CharlotteTheHarlot

Exactly. This is what is meant by working without a net. ( Image Source: here ) Just IMHO but this is an incredibly bad idea. It's bad enough that .REG files have that association in the first place ( it is much better to assign them to a text editor, not REGEDIT.EXE ), but the latest dumbing down of the Windows shell includes possible single click execution ( "OPEN" verb ) of files, or worse, no click execution thanks to touchpads opening the object when the pointer is held over it for a period of time! That last warning can be literally like a lifeboat to safety. Imagine you have a folder full of saved .REG files ( which would be really dangerous if they are complete system exports perhaps from other computers, or has deleted keys like [-HKEY ) and you are poking around that folder and the touchpad sends a complete 100 MB export ( HKLM/System included ) to REGEDIT silently. You will blow away so many system settings before it finally fails ( because it will crap out on some keys you cannot modify on a live system ). My advice is to assign .REG to an editor. For importing REG scripts I keep a shortcut icon to REGEDIT.EXE available ( Quicklaunch or Desktop ) for manually dropping .REG files on. This still provides that last warning too as long as you don't edit that shortcut and add the /s switch. If you insist on saving that microsecond of effort of clicking away that warning, then I suggest studying for the worst case scenario of how to replace a FUBAR'd registry ( you will be on a functioning live system that now has a corrupted registry on disk but you won't see the effects until the next reboot ). It is not an easy thing on NT to exchange hives, and this assumes that you managed to save good backup copies of the current working one. EDIT: before someone mentions it, in that photo it looks like the guy has a safety line attached to the tightrope dragging behind him ( still a scary photo! ). Consider that little safety line equivalent to that last REGEDIT warning prompt.

Jaclaz, although I didn't specify it in my comment, my older power supplies are not only missing the 3.3v contacts in the connector, but also the wires naturally! Like the traditional "molex" they have black,red,black,yellow. It's a simple implementation of them ( Power Supply manufacturers ) sticking a SATA power connector onto the same wires that can just as easily have a large or small "molex" connector. And it works just fine presently. Like yourself, I too have no SATA fitted drives that require the 3.3v that I'm aware of. At some point it will be useful though and drives will utilize that end of the connector. Either that or they will simply ( continue to ) use voltage regulators and power resistors onboard to obtain 3.3v or other variations. RAM based drives are obvious choices for that 3.3v, as are any smart devices with a CPU or other IC's. It would be financially cheaper for these specific manufacturers to build their SATA attached device if they have a native low voltage feed available. But nothing is stopping them from doing what was done before the 3.3v ( and -5v and standby, etc ) arrived, and that means ensuring maximum compatibility by building to the widest base of potential customers - just assume +5v and +12v, handle regulation onboard and be done with it. Who is to say that it already isn't being done with SATA attached devices.

Intel Chairman Says Company Had Lost Its Way ( Tom's Hardware 2013-11-30 ) Yeah, at around 3.9 GHz. Hasn't anybody at Intel seen Spinal Tap? ( Image Source: here )

Well, decisions violating the First Amendment (or similar Freedom of press or speech) are IMHO a tadbit tough to apply to people not making money (integrally or partially) through merely re-distributing pre-made content (by others). Here's an interesting question (interesting to me, anyway ): suppose that the police find a guy on the streets of New York City (or any other big city) who is GIVING AWAY knockoffs of Gucci handbags. Ergo, he's not making any money off his activities. (Let's say that he became an Internet billionaire and this is his pastime.) Is he less guilty for giving the stuff away than if he were selling the knockoffs? I don't have a pre-set answer, it's something to ponder... What if the pages are 50/50? And when they are 20/80? Great questions. My first reaction would be that (for better or worse) these are matters of judgment and no iron-clad rule can be set, rather you'd have to judge on the particulars of each case. --JorgeA I'm okay with the guy giving away the Gucci knock-offs for free. I'm also okay with him charging money if they are not called Gucci or passed off as them ( this is NOT the same as copying a DVD and selling it ). Making a better mousetrap, or selling a clone of an existing mousetrap for a better price is an improvement upon the status quo and was once respected. As you probably know, down in NYC they have declared war on things exactly like this ( knockoff Gucci, Rolex, etc ) and the reason is probably because of deep pocketed lobbying of the powers-that-be to protect their little empire. It's a microcosm ( or macrocosm? ) of the tech world IP battles. IMHO this all leads back to patents with their built-in arbitrary timeframe of an exclusive monopoly protected by law. Take that away, making it maybe one year tops, and many problems will fix themselves. IMHO naturally.

As a content creator, I understand the desire to stop piracy, but this cure is worse than the disease. Once any website can be [Orwell reference] sent down the memory hole, [/Orwell reference] then every website is subject to the whim of the authorities and remains at the mercy of the political winds. --JorgeA Couldn't agree more. This is classic camel's nose under the tent. It's the precedents that get ya in the long run.

Not sure what your point is? A few civil servants or tens of them, whatever. Denote the actual quantity of criminals involved as n and process 317,000,000 - n which results in the absolute quantity of non-criminals being charged cash money for the actions of n. ( Yeah, I know that 317 million is high, actual taxpayers is less at around 100+ million or so ). The point is that these companies are targeting us because we are suckers. They won't target the actual criminals involved because they won't collect anything substantial ( I mean "alleged" criminals, I wouldn't take their word at face value ). The immunity that all government employees enjoy which shifts any responsibility to the taxpayer is the problem here. And it ultimately leads to this. It's so lucrative that it would pay for some software copyright holder to enlist some government employee sysadmin to pirate some software and install it on a million client network, just guarantee him a cut of the extortion settlement and a perfect scam is possible. Since taxpayers ( actually future taxpayers since the debt is so enormous ) don't feel the pain directly they have no real victims of their scam. All I'm saying is to charge the actual perps. Not me and others who are not involved.

That's pretty normal in my experience. My lower wattage power supplies, around 400 W and below are missing those three pins, probably because they are older and/or cheaper. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA#Power_connectors That first section of the power connector holds the 3.3v conductors and is not needed on most SATA harddrives, but I would expect them to be used in the future, perhaps for SSD or other RAM based drives ( or even hybrid drives ) where lower voltages are needed. It's a good question that you ask though, because if you happen to have a SATA drive that does use those connectors you would drive yourself mad trying to figure out what the problem is! My guess is the drive gets returned to the seller, thinking you have a dead brick.

Reported 50,000+ Networks Possibly Hacked By NSA ( Tom's Hardware 2013-11-27 ) Sorry if already posted, just want to make sure all the Snowden releases get a mention. Bitcoin exchange rate tops $1,000 for first time ever ( TechSpot 2013-11-27 ) UK man throws away hard drive containing over $7.5 million in Bitcoins ( NeoWin 2013-11-28 ) Interesting stories to be sure. I imagine if you had a time machine, the classic choice about going back and buying tons of stock in IBM, MSFT, AAPL or GOOG is now no choice at all, and instead it means grab a few thousand bitcoins when they were available for less than a buck each. I'm guessing that with this news the next virtual currency that comes along won't be dismissed so very easily! EDIT: clarity

Microsoft reportedly implementing stronger encryption to combat NSA spying ( TechSpot 2013-11-27 ) Report: Microsoft to encrypt more of its data to prevent NSA spying ( NeoWin 2013-11-28 ) No sense quoting it. There is no real information here, none about what Microsoft might do and of course nothing stating that there aren't back-doors making this face-saving window-dressing. It is obvious that the spy leaks have had some serious negative effect on all of these companies reputations and sales, the only question is whether they are in the process of applying band-aids, or tourniquets to stop the bleeding. FCC Chairman Suggests Overhaul for Phone Internet System ( Tom's Hardware 2013-11-27 ) Unless this bureaucrat's first words out of his mouth were 'To ensure citizen privacy' or 'a new infrastructure with no spying capability' ( or ... ) then he must think we are fools. No way that anything could be developed and rolled out presently and NOT be compromised to the core. In a perfect world the bureaucrat would now be soliciting design ideas from privacy advocates and commit to not moving forward without a foolproof plan for privacy. But that won't happen today, as the expectation thanks to lukewarm outrage from the sheeple is for the status quo - spooks tapping all communications at will.

US Government to pay $50 million for using pirated software ( NeoWin 2013-11-28 ) Oh the "Government" did that? You mean some individual civil servant. And now we taxpayers get fleeced some more by this Sopranos industry of copyright pirates posing as copyright police. A perfect reason why the blanket immunity for public officials ( USA ) should be done away with allowing each individual to be charged as a criminal and alleged damages can be extracted from them, rather than levied against the taxpayer pool. But that is in fact the purpose in the first place, to absolve the individual completely. It runs up the taxpayer fiscal liability and also contributes to the destruction of individuality in the long run. A more evil situation would be hard to devise. Naturally this parasitic company called Apptricity would jump at the chance to raid taxpayers' wallets, since the few actual government employees that allegedly committed this offense have little to offer. If the government spooks and the IRS and other alphabet agencies want to harass someone, how about aiming your vast resources at them, Apptricity instead. Tap their phones, confiscate their computers, find out what they have hiding in their closets. Since they have just managed to charge me as a taxpayer for software I never installed or use, they are taking my money without any product or services in return. That makes them thieves. Go get 'em, I can support that! Microsoft issues security alert for new Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 exploit ( NeoWin 2013-11-27 ) Red meat for the mindless fandogs ( fanpuppies really ) to chew on. I don't have time to look at this properly today, but why does that ring a bell? Didn't we already see this a long time ago? Hopefully someone has better Total Recall than myself. EDIT: clarity

Bloomberg: Alan Mulally still a favorite for Microsoft CEO position; Stephen Elop no longer frontrunner ( NeoWin 2013-11-28 ) I'll bet the Ford guy keeps saying "no" just to get better and better offers. When they finally sign him it will be for a record breaking package ( and will backfire because of the bad press Microsoft will receive ). Either that or this is all to wear down Wall Street and then suddenly keep Ballmer. Aw heck, just bring back Sinofsky, at least that will provide some entertainment value as they circle the drain. Microsoft changes online Xbox One form letter after getting sexism complaints ( NeoWin 2013-11-27 ) So this grabs Microsoft's attention resulting in an instantaneous about-face, instead of the two full years of yelling about Metro and other disasters! They are a clown circus. And though it's beside the point, political correctness will become the death of free speech. Such cowards.

Yahoo slams Microsoft Outlook in eccentric memo, even though most of them use it ( NeoWin 2013-11-24 ) NeoWin defense piece, for Microsoft naturally, all because Yahoo criticized their crappy Outlook email thing. Naturally it serves up red meat for the NeoDogs to chew on. I say blah blah blah as I prefer email clients over webpages, but here's the thing, the article looks like this ... Making it obvious that the author needed to resort to a trick to compare Outlook and Yahoo favorably. First he shows Yahoo at 500 x 310 ( apect ratio is 1.61 to 1 ) ... ( Image Source: NeoWin ) ... then he shows Outlook at a larger 640 x 360 ( aspect ratio is 1.78 to 1 ) ... ( Image Source: NeoWin ) ... which unsurprisingly yields far more pixels of Outlook and a wider, much more favorable aspect ratio. How on Earth could Outlook not appear more useful in this instance! We know what the NeoKid was thinking obviously, but what on Earth did he do to accomplish this? Neither image seems resized since the fonts appear true enough, the only thing I can think of is that he used Outlook full screen but screencapped Yahoo in a resized browser window. That actual placeholder webpage title they use over there "Neowin - Where unprofessional journalism looks better" is very true indeed. Also note that "Yahoo thinks this program is like a dinosaur" is the original caption from the author. To this I say: Why yes it is a dinosaur, lodged firmly in the Win3x era before VB came along to make controls and interfaces show some manner of difference and most importantly, depth ( actually that's insulting the Win16 era too much because programmers had the tools to make perfectly useful applications already, it was the early HTML era that this NuMicrosoft is partly mimicking ). That whole Outlook is a minefield of hidden controls, meaning you'll have to move the mouse over anything to see if it is clickable or not. The fact that you MetroTards accept this idiocracy willingly only reflects on your complete lack of critical reasoning when your beloved Microsoft is involved. Anyway, if you make them the same size and put them side by side things appear much differently IMHO ... These two windows are the same size, now which one looks like a dinosaur? ... and the real problem becomes obvious. Outlook is a clusterf*ck just the same as all of Microsoft's latest re-imaginings using that ridiculous bright white and gray theme, webpage-like HTML and CSS level rendering, retarded icons, disorganized layout and Julie's horrific ribbon thrown in for good measure. It would take a very few more white elements to make the Outlook window into a blinding flashlight app, and we really need more of those. There is true insanity in the extreme crap visual appearance of much software these days, a fad led primarily by Microsoft and to some extent Apple, frittering away all the advancements of GPU acceleration and display output. Icons for example, are being reduced to 2-color flat copies of those retarded public road signs that were designed BEFORE there even were computers in the graphic design industry. It's madness brought to us by the overpaid under-achievers in Redmond. One wonders what their vaunted telemetry shows for use of accessibility features, particularly those catering to handicapped persons. According to NuMicrosoft logic all physically handicapped people should be thrown under the bus because certainly any feature they removed on the basis of telemetry surely had more usage than the more specialized accessibility functions. Yep, it seems the only handicapped people that Microsoft interface designers care about at all are the mentally handicapped MetroTards. EDIT: typos

Protecting Your Data: Grading the Major Websites ( Tom's Hardware 2013-11-25 ) Nice reference there, I mirrored it and put it into this spoiler ... Guess What? Your Facebook Friends List Is Never Private ( Tom's Hardware 2013-11-25 ) And the steady drumbeat of half-arsed privacy implementations continues. Awesome job Zuck! You're worth every single penny of all those billions.

Microsoft Enlists Pawn Stars to Call Chromebook Not a Real Laptop ( Maximum PC 2013-11-26 ) Gloves off: Microsoft slams Google and its Chromebook in new video ( NeoWin 2013-11-26 ) ~sigh~ Now this is so very disappointing ( see the pathetic commercial at the links ). Pawn Stars was at the top of the heap of modern reality TV shows but is now starting to decend into a morass of crap. Fist they started clearly fleecing some of the people that come in with items to sell, crying about risk and profit and seem to have settled upon 50% maximum buying price for almost everything that comes in. Then we started seeing product placement segments, commercials really where they are obviously paid for their consideration. Now they are full blown shills for a deep pocketed shillmaster. It's not only embarrassing, it is damaging to their reputation. The only thing they ( and everybody really ) has going for them is their integrity. How can anyone ever trust them now if they have sold off their neutrality for financial gain? I wouldn't trust them. The thing is obviously scripted which is bad enough, but they use the normal setting ( the store itself, and the backroom with the guitars where Rick usually explains facts and details ) which means that in the future when he is explaining the history of something and pontificating on the value his own integrity is tarnished ( is this a commercial or not? ). Dumb, dumb, dumb! I notice that they only signed up Rick and the old man for some reason. Perhaps Chumlee wasn't available? Or maybe they were worried that Google might do something like this ... IMPORTANT NOTE: I'm not at all saying that Chumlee is a MetroTard, just that this is what might have happened had Microsoft bribed him instead! In fact, if you watch the show you'll see that Chumlee is the only one that knows anything at all about technology ( other than using Google or blabbing on cellphones ) so I would guess he is not a MetroTard at all, not even close. So after making that image I instead decided to whip up a few more that we can safely say are accurate now ... ( Rick original photo ) ( original image ) I guess it's true when Ricks says "Everything has its price". Even integrity.

Watching TV in Europe inside Xbox One suffers from 50Hz limitations ( NeoWin 2013-11-25 ) Another mistake? Unbelieveably, the answer is yes! And it's a doozy. They actually forgot about PAL vs NTSC! There's no excuse for this except that it's a certifiable clown circus at Microsoft ... ( Image Source: here ) Sony resetting PSN account passwords worldwide is just a "routine protection" ( NeoWin 2013-11-26 ) Xbox One multiplayer and store services currently experiencing small service disruption (Update) ( NeoWin 2013-11-26 ) The perils of the cloud continue. Kinda ironic of how these two occurred in succession. First came the Sony story and unsurprisingly the MicroZealots started taking shots at them, then a few hours later the Microsoft story arrived and the MicroZealots started taking shots at the NeoWin author for having the temerity to spoil their party. Kids these days. A new Steam Machines prototype emerges, from iBuyPower ( PC Gamer 2013-11-26 ) For the price of an Xbox One, iBuyPower will sell you a Steam Machine ( TechSpot 2013-11-26 ) Steam Machine Prototype Previewed from iBuyPower ( Tom's Hardware 2013-11-26 ) iBuyPower Teases White Steam Machine Prototype ( Maximum PC 2013-11-26 ) Not a lot of positive comments so far. But this is one of those pre-made canned solutions ... it's a console ... it's for GameTards who cannot muster the patience and/or lack the experience to construct something like this for themselves. Funny how that one seems a perfect cross of Xbox and PS in appearance though. I wonder if Microsoft patented that puke green color?

Canalys: Microsoft to Own Just 5 Percent of Rapidly Expanding Tablet Market in 2014 ( Maximum PC 2013-11-26 ) And this is what you destroyed Windows for, Ballmer and Sinofsky? Great job guys! You're really good at this. SkyDrive Could be Renamed BingDrive, FetchDrive, and NewDrive Following UK Court Ruling ( Tom's Hardware 2013-11-25 ) That's exactly what I've been wondering about lately. Why on Earth did they not make the change before the Xbox release, because now that's a whole new line of product websites and services that need to be addressed. Anyway, I already made them a new name and logo which they may use free of charge ... ( Originals: 1, 2, 3 ) EDIT: oops, needed more SpyDrive edits in that image.

Microsoft Responds to Surface 2 Overheating Issue ( Tom's Hardware 2013-11-26 ) Hmmmm. This is a new one I think. And one that is to be expected when cramming a computer into a tiny sliver of a case, a true fool's errand. I wonder how Microsoft is enjoying the hardware business now? Microsoft to sell Surface RT for $199 on Black Friday ( NeoWin 2013-11-26 ) Just over one year ago this thing was released ( and then Sinofsky was fired ). And this is the price many of us suggested for it to have any chance at all of selling. We are literally seeing a repeat of the HP Touchpad firesale ... almost ... a mere $100 difference at this point. Will the fanboys acknowledge they have a Touchpad fiasco on their hands yet? Ironically there was real love shown for that WebOS operating system in stark contrast to the overwhelming disdain for the Metro-centric Microsoft Tiles. There are many lessons here and chief among them is that even a good software interface cannot guarantee success in a market, and a bad interface, well, that can only reduce your chance of success further.

Ha! The Bureau is still doing black bag jobs, which is rather ironic as the Federal government ( especially the Justice Department ) is populated with people that spent their lives lecturing us about the sordid past. People cried like mad when the Bureau did it to politicians, elitists in the news media, and high profile citizens like MLK. Now that they appear solely focused on the citizen peasants, I mean terrorists, you can hear a pin drop. J. Edgar Hoover or G. Gordon Liddy please pick up the courtesy phone. Amazing. I expect to see a new commodities exchange open up in Chicago for Metadata futures speculation. You would think it is more valuable than Gold, Platinum and Oil. Clearly what is happening is that everyone is actively probing the perimeters of where legality ends and spying begins. It's that precedent thing again. Camel noses and tents. Give an inch and they will most assuredly take mile. To try yet another cliché, this is where the rubber meets the road ( pardon the pun ). We need to fight each and every foray into this Brave NuWorld. Failure is NOT an option.

You got that right but try telling the NeoKids. They won't let any number of facts interrupt their circle jerk. I just don't see how this handful of millions means anything at all anyway. As you know Apple is selling over a million iPads per week, and that's just them. Phones sales are getting almost uncountable and all three ( tablets, phones, consoles ) are in the same price range. Clearly consoles are the niche market and they would be even niche-ier had Microsoft not declared war on the PC, especially PC Gaming with all their planned obsolescence with Direct-X and Windows. I got nothing against them, either one really, because canned solutions like a console for the GameTards that just want to play and not be bothered by disk space and CPU and RAM and cooling are a good fit. Sony and Nintendo were no threats to the PC world and had no designs on destroying it. Then along comes Microsoft with their typical modus operandi of trying to clear the field ( PC gaming ) to pave the way for another near monopoly. They know nothing else. It is a consequence of the young child-like Bill Gates in the early years doing nothing but eliminating competition wherever he saw it, and it trickled down to all his subordinates, especially Uncle Fester. There is a timeline graphic ... Infographic: A timeline of Sony's PlayStation franchise ( TechSpot 2013-11-22 ) ... that shows huge numbers of PlayStation sales, like a hundred million for the first two and 75 million for the PS3, I'm having a hard time imagining this latest generation matching those in any way, especially Xbone.

Epic post! And this is very nice ---> JOAN.png <--- How much you wanna bet it is her Xbox avatar. I see her talking about how kids are so tech savvy, but that is a redefinition of the words. Today's kids couldn't tell hex from binary any more than they can identify countries on a map, in other words they are just as vaguely educated as previous generations, or even less educated considering that much time is wasted in school on computer "activities" like training them to use Office or Photoshop. Today's kids however are highly educated in consumer tasks like using a remote control, DVD players, consoles, Facebook and cellphones. This is what astonishes the red-headed bimbo and what she confuses for tech skills. If someone went in an swapped around all the wires on their console, TV and DVD player or screwed with the router they would show no logical debugging skills and most likely have daddy buy them a new set of devices before calling in paid techs to sort it out. Becoming Tech savvy is largely voluntary and is more an art than anything else. Julie exemplifies the low standards of intelligence required to get by even at Microsoft. She is catering to the sheeple but describes it as something else, and this either by accident or design, but either way she is focusing on sheeple consumers ... because it is easy. And you're right, the Apple-envy is strong, very strong, it's industrial-strength, and drives them at every step. When they flop again, Julie had better hope that Bill Gates doesn't show up to her office with a stranger dressed in black ... Do You Know What Weakness Is?

Microsoft: We are working to replace Xbox One units with disc drive issues ( NeoWin 2013-11-23 ) Speaking of their ability to perform data collection, these things would sound far less suspicious if every answer wasn't couched in defensive babble like "affecting a small number". Since they obviously know exactly what numbers are involved why not just state them? They literally are asking for more and more criticism with every word they officially utter. It also would help if their fanboys weren't crying in each and every one of these threads as to how the article is unfair for mentioning problems involving their beloved Microsoft. It's pathetic really. Senators Call NSA Snooping Unnecessary to Security ( Tom's Hardware 2013-11-22 ) No kidding. Pretty much all of the first Ten Amendments are under incessant attack these days. So anyway, that's three of the one hundred boobs in that house. Three. Wonderful. And the thing looks too vague to get anywhere. I've got a perfect solution though. Make it a federal offense for any federal employee or citizen to violate a citizen's civil rights and specify that they must be charged individually for each count ( no immunity as they have now for official duties ). So if someone spies on a thousand citizens they are charged with a thousand counts and face a thousand consecutive ( not concurrent! ) sentences. This means that computer based crime becomes much more risky because of the multiplicative factor involved. Note that I already suggested something similar earlier for a non-governmental crime by a bitcoin miner. It is the perfect solution all around because it uses the ability of computers and networks to affect many people at a time as the main deterrent. Criminals would realize that using a computer to attack multiple targets means multiple counts and multiple penalties. Of course this is resisted by law enforcement and the judicial branch because it means their ability to make deals behind the scenes is compromised, but that is a large part of the problem in the first place.

Skydrive will not be rebranded as New Drive' ( NeoWin 2013-11-22 ) I'm still shaking my head at this situation. They have been using "SkyDrive" more and more since losing this lawsuit it seems. It is apparently even used in Xbox, a newly released device, rather than switching to whatever they want for the future. That's crazy because they now have to scrub all of them also! If the UK Sky company wanted to drag them right back into court they would have no problem nailing them with a contempt verdict for thoroughly ignoring the earlier judgment. This is yet another example of Microsoft's ability to screw up every issue in the legal department. It also is in stark contrast to how fast they ran away from the name "Metro". Microsoft matches Sony, sells over a million Xbox One consoles in the first 24 hours ( TechSpot 2013-11-23 ) Microsoft: More than 1 million Xbox One consoles sold in 24 hours ( NeoWin 2013-11-23 ) With Microsoft clearly able to pull out these statistics at will doesn't it beg a question or two like ... * Number of customers optically tracked by Kinect * Quantity of gamers who said "Xbox, On" and "Xbox, Off" * TV viewing habits of customers now that they have a super-TiVo uber-Nielson big brother * Quantity of customers opting out of data collection * Number of gamers disabling Kinect * ... etc

Workers in China Protest Nokia-Microsoft Deal ( Tom's Hardware 2013-11-22 ) Phheww! I bet Elop and Ballmer didn't see this coming. Well Ballmer definitely didn't as the luxury of being a software maker means you don't have to worry about things like slave labor building and sabotaging your widgets. ( I added that Reuters link because like so many articles these days, the bad journalism seems to require leaving out links to the main sources of information. ) There is some reported violence and lots of bad publicity being reported in the Reuters article. Definitely not something they will be happy about seeing. No coverage yet at NeoWin unsurprisingly, this is too much of a downer for the fanboys. And besides, they would just say that it happens to Apple, and everyone else too. Ballmer Defends Xbox, Bing as Key Microsoft Components ( Tom's Hardware 2013-11-23 ) What this sounds like is that the Board Of Directors ( inluding Ballmer ) will be a roadblock to any sensible moves by Microsoft and her new CEO in the future. Wall Street will be unimpressed by this and their stock will likely remain stuck in the mud for eternity. Microsoft's devices head: We won't have three Windows versions in the future ( NeoWin 2013-11-23 ) Like a stubborn mule the red-headed bimbo digs in her heels and tells us that a dumbed-down NuWindows is the plan for NuMicrosoft. Period. I said it long ago, they are getting out of the personal computer business and getting into the toy business because it is easier. This is a violation of the concept of a standards setting monopoly they everyone agrees to in order to let a common platform ( x86 Windows ) take root and thrive. They are further violating this trust by targeting the members of the x86 monopoly with forced use of Microsoft Tiles and the Microsoft Store, no clearer case of self-serving abuse of leverage could possibly be found. Imagine if one company provided more than 90% of the petroleum or food we used and suddenly decided to switch to something else ( ethanol, natural gas, tofu, ... ) and everyone then had to turn their world upside down to accommodate this newer, self-serving business model. Governments would step in, take the supply chain and break it up and redistribute it to more reliable parties. That's what we have here contrary to what the narcissistic fanboys want to believe. Microsoft is violating their decades old position at the center of this universe. The most ethical solutions would have been to build a separate Microsoft Tiles piece of crap and allow it to stand or fall on its own rather than leveragin their monopoly. They could also alleviate their illegality by releasing the x86 operating system code to public domain. If governments were not bought off and if the fanboys weren't so retarded, this is where the conversation would be today.

There is a thread where we discussed this a bit ... Add Command In Context Menu. I explained some details starting about here. To cut to the chase, relocating an entry involves exporting the current contents of a registry key, editing it as a REG file so that the entry is now in the proper position, and then re-importing that REG file with a command at the top that first deletes all the entries and then inserts the new ones ( with the new order ). Complicating this is the fact that entries are displayed in the context menu from ( broadly ) at least two different locations using two different methods ( Shell and ShellEx ). One must take this into account and that usually means grabbing both locations and editing the entire works. As I don't understand your language I cannot tell what that means ( Open in a new Window? ). You need to first determine where that command originates from, so I would suggest you export the entire registry and then search for it and perhaps post that key ( Shell or ShellEx ). Keep in mind that the latter method ( ShellEx ) uses pointers to DLL libraries so that particular text prompt might not even show up in the registry export ( DLL code resides in the DLL file and the context menu text is pulled from there, "Shell" entries show the customizeable context menu text right in the registry however ). ADDED: forgot to mention this ... the reason that the registry key(s) need re-ordering is that they are read and enumerated sequentially as they exist within the registry hive files ( not necessarily as they appear in the REGEDIT interface ). As they get entered into the registry they are stored as records in the hive ( it's a database ) and they are stored one after another without regards to alphanumeric sort or anything else. The shell code reads them sequentially ( as they were entered into the registry over the life of that Windows installation ) and then builds the context menu which will look like they appear on disk. Microsoft never added any runtime code to micromanage the appearance of the context menus but there are 3rd party utilities. Some of them do it the way I described by re-ordering the records, others I believe do it at runtime at each boot by inserting a service to manipulate the current session in memory. Another type ( seen in that linked thread ) effectively inserts a shim that itself can host context menu entries that are highly customizable. I prefer to do it by hand myself.

Nokia to say näkemiin to their Espoo HQ building ( NeoWin 2013-11-21 ) Not a big deal I guess, but NeoWin ninja-edited the title to this article since yesterday when it originally looked like this ... Nokia to say farvel to their Espoo HQ building ( NeoWin 2013-11-21 ) ... but without any update mention in the body of the article ( very bad journalism Steven NeoBond ). One comment was apparently the reason for the alteration ... Yep, that pretty much explains it. Motorola to Use 3D Printing for Customizable Cellphones ( Tom's Hardware 2013-11-22 ) Another follow-up from yesterday. 3D printing does have a certain appeal when considering user empowerment ( not printing stupid little plastic dashboard toys ) with respect to cutting out the big government-approved monopolies from designing, building, selling ( and ruining ) all manner of consumer electronics. There will come a point when citizen manufacturing becomes the favored source of home equipment, as long we can resist all attempts by the monopolies and their government lackeys to step in and regulate it away.