Windows 8 - Deeper Impressions

[TELVM]

Microsoft kills off employee stack ranking system, now encourages collaboration

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

Microsoft kills off employee stack ranking system, now encourages collaboration

Now that is interesting. Quite possibly the first smart thing out of Redmond in years ( unless you count the employee braindrain ).

Nothing about it mentioned at Mini-Microsoft yet ( He's probably waiting for the CEO announcement ).

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

Microsoft confirms SkyDrive is coming to the Xbox One ( NeoWin 2013-11-11 )

It is going to be very interesting to see if the "SkyDrive" branding shows up on the Xbox, I mean literally shows up there. As they have lost that court case and must change it, any branding that appears in the very soon-to-be-released Xbone will be extra work that needs to be scrubbed out later. That would be senseless.

Does anyone else notice something strange going on here? When they lost rights to "Metro" you never saw anybody move so fast. That name was struck from the public consciousness almost instantaneously. But with "SkyDrive" they seem to have not even moved a muscle. Something is weird about this. Unless they have quietly negotiated a limited use license it sure looks like another legal fiasco in the making by flagrantly ignoring the judgment of that court case.

How big are Xbox One games? List reveals install sizes up to 43GB ( NeoWin 2013-11-12 )

And here collide two of the landmark "features" of Xbone: (1) all games must be installed to the HDD ( not playable from optical disc ), and (2) deprecated physical media in favor of digital distribution. Suddenly the CloudTards are silent. Perhaps the thought of burning up 100% of their ISP bandwidth cap by downloading a single game doesn't look so swell? It's a good thing that item (2) isn't set in concrete, just yet.

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

Microsoft to fix IE zero-day bug today with security patch ( NeoWin 2013-11-12 )

However, because the IE zero day bug is already being used in the wild, Microsoft posted a note on its Security Response Center blog on Monday stating that the exploit, which affects an Internet Explorer ActiveX Control, will be closed as part of the MS13-090 bulletin.

Microsoft also offered some advice for PC users who might be affected by the exploit before the patch is released later today, such as changing Internet and local intranet security zone settings to "High" to block any ActiveX Controls and Active Scripting. It also says that IE can be configured to either prompt or disable Active Scripting.

Oh look, some more details that finally mention ActiveX controls which have been making the Internet safe for malware for the better part of two decades. First rule of security - never use MSIE unless it is for Windows Updates. Violating this rule, as the fanboys highly recommend, is about as dumb a thing as one can imagine.

Seriously though, still no hard information on what website this alleged exploit is operating from? So it is out there doing alleged driveby infections and conveniently no-one else may check this out to see if they are just blowing smoke.

Noisy tabs and Malware detection added to Chrome Beta ( NeoWin 2013-11-12 )

Make it so! ( I mean you Opera, in the Presto build not the Chrome clone ). Finally a web browser that finally flags a tab that has a webpage playing audio ( and let's hope they don't patent this tweak ). It is a little unclear to me in the article but let's hope this also applies to YouTube and other videos that autoplay thanks to those miserable lowlife webslinging authors. While the flag is nice, I propose a better solution involving missiles launched from a predator drone that home in on the web author directly. We know this is do-able thanks to all the recent spying revelations.

[Formfiller]

Funny, MS kills stack ranking right when Yahoo implements it.

Maybe they have secretly already chosen a CEO and this was actually his first decision. Ballmer had years to get rid of stack ranking, odd that it happens right around when everybody was reporting that the CEO list was narrowing down.

Edited November 12, 2013 by Formfiller

[JorgeA]

Funny, MS kills stack ranking right when Yahoo implements it.

Maybe Microsoft sold the patent rights for that system to Yahoo...

--JorgeA

[jaclaz]

Funny, MS kills stack ranking right when Yahoo implements it.

Maybe Microsoft sold the patent rights for that system to Yahoo...

--JorgeA

Good one!

Just for the record, bell (or Gauss) curves are a good instrument when production or constance of quality are the scopes, and never a good one where research and innovation are.

They tend to heighten the relevance of average, and while they may be useful to "cut" the bad out, they also cut the "exceptionals" or the "geniuses" out.

By re-sampling data over and over, the result is always tending to be "average".

jacla

[JorgeA]

In browser news:

IE11 for Windows 7 Globally Available for Consumers and Businesses

People are complaining that IE11 breaks their Desktop Gadgets and that it doesn't work with YouTube, Wordpress, and Google+ among others. Reminiscent of practices in the Destroying Windows blog, one commenter complained that --

I cannot believe I witnessed benign, truthful and relevant comments being deleted from this post. Way to sensor the community and help favor your own products.

-----

Google starts applying the "forced march by dropping support" strategy to both Vista and IE9:

Google Apps kills support for Windows Vista by discontinuing support for Internet Explorer 9

This is ironic, because IE8 is still the single most popular version of any browser out there.

Microsoft's IE8 is currently the top browser with a 21.76% browser market share. Interestingly enough, IE8 actually went up in market share compared to the previous month, which had a 21.39% share. We wonder what caused the increase?

At the same time, IE10 went down by half a percent. My guess: IIRC, IE8 is the default browser for Windows 7 and IE10 is the default browser for Windows 8. Therefore, there are more new installations of Win7 than of Win8.

--JorgeA

Edited November 13, 2013 by JorgeA

[G8YMW]

Or IE8 is the highest version that supports XP

[vinifera]

both true, not to mention (yes I witnessed it) that many business companies force use IE for online transaction
(not other browsers) and most only call for IE 8 coz of XP

on another note, even if I dislike Vista and absolutely hate IE, but what google does with their support drop is stupid
clear example are versions 10 and 11 of Opera, they both run youtube/flash (newest) without problem at least on other sites
but google simply blocked them on purpose crapping messages like "upgrade your browser, try google Chrome instead"

anyhows IE will always be worst since it gets only 1 upgrade per year and that is... just open wound with salt on it

Edited November 13, 2013 by vinifera

[Formfiller]

In browser news:

IE11 for Windows 7 Globally Available for Consumers and Businesses

People are complaining that IE11 breaks their Desktop Gadgets and that it doesn't work with YouTube, Wordpress, and Google+ among others. Reminiscent of practices in the Destroying Windows blog, one commenter complained that --

I cannot believe I witnessed benign, truthful and relevant comments being deleted from this post. Way to sensor the community and help favor your own products.

No wonder:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/13/microsoft_new_ie_chief/

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) has a new chief - the exec who has led the company’s Windows Phone rebirth for four years.

IE is getting metrotarded. It's funny that all the people at MS who have a "metro" background drag all the products they touch to a new low. IE 11 is the worst release Internet Explorer release I can think of. Its compatibility problems are staggering. They also have removed the "view this in compatibility mode" button. The function is still there, but ridiculously hidden.

It's not because its less standards compliant - it support more HTML 5 stuff than IE10. It seems to be less compatible with "quirky mode" sites than its predecessors (which isn't a good thing, no matter what the fanboys are saying. The vast majority of sites are not 100% HTML standards compliant, ignoring this reality is stupid.)

Edited November 14, 2013 by Formfiller

[jaclaz]

For no apparent reason this thread is interesting :

http://windowssecrets.com/forums/showthread.php/157657-Skype-password-reset-token

seemingly if you sign in Windows 8.1 with MS account, you can't log off Skype anymore, the "solution" provided by the good MS support is:

http://windowssecrets.com/forums/showthread.php/157657-Skype-password-reset-token?p=928741&viewfull=1#post928741

I understand that you are having issues with your MS account since you can't log out. Let me assist you with these.
If you signed in to Windows * with your Microsoft account, you can't sign out of Skype. But if you don't want to be disturbed, simply set your Skype status to invisible, and nobody will see you online.

And it is actually the "official" stance, see:

https://support.skype.com/en/faq/FA12199/can-i-sign-out-of-skype-windows-8-or-above

... and to be fair, is not even "news" (Windows Phone 8 doees the same):

http://forums.wpcentral.com/windows-phone-apps/203679-dear-skype-please-let-me-log-out-skype-windows-phone-8-a.html

jaclaz

Edited November 14, 2013 by jaclaz

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

Microsoft Stops Ranking Its Employees. Reward curve and rating system scrapped ( Maximum PC 2013-11-12 )

Microsoft axes stack ranking, employees likely scream with glee ( NeoWin 2013-11-12 )

More about the about-face on the incredibly damaging stack-ranking where a certain number of employees were predestined to receive bad reviews simply because of quotas, making the existence of a perfect team an impossibility. Note that I am talking about the quota aspect of this. Stack-Ranking can also be used in a non-insane way without quotas and I'm sure it exists elsewhere quite possibly using the same confusing name. It is astounding that quotas were ever introduced anywhere, especially at Microsoft which began life in the most informal of circumstances. Of course they still might screw this up royally, just removing the system is no panacea at all. They have to take a weed-whacker to management and somehow remove all of the deadweight, people who are just punching the clock and waiting to vest and watching others who they can backstab and leap over. One way to do this would be to terminate all management who unquestioningly supported Stack-Ranking and actually applied it to employees in their departments. So, if they gave a "5" to an employee this manager should be placed into the "scrutinize file" and then it needs to be determined if that "5" was legitimate or a quota. If that manager filled a quota and did not fight against the system he should be shown the door.

Microsoft Worried About PCs Still Using Windows XP ( Tom's Hardware 2013-11-13 )

If you want to stack rank someone then how about this Tom's Hardware author who just constructed this FUDfest article to stoke the flames and drum up comments and page hits ( this guy is just as sycophantic as Ed Bott or Patty Hearst IMHO ).

They got 91 comments already so apparently the recipe works. ~sigh~ Shovel the people into a modern, post-9/11, PRISM friendly and spook approved operating system. That's the ticket. :

At least one commenter cuts to the chase with a simple solution: "If XP is so insecure and outdated but people like it so much and want to stick with it. Why doesn't MS just make Windows 9 look and feel exactly like XP when it comes out? Just make it with modern security, technologies and automation behind the scenes.". Quite a good question there. I guess the answer exposes that part of the Microsoft plan which is all about the future walled-garden for retards. Having a user customizable interface without training wheels simply does not fit into those plans.

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

Security Related ...

Over 70,000 unencrypted credit card and CCV numbers stolen ( NeoWin 2013-11-13 )

... according to the Irish Times, the credit card information of over 70,000 people has been stolen from a company called (ironically) Loyaltybuild. Not only were the credit card numbers themselves stolen, but the related CCV numbers were as well. To add insult to injury, the data was sitting on the systems in an unencrypted format, meaning whoever took the data can start using it immediately. In addition to the direct credit card data, roughly 1.5 million people had their personal information stolen -- including names, addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses.

And yet another Groundhog Day where the forecast calls for cloudy with a probability of theft. ~sigh~ We're truly on our own in this Brave NuWorld because clearly there are no adults in place in any position of authority anywhere. It seems every possible mistake must be made, every bad idea tested, and no-one is capable of learning from past experience from themselves or others. Every day is new that exists completely independent of the previous one. It's no wonder the world is awash in scams and frauds exceeding the legendary snake oil period of the late 19th century. And why not, the NuWorld is their oyster stocked full of sheeple.

Adobe leaks 150 million passwords; Facebook and others impacted ( NeoWin 2013-11-13 )

The fallout from the recent Adobe breach keeps growing. At first it was thought that "only" a few million passwords were leaked when the company's servers were attacked by a sophisticated hacker. While that number is already higher than it should be, the scope turned out to be at least 50x larger, with new estimates putting the number of leaked credentials at over 150 million.

Not only is this news extremely bad for Adobe, but it's also having a big impact on other websites across the Internet due to the fact that people frequently use the same password on multiple sites. From large sites like Facebook to smaller sites like Diapers.com and Soap.com, companies are examining the stolen data and sending out warnings to customers that they suspect may have the same passwords. According to Krebs on Security, Adobe made the mistake of encrypting all of the passwords with a single key, so if it's brute forced or stolen, the entire trove of data can be unlocked.

NeoWin just catching up to news from two weeks ago ( Huge Adobe Data Breach Gets Even Worse ( Tom's Hardware 2013-10-29 ) ). All hail the cloud indeed. :

NSA Tracks Turned-Off Phones But Phone Makers Don't Know How ( Tom's Hardware 2013-11-12 )

Didn't we already understand this well over a decade ago? Am I the only one who watched Alias and 24 and Clancy movies? Remove the battery, pop out the SIM and if you're really worried put the phone in a Microwave oven ( the oven should be off ).

But seriously, there is a train of thought that these phones are not really "off" when you turn it off and that it periodically pings regardless of what you might think. This would make liars out of the manufacturers who deny this but at this point in time knowing what we have learned in the past six months who is going to believe this at face value? There seems to be no non-governmental purpose for powered-off pinging though, I mean we know that stolen phones don't get recovered by the police and if you misplace the phone it's not like it is smart enough to let you know where it is hiding. So if such a clandestine feature made it into all phones at the behest of government spooks it exists only for their very narrow purposes and lives at a well hidden level where thousands of researchers have somehow missed it. The problem is that the thing will be discovered some day. All in all I'd have to call this unlikely but not impossible. And then there is something else ... the quandary that the spooks find themselves in which is quite similar to the World War II codebreakers who successfully read encrypted comm traffic but were unable to act on it without giving away their actual breakthrough ( if you know of a pending attack should you prevent it or hold the knowledge for something even more important, whatever that might be? ). So if spooks can locate any cellphone regardless of the power-on status, how could they use this information without giving it away? Things that make you go hmmmm.

[Formfiller]

Are they this crazy?

http://www.neowin.net/news/rumor-kevin-turner-reportedly-to-be-next-ceo-at-microsoft-followed-by-elop

Kevin Turner is the worst of them all. Just wow.