He's dead, but he won't lie down

Windows XP should be dead years ago, but but the number of web browsers using XP seems to not even decrease. And not at a negligible level, either, XP is used several times more than linux.

Progress is hard.

A Nokia Lumia arrived

I need it for testing some compatibility blah.

Although it looks modern and snazzy and so on, and they've clearly tried to make it iOS-like, the visual design somehow communicates that the next screen may be this:

(Note: I copied that from MSDN without permission.)

Update: Later it told me an update is available, and to please connect the phone to a computer, which would tell me more and allow me to update the phone. I connected it to my desktop. The phone did nothing and there's no apparent way to make it do something or ask what the problem might be. The computer supplies power, so it cannot be fear of running out of power in the middle of the upgrade.

I suspect that computer actually means computer that runs the right version of Windows and has the right software installed. But they don't want to say that, because it would sound complicated. Windows phone can be complicated but it must never sound complicated. Plonk.

Update: I gave the phone to an ex-Nokia colleague who willingly began using it.

Virtualbox, AnyDVD and read errors

If AnyDVD pops up a big warning dialog about read errors (suggesting a region-free fimware from rpc1.com, cleaning the DVD, etc), and you're using it inside Virtualbox, then the correct solution is: […More…]

Bashing Microsoft

Scientists have proven that eighty-four per cent of Microsoft-bashing is ridiculously wrong, and that all that rubbish makes valid criticism of Microsoft look bad.