Windows 8 - Deeper Impressions

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

Microsoft, Windows, and Phone News ...

HP quietly launches Split x2, 13-inch Windows 8 convertible ( TechSpot 2013-07-17 )

Does HP even want to survive? I said at launch that Windows 8 would drive up prices and we would get $1000 netbooks. Well that came true with the Surface, but this HP thing is even worse! 13" screen, i3 Ivy Bridge, 4 GB RAM and 128 GB disk, 1366 x 768 using onboard graphics. And this can be yours for only $749.

Flashback to a snapshot infographic I made nine months ago ...

Microsoft: The desktop UI will never go away completely ( NeoWin 2013-07-17 )

A TechCrunch article quotes Microsoft Chief Evangelist Steven Guggenheimer saying, at least at first, "Over time, its likely to go away." However, the article mentions that Guggenheimer quickly changed that statement, saying he was not sure if the desktop UI will "ever go away completely."

Yet another foible, a possible outburst of truth which was quickly retracted. So what of this? As said many times before, a standalone version of Metro aka Windows Tiles would have gone down in flames. Thus by necessity they decided to morph the existing Windows into it. A cynical deception. Add Metro to Windows and later remove the desktop and you have exactly what you wanted in the first place but were too cowardly to birth on its own. This disruptive action, a sneaky underhanded strategy to capture the Windows legacy user base, has cost them dearly. And this particular Softie for a brief moment spilled the beans.

In the comment thread we get treated to a repeat performance from the MetroTard-in-Chief, echoing one of his earlier pearls of wisdom concerning his childish love of screen touching ...

If you're afraid of smudges, then how do you get any work done with any other i/o device? No one today seems too concerned with smudges on their touch screens. Why is that suddenly an issue?

... where he is stating that since you don't care about smudges on your mouse or keyboard you shouldn't worry about them on your screen! It kinda proves he is blind, literally that is, as the display quality of the screen in front of him makes no difference to him whatsoever. He really does not see a problem with a smudge on a visual output device, one that you look at with your eyes. That would also explain why he cannot see the offensiveness of a blocky playskool theme sans shadows and 3D and depth and other normal visual clues. There really is no helping some people.

Nokia 'very happy' with Windows Phone, saw uncompetitive Android market ( Maximum PC 2013-07-18 )

Speaking to a group of European journalists, Elop said Nokia saw the potential for a single manufacturer to take most of the consumer market for Android smartphones.

What we were worried about a couple of years ago was the very high risk that one hardware manufacturer could come to dominate Android. We had a suspicion of who it might be, because of the resources available, the vertical integration, and we were respectful of the fact that we were quite late in making that decision. Many others were in that space already.

Now fast forward to today and examine the Android ecosystem, and there's a lot of good devices from many different companies, but one company has essentially now become the dominant player.

You know when these guys are lying? When their lips are moving. Android was maybe at 30% of the market when Nokia signed their contract with the devil and switched to Windows Phone. So what is he saying, they were afraid to compete? And what is with that swipe at Samsung like they are some kind of evil force? This guy Elop is a former Softie, yet he worries that "one manufacturer would dominate ...". He came to Nokia straight from a convicted monopolist that only is good at one thing, operating in a field without competition. His little speech there gives away the story. These Softies are full of envy and jealousy and hatred of competitors, particularly those rolling past Microsoft.

Microsoft's ads for Surface, Windows 8 and more boost overall tech ad spending ( Maximum PC 2013-07-18 )

An article describing the massive advertising budget that Big Little Brother Microsoft has dumped into the advertising world. What was it they set aside, 3 billion? 4 billion? Apparently it is providing a boost to the world economy, or something. Did anyone ever tell them that a good product advertises itself? Do they think that Apple really sold all those iThings because of their lame commercials? No. They actually hardly ever air. It's just that they are memorable. Advertising can seriously turn off a buyer as well. I've seen enough of those silly Surface ads, especially that idi0tic one with the dancing on the table so many times that I would pay good money to see those hipsters tossed into a vat full of snakes and spiders on Fear Factor. That would be good advertising, and good TV. Microsoft got taken to the cleaners by their advertising agencies. And they never even saw it coming.

Microsoft's Surface Team Reportedly Turns Attention to Smart Watch Design ( Maximum PC 2013-07-18 )

According to The Independent, Microsoft employees are a testing a prototype smart watch made from aluminium oxynitride, an expensive material that's also known as transparent aluminum. It's said to be three times harder than glass and stable at temperatures up to 1,200 degrees Celsius.

Here's the thing -- aluminum oxynitride costs about $20,000 per square meter, which makes us a little bit suspect that Microsoft's going down that road. Whatever material Microsoft ends up using, assuming it's working on a smart watch to begin with, you can bet that it will run some form of Windows 8 and be able to communicate with other Windows 8 devices.

If that is transparent aluminum then my pool is full of liquid oxygen. Or hydrogen. Well you get the idea. Actually it is kind of a cool idea they have here because for once it is a uniquely original idea they are using rather than the normal ripping off of something else. The Wikipedia page does describe it as having good properties. Naturally they will find a way to ruin the one unique idea they had in a long time, probably by plastering the Playskool Microsoft Tiles garbage on it.

Check out my quick handiwork that compliments the mockup at the article link ...

( Inspiration )

EDIT: typo(s)

Edited July 21, 2013 by CharlotteTheHarlot

[G8YMW]

Charlotte,

I dont think I'll be buying one of those watches any day soon.

What with having to put my glasses on to do ANYTHING on that. I've visions of having to get past Angry Birds to get the time

[Formfiller]

Here's NSA presentation for their software "XKeyscore". Apparently they use these slides to "sell" this system to allied intelligence agencies, like to the German ones.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/german-intelligence-agencies-used-nsa-spying-program-a-912173.html

Germany's foreign intelligence service, the BND, and its domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), used a spying program of the American National Security Agency (NSA). This is evident in secret documents from the US intelligence service that have been seen by SPIEGEL journalists. The documents show that the Office for the Protection of the Constitution was equipped with a program called XKeyScore intended to "expand their ability to support NSA as we jointly prosecute CT (counterterrorism) targets." The BND is tasked with instructing the domestic intelligence agency on how to use the program, the documents say.

According to an internal NSA presentation from 2008, the program is a productive espionage tool. Starting with the metadata -- or information about which data connections were made and when -- it is able, for instance, to retroactively reveal any terms the target person has typed into a search engine, the documents show. In addition, the system is able to receive a "full take" of all unfiltered data over a period of several days -- including, at least in part, the content of communications.

Furthermore, the documents show that the cooperation of the German intelligence agencies with the NSA has recently intensified. Reference is made to the "eagerness and desire" of BND head Gerhard Schindler. "The BND has been working to influence the German government to relax interpretation of the privacy laws to provide greater opportunities of intelligence sharing," the NSA noted in January. Over the course of 2012, German partners had shown a "willingness to take risks and to pursue new opportunities for cooperation with the US."

In Afghanistan, it says elsewhere in the document, the BND had even proved to be the NSA's "most prolific partner" when it came to information gathering. The relationship is also close on a personal level: At the end of April, just a few weeks before the first revelations by former intelligence agency employee Edward Snowden, a 12-member high-level BND delegation was invited to the NSA to meet with various specialists on the subject of "data acquisition."

Anyway, here it is:

LOL! I know the NSA doesn't employ Photoshop wizards, but this is quite pathetic on a artistic level. The slides look like straight from a cheap "HTML generator" website, where some hobbyist is trying to sell off his newest shareware masterpiece.

I especially like the cheesy early 90s "XKeyscore" logo.

"My target uses Google Maps to scope target locations - can I use this information to determine his email address"?

This sounds almost like a SEO-pitch ("how can I book the best ads on Google so that my potential customers will find my website faster?")

I had to laugh about "plug-ins" and the guy doing a query in slide 2. It's as if they are selling a MySQL tool.

It's serious topic, but it's incredible how cheesy it looks and sounds "internally".

Edited July 21, 2013 by Formfiller

[jaclaz]

I would say that it is not-as-secret-as our Germans (or Brazilians) friends seem to think (or try to "sell" to the world).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-Keyscore

More than one company is recruiting "in the open":

http://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=Xkeyscore&l=

specifically for x-keyscore.

I doubt that if it was a top-secret military/NSA ONLY *whatever* you could find job requests about it.

Besides not-that-much-covert linkedin profiles such as (example):

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130617/13482623512/discovering-names-secret-nsa-surveillance-programs-via-linkedin.shtml

https://twitter.com/csoghoian/status/346139237856460801

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/jason-miller/39/741/a49

I have the impression that people in the US Army and in the NSA spend more time inventing and remembering codenames (and making crappy PowerPoint slides for them) than anything else, just for the record:

http://www.bullypulpitgames.com/projects/names/new_names/

http://www.bullypulpitgames.com/projects/names/new_names/military_code_names.txt

jaclaz

Edited July 21, 2013 by jaclaz

[Formfiller]

More than one company is recruiting "in the open":

http://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=Xkeyscore&l=

specifically for x-keyscore.

I doubt that if it was a top-secret military/NSA ONLY *whatever* you could find job requests about it.

jaclaz

Funny how open that is indeed.

http://jobs.saic.com/job/Columbia-XKEYSCORE-Systems-Engineer-Job-MD-21044/2679775/?feedId=4&utm_source=Indeed

JOB SUMMARY:

The Systems Engineer will provide support for the compartment systems that encompass the SKIDROWE systems. The successful candidate will be a self-starter, work well in a dynamic team environment, and be very organized and detailed oriented.

..

•This candidate will need to have experience in basic SIGINT technology as well as integrating, installing, configuring, changing, and optimizing HW & SW solutions into an overall system architecture.

•Support SIGINT systems by performing custom configurations of fielded mission systems.

Qualifications:

BASIC QUALIFICATIONS:

•High School diploma or equivalent with 3- 4+ years of related experience installing, configuring, integrating, and testing software which run on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).

•Software Integration experience with scripting languages (Java, C and Bourne shell).

•Familiar with VMware ESXi 3.5, 4.1, and 5.0.

•Currently possess an active TS/SCI with Polygraph security clearance.

--

Apart from the last one, the basic qualifications are ridiculously mundane. Red Hat? I thought stuff like that runs on something cooler.

By the way, corporations require nowadays usually far more qualifications for positions like beta testing software. And here you can play spy with a bit of Linux and script experience. Odd.

This is funny:

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS:

•Excellent interpersonal, verbal, and written communication skills with the ability to successfully interact with internal and external customers.

I love it. *Customers*.

Edited July 21, 2013 by Formfiller

[jaclaz]

Yeah, the "news" (if any) are just the (crappy) slides.

Look a bit around for the book:

The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America

by: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Bamford

It is published in 2008 and contains some reference to xkeyscore ad similar alright.

Let's say that at least this time the whistleblowers failed to blow hard enough or however the whistle came out a little faint, before the mass of mindless journalists and blogging jerks ping-ponged these non-news back and forth saturating the net with the topic.

I see it not entirely unlike someone publishing in - say - 1919 the original, handwritten manual and drawings for a COLT M19A11 and titling the article "New, deadly weapon revealed!"

jaclaz

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

lol microsoft was 1st jackass to comply

does this means Vista is clean of backdoors ?

Missed this post earlier. Cool graphic.

I don't think we can state with certainty that Vista is clean. On that graphic, September 2007 was the date that Microsoft officially got married to the spook agencies. But I would speculate that the long run-up to Vista, the infamous Longhorn re-write was at least partly about spying. We're talking like 4 years after 9/11 and more importantly a decade after the Carnivore and Echelon and other earlier forays into collaborative spying.

Thinking back about this I have always been mystified as to Microsoft's sudden change during the Vista fiasco in 2006-2007 and their seeming anger at the pushback and criticism by end-users. It never made any sense to me. Nothing like that happened with their earlier failures. Yet they were apoplectic and turned on us. We were "doing it wrong". Here, have a Mojave Experiment.

It seems possible to me that the Longhorn rewrite was partly about building doors for data collection, not necessarily giving the feds a free pass, but they would be in place if they needed it for court orders ( again, 9/11 already came and went ). Things have changed radically since, but it is very plausible to me that they were sweet talked and massaged into an agreement having no idea what it would evolve to later. In other words it was harmless in their eyes.

This I would buy as a reason for their inexplicable panic over Vista. They're thinking, "Shoot, if we can't get this thing into the user base then we can't easily comply with any warrants". It also jives with the inexplicable push to kill Windows XP. Even though SP3 came in April 2008, I don't think it was time enough to develop it into a magic spook plugin pack. So there Windows XP it sits, on 35% of the 1.5 billion computers, relatively secure.

All things considered, a real good "conspiracy theory" could be constructed. For example it is possible that the DRM fiasco that Gutmann exposed might have gotten a little too close for comfort as he poked and prodded to see what the OS was snooping for. And then there was the assimilation of Winternals and Mark Russinovich in summer of 2006. He's the guy that did similar heroic snooping of Sony and ferreted out their sneaky DRM. Taking him out of play, so to speak, prevents a very sharp set of eyeballs from snooping in the new Vista OS ( and it was suspicious how his Rootkit Revealer suddenly was killed, a utility that might detect something that is smart enough to hide itself using countermeasures ).

NOTE: needless to say, this is all just speculation. I got nothing to show for proof obviously, they are hopefully just coincidences. But after watching them and most of the industry for going on four decades now, you sometimes trust your gut, especially when no-one is talking or likely ever to talk about such matters. I could be completely wrong though, and Vista may be no more dangerous than WinXP or Win9x. I just highly doubt it.

I have also wondered just how information could be taken from an operating system anyway. It wouldn't be easy if the user had packet sniffing experience, a hardware firewall and a variety of rootkit detectors. But then I remembered that CEIP thingie. It sets up bundles of collected collated data burst transmitted later. Something like that could be reconfigured, especially if you have the Windows source code which I'd bet the spooks do. These are just wild speculations, just tossing them out there. I'll let others dwell on them and carry it further.

[JorgeA]

Windows turning into a "boutique" OS -- ouch!

this is nothing new. We know this sicne we saw Windows Developer preview the first time

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

More importantly -- in your view, what would have been a more pragmatic approach on the ReactOS team's part?

Hmmm , this would probably need a new dedicated thread, where I will manage to get flamed by everyone:

• the "Windows" guys
• the "Linux" guys
• the "React-OS" guys

BTW all good guys :, but quite touchy when you "comment" their beloved creature/preferred OS.

See if these posts are enough:

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/58899-open-sourcing-windows-9x/page-6#entry747389

http://reboot.pro/topic/4207-running-kde4-programs-under-windows/?p=46592

http://reboot.pro/topic/5512-mobileos-sorry-guys-im-a-little-confused-again/#entry43184

jaclaz

Yes, those posts did the trick, thanks!

--JorgeA

Edited July 21, 2013 by JorgeA

[JorgeA]

Look for the next big thing to be end-to-end security applications. It's amazing how PGP and Steganography and text cipher programs were all the rage in the 1990's and suddenly they disappeared from the public eye for at least the past decade. Secure P2P communication and end-user crypto will likely become quite the growth field of the next decade. And they will not be programs developed by Microsoft, Apple or Facebook.

Historically, the problem with encrypted e-mail has been the hassle factor and the difficulty of setting it up to work with others with whom you communicate. Until and unless someone, somehow, figures out a way to do e-mail encryption so that it works automatically (if that's what you want) and with everyone that you send to or receive from (while preventing them from reading e-mails to and from third parties, should they manage to get their hands on your inbox), I doubt that e-mail encryption will become as routine a function as launching Outlook.

My ISP is starting to implement SSL for its e-mail service, but with the NSA looking over their shoulder I'm skeptical that it will be of any use against official snoopers; and in any case it seems to me that any e-mail directed at me would still have to arrive at my ISP's servers already encrypted at the sender's end for the encryption to be of much help.

I'm willing to be enlightened on this subject and to be shown that these things are already doable.

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

Miscellaneous News ...

Verizon May Owe Apple $14B Over Slow iPhone Sales ( Tom's Hardware 2013-07-14 )

The LA Times reports that Verizon Wireless may end up owing $14 billion to Apple. That's because the company must sell $23.5 billion worth of iPhone units this year to meet a commitment it made with Apple back in 2010. To do this, Verizon must double its iPhone sales of last year. Unfortunately, iPhone sales just aren't all that great thanks to larger, zippier Android phones dominating the market.

I think it's safe to say that the party is over for the smartphone boom, actually the big clue was to just watch for when Microsoft makes their big entry, because it is usually right before the bottom falls out, unfortunately Microsoft has Nokia to take the fall for them. Smartphones should be saturated within a few more quarters, at most a year and then the race to the bottom begins. Let's just hope that the rigged subsidy system is taken down with it. It is the only reason that tiny $700 phones ever had a chance to be "purchased" by people who cannot even help from losing their pocketbooks, laptops and even children. Anybody who buys in to the top-end now is nuts, this industry is about to become one big buyer's market.

Considering that the smartphone boom was one of the main factors in Microsoft's decision to destroy Windows, the end of that mobile craze wouldn't be coming a moment too soon.

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

Anyway, here it is:

Where'd you find the slides? I clicked on the Spiegel link and saw the text you quoted, but no illustrations other than a photo of the 23-letter sign at the BND headquarters.

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

My ISP is starting to implement SSL for its e-mail service, but with the NSA looking over their shoulder I'm skeptical that it will be of any use against official snoopers; and in any case it seems to me that any e-mail directed at me would still have to arrive at my ISP's servers already encrypted at the sender's end for the encryption to be of much help.

In light of that, and of everything else we've been saying about online and e-mail privacy, I'm wondering if anybody here can comment (helpfully ) on this and this.

Thanks.

--JorgeA

[Formfiller]

Anyway, here it is:

Where'd you find the slides? I clicked on the Spiegel link and saw the text you quoted, but no illustrations other than a photo of the 23-letter sign at the BND headquarters.

--JorgeA

There are on a bunch of news sites.

Image search bring them up:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&site=imghp&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1680&bih=884&q=xkeyscore&oq=xkeyscore&gs_l=img.3..0i24.779.2381.0.2510.9.6.0.3.3.0.69.330.6.6.0....0...1ac.1.21.img.1faK7e7pBZg

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

My ISP is starting to implement SSL for its e-mail service, but with the NSA looking over their shoulder I'm skeptical that it will be of any use against official snoopers; and in any case it seems to me that any e-mail directed at me would still have to arrive at my ISP's servers already encrypted at the sender's end for the encryption to be of much help.

In light of that, and of everything else we've been saying about online and e-mail privacy, I'm wondering if anybody here can comment (helpfully ) on this and this.

Thanks.

--JorgeA

Funny thing is, Steganos ( or Demcom ) is one of the companies I was thinking about. They were around since at least the late 1990's and had some interesting software. One thing they did was the steganography process of coding messages inside things like image files. Another very unusual thing was developing zero emission utilities that used a display method that thwarted the possibility of someone mirroring your CRT monitor contents remotely by reading the EMR emissions. Pretty cool and cutting edge in the consumer space.

I looked at the links and can offer no opinion really, I simply haven't kept up with them. But it does resemble the trend of Mega Security Suites with every possible bell and whistle. These things must be huge punishment for the CPU, file activity and memory transactions, and Internet communication. How could they not be. If the darn CPUs were at 8 GHz instead of 4 then I might be able to write off the performance cost of countless realtime security processes. Anytime I see a picture of a screen full of security programs I get a gut wrenching feeling of an underpowered PC slogging along in slow motion.

In the home, if people designed a network where there was a single computer doing Internet it might make sense to sacrifice it as the front facing beast loaded down with security software. Everything else being kept offline can run naked and at full possible speed, not saddled down with all the security stuff. Unfortunately most people don't even come close to this arrangement. It is now normal for everything to be connected to the outside, from the PCs to the laptops, phones, etc. Countless points of failure. Software like this needs to be present on everything. ~sigh~

I think the real action in security is going to be found in routers. Using a gateway choke point is economical and and simpler. A router makes a terrific gateway because it has all the features we need, from a hardware firewall to an internal network hub. But we do need further advances here. I would like to see much better firmware for starters. I would also like to see serious testing from multiple independent security researchers to assure us they ( the routers ) have not been compromised by the federales.

Recall how all the printer manufacturers also got in bed with government or law enforcement, creating some kind of detectable watermark embedded on all printouts because of special firmware code. Hollywood managed to insert themselves into every piece of A/V consumer electronics also. So it sure would not surprise me at all if the spooks already got to the router manufacturers.

I'm hoping we start seeing new super routers specifically tailored for this new age we're suddenly in. They should go out of their way to advertise their independence: "Hacker-proof and Government Spy-proof!. In fact I would like to start seeing this trend everywhere. For pushback to become effective it needs to develop some momentum. Statements like those would start the ball rolling and create peer pressure on the others.