Windows 8 - Deeper Impressions

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

Microsoft: You will still need to activate Windows XP after April 8th with a fresh install ( NeoWin 2014-01-14 )

So the 14 year-old question has finally been answered - the activation servers will remain! If they had shut them down they would have been screwed for messing with paying customers, a lot of them. If they pushed out a patch to disable WPA they would have opened the door for many more Windows XP fresh installs. So they split the difference and will run the servers forever. That's amazing. Can you imagine just how much money it has cost them to run such a huge amount of servers for so long! They have probably managed to turn a profit into red ink over the last 14 years due to this WPA activation experiment.

I don't think the there is a cost-issue with the the XP activation servers.

My guess is that that there are no "Windows XP servers" a such, their activation servers probably activate all MS products and are not grouped by specific products (adding new products to them is most likely just a software update).

The transit cost in bandwidth between them and us and back is probably negligible since it is a pre-packaged globule of secured bits, but the processing on either side is what I meant.

The bulk of the cost of WPA was long ago pushed onto and permanently inflicted on the victim locally at bootstrap noticeable during the Windows XP Boot Screen when hardware hashing is calculated and verified against a local file, and it is very safe to say that step alone has cost a fortune in Windows XP customer CPU electricity and of course, wasted time. I'll bet that is a HUGE dollar cost considering the user base size, and much slower and watt burning CPUs seen in the XP era. On early Pentium 4's that screen is easily 30 seconds to a minute by itself, the majority is the WPA routine which is obvious if you used Win9x/Win2k/WinXP on the same motherboard and BIOS revision.

Still, on their end they must have quite an incredible database of hashes, safely stored and accessible online to Microsoft ( not an inexpensive feat by any means, and I believe these files were never ever hacked from the outside ). That cloud arrangement is called upon whenever someone installs or re-installs XP, checks their activation status, trips the WPA change limit, and I believe whenever they use Windows Update or even the WGA hashmaker to access Microsoft downloads. For the most part their end of the WPA process has been smooth and reliable, IMHO this implies that they have spared no expense on their end, be it server hardware, interconnecting wiring, server-side processing and software, and network support people.

The only question I really have is whether WPA for Windows XP ( and Office XP and above ) costs more for? Microsoft or its customers? As I said, I suspect we paid the bigger price in total, but I might be wrong.

[Formfiller]

Microsoft: You will still need to activate Windows XP after April 8th with a fresh install ( NeoWin 2014-01-14 )

So the 14 year-old question has finally been answered - the activation servers will remain! If they had shut them down they would have been screwed for messing with paying customers, a lot of them. If they pushed out a patch to disable WPA they would have opened the door for many more Windows XP fresh installs. So they split the difference and will run the servers forever. That's amazing. Can you imagine just how much money it has cost them to run such a huge amount of servers for so long! They have probably managed to turn a profit into red ink over the last 14 years due to this WPA activation experiment.

I don't think the there is a cost-issue with the the XP activation servers.

My guess is that that there are no "Windows XP servers" a such, their activation servers probably activate all MS products and are not grouped by specific products (adding new products to them is most likely just a software update).

The transit cost in bandwidth between them and us and back is probably negligible since it is a pre-packaged globule of secured bits, but the processing on either side is what I meant.

The bulk of the cost of WPA was long ago pushed onto and permanently inflicted on the victim locally at bootstrap noticeable during the Windows XP Boot Screen when hardware hashing is calculated and verified against a local file, and it is very safe to say that step alone has cost a fortune in Windows XP customer CPU electricity and of course, wasted time. I'll bet that is a HUGE dollar cost considering the user base size, and much slower and watt burning CPUs seen in the XP era. On early Pentium 4's that screen is easily 30 seconds to a minute by itself, the majority is the WPA routine which is obvious if you used Win9x/Win2k/WinXP on the same motherboard and BIOS revision.

I am sorry to say that, but you're way off here. XP boots quick on fresh installs, even on Pentum 4 hardware (I know that, I have still a notebook from that era).

The more stuff you had installed, the more fragmented the HD was, the longer the boot, but it was quick on a fresh install, way faster than Windows 2000 on the same hardware. The trick was simple though: They asychronized some stuff on boot on XP that was strictly processed in order on Windows 2000s boot process, also, some processes were off-loaded to the end of the boot process: XP showed already the desktop while it was still loading some things, while 2000 only showed the desktop when everything was already finished (because of this though, 2000's desktop was usable immediately once it was on, while XP's often had some lag for a few seconds).

Some typical experiences from that time:

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/215420-46-faster-2000

One must add though that Windows 2000's boot time is really long, and 98 would probably boot faster than the NT based versions on the same hardware.

Edited January 18, 2014 by Formfiller

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

I am sorry to say that, but you're way off here. XP boots quick on fresh installs, even on Pentum 4 hardware (I know that, I have still a notebook from that era).

The more stuff you had installed, the more fragmented the HD was, the longer the boot, but it was quick on a fresh install, way faster than Windows 2000 on the same hardware. The trick was simple though: They asychronized some stuff on boot on XP that was strictly processed in order on Windows 2000s boot process, also, some processes were off-loaded to the end of the boot process: XP showed already the desktop while it was still loading some things, while 2000 only showed the desktop when everything was already finished (because of this though, 2000's desktop was usable immediately once it was on, while XP's often had some lag for a few seconds).

Some typical experiences from that time:

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/215420-46-faster-2000

One must add though that Windows 2000's boot time is really long, and 98 would probably boot faster than the NT based versions on the same hardware.

Way off? FF, we're talking about two different things here. As soon as you mention laptop I know that is an OEM SLP WPA. I too have a bunch of computers using OEM operating system versions, but the process is substantially different. I should have been more specific in describing "retail" Windows with the actual voting hardware check that is missing from OEM installs ( and volume licenses also of course ). NOTE: Now that I think about it, the fact that bulk of the computers out there are either OEM or VL ( not retail ) means that I was incorrectly overestimating the burden on the user client side for WPA. So I thank you for the comment!

When you actually use legal retail Windows installations ( I have tons of "system builder" versions on many HDD's because that is really the only legal way to put XP on random slapped together computers ) then these are using the actual WPA hardware check with the infamous voting and hashing and checking. Few people will ever do this on laptops as they come with OEM stickers and a BIOS with a code burned in and the test is a simple check of the DMI for a string stored in BIOS.

My experiments are almost always involved with this retail WPA arrangement. I have tried to identify the hidden steps that occur after the BIOS POST and Select-OS-Menu during the XP boot screen ( the horizontal scrolling bar ) but before the HDD is accessed *** and the registry is read and Windows files are initialized. What I think I know for sure is that in that narrow timeframe, when the scroll completes 5-6 passes ( with *no* HDD activity ) the hardware votes are counted and the hash generated and then a quick flash of the HDD is when the comparison is made ( successfully ) and then the HDD lights up as the registry is loaded into RAM and the hardware tree is initialized ( there's much more obviously, but that's a broad outline ). Experimentation shows that using the system as originally legally activated ( *exactly* same hardware ) means the quickest possible pass through the boot screen with that one flash of the LED, as I add different voting hardware like other HDD's the boot screen duration changes for the worse and the LED lights constantly as several WPA files are accessed ( we should probably avoid any discussion of this part ).

This is what I was referring to ( again, incorrectly since most systems in the wild will be OEM or VL anyway ) the wasted time and CPU due to the WPA process.

OEM and VL can be very fast on Windows XP indeed, in fact I am quite sure Microsoft intentionally made it this way to head off criticism from OEM system customers and of course the volume license factory floor customers.

As far as Win9x/Win2k versus WinXP, besides the Apples-Oranges thing with OEM XP versus the simple registry check on its predecessors it also is highly dependent on the user profile. I would say that is the dominant factor of them all, and since it is difficult to get a registry in the earlier versions anywhere near Windows XP size, and the far less services and bloatware, I would always place smart money on Win9x/Win2k on the same exact hardware with equivalent post-install software present.

The limiting factor for Win9x and Win2k bootstrap was CPU and HDD in their original timeframe but they can easily be used alongside WinXP at least through 2005 or so on i865 and nForce2 boards ( my favorite "legacy" systems ) for a fair comparison and as I said, if the profiles are minimal after a fresh install, WinXP retail will lose because of the extra checking, which is amplified when hardware is altered. I have both WinXP and Win2k together on later boards ( sans Win9x naturally ) like G31 with Core2 2/4 and even SATA disks and there is no way I can imagine WinXP ( retail! ) booting faster since all that Win2k has to do is tear through the system files and load its smaller registry.

I suppose I could try installing Win2k on a Windows XP OEM laptop ( after a driver researching nightmare ) and see what you and those at that link have experienced. But that's probably not going to happen because it was never an experiment that interested me ( laptops I repair often but use very rarely ).

*** Just to clarify .... the HDD is accessed before that step, for example the MBR and NTLDR and BOOT.INI as well as some other things are processed after BIOS POST in order to even get to the Select OS menu obviously, I was focusing on what happens immediately after the OS is selected or defaulted. On retail WPA with the exact original hardware from activation you will wind up at the boot screen with no HDD activity and then the 5-6 animated scrolls and then the HDD flash. It is this narrow timeframe I am talking about.

NOTE: none of this should be construed as having anything to do with bypassing or defeating WPA. That is not the purpose of examining this at all. It is about maximizing the bootup speed and understanding the process, what effect changing hardware has on the system, and now, quite possibly whether there is any spook code to identify!

One more comment: yes I know that "System Builder" editions are technically "OEM" licenses, but as far as the WPA is concerned they are more comparable to the full retail version because neither use the BIOS SLP mechanism that allows infinite hardware changes. The confusion is from Microsoft and all their editions, and ironically the minority of users ( non-big-box-OEM and non-VL ) are the ones that suffer most, these victims are the people that buy full-price retail copies or build systems of their own. Here's the official explanation from many years ago right from Microsoft ... http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb457096.aspx

Also be aware that this applies to Windows XP specifically. It is very similar in Windows 6 versions ( Vista/7 ) but NOT exactly the same. Some tweaking was made, see here ( ironically from Ed Bott who is always suspiciously ready to defend Microsoft controversies and always seems to be speaking in an almost official capacity ) ... http://www.edbott.com/weblog/2005/02/everything-you-always-wanted-to-know-about-windows-product-activation/

Edited January 19, 2014 by CharlotteTheHarlot

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

Paul Thurrott's sources back up this report:

"Threshold" to be Called Windows 9, Ship in April 2015

Just finally read through it ( I wonder if Paul gets dizzy from all the ping-ponging back and forth on this issue ). Two favorite comments ...

I have to wonder what on earth Microsoft were thinking when they let win8 out the door. i though the metro UI looked very childish and ham-fisted, flat and monochromatic - it's dull, ugly and painful to look at, all at the same time (If such a thing were possible!) What's the point of full screen apps on a 21"" monitor, blinding whitespace everywhere, and no obvious way to close them? What on earth are the point of those hot corners and why is everything hidden? Why is the OS like a gigantic easter egg, and why does it take up 17Gb of disk space??? I tried the last release candidate and the only way that made it useable was by getting a 3rd party start menu replacement and disabling metro. I knew it would bomb right there, and I was right.

MS appear to have lost their way, chasing a market of tablets and smartphones while ignoring their core business. I'm a Geographical Information Systems (GIS) specialist; I have 4 monitors at work on a win7 platform; There's no way I could use metro - I need a desktop, and there's no way I could do what I do on a tablet or smartphone. Yes there are mobile GIS apps, and we have mobile dataloggers, but for the core, root work I do, I need a desktop. I need multiple monitors and I routinely have many, many explorer windows open, a remote PC session, and ArcMap, ArcCatalog & ArcScene open along with email & chat clients and adobe. How the hell can I do that on a tablet? Even touchscreens are a no no..imagine trying to heads up digitise polygons, lines and points or edit attribute tables using a finger?? Touchscreen tablets are great for consuming content, but for creating it, you need a keyboard & mouse.

Quite some years ago, we ditched windows at home completely; it's all linux laptops and linux media centre PCs, android phones and android tablets. Funny thing is, we don't miss windows, not one little bit. I have a win7 DVD somewhere, it's gathering dust along with office 2013 (equally appalling UI).

I suspect Microsoft may eventually realise the mistake they've made, but it'll probably be too late by then. Ignore your core business at your own peril...

This is a classic case of Microsoft not listening to users. Do all of you not remember the almost universal shock and hate from the community on the preview releases when we all were told metro was going to be forced on us. If Microsoft had listened they wouldn't be in this position. Windows 7 never got that sort of negative feedback.

I find windows 8 just so fugly and can't believe a graphics designer put their name to it. Those multi coloured tiles ..... Arrrrrrgh it hurts my eyes. Just how are live tiles supposed to work in 95% of the worlds productivity applications? Stupid and ugly.

Here my wish list:

- Bring back some form of the aero interface by default, turn it off if you don't want it. Can't believe how much better windows 7 applications look compared to flat ugly windows 8.

- Enhanced start menu default on desktop

- No windows ID required, this only p***es people off to have to sign into a service they never needed before.

- Metro apps in windows on the desktop.

- Cant stand centre justification of text in the windows title bars. Just looks plain wrong and awkward. Option please to left justify it or left justify by default.

- Option to turn off those stupid charms.

Unfortunately the vast majority of them are unlike those two, and could easily be posting at NeoWin given their shock that the rest of the world doesn't want to play along with them in their sandbox. Lots of suggestions of doing this and that, but almost none suggest the simple concept of choice. Meanwhile the Microsoft behemoth slogs along at an IBM glacial pace and in 2015 will finally after nearly 4 years of warnings and criticism have the product we told them about from the very beginning of this saga!

Actually, they'll still get it wrong somehow.

[jaclaz]

3.5 out of 12, insufficient, Mr.President.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/01/rating-obamas-nsa-reform-plan-eff-scorecard-explained

Earlier today, President Obama announced a series of reforms to address abuses by the National Security Agency. We were heartened to see Obama recognized that the NSA has gone too far in trampling the privacy rights of people worldwide. In his speech, the President ensured that National Security Letters would not come with perpetual gag orders, brought new levels of transparency and fairness to the FISA court, and ended bulk collection of telephone records by the NSA. However, there is still much more to be done.

We’ve put together a scorecard showing how Obama’s announcements stack up against 12 common sense fixes that should be a minimum for reforming NSA surveillance. Each necessary reform was worth 1 point, and we were willing to award partial credit for steps in the right direction. On that scale, President Obama racked up 3.5 points out of a possible 12.

jaclaz

[JorgeA]

Did you ever think you'd see anything like this:

(click on the image to enlarge)

Just got the advertising circular this morning from H-P. Makes me wish I were in the market for a new PC so that I could reward them for listening.

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

Well, it looks like I've stopped getting e-mail notifications of new posts -- again. I was afraid that activity on this thread had ground to a halt, turns out I just wasn't getting told about it. Glad to see you guys have been holding the fort.

I'll be back in action tomorrow.

--JorgeA

Naah, the notifications are fine, it is the NSA that intercepts the messages and redirects them elsewhere .

LOL -- wouldn't surprise me if they could do that!!

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

More snow flakes from Mr. Snowden. From the Guardian:

NSA collects millions of text messages daily in 'untargeted' global sweep

• NSA extracts location, contacts and financial transactions

• 'Dishfire' program sweeps up 'pretty much everything it can'

• GCHQ using database to search metadata from UK numbers

I have friends that think I am a bonafide member of the tin hat society. But, every day or week, there is more information revealed about just how deep into our daily lives, that the various governments have burrowed. The only reason that I even have a cell phone, is that it has become a necessary evil. Even at that, there are day or even weeks, that I don't even turn the thing on. What finally pushed me over the edge, was that Pay Telephones were no longer available.

The brave new and without privacy world, is becoming quite scary these days. Hopefully, the sheeple will wake up and demand better.

The whole article can be read here: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/16/nsa-collects-millions-text-messages-daily-untargeted-global-sweep

bpalone

I'm now telling my friends that, "You were right that things weren't as bad as I feared: they're even worse!"

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

All these new appliances being brought into homes with these "smart chips" maybe could be a problem. I don't have a smart phone but maybe this is similar ... everything being connected? I didn't see this posted anywhere.

Hackers Have Used A Refrigerator To Attack Businesses. Security researchers at Proofpoint have uncovered the very first wide-scale hack that involved television sets and at least one refrigerator.

Thanks for the article, another scary warning.

Beyond hacking for mischief, imagine the possibilities this offers not only to the NSA but even to "benign" authorities. With this "Internet of things" where every item in your house is connected to the world, state and local governments will be able to keep tabs on how many people are staying in your home, what type of light bulbs you're using, how much water you use to shower, what kind of food you're buying, how warm you keep your home in the winter and how cool in the summer. A fantasy playground for busybodies and ideological gangsters -- all in the name of maintaining property values or protecting your health or saving the planet or whatever bu!!$h/t excuse they come up with next for meddling in people's lives and telling them how to live.

--JorgeA

Edited January 19, 2014 by JorgeA

[JorgeA]

Paul Thurrott's sources back up this report:

"Threshold" to be Called Windows 9, Ship in April 2015

... In some ways, the most interesting thing about Threshold is how it recasts Windows 8 as the next Vista. It's an acknowledgment that what came before didn't work, and didn't resonate with customers. And though Microsoft will always be able to claim that Windows 9 wouldn't have been possible without the important foundational work they had done first with Windows 8—just as was the case with Windows 7 and Windows Vista—there's no way to sugarcoat this. Windows 8 has set back Microsoft, and Windows, by years, and possibly for good ...

Love it!!

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

Hi everyone, back from the hellidays. I apologize in advance for anything duplicated!

Welcome back! I was getting worried that you were either buried in the blizzard, or maybe taken away for a chat with our friends at the three-letter agencies...

Microsoft quietly ends support for Windows 7 dynamic themes ( NeoWin 2014-01-05 )

However, and with no advanced warning, Microsoft has now stopped offering and supporting their Dynamic Themes. None of them are available for download at Microsoft's Windows website, and clicking on the individual links to each of those themes now shows a message that they have been "retired."

[...]

While dynamic themes are no longer available from Microsoft, Windows 7 and 8 users can still get a new desktop background delivered to them every day by downloading and installing the company's Bing Desktop program.

Microsoft with its advanced and massive cloud infrastructure and associated software cannot find the wherewithal to serve up images for Windows 7 themers. Oh wait, they still do as long as you use Bing. Yeah sure. Download and install Bing spyware which will almost assuredly hijack your search engine and homepage, and naturally add a service or two and autoupdate at will, just to get the same wallpapers that previously came through a benign theme engine. Sounds like a wonderful idea. Not.

Check out this observation down in the comments section --

I think the fact that MS has gone with the total bland monochrome look is a reflection of the people running the company. Just flat bland morons. No one thought that Blackberry would ever fail, but look at them now. I would say MS is on life support and they don't even know it.

--JorgeA

[jaclaz]

Did you ever think you'd see anything like this:

You mean HP doing something intelligent and good in the last what? ten years?

No, it is actually surprising .

jaclaz

[JorgeA]

Windows XP FUD ...

Windows XP support ends in 90 days, Microsoft remains firm on deadline ( NeoWin 2014-01-08 )

Support for Microsoft Security Essentials on Windows XP ends April 8th (Update) ( NeoWin 2014-01-09 )

Kaspersky Will Protect Windows XP After Microsoft's Deadline ( Tom's Hardware 2014-01-15 )

Does anybody have access to solid numbers showing how many PCs are actually harmed by the vulnerabilities fixed by Windows Updates? If you read the MS bulletins, a lot of these vulnerabilities sound fairly remote/unlikely.

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

Did you ever think you'd see anything like this:

You mean HP doing something intelligent and good in the last what? ten years?

No, it is actually surprising .

jaclaz

Yeah, I meant a major PC vendor offering Windows 7 machines at this stage, with the selling point that they're "back by popular demand"!

--JorgeA

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

Welcome back! I was getting worried that you were either buried in the blizzard, ...

Well we got a another 6 inches from that highly publicized storm, but what happened was that the weather forecast was completely wrong as usual, in fact it was backwards. They said a foot of snow followed by subzero freezing hell.

Actually we got the frigid blast before the snow, getting down to -3 degrees F and then the snow came ( which I think helped to limit the total somewhat ). Then it went to -10 F for the following night/day and staying in the zero range for most of three days in a row but only with light fluffy mountain skiing type snow to shovel and plow. 8 inches in total. However, everything was so fragile that you could break a window or a tree branch or vinyl or plastic just by brushing against it.

No blackouts thankfully, but a lot of dead cars including one of ours ( electricity loves cold but liquid chemicals in a battery do not ) which got in the way of a medical issue of someone close to us. Friends and neighbors helped as usual thankfully. No matter how advanced everything gets with fancy phones and tablets, we are always going to find ourselves out in the cold with jumper cables starting a car, or teaming up to push them off the road, throwing rock salt all over the place, checking on shut-in neighbors, digging out snow-plow walls, etc. Been doing this exact same thing for over 50 years with no difference whatsoever from then to now. It's an amazing constant in the universe. I seriously envy my friends in Las Vegas, Florida, California and Hawaii right now.

... or maybe taken away for a chat with our friends at the three-letter agencies...

Naturally they would have a gag order so no-one would ever know! However I wouldn't follow it, so they can shove it right on up their arse while I plead the First Amendment. Should they throw me in jail I'll plead the Eighth Amendment.

Ironically if these Constitutional matters ever really get tested in court, all the perps will end up pleading the Fifth Amendment. Then the people will have no choice but to rise up and plead the Second Amendment.

Wait a minute, someone's at the door ...