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Author: getwired

The Cliff Clavin Effect – AI and the Truth

The Cliff Clavin Effect – AI and the Truth

When another human tells you something, you may question it. When a machine tells you something, you likely take it as the gospel truth. On the 1980’s American TV show, “Cheers”, the character Cliff Clavin, a mailman played by actor John Ratzenberger, often doles out facts as if they were known truths.? He would say, “It’s a little known fact…” followed by something that you might or might not believe to be true. Over time, “It’s a little known fact”…

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So you want to buy my domain name

So you want to buy my domain name

Multiple times per year, I receive unsolicited email from random people – typically from consumer-class email addresses – asking if my domain (this domain – getwired.com) is for sale. To answer the question bluntly; no, it’s not for sale. To the people who will read that and then still want to ask me if it’s for sale… effectively everything has a price, right? I registered this domain name in Oct. 1995. That’s over 28 years ago. It was a great…

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The death of the automobile

The death of the automobile

When I was a kid, I was fascinated with cars. I used to joke that my first word was cat, which it was, but I meant to say car. I was fascinated every time I saw the hood up on a car. I didn’t understand how the machinery worked, I just knew they were fascinating to me.  I saw the hood open on my dad‘s car once when I was very young. It was a carbureted car, and I asked…

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Image-Based Setup (Just like starting over)

Image-Based Setup (Just like starting over)

When I started at Microsoft, there were two independent families of Windows. The consumer releases that were all DOS-based, and the business releases that were all NT-based. Until I joined the Windows team in 2000, I really didn’t understand the intricacies of having these two different ways of doing everything. In particular, with Windows XP being the melding point where all Windows releases became based off of the NT codebase, a ton of effort was spent in terms of setup,…

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The Birth of WIM

The Birth of WIM

When I joined the Windows setup team in Oct. of 2001, Windows Whistler (what would become Windows XP) was already at beta 2. A rapid release tucked in after Windows 2000, which was well-received by business customers but was nowhere near customer ready, the goal of Windows XP would be creating the first Windows NT-based OS for consumers. VP Jim Allchin’s mantra was “It just works,” which we sometimes jokingly said as “It juuuust works.” Humor aside, Windows XP would…

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Dead disk walking

Dead disk walking

Windows XP was the first version of Windows that didn’t ship with boot floppies. It only shipped with a CD. Yes, you could download a tool that would build a few boot floppies for you if your computer didn’t support El-Torito boot for some reason, but most computers that ran XP happily at the time that we shipped also supported CD boot. So even as XP launched in late 2001, the writing was on the wall for the floppy diskette….

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Remember the Itanic

Remember the Itanic

Intel may have had the best of intentions for the Itanium architecture. However, from the very first day I sat down and tried to use one after I joined the Windows team, I found it frustrating. It was loud, slow, and hot. Just starting the notepad was slow. It was a hot, angry pig. (And not even a fast pig like a javalina.) Itanium was designed to be a brand new platform for high-end workstations and servers. The x86 instruction…

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WinPE and Me

WinPE and Me

Background When I joined the Windows setup team in late 2000, just  ahead of Windows Whistler Beta 2 (the OSs you know as Windows XP and it’s belated sibling, Windows Server 2003), Windows was in this odd limbo when it came to how the OS was put down onto new or existing Windows PCs. Legacy Windows setup and upgrade – how consumers and many smaller businesses would roll out releases of Windows Third-party imaging – where tools would apply a preconfigured image…

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On Managing I/O

On Managing I/O

For 10 and a half years, I’ve taught our Microsoft licensing boot camps with Directions on Microsoft co-founder Rob Horwitz. Over that 10 years, we’ve traveled and worked together so much that colleagues have referred to us multiple times as the odd couple. (Ahem… I am clearly Felix.) When we teach, it’s multiple days of Rob or myself presenting for a good chunk of the day. In the before times, when we did in-person boot camps every other month, the…

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Places that are Lost

Places that are Lost

“There are places I’ll rememberAll my life though some have changedSome forever, not for betterSome have gone and some remain” “In My Life” – The Beatles When we would go visit the river, I don’t ever remember asking my parents “Are we there yet?” It was obvious when you were there—because everything changed. If you’ve never lived in Montana, or visited multiple parts of it, you probably think of it as all mountains, all trees, or both. But there are…

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