Microsoft’s existential threat

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Very interesting point made out by this blog post by Patrick Rhone, about how Microsoft’s core business faces an existential threat:
MS office on Flickr

Microsoft for many years had convinced the world that, in order to get “real work” done, you needed Office.
…
Then, she explained, the iPhone came. There was no Office. People got things done. Then the iPad came. There was no Office. People got things done. Android came. People got things done. All of those things that they, just a couple of years ago, were convinced they needed Office to do. They got them done without it. And thus, the truth was revealed.
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Like the curtain finally falling from the Wizard of Oz to find just a small, frail, man pretending to be far more powerful and relevant than he really was. Microsoft’s biggest miss was allowing the world to finally see the truth behind the big lie — they were not needed to get real work done. Or anything done, really.

And that will be what ultimately kills them.
…

Via Gruber.

Amazing high-def images of Earth from outer space

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Flickr has published two amazing high-def photos of earth from one of NASA’s earth observing satellite – Suomi NPP. The photos are created by joining several high def photos and joining them together, as explained here.

Most Amazing High Definition Image of Earth - Blue Marble 2012 Eastern Hemisphere - Blue Marble 2012

The original photo on the left of the western hemisphere is available on Flickr with a resolution of 8000×8000 or 64 megapixels! (link to the original, beware of the size!)
To top even that, NASA made available the second image of the eastern hemisphere on Flickr with a resolution of 11500 x 11500 or 132 megapixels! (link to the original, beware of the size!)

Credit: All photos and info from NASA Goddard Photo and Video.

The Windows bundling racket gets a jolt in France

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Finally a victory!.

A French laptop buyer has won a refund from Lenovo after a four-year legal battle over the cost of a Windows license he didn’t want. The judgment could open the way for PC buyers elsewhere in Europe to obtain refunds for bundled software they don’t want, French campaign group No More Racketware said Monday.

The first sane judgement against the fraud on consumers which has been happening for almost two decades – bundling the Windows OS with all new consumer laptops and desktops. Before others point out, let me emphasise that this doesn’t just affect Linux and other FOSS OSes, it affects Windows users as well.

Several years back, when I bought a laptop for my father, decent laptops were only available with Windows Vista on them – one of the most unusable versions of the Windows line. I wanted a Windows OS on the laptop for my dad, and I wanted it to be Windows XP, but even though Windows XP was being sold on retail at the time by Microsoft, the laptop manufacturers would force me to buy the laptop with Vista. I eventually had to shell out more money to buy a Windows XP licence and install it on the laptop.

This is pure and simple racketeering. Ostensibly, to “prevent piracy” of its OS on new hardware, Microsoft wants its OS to be preloaded on all new hardware. Of course, not any of its OS versions (even though it can be selling multiple versions of its OS at any point in time), but the “latest and greatest” version, whether the customer wants it or not.

How is this different from people paying extortion money to local thugs for their own “protection”?

Sadly, this business practice has been going on for years. While several other activities of Microsoft (and even Intel) have been subjected to anti-trust actions, the Windows OS bundling racket still affects all countries. Hopefully, France will show the way.

Even though, considering how cynical I have become of late, I won’t be holding my breath.

But no matter how small, every victory matters.

Home Cooking: Banana Muffins

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Nowadays, this is how overripe bananas at our home end up. This is probably one of the easiest fool-proof recipe to make. You can use the same batter for either banana muffins or a banana cake. The tried and tested recipe follows.

Recipe

  • 3 ripe bananas
  • 1 egg, beaten
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla essence
  • 1/3 cup melted butter or oil (I use olive oil, i.e. regular olive oil, not extra-virgin)
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 1 1/2 cup maida (all-purpose flour)
  • 1 pinch cinnamon, optional
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 pinch salt

Steps

  1. Pre-heat the oven at 175 degrees centigrade for 15 minutes. You can use this time to prepare the batter. Time it such that the oven is ready by the time the batter is made. The batter should be put in the oven as soon as it is ready. Keeping the batter lying around once it is made, will waste all the leavening effect that is the centerpiece of baking.  
  2. Grease and dust your baking pan if you are making a cake. Line the muffin cups with paper liners if you are using them or else oil and dust them.
  3. To start making the batter, use a fork or potato masher for mashing up the bananas.
  4. Pour the oil/butter into the bananas, stir and mix them together.
  5. Add the sugar, beaten egg, vanilla essence and mix again. Add the pinch of cinnamon, if you want and mix again.
  6. Now prepare the dry ingredients. Use a large bowl, put in the maida.
  7. Add the salt to the maida and mix it well.
  8. Take a stock of the situation at this point. Is the oven ready? The next two steps will take about 2-3 minutes. If the oven is going to take longer to heat, you can pause at this moment and wait.
  9. Put the baking soda into the liquid batter and mix properly. At this point the baking soda will start reacting with the bananas and start producing the leavening effect by releasing gases.
  10. Make a hole in the middle of the bowl containing maida and pour the liquid batter into it. Use a spatula and slowly fold the dry maida into the liquid and just make it all wet. Don’t mix too much. Just ensure that most of the maida is wet. A few dry spots here and there is ok.
  11. Pour the entire mixture into the cake pan, or if you are making muffins, start spooning them into the muffin cups. Don’t fill up the muffin cups more than half of their depth. These muffins rise well.
  12. Bake at 175 degrees centigrade. Bake for one hour if making a cake. Bake for 20 minutes if you are making muffins. These bake well in convection ovens. If your OTG doesn’t have a fan, see if your microwave has a convection mode with fan and use that instead. Use simple convection mode in microwave. Don’t try those fancy combo convection+microwave modes.
  13. As soon as the baking is done, take them out of the oven. Take the cake out of its can after about 5 minutes and let it cool on a wire rack for at least 30 minutes. If cooking muffins, take out the muffins after a few minutes and cool them. The would be ready to eat within 10-15 minutes of taking out.

 

Pratap Bhanu Mehta on state censorship in India

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Pratap Bhanu Mehta’s brilliant article brings out the troubling state of our country today.

Everyone utters the platitude that they respect freedom, but they then use the qualifier that no freedom is absolute in the most mendacious way.
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In fact, the claim made by politicians that this kind of content (i.e. Twitter, Orkut, Facebook) will lead to violence is insulting doubly over. First, it is just a plain lie to justify censorship. Second, what is offensive is that politicians continue to treat Indian citizens as if we were colonial subjects. They infantilise us. They say to us, “you are unable to control your passions, so we have to protect you by censoring”. The truth is the opposite: they want to construct our passions in such a way that they can use that as a pretext to censor.
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Holding them (i.e. social networking sites) pre-emptively responsible for offensive speech is like requiring a profit-making road operator liable for every crime committed on the road because they did not pre-screen every car and driver and
let potential murderers drive. But the issue is not technology. Given the Indian state’s record, it is but natural that any whiff of regulatory control is seen as threatening. A measure of this is the fact that a platitude like “no freedom is absolute” sounds more like a threat when the state utters it.

Link to article

Microsoft using Secureboot to lock down ARM

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Thanks to a tip from a colleague – Anshu, I found out further confirmation that the Secureboot issue, that I blogged about earlier, is going to bite us badly just as we expected.

According to this post of the Software Freedom Law Center, Microsoft has recently revised it’s Windows 8 Hardware Certification requirements to lock out all alternative OSes from the ARM-based mobile devices that it ships on.

The Certification Requirements define (on page 116) a “custom” secure boot mode, in which a physically present user can add signatures for alternative operating systems to the system’s signature database, allowing the system to boot those operating systems. But for ARM devices, Custom Mode is prohibited: “On an ARM system, it is forbidden to enable Custom Mode. Only Standard Mode may be enable.” [sic] Nor will users have the choice to simply disable secure boot, as they will on non-ARM systems: “Disabling Secure [Boot] MUST NOT be possible on ARM systems.” [sic] Between these two requirements, any ARM device that ships with Windows 8 will never run another operating system, unless it is signed with a preloaded key or a security exploit is found that enables users to circumvent secure boot.

Upcoming devices running Windows 8 mobile including the increasingly popular tablets are soon going to be Windows only – that is, for example, you will not be able to run Android on them without an exploit.

But just yesterday, Qualcomm announced plans to produce Windows 8 tablets and ultrabook-style laptops built around its ARM-based Snapdragon processors. Unless Microsoft changes its policy, these may be the first PCs ever produced that can never run anything but Windows, no matter how Qualcomm feels about limiting its customers’ choices.

While someone may very well point out that because this is only restricted to mobile devices and since most folks, even most technically savvy ones rarely change the OS on their phone, the problem is the precedent this sets. Given some time of locking down the mobile platform to only run Windows, Microsoft can very well make a case to extend Secureboot to desktops that you buy as well, by giving the mobile platform experience as a “standard technical security procedure” to justify this to get around anti-trust issues.

And to reiterate this again, this will badly hurts the hardcore Windows users as well.

Microsoft’s idea is to control the OS running on the desktop, including which of their own OS will run on new hardware. So if you were not a fan of Vista and wanted to stay with Windows XP, like in the past, you will not have a choice in a similar situation in the future. For example, even if there is some widespread concern about a new Windows version in the future, Microsoft can arm-twist the hardware manufacturers to program the new desktops in the market to only work with the new OS of theirs, forcing all of their users to upgrade.

Believe it or not: Gems from India’s cow lobby

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Minutes from a government sponsored Cow promotion conference in Madhya Pradesh. (Newspaper article)

  • Only those inside houses coated with cow dung escaped the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy.
  • There are only two ways to remain insulated from nuclear radiation, and one of them is application of cow dung.
  • Using cow dung can ensure normal delivery instead of C-section.
  • Those who drink the milk of jersey cow and buffaloes commit more crime than those who consume only desi cow’s milk.
  • Only the cow can save mankind; just touching it can stabilise blood pressure.

If promotion of this kind of delusional nonsense is the basis for government policies like this, this country is doomed.

Should you easily hand over those encryption keys to the law?

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Don’t try this in India yet, but in US, a district court is about to judge on whether you have to hand over encryption keys to the law if asked. Or can you decline because that is akin to self-incrimination? Given that the general pattern in our country of late is that you are guilty till proven innocent, trying this at “home” is probably only going to get yourself convicted,

I personally feel that the point of deliberation out here is on thin ground. If you can get a magistrate’s order to get a search warrant for a house, I don’t see how that is different from a similar warrant to search your computer. The difference is that one key is physical and the other is not.

Article link

The more dangerous side of covering up women – a false sense of security

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Brilliant article by Harini Calamur about the truly dangerous side of the recent outbreak of self-righteous people in power – asking women to be covered up for their own security.

Telling women that dressing ‘properly’ will reduce chances of their being victims of sexual assault is lulling women into a false sense of security. In the National Crime Records Bureau report on all types of crimes that take place in India, among the more chilling statistics are rape figures. Every hour, two women somewhere in India are raped. Every third day, an elderly woman is sexually assaulted. About two girls aged under 10 are raped every day. Most of these are outside metros and cities in regions where women are dressed in a traditional manner. Fully covered. It wasn’t their clothes that caused the crime. It was their gender.

The problem is not with what women wear, it is with society that allows men to get away with rape and blames the woman for inviting it.

Read the rest of the article in DNA here.

One of the highlights of the upcoming Windows 8 is …

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.. the easing of reinstalling it. I am not joking. Here is the official blog post about this: Refresh and reset your PC

As Business Insider says it well:

Think about any other product that is so unreliable and degrades in performance with such predictable regularity that the next version will have a feature that makes it easy to WIPE IT CLEAN and start over. Is that a product you’d be super-excited to buy?

Looking forward to the future OS of choice for all the corporate IT environments out there. :)

To be fair, this was really my biggest request from Microsoft. Kudos for them for swallowing their ego and going ahead and giving customers what they want.