Hoopla!

Ahh, Microsoft. Once the proud demigod of the computer industry, now just a pimple on it’s ass.

No amount of Wow can save you from obsolescence.

Since we’re practically neighbors (I’m just across the 520 bridge from you) I’d like to offer some advice:

• Switch to a POSIX-compliant kernel. It worked for Apple and they’re kicking your ass.
• Put 500 developers on the WINE project so it mimics the Win16, Win32, and Win64 APIs perfectly.
• Disallow any in-house developers from implementing non-crucial functions that do the work of awk, sed, grep, and other GNU tools. Write proprietary versions of these tools and make all your developers use that code when parsing, calculating – or just about anything else.
• Create a share-nothing library system for your code. One task = one program. Always.
• Remove the 55 million of 65 million lines of code from Vista that have been rendered unnecessary by the above changes.
• Make WPF and WPF/E rock-solid on this POSIX kernel and use it to outshine OS X Core Effects (you think WPF works well, you’re wrong)
• Sell this OS as the simplest, stablest, fastest, most feature-complete Windows ever.
• Stay a threat, earn back some respect.

If you do this you’ll have something like Mac OS X except it’ll run all Windows programs natively and run on all hardware.

Until then, best wishes.

I’ve been trying to enhance my stock of software on my Moto Q with limited success. One of the biggest problems I’ve had was downloading cab files directly through the phone. I can’t use ActiveSync to transfer files to my phone because A) It sucks and B) I use Linux, not Windows. So I’ve got to download them directly.

About 70% of the .cab files I try to download are displayed in the browser window (really pretty) while the other 30% give me a handy prompt with ‘would you like to download and install this file?’

The solution seems to be in changing the mime-type on the server. To do this I’ve had to use my Linux box to download the file and upload it to one of my sites (I use 6brand.com just ‘cause it’s the easiest to type on a tiny keyboard). Then I have to modify the .htaccess file to make sure it gives the phone the right mime-type.

AddType application/x-cab-compressed cab

Voila – and it’s done. Now I browse to my site, download the file, and crapware spreads all over my phone. As an added bonus, this allows me to download files straight to my Moto Q using the crappy-ass version of IE that it ships with. Normally file downloads are disallowed but an exception is made for cab files. If you use the right mime type and have a .cab extension you can download any file. It will attempt to execute the file once it’s downloaded but you just have to ignore it’s error message and then find the file in C:\My Documents.

I played around a bit today with the software that ships with Windows Mobile 5 – and a lot of it is crap. The ‘tasks’ app that helps you keep track of todos isnt even as good as Rail’s ‘scaffold’ interface. The calendar app is basically useless (it doesn’t seem to sync up with any other calender) and it doesn’t have anything for reading rss.

All that though is mitigated by my understanding that this is a new OS and it’ll take a while for many good programs to show up – and by the competency of Mobile IE and Windows Media Player 10. I can watch streaming video – that’s awesome. Equally awesome is IE’s understanding of complicated session and history management. Case in point: I wrote this whole post in the standard Typo admin section entirely from my moto q.

I’ve been using some old kyocera phone for a couple of years now and it’s limited features were wearing out my patience. I headed down to the Verizon store today to see about getting a new phone and I came home with a new Moto Q.

Some things I like about the Moto Q

It’s awesome. It has a 1.5MP camera, plenty of processing power, a full qwerty keyboard, plus a super thin profile. It’s as tall as a CD and thinner than a finger. Plus, it’s got a great resolution on the screen.

Moto Q drawbacks

It’s running Windows Mobile. Granted, this is much better than their desktop version of windows, but I’d still be much happier if this thing ran something GNU because then at least I’d know that any bugs were sure to be fixed.

It’s not a touch-screen. This might be an advantage because it allowed motorola to build a sturdier (and brighter!) screen, but it’s still kinda lame.

There’s a new learning curve with this thing. I haven’t quite figured out how it expects me to operate. I pride myself on usually having good technological intuition but I can’t quite predict how this phone/computer will react to what I do.

Internet Explorer. Nuff said. I’m trying to get Minimo installed but it’s proving very difficult. IE won’t let me download executables off the web and the mozilla-packed .cab file seems to be ‘unrecognized’. I’m not even sure what that means. I wish there was some kind of ‘advanced mode’ on this thing so it would just get out of my way.

Things I’m hoping to try

+ Playing an Xvid-encoded movie + checking a pop3 address that’s set up to reflect the contents of one of my Gmail filters + using Net VNC to have google maps visible on my phone + setting up pictures for everyone in my contacts + learning how to record phone conversations to mp3/wav + putting more GNU software on this thing