I remember The Register, early attempt at blogging, surprisingly still going - Charlie Hoult
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Trident ends tear jerking windows scenes in picture houses
IT'S ONE OF THE most over created scenes in the film industry. Our hero stares forlornly at the storm lashed windows. It's a visual metaphor for the tears that he/she is desperately holding back.
But the film won't have started yet. The weeping is taking place in the cinema foyer, where – dagnamit! – the bloody computer isn't working. It looks like it runs on Windows, says Barry from the pop corn stand. And he knows a bit about computers – but for some reason the bloody thing isn't responding.
Now everyone's in tears. The customers can't get to see the movie. The manager is going to get it in the neck. And the fat couple with Tourette's and a bucket of noisy sweets won't get their chance to sit right behind me and ruin my evening.
We're all mortified, and all because an industrial PC runs an alien form of windows that nobody understands.
Those days are over though because a firm in Surrey – Trident – reckons it can take the pain out of digital signage, factory installations and, yes, retail outlets and cinema cash desks. It's offering embedded PCs that boot out of the box.
How do they do this? With a Windows embedded evaluation image on a Compact Flash card. It's ideal for single board computers that are becoming the platform of choice for industrial usage.
"People think they know Windows, but they won't have a clue when they have to map the hardware and run the target Analyser Probe," explained Andy Stevens, Trident's embedded systems senior product manager.
"Microsoft's embedded operating systems offer huge flexibility for configuration to suit individual applications which remains available to developers exercising the offer. But you have to know what you're doing. So we can do it for people."
Does this mean no more tear jerking windows scenes? Let's hope so, they were such a cliché anyway. µ
Tags: Microsoft
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You wonder why they can't use another flavour sauce on your Extra Large Nachos with Jalapinos.... what about Linux. I'd love to know the cost of an embedded MS OS!
And how, exactly, do you think we run the millions of Linux systems that run on these single board computers? Mostly CF cards, of course. We're even downsizing since a CF is a bit big and clunky for modern boards.

Putting Windows on CF won't make it crash less often.
I'm a regular Inq reader; I get the humor. I'm not one of those people who write in to ask what a 'vole' is or to correct the spelling of 'source' (correctly spelled 'sauce').

I think it would have been nice for someone to have read this article a couple of times and tidied it up a bit before publishing it, so the readers didn't have to read it twice to understand it. Unless you made it hard to understand on purpose, as a way of poking fun at the people quoted in the article who are trying to make end user's lives easier since the end users don't understand the technology. But (in this case) I think I'd be giving you too much credit...

I still like Inq and Nick, too. :)
Replace one alien form of windows that nobody understands with yet another alien form of windows that nobody understands residing on flash? Whoopdie-f'ing-doodly doo. Well it would certainly be a cash cow for the propellor-heads selling and maintaining this devil you won't know. Otherwise, no point at all.

And with the movie mode of my digicam as my witness, sticking an OS on flash isn't a cure-all for cheap hardware, buggy kernels or poorly written applications. I think today for giggles I'll upload to YouTube my video of the in-flight entertainment system on my Delta flight rebooting itself upon command, whereupon it shows me a dazzling display of penguin prowess, predictably.
nagDAMMIT!