Windows 8 - Deeper Impressions

[JorgeA]

N.S.A. Gathers Data on Social Connections of U.S. Citizens ( New York Times 2013-09-28 )

WASHINGTON Since 2010, the National Security Agency has been exploiting its huge collections of data to create sophisticated graphs of some Americans social connections that can identify their associates, their locations at certain times, their traveling companions and other personal information, according to newly disclosed documents and interviews with officials.

[...]

Phone and e-mail logs, for example, allow analysts to identify peoples friends and associates, detect where they were at a certain time, acquire clues to religious or political affiliations, and pick up sensitive information like regular calls to a psychiatrists office, late-night messages to an extramarital partner or exchanges with a fellow plotter.

As @jaclaz has pointed out, this is completely ineffective against a terror plot involving isolated or occasional signals to sleeper cells. The real usefulness of this information lies in establishing dossiers on each and every U.S. resident, see which way they're trending, and be able to act if the trends seem unfavorable to the Party in power. Not to mention having usable dirt on anybody who starts to stick out as a possible challenger to them, let alone to the burgeoning totalitarian state. Had the Soviets and their puppet governments back then had access to this kind of database on their subjects, the miracle year of 1989 might not have happened.

--JorgeA

[Formfiller]

It's cute that even with Netmarketshare's "adjusted" algorithm, Windows 7 is stil climbing in marketshare, something that MS desperately wants to avoid ("never let it be the new XP").

[JorgeA]

It's cute that even with Netmarketshare's "adjusted" algorithm, Windows 7 is stil climbing in marketshare, something that MS desperately wants to avoid ("never let it be the new XP").

Good point. I'm sure that the plan/hope was for 7 to drop (even if less than XP) as 8 came on the scene.

And speaking of XP, check this out:

Roadblocks ahead as companies delay Windows XP migration

A poll of nearly 500 IT professionals with responsibility for corporate desktops and laptops at global organisations revealed that 47 percent still haven’t completed their migrations off Windows XP.

As industry averages for the time needed to complete an OS migration range between 12 to 24 months, it’s clear that many in-process migrations won’t be completed before Microsoft’s April 2014 end-of-support deadline for Windows XP.

There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of enthusiasm out there for getting off XP.

--JorgeA

[Monroe]

Just wanted to add that Windows XP use "may" be much higher than being reported. In my case I use Proxomitron around 99% of the time as I go around the internet ... using the Sidki filter set. I have Windows XP installed but when Proxomitron is active web sites see me as having Windows 7 installed. I also use K-Meleon 1.6.0 beta 2.6 by JamesD ... which by the way he uses with Windows 7 (32 bit).

Anyway, I have K-Meleon set as a Firefox Portable User Agent so I show these readings with Proxomitron on or active:

Browser logo Firefox 17.0.9.9

run on logo Windows 7

... with Proxomitron on "Bypass" I show these readings to a website:

Browser logo Firefox 17.0

run on logo Windows XP

The Sidki filter set will show Windows 7 in use when I'm online, even when I was still using Windows 98SE early last year.

I also have other User Agents installed that can show any OS installed ... like Safari or Windows 8 but just getting back to Proxomitron. Just the computers still having XP installed but running Proxomitron with the popular Sidki filter set installed would be showing Windows 7 to every site they visit ... so it's possible that XP is actually on many more computers around the world than being reported. Just don't have a real idea how many that might be, could anybody ... would have to be a wild guess, this may also make the numbers for Windows 98SE totally different.

Proxomitron site:

http://prxbx.com/forums/

Proxomitron - Sidki page:

http://prxbx.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?fid=44

If anyone is interested in the new version of K-Meleon by JamesD which was released a few months ago and being used on Windows 7 or XP ... ... The link is there for the new KM version download, not sure if this permitted, it's a good link to that download version but a moderator can have the final say.

Posted by: JamesD

Date: July 03, 2013 06:45PM

K-Meleon 1.6.0 Beta 2.6

I have collected some new pieces and put them together as a new beta release for K-Meleon 1.6.0. The release is a 7-Zip so users can install in two ways. If you wish to have your profile in the same folder tree as the program, then you only have to make a folder, extract the files in 7z to that folder and run the executable named k-meleon. If you need your profile to be in your %APPDATA% folder then follow the same steps except prior to running k-meleon.exe you should delete the file named profile.ini which has 0 bytes.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1522294/K-Meleon1.6.0_Beta2dot6_en-US.7z

K-Meleon 1.6.0 beta 2.6 Win 7 (32 bit)

Is K-Meleon Dead ?

http://kmeleon.sourceforge.net/forum/read.php?1,125050,page=2

just to add, I just noticed further down in the thread "Is K-Meleon Dead ?" there is a post by guenter where he says that K-Meleon will work with Windows 7 (64 bit):

Posted by: guenter

Date: July 15, 2013 11:14PM

1.6 will work on Windows 7 / 64 bit. But make sure that You have writing rights to the Instalation & Profiles folders. If needed grant them manually. If K-Meleon does not load web content - a firewall or other security device prevents it from access to the net.

In Your case it sounds like K-Meleon has the right to start but not the right to enter the net. That is enough English answer & easier to type German

& esyer to be more verbose in my native language 4 me.

Mit welcher Fehlermeldung stürtzt er ab? Mäno. Das ist wichtig.

... in case anyone would want to experiment with KM to see for themselves ... I'm sure it will not be 100% but it might be good enough for a 2nd browser to have handy. I mostly use KM but when I occasionally hit a web site with problems then I have Firefox Portable ESR or Opera or IE 8 to fall back on.

Also ... someone can maybe clear this up, that has more knowledge than myself on the subject ... can a website still tell exactly what OS I have installed regardless of what a User Agent or Proxomitron might report? ... but in general would most websites just count what ever Proxomitron or a UA would be reporting?

Edited October 3, 2013 by duffy98

[Tripredacus]

Another tech company hell-bent on self-destruction?

Intel proves once and for all that PCs are not coming back

If you have followed PCs for any length of time you will know Intel is desperately trying to figure out what to do to combat the phones and tablets that are eating them alive from the ankles up. It is pretty obvious that the company both doesn’t understand what the problem is and is actively shutting out all voices that explain it to them. How can I be sure of this? Intel is both doubling down on a known losing strategy while publicly disparaging things that would help. Behind the scenes it is however much worse.

Sound familiar?

Lots more goot insights in that article, well worth reading (and it's not very long).

--JorgeA

Intel (as well as other board manufacturers) are running into the same problem with their desktop boards. The first problem is that there are too many of them available per generation. Every time a new generation of boards come out, I'm tasked with testing at most 10 different Intel boards to make sure everything works. TEN BOARDS. The differences between these boards are very small. Number of PCI-E Xx slots, number of memory slots, form factor. That's pretty much the differences between all the boards they sell. The other guys (Asus, MSI, etc) have the same problem. Too many options for too few customers who actually care.

I know where all this comes from. A lot of it is left over from the enthusiast days, and the rest is aimed at companies who build devices. Except those products should be kept away from the retail channel if that is the case. If at every new generation a single manufacturer only released 3 boards based on form factor, it would be better. Intel (and others) wouldn't need to spend all that time doing R&D on making a bunch of different things that do the same thing.

The second problem is that Intel has been changing CPU keying in each of the past few generations. I've got a few different gens available to me that I have to re-test for various reasons. While all the CPUs look the same (and are the same size) they have 3 different keyings, meaning you can't actually put that CPU in the socket even if it is an LGA115X. This means that you have physical incompatibility issues between generations. And the last problem is that these different generations (Intel 6/7/8 series chipsets) are coming out too close together. I worked on the 7 series and maybe had 4 months off before the Haswell (8 series) stuff came out.

And in the end, very few people actually care about the difference between the different generations of boards. Even AMD can fall into this category. Desktop boards have been pretty much the same (in a working sense) since the Core 2 Quad CPUs came out, which I think was in the Q35 and 5x chipsets for Intel. Sure the i Series CPUs are technically better, but engineers, gamers and other high-end users are the only ones who care about things like that. To me, there is no difference between this gaggle of boards that came out the past 2 or 3 years and a standard user can get by using something a few generations old still with no issue.

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

Freakonomics and Microsoft trade words over 'Bing It On' challenge accuracy ( NeoWin 2013-10-03 )

This week, Ian Ayres of the Freakonomics website has put Microsoft's claims to the test in his own study. The site questions the number of participants in Microsoft's original study, which suggests that 1,000 people is simply not big enough of a pool to come up with an accurate final result. Ayres also questions why Microsoft does not release the results of its online "Bing It On" challenge, which millions have taken since the site launched.

Freakonomics conducted its own survey, using the online "Bing It On" website. The Ayers said:

We found that, to the contrary of Microsofts claim, 53 percent of subjects preferred Google and 41 percent Bing (6 percent of results were ties). This is not even close to the advertised claim that people prefer Bing nearly two-to-one. It is misleading to have advertisements that say people prefer Bing 2:1 and also say join the millions of people whove taken the Bing-It-On challenge, if, as in our study, the millions of people havent preferred Bing at a nearly a 2:1 rate.

This caused Microsoft to post its own response on the official Bing blog. Matt Wallaert, Bing's behavioral psychologist, defended the number of people used for its original study, saying, "A 1,000 person, truly representative sample is actually fairly large. As a comparison, the Gallup poll on presidential approval is just 1,500 people." As far as releasing the data on the Bing It On website, Wallaert says it's not being posted because of privacy concerns. He stated:

It isn't conducted in a controlled environment, people are free to try and game it one way or another, and it has Bing branding all over it. So we simply don't track their results, because the tracking itself would be incredibly unethical. And we aren't basing the claim on the results of a wildly uncontrolled website, because that would also be incredibly unethical (and entirely unscientific).

Now wait a minute. They have a real sample of millions that took the test but only used 1,000 of them as their propaganda? And as one of the commenters pointed out, what's this crap about privacy? They use the word "Tracking" as a diversion here, no-one wants to know who their identieis! Near as I can tell they are using these terms solely as a shield to not report the actual results, which is weird because they supposedly collect no user-identifiable data on the test-takers in the first place. So the federal government spooks first partner is suddenly concerned about privacy but only when it suits their own purposes.

The funniest part about that challenge is how it makes Bing look like a Google-clone. That's what I took away from it ...

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

Seagate Cloud Storage Backups Unavailable for 2 Weeks ( Tom's Hardware 2013-10-03 )

Seagate last night emailed users to inform them that its Seagate Dashboard cloud storage service is going through some updates that will render the upload capability of the service unavailable for "a few days" (over a fortnight). The company says that while the updates are processing and testing, scheduled backups will be suspended (or may result in errors) from today, October 3, through to October 18. Seagate told customers they should copy any files stored on the cloud to local storage.

[...]

The news comes hot on the heels of Nirvanix's surprise exit from the cloud storage market. The company emailed users earlier this week and told them it was shutting down on October 15. That doesn't give users much time to seek alternative solutions. It's been said that you should never trust a small company for cloud storage, but Seagate aint exactly small potatoes. We reached out to Seagate for some clarification on the current situation, and asked if the company felt customers' data was at risk (after all, the company said that upload capability and scheduled back ups would be affected, but also advised users download their data to local storage). Seagate hasn't been able to answer our questions so far, but we'll keep you posted once we find out more.

You know, pretty much every cloud epic fail scenario is coming true for various companies on a weekly basis. I wonder what else might happen?

GitHub down for some users due to yet another Denial of Service attack (Update) ( NeoWin 2013-10-03 )

Well, there's another one, DDoS this time. I wonder what else could happen?

Cyber attack hits Adobe, 2.9 million accounts compromised ( TechSpot 2013-10-03 )

Adobe Servers Hacked, 2.9 Million Customers Affected ( Maximum PC 2013-10-03 )

Adobe Data Breach Exposes 3 Million Customer Credit Cards ( Tom's Hardware 2013-10-03 )

Adobe: Cyber attackers removed personal info from 2.9 million customers ( NeoWin 2013-10-03 )

Adobe has revealed today that they've been hit with a cyber attack, with intruders stealing a range of information from 2.9 million Adobe customers. Adobe IDs and encrypted passwords were accessed, but far more worrying is the news that customer names, encrypted debit and credit card numbers, expiration dates, and order information relating to product orders was stolen.

While this information was taken, Adobe doesn't believe that the intruders accessed any decrypted information, meaning your credit card information should be safe. Any customers that have been affected by the cyber attack will have their account passwords reset, and Adobe will also offer one year of free credit card monitoring to ensure malicious purchases aren't made.

Adobe also reported that source code to a number of products, including Acrobat and ColdFusion, was stolen in a separate, but potentially related attack. The company claims there is no "specific increased risk to customers" due to the source code theft.

The theft of Adobe customer data comes at a bad time, with the company trying to shift customers to subscription services such as Creative Cloud. The entire Creative Suite moved to the Creative Cloud subscription model earlier this year with mixed feedback, and revelations of cyber attacks on the service will instill no confidence in future buyers.

That's three, just like a Hat-Trick or Triple Crown.

I love this part too ...

"Adobe is also offering customers, whose credit or debit card information was involved, the option of enrolling in a one-year complimentary credit monitoring membership where available," Arkin said.

See, you can just strike that word "Adobe" and fill the space with the name of any other cloud merchant. That exact phrase right there "complimentary credit monitoring membership" is going to become quite popular over time ( already has actually, it showed up in our snail mail when the electric utility had CC numbers stolen ).

The worse thing about this remedy though is that after you have already been cloud-raped, the solution is to now hand over your most personal information to yet another 3rd party ... who also lives and operates ... in the cloud. It's like after accidentally smashing your thumb with a hammer and then being treated by putting that thumb in a vice and scrunching it tight. Substitute other body parts as necessary.

[TELVM]

The top most helpful tips in the Windows 8 section of Microsoft Community as of 10/04/2013:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_8?tab=QnA&sort=HelpfulCount&dir=Desc

[Formfiller]

Beautiful.

The cloud is actually the complete anti-thesis to the core design of the internet.

The internet was made to mirror data on as many computers in case of attack. The original designers knew it that harvesting and centralizing all users and data on just one or two sites is dangerous, because those few centers will be the target of attacks (physical, and later, digital).

Our dear Orwell-wannabe's at Google, Microsoft and Apple are learning this lesson the hard way. They will never perfect it, because those gargantuan honey pots they are creating are just too juicy to pass for all the hackers, criminal and "cyber-Task forces" in the world. But, unfortunately, I think their desire to gatekeep the data of the users and thus "having them by the balls" is just too strong to resist. They would rather risk Cloudogeddon than reversing the trend.

Edited October 4, 2013 by Formfiller

[JorgeA]

Further details on the Lavabit founder's struggle against the spooks:

Lavabit Founder Waged Privacy Fight as F.B.I. Pursued Snowden

Prosecutors, it turned out, were pursuing a notable user of Lavabit, Mr. Levison’s secure e-mail service: Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who leaked classified documents that have put the intelligence agency under sharp scrutiny. Mr. Levison was willing to allow investigators with a court order to tap Mr. Snowden’s e-mail account; he had complied with similar narrowly targeted requests involving other customers about two dozen times.

But they wanted more, he said: the passwords, encryption keys and computer code that would essentially allow the government untrammeled access to the protected messages of all his customers. That, he said, was too much.

“You don’t need to bug an entire city to bug one guy’s phone calls,” Mr. Levison, 32, said in a recent interview. “In my case, they wanted to break open the entire box just to get to one connection.”

On Aug. 8, Mr. Levison closed Lavabit rather than, in his view, betray his promise of secure e-mail to his customers. The move, which he explained in a letter on his Web site, drew fervent support from civil libertarians but was seen by prosecutors as an act of defiance that fell just short of a crime.

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

The cloud is actually the complete anti-thesis to the core design of the internet.

I'd never thought of it that way, but this makes great sense.

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

The top most helpful tips in the Windows 8 section of Microsoft Community as of 10/04/2013:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_8?tab=QnA&sort=HelpfulCount&dir=Desc

Nice find!

Amazing that the very top spot would belong to a question about downgrading to XP, and not even 7. I'll have to check this out!

--JorgeA

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

Further details on the Lavabit founder's struggle against the spooks:

Lavabit Founder Waged Privacy Fight as F.B.I. Pursued Snowden

Prosecutors, it turned out, were pursuing a notable user of Lavabit, Mr. Levisons secure e-mail service: Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who leaked classified documents that have put the intelligence agency under sharp scrutiny. Mr. Levison was willing to allow investigators with a court order to tap Mr. Snowdens e-mail account; he had complied with similar narrowly targeted requests involving other customers about two dozen times.

But they wanted more, he said: the passwords, encryption keys and computer code that would essentially allow the government untrammeled access to the protected messages of all his customers. That, he said, was too much.

You dont need to bug an entire city to bug one guys phone calls, Mr. Levison, 32, said in a recent interview. In my case, they wanted to break open the entire box just to get to one connection.

On Aug. 8, Mr. Levison closed Lavabit rather than, in his view, betray his promise of secure e-mail to his customers. The move, which he explained in a letter on his Web site, drew fervent support from civil libertarians but was seen by prosecutors as an act of defiance that fell just short of a crime.

--JorgeA

Ladar Levison. Bonafide hero.

In a just world, Levison would be a witness in a Congressional investigation that sends many of those anti-Constitutional criminals to jail, and also the Congressional members that gave it approval. I would prefer tar and feathers and the gallows pole, but I am willing to cut them a deal for prison time in exchange for further whistle-blowing.

.

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

Microsoft board of directors recommend Gates, Ballmer for re-election ( TechSpot 2013-10-04 )

Company shareholders will convene on November 19 to vote on the new board of directors. Fortunately for Gates and Ballmer, the board has recommended they both be re-elected to their current positions. Furthermore, the two will likely have some power at the company as Gates is the single largest shareholder with 4.52 percent of the companys stock while Ballmer holds 3.99 percent.

All other board members own less than one percent of the company although investment firm BlackRock owns 5.57 percent - still less than the 8.51 percent Gates and Ballmer own together.

Isn't it amazing that it has come to this? It won't be long before there is no trace of the original founders and no trace of the reason they originally were successful - software products and software development. Computer programming languages of every flavor that laid the groundwork for the x86 universe came from Microsoft who jumped into that new Intel architecture and made it successful. The company has been thoroughly run into the ground, not for pure revenue, but definitely for reputation and gravitas. Developers were kicked to the curb and all the Windows veterans crapped on. They have truly forsaken their position as leader in exchange for playing in the sandbox of sheeple toys, and all because of Apple-envy and Google-envy. Great job fellas.

Steve Ballmer Gets Another Pay Cut After Slipping on Surface ( Maximum PC 2013-10-04 )

Microsoft only paid 79 percent of Steve Ballmer's incentive bonus in 2013 ( NeoWin 2013-10-04 )

Steve Ballmer's final year at Microsoft is one that's been wrought with challenges and a few missteps, such as the $900 million charge the Redmond outfit took on unsold Surface inventory. In addition, Windows 8 sales haven't been as high as Microsoft hoped, which is largely the result of a slumping PC market in the wake of consumers turning their attention to mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.

Due to all this, Ballmer's pay was again cut this year, according to Microsoft's 2013 proxy statement. Don't go shedding too many tears on his behalf, however, he still raked in a healthy $1.26 million for his efforts, including $697.500 in base salary and a $500,000 bonus.

In 2012, Ballmer made $1.38 million by way of a $685,500 salary and $682,500 bonus. This year, his bonus was 79 percent of the total he was eligible for.

Another tiny hand-slap for the bad boy. Meanwhile Microsoft flounders as they morph from the technical juggernaut they used to be, into Playskool or Sesame Street, promoting and manufacturing children's toys and selling them to sheeple that aren't even capable of knowing when they are being insulted.

Microsoft dreams of HTC handsets dual-booting Windows Phone and Android ( TechSpot 2013-10-04 )

Would You Buy a Dual Booting Handset with Android and Windows Phone? ( Maximum PC 2013-10-04 )

Microsoft's proposal to HTC is that it cram its Windows Phone platform alongside Android on its handsets, Bloomberg reports. As added encouragement, Microsoft is willing to drastically reduce or even eliminate its licensing fee, so the real risk would be in whether or not there would be an audience for dual OS devices, and not the cost of licensing Windows Phone.

So we're to believe that Microsoft wants Windows Phone 8 to go head-to-head against Android? I don't think so. If they wanted to do that there is a real simple controlled experiment they could do right now ... release both a WP8 *and* an Android version of the Lumia 1020 and see which one actually sells.

HTC better be careful. This is no doubt how the Nokia death spiral began, with an innocent discussion about a collaboration and later a deal for the operating system. Watch your backs!

Microsoft Set to Patch Critical Internet Explorer Flaw ( Toms Hardware 2013-10-04 )

Microsoft's upcoming round of Patch Tuesday monthly updates, due next week, will likely include an all-encompassing patch for a serious Internet Explorer flaw.

Malware attacking the browser flaw, dubbed a zero-day exploit because Microsoft didn't know about the underlying flaw beforehand, has been attacking government agencies and financial institutions in Japan and Taiwan through poisoned Web pages.

Would someone please diagram exactly how that works for me? How do poisoned webpages up and attack government agencies and financial institutions in Japan and Taiwan? Presumably they would only be using MSIE for Intranet apps and not browsing the WWW. Why would they even have access to the larger web? And even if some did would they be the same systems that have access to their secure Intranet? Am I living in crazyland?

EDIT: fixed broken tags

Edited October 6, 2013 by CharlotteTheHarlot

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

Xbox in the news again ...

Microsoft exec: Xbone nickname for Xbox One will likely "stick" around ( NeoWin 2013-10-05 )

HeHe. Another manifestation of the Streisand Effect

Microsoft exec: Kinect for Xbox One won't collect data for advertising ( NeoWin 2013-10-04 )

The concerns began after an older interview was posted with some unnamed Microsoft personnel on a site called Stick Twiddlers, which claims that the Kinect "could" be used in advertising. In a post on the NeoGAF message board this week, Microsoft's Xbox planning and marketing director Albert Penello dismissed those concerns, saying:

First - nobody is working on that. We have a lot more interesting and pressing things to dedicate time towards. It was an interview done speculatively, and I'm not aware of any active work in this space. Second - if something like that ever happened, you can be sure it wouldn't happen without the user having control over it. Period.

Yeah, I'm gonna take their word for it

They have this one commenter over there who has to be a sock puppet for Dot MetroTard because there cannot possibly be two fanboys this ridiculous ...

Google tells you straight up they track everything you do and scan your email and it doesn't seem to hurt them much.

~sigh~ Why don't you just come out and say what you're thinking and endorse them using Kinect for spying and advertising?