@h3

"There really is no difference between the Metro screen and the start menu in any ways that matter."

Other than efficiency. I very rarely use the keyboard, and most of the functionality you listed needs the keyboard and to add insult to injury they want two hands to issue the key combinations. Which blows my mind in the fact that this is supposed be designed for computers lacking keyboards. That just screams poor design.

JRAPHICS

So the G stands for Jraphics? Makes perfect sense. How about he just gets over it, and just pronounces it like the rest of us do. Here's why rocket scientist inventor guy.

"Did you get the `JIF`?"

"No, we have plenty of peanut butter in the cabinet."

"No, the `JIF` image file I sent you?"

"Oh, yes I did. By the way, what does JIF even stand for?"

"Why GRAPHICS IMAGE FILE my dear."

"Oh, so when we have to say `JIF image file` we are really saying `Graphics Image File Image File`?"

"Yes."

"And that is better or smaller why?"

"That is what the guy who put the J in GRAPHICS wanted."

Re: Smart Phones Myth

@mmeier

I own a Taichi, the hardware is swell, it's the damn Windows8 that I can barely stomach. I would have paid $100 extra to have XP on the thing (I've installed 64-bit XP since, but some of the dual-screen, mult-mice apps are a no go, so I long for a vendor solution). I wanted the hardware bad enough to try to deal with the Windows 8, other people clearly aren't doing that.

Not a day goes by that I don't curse the name Windows 8, from the 3rd party crap I've had to install to get a start-menu back, to the horrendous network functionality, and including the File Explorer that behaves like it is running as a Java Virtual Machine. There is no doubt that PC sales are suffering because some only have Win8 as a choice.

I wonder if they really "dog-fooded" this version of their software first, if so, then not just Balmer should go, but anyone that used this on a normal computer and still signed off on its release to market.

They should have sold "Metro/Modern" on their Win phones, released it as a choice to rival Android on ARM tablets in addition to Surface sales, and made it a free application that users could choose to download and install on their desktops. Forcing it on power users with no other choice was a bad move.

I blame that Sholwsky (forgot his name) guy, now that he is gone, I hope their offerings are more of a collaborative effort from their top programmers, and not just what the loudest guy in the room wanted.

Re: What model of potato was that taken with.

I know that, I've seen the incredibly boring printouts that let us infer the existence of one of the exo-planets.

It wasn't a comment on NASA, but more of a jab, and as the other comment posted, a display of my snarkiness directed at our lack of funding to the sciences in general.

I firmly believe that our best time as a nation was after Kennedy issued the Moon challenge and every school in the country started pushing science and math education is a way never seen before, but all the changed around Regan's time. Now we have to sue schools just to keep them from trying to force kids to pray, or just to keep Creationism out of science class. Kids don't even do dissections in high school anymore, hell chemistry class nowadays has been relegated to a bottle of diet coke and some Mentos tabs, the Bunsen burners have long ago been removed.

"That's why you shouldn't have moved everything to the Cloud."

That is the phrase/mantra that should be recited to every CEO by the remaining IT staff after their data gets stolen or there is a complete work stoppage due to any number of reasons that they can't access their cloud-based applications or storage.

There is always someone saying "We could save a lot of money by outsourcing our IT staff and using cloud-based apps, and they're usually some "Lean Six Sigma Blackbelt" douchbag.

The first question anyone should ask is "Why is no one else doing it?" Remember that just because you don't know the reason, doesn't mean there isn't one.

I have always thought the same thing. I imagine that wars would not last very long if armies of AMEEs were roaming about, even just the threat of deployment should be enough.

Have you seen LittleDog, it doesn't even have a face, and scares the crap out of me.

http://www.bostondynamics.com/robot_littledog.html

Re: unique audiovisual experience?

No, no, no. You don't let this kind of strong arming take place, if you do, then it will spread. Just days ago ElReg did a "walk-through" for Office 365, this is the same thing, and giving Microsoft the ability to ban an instructional video because it uses the likeness of their software would be absurd (or damage all of society in the long run). Their IP is the game, a video of the game is not playable, therefor it doesn't compete. If this is allowed, then what is to stop Nike from banning videos of people running in their shoes, or Levis from demanding their cut from anyone wearing jeans in a home video.

If they want to skirt the law, then break up these types of videos into smaller "clips", but don't ever let them take money, or think they can control teaching and demo videos because where will it stop?

Everything is owned by someone on some level, only media design to be passively viewed should be protected this way, not shoes, or shirts, or toys, or word processors, or video games. What the hell is wrong with people? Imagine trying to learn Word or Excel when the only place authorized to display a likeness of the application is Microsoft Online University.

Re: Critique of Pure Animal Behavior - by MigMig-Johnson Kant

Next time just type "Lorem Ipsum".

This is why you shouldn't surf the internet when you are really high, or if you do, don't respond in the comment sections.

Haters gonna hate, for a reason.

I think you mean Windows ME, as it came just before XP but after 98, it was basically Windows 98 with DOS crippled, the Windows 2000 WIA, and the theme from Windows 2000, and was a horrible OS, it is the OS that blue-screened on Bill during the press event. XP was the first truly 32-bit consumer OS available from Microsoft, but its ability to run legacy DOS programs was severely lacking, and since most of the business software people were using at the time wasn't working under the new OS (old DOS/3.1 software), of course they bitched. I "bitched" when Microsoft removed my ability to open a File Explorer under a different user (secondary shell) with IE 8 and Windows 7, because it screwed up my workflow. Windows 8 changed more than the GUI, they removed functionality, and dumbed down the whole OS. Just because most people don't fully understand why we hate it,it doesn't mean our reasons are any less valid.

Have you tried mapping a NTLM v1 Linux Samba share to a Win8-Home drive letter recently? Good luck doing it quickly without gpedit.msc. Or how about you tell me how to change the priority of your Wifi connections under Win8. If that didn't make sense, then don't question why we hate it, you wouldn't understand our "hater" reasons anyway.

Rooty root.

I too buy my phones contract free, and tend to pick Samsung because of the great aftermarket ROM support, however, because of the "different hardware per country" and some sort of "detect tamper and brick" crap Samsung is pulling with the new S4, Cyanogenmod have said they aren't going to support it officially. I hope that other homebrew people don't follow that line of thinking and will figure out how to push Android 6.8 (OreoCookie) on it when it comes around.

I personally don't understand why if you buy it free and clear, it doesn't come unlocked, with a SU program already installed, and a recovery partition that runs unsigned updates. Hell, we are paying enough money.

Re: Jedit "On the downside, being a mini-tablet it was too big for most pockets "

"Have you considered a belt clip pouch?" -mm5th

Batman, is that you?

Re: That's a pretty nice

AC, it's hard to tell sarcasm with text, next time use "/sarcasm" at the end, because I know you can't be serious.

Re: Greed

As long as there is still a choice, but will they still keep the "Activation servers" on after their software is no longer covered? If not, then every version of XP, Vista, Win 7 and Win 8 will become worthless, the same is true with most of the recent Office releases, actually, anything that has to be "Activated".

So it seems he might actually be forced to upgrade, ok not forced, he can choose to use scissors and glue to make documents when Microsoft decides to not "activate" his software anymore.

I'm just going to get used to using OpenOffice or some other free choice earlier rather than later. Not because it's price is free, but because it's free from activation.

I only care once in a while

I have some pretty gnarly mp3s, some of them are 15 years old, some were converted to VQFs, and then back to MP3, and the source CD has long since disappeared. On occasion I will get some sort of alien cut-in out of nowhere (perhaps caused by an errant neutrino hitting my hard-drive in just the right place, or maybe just aliens), but other than those and the occasional unlucky "cumulative compression clipping" (I know I just made that up, but what would you call the weird robotic clipping that occurs when a artifact from compression gets compressed again, but then is 4 times worse than the first time?).

Anyway, all I was saying is that some people don't care all that much about the quality 90% of the time, not enough to even re-rip CDs to mp3s, let alone pay for some weird master that only plays on a bed of baby seal tears ran by moonbeams.

Re: Being able to root my own device is a good thing.

I completely agree.

It's also the only thing that will let Glass1.0 owners install the software from Glass2.0 after the manufacture abandons us, like they always do. I buy phones and tablet based upon their ability to be rooted and the bootloader unlocked. I pick the one with an available root exploit if given a choice.

If you give your device to a friend and they hack it to spy on you, then you need better friends, not a better security policy.

Re: Errr... SMARTR Virtual Leader Ships Fully Armoured Battle Stations with Satellite Weaponry

Is that you Dr. Sanjay Gupta?

Re: CISPA needs to pass

Yeah, but it doesn't go far enough. Let's all abandon our clothes (after all, what are you hiding under them?) and only build walls out of glass. Hell, why we are at it, let's just make ANY email or text message program BCC a copy straight to our various governments and our mothers, and make it mandatory. All containers and bags should be see-through, and we should all have to carry around one of those duck-bill examination tools, in case someone might want to check inside our ass. I feel safer already.

But, let's make sure that laws are still hashed out in closed sessions, I mean we have t o have some sort of privacy, for our leaders.

//giant blaring sarcasm

Re: @Marketing Hack

@@Marketing Hack

@I simply can't up-vote you enough on that post. Bravo!

Agreed.

Re: That's a real site?

Let me clarify. I have seen Alibaba.com popping up in every search result for about 10 years too, a little too many search results in fact. That was the issue, they look just like a scam/spam site to someone that doesn't know they are a real site (like me). You can type in flux capacitor into Google and it will come back with 11,800 hits from Alibaba.com. Now you tell me, how can any real site have 11,800 different products about an object that doesn't exist in the first place?

I wasn't trying to make a derogatory comment about anyone, I was truly surprised that the site was real, and attempted to explain that surprise. (I'm an American, and so no, I hadn't read the story. My only exposure to the name Alibaba was the Beastie Boys repeating it over and over, followed by the words "and the forty thieves". So I'm going site ignorance as my excuse there.) I'm still not giving them my credit-card.

Re: That's a real site?

He didn't take their money, he only told others where it was at and how to access it. Then covered up a murder.

And they want my credit-card, no thank you.

Re: They bought a stolen laptop.

New laptop, $100 bucks, seems legit.

Re: Oh they would so love to do it ...

This is how you keep them at bay, by letting them know in no uncertain terms that we will not tolerate "Always On" nanny consoles.

I suspect those Meme pictures will be thrown around whenever someone even hints at "always on" anything.

Re: Pay me

"You can pay forever, own nothing, and be completely dependent on the internet and your connectivity to it. Act now and we'll throw in the fact that we are going to change your interface around anytime we want and you will just have to deal with it (and retrain your employees on them). We may also raise the price year after year, and charge more for some things and discontinue things you and your company use on a day to day basis (oh, you want Access, that's on a different pricing tier, the Pro Gold Tier). For no extra charge we will allow various government agencies access to your data, but don't worry, you'll never hear about it when it happens."

I think they are also planning on some sweet "AOL dialup fee" type money from Office 365, you know the kind where an old person signs up in 1992 and is still being charged in 2013 because they don't know what it is or how to stop the payments.

Re: Just goes to show, if you have enough money..

If that is the case, then this is truly the exception, as they do spend their money on making the world a better place. The Gates are definitely not the norm. Most of the time the buyer is someone like Donald Trump, not someone who really has spent billions helping to fight AIDS and malaria. I stand by my statement as general rule in regards to people with too much money buying crap with what would be 5-20 years worth of salary, but concede in this particular case.

Re: Micky Mouse Act

..and renewable every 20 years until the end of time.

Sounds like forever to me, after all they wanted it to be forever.

"Sonny Bono wanted the term of copyright protection to last forever. I am informed by staff that such a change would violate the Constitution. ... As you know, there is also [then-MPAA president] Jack Valenti's proposal for term to last forever less one day. "

In 2023 when Mickey Mouse is set to drop into public domain (again), you honestly think it will, if so have I got a bridge to sell you.

Re: It's impossible to send data this way ...

Why couldn't you just record a minutes worth of "information" being transmitted, then compare the timestamps after the fact? What you said is like saying a telephone can't work because by the time you run over to the other end the sound is already gone.

Anyway, if data is being transmitted 6 times faster than the speed of light or more, maybe the problem is that the information they are trying to measure at the distant end is coming from only one possible future, and by stopping the experiment "before" that future event has caught up with current events, therefore screwing up the results. I guess what I'm asking is has anyone working with entangled quantum particles ever encoded something like PI in the spin of of one of their entangled particles and "kept" encoding it for an extended period of time, while measuring the spin of the opposite end to see if that same data ever starts coming in. I know they say that viewing the spin of the opposite end changes the result, but what if that is only for tests shorter than the event lag?

Re: Actually ...

Don't forget that they can write all the software in Java, and like totally run it on all kinds of stuff dude. /sarcasm

Gone are the days of writing applications in assembly to optimize it, hell they aren't even writing crap in C, its all in Java. I'm looking right now at JavaW using 800mb of RAM, that's nuts, that is 8 times the RAM needed to run the whole XP OS just to run a program that if written in a lower language and optimized would probably be less than a 100mb.

Nowadays the attitude is: "The application is running slow. Have you tried throwing RAM at it?" What do we expect?

Re: Hey, you, get on to my cloud

I'm pretty sure that the windmills were for pumping water, and some still do have them for that. I don't recall ever reading anything about farms in the 1900's using windmills to generate electricity. (nowadays they do to be green and self-sufficient).

Re: Idiocracy

But Brondo has electrolytes, it's got what plants crave?

Re: Horses for courses

Or China based. If fact, that might save them some time, there's no reason to hack into your systems when you give them your data and ask them to keep it safe for you.

Re: Don't do the crime if you can't do the time

Really Yorgo? The issue is that the age of the people involved is often so young that their frontal-cortex hasn't even developed yet, so they basically CAN'T really make proper decisions based upon long-term consequences. Yet you think that it is fair to ruin their future or basically give them a life sentence for what is most of the time a victimless crime?

If you were any kind of a caring human being and not a sociopath you would have at least amended your comment with a suggestion for making the whole thing make more sense, instead of regurgitating uneducated crap quilted into pillows by Quakers .

I say, find them the equivalent of fixing Y2K date entries in code, or manually converting one database to another, or something, anything other than locking away a person that was most of the time literally too smart for their own good and too young to weigh the consequences. Give them a chance to pay back society in a way that their talents could offer the most benefit for everyone involved. Chances are if you stick a 20 something in jail for hacking, they are going to come out with new violence related skill-sets, a chip on their shoulder, and no job prospects higher than fry-cook, and that is just asking trouble.

Re: I don't understand.

I honestly at first wasn't really concerned with putting Linux on, I really was just wanting to dual-boot XP Pro 64 and Windows 8, but that is blocked from installing under UEFI as well. I was just using Grub2 as a easy way to pick bootloaders. I'm going to pine of that Windows XP File Explorer for years to come, I can feel it.

Re: Sort of..

@AC, I'm not sure why not? If a virus or something is able to flip settings in your NVRAM to turn on/off the secure state without you knowing (your proposal), then what would stop it from (in the future after someone is able to create their own keys, and this all becomes just another bother for legitimate users) injecting keys that match the boot changes it could make?

All I'm saying is that if a human is turning it off, then why wouldn't they at least allow that human the choice. We're not talking full drive encryption here, it would be trivial to allow the user to just run the recovery disk and move the install in legacy mode, but they have locked out that possible outlet (artificially I'm guessing).

The issue is that Hispalinux doesn't have keys, not those mainstream ones you listed. Hell from what I remember even Linus thinks that begging Microsoft for keys is wrong.

Sort of..

Sort of, but MS designed Windows 8 (and the Recovery images made from a Win8 install) to not work with UEFI turned off after the fact. So, yes you can turn off UEFI in most new computers and install Linux, however, most of the time you will have to turn it back on to run Windows again. Yes, you can blow away all your GPT partitions (if you have the tools and know why you need to) and re-install Windows 8 (you'll have no disc and no physical key most of the time though) and then Linux, but be prepared to lose any factory recovery partitions (which also don't work if they were made with UEFI switched on when they were created (ala Sony)).

So yes, you can turn off UEFI, but it is not really just a matter of toggling a setting.

Re: Fair enough

He started out with the wrong mindset, he came around when it counted, now he acts like we all should. He now tries to make the world a better place, there is nothing wrong with that.