Posts by ceebee 110 publicly visible posts • joined 30 May 2008
No replacement ready
No way to transfer contacts to "Squirrel"
No way to transfer chats
Why bother?
In the end Squirrel is just a new chat program ... so why bother buying Yahoo at great cost? Hope the CEO is sacked ..actually he is retiring!
Yahoo stuffed Messenger several years ago. Wrecked .. Groups ...Calendars ...Flickr ...everything it touched .. never listened to the users... and they wondered why they failed?
well new is NOT better... the new desktop app for Yahoo messenger is a massive backward step in functionality .. no presence settings ... no way of knowing who is online .. no video.. no file transfer no photo sharing... sorry the Purple Palace has just stuffed up AGAIN!! .. having stuffed:
Profiles
Calendars
Flickr
Groups
now they have ruined Messenger...
no wonder the company has ben in such a mess .. poor management for a decade or more. and stupid product decisions that drive away users...don't understand why they have consistently ignored users again and again.
Should be easy for Boris..he could ask his Turkish father ..his Swiss mother ...or even the guys in the US .. where he has a passport besides his UK one.
So most Leavers would want him OUT...ironic really...esp. as he is related to German royalty. (Yes they still exist!)
Meanwhile sorting out IT laws ..copyright, patents ... can Sky show that Euro match and how many foreign players can ManU have ... is going to be fun to watch... will be like watching Basil Fawlty dealing with a smartphone!
It is not the startup time that aggravates me with Windows ..but the time it takes to shutdown ... with OSX or Linux it is seconds.... with Windows it seems to take minutes... and always has! It is 2015 why does an OS take 5 minutes to shutdown?
WP should have arrived with a proper Exchange/Outlook integration and server-side tools for business from day one. The business market was still wide open in 2009 but chasing the consumer iPhone space was dumb. And then effectively dumping WP7 to go to WP8 etc compounded the disaster.
MS simply has not had a proper strategy for WP since that well know fruit company released the touchy phone thing.
The announcement this week is effectively the end for WP .. who is going to buy or develop for a device that is effectively EOL ....... this is as crazy as HP and Palm/WebOS.
And these guys get 7 figure salaries...couldn't run a booze-up in a brewery!
It is ironic that LV..despite superior performance suffers from "laser rot" (the glue holding the clear plastic coating to the aluminum disk goes opaque) which means my CEDs play fine 30 years after they were pressed but many of my LV disks of the same era are totally unplayable!
Let me start by saying I find Windows 10's UI ugly ... I detest the flat look ..makes me think of 1989 and Windows 2.
Bot onwards.. many of the graphical UI ideas we take for granted come out of the famous Palo Aalto experiments by Xerox and the work done at Apple in the development of Lisa and the Macintosh and from Unix X window managers.
The spatial file browser, windowing (yes windows come from that fruit company.. developed to solve the problem of small screens of the day) etc.
Your three UI elements are present in the Mac by the way. The dock show running items in OSX and prior to OSX a menu displayed running apps. And Apple copied Alt+Tab from Windows.
Double clicking title bars minimises Mac windows too.
Windows95 's taskbar is the development of the Windows 3 minimised icon model which showed running apps on the desktop. I have to say it remains an inspired design choice.
Windows 8 made major changes to basic concepts and hid elements in stupid ways. It was rightly criticised for that.
But for me the serious failings in Windows 10 (if they may be considered as such) are the loss of functions ... no Media Centre and no DVD player? Huh? Was Microsoft having a bad hair day or something?
But then i haven't forgiven for the mess known as the Windows Explorer in Windows 7.
MoJ sent us this (meaningless drivel) statement.
“We are committed to modernising the department’s administration services – creating a fit-for-purpose organisation which offers the best value for money to the public."
ie we are sacking as many full time UK staff as we can get away with
“This work is central to the Government’s ongoing reform programme, which was put in place to create a more accountable and unified Civil Service."
ie we haven't a clue what the civil service does either ..pass the gin
“We are currently in discussions with Shared Services Connected Limited with a view to signing a contract later this year, which will save the taxpayer millions of pounds a year."
ie. really..actually save money?
"We will work with staff, trade unions and other stakeholders to assess any impacts on staff."
ie: how much do we have pay out when we sack staff?
Going back into prehistory... on the Macintosh up until OS7 in 1990, clicking on a filename below an icon instantly enabled edits to the filename. Then came OS7 and hell broke loose ...click and wait before you could edit a filename.(This is the way it has remained since)
A simple little change sent many long time Macintosh (and I am using that name deliberately) in to apoplexy!
And I am still waiting for OSX to have labels operate the same way as they did in the "classic" OS! I loved having a rainbow of colour coded folders and icons.
Clearly if you have hundreds of millions of XP users and using IE8 or earlier, the vast majority will not be changing to newer Windows versions (or other alternatives) by April.
Then what? With 30% approx of the world's PCs not being patched the danger is massive. This will put immense pressure on Microsoft to continue patching XP.
Pulling the plug on XP is going to be very tough!
The Liberal plan is designed essentially to prevent high speed internet competing with existing (Murdoch) cable / media interests.
The whole plan is a sham no matter what the technicalities of the deals.
Australia will get a 20th century pseudo NBN at great cost.
Thanks to these conservative fools.
The old logo reflected a young slightly flippant corporation. This one is a like stodgy middle-aged parent trying to be cool but too afraid to let loose.
Yahoo! has made such a mess of its UI changes .. profiles, Mail, Flickr (grrrrr) Groups.. why would anyone expect them to leave the logo alone.
If Yahoo! follows the pattern with Yahoo! Profiles, Calendar, Flickr and Mail they will fix a few obvious bugs but the overall change to the UI in its Groups will not change no matter how many complaints they receive.
They are simply not interested in users. The users are just product to be delivered to the advertisers.
FULLSTOP!
I hate to say it but after being burnt by the horrendous, awful and totally failed Flickr! change I will never ever rely on Yahoo! (or any similar online corp).
If you use Tumblr standby .. because Yahoo! will get around to stuffing it up sooner or later!
Every time they change something it ends up less functional and less useable.
Someone should write a about how Yahoo! implemented change in the most appalling way possible.
Why they do it I wonder??? How difficult can it be to ask for user feedback? Yahoo! has totally failed its users... AGAIN.
The reality is that not one of our leaders can be believed on this topic.
Obama, Harper, Key, Cameron and Rudd have zero credibility on this whole issue.
I am not sure about Canada and NZ but the mainstream media in Australia have been almost totally silent on this issue and have not asked our politicians any awkward or searching questions.
The media has failed us here... with the exception of the Australian version of The Guardian.
I suspect they have been warned off in no uncertain terms.
You just hit the core issue Don Jefe... WindowsRT is NOT Windows.. in the same way iOS is not OSX. Microsoft never quite got that message.
Had Microsoft developed and marketed RT as a proper platform and managed to get some apps onto the platform RT might ..perhaps even still might, work.
Proper Exhange support, a Modern UI RT version of Office.. etc. are essential.
Make the Startscreen the real UI for RT devices.
If the mess Yahoo! made of Flickr and Yahoo! Mail is an indicator ... Tumblr will be a mess by this time next year!
I am not really sure what Ms Mayer has achieved?
Annoying your longtime paying customers to go chasing a mythical social network audience does not seem to me to be the way to build a sustainable business nor does simply buying up start-ups, and shutting them down 5 mins later when the gloss wears off.
I suspect Ms Mayer will move on or stay until Google or Microsoft or something behemoth buys it.
How can any government dare ask about privacy when the greatest threat to privacy is the government itself?
The Snowden revelations show the lengths to which our governments are actually spying on us ...not just the NSA but the Australian, UK, NZ and Canadian governments amongst others
And I hope the delegates at the G8 conference are being careful about what communication devices they use because it is clear they will be being listened to and spied upon!
As a non-US citizen I am appalled that Obama and such consider it alright to breach my privacy.
But more significantly... why would any non-US business use any US based or owned service provider , any cloud/data storage service or email service. Clearly any or all US internet services are wide open for extra legal snooping.
It means any confidentiality clause in contracts is worthless when dealing with the US.
It means any data transiting the US is open to NSA screening.
Quite simply the US is an untrustworthy partner.
And anyone who believes it is only about security and not economic espionage is naive and in any case could any business take the risk that their of their material being scooped up by an agency of a competitor's government.
Am I angry ..yes ..not because I am surprised or because I am a likely target but because the US does not respect the privacy of anyone and most certainly not the RIGHTS of non citizens.
I may not be American but I have rights too Mr Obama!!
We now know officially and it is admitted by the US government that it spies on data of foreign citizens ... people like many of us here on this forum.
But what is Mr Cameron, or Mr Hollande or Mrs Merkel or Ms Gillard or Mr Harper going to do about this?
I suggest absolutely NOTHING except perhaps queue up to get copies of the data from their US buddies.
The almost total lack of comment from governments is deafening. No words of support for their citizens .. no promises to take the matter up with the US ..nothing!!
The US policy is both understandable and totally unacceptable.
Well we all know the game in play with "asylum seekers".
The pure unadulterated racism is disgusting. The Leader of the Opposition (who is not a fool) randomly mixes up the term "asylum seeker" and "illegal". The government is in a spin and has been for since 2001 when it let its hard men overtake any sense of humanity in the Tampa affair and revealed a moral bankruptcy that was astounding.
The obsession with the boats is costing $3.2 BILLION!!! This is plain lunacy!! How many "boat people" could we have resettled, how many refugees could we have helped with that money instead of operating prison camps (and because I defy anyone to say they are not!).
The current policies of both major parties are just disgusting and inhuman no matter what spin they wrap them in.
grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
I would not believe a word of Yahoo!'s corporate spin if my life depended on it.
They always makes these sorts of comments when they buy something. They made the same sort of soothing noises when they bought Flickr years ago and have progressively destroyed the site.
There are literally 20,000 complaints (178 pages of them) on the Flickr blogs at the moment demanding that Yahoo! undo the changes to the interface that were implemented on Monday, without consultation or any warning.
Yahoo! won't take any notice of course. The changes are part of targeting Flickr at a different audience and Yahoo! has basically told its existing Flickr users to just go away, which they are doing in droves (to French site Ipernity.com)
What the Yahoo! experience shows Flickr users is NEVER EVER trust the cloud or trust corporations to take care of your data.
Tumblr users can look forward to the same behaviour from Yahoo! ... why should we think otherwise.
The revised Flickr site is slow (ie as in molasses) is so cool it is unusable and double the cost and with less services (ie stats are no longer available) for "Pro" now "ad-free" accounts.
It looks like it was hit by a bad dose of Google black and Windows8.
But most importantly it makes searching, displaying and commenting images on images so much more difficult.
The Flickr blog is full of negative comments.
This is what lies ahead for Tumblr users.
The Flickr site today has none of the feel that made the original Flickr so good to use ..simplicity and speed.
Fail Yahoo! FAIL!
With approximately 30% or so of all PCs running WinXP I just do not see how Microsoft can cease support. From a practical point of view security of one third of PCs will be at risk and that simply is not acceptable.
Whilst it is unfortunate it is inevitable that XP will live on well beyond next year!
Quite separately, I checked the system requirements for Office 2013.
Win7 or Win8
1ghz processor,
1024x576 pixel screen, 64mb video ram
.NET 3.5, 4.0 or 4.5
3gb of disk space (3gb!!!!!)
so NO Vista or WinXP users may apply.
Whilst I can understand the requirements I find it odd that Vista is not supported? What is missing from Vista that is required in Office 2013? It is just an office suite we are talking about!!!!!
This goes with the apparent move to lock down games to a single xBox (or Playstation).
Microsoft and other players are trying to kill the secondhand software and gaming market as well as extract maximum cash from the punters now via subscriptions and sleight of hand changes to licensing and pricing (witness Mac Office prices increases).
So goodbye MS. The new Office is ok but there is nothing in Office 2013 I need particularly that is not in Office 2003 for which i have a legitimate and TRANSFERABLE enduring licence. (And do not have to put up with the awful ribbon UI).
LibreOffice is getting there and includes a vector drawing package that Office has never had, so a combination of Office 2003 and LO does me fine.
MS has rocks in its head if it thinks I am going to pay a subscription fee for basic word processing!!
Apple of course has not updated Safari (or much else) for Snow Leopard users who are stuck with Safari vs 5.0. No security updates ..zilch..typical...
Of course as good little Apploids we are supposed to drop everything upgrade to Lion or Mountain Lion ..fine but then I lose a range of applications needing PPC code (yes they still exist).
I am sorry this continues to be a huge security FAIL!
It is not just the file formats but also the physical media beit disk or tape or whatever.
I regularly retrieve material from 1980s Mac formats like MacWrite, MacDraw, MS Word for Mac etc. from 400kb and 800kb Mac disks.
I luckily still have a working 1990 MacPlus which enables me to read the disks and bring the data forward to via a usb floppy disk drive to a more recent version of Word or whatever.
Archivists rightly fear the "Digital Dark Ages" as material written only 10 or 20 years ago is increasingly difficult to recover easily.
Even MS Word will not (easily) read files created before Word 97 (for security reasons!).
The OZ government(s) have an appalling history of stalling renewable energy options to favour large coal interests. Both the coal mining companies and mining unions have fought solar and wind power across the country. This review / study is really just another stalling exercise. Anything to avoid actually DOING something.
OZ should be at the forefront of solar power useage but our government continually resist investing in it. They have reduced solar feed-in tariffs and removed nearly all subsidies to home owners.
grrrrr.....
Got mine on Wednesday (ordered it on 28/6)... smooth as silk delivery by FedEx from HK to Australia. Once I got a shipping notice from Google on Monday I could track the parcel from HK to Sydney to Melbourne.
As for the device itself... very happy with it... the screen is great.. the device is fast and jelly bean is certainly a nice refinement of Android.
Almost immediately after booting it announce a system update was downloading! HOOORAY ... one of the big advantages of getting a Nexus!
And that packaging is some sort of Chinese puzzle box designed to frustrate!!!!!!
If Apple follows its normal policy Snow leopard will unsupported with the release of Mountain Lion.
Snow Leopard was released in 2009 and is the last OS to support Rosetta.
If support ends (as Apple usually only supports the current OS and its immediate predecessor) then whilst your Mac may not stop working but it will be increasingly insecure as there will be no further security patches and Safari will no longer be updated.
That is a far more serious issue.
(Ask users of Tiger or Leopard about this!)
I have tried Win8 and the UI is basically a mess. It may be fast and fluid but it is still less productive and useable.
I am less worried about Aero Glass than the whole mess that is the Metro start menu.
This really is Metro vs 1 not Windows vs 8!
Now where did I put those Bob disks?
Given that Australia has already signed ACTA without any input form either our parliament or from consumer advocates and has indicated its willingness to sign the Trans Pacific Partnership treaty (almost sight unseen) we can already see the thrust of any changes to copyright will further reduce consumer rights to promote profit...ooops "innovation".
If ACTA is bad the "Trans-Pacific-Partnership" is even worse...it is currently being negotiated in the same secretive way as ACTA was and what has leaked reveals the very sort of scope creep that anti-ACTA activists feared. Even more draconian "IP" rules and penalties.
Of course we are not allowed to know exactly what is being discussed or even by whom let alone see a draft ... gotta love the mix of big content and government bureaucracy.
There was no real consultation ACTA here in Australia (just as there is no consultation on the Trans-Pacific-Partnership (nice name ..total dud of a treaty).
These treaties have been designed to sidestep the public involvement. Both ACTA and the ongoing TPP processes have been carried out in almost total secrecy.
Thankfully the EU is showing signs of questioning ACTA.
Thinking on this ... think forward a few years.. smartphones with PVRs / tuners built in? Ironically as it stands it is possible to program Foxtel (part owned by Telstra of course) via telephone or web.
How long before I can stream that back to my phone or pad thing ...how long before my phone or pad is the PVR?
The broadcasters and content owners need to think ahead not look back to good old days!
This decision has big consequences for copyright/exclusive content deals for the telcos in Oz. But then maybe it would be easier if those fancy smartphones and fondleslabs had tv tuners built in (it is 2012 after all how hard can it be!) ..but wait then all that video stuff would not be eating into your data quota...mmm
If the new Start menu/screen thingy is unworkable ... and judging by the screen shots it is pretty much the case... users (including your truly) will continue to do what we always have done with desktop OSes... add icons for commonly used programs and documents to the desktop and ignore the Start Menu completely.
(Even with Windows 3.x Program Manager, users created program groups with the most used programs readily accessible and hid the rest).
The XP start menu was the first attempt to deal with the huge Start menu lists caused by programs adding increasing numbers of entries to the menu... most of my users ignored it ...until forced to use it with Windows7.
The original spatial model, pioneered by that well known fruit company remains, for many (most?) users, the most comfortable, logical and useful paradigm.
But this also opens some interesting questions for competitors. If this impacts Apple vaunted A4/A5 processors and the tech is available in products from Via then Apple's competitors in the mobile phone and computing space seeking the sort of speed etc. that Apple claims come from its magical chips, are in a far better position to obtain the technology for their own products.
This is a watch this space issue...
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