HalloweenDocument12

I don't see the problem with infinite transfers. License transfers are a pain. Even if it takes only 30 seconds (which it never does), that's enough to make it a pain in the rear so this imaginary scenario of a person paying for one license and effectively using it on tons of devices doesn't exist. And, even if that were the case, per-user licenses make much more sense than per-device. Can you imagine the controversy if Apple tried to charge twice for every song because of them existing on the computer before being transferred to the portable device? Even within this structure, people are going to get dialogs that say, in effect, "Sorry but this copy has been activated too many times. Call Microsoft to plead your case, which will result in just one more activation."

Nah, Google is an actual marketing company, unlike Microsoft, who is and always has been a poseur in this area. I am not exaggerating when I say that Google could easily nullify a $500 million Microsoft campaign by sending one of its attractive, well dressed interns into the studio and spending five minutes calmly explaining exactly what info is collected and how it's used to advertise to the user. Then Google just has to enable a floating bar in Gmail for a few weeks saying something like, "Watch this if you're concerned about privacy and how Google collects and uses information." What are netbooks? Is that the fad from 2008 that was on its last legs in 2010 even before the iPad came out? Keeping in line with the idea that Microsoft knows nothing about marketing, moves like this are a plus if they're made before a negative but after they tend to not be enough. After you slight your audience, you need to give them $1.20 of value at a price of $1.00. Trying to charge people $1.20 for $1.00 of value then later correcting the equation doesn't work, and that's assuming what's been done here, which isn't necessarily the case.

That's why having a unique, strong password at every site is the only realistic measure of protection. Unfortunately, this is impossible for nearly everybody without using password management tools. The real danger is reusing passwords and having it revealed at one of the weakly guarded sites you referred to. And then there's social engineering. I'll say that some site or service I use gets compromised about once per quarter, so the danger is real. Also, keep in mind that when a site is compromised, the secret questions and answers float away in cleartext, so one essentially needs to treat them like unique passphrases.

I keep notes on every restricted password system I use, Evernote included. The notes say that its limitations are 62 characters, and apparently the only special characters allowed are '-' and '_'. This still allows for over 300 bits of entropy but the 62 character limitation is a little strange. Why not 64? I once had a bank account that used my SSN as a login with a 4 number PIN, which was set to my birthday by default and was active without me setting it up. That was probably the most absurd password scenario I've ever seen. The PIN had to be 4-numbers because it had to match the ATM system (for some reason), but I was able to change my username (but not without calling them). Though SSNs are only 9 numbers, the system accepted something like 12 or 16 alphanumeric characters, so I gave them a randomly generated string. I asked them WTF they were thinking with a system like this and they basically said it's (somehow) cheaper for their fraud department to reimburse customers than to change their system. This was back when online banking was kind of new.

Whether you want it or not, your most important information, such as social security numbers (or the equivalent of your locality) and banking information, is already online and vulnerable to the same sort of breech. If what Evernote communicated is accurate, people with non-trivial passwords are not at significant risk of account breech, but all customers are particularly vulnerable to phishing attacks. I feel for regular people who aren't security experts and try to navigate this stuff. If it weren't for things like KeePass and LastPass, password management would be untenable, and even then laypeople aren't in a position to evaluate the efficacy of said products. There's no choice but for most people to fly blind, and they become frustrated listening to conflicting advice on the matter.

Will do! Ahh, call off the dogs. The first time I watched it I thought (and so did he) that he was controlling both sides when, in fact, he had a CPU opponent. The timing of his clicking coincided with his CPU opponent acting. He isn't targeting during the 2nd CPU move when the queen takes the pawn, which...is probably just as bad as moving the wrong pawn by a supposed mis-click...

Leo wasn't on board from the start. He reviewed 8 a few days after the BUILD Conference preview release, was immediately skeptical, and said all the stuff "we" were saying since then as well: Another thing he was wrong about was at 7:23 where he says that Microsoft will just have to provide a "great big button" to turn off Metro and turn on the Windows 7 interface. Like most of us, he just couldn't believe Microsoft would foist something like this on its customer base. His dress style hasn't changed one bit in over 15 years. In fact, I think that's actually the exact same shirt. EDIT: pay attention to him playing chess. He clearly clicks on one pawn only to have the one next to it move.

Also from the link JorgeA posted: The writer was wise to qualify the statement with "corporate market". I think tech people are being unrealistic about the effect of XP's "expiration date" with respect to the consumer market. Some literally believe that it will evaporate the instant support ends, as if home users know or care about support periods. Hell, some of them will see it as an upgrade since their computer won't be at the Welcome screen every Wednesday morning when it automatically reboots while they're in the bathroom. XP is is going to be like a carton of eggs. Some people will toss it the day of the expiration date or even before. Others will continue using them until something bad happens, which probably won't happen even if they're weeks past their date.

They should define "anyone". Sure, while a likely minority realized long ago that Windows 8 was mediocre at best, the hype machine would have one believe that Windows 8 was enough to singlehandedly revive the flagging PC market. Don't take my word for it, they fooled the WSJ among others: Permission to Procrastinate: Wait to Get a New Laptop It's easy to say "No one listens to Mossberg" but I actually had to put up a fight over deploying Windows 7 due to his articles. I've made sure to rub it in now that my boss knows 8 is a dog. In fairness to Walt, he gave a straight review upon release: Walt Mossberg Reviews Windows 8 I think he initially advocated on the assumption that Microsoft knew what it was doing then later backpedaled once he realized how backwards it was. Maybe he assumed that the bugs would have been ironed out by release.

If Windows 8 is less disorienting than a virtual machine, it's only slightly so.

Everyone But Apple And Samsung Is In A Sad Race For Third Place Microsoft never professed to aiming for third place, but the article writer can't even remember to mention them (or Nokia) when talking about competitive smartphone manufacturers. Remember, recent events are an "all-in" for this precious mobile market. Microsoft should be included in every single article on the subject, along with Apple and Samsung, but since no one is taking them seriously, they're below the likes of BlackBerry, HTC, and LG.

I'm about 80/20 following up and introducing new material so without existing traffic I have less to offer.

Quoting bphlpt from What happened to Deeper Impressions thread ? because I think it fits in with recent discussions here: It's not just here, it's just about everywhere that has traffic of any significance. However, at many other places it's the commenters who do not wish to hear Microsoft criticisms and thus they forced the issue. Recent events excluded, the MSFN community seems to be satisfied with a laissez-faire approach, which is almost unique across the Internet, which surely had a part in how this topic became so well known. I agree that "deeper impressions of Windows 8" is not an accurate handle for this topic. However, I would argue that the thread is cohesive nonetheless and that people who haven't been following since the start are finding their way by referral. In that case, topic name is basically irrelevant. In fact, I don't think I was even immediately conscious of the thread topic until the discussion of topic arose, and I've been reading for months. If I were asked, I'd refer to it as something like "that really long thread at MSFN that talks about Windows 8 and Microsoft's recent behavior". I feel this is a more "business & strategy" type discussion than "technical" but I'd also rather the topic to be positioned for maximum audience. Maybe there's no effective difference with what's been done; I can't answer that. On becoming "anti-MS" I don't think it can be denied but the accusation of it being an "anti-Neowin" in more than spirit is inaccurate. Most of the posts in this thread are better written and more information dense than top-level articles at Neowin and many other sites. Nearly everyone directly references or refers to something previously referenced, and multiple sources are referenced routinely, which, again, is rare even for articles. This is miles away from one-liner bashing and flamewars seen on most discussion forums. I can only speak for myself, but I claim to be tech-agnostic, which means once I become convinced that a particular technology offers advantages I will adopt it. Admittedly it would take a while for Microsoft to convince me that they have righted the ship, especially after they demonstrated that good products (Windows 7) are still possible in a sea of failure, but were Microsoft to consistently release high value products I would change my opinion. This attitude differs from "picking a team" where one needs to become emotionally involved and champion all aspects of his preferred corporation, which I become weary reading about, even regarding companies I generally think do a reasonable job. To put it another way, I feel a strong skeptical base aids a company and its products far more than cheerleaders, and, again, I feel this way even about healthy companies. For years I felt Microsoft qualified as a company that handled criticism well by addressing large portions of it with every new release. Furthermore, Microsoft was at one point well ahead of its time by embracing "social media" before such had a name. Before the WWW was big they sought feedback and collaboration on newsgroups (have a specific reference in mind but can't locate it), and for years they set the standard for development and beta testing transparency. I feel people like me are posting in this topic, which is why I follow the discussion. I don't mean to derail regular discussion with this aside, but I did want to justify the discussion within the topic itself as being more than simple mudslinging. The thread which originated the quote is a good place for followups: What happened to Deeper Impressions thread ?

In my experience, which is over 15 years of participating on Internet forums, "Rule 8" does far more harm than good to both sides of the discussion. I understand why it is there--to give site administration an out when unilateral decisions must be made--but it doesn't work out at all when half the active forum is banned due to "because I said so" which happens often enough for me to make a post like this. There's nothing worse for an Internet forum than to have an atmosphere where anything can be deleted at any time for non-specific reasons, which is what CharlotteTheHarlot is getting at, and after it happens the first time, followups are generally quick to follow, experience speaking. Transparency helps both sides because in addition to shaping the discussion in a meaningful way, having to explain administrative action enforces consistency in doing so. A pre-counterargument to potential counterarguments: I am not asserting free speech, rights, or any other privileges beyond what is granted beyond my de facto ability to post on the site. I do not demand or expect a response, let alone one that answers raised concerns to my satisfaction.

Hm, I hadn't actually seen the MSN page. The article thumbnail is too small. MSN8 has the same information density problems as Windows 8 and Office 2013. Not a surprise I guess. Without borders, it's hard on the eye to determine flow. There's not enough text on the screen to make obvious "blocks", and it's not justified which exasperates the problem. Then you won't have Nixon to kick around anymore. Do you really want Gerald Ford? On the topic, why'd they use PowerShell? I thought it was supposed to be an independent study. Is PowerShell really the best tool for the job?

The best part of that parody is the use of the Windows 1 font for the transition cards. Great touch. If my opinion matters, I would likely cease visiting were this topic shut down. At this point, this thread is effectively a sub-forum. I was reading along for weeks before I decided to join. While discussion isn't on-topic with the thread title, it is consistent within itself, if that makes any sense. What happened is that "deeper analysis" lead to spilling over from Windows 8 to Microsoft's current corporate strategy, how they got there, and where they are likely to go. Reading the topic for some time, it has flowed naturally, which I think is much of the appeal.

Who the heck cares? Did I miss something or did I step into 1997 where we actually cared about website performance on our Pentium 1s with 24 MB RAM and 28.8 kilobaud modems? Where are the results for Lycos, Webcrawler, and Excite? Does IE 10 have anything to make Geocities sites stop blinking? Don't get me wrong, things should load faster with technology improvements but there's no way anyone is switching platforms to get a faster loading version of MSN, which no one uses. It's telling that results were explained in percentages rather than in absolute units of time. How long is this in seconds? Did the clock stop at the point where one could start reading the page or did we wait until all elements finished loading? The linked PDF does give the answer, but you can see why they're using percentages when the answers are exciting like "2 seconds saved". They're using an AMD E2-3000M as a testbed, which is roughly equivalent to a Core2, and 2 GB RAM. With a more powerful computer those multiple seconds would rapidly become imperceptible fractions of seconds. EDIT: referenced CPU benchmarks and changed language for accuracy.

Even Microsoft's main channel is lame: http://www.youtube.com/user/microsoft 128,888 subscribers and 5,966,850 views since Feb 12, 2006. The number of subscribers compared to views is suspicious. Even if it's an honest number, it still means the channel gets extremely low click-through. Compare it to Google's: http://www.youtube.com/user/Google 1,231,430 subscribers, 686,722,272 views. Wow! Google's channel is boring, too. Apple's channel sucks, too, but it's just a dumping ground for their TV spots: http://www.youtube.com/user/Apple 1,041,982 subscribers, 37,238,727 views. Note their click-through rate is even worse than Microsoft's. As sharp as Apple's marketing is, their channel is shockingly underutilized. Google is the only one that gets it even close to right. To keep this on topic, one of the things Microsoft needed to do to "out cool" Apple and Google with the hipster crowd was to make their YouTube traffic look like Google's. As it is, they're beat handily by a blender company: http://www.youtube.com/user/Blendtec Surely Microsoft has stuff that competes with blenders.

Check out the number of views on the Scroogled videos. http://www.youtube.com/user/ScroogledTruth Microsoft is awful at marketing. Less than 36,000 channel views and barely over 100 subscribers. I could do a better job with their YouTube marketing and I don't really know what I'm doing. I wonder how much money they dumped into this to reach the same number of people serviced by a podunk TV station.

IMO the critical mass of answers by nameless supporters helped clinch the victory of Windows over Linux. While FOSS had the reputation of having people eager to help, most of them weren't knowledgeable beyond the most basic of things and reliable answers to routine problems were rare. With Windows, most problems could be solved by entering the error message and researching comments. It didn't always work and wasn't always easy to deploy even with a step-by-step guide, but one could say with a decent level of confidence that answers were out there. For years I thought it was me. I just couldn't focus on the KBs. I found them so vague and wordy that I started skipping over them. MVPs were no help because they would just link back to the KBs even after you explained that you already tried them or they didn't apply. In my experience, MVPs don't offer useful information.

That's him, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols. Guess I come from a different circle as I thought he was universally known by his initials. He's on the A-list of FOSS apologists working in the press. He's like the Thurrott of Linux but in my opinion even more dishonest. Agreed. I'm just lamenting that this is necessary and even vital. There is almost always someone in the comments with a more researched, better presented argument. Commenters should be added-value, not the driver, in my opinion. I actually always liked El Reg. It's just that I realize using it as a factual source in arguments can leave one on shaky ground. Over the years its 'rag' status has allowed it to publish some surprisingly incisive articles you wouldn't find anywhere else, but some people can't get past its sarcastic and cynical style, even though its articles are often well-grounded. I recently discovered that Stardock owns 40% of Neowin. You'd think they'd mention this each and every time Stardock is mentioned in an article but it never is (except in the comments section, which is how I found out about it). Lately, when some "crazy rumor" comes out about Microsoft, often directly traced back to top management, the apologist's reaction is, "Do you think Microsoft would really do this?" and the answer has to be, "Based on a pattern of behavior observable over a period of years, yes, I find this 'rumor' credible."

It's baaaack Coveted Microsoft Surface Pro model surfaces again in stores Oh. Geez, they can't even deliver to dense/big states like NJ and TX? Maybe it wasn't a hoax after all; Microsoft just has no idea how to manufacture and distribute electronics. FAIL

I miss (the original) Screen Savers I also miss Computer Chronicles. How come all the good tech journalism came about at a time when such wasn't mass market? The best was when Gary Killdall made company reps visibly uncomfortable with basic questions. Not that good tech journalism doesn't exist but now you have to go to "some guy's blog" or find a hot message board thread like this one. Getting on a rant, I loathe "journalists" that link only to themselves for argument support. That's as dishonest as it gets. SJVN is probably the worst at this. Not a slight at CharlotteTheHarlot at the least bit, but it's a bit sad seeing forum commenters offering multiple, independently written sources as evidence while major article writers can't even be bothered to track down a single 1st source, instead relying on Nth-generation summaries and blog rewrites. This problem extends to all technical writing, though. Science reporting is just as bad as tech reporting, for example.

This one has the Tiles color scheme

Windows loaders spoof a hardware fingerprint, thus making an OEM VLK valid. Later Office 2010 activators spoofed activation servers I think but the earlier ones just reset the trial period. They'd install a service that basically reset the trial info every 24 hours. Loaders are very useful for test deployments because Microsoft's VLK licensing doesn't give enough leeway to do dry runs. In fact, once working, you might as well keep the loaders there. It's like the old days this way: install everywhere but make sure the number of licenses you own matches the number of deployments. It'd be nice if Microsoft would release licence management tools that businesses could realistically use, but it actually gets worse every year.