“We poured gasoline on our own burning platform. I believe we have lacked accountability and leadership to align and direct the company through these disruptive times. We had a series of misses. We haven’t been delivering innovation fast enough. We’re not collaborating internally. Nokia, our platform is burning.” – Nokia CEO, Stephen Elop

Well, Stephen, the former head of Microsoft’s business division, revealed his master plan to reinvent Nokia… and his answer?  Windows Phone 7.

Seriously.  That’s his answer.  To move from one failing platform to another.  Excuse me while I catch my breath from laughing so hard and wipe the tears away from my face.  This is golden.

During Nokia’s presentation, he presented this ridiculously optimistic graphic, showing what Nokia thinks will happen to phone OS market share:

First, I would like to point out that Symbian has no where near 50% of the market share.  It is currently in 2nd place with 31% of the market share (as of Q4 2010), behind Android who has 33% of the market share, and has been exploding over the last year.

Likewise, Windows Phone is currently claiming a gigantic 3% of the market share.  Yup… 3%.  So how on Earth Nokia thinks 31% of a failing OS added to 3% of a failing OS adds up to over 50% of the market share completely blows my mind.  I can’t even fathom how they came up with this fantasy candyland illustration.

Well, I decided to fix up Nokia’s graphic for them with a much more realistic illustration:

Dear Nokia:  If you think Windows Phone OS is going to be your saving grace you are sorely mistaken.  If I owned any Nokia stock at this point, I’d be selling it asap (Just as an added el-oh-el, Nokia’s stock is down 13% at the time of writing this post… apparently investors agree, terrible decision Nokia).  Enjoy failing as a company.

Linkin Park has 2 absolutely amazing albums with Hybrid Theory and Meteora.  Not a dull song in the group, original music, awesome fast pace rhythms, and totally bad as solos.  Then what?  We got some remixes with Jay Z (which weren’t bad, just nothing new really), then we were handed the shit fest known as Minutes to Midnight.  While Minutes to Midnight had a few good songs on it like Bleed It Out and What I’ve Done, even those good songs didn’t sound like the Linkin Park we’d known and loved from Hybrid Theory and Meteora.

Well, everyone is allowed one stinker album right?  I figured I would let Minutes to Midnight slide and still call myself a Linkin Park fan.  That was until I heard the songs off A Thousand Suns… wow.  They got even worse than Minutes to Midnight.  What the hell?  A Thousand Suns doesn’t have a single good song on it.  They’re all electronic fucking garbage.  What happened to the bad ass guitar solos, bad ass drum, and original lyrics not the shit like “god bless us everyone, blah blah blah”.  Every single A Thousand Suns song is absolute garbage.  Just filth.

So again, I ask, WHAT HAPPENED?

Did someone get off drugs?  Someone go on drugs?  What?

Whatever it is, I am no longer a Linkin Park fan.  I am still a fan of their original albums, but this new stuff as just awful.

I leave you with my favorite Linkin Park song. RIP Linkin Park.

Windows Phone 7 will be a miserable failure.  There are many countless reasons why it is going to epic fail, but here are some of the most important:

1) Microsoft doesn’t know mobile phones from a hole in the ground.  Just look at the current state of Windows Mobile.  It’s built on the Windows CE platform, created in 1996.  Yes.  Let me repeat.  Windows Mobile is based on a platform created in 1996.  Sure, the platform has seen updates, but it’s still based on a world created 13 years ago.  Back when Windows 98 was nothing but a dream.   Windows Phone 7 is based on Windows CE.  Yup.  Microsoft’s newest “cutting edge” Phone OS is STILL based on Windows CE.  They just couldn’t get rid of it.  Thanks Microsoft.  The same bullshit you’ve been jamming down our throats for the past how many years that has NEVER worked right is your platform for the next Windows Phone?  EPIC FAIL.

2) The Kin is a disgusting failure.  The Kin is running a hacked down version of Windows Phone 7.  Don’t believe me it sucks?  Here are a few quotes regarding the Kin and it’s abilities:

“…Lofty goals indeed for a product like this, and unfortunately for everyone, Microsoft misses the mark by a long shot. It’s not even close.”

“…we also take issue with the browser, which is abysmally slow and buggy (it consistently crashed while trying to load any complex web pages like Engadget), and the email client, which seemed to have trouble displaying even the most rudimentary HTML messages”

“While using the One and Two we found ourselves consistently confused or surprised by how many bad little interface problems there are. Not only does the phone make it hard to do simple tasks — and not only are the social networking features poorly implemented — but the handsets are often sluggish, hiccupy, and downright crash-prone. We were told by the devices on more than one occasion that we needed to restart (while performing basic tasks), and often it would just throw us a blank screen while we waited for the device to come back from whatever tragic internal situation was occurring”

That’s enough of that.  If you want to read more though, you can head over to Engadget’s review of the Kin One and Two.

3)  Microsoft does not care about the mobile market.  Microsoft is simply doing this so they can say “us too!”  Windows Mobile 6 SUFFERED from multiple issue that have existed in the Windows Mobile/CE platform for literally a decade now.  Simple fucking tasks like the built in alarm have never worked right (I know I have bitched about this before, but it’s such a shockingly easy feature to fuck up, I can’t believe they have never gotten it right).  Microsoft can’t even code a proper alarm function, nor do they care about EVER fixing it.  What makes you think that Microsoft is going to give a rat’s ass about building a competent useful device and keep it regularly updated?

Which brings me to my next point

4) Microsoft has no sense of time frame in the mobile market.  This market is an incredibly FAST paced arena.   If there is 1 thing Microsoft is definitely not, it’s fast and agile.  Let’s just take a look at some quick time frames:

The Windows Mobile 6 line was released in February of 2007.  They are on Windows Mobile 6.5 right now with nearly zero improvements aside from MAEK BUTTONS HUEG!  Windows Mobile 6 was nothing more than a skin over Windows Mobile 5, released in 2005.  Like I said, WM6 was released in early 2007.  In the 3 years since it’s release, it has seen 1 very very minor update from Microsoft.

In that same time frame of 3 years, we have seen:

• Original iPhone (2007)
• iPhone 3G [With it the launch of iPhone OS 2] (2008)
• iPhone 3Gs [With it the launch of iPhone OS 3] (2009)
• iPhone 4 [With it the launch of iPhone OS 4] (2010)
• Android 1.1 (Feb. 2009)
• Android 1.6 (September 2009)
• Andriod 2.1 (January 2010)
• Android 2.2 (June 2010)

That is 4 seperate iPhones with 4 seperate iPhone OS versions, each one substantially better than the one before it.

4 seperate major Android releases, each one substantially better than the one before it (don’t let Androids weird number versioning system trick you up, each release is pretty substantial).

Windows Mobile, 1 minor release.  The other big players, 4 MAJOR releases.

5)  The Windows Phone Marketplace is a joke.  Microsoft has created a costly CLOSED platform.  You can’t install non-marketplace apps, and developers have to PAY to release $0 cost apps.  How in the fuck is that going to ENTICE developers to your completely fucked platform when there are already other infinitely better and cheaper platforms out there to develop for like the iPhone, Android, and Blackberry devices?  Windows Phone 7 will have no developer support.  Current Windows Mobile has no developer support and it’s been around longer than iPhone and Android.  Don’t believe me? I dare you to download a properly functioning Pandora app on Windows Mobile.  You can’t.  Because developers don’t care about a shit platform and won’t develop for it.

It doesn’t take a genius to clearly see and understand that Microsoft doesn’t care.  They don’t care about making substantial releases and they don’t care about making progress, and they certainly don’t care about mobile devices..  This is even shown in the current version of Windows Phone 7.  They have made no progress other than throwing an interesting skin on top of Windows CE, the same broken piece of shit from before.

It’s pretty pathetic.  I used to be a Windows Mobile fan.  I was using Windows Mobile doing things the iPhone couldn’t even do at launch for 2 years before.  Microsoft could have owned the mobile market, they could have controlled it.  But they don’t care.  They didn’t care about it then, and they sure as hell don’t care about it now.  Thinking anything else is foolish.

Basically, the touch-pad and buttons are all one surface.

Observe:

The problem comes from the fact that the “button area” is still part of the touch-pad.  So you place one finger on the button, and now you can’t use the fucking touch-pad.  Your cursor will either sit there and stare at you like a vegetable or it’ll jump all around the screen like crazy.  Either way, the touch-pad is completely unusable if you’re touching either button.  This is incredibly frustrating because my style of laptop mousing is resting one hand’s fingers on the buttons while using the other hand to navigate the mouse, or resting one finger on the button, while the other navigates the mouse for faster mouse action.  The only effective way to use this touch pad is with one hand and one finger.  Christ.  It’s awful.  Seriously.

I ended up grabbing one of those USB ball mice and plugging the damn thing in and using that, because trying to use that bloody touch-pad was making me want to kick puppies.  And I love puppies.

Thanks for the SHIT design HP.  I’m sure as hell glad this isn’t my machine.  I would be returning it if I had to put up with that damn thing.

I can’t believe it took 7 months… but yes folks, Fox has FINALLY canceled the Wanda Sykes show.  Let us all rejoice.

That is all.

Seriously?  2 items should warrant a receipt no longer than 4 or 5 inches.  A 15 inch receipt is just an extreme waste of paper.  I can’t believe your shitty commercials when you pull crap like this hundreds of thousands of times a day across the country.  No one wants to take your crappy survey, shrink the Xbox-huge logo at the top, shrink the barcode, reduce the white space.  Bam, 4 inch receipt.

Here, I even mocked one up for you.

Since the very first day New Wave took over and my IP address switched to their network I have had atrocious service, and no one from New Wave cares about it.  By fall 2008 I had called them no less then 10 times over a network congestion issue. I honestly lost count of how many calls I made and every single time I reached a “tech support” person, they were 100% incapable of understanding my problem and 100% unwilling to even do anything to attempt to solve it.  The exact problem I was having was network congestion.  During peak internet usage hours (evenings after work and weekends… basically any time I wanted to actually USE my internet), the service was unusable.  My ping times would often shoot from 30ms ping times to over 500ms ping times during peak hours.  Trying to use my “broadband” service for any “broadband” activities like streaming video, playing games online, was 100% out of the question.  Pages would often take minutes to load, streaming even music was not even possible.

At the time I didn’t know exactly what was happening, so I took it upon myself to write a script that sent out 1 ping per minute and log the response time.  After running the script for a few days I quickly realized that my problem was because of network congestion.  The sad thing is, I diagnosed in a few days, what New Wave had been unable to tell me for months.

Here is one example form Fall of 2008.  I was still suffering from unusable internet at this time (blue lines indicate ping times under 100ms, which was my cutoff for “acceptable” pings.  Red lines indicate pings over 100ms.  The taller the line, the higher the ping)

As anyone with half a brain can see, the internet functions more or less ok until peak usage hits (late afternoon), then everything goes to crap.  In November 2008 New Wave FINALLY fixed the issue.  It took them around 6 months to correct the congestion problems.  For 8 months my internet was basically unusable.

Since then I haven’t had any serious problems with my internet.  There were outages every once in a while, but whatever.  It happens, and I understand that.  But, I was left with a very bad taste in my mouth from dealing with New Wave for such a long time and them dragging their feet for so long on this issue, that I doubt they could ever do anything to make me happy with the service again.

Early this year I found out New Wave was offering HD service in my area.  Finally, something improved over New Wave’s pretty shitty “digital” cable picture, sweet!

But, I should have known that coming from a company like New Wave that simply does not give a shit about it’s customer, dealing with them again would be a frustrating experience.  Boy, was I right.

A couple months ago my cable modem gave up the ghost.  The tech who replaced it mentioned HD service, and I told him I would like to sign up.  He called up the main office in town and put me down for an HD receiver.  Like any other truly awful company, they were out of stock and had to put my name on a waiting list, assuring me they would call me when my receiver came in.  They never called.  Days turned in to weeks, weeks turned in to months.  I never heard a peep from them.  So, I suffered along with my fuzzy cable for a few more months.

A couple weeks ago I was feeling ready to be ignored and abused by their “customer service” department again, so I decided to stop by their home office in town.  I walked in and was able to order HD.  They scheduled a tech for the following Thursday to come out and install it.  I asked them right there if they could just give me the hardware, as I was PLENTY capable of unscrewing a coax from the old unit, and screwing it in to the new unit.  She told me that was not an option and they had to come out and do that.  Fantastic.

Wednesday night rolled around and we got an automated call from New Wave reminding us that they would be there to install the HD box the following morning from 8am to 10am.  Wow… I was finally going to get my HD service!

HAHAHA, YEAH RIGHT!  Thursday came and went.  Not a single word from New Wave.  They never showed up.  They never called me.  A week later, I still have not heard from them.   Wow.  Awesome job New Wave.   I have never had such trouble trying to PURCHASE a product from a company like I have from New Wave.  You would think that if I was willing to fork over more cash to their shit-fuck company, that they would actually want to take it, but apparently not.

The problem here just isn’t New Wave, but it’s the illegal monopolies cable companies are allowed to have over service areas.  Companies like New Wave are allowed to put a strangle hold on their customers and treat them as shitty as they want, while the customer has no other option.  We either take it in the two-hole from them, or we go with out.  And being the geek that I am, going with out broadband wouldn’t work very well for me.  So here I am.  A broken desperate man, who only wants HD service in his home.  Why is this so much to ask from a company?

UPDATE (4/9/2010) – New Wave has fixed my situation and I finally have HD!  Read about it right here.

Come on people.  It’s 2010.  Optical mice can be had from Newegg for $4.  I can’t believe ball-mice are still being packaged with new machines.  And this wasn’t even a cheap piece of crap Acer, this came with a brand new HP Proliant server!  Sheesh.  Spare no expense with that fancy fuckin technology why don’t yah?

I guess since it’s a server it’ll be remoted in to 99% of the time anyway, but still.  Like it would’ve broken HP’s bank to throw an optical mouse in there?

I had forgotten how absolutely frustrating ball mice are with out a perfectly flat surface until now.  Thanks HP.

For files created/modified in the last 24 hours, Windows 7 does not display the file time in the File Properties dialog.  It just gives a very unspecific “X hours ago”.  What the fuck is this shit?

So if I wanted to know the EXACT time this file was created, I can’t see that.  Fan-fucking-tastic idea Microsoft.  Where do you idiots come up with this shit?  Seriously, who ever thought this was a good idea should be punched square in the balls.  What good does “5 hours ago” do.  Ok, so it was created some time 5 hours ago, giving an hour of buffer time in there.  That really doesn’t help me.

And the kick-to-your-face part of it is that if the file was created/modified/whatever more then 24 hours ago, it actually shows the time:

Why on Earth can’t it show that for ALL files?!  Why does 7 think it necessary to change this USEFUL format to a USELESS format for files changed in the last 24 hours?  I know that most people don’t care, and that is probably why they changed it, but how is this helping anyone?  It’s not!  It’s only hurting those of us who need exact file times.

Fucking mind-boggling!  I’m not alone either, there are others out there who are annoyed by the same “feature”.  You see, this is the kind of shit that is fine to implement, IF YOU GIVE THE USERS A CHOICE TO CHANGE IT SOME PLACE.  I’d be fine even with a reg edit, but from what I have seen, there is no way to change this back.

I can’t wait for Fox to cancel what will surely be one of the worst shows to ever air on Fox.

I don’t have much else to say about this other then most people across the country seem to feel the same way