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Windows 8 - Deeper Impressions


JorgeA

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Do you remember (or are you allowed to say) who (i.e., person/organization) put forth the idea that

regular desktop programs would cease to exist and there would only be Metro apps

--JorgeA

Yes and no.

I think it was something in the things they were trained so say by their masters.... but I did give a clue to "who" it was already. ;)

The question has to do with the relative security of Windows vs. Linux.

One quick answer, if you want a greater debate, post a new thread someplace. Its real simple. Windows is "less secure" because of this:

http://marketshare.hitslink.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=8

If you could find a relative pie-chart that showed % of OS infections, it would likely be on the money.

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Linux advocates like to say that their favorite OS is much more secure than Windows. Is that true, or just propaganda?

Windows has its fair share of problems, but most of them are due to carelessness (like running malware downloaded from P2P and such), not applying updates and so on. Sure, there are some infections due to zero day exploits and such, but that could happen on any platform.

Apple users have been saying the same "only Windows gets viruses" thing for years, nevermind that 20% of Macs have malware on them. Also, Macs have typically always been the 1st thing to get hacked in the pwn2own contests. And Android which is Linux based also has its fair share of malware. That's what happens when your platform becomes popular enough to target.

And if you look at Secunia's statistics, in the ~3 years Win7 has been out, it had 110 advisories & 215 Vulnerabilities. Ubuntu 12.04 hasn't been out for 2 months yet (53 mere days) and it already has 24 Secunia and 68 Vulnerabilities -- roughly 25% as much but in 5% of the time. Or if you look at a LTS version (one that's still supported), from 2010 (so more like 2 years old) like 10.04 then that had 362 advisories & 1799 Vulnerabilities. So over 3x as much advisories and 8x the vulnerabilities, despite being only 2 years old (vs Win7's 3 year time span).

Either ways, I couldn't personally care less about Linux. I'd sooner go back to crappy old WinXP (yuck!) -- at least it can still run some useful software. Or even use Win8 which is atrocious to use, but it still runs more useful software than Linux probably ever will. Running the said useful software is a requirement (work has to get done), whereas Win8's Metro garbage is just a nuisance or annoyance (it sucks, but it's still possible to do some work on the desktop). Whereas with Linux you might be able to customize the interface to your liking more, but then there's very little you can do on it besides thinkering with the OS. OS X on the other hand is a somewhat worthy replacement, and the latest Macbook Pros look fantastic, even if you'd buy one just to run Win7.

Security will be one reason people will keep buying iPads over Win8 RT tablets though. There's tons of people who associate Windows with viruses/malware/BSODs/problems/complicated registry voodoo and what not (no matter how right or wrong they might be about that). These people will steer clear of a Windows tablet for sure. Who wants a tablet that needs to be reformatted every 6 months, right? ;)

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Word is that Microsoft is coming out with its own Windows RT tablet.

A follow-up piece includes this quote from Steven Sinofsky, who shows he doesn't understand the difference between a PC and a tablet:

"A tablet that's a great PC, a PC that's a great tablet," said Steve Sinofsky from the Windows team. "A new kind of computing."

Reports The Wall Street Journal (June 16-17, 2012):

Among other things, the company risks angering other hardware makers it has been encouraging to make devices based on Windows RT.

But computer makers have expressed some hesitation about the devices, says Crawford Del Prete, an analyst at research firm IDC, in part because they are expensive to make and it is uncertain that anyone wants to buy them.

--JorgeA

Edited by JorgeA
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And if you look at Secunia's statistics, in the ~3 years Win7 has been out, it had 110 advisories & 215 Vulnerabilities. Ubuntu 12.04 hasn't been out for 2 months yet (53 mere days) and it already has 24 Secunia and 68 Vulnerabilities -- roughly 25% as much but in 5% of the time. Or if you look at a LTS version (one that's still supported), from 2010 (so more like 2 years old) like 10.04 then that had 362 advisories & 1799 Vulnerabilities. So over 3x as much advisories and 8x the vulnerabilities, despite being only 2 years old (vs Win7's 3 year time span).

Thanks, CoffeeFiend -- this was totally new and revealing information for me. I'll follow up on it... but not in this thread. ;)

--JorgeA

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http://money.cnn.com/2012/06/18/technology/microsoft-windows-tablet/index.htm

Tablet PC calling it "Surface"... Yep, they're catering to non-Desktops to sell their "new" hardware with Windows 8... Isn't it cute?

Another version of Surface will be designed for the fuller Windows 8 operating system, which will run on Intel chips.
The full Windows 8 version will be available three months later in 64- and 128-GB versions.

Kind of confirms what's been discussed all along, doesn't it? Feel warm and fuzzy yet?

Edited by submix8c
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It's a long video. Can you tell the approximate time code where he has trouble?

xpclient,

Tune in at the 10:45 mark, that's where the fun starts. ;)

Shortly after that, he says:

It's a learning experience for, I think, all of us. Now, how do I get to my taskbar?

Audience members are heard laughing and clapping in the background...

It's also interesting to see throughout the video how aggressive the Metro Start Screen is, impinging repeatedly into the user's consciousness.

--JorgeA

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Okay I saw the video. :thumbup Team BS (Ballmer+Sinofsky) should take a clue from the video, please. Mark won't say anything against Windows 8 publicly but they should be smart enough to understand the troubles at least he is having because they have closed their minds to any outside criticism. The bigger shock for me was reading the reviews of Bob 2 at sites like Engadget, Gizmodo where they were all reviewing it favorably and telling "haters to get along". :no: This s*** might succeed even as bad as it is because most of the monkeys in the world are clueless about productivity, usability and have change blindness. They don't even notice anything's broken, missing or not working. All they do is time pass on Facebook, Pinterest etc and play Cut the Rope. I'm sure Julie Larson Green herself belongs to that group. How else would one explain why she dumbed down Bob 2 to a child's toy?

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Windows gets a lot of viruses from IE or Outlook Express (when it was around). And people point the finger at MS about getting all these viruses, even though their own practices were the cause of their problems. Nevertheless, MS takes the responsibility instead of attempting to inform their userbase. And this led to the UAC. There was no attempt to educate their users, so they put in a system that was designed to help protect Windows from the users.

Windows 8 with Metro is no difference. It is another step in protecting the OS from the users. ....

Metro apps are not designed to touch the system files of the OS or the registry which would cut back on viruses or other corruption

You are right: MS didn't bother to educate its userbase.

Not only on security but on the million of cool stuffs you can do with existing OS since W98.

Therefore they create a whole new OS just to put a few ignored features forward.

They shows the ability to launch IE10 full screen on Metro as a new feature. Well it's been almost 20 years that pressing F11 does just that! LOL.

But MS has also been terrible with security and, as you said, instead of fixing it, they added layers of protection.

For example the ability to download something on the desktop and run it. This is completely insane.

Or enable scripts on Word documents!

Or scripts on html e-mail messages... :shock:

Scripts can be very useful on Excell sheets or Word documents, but there are relatively difficult to implement and inefficient, when you know that you can do much better in HTA, without compromising safety.

Microsoft opened many doors to viruses to allow features almost nobody uses. But instead of removing these features known to bring in viruses, they do someting more complicated.

ActiveX, in javascript/html codes, can easily manipulate your operating system.

And you can't disable ActiveX if you want to watch YouTube videos!

That's total insanity. Why they simply didn't removed ActiveX and make a flash video-only module to replace it?

No, instead they create a white list for IE10.

You can blame the user, but how do a user know that a webpage contain malware?

OK for downloaded softwares, but then how a software can be launched other than by doubleclicking on an exe file?

Why doubleclicking on a .dat file can install a virus on your computer???

There are very strange questions about the choice MS made about safety.

Now with Metro, if its apps are effectively sandboxed, isolated from the system (which remains to be seen), then it will be quiet a radical step to protect the users.

But what when Metro will be hacked?

Note, I don't ask "what if Metro can be hacked", I ask what will happen when Metro will be hacked in short order and massively?

Maybe hackers may not enter the system, but posting undeletable adds on the screen that appears everytime a user boots their computer is more than enough for them.

Every shopping website will want their tile on your Metro start screen, and you can make sure that, as we speak, they are already working hard on ways to hack it big time.

if the security problems attributed to Windows are actually the result of bad habits by users (as you suggested in the quote above), then maybe PC security wouldn't really improve even if there were a mass switch over to Linux. What do you tbhink?

Had Linux 90% of market share, there would have also been 90% of hacker energy spent on breaching Linux' safety.

Yet that's assuming Linux developers do the same mistakes as Microsoft. Mistakes which I explained above, albeit not exclusively these ones.

Let's say Linux has a system to allow YouTube videos to play while not enabling ActiveX, then you already have a huge safety improvement.

And so forth with the hundreds of safety weakness which could be easily adressed.

A tablet that's a great PC, a PC that's a great tablet
Steven Sinofsky doesn't understand the difference between a PC and a tablet:

No he deosn't.

I wonder if he uses a PC himself. He has probably only a small laptop/tablet-already which he carries all the time with him, or maybe no device at all, since he dictates his secretary what to type on tweeter.

Anyway, he is totaly disconected with reality as this comment confirms.

This is incredible.

Especialy the "a PC that's a great tablet" part.

Edited by Fredledingue
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"A tablet that's a great PC, a PC that's a great tablet," said Steve Sinofsky from the Windows team. "A new kind of computing."

More like: a poor tablet that's a much worse PC, or arguably not one at all.

So they announce vaporware, with still unknown specs and an unknown price. That's almost like announcing nothing: "We're going to bypass our OEMs altogether, to create a tablet with a third of the screen res of the iPad (basically the LCD you'd expect on a $200 Android tablet) and 1% of the apps (there's over a half million apps for iPads), battery life unknown, and most likely no cheaper than a much better iPad". It's also a first gen product (I wonder if they're going to "RROD") and it comes in nauseating garish pastel colors too (including Barbie pink -- just in case you're a 6 year old girl)! I also wonder if it's actually going to be available anywhere unlike the Zune (I wanted to buy one back then but nobody in Canada sold them)? Bypassing OEMs seems like a fairly hostile move by many but then again manufacturing MS hardware hasn't made Toshiba (Zune) or Nokia (WP) any money either. If anything it'll likely make them want not to bother with Win RT. Add to that the confusing (for the average consumer) selection of CPU choice (what do you mean this Windows computer can't run any of my software?) and the "viruses/BSODs/must reformat every 6 month/coming loaded with crapware" reputation (and from a manufacturer that's known to abandon their products frequently), all in a hybrid hardware format (laptop/tablet) that just doesn't work.

I can totally see this being a HUGE success! :rolleyes:

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Here's a 52 KB tool to kill all traces of Metro a.k.a. the Metro kill switch: http://www22.zippysh...pl&key=48981934 To get Metro back, just reboot. Just place this in your startup. Only time you will see Metro is now at startup. :thumbup

Edit: To avoid any confusion, I didn't make this tool, I simply found it on the interwebs. :w00t:

Edited by xpclient
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That's almost like announcing nothing: "We're going to bypass our OEMs altogether

Now that Surface has been announced, I understand why the ARM market was locked down to just those 3 vendors. See, except for those 3 companies (and Microsoft), no other OEM or ODM can get ARM cpus or build/whitebook ARM tablets.

But there is an interesting thing that no one seems to be picking up on yet. Of the two SKUs announced, although I can't comment on ARM/Windows RT, the x86 offering might be interesting for some people. All that debate over the SecureBoot "feature" where you can't dual boot (except for RedHat) basically died away but what isn't really mentioned in any of those old articles is that SecureBoot is only applicable to systems with UEFI 2.3.1 firmware. Windows 8 32bit is not supported on UEFI, so any 32bit Surface tablets won't have SecureBoot or any other of those UEFI features.

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