Windows 8 - Deeper Impressions

[JorgeA]

Security news, Google/Android edition:

Google knows nearly every Wi-Fi password in the world

Many (probably most) of these Android phones and tablets are phoning home to Google, backing up Wi-Fi passwords along with other assorted settings. And, although they have never said so directly, it is obvious that Google can read the passwords.

...Backing up your data/settings makes moving to a new Android device much easier. It lets Google configure your new Android device very much like your old one.

What is not said, is that Google can read the Wi-Fi passwords.

And, if you are reading this and thinking about one Wi-Fi network, be aware that Android devices remember the passwords to every Wi-Fi network they have logged on to...

[emphasis in original]

Google Is Testing A Program That Tracks You Everywhere You Go

Google is beta-testing a program that tracks users’ purchasing habits by registering brick-and-mortar store visits via smartphones, according to a
report from Digiday.

Google can access user data via Android apps or their Apple iOS apps, like Google search, Gmail, Chrome, or Google Maps.

If a customer is using these apps while he shops or has them still running in the background, Google’s new program pinpoints the origin of the user data and determines if the customer is in a place of business.

Google gets permission to do this kind of tracking when Android users opt in to the “location services” option in their smartphone’s options menu and when iOS users agree to allow “location services” for Google apps like Gmail and Google Maps.

Down in the comments section...

"Google gets permission to do this kind of tracking when Android users OPT IN to the “location services” option in their smartphone’s options menu and when iOS users agree to allow “location services” for Google apps like Gmail and Google Maps."

No... this is NOT an "opt in". If the user does not allow the "location services" then the phone will not operate. I fail to understand how you can call this an "opt in" when it is in fact compulsory.

.

Locations Services was the first thing I disabled. Any fool who lets this "service" operate deserves to be tracked.

Any Android smartphone users reading this who can verify (1) whether this location feature can be disabled, and (2) whether the phone keeps working if you do disable the feature?

--JorgeA

Edited November 7, 2013 by JorgeA

[Tripredacus]

Any Android smartphone users reading this who can verify (1) whether this location feature can be disabled, and (2) whether the phone keeps working if you do disable the feature?

--JorgeA

Yes it can be disabled. Certain functions won't work, like Maps, location tagging with photos, certain other apps that require it. The maps is a strange one. Its not like Google Maps on the website, where it loads up and you type where you want to look at. It automatically tries to set the default map location based on your current GPS and complains about Location Services being disabled.

And as far as "opt-in" this isn't entirely accurate. The phone never asks you if you want to use it or not. In my experience (noting that all Android OS versions and settings added by wireless carriers may be different) it is more of an opt-out scenario. Everyone I know has it enabled on their phones because it is the default setting. It doesn't ask you when you first set up your phone or anything, but you can go turn it off if you want.

Anyways, the only useful thing I've personally found using Location Services is that the clock will change automatically when changing Time Zones.

[jaclaz]

It doesn't ask you when you first set up your phone or anything, but you can go turn it off if you want.

Yes, it normally asks it at first setup, at least Samsung's do, example:

http://www.knowyourmobile.com/samsung/samsung-galaxy-s4/20099/how-set-your-samsung-galaxy-s4-first-time

jaclaz

[TELVM]

Google bans Windows Chrome extensions found outside the Chrome Web Store

The sad march towards tribal fiefdoms continued Thursday, as Google announced that it will only allow Chrome for Windows users to download extensions hosted by Google’s own Chrome Web Store starting in January.

Google says the decision to transform Chrome into a gated community stems from security concerns, in an echo of the official reason that Microsoft moved to the Windows Store model to distribute modern UI apps ...

[JorgeA]

Monkeys do keep their documents users folder on C: , if they don't they cannot upgrade to 8.1:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows8_1-windows_install/sorry-it-looks-like-this-pc-cant-run-windows-81/84310e8a-edd3-48d7-af31-0b09666b0c74

Sometimes I wonder what a cyberarcheologist from year 2513 (or *any* alien of a more advanced race) might think of this early computer civilization, if they find about this issue.

A solution was given on page 10, by user "TSoftware":

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows8_1-windows_install/sorry-it-looks-like-this-pc-cant-run-windows-81/84310e8a-edd3-48d7-af31-0b09666b0c74?page=10

It's outrageous when the fix involves a 15-step procedure (at least) whch moreover wrecks your Start Screen. As one commenter wrote,

Gotta tell you, I never thought for a second that this scenario would not be supported.. This has to rank up there with releasing the Surface and restricting purchases to on-line only.

And one more Win8.1 "deeper impression" by the last commenter in that thread:

I like win8 and 8.1 looks a little better, but can you believe that File History will not back up your SkyDrive folder!!!

Why on gods earth would they want to stop you using you own equipment to provide file back-up and versioning? If I corrupt a file on SkyDrive and its propagated onto my laptop why can't I go to File History get last weeks version, I have the disk space!

This has been an absolute abortion of a migration and to be honest with the limitations is hardly been worth it.

In the spring I came within 5 minutes of buying an 27in iMac, but after 20 years of using Microsoft products I bottled it and brought a highly speced custom PC because I thought Windows 8.1 would be the way forward. I honestly think I made the wrong choice, so very sad.

[emphasis added]

The answer to the question in bold is (of course) control. They don't care that you have the disk space for your own backups, and if they had their druthers, instead of a nice big SSD you would have a 32GB SD card in your machine so that you had to put everything in the cloud. They're trying to move the individual away from owning and directing his own (cyber)life, to a "sharing" model where the major decisions are made by Experts who know better than you and your every action is monitored and logged for analysis. All in the name of protecting you, needless to say.

Oh, and the answer to @jaclaz's question about what the cyberarcheologist from 2513 might say is that this is just about the time when the New Dark Ages took hold. Instead of priests in black robes, this time it was scientists in white lab coats who claimed special access to Truth and the right and the power to enforce their view of it on everyone else.

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

Google bans Windows Chrome extensions found outside the Chrome Web Store

The sad march towards tribal fiefdoms continued Thursday, as Google announced that it will only allow Chrome for Windows users to download extensions hosted by Google’s own Chrome Web Store starting in January.

Google says the decision to transform Chrome into a gated community stems from security concerns, in an echo of the official reason that Microsoft moved to the Windows Store model to distribute modern UI apps ...

A perfect example of what I just wrote in my previous post! I swear I didn't read your post before submitting mine!!

--JorgeA

[jaclaz]

Well, this is "fresh":

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/06/google-nsa-gchq-spying-judicial-process

https://plus.google.com/+MikeHearn/posts/LW1DXJ2BK8k

jaclaz

[TELVM]

... The answer to the question in bold is (of course) control. They don't care that you have the disk space for your own backups, and if they had their druthers, instead of a nice big SSD you would have a 32GB SD card in your machine so that you had to put everything in the cloud. They're trying to move the individual away from owning and directing his own (cyber)life, to a "sharing" model where the major decisions are made by Experts who know better than you and your every action is monitored and logged for analysis. All in the name of protecting you, needless to say ...

And that's the true reason behind all this "tabletizing universe" hogwash and the dark clouds on the horizon: To leave the people hardware-handicapped. That's why they've declared war on the powerful, hardware self-sufficient PC.

If they manage to downgrade us to monkeys poking on 32GB tablets (just enough for Tiles X and nothing else) then they'll have everybody by the balls.

"Entire human crops to harvest at leisure ... yum yum"

[Formfiller]

CEOs narrowed down:

http://windowsitpro.com/paul-thurrotts-wininfo/report-microsoft-ceo-search-narrowed

A credible report from Reuters claims that Microsoft has narrowed the number of possible candidates for its next CEO to five individuals. Of those, two are external to the company and at least two are among its highest-ranking executives.

So who's on the short list? According to Reuters, it was able to identify only four of the five remaining candidates, although the fifth is said to be a current Microsoft executive. The identified candidates are:

Ford CEO Alan Mulally

Stephen Elop

Tony Bates

Satya Nadella

In the original article the backgrounds of these are listed, I haven't quoted that.

Anyway, rather lame list. The only interesting choice is Mulally.

Tony Bates was the CEO of Skype shortly before Microsoft bought it. He didn't found the company and joined well later, after it was already an established brand (in 2010, - MS buy out was in 2011) Before his Skype stint, he was a Cisco exec and later touristed in Silicon Valley, and was member of the board of Youtube, Lovefilm and so on... pretty generic exec.

Satya Nadella is the tech leader of the "cloud" efforts at MS. According to Wikipedia he "led the transformation of the business and technology from client-server software to cloud infrastructure and services." In other words: More of the stuff why MS needed a new CEO in the first place! Do they really think everybody can be forcefully moved to the cloud? Apart from the recent spy scandals and privacy problems, there are some massive infrastructure problems; slow internet connections even in developed countries and myriads of other showstoppers. The Xbone disaster has teached them nothing.

Stephen Elop - I don't get the appeal? He was only two years at MS before he joined Nokia. OK, he should be rewarded for trojan-horsing Nokia I guess, but making him CEO? Without Microsoft's help, Nokia would be probably bankrupt. Elop's effort to establish WP as a major player pretty much failed. Why are they so in love with the guy?

Besides:

Elop was a director of consulting for Lotus Development Corporation before becoming CIO for Boston Chicken in 1992, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1998. In the same year, he joined Macromedia's Web/IT department and worked at the company for seven years, where he held several senior positions, including CEO from January 2005^[12] for three months before their acquisition by Adobe Systems was announced in April 2005.

He was then president of worldwide field operations at Adobe, tendering his resignation in June 2006 and leaving in December, after which he was the COO of Juniper Networks for exactly one year from January 2007 – 2008.

From January 2008 to September 2010, Elop worked for Microsoft as the head of the Business Division, responsible for the Microsoft Office and Microsoft Dynamics line of products, and as a member of the company's senior leadership team. It was during this time that Microsoft's Business Division released Office 2010

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Elop

So, he was CIO of a company that filed bankruptcy, and the two times he was CEO, it led to acquisition of these companies short time after?

Edited November 8, 2013 by Formfiller

[Formfiller]

According to this article:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-06/microsoft-said-to-include-turner-on-internal-list-for-ceo.html

The mysterious last in the list is Kevin Turner! He's an exec at MS and is apparently hated by the employees (comments on mini-msft and others). He is apparently one of the driving forces behind the stack-ranking system there.

Worse than Ballmer. What a choice!

[TELVM]

An analysis of the last iteration in a famous game:

... Operating Systems – results clearly show that the game runs much better on Windows 8.1 than on Windows 7. When releasing Windows 8′s vanilla version, Microsoft announced better performance with multicore CPU’s, especially with AMD’s FX CPUs. What Microsoft said, Microsoft delivered. It is perfectly fine that new operating system brings better performance but we do not know why there is so much stuttering with Windows 7 OS. When we say stuttering we are not referring to frame drops or even Frametiming, we tested all that and it brought us nothing. We believe that Framerating techniques would show what the users and we as well have experienced, however at the time of testing we didn’t have adequate equipment to prove these claims but you can be sure that this is something we are going to be dealing with in the future. Battlefield 3 runs perfectly well with W7 without even a hint of stutter and we really do not understand why this happens in Battlefield 4. Unless, someone has found a way to show his new OS as a much superior one to the previous, and in order for them to do that, found a way for the older one to fail. We are not pointing any fingers, just saying. At this point , since there is not even a hint of a patch that would improve performance on W7 (DICE is being awfully quiet about that), if you are planning on upgrading your computer for Battlefield 4 the first thing you should change is your operating system and switch to Windows 8.1 (64-bit) ...

Source

How do you catch moths? You bait them with a fatal attraction ...

[JorgeA]

How do you catch moths? You bait them with a fatal attraction ...

Wow, that's very fitting.

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

A sampling of comments on a MSFT board discussion about the lack of a Windows 8.1 ISO, and the practical problems that OEM system users face as a result of that:

My wife and I have a desktop machine each, a laptop between us, and recently a tablet, all happily running Windows 8. The tablet is 32 bit and the rest 64 bit versions. I would love to move to 8.1 but, with ~3GB download from the Windows Store each and with an 8GB download per month plan most of which we use each month, we simply won't be doing the upgrades.

Microsoft simply has to realise that there are a lot of loyal and enthusiastic Windows 8 users who don't have an unlimited broadband connection.

Release an ISO or alienate a lot of users, not just small business but home users as well. What about people with a couple of teenagers? You could easily have 6 machines per broadband connection.

Whatever mind-dead executive that thought out this policy needs to find another career.

.

Well, that is not very clever - it will only encourage downloading from alternative sources which then will be fraught with the risks of malware. Not to mention about those small operators who have 5 or 10 PC's that need upgrading but do not have sufficient broadband allocation for that amount of data. We're running Windows on MAC computers in Bootcamp but this may just tip us over to going OS X on all of them.

.

I rank this 8.1 on a scale worse than Windows Millennium.

.

This is my worst experience to date with a major Windows upgrade.

Please please please Microsoft make the ISO available same as it is to MSDN subscribers. Trust your customers; listen to your customers.

--JorgeA

[jaclaz]

Well, you see, if you use "happily running Windows 8" in a sentence , all the following comments, even if otherwise senceful, loose each and every possible validity.

If you go to a car show and while talking with other car enthusiasts by mistake you utter "I actually liked the Ford Pinto" (in the US) or "I actually love driving my Fiat Duna" (in Europe) you instantly loose your credibility and everything you say after (and before) is discredited.

"running Windows 8" is acceptable, using the adverb "happily" it is not .

And ME was not that bad, after all. (I know, it's hard to say this, but still it cannot be compared to the 8.1 abomination ... )

And Windows 8.1 is NOT a "major" Windows upgrade, it is a very minor one.

jaclaz

[TELVM]

A sampling of comments on a MSFT board discussion ...

Heh heh , notice how they've crippled the search by removing the "Sort: by Helpful Votes" option in an attempt to camouflage the elephant in the room :

The top most helpful tips in the Windows 8 section of Microsoft Community as of 10/04/2013:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_8?tab=QnA&sort=HelpfulCount&dir=Desc

This is elegant shill-busting in my book :

According to my good friend RalphEllis here, the customer has to adapt to Windows, not the other way round. Blaming the customer seems to be the central theme in his 'answers': all you lazy critics should put in more effort! Start reading, start learning, at least half a day!

Of course, we're dealing with a paid spin doctor here, who will twist, turn or simply ignore what everybody is saying and keeps defending WinH8(.1) at all cost. But apparently my good friend RalphEllis took the same classes as Comical Ali.

Being employed in the business of promotion as well, I have some advice for you: it's better to publicly recognise obvious errors, to keep any credibility that you have left. Be honest, or at least as much as possible within the boundaries set by your employer. Don't mock, bully or patronize your audience, but listen to what they are trying to tell you. Strong expressions (e.g. I HATE WINDOWS 8) are always used out of real frustrations: don't ridiculize this, but try to empathize.

Unlike those third party add-ons, this advice is free, Ralph!

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_8-windows_install/i-hate-windows-8/cd2d9fec-9d95-42ba-9e41-727419459465?page=27 (Bottom of page)

Edited November 9, 2013 by TELVM