Windows 8 - Deeper Impressions

[TELVM]

... 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 ...

There is a delicious epilog to that story . After WW2 the USA & UK sold german cyphering machines, at bargain prices, to many allied and neutral governments. 'We don't know what to do with the lots we've captured, and of course, as everybody knows, they're unbreakable' .

The ULTRA secret wasn't unofficially disclosed until 1973, 30 years after the war (once tech advance had made it irrelevant).

"Lester, can you actually believe we f***ing sold the wiretaps to the targets?"

While we're at it, here goes one my favourite bug stories: The Thing

[JorgeA]

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

So, Microsoft (and certainly Skype) is becoming the "Hotel California" of cyberspace: you can log in anytime you like, but you can never leave.

--JorgeA

Edited November 15, 2013 by JorgeA

[bphlpt]

Great analogy! LOL

Cheers and Regards

[Monroe]

I was thinking more of the Roach Motel ads on TV years ago ... the little box with the sticky stuff inside ... used them in '80's ... "Roaches check in, but they don't check out!"

Roach Motel ads 1978 - 1981 ... various vintage roach motel commercials.

https://www.google.com/search?complete=0&hl=en&source=hp&q=roach+motel+ad&btnG=Google+Search&gbv=2

Black Flag "Roach Motel" Commercial (1978)

"Roaches check in, but they don't check out!"

[JorgeA]

Oh yeah, that comparison works too.

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

Another emerging technology to follow you around the Web:

American Airlines Tests Tracking Website Clicks

American Airlines is experimenting with clickstream technology, which can record everything that users do on a website.

The trial, which includes a limited number of live user interactions, will help the company figure out what compels people to purchase a ticket from American or take their business elsewhere, according to American CIO Maya Leibman.

[...]

"We are starting to experiment with Big Data, combining clickstream analysis with our websites," Ms. Leibman says. That means the company can track and record exactly what pages consumers visited, and what they clicked on or lingered over before buying a ticket—or leaving the site.

In the event that a person leaves the site without making a purchase, American can track where the potential customer went next on the Web. Analyzing that mass of data can help American improve its understanding of customers, and potentially, do a better job of converting consumer interactions into sales.

Like Facebook, American is using a technology called Hadoop, an open- source software framework that runs on clusters of low-cost servers. It is highly scalable, making it a popular choice for systems that manage massive amounts of information.

[emphasis added]

Now, I actually don't mind if a vendor tracks my actions on their website (or in their store). In fact, at a store sometimes I wish that they DID notice how I struggled to find a particular product or get around their maze of corridors and then walked out in frustration. (Ditto for poorly designed websites.) I'm there to do business with them and anything that facilitates that is welcome.

But once I leave their store (website), my dealings with them are over (for the time being, at least) and it's none of their d*mn business where I go next.

Remember from now on to close your browser tab or window when you're done at a particular site.

--JorgeA

Edited November 15, 2013 by JorgeA

[JorgeA]

CMU Facial Recognition Technology Could Be Future For Catching Criminals

Hmm... had this technology been functional and deployed in 1989, Eastern Europeans from Poland to Bulgaria might still be, uh, enjoying life in their workers' paradises.

Savvides thinks that shows the potential of whey they do at the CyLab.

“That’s huge,” he said. “It could be a game changer for law enforcement.”

A penny-wise and pound-foolish technology.

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

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.

The trouble with this idea is that it's sensible. But worse, it implies that the powers-that-be at MSFT actually respect their customers and give a hoot what our preferences are.

As the bigwigs at MSFT have shown time and again, they are self-styled (to borrow a phrase from Apple) geniuses who think they know better than we do what's best for us, and they're not about to let some piddling detail like what the market wants to get in the way. Oh, and they have -- deep, authoritative announcer's voice -- Science (telemetry data) to back them up.

Never mind that it was by listening to customers that they built the most enduringly successful computing company in history -- they're willing to jeopardize more than three decades of that in order to chase after Apple's 6-year blip of popularity since the iPhone was introduced (or 3 years since the iPad came on the scene). Previous experiments with Windows phones (and iPod imitators) having failed miserably, they doubled down by trying, with Windows 8/RT, to herd their customer base into the corral we had resolutely stayed away from all along. All of their gambits are failing and their position will be left a wreckage unless they undertake a strategic retreat and pronto.

--JorgeA

[Formfiller]

Another company f***ing it up by dumbing it down: Egosoft.

They create the massive-sized "X" space games. They dumbed their latest installment down to attract the masses, with horrible results. Read their forum:

http://forum.egosoft.com/viewforum.php?f=127

It reminds me of the destroying Windows blog..

Some rants from there:

It took so long because it was so complicated taking everything out that made X2 and X3 so special.

Alone removing the SETA and coming up with a halfassed excuse to do so, oh boy, that took long. But THANK RHONKAR we have zey supertollen Highways or whatever they are supposed to be. Couldnt live without them.

Does anybody know how much the speed of your ship is? Do we get some "afterburner" thrusters like in Freelancer or even better, "slipspace" devices like in I-War 2? I'd personally hate tucking around at 150m/s, without a SETA, that'd take 20 minutes to dock on a **** station.

Then it took very long to design an über-awesome ship, because, you know, we didnt have the choice to pick a ship we want in the other games. Oh wait...

And finally, instead of these tiny-whiney sectors it needed to be bigger sectors. Instead, just lock everything, so the player is forced to complete quest stages like back in the olden days of certain other games, when you "cant use this Sword coz my level is 1 to low, rofl so fight with your fists noob". Yeah, that took at least 4 years to design, and I can feel the devs, that can really leave you scarred.

But I might sound p***ed off, I am watching closely.ou offer refunds?

You Guys Had Great Franchise and you just wrecked it.
There was no need for the changes that got made.
And Now Its just lame.
Nothing about this game is fun.
To Do anything is just Crap.
The UI Takes soo much away from the game.
You Guys Took Away free look and third person.
You Guys Put so much s*** in front of cockpit that dog fights are mess.
Would really be that hard to add to crap in the cockpit a shield and hull bar at least.
It's to bad that the one Good thing about the X Franchise you guys kept was the name..
Im Done also do you offer refunds?

Fans or more precisely fanboys as true fans, like me, were warning everyone, including Egosoft, that they are heading the wrong way.

p***ed and Angry after buying it.

Been a long time fan of the series but this has me wondering if anyone was actually questioning the design choices for the game while it was being made.

I was all for streamlining the UI, I knew that was going to go a bit bad for trying to (this time) but not this bad. It's turned into a fight within the game to click through a ton of menus to get somewhere and even then you get far less information shown than you did in previous games. So you spend time scrolling constantly or hitting a button to show more choices.

Honestly at this point in the game's life I believe this is coming out on consoles at some point due to what I see as a game made for gamepad controls. We've lost all the keybinds to make things quick and easy to do on them. Which is not good for the majority of PC users using keyboard or mouse or like me a Joystick (another thing that is buggered) for these games.

I loved plotting a course on the universe map/sector map and hitting autopilot and watching the universe carry on around me while I made a cup of coffee. After all in the future do you think that they would tie there pilots to the seat for every second. Hasn't everyone enjoyed the scenes in films of the traders sipping there drinks or reading stuff/sleeping as they fly? For reference think of Cowboy from Battle beyond the stars... I know corny and cheesy film but a childhood film I still love Smile

No external views or even being able to look around in the cockpit something that I have enjoyed from the series Headbang Yes I know it's being looked at or worked on but missing from release is just bad.

Was the game released because of all the hype for Star Citizen going on had the publishers worried? I just can't fathom why they thought it was a good time to release.


I'll lurk again on these forums and watch to see what can be fixed or not and try and get my head round the games limits but I am disappointed about the game. I do hope the fixes come for what I see and I think the majority sees (from steam forums and review sites like RPS to name a few) as being very so much wrong with the game.


TLDR: Angry/ annoyed/ lack of what made Xseries good imo/ disappointed/ hopeful for fixes (a lot of fixes)

How am I feeling? In one word?

Betrayed


I will never pre-order a game again in my life.

I will probably never buy another Egosoft title again in my life.


I see it as thousands of hours spanning across one of the most unique - deep video game series ever and now the developer team is laughing in my face and flipping me off.

Personally, I lost all faith in Egosoft and probably never buy anything from them ever again. They were my all time favorite dev team, because they actually listened to the community and made the games we wanted to play. TC is the best example. After Reunion they took all the feedback and modded content and released a game all of us could enjoy with the features we always wanted. Sure, there were bugs and problems at first, and the old engine couldn't handle everything we wanted it to, but at least the game was playable and enjoyable.

With Rebirth they completely turned their backs on the community, gave the middle finger to the modders and everyone who helped the franchise grow. Instead of listening and working with the very people who play their games, they went and stipped out every single feature that made the X series what it is and made an utterly trash shovelware console game, that's nothing more than a quick cash-grab attempt.

No, no patch will ever fix this horrible nonsense, since the real problem is not the bugs or utterly unoptimized graphics, no, it's game's core that's rotten, the awful design decisions, the stupid gimmicks "for a broader audience", that ultimately doomed the franchise.

I'm terribly sad to see this go down, I had such high hopes for the series and the dev team, but now I feel sorry for everyone who wasted money on this wreck.

I think the truth is out now; that this is nothing more than an attempt to reach the console market. It explains the whole one ship design choice and why you really designed it this way.

I can understand you wanted to approach the console market and open up Rebirth to a larger audience, but alienating your PC audience in doing so isn't going to earn you favors.

A mind of a fanboy never stops to amaze me. EVERY new game is a top seller on Steam at the day of release. So it is no indicator. And just check all those forums here and on Steam. Putting performance and bugs aside, everything we told Egosoft would happen is happening. But we were those doomsayers, we were not true fans, right? And on every problem we pointed out we were told Modders will change that. Sorry guy, but no modder will program a completely new game

And feeling sorry? For what? For ignoring your fans whotold you so long time ago this will happen?

Definitely a lesson in not trying to please an imaginary demographic.

That's what I call a deja vu!

Removing loved features, taking out beloved elements and replacing them with the short lived hip stuff, p***ing off the core users.... all these stories sound always so familiar!

Edited November 16, 2013 by Formfiller

[JorgeA]

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.

I, too, have heard that it's possible to track mobile phones even if they are nominally turned off. Some quick-and-dirty research turned up these bits:

Can The NSA Really Track Turned-Off Cellphones?

An informative but not totally helpful article.

Can Cell Phones Be Tracked When Turned Off?

A little more unsettling, but still not offering finality on the question.

More digging on the "roving bug" idea led to the following:

FBI taps cell phone mic as eavesdropping tool

The critical question is whether a "roving bug" is a piece of hardware that's physically tacked onto the phone (obviously a labor-intensive process), or software code that can be installed remotely and en masse. If the latter, those of us who are concerned about privacy will need to take that possibility into consideration.

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

That's what I call a deja vu!

Removing loved features, taking out beloved elements and replacing them with the short lived hip stuff, p***ing off the core users.... all these stories sound always so familiar!

I don' t know what you're talking about.

But seriously -- the urge to wreck successful designs and the arrogance of ignoring what their customers are telling them -- this is like a computer virus that's infecting the minds of developers all around the world.

Sure, I get the desire to cater to users of mobile devices like tablets and smartphones, but the way to do that is not by alienating your established customer (and fan) base.

I remember when the WordStar folks came out with a Windows version of their venerable word-processing DOS software. It was obviously an attempt to "keep up with the times" as people made the switch to Windows, but the interface was so completely different from what we knew and loved, that it was like learning a whole new program. Basically they eliminated what made it both familiar and special, and so users had no particular reason to keep using it over MS Word. Within a few years, WordStar had gone to the Great Recycle Bin in the Sky.

--JorgeA

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

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.

I just saw that. Here's the full title ...

Rumor: Kevin Turner reportedly to be next CEO at Microsoft, followed by Elop ( NeoWin 2013-11-14 )

WPdang.com, who has about a 50% accuracy rating on Sorsed for getting rumors right, is making a bold claim that Kevin Turner, Microsofts current chief operating officer, will be the next CEO of Microsoft.

[...]

Now, where the story falls apart in our minds, is that the source claims that Turner will only hold the spot for 2-3 years and that Elop will succeed Turner after that time.

My proposal for Microsoft's new corporate theme song ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9wdbbGZkOA

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

... 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 ...

There is a delicious epilog to that story . After WW2 the USA & UK sold german cyphering machines, at bargain prices, to many allied and neutral governments. 'We don't know what to do with the lots we've captured, and of course, as everybody knows, they're unbreakable' .

The ULTRA secret wasn't unofficially disclosed until 1973, 30 years after the war (once tech advance had made it irrelevant).

"Lester, can you actually believe we f***ing sold the wiretaps to the targets?"

While we're at it, here goes one my favourite bug stories: The Thing

Yes, that is ironic on the surface and completely by design. For those not following along closely, they encouraged others to use already broken ciphers. It should make people think about NIST publishing and recommending the compromised RNG ( eventually added to Vista and probably all Windows since ) to the world, and what else they have slipped by the goalie along the way.

Another example was in the Pacific theater where "Magic" ciphers were also broken. In at least one case they did dramatically use the info, and that was to shoot down Yamamoto's plane which shows that sometimes caution is thrown to the wind.

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

Microsoft: Indian banks could be at "major risk" if they don't ditch Windows XP ( NeoWin 2013-11-14 )

The press release states that, according to a recent study, the use of the 12-year-old OS is still prevalent in India's banks. It says that 34,115 bank branches in that country "are at risk, thanks to their reliance on Windows XP." Microsoft claims that some branches located in rural and semi-urban areas could go down due to their continued use of the OS. The company added that even branches in urban locations could see more than half of their customers wait up to 30 minutes to handle an average transaction.

Microsoft recommends that banks in India that are still using Windows XP begin their migrations to a newer version of the OS now as this kind of transition will likely take 100 working days to complete. Expect to see more of these kinds of warnings from Microsoft as the April 8th date approaches.

I would love to see some sycophant explain the details of that FUD logic ( shown in bold text ). Exactly how does one derive banks 'going down' or transaction delays of '30 minutes' from the simple matter of updates not appearing in the automatic WU? This is pure FUD plain and simple, and some of the worse yet seen. I've said it before, the thing that Microsoft and her sycophants most fear is that people will call their bluff and expose this nonsense of an operating system being "supported" by them and your very livelihood depending upon it. The last thing they want is for people to discover the truth - they support nothing and charge good money to maintain that illusion.

HP researchers find zero-day exploit in IE11 on Windows 8.1 ( NeoWin 2013-11-15 )

PCWorld reports that researchers Abdul Aziz Hariri and Matt Molinyawe from HPs Zero-Day Initiative team were able to hack into a Surface Pro tablet via a bug in IE11 running on Windows 8.1. The exploit allowed them to gain remote code execution which, Hariri said, "gave us full control over the whole machine".

Well this is unprecedented - MSIE facilitating infection. Seriously, weren't we just told by somebody about all these fabulous security improvements in Windows 8? If Microsoft cared about security at all they would block MSIE from being used on their operating system. Of course they would first need to figure out a way to make Windows Update work with other browsers since they fused the two at the hip.

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

Well the big news of the past few days is that the Sony PS4 is out and here is it is unveiled on NBC Late Night ( mentioned by a commenter at one of the NeoWin threads). Check out the robot thing in the video ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hUUsqhetX4

Amazing YouTube numbers after just 3 days. At this writing: ... 2,781,428 views ... 3,572 comments ... 21,094 likes ... 679 dislikes ... We'll have to see how the Xbox does next week.

Sized Up: Xbox One is massive compared to the PS4 ( NeoWin 2013-11-14 )

( Image Source )

Well they certainly score a clean win in this category.

Jolla to launch inaugural smartphone with Sailfish OS on November 27 ( TechSpot 2013-11-15 )

Jolla recently announced plans to launch their debut smartphone on November 27. The company, composed of multiple former Nokia staffers, will initially launch the Sailfish OS-based handset at a pop-up shop in central Helsinki.

( Image Source )

A real alternative phone OS and kinda nice looking so far. One can almost imagine the "Nokia" logo on that cyan back below the camera shutter. It's interesting because a group of former Nokia employees are purposefully behind this project out of frustration with the Nokia sellout to Microsoft for WP and are moving forward with this further variation of MeeGo, a Linux phone OS originally started by Nokia and Intel. That kind of dedication shown for an OS given a death sentence in by a Microsoft trojan horse makes the story timely.