JorgeA

I'd love to be a fly on the wall of some of these places and listen in on the thought process that leads them to make these sorts of changes. What exactly are they thinking, and what do they expect to gain from crippling their interfaces and ending up all looking like each other? --JorgeA

Great find, thanks. Government spying is more "popular" internationally than we'd thought. --JorgeA

Two perspectives on Windows 8.1: A. Woody Leonhard reviews what's new, sprinkling in commentary that will warm the hearts of most readers of this thread: [emphasis in original]B. PCWorld makes a list of things that are still "missing" in the preview version: Both articles make for good, informative reading. --JorgeA

An oldie but a goodie. Starting at about 42:40, Paul Thurrott reveals his personal distaste for the Metro UI and his preference for the Desktop: I'm thinking that the explanation for Thurrott's many apparent 360-degree turns is that he himself actually prefers the Desktop interface, but is resigned to Metro as the inevitable wave of the future. --JorgeA

I had database errors yesterday. Couldn't get into MSFN at all for several hours. It looks like the problems are coming back... And I'm still not getting e-mail notifications of new posts. --JorgeA P.S. And then when I submitted this post, I got another error. Ended up back in the forum overview instead of this thread.

I totally agree -- the cure is worse than the disease. If we could get the NSA folks to spend their time at the office "liking" stuff instead of what they're actually doing, I'd consider that tax money well spent... --JorgeA

Yeah, toward the end it really degenerates into name-calling ("cranky idiots") and the writer comes off as arrogant and patronizing. And then we see his bio paragraph: Except that, of course, in this case they do. So he's a paid employee for Microsoft. That gives us some insight into what he wrote and why. One other point. If PC users became "simpletons," then due to its own GUI Microsoft has played a huge role in this devolution. Yet somehow Perlow is using this to argue for further simplifying the UI...?!? Does not compute (so to speak). Finally, if Perlow doesn't understand the difference between "change" and "improvement," then I have to question whether Microsoft is getting its money's worth from the salary they pay him. OK, I couldn't resist adding one more thing -- all right, two more things, both excellent observations in the comments section: Another great set of links, BTW. How do you manage to put all of these together so quickly? It would take me half an afternoon to create some of your digests. --JorgeA

Of course it was. I had an argument about this on Channel9: http://channel9.msdn.com/Forums/Coffeehouse/Dick-move The fanboys didn't like it one bit and flailed around with ad hominems. It's one of my "how to handle the boyz"-threads. So, great minds think alike!! I have to hand it to you, though -- you really know how to deal with these fanatics. For me, it's hard to bear the stress and annoyance of hearing this cr*p, especially like the first one: I just can't fathom that "I'm not a Jew, so I don't care" type of argument. It's an emotional response to a rational line of discussion, and I've always found it to be so maddeningly irrelevant as to not know what to do with it. And yet, some (many?) people do approach discussions that way, so OTOH I can't just leave it unanswered lest they think that I'm conceding their "point." Hence, the stress. --JorgeA

Glad to hear that it's still possible to get the Gadgets. BTW, has anybody else wondered about the timing of the original announcement last year that people should stop using Gagdets for "security" reasons? It was right around the time that Win8 was coming out (within a month, IIRC). I've always suspected that trying to eliminate the Gadgets was an attempt to make the Vista/Windows 7 Desktop look that much more static in comparison to what the 'Softies viewed as the dynamic, constantly updating live tiles. Moreover, if you're using Gadgets that get their data right from your own PC (like the picture gallery and the CPU meter), then there can be no question of a security problem, so why issue a "fix" to get rid of all of them? --JorgeA

Agreed that it should be an option. In fact, my worry is that if it's impossible to disable the pseudo-Start Button that takes you to the Metro Start Screen, then it will be at best awkward and definitely ugly to have a real Start Menu overlaid on top of it. And, when you clicked in the area, how would the computer know which of them to activate? Worse than a middle-finger salute to Windows users, this pseudo-Start Button could actually cripple all the replacement real Start Buttons out there. Maybe that was part of MSFT's thinking. Does anybody have insight into this? --JorgeA

It sounds like the concept is to have the Xbox work like a set-top box, maybe even taking the place of the STB. Incidentally, this announcement would help to explain Microsoft's relegating Windows Media Center to second-class status in the Windows world: they don't really care about WMC because the focus is now on the Xbox. The type of connection would depend on how the cable company sets up its delivery system. Some of them are using switched digital video (SDV), which requires the use of a supplementary piece of equipment in addition to the STB or DVR. So, conceivably the coax could go out of the wall into the SDV adapter, and then the adapter would connect to the Xbox by HDMI/component/composite video. Is there the start of a pattern here? Mattrick is the second MSFT exec (Sinofsky was the first) to oversee the launching of a major new company product amid great controversy, and then leave immediately thereafter. --JorgeA

Welcome back. Glad you survived! Do take a look at the previous posts if you can. There's a number of interesting/funny images, cartoons, and videos embedded in some of them. That sure would be a welcome development. It'd be a sneaky strategy on Google's part, but I wouldn't mind if they tried it. Evidently MSFT needs strong competition before they'll take their customers' preferences seriously. --JorgeA

Thanks, xpclient. I'll see what I can do about getting you a screenshot. --JorgeA

I put ReactOS on a live CD and tried it on three different computers. It crashed during booting on a Core2 Duo E7600 and even an XP-era Pentium 4 machine, but it loaded and ran on a Pentium II box. Then I ran Prime95 on it, and the performance was almost 40% faster than Windows 98, the OS that's on the HDD. Of course, that's probably due to the fact that ReactOS is alpha software and isn't weighed down by all sorts of additional stuff, but still it was nice to see that it worked. --JorgeA

I never saw it when it was on. Is this the one: --JorgeA

Yeah, that is unbelievable!! What is the matter with these folks? Do they prefer having their choices limited and being told what to do?? I guess that in some way this goes along with my comment to @HalloweenDocument12 about people who lust for novelty and are contemptuous of those who don't share that sentiment. Or...is it society in general, that is? bpalone Just as you said. --JorgeA

Lipstick on a pig -- you nailed it! (Source) --JorgeA

I think that you'll always find a certain proportion of people among the general population who are novelty lusters -- they crave new things for no other reason than that they are new or different. But I also think you're right that there seems to be a sharp "edge" to them that wasn't there before. They've moved past personally loving novelty to scorning others who don't share their enthusiasm. Maybe that sentiment was there all along and the Internet has enabled them to band together into a "novelty faction," enhancing the intolerance effect. --JorgeA

http://gigaom.com/2013/06/28/if-prism-doesnt-freak-you-out-about-cloud-computing-maybe-it-should-says-privacy-expert/ And, just for the record : http://www.montereyherald.com/local/ci_23554739/restricted-web-access-guardian-is-army-wide-officials jaclaz Thanks for the links. The last commenter at the end of the first article makes the extremely cogent point, that government access to private business data not only represents a privacy threat, but also presents vast new opportunities for industrial espionage and official corruption: And of course it's not just that officials in Country A might want to feed data from companies in Country B to their own industries (perhaps for a handsome fee), but that officials in (say) the U.S. would be able to feed business data to competitors even in the same country. Pick your motive, it doesn't matter -- what matters is the fact that they can do this easily and without anybody else even knowing about it. That first article led me, eventually, to this nugget: One possible solution (needless to say, with the proviso that laws are subject to change) may lie in the proposed creation of a kind of Festung Deutschland: --JorgeA

Just to make sure -- can one get that Windows 7 Start Menu look with transparency and rounded corners (top image) in Windows 8 (and 8.1), or is one limited to the Win8 skin (bottom image) when using Windows 8? Keep up the great work. --JorgeA

Thanks for the report! So it looks like they fixed things in part. Another halfway measure, like reviving the Start Button but not the Start Menu. It's still unclear whether Microsoft will eliminate (in the official 8.1 or a subsequent release) all the code that permits Tihiy's StartIsBack and other Start Menu replacements. I keep jumping back and forth between hoping that they keep that ability (because it will make Win8 easier to use) or hoping that they will eliminate it completely (further damaging the prospects for Win8's success). --JorgeA

Very good jaclaz, thanks very much for the extended explanation. It does match what I thought but wasn't certain of. (Hey, I actually understand some of this technical stuff! ) --JorgeA

Yes, you are evidently NOT familiar with the concept. A Virtual Machine resides on a Real Machine (Host). A Virtual Machine (normally) uses a Virtual Disk Drive. A Virtual Disk Drive (normally) resides on the Real Machine (usually in the form of a disk image, i.e. of a file, saved on the Real Machine, that represents a disk contents). The Virtual Disk Drive Image (the file) can be accessed - through a Virtual Disk Driver - exactly if it was a Real Disk Drive from the Real Machine. Thanks, jaclaz. I had you in mind when I wrote the bit about providing "gentle, patient explanations." I can follow what you wrote above. That matches pretty much my understanding of VMs. I can also understand the usefulness of a VM if you need to run an older program that a current version of Windows can't handle. But I'm struggling to understand the benefits of a VM from a security standpoint, like I explained in my previous post: --JorgeA

It's done and gone with 8.1. You can drop it from the list. OK, thanks! --JorgeA

I've never used a VM, so I have no experience in this, but (possibly a bit OT) maybe you can address a conceptual question: At some point, data downloaded/processed via the Internet (e-mail, websites, PDFs, etc.) will have to be stored permanently (otherwise we're just simulating work instead of actually working). Persumably this means storing it outside the VM. If the data thus downloaded or processed (and without malware scanning we don't necessarily know WHICH data is involved so that we can remove it) turns out to be infected with malware, then aren't we infecting the "real" machine anyway? OTOH, if the data is stored only within the VM and we wipe it out to start clean when the VM goes bonkers, then aren't we losing our work (which is the point of working on a computer)? Maybe I don't understand the concept well enough, but it's always seemed to me that VMs -- like sandboxes -- are kind of pointless, at least from a security standpoint, because of these issues. You either save the stuff to permanent storage and thus you're vulnerable anyway, or else you don't save the stuff permanently and your work goes POOF when you need to start fresh. Gentle, patient explanations befitting my abysmal ignorance will be appreciated. --JorgeA