JorgeA

The SkyDrive is falling! (Well, the name, anyway...) “SkyDrive” follows Metro into oblivion as Microsoft abandons trademark case --JorgeA

Whoa! LOL -- and it will even be literally true! --JorgeA

Now, there's a statistic I'd love to get a hold of -- the percentage of "Windows 8" licenses that get sold but then downgraded to 7. --JorgeA

Thanks a bunch Charlotte for the extensive explanation. I guess what I'm trying to wrap my head around is why there would be a need for a VM over which to run an older version of Windows, vs. simply running that version of Windows directly on the machine. (Note that this is a different issue from -- for example -- running XP in a VM inside Windows 7 because you have some old program that won't run on the newer Win7. In the case we're discussing, we are trying to dispense with the newer OS altogether.) Let me give a simple hypothetical example and see if I'm getting it. Suppose that, four years from now, they come out with "USB 4". None of today's Windows versions is equipped to handle that: the Intel VM would provide the way to make use of USB 4 on (say) Windows 7. Is that the sort of thing we're talking about? In that case, I could see how one could keep running 7 indefinitely. --JorgeA

More bad news for MSFT and Surface: Microsoft Surface revenue so far: $853 million [emphasis and emoticon added] AllThingsD picked up the story. check out the graphic that goes with the story. It wouldn't do justice to it to attach it here. Also via AllThingsD, this blog post. --JorgeA

This is interesting -- can you elaborate on the part about a virtualizing hypervisor being (potentially) Microsoft's worst nightmare? I can see how Intel releasing its own OS could be a problem for MSFT, but am not so clear on how the hypervisor thing would affect MSFT. Why would they care -- couldn't they argue that unless you're running the latest version of Windows, you're exposed to Internet nasties and also missing out on great new features? --JorgeA

Ed MicroBott finally puts out a halfway decent column about Windows 8, although he can't resist the temptation to make some excuses. First, the good stuff: And now for some of the output from the excuse factory: I am old enough to remember the days when any decent new PC you bought went for $1500. My first four systems, purchased over a span of 14 years, each cost around that amount, give or take a few dozen dollars. I'd come to think it was some sort of unwritten rule about selling PCs. I didn't have to buy a new computer for another ten years. Imagine my shock when, "all of a sudden," immensely more powerful machines were retailing for $600, $800. (Obviously I hadn't been paying much attention to developments in the computer market.) For this, in part we can thank all that "crapware" that Bott and so many others complain about: they help to reduce the price that customers pay for their PCs. If I don't like a particular piece of "crapware," I simply uninstall it, or remove the desktop icon and leave the program dormant in its corner of my hard drive in case I ever develop an interest in it. But I am thankful to the program's vendor for making my computer less expensive to buy. And yes, I've become aware of the existence of some valuable software (or software categories) that way. Finally, there is this comment: Two inches?? Umm, I don't know how Ed Bott sets up his office, but the shortest distance between the top row of my keyboard and the bottom edge of my monitor is eight inches diagonally -- meaning that the action includes both outward and upward movement. That distance (and remember, this would be the shortest movement) makes for a fairly uncomfortable gesture -- IOW, gorilla arm. And this is not even counting the esthetic and maintenance factors involved in the repeated addition of skin oils to the screen. --JorgeA

I never thought we'd see a headline like this... How Microsoft could beat Siri and Google Now: A modern Microsoft Bob ...but the body of the article, rather than ridiculous, is actually frightening: It's not hard to imagine ways in which this technology could be used by spooks (rogue or otherwise) against people who don't like whoever happens to be running the government at the time. And, needless to say, the "app" thus triggered would not be announcing itself to the user. The first political party in power to use this technology could become the only party to hold power from that point on. It's amazing that people like Stefan Weitz are rushing nonchalantly into creating the dream machine of every would-be Stalin, Hitler, and Mao out there. I don't know whether it's worse to think that they have no clue as to what they're creating -- or that they know full well what they're up to. --JorgeA

Now there's an effective image. Great job! --JorgeA

Regarding the issue of the coloring of hyperlinks, I made a screenshot of a post that includes how it looks both in the reply box and in the preview pane. If it comes out for you the way I see it on my screen, you'll see that the hyperlinked text in the reply box has good contrast (blue hyperlink vs. black text), but then it reverts to black in the preview pane and is difficult to tell apart from the regular text around it: The factors that save the situation in this case are that the hyperlinked text is in bold in a different typeface and larger point size. Still, the screenshot illustrates the issue of blue vs. black for hyperlinks. If the linked text were in the middle of a paragraph and matching the format of the surrounding text, it would be awfully difficult to know that it's a hyperlink rather than merely underlined text, and so the reader wouldn't necessarily know that it's clickable. What can be done about this, either at the user (my) end or at the programming end? --JorgeA

Yeah, that's pretty rich! --JorgeA

Just came across this glowing (not!) field report on the Windows 8 experience: --JorgeA

An excerpt from Security Now! #409. To quote @jaclaz -- humanity is doomed: So the infrastructure is already in place to squelch any opposition through legal channels, Vladimir Putin-style, as soon as it becomes too bothersome. Since practically everybody is a criminal, consciously or otherwise (there are way too many laws on the books), all that's needed is the information -- which they are now collecting -- and the motivation to [sarcasm ON] Impartially Enforce THE LAW [sarcasm OFF] on the intended target. My own views reflect Leo Laporte's here: I don't care much if a private company knows who I am or what I'm doing, except insofar as the data is in existence to be (officially) subpoenaed or (covertly) wiretapped. What's the worst Amazon.com is going to do with me, try to sell me something? But the spooks -- well... That's why (for example) I keep my cellphone off unless I'm expecting a call or need to make one: as I keep saying, if the data doesn't exist, it can't be used against us. Why give them any more data than we have to? --JorgeA

A very perceptive piece of analysis. Here's a couple of choice quotes for the time-impaired: [emphasis in original] Like we said here long ago (I remember CoffeeFiend especially saying it), this would acknowledge the fact that a tablet is not a PC, and a PC is not a phone. --JorgeA

Steve Gibson, in Security Now! episode 409, offered a number of jokes that have been going around regarding the NSA. Here's (IMHO) the best one: BTW, episodes 408 and 409 are well worth listening to, or reading the transcripts. In #408 Gibson describes how he believes the spooks are doing it. --JorgeA

How long before SkyDrive or some other form of cloud-only storage of users' data becomes mandatory and private hard drives are prohibited, all in the name of public safety, fighting crime and terrorism, protecting the children, eradicating hate, etc. etc.? From my cold, dead fingers... --JorgeA

That's scary. Another reason to keep (and encrypt) your sensitive data locally rather than in the cloud. Here's a related story: Feds put heat on Web firms for master encryption keys --JorgeA

It looks like this for me: Are you using a non-default theme? A non-default theme? I didn't even know that I could change it! So I guess that the answer is -- no, I'm using whatever the default is. FWIW, that's on IE8. --JorgeA

Whoa, once again Demerjian pulls no punches as he dismantles Microsoft's Windows 8(.1) strategy, performance, and future: Microsoft drove the bus off the cliff, now it tries to speed up A selection from the many quotables: --JorgeA

Well, seemingly they also cannot (or don't care to provide this technology to FBI) what should be a much simpler core (for people possessing super-computers) i.e. decrypt a hard disk: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/06/28/brazil_banker_crypto_lock_out/ Wow, that story shows the value of good encryption. I do wonder, though, what the reporter had in mind with the highlighted text in the following quote: For voice communications that's a real problem, and as we can see from your example it can serve to get someone (who may be perfectly innocent) into trouble as easily as it could keep a guilty party out of trouble. --JorgeA

Sounds like a big fat lie to me. We've all heard of the idea of "plausible deniability." Well, this is highly implausible deniability! So, they can tap into people's transatlantic communications, assemble pettabytes of data, connect people to everyone else they're in contact with -- and yet they can't search their own e-mail? Yeah, right. --JorgeA

--JorgeA Peter Bright just dies when discussing with Leo Laporte. His facial expressions when debating with Mary and Leo are priceless. 1:09:00 - Pure destruction of Peter Bright. It's like all the bad moments of the presidential debates rolled into one compilation vid. Metrotards would be booed out in a TV debate. That's why there is such a strong censorship on places like Neowin. That was a great sequence indeed. Leo just tears apart the whole "full-screen Metro app" notion while Peter feebly tries to rationalize it. If there were a focus group with their approval meters, you could almost see the Win8 graph plummeting at this point. --JorgeA

That picture hurts my eyes. Also reminds me of the kind of things I could create with whatever bloatware came with the Windows 95 on my old Packard Bell. A correction is needed in the box to the left of balloon #3. Instead of ending with "find the charms," the sentence should read, "is annoyed by the charms." Or, "is interrupted by the charms." Also, it would be interesting to learn how many of that "virtually everyone" who launches an app "on the very first day," launches an app on the second or subsequent days. --JorgeA

I just keep shaking my head in disbelief at the positions some of these folks take. BTW, are you the "anonymous" who wrote this gem with respect to the "XP retirement party" graphic: (No need to reveal your true identity. Just expressing appreciation.) --JorgeA

Yeah, that woud make life so much easier for the rest of us! But don't you worry -- before we know it, every PC will have security login combining biometrics and complex gesture-based passwords. It'll take the user's blood,iris scan, etc., and then combine the info with the results of the gesture test to derive an estimate of intellectual ability to provide the appropriate UI for that user. And then send the data thus collected to the NSA, of course. Who knows, it could be a terrorist trying to log in. Better safe than sorry... --JorgeA