JorgeA

Here's some more info on this: Secret code indicates NSA tracks privacy tool users So the situation may in some ways not be as bad as it looks (certain countries are excluded when you're looking into TOR), but worse in other ways (the monitoring is broader than TOR, and except for TOR it does cover the whole world). --JorgeA

Word of this is getting out: Are Tablets the Odd Man Out as Phones Grow and Laptops Shrink? Wouldn't it be ironic if it turned out that Microsoft destroyed its flagship product for the sake of a two-year fad? --JorgeA

Desktop PCs and the Windows desktop: Endangered species? Looks like even Ed MicroBott (an early Win8 apologist) is regaining his sanity. --JorgeA

Nice dark humor there. @jaclaz: I'd slowed down on the surveillance theme as interest in it here seemed to have waned, but I'm game if folks want to keep up that part of the discussion. BTW, the theme isn't really OT because it derived from Microsoft's own snooping and collaboration with snoops (and not just the NSA, but also helping the New York Police Department to build a network of surveillance cameras around the city). As the thread's subtitle under the old forum software used to read, it's also about "Microsoft controversies." Anyway, here goes something new: Snowden plans to work on anti-surveillance technology If and when he does finish such a project, people hoping to download it would be well advised to use multiple layers of encryption and anonymization to decrease the chances that the busybodies will find out they visited the site. --JorgeA

Is this yet another thing that Microsoft removed (screwed up) in Windows 8.x? Comments? Responses? Inquiring minds want to know... --JorgeA

Good points all, borne out by our experience with Windows 8. We will only be certain of what Microsoft intends for us when the RTM is ready. But it's still fun to gossip and speculate. I have the three Win8 previews installed on one computer (also with Windows 7), and every once in a while I'll go in and boot into each of the previews in order just to see how things changed from one to the next. The progressive uglification of the Desktop comes out clearly. The sad things is, if they'd left the windows as they are in the Developer Preview, then IIRC with a replacement Start Menu and Start Screen bypass things would have been more or less OK -- the major visual change being rectangular instead of rounded window corners. --JorgeA

I used Secunia PSI some years ago for a brief time. While it's an interesting concept, and no doubt helpful for people who aren't technically oriented and who don't much care which version of a program they use, personally I found it a bit annoying to be reminded (tut-tut) that some of my applications were not up to date. "Yes, I know, and I want to keep it that way!" So now I use a mixed update system. No one is allowed to install updates automatically, but I let my programs tell me upon launch if there is a new version. I let Windows, Flash, and Java tell me when there's an update, but I decide if and when to install it. You wrote above that, Is there a website that explains which programs can be safely unchecked from Startup, and which processes can be safely disabled? I figure (not very scientifically) that, if I can't tell from its name what the program or process does, then it's probably not a good idea to disable it or to remove it from Startup. --JorgeA

Windows 9 (Threshold) to include new taskbar, improved UI and much more Windows Threshold: A distinctive new look and a home for Cortana So it's a mixed bag, so far. We're finally getting UI choice based on the kind of machine we're using. On the other hand, we are getting more of that modern Windows 2.0 flatness and it's not clear what this "glance-and-go" idea offers that's not already provided by Taskbar preview (you hover over it, get a thumbnail view, and can click on it to go to that window). @Formfiller: BTW, Dot Matrix is alive and well in the comments thread there, and as unreformed as ever. --JorgeA

Aaaarrggghhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Literally minutes after posting above about the Lenovo story, I see this: Lenovo: Pretend we never said anything about 8in tablets As a couple of commenters speculate, maybe Microsoft had a chat with the Lenovo folks. In any event, whatever the facts may be, it's clear that they wouldn't be diverting their U.S. stock of Windows tablets to other countries if U.S. sales were hot. --JorgeA

Good to know that some Metro/Win8 advocates have been capable of seeing the light. As for the rest, I'm reminded of those Japanese soldiers who hid out in caves and kept on fighting for 25 years after the end of World War II... --JorgeA

Apropos of the post upthread about Microsoft's failure to gain traction in the mobile devices market: Lenovo ends sales of small Windows tablets in US due to lack of interest --JorgeA

Thank you very much for the kind offer. However , I think that the way I wrote my post may have given the wrong impression. The thread that I linked to has nothing to do with me, it's not my situation. I was only using it as an example (maybe a poor one) of the sort of thing that can happen to folks who use Web- or cloud-based software instead of applications that reside on their own computers. Let's say that somebody's using, say, Office 365 or one of the new cloud-based Adobe applications. Microsoft or Adobe decides in their infinite wisdom to remove a certain functionality that had been there all along and which some people relied on. Now it's gone. Given that one is using this cloud software, was (is) there any way to prevent the loss of that functionality? My gut says that there isn't, considering that the software now resides on a server controlled by somebody else rather than on my PC where I can decide whether to "upgrade" the program or install updates. Basically, with respect to that particular application, my PC is little more than a terminal. That's the general issue that I was (maybe inadequately) trying to highlight. The specific examples (Office 365, Adobe programs) may not yet fit this description, but you get the idea. Or maybe the situation with cloud-based software isn't anywhere (yet) quite as dire as I suspect it is? --JorgeA

Here's an illustration of what can happen when we live in the cloud. You had a smooth operation running, everything working the way you wanted it to -- and then the software gets "updated" beyond your control and you can't do with it what you could do five minutes before. All of a sudden you're forced to learn how to use the software all over again or even to start scrambling for alternatives to recover the lost functionality. Sounds like a good argument for keeping locally running software where the customer decides if and when to "update/upgrade". --JorgeA

This story (linked to in the Business Insider piece above) gives some background on what's going on at Microsoft: Satya Nadella Is Cleaning Up Steve Ballmer's Mess Some tidbits: In light of the spectacular failure of Windows-based mobile devices to catch on... Microsoft admits to a 14% device share, 'we have to rethink how we look at our business' ...Nokia evidently had therefore decided to save their skins by developing new phones based on the most popular smartphone platform -- Android. But their acquisition by Microsoft put an end to that strategy, hence all of a sudden they have a bunch of employees with (1) nothing to do and (2) nothing to sell that people want to buy. If Nadella thinks that buying Nokia was a mistake, then the obvious move is to undo the mistake by selling Nokia back. But of course that would mean allowing the embarrassment of a former partner defecting to the competition (Android). --JorgeA

What's good for the goose is good for the gander: Woman Claims NYPD Has Practice Of Arresting People For Recording Officers Hahaha -- police types have been telling us for years that "there is no expectation of privacy in public places." So suck it up. To borrow a favorite totalitarian question: if you've got nothing to hide, then what are you afraid of? Or have we reached the state where "all animals are equal, but some animals [government officials] are more equal than others"? --JorgeA

The ultimate goal of the NSA is total population control I wonder if we may be contributing to the building of our own cages by doing ever-increasing amounts of our business online, destroying bricks-and-mortar enterprises (bookstores, music stores, newspapers, etc.) in the process so that in fact we leave ourselves with no choice but to make our purchases where the snoops can easily keep track of them. As we go marching... --JorgeA

Igor comes back at Windows 8 with his usual, uh, force: The most annoying apps in the world After skewering Skype, uTorrent, Flash,Java, and the newly designed Firefox, he aims the guns at Win8: You will have to visit his site to find out what the units are in that 5/5 score. --JorgeA

The software design trends that we love to hate and... A pretty good indictment of the Windows 8 look. --JorgeA

How was it determined that the screenshots out there are fakes? (Just curious, not arguing...) --JorgeA

More interesting to me was the part of the blog post that focused on Windows 9 (as opposed to Nadella's hot air): Soiunds good -- make Metro about as easy to get to as Windows Media Center or the Management Console (i.e., you have to specifically ask to see it, no surprise apparitions when you're trying to do something else) and I'll be OK with that. --JorgeA

I agree. There was surprisingly litle actual content in that 3000-word essay by Nadella, things you could put your finger on. --JorgeA

I will need some opinion from mother tongue English speaking people to understand if the "which is crazy" is referred to the decision of not jumping on the (also sinking BTW) "new OS" or to the "new OS" itself. jaclaz I'm not exactly a "mother tongue" English speaker , but the (unclear) way that that was written it could indeed be taken either way. I took it to mean that the whole situation where a new OS is losing out to an old OS and even to one that's EOS, is just amazing. Yeah, sure , from "insignificant" all the way up to "irrelevant" is a clear (though a tadbit late, I may say) success of this often unjustly neglected OS. Hahaha! Just for the record, Vista's insignificant/irrelevant market share is still twice that of Linux, the most self-important OS in the history of the universe. --JorgeA

Did you ever think you'd see a headline like this? Windows 8.x goes into reverse gear -- loses market share as both Windows 7 and XP show growth The least surprising bit of news is that the share of Windows 7 went up. More remarkable is that XP (the Rasputin of operating systems) also went up despite all the efforts to kill it. Most pleasing to me personally was to learn that Vista's share, too, went up (from 2.9% to 2.95%). Desktop OS Market Share, May 2014 and June 2014 [source] Looks like customers will go with anything but Windows 8. --JorgeA

More about that new Start Menu: Start Menu Will Replace Start Screen in Threshold Interestingly, Paul sticks to his assertion that Microsoft had been busily taking out Start Menu code to prevent third parties from providing it: Apparently, in addition to botching Windows 8 itself, Surface, etc. (see the post above), they botched even this job, as demonstrated by the abundance of Start Menu replacements. A comment down below in that Thurrott article that I found myself nodding to repeatedly: --JorgeA EDIT: Couldn't resist including this comment:

LOL :angrym: --JorgeA