Here’s a bizarre use for Microsoft’s “Flash-killer” Silverlight—a ballistics calculator. Yes, Silverlight is being used to build an application that lets shooting and hunting enthusiasts “customize shooting conditions” while comparing Winchester-made bullets.
Winchester’s Ballistics Calculator lets gun users choose their type of ammunition and then compare up to five different bullet types with charts and graphs. You can enter specific conditions like wind speed and outside temperature, maximum range, direction, speed and height. The application will then display charts and graphs that visually lay out the point of impact, drop and trajectory of each type of bullet.
According to Microsoft, Winchester chose Silverlight because it is a “cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in” that allowed the ballistics maker to create an app that doesn’t have to be downloaded (but you have to download Silverlight).
Silverlight 3 launched this past summer, with the hopes of making inroads against its main competitor Adobe Flash. It looks like Microsoft is going after gun enthusiasts first.
http://en.wikip...llow_journalism
http://uncyclop...Attention_Whore
Yeah. What exactly makes Winchester using Silverlight to design a ballistics calculator “bizarre”?
Is it the fact that it involves “shooting and hunting enthusiasts”? Or that bullets are involved?
Would it be bizarre if Winchester had used Flash to design said app? This article just drips of stupidity and overt stereotyping.
+1….
Link to Yellow Journalism… Love it. I did the same thing for a couple years at CNET, until I just got tired of reading the complete crap there.
I wish Tech Crunch would get a few coders to discuss stuff like this.
Brrr… Adobe should be frightened
Why is a ballistic calculator considered “bizarre”?
Well, I’m no gun fan though I believe that its up to an individual to own one or not.
As for silverlight, at first I had my doubts but it looks like Microsoft is getting traction with it and they seem to be more creative than Adobe
in the space.
Silverlight is just Microsoft’s latest tool to lock companies in to their platform.
You think moving from IE6 to a modern browsers is difficult. Companies are going to have to shoot their way, out of this one.
At Microsoft, Silverlight content is created in Flash and they have a special team of people who recreated what you’ve created in Silverlight. Not even Microsoft uses Silverlight.
Microsoft is using Silverlight all over the place. In fact, the upcomng Office Web applications use Silverlight for specific enhancements.
Well if thats the case, then please point me out to them, as i’m often doing File->New->Silverlight project within and helping others do the same.
Automatically producing Silverlight via Flash, now i’ve heard it all
-
Scott Barnes
Rich Platform Product Manager
Microsoft
learning silverlight now, and it’s great so far.
? Did Letterman keep his grey socks on ?
This is another indication that Techcrunch is losing the quality coverage it had 12 months ago.
I’m suprised Paul Carr didn’t write several pages of wasted words about this!
Don’t know why this is so “weird.” It’s actually a cool little web feature.
Silverlight is the foundation of this because the magic bullet is made of silver. In metaphorical terms, there are subtle hints in the words ‘Silverlight’ and ‘Silver bullet’.
This was something that came out of the creative meetings of the Microsoft advertising guys (The teams that brought you the amazing Windows 7 House Party Ad). I was there because I was chatting to them on MSN at the time. They use a lot of bloody emoticons but this shows passion. (I’d like less passion from the fat chick who keeps ‘Lol’ing’ to me – I’m getting tired of typing ‘BRB’)
Anyway I digress. So essentially what is happening is that Microsoft is now basically helping the sales of bullets, so that people can go out and shoot the Apple Evangelists. ‘Oh I have an iPhone, oh I have a shiny mac! Look at me – nobody likes me but I’m £20k down on buying shiny stuff and Steve Jobs bums me all day long’
Sorry I digress again. Yeh so this is Microsoft’s way of ridding the world of credit card shuffling morons and hey you can film it and then upload the video using Silverlight.
Got it? Good.
That will be all
Danny
shahdanny@gmail.com – I use Gmail because Hotmail once deleted all my shit cos I didn’t log in for 30 days.
Heh, that’s also why I use Gmail. I won’t forgive hotmail for deleting my old emails either. Ditto for Yahoo!. It’s tantamount to someone throwing out your old letters. Even if I am never going to read them again, I’d like to know they’re still around should I ever need or want to look at them again. Or use them to blackmail people. ;P
Quite possibly *the* stupidest article I have ever seen on TechCrunch.
Leena, please consider taking yourself to a shooting range. Reeds in Santa Clara is nice and clean, and bizarrely enough, it’s pretty diverse; it’s not the domain of grouchy old white men — although they usually give the best shooting advice. Take the 30 minute class and shoot a 9mm. You will not regret it. You will have fun.
That Microsoft won over a bigger client with Silverlight could be the news here, the fact they chose Silverlight over Flash could be interesting if technical reasons were given (like perhaps Silverlight using C# over flashes ActionScript make it easier to calculate ballistic conditions).
But this article doesn’t talk about any of that… Why does this article exist?
This doesn’t seem so bizarre to people who have seen Red Dawn a few dozen times.
I enjoyed playing with the little app and learned a few things about bullets and range. Very educational.
Agree, this doesn’t seem bizarre to me. This is a very strange and usless article. Yes, I would also agree this is possibly the stupidest article I have ever seen on TechCrunch.
Although, I really like the balistics calc site.
What is Microsoft role in this?? Microsoft developed a genetic web RIA technology, you can do almost about anything.
By the way, “there is an app for that” on the iPhone, I think Apple has something to do with Guns and Bullets
what does all this mean?
“Apple’s iPhone helps sell bullets” to frustrated owners who want to shoot the dang device:
http://www.mobi...he-apple-store/
I had the chance to see the application running on the Surface device which the partner Quilogy used on behalf of Winchester.
Very impressive use of the Microsoft platform to help a company build a solution that draws in their customer.
As the other commenters pointed out, there is nothing scary, weird, strange or dangerous about a ballistics calculator.
Hunters use them to work out how high or low their bullet at certain ranges, relative to the point that their scope is zero’ed at.
They are available for every mobile platform, and sometimes even integrated into the rifle scopes.
For the iPhone:
http://www.thef...0-sniper-rifle/
http://www.thef...ics-calculator/
“but you have to download Silverlight”
Same is true for Flash, or any other browser plug-in.
People seem to forget that, somehow.
Bizarre? Nothing bizarre about this.. Or this http://caselaw....on/amendment02/
If you want to write an anti-gun article, just do it. But what is this garbage you’re trying to pass off as news?
There’s nothing bizarre about creating a calculator using technology. What’s bizarre is that TechCrunch posts barely veiled left-wing propaganda as news.
Oh here we go again with the little sissified nancy-boys in Silicon Valley who think they are the center of the fucking universe and believe that anyone who doesn’t sit around with a latte and ooze self-importance is somehow beneath them.
An app that performs ballistic calculations isn’t bizarre, you big fucking pussies.
I think it’s bizarre that grown men have their toenails manicured or spend $200 for a haircut. You probably think that is normal. I think it’s normal that people enjoy using firearms.
so how many human deaths will Microsoft indirectly be responsible for?
I don’t think its bizarre either….Silverlight is probably going to continue gaining ground.
http://domusinc...s-exciting.html
“J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly designed the first electronic computer ENIAC to calculate the trajectory of artillery shells. The machine didn’t debut until February 1946, after the end of World War II, but it did launch the computer revolution.”
The more things change..
I myself am from the Silicon Valley and don’t see how a ballistics calculator is odd. That’s like guessing instead of using a calculator for a trig test. Also, wth with the “” around customize shooting conditions. You can just tell this author is pretentious.