JorgeA

Fortunately, there are plenty of alternative distros out there that don't try to push or lure their users into the matrix. --JorgeA

There's a distinction between what is reasonable/right, and what we have the power to prevent/punish. If I'm a 96-year-old confined to a wheelchair and attached to an oxygen tank, there may not be much that I can do about a burglar breaking into my home, but that doesn't make it right or reasonable for the burglar to do it. Now we may not be in a strong position do stop the snooping, but that doesn't mean it's acceptable. As to what if anything we can do about it, we can take some encouragement from the experience with the removal and now the return of the Start Menu and button and default boot to desktop. If enough customers speak up and/or stop buying their products, they'll pay attention. That's somewhat disturbing. In principle it should be possible to set up an Internet traffic monitor to see what connections (if any) the computer is making and to where, no? If I were technically savvy enough about networking, I'd be tempted to test the idea. (Although it might not tell us very much about WHAT the connections are to, but at least we might discover that it's making mysterious connections, which a security researcher such as Krebs or Schneier or Soghoian might be able to investigate.) Amen to that last sentence! --JorgeA

I liken it to a bicycle messenger: I certainly do not expect him to rummage through the package that I entrusted him with. Or, to put it more strongly, I EXPECT HIM NOT TO rummage through my package. It's irrelevant to me that the package is in his possession or inside his messenger bag for the time it takes to deliver it to the intended recipient. --JorgeA

Yeah, that's the other story making the rounds. The one I linked to shows that -- for all its assurances of respect for privacy -- Microsoft, too, is routinely rummaging through customers' stuff. If they can look for one type of thing, they can look for any number of other types of things. As the ExtremeTech piece concludes, this Caveat emptor. --JorgeA

^^ Well, here's our answer -- Microsoft Is Also Scanning For Illicit Images --JorgeA

Good find! Some of what they say sounds promising. Here's an excerpt from one of the links in the document: And yet... ...I will feel confident in Microsoft's assurances only when a variety of reputable third parties confirms that neither Microsoft, nor the government, nor anyone else can read my communications or trawl through the files I have stored online. We may recall that Microsoft has already acted, for example, against a German photographer who stored erotic images he himself took. In light of the assurances quoted above, can we be sure that Microsoft will be physically incapable of doing this sort of thing again in the future? That's what I would ask my friendly MSFT salesman next time he came calling about my subscribing to their cloud services. --JorgeA

Another drawback of moving everything to the cloud: Saving old software from extinction in the age of cloud computing I remember reading, some years ago, that the advent of word processors would make the work of future literary historians and biographers more difficult. They often rely on strikeouts and margin notes in manuscripts to follow the development of an author's concept for an important novel, or to trace the writer's evolving style. And e-mail between writers and editors -- indeed, from any historical figure to other important people in their lives -- tends to be less permanent than physically mailed letters. (Well, maybe they can apply to the NSA for its records. ) Now software itself is at risk of suffering the same fate that it has helped to visit on manuscripts and correspondence. Microsoft is both a follower and a pusher in this trend. --JorgeA

Yes, I have indeed seen what seems to be a much greater incidence of these sorts of things -- certainly of people who can't "up"grade to Win8.1 because of MSFT's a$inine idea to make it available only via the Windows Store. Ya gotta provide alternative ways to accomplish things, folks! Possibly related to this situation (or perhaps suggestive of the nature of Win8 as a whole) is the following tidbit I just came across: [emphasis in original!] Maybe BitDefender simply IDs Win8 itself as malware... --JorgeA

Windows 8.1 and Windows XP sees drop in market share, Windows 7 gets a slight increase [source via Winbeta] This is the second straight month that Windows 8+8.1 market share figures have dropped and Windows 7 has increased. Once is a fluke, twice is suggestive. Three times will make it a trend. --JorgeA

That's an intriguing theory. (Funny story about the goat. ) However, it's a high-risk strategy (if it is a strategy) that they're implementing, as several of their major products are struggling. Here's another one: PlayStation is outselling Xbox by more than 3:1 Add that to Windows Phone, Surface, and Windows 8 itself, and you start thinking that if they did mess up Win8 on purpose, then the company is run by a bunch of masochists. But they do make a ton of money on other stuff (Office, cloud services) so maybe they think they can afford to take some risks. Or maybe they are in fact applying the "goat in the house" theory and looking forward to when people will be so thankful that Windows got fixed that they'll forget all the previous sins. Personally, I think that it wasn't a goat, but an infestation of obnoxious pests who imposed their vision on the company (and its customers) and who took some time to eradicate once the homeowner realized what they had done to the house. Note that most of the major culprits are gone now, starting with Sinofsky. --JorgeA

And speaking of Windows 8 on mobile devices: It is game over for Windows Phone Ex-Microsoft evangelist says Microsoft should 'give up' on Windows Phone and embrace Android Although not all voices are down on Windows Phone: Windows Phone is like OS X a decade ago -- gaining respect, finally --JorgeA

I'm going to focus on a different part of the paragraph than jaclaz did. Do you mean that they felt they could "afford" to fail witn Win8, or that some train of thought led them to try deliberately to screw things up with Win8? It's hard to fathom how anybody getting paid to work could think the latter, intending deliberately to botch up a new OS for the sake of the OS that follows it. --JorgeA

First they stepped out on Microsoft with a Chromebook, now H-P is hedging their bets further with an Android notebook: This cannot be a good sign for the Windows 8.x mobile model. --JorgeA

In your view, what will it take for designers to consider their users' ease and convenience when they're working on a website? IMHO there is too much of a "F-U, take it or leave it" factor in Web (and browser and OS) design nowadays. --JorgeA

That quote is pretty funny -- and appropriate!! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alum I wonder how long before some clever alum and his lawyer sue the University for misleading advertising: Your Honor, my client was led to believe by the Defendant's promotional materials, that his academic career there would consist of camping trips and sunny days boating at the lake. Who reads words?? We allege that my client's attention was maliciously and deliberately misdirected by the visual elements that dominate the promotional materials. Imagine his shock and disappointment when, after committing to this institution, arranging for his student loan to be paid there, and foregoing opportunities to attend other schools that year, my client arrived on campus and suddenly discovered that there would be actual mental work to be performed at a desk! We therefore seek damages for pain and suffering, as well as punitive damages to deter such deceptive advertising in the future. --JorgeA

Looks like even supposedly sedate academia is suffering from Metroitis: Breaking Web Design Conventions = Breaking the User Experience Well worth reading through this whole analysis by someone who evidently knows what he's talking about. --JorgeA

Another way that government surveillance jeopardizes democracy: Surveillance Programs Hinder Journalists, Lawyers, Report Says --JorgeA

Google asks for what they deny to others: Google asks judge to keep Gmail privacy case docs secret, because only Google is entitled to privacy --JorgeA

In anti-surveillance news: How to defeat facial-recognition machines and look like a rock star [source] --JorgeA

...or a university professor could be using his tablet to review adult videos for an article in a "cultural studies" academic journal. (I remember reading once that researchers had discovered that the measurements of Playboy Playmates tended to change along with the state of the economy.) @NoelC: see how easy it is to get "real work" done on a tablet? --JorgeA

Lest anybody think that Russian officials are heroes for giving asylum to Edward Snowden: Russian government offers money for identifying Tor users And then there's this winning combo of journalistic impartiality and euphemism: Wonder what Snowden might be thinking now of his protectors. --JorgeA

Uh-oh: Microsoft will unify Windows, Windows Phone, and Xbox into ‘one converged operating system’ Have they really learned nothing?? OTOH, maybe the news is not quite what it seems: Nadella’s “one operating system” ain’t new and won’t be one OS As long as the Desktop survives in a fully functional form and the UI deficiencies injected into it by Windows 8 get fixed, I'm cool with that. --JorgeA

Good point. And no doubt they would have done exactly that. --JorgeA

If you work in the, umm, adult film industry, then you can classify all that video watching on your tablet as "research." --JorgeA

Report: Microsoft shoveling more dirt onto Windows 8.1 with 'Threshold' Best line in the piece: --JorgeA