use their operating system so that's why Visual Studio is free. You will always "pay", one way or another. Even with all the "free" Google services, there is always a catch. Truth is that there is no free lunch.

The most basic version isn't too high but as soon as you want to make Android stuff, you must have the professional version. I did take a look at Android Studio and Eclipse but when you use those stuff, you will soon realize how "cheap" Delphi XE actually is! I mean, when talking business, these prices aren't really that high.

I do agree that their price is pretty steep for basic versions, however. They should lower the price for non business entities. Then again, they too, have to eat and put food on their families. Perhaps, when we have real A.I. robots and when humanity will not have to "work for food and basic stuff", things like Delphi XE would be free. For now, we can only dream.




I actually miss him. He was more funny than Obama. Hehehhehe

Addendum; Using Android Studio or Eclipse is like going 20 years back in time, right into the 1990s. Those tools are truly horrible. For making games, there is of course Unity3D. I have tried Unity3D and it's actually pretty good!

I think the views that you have expressed go far beyond this forum, and is one of the reasons why the Windows store is a complete failure. i immensely don't like the fact that Microsoft does not allow sideloading, as it poses a major danger to both developers and users alike. Imagine your hypothetically successful app getting the hatchet by Microsoft, and your financial planning subsequently being turned upside down and expeditiously having to come up with a new plan to put food on the table. That would never happen, however, because the Windows crap store is a failure, and it will remain a failure. It didn't have to be a failure, but there has been so much damage done by MS's completely shitty leadership (certain homeless people off the street would have better ideas on how to aggrandize the company's market and sales), that the level of effort in turning the ship around would require so much reorganizing and restructuring, that humanity has a better chance of getting to mars in our lifetime than what I know MS needs to achieve the type of success that they enjoyed in the Windows 95 days. The fact that they chose Nutella to lead the company rather than reaching out and finding someone absolutely amazing, paints the obvious picture that Microsoft is fucking retarded. They don't know how to change; their board just doesn't know how to get those changes done. They're not like Steve Jobs with a true talent for design and an innate understanding of how things should be. Microsoft doesn't have that -- all they are are copiers.

Another problem is that the name "Windows" has a negative connotation associated with it, and even though most people who use Windows aren't very technically literate, they're smart enough to know that Windows is (and has been) plagued by malware. Maybe it's time to ditch the name. Windows will continue to be used in the office environment for a long time, but I think you will see more cases of government and business switching to Linux because of cost savings and other reasons. There's an interesting post that I came across on the internet from a MS employee ranting about how shitty things are inside the company, which you can read here:

http://blog.zorinaq.com/?e=74

One interesting comment that somebody posted on the above article sums up the point I'm trying to make in my post:

This piece reinforces what I've believed to be true of Microsoft for some time now: the company is like a huge, rudderless ship. A ship which is now running aground - and the crew know it, too - some of them, at least - but nobody knows what to do about it or can't do anything, because she has grown so large for so long now that her momentum makes it impossible to change course.

Perhaps the crew have tried to call the Bridge. I'm sure they have, but no-one is answering. No one's there. The Bridge is empty. Sure, Microsoft has a CEO, but she has no Captain. She has a Board of Directors, but no Navigator. A Management team, but no Helmsman. Momentum, but no Destination and, unless Microsoft does something very drastic to change her course very soon, she'll run aground. It may already be too late.

Microsoft really is very, very much like the Titanic, metaphorically speaking. That ship's designers also thought they had created something unsinkable; they also handed it off to a captain who drove her at top speed, blind, in the dark.

Will Microsoft share Titanic's fate? Probably. The company has always struck me as being a bit out-of-touch with its customers but, now, like some gigantic whale swimming in the shallows, she in grave danger of being beached by the outgoing tide. Even now she can't keep up. She is falling farther and farther behind whilst the smaller and more agile fish head out to sea.

For my part I won't feel at all sorry to see Microsoft go away, but I will feel sorry for people like that bloke inside the company, trapped inside a system he would change if only he could. I hope he and the others there like him get out in plenty of time.? As for that chest-thumping primate Ballmer and his ilk? Let 'em drown.
Tex Pepper, - 12-05-'13 01:18

I'll give MS's a few hints on things that I would want if I were to really ever use Windows again, since they're too stupid to figure it out themselves:

Make the file system comparable to EXT4's performance; NTFS is terrible with small files and fragments easily. EXT4 beats NTFS in every benchmark I have seen and does not fragment
Get rid of the backdoor in Windows
Have the code reviewed by an unbiased third party to verify there are no backdoors. Release findings to the public
Increase security in Windows, making it run like Linux or BSD (passwords, no admin access for user)
Burn Modern at the stake, and fire anybody who ever says that word again
Windows is too bloated; allow customization options for barebones installs
Boot time is still too slow
Dump the registry -- this was a terrible design decision and turned into its own file system
Stop releasing new redistributable C++ packages every 3 days; it's starting to get ridiculous:

I believe more of the speed differential is related to @RobinJ's thoughts on software engineering. Everything* in Windows is built on the MSDN via some kind of Microsoft framework or another. This is actually related to how Big Business loves Microsoft; Microsoft is all about helping different programs/suites/technologies talk to each other.

Next... to make it easier for the developers to have the essentials covered (and not reinvent the wheel) Microsoft allows makers to bundle and/or require precompiled libraries like Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable. Or .Net4.0, MSSQL 2005, ad nauseum. There are something like ten years worth of packages developers can use and build upon and require end users to install on their Windows computers in order to use the new software.

So in order for program Zyzzyx to load and run, one or more MSDN redistributable libraries have to be present and running. These libraries determine how programs interact with the OS.

To boil it down, I would opine that Window's intentional compatibility across decades of software makes it bloated and occasionally more slow than a comparable linux system. Also note that I have developed visual software for windows but not any for linux... not GTK, Qt, Py, anything, so my assumptions about linux being less bloated are just that.

edited to add: further, FOSS software does have people improving it all the time, so GTK will improve as time passes rather than GTK-2005 and GTK-2008 being on same computer, while Microsoft does that all the time.

http://askubuntu.com/questions/150941/l ... ows-kernel

You guys seem to be dancing around something that's been in the back of my mind too. Would it be such a horrible thing if Microsoft actually let Windows as we know it just die? I'm not saying immediately, but over the long haul. Switch to a BSD kernel, develop a interface for a phone or perhaps start with ASOP, then add features to it for a full PC, more features for a full server. I realize it might mean the end of a lot of people's jobs, but that is probably going to happen in the long run anyway. It just seems to me that unless they do something drastic, they will become irrelevant.

I personally find Windows to work just perfect. I use Windows 8.1 currently and our Web sites are all running Windows Server 2012 R2. The issue is that Microsoft makes it hard to customize the user interface (GUI). Switching kernel doesn't really help there. Put the horrible Windows 8.x look on top of a linux distro and you will get the same horrible experience.

The other issue is also the fact that they are trying to lock Windows down. Do you really want a locked down Linux distro?

Bottom line is that most developers (sane and educated ones) develop for a platform which is most open. Just compare Android to iOS/Windows Phone. The only reason is its openness because anyone can write something, anything, and distribute it the way they want, including using the locked-down Google Play. There is no such openness in iOS or Windows Phone and Microsoft forgets that the reason they got big in the 1990s was due their openness.

Let me go a bit further, as always feel free to disagree. Not that I could or would want to stop you

The PC is dying, Microsoft may have hastened that with Windows 8, but nonetheless... Microsoft is wanting to push online services more and more. Imagine the overhead that MS has in maintaining all that it does. It's very much a corporation of the late '80s - early '90s. I'm afraid that at some point they're simply going to have to decide what's worth salvaging and what's not. I wholeheartedly agree about what you're saying about openness. Switching to a more open kernel and releasing their own version of it would seem to be a good start, perhaps piling some closed source bits on top of it. I also agree about the UI, I think you know that What I'm saying is start with the new kernel, design a UI for the "lowest" (least resource providing) device and add more and more features to get to the highest (most resource providing) device.

They will have to do something drastic to compete in the 21st century, perhaps Windows 8 was too much, simply because they panicked. However, I'd say too much of the company is focused on Windows and the PC in general. Basically stuck in the 20th century.

I had to wait and collect my thoughts before answering you on this. Look, first of all, we must agree on the term "PC". Remember that "PC" means "personal computer". In that context, there is no such thing as "PC is dying". I guess by "PC" you mean the big tower desktop computer. That's true, that is "dying" but it doesn't mean "PC" is dying. For example, Microsoft Surface is a full "PC" with full Windows on it.

This is where I have issues with this whole "PC is dying" thing that the media is hyping up. You have to be very careful and look past the Orwellian terms. By "PC is dying", they mean that they want to start locking your devices down. No more administrator (root) rights on your device. They will choose to allow or disallow whatever software they want. You will not be able to uninstall the built-in applications on these devices. Call it a modern "TV", if you will.

They have brainwashed people with this "PC is dying", "Mobile devices" thing for some years now. That's why they don't call the smartphones a "PC". They know that people are used to locked-down "phones", hence, they keep calling them "phones" and not a "PERSONAL COMPUTER". These new mobile devices, are indeed, PERSONAL COMPUTERS.

I have given example of this before. I own a Galaxy S4 Mini. 4.3" display. You look at it and hear me calling it my "PC", you would laugh, but on a closer look, it IS indeed a PC. A personal computer. I got everything in it and doing a "phone function" is just a small part of what this device does. I got measuring stick applications in it, alarms, flashlight, email, Web browser, camera (both picture and video recording), emergency alarms, emergency strobe light, countdown timer, steam, skype, GPS tracking of family members, GPS enabled map, full banking (from seeing my acccount to doing payments and bills without the need to physically go to a bank, ever), calculator + full access to my servers and "desktop PCs" using remote desktop, TV remote control functionality, VNC remote control, Firewall, mp3 player, video player (Netflix to TV etc.), I can choose which applications can access what (from gps to contacts to internet etc.), hell, I can even fully control my speakers like a Hi-Fi system and send music to them by Bluetooth ...see where I'm going with this?

This device which the media keeps calling a "phone" is in fact, not a "phone". It is a full personal computer. They just keep using these Orwellian phrases [smart, phone etc.] attached to such devices to condition people into accepting a locked-down walled garden prison.

I wouldn't be able to do the above if this was a "smartphone". I have rooted my device, I fully wiped that Orwellian Samsung crap they put on it and installed an almost vanilla Android (Cyanogenmod) on it. Even with Cyanogenmod, I had to remove MANY components in order to make this "more vanilla" and "more mine".

What Microsoft doesn't understand is that while they are trying to get their OS into mobile devices, at the same time, they are LOCKING IT DOWN. That is what they don't get. It will never work. No one gives a flying fuck (developers, those who matter) about such a device. That's why Android is so big. This whole removing the Start Menu is just a decoy which doubles as help to kill of many OEMs because they now also sell hardware and want less competition.

If Microsoft had put the phone function inside Windows (after all, phone function is just a driver + a small dialer application) and never forced a walled prison to users, put this on a small device, then, only then would they have succeeded. Then they would have had all the applications and developers aboard, they would have had the phone function and the full "PC" functionality. Until then, I will keep buying Android devices for my family memebers and customers.

You see, I can even connect my "phone" to mouse and keyboard AND a full HD display monitor! Never forget, there is no such thing as "PC is dying". PERSONAL COMPUTING is alive and well! ...what the media outlets mean is that "OPEN PERSONAL COMPUTING IS DYING". They want to kill off the openness of "desktop personal computing". They want to control you, your devices and every other aspect of your life.

Microsoft isn't dying. They want to kill off Microsoft too, on purpose because Microsoft is a threat, yes, believe it or not, a threat to openness with Windows because Windows isn't wasn't locked. You have administrator rights on it.

Let's be realistic here, however. Microsoft will never switch to an open kernel. That just won't happen and besides, Linux is already there. What we must be careful with and try to avoid is a locked-down Windows. Once Windows is fully locked-down, I'm sure Google will also start preventing the "sideloading" of applications in Android as well. Remember, they are ALL big corporations, THEY ARE ALL IN THIS THING even when they pretent to hate or fight each other. If you take a step back, you will see that both the media outlets and these corporations are MOVING ON THE SAME DIRECTION, they are pushing everyone toward the same agenda, entering the invisible prison, feudalism in IT.

Don't be fooled by them and their lipsticks.


Ps. For the record, I like pr0n and have nothing against gays, shemales etc. Whatever floats your boat is your business and your business alone.