The boy stood on the burning platform

When I read that Stephen Elop is to be paid $25 million for his three years architecting the downfall of Nokia, the outrage across the internet was palpable. And I must confess, I fell for it. As I considered how this once-proud brand had been brought so low, and now the architect of its downfall is to be so rewarded, I felt almost physically sick at the sheer injustice.

But, I wondered, where was the political angle? How could the government of Finland just stand by and watch this - pillaging of their national flagship? Where was the doomsaying, the demagoguery, the raging anti-Americanism that should have heralded the announcement of Microsoft's takeover?

Which led me to think that, just maybe, people who paid attention may know more about this story than random internet blowhards. Which prompted me to do a little - just a little, mind you - further research.

And looking at the record, I notice that when Elop became CEO of Nokia in September 2010, the firm was already in grim shape. Share price, market share and profitability were all dropping rapidly. True, the company still had its own distinctive platform, it still had an unrivalled reputation for quality, particularly in the low end of the market, and it still shipped more phones than anyone else on the planet. But all those positions were under strong attack, and it was rapidly running out of resources with which to defend them.

And while Elop's performance was, by the numbers, gruesome, it wasn't as bad as it's now routinely depicted on partisan blogs. The oft-quoted "87% share price decline", for instance, is based on measuring from peak (just after his arrival) to trough (July 2012), but it fails to consider that if you bought stock in July 2012, you'd be looking at a 250% return by now - the end-to-end drop is a mere 40%. Of course that's still not good - unless, that is, you compare it with the 3-year period before Elop's arrival, when that same stock dropped by an eyewatering 75%.

If Elop's job was to arrest the decline, then he failed. But if his job was to prepare Nokia for its only viable future, as part of a hideous multinational empire, then he's done it well. Rather than a "trojan horse" - the popular image right now - perhaps we should be seeing him as a port pilot - the guy who comes on board just before the ship enters a harbour, to steer her past the hidden shoals into a safe dock.

Viewed in that light, Elop's initial appointment makes a lot more sense.

Has he earned $25 million? I have conceptual problems with the thought that anyone can "earn" that sort of money in three years; but I can imagine it wasn't a fun three years. And so long as it's not my money, who am I to judge?

Microsoft: digging holes since 1997

For a while there, I was almost starting to like Internet Explorer.

When my bosses told me to "slick up" our website, with scrolling headlines and graduated tints and rounded corners and shadows and all that tired old tat, I rubbed my metaphorical hands gleefully and settled down to learn the very latest web languages (by which I mean, HTML 5 and CSS 3). That didn't take long. But then, as I'd expected, the hard part began: learning how to make these gimmicks work in each type of browser.

I'll spare you the ins and outs of that - the stylesheet is kinda messy, and at almost 600 lines it's about three times as long as it has any business to be, but it works. (It's even technically valid, at least according to w3.org.)

When I handed my designs over to my bosses for feedback, they loved them. The pages, though I say so myself, look pretty cool when viewed on PC, Mac, tablet or notebook. For good measure I even checked them on my Nintendo DS. Lovely. My only negative feedback came from - what else - Internet Explorer 9.

But how? I've got IE9 myself. The same version, on the same platform, looking at the same pages - yet the results are completely different. (For instance: my version of IE9 has no problem with supporting display:table-cell, whereas yours evidently thinks it's the work of the devil.) What goes on?

It took me a whole afternoon to work out the answer to that.

Microsoft, rot their vile souls, have built "handy" features into Internet Explorer called "browser mode" and "document mode". Which means that the same browser can apply completely different sets of rules to interpret the same code.

On paper, like most of MS's output, it's not a bad idea. In practice, also like most of MS's output, the implementation is awful beyond description. See, the thing is: there's no way to control which settings someone else's browser will apply.

Oh, in theory there is. There's a tag you can put in your page header to tell it "This page is meant to be rendered in IE 9". That's annoying enough in itself - why would a browser need to be told not to pretend it's something else? And obviously it doesn't work if the client isn't using IE 9. But what's really winding me up, right now, is that it still won't work even if they bloody are using bloody IE9.

For a partial explanation, look at this unholy monstrosity. But even that is only a small part of the horror. See, while the page author has some minimal control over the "document mode", they have no control at all over the "browser mode", which overlaps with and partly overrules the "document mode". The browser user sets that at installation time - usually without even realising what they're doing, because it's disguised as a question about "how would you like to view the web?". And if you've downloaded the page in "IE7" mode, and then tried to apply "IE9" layout to it, the result is an ungodly hybrid that would make Doctor Moreau blench.

To add insult to injury, the mode that sometimes gets applied without realising it is "IE7". So I have to hack the design to work in IE7, despite the fact that nobody in the entire world actually uses IE bloody 7. (Well, okay. To be strictly accurate, according to our website logs, about 10% of IE users do - although I'm guessing most of those are really using later versions that are just pretending to be IE7.)

What people do still use, in their droves, is IE6, which is an entirely different pain in the fundament.

So now I'm having to insert four, count them, four separate stylesheets - for IE6, IE7, IE8 and (every other browser including IE9). And just hoping to goodness that IE10 works acceptably with the IE9 design.

Keynes, famously, is supposed to have argued that in times of recession, it would be worthwhile to pay the unemployed to dig holes only to fill them in again. That's about how useful I've been feeling this week.

It's a simple question...

Dear Lazyweb,

Somewhere out there, there has to be someone who knows what the "priority" attribute does in a style definition in MS Word 2007/2010:

Google is no help. Word MVPs aren't saying.

Word Help is its usual helpless self:

But someone must know. Bonus points for an answer referencing a source published by Microsoft.

Anyone? Anyone at all?

Order of the boot

When my employers wanted to experiment with Windows Vista, it was an easy choice to pick the employee whose work they could most afford to lose. Was it, they wanted to know, really as bad as people were saying?

It took me about two weeks to make up my mind about that. Yes. Yes, it was. If anything it was worse than people were saying. Not only had it reorganised some basic functions and obscured others, added enormous delay to simple things such as booting, file copying and even file deletion; it was prone to slowdowns and erratic pop-ups occurring for no discernable reason at all; it would make its own decisions about how to display a file folder (it's convinced that some of my application folders are full of MP3s, and others are photos, and no matter how many times I tell it they're not it always reverts sooner or later); and it broke some of what I considered the best basic features of earlier Windows versions, such as giving the user a warning when they try to delete a file that's marked as "Read Only".

Now, Vista has already been superseded, and I'm seeing the Internet fill up with people commenting "It's not that bad, really".

I have two words for those people: "Stockholm Syndrome". It is that bad, really. Two service packs, innumerable patches and 30 months of use experience later, everything I complained about in the above paragraph is still true. The big difference is that now I know how it sucks.

And so it was with a heavy heart that I rebooted my laptop this morning. See, Windows updated yesterday - presumably that security hole that everyone's been going on about - and that meant that when I woke it from overnight hibernation this morning, it reminded me to reboot. Options at this point are: "Remind me again in 10 minutes/1 hour/4 hours". No option for what I want, which is "Remind me when I click 'Hibernate' or some other shutdown option again, and in the meantime just shut up and work."

Just in case anyone thinks I'm exaggerating about how bad Vista is, I took the liberty of recording what happened next:

• 8:09 a.m.: I click the "Restart Now" button in the "nagging" dialogue. The dialogue goes away and my cursor changes to the dreaded infinite-looping affair that says my computer will now not respond to anything I do for an indeterminate time to come.
• 8:11: Dialogue pops up: "Windows Explorer has stopped working". Options are: "Check online for a solution and restart the program", "Restart the program", "Debug the program". No mention of "Just shut the fucking program down already." I ignore it, in the well founded hope that Windows will forget about it.
• 8:12: Outlook pops up a dialogue asking if I'd like to auto-archive my old items now. Miraculously, this dialogue does have a "No!!!!" option. I click it.
• 8:14: Screen goes black.
• 8:17: I get back with coffee. Screen is still black.
• 8:18: Part 1 of the Windows startup sequence appears. It looks superficially like a progress bar.
• 8:19: "One of your disks needs to be checked for consistency. You may cancel the disk check, but it is strongly recommended you continue." Windows has said this on every single startup since a new hard disc was fitted about a year ago. CHKDISK has never found any issues. To be on the safe side, I humour it. (In fact cancelling is more trouble than it's worth, because it means pressing a key, which - since Windows is not yet aware of the external keyboard - means opening the laptop, which means Windows rearranging the displays, which would take another 90 seconds at minimum.)
• 8:21: Screen goes black. Remains black for over 50 seconds.
• 8:22: "Please wait". Well, that makes a nice change of pace.
• 8:22: "Configuring updates: part 3/3"
• 8:24: "Press Ctrl + Alt + Delete to log on". I do so.
• 8:25: "Welcome"
• 8:26: Desktop appears, but cursor is still in circling "wait" mode
• 8:27: Cursor switches to "ready" mode. I click to open Outlook.
• 8:29: I can see my Inbox! Start trying to read e-mail.
• 8:35: "Multiple problems exist with your computer security". This dialogue is another thing that keeps coming back like a vampire, no matter how many times I stake it. The "problems"? "Windows Defender is out of date. Update now?"

So, your recommendation is that I go through all that again? I'll pass.

Time taken from switching on to getting a usable desktop: 20 minutes. Time taken to anything like full functionality (i.e. Windows stops interrupting me every 2 minutes to nag about something): over 35 minutes.

I remember when booting a computer meant loading a program from cassette tape. It didn't take one-quarter as long as this.

Darth Google

A few of weeks ago now, I installed a new widget on this page that records where (it thinks) my readers are located, where they come from, and what links they click when they're here.

It's fascinating reading, although slightly dispiriting that I don't get visited nearly as often as I should. But among other things, it lets me see what people were searching Google for when my blog popped up.

An uncommon lot of people - well, half a dozen at least - seem to have been drawn here by the picture included in my unflattering review of Watchmen. I wonder if they were disappointed when they didn't find a full online version of the comic. (If so, tough. I don't support digital piracy.)

Recently there was some poor sap from Miami searching for "the science of karma", and they were apparently so disappointed that they must've complained to Google, because my post of that name currently doesn't show up at all in a search for that phrase.

Then last week there was someone searching for "Mr Darcy is all politeness" (without quotes). I wonder what they were looking for.

I know what they found, though. Apparently, if you Google for a random text from Pride & Prejudice, the number one result you get is the "Google Books" edition of the text.

I don't know if you're familiar with Google Books. It's a stupid idea, the misbegotten offspring of an idiot's compromise between Google and the major publishers whereby Google gets to "publish books" online. By way of throwing a bone to the copyright Gestapo, Google agreed to leave out some pages in these works, the theory being that people should be allowed to search the text online but not able to read it. The choice of pages omitted depends on what you searched for. (It also, I've discovered in the course of researching this, varies from one day to the next. Last week I could page all the way through the book, with some random omissions such as p.145; this week, it's skipping directly from p.60 to the back cover.)

The irony being, of course, that Pride & Prejudice is not a copyright work. Not unless Jane Austen lived to be 200 years old, anyway. Anyone can reproduce this text as many times as they like; rewrite, repackage, adapt, perform, distribute, sell, loan or hire it, or any original work they may derive from it, completely at will. That's how Wordsworth Classics (Google's edition) were entitled to publish it in the first place; for them now to assert copyright over the text is indefensible, and should be illegal if it's not already.

But I digress. My real point here is that no human being in their senses would search for the Google Books edition of this work, because it's fecking useless. Instead, they could look for the Gutenberg version, which is easier to read, easier to search, and complete. And one hundred per cent legal to distribute in every country I know of, unless of course it meets someone's idea of obscenity...

And yet that page doesn't show up at all in the first page of Google results when searching for the text.

Ten years ago, Google became famous for its motto: "Don't be evil". "Evil" was always somewhat nebulously defined, but it was commonly understood as contrasting with Microsoft's standard operating practice of abusing every part of its business to give various (arguably) unfair advantages to every other part, generally at the expense of its own users. But it's hard to see the above Google result in any other light. The top result for the search is the one that's least useful for the user, and most profitable for Google.

Reasons to hate Vista, part 4 (I think)

Windows Vista gets a lot of stick. Microsoft claims that this is unfair, caused by biased reviewers read by people who haven't given it a fair chance. But Microsoft is, as ever, full of it. I've yet to see them explain why these malicious reviewers are so prejudiced against this Windows version in particular.

I've had this computer, and this crappy excuse for an operating system, for a year and a half now. And it still manages to surprise me with all the ways it can think of to go wrong on boot-up.

Usually it's something to do with the screen that gets screwed up. Recent irritations have included:

• showing a 1280 × 1024 background image on a 1920 × 1200 monitor.
  Usually when this happens it will realise its error and correct it within, ooh, about five minutes. But last week it stuck with that setting for an entire session, lasting some hours.
• images switching to and fro between left and right monitors
• refusing to show any desktop at all -- just a black screen with a cursor.

But it's really amazing how many variations on these themes it can come up with. Nothing if not inventive, Vista is.

Today it was a practical issue. I'm accustomed to the computer taking more than five minutes (timed) to restore from standby. That's fine, it fits my morning routine, I use the time to make coffee. But when it takes another four minutes, on top of that, to open Outlook...

The Microsoft VP who famously "got burnt" by Microsoft's "Vista-capable" scam -- for scam it was -- at least ended up with what he described as "an e-mail machine". He's still better off than me.