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Windows 10 - Deeper Impressions


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47 minutes ago, NoelC said:


 

Why is it so hard to completely disable Cortana for those who don't want it (and practically impossible to remove the software entirely)?  Could it be that Microsoft feels Cortana stands to take the most valuable data from those who don't need a digital assistant?  By the way, does Cortana even reliably recognize speech yet?  I haven't tried it for a long time, since it sucked so hard initially.

Only to add some FUD :w00t::ph34r:, a nice POC (if you think that NOT having a microphone would do):

https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/23/security-researchers-can-turn-headphones-into-microphones/

Quote


The hack is fairly ingenious. It essentially “retasks” the RealTek audio codec chip output found in many desktop computers into an input channel. This means you can plug your headphones into a seemingly output-only jack and hackers can still listen in.

Spoiler


THE_ENEMY_IS_LISTENING_-_NARA_-_515588.j


 

jaclaz


 

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Uh, no.  There is not really any reasonable substitute for Photoshop for professional imaging work.  And in my case I sell my products into the Photoshop market, so I have even stronger ties to it.

And of course, with Adobe offering only subscriptions there are certainly a lot of folks who would prefer permanently licensed software, not software that will stop working if they stop paying.  That being said, Adobe's subscription prices aren't terrible; I always used to buy the upgrade for all new versions released, so I was paying pretty much the cost of a CC "Photographer's Bundle" subscription anyway.

But I only bring up the latest Adobe software features to show that they're becoming more and more dependent on their "cloud".  It's just another example of the direction things are heading.

I just can't believe that the way the big companies are choosing to implement their "clouds" makes sense.  I mean, right now we have the most powerful computers in history in front of all the users, yet Microsoft and the others are sending the low level data to the mothership to have it processed?  Wouldn't it make more sense to do most or all the work on the users' systems?  I mean, sure, things like "OK Google, what's Windows 10's market share right now" can't be answered locally, but it's not hard to imagine only forwarding queries, after all the interaction with the user has been worked out, rather than sending the digitized audio.  The server farms may be really heroic in size and scope, but we're talking about data from thousands of millions of people!

-Noel

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2 hours ago, NoelC said:

Uh, no.  There is not really any reasonable substitute for Photoshop for professional imaging work.  And in my case I sell my products into the Photoshop market, so I have even stronger ties to it.

And of course, with Adobe offering only subscriptions there are certainly a lot of folks who would prefer permanently licensed software, not software that will stop working if they stop paying.  That being said, Adobe's subscription prices aren't terrible; I always used to buy the upgrade for all new versions released, so I was paying pretty much the cost of a CC "Photographer's Bundle" subscription anyway.

But I only bring up the latest Adobe software features to show that they're becoming more and more dependent on their "cloud".  It's just another example of the direction things are heading.

In other words, by making your add-ons for Photoshop, you are an accomplice, facilitating and supporting this flawed market model and somehow justifying it. :w00t::ph34r:

A Court would probably give you a lighter sentence because of your state of need, still ... ;)

jaclaz


 

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25 minutes ago, Dibya said:

I think i am fully offline with creative suit cs6 . CC though run by using wrapper but glitches heavily under xp.

Yep....I won't succumb to the cloud....still love my CS6 and don't need the cutting edge tools with the latest version....

bookie56

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2 hours ago, bookie32 said:

Yep....I won't succumb to the cloud....still love my CS6 and don't need the cutting edge tools with the latest version....

bookie56

Last best version that works on legendary XP.

I love cs6. I will stay with it. Illustrator is needed by me for my manga works.

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I'm still on CS6 PS and AE here. I got them 4.5yrs ago now, so it was much cheaper than going CC which just arrived at the time.

They're both still perfectly great for doing all my professional work.

The way these big software companies want to go is total cloud.

They can then take their market from a discretionary one into an essential one for any professionals and businesses. That is a better business model for financials, but not so great for the consumers.

It won't be long until enough people transition to GIMP alike releases, despite the difficulty in doing so, and cause enough interest from the devs to rework the UIs into something half sensible, and then Adobe's business model is dead.

But while businesses like MS, Adobe, Autodesk etc are all chasing cloud to chase capitve markets and fixed monthly revenue streams for their investors, they're slowly signing their customers transitions to open source software!

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5 hours ago, jaclaz said:

In other words, by making your add-ons for Photoshop, you are an accomplice, facilitating and supporting this flawed market model and somehow justifying it. :w00t::ph34r:

A Court would probably give you a lighter sentence because of your state of need, still ... ;)

jaclaz
 

Except that I sell permanent, perpetual licenses.  The world is a big place, and I make major new releases from time to time with features people find valuable in order to sell upgrades.

Besides having a unique product, it's possible one would have to be too big to fail and have questionable morals in order to force people into subscriptions.

-Noel

Edited by NoelC
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12 minutes ago, ProfessorUltraviolet said:

I'm still on CS6 PS and AE here. I got them 4.5yrs ago now, so it was much cheaper than going CC which just arrived at the time.

They're both still perfectly great for doing all my professional work.

I presume you haven't bought a brand new camera lately.  What will you do when you get a new one that Adobe only directly supports in Photoshop CC?  I mean, I have a 2007 dSLR myself which shoots as good 10 MP photos now as it did then, so for me it's not a necessity to get the latest, but...  There ARE people taking fast, noise-free images in virtual darkness now.  I can't do that.  If I had to do that in order to be competitive as a photographer...  The last Camera Raw release for Photoshop CS6 to add new camera support was over a year ago.  Of course, they offer the DNG converter but that ups the pain level...  So it's the age old value proposition:  Cheap and painful or more expensive and more pleasant.

There are some nice new features since Photoshop CS6, such as Select & Mask (Formerly Refine Edge) that can save a product photographer serious time if they need to mask a subject to put it on a custom background.  Use Liquify on big images?  Now it has GPU acceleration.  Oil Paint is just cool, though possibly not for the obvious reasons you think of (it can be a very good anisotropic noise filter).  Panoramic stitching has improved.  Plus there are some bugs left in CS6 that have long since been fixed in the various CC releases.  I admit, the differences are subtle and often in the details, but there are actually good reasons a photographer (or web designer or ...) could want Photoshop CC.

IMO what Adobe ought to have done was to continue to offer both "perpetual" licenses AND subscriptions.  Clearly it must be more lucrative to lock people into renting "Software as a Service", but hey, so price the "perpetual" license up then in order to make it more profitable too.  Someone who feels strongly could still, for a price, get the software licensed as they wish.  The way it's run now it feels like greed.

That brings us back to discussing Windows.  Not everyone wants a Windows version that changes continuously, is inextricably linked to the cloud, and we SURE AS HELL don't want to have to pay for it over and over!  Yet we all know that's coming.

Thing is, for some reason these software companies don't seem to think that paying top engineers to make complex products, and more importantly to run multiple product lines simultaneously, is any more necessary.  It's like the jocks are running the show and need to simplify the company so that they can understand it.  Thus we are faced with oversimplification of complex products into things we don't want at every turn. 

I suppose there must be some user out there somewhere who finds Windows 10 is delivering, out of the box, the exact features he/she always dreamed of having, and because it fits their life so well they'd happily pay by the month for it.  I hope at least that person is happy as a clam while the rest of us suffer.

For my American friends here, Happy Thanksgiving!  For everyone else:  Happy Thursday!

-Noel

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Yeah you're always going to miss out on new features unless you upgrade.


But 5 years ago this idea of cloud/perpetual paying wasn't really a thing, now it is... but only really from the 'big' software producers or software service providers.

So Microsoft + LinkedIn (all paying perpetually via personal data and real money with Skype)
Autodesk, almost all is pay as you go now, and it's literally paying enough to have bought the software outright in just a few years now! Crazy money.

Adobe, all pay as you go, not crazy money yet, but it's not a good deal either. If they divvied the cost outright to a truly PAYG monthly equivalent over 3 years, then it'd be quite attractive. But the higher costs to go PAYG and so on, really put you off bothering.

So yes they have professionals by the balls. Some people let themselves get bullied. Others take their business elsewhere.

BUT, loads of other people are making great new software that you just buy and keep forever. Too many people just struggle to change, but it's the only way to not be shafted for convenience.

I say get vocal, get all crowdfundy, and get decent programmers out there to write quality standalone tools to do things like camera raw > open format. Maybe a small fee to update to the latest cameras? Or just a small fee for each camera you use?

And the chances are a team like that could do it for a lot less money, create it 'open' so anyone can contribute, etc.


Adobe only have a monopoly on that because consumers are too lazy to forge a new path. The internet is the perfect platform to make a stand.

Microsoft is a different matter. All I can hope is that Microsoft goes near belly up on some privacy/data leak scandal and they at least rewind their data stance. Then all they need is to segregate (or offer choices) on how Windows is deployed. Ie, professional like win2k, mid level blends (win10), or novice tiley metro (win8).

I can but dream!

Edited by ProfessorUltraviolet
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I have some catching up to do with Win10-related news. Here's one: Paul Thurrott takes the clear-eyed side on this issue:

Microsoft Cheapens Windows 10 with Ads

The only sour note in that whole writeup is that "yes, I love Windows 10, but..." disclaimer that seems to be obligatory nowadays if you don't want to be cast as "opposing change," a "hater," blah blah blah. Otherwise, it's dynamite stuff:
 

Quote

Like its predecessor, Windows 10 is full of advertising. But unlike Windows 8, Windows 10 places ads directly in the user interface, and it’s gotten worse over time.

[...]

Advertising in Windows isn’t new: Microsoft first started placing ads directly in Windows starting with Windows 8. Four years ago, at my old gig, I wrote a post called Microsoft Cheapens Windows 8 with Ads in which I explained, simply, “There are ads in Windows 8.”

As I predicted correctly at the time, apologists would try to explain away these ads by stating that they were not in the OS itself, as they were in apps like News and Weather, which were “in” Windows 8 but not “part of” Windows 8. B*llsh!t, I said, preemptively. But those apologists nonetheless did exactly that.

But my central complaint in 2012 was that advertising was a slippery slope. That is, once you’ve opened the door to advertising of any kind, the door will remain open. And it will widen. And that’s exactly what’s happened with Windows 10.

And it gets better from there. Yes, he did call the other side "apologists." :thumbup And he anticipates a variety of new arguments against his position.

Well done, Paul.

--JorgeA

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15 hours ago, ProfessorUltraviolet said:

I'm still on CS6 PS and AE here. I got them 4.5yrs ago now, so it was much cheaper than going CC which just arrived at the time.

They're both still perfectly great for doing all my professional work.

I'm using CS2, and it's perfectly adequate for my needs. I also have a copy of Photoshop 7 (yes, 7) from 2001, and it works fine as well.

Why do I need anything else? The only thing about CS6 I like is that it includes an updated version of Audition (Adobe's DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) software), and finally ported it to OS X. I had been using Audition 3.0 forever (and that version remains my all time favorite), and since it was Windows only, I was somewhat dismayed because I wanted to use it on my Mac without booting into Windows (I bit the bullet and just booted it into Windows, and as it turns out, my Mac runs Windows better than most PCs I've encountered, so it ended up being a very good thing (XP was current then, so it was very fast; Vista and 7 (and most recently, 8.1) are fairly fast as well, but Audition's interface somehow feels a bit laggier when run on 7 compared to XP).

(TL;DR) Until something better comes along, I'm sticking with what I have, no matter how old and decrepit it becomes.

c

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6 hours ago, JorgeA said:

And it gets better from there. Yes, he did call the other side "apologists." :thumbup And he anticipates a variety of new arguments against his position.

Well done, Paul.

--JorgeA

JFYI ;):

Spoiler


0952d133-367d-4144-b595-b41b82f88875.jpg

jaclaz
 

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