JorgeA
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Posts posted by JorgeA
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Rooting around the Group Policy Editor, I found the following setting:
Wondering three things:
- What are some examples of the "alternate interface" programs mentioned in the first long paragraph of the description?
- Will any such alternate programs actually work in Windows 10?
- Could this setting (assuming that it's not ignored) be used to install and use an Aero Glass-style UI?
--JorgeA
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5 minutes ago, bookie32 said:
Yes, I can agree on that...when you are used to a type of software for a long time...while I can agree that Libre isn't perfect...it is a start and an attempt by the open Source community to give the customer options...needs more work...yes!
Who knows the current climate regarding what Microsoft is doing/done/about to do might just prompt even better development in the Open Source community to help put Microsoft in a large coffin about a hundred miles down where it is quite warm...I am told (no personal experience...
)
bookie32
My next step will be to test PDF editors for Linux and their compatibility with Adobe Acrobat. Is there any PDF software for Linux out there that offers its own PDF printer drivers? In my limited testing so far, the native Linux PDF printer driver (Netrunner 16.16) seems to create enormously-sized PDFs of webpages printed into PDF. IIRC the same sample article from a newspaper website printed into a 27KB file in Adobe on Windows, but into a 4.1MB file in Linux.
Linux will look more and more attractive, if and as these kinks get ironed out. I can hardly wait.
--JorgeA
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Quote
A large amount of the increased share price currently is based on Microsoft’s cloud offerings, its other product lines contributed minimally – Windows and PC sales are down, mobile has plummeted, tablets and 2-in-1s are barely gaining traction and even the Xbox division has been beaten by PlayStation consistently...
With the hideous UI and the "our way or the highway" attitude to running Windows, is it any wonder that Microsoft is struggling in so many aspects of its business?
--JorgeA
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Considering that (for example) MS Office is at present the standard for business applications, then business software for a new OS would need to be fully compatible with Office files.
Compatibility tests that I've read between LibreOffice and MS Office have not been very encouraging. LibreOffice seems to often make a mess of the formatting. In my own experience, with Change Tracking set to On, deletions made from a .DOC file in Word are frequently not recognized by LibreOffice, such that when the file comes back from the LibreOffice user you see both the text that you had deleted and the new text that you added all running together -- making it necessary to delete the unwanted text all over again. I've also run into CR/LF issues, where deletions of unwanted CR/LFs are ignored.
It's these sorts of niggling issues that need to be ironed out before Linux (or any other non-Windows OS) becomes a viable alternative for business. And boy do I want a viable Windows alternative!
--JorgeA
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On Friday, August 26, 2016 at 1:32 PM, jaclaz said:
Maybe (coincidence) the newly named PC-BSD (now TrueOS) will fit the bill:
https://www.trueos.org/more-on-trueos/
jaclaz
I suspect that it will take a sufficiently concerned tech billionaire (Steve Wozniak?) to jump-start any alternative OS for it to become a viable competitor to Windows.
And actually less important than the OS itself will be the existence of standards-compliant software for it. A "deep pockets" sponsor would have the wherewithal to fund the development of applications for the new OS that could handle files created in Windows.
--JorgeA
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3 hours ago, bookie32 said:
Hi guys!
Well, one does get tired of authorities dismissing peoples concerns by using the standard reply:
QuoteMuch of the NSA’s defence is that the public should be unconcerned, summed up by the dictum: “If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.” But civil liberties groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union warn that surveillance goes well beyond what Congress intended and what the US constitution allows.
Doesn't it just want to make you puke!!!
This has nothing to do with whether we have something to hide or not...just plain wrong...how ever you word it...
bookie32
"If you have nothing to hide..." -- what a load of baloney. Increasing surveillance of that sort would not only make it ever harder for a movement such as the American Revolutionaries to coordinate their activities, but even in more ordinary (democratic) political circumstances would give the party in charge of the government an additional and growing advantage over the opposition, as they could keep tabs on who in the other party is talking to whom, where they're meeting, and what they're saying to each other.
--JorgeA
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I do remember reading somewhere that MSFT let go of a big portion of the team that used to test Windows Updates, in favor of having Windows users serve as guinea pigs.
Apropos of these last few posts, here's another commenter on Woody's website:
QuoteThe market is ripe for a new Bill Gates with a Linux-based product that is designed for ordinary people. Apple is content to be a specialty supplier that sells only premium-priced products.
--JorgeA
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Another insightful observation from a commenter on Woody's website about yet another Windows 10 update screw-up:
QuoteMs completely lost control over windows development. And I suspect they cant regain control bcoz when they decide to use users as debuggers they got rid of all the developers that counted (and cost serious money) and now they have no talent. Moreover, once you reach this level of chaos its impossible to recover even WITH top talent.
--JorgeA
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Mary Jo Foley came up with some figures from Microsoft as to the proportion of Windows users who downgraded their machines to Windows 10 as a result of the company's Win10 push (starts at 9:45):
QuoteMJF: If you really look at the overall numbers, how many people update Windows through an update, instead of waiting to get a new PC or getting it through a volume licensing contract at their business? It's small.
AZ: Is there a number? I've always wondered that. I asked Paul but he didn't have -- I'd imagine it would be a fraction. I'm not talking about Enterprise, I'm talking about consumer market. It has to be a fraction of the percentage of PCs out there.
MJF: It is. We've all asked for the number, and obviously, I understand why they don't want to give us the number. But I had heard at one point that it's under five percent of all eligible PCs. It's really small. Even with the free update, it's still that small.
If this percentage is anywhere near the truth, it speaks very well of the ability of non-techie users to defend their computing preferences against the lures, the nagging, and even the trickery of their Redmond overlords.
--JorgeA
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11 hours ago, jaclaz said:
@JorgeA
Besides the usual FUD of which this kind of articles is full
I'm curious -- where is the FUD in the Betanews article? Your post actually agrees with major points made there.
--JorgeA
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Besides apps for a failing mobile UI, Windows Hello is another ballyhooed Windows 10 feature whose rationale is looking increasingly dubious:
Biometrics are less secure than passwords -- this is why
QuoteMany technology pundits talk about biometrics as the ultimate authentication solution -- the technology that will make the 'imperfect' password obsolete. Despite the hype, most companies are approaching with caution. In fact, CEB found that there are varied degrees of biometrics adoption globally, as around 20 percent of firms have actually deployed the technology.
A big reason for low adoption could be that they are less secure. And while many are touting the security of biometrics, there are four issues to consider when evaluating the technology.
"Windows Hello"? No, thanks -- goodbye!
--JorgeA
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Speaking of Cortana, this just hit me last night. Here's the Cortana logo:
And here is the "eye" of the all-seeing, control-freak computer HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey:
Is it a simple case of sci-fi geekiness, or perhaps a statement of ultimate intent? Cortana's quest to monitor everything about Windows 10 users to better "help" them comes uncomfortably close to "life imitating art."
--JorgeA
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9 hours ago, tomasz86 said:
I wonder whether that notification was really supposed to be black
. At the moment it is kind of useless as you are unable to read the text in there..
One of these notifications popped up when I came in here, so I had the chance real quick to get a screenshot (see at the bottom):
--JorgeA
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If we have reached stasis, then that means it's time for the Forum Software Gods to start messing with things again...
Some things are better, some are worse. For example, we don't have nested quotes, so if you quote me to comment on something I said and then I quote you to comment on your comment, the context is lost and we have to start scrolling up and down the page to get the full idea of what's going on. Also, there seem to be fewer fonts to pick from, and AFAIK there's no guide (as there used to be) listing the various kinds of [] and [/] toggles that one can use.
OTOH, the Like button helps to cut down on the number of short posts since we no longer feel compelled to type "+1" when we liked something that a member said but have nothing to add to it.
I'm not crazy about the blip notifications that pop up in black at the bottom of the screen when you have MSFN showing and someone posts in a subscribed thread. Clicking on them before they (quickly) disappear doesn't seem to do anything. I can see how that could be of some value in a fast-moving Twitter conversation, but not in a slow-motion discussion of the kind that normally takes place on MSFN.
--JorgeA
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45 minutes ago, jaclaz said:
It is rare to find in a such short statement:
QuoteMicrosoft is committed to customer privacy and ensuring that customers have the information and tools they need to make informed decisions.
Yes sir, we have all the tools we need... except the one to COMPLETELY TURN OFF the snooping. Like we had before.
It's a bit like having a TV where you can set the volume to any level of loudness, except Off, and the faintest you can set it to is an annoying murmur that interferes with your phone calls.
--JorgeA
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8 hours ago, NoelC said:
Without a UI to control a thing, why would they maintain support for making the thing controllable?
-Noel
It appears to be a "hidden" control now, as opposed to a removed control.
Firefox has done that sort of thing, too. They used to have a check-box to turn off Javascript in the settings UI; they removed that box but you can still turn off Javascript in "about:config".
Needless to say, I'd rather have a visible setting so that the user doesn't need to be an uber-geek in order to modify the software to suit his policy preferences.
--JorgeA
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And now for the funniest statement to date by a Microsoft apologist (quote begins at 22:29):
QuoteCustomizing your Anniversary Update, there's lots of way to get started. The one thing Microsoft has done with Windows 10 that has been very impressive, is its customization level. The ability to turn off transparency, to turn it back on, to have custom colors, to use your accent color, to have custom desktop backgrounds and lock screens and all kinds of stuff like that... So it gives you tremendous amounts of flexibility to customize the system the way you want it, the way you want it to work.
--JorgeA
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Here's one of the best analogies I've come across to explain why it doesn't make sense to compare snooping by other tech companies to snooping by Microsoft:
QuoteYeah this is what I hear all over the place “Google and Facebook do it tooooooo and nobody complains!!!!” The difference is that Google and Facebook are not what makes your computer tick, they are choices. Kinda like when you hop in your car and decide to seek a prostitute on Google Road or Facebook Alley, the choice is yours. With Windows 10, your car is the prostitute. You have no choice.
--JorgeA
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11 hours ago, jaclaz said:
The actual explanation by a good guy from MS here:
is "appalling", it is clear how they "meant good" but through the usual miscommunication they managed to poorly test the feature, the seriousness - bedsides the specific issue - is that (shouldn't it have been already clear enough) the Insider program is demonstrated clearly as being a (mismanaged) joke.
[...]
BTW, the new "framework" seemingly worsens the "quality" of captured video stream anyway (besides not working), so a few posters on that thread that make software for video diagnosis and postprocessing are (justly) really mad at MS.
[emphasis added]
This is just mind-boggling. How many things will they break and how many people will they have to p*ss off before they get a clue that the new Windows Update model is not working?
--JorgeA
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On Wednesday, August 17, 2016 at 8:17 PM, Tripredacus said:
For some reason your post reminds me of this guy:
What is funny is that while it may be possible to do all sorts of things in a motion/voice based system (and surely more in the future) you can be assured that whoever made that environment spent hours on a keyboard!
Bummer, I've tried to watch this half a dozen times since Wednesday and I keep getting "An error occurred, Please try again later." Hey YouTube, how much later??
--JorgeA
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Cortana: The spy in Windows 10
It looks like it may still in fact be possible to disable Cortana completely, it's "just" that the UI for doing that has been removed:
QuoteI should note that, if your distrust of Microsoft exceeds mine, you can rip into your operating system’s guts and totally disable Cortana. You need to beware, though, because it involves going in deep, to places where it’s really way too easy to foul up Windows. In killing Cortana, you could end up seeing a lot more Windows crashes.
In Windows 10 Pro, you type gpedit.msc into the Start menu. Head down to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Search. Once there, double-click on Allow Cortana to toggle it to Disable Cortana. Log off and back on, and you’re done.
In Windows 10 Home, open the registry with regedit and head to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Search
Next, right-click the Windows Search folder and choose New > DWORD (32-bit) Value. Name this new DWORD AllowCortana and set it at 0. Now log off and reboot your computer.
--JorgeA
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On Wednesday, August 17, 2016 at 8:19 AM, helpdesk98 said:
That is not just a blank page you have been added to MS's watch list that page actually sends detailed telemetry about you back to MS. lol
--JorgeA
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On Wednesday, August 17, 2016 at 2:56 PM, NoelC said:
By the way, in the vein of posting discussion-evoking links... Look particularly at the massive collection of negative user sentiment in the comments under this article (to which Jorge posted a link before):
https://www.askwoody.com/2016/win7-and-8-1-to-get-cumulative-updates/
Is it because AskWoody.com has attracted people who don't like where Microsoft is going, or is it because Microsoft is simply doing such wrong things that even plankton don't like it?
-Noel
My money is on the latter.
--JorgeA
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With Windows 10, Microsoft Blatantly Disregards User Choice and Privacy: A Deep Dive
The EFF weighs in on Win10 and Microsoft's campaign to push it on users of earlier versions of Windows. One angle that's totally new (to me, at least):
QuoteMicrosoft has tried to explain this lack of choice by saying that Windows Update won’t function properly on copies of the operating system with telemetry reporting turned to its lowest level. In other words, Microsoft is claiming that giving ordinary users more privacy by letting them turn telemetry reporting down to its lowest level would risk their security since they would no longer get security updates. (Notably, this is not something many articles about Windows 10 have touched on.)
[emphasis added]
QuoteBut this is a false choice that is entirely of Microsoft’s own creation. There’s no good reason why the types of data Microsoft collects at each telemetry level couldn’t be adjusted so that even at the lowest level of telemetry collection, users could still benefit from Windows Update and secure their machines from vulnerabilities, without having to send back things like app usage data or unique IDs like an IMEI number.
--JorgeA
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. At the moment it is kind of useless as you are unable to read the text in there..
Official - Windows 10 Worst Crap Ever!
in Windows 10
Posted
Yeah, I too am curious to see what this blizzard of white on white looks like.
--JorgeA