Windows 8 - Deeper Impressions

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

Aero Glass can be enabled in the recently leaked build of Windows 8.1 Update 1, will it make a return? ( WinBeta 2014-02-06 )

Aero Glass can be turned on in the leaked build of Windows 8.1 update 1 ( NeoWin 2014-02-06 )

The tweak involves changing the values inside of your registry which we might add should only be done by folks who know what they are doing as a bad registry change can kill your system. But, if you are brave enough, do the following: locate KEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows and then click on 'Windows' and select New > Key and name it DWM. From there, create a Dword 32bit values and name it HideBlur, then change the value to 1.

While we are cautiously optimistic that Microsoft will bring back one of the best themes the company has created, seeing as this can only be done in a leaked build of Windows 8.1, we wouldnt get too excited as these things are quite common. In fact, since it is a leaked build, everything is subject to change and the ability to enable Aero Glass could be an oversight by those who compiled the build.

Well that just corresponds to a simple patch ...

[KEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\DWM]

"HideBlur"=dword:00000001

However, as the video shows it really is an unimpressive title bar transparency and nothing more. A useful Aero requires the full theme found in Windows 7, including rounded corners, blur and color selection. It doesn't sound like the guy in the video at WinBeta knows what he is doing, he seems to think there is a switch that needs to be thrown. Why not try out the Windows 7 visual styles in this 8.1 update just for starters?

Seriously though, isn't it silly for Microsoft to have to rebuild the thing from scratch now, rather than just re-inserting the original Windows 7 source code that they obviously killed.

To Grow, Microsoft Must Deemphasize Windows ( Thurrott 2014-02-04 )

A report this week claims that an activist investor who will soon join Microsoft's board of directors will fight to convince the firm to lessen its reliance on Windows. As it turns out, that's actually a fine idea. More to the point, Microsoft is already moving in that direction anyway.

As you might know, ValueAct president Mason Morfit is set to join Microsoft's board sometime early this year, most likely in the wake of whatever decision the firm makes on its next CEO.

[...]

That might sound like heresy in some circles, but the truth is, this change has been coming for a long time.

And naturally Paul mostly agrees, as would any good co-dependent enabler. By all means, throw more eggs into that cloud basket, a certifiable growth industry, well until more Snowden leaks hit. It's much like a house of cards just waiting for the final gust of air to bring the whole thing down.

The other funny part about this is the sheer irony of enablers and fanboys pushing for Microsoft to get deeper into the cloud, sell consumer sheeple crap, and become a devices and services company. All of these things perfectly define those other companies that they literally HATE: Apple, Google and Amazon. One thing the MicroZealots all have in common is universal loathing for those firms ridiculing them as toy makers for iSheep and data and music services for dummies. But now the truth of this should be perfectly clear - they were actually dying with envy and jealousy all along. We wanna be sheep too!

Here is an epic response at the Thurrot article ( among several ) ...

I wasn't aware that Microsoft wasn't diverse in its software offerings. Quotes like, "Who buys Windows?" from Ballmer are just one more nail in his "shoulda' been gone from Microsoft years ago" coffin. This is the same guy who thought it was a great idea for Microsoft to spend $40B+ getting a bagful of nothing in the Yahoo! purchase, remember? He came close to ruining the company with that brain-dead move--and would have, too--if it hadn't been for the fact that the Yahoo! co-founder was even dumber than Ballmer and turned him down! Then Ballmer does it again by green lighting a touchscreen OS for Microsoft's buying public--which happened to be 95%+ *non* touchscreen!!!!!

I think people are getting dumber by the day...must be...it's like we are returning to the dark ages, or something, where people have difficult parsing even simple logic. The *only* reason people--especially dumb investors--are talking about "deemphasizing Windows" is because *Windows 8 has flubbed commercially*! That's it. No other reason. Yet, we know why it flubbed, and we know how to stop it flubbing! Yes, indeed, these things are known quantities. To fail to do them is to fail completely--doesn't matter what Microsoft does with Android, etc.

"Who buys Windows?" indeed. What a perfectly idiotic question. When Win95 shipped there was enormous media coverage of the people lining up outside the Best Buy's all over the country to purchase it--the night before it went on sale! Same thing pretty much happened with XP. I buy all of my OSes for my machines at home @ retail and there are *certainly* millions of other people who do the same. The more I peer into Ballmer's past quote parade the more he resembles a near moron--and, no, Ballmer doesn't get the credit for the double-digit rise of x86 PCs during his tenure--Ballmer was simply in the right place/right time and went along for the ride. What happened was inevitable. Even Ballmer could not screw that up because people elsewhere in the industry other than Ballmer were making it happen.

So, OK, how can the guy supposedly smart enough to green-light Win7, another wildly popular Windows OS version that people stood in line to buy, also think a touchscreen OS with little-to-no hardware base is going anywhere, and "Who buys Windows"? Are those even coherent thoughts?

It's stupid observations like counting the number of "Apple devices" that sell and equating them to Microsoft Office sales without asking the key question: "Who does spreadsheets and term papers on a keyboard-less device with a tiny screen?", that blow me away. The only "Apple device" fit for Office is the PC Apple sells called a "Mac." Likewise, Windows PCs. Cell phones and 7" tablets won't get the Office job done.

Windows is the hub of the Microsoft software ecosystem. Dumb investors cannot be expected to know these things. But the CEO of Microsoft has to know it--because if he doesn't, might as well cash out of Microsoft while the stock is still worth something. If the new CEO doesn't clearly grasp this then Microsoft is already a Dead Man Walking."

February Xbox One update will add hard drive management ( NeoWin 2014-02-05 )

Today, Microsoft does another 180 with the Xbox One by announcing that its next software update, due on February 11th, will finally add a way for owners to view and manage storage space on the console.

[...]

The update will also add a battery indicator to show owners how much power is left in their wireless controller and it will allow USB keyboards to be used on the console for the first time.

Can we now all agree that Xbox was released rushed and unfinished? Well most objective people can, not the fanboys though.

BTW, check out the comments for post after post attacking the author of the article! His crime? Stating this: "Today, Microsoft does another 180 ...". I kid you not.

Microsoft's Kinect is being used to guard the border between North and South Korea ( TechSpot 2014-02-04 )

Well with the Kinect in place we can finally say that for once the government spooks will be looking at a border crossing rather than spying internally on its own citizens.

Not sure just how true this story is, but let's assume the South Korean decision makers are dumb enough to use consumer electronics for such a volatile flashpoint. I'm very doubtful that Microsoft would agree to this because the downside risk is substantial in the event of a failure. Any number of border incidents can occur that will reflect badly on them ( incursions, shootings, accidents, a Kinect BSOD that leads to a false alarm ) the list of possibilities is endless. No-one hears about uneventful day-to-day business-as-usual operations, but they do hear about the bad stuff. Good luck with this.

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

Comcast web mail servers hacked, all users at risk ( NeoWin 2014-02-06 )

Hacking group NullCrew FTS declared today that it had exploited a security flaw in Comcasts Zimbra webmail server.

[...]

Every Comcast ISP user has a master account, which is accessible through their Zimbra webmail site. This account can be used to access your payment information, e-mail settings, user account creation and services you purchase from Comcast. Even if you do not use their mail service, you still will have a master account. It is strongly recommended that, if you are a Comcast user, you change your password as soon as possible.

And the hit parade continues. Glad that Comcast spent so much time and resources worrying about throttling bandwidth hogs rather than securing their network from the bad guys. Good job guys!


GCHQ disrupts Anonymous using Denial of Service attack ( NeoWin 2014-02-06 )

Not only did the actions of GHCQ disrupt the grouping of Anonymous members but it also disrupted other hacktivists who were arranging Letter Drops, Protests and other legal ways of protesting against their chosen causes.

Which is a peculiar way of saying they also impacted innocent bystanders, civilians if you will. This describes an indiscriminate bombing, like "targeted" strike on a building to kill the bad guy terrorist but taking out innocents in the process. Ironic too, since this whole spook saga hinges on the justification of preventing terrorism. Naturally the UK spooks have an explanation ...

In a statement from GHCQ to NBC a spokesperson confirmed, "All of GCHQ's work is carried out in accordance with a strict legal and policy framework."

That answer was a non-sequitur and IMHO shows that our governments are operating under no oversight whatsoever. There is no law that sanctions stepping on or taking out innocents. All such incidents are pretend-investigated as accidents and then summarily "cleared" after much chest-thumping. No wonder our own spooks have made pets out of their UK counterparts, they have even less restraints than we pretend our own operate under.


GCHQ warns UK government agencies on end of Windows XP support ( NeoWin 2014-02-06 )

In a page on the GCHQ site that went live this week, the agency says that while upgrading Windows XP and Office 2003, among other programs, is "strongly recommended" before Microsoft ends support, there are ways to reduce the security threat if those upgrades are not ready before April 8th. One is to edit the registry file on Windows XP machines "so that vulnerable Office components and Media Players are not registered as the default applications for the relevant file types."

GCHQ also recommends that access to removable media on Windows XP PCs should be taken out. In addition, the agency says, "It may be possible for those posture checks to enforce that no Windows XP devices can be used to remotely access corporate systems." Installing and updating antivirus programs on Windows XP PCs " will continue to be beneficial".

I'm surprised they didn't just tell everyone to use Vista+, since the spooks were likely knee-deep in the development of those OS versions. So anyway, edit the registry to stop Office and WMP from opening files? WTF. If they wanted to really stop virus armageddon they would tell them to just not use Windows, right? That last bit is hysterical: "Installing and updating antivirus programs on Windows XP PCs " will continue to be beneficial"." What no recommendation, any AV program will suffice? Yes, these spooks sound very tech savvy indeed.

EDIT: fixed quote tags

Edited February 7, 2014 by CharlotteTheHarlot

[Aero7x64]

Like I said already before I want both full Windows Aero and proper start menu. Border transparency is not full Windows Aero. Gradients, glow, blur, color selection to Windows borders, border buttons that fit to Aero style, progress bars in Aero style etc. other things that make full Windows Aero what it is, have to be restored and of course proper start menu also has to be restored.

Edited February 7, 2014 by Aero7x64

[JorgeA]

Or being less optimistic, look at what is in the cooking (recent patents, courtesy of Improbable Research):

http://www.improbable.com/2013/12/04/inventions-to-detect-and-prevent-annoying-phone-calls-documents-or-people/

Your e-mails (or forum posts for that matter) will be tagged by the (connected to Google, just to be fair with the good MS guys which are not the only Evil) first patent as "annoying document", and the phone calls you will make to protest about this will be filtered by the second and third technology (this latter by the good guys at Huawei) and you will soon be registered as a VAP (Very Annoying Person) in a database.

Once in it, you will be deprived of any possible way to communicate your ideas and opinions, short of shouting or send messages into bottles

This latter approach working usually fine, but not in a timely fashion and sometimes not even working at all:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2418557/Worlds-oldest-message-bottle-discovered-walker-Canada.html

Man, put this technology together with government snooping and you have the recipe for a non-violent totalitarianism where people with views different from the officials in power can be almost completely silenced at the press of a button. No arrests or shots to the back of the head necessary. All you'd need is to get a party in power that's contemptuous enough of the democratic process, and that could be the last effective election.

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

Keep safe Charlotte (and anyone else facing similar)

Thanks! Survived another one. 10 inches in 12 hours, so AccuWeather called that one pretty close. 4 inches just two days ago also, and naturally nothing is melting ( 10 degrees F tonight, 3 degrees tomorrow, daytime below freezing ) so it is getting pretty darn high on the ground with no place to put the plowed new stuff. Ah well, I see some others got double that amount, so we're lucky I guess.

Glad you made it through OK.

Over here, we didn't get any snow -- instead, we got a quarter-inch coating of ice over everything. On top of the snow that was already on trees, it caused thousands of them to break and take down power lines with them. I have friends and family who still have no electricity, two days later. People are moving in with relatives or staying at hotels, and public and private buildings are being used as shelters. The electric company says it's the most damaging ice storm in their history.

Miami's sounding real good right now...

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

Like I said already before I want both full Windows Aero and proper start menu. Border transparency is not full Windows Aero. Gradients, glow, blur, color selection to Windows borders, border buttons that fit to Aero style, progress bars in Aero style etc. other thinks that make full Windows Aero what it is, have to be restored and of course proper start menu also has to be restored.

That list would be good enough for me, too.

All they would need to do is to add Aero as an optional theme under Personalize when you click the Desktop, the same way they kept the option for Windows Classic for so many years.

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

A-ha!!!

Starting at 18:13, Paul Thurrott waxes lyrical on the beauty of Aero Glass in Windows Vista on one of the first episodes of Windows Weekly, November 2006:

PT: ...They've pretied it up -- I mean, there are brand-new icons now throughout the system, which are really kind of nice-looking and have that glass look to them. The other thing I noticed, and I know this is going to sound like an odd sort of a side comment, but I recently bought a monitor for a secondary PC for my son, and it has that kind of glossy, shiny coat that screens have now. The screen is much smaller than the one that I use, but it's shiny, and Windows Vista on that machine is absolutely gorgeous -- I mean, there's just something special about it.

LL: It's the shiny, happy operating system!

PT: There is something to it with this Glass thing, when you've got it on that shiny LCD, it really is -- it's really attractive.

[emphasis added!]

It'd be interesting to find similar glowing descriptions of Aero back then by today's advocates of the Windows 8 flat and dull UI.

--JorgeA

Edited February 7, 2014 by JorgeA

[MagicAndre1981]

Paul Thurrott changes his opinion daily. So ignore him.

[jaclaz]

Paul Thurrott changes his opinion daily. So ignore him.

Well, no .

One should ignore him every other day .

jaclaz

[JorgeA]

Paul Thurrott changes his opinion daily. So ignore him.

Well, no .

One should ignore him every other day .

jaclaz

[JorgeA]

We knew that it would come to this:

New York Police Department is beta-testing Google Glass

Google Glass could have a similar value proposition for police forces, Merritt said, pointing out that wireless facial recognition software is one potential use.

Now put that together with this:

Just When You Thought Google Glass Couldn't Get Creepier:

New App Allows Strangers to ID You Just by Looking at You

A new app will allow total strangers to ID you and pull up all your information, just by looking at you and scanning your face with their Google Glass. The app is called NameTag and it sounds CREEPY.

The "real-time facial recognition" software "can detect a face using the Google Glass camera, send it wirelessly to a server, compare it to millions of records, and in seconds return a match complete with a name, additional photos and social media profiles."

--JorgeA

EDIT: new link

Edited February 7, 2014 by JorgeA

[JorgeA]

Even North Korea is abandoning Windows (the look, anyway):

North Korea's Own OS Goes From Copy of Windows to Copy of OS X

Red Star OS, the official (and only state-approved) operating system of North Korea, has gotten a brand new look — or at least, a look that was brand new on Macs about 10 years ago. Red Star once imitated the look and feel of Windows, but has moved on to copying Apple's OS X.

An interesting point, for Linux fans perhaps to ponder, is the following:

Using Linux as a base for the OS allows the creators to easily take control of basic system functions, something that would be difficult with an off-the-shelf OS like Windows. Red Star's built-in apps and services have been customized by its developers, allowing North Korea's infamous censorship and restriction of media sources to take place at a fundamental level.

--JorgeA

[vinifera]

dunno if this was posted

but here are updated things in new update 1 for 8.1

clearly shows the failure of MS and win by users

Metro apps are now acting like normal apps, can be minimized to taskbar, maximized and they even get title bar like any normal windowed app

Taskbar now pops out even in "metro mode" (when you hover down)

Metro Title bar popus out when you hover up

and what was known metro apps can be pinned to taskbar as ordinary apps could

[Monroe]

Kind of interesting that Snowden maybe used a “web crawler” software to grab all the secrets ... totally fantastic ... who is in charge protecting everything ... there must be more web crawlers.

Snowden Used Low-Cost Tool to Best N.S.A.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/09/us/snowden-used-low-cost-tool-to-best-nsa.html?_r=0

FEB. 8, 2014

WASHINGTON — Intelligence officials investigating how Edward J. Snowden gained access to a huge trove of the country’s most highly classified documents say they have determined that he used inexpensive and widely available software to “scrape” the National Security Agency’s networks, and kept at it even after he was briefly challenged by agency officials.

Using “web crawler” software designed to search, index and back up a website, Mr. Snowden “scraped data out of our systems” while he went about his day job, according to a senior intelligence official. “We do not believe this was an individual sitting at a machine and downloading this much material in sequence,” the official said. The process, he added, was “quite automated.”

The findings are striking because the N.S.A.’s mission includes protecting the nation’s most sensitive military and intelligence computer systems from cyberattacks, especially the sophisticated attacks that emanate from Russia and China. Mr. Snowden’s “insider attack,” by contrast, was hardly sophisticated and should have been easily detected, investigators found.

more at the link ...

Edited February 9, 2014 by duffy98

[JorgeA]

Kind of interesting that Snowden maybe used a “web crawler” software to grab all the secrets ... totally fantastic ... who is in charge protecting everything ... there must be more web crawlers.

Wow. in a weird sort of way, I find this reassuring. The fact that the vaunted NSA geniuses would leave open the possibility of using such a relatively unsophisticated piece of code to vacuum up the data on their computers, makes me wonder if they aren't as omnipotent and fearsome as we've been led to think. After all, it IS a government bureaucracy...

Thanks for the good news (if that's indeed what it is!).

--JorgeA