Posts by kb

OK Windows 10, we get it: You really do not want us to install this unsigned application. But 7 steps borders on ridiculous

Sorry I support this 110%

Because it cuts down on the stupid people installing bugs which is better for all of us. If you want an example the only time I have ever had to throw someone out my PC shop was during the Win 7 days, he bought a new PC and wanted me to install Limewire on it. I told him "The FBI shut down Limewire years ago, I will be happy to show you how bittorrent works but Limewire is long dead" so what did he do?

You guessed it, promptly went home, installed a malware program someone had stuck the Limewire icon on, when the AV told him plainly it was a virus he UNINSTALLED THE AV and then when he had his PC completely pwned and was so infested it couldn't even load a webpage he tried bringing it back and demanding I fix it for free. When I threw him out the shop he was screaming "It says right there that it is Limewire YOU MAKE IT WORK!" like a fucking baboon.

So yes people with a BRAIN can get around this, those like Limewire boy? Cannot which is the entire point! Microsoft has realized that there ware waaaay too many computer users that are "sniff your own farts" level of dumb and there is nothing they can do to raise their IQ so making a bar that the truly moronic cannot overcome? I support 110% if for no other reason so we don't get millions of PCs in botnets thanks to these geniuses.

Reliable system was so reliable, no one noticed its licence had expired... until it was too late

I had something worse than a license issue once..

Had a kid in his early 20s come into the PC shop I worked at practically in tears, it seemed his dad had FINALLY let him run the lumber mill for the first time while the old man went on his first vacation in 20 years...and the PC than ran the CNC that did custom columns went down and they had a contract worth tens of thousands that was gonna go belly up if they couldn't get the columns made!

The problem? The CNC system, which was this huge thing that cost them a couple hundred thousand back in the day...only worked with an ISA card plugged into a PC running Windows 3.1 and this was a year into Win 7 being out so needless to say no shops had Win 3.1 systems lying about and they needed the thing on THAT day! He had been to 2 other shops before he came into ours and was damn near in tears, told the boss the problem who replied "If anybody in town has something like that in would be my head guy,he's a packrat..YO GET UP HERE" and when he told me the issue and showed me the system I said "Yeah I got a couple of old 200Mhz with ISA slots back in my workshed at home but I'm kinda tied up here"...he just started throwing cash, gave the boss $250 just to "borrow" me for a couple hours, gave me $300 a pop for the 2 systems and another $350 to set them up by cloning his old drive to the "new" systems and making sure it all worked.

The moral of the story? If your butt depends on a crucial system? Best have backups. I ended up putting him in touch with an old engineer friend of mine (RIP David, you are missed) who built him a couple of serial port adapters that would take the place of the old ISA card if it ever goes tits up and last I heard that old CNC is still cranking out fancy columns using my old 200mhz workstation from back in the day.

Nunes FBI memo: Yep, it's every bit as terrible as you imagined

Re: Opinion poll proxy vote!

NYC and LA voted for Clinton but luckily for the USA there is this thing called the electoral college put there for PRECISELY this reason, to keep one or two large cities from being able to control the will of the entire country.

If you take the votes from NYC and LA out of the equation? Hillary lost by a landslide. Look at the map, how many states actually voted for her? Not even close, not by a long shot which was why Hillary didn't contest.

BTW you should look up her popularity numbers from 2015 to 2016, because the day she announced? Her popularity was a whopping...16%, by the day before the election, with every news org owned by the large corps she sucked up to singing her praises 24/7 for nearly 2 years? Her popularity was...15%. Sorry Charlie but the rotting corpse of Richard Nixon could have won against Shillary, she was an arrogant elitist corporate suck up that rigged the primary against the actually popular candidate, bought the DNC, and despite having every advantage lost the majority of states by a HUGE margin.

Love how so many are spinning like tops..

Richard Nixon was impeached for using the power of the government against his enemies and spying on his opponent to try to rig a presidential election, while Clinton and Obama...used the power of the government against their enemies and spied on their opponent to try to rig a presidential election.

Yup don't see how anybody should be upset over an attempt to rig presidential elections by simply using the power of the white house to bug their opponents, why what could be more democratic? Clinton/Obama For Prison 2018.

New York Police scrap 36,000 Windows smartphones

They should have kept the phones

Can ANYBODY show me an Android phone sold in 2016 that gets updates until 2019? Anyone? Beuller? The windows phone was a SMART purchase if they wanted phones that would get security updates for the long haul, instead they'll end up with phones that they'll need to toss every other year if they are lucky.

And before anybody brings up apple, have you ever used an older Apple phone with the latest OS? Talk about painful! Say what you want about MSFT about windows 10 actually made 8.1 phones snappier and more responsive, not less. I've never sen an Apple phone that ran faster after being updated to the latest and greatest from a previous version, this is why my apple customers simply replace the phone when the new Apple phones are released, not really any point in updating those if you want a snappy and responsive phone.

Old Firefox add-ons get 'dead man walking' call

I switched to Pale Moon

When it was obvious that FF had zero f*cks to give when it comes to what users think and I have to say I've never been happier. My extensions all worked, it looks and behaves like classic FF did, all in all I highly recommend!

Firefox doesn't need to be No 1 – and that's OK, 'cos it's falling off a cliff

Re: more needed than ever

There is something IMHO better...its called Comodo Dragon and Icedragon. One is built on Chromium, one on Gecko. You can run any extension you like, you can choose to use the Comodo DNS (which I find incredibly good at blocking sites that have been infected with malware before they load) baked in or not, it has built in IP/DNS leakage detector (again removable if you don't want it with a single click), media downloader (again one click uninstall if you don't want it) and after using them for 2 years I can attest they are rock solid and the only issue they had (Privdog) was removed over a year ago so is no longer an issue.

Its a shame what has happened with Firefox but thanks to having Dragon and IceDragon its not affected me or my customers and if FF goes away tomorrow? We'll still have dragon and IceDragon.

Is your Windows 10, 8 PC falling off the 'net? Microsoft doesn't care

Re: It's all a bit farcical, isn't it?

It works perfectly fine for MSFT's customers...which are those that pay the monthly fee for Windows 10 Enterprise. Oh you didn't get the memo? They fired pretty much all of their QA and testing teams right before the launch of Win 10, now the alpha and beta tester is YOU if you have Win 10 Insider, Home or Pro respectively.

Basically Insider is the alpha build, Pro and Home are the early beta (Home) and late beta (Pro because you can delay updates) and the actual RTM finished product? Sorry but that is only a rental, you have to pay every month for Win 10 Enterprise if you actually want a non beta OS from MSFT now...or stick with Win 7 as many of us did.

Isn't it sad that they replaced the sweaty monkey, whose idea of innovation was to ape Apple, with Nutella whose idea of innovation is to ape Google and like the monkey do a p*ss poor job of it? Lets just hope he gets fired soon enough and they get someone in there that realizes there is still good money to be made by building a quality OS that people actually want to use.

Some Windows 10 Anniversary Update: SSD freeze

Re: Huh,

Last I checked you CAN move folders from ProgramData, you just have to use a third party tool to create a Symlink so the program doesn't know its been moved. Here is a link to the tool you need from Mark Russinovich of MSFT...

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896768.aspx

Re: Wow.

Hey! Don't insult Windows 8 like that, you can grab a copy of Windows 8, slap Classic Shell on it, block the telemetry backports and voila! A usable useful OS!

Windows 10? Its a broken alpha quality at best OS that only exists because Nutella is trying to badly ape Google the way the Ballmernator tried to badly ape Apple iOS with Windows 8.

BTW if you want to know why Windows 10 is such a giant POS? Look up Banacles Nerdgasm's channel on YouTube and watch his "I was fired" video...he was part of the tester team and says they were ALL fired, all the testers and ALL of the QA team were given their walking papers...why? Because YOU are the new beta testers, with the handful that run Insider the alpha testers. This is why you can't stop updates but the Enterprise customers can, you gotta "do your job" and deal with all those OS breaking bugs so the actual customers don't get the shitty product you did...nice huh?

So all of you that buy new PCs with Win 10 Home or Pro? Yeah you are paying to not only give your data to MSFT but to be a beta tester on an OS who had very little alpha testing since of course very few run Insider edition. Great for MSFT, sucks to be you.

Microsoft offers admins free Win 10 upgrade lube

Re: Not trustworthy

Hear hear! I tried it on nearly a dozen boxes and lappys at the shop...now we aren't talking P4s here, we're talking C2Qs and Phenom X4s and Core i3 lappys, all with ooodles of RAM...every time GWX said "its good to go!" and with every.single.one. there was serious show stoppers.

So apparently MSFT thinks a computer with no network, no sound, no graphics, hell that won't even boot? Yep working as intended.

So I have added something else to my "must have" USB toolbox..Never10 by GRC, at least it works as intended!

Microsoft phone support contractors told to hang up after 15 minutes

Re: Want to increase your personal call stats? @x 7

But look at what you just wrote " I'd often have reviews where I'd get slated for having too high an average call time" which shows those others were JUSTIFIED for doing what they did because the bosses obviously gave not a single shit about anything actually getting resolved, just the call time.

And I'm sorry but any place that bases support on call time? Its a fricking trainwreck doomed to failure, why? Because you CANNOT magically know how long its gonna take to fix an issue, especially by phone. hell lets look at the example one of the earlier posters gave as an "easy" one "I can't get word to print"...well is it a network printer? That could mean you need to do some sometimes quite involved network troubleshooting. is it a "plug and play" USB printer? Might have to deal with windows issues, device manager issues, or driver issues...bzzt, times up you are in trouble.

See how fricking DUMB using call time as a metric is?

Mud sticks: Microsoft, Windows 10 and reputational damage

Re: Don't blame users for the UI

Uhhh...just FYI but W7 DOES allow that, they are called libraries and you can make new libraries and pin as many folders in them as you want. Its as easy as "right click on folder > include in library > create new library". Its actually quite easy and once you have it in a library you'll find it right there on the right hand side of the start along with the other libraries.

Now that said about Windows 10....sigh, WTF MSFT? Really? Did you learn NOTHING from Win 8? I have tested Win 10 on just about every kind of system you can name from C2D laptops to octocore gaming rigs and not one, not a single one, was the experience better than 7/8.1!

I'm not talking from a user perspective either, I'm talking about obvious issues with the OS, such as "senior moments" where the OS just hangs for a couple seconds for no damned reason (my guess is its the dozen pages worth of telemetry crap constantly running in the background, but that is just an educated guess) or the way its network performance sucks compared to 7/8.1 (probably the same telemetry crap) to the buggy drivers and updates, I can really not find a single upside to this OS. That isn't even going into the UI which is an eyesore and doesn't even allow you to change the fricking font without reg hacking, the absolute mess that is the Win 10 control panel, its just not a good OS and I have yet to find someone that prefers Win 10 over Win 7, or even Win 8 with Classic Shell.

Intel's 6th gen processors rock – but won't revive PC markets

Re: Gamers don't need these either

Mind a bit of advice? Get an AMD FX6 or FX8. You can get the FX6300 for $98 USD and the FX8320 for $138 USD, that is 6 cores minimum and a minimum turbo of 4Ghz and the money you save? Will let you get a REALLY nice gaming board. I got a triple Xfire gaming board, 16Gb of RAM, R9 280, FX8320E, 3TB HDD for storage and a 120GB SSD and the whole shebang was around $500 USD after MIR.

That said I don't see how you got gimped with PCIe 1.0 unless you literally just took some HP or Dell and tried using that as a gamer box, as my last PC (which for the record played all my games at above 30 FPS, the only reason I upgraded is the oldest boy has his PC die and it gave me an excuse to treat myself to just give him mine) was right at 6 years old and had a Phenom II X6 with 8GB (supports 16GB) and dual PCIe 2.0 and that wasn't even a high end board, IIRC it was like $55 USD. He currently has no issues with playing new FPS and MMOs, he just swapped out my HD7790 for an R9 280 like mine, runs fabulously.

Gamers don't need these either

Because the rotting elephant in the room is that PC games have reached a plateau, the cost is simply getting too high to keep pushing for ever fancier graphics that fewer PCs will be able to play. Look at the top 10 PC games...are there any that can't be played at 30 FPS with a Phenom II quad or C2Q with a $150 GPU? I seriously doubt it.

The simple facts is once we hit multicores PCs went from "good enough" to insanely overpowered for the tasks that the majority, hell even most gamers, have for them. I have customers with Phenom I triples and quads as well as C2Ds and quads and for the tasks they have? They all work fine and for the few that asked for more speed? An SSD has made them very happy with the hardware they have.

There really isn't a need for upgrading before the hardware dies, and these companies need to accept the MHz wars are over and ain't never coming back. PCs are dishwashers and TVs now, don't toss until it croaks.

Win8 inventory glut? Yep, it's all Microsoft's fault, says HP

Re: kb

LOL are you SERIOUSLY comparing a tablet, a device designed for passive viewing and very little interaction, to a full fledged computer?

Why don't you show us how much you've guzzled the koolaid and start bringing up supercomputers and routers, after all they all have processors so they count...amirite?

Re: Obligatory Linux post.

Because as we saw with Linux netbooks (which just FYI saw a 400% higher return rate, I'm willing to provide a link if you wish) if the software that people want to run won't work on the PC they send it back and the software they want is on Windows NOT Linux.

I'm sorry to burst your bubble but as long as 95%+ of the commercial software will not run on Linux? Then you might as well be offering to trade folks their shiny new PC for a Llama for all the good it will do 'em.

Microsoft will rest its jackboot on Windows 7, 8.1's throat on new Intel CPUs in 2018 – not 2017

Re: "One solution is to boot a Linux USB stick ..."

Funny that only cowards replay, but I can torpedo your argument with one simple phrase..."Tivoization".

With that one simple word added to GPL V3 the great unwashed RMS absolutely DESTROYED any hope Linux had for mainstream adoption. Don't take MY word for it, go look up the numbers...GPL adoption? Falling like a rock and has been doing nothing but drawing a falling bullet graph since...wait for it...GPL V3 and "Tivoization". BSD, MPL, pretty much all the licenses EXCEPT GPL has been growing, why is that?

The answer is simple, RMS has made "Linux is a cancer" into a true phrase by going out of his way to attack a single company that didn't follow his "spirit of the GPL". Companies aren't gonna risk dealing with software where they could be openly attacked and get tons of negative PR because one guy decides that it doesn't matter what the license agreement actually SAYS, only his interpretation of it...wanna guess who writes the billions and billions of dollars in software used around the world daily? It ain't RMS, its corps.

What was Linux adoption rate 20 years ago? Less than 2%, 10 years ago? less than 2%, now that MSFT has literally turned their OS into spyware? Drumroll....less than 2%. You can make excuses all you want but you have been giving your product away for decades and gotten exactly nowhere, no matter how big a stinker MSFT puts out. That isn't "inertia", that is the fact that the software people want to run? Don't run on your OS and thanks to RMS hatred of corps never ever will.

Photoshop, Sony Vegas, Pro Tools, more than 90% of the triple A games that come out every year, Quickbooks/Quicken, without these and thousands of others? Again you might as well be telling users to trade their OS for onions, because your OS and an onion would be equally as useful for them getting their work done.

Re: "One solution is to boot a Linux USB stick ..."

Then you are either a programmer, or someone who ONLY uses the Internet, in which case you would be just as well off with a $50 tablet.

For everyone else, which based on current usage rates is 90% of the population? They have programs they bought their PCs for that ONLY runs on Windows. Everything from audio/video creation to SMB tax software, there is literally tens of thousands of pieces of software that are mission critical to people's daily work that do not run on your OS and thanks to the hostility of FOSS to proprietary software never will.

So you might as well say "replace your computer with an onion" for all the value of your statement because without the software required to get our work done? Your OS is useless to us. there is a reason why MSFT can place spyware in their OS and adware on the lockscreen and Linux gains....zero percent, its because of the network effect and the simple fact your OS doesn't run what the vast majority require to do their jobs.

Re: Microsoft has lost it's way.

Riiiight, blame the user because your OS has a "UI" that is about as user friendly as a Trash 80...and you wonder why Linux has sat at 2% for nearly 20 years, despite MSFT putting out no less than FOUR stinkers in that time?

How Microsoft copied malware techniques to make Get Windows 10 the world's PC pest

Re: I is dreaming

I can help with that, there is a handy .bat on the middle of this page that strips those out, followed by a nice list to slap into HOSTS that blocks the websites that MSFT likes to phone home to. HTH.

http://techne.alaya.net/?p=12499

Hey Windows 10, weren't you supposed to help PC sales?

Re: Improve PC Specs

Uhhhh...that is because Win 8/8.1 does NOT do a real boot, it only does a suspend to disk. If you install a new driver or do any other update that requires a real fresh boot? You'll see the Win 8 "fast boot" is fast BS.

If you want to do the same "speed trick" in Win 7 simply enable hybrid sleep and use it, you'll find it "magically" becomes just as fast as Win 8.

FTC: Duo bought rights to Android game – then turned it into ad-slinging junkware in an update

Re: Adds or Drugs (Meds) ?

It was toxoplasmosis and he raised the price from 7.50 USD to over $700 USD, thus making a single 30 day supply (it usually takes 90 days IIRC) $21K, or $63K for enough to actually treat the illness.

As for TFA, what is to keep them from just starting a new company and doing it all over again? Seems like an easy way to make a ton of cash, just buy a semi popular Android app, turn it into malware with an update, and rake in the cash.

Yahoo! Mail! is! still! a! thing!, tries! blocking! Adblock! users!

Re: Do people still use Yahoo?

YOU didn't do anything...Yahoo did. Look up "Yahoo XSS attack" to see how truly pathetic Yahoo security is.

If you want to keep your Yahoo? Use Gmail to access your Yahoo or use thunderbird, but their webmail is nothing but a security nightmare and they give ZERO craps about its weaknesses, just about shoving ads down your throat.

Windows 10 marks the end of 'pay once, use forever' software

Re: Linux

Its just as easy on Windows, simply have one partition (or an SSD) for Windows and a second partition (or HDD) for user data. Simply click on the user folder after install and choose "move" and move it to the drive where the data is stored on the HDD...tada!

And I'll get hate for saying it but truth is truth...all those guys singing Linux praises? WinME was a bomb...you gained nothing. Vista was a bomb...you gained nothing. Windows 8 was a bomb...starting to sense a pattern here? To steal a line from a former US presidential election ITS THE PROGRAMS STUPID and I'm sorry but in 2015 Linux programs simply cannot compete with commercial software from a decade ago, they just can't. You know the obvious ones, Gimp and Inkscape can't touch Photoshop or even PaintShop Pro from 2005, Audacity can't touch Sonor or Acid Pro from a decade ago, I could go on all day. You wanna know what somebody used to using good commercial software thinks when they try Linux? You know those Chinese knock offs sold on sites like Chinabuye, like those MP5 players made to look like the Vita or cheap Android "consoles" with names like Polystation 4 and Wii U2? Using Linux software feels like that, its all a bunch of bad ersatz knock offs that only look like the real deal in the most superficial ways and once you use it? It compares about as well as that Polystation 4 does to the PS4.

So as long as Linux is openly hostile to commercial software, the kind the vast majority of the planet has literally invested billions of dollars in purchasing? Then MSFT could change the name of Win 10 to "Big Brother Edition" and put the Eye of Sauron as a desktop wallpaper, they will still get more users in 22 days than Linux desktops have gained in 22 years. People simply aren't gonna give up all that software for bad ersatz knock offs or worse be told they need to buy Windows just to run it in a VM, to which I always reply "If I still have to buy Windows, what do I need your OS for?"

BTW before anybody chimes in with Android/ChromeOS? That is a proprietary OS owned by Google which phones home just as much if not more than anything MSFT puts out and which in the case of Android we are seeing more and more taken proprietary thanks to the Google Playwall and in the case of ChromeOS we are seeing bog standard X86 hardware so locked down with DRM that it takes a page of CLI simply to get it to run a handful of special distros with approved bootloaders, you might as well claim TiVos and routers as desktops if you are gonna count those.

Mozilla-Microsoft spat latest: Firefox yanks Cortana away from Bing

Re: Which British accent

Nope sorry we USED to think of you that way, but then BBC America gave us too many of your "Are you being served?" episodes So it'll sound either VERY cockney or lower middle class ala Miss Brahms or Mrs Slocombe, although I'd give 'em bonus points if it switched the voice to Mrs Slocombe and Cortana started babbling on about its pussy.

Re: I'm Mullah-levels of mad

I haven't given them a red cent since Windows 7 and am advising my customers to treat Win 10 like a plague blanket, pretty to look at but very VERY bad to own!

What is sad is I fricking HATE Linux with a purple passion but if MSFT keeps this crap up? I'll end up with an SSD with a stripped to hell Windows 10 "upgrade" (more like downgrade) for what games won't play in Steam for Linux and the rest will all be done in some Linux distro with a Win 7 skin on it.

'Fix these Windows 10 Horrors': Readers turn their guns on Redmond

he ain't drinking the Koolaid, he getting PAID!

Seriously go to any Windows 10 articles on the tech sites, the astroturf is insane. C-Net, Slashdot, you are suddenly seeing accounts that haven't posted since the release of Windows 8 all coming to life and singing the praises and shooting down any and all doubters..coincidence? Bullshit its good old fashioned ham fisted astroturfing!

So when you see somebody trying to shoot down all complaints with Windows 10? Look at their history, do they only have a couple posts per year? Are they all "on message" focused on this or that corp (as some astroturfers are for hire) with little deviation? Then you may be dealing with an astroturfer.

And if you don't think MSFT is bringing out the astroturf this round? I'm sorry but all you have to do is read the comments during the Win 10 beta and compare it to now. During the beta plenty of praise AND complaints went completely unnoticed, now during the release? Every.single.complaint. seems to be getting addressed by somebody spouting the company line, while using plenty of market speak like "services integration" and "user experience"....yeah MSFT is breaking out that big old wallet and trying to make sure the bad buzz doesn't give them another Windows 8, anybody that has hung out on the forums of some of the sites I named can easily spot the change in tone. It was the exact same with Windows 8/8.1. with their "UI innovations" and "removing the line between PC and tablet" and just as hamfisted.

AMD claims record with latest overclock-happy FX Series chips, again

Re: It isn't eight cores and it's still embarassingly slow

Go to Phoronix and look up "AMD Vishera benchmarks" and see for yourself. By simply using GCC instead of ICC to compile the benchmarks then...gasp!, Shock! you suddenly see the FX8350 trading blows (and in some cases BEATING) the i5s and i7s which cost as much as 300% MORE than the FX8350 does. Isn't that amazing what a simple compiler swap does?

And I can back up those numbers, having had a 4770K and FX8350 side by side, in actual tests using actual programs like Handbrake? Trading blows with the FX winning on anything multithreaded while the 4770K primarily won the single threaded tasks. Since its rare that I only have a single thing to do? I went and bought the FX8320E and was able to get it AND a nice gaming board AND the RAM for less than the 4770K was selling for by itself!

Re: It isn't eight cores and it's still embarassingly slow

I'm afraid those bench scores are less truthful than your average politician, for why see "Intel cripple compiler" or "Cinebench caught rigging" for just two examples.

There is a REASON why Intel has been busted on three continents for market rigging ya know, its because they have been caught not only paying OEMs not to stock AMD systems but also have been caught rigging both their own compiler as well as outright bribing benchmark companies by giving them VERY lucrative advertising deals) if the scores come out their way.

So yeah if you let me tie a boat anchor onto the Intel chips so that every math heavy task had to use the old 487 (which hasn't been considered anything but a legacy path since 1999) code paths along with other dirty tricks I'm sure I could produce a bench that shows the Phenom I beating the latest i7...that don't mean its a legitimate measure by any means.

Re: Wake me up when they can manage to make a decent Desktop CPU

They already have if ULV is your thing, its called the Athlon 5350 socket AM1, a max TDP of just 25w (and actual usage typically below the A4-5000, we're talking 9-12w) and that is WITH a Radeon 8400 GPU built in. Its based on the same core as the A$ BTW, so if you like the A4 you'll love the 5350.

If you want to make a ULV desktop or even HTPC I highly recommend it, oh and FYI you can get the APU with the board for less than $110 USD.

Foxconn's going to 'exploit' Indian labour? SCORE! Bye, poverty

Missing the rotting elephant in the room..

Although that isn't surprising, as its buried in a mound of dioxin. You see the "dirty little secret" of all these factories offshoring is the mass murder of insane numbers of people in the area.

And make no mistake, when you see Chinese "cancer towns" where the odds are better than 1 in 3 you'll die young of a toxin induced cancer, or see thousands dying early or various GI cancers because over 20% of the farmland is so full of heavy metals and poisons that any food from them is deadly, that is EXACTLY what it is, its mass murders committed for the profits of a few.

So lets not pretend these corps are doing anything "good" for these people, they are throwing them a few shekels in return for poisoning their entire area for centuries, I don't see anybody with any sense arguing that is any kind of "good deal" for those that have to live there. And of course once the populace gets tired of dying they will just move to the next poor nation they can sucker into taking their toxins,like a plague they just move from area to area.

E-cigarettes fingered as source of NASTY VIRUS

Doesn't have a thing to do with ecigs

Unless you also blame Sandisk when a bug comes out on Flash? this is the fault of the USB consortium designing USB to automatically trust whatever the device tells it, this makes it trivial to put malware on pretty much anything USB.

The solution? Point him to one of the several box mods that use a simple USB cord that just hooks to the battery, problem solved.

Re: We need the hard evidence...

Everyone is making funnies but just remember there have been a rash of "ZOMFG ecigs burn babies!" style FUD articles in the past few months but when anybody asks for the actual data to back up the claim? Crickets.

Cigarettes are a billion dollar business folks, not only for big tobacco but for big mommy government in the form of taxes, ecigs cut both out of the loop so be sure to ask for the data and follow the money.

If you don't believe me feel free to look up the article by the Japanese researcher being pushed by the media just yesterday, he claimed ecigs have ten times the carcinogens of regular cigarettes, oh noes! When multiple groups asked what should have been simple questions like what brands were tested, whether he was talking premade cig carts or juice, what the power levels used were, what was used to measure the samples? Crickets.

Sony tells hacked gamer to pay for crooks' abuse of PlayStation account

Re: Can't say I'm very sympathetic.

Thank you for admitting you just like to buy lots of gimmicks, because if there is one thing we PC gamers really need to educate users on its the "PC gaming is teh expensive!" is a myth is priority #1.

I have built many a gaming PC for sub $400 USD for friends that play most games on medium to high and with PC games not being CPU bound for years its beyond trivial to grab a used tower (after all we've had quads for nearly 7 years folks) and slap in a card and be able to play most games easily.

Cheapest I ever slapped together a gaming PC? $120 USD for a single mom in the building who asked me to come up with the cheapest thing I could for her to use that her son could also play shooters on. I grabbed a Win 7 Athlon triple core HP for $50 off of Craigslist that already had Win 7, slapped in an HD7750 I found online for $69. Now he plays TF2, DCU, and anything else he likes and they are VERY happy with performance.

So please be sure to continue to point out its only expensive if you want to buy gimmicks, because I don't know how many times I've had to explain to folks (even help them pick out the parts or PC) because they truly believed the "a gaming PC costs thousands!" myth.

Re: Ben Smyth's details

Wow...you've REALLY not dealt with online trolls or gaming douchebags before, have you?

First of all given Sony's record on security, with even their movie division getting pwned to the tune of a billion bux? Expecting their PSN security to keep out hackers is a BIG assumption and I would argue given the track record? Unfounded.

Second you've obviously never pwned one of these narcissist crybabies before because BS like this? Right up their alley. I ended up having to get the cops involved with mine as when he couldn't figure out how to hack my PC gaming account he ended up DDoSing my ISP, all because I dropped him like a bad habit in an online game, so going "FU you can pay for my game now beiootch?"...yeah really wouldn't surprise me.

At the end of the day it should be trivial to see whether or not this guy is a friend of the person or just an asshat and considering their track record on security? Frankly they should be assuming its a hack, after all their security does stink ATM.

Yet another reason to buy a PC

You aren't forced to buy from a single company, can't have online play held hostage, don't need your CC to use it (you can even buy Steam bux with cash from several retailers if you CHOOSE to use that service) and several places sell games with absolutely no DRM at all.

Considering they've been selling AMD quad APU systems at Tigerdirect that can even play BF4 above 30fps for around $220 USD along with the fact that MSFT announced Win 10 is gonna be free for the first year to pretty much anybody? I'd say its a no brainer.

I know I'm VERY glad I got my family into PC gaming, by shopping smart and getting systems with plenty of room to upgrade I doubt I have even $1300 USD into the FOUR PC towers we have while we all have plenty of power (quad for the missus, hexa me and the oldest, octo for the youngest because he had to be Spinal Tap and go to 11) and the amount of money I saved on games is just nuts.

Being able to have a family game even with the oldest the next town over with the new wife and the youngest in his new apt down the street without having to shell out a pile of cash just for "permission" to do so? Priceless.

Adobe finds, patches ANOTHER exploited Flash 0day

Quite a lot actually

Well lets see, HTML V5 is pretty much useless for web animation and web games, so all those are out, its an insane resource hog on anything without H.264 acceleration, so all your older PCs and phones and tablets? yeah those are out too. What else, oh yeah HTML V5 has baked in DRM thanks to Apple and MSFT, and only supports a codec that is one of the biggest patents landmines in history so Linux users? Yeah you can give up now, You have to be one of the big three (Apple, Google or MSFT) or you'll be committing patent infringment and with HTML V5 DRM so easy to use most videos? Yeah you aren't gonna be able to watch 'em.

Does Flash need a better alternative? Sure it does, its creaky and old and buggy as hell. But sadly instead of demanding something actually BETTER than what we have what is happening is corporate interests are ramming through a "standard" that is about as user friendly as the first XB-One press conference. There is a whole lot for big corps and big media to like about HTML V5, requires new hardware, has DRM, lots of lock in, for the end user? Yeah not so much, pretty much worse than Flash in every way, worse CPU and memory usage, worse codec support, worse game and animation support, nothing but worse all the way round.

Windows 7 MARKED for DEATH by Microsoft as of NOW

Re: We've just rolled out Windows 7

ClassicShell has about as much to do with the actual UI as a Win 7 themepack for XP. Sure it LOOKS like Win 7 but once you start working with it? You'll quickly start running into areas that are still Metro and a PITB. Don't take my word for it, start launch control panel programs in ClassicShell and see how long it is before you get "Metro'd".

My users are following my lead and staying with Win 7 until Win 10 has shown to be free of gotchas.

Re: WTF?

Its nothing to worry about as its only the end of MAINSTREAM support which is defined by MSFT as the period "when new features CAN be added"..question, can you remember any "new features" added during the previous 5 years? Can you remember any "new features" added to Vista during its mainstream period?

I've tried and the closest I can come up with is Dreamscene for Vista which was IRL just a CYA to keep MSFT from getting a class action over Balmer saying those that shelled out 3 bills for Vista Ultimate would get "Ultimate Extras" like preorder DLC. Other than that? yeah I can't think of nothing.

Might as well say "Windows 7 is kinda sorta possibly in the middle of its life, if it don't get extended like XP did" because we all saw how many times MSFT had to hit the time out button on XP, wouldn't surprise me if they have to do the same with 7.

Ailing AMD battered by goodwill, inventory charges

Re: AMD E1

Actually the Bobcat and Puma chips are great, its just Win 8 is a big old pile of suck. I have one of the weakest ones they made, the first gen Bobcat E350 netbook, and its a GREAT chip in Windows 7,I can even do 720P over HDMI (can do 1080P as well, although it will dip below 30FPS in heavy action scenes).

But AMD knows something you apparently do not, which is Windows 10 also runs great on Bobcat through Jaguar. I've got it running now on the above E350 and its damned snappy, all I had to do was kill the start menu live tiles and its even faster than Win 7!

But of course the rotting elephant in the room is how long Intel is gonna be allowed to keep rigging the market before they get busted. It has come out Cinebench was rigging their benches against AMD for their buddy Intel and you can watch the Tek Syndicate podcast "Intel admits to rigging" where they straight up admitted that they "gave incentives" for benchmark software to use the Intel Cripple Compiler, which puts out code that gimps AMD chips.

You can't have a fair fight if one side is allowed to bribe the ref, and that is what they have been doing. If they win on merit? Fine and dandy, but don't forget the reason we got stuck with tens of millions of lousy power hogging P4s was Intel decided the way to win when they were behind is just to rig the fight, we need to demand that this isn't allowed to keep happening!

DAMN YOU! Microsoft blasts Google over zero-day blabgasm

Re: Sorry, but Google were uttely wrong.

Considering there is a major exploit for EVERY Android system 4.3 and older (which represents the majority both in units in use AND in units currently being sold) that Google has marked as "won't fix" I think we can all see how much Google cares about security with regards to even its own customers, NONE.

For those that haven't heard look up "Webview vulnerability" and you'll find plenty of articles. Sorry Google fans but if you spent a lot of money on that ICS phone? You're boned as Google does not care if you are pwned, we are talking less than 2 years since release, talk about p*ss poor support!

BTW before you try to bash MSFT for not upgrading WinPhone 7? You might want to know that WinPhone 7 STILL gets security updates.

Windows 10: One for the suits, right Microsoft? Or so one THOUGHT

Re: What about Windows 9?

The rumor is that during testing they found a lot of the older yet still popular business software (Quicken cough Quickbooks cough) would look at Windows 9 and refuse to install because the code equated Windows 9 with 95/98.

This honestly wouldn't surprise me as I've dealt with business software that was hardcoded to refuse to install unless Flash 7 and ONLY Flash 7 was installed so while we haven't any proof the rumor is true on the surface it seems logical.

Re: Tiles should replace icons fully - everywhere.

I take it you never tried CPUMeter and NetMeter gadgets as they are great for keeping an eye on the system and seeing when an app is sucking more CPU/RAM/Bandwidth than it should.

Luckly for us that like gadgets they work just fine in Windows 8-10 thanks to 8GadgetPack, it even comes bundled with the most popular ones like the above and adding any previous gadget is "clicky clicky" simple.

I do find it funny that so many would rag on gadgets while advocating Linux, while damned near every Linux desktop screenshot usually had gadgets like CPUMeter and NetMeter running.

Re: The 'sanity at last' release.

I'm running it on a 2011 AMD netbook which is the weakest thing I have, the logic being that if it runs good there it'll run good anywhere...the verdict? Faster than Windows 7,even with all drivers running in compatibility mode, and the few ideas left from Win 8 like the live tiles on the right of the start menu are optional, completely under user control, and by default are things users might actually find useful like the weather.

While I thought Win 8 was garbage this is really nice and if the price is right I could easily see myself upgrading most of my systems. Its just a shame it no longer has DVD maker or I'd upgrade all but I have yet to find a program that works as well as DVD maker when it comes to making home movie DVDs.

If they can replace the Windows Gadgets? Heck yeah!

One of the best things that MSFT foolishly tossed was the Windows Gadgets, it was VERY handy to have everything from CPU load to network usage in one easy spot along the right side of the screen...now if these new tiles can take that place so that merely clicking on the start button gives me CPU/RAM/Network usage data any time I want it then why not?

I'll be finding out this weekend when I have the time to slap it on my netbook which I figure will be the perfect place to test Win 10, because if it kicks butt on an AMD Bobcat dual with a 5400 RPM drive? Then it'll fly on my desktops.

iPhone 6: The final straw for Android makers eaten alive by the data parasite?

Re: Uneducated toss.

Actually as someone living in the states that talks to a lot of folks I can tell you the biggest trend here is NOT iPhone, which is still seen as a hipster brand for the coasts, but ditching the wallet raping contracts completely and going with one of the many growing prepaid or pay as you go providers like Straight Talk, AT&T Go, and Ting.

The problem is these companies like Sony are trying to play in the high margin arena when any retailer here will tell you the $200 and under phones are outselling the $400+ phones by a good 4 to 1, again thanks to those ditching their contracts. BTW guess who makes the best phones at this price? The Chinese companies listed in TFA, as all you find from the likes of Sony and their ilk is refurbs or seriously outdated tech.

Mozilla axes HATED Firefox-ad-tab plan ... but will try again

Re: Here's an idea!

This actually CAN be done right, look at the default start screen for Palemoon for instance...its got such a good selection that frankly I have kept it as a home screen.

Here is what you get on its start screen...palemoon home page, gmail,twitter,G+,Linkedin,BBCNews,Wikipedia, second row..FF addons, Outlook livemail,FB,yahoo,deviantart,imdb,download crew, final row.lifehacker,newgrounds,youtube,microsoft,stumbleupon,wordpress,livejournal.

With that selection there is more than enough places that I use a lot to make it worth keeping...is Palemoon getting paid for having some of those there? Maybe,probably,but I really don't care since I use those sites anyway and if it keeps palemoon cranking while making my browsing a little faster win/win.

So I think it all comes down to selection and usefulness. If they make sure you have a wide selection of popular websites that are heavily used? I could see folks keeping it and even finding it useful, if they just let anybody with cash buy the slots? Then it'll bomb.

US Supreme Court supremo rakes Aereo lawman in oral arguments

Re: Who has the bigger pockets ?

What is funny is it really don't matter which way they rule, as broadcast TV is dying. I work with people in their 20s all the time as well as live near a college and their TVs? Are all being used for streaming, gaming, or as PC monitors. Kids today have grown up with the net and the idea of scheduled TV is as alien to them as 8-tracks.

So enjoy your greedy while you can broadcasters, because you will go the way of the LP. ironically if they would encourage bunches like this they might actually get kids watching again as they could just DVR everything and watch it on their timetable, but its not the first time we've seen companies burn long term survival for short term gains.

Cheat Win XP death: Your handy guide to keeping snubbed operating system ticking over

The pirate version is better.

Like in much software the pirate version of Windows XP, called "TinyXP" is a MUCH better candidate for a VM than the bog standard XP and as a nice bonus it takes all of 10 seconds to put in your XP Pro key and make it a fully licensed copy of XP pro.

The reason why its better is simple, it was originally made by a Windows gamer (who sadly stopped making Tiny Windows after Tiny 7 Rev 2 due to losing his job in the downturn) whose goal was to make it run better than 95% of the software for Windows while using the least resources possible. Due to its age XP has a LOT of cruft like netmeeting that pretty much nobody uses anymore so by cutting that and other junk (the installer even gives an option of not having IE/OE/WMP which lowers its RAM footprint on desktop to a microscopic 50MB) you have an OS that was practically built for a VM.

He also has versions of 2K3, Vista, and Win 7 out there if you have the need for one of those as a VM, I'm sure anybody looking can find them easily enough. Oh and for those that wonder "how long can ya go?" the answer is the now hard to find Tiny Win2K Pro, it uses just 34Mb of RAM and a full install is less than 500Mb.