Thoughtsofanidlemind's Blog

Category: Technology

  • The ALL-IN-1 Mail Filter: Forerunner of modern email rules processing

    Email systems had a different ebb and flow twenty-five years ago. An average mailbox received perhaps 10-15 messages daily and the messages were simpler with fewer attachments and properties. Most messages were in the order of one printed page or less, or roughly 2KB of ASCII text. Some email systems,…

  • Sanity slowing coming into focus in patent wars

    Patents have been a lucrative source of highly profitable income for the technology companies that have accumulated sizable portfolios over the years. Companies earn income by licensing their patents to other companies or by prosecuting others who are felt to infringe a patent. At the same time, a patent portfolio…

  • Adieu Minitel

    France turned off its Minitel service on June 30, thirty years after the little beige boxes first appeared in French homes. Apparently almost 800,000 devices were still in use when the time came to flip the switch from the maximum of 9 million devices that were in use in the…

  • Bad week for Microsoft partners

    This week has been some week for Microsoft partners. First, all of the OEMs who have faithfully followed Microsoft’s weaving way through operating systems towards the Promised Land of Windows 8 had their collective noses rubbed into the dirt when Steve Ballmer introduced Microsoft Surface. Dreams of a happy 2012…

  • Microsoft scores own goal with their sad attitude to Windows Phone upgrades

    Microsoft passed a really positive message to the people, like me, who invested in Windows Phone 7.5 when they announced that Windows Phone 8 won’t run on older devices on June 20 at the Windows Phone Summit in San Francisco. In particular, those who recently bought a Nokia Lumia 900…

  • The ethics of cut and paste blogging

    Blogging is good fun. After all, if it wasn’t, we wouldn’t do it – right? But there are some blogging habits that are unacceptable. Abusing someone for instance would seem to be in pretty poor taste. So, at least in my mind, is the way that some populate their blog…

  • Windows 8 upgrade smooth, but Skype’s a CPU hog

    Microsoft took the IT world a little by surprise when it made the Windows 8 Release Preview code available last Thursday (May 30). Ever prepared to take a run at the future, I promptly downloaded the code and upgraded my venerable HP EliteBook 8530w (8GB memory, 256GB SSD) from the…

  • Ten years on: The HP-Compaq merger

    On May 3, 2002 HP announced that it had completed the acquisition of Compaq. The new HPQ stock began trading on May 6 as the new company launched into action around the world. For those of us involved in the merger, it certainly was an exciting time. Based on an…

  • On the road again… to San Diego

    This week I traveled from Dublin to San Diego to attend “The Experts Conference” (TEC). The conference organizers took care of tickets and I was routed via JFK on Delta rather than my normal choice (probably Aer Lingus to Chicago and onwards on United). The good news was that Delta surprised me…

  • A billion? Maybe good value if they’re good patents

    At first glance, the news that Microsoft has agreed to pay AOL more than $1 billion for a trove of 925 patents (plus access to 300 patents kept by AOL) might seem to be an expensive purchase to some. Microsoft then offset some of their expenditure by selling access to some 600…