JorgeA

What is surprising is IMHO the apparent surprise at these kind of "news" (actually not really "news"). It is obvious that any government will do everything in its powers (and even more) to keep under control dissidents and potential menaces to the status quo. From a purely technical standpoint this makes little or no sense: To me, the interesting part isn't so much that governments are doing this -- it was not hard to suspect it -- but the extent to which my suspicions have been confirmed, and even exceeded, in the past year. But even a simple setting under "Control Panel" (or similar) would do, I mean one can bear looking at the desktop or (once ) to the NCI, at least the strict time needed to navigate to where the custom setting can be changed.... You beat me to expressing the idea (see my previous post). --JorgeA

I would add, and allow the user to set a default and not have to choose every time they boot up. Do something like grub does, give you a few seconds to choose another option, then go into the default if no choice is made. In other words, give the poor user some control over their system. After all, they have chosen to use your OS and by doing so have acknowledged that the OS maker and various alphabet groups are going to be reviewing the content of the system. So, at least make the user feel like they have at least a tiny bit of control. bpalone That sounds good to me. I'd be happy with a setup where the user would make that choice initially when installing Windows (or the first time that a store-bought PC booted up) and then that choice would remain the default until the user changed it via some simple method. That would eliminate one step during bootup (the Grub multiboot system I have makes me choose every time I reboot -- that's unavoidable of course, but in the case of the Metro vs. Desktop UI it's not necessary to make a selection every time). --JorgeA

Lest anybody get the impression -- in the wake of the NSA revelations -- that the U.S. government is the only one that snoops into private individuals' business, read this: Foreign regimes use spyware against journalists, even in U.S. --JorgeA

^ But but but that would mean ... ... (drums beating) ... ... the application of plain logical common sense! Taboo! No. Common sense would be a simple MANUAL switch/preference that the user can use to choose between NCI and "normal" Windows, INCLUDING Start Menu on ANY device, whenever he/she wants, and NOT something "automatic" (that - like any other unneededly complex setup - WILL fail before or later on some hardware). Practical example. HOW exactly will the senseless automatic determination of workspace behave on this specific (possibly also senseless) newish device? http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/review/2233469/asus-taichi-review http://www.asus.com/taichi/ jaclaz I would take either idea as an improvement over the current situation with Win8. We've favorably mentioned here before the concept of an OS that would detect the hardware it's on and then offer the UI that's best suited for that hardware. (As we were saying early on in this thread: a PC is not a tablet, and a tablet is not a PC.) It's not unprecedented for an OS to select features depending on the hardware: for instance, Windows Aero vs. Basic for machines that lack the graphics capacity to handle Aero. Although as TELVM suggested, it should be possible to change one's choice of UI. But sure, the purest solution would be to have an installation (or first-boot) screen that would put the two choices side by side (without automatically selecting a "default") and let the user decide -- and then allowed him to easily switch back and forth. --JorgeA

Re: Charlotte's post upthread, here's a company that does seem to listen to its customers, at least in some respects: H-P Says It Will Clarify Controversial Server Software Policy First they brought back Windows 7 PCs, and now they fixed a policy that users objected to. Are you listening, Mr. Nadella? Watch and learn... --JorgeA

A pair of insightful critiques of Windows 8.1U1: Windows 8.1 Update 1 -- A Frankenstein product stitched together with compromises A sign that real choice is approaching? Windows 8.1 Update 1 lacks the one thing that could save the troubled OS -- a Start menu --JorgeA

Somebody else has noticed Paul Thurrott's dizzying changes of heart, and eloquently takes him to task for the position Paul takes after his latest 180-degree turn: Paul Thurrott thinks Microsoft should stop trying to please everyone. He's wrong. --JorgeA

Windows 8.1 Update 1 comment of the week: Great first reply to that comment, then watch the W8 groupies and MSFT sycophants start snorting... Honorable mention on page 2: --JorgeA

You're going to drive me to the Web to find out who Bob Ross is/was... --JorgeA

Love the graphic!! --JorgeA

And now more hopefully: Internet architects propose encrypting all the world’s Web traffic As the aticle goes on to explain, there are flaws in the proposed changes, but it would definitely be a step in the right direction. --JorgeA

Anybody here using Chrome might want to take notice of this -- Speech recognition hack turns Google Chrome into advanced bugging device The discoverer of this flaw (if that's what it is) notified Google about it almost five months ago and --surprise, surprise -- nothing's been done about it: --JorgeA

Another argument for the "benefits" of walled-garden app stores: you get to install anything THEY decide you're allowed to. --JorgeA

In less encouraging news... New surveillance technology can track everyone in an area for several hours at a time Great -- imagine what the East German Stasi or segregationist authorities in Mississippi could have done with this technology in 1989 or 1963, had it existed then. They were used in demonstrations for police? It sounds a lot likelier that they would be used in demonstrations against police. Politicians know which side their bread is buttered on. --JorgeA

Wow. in a weird sort of way, I find this reassuring. The fact that the vaunted NSA geniuses would leave open the possibility of using such a relatively unsophisticated piece of code to vacuum up the data on their computers, makes me wonder if they aren't as omnipotent and fearsome as we've been led to think. After all, it IS a government bureaucracy... Thanks for the good news (if that's indeed what it is!). --JorgeA

Even North Korea is abandoning Windows (the look, anyway): North Korea's Own OS Goes From Copy of Windows to Copy of OS X An interesting point, for Linux fans perhaps to ponder, is the following: --JorgeA

We knew that it would come to this: New York Police Department is beta-testing Google Glass Now put that together with this: Just When You Thought Google Glass Couldn't Get Creepier: New App Allows Strangers to ID You Just by Looking at You --JorgeA EDIT: new link

Well, no . One should ignore him every other day . jaclaz

A-ha!!! Starting at 18:13, Paul Thurrott waxes lyrical on the beauty of Aero Glass in Windows Vista on one of the first episodes of Windows Weekly, November 2006: [emphasis added!] It'd be interesting to find similar glowing descriptions of Aero back then by today's advocates of the Windows 8 flat and dull UI. --JorgeA

That list would be good enough for me, too. All they would need to do is to add Aero as an optional theme under Personalize when you click the Desktop, the same way they kept the option for Windows Classic for so many years. --JorgeA

Thanks! Survived another one. 10 inches in 12 hours, so AccuWeather called that one pretty close. 4 inches just two days ago also, and naturally nothing is melting ( 10 degrees F tonight, 3 degrees tomorrow, daytime below freezing ) so it is getting pretty darn high on the ground with no place to put the plowed new stuff. Ah well, I see some others got double that amount, so we're lucky I guess. Glad you made it through OK. Over here, we didn't get any snow -- instead, we got a quarter-inch coating of ice over everything. On top of the snow that was already on trees, it caused thousands of them to break and take down power lines with them. I have friends and family who still have no electricity, two days later. People are moving in with relatives or staying at hotels, and public and private buildings are being used as shelters. The electric company says it's the most damaging ice storm in their history. Miami's sounding real good right now... --JorgeA

Man, put this technology together with government snooping and you have the recipe for a non-violent totalitarianism where people with views different from the officials in power can be almost completely silenced at the press of a button. No arrests or shots to the back of the head necessary. All you'd need is to get a party in power that's contemptuous enough of the democratic process, and that could be the last effective election. --JorgeA

An intriguing security possibility that's emerged in the last few months is the Malwarebytes Anti-Exploit (more info here). It's still at the beta stage and I'm not sure if they will charge for it when it comes out of beta, but I have it on three machines and haven't had a problem with the current version. (An earlier one had a bug that affected the opening of Word documents.) If I have to pay for this product, I will seriously consider buying it. --JorgeA

The emphasized portion above leads me to think that Windows as we have known it is going to be a thing of the past. Yes they are back tracking at the moment, but if my memory serves me correctly, they have back tracked in the past, only to baby step us to where they wanted us to begin with. His comments about "cloud-first world" is the clincher for me. The optimist in me says that the "reimagining" he's talking about will be an emphasis on user privacy and data security, with end-to-end encryption that makes the data inaccessible to both Microsoft and spy agencies. Then again, I can be optimistic that Microsoft will be paying me to use its future operating systems and put up with their UI annoyances. --JorgeA

While the marketshare of Windows 8(.1) increased by 0.09 %, in the same period Windows XP increased its marketshare by 0.25% Now that is amazing. We can attribute the increase to the vagaries of random sampling or whatever, but the point remains that XP usage is not dropping precipitously in spite of all the attempts to kill it. --JorgeA EDIT: clarity