Windows Holographic?

Will VR and mixed reality take off?  Microsoft touted Windows Holographic today in an email to Windows Insiders - members of its beta community.

Perhaps as much of a misnomer as 'four channel stereo?' Or just a way to say that we support interactive 3D media?

I'll have to reserve judgement on the 'Holographic' tag, as that implies vastly more information storage than 3D interactive.

The Verge

Microsoft Blog

Quadraphonic_sound

Tay it ain't tso!

Microsoft's experiment with an online Bot named 'Tay' was quickly ended when the bot began posting racist and even fascist messages.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2016/03/24/us/ap-us-microsoft-twitter-chatbot-deleted.html?ref=news

The initial response in the Twitterverse was that the Bot was 'trained' to become 'racist', but as the New York Times article reveals - the system was not filtering the type of responses that it came out with, so people tried to get it to say crazy stuff. It worked. Oops!

After brief experiences with Chatroulette, I have to agree that this was to be expected if the 'Bot was programmed to respond with no filters. Other systems, such as Siri, or Amazon Echo do not respond to 'inappropriate content'.

We were experimenting recently on a long tech support call, because it has been said that swearing while waiting on hold will result in the call being bumped up in the queue. I can verify that playing a video of swearing Parrots into the phone did not cause any reduction on on-hold time with Sage Software. (I hung up after two hours.)

Old cell phones make a nice webcam

Need a webcam in my computer room. Old smart phone and free IP Webcam software. Poof!

Standing Desk in use

Standing Desk, Read Only Friday

Thought I would try out a standing desk, with a treadmill. For me standing in one place is no better than sitting all day! Here is the result.

First I had to find a cheap treadmill. Craig's list didn't work out so I opted for the Confidence Plus treadmill (about $200 online with free shipping).

Preparing the treadmill involved removing the arms from the Confidence Plus treadmill (about $200 online with free shipping). See details here...

The second challenge is that Standing Desks are expensive. Ikea is out of stock on the Bekant standing desk which is around $500. Others ramp up in price quickly.

For a quick experiment, this plastic shelving from Home Depot does the trick.

To get the right height, just cut down the plastic spacers. We're using four of the five shelves, and the treadmill is resting on the lowest shelf. (The feet are not used.)

Works ok for a test. Next thing is to stabilize the shelving a bit more.

Great post on "Why Bad Software Succeeds"

Came across this today - worth a read:

http://pressupinc.com/blog/2014/12/bad-software-succeeds/

Clickbait Alert: The Latest Smartphone Security Alert

This is exactly the kind of security warning that trends towards "Clickbait":

Smartphone security alert: 87% of iPhone and 97% of Android top 100 apps hacked

First of all, there's the number, then there's the terminology.

What do we mean by 'hacked'? Was there a data breach? Was the Apple or Google app store hacked?

No. 

The report from ArXan, "State of Mobile App Security, Apps Under Attack", Volume 3 – November 2014 has this to say:

The 2014 State of Mobile App Security analysis followed the same methodology as last year’s research, which included identifying and reviewing hacked versions of top iOS and Android apps from thirdparty sites outside of official Apple and Google app stores.

Users know, even if they ignore, that installing apps from third party sources is risky.
While it is important to know that such a high percentage of apps that are distributed outside of the app store have been infected with Malware, the report does not show any compromise of the app store or these companies' infrastructure. However, other research linked in the article, available here, deals with those issues.

The Register had this to say:

As a specialist in application protection, Arxan has an obvious vested interest in talking up the threat from poorly protected mobile apps. However, that's not to say it isn't onto something. The recent discovery of the WireLurker iOS malware provides evidence that the issue of tampered apps is a real and present danger.

So, I guess, important to know. Perhaps this becomes a reason companies should avoid putting out branded apps, or for sectors that deal with private information - should employ technology (such as ArXan's) which helps to tamper proof the code.

Bottom line: 87% of reports that the sky is falling - need to define the term "sky".