Formfiller

So they are pushing this rapid development nonsense after all. Yeah, that'll fix Windows up real good. I wonder if the 'Tards and Microsoft herself realize that this means their latest operating system will likely never reach 10% user base at any point in time because by the time one gets to 8% the next one comes out. They will have many more different versions alive simultaneously than in the past and the lag for upgrades will increase. It's their bed, they made it, now they will have to sleep in it. More like another proof that 8.1 is just a more fuzzed up service pack. They ditch support for the RTM Versions as soon as the SP comes out. W7 RTM is not supported anymore, too.

I don't think that's the main reason MS wants to get done with XP. They don't want the burden to support it anymore, and thus save costs. Whether or not it contains spyware code doesn't matter to MS much. I highly doubt it that the NSA pays Microsoft "per Installation" of Vista/W7/W8. The OS itself is also a weak target for spying, since suspicious data can by analyzed going out and from a computer and they risk that hacker groups, students etc. could blow up the entire operation simply by analyzing traffic of a Windows PC. The main targets for the spooks are the cloud services, which can't be controlled by the users whatsoever once they send data in.

The wonders of donations.

http://www.techbroil.com/2013/09/goodbye-douchebag.html?showComment=1381149122612#c904576315567032853

Beautiful. The cloud is actually the complete anti-thesis to the core design of the internet. The internet was made to mirror data on as many computers in case of attack. The original designers knew it that harvesting and centralizing all users and data on just one or two sites is dangerous, because those few centers will be the target of attacks (physical, and later, digital). Our dear Orwell-wannabe's at Google, Microsoft and Apple are learning this lesson the hard way. They will never perfect it, because those gargantuan honey pots they are creating are just too juicy to pass for all the hackers, criminal and "cyber-Task forces" in the world. But, unfortunately, I think their desire to gatekeep the data of the users and thus "having them by the balls" is just too strong to resist. They would rather risk Cloudogeddon than reversing the trend.

It's cute that even with Netmarketshare's "adjusted" algorithm, Windows 7 is stil climbing in marketshare, something that MS desperately wants to avoid ("never let it be the new XP").

Ballmer's intense goodbye: http://www.theverge.com/2013/9/27/4779036/exclusive-video-steve-ballmers-intense-tearful-goodbye-to-microsoft His recent decisions were terrible, but I am gonna admit, I will miss the guy.

PC game developers are p***ed at Microsoft and hate Windows 8: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGqu4CsUX9I Among them the superstars Chris Taylor (Total Annihilation, Dungeon Siege Supreme Commander) and Chris Roberts (Wing Commander, Freelancer, Star Citizen) Watch the first twenty minutes of the Video. Especially at 18:00.

Cute story: http://www.neowin.net/news/report-nokia-asked-stephen-elop-to-reduce-his-bonus-but-he-refused Now a new report from Finland's Helsingin Sanomat claims, via unnamed sources, that Nokia's board has been urging Elop to accept a smaller amount for his severance package in an effort to stop the growing amount of hate towards the company. The report claims that Elop has refused that request. Apparently, Elop is getting a divorce from his current wife and he has told Nokia's board his wife would not accept a reduced payout.

Thurrott is on his meds again (or off, - whatever is causing the switches). Here's a good comment from the article:

You were not convinced that Apple eats your soul and Google is bad for your heart?

Paul Thurrott is a whore. http://winsupersite.com/windows-phone/praise-nokia-lumia-520 Free yourself from corporate overlords by going Windows Phone? I didn't know that Microsoft was a charity. PT is getting desperate. That's the problem when you're only whoring-out to one customer only. You can only offer your services at the train station when your former sugar daddy gets his brain fried because of syphilis. I can already imagine his Windows 9 gig: "You're either going to use it, or Google and Apple will suck your soul out!"

Yeah, I had such thoughts myself. There's also the possibility that they do have access to the data, but don't have the means to effectively process it - maybe the XKeyScore queries give out very incomplete data sets. Sort of how Google shows 1000000 hits for a term, but you can actually access only ten. Well, the truth is only known to high up spooks, so it's all speculation.

Well, Google is one of the prime NSA darlings. Chromium is a huge codebase, - it's not impossible that there is nasty stuff hidden in it, given its origin. OK, it's open source, but so what? Apart from the Google devs, has anyone really traversed through the whole source code? And seriously, even if someone would find some backdoors in it, so what? All the NSA revelations of the past months were much bigger than this. Most people will just shrug it off as just another NSA story. So it's not like there's some huge PR risk for Google here. These browsers based on Chromium act basically just as GUI frontends for the Chromium core, their vendors usually don't have the manpower and the expertise to check the sourcecode of Chromium itself for nasties. I am well aware the same can be said for IE, Firefox, pre-chrome (classic) Opera etc., but they don't claim to be some sort of anti-spy weapon in the first place. Also, on a general note, I would be cautious about these "anti-spy" services in the first place. In the past, they had often ties to intelligence services. I wouldn't be surprised if some of them serve as honey-pots. http://news.cnet.com/2110-1017-252525.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymizer_(company) And that's only the stuff that has been publicized. Oh and by the way, using products from "neutral" countries is no safeguard either. Here's the story of Crypto from Switzerland (the first country one thinks about if you hear "neutral"): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_AG

There is a lot going on on this thread: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1780736&page=7 The writer of the W8 bash article on Tweakguides.com (http://www.tweakguides.com/Windows81_1.html) joined the discussion, the metrotards are in full swing too. And on Techbroil.com there is an outright war with the tards and apparently some shills. I guess the marketing department in Redmond reactivated the troops just in time for the 8.1 release. Stuff got interesting again.

Another Channel9 saga! http://channel9.msdn.com/Forums/Coffeehouse/Windows-81-is-the-OS-equivalent-of-phishing-mail It's about the article posted earlier here on Tweakguides. The huge disagreement is about the 8.1 account screen.

Maybe it's because I have watched tons of X-Files, Millennium and Nowhere Man in the 90s, but strangely, I am not surprised in the least by all this spying. Not even the extend of it. I think even prior 911 I wouldn't be surprised all that much by these revelations. Strange. If one would be paranoid, one could almost think all these 90s conspiracy shows were a preparation for the things to come.

Metrotards are obviously pissed about Aero Glass: http://www.neowin.net/news/areo-glass-mod-for-windows-8-10-version-released

I am pretty sure the scenario in the link happens only when you put in the DVD. The upgrade through the store is a real upgrade I think (what a colossal p***-off if not!)

Even Thurrott gets annoyed by "NuMicrosoft". http://windowsitpro.com/cloud/does-microsoft-hate-it-pros

More madness: http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/microsoft-employee-stack-ranking-and-its-most-universally-hated-exec?source=nww_rss Scott Barnes (he was a bigwig behind Silverlight) comments on the article: Another former employee comments: Another softie, complaining about Lisa Brummel: (she is often mentioned on MiniMSFT) http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/microsoft-employee-stack-ranking-and-its-most-universally-hated-exec?source=nww_rss#comment-585830586

Who needs this: When you have this!:

More good reading at the link above! --JorgeA Interesting. Apparently ValueAct played some role. If you remember, they aren't fond of the NuMicrosoft antics at all.

Redmond is one huge torture chamber or something: http://www.businessinsider.com/meet-the-most-universally-hated-exec-at-microsoft-lisa-brummel-2012-7 I have to admit, I respect MS employees more after reading all the horror stories about their terrible condition. Even something stinky like Windows 8 is an achievement given this environment.

You're free to tell company and product names here.