Windows 8 - Deeper Impressions

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

What I think happened is that since yesterday the default # of displayed comments changed from 20 to 25 which should account for missing pages.

For me, I had the # of comments per page set to maximum ( I think 150 ) so instead of missing pages, the total for me went from 24 to 141.

I don't think any posts have gone missing since the upgrade.

You really have to overdo it, don't you?

Just imagine how many kilometers your swiping finger would need to cover on a touch tablet to scroll those 150 posts!

It's funny because I thought more people would have been using "maximum" at least at home on giant displays!

I guess on a tablet smaller might be better but that is where a selection would come in handy. So I guess it all comes back to the TabletTards. Catering to the lowest common denominator. Why am I reminded of the early days with TABLE WIDTH and other hyper-specific settings that never translated well as screens and resolutions grew?

I remember first using 1280x1024 on Windows 95 when most were still on 1024x768 or 800x600. You got all this new space for Windows and stuff but on the Internet almost everything was stuck in miniature with no adjustment. Well, except those that paid attention to the warnings of stubbornly coding HTML for a specific display.

History repeats.

EDIT: typo

Edited July 14, 2013 by CharlotteTheHarlot

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

Why We Can No Longer Trust Microsoft ( John C. Dvorak PC Magazine 2013-07-12 )

If I was a shareholder in any public company, I'd get up at the annual meeting and ask if the company was using Microsoft products and if so, I'd demand to know why it has not dumped them for something else. (And Google Docs is not an option.) And by the way, the Windows operating system is corrupted too. Smart money now uses Linux. The Linux code is open and available and you can look for yourself to see if the OS is sending messages to a spy agency or not.

This is a financial disaster waiting to happen. Microsoft is oblivious if it is not doing something to divorce itself from the NSA.

Apple, on the other hand, could have come out smelling like a rose, but following the death of Steve Jobs, who apparently refused to play ball with the NSA, it stupidly jumped on board to join the PRISM club.

Curiously, we've all known about the possible links between NSA and Microsoft since the Windows 2000 era when odd DLLs began to appear, which observers surmised were some back-door codes. ...

This is a really important point. He's made it once before, quite possibly before anyone else.

Good article.

[jaclaz]

Work is fine and all, however ...

ONLY seemingly OT, and JFYI :

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/russian-intelligence-seeks-typewriters-for-secret-documents-a-910677.html

http://www.policymic.com/articles/54437/the-kremlin-is-going-back-to-typewriters-and-you-should-too

Remember that those are the same guys that invented the AK-47, a legendary gun that has outclassed in usability, ease of use, reliability and manufacturing costs each and every assault rifle ever made (and it still does after some 66 years).

jaclaz

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

ONLY seemingly OT, and JFYI :

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/russian-intelligence-seeks-typewriters-for-secret-documents-a-910677.html

http://www.policymic.com/articles/54437/the-kremlin-is-going-back-to-typewriters-and-you-should-too

Thanks! I guess we kind of knew it all had to come full circle, right?

[JorgeA]

These links, provided by jaclaz in another thread, have a bearing on our discussion here:

http://www.cio.com/article/721478/2013_Prediction_BYOD_on_the_Decline_

http://www.cultofmac.com/156511/byod-failure-five-big-reasons-why-employees-dont-want-to-use-their-iphones-ipads-at-work/

If it turns out to be true that both employees and employers sour on the idea of BYOD, cooling off the fever for mobile gadgets, this could knock the props out of Microsoft's rationale for pushing not only the Surface, but also the whole Metro UI concept. Microsoft would be fighting the last war, with Desktop users as the main casualties but a new sliver of hope for resuscitation.

--JorgeA

Edited July 14, 2013 by JorgeA

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

These links, provided by jaclaz in another thread, have a bearing on our discussion here:

http://www.cio.com/article/721478/2013_Prediction_BYOD_on_the_Decline_

http://www.cultofmac.com/156511/byod-failure-five-big-reasons-why-employees-dont-want-to-use-their-iphones-ipads-at-work/

If it turns out to be true that both employees and employers sour on the idea of BYOD, cooling off the fever for mobile gadgets, this could knock the props out of Microsoft's rationale for pushing not only the Surface, but also the whole Metro UI concept. Microsoft would be fighting the last war, with Desktop users as the main casualties but a new sliver of hope for resuscitation.

So true, Microsoft always seems to be fighting the last war. I guarantee there is some hysterical laughter in Cupertino while they watch Redmond turning the formerly unassailable company upside down in order to dive headfirst into the mobile pool just as the water is draining out smashing their head on the concrete bottom.

That's gonna leave a mark.

[JorgeA]

So true, Microsoft always seems to be fighting the last war. I guarantee there is some hysterical laughter in Cupertino while they watch Redmond turning the formerly unassailable company upside down in order to dive headfirst into the mobile pool just as the water is draining out smashing their head on the concrete bottom.

That's gonna leave a mark.

That's a very vivid picture you draw there!

--JorgeA

[jaclaz]

That's gonna leave a mark.

Point is that Ballmer's head is SO d@mn tough that the pool will be seriously damaged.

Though the cracked concrete crater:

Credits: http://texturelib.com/

can be repaired, the pool won't ever be the same as before....

jaclaz

[JorgeA]

This is some scary sh*t -- a small indication of what the NSA can learn about anybody that it chooses to set its sights on:

Curious what the NSA gleans from your Gmail? Now you can see for yourself

A Hypnotic Visualization of Everything Gmail Knows About You and Your Friends

As pointed out previously, this represents a real threat to the democratic system. If a government can keep track of who's talking to whom and when, that information provides precious tactical intelligence to head off or counter opposition activities: talk to that congressman who's been considering voting against you. Offer casually to tell the press about his flirty e-mails with a man who is not his wife. Did you find out where your rival in the next election is meeting "privately" (hahaha! ) for potential endorsements? Send a "spontaneous" rent-a-crowd to protest whatever at the endorser's home so that he can't make the meeting. The possibilities are endless, and not just for the Stalin types in Stalin-type governments.

--JorgeA

[jaclaz]

Let's call things with their names .

That is PURE bull§hit.

Curious what the NSA gleans from your Gmail?
Now you can see for yourself

Should read:

Curious what the NSA gleans from your Gmail?
We were, and since we couldn't find ANY kind of accurate data, and we had to write something witty, we decided to attempt "selling" you a completely UNrelated MIT project, that has NO connection whatsoever with what the NSA may or may not see, gather and/or analyze.
Since if we had titled this piece of misinformation as it should have been, i.e. "Interesting project by MIT capable of analyzing Gmail data" we wouldn't have come even near to the number of views we had since we added in it NSA and Prism as keywords we went the usual way of misrepresenting things, so that the most gullible among our readers will spread these non-news.

On the tool page:

https://immersion.media.mit.edu/

Once you log in, Immersion will use only the From, To, Cc and Timestamp fields of the emails in the account you are signing in with. It will not access the subject or the body content of any of your emails.

I would expect that the NSA would be interested in contents.

jaclaz

[vinifera]

lol microsoft was 1st jackass to comply

does this means Vista is clean of backdoors ?

Edited July 14, 2013 by vinifera

[JorgeA]

On the tool page:

https://immersion.media.mit.edu/

Once you log in, Immersion will use only the From, To, Cc and Timestamp fields of the emails in the account you are signing in with. It will not access the subject or the body content of any of your emails.

I would expect that the NSA would be interested in contents.

jaclaz

No doubt the NSA is interested in the contents of e-mails, but the newspaper reporting so far has indicated that, while they may or may not have access to those contents, they do have access to the kind of metadata that the MIT project analyzes. Therefore the MIT project serves as an illustration of what the NSA can do, with the proviso that the NSA does this with most or all e-mail services out there and not just Gmail, so they get a more complete picture of people's webs of relationships. And of course users send their info knowingly and voluntarily to MIT, which is more than can be said for the NSA.

--JorgeA

[Tripredacus]

Not going to bring politics into this, but this was tweeted in February... titled "I spy"

https://twitter.com/BarackObama/status/302560295958749184

How strange, because "I spy" something that looks like Windows 8. Is Windows 8 an operating system for children?

[JorgeA]

It sure looks like it could be Windows 8!

Microsoft's strategy: "get 'em while they're young"...

BTW, we've all done very well so far in keeping the discussion at the philosophical level! So please, no BHO comments pro or con. (Unless they're actually about Browser Helper Objects...)

--JorgeA

Edited July 15, 2013 by JorgeA

[JorgeA]

Apropos of one of the topics we've been covering...

A simple SSL tweak could protect you from GCHQ/NSA snooping

An obscure feature of SSL/TLS called Forward Secrecy may offer greater privacy, according to security experts who have begun promoting the technology in the wake of revelations about mass surveillance by the NSA and GCHQ.

Something to look into, but it doesn't appear to be a measure that an individual user can apply on his/her own. (I'll be happy to be corrected on that point!)

--JorgeA

Edited July 15, 2013 by JorgeA