CharlotteTheHarlot

Jaclaz, my friend, it looks like you are doing exactly what you think I did! What I "have experience with" is exactly what I said above, no mystery, and those things include the Windows PE tools mentioned, and various Linux pre-cooked solutions, all for accessing sick Windows systems. Nothing exceptional, just average end-user knowledge sprinkled with a few odd stabs at Bart customization. Now by the numbers ... The very first comment I made in the original thread ( now Post #1 here ) was just a mention that "I believe" there remains some breadcrumbs when using certain famous WinPE tools, specifically about them leaving no trace I said: "May not be entirely true" . Either my suspicion is correct or not. The next time I use them I will determine it for sure but if you have some knowledge on that issue, please spill it. In that same comment I said "A perfectly sterile forensic PE tool should leave nothing on the target system without prompting." which is hardly controversial or demonstrative of either "not much experience" or "mixing liberally different things". In the next comment ( now Post #4 here ) all I did was refine that to not sound critical of these tools, because I think they are very important, I said among other things: "I am a true supporter of the masterful ERD / DaRT tools, with a small bit of fine tuning they could be the most valuable product ever never released by Microsoft. ". That was true, and also funny ( well I thought so ). Moving on, I then decried certain Linux boot CD's that use a timer for user input before they mount the first available HDD they see: "Hello user! Shall I boot from this CDROM or shall I mount that possibly infected and FUBAR'd hard disk I see here? You have 5 seconds to type your answer! ". Now that is also true ( for some discs I have used ) and I think really funny ( that means laugh! ). Finally I suggested Microsoft just release their excellent tools for everyone. Nothing there looks to me to like "not much experience" or "mixing liberally different things". In the final comment ( now Post #6 here ) I only responded to Dencorso's question of ever using Tin Hat. From reading that page he linked I can't say that I have, but it is possible. I then asked for any pre-cooked distros. Some day I may get a chance to try them! So once again nothing there looks to me to like "not much experience" or "mixing liberally different things". So in conclusion, to paraphrase your own comment I'm sorry to say I don't know what you're going on about. And if I may, it looks like you are speaking with "not much experience" about what I actually said, and "mixing liberally different things" about something I said here or perhaps somewhere else! But it's all good. Just like myself you sound like a ornery old coot from time to time even though we are both actually quite spry, happy and cheerful when not commenting on Microsoft issues! I won't say "lighten up" because at our age that becomes very difficult, in every sense of the phrase.

Recap of the huge news of the past two days, mentioned here by Jorge and in at least one other thread. These are ordered very roughly sequentially ( the posted date/times are all over the place thanks to idi0tic javascripts ) ... UK gathering secret intelligence via covert NSA operation. Exclusive: UK security agency GCHQ gaining information from world's biggest internet firms through US-run Prism programme ( UK Guardian 2013-06-07 ) Glenn Greenwald: U.S. wants to destroy privacy worldwide ( Politico 2013-06-07 ) U.S., British intelligence mining data from nine U.S. Internet companies in broad secret program ( Washington Post 2013-06-06 ) Leaked documents show massive surveillance effort by NSA, FBI on consumer services ( The Verge 2013-06-06 ) Sources: NSA sucks in data from 50 companies ( The Week 2013-06-06 ) U.S. government confirms PRISM surveillance program, tech companies deny involvement ( TechSpot 2013-06-07 ) Anonymous leaks NSA documents linked to PRISM ( TechSpot 2013-06-07 ) NSA Collecting Data Straight from Google, Apple, Microsoft ( Tom's Hardware 2013-06-07 ) Whistleblower’s NSA warning: ‘Just the tip of the iceberg’ ( Washington Times 2013-06-07 ) Government likely to open criminal probe into NSA leaks: officials ( Reuters 2013-06-07 ) Microsoft denies participating in US online intelligence gathering efforts ( NeoWin 2013-06-07 ) Phone spying and PRISM internet surveillance: what's the difference? ( The Verge 2013-06-07 ) Justice Department Fights Release of Secret Court Opinion Finding Unconstitutional Surveillance ( Mother Jones 2013-06-07 ) Boundless Informant: the NSA's secret tool to track global surveillance data ( UK Guardian 2013-06-08 ) NSA Prism: Why I'm boycotting US cloud tech - and you should too. 'Not subject to American law' - the next desirable IT feature ( UK Register 2013-06-08 ) Director of National Intelligence issues fact sheet on PRISM in response to leaks ( The Verge 2013-06-08 ) The news that immediately caught the attention of the PC universe ... Indeed Microsoft wasn't just another company on the list, it appears she heads the list, as the first entry leading the proverbial charge ... Hmmm. Hot on the heels of the Vista fiasco and in the process of releasing the "fixed" Windows 7, NuMicrosoft was diving into bed with the Feds allegedly because of favorable legislation that granted them immunity for cooperating and giving up their customers. Very nice. They also have this little tidbit ... That cloud thing is all of a sudden looking pretty sucky. The darkside outsiders like Rapid and Mega suddenly look pretty friendly, right? For their part Microsoft ( and all the others ) have issued canned responses that are pretty much boilerplate ... Of course, there are holes in these responses big enough to drive the proverbial truck through. I gotta say that it is entirely possible that these companies like Microsoft are actually telling the truth here. It is unfortunately the case that certain agencies ( Never Say Anything ) have the means to physically connect to any installation right under their noses without ever being noticed, and smart people should just assume it is already the case. This is certainly bad timing for Microsoft as it plows ahead with their methodical customer suicide. Microsoft may be no worse than any other company today but given its unique position as operating system facilitator of all software and DRM on most computers, they will catch the most he!!, and deservedly so. Considering the Azure cloud, and their two-year long self-serving attack on Windows users with the abomination called Winows 8, and the ongoing Xbox debacle and Kinect, now is a fine time to review Microsoft Patent #20120278904. What's that word again? Oh yeah. Karma.

Good find, I completely missed this one. All posts by "haterz" like SJVN should be prominently displayed since they drive the 'Tards absolutely crazy ... Windows 8 continues to fail ( Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols ZDNet 2013-06-02 ) ( NOTE: I didn't even know who SJVN was until a few pages back in this thread where "HalloweenDocument" pointed him out to me. Now I see he is Linux aficionado and that is all it takes to light the fuse of MicroZealots ) Here is the first chart he shows for Vista vs. Windows 8 at going on 8 months ... ... and note that the Zealots immediately say "but there are more computers now so a percentage point means more than it did 5 years ago". Well, fair enough, that is simple math. However percentage is still percentage, therefore it is smaller marketshare, period. Additionally, they must ignore the two biggest differences which are much more significant variables: (1) Vista was released in January, while Windows 8 was a carefully timed holiday release in October, exactly the same as Windows XP which they so badly want to kneecap. (2) This Windows 8 abortion was let out for the firesale price of $39 or even much less for almost 4 months. We don't really know the OEM price to manufacturers but it isn't a stretch to guess that they also cut them some slack in order to fill the pipeline. Therefore, even with massive wind at its back, this pOS abomination still can't get the traction that Vista had, and Vista is the most obvious Microsoft failure of recent times. MicroZealots and MetroTards, stick that in your pipe and smoke it. EDIT: typo

Uh Oh Microsoft, AMD Wants to See Other OSes (Android and Chrome) ( Maximum PC 2013-06-06 ) Could this be the 2nd baby step away from monopolistic Microsoft domination? Jump up to Post #3088 for the earlier, and I think important news about Intel based devices without Windows. The funny thing is that these moves will hurt Microsoft far less than the bad publicity in the short term. In the long term it could go either way, but this is certainly how it would begin, in small baby steps, chinks in the armor, flies in the ointment ... Modern design at Microsoft. Going beyond flat design. ( microsoft.com/en-us/news/stories/design/ ) Microsoft's product design themes explained in new article ( NeoWin 2013-06-07 ) The top link is to a Microsoft website that only a MetroTard could love. It is a digital celebration of every bone-headed retro-evolutionary move they have done since they began their quest for irrelevance a couple years ago in 2010. In there you will see every possible demonstration of graphical user interface reversion, revisionism and revulsion that you can stomach. This is their own back-patting flag-waving historical tribute to the NuMicrosoft way of thinking of dumbing down their users into Neo-AppleTards. Only worse. Ironically I only see a quick little image of MCE ( the Windows XP Media Center Edition app ) but with no mention of it in the text. They mention the Xbox dashboard, but no discussion of either the Win98 active desktop channels or the Windows System Tray or the Vista and Win7 desktop gadgets. These last three are certainly the earliest prototypes for the bulk of the Metro debacle. The MCE "fast and fluid" typefaces are key to the "Modern" design language and date as far back as 2003 I believe. The only thing they didn't ripoff from earlier Windows were those lame one or two color icons commonly seen on street signs and handicap parking spots for, oh, the two or three past decades. I'm not sure this term NuMicrosoft is really appropriate at all. There is nothing Nu or New here, at all. They should probably just change their logo to a masked thief, or at best to the recycle bin, because all they have really done is regurgitate lots of old stuff into an intelligence sucking front-end for MetroTards. Here is my proposal ... Spotted: Boot to desktop for Windows 8.1 settings pane ( NeoWin 2013-06-07 ) Look everybody, Microsoft has apparently rediscovered the concept of checkbox choices. But they clearly worded it wrong ... ( inspiration ) Windows 8.1 Start button finally shown off on video ( NeoWin 2013-06-07 ) Jensen Harris is back, this time with a live presentation showing off all the good work that Microsoft has been busy doing thanks to all their listening to customers! It is quite pathetic if you ask me. Just jump to 1:32 where he shows the desktop with the "Start Screen Button" that no-one ever asked for ( you could press the Windows key to jump into the Playskool Tiles! ). And then ... as he jumps between the desktop and Metro and back ... the crowd inexplicably applauds! What are they nuts? They cannot possibly be cheering for a button that merely jumps to the Playskool interface. Can they? How is this not the most patently absurd thing they have ever done? How is this not the biggest FU ever flipped to their customers in history?

Can't say that I have. Are there any good pre-cooked ISO's for use on problem Windows installations? I mean, similar to DaRT with registry and file functions? Add in an antivirus and forensics and we'll have a winner. P.S. I realize this is bordering on a threadjack, feel free to spin it of if necessary!

Microsoft: Brain impulses shows people really do like in-app Windows 8 ads ( NeoWin 2013-06-05 ) Talk about breaking down precedents and establishing new ones. I can't believe I supported and defended this company for years. Putting ads in a "paid" software or operating system is bad enough because it's like getting ads on subscription TV like HBO. But then sponsoring more fake studies to tell us that we actually like it! Apparently they will stop at nowhere. It reminds me of how the channel listing on cable TV evolved from a useful full screen of ... wait for it ... channel listings back in the late 1970's, to what we see now ... a little sliver of channel listings ( one or two at a time ) and the rest of the screen devoted to advertisements. How are they not an evil corporation now ( something I would have never said in the past )? How is the term: Micro$oft not entirely appropriate? They are now completely indefensible. Study Crowns Internet Explorer 10 as the Most Energy Efficient Browser ( Maximum PC 2013-06-07 ) IE 10 is Most Energy Efficient Web Browser for Windows 8 ( Tom's Hardware 2013-06-08 ) A late April Fools joke? They're serious. Maybe they meant: Study Crowns Internet Explorer 10 as the Most Malware Efficient Browser? Well believe it or not, MSIE currently really is the most energy efficient browser on my computers, as they get almost no use here they are consuming almost no energy whatsoever! Microsoft won't say if IE11 will be made for Windows 7 ( NeoWin 2013-06-05 ) Oh puhlease, who do they think they are kidding? This happens every single time. Microsoft always has a choice to release MSIE for all their existing operating systems, all it would require is intelligent coding as a portable app without relying on tons of crap in the registry. But that ship has sailed. So go ahead. Cut off Windows 7 from using the latest MSIE, I dare you. And then look at the fragmented browser usage stats and wonder exactly why that is. EDIT: same old driver error seen when posting this one here. If you refresh from that page I believe a duplicate post then gets submitted.

You may be right, but I have only found one ( of mine ) missing so far. If you actually saw a missing page or two then please run a search into any and all cache folders used by your browser(s) for "Deeper Impressions". Do this before they get overwritten! It may already be too late because in Opera even set at 200 MB cache they are already gone for me! NOTE: the number of pages in a thread is relative to a preference setting in the MSFN cookies. Mine is set for maximum ( I think 150 ) posts per page, consequently we are presently on page 21. If you can tell us how many posts per page you are set to and how many missing pages we can get a general estimate of number of missing comments. EDIT: Rats! Just saw that database error thing when I posted. Wonder how long before we go down again! EDIT2: Seen again after this edit. I notice that the default page font gets switched when this occurs.

Is Microsoft playing with fire by bundling Office with Windows 8.1 tablets? ( NeoWin 2013-06-05 ) A NeoWin author almost accidentally swerves into a good point here, almost. He is actually mostly wrong about this because most Windows ReTard devices are actually Microsoft Surface tablets since most other OEMs have now given up on the platform. That leaves Windows ReTard Edition and the pre-installation of Outlook or Office as a non-issue because they are Microsoft hardware, just like a MacBook is an Apple device. No software has any expectation of being installed onto such hardware, no more than on a Samsung refrigerator or LG Television. It is a walled-garden gated-community by definition. This is a difficult concept for NeoWin fanboys to understand, but it is fundamental. Microsoft is normally the 3rd party operating system on other people's hardware, not their own. Now if they try this with Windows 8 non-ReTard Edition on non-Microsoft devices they will have a problem. Microsoft Gives a First Look at Windows 8.1 ( Maximum PC 2013-06-06 ) Microsoft Shows Off Windows 8.1 in Video, Talks Outlook RT ( Tom's Hardware 2013-06-06 ) Jensen Harris, a primary Windows Destroyer team member shows up in one video trying to push the latest propaganda about "listening to customers" and other nonsense. Recall that he is the one that Sinofsky hid behind when they removed Aero Glass and went all flat prior to the RTM. His presentation is as awful as usual and reinforces the case that Microsoft is beyond tone-deaf, they are sadistically masochistic and intent on stepping on every landmine in their path. I only mention these two articles because they are at non-Fanboy sites and will get much different commentary there than at the usual suspects, like NeoWin and The Verge. Microsoft: All apps must be re-installed for preview-to-RTM Windows 8.1 upgrade ( NeoWin 2013-06-05 ) Microsoft Talks About How Windows 8.1 Preview Will Work ( Tom's Hardware 2013-06-07 ) More bad news for MetroTards. If you are such a die-hard fanboy that you want the preview of this service pack it is going to cost you some of your spare time in reinstalling applications. You know things are bad when even the NeoWhiners recognize the danger here ... Naturally you have some of those die-hard MicroZealots and MetroTards that disagree! You know the type. Microsoft can do no wrong! See here ... ~sigh~ Lord save us from the narcissistic children of the world.

The only luck I had was with posts that I happened to reply to, when I was able to go into the browser history and retrieve the quoted post in the reply box (see a couple of examples just above) but of course my comments weren't included. I checked a bunch of online search engines feeding guaranteed keywords ( "Benjamin Franklin" "Lightning Rod" "elD7qes.jpg" ) from a definite missing post in this thread, confined to site:msfn.org but no luck. Spiders were not crawling this thread before the database rolled back. Unless someone else has cached local copies of this page I fear they are lost to the four winds. Something else ... The physical number of that known missing post is 1041709 and it was sometime after comment #3097 which has the physical number 1041626. But then we have the gap and then comment #3093 by SIW2 which is physical number 1041653. So there is something very wrong here as that earlier missing comment has a higher physical number than a later comment.

Just to clarify, I don't want to come off as beating up WinPE implementations or especially ERD and DaRT. I just wanted to mention that vague observation of possible breadcrumbs as they were implemented in the Windows XP thru 7 era ( I haven't used it since 8 was hatched ). Such a trail may be what tipped off System Internals during the Best Buy fiasco. I am a true supporter of the masterful ERD / DaRT tools, with a small bit of fine tuning they could be the most valuable product ever never released by Microsoft. Half joking because of the myriad restrictions on it, it should have been released long ago to everyone. And it should be easily insertable as a Recovery Console type add-in to the local computer boot menu as well ( CmdCons without offline registry editing or GUI file management ). Having used many Linux flavored "PE" recovery discs over the years ( because you have to for paying customers if you choose to stay legal ), it is stunning just how half-baked this entire field is. The maddening thing with almost every canned Linux bootable CD is the insanity of having timer-based prompts for such serious questions as "Hello user! Shall I boot from this CDROM or shall I mount that possibly infected and FUBAR'd hard disk I see here? You have 5 seconds to type your answer!". Try to guess what they typically duhfault to. Dear Microsoft, by all means save us from this carnage and free up these tools for everyone.

FYI ... I asked the mods to split this off from another thread ( "Is it Legal to run Windows PE as a general operating system" ) as we kind of drifted off topic ( my fault, sorry! ). Anywho, we can discuss bootable tools for salvaging FUBAR'd Windows systems. Note: I suggest commenters should probably only mention legal tools ( ) or else the mods will most likely make you walk the plank! Below this line is the original discussion already in progress ... -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- May not be entirely true. Certain PE implementations like the earlier System Internals ERD and the later DaRT leave something, at least a folder and possibly some registry entry. I never did do a formal test of this so I am just guessing that it is a date/time/stamp tattoo. A proper audit should be done to see what if anything persists. A perfectly sterile forensic PE tool should leave nothing on the target system without prompting. EDIT: fixed typo

Windows ReTard Edition is still floundering ... Microsoft is cutting the price on Windows RT for smaller tablets ( NeoWin 2013-06-03 ) Microsoft May Cut Prices on Software for Windows Tablets ( Tom's Hardware 2013-06-03 ) ~sigh~ charging any price above zero for Windows ReTard Edition no sense when competing against Android. They will never learn. But even that didn't last long. Just a couple of days later ... Microsoft cuts Windows licensing costs for OEMs ( NeoWin 2013-06-06 ) And presumably here's their logic ... Got that? They want more sales of small devices. ... So ... we can assume they don't want more sales of larger devices? Now, speaking of small devices ... Microsoft: Smaller Windows 8/8.1 tablets can have buttons on the side ( NeoWin 2013-06-05 ) Besides being thoroughly condescending and proving that Microsoft's and their sycophants blaming OEMs for all so-called bad designs is yet another lie, this also illustrates the extraordinary scam Microsoft has been engaging in during the entire PC era. Apple sells 1st party hardware with an included 1st party Operating System to make it work out of the box. They also are responsible for defects in both hardware and the operating system. No news there, it is what anyone would expect. Microsoft, with rare exception ( e.g., Surface ) sells NO hardware and is the 3rd party supplier of an Operating System to 1st party equipment manufacturers. By threading this needle they have established not only a monopoly, but the particularly envious position of NO responsibility for hardware problems ( obviously they are blamed on the OEM ), but also the astonishing situation where due to licensing terms the OEM versions of Windows means that Microsoft has NO responsibility for its own operating system as well. Irate phone calls once again go to the OEMs. Not only that, the OEMs ( and by extension, the customer ) get charged a price for this luxury! What an incredible scam.

Canalys: Windows Phone to grow 400% in the next 4 years ( NeoWin 2013-06-04 ) 2017 forecast: Windows Phone at 12.7%, 1bn Android phones a year ( NeoWin 2013-06-06 ) Now that's what I call optimistic. Let's have a look at the real numbers ... ComScore: Microsoft's US smartphone market share dipped in April 2013 ( NeoWin 2013-06-05 ) Actually Blackberry might have "stopped the bleeding" now with less than a percentage point lost on this latest chart ( see this post for all the previous ComScore charts I could find. ) This chart, like the previous ones dispute some of the articles at fanboy sites stating that Windows Phone has somehow surpassed Blackberry in usage. I would expect BB to stabilize now and those last 2 percentage points that they have over WP will be very hard to overcome.

I don't think anything is missing. The board has been unavailable for at least a day, maybe two. Working pretty quickly at this moment, but maybe it's because no-one is here currently and traffic is light. EDIT: I guess I can't count! I last posted hear on the 3rd, it is currently the 7th, and I recall trying to get in to the site each day to no avail. So I am guessing at least 3 down days total! EDIT2: I may be wrong about the missing posts too. Not sure yet, but have suspicions. EDIT3: Verified at least one post missing above after the one from Formfiller. I remember because of the image I used with The Three Stooges. Also, I had use the terms "Benjamin Franklin" and "Lightning Rod". If someone has a large local cache in their favorite browser a copy of the missing comments might still exist. Can anyone locate anything in their local cache to be used as keywords in a Google search to see if their cache caught the thread before the database rolled back? Nothing working so far for me.

Is there some contagious problem with IPB going around ? A day or so ago there were some strange effects at NeoWin too ( Forums turned offline for now [update: We're back] ). Note the following ... You can't blame someone for wondering if they are causing SQL problems upstream to get everyone to update. P.S. why not use @MSFNorg at Twitter to mention board status? Are there any other offsite places for news? Yahoo? typos

Verified ... NOT working Tested with and without "Run as Administrator"! No luck. Also tested Windows XP and ... WORKING fine. I gotta admit that this is a core system change probably with Windows 6 ( Vista, 7, ... ) that slipped under my radar. My quick guess is that those strange values like "ExplorerFlags" may actually be enablers for the shell context menu entries. But just a guess presently. Regardless, this is a clear case of broken backward compatibility. FWIW, I almost never use Explorer except at gunpoint, instead using file managers like Powerdesk, Tracker and XYplorer for these tasks. Next chance I get I will check to see if those REG entries work under those 3rd party file managers even though it fails under Explorer. Meanwhile, you may start a Google or Bing hunt. Or maybe someone here knows what happened.

You're right of course. And I'm not trying to talk anyone out of dual, quad, octal, or deca (???) booting. Just mentioning two of many alternatives! So you got ten working? Way to go Rudy! P.S. there were some questions about last chipsets supporting Win9x and SATA quirks in this thread, I'll bet you probably have some good insight into these limits.

Razer CEO: 'I don't hate on Windows 8'; is 'super disappointed' with Dell and HP ( NeoWin 2013-06-01 ) Yeah well that's to be expected from a competitor speaking of his competition I guess. But then I see this ... Now that really ticks me off. This young man is CEO of a decent company but now sounds like a young girl posting mindless drivel at NeoWin. So exactly who missed the "Start Button" anyway? He thinks the worldwide anger is from a missing "button"? Now that's just friggin' insulting. And then he tops it off with "but it is better than 7". Well, if by "better" he means "uglier" and "stupider" then he has a point. With that kind of cavalier attitude towards simple logic and facts who could take him seriously ever again? Not me. Ah well, we all must play our role I guess. His is apparently to tamp down the criticism and avoid controversy to avoid alienating customers but he just failed, with me. So I'll put him on my personal list of companies to avoid and never recommend based solely on the fact that their CEO, Min-Liang Tan, is so astonishingly stuck on stupid. He had a chance to be a hero to all those gamers that buy Razer items but instead chose to imitate Forrest Gump. Microsoft Confirms Start Button Returns in Windows 8.1 ( Tom's Hardware 2013-05-31 ) Forgot to mention this a few days back. All the sites have now posted a few articles about Microsoft officially confirming their FU to the countless customers who never asked for a Start "Screen" Button that links to Metro but in fact asked for the Start Menu. Tom's is another one of those non-Shill sites although the author is their version of a MicroZealot and that headline pretty much confirms it ( and you know it must burn him up to see all those opposing comments every day ). Since there was never ever a Start Screen Button in any version of Windows, it never left in the first place, in order to be "returned" now! The headline is a lie, and every article on every site that dutifully reports this Microsoft propaganda of a "return" of the Start Button is lying. When beta1 ( the DP ) was replaced by beta2 ( the CP ) the Start Button and Start Menu were gone and have yet to make a return ( unless we count 3rd party utilities that restore it ). Windows 8 Start menu makers thoughts on the return of the Start button for 8.1 ( NeoWin 2013-06-02 ) Speaking of 3rd party utilities that restore the Start Button and Start Menu, here is a NeoWin article in which they ask the creators of these Start Menu restoration programs what they think about the so-called "return" of the Start Button. NeoWin must consider it a trick question I guess. Or not! Perhaps they believe it themselves. EDIT: typo(s)

Microsoft preparing response to Xbox One DRM concerns ( NeoWin 2013-06-01 ) Yep, I'm so sure. The response will no doubt try to "Mojave Experiment" us into believeing we're doing it wrong or that DRM is good as long as they disguise it. There is one commenter, most likely a bonafide Softie ( or bucking for the MicroZealot of the year title ) going way out of his way to convince people how their eyes are lying to them and that DRM is wonderful ... As I suggested upthread, this Softie has inadvertantly let slip the entire reason for games being installed on the HDD. Some people speculated it was for blazing fast performance ( because that is how we desktop users run games ), but that was a wrong guess. The real reason was to introduce DRM with no way to go back from this precedent. They could have had optional play from the DVD if they chose, but they didn't because that would be a loophole out of the hardcore DRM involving always-on and phone-home and whatever other methods they try ( Kinect counting users playing the game ). And now we have this Softie spilling the beans - DRM is vital because the games are on the HDD, what else can "they" do? Of course the other half of that comment is downright lunacy. It is clear that this person has eliminated "private property" from his lexicon altogether. We own nothing, the all-important content creators and their publishers own it all. Your computer is a consumption device and if they had their way everything would actually be PPV ( Pay Per View ). Ford and other companies will be glad to learn of this new paradigm invented by this hard-working propagandist. They have been missing out on sales every time a used car is sold. Car companies will need to control the after-market as soon as possible. I wonder if this applies to every time a house is resold. Who gets that cash? The original owner? The Builder? Hey do I get a cut of all the PC's I built each time someone resold them? Naturally he has it in his head that this only pertains to digital stuff. Well I know that Microsoft has been behind that thought ever since the very beginning trying to keep "software" into a special category all by itself. Everything else has the doctrine of first sale but if Microsoft has their way it wouldn't exist for software. Unfortunately for them and this employee or sycophant, it is just not so, at least today. There may be ambiguous gray areas when a product never has a physical media ( not the case today with most game after-markets ) like Steam, but even that is going to cause a battle. Older Xbox and PS games on optical discs have no such gray area, which pretty much proves this commenter has no gray matter. Where this is going is in a complete recreation of the old Ma Bell telephone monopoly and methods where we used to pay for every phone call in a phone both ( or, only "long distance" at home which often times wasn't very long at all ). This model of monetizing every single bit or electron is what they are after. The PPV angle I think is pretty accurate. They see themselves as digital overlords, metering everything from their subscribers and expecting automatic payment as well. Do the least amount of effort for the most amount of money. It is clearly devolution down to the lowest and basest form of modern business school sheeple-nomics. All our devices will be converted to cash register phone booths. Any movement toward independence and private property and privacy will be fought tooth and nail by Big Government, Big Hollywood and Big Technology. Microsoft's latest video slams the no-contract cost of Samsung Galaxy S4 ( NeoWin 2013-06-01 ) Well another day, another attack ad. I don't know what's gotten into them or the water supply up in Seattle, but they have somehow turned themselves into an angry, evil company in the post WinXP years. The Vista experience really changed them, much much more than they hoped to change everyone else with their Vista Experience. This is one of those threads at NeoWin which is self-explaining because even at that fanboy site the opinions on this kind of MicroStrategy are critical and unkind, to say the least. I'll just quote one commenter: "You know its bad when people from here think Microsoft pulled a stupid." But why the crazy comparison of the top-end Galaxy with a mid-range Nokia? I think it is very simple ... Samsung's Galaxy S4 soars to 10m sales in under a month. That's all it took. A wildly successful launch for that phone and Microsoft turned green with envy. I'll let the shrinks determine the contagious mental condition that is rampaging around Redmond, there must be some term for it. Meanwhile I'll just use layman's terms ... IBM-envy, Apple-envy, Google-envy, Samsung-envy ... Having said that, every cellphone is ridiculously expensive these days, probably costing double what they should. These things are rolling off the assembly lines ( what was the purpose of them according to Henry Ford? ) and when they are handled by human beings it is a workforce of semi-slave labor working for peanuts. All the R&D was done long ago for cellphones so it's not like they are recouping any real outlays. Furthermore, we know the cost of parts on most of the phones already and they are maybe 25% of the final price, and even at 50% it would still be a ripoff. The actual capital investment lies solely in marketing and advertising. The only reason they get away with it is because the final cost is buried in contracts well-hidden from the eyes of the consumers. Gloves Off: Microsoft builds Windows vs. iPad comparison site ( NeoWin 2013-06-01 ) Well another day, another attack ad ... not really. At least this one is closer to a product comparison, but with two nitpicks I think. First of all, shouldn't it be Windows vs iOS? More importantly, they have got to stop calling this Windows 8 Metro thing "Windows" at all. Brand or trademark or whatever, this thing lost the right to be called Windows when it stopped having ... wait for it ... Windows. Yeah, they're still there in theory ... in the desktop ... when you use x86 software ... complete with sharp-cornered flattened non-3D bland un-shadowed GUI elements ... but they're still there ... I guess. Seriously Microsoft. Rename this abomination to Microsoft Tiles, it's not too late. Kinect for Windows used to create new hotel kiosk display ( NeoWin 2013-06-01 ) ( image source ) If you're a frequent traveler you also know that most hotels have the hotel information available on the TV in your room, have been for many, many years too. You see where this is going and the problem coming up? It will be inevitable that manufacturers of these units will get tired of selling one or two units to each and every hotel when they can instead sell 4 or 5 thousand to each hotel. Then we get to the problem of Kinect with its cameras and microphones being installed in a hotel room. Yep, what could possibly go wrong here? Just for the record, the only places that Casinos cannot place cameras are in public bathrooms and in hotel rooms. They are everywhere else. They will need to get laws changed of course, and with the proper greasing of greedy palms this is a good possibility. Then they'll assure us that they can be trusted. They cannot. I'll just repeat what I wrote upthread a ways ... EDIT: typo(s), added image source link

Windows 8 market share up slightly in May; Windows 7 gains ground ( NeoWin 2013-06-01 ) ... 2013-05-01... 2013-06-01 After 7 months the abomination called Windows 8 has clawed its way to 4.27% marketshare, almost as high as Vista's 4.51% And if by "clawed" you mean forced itself into the user space by being pre-installed on new computers almost exclusively for 7 months and being pushed into enterprise through backroom upgrade and other licensing scenarios for about 10 months and by entering the standalone retail markets at fire sale prices of $39 or even less for at least 4 months! Add to that the relentless FUD attacking Windows XP as a pending y2k-like apocalypse and the ceaseless warnings to update or die and still the whole rigged thing still shows Windows 8 sitting at 4.27% marketshare. Of course this is for "desktop" operating systems only, as the 'Tards will quickly point out, which I guess means they are doing well in mobile? I think not. And I can turn right around and point out something right back at them. How about the fact that many Windows XP machines are not talking to the internet and showing up in Net Applications statistics because they are too busy getting work done on offline systems, embedded in kiosks, banking and other high security setups where they cannot be easily counted. Contrast that with the consumption based Windows 8 with its "cloudy" innards, an operating system that is the polar opposite and leans more towards the "always connected" paradigm than anything before it. So the take-away to this article should be the embarrassment they have on their hands. ( BTW: see this post for links to all the previous charts. ) Net Applications: IE10 browser share up to 9.26 percent ( NeoWin 2013-06-01 ) They really should rephrase that to "is making slow but steady progress among PC users on supported operating systems". If they had any scruples they wouldn't even bother with stories about MSIE marketshare. This thing is one of Microsoft's most blatant examples of planned obsolescence, something completely indisputable and shameworthy. A real software company would compartmentalize the browser software components rather than integrate them amongst the OS system files. In other words, it should be usable in a single folder structure and very light on the registry. Ideally it should be simple and portable. But not Microsoft who are allegedly experts on writing software. They found a way to make almost each version die along with the current operating system. Consequently these Internet Explorer usage charts are ridiculous. It is not software that is being "adopted" by anyone, it is hardly even software at all. It is only showing up in the places it is allowed to show up, rarely by choice, and as a quasi-proxy for installed operating systems more than anything else. To me, this kind of statistic is the ultimate example of meaninglessness, a true proxy for idiocracy. Windows 8 usage on Steam climbs to 12.72 percent in May ( NeoWin 2013-06-01 ) Not this stuff again! NeoWin MetroTards are really reaching with this one. They are also demonstrating some rather ~ahem~ iodiocracy with that phrasing: "increased its share on Steam". It may sound like a nitpick but IMHO it demonstrates a fundamental lack of knowledge about just exactly what an operating system is and does. Windows 8 is NOT on Steam. Steam is on Windows, among other things. It proves to me that MetroTards cannot distinguish between software and an operating system which leads to their huge disconnect about Microsoft holding and exploiting a monopoly over computers they did not manufacture, and the bogus comparisons to Apple and Android as competitors in the same space. What they obviously also don't realize is that those people that use Steam are using a desktop program, not a Metro app to use Steam in the first place. The choice of Windows 8 for Steam is not a choice at all, it is completely irrelevant to this subject. This alleged data point, which they ( NeoWin ) have been promoting for months is apples to oranges, means nothing and illustrates the depths to which they are willing to sink to rationalize their membership in the MicroZealot and MetroTard cults. Finally, talk about lowered expectations: "by just more than a full percentage point"! They have been conditioned from so many months of fractional percentage point movement ( which in itself begs disbelief in the ability to measure at this granularity ) that this "news" is truly cathartic. You almost gotta feel sorry for them. Almost. Games still dominate latest top 10 paid Windows 8 app listings ( NeoWin 2013-06-01 ) These last two stories really belong together as they paint the picture of a consumption targeted operating system. We don't call it Playskool for nothing. This isn't to slag any of those particular games or even Steam, I swear! Let me just point out what you don't see and won't see in these lists, ever ... Chess ... and ... Mensa software. Seriously. I'm coming at this from disputing the bogus notion that Windows 8 is anything but a version of Xbox dashboard mixed with MCE, two consumption based entertainment products. It was painted however by Sinofsky and his gang of Windows Destroyers as an evolution, a sea-change "advancement" of Windows all the while they criticized us for "hating change". Yeah, no. Unless they meant we should change from real users to "consumptors" that line of attack was and is off-base, insulting and unforgivable. Am I enjoying being proven correct over and over? You bet I am. EDIT: typo(s)

Samsung taps Intel to power the Galaxy Tab 3 ( TechSpot 2013-05-31 ) Samsung Reportedly Picks Intel Chip for Galaxy Tab 3 10.1 ( Maximum PC 2013-05-31 ) Report: Samsung Chooses Intel for Next Android Tablets ( Tom's Hardware 2013-06-02 ) ( image sources: left and right ) There's that Karma again. Microsoft runs whole hog at ARM out of pure jealousy and envy of Apple and Google ( and at the expense of their angry x86 user base ). And so far they have gotten nowhere except for one dramatic achievement - the astonishing mouth-frothing anger of all those users they kicked in the nuts. Now here is Intel making, for now anyway, a small but possibly important move into SOC ( isn't SoaC more logical? ) ... and ... wait for it ... Android. Oops! Wintel no more? Too soon to tell but just in case I shall dub thee Intellidroid We'll have to keep an eye out for other possible signs of trouble here ... oh look ... here's another ... Acer Haswell AIO Android PC Spotted; Reveal Next Week ( Tom's Hardware 2013-06-01 ) ( image source ) Oh my! As you Sow so shall you Reap. You really gotta wonder why this possibility of Intel hurting Microsoft never seems to come up in these discussions. It sure looks to me that Microsoft has taken them for granted ever since the IBM PC was released. You could even argue that they have been somewhat disrespectful to Intel, often blaming the chips for not being advanced enough or fast enough or smart enough especially during the 286 era, then again in the Pentium I and really almost every chip since. Looking back, I happen to think that Microsoft was mostly at fault, releasing operating systems 3 years ahead of the appropriate processors consistently until now - when for the first time the released OS doesn't tax the CPU at all. Keep in mind that Microsoft has engineering samples of all the chips and develops Windows using these knowing full well that such technology won't be mainstream for several years, yet still they release the OS to the masses who then get to experience Windows in slow motion. For their part I can't recall Intel calling out Microsoft for making many of their processors appear slow to the end-user customers, and really they should. I won't forgive them for crappy Celerons which are purposefully neutered, but many other chips have been bogged down by Windows. But that's their business I guess, I mean, play Microsoft's stooge at your own peril, with the result that Microsoft rakes in boatloads of dough while Intel catches the blame. Perhaps that will be coming to an end now? It is not hard to imagine real damage done to Microsoft and their Windows empire by these tablet and AIO form factors ( and future Desktops? ). Remember, it is the fickle consumer that buys this stuff, not us. And it could even get much worse because all Intel really has to do to turn the screws into Microsoft is write it's own x86 operating system and release it for free or low cost. This would preserve their x86 CPU and chipset business which Microsoft seems uninterested in. If anyone has the moral right to the instruction set it is them. They just need to cleanroom clone the Windows API's to exactness and Steve Ballmer will need ant-depressants and a suicide watch. I wouldn't be surprised if they already have something that just needs tweaking. The GUI would require some serious attention naturally, but I think this is one possible alternative to the arrogant, predatory, and monopolistic traits that define Microsoft. Hmmm. Just thought of one other thing! How are they gonna count these AIO units in marketshare statistics? Certainly they are NOT mobile devices. They will have to go into the desktop totals. There seems to be some reasonable chance that Microsoft's "desktop" monopoly will begin to fall in total. Things that make you go hmmm.

Rest assured that if it happens I will have piles of train wreck images ready to go. And the MetroTards will never hear the end of it.

That is a good idea. And dirt cheap! Not like it was 10 years ago

Well the Store for updates, yes, but it will be coming on new systems pre-installed. I imagine a lot of hapless victims of Windows 8 Blew will look at their brand new system and hit Google, try to install one of these utilities in order to repair this Microsoft bug and be out of luck!

We won't really have to. There are two alternatives besides dual-booting ( from a single HDD ). {1} Have several HDDs in one computer, each disk formatted to different OS, naturally they are only used once at a time. You have an XP disk, Win9x disk, Win7 disk. It takes a couple of minutes to shut down, open the case swap PATA or SATA and power cables, button it up, power-on. This eliminates the complexity of bootloaders and partition quirks. {2} Have several computers, each configured for different operating systems. With the advent of USB thumbdrives ( sneakernet ) and ethernet NIC there really is little reason not to! This has several huge benefits ... A virus attack on one can be managed thoroughly by pulling the infected drive and working on it as a slave in another system. One system can be used to backup another, this is playing the favorable odds that no two systems will die simultaneously. Naturally this does not include disasters like fire or lightning strike ( unless they are unplugged when not in use ). When you have some time-consuming task that ties up a system for a while, you can let it work undisturbed and move on to another. Happens to me all the time. Virus scanning a slaved HDD, full formatting a new 2 TB drive, full Chkdsk on a HDD, system burn-in, diagnostics or benchmark, etc. What some people do is virus scan without the actual full settings ( every file, period! ) or they do a quick-format, or they try to multi-task at the same time because they have no alternate computer. I never understood that quite frankly.