The Internet is Wrong - Volume 2
Friday, 13th May 2011, 15:29

Yes, yet more whingeing about people being wrong on the Internet. Who'd have thought it.


My Start Menu is Wrong

Okay, okay, technically not the Internet, but how can Google find me millions of results in a fraction of a second but searching my Start Menu in Windows 7 takes ages and fails to find what I'm looking for? True, Google these days often fails to find what I'm looking for also, often even showing me pages which don't even have the word I'm searching for on, but that isn't the point. It fails to find it quicker.

Searching for "Ultra" comes up with UltraCompare Professional - Binary Compare but not UltraCompare Professional itself, even though it's there in the same folder under my Start Menu. It makes no sense, NO SENSE!

If I search for "Update" you'd think Windows Update would appear, but no. It doesn't even show if you search for "Windows", you have to type in "Windows Update", yet for the former it finds Apple Software Update, amongst others. Doesn't give you a lot of confidence that Bing would ever find what you were looking for, does it.


Repairing Graphics Cards With Your Oven is Wrong

You know, this one is right up there with shoving your HDD in the freezer, which by the way if you want to repair it at all, is wrong. How does this happen? Someone reads about how a repair company has an oven that they bake electronic products in, then thinks, oh I have an oven, this will repair my graphics card!

Well poster of a blog item about such an idea, ASadhra, you are wrong, but then I don't need to tell you that because in your own comments section you admit this was nothing more than a temporary fix. If indeed that can be classed as a fix at all, perhaps short term bodge is a better phrase for it.

Anyone who has ever wielded a soldering iron on delicate circuit boards, will tell you that heat is an enemy of electronics. If you hold your soldering iron down for too long in one place you'd be amazed how fast the heat can travel and how many delicate chips, capacitors, resistors, etc, it will eventually destroy. But you see this is why we use an iron with a point rather than a supped up hair-dryer, we heat an area for the minimum length of time to do the job and we get it off quick. If it's near delicate items we use clip on heat sinks to try and minimise the exposure.

Sticking it in an oven and raising the entire board up to the temperature required to melt the solder on it, is like eating 40 hamburgers on a Monday morning because it'll save you having to take in any meals for the rest of the week. All you are going to end up with, is a mess. Don't do it kids!


Sony's hack claims as reported by Reuters are wrong

So, we should all be pretty well aware now of the giant security cock up that was Sony's PS3 network being hacked and various accusations of this or that personal information may or may not having been extracted in the attempts. There are accusations that hacking group Anonymous who have previously attacked Sony were responsible, and denials from Anonymous that this is the case.

But one thing was reported by Reuters is clearly wrong, that Sony had, "removed off the Internet the personal details of 2,500 people that had been stolen by hackers and posted on a website." Sorry Sony, but if those details were posted on the Internet, I highly doubt you were the first to see them and remove them before anybody else did. The Internet is a huge network of computers nearly all of which you have no access to, you may have been able to reduce the number of places it appears publicly by one website, but if you think you removed that data from The Internet, you are, unfortunately for those individuals whose information is in that database, wrong.


Pyramid Research's forecasts for Windows Phone 7 is wrong

You know what? Let's put aside the fact that Microsoft say they've shipped 1.5 million Windows Phone 7 handsets, and yet a Russian website claims only 674,000 of those were actually sold. Let's ignore the fact that Microsoft is actually responsible for buying a load of WP7 phones to give free to their employees and no doubt including those in the aforementioned figure.

Let's just look at a few basic facts. Microsoft isn't cool, Apple is cool, Google is not-as-but-still-quite-cool. Blackberry is definitely not cool even though somehow articles appeared in various parts of the press last year about how it was the smartphone of choice for teenagers, yet despite this issued a profit warning last month. Oh, and yes, Nokia is really not cool, you had your chance Gorman! So Microsoft teaming up with Nokia, is really, really not cool.

More facts, Microsoft has failed to take a large chunk out of a market they have been in for years. Is it possible you didn't realise they were in the mobile phone OS business since at least 2009? And somehow I don't think such epic failures as the MP3 players called Zune, show the company can check enough of the right boxes to make people actually want more of their mobile products.

So, I'm sorry Pyramid Research, and MVC UK who unashamedly reported the story without questioning it, you are wrong. With a lot of money thrown at it, I reckon I can put a far better guess of 15% smartphone market share in 2015 for Windows Phone 7. Alas you can't compete with Android or iPhone in the non-business marketplace, not without being cool.

Maybe if you pretended your mobile OS wasn't called Windows and wasn't made by Microsoft, then you'd stand a chance of being cool. A bit like you did with XBox.

Posted by Robert John Shepherd