Mandelbrot Set Explorer | Wolfram Hempel. To promote the launch of their latest browser IE 10, Microsoft created IE Test Drive, a showcase of computation heavy examples to demo it’s capabilities. Fair enough, both Chrome and Firefox maintain similar sites. But while theirs are community driven, Microsoft’s is of a more corporate nature, packed with “this is how we fare against evil Chrome and Firefox” comparison tables. Microsoft’s Ie Test Drive page All shall be forgiven though, seeing that IE 10 is in fact the first decent browser out of Redmond.
One thing however struck me as odd. Microsoft’s version of the Mandelbrot set Explorer from IeTest Drive How can this be? My Version of the Mandelbrot set explorer on Github Bigger, in color and currently with no optimizations whatsoever. ( This would be a great use case for Webworkers though). If you’d like to have a look at how it’s done, check out the Github repository.
Like this: Like Loading... Microsoft's Surface available for pre-order in eight countries, shipping October 26th. Did Microsoft Just kill Flash, Silverlight? Microsoft’s new Metro style GUI in Windows will not support plug-ins anymore . After Apple, Microsoft is second to be dropping plug-in architecture and decides to rely on HTML5 technologies only. Is Adobe’s Flash era now officially ending and what do we make of this trend? <p>Windows 8 Start Screen</p> “Reimagine” is the keyword that could describe Microsoft’s product and business strategy these days. We heard phrases such as reimagining Windows and even “reimagining Microsoft”. Some readers have questioned our opinion that Microsoft is betting “everything” on touch, based on the fact that the Metro GUI in Windows 8 can be dropped and replaced with the traditional desktop GUI. Windows 8 is everything but evolutionary. Windows 7 has sold about 450 million units in 22 months and just surpassed Windows XP in usage share, Microsoft said.
Windows president Steven Sinofsky yesterday announced that there will be no plug-in support in Windows 8 (Metro). How Would You Move Mount Fuji? Now comes a new book, How Would You Move Mount Fuji? Microsoft's Cult of the Puzzle - How the World's Smartest Company Selects the Most Creative Thinkers by science writer William Poundstone. Poundstone talked to various people who have been involved in Microsoft hiring, including those who were interviewed, and those who gave interviews (full disclosure: I worked at Microsoft for ten years and was one of the people he talked to).
He includes a lengthy list of questions, and most interestingly for many people, he also includes answers. In the book, Poundstone traces the origins of this type of question, providing some fascinating information on the history of intelligence testing. He then chronicles how a certain type of puzzle interview caught on in the high-tech industry. Microsoft was not the first company to ask such questions, but it certainly popularized it.
"The problems used in AI research have often been puzzles or games. Microsoft employees are aware of such sites. Microsoft’s Downfall: Inside the Executive E-mails and Cannibalistic Culture That Felled a Tech Giant. Eichenwald’s conversations reveal that a management system known as “stack ranking”—a program that forces every unit to declare a certain percentage of employees as top performers, good performers, average, and poor—effectively crippled Microsoft’s ability to innovate. “Every current and former Microsoft employee I interviewed—every one—cited stack ranking as the most destructive process inside of Microsoft, something that drove out untold numbers of employees,” Eichenwald writes. “If you were on a team of 10 people, you walked in the first day knowing that, no matter how good everyone was, 2 people were going to get a great review, 7 were going to get mediocre reviews, and 1 was going to get a terrible review,” says a former software developer.
“It leads to employees focusing on competing with each other rather than competing with other companies.” “I see Microsoft as technology’s answer to Sears,” said Kurt Massey, a former senior marketing manager.