CharlotteTheHarlot

Way off? FF, we're talking about two different things here. As soon as you mention laptop I know that is an OEM SLP WPA. I too have a bunch of computers using OEM operating system versions, but the process is substantially different. I should have been more specific in describing "retail" Windows with the actual voting hardware check that is missing from OEM installs ( and volume licenses also of course ). NOTE: Now that I think about it, the fact that bulk of the computers out there are either OEM or VL ( not retail ) means that I was incorrectly overestimating the burden on the user client side for WPA. So I thank you for the comment! When you actually use legal retail Windows installations ( I have tons of "system builder" versions on many HDD's because that is really the only legal way to put XP on random slapped together computers ) then these are using the actual WPA hardware check with the infamous voting and hashing and checking. Few people will ever do this on laptops as they come with OEM stickers and a BIOS with a code burned in and the test is a simple check of the DMI for a string stored in BIOS. My experiments are almost always involved with this retail WPA arrangement. I have tried to identify the hidden steps that occur after the BIOS POST and Select-OS-Menu during the XP boot screen ( the horizontal scrolling bar ) but before the HDD is accessed *** and the registry is read and Windows files are initialized. What I think I know for sure is that in that narrow timeframe, when the scroll completes 5-6 passes ( with *no* HDD activity ) the hardware votes are counted and the hash generated and then a quick flash of the HDD is when the comparison is made ( successfully ) and then the HDD lights up as the registry is loaded into RAM and the hardware tree is initialized ( there's much more obviously, but that's a broad outline ). Experimentation shows that using the system as originally legally activated ( *exactly* same hardware ) means the quickest possible pass through the boot screen with that one flash of the LED, as I add different voting hardware like other HDD's the boot screen duration changes for the worse and the LED lights constantly as several WPA files are accessed ( we should probably avoid any discussion of this part ). This is what I was referring to ( again, incorrectly since most systems in the wild will be OEM or VL anyway ) the wasted time and CPU due to the WPA process. OEM and VL can be very fast on Windows XP indeed, in fact I am quite sure Microsoft intentionally made it this way to head off criticism from OEM system customers and of course the volume license factory floor customers. As far as Win9x/Win2k versus WinXP, besides the Apples-Oranges thing with OEM XP versus the simple registry check on its predecessors it also is highly dependent on the user profile. I would say that is the dominant factor of them all, and since it is difficult to get a registry in the earlier versions anywhere near Windows XP size, and the far less services and bloatware, I would always place smart money on Win9x/Win2k on the same exact hardware with equivalent post-install software present. The limiting factor for Win9x and Win2k bootstrap was CPU and HDD in their original timeframe but they can easily be used alongside WinXP at least through 2005 or so on i865 and nForce2 boards ( my favorite "legacy" systems ) for a fair comparison and as I said, if the profiles are minimal after a fresh install, WinXP retail will lose because of the extra checking, which is amplified when hardware is altered. I have both WinXP and Win2k together on later boards ( sans Win9x naturally ) like G31 with Core2 2/4 and even SATA disks and there is no way I can imagine WinXP ( retail! ) booting faster since all that Win2k has to do is tear through the system files and load its smaller registry. I suppose I could try installing Win2k on a Windows XP OEM laptop ( after a driver researching nightmare ) and see what you and those at that link have experienced. But that's probably not going to happen because it was never an experiment that interested me ( laptops I repair often but use very rarely ). *** Just to clarify .... the HDD is accessed before that step, for example the MBR and NTLDR and BOOT.INI as well as some other things are processed after BIOS POST in order to even get to the Select OS menu obviously, I was focusing on what happens immediately after the OS is selected or defaulted. On retail WPA with the exact original hardware from activation you will wind up at the boot screen with no HDD activity and then the 5-6 animated scrolls and then the HDD flash. It is this narrow timeframe I am talking about. NOTE: none of this should be construed as having anything to do with bypassing or defeating WPA. That is not the purpose of examining this at all. It is about maximizing the bootup speed and understanding the process, what effect changing hardware has on the system, and now, quite possibly whether there is any spook code to identify! One more comment: yes I know that "System Builder" editions are technically "OEM" licenses, but as far as the WPA is concerned they are more comparable to the full retail version because neither use the BIOS SLP mechanism that allows infinite hardware changes. The confusion is from Microsoft and all their editions, and ironically the minority of users ( non-big-box-OEM and non-VL ) are the ones that suffer most, these victims are the people that buy full-price retail copies or build systems of their own. Here's the official explanation from many years ago right from Microsoft ... http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb457096.aspx Also be aware that this applies to Windows XP specifically. It is very similar in Windows 6 versions ( Vista/7 ) but NOT exactly the same. Some tweaking was made, see here ( ironically from Ed Bott who is always suspiciously ready to defend Microsoft controversies and always seems to be speaking in an almost official capacity ) ... http://www.edbott.com/weblog/2005/02/everything-you-always-wanted-to-know-about-windows-product-activation/

I don't think the there is a cost-issue with the the XP activation servers. My guess is that that there are no "Windows XP servers" a such, their activation servers probably activate all MS products and are not grouped by specific products (adding new products to them is most likely just a software update). The transit cost in bandwidth between them and us and back is probably negligible since it is a pre-packaged globule of secured bits, but the processing on either side is what I meant. The bulk of the cost of WPA was long ago pushed onto and permanently inflicted on the victim locally at bootstrap noticeable during the Windows XP Boot Screen when hardware hashing is calculated and verified against a local file, and it is very safe to say that step alone has cost a fortune in Windows XP customer CPU electricity and of course, wasted time. I'll bet that is a HUGE dollar cost considering the user base size, and much slower and watt burning CPUs seen in the XP era. On early Pentium 4's that screen is easily 30 seconds to a minute by itself, the majority is the WPA routine which is obvious if you used Win9x/Win2k/WinXP on the same motherboard and BIOS revision. Still, on their end they must have quite an incredible database of hashes, safely stored and accessible online to Microsoft ( not an inexpensive feat by any means, and I believe these files were never ever hacked from the outside ). That cloud arrangement is called upon whenever someone installs or re-installs XP, checks their activation status, trips the WPA change limit, and I believe whenever they use Windows Update or even the WGA hashmaker to access Microsoft downloads. For the most part their end of the WPA process has been smooth and reliable, IMHO this implies that they have spared no expense on their end, be it server hardware, interconnecting wiring, server-side processing and software, and network support people. The only question I really have is whether WPA for Windows XP ( and Office XP and above ) costs more for? Microsoft or its customers? As I said, I suspect we paid the bigger price in total, but I might be wrong.

Actually (personal opinion) I do like the new design (of the tools) the new packaging is hideous, but who cares? The real problem is with the changing of & with +. Do a quick test, ask 10 people at random to write an ampersand on a piece of paper. I would be surprised if you get more than 6 written correctly. Humanity is doomed. jaclaz Agree on the packaging naturally, it does not instill confidence at the point of sale that the box contains anything except modern garbage destined to self-destruct immediately after the 90-day or less warranty expires. And as that one commenter mentioned, it looks like a box that contains counterfeit goods. To me, this is another example of product devolution. Being picky? Perhaps, but it is the latest in an ongoing race to the bottom. Three strikes ... (1) First came the breaking of the traditional lifetime warranty from Craftsman ( and IIRC also B&D and some others ). (2) Then came the outsourcing I mean free trade shuffle to the lowest bidder ( India and China ) converting these famous brands essentially to imports. Unsurprisingly prices didn't drop to match the falling quality and shorter warranty. (3) Now we see the final handiwork of marketing gurus who are a dishonest group even on a good day, but now chasing every fad rather than using their brains to find talented artists and designers ... ( Image Sources: 1,2 ) Yeah, the ampersand removal is utterly ridiculous, that is a good example of brand suicide and logo changes are a trap that companies continue to step right into. And B&D certainly stepped into it here since they literally scrapped a instantly recognizable trademark. Dumb as can be. But it's even more than that ( again, it may sound picky but I don't care, to a student the teacher is picky, to a driver the cop sounds picky, etc ). That color is the worst orange I can imagine. That one lends itself to looking like a toy more than any other color IMHO. Naturally I would choose the traditional blood red, or instead a bright fluorescent yellow for safety and easy spotting in the field. Notice the attempt at fanciness in the trigger area too. To me it is stunningly repulsive even though I can't say why, maybe the jaggedness not fitting the overall shape. The net result is a more toyish overall look to the product. Remember the old "Price is Right" TV show? Looking at the above image wouldn't it be fair to say the one on the left would price at +$50 to +$100 versus the one on the right? Or simply put, which model looks like it costs more? But anyway, it's their product, they can kill it if they want. It's their funeral. What is interesting to me is the lack of logic behind all these moves, like we see with Microsoft and others. A sane person would calculate the probability of whether your changes that scrap familiarity and recognition in exchange for a modern fad will either net more customers by adding new ones while keeping the previous ones, or, subtract more existing ones than new additions resulting in a net loss. Now if I owned the one on the left and went to buy another and the only available one was that one on the right, I would immediately start looking at other brands. That's my opinion naturally, but my reasoning is that I see what looks like a less quality model and I am very quick to punish dumb mistakes. Even on the small chance that only the looks have changed and the quality is identical, they still lose the sale on the sake appearance because the actual quality and lifespan of the device cannot be determined at the point of sale. So, the variable I sense is that all these companies are taking their existing customers for granted ( if they don't like it tough - they can buy something else ) and chasing every fad that promises to attract new ones ( which almost always just cosmetic ). Without "lifetime warranty" and other assurances they have stripped away every possible reason to buy the thing in the first place. I imagine these marketing geniuses are the type of people that purchase every new fishing lure kit on late night TV and wonder why the old-timers laugh at them while they reel in their usual haul. I'll bet their fish stories around the water cooler Monday morning on Madison Avenue are as pathological as the commentary seen at NeoWin.

Kickin' it old school ... If you're like me and need a break from the retardification of all things computer, then these articles might help. Standing in stark contrast to all the mobile stuff and the Microsoft Tiles fiasco dumbing down of Windows, there is plenty of light on the PC performance side. Here is a small sampling of stuff from CES for those that might be getting bored or aggravated by goings-on over the past couple of years ... CES 2014: Gigabyte Suite Tour (Video) ( Maximum PC 2014-01-08 )CES 2014: MSI Suite Tour (Video) ( Maximum PC 2014-01-08 )CES 2014: Asus Suite Tour (Video) ( Maximum PC 2014-01-08 )CES 2014: Asus Throws Down the Gauntlet, Unveils a 28-inch 4K Gaming Monitor for $799 (Video) ( Maximum PC 2014-01-08 )CES 2014: Cooler Master Shows Off HAF Stacker Case and Mechanical Keyboards (Video) ( Maximum PC 2014-01-08 )CES 2014: A Tour of MSI's Gaming Laptops, Steel Series Engine, and All-in-One PCs (Video) ( Maximum PC 2014-01-08 )CyberPowerPC Sinks Its Fang Gaming PC into a Battle Box ( Maximum PC 2014-01-08 )CES 2014: Oculus Rift Tour (Video) ( Maximum PC 2014-01-09 )CES 2014: AMD Suite Tour (Video) ( Maximum PC 2014-01-09 )CES 2014: Gaming at 12K with Nvidia! (Video) ( Maximum PC 2014-01-09 )CES 2014: Getting Better Acquainted with Razer's Project Christine (Video) ( Maximum PC 2014-01-09 )CES 2014: Enermax Suite Tour (Video) ( Maximum PC 2014-01-09 )CES 2014: Zalman Suite Tour (Video) ( Maximum PC 2014-01-10 )CES 2014: Origin PC's Millennium and Genesis Cases (Video) ( Maximum PC 2014-01-10 )10 Coolest Things We Saw at CES 2014 ( Maximum PC 2014-01-13 )Corning's Optical Cables for Big Data Transfers First Look <--- Watch this video! ( Maximum PC 2014-01-14 )NOTE: See the very cool video at that last link from a Corning presentation at CES of its fiber cables ( self-contained connector to connector fiber, beyond the cable ends they are electrically normal ). They also are using a brand new Mac Pro with multiple GPUs and a 4k monitor. Vey cool, high-end stuff. LG Launches 5 OLED TVs, One with 4K Resolution ( Tom's Hardware 2014-01-02 )Sharp Claims New TVs Achieve Resolution Between HD and 4K ( Tom's Hardware 2014-01-06 )Samsung: 4K Ultra HD television adoption will happen faster than anticipated ( TechSpot 2014-01-11 )These last three articles is about advancing video technology and I just wanted to point out a useful infographic detailing various video modes and screen size, mirrored here ... Miscellaneous ... Walt Mossberg, Kara Swisher say goodbye to All Things D, launch new site ( TechSpot 2014-01-01 ) The new site is here ... http://recode.net/welcome/ Researchers hit the web to search for evidence of time travelers ( TechSpot 2014-01-04 ) Well they certainly couldn't have looked too carefully, if they had they would have found tons of evidence of prophecy right here at MSFN Deeper Impressions where we nailed all these Microsoft and Windows 8 and many other things in advance. : I was going to index some of our accurate predictions but there are just so many. Maybe sometime in the future. Speaking of time travel and prophecy, sometimes you don't need a crystal ball or Delorean to see danger ahead. from the Department of Bad Ideas that anyone should be able to understand ... Samsung lays groundwork for connected homes with Smart Home platform ( TechSpot 2014-01-05 )Discovery iQ Oven Is Android-Powered, Internet Connected ( Tom's Hardware 2014-01-06 )Google announces partnership with major automakers to integrate Android ( NeoWin 2014-01-06 )Google crafts Open Automotive Alliance to bring the Android ecosystem in-car ( TechSpot 2014-01-06 )Google's reach expands into your home more via $3.2 billion Nest acquisition ( ZDNet 2014-01-13 )Google acquires Nest Labs for $3.2 billion in cash ( TechSpot 2014-01-13 )Google Acquires Nest Labs for $3.2 Billion ( Maximum PC 2014-01-13 )Google to acquire Nest Labs for $3.2 billion ( NeoWin 2014-01-13 )Why Nest will be bigger for Google than Android ( Quartz 2014-01-14 )The burglars and thieves must be drooling over all these wonderful new gift-horse avenues of theft of homes and cars, hackers laughing at endless unprecedented possibilities for creating random carnage and mayhem, and terrorists giddy with anticipation of even more creative remote controlled weapons, and of course our benevolent government protectors are rejoicing as the private sector builds the espionage infrastructure that they would normally have to build for themselves. In fact, everyone except for the sheeple I mean private citizen is celebrating this "progress". That new Google story is especially worrying because I expect that logo will appear on everything from your thermostat to your toaster, each time implying your tacit approval of whatever EULA they have posted currently. It's a Brave New World. Gotta give props to Dot MetroTard here for saying: "Your temperature will display after a quick message from our sponsor...". Indeed. UPDATE: just a few days later comes this: For The First Time, Hackers Have Used A Refrigerator To Attack Businesses (Business Insider) with more early examples from our seemingly inevitable future ... Yay progress! Believe it or not there is a direct tie-in to the Microsoft fiascos in the next few articles ... DirecTV pulls The Weather Channel from lineup over reality TV (and money) dispute ( TechSpot 2014-01-14 ) Many people have probably heard about this, but not many know the full story. TWC ( The "Weather" Channel ) had its bluff called and was dropped. They were asking for more money of course to be carried on DirecTV. This is similar to the ongoing disputes on Cable with media companies that own channels extorting the Cable carrier to pay more which then jacks up our bill. The Cable/Sat company always caves, prices rise, and then the channel owners come back again next year for more. With TWC there are some other facts in play though. They had multiple controversies in play here for years, and what has happened was a multi-front war with many different people, kind of like Microsoft finds itself in, and they proceeded blindly on their stubborn path deaf to all criticism and find themselves with no support. And now dead. A few years The Weather Channel started to drift from being a "Weather Channel" at all and injected themselves with controversial characters that used the space between forecasts for global warming propaganda. Then they gradually adopted alarmism as their main product with ambulance chasing every storm and drought and heatwave as a crisis becoming an electronic tabloid. Not content with this radical departure they added volumes of realty TV style shows ( with a couple fairly good ones too ). This was enough to get many people up in arms, particularly those of us who don't want to be lectured to and are just looking for the facts, facts like the wind, temp, pressure, radar without the 24/7 crisis approach ( a simple task, this was normally sourced from the closest airport, the forecast pulled from the NWS ). Getting these facts became harder and harder as they shortened the "Local On The 8's", making the displayed boards quicker and almost impossible to digest just so they could get back to their fear mongering and realty shows and commercials. In fact they used to always keep the local stuff on a permanent quasi-Chyron on the bottom even during commercials ( like a news or stock ticker ) and that eventually vanished. Sometimes they have no "Local On The 8's" at all, and other times it is a hybrid version squished into a small box. Lately they have another variation where it is squished down into the scroll area! They changed everything for no good reason ( now who does that remind you of? ). Then they got bought by a huge network, NBC. They started integrating fat Al Roker and other nonsense from that network and became just another commercial station, a platform for ads with little resemblance to how it started long ago. By this point there was very little reason to even go to TWC because almost nothing remained worth waiting for ( and you never really had to wait before ). Now if that all is not enough, the most recent disaster should sound very familiar - a wholesale "redesign" of the graphics. Yes, they went "modern" because some idi0t(s) in the organization thought it would be just grand to change everything! They went to horrific color selections, illegible fonts, stupid little icons, and worst of all: desaturated maps of mostly black and white and GRAY ( in fact if you click that link you will see the old style topographic color maps derived from satellites to compare with the unbelievable current crap ). On the new maps they use blue for water and white for land! Also, white is for clouds. And for Snow! They also use some variations of light gray for a wonderful clusterf*ck of modern madness. Seriously, what they did here was turn the TV channel into a webpage or phone app. They also have all kinds of bugs, for example when the bottom scroll area updates it literally overlaps the previous text for a second and this has been ongoing for quite a while. I just checked the "Local On The 8's" and found national blurbs, Dakotas, Carolinas, California. Not a single thing is functional unless you are some kind of TabletTard. But this is no tablet! It is a giant TV! Idi0ts. Also similar to Microsoft is how they are presently airing some propaganda about their dropping from DirecTV, alleging overwhelming outpouring of support from the public ( i.e., NeoKids, MetroTards, etc ), but that is not even close to the truth since DirecTV has replaced them with "The Weather Network", a new channel they own and I am reading pretty good comments about it ( I don't have it myself ). Most ridiculous is their contention that they are a critical contention for public safety and thus lives are at risk by being dropped. If that were true they wouldn't have butchered the channel in the first place. It is so bad that the founder of TWC has swore off any connection with his baby. We have seen this destruction of graphics over and over in computer software, a crazy trend toward ugly minimalism just as the hardware has become capable of the most incredible output. Every one of these knuckleheads will be paying the price once their particular competition wises up and capitalizes on it leaving them and their crappy graphics looking like 3rd grade refrigerator artwork. Now check out this very interesting story ... Did Black and Decker lose a nut with its modernist redesign? ( Quartz 2014-01-14 ) ... especially the childish use of text ( as if a blind man selected the fonts and kerning ). Also see the new packaging that someone correctly describes as now looking like a crappy unofficial box from a counterfeit product. It is positively insane! This is what happens folks when people stop being critical of mistakes and failure, be it parents, teachers, bosses, programmers, whatever. A judgment-free consequence-free society will ultimately begin a race to the bottom. But the good news is that someone will always notice branding suicide, and capitalize on the disaster leaving them in the dust. And we get to rub their noses in it. :

The Competition ... Deserting Troops ... Dual OS support in Intel processors confirmed ( NeoWin 2014-01-07 ) AMD to offer virtual Android enviroment on Windows desktop via Bluestacks ( NeoWin 2014-01-07 ) So it's not just sour grapes from OEM device builders offended by Surface. The exodus is touching everyone in the entire Microverse right down to the chip makers. And chip makers are working overtime to save themselves ... Nvidia unveils Tegra K1 SoC with 192 CUDA cores, Kepler architecture ( TechSpot 2014-01-06 ) CES 2014: Nvidia Announces "Super Chip" Tegra K1 CPU ( Maximum PC 2014-01-06 ) NVIDIA officially announces Tegra K1, its Kepler-based mobile chip ( NeoWin 2014-01-06 ) Early benchmarks suggest Nvidia's new Tegra K1 SoC is a winner ( TechSpot 2014-01-13 ) Early benchmarks show NVIDIA's Tegra K1 outperforming Apple, Qualcomm chips ( NeoWin 2014-01-13 ) This is the last thing Microsoft needs. Huge advancements in ARM performance will speed acceptance of Android on the desktop and elsewhere and elevate it from a toy OS and chipset to something else entirely. Couple that with a concerted effort by the chip makers to free themselves from the MicroMonopoly and opening up sales everywhere and you have the makings of a total disaster. Of course tis isn't great news for x86 at all, and for that we again need to blame the geniuses in Redmond who kill golden geese for fun. The Competition ... Steam Edition! ... Steam Machine hands-on part two: the Steam Controller, Civilization V and StarCraft 2 ( PC Gamer 2014-01-01 )Steam Machines from over a dozen partners to be showcased at CES ( TechSpot 2014-01-06 )Digital Storm announces liquid cooled, 4K TV ready Bolt II Steam Machine ( PC Gamer 2014-01-06 )Digital Storm Unveils Bolt II, World's First Liquid Cooled Steam Machine ( Maximum PC 2014-01-06 )Digital Storm Unveils Hybrid PC-Steam Machine ( Tom's Hardware 2014-01-06 )CyberPowerPC Announces Steam Machine Configurations Starting at $499. Sylish Steam Machine configurations are slated for the second half of 2014. ( Maximum PC 2014-01-06 )Cyberpower's Steam Machine in Both Intel and AMD Flavors ( Tom's Hardware 2014-01-06 )CyberPowerPC reveals its $500 Steam Machine ( PC Gamer 2014-01-06 )Digital Storm, CyberPowerPC unveil Steam Machines at dramatically different price points ( TechSpot 2014-01-06 )Origin PC Preps Single and Dual GPU Steam Machine "Chronos" Rigs ( Maximum PC 2014-01-06 )Valve announces Steam Machine manufacturers, open to making its own ( PC Gamer 2014-01-06 )Valve Unveils First Generation of Steam Machines at CES 2014 ( Maximum PC 2014-01-06 )Alienware SteamBox Hands-on: PC Gaming Invades Your Living Room ( Tom's Hardware 2014-01-06 )Steam Machines Pictures and Specs ( Maximum PC 2014-01-07 )Valve Officially Reveals List of Steam Machine Partners ( Tom's Hardware 2014-01-07 )Valve shows off 13 Steam Machines covering all shapes, sizes and price points ( TechSpot 2014-01-07 )Hands-on with Steam Controller at CES 2014 ( PC Gamer 2014-01-07 )Steam Machines are expensive, ugly, but full of potential ( PC Gamer 2014-01-07 )14 companies will offer Steam Machines in 2014; many will dual boot Windows ( NeoWin 2014-01-07 )Zotac: "We were the first company" making Steam Machines ( PC Gamer 2014-01-08 )Valve confirms third-party Steam Controllers in the "longer term" at CES 2014 ( PC Gamer 2014-01-08 )Valve: Streaming-only box would be "awesome," but native SteamOS support is priority ( PC Gamer 2014-01-08 )Valve looks to lead the charge in creating a standardized VR controller interface ( TechSpot 2014-01-09 )Valve 'days away' from releasing virtual reality software development kits ( NeoWin 2014-01-09 )Interview: ORIGIN PC and Falcon Northwest chat about their Steam Machine plans ( NeoWin 2014-01-09 )Valve Releasing VR SDK Next Week ( Tom's Hardware 2014-01-10 )Free-For-All: How Valve Is Building a New Way to Play Games ( TechSpot 2014-01-10 )Microsoft Xbox exec is 'not sweating it' when it comes to Steam Machines ( NeoWin 2014-01-10 )SteamOS now supports Intel and AMD graphics (Updated) ( TechSpot 2014-01-10 )Valve Releases SteamVR Beta, Will Work With Oculus Rift ( Tom's Hardware 2014-01-14 )Valve launch Steam VR beta ahead of their Dev Days event ( PC Gamer 2014-01-14 )Valve updates Steam Controller with new buttons, drops touchscreen ( PC Gamer 2014-01-15 )Valve Wants Movies, Music on SteamOS, Controller Changed ( Tom's Hardware 2014-01-16 )Steam Machines Will Be as Open as Possible ( Tom's Hardware 2014-01-17 )Valve Lends Oculus Rift a Hand in Driving VR Technology Forward ( Maximum PC 2014-01-17 )NOTE: all those articles are from just a couple of sites in just two weeks. Pretty amazing accomplishment IMHO. Here's an infographic showing 12 of them here. That quote was from before CES which is now complete. The stories are just getting written and posted now but it is pretty clear to me that Valve is in this for real. And what has really surprised me is the speed with which 3rd parties have gotten onboard here. It is amazing. I don't understand the nay-saying from some commenters though. I think some people are so brow-beaten by the lack of progress from Linux over the years that they are acting like whipped puppies, conditioned to beatings and resigned to their fate. However, this Valve initiative looks to me like the long game, which pays off in 5 and 10 years. The thing to remember is that at the end of the day SteamOS and Steam Machines will not add any users in the Microsoft column, and indeed it will subtract some, perhaps many. And it will erode Microsoft's influence in their previous position of dictatorial authority and will open up avenues for game developers. No big announcements yet of game companies writing SteamOS native games ( that I can find ), but these baby steps will lay the groundwork for those announcements. They will all notice this unprecedentedly fast adoption of SteamOS by 3rd party OEM system builders and later from SteamOS for existing systems and make a decision most likely to get some games written for native SteamOS. Remember that DirectX did not catch on overnight either and it was a real lame mess at first. Microsoft is either going to have to recommit to a massive defense of their non-console Windows game platform or they will lose it in time. And the main reason they will lose it is because of the missing Microsoft Tax of $50 to $100 per device that the OEM gets to pocket. Once enough machines are out there, 3rd party Steam Machines or SteamOS added on PC's, then that total number will become the factor that draws over development. But anyone that expected some overnight victory hasn't really thought this through. This is yet another front in a war that Microsoft never saw coming. They have set themselves up in a circular firing squad surrounded by multiple enemies with guns trained and ready to shoot anyone left standing.

The Competition ... Barbarians at the Gates ... Acer Gives Touchscreen Chromebook a Moonstone White Makeover ( Maximum PC 2014-01-03 ) Acer Announces DA2223 HQL and TA272 HUL All-in-One Android PCs. It's an all-in-one with Android inside. ( Maximum PC 2014-01-03 ) Acer Smells Blood in Low-Cost Tablet Category, Rolls Out Two New Models Starting at $130 ( Maximum PC 2014-01-03 ) Acer unveils new 7- and 7.9-inch Iconia tablets, starting at $130 ( TechSpot 2014-01-06 ) Lenovo Introduces Its First Android PC ( Tom's Hardware 2014-01-05 ) Meizu Announces MX3 Android is Coming to North America ( Tom's Hardware 2014-01-07 ) Brought to you by Microsoft ( Image Sources: 1,2,3,4 ) Following in the footsteps of earlier strategic geniuses such as Napoleon and Hitler in Russia, the French at Dien Bien Phu and our own Alamo, Microsoft has surrounded themselves with their enemy and has got them right where they want them. Actually that comparison is a bit unfair to Napoleon et al, because none of them first shot their own troops before engaging the enemy. So perhaps we should add Stalin's decapitation of his officer ranks. This makes for a wonderful strategy ... if your goal was to leave yourself surrounded, and defenseless. Good job boys! I'd say it's about time for Microsoft to come clean and name the geniuses that suggested attacking Windows and other classic brands that defined the company leading to nearly complete AWOL support from the previously loyal troops. BTW, here's a link to a good article mentioned at TechBroil from a Softie describing the situation from the inside ... Trust, Users and The Developer Division -- A follow up to what went wrong What does the peanut gallery have to say about all this ... Lenovo to release multiple Chromebook configurations this summer ( TechSpot 2014-01-09 ) Toshiba Chromebook inbound, Microsoft probably not happy about it ( NeoWin 2014-01-06 ) Brad Sams wondering about carving a niche? There is some kind of force field around NeoWin, or maybe tinfoil, but whatever it is it sure is effective at keeping out the scope of the epic fail their MicroGod has brought upon itself. Android apps on a Windows PC is an OEM gimmick, waste of time ( NeoWin 2014-01-10 ) And here we have Brad Sams yet again, rallying the troops I mean NeoKids as usual. You see, they sense that Android and/or some other variation(s) of Linux are preparing to invade the desktop and thanks to the vulnerabilities created by multiple Microsoft fiascos ( Windows 8 hatred, Surface backstabbing the OEM's ) there is real unprecedented risk of inroads being made. It's a shame that the code word "Normandy" has already been taken, ironically by Nokia for its prospective Android phone release, because that code word might be the most perfect one ever chosen for all these competitors. Brad tries to make sense of this but as usual misses the point ... ... and as usual blaming the OEM's for everything, even alleged declining PC sales. These same NeoKids just finished a full year of blaming not Microsoft, but OEM's for the hatred of Windows 8 devices. These same NeoKids also are united in their own love for mobile apps on a desktop computer, as long as the OS is Microsoft Tiles. Merging, unification, consolidation, "One Windows" they say. But change that OS to anything else and their brains meltdown and the babbling begins. What Brad and the NeoKids are avoiding facing is the fact that just like on the northern coast of France, a beach-head needs to be established before the invading troops conquer your territory.

Spooks and Spying ... Pushback Edition ... Some codes and notes about the backdoor listening on TCP-32764 in linksys WAG200G. ( GitHub approx 2014-01-01 ) Find out if your router is listening on backdoor port 32764 ( GHacks 2014-01-06 ) Some routers found to be listening on undocumented port ( NeoWin 2014-01-06 ) See the links for the ( likely incomplete ) list of affected routers. Naturally we have no idea what this is all about yet. And with the spook stories about compromised firmware from cooperating manufacturers and/or spooks planting bugs before you even get your device how can we ever be sure of anything. The Pirate Bay developing tool to free users from censorship ( NeoWin 2014-01-06 ) The Pirate Bay to introduce decentralization in attempts to beat censorship for good ( TechSpot 2014-01-07 ) One bright spot in a sea of madness. Blackphone promises to be the first privacy-centric smartphone to offer secure communications for users ( TechSpot 2014-01-15 ) Blackphone announced; claims to offer more security and privacy ( NeoWin 2014-01-15 ) And another bit of sanity. Like I said, this will be a growth industry. Firefox Aiming to be Free from NSA's Gaze. Possibility of a browser free from NSA surveillence ( Maximum PC 2014-01-14 ) Mozilla: Firefox Has No Government Backdoors ( Tom's Hardware 2014-01-14 ) Interesting. I hadn't thought about just how hard it is to verify if something is untampered with once it leaves a "trusted" party. They could post CRC and other file fingerprint data and users could verify files on their end, or maybe use a distributed authenticator, but as we now see so many avenues are compromised. Maybe we will soon see a "Verified Authentic" in the ABOUT box updated each time the program is launched. We need to try to imagine the methods the spooks will use to counter this and other ideas. Internet sets February 11th as day of protest against mass surveillance ( NeoWin 2014-01-10 ) Well it's a start I guess.

Spooks and Spying ... continued ... What It's Like When The FBI Asks You To Backdoor Your Software ( PC Magazine 2014-01-08 ) How about that? Do read the story for more insight. It's like I said, the governments of the world are making their moves now on pacifying their uppity citizenry, the Internet and all p2p correspondence. In fact we can retro-project our current understanding of all the spying right back to the old days before the Internet and now be completely sure that snail mail and telephones and telegrams and everything else were also compromised completely. It will take nothing short of citizen revolutions, overthrowing our protectors, and opening up of the deepest darkest records and secrets to completely understand the scope of government spying. NSA seeks to build quantum computer that could crack most types of encryption ( Washington Post 2014-01-02 ) NSA building quantum computer capable of cracking most forms of encryption ( TechSpot 2014-01-03 ) Not too long ago I'd have laughed this off. For some reason I'm not laughing this time. Per Snowden NSA Leaks, Dell PowerEdge Server BIOS Hacked ( Tom's Hardware 2014-01-03 ) This sounds like it fits squarely into the post-9/11 timeframe when Windows 2000 and then Windows XP were penetrating both the business and consumer space. IMHO, it was too late to completely compromise these OS releases without built-in backdoors hence the attacks on weak points like the BIOS firmware and with relatively new things like USB. Does anyone still doubt that the Longhorn/Vista cycle was targeted for penetration before release and the delay was more than coincidental? Apple denies involvement in NSA eavesdropping on iPhone users ( NeoWin 2014-01-02 ) I'd say that the probability that Apple stood up to and successfully resisted the government spooks is exactly zero. And now after five generations of either backdoors or reverse engineering I cannot imagine any scenario now where an iPhone could present any challenge to the spooks. Teenager reported to police after reporting vulnerability in government website ( NeoWin 2014-01-11 ) Knock, knock. Who's there? We're from the government. We're here to help. Let us in please. Websense: Is Windows Watson Leaking Info to Hackers? ( Tom's Hardware 2014-01-02 ) Windows crash reports may help hackers claims research ( NeoWin 2014-01-05 ) Just the tip of the iceberg, as all Windows veterans know full well. It is quite amazing that the concept of "phone home" without notification was ever allowed to take root in a free society ( and a quick one-time EULA does not mitigate this fact ). Long ago I suggested that each and every outgoing communication be treated as theft, like if a burglar broke in an used your phone for his personal long distance calls, and most importantly that this phoning home be quantified so that the owner of the computer/telephone/broadband be allowed to directly collect from the guilty party. The same concept could be applied to bloatware/malware and other software that uses the CPU ( and thereby electricity ) without explicit permission. Phoning home without notification and using CPU and power without permission are cases of theft and never should have become normalized.

Spooks and Spying ... N.S.A. Devises Radio Pathway Into Computers ( New York Times 2014-01-14 ) The NSA monitors 100,000 offline computers using radio transmitters ( TechSpot 2014-01-15 ) NSA Uses Radio Waves to Spy on Offline PCs ( Maximum PC 2014-01-15 ) Latest leak suggests NSA can spy on offline computers ( NeoWin 2014-01-15 ) More details on the non-existent black bag division of No Such Agency. Click the spoiler to see the design outline. It's a simple and effective procedure. USB connectors/dongles ( even in cable ends or flashdrives or anything really ) containing microscopic transceivers good for a few miles on classified ( probably variable oscillating ) frequencies that securely connect with portable spook stations. The USB device contains enough logic to hijack the computer through the firmware pre-Windows bootstrap. The spook logic can also be present on other devices, not just USB, perhaps everything from expansion cards to maybe even Ethernet cables or other connectors. In short, anything that can interface with the computer bootstrap process, and that means anything at all if the BIOS has been modified way back in the development process to secretly initialize hardware that we never even imagined were initialize-able. So let's just cut to the chase. Every possible technological feat seen on the post 9/11 TV spy thrillers and were not only completely possible and already underway, but they may have even been understating it. I guess it is no surprise that it was just announced that is returning for at least a half season ( 12 hours ) this spring. I wonder what kind of possible material they will explore this time around? Spy court judge slams proposed privacy advocate ( My Way 2014-01-14 ) Absolute proof of a thoroughly rigged system, for the government and against the citizens, that this FISA court really is. The friggin judge "Speaking for the entire U.S. judiciary" is "the former FISA chief judge". He is commenting on the recent recommendations from the White House. Now we just need some idi0ts in Congress to voice their approval to have a hat-trick of all three branches united against the very people that they allegedly serve. NSA collects millions of text messages daily in 'untargeted' global sweep ( UK Guardian 2014-01-16 ) One of the latest Snowden leaks via the Guardian. It seems that our government protectors are attempting what was previously considered impossible. Vacuuming up anything and everything. Bag it, tag it, and analyze it later. Former Top NSA Official: We Are Now In A Police State ( Washington Post Blog 2013-12-18 ) DEA agents use NSA intercepts to investigate Americans report ( RT 2013-08-05 ) Very VERY important one month-old and five month-old articles, the first quoting Bill "Binney, a 32-year veteran of the agency, was instrumental in the creation of the NSAs surveillance program for digital information. He also served as the NSAs senior technical director." What these articles show is that even the foundational theory for all the spying is a lie and is violating core American principles each and every day. National Security my arse. It is an all-seeing all-knowing high-tech police state that Goebbels and Stalin could only dream about. The product of the spying is being applied to exactly what it should not be applied to - the citizens. They even have a documented "parallel" tract to coverup the actual sources, a conspiracy that dwarfs whatever Nixon actually did. Can anyone now doubt that the powers-that-be have all the tools necessary to blackmail anyone they choose to? Moreover, the attorney general and the DoJ is right in the middle of this! We here in the USA have a thoroughly corrupt capitol city, DC ( District of Criminals ) that have taken the stereotypes of J. Edgar Hoover and LBJ and Nixon and the plumbers and made them all look like amateur hour rookies. No wonder they are angered at Snowden ... Americas Spies Want Edward Snowden Dead ( BuzzFeed 2014-01-17 ) Oh really? Who's the effin' traitor you federal bureaucrat? You are. If you read the oath you should have taken you'd know that YOU are violating the Constitution! Not every one of our soldiers are honorable though most are, but this idi0t is a case in point. Now I do happen to know exactly what oath he took and this dirtbag would do well to re-read it. I'll wager most of the complaints are from outside contractors or low grade unionized federal bureaucrats, with a vested interest in maintaining their situation sucking cash out of the taxpayer funded black budget, without any concern for the Constitution especially when money is involved. These fools are p*ssed that they got caught violating the Constitution and that's it. They're worried they will be forced to shutdown and get laid off. They're all keyboard warriors who are an insult to real field spies and soldiers who put their actual lives on the line rather than sit behind keyboards stealing data from far-away targets through taxpayer funded pipes illegally attached to private industry and citizen private property. In a just world we would be hanging each and every one of them that violated their oath and the Constitution without speaking up and resigning instead. NSA Data Have No Impact on Terrorism: Report ( Bloomberg 2014-01-13 ) Study claims NSA phone data collection is useless in preventing terrorist attacks ( TechSpot 2014-01-13 ) But but it's for the children and you know, keeps us secure. If even one live is saved, one child rescued, one unicorn spared from extinction, it is all worth it. ( /SARC )

Computer and Cloud (In)Security ... continued ... Some Yahoo visitors hit with ad-based malware this week ( NeoWin 2014-01-05 ) Yahoo's advertising network hit with massive malware infection ( TechSpot 2014-01-06 ) Yahoo malware turns computers into bitminer slaves ( NeoWin 2014-01-09 ) Every get the feeling it's you against the world? Well it's pretty much true now. Everyone ... hackers, government spooks, Big Technology and Big Data megacorps, advertisers, spammers ... they all have declared open season on the sheeple. They plan to shear us clean down to the last follicle and then cook us up for lamb chops. What a great thing this Internet is, eh? Blizzard warns of harmful information-stealing Trojan affecting WoW players ( TechSpot 2014-01-06 ) Is there any difference in this problem and the spook hacking? White hats, black hats, gray hats, no hats. Snapchat Data Breach: What Went Wrong and What to Do ( Tom's Hardware 2014-01-02 ) Snapchat updates its mobile apps, apologizes for exposed accounts ( NeoWin 2014-01-09 ) Snapchat patches security exploits, issues apology for the first time ( TechSpot 2014-01-09 ) And the hit parade continues. Dropbox: Recent downtime caused by routine maintenance error, not hackers ( TechSpot 2014-01-13 ) Cause Of The Dropbox Outage: Hacker Or System Update? ( Tom's Hardware 2014-01-14 ) Well I feel much better now, it wasn't hackers at all. ( /SARC ) Hey, I got an idea, let's create a fragile service where a single mistake or programming error can bring the whole thing down. Then let's trust our files to it and hope for the best. LinkedIn files lawsuit to stop unknown group from using bots to steal profile data ( TechSpot 2014-01-08 ) The funny thing is, they really only are worried that someone else might milk their "customers" for more than they do. Any complaints we see from these outfits like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, etc, are self-serving.

Computer and Cloud (In)Security ... Target: An additional 70 million people may be affected by recent security breaches ( NeoWin 2014-01-10 ) Target Hackers Took Personal Info Too ( Tom's Hardware 2014-01-10 ) Target data breach update says up to 70 million customers affected ( TechSpot 2014-01-10 ) Malware Was Used in December's Target Hack. Malware including RAM scrapers were used in the Target attack. ( Tom's Hardware 2014-01-13 ) Malware on point-of-sale terminals behind Target hack, at least three other well-known US retailers hit using similar methods ( TechSpot 2014-01-13 ) Target Hackers Wrote Partly in Russian, Displayed High Skill, Report Finds. Hacking Campaign Appears Broad, Sophisticated and Against Many Retailers ( wall Street Journal 2014-01-16 ) Any comment necessary? Note that those later updates are shifting the story now towards a large-scale organized set of attacks on multiple retailers. It seems that international criminals are looking at the online world just in the same way as our government protectors do, we are sheeple, ready for fleecing. In a twisted sort of way all these attacks are calling the bluff of our government protectors, exposing them as the ineffectual and unfocused boobs they are. How is it remotely possible for any hackers to get away clean given what we now know? It makes no sense. Actual terrorists will be heartened seeing the ease with which the hackers are getting away with attack after attack, crime after crime. Something has gotta give. Hackers steal card data from high-end retail chain Neiman Marcus ( TechSpot 2014-01-11 ) Target is not alone: Neiman Marcus and others hacked ( NeoWin 2014-01-11 ) Luxury Retailer Neiman Marcus Hacked, Three Others ( Tom's Hardware 2014-01-13 ) What me worry? I'm sure the spooks are on the case and will shortly make everyone safe again. Skype's Twitter, Facebook and blog sites compromised by Syrian Electronic Army (Update) ( NeoWin 2014-01-01 ) Skype blogs still down a day after defacement by hackers ( NeoWin 2014-01-02 ) Skypes social media accounts hacked by Syrian Electronic Army ( TechSpot 2014-01-02 ) Skype blog back online after defacement last week ( NeoWin 2014-01-06 ) Syrian Electronic Army threatens more cyber attacks on Microsoft ( NeoWin 2014-01-15 ) That was the earlier story. But more arrived a week later ... Microsoft Twitter accounts hacked by SEA ( NeoWin 2014-01-12 ) You know what's funny? It's not like the SEA will post any messages more damaging or embarrassing to Microsoft than their very own employees have. Facebook sued for allegedly reading private messages and selling data to advertisers ( TechSpot 2014-01-03 ) I'm sure this will get traction. Not. But we can keep our fingers crossed. Starbucks storing mobile passwords in clear text ( WTOP 2014-01-16 ) The dummyfication of the app world is well underway. With it, dummyfication of app development tools yielding dummified apps to be used and enjoyed by dummified sheeple. I wonder if Starbucks reads the newspaper and has heard of Target. If not, they will be educated on this in very short order.

Xbone ... just can't catch a break ... Some Comcast customers can't connect their Xbox One to the Internet via Wi-Fi ( NeoWin 2014-01-02 ) Microsoft thought about removing disc drive from Xbox One as late as mid-2013 ( NeoWin 2014-01-02 ) Report: PS4 outsold Xbox One during 2013 in UK ( NeoWin 2014-01-02 ) Major Nelson responds to Xbox One criticism, points to future improvements ( NeoWin 2014-01-04 ) Microsoft announces 3 million Xbox One consoles sold ( NeoWin 2014-01-06 ) Microsoft: Missing 8 of Xbox One's planned markets was the worst part of launch ( NeoWin 2014-01-06 ) Xbox One has a Kinect problem, but can 'Cortana' fix that? ( NeoWin 2014-01-06 ) Microsoft spokesman promises Xbox One's Halo will be released in 2014 ( NeoWin 2014-01-07 ) Sony: 4.2 million PlayStation 4 consoles sold as of Dec. 28 ( NeoWin 2014-01-07 ) Sony earns early victory in next generation console war ( TechSpot 2014-01-08 ) Sony unveils Playstation Now cloud-based gaming service at CES ( TechSpot 2014-01-08 ) I would point out that this Sony move to embrace classic "legacy" games is yet another kneecapping of Microsoft and others who favor planned obsolescence. And it will leave the MicroZealots babbling unintelligently once again. Oh, this one is really funny! ... Xbox One users view less porn than those on the PS4 ( NeoWin 2014-01-03 ) Says at least one MetroTard ... "XBOX is for families and PS4 is for dungens." ... Oh really? The ony problem with that is the fact that Microsoft is currently helmed by a bunch of wannabe hipsters angling for street cred. This leads to incredulous decision making, like this ... Xbox One owners can get an early preview of FX's new TV show Chozen ( NeoWin 2014-01-04 ) Wait, what? Families indeed! And talk about a narrow demographic, gay white ex-con gang bangers? Good job Microsoft, you're really good at this publicity thing! Disclaimer: this is NOT to disparage gay white ex-con gang bangers ( they need love too I guess ), just pointing out the very strange decision making coming out of Redmond. They have an infinite capacity for shooting themselves in the foot, and I can't wait to see how this one unravels before their eyes. Will the rap guy cartoon be using an iPhone? A PlayStation? Get your popcorn ready for it to backfire!. Late additions ... Microsoft exec: The cloud won't replace local hardware for next Xbox console ( NeoWin 2014-01-13 ) Much to the disappointment of the NeoKids of course, well not yet, the thread just started so give it some time. Fanboys are always eager to embrace restrictions I mean change, and walled gardens I mean playgrounds, as long as Microsoft is their dictator I mean parental figure. Microsoft's head of Xbox media licensing departs company, citing reorganization (Update) ( NeoWin 2014-01-15 ) Well I know nothing of this guy but I sense some kind of controversy here. Check out the vitriolic comment from one commenter ... Wow, the kid has some kinda huge chip on his shoulder. Sounds personal too. That particular commenter uses the handle FMRMSFT ( probably meaning "former Microsoft" ) so I wonder what the heck this is all about. Microsoft: Xbox One led December's U.S. console hardware sales with 908,000 units ( NeoWin 2014-01-16 ) NPD numbers: Xbox One leads in December ( Microsoft 2014-01-16 ) Maybe so, but strangely neither NeoWin or Microsoft provide a link to these figures at all, and I cannot find them at the NPD website either. Sorry, I cannot take their word for anything. That other bit: "Together, Xbox One and Xbox 360 held 46 percent of the hardware market share in the U.S." doesn't exactly impress me either since it means that their two biggest products in the sector don't even make up a majority of the USA market! 54% of the USA market is non-Xbox. That is stunning to me.

The MicroNokia Edition ... Nokia mocks Samsung's Michael Bay CES presentation ( NeoWin 2014-01-07 ) Oh Dear. Here is another sign of the sickness in Redmond matriculating down to its extremities. What happened here is that a Hollywood producer messed up at a CES presentation for Samsung ( this explains the unexpected animosity towards him from MicroZealot fanboys and Nokia ). Then the company formally of highly regarded quality and reputation, Nokia, once again steps into the waters of childish Scroogle-like unprofessionalism, a trait it has entirely picked up since its association with Microsoft, and released this twitter message. The tweet extoles the virtues of Microsoft's OneNote but what NeoWin didn't mention is that the tweet unfortunately has its own problem ... ( original photo from here ) Seriously, you can't make this stuff up! I haven't checked back yet but I would expect them to change the image without comment. Rumor: Microsoft thought about letting buyers pick Windows Phone or Android for their phone ( NeoWin 2014-01-06 ) Nokia's Android phone UI comes in to the light, too bad you can't buy it ( NeoWin 2014-01-08 ) Image of Nokia's Android phone prototype Normandy leaked (Update with Android skin UI) ( NeoWin 2014-01-13 ) More like "marketing concerns" for MicroNokia I would think. It's amazing that in every one of these stories the NeoKids insist Android was a bad idea. They seriously believe that 3% marketshare with Windows Phone is better than 10% or 20% or 30% or more marketshare with Android. They cannot fathom that people would just love to have that Lumia 1020 without being enslaved to WP and the Microsoft walled garden and all the crap that goes along with it. Microsoft: Windows Phone 8 devices can be upgraded to Windows Phone 8.1 ( NeoWin 2014-01-09 ) Lots and lots of sighs of relief that Microsoft might not be screwing them over again. Such cognitive dissonance deserves its own field of psychiatry. The very fact that they welcome this alleged promise indicates that they were standing on the precipice of NuMicrosoft planned obsolescence looking down the cliff and expecting to be shoved off at any moment save for this last minute reprieve. Let's call them MicroLemmings. Nokia launches Lumia Black update worldwide, comes with folders and lots of new features ( NeoWin 2014-01-09 ) Ummm, if you mean quasi-folders, then yeah, here you go. What they actually look like is a container app that holds other apps. Hey, we used to call these windows and they came to prominence way back in Windows 3.x, and that is exactly what this implementation looks like to me. Apparently Metro is now evolving now from Windows 2.x to 3.x equivalence. Hot dog! In two to five more years we can expect real folders and multitasking, perhaps even a customizable interface. Yay. This is how you get folders on your Nokia Lumia ( NeoWin 2014-01-09 ) Not so fast Brad Sams, there's a word for that ... fragmentation ... you know, the very thing that MicroZealots and MetroTards like yourself and the other NeoKids like to rag on Android for. Cognitive dissonance once again. Anyway, this appears to confirm that these are not folders in any real way except for appearance. They are much more comparable to the limited program groups implementation seen in Win3x. And that is ironically appropriate. Nokia officially shuts the doors on Symbian and MeeGo app support ( TechSpot 2014-01-02 ) They seriously hope and pray ( and beg ) that Symbian and MeeGo aficionados will jump ship to Windows Phone eh? Begin holding your breath now. ProKASE for Surface Pro adds USB ports, card readers ( NeoWin 2014-01-04 ) Now that would seem like a pretty interesting and useful accessory, right? Yes, but not to the kids at NeoWin who pounce upon this non-Microsoft add-on like Muslims insulted by infidels drawing images of their prophet. It's hard to figure out why they feel this way, perhaps they believe Microsoft got it perfect already? Maybe they resent someone other than Microsoft making a few dollars off a Microsoft product? Most likely it is just that they are simply insulted that someone even thinks that Surface requires any improvement whatsoever. Making it worse is that they would now need to go and spend a few bucks themselves with this 3rd party just to keep up with the Jones's and maintain feature parity. The ongoing war on freedom and choice illustrated once again. MicroSheep are all-in on uniformity dictated by their prophet of choice and God help anyone that gets in their way. Late addition ... Microsoft allegedly investing over $2 billion on Windows Phone makers in 2014 ( NeoWin 2014-01-15 ) Microsoft: We're doing cross-promotions, not paying OEMs $2.6 billion ( NeoWin 2014-01-16 ) Are they or aren't they dumping another pile of cash into the Microsoft Tiles cesspool, that is the question.

Windows XP FUD ... Windows XP support ends in 90 days, Microsoft remains firm on deadline ( NeoWin 2014-01-08 ) Support for Microsoft Security Essentials on Windows XP ends April 8th (Update) ( NeoWin 2014-01-09 ) Kaspersky Will Protect Windows XP After Microsoft's Deadline ( Tom's Hardware 2014-01-15 ) An official statement from Microsoft that rests completely on a lie. So how old is Skype then? 11 years old, right? Not to mention that little event in September 2001 which is central to the big story of the past 7 months. Hence that official Microsoft statement might be re-written to say this ... It is par for the course though. NeoWin and The Verge Tribe forums have the highest concentration of government boot-lickers, sheeple who sigh and shrug over each and every breaking spy story. They are enablers, and children, blinded by their narrow narcissism and prone to missing all clues before it is too late. Oh, check out this exchange of FUD between NeoKnuckleheads ... Yep, true enablers of the worst possible kind. This idi0t is allied with both the spook spies and with malicious hackers. His declared enemies are naturally Google, Apple and Windows XP users. There should be no doubt that the Microsoft fanboy contingent that arrived sometime after the Vista fiasco are sicker and more dangerous than any of the alleged Apple sycophants of the past and even the Linux community. But the story continues on ... Mixed Signals: Microsoft extends Windows XP Security Essentials support to July 2015 ( NeoWin 2014-01-15 ) Most antivirus programs to support Windows XP well past its own end date ( NeoWin 2014-01-16 ) Microsoft Reverses Course, Vows to Update MSE for Windows XP Until July 14, 2015 ( Maximum PC 2014-01-16 ) Microsoft to extend Windows XP anti-malware support through mid-2015 ( TechSpot 2014-01-16 ) Microsoft Extends Windows XP Anti-Malware Updates 1 Year ( Tom's Hardware 2014-01-16 ) Microsoft decides against dropping "support" ( whatever that is ) with its antivirus, matching what other companies have also done. The fanboys are not pleased. More Windows XP FUD follows with all kinds of displays of hatred including deathwishes for one of Microsoft's most successful products ever. Microsoft: You will still need to activate Windows XP after April 8th with a fresh install ( NeoWin 2014-01-14 ) So the 14 year-old question has finally been answered - the activation servers will remain! If they had shut them down they would have been screwed for messing with paying customers, a lot of them. If they pushed out a patch to disable WPA they would have opened the door for many more Windows XP fresh installs. So they split the difference and will run the servers forever. That's amazing. Can you imagine just how much money it has cost them to run such a huge amount of servers for so long! They have probably managed to turn a profit into red ink over the last 14 years due to this WPA activation experiment. Naturally there is much FUD in all these Windows XP articles withso much vitriol that you need to read them to believe them. Let me put it like this, the people who hate "Windows" the most ( I mean "Windows" in the classic sense which does NOT include Microsoft Tiles for retards ), the biggest enemy classic "Windows" has is NOT Apple'tards, and it is NOT Linux'tards, no, it is our very own contingent of MicroZealots and MetroTards. Congratulations Microsoft, you have finally surpassed Apple in one market after all ( and Linux too ) because you have spawned a kook contingent that has no peer. They actively wish death on your most famous and useful product, even Apple'tards didn't waste their time talking this way about Windows XP. Congratulations Steven ( site owner "NeoBond" at NeoWin ) for attracting these dingleberries hanging off the arse-end of the technology world to your site ( that goes for The Verge Tribe too ). If you put brownshirts and swastikas on them and held a large gathering at a Microsoft product release you would have them yelling Sieg Heil in no time flat. The Cult Of Personality is a very powerful thing indeed. 95% of ATM machines still use Windows XP, and will be exposed to vulnerabilities after April 8 ( NeoWin 2014-01-16 ) This is quite possibly the stupidest example of FUD yet seen on planet Earth. I kid you not. The entire article is written with the implication that ATM's are connected to the internet like a laptop on Wi-Fi. No really! ... Simply incredible! Great job with your NeoWin site Steven! You have published the most incredibly embarrassing piece of trash ever. It literally outdoes satire sites like the Onion, except for that it is not satire, your NeoKid is totally serious. The second commenter sets him straight ... Just unbelievable!

Hi everyone, back from the hellidays. I apologize in advance for anything duplicated! Ford CEO Alan Mulally officially takes himself out of Microsoft CEO race ( NeoWin 2014-01-07 ) Ford chief Allan Mulally pulls out of Microsoft CEO race ( TechSpot 2014-01-08 ) Report: Mulally considered Microsoft CEO gig before Ballmer's announcement ( NeoWin 2014-01-09 ) Or maybe he is just too professional for the Microsoft clown circus. So now that the Ford dude is completely out of the picture, the coast is clear for the NeoKids to pull out the long knives and make a night out of it. They had no choice but to wait for this since had he been chosen they would have found themselves necessarily rooting for him on occasion, especially if he turned Microsoft around. But now with him out of the running he can be sliced and diced at will for being an old guy with no tech know-how. Seeing how the NeoKids quickly turned on Elop it is certainly no surprise. Are Gates and Ballmer scaring off potential CEO candidates at Microsoft? ( TechSpot 2014-01-04 ) Report: Bill Gates to be 'much more involved' in Microsoft with new CEO ( NeoWin 2014-01-08 ) Rumor: Ericsson's head man Hans Vestberg new Microsoft CEO candidate ( NeoWin 2014-01-16 ) Well, that's certainly one possibility ( scaring them off ). However, I still think that because of the high profile nature of this CEO search done in the media with elements of personal campaigning, they have inexplicably allowed a carnival atmosphere which itself will lead to a +/- feedback when the CEO is announced by buoying or sinking MSFT on the street. They have actually found a way to mismanage expectations of the one single thing that was entirely in their control - selection of their own CEO. UPDATE: that last story suggests they have a new candidate on the list. Microsoft quietly ends support for Windows 7 dynamic themes ( NeoWin 2014-01-05 ) Microsoft with its advanced and massive cloud infrastructure and associated software cannot find the wherewithal to serve up images for Windows 7 themers. Oh wait, they still do as long as you use Bing. Yeah sure. Download and install Bing spyware which will almost assuredly hijack your search engine and homepage, and naturally add a service or two and autoupdate at will, just to get the same wallpapers that previously came through a benign theme engine. Sounds like a wonderful idea. Not. Meanwhile, have a look at the official crap wallpapers just officially released by Microsoft here ... Microsoft reveals new Windows 8.1 themes as part of Open Call project ( NeoWin 2014-01-12 ) ... Seriously? Windows 8.1 spring update expected to arrive in April ( NeoWin 2014-01-07 ) Rumor: Windows 9 'Threshold' expected in April 2015 ( TechSpot 2014-01-12 ) Windows 9 'Threshold' reportedly coming in April 2015 ( NeoWin 2014-01-11 ) Microsoft Reportedly Prepping Windows 9 Announcement ( Maximum PC 2014-01-13 ) Microsoft's April 2015 "Threshold" Release May Be Windows 9 ( Tom's Hardware 2014-01-14 ) More indications that Microsoft will NOT move swiftly and repair the damage done to Windows but will instead work at Windows Phone style snail's pace with incremental fixes. Good idea. Not. From that last link ... Poor Paul takes a beating from the very fanboys who normally love his shilling. I guess there is some kind of sweet, ironic justice in all this. Microsoft releases automatic Surface 2 update to fix BitLocker issue ( NeoWin 2014-01-06 ) Finally the patch to fix that Surface megabug. Sorry, not so fast ... Such are the dangers of Microsoft jumping into the hardware biz. They had it real easy in the days of being the OS software supplier to OEM manufacturers because they offloaded every problem, hardware and even their own OS software to those OEM manufacturers. Now they get the phone calls! Oh, I just have to mention this thing again ... Specs revealed for Panasonic's Performance version of Windows 8.1 20-inch 4K tablet ( NeoWin 2014-01-08 ) Recall this infographic I made way back before the Windows 8 launch ... Now have a look at this thing ... Ding, Ding, Ding. We have an absolute winner for least possible value for most amount of money. Even Apple couldn't gouge this much. Hey Panasonic, what is wrong with you? You should be making plasma computer displays!

If you click on the systray USB icon with either button nothing happens? Nothing at all? Hmmm. That's pretty interesting. Trying to remember such a thing but I do not think I ever saw that. I don't have time right now to chase this down but it seems to me that would certainly be a very searchable string for Google ... "click SysTray USB icon nothing happens" Lots of hits. Look at the ones at SevenForums, they look promising at first glance.

Don't forget ... HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder Remember that such entries will use a ShellEx subkey hanging off a higher key which is not necessarily easily identifiable. That ShellEx subkey contains a pointer to another class where a DLL is specified. That DLL holds the code that displays the icon. It is not something that can be adjusted from within the registry, but some of the context menu handlers might provide customization of their program through its own interface. Here is a thread that delves into it. Post #15 and beyond covers this subject in detail. More information here ... Read the whole thread to get a feel for it and see post #12 for specifics.

Never seen that! Reminiscent of script kiddies trying to block MSIE from Netscape fanboy sites, and vice versa. Let the arms race begin. Block Windows XP. Block Apple. Block Microsoft Tiles. Amateurs. Oh crap. You owe me another monitor.

@ epic ... great job in the top post Opera devs lost their minds years ago. It began IMHO when the Opera forum threads began to get prowled by NuOpera fanboys who shutdown every complaint. Every mistake they made was addressed by users in threads, but ignored thanks to their enablers killing the discussion by trolling the complainers and getting threads locked. The best we can hope for is for them to fork off the 12.x desktop source code to another group or release it to the community as public domain. EDIT: clarity

Court Rules No Suspicion Needed for Laptop Searches at Border ( ACLU 2013-12-31 ) U.S. Government: We can take your laptop and phone at the border ( NeoWin 2014-01-01 ) Another day, another enabling of the police state by government courts. What a system we got going here. It's almost as if everything is rigged. Wake up sheeple! OFF-TOPIC ...Well, this is probably my last post until the latest snowstorm passes and God forbid any power blackout. Batten down the hatches everyone, if you are almost anywhere in the middle to east USA there is a major storm incoming. For us, we are expecting about 24 hours and at a foot of new snow. Unfortunately that's the easy part. It will be followed up with the coldest day of winter so far ... 10 degrees to -10 degrees high/low ( and yes, that is Fahrenheit where zero is actually cold ). This kind of storm really sucks because it leaves a tiny window of opportunity to shovel all the white sh stuff before it freezes into solid Arctic ice sheets. Hours and days worth of time is pre-scripted in advance, and there is nothing you can do about it but accept it. Kinda like hurricane Irene when it was just sprinkling days before but you knew you had 10 inches of rain and flooding incoming on a timeline and you could do nothing about it. I hate winter! Stay safe and see you on the other side of this thing, I hope. ( Image Sources: 1,2,3 )

Windows XP use drops fast; Windows 8.1 moves ahead of Vista in December's OS data ( NeoWin 2014-01-01 ) NeoWin seemingly gets to gloat as Microsoft Tiles posts a minor gain of 1.19% while classic Windows versions fall 1.32%. The detailed numbers follow ... First the obvious caveat that combining those percentages as I did is not scientific because there is definite overlap ( any system that was updated 8 to 8.1 or even XP to 7 will quite possibly be double counted ). This problem is exacerbated by the act of adding already smoothed averages ( the statistics total rarely add up to 100% ). Finally, we really don't have any explanation of Net Marketshare methodology at all. It is already quite suspect for obvious reasons considering several adjustments made previously that render comparisons between different reporting periods ridiculous and useless. Having said that, it looks like the MetroTard versions gained approximately 1 percentage point in Q4, while classic Windows lost approximately 1/2 a percentage point ( that's from a quick eyeballing, I'll return after the storm with better quarterly details ). One other footnote. NeoWin had this story hours before the actual statistics were available on the website. I did check, multiple times but only the November numbers were posted, yet NeoWin had already ran the article with a screenshot included. This means that NeoWin has some different access to this commercial company's data which indicates something is amiss.

These things are going to be forever stifling innovation and severely threaten everyone except for the favored few who lobbied to get these special positions in the first place. We could start by having all patents expire in one year, implementing use-it-or-lose-it rules, and perhaps even rotating licensing of public airwaves and channels to stop the consolidation of IP in the hands of conglomerate empires like ABC/NBC/CBS/Fox/etc ( whatever your poison ) who then exploit it by buying up and sitting on music and TV entertainment ( at the expense of the artists and actors who actually did the performance ) and then parcel it back out to Cable/Satellite/etc at extortion prices and double dip by also extorting advertisers ( and that's where we really pay the bill ). It's quite a mess we have here indeed. Well that was pretty easy. It is a basic animated GIF. The one picture of a Surface is static in all the frames, the NYT screencaps are real and from the website. They are cropped and dropped in as layers which are resized using Trapezoid/Parallelogram transforms ( I always forget which is which ), that option depending on your editor will appear when you hold the pointer over a handle and pressing CTRL or ALT or SHIFT keys. Once the layers all match the shape of the target area on that Surface screen I then exported a single frame for each one ( I think that was just 6 bitmaps ) and then glued them together in an animated GIF program ( this time was Jasc Animation Shop ), set a few options and rendered it. This time I used "optimized" encoding rather than plain static, which means it actually only saves the "changes" from frame to frame ( rather than like a standard movie which is a sequence of complete frames ), the result is a much smaller file size but at the expense of some compatibility with older viewers and browsers I believe. It is also by definition lossy so you cannot extract out the source images which depending on your goal may be an advantage or disadvantage. But since going from BMP to GIF is already radically lossy it really is a moot point. Love it. From time to time people do these tricks, but for it to be real effective each participant needs to alter the text slightly and/or add some other bits. It is way too trivial for a computer to deduplicate plaintext. The difference to the spooks of sniffing and capturing 1 million identical texts versus 1 million different texts is night and day. For one thing the latter will exponentially multiply the storage and processing used. I believe there are some webpage javascript random keyword generators but I don't really want to drop that into Google or Bing at the moment to find them. What they should do is just make a form based randomizer that adjusts a seed text ever so slightly. The idea is sound nonetheless.

The "Safely Remove ..." icon in the systray ... If you left-click it, the dialog should immediately offer to eject any removable devices and defaults to favoring the most recently inserted/installed ( at least that's been my experience ). If you right-click it, there should be a small selectable box that says "Safely Remove Hardware" and clicking on that should bring up the full dialog with the device tree that I believe you are expecting. Maybe I am not understanding, what do you mean by "selected" the Safely Remove icon, was that a left or right click? There are definitely some strange things in the way Windows handles the notification area though, and it has gotten worse in Vista/7. It is needlessly obfuscated and the settings aren't intuitive. On Windows 7 for most systray icons I always have them set for "(always) Show ..." but it doesn't always seem to work out ( though on XP it works 99% of the time just by unchecking the old "hide inactive icons" ). I'm not sure what the Black Viper "Safe" preset actually changed, but from what I remember most of his registry scripts just incremented or decremented simple DWORD values probably from 00000001 to 00000002 or something like that. If you really want to get to the bottom of it you can compare his registry script to a ( hopefully ) saved registry export you might have, locate the difference and just play around with that one registry value.

Oh I almost forgot! ... Happy New Year to everybody! ..... ..... ..... .....

PC makers to rebel against Microsoft Windows at Consumer Electronics Show ( TechSpot 2013-12-27 ) Yet even more evidence of a revolt in the OEM channel, or at least serious hedging of bets. How will Microsoft stop the bleeding now I wonder. Everyone warned them about screwing around with the OEM network. By directly competing with them with Surface ( well, at least that was the plan ) they only managed to tick them off. Now the chickens are apparently coming home to roost. Google's Eric Schmidt on 2014: 'Big data' will be everywhere ( NeoWin 2013-12-30 ) Ummm, ya think? They're already everywhere. And Eric, I already coined that term ( inspired by Big Government and Big Hollywood ) and let me tell you, it is not a compliment. Meanwhile another Microsoft-Google war in the comments of course since that was the entire point of the post. Steam Machine Review ( NeoWin 2013-12-25 ) How to Install SteamOS ( Maximum PC 2013-12-27 ) A couple of good, and well-documented hands-on experiences. Note that there are severe partition wiping risks from the SteamOS installer that testers should be aware of.