Windows 8 - Deeper Impressions

[Formfiller]

By the way, here are some more C9 classics from my Enfant Terrible (wastingtimewithforums) days there, in case you missed them:

This is epic. Not least is the amount of patience and calm that you were able to deploy against some of these folks. I find it annoying even to read through them, let alone trying to compose replies without going nuts!!

--JorgeA

Thanks.

For more "going nuts" experiences, I heartily recommend this thread:

http://channel9.msdn.com/Forums/Coffeehouse/E3-Smackdown

It's not my best performance (in opposite to most threads, I've lost my cool a few times here), but its one of the threads where the apologists are ultimately entering loon-territory. Inane comparisons and ad-hominem attacks galore! It's long but worth it for the ultimate "I want to tear my hair out reading this!"-experience.

Edited March 4, 2014 by Formfiller

[Formfiller]

Doubt there's a way to research this, but it would be interesting to go back to 2006-7 and see if some of these same people back then were praising Aero Glass and similar fancy visuals and other novel aspects of Vista that they're now looking down on.

They did.

Here you can see "Evildictaitor" (my most persistent sparring partner) shilling (literally, he is a MS employee) for Vista Dreamscene, Silverlight and WPF back in the days:

http://channel9.msdn.com/Forums/Coffeehouse/255491-Whats-going-on-at-Microsoft/4983627f4ddb4639bd409dec0086e556

http://channel9.msdn.com/Forums/Coffeehouse/255491-Whats-going-on-at-Microsoft/edf470e8541b4d75992c9dec0086e4ed

http://channel9.msdn.com/Forums/Coffeehouse/255491-Whats-going-on-at-Microsoft/f611651d614a439f80489dec0086e985

Edited March 4, 2014 by Formfiller

[TELVM]

The disconnect with Windows 8.1: Hiding the utility

... the majority of onscreen controls aren't visible all the time. They only appear when deliberately invoked, which doesn't make many new users feel comfortable. Think about that, Windows onscreen controls aren't onscreen until the user does something to make them appear. Which they have trouble with because they don't know the controls exist, much less that they need do something to invoke them.

[...]

...New users must remember where hidden menus live, and what controls they contain once properly invoked. That seems to make some Windows 8 users uncomfortable, especially those who learn how to do something and later forget it, as they don't do it often and there's no visible memory reinforcement. This disconnects the user from the interface.

^ MS was well aware of this since the pleistocene:

"Beginning users and many intermediates relied almost exclusively on visible cues for finding commands. They relied on (and found intuitive) menu bars and tool bars, but did not use pop-up (or "context") menus, even after training."

The Windows® 95 User Interface: A Case Study in Usability Engineering

The famous video of Chris Pirillo's dad confronting Tiles 8 shows this perfectly:

MS simply chose to screw the users with Tiles 8. Specially the non-power users.

[bpalone]

The famous video of Chris Pirillo's dad confronting Tiles 8 shows this perfectly:

Father "Who makes this?"

Chris"Microsoft."

Father"Are they driving me to MAC?"

No truer words ever spoken!

I really enjoyed the video, thanks TELVM.

bpalone

[JorgeA]

Doubt there's a way to research this, but it would be interesting to go back to 2006-7 and see if some of these same people back then were praising Aero Glass and similar fancy visuals and other novel aspects of Vista that they're now looking down on.

They did.

Here you can see "Evildictaitor" (my most persistent sparring partner) shilling (literally, he is a MS employee) for Vista Dreamscene, Silverlight and WPF back in the days:

http://channel9.msdn.com/Forums/Coffeehouse/255491-Whats-going-on-at-Microsoft/4983627f4ddb4639bd409dec0086e556

http://channel9.msdn.com/Forums/Coffeehouse/255491-Whats-going-on-at-Microsoft/edf470e8541b4d75992c9dec0086e4ed

http://channel9.msdn.com/Forums/Coffeehouse/255491-Whats-going-on-at-Microsoft/f611651d614a439f80489dec0086e985

Thanks for the links!

The third one was especially apropos. He wrote back then that --

Given by a later statement you made along the lines of you not using Windows Vista (quote:not sure about vista as i never downloaded much for it - but on XP it asks you over and over.), you should perhaps look into actually getting the software before reviewing it.

Does this line of argument sound familiar? That's the first line that Win8 apologists adopted when people started objecting to that OS in 2012. I wonder if this guy sees the irony.

There's also this howler on DRM:

Despite your efforts to argue against anti-plagurism technology, the old approach of trusting users as you suggest simply hasn't worked and is costing the music and software industry hundreds of billions of dollars a year

I wonder if he has since learned how to spell "plagiarism." But more importantly, I'd like to see serious studies that demonstrate that the music and software industry ever lost "hundreds of billions of dollars a year" to piracy. IIRC, this is the case only if we assume that everybody who pirates copyrighted works would have paid to purchase it if there were no way to get it for free. The studies I've seen suggest that the vast majority of people who don't pay for the copyrighted works they use, would not have bought it anyway.

Meanwhile, the Hollywood mafia are shooting themselves in the foot by seeking to squeeze every possible penny out of every conceivable source. As a result, for example, talk-show podcasts who were asked to pay royalties on the show bumper music that plays when the show gets broadcast over the air have opted instead to produce musicless podcasts -- and the music companies lose that opportunity to expose listeners to those songs that they might have found enjoyable and then bought.

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

Yet another unwelcome trend, courtesy of Windows 8:

Windows 8.1 + Microsoft Account

Redmond has an offer that will be increasingly difficult to refuse

In writing Windows 8.1 Field Guide, I was struck again and again by how Microsoft has integrated its online services more deeply into its flagship platform. In this release, it's still possible to sign-in without a Microsoft account, of course, but Windows 8.1 makes that both difficult and impractical. I suspect it's only a matter of time before doing so is compulsory.

Those who know how the Win8 installation process goes are aware of these difficulties. In Paul Thurrott's judgment, it's only going to get worse:

Microsoft account integration is useful and desirable enough that most users will have no issue switching to this type of account. The benefits are just obvious. But it's likewise obvious that we're being pushed to this future and that it's possible some future Windows version will eliminate local accounts all together (or render them so functionally deficient as to arrive at the same conclusion). The sheer number of changes just between Windows 8 and 8.1 support this. It's just really hard to avoid Microsoft account now.

As the guy down in the comments said:

If, in a future Windows version, a local account is not available any longer and an MS account is forced, I switch to Linux. Why? An MS account prevents the user from verifying the integrity and privacy of his PC and its data. I do not sacrifice my basic human rights, replacing them by trust to a company (and the NSA).

I suspect that he meant to say "ensuring" rather than "verifying" the privacy of his PC and data, but the point stands.

--JorgeA

[bpalone]

To lighten things up a bit....

1 in 10 Americans think HTML is an STD, study finds

27% identified "gigabyte" as an insect commonly found in South America.

42% said they believed a "motherboard" was "the deck of a cruise ship.

23% thought an "MP3" was a "Star Wars" robot.

12% said "USB" is the acronym for a European country.

The entire article can be read here: http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-1-10-americans-html-std-study-finds-20140304,0,1188415.story#axzz2v1PZtzMZ

I think I now understand how some people really think that Windows 8/8.1 is so great. But, to be fair, every industry has its inside acronyms that if you are not aware of them are nothing but Greek to you.

Just thought everyone might enjoy a chuckle.

bpalone

[bpalone]

Now, back to a bit of reality...

F-Secure: Android accounted for 97% of all mobile malware in 2013

Entire article can be read here: http://thenextweb.com/google/2014/03/04/f-secure-android-accounted-97-mobile-malware-2013-0-1-google-play/

The above doesn't sound to good to those that say that Linux can't or doesn't get viruses, since Android is based upon Linux. However, as we all know, any OS is vulnerable and as has been stated here and elsewhere the real weak link is the user. Most all attacks are delivered by social engineering and I don't see that changing any time in the future.

The other thing is, Android owns the mobile platform market, so it would only make sense that it was the most abused or infected system.

bpalone

[jaclaz]

The above doesn't sound to good to those that say that Linux can't or doesn't get viruses, since Android is based upon Linux.

Sure, just strip off of it BOTH Dalvik and Java, and you have a relatively secure Linux.

Just totally faked research data :

Mobile Malware 2013:

Other platforms: 3%

Android: 97%

of these to be connected to:

base (heavily modified and forked) Linux kernel: 0.00%

Dalvik VM: 12.45%

Java: 88.54%

Other:0.01%

(and yes, the total makes 101% as I am keeping in line with Forrester Research quality standards)

To re-connect with (supposedly) real data, 75% of the Android malware in the world (3/4) belong to:

Saudi Arabia 42%

India 33%

Now while India may have a relevant number of Android phones in use, the amount in Saudi Arabia cannot but be trifling (even if you consider a 188% penetration rate) and consequently the 40%, 50% or even 60% of Android share of it is "nothing".

This plainly means that each Android phone in Saudi Arabia has (or has had) at lest 238 malware apps concurrently, or that - with the only exception of Indians and Arabs (and only the arabs from Saudi Arabia) - all the rest of the world population has the same malware but also the good habit of not telling anyone about it.

Comeon, that data is either failed or wrong or both, it makes no sense whatsoever.

Let's say that ALL the estimated mobile phones in Saudi Arabia (46,000,000):

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

are actually Smartphones and that 60% of them 60%*46,000,000=27,600,000 use Android and that each and everyone of them has at least one malware.

Logically the total amount of malware affected phones in the world is 27,600,000/42%=65,714,286

Out of an estimated amount of active android devices worldwide of more than 1 billion at the beginning of September 2013:

http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/03/google-announces-1b-total-android-activations-names-next-version-kitkat/

and adding to it between 1 and 1.5 million activation per day since, we have at the end of 2013:

3*30*1,250,000+1,000,000,000=1,112,500,000

65,714,286/1,112,500,000=5.9% infection rate

But we know that 75% of those infected phones:

65,714,286*75%=49,285,714 are in either Saudi Arabia or India, so we can approximate to:

(65,714,286-49,285,714)/(1,112,500,000-49,285,714)=16,428,572/1,063,214,286= 1.54%

So we can actually say that unless you are in Saudi Arabia or India your chances of getting a malware are below 1.5% and that is an average, since the malware will affect before you those that think that the gigabyte is a south american insect , your actual "virus surviving" chances are much higher than that (and of course not every single Android phone in Saudi Arabia is affected, the end result will be "insignificant risk")

IMHO random numbers, again.

jaclaz

[TELVM]

27% identified "gigabyte" as an insect commonly found in South America.

[JorgeA]

That's pretty funny.

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

Free Windows? Maybe

Windows 8.1 with Bing could be the way of the future

Microsoft is testing whether it makes sense to provide a free version of Windows down the road. And while recent leaks have revealed the existence of something called Windows 8.1 with Bing, it's unclear what this bundling would mean to users. So let's guess!

None of the guesses sounds too promising, I'm afraid:

No more disabling Bing. Today you can disable Bing integration in Smart Search and make it work like the old days, and just search your PC. Maybe Windows 8.1 with Bing would remove that functionality.

No more disabling Bing, redux. And what about the browser? Since the Modern mobile app version of Internet Explorer is already locked down for your pleasure, maybe it should be tied to Bing permanently too.

Ad-supported. This one makes my eyeballs itch, but it's not hard to imagine ads in Windows. Heck, they're already there: In the Bing apps. Maybe they could be in all apps. And on the Start screen. Youch.

Windows RT. Why not just make Windows RT the free version? You could rebrand it as Windows with Bing, which sounds so much better than "Windows without the desktop." (The leaked shots show an x86 build, however.)

Well, all right, I suppose I could live with the last one and then ignore RT...

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

And back on the cyberprivacy front --

Yahoo webcam images from millions of users intercepted by GCHQ

Britain's surveillance agency GCHQ, with aid from the US National Security Agency, intercepted and stored the webcam images of millions of internet users not suspected of wrongdoing, secret documents reveal.

GCHQ files dating between 2008 and 2010 explicitly state that a surveillance program codenamed Optic Nerve collected still images of Yahoo webcam chats in bulk and saved them to agency databases, regardless of whether individual users were an intelligence target or not.

In one six-month period in 2008 alone, the agency collected webcam imagery – including substantial quantities of sexually explicit communications – from more than 1.8 million Yahoo user accounts globally.

And doubly interesting to us here is this tidbit:

Optic Nerve was just one of a series of GCHQ efforts at biometric detection, whether for target recognition or general security.

While the documents do not detail efforts as widescale as those against Yahoo users, one presentation discusses with interest the potential and capabilities of the Xbox 360's Kinect camera, saying it generated "fairly normal webcam traffic" and was being evaluated as part of a wider program.

Documents previously revealed in the Guardian showed the NSA were exploring the video capabilities of game consoles for surveillance purposes.

[emphasis added]

--JorgeA

[MagicAndre1981]

Win8 .1 with Bing is this:

Windows 8.1 with Bing helps OEMs add Windows to low-cost devices while driving end user usage of Microsoft Services such as Bing and OneDrive.

This edition of Windows sets Bing as the default search engine within Internet Explorer. Users will be able to manually change default search settings and install additional browsers of their choice.

Windows 8.1 with Bing is based on the feature set available in Windows 8.1 Core and incudes all of the latest updates, including Windows 8.1 Update. Windows 8.1 with Bing is available for 32-bit and 64-bit platforms.

taken from the ADK of the Update.

[jaclaz]

And back on the cyberprivacy front --

This sentence:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/27/gchq-interception-storage-webcam-images-condemned

As more people buy technology with built-in cameras, from Xbox Kinect to laptops and smart TVs, we need to be sure that the law does not allow for them to be routinely accessed when there is no suspicion of any wrongdoing. Orwell's 1984 was supposed to be a warning, not an instruction manual.

(bolding/underlining/colouring is mine) is one of the best I have seen lately on the matter.

jaclaz