… or, how I’d rather have my eyes gouged out by scalding irons than use it again.

I deleted my Windows-partition a few weeks ago when I had finished playing through the games I wanted to try out. Recently I felt another hankering for some gaming-action and decided to reinstall Windows. This time though I went for the 64-bit version of Windows Vista, thinking that I should do it properly. Or whatever. Mostly I just wanted to see if there was such a huge difference in Crysis between DX9 and DX10.

Well, anyways. After moving around some drives I popped the disc in the drive and proceeded to install. The installation is fairly straightforward, essentially as dumb as the XP-install but at least it’s prettier to look at. Partitioning is a bit smoother though, although as usual the way of thinking in Windows is somewhat backward.

After some reboots there was some information that needed to be input. Create a user, etc etc. Then, for some inexplicable reason Windows decided it was time to do the Windows Performance Benchmark or whatever it’s called. Stupid, since I was running on stock-drivers and all that. There’s no way of skipping it though, so I just rolled my thumbs and waited.

Until a minute or so later when it bluescreened. Something about the memory controller. I sighed and waited until it rebooted by it’s own volition.

When it started up again I was greeted by the create-a-user request. However, my chosen username was apparently already taken, so I created another. This time it didn’t do the Windows Performance-whatever thing since I guess it had already been checked off somewhere inside the corridors as “done”. A moment later I was looking at the login-screen. On screen were two icons with my first username and then my second one.

Before I continue, let me say now that I hate that login-screen. First off, it looks like it was designed by Mimi from the Drew Carey Show. It’s garish, it’s loud and it takes itself way too seriously. Secondly, whoever thought it would be neat to have an icon to click on and then forcing the user to type the password is stupid. Logging in takes twice as long since you have to flail your arms around your desk as if you were on fire. And as you will find out, I had to look at it a lot, which annoyed me even further.

I felt adventurous and clicked my original username. You know, the one I created first and then followed with a nice ol’ BSOD. I clicked it, punched the password, was greeted with a message as to how Windows was “preparing my desktop” and then for no good reason the computer rebooted. I sarcastically remarked to myself that it was impressive how Microsoft had managed to emulate the look and feel of a BIOS-bootscreen.

Next time around I clicked the secondary username. This time I was not greeted with a reboot, but instead the desktop appeared. Of course, “appeared” isn’t a proper description. Jerked itself onto the screen is probably a more accurate metaphor. It was in glorious 800×600, and everything was the size of Montana. I downloaded and installed drivers for my Audigy2 ZS and 9600GT and then rebooted. Now the login-screen was in a more human resolution.

I logged in and was greeted with the amusing effect that my monitor went into standby. Weird. It made it rather difficult to troubleshoot as well, since I was effectively blind. After a reboot into Ubuntu and some brief googling I found others with the same problem. Apparently Windows or the Nvidia-driver or whichever sometimes got confused as to what port the primary monitor was plugged in. The work-around was to move the monitor to another DVI-port. I tried it, no dice. On a whim I unplugged my TV-out and after a hard reset (ouch!) I could control my own computer again. Apparently Windows though the TV-out was the primary monitor.

Then the fun really began. I installed some basic applications and for every one of them I was hassled with a barrage of “Are you sure you want to do this?”-type questions. I guess some were UAC-related, others were, well, I don’t know why they insisted on popping up for no good reason. Either way they were extremely annoying. It was a little odd as well when I double-clicked a folder and found myself staring at another bluescreen. This time it was the good old “page fault in non-paged area” which was an old buddy of mine. I think every computer I’ve owned for the last 8 years has seen that BSOD happen.

I wasn’t particularly impressed by Aero either. It felt too frail, and after having used Compiz Fusion for almost a year I wasn’t very impressed by any of the effects either. I felt rather constricted by being limited to one desktop; often I would ctrl-alt-left to try to find another desktop, then remember that yeah, Windows still didn’t have that feature. I felt that the whole Vista-experience must be similar to being at a brazilian carnival for mentally retarded people. Everything is dressed in bright, gaudy colors while loud music and sound-effects play, and everyone shouts stupid and obvious questions at you.

“ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO DRINK THAT? YES/NO/CANCEL. DO YOU WANT TO OPEN THIS DOOR? ALLOW/CANCEL”

And so forth, and so on.

Moving right along. I started installing Crysis. It took forever. I swear, it went less than a quarter of the speed that the same install took under XP on the exact same machine.

To top it all off, I got another bluescreen. This time it complained about something else, I really didn’t pay attention any longer. Instead I pushed reset and booted into Ubuntu, laughing at myself for the folly of even trying this. Tomorrow I’ll instead install XP strictly for gaming, and never again bother with anything else.

Bill, let me give you some advice. I know you don’t give a rats ass about me, but let me suggest that you and your soul-crushing company just bury Vista already. It’s been more than a year, and the Wow hasn’t started yet. It’s been more like “Why?” than Wow. Just bury Vista, pretend it never happened, pay off whatever people are going to sue you, don’t listen to the fanboys, and simply stick your head in the sand over the whole dang thing. Bill, listen to what an old friend of mine has to say:

(slightly paraphrased)

“Don’t be too proud of this technological terror you’ve constructed. The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Source.”

I’ve just come home from spending a rather interesting saturday pre-noon. Today there was a shindig of some kind downtown, promoting free culture and other such good things. The first half of the day consisted of lectures from Lars Aronsson, founder of Project Runeberg (a swedish project with similar aims as the more wellknown Project Gutenberg, but focusing on swedish literature instead) and Rick Falkvinge, founder of the Pirate Party.

Consisting of the day after lunch was a lecture by Maud Olofsson, and then an open debate where Rick, Lars and representatives of various organizations would be present. I didn’t feel like attending this since I find Maud Olofsson at best to be very annoying, and at worst to be a two-faced untrustworthy person sprouting whatever opinion is currently in vogue. The debate would’ve been interesting, but I didn’t like the prospect of sitting 20 minutes on a bus home to eat something, then 20 minutes back to listen to the debate for an hour and then 20 minutes on the bus home again.

But the first half was very interesting. I’ve never heard of Lars Aronsson before, but I’m a big fan of open media such as Wikipedia and Project Gutenberg, and he was obviously very enthusiastic about what he did. He chatted a bit about the process of digitization, the problems that intellectual property-laws posed on his work, and generally held an interesting lecture about thing. Rick held another interesting lecture, although I found it a bit sad that he was essentially just preaching to the already converted. Never the less, he gave me an interesting new angle on the whole thing, and talked at lengts about why patents need to be abolished, as well as the origins of intellectual property and why laws regarding them need to be severely reformed. I heartily agree with Rick on the subject of patents on medicine. Not only are the patents stupid and restrictive - they’re actively harmful and causes people to die! Completely absurd.

On a different note I found it rather neat to find that both Rick and Lars apparently run Ubuntu on their laptops. Good!

Other than that the weather is spectacular here. Thermometer says only 10 degrees celsius, but it feels a lot warmer than that. Compare the photo below with the one I took in January. Same angle, almost standing in the same spot.

UPDATE: Apparently there was some kind of mix-up. It wasn’t Maud Olofsson who was scheduled, rather someone with the confusingly similar name of Maud Johansson. Weird. The sendout that I got said Maud Olofsson. Anyhoo, there’s some photos from the event at Stefan Flods blog.

And this ginormous tractor outside the tractor-place. It’s a humdinger. It has nothing to do with the rest of this post, I just thought it was cool.

Today’s date is Thursday, April 24th, 2008. That means that today is the day that Ubuntu 8.04 is released. At the time of writing this, Ubuntus own page hasn’t yet been updated to reflect that so hold off downloading for a while until it’s been updated.

I’ve been running the 64-bit version of Hardy on my workstation for the past month or so, and it’s the best so far. Because that’s what Linux is, small but steady improvements. I’ve read a lot of comments on the net saying that they’re always disappointed that there’s never any huge improvements in each new version of Ubuntu, and compares it with Windows who introduces a lot of new flair.

Unfortunately, what they forget to factor in is that Ubuntu ships a new version every six months. That is twelve (12!!) releases for the time it took to finish Vista. Consider again that each new version of Ubuntu contains myriads of improvements - some small, some big - and Windows just looks plain silly. The only really new improvement Vista brought over XP was a flashier interface.

I recommend everyone to download it and try it. It won’t cost you more than a CD-R and some time.

There are however a few issues for me left from when I earlier wrote about Hardy. Pretty much all of them have been fixed, except for

* I’m still not completely happy with btnx, and evdev seems to be broken still. After some fiddling with it, researching it a bit more and generally spending slightly more time than ten seconds thinking about it, I discovered that a minor bit of tweaking was needed. Just point evdev at the right device and it works fine. Sidescroll works fine now, but I need to figure out a way to reverse it - right now it scrolls right when you punch left and so on. Btnx is history for me.

(it should be noted though that this might be residual annoyance since my Hardy-installation started life as Alpha6, and it might be some old configuration that lurks beneath the surface)

* Flash has issues. I realized how Flash is implemented in the 64-bit version, it’s simply a 64-bit wrapper around the regular 32-bit Flash binary. This is an ugly hack, and the wrapper has a tendency to lock up every now and again. It should be pointed out though that this is not Ubuntus fault - it’s Adobes, for insisting on not releasing a 64-bit Flash for Linux.

* I don’t know if Ubuntu has updated it’s proprietary driver-manager to support newer Nvidia-cards such as the 9xxx-series. I know the driver supporting them is still in Beta, so it might not be supported by the easy click-and-say-yes method Ubuntu has. This means that owners of 9xxx-cards (including myself) have to visit Nvidias site and install it the old-fashioned method. This is quite user-unfriendly, but again, blame Nvidia and not Ubuntu. I don’t know if the famous Envy-script supports installing the drivers for 9xxx-series cards since I’ve never used it.

Here’s two screenshots for you. The top is a standard desktop, the bottom is the exposé-like view featuring the “curved” option enabled. I think it’s pretty.

UPDATE: The official page has been updated. Grab your copy from the download page.

Aliens vs Predator: Requiem

Action/scifi from 2007.

—

The Aliens and one lone Predator descend on a small village somewhere in the USA, squeezing the local humans between them.

—

Yeah, I guess that’s a pretty good summary of the story. The Predator (or Yautja, as they’re known in the expanded universe) takes on the task of cleaning up after the botched mission in the previous movie. Why? Because that ship crashed, and this lone creature was sent to erase the traces.

The story is a bit weird actually. The Predator first does an excellent job of removing any traces of aliens or Predators using some weird blue liquid that dissolves everything it touches, all the while staying out of most of the action. It gets a little weird after a while when he decides that he’s no longer there on a covert mission and instead goes off and starts collecting trophies instead.

So, the story is a bit iffy. It works, I suppose, but it’s not very logical.

It’s easy to think that this movie is crap. And I would assume that to someone not very into the whole AvP mythos it would just seem like another stupid actionfest. But I liked it. I went in with very low expectations since I thought the first AvP movie did a really half-assed job. So, expectations were low and interestingly enough, I think that if you’re a fan of Aliens, Predators or the concept of them kicking the crap out of each other then this movie might be for you.

Sure, you have to ignore that logical jump mentioned in the storyline, but the ingredients are all there and they seem in my opinion to have been mixed into the right kind of dish. I was annoyed at how stupid the Predators in Paul W.S. Andersons take were, but I can assure you - this time around the Predator takes no crap from anyone. He’s just as kick-ass as Predators should be, and whatever mistakes he does (because he does a few) is simply him being faced with an even more kick-ass enemy - in this case the Predator-Alien hybrid briefly glanced in the first film.

I’d say it’s obvious that Colin and Greg Strause who directed this did some research beforehand. A lot of the concepts in this movie are almost directly lifted out of previous films. In fact, they even pay homage by lifting a few lines from previous Alien/Predator films, most notably the classic “Get to the chopper” but without Arnold saying it. Normally I would wrinkle my nose at such a pathetic attempt to score fanboy-points, but in this case it actually works. Hell, a lot of the musical cues are taken from earlier films (the weird drums whenever the Predator does something, the dark horns when the Aliens do something) and again I would normally scoff at this. But not here, here it helps convey the gravitas behind the mythos.

Now, I understand that making a film out of something like this is tricky. You have to give it enough personal touch to make it “yours” as a director, while not changing too much and thus upsetting the fans of what you’re making a movie out of. This one manages to walk the line, if you ask me. PWSA changed a little too much, while the Straus brothers manage to keep it. Sure, they don’t add much new to the mix, but when the mix as it was is excellent then why bother?

This movie has action, and as far as being an AvP-movie I’d say it’s more faithful to the concept than the first one. The ending is a bit anticlimactic, but it has a very neat minor twist to it. I’m not going to spoil that for you though.

I liked it. If you’re a fan of the AvP-mythos then I think you’ll like it as well. It’s plenty gory, and the Predator is kick-ass. Recommended.

Yeah, keen observers might note that I’ve removed the “Ubuntu Linux” page from my blog.

Why?

Well, I realized that it was futile to try to have a static page about such a fast-moving target. By the time I’m even close to getting around to finishing it a new version of Ubuntu has been released, and the cycle starts over again.

Instead I’m going to write a static page about Ubuntu, I’m going to some day create a static page about my thoughts on Free Software, Linux and that stuff. For Ubuntu-related news you’ll simply have to read the blog instead. Or search it.

In two days Hardy Heron is officially released. It’s a bit obvious saying this, but so far it’s the best yet. I roll my eyes a bit when I read about how people try it and are disappointed that the changes aren’t as big as they expected. Well, that’s how Linux works. Small, but constant and never-ending improvements - unlike Windows who builds a hype-machine for five years and then falls flat on it’s face since it’s essentially the same stuff as before.

The Golden Compass

Fantasy from 2007 starring among others Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig and Sam Elliott.

—

In a parallell universe young Lyra Belacqua goes on an adventure up in the arctic. Or something. Here, I’ll just steal the summary from IMDB instead of writing my own: “In a parallel universe, young Lyra Belacqua journeys to the far North to save her best friend and other kidnapped children from terrible experiments by a mysterious organization.” Yeah, I guess that works as a plot summary.

—

Okay, back in October when I mentioned this film I was pretty interested in it. Mainly that interest stemmed from the controversy the film (as well as the books it’s based on) was causing among the fundamentalist christians over in the US, but also because I thought it might be entertaining. When I read about it sounded kind of like Narnia crossed with the Lord of The Rings.

So, now I’ve seen it and what do I think of it?

I think it’s a pretty but incredibly dull affair.

Sure, it’s a nice production and visually it looks kind of like a steampunk-version of Narnia. It’s filled with computer-animation and gorgeous environments, and it’s got some pretty impressive actors. Yet it all feels so darn wasted.

The story is filled with incredibly heavy-handed metaphors for things Philip Pullman doesn’t like. It doesn’t really take a big brain to see that the magistrate is in fact the church, and they want to outlaw science (the dust) and free will. But the way these otherwise interesting metaphors are presented is so obvious. The whole world built in this film is just flat, there’s no excitement. It’s wooden.

And speaking of wooden. Let me tell you what else is wooden in this film. The acting. It’s like watching a bunch of planks sprouting ridiculous lines. Even Daniel Craig and Nicole Kidman who usually manage to bring some kind of gravity to films fail miserably here. In fact, Daniel Craig barely even makes an appearance in this film, and Nicole Kidman is some generic Cruella DeVil-like villain. Pretty much every character in the film is just some two-dimensional cliché that’s been tossed into the mix to make it seem exciting. Casting Sam Elliot as the swaggerty adventurer with an accent as wide as his cowboy-hat is just too obvious.

Speaking of the dialogue. I mean, seriously, even in an alternate dimension, who the hell speaks like they do in this film?

Let me give you an example:

Normal film: RUN!

The Golden Compass: My young friend, I fear that now is the time where we must apply force to our legs and outrun the foolish enemy behind us. Lead the way and I will attempt to stave the flood of… etc etc etc etc and so forth and so on.

No, I think that the only people who will get a kick out of this film are already fans of the books. We who haven’t yet read them just find that this film is so self-important it’s almost falling over itself, and it’s formulaic and utterly boring delivery just underscores that. I had trouble keeping my eyes open, and I doubt that any kid who’s not a fan of Lyra will have troubles doing it too.

Watch this only if you have nothing else to do, and only if you aren’t paying for it. I don’t care that Phil Pullman is an atheist and is making the religious right nervous - this film is most of the time like watching paint dry.

If you want a fun and exciting film set in an alternate reality I instead recommend you go off and rent Stardust. Now that movie was fun!

Cloverfield (2008)

Action/Scifi/Drama featuring a bunch of virtual nonames.

—

A monster attacks New York City and a small group of survivors equipped with a camcorder try to make it out of the city alive.

—

This. Movie. Is. Awesome.

I’ll say it again for emphasis. This movie is awesome. This movie will blow your socks off, rip your shirt to pieces and not introduce itself to your parents.

The story is pretty non-descript, but this is not a story-driven movie. The story rather acts as a frame to the characters. This is a disturbingly realistic and amazingly intense film. It is not your average hollywood-movie, filled with a bunch of overpaid actors hamming it up in front of a bluescreen.

The film is presented as a piece of government evidence, retrieved from a camcorder found in what was previous to the events in the film Central Park. The whole film actually looks like something that was shot by someone holding a camcorder, while being a part of the events.

And in case you didn’t already hear me say it, it is awesome. This is not your average monster-movie. The only thing it raises is questions. The really wonderful thing about it is that the way it’s filmed makes you forget that it’s fiction. You feel as if the boundary between reality and what you’re watching disappears. You have to remind yourself that this, despite appearances, never happened.

This movie is as awesome as Godzilla should’ve been back in 1998.

See it. Even if you’re not into monster-flicks, or action, or scifi. See it because it’s awesome, see it because it’s not cheesy, it’s not cliché. Strongly recommended.

I forgot to mention that yesterday our apartment appeared in all the listings. It is now for sale! So, if you’re looking for a very cozy apartment in Umeå, look no further. Plenty of space, stylish interior, fairly high standards of living, huge balcony, convenient location as well as excellent (i.e. 100 mbit) broadband.

Our apartment at Hemnet.

And some photos. These were taken by our realtor Erica, and she’s been excellent so far. Professional, efficient, easy to get along with. And, an excellent photographer.

There are a few things that I miss from the more decadent US of A. Among those things is the wide selection of soft-drinks available. Sure, a lot of the stuff is available here in Sweden, but there are quite a few flavors that aren’t. We can get regular Coke, Pepsi, Dr Pepper and various other products.

But we can’t get root beer, Mountain Dew or Cherry Coke. At least not through the official channels, although there are companies who import american products for us to enjoy at almost silly prices. Root beer is pretty common now. Mountain Dew and Cherry Coke is not.

(On another note: root beer is the preferred choice of drink for UNIX-people. Why? Well, why don’t you think about it for a while)

But today I found both of those. At really horrible prices I bought two cans of Cherry Coke and two of Mountain Dew. Combined with the amazing weather Umeå has today, I’m having an excellent day.

And in case anyone in Umeå is wondering where I bought them, you can find them at Nanna-kiosken downtown, right next to Vasaplan. They cost a horrendous 15 kronor (approx US$2.50) a piece.

The other day Gartner published a warning that Windows will collapse unless something dramatic is done on Microsofts part.

Let me correct that statement: Windows has been collapsing for years, and Microsoft knows it. They also know that they’re screwed either way, and have so far been sticking their heads in the sand trying to ignore reality.

See, regardless of what Microsoft tries to tell you, they’re selling a product that is a legacy-system. They retired most of the Windows 95-codebase after Windows ME proved to be a spectacular failure in every department, but most of Windows XP, Windows 2000 and I would assume quite a lot of Windows Vista’s collective codebases date back more than a decade, back to Windows NT.

Since 2001 when Windows XP was launched, every release since then has basically just been another spit-n-shine polish of the old Windows NT-codebase. Sure, they’ve tacked on some new bits, but the core dates back to around 1996. Don’t be fooled by Vista either, even though Microsoft likes to hint at Vista being a complete rewrite (thus attempting to explain away the extended birthing process) it isn’t. It’s another legacy-OS dressed up with new clothing.

Windows has been falling apart for a decade. The only thing it’s really bored into peoples consciousness is that Windows is unreliable. By extension, this has caused a deep, almost subconscious feeling in the human population that computers are unreliable regardless of what system they’re running.

What Gartner suggests is that Microsoft is going to have to do a complete overhaul of the Windows codebase, or face complete and utter failure in every department. They point to the extended process behind Vista combined with it’s failure to live up to the hype as reasons why this is needed. Vista took a long time to develop. A long, long, long time. It required at least one complete restart of the project (that we know of, there might be others that Microsoft is black-bagging) and yet the reception to the new version can’t be described as anything more than lukewarm. And I’m being somewhat generous in that description.

Why did Vista take so long to produce? Simple. The codebase has become an unmaintainable jungle, and every effort to make it straighten up and fly right is failing. This is also reflected in Vistas much less than stellar performance. Even on powerful computers it limps along and is having a hard time keeping up with it’s much older cousin Windows XP.

Additionally, while a lot of people are quick to defend Microsoft using Windows XP’s success as an example, we need to remember what Windows XP was like when it was young. It was a temperamental beast lacking most of the hype that we were promised. Sure, it didn’t take six years to reach the market. But it took six years and thousands of patches, driver updates and general tweaking to get it to where it is today. It’ll probably take another six years of applying tough love to Vista to get it even remotely into shape.

“Why yes, this is the size of the Windows codebase!”

So, suppose that Microsoft actually bites the bullet and decides to overhaul Windows. It will take them years upon years to rebuild a new codebase that comes even close to delivering what people are expecting these days.

Apple is a good example of what Microsoft is going to have to do. Apples MacOS was failing miserably when it depended on the legacy of what’s now called MacOS Classic. Versions 8 and 9 were miserable and not well-received by the users. Apple did bite the bullet and did a complete overhaul of MacOS. It took a long time, a lot of work, and a lot of inventiveness but Apple now has an operating system that is flexible, robust, well-performing and scalable. All the things that Windows badly needs. MacOS can be scaled down to run on a cellphone, and it can be scaled up to run on supercomputers.

— Lots of semi-technical mumbo-jumbo starts here—

Along the road Apple had to make a lot of tough choices. Not too long ago there was an uproar about how Adobe isn’t going to ship a 64-bit Photoshop-version for Mac. This has it’s base in Apple deciding to not support Carbon, the API that Adobe has used to make Photoshop under OS X, in 64-bit environments. Carbon is one of the five API’s in OS X, and it was originally only meant as a transitional API. This was since a lot of companies (including Adobe) complained about having to port their existing codebase to Cocoa, the preferred API in OS X. Thus, Carbon was born, with the intention of retiring it when companies had gotten their codebases up to speed. Adobe never bothered, and now that Carbon is becoming history, Adobe has to rewrite Photoshop to use Cocoa in order to produce a long-awaited 64-bit version of Photoshop, which they originally should’ve done years ago. Apple made a tough choice deciding not to support Carbon under 64-bit systems, but it’ll be a choice that will prove fortuitous in the long run.

(Disclaimer: I’m not an Apple, Photoshop, OS X, Carbon/Cocoa or Adobe-expert. So any errors are simply my own)

— Lots of semi-technical mumbo-jumbo ends here—

This is a much simplifed example of one tough choice Apple had to make. Apple realized they’d had to do a complete overhaul, or go under when the ship sank. Microsoft is going to have to do the same thing - a complete rebirth of Windows with a brand-new codebase and a completely new approach to operating systems. They can no longer rely on their old codebase.

The difference here is that Microsoft will probably be screwed no matter what they do. If they decide to do a complete rewrite there will probably be at least a decade before we see a new Windows. Even then I doubt it will be a mature product. Think of it as being in a car-crash, damaging your brain and then having to learn to walk all over again. That’s what Microsoft is going to have to do. They can no longer rely on their previous knowledge (i.e. codebase) and will have to start from scratch.

Apple didn’t really have anything to lose. Instead they had everything to win by doing this. In 1997-1998, Apple was a dying company, desperately trying to find their way again. Microsoft on the other hand has everything to lose, and very little to gain. While they’re busy re-creating Windows from scratch they will lose customers. Apple is coming strong, with fairly innovative and high-quality products, at least considering they’re a corporation with profit-margins. On the other side of the forest are the hungry Free/Open Source systems. Linux is just as scalable, powerful and flexible as OS X - if not more. The big difference is that anyone can install Linux, without paying a dime, and without annoyances common in the Microsoft-sphere. No viruses, no firewalls, no rootkits, no NSA-backdoors into your computer, no EULAs and no trouble.

On the other hand, if Microsoft insists on continuing to re-use the existing Windows-codebase the problems will persist. Windows of the future will be an even worse, virus-infected, unstable thing. Microsoft will spend billions of dollars trying to reign in their legacy-code, spend fortunes trying to get it under control - and fail spectacularly.

Microsoft is damned if they do, and damned if they don’t. Either way, I think that the future of software and computing will be radically different.