CharlotteTheHarlot

All true. So perhaps they have elements of all three ... NarcissisiSadoMasochism :lol Narcissism ... consideration only to personal circumstances ... "Well this new Microsoft policy of xxx doesn't affect me at all" Sadism ... willingness to inflict their preferred interface, or lack of it, on the rest of the world, and to make relatively easy jobs like detailed file level operations impossible through abstracted interface training wheels. Masochism ... unerring ability to drop trow and bend over whenever their MicroMasters demand so.

Former Microsoft employee talks publicly about online hate after Twitter comments ( NeoWin 2013-11-07 ) Poor baby, mistaking Twitter for a personal diary that he can write his thoughts into and no-one will read or respond to. This is called peer review ( or better yet, p2p review : ) which is so thoroughly lacking in the world today in insulated boardrooms and political offices. Hey Adam, #dealwithit! Internet Explorer Has a New Anime Girl Mascot ( Tom's Hardware 2013-11-09 ) Wannabe Hipsters. This could very easily have been from the Onion or the Daily WTF. Panasonic's 20 inch Windows 8.1 tablet coming to U.S. in January for $5,999 ( NeoWin 2013-11-08 ) ~sigh~ A bigger waste of money I cannot imagine ( and that's really saying something these days ). Talk about betting on the wrong horse. Panasonic seems incapable of making logical decisions which pains me to say since I have always liked their stuff. They just threw in the towel with plasma TV's being discontinued after failing miserably at marketing ( and evolving ) them properly. It is such a shame because they are arguably better than LCD tech except for power efficiency. You would think they could make 30 inch plasma computer displays ( preferably higher than 1080 vertical ) by now, something a lot of people would jump on. Instead they jump to 4k LCD. Security and Privacy ... The CIA pays AT&T more than $10 million annually for foreign call logs ( TechSpot 2013-11-07 ) Thing is, we now know that this is just one of many prongs in a multi-pronged approach. Prior to this past summer this wouldn't even be news at all, in fact it is pretty much the same thing from the old Ma Bell days that existed throughout the cold war and probably started around World War II. The newsworthy portion IMHO is that they are actively being paid out of the taxpayer wallet and this adds a new dynamic which is that they are selling their services to the spooks which makes it even easier to say "yes" to requests. It is probbaly safe to assume that payola is involved in all the other cases we now know of. Citizen privacy is fungible, it is a commodity that exists only until someone offers to pay for access.

The Xbone saga continues ... Xbox One cloud servers could reboot in mid-session if they are updated ( NeoWin 2013-11-06 ) Xbox One's cloud service updates could cause reboots mid-game ( TechSpot 2013-11-08 ) Miserable complainers, always whining about this or that! Now they are moaning about mid-game system reboots. Spoiled babies. The cloud is your friend. Leave Microsoft alone! /SARC For a glimpse into the impenetrable me-only narcissistic mind of a fanboy, consider this comment: "Hint: they're not going to be updated in prime time." which is an ignorant attempt at rationalization ( and with NO sarc tag ) that translates to 'they'll only do these updates during off-peak hours Yep, that magic off-peak hour on planet Earth is what time exactly? Xbox One will be a paperweight without day one update ( NeoWin 2013-11-08 ) Xbox One won't play 3D Blu-ray movies at launch ( NeoWin 2013-11-09 ) Something like this really shouldn't be surprising except that only a week ago the news that the PS4 needed a day-one update caused the MicroZealots to crack jokes and celebrate. And now we get the corresponding story about Xbone also needing a day-one update. Cognitive dissonance is strong in these threads. Microsoft Finds Its Way Back to PC Gaming, Plans to Launch Several First Party Titles ( Maximum PC 2013-11-07 ) Microsoft planning to bring more first-party titles to PC ( PC Gamer 2013-11-07 ) Microsoft now focused on 'core' PC games after Windows 8 launch's casual titles ( NeoWin 2013-11-07 ) Not going to bother quoting the little quoted tidbit of lip service that the Microsoft executive spouted, it is merely a defensive rear-guard action in the multi-front war they have managed to get themselves into. What we're seeing here is their realization that the patience of actual Windows users has run thin and the little positive feedback they receive from their fanboy enablers cannot sustain them alone. With Gabe and Valve on the job now and serious consideration given to alternative operating systems, distribution methods, input devices and low level API's instead of Direct-X they are waking up to the fact that their dictatorial days might be over. Microsoft extends support for parts of Skype Desktop API ( NeoWin 2013-11-06 ) Speaking of cognitive dissonance, the handful of commenters who even showed up here failed to connect the dots. The ancient ten-year old Skype which was launched just 2 years after Windows XP has gotten a lifeline tossed its way. Windows XP still slated for execution on schedule though.

Stardock releases Launch8, Start screen dock for Windows 8/8.1 ( NeoWin 2013-11-07 ) And the natives do not like it. Microsoft releases Windows 8.1 patch to fix mouse lag while gaming ( NeoWin 2013-11-09 ) So they "fixed" the games through patches instead of the operating system. Games that worked previously on earlier operating systems are now broken because of changes made in the new operating system which came out long after many of these games were published. Yet the fanboys blame the developers in the comments! Notice that they are too cowardly to simply state the truth - "Microsoft Tiles may or may not be compatible with earlier software". In fact they often say the exact opposite: "Windows 8 works on everything that Windows 7 worked on and is even better!". The description of the problem here fits not an operating system at all, but a "software" instead. An "operating system" supports software on hardware, period. Anything else is not an operating system at all, more like a walled-garden. Windows 8.1 Causing BSOD When Creating Ramdisk. Yes, we have another Windows 8.1 problem, Houston. ( Tom's Hardware 2013-11-05 ) Sure sounds like a 'feature' and not a 'bug' at all. At bootstrap the OS finds something not signed or approved and stops working. This is to be expected in a Walled-Garden, get used to it. I do love the advice about "users should make sure that all drivers have been updated". Keep in mind the target demographic here is MetroTards who want to poke and swipe and be completely rid of such technical details. This is a consequence of squeezing together two audiences into one box, the veteran expert users, and the 'Tards. If only one operating system is offered, then one or the other customer must be sacrificed.

Microsoft reportedly narrows down the list of CEO candidates to five ( TechSpot 2013-11-06 ) Microsoft's Search for a CEO to Replace Ballmer Down to a Handful of Candidates ( Maximum PC 2013-11-06 ) Microsoft Narrows Next CEO Candidates Down to Shortlist ( Tom's Hardware 2013-11-06 ) Microsoft reportedly narrows CEO search to about five candidates ( NeoWin 2013-11-06 ) ( as mentioned by Formfiller ) All the same names keep popping up and only one of them, the guy at Ford is really external which means they are on the path to screwing this up also. ~yawn~ Maybe they should be considering Gabe Newell who seems to be shadow CEO judging by some other stories concerning Windows games! Bloomberg: Microsoft COO Kevin Turner also in the running for CEO gig ( NeoWin 2013-11-07 ) ( also mentioned by Formfiller ) Oh yeah, that'll go over well! From what I can tell observing from the outside of the company, this person "KT" clearly places in the top three most despised and reviled Microsoft executives. No matter what happens one thing is for sure, there will be big changes coming, probably with layoffs especially because of the influx of Nokia employees. But the promotion of this guy would lead to yet another exodus of whatever good people still remain. AND HERE IS THE BIG ONE CAUSING NIGHTMARES FOR THE FANBOYS ... Elop would consider dumping Xbox and Bing if he becomes Microsoft CEO ( NeoWin 2013-11-08 ) Microsoft CEO candidate Stephen Elop reportedly considering dropping Bing and selling Xbox business ( TechSpot 2013-11-08 ) Stephen Elop Mulls Selling Xbox Business and Bing if Chosen CEO of Microsoft ( Maximum PC 2013-11-08 ) It's safe to say that Elop is no longer the golden child to the MicroZealots at NeoWin!

Yes it can be disabled. Certain functions won't work, like Maps, location tagging with photos, certain other apps that require it. The maps is a strange one. Its not like Google Maps on the website, where it loads up and you type where you want to look at. It automatically tries to set the default map location based on your current GPS and complains about Location Services being disabled. And as far as "opt-in" this isn't entirely accurate. The phone never asks you if you want to use it or not. In my experience (noting that all Android OS versions and settings added by wireless carriers may be different) it is more of an opt-out scenario. Everyone I know has it enabled on their phones because it is the default setting. It doesn't ask you when you first set up your phone or anything, but you can go turn it off if you want. Indeed. this is the problem in a nutshell. We have seen in less than a decade the dramatic anti-privacy shift from Opt-In to Opt-Out. It can be stated no clearer. ( RealPlayer and Gator adware must be feeling awfully vindicated these days ). It is not even debated anymore, all companies have been leapfrogging each other down this road to 1984 Big Brother and Idiocracy with no serious pushback from any quarter. The sheeple are the perpetrators and the victims simultaneously. And it's not good enough to blame government or lack thereof ( is there such a thing? ). The most effective voices are from the citizens and customers. There are not many avenues of recourse either. The only one I have any faith in is free speech and calling a spade a spade. Labeling Google and Microsoft and the rest as spyware and getting it out into the public consciousness is what I am attempting. Perhaps with the parallel issue of the spooks' data collection and the blurry lines between them, we can piggyback on top of that and make them feel some pain here. We have little choice, failure is not an option. Think of what your kids and grandkids will be facing thanks to the fanboy enablers in their future.

Chimps are smarter than us MetroTards. When monkeys can deduplicate photos on a fistful of flashdrives and camera cards get back to me. In fact, when a human MetroTard can accomplish this get back to me.

Agreed with all except for that part. It's almost become doctrine to state that as a kind of hedge to soften the criticism. But I can't see how Metro has any kind of learning curve whatsoever. It's more like un-learning, a reversion to childhood habits of touching everything. It's positively primal ...

The Competition ... iPad Air outselling previous models, seems destined to be a hit ( NeoWin 2013-11-04 ) This thread is exactly like Steven ( NeoWin boss ) throwing a juicy slab of red meat into a cage of feral dogs Pavlovian fanboys. Maybe this is what they mean by "Haterz gonna hate"? This was easily predicted though. Microsoft knew when the Apple refresh was coming yet they still did a complete Groundhog's Day repeat of one year ago releasing their own nearly identical product line again, this time merely changing the name of the hardware and OS, and slightly tweaking the specs. They just phoned it in. Head meet brick wall. So now the Surface 2 will at best wind up treading water despite everything they have done. Some days it just sucks to be a fanboy. Three more developers hop on AMD's Mantle API bandwagon ( TechSpot 2013-11-04 ) Eidos and Two Other Developers Vow Support for AMD's Mantle Graphics API ( Maximum PC 2013-11-05 ) Microsoft decides Direct-X is legacy ( except for the sole purpose of forcing OS upgrades ) and the industry says screw you. There seems to be competition for Microsoft at every level now, in all the areas they formerly dominated. I guess their dreams of DRM-ridden locked-down consoles and planned obsolescence of Direct-X between operating systems has not gone according to plan. LOTS of Steam OS news is popping up ... Valve to announce Steam Machine partners during CES 2014 ( PC Gamer 2013-11-04 ) Half-Life 3, other future Valve games won't be exclusive to SteamOS ( PC Gamer 2013-11-04 ) Only Valve will make Steam controllers ( PC Gamer 2013-11-04 ) See the first pictures of the Steam Machines prototype ( PC Gamer 2013-11-04 ) Steam client "should allow you to run in Offline Mode for as long as you like" say Valve ( PC Gamer 2013-11-04 ) Take a Look at the Steam Machine. It looks good, real good ( Maximum PC 2013-11-04 ) Valve steps up its game, pushes beyond software ( Seattle Times 2013-11-04 ) We play with the Steam Machine, Valve's game console of the future] ( The Verge 2013-11-04 ) Valve reveals design of prototype Steam Machine ( TechSpot 2013-11-05 ) Valve Wants to Make PC a Better Entertainment Platform ( Tom's Hardware 2013-11-05 ) That last article at PC Gamer is interesting ... Sounds like a dig at the DRM addicted console makes, particularly Microsoft with its on-again off-again daily check-in. It's a bug, not a feature like Microsoft wanted!

Security and Privacy ... badBIOS: The unstoppable malware that infects firmware, jumps 'Airgaps' ( TechSpot 2013-11-04 ) Still sounds like a hoax to me. Either that or he has discovered another Stuxnet level malware. Beware! Spooky Apps Can Weaken Your Privacy ( Tom's Hardware 2013-11-04 ) Monkey see, Monkey do. Why wouldn't all manner of software developers simply follow the lead of all the big names like Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, and the Government spooks. As they show no self-restraint and draw no lines that they will not cross of course the smaller authors will come along and follow in their footsteps. Hey, they also want big houses and limousines and a table at 5-star restaurants. Can you blame them. How fast we have fallen. When Windows XP and Office XP came out there was a lot of fighting over the activation phoning home and arguments over WPA and privacy. 5 years later we tried again to discuss this with Vista DRM but were told to shut up by lackeys like Ed MicroBott who were already assimilated to that over-step and ready for the next one. 7 more years elapse and basically it's game over now. You would be hard-pressed to even locate software that even does Opt-IN. Well done everyone! It's a Brave New World.

The Feudal Telecommunication Oligarchy ... IBM claims Twitter is in violation of three patents they own ( TechSpot 2013-11-04 ) See what they did there? Timing is everything in blackmail and extortion. IPO is coming, now is the time to strike. Patents are the primary weapon in the consolidation of power of existing Big Data companies, it facilitates their hardening into protected fiefdoms, monopolies whose portfolio is a collection of patents rather than fresh ideas. What a wonderful idea mankind has wrought upon itself. Rather than encourage creativity and the improvements and evolution of an idea, they freeze them in place for an arbitrary period, 17 years maybe, but actually forever. It would be so simple to fix the "system". Have patents last one year and then expire into the public domain. And no patents ever granted for future ideas, only for working product. Done. After that we can deal with the lawyers. Equipment Makers Want Telecoms to Upgrade Networks ( Tom's Hardware 2013-11-03 ) Be afraid, be very afraid. Huawei is a Chinese government front and Alcatel-Lucent is like a grandson of AT&T ( making the French half the granddaughter-in-law or something? ). "Hey, let's better organize the Internet! And we'll let government companies and former Baby Bell monopolists build it!" I got a better idea, stop screwing with the Internet, either get the governments out of it or we need a new one completely, this time decentralized with p2p at its core. We just need to figure out a way to eliminate ISP's as the guardians of access. Internet might someday lose its dependency on servers, rely on P2P instead ( TechSpot 2013-11-04 ) I swear I had no idea that this story was coming, coincidental and fortuitous though! I've never even heard of this concept. When I keep saying decentralized Internet with p2p logic I am kind of hinting at the difference between, say, IDE and SCSI. The former relies upon a central authority to manage almost every transaction between relatively dumb devices but the latter added smart logic to the devices and diminished the authority of the system ( yes this is abstract, nitpickers leave my analogy alone! ). My point is that we are on a clear path to overwhelming centralized control, mostly from governments, but also from the favored class of Big Data companies. It is a perfect feudal model, where the kings have a buffer class of nobility between them and the peasants. Anything pointed in the other direction sounds good to me.

Newegg taking pre-orders for Windows 8.1 back-up disc; on sale Nov. 15th for $14.99 ( NeoWin 2013-11-05 ) What a clown circus! Even bricked tablets from bad live updates cannot get Microsoft to realize that digital distribution is fine for some things, but not for the ( use Dr. Evil voice ) frickin' operating system. Enter NewEgg, who probably ( but not stated in the report ) are in the perfect position to notice these problems. Operating on razor-thin profit margins will do that to you because all it takes is a bunch of returns or support incidents to wipe out everything you have accomplished. Microsoft cleverly insulated itself from such customer interaction long ago by using the OEMs and retailers as effective shields while they cower behind them and rake in the money. RetroUI Pro Start menu app adds Windows 8.1 support ( NeoWin 2013-11-04 ) For Jorge and your Start Menu thread. Don't bother reading the comments though. There are two phrases that send the Pavlovian fandogs into a barking mad frenzy ... Start Menu ... Windows XP. Windows Phone now more popular than iOS in Italy ( NeoWin 2013-11-04 ) Oh great, now we're gonna hear even more Italian jokes. What's going on over there Jaclaz? In all seriousness, they are short on details here. Neither NeoWin or the source article even gives the numbers that I can see. For example, just how can you tell usage from a country level. Ah well, I'm no statistician. But I am very suspicious when things like this are just tossed out there without nuance. One commenter might be onto something though, saying that it is brand loyalty to Nokia over anything else. Windows 8 loses market share for the first time... sort of ( TechSpot 2013-11-04 ) Hey, that's what I've been saying ( glad they're noticing though ). Microsoft decided to play tricks this time around and are getting rewarded They chose to use point upgrades rather than Service Pack terminology for an update which is clearly nothing more than Windows XP SP2 or Windows 98SE at best. The most inexplicable thing is bumping the kernel up to Windows 6.3 though, because nothing in there merits such an increment. So to Microsoft I say, please get to work on 8.2 immediately! OS fragmentation is the only excuse you can truthfully put forth to explain the magnitude of this epic fail.

Jaclaz, I forgot to mention something. If you are using Opera 12 rather than 11, I believe ( but haven't had time to prove ) there is something different between them. Research this ... optimizely.com I noticed this in the cookies immediately after moving from 11 to 12. I never had it appear in 11. Optimizely is another cross-site advertising facilitator and while I have yet to notice and tailored ads myself ( haven't really been looking ), it does spawn cookies for every site that uses their code. I only looked briefly at it so far, noting the cookie set times and comparing to browser history page loads. I have rough lists of sites that use the code, set the cookie and then presumably plan to launch ads. One of them is The Guardian ( from reading the spy articles ). I cannot yet rule out some difference in the content block blacklist or anything else. So it may be an Opera 12 thing or not. I haven't even checked Opera forums yet. This Optimizely cookie thing has per-site blocking ... //www.optimizely.com/opt_out Where you are supposed to do it for every site ... //www.example.com/?optimizely_opt_out=true ... which I think is ridiculous. Some day if I get time I will try to just add them right to the content block blacklist and some other tricks. Just an FYI, it may or may not have anything to do with that experience of yours.

Clearly you got tracked. It reminds me of Minority Report where he goes into a store wearing someone else's eyes and the smart advertising system serves up stuff appropriate for the other guy. ( Image Source ) I see interesting tracking results when fixing computers using Nirsoft stuff to wander through the caches to locate the malware point of entry. I'm pretty convinced that the bulk of what I see in there was custom tailored for their benefit because they seem to match the personality pretty well ( ladies shoes, cowboy hats, music stuff, etc ). Are they effective? God I hope not. Mathematically it makes no sense to me. Why would I expect that out of the thousands of possible places I could by a certain widget, that the one that squeaked through the system and appeared in a Google sidebar is the best match? Those are like lottery odds. More likely is that the one that squeaked through had the most money to spend, or has a sweetheart deal with Google/Microsoft/Yahoo, or just got lucky. I don't anticipate Google/Microsoft/Yahoo refining their algorithm to sort possible ad insertions by best deal or location, or lowest tax, or cheapest shipping or anything else of actual consideration. And this is going to only get worse as Microsoft embeds Bing like a tick deeper into their Playskool operating system. As there was little to no discernible outcry, why would they not continue? Same with Google obviously. As bad as advertising is right now for modern society ( I mean as an invisible inflationary engine ), it is only going to get worse going forward. Microsoft and Google and associated advertising agencies will spend great effort convincing the general product makers that this new computerized advertising thing ( rapidly becoming a pull model ) is even better than the already expensive broadcasting push model - because it pulls rather than pushes - hence, the ads are targeted and better, and now pay us please. Expect prices of goods to ... wait for it ... rise! So you can obviously put me down in the "miss" category with respect to the question. That's a "miss" with a side order of anti-Orwellian alarm, disgust and anger. ( Image Source )

Well, needless to say, I'm the same as you concerning those ads you mention. The benign cases are tolerable as they exist but having been around a long time we know that clicking on something that could easily be labeled "click me" is an unacceptable risk. I suspect we have developed instinctive self-defense brain function that surveys the field in front of us and overlays a warning label ( mine looks like a Terminator HUD interface ) over clickables and we pay attention to it. It would seem that the younger evolved/mutated species specimens may not have any such early warning system, at least judging by the excuses I have to listen to almost every day from computer owners. Those benign ads are at the bottom of the risk ladder because in a place like this ( or those other great sites you mention ) the population is mostly well-armed, or at least street-wise. ( O/T, but does anyone remember when advertising and commercialization became allowed on USENET? I remember a lot more controversy in the early 1990's than I can find in results from Google searches. ) What are less benign are the ones you mention in search engines like sponsored ads. Those users that are not equipped for self-defense have a perfect trap just waiting for them to walk in, and Windows happily obliges! This was my first pet peeve with the post Windows XP disaster ... That's an actual screenshot of what happens if you click on an unassociated filetype in the highly praised but severely dumbed down Windows 6.x family, in this case Thumbs.db sitting in the user desktop because some other evolved program like a simple picture viewer that comes with Windows itself left it as a trap I mean, gift. Naturally this wonderful operating system leads straight to a new infection vector from here when you hit ENTER ... ... whereupon the ever-vigilant MSIE is launched with a portal to the outside world ( instead of the operating system itself! ), a Microsoft hosted page with sponsored results ( WTF? ) and the only visual segregation is some CSS code that changes the background from #ffffff to #e9e9e9. Now that's what I call evolved. Not that it really matters anyway because if you look in the non-sponsored official Microsoft section there is no solution anyway! So the hapless sheep then will most likely click on Instantly Fix and Open/Run .DB ... and be treated to a program that hardly helps at all and either installs a service or simply takes over the UNKNOWN filetype for future encounters. Or, it does something even worse. There is so much wrong here, including the MSIE toolbar there that displays some spammed links to game websites that came in when this particular user installed something in the past, allowing further opportunity to FUBAR the system, which BTW was not even infected at all at this point ( the UNKNOWN filetype is not a crisis and the OS logic is working properly at this stage, it's the next step which was changed that now kicks the user online rather than utilizing a local dialog that existed from Win95 to WinXP, and I believe maybe even Win3x. There are really no words adequate to describe the level of stoopid that Microsoft OS developers allowed into the Vista+ product. We're gonna need a new dictionary. It begs the question of why Microsoft or Google should even be trusted to vet those "Sponsored Results" in the first place. I mean they have constantly reoccurring problems with all manner of things from Windows Update to Firmware to Server Hardware. Why on Earth should anyone believe they have the ability to perfectly scrutinize things at this level of detail? Are we to believe they download all the files from all the sponsored results, adequately test them and then and only then, greenlight them? They cannot even test their own OS adequately as we have seen every day! But back to advertising as a concept ... Even if we could somehow make all the ads safe ( and that's asking a lot! ) we are still left with the parasitic traits built-in. In almost every instance advertising is an invisible slush fund, a widely accepted value-added tax that promises free or low-cost services which are very far from free. In short, ads are among the most insidious affliction that an allegedly free society allows in its midst. And it all began when we accepted government regulation of broadcasting which became a licensing authority for monopolies, handing out cash printing presses to a handful of favored entities who get to charge whatever they want to air a spot. Nothing is free. When the sheeple stand slack-jawed in the aisle of the grocery store wondering why their laundry detergent or loaf of bread has jumped 3 cents since last month or several dollars since last decade they should only blame themselves. Because, when they go home and watch a ballgame or Oprah it never occurs to them that they are fully approving of this inflation engine even as they see an ad for Tide or Nissan or baby food which that company just shelled out hundreds of thousands of dollars to air, which the broadcaster just pocketed, and which the sheeple gets to pay at the supermarket cash register. It's a brave new world indeed. It would be great if all the companies that produce goods would agree to a advertising strike for a month or two, buy no ads whatsoever and help to shake out the parasites in this grand Ponzi scheme. But that fantasy is as likely as Microsoft growing a brain.

Less Than Half of Microsoft Employees Approve of Ballmer ( Tom's Hardware 2013-11-02 ) And that is really saying something considering just how many employees bailed on Microsoft since the Stink Ranking program began. Better title for the survey results should be: Less Than Half of all remaining Microsoft Employees Approve of Ballmer : Microsoft to offer Office 365 for free to 4 million students in Sao Paulo, Brazil ( NeoWin 2013-11-02 ) Well that's one way to inflate your subscription numbers. From just over a week ago ... I just don't understand their optimism, it's almost crazy because those numbers are abysmal! 5 months to get to one million, 10 months to get 2 million! TWO MILLION? This article from two years ago said they sold 31 MILLION copies just of Office 2010 by that time, and also that Office is used on ONE BILLION Windows computers in total. Thurrott and NeoWin are seriously off their rocker. A real board of directors would locate the CloudTards in Redmond and tar and feather them in front of the entire campus on a hot summer day as a lesson to warn others of why you don't mess with success. Microsoft offers Visual Studio 2013 to DreamSpark subscribers ( NeoWin 2013-11-02 ) And that's another way to inflate your numbers. From less than a month ago ... ( original photo from NeoWin ) Now isn't that a sight for that causes sore eyes. That GUI is easily the worse thing I could imagine having to work in. It's like an alternate universe now. It's like they gave the source code to the high school geek club and they produced this in between smoking pot and keg parties. Evey single thing about the earlier Visual Studio versions has been ruined, and every possible bad idea has been sprinkled on top. The only useful purpose for that ridiculous GUI would be use as a flashlight app on a cellphone. Anywho, are they seriously bragging about 5.5 million downloads in one-year? That is positively anemic.

Report: Recent Surface Pro 2 WiFi firmware update greatly boosts battery life ( NeoWin 2013-11-02 ) This is classic headline spin from NeoWin where they try to turn an exposed bug into a feature. What we know for sure is that the buggy firmware was shortening battery life and they fixed it and now the battery lasts as long as it was intended to. Surface 2 was supposed to have longer battery life by design but the firmware hampered that effort and some reports had it with the same battery life as the original Surface. So the fanboys get to believe they just received a gift of extra battery life when they most likely never even noticed that their Surface 2 was under-performing from the start. No surprise there. PC Gamers Affected By Mouse Problems From Windows 8.1 Update ( Maximum PC 2013-11-02 ) Microsoft: There are several issues in Windows 8.1 with somce mice in games ( NeoWin 2013-11-03 ) NeoWin is late reporting this story for some reason. Yet another screwup that begs the question of whether there was any real world testing of Windows 8.1 Blew. But how can that be the case since so many people have had the update for so long all around the world? So Microsoft had better hope there is something causing this in the post-Blew updates because otherwise they have failed on so many levels here by not testing games and mice thoroughly. Microsoft updates Xbox privacy policies ahead of Xbox One launch ( NeoWin 2013-11-01 ) Updated Microsoft Privacy Policy Details What Xbox One Is Recording ( Maximum PC 2013-11-02 ) What data does Microsoft's Xbox services collect? We break it down ( PC World 2013-11-02 ) <---- Lots of details Read the PC World article ( but definitely ignore the idi0tic snark by the author ) as it has lots of detail and yet may not even cover it all. I just love how some fanboys immediately jump to argumentum absurdum with their logic of 'you can always choose to live like a hermit' or 'you have a cellphone' etc. The human race is doomed if this ever becomes the prevailing thought process. They are saying that because you have accepted limited uses of technology you should now jump in feet first by inviting the literal definition of 1984 big brother into the house. This thing is really a stunning insult to the intelligence. When a console fanboy is happily playing a console game they have up to 6 separate expenses that their hapless parents need to pay for ... The sheeple not only get to pay for a $500 Xbox, and then purchase expensive retail games, an Xbox Live account plan, and also pay for an ISP for broadband, you must buy a Television set, and of course pay the Electricity Bill to power everything, they then get to be milked like cows for information that they are telling you is being sold to advertisers to bombard you with targeted ads. The total cost of this insanity is extremely high and you still get the ads! And you voluntarily give up your privacy in the process.

Ironically his reaction there mirrors those from the adults a year and a half ago seen in the official Destroying Windows Blog when the murder of Aero was announced, and at many other times over the past two years. So to Dot MetroTard I say ... Homeric!!! Start stocking up on graphics like that because they will become very useful as the fanboys hopes and dreams get shattered over the coming months and years. We're gonna need some industrial strength sympathy graphics if things like Xbox vanish ... Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen may want the company to spin off Xbox business ( NeoWin 2013-11-03 ) Hopefully the fanboys will be able to see the images through the tears.

That got me wondering ( and searching ) ...

Well one thing that can happen is that one or more of the updates has a EULA dialog that appears in a separate smaller window, usually behind the main Windows Update window. So the updates stop while it waits for the user to click on the agreement. It looks like your Windows Update is maximized to full screen, so you can ALT-TAB to switch to other windows to check. If the taskbar is set to autohide I think its possible to completely miss the EULA. I'm not sure what happens after an extended period of time, for example does the update needing the user to click time-out and then not get executed? That's a good question. To avoid this I usually keep the Windows Update window small, and off to the side ( not in the default center location where all windows appear ) so that secondary windows that popup are visible.

On this, I beg to disagree. IF we had a valid connection bus, fast enough and "standard" (and I mean really standard), the "real" way to be ecological, save money, re-use devices, have them portable and what not, would be a new generation of PC's made basically of just a PSU, a processor, some storage. To this you add a bus (as sad really universal) on which you plug each and every other device/component, including RAM. I would love a reliable singular bus but I don't think USB is a really great choice. It's main failing is being so Windows dependent. Not completely dependent, we know it works fine in the BIOS for Keyboard and Mouse so it is possible to use BIOS based code to run the thing, but inside Windows it can be a nightmare because of the piles of hooks kept in the registry. A BIOS approach similar to Floppy/IDE/SATA/Serial/Parallel where adequate code is already onboard that would allow at least for flash storage was never factored in. The problem arises when you have a sick computer, which usually means a sick registry, and before you can even start popping in Ethernet converters or Thumbdrives to do some work you must first trust the sick computer to ID the inserted device to load "drivers" for it, stick them in the registry which means CfgMgr correctly enumerating all the existing keys and giving the new device the next free sequential ID and then inserting all the related keys correctly. This is not an optimum scenario for a sick patient and kinda violates the Hypocratic oath or something. It's like telling the patient on the operating table to "hold these instruments and shine that light on you so I can get to work now. I don't know how that USB consortium made their decisions back in the late 1990's but someone should have held their hand up and said something before the interface became another Windows registry victim. I don't pretend to know the answer though. I could guess that maybe something with smart p2p logic like SCSI. But somehow we wound up with USB flash and printers and other toys that live or die by Windows working properly. And it all vanishes on a repair installation that writes a new registry of course ( flashdrives are no biggie obviously, but printers and scanners and cameras and similar need to be reinstalled ). When USB 1.0 or 1.1 came on motherboards I remember the first indication of this mistake when it became impossible to print out BIOS screens if all you had was a USB printer because they didn't even include enough BIOS code to act on PrtScr and reroute the contents of the display to USB. It wouldn't have been so bad if there were cheap digital cameras then. Lucky they did realize that someone might only have a USB keyboard and put enough code to make thing work ( well on most motherboards anyway ).

Absolutely. The first line of defense of a civilized society is for humans to police themselves ... individually ... self-restraint. The ability to "just say no" and being mindful of setting precedents and setting a good example are core traits of a wise adult. Presumably adults are present in all these industries, and all the spy agencies, and in all the myriad government positions. Either we have run out of adults or we have already degenerated into an uncivilized society where anything goes. And by anything goes I really mean anything goes. And it leads to a guaranteed snowball effect as others watching those that do questionable things become assured that they can and should match it and then exceed it. An off-the-wall example is how TV commericals evolve by copying and exceeding each others forays into new territory. Commercials get louder and louder, the government makes a small pushback, they pause and catch their breath, then continue on. Subliminal messages are used, then caught, and most likely being used again ( I suspect that trick they use by first airing long spots and then shortening them to cause your mind to fill in the blanks is a form of it). I've been amazed to see how risqué things appeared slowly but surely on plain old regular TV channels during the supposed safe daytime. Long ago you had some Coppertone suntan commercials break new ground with bikinis, then skimpy clothes on underwear ads, then penis pills without mentioning that actual subject using euphemisms, then penis pills talking about penis pills, then vibrators but not actually mentioning it ( personal massage ), and now vibrators, at all hours. Can't you just wait to see what new ground we break next year? The tech industry and government itself capitalize on this exact same phenomenon. The slow cooking frog.

Latest Snowden documents reveal the NSA infiltrates Google, Yahoo data center traffic at will ( TechSpot 2013-10-30 ) NSA infiltrates links to Yahoo, Google data centers worldwide, Snowden documents say ( Washington Post 2013-10-30 ) Update: Google Denies NSA Cooperation While Expanding Encryption ( Wall Street Journal Blog 2013-10-30 ) NSA Bombshell Shocks Former Spooks: "Why in The World Would We Burn Google?" ( The Cable 2013-10-30 ) ( that's a very tiny snippet from voluminous information in those and many other articles ) Another important piece of the puzzle, and one of the oldest and least surprising. In this step the spooks simply tap directly onto communication hubs from the outside and take whatever they want without the operators having idea about it. Most likely they have no need of warrants here because wiretapping this traffic while it is in transit the signals are presumably "secured" and most importantly constitute the "public airwaves" ( even if it is on a wire ) and we citizens long ago lost control of this when we accepted the bad precedent of allowing the FCC to regulate such things. This is slightly different than the recent revelations of asking for or just demanding direct access into ISPs and telecoms with their own special rooms onsite and with cables connected from there back to government centers, presumably using warrants and/or national security letters. IMHO, the reason that this outside access is done is because if you are in the SIGINT business you will most definitely want copies of the same communication encrypted and unencrypted which is critical to cracking security methods used and getting passphrases. Having just one or the other leaves ambiguity. The infamous metadata ( that the politicians use as a distraction to greenlight anything and everything ) is the key to synchronizing the two data streams, origination, destination, time of transmission, etc. If you followed this far you can now imagine that even if the internal cooperative/coerced step gets removed because of political pressure, they would still maintain this legacy approach of positioning taps in-between all comm hubs outside the ISP and telecom centers and MOST IMPORTANTLY they would still be able to unscramble and decrypt at will having learned much from the internal access and cooperation that was widely unknown until this past summer. The overall picture should be pretty much complete now and it shows that our federal protectors are present at every single point and have every intention of knowing everything possible. All the 1984 big brother jokes over the past decades were in fact understated. We have gone miles past anything ever dreamed now, because in the modern age the first amendment has devolved down to either soapbox speeches or private face-to-face conversations. In the government view, every single other thing is fair game. If you think about it, even a huge public outcry and Congressional hearings or a Warren-style commission ( none of which have even appeared yet ) would really matter. But it's an easy guess of the political strategy here. The spooks went for it all, and got it all, while they could, and will only pull back when the pressure becomes unbearable. Should that happen the politicians and Big Data corporations would get kudos for stopping the "invasion of privacy", but the damage is done as they have the means to continue anyway "from the outside" using the massive knowledge gained. Silent Circle, Lavabit to take back email privacy with Dark Mail Alliance ( TechSpot 2013-10-31 ) Dark Mail: New Encrypted Service Announced ( Tom's Hardware 2013-10-31 ) Clear signs of that new growth industry I expected. : This may be the only way to have anything approaching secure communications. I'm withholding my own expectations until I read more on this. As stated above, if the spooks get copies of traffic from the inside and outside ( plain-text and encrypted ) then can put those incredible supercomputers and massively parallel systems to use in developing a database of brute force methods and then run the gamut against encrypted traffic in future scenarios when they have less access than today. Unique ephemeral one-time keys sounds like a good approach at first glance, but who really knows what is effective anymore. It already may be too late since the taxpayer-funded government monster has been operating without restraint or oversight for so long now. Microsoft, Google and others ask lawmakers to reform NSA data collection efforts ( NeoWin 2013-11-01 ) Google, Apple, Microsoft, and others back bill against NSA surveillance ( TechSpot 2013-11-01 ) Trying to calm down the sheeple. And after some moderate complaining about national security the government will oblige of course, returning privacy back to a less high profile place in the news media. They all win except for us, the customer/consumer/citizen. The government wins by appearing responsive to privacy concerns, the companies win by appearing to be fighting for us, yet neither is the case and nothing really changes behind the scenes. What's really happening is that these companies who couldn't care less about the customers except that they pay their bills when demanded, are feeling heat from them especially on the international front. See the articles above ( especially about burning Google ) for some details. Now is the time to expect a barrage of placebo actions with one goal, shutting everyone up. The sheeple need to get back to consumin' and stop picking on the providers, and stop driving down the politicians approval ratings. EDIT: typo

LG, Cisco and others looking to create common platform for future "Smart Homes" ( NeoWin 2013-10-31 ) ~tsk~ One bad idea after another. UPnP apparently wasn't enough of a shortcut for the ConnectTards, instead they desire the ability to have anyone walking into any home and turn anything on and off from any cellphone and tablet. Next wave of software growth to respond to this ... apps that promise to guard against threats from strangers controlling your toaster, TV, lights, baby monitors and security alarms! Home security redefined. Let Norton and McAfee guard your house. What could probably go wrong with that. ( well, you'll probably come home one day and find your door unlocked and a message reminding you that your subscription expired, please renew to re-enable home protection ). But the sheeple will be thrilled at their new ability to turn on lights or the stereo from their cellphone while sitting on their ever-fattening butts on the couch. Future criminals will never have had it so easy. Cellphones with war-dialers that try millions of combinations per second to unlock the victim's front door and then make off with their Xbox and giant LED TV. I wonder who the victim will blame when they come home to find their stuff is gone. Major Patent Dispute Pits Apple/Microsoft-led Rockstar Group vs Google, Samsung, and Others ( Maximum PC 2013-11-01 ) Microsoft and Apple suing Google with a war-chest of Nortel patents ( NeoWin 2013-11-01 ) Some of the NeoKids are thrilled naturally. "Good. Finally Google's rein of terror can come to an end and Microsoft and Apple can bring peace to the world of IT." Kids these days, more piercings than brains. But I do love that phrase he used, and it is better applied as Microsoft's Reign Of Terror. Thank you, I will be using that! Make no mistake, this is about one thing, Microsoft and Android. Microsoft is the new Netscape now, If you can't beat 'em, sue 'em. And with enough bad court decisions they could win and for all practical purposes end up owning Android by being the one who collects the most cash from its use. There already is a Microsoft tax on Android already and now they want to increase it further or in their best case scenario get some court lackeys to completely block its sale the way Apple blocks Samsung. The only playing field that Microsoft can play on is an empty playing field. Clearly the biggest mistake ever made was the scam perpetrated by the DoJ in stopping the court from breaking up Microsoft into little pieces when it had already decided to do just that. Now we are seemingly stuck with this festering sore on our technology like a prostitute stuck with a rampaging venereal disease. Best comment I saw was at MPC: "I just love how patents protect innovation as intended. Yah patents!". So true. Patents are literally designed to create a monopoly for some arbitrary period of time, and most of the time that period is, well, forever. We need more Benjamin Franklins and fewer Bill Gates, Steve Ballmers, and Microsofts. Meet badBIOS, the mysterious Mac and PC malware that jumps airgaps ( Ars Technica 2013-10-31 ) 'BadBIOS' System-Hopping Malware Appears Unstoppable ( Tom's Hardware 2013-11-01 ) Halloween scare story? That's what I would guess. The story has hoax written all over it. But if it is legit then we are seeing a Stuxnet quality virus with countermeasures and smart code for multiple contingencies, and that probably means something that came out of a government spook lab. As tabloid as they are I do want to give Ars Technica credit for using a cool picture though ... ( Image Source: Ars Technica ) EDIT: typo, clarity

PS4 to Have Resolution Advantage at Launch vs. Xbox One ( Tom's Hardware 2013-10-31 ) Microsoft just can't catch a break with Xbox it seems. It's almost as if Sony had a spy in the ranks at Microsoft considering the fact that on every front they have cut their legs out from under them. Windows Azure hit with worldwide partial outage ( NeoWin 2013-11-01 ) Impossible! The cloud is our friend, it serves us software, protects our data and is always available. You do gotta wonder though ... who is it that suffers more from cloud problems? The sheeple that were scammed into using it, or the government spooks that exploit it. Google reverses promise made in 2005 not to use banner ads in searches ( NeoWin 2013-10-24 ) <--- Last Week Following Google's lead, Bing Smart Search starts testing giant ads in results ( NeoWin 2013-10-31 ) <--- This Week Ill skip commenting for now, and instead offer for your enjoyment the actual reaction of our favorite fanboy ... Ironically his reaction there mirrors those from the adults a year and a half ago seen in the official Destroying Windows Blog when the murder of Aero was announced, and at many other times over the past two years. So to Dot MetroTard I say ... ( original image from here ) EDIT: typo, clarity