Windows 8 - Deeper Impressions

[JorgeA]

The ultimate metrotard nadir:

http://www.techbroil.com/2013/07/900-million-reasons-why-surface-rt-was.html?showComment=1374675313038#c8739683891903098046

I just keep shaking my head in disbelief at the positions some of these folks take.

BTW, are you the "anonymous" who wrote this gem with respect to the "XP retirement party" graphic:

My personal favorite: "#3 Built for Business".

Yeah. Sort of like how condoms are built for the celibate.

(No need to reveal your true identity. Just expressing appreciation.)

--JorgeA

[Formfiller]

BTW, are you the "anonymous" who wrote this gem with respect to the "XP retirement party" graphic:

My personal favorite: "#3 Built for Business".

Yeah. Sort of like how condoms are built for the celibate.

(No need to reveal your true identity. Just expressing appreciation.)

--JorgeA

No. But yea, that was a good one.

[JorgeA]

New Microsoft infographic gives Windows XP a retirement party ( NeoWin 2013-07-24 )

Grrrr. How lame can they get! An "infographic" that is childish and Metroish and worst of all, ridiculous. It is supposedly designed to tell businesses why they need to go from Windows XP to Windows 8, yet they offer absolutely zero business reasons and actually embarrass themselves in the process by talking about social and other stuff.

Have a look ... Microsoft_RetirementParty.jpg ( 1.5 MB )

That picture hurts my eyes. Also reminds me of the kind of things I could create with whatever bloatware came with the Windows 95 on my old Packard Bell.

A correction is needed in the box to the left of balloon #3. Instead of ending with "find the charms," the sentence should read, "is annoyed by the charms." Or, "is interrupted by the charms."

Also, it would be interesting to learn how many of that "virtually everyone" who launches an app "on the very first day," launches an app on the second or subsequent days.

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

Windows Weekly 312 features a spirited debate between Leo and Mary Jo (mostly) against guest Peter Bright, who defended Windows 8, the removal of the Start Button, and Metro apps.

The fun starts quietly at 57:30 with a factual report by Mary Jo and then the fireworks begin about 58:35. And about a minute after that, Leo brings up the idea of an OS that can tell what kind of hardware it's on, and select Desktop or Metro accordingly.

Peter states that bringing back the Start Button is a mistake "if" Metro apps are the future, as people need to start getting used to that interface. Whereupon Leo uncorks the best line of the whole discussion:

LL: Yeah, but are Metro apps the future? That's a terrifying future! I don't want everything to be full-screen -- that's a step backwards, that's called DOS with GUI, with graphics.

--JorgeA

Peter Bright just dies when discussing with Leo Laporte. His facial expressions when debating with Mary and Leo are priceless.

1:09:00 - Pure destruction of Peter Bright. It's like all the bad moments of the presidential debates rolled into one compilation vid.

Metrotards would be booed out in a TV debate. That's why there is such a strong censorship on places like Neowin.

That was a great sequence indeed. Leo just tears apart the whole "full-screen Metro app" notion while Peter feebly tries to rationalize it.

If there were a focus group with their approval meters, you could almost see the Win8 graph plummeting at this point.

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

This one will either make you laugh hysterically or cry, or maybe both ...

NSA Says It Cant Search Its Own Emails ( ProPublica 2013-07-23 )

The NSA is a "supercomputing powerhouse" with machines so powerful their speed is measured in thousands of trillions of operations per second. The agency turns its giant machine brains to the task of sifting through unimaginably large troves of data its surveillance programs capture.

But ask the NSA, as part of a freedom of information request, to do a seemingly simple search of its own employees' email? The agency says it doesnt have the technology.

"There's no central method to search an email at this time with the way our records are set up, unfortunately," NSA Freedom of Information Act officer Cindy Blacker told me last week.

The system is a little antiquated and archaic," she added.

Sounds like a big fat lie to me.

We've all heard of the idea of "plausible deniability." Well, this is highly implausible deniability!

So, they can tap into people's transatlantic communications, assemble pettabytes of data, connect people to everyone else they're in contact with -- and yet they can't search their own e-mail?

Yeah, right.

--JorgeA

[jaclaz]

So, they can tap into people's transatlantic communications, assemble pettabytes of data, connect people to everyone else they're in contact with -- and yet they can't search their own e-mail?

Yeah, right.

Well, seemingly they also cannot (or don't care to provide this technology to FBI) what should be a much simpler core (for people possessing super-computers) i.e. decrypt a hard disk:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/06/28/brazil_banker_crypto_lock_out/

There is something else that it is sometimes not highlighted (IMNSHO) enough.

Since a lot of time, the world is a tower of Babel, there are more languages and dialects than stars in the sky, there was a recent criminal case in Italy where a communication (a normal, cellular phone call) has been intercepted (fully legally, i.e. in accordance to a Court order) in which a suspect, talking in an arabic/maghreb dialect supposedly said something to the effect of:

"May God forgive me, she is not the one I killed!"

That is according to the interpreter that was initially called to translate and transcribe the recording.

According to another interpreter, the sentence was actually meaning something to the effect of:

"May God make him answer the call!"

and another one:

"God, why doesn't the call go through?"

and another one:

"Why, why doesn't he answer the phone, why God?"

and some 4 (four) other different versions similar to the last three ones.

Now you can understand how the first equates to a confession, and all the others to some form of cursing from someone that tries to talk to someone and doesn't manage to do that and is consequently annoyed.

On the other hand, even in a litlle country like Italy, still some dialects survive that are understood and talked ONLY in a very limited area.

With all due respect for the NSA and the US military, I never had the impression they are - generally speaking - particularly versed in polyglotism, and allow me to doubt that computer aided analysis is that much effective when it comes to "spoken language" (anyone that ever trained a voice interface will know what I mean).

jaclaz

[JorgeA]

So, they can tap into people's transatlantic communications, assemble pettabytes of data, connect people to everyone else they're in contact with -- and yet they can't search their own e-mail?

Yeah, right.

Well, seemingly they also cannot (or don't care to provide this technology to FBI) what should be a much simpler core (for people possessing super-computers) i.e. decrypt a hard disk:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/06/28/brazil_banker_crypto_lock_out/

Wow, that story shows the value of good encryption. I do wonder, though, what the reporter had in mind with the highlighted text in the following quote:

The case is an illustration of how care in choosing secure (hard-to-guess) passwords and applying encryption techniques to avoid leaving file fragments that could aid code breakers are more important in maintaining security than the algorithm a code maker chooses.

jaclaz, on 24 Jul 2013 - 1:26 PM, said:

There is something else that it is sometimes not highlighted (IMNSHO) enough.

Since a lot of time, the world is a tower of Babel, there are more languages and dialects than stars in the sky, there was a recent criminal case in Italy where a communication (a normal, cellular phone call) has been intercepted (fully legally, i.e. in accordance to a Court order) in which a suspect, talking in an arabic/maghreb dialect supposedly said something to the effect of:

"May God forgive me, she is not the one I killed!"

That is according to the interpreter that was initially called to translate and transcribe the recording.

According to another interpreter, the sentence was actually meaning something to the effect of:

"May God make him answer the call!"

and another one:

"God, why doesn't the call go through?"

and another one:

"Why, why doesn't he answer the phone, why God?"

and some 4 (four) other different versions similar to the last three ones.

Now you can understand how the first equates to a confession, and all the others to some form of cursing from someone that tries to talk to someone and doesn't manage to do that and is consequently annoyed.

On the other hand, even in a litlle country like Italy, still some dialects survive that are understood and talked ONLY in a very limited area.

With all due respect for the NSA and the US military, I never had the impression they are - generally speaking - particularly versed in polyglotism, and allow me to doubt that computer aided analysis is that much effective when it comes to "spoken language" (anyone that ever trained a voice interface will know what I mean).

jaclaz

For voice communications that's a real problem, and as we can see from your example it can serve to get someone (who may be perfectly innocent) into trouble as easily as it could keep a guilty party out of trouble.

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

Whoa, once again Demerjian pulls no punches as he dismantles Microsoft's Windows 8(.1) strategy, performance, and future:

Microsoft drove the bus off the cliff, now it tries to speed up

A selection from the many quotables:

Microsoft has driven off the cliff into the death spiral and rather than change direction they are trying to speed up their ‘momentum’. Endless reorgs, paid analyst reports, and flat-out lying to anyone who will listen won’t help, they can not succeed from their current position.

Rather than fire those responsible they picked a scapegoat and executed him for no real reason other than to shield the incompetent. Most onlookers doubted what we said about the severity of the break, it alone is fatal to Microsoft. Let us reiterate, you are underestimating it. Rather than back pedal, Microsoft announced the impending glory of their new devices and services strategy leaving ‘valued partners’ no doubt that if they don’t flee now they are dead. Every ‘valued partner’ sells lots of Android tablets now, the last Dell PC a friend purchased came with a WART tablet at what appears to be less than hardware costs. How many OEMs put anything more than meager efforts behind selling WART/Win8 tablets? Think they are getting enough volume in return to pay for the case tooling?

When SemiAccurate was at GDC last spring we asked almost every dev we talked to about WART and Windows Phone development. The answers were all the same, those with apps indicated that they were handsomely paid to make them by Microsoft, those who weren’t were unified in their derision of the platform. It is pay to play for Microsoft at this point and given the lack of apps that matter, even though they are paying large sums to many, the rest of the community isn’t playing ball.

For Microsoft to change their path the company needed to take quick decisive action. They needed to show partners that they would not unfairly compete with them, and they failed. They needed to show end users that the next version would make things better, the ‘Start’ menu in 8.1 simply throws the things users object to most back in their face. They needed to soothe app devs and entice them back but instead they stonewalled on revenue and made app approval needlessly harder.

All of these fairly basic fixes needed to happen months ago in order for those needing the results to see the changes in a timely manner. Microsoft did none of this and quite bluntly went farther in the wrong direction in every case. Instead of fixes we got a reorg that consolidated power in the hands of the most incompetent of them all Steve Ballmer. If he was fired months ago there was a small chance Microsoft would survive, today he has more control than before. Microsoft has failed.

--JorgeA

[Formfiller]

Yea.

Edited July 25, 2013 by Formfiller

[Vince4Amy]

I'm probably not going to upgrade to Windows 8.1 immediately because I have Windows 8 running fine at the moment. One of the things I don't like about Windows 8.1 is the blatent SkyDrive integration everywhere and as of the latest public beta you can't uninstall this. I obviously won't configure it when I do upgrade to 8.1 but I think that it seems to be a step to perhaps a forced Skydrive integration in future versions of Windows.

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

Whoa, once again Demerjian pulls no punches as he dismantles Microsoft's Windows 8(.1) strategy, performance, and future:

Microsoft drove the bus off the cliff, now it tries to speed up

Devastating. If only that were posted in full at NeoWin. The MetroTards and MicroZealots would be slitting their wrists.

[Formfiller]

June 2012:

http://www.theverge.com/2012/6/28/3122873/windows-8-start-button-explanation-chaitanya-sareen

Microsoft removed the Start button from Windows 8's Consumer Preview version earlier this year, generating a lot of discussion and mixed reaction over a user interface element that was first introduced in Windows over 15 years ago. In an interview with PC Pro, the company has revealed that telemetry data was a big part of the decision to scrap the Start button and traditional Start menu in Windows 8.

July 2013:

http://www.neowin.net/news/ballmer-states-that-windows-is-not-selling-well-next-gen-surface-in-testing

During his internal address, Ballmer stated that Windows is not selling well enough, which shouldn't come as a major surprise, as the company has blamed just about everything under the sun for the slower adoption of Windows 8

Other obvious talking points included the fact that Windows 8.1 was heavily shaped by user telemetry and was why Microsoft reintroduced the Start button back into Windows 8.

Edited July 25, 2013 by Formfiller

[jaclaz]

It must be a particular kind of telemetry.

I mean, IF they had provided the option to use EITHER the Start Button (AND Menu) OR the NCI, they might have been able to count how many users actually preferred the one over the other, but since they forced everyone to use the NCI, I wonder WHAT THE HECK they registered through telemetry.

jaclaz

[Monroe]

This just broke at the Drudge Report over the last few hours ... just a quick post since there was talk earlier of government spying in this thread.

Drudge Report

FEDS DEMAND WEB FIRMS TURN OVER PASSWORDS

http://www.drudgereport.com/

... at this time this is the main "headline" story at the Drudge Report and it may stay that way for several hours until something else starts to trend so the actual article link is below.

the actual article ...

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57595529-38/feds-tell-web-firms-to-turn-over-user-account-passwords/

Feds tell Web firms to turn over user account passwords

Secret demands mark escalation in Internet surveillance by the federal government through gaining access to user passwords, which are typically stored in encrypted form.

The U.S. government has demanded that major Internet companies divulge users' stored passwords, according to two industry sources familiar with these orders, which represent an escalation in surveillance techniques that has not previously been disclosed.

If the government is able to determine a person's password, which is typically stored in encrypted form, the credential could be used to log in to an account to peruse confidential correspondence or even impersonate the user. Obtaining it also would aid in deciphering encrypted devices in situations where passwords are reused.

"I've certainly seen them ask for passwords," said one Internet industry source who spoke on condition of anonymity. "We push back."

A second person who has worked at a large Silicon Valley company confirmed that it received legal requests from the federal government for stored passwords. Companies "really heavily scrutinize" these requests, the person said. "There's a lot of 'over my dead body.'"

Some of the government orders demand not only a user's password but also the encryption algorithm and the so-called salt, according to a person familiar with the requests. A salt is a random string of letters or numbers used to make it more difficult to reverse the encryption process and determine the original password. Other orders demand the secret question codes often associated with user accounts.

... more at the link

Edited July 26, 2013 by duffy98

[jaclaz]

It's meme time!

The "us" is to be intended as "US" .

jaclaz