JorgeA

Very funny, fitting video. Microsoft is the ship we see, and the buying public is at the other end of the radio... Regarding Thurrott's quote -- well, if MSFT were in fact "listening" to customers, Windows 8.1 would have included a real Start Menu, offered Aero Glass, and made Metro completely optional on first use ("Is this PC [1] a toy or [2] a work machine?" ), the same way as some software packages let you decide which language you want when you first install them. --JorgeA

Somebody other than Elop is looking increasingly likely to take over for Steve Ballmer: Is Ford’s Alan Mulally Now in the Lead to Be New CEO of Microsoft? Hmm -- I know that we've made the automotive analogy before in this thread (with respect to the UI), but does it also hold for running a tech company? Can a car guy direct Microsoft successfully? Note that Mulally is 68. How long could he be expected to stay on the job? I wonder if the kingmakers view him as a sort of transitional figure, or maybe a Friend of Steve (it's in the article) that they can control. --JorgeA P.S. Or maybe he'll have enough of an outsider's perspective to finally steer the MSFT ship clear of the Metro iceberg, and force some of the current brilliant execs to walk the plank. One can hope, anyway...

We may have missed this when it first came out, but back then Woody struck again with a list of the most important fixes to Win8 that he'd like to see in a Windows 9. Notice his "must-have features" Nos. 7 and 1... He draws an interesting parallel to the evolution of the Office interface, which he says has returned to a higher level of sanity (away from the Ribbon) in the 2013 version. --JorgeA

In line with our theme of the history of MSFT screw-ups, here's one put together by Woody Leonhard, dating back all the way to MS-DOS 4.0. Windows 8 features prominently, of course... Enjoy the trip down memory lane. --JorgeA

Thanks jaclaz, I checked it out and will monitor it for further improvements. --JorgeA

Symantec is offering me an updated version of their Norton 360 suite, and when I went to read the EULA I came across the following text there: Now some folks here might want to joke about Norton possibly being a "weapon of mass (PC) destruction" , but more seriously I'd be curious as to what you all think the section above could be talking about. The only WMD connection I can think of is that the EULA prohibits using Norton products to try to stop packages like Stuxnet that are intended to mess up the computers running production facilities such as (but not only) uranium enrichment centrifuges. Could that be it? Any other possibilities? Other than that, I'm scratching my head. --JorgeA

LOL

Is the search function in Windows 8 crippled? Alex Castle reports in the November 2013 issue of MaximumPC that: Any thoughts on what he says about Search in Windows 8? What about his suggested alternative -- ever heard of it? --JorgeA

This makes no sense. Do these MSFT managers even know what they're talking about? Everything I have ever read about PC security tells me that you're not supposed to install one AV "on top of" another. You can install (for example) anti-spyware on top of anti-virus, but not one anti-virus program on top of another anti-virus program. The idea (as I understand it) is that they can interfere with each other and you end up just as badly off as if you didn't have any protection installed. Windows Defender (as MSSE was previously known) was an anti-malware program and thus could run concurrently with an AV suite, no problem. But MSSE is billed as a full-fledged AV program, so Holly Stewart's advice strikes me as terrible. Unless she knows something that no other AV vendor is willing to admit to... --JorgeA

That's pretty funny (and fitting)! --JorgeA

At first I thought that maybe Panay was misspeaking, but according to the hard-to-read chart that @jaclaz linked to , this is indeed the official name for the thing. --JorgeA

One of the computing industry's more colorful figures plots a comeback: Exclusive: John McAfee vows to make Internet 'impossible to hack' in Silicon Valley return --JorgeA

I had the same impression. --JorgeA

As long as it's not another walled-garden type of scheme where anything users want to install has to go through Valve/Steam, this is an unqualified good development. If it is another walled garden, then it's a "qualified" good development -- not so much in and of itself as for the further competition that it gives Microsoft. --JorgeA

Another thing about this item: Paul is really taking a beating in the comments section. A lot of incisive points being made there. Here's one of the best contributions: --JorgeA

More stuff that our friends at No Such Agency peek into: 'Follow the Money': NSA Spies on International Payments This has got even some spooks worried: --JorgeA

Well I still don't like it. Your fingerprint will probably be stored somewhere ( well unless they just store a hash and recalculate it each time you press it, but I gotta think this will be high CPU cost ). It is surely inevitable that if they are stored they will be copied. And there will be no need to cut off a finger if you can just 3D print a small mockup that is good enough to wear like a glove. I predict that this will become a boon to criminals in the near future when they get to wear other people's fingerprints for day-to-day activities and even crime. Actually we don't even have to worry about the biometrics in iPhones at all. All they need to do is collect any of the millions of already existing fingerprint photos all over the world, many are already online, and write some software that will convert them to 3D printer source files and voilà! Long-dead people will be resurrected and be committing crimes all over the world. Perhaps the entire concept of fingerprints is about to be removed from all possible use of unique identification. The so-called benefit-of-the-doubt will need to be considered. Charlotte, you are a prophet... and it didn't even take that long for your prediction to come true: German group claims to have hacked Apple iPhone fingerprint scanner [emphasis added] That TechSpot headline should be changed to read: Thieves won't be able need to sever your finger to unlock the iPhone 5S From the comments section, one bit of oft-neglected wisdom for our "mobile age": --JorgeA

This gentleman claims that it all works together for him: http://forums.malwarebytes.org/index.php?s=7f2b387094682430979cd61d16a4a552&showtopic=133102 Anybody here have a (working) multi-layered security setup to rival that one? --JorgeA

In privacy news -- I'm not sure if we covered this story already, but it's so Kafkaesque that I had to (re)mention it: Feds Threaten To Arrest Lavabit Founder For Shutting Down His Service [emphasis in original] So it's no longer enough to cease providing customers a measure of privacy, you have to actively collaborate with the official Peeping Toms, or else... As they say, it was an offer he couldn't refuse... --JorgeA

Great images! Did you create them yourself? Good research work even if you "only" found them somehow. Oh, and Thurrott's latest seems to suggest that he's done a (another) 180-degree turn. Lately he'd been pretty down on Metro in the Windows Weekly podcasts (as I've quoted), but this marks a return to advocacy for what we might call the televisation of the PC... --JorgeA

Out of the frying pan and straight into the fire. Sorry, I'll pass. Yeah, the headline I saw sounded exciting, but when I read the details it turns out to be even worse than cookies. From the Wall Street Journal: [emphasis added] --JorgeA

Thanks for the scoop, Charlotte. --JorgeA

This article is a bit on the technical side, but it provides some insight as to how backdoors creep into security software: Stop using NSA-influenced code in our products, RSA tells customers Just one "teaser" excerpt: --JorgeA

No complaints here. Just to be clear, I am very happy with the way the issue ultimately got resolved and with the way the board is managed. --JorgeA

Isn't that supposed to be a Chinese curse -- "May you live in interesting times"? --JorgeA