Re: @jai
They could always open up BBM, I suppose.
They'd lose in terms of exclusive device sales but those seem to be down the shitter anyway. And they might win in terms of service provision.
4790 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Nov 2009
I wish I knew why, but since developing a couple of Win8 Store Apps for work - demonstration stuff made under orders, basically - I find myself more and more tempted by the notion of a WinRT tablet.
It's a challenge, I suppose. Take the hobbled device, make it do everything I need.
I wouldn't buy this thing, though. The combination of Acer's crappy build quality and a last-gen x86 chip rings up a large "NO SALE" sign.
I have to be honest IP, old feller.
It's not about Windows 8 which I don't love and which doesn't magically make everything better. It makes a very few minor things better, true, but not enough to get worked up about.
What's got me riled up is the massed howling crusade against it when the reasoning is so fucking trivial.
If it made major workflow alterations, sure. Wail, scream and go on and on about how bad it is. But a launcher that you rarely if ever see? That's it? That's your "horror"? That's "the abomination that is TIFKAM"?
Once we get that petty about a tool for basic usage which is not a huge improvement but is actually an improvement in some regards, well.. somebody needs to step up and point out that acting like a screaming drag-queen over a missing sequin does not do this industry any favours at all.
Since nobody else has the balls to tell the emperor that he's Danny la Rue, I have to do it.
@MysteryGuy
Seriously, why are you acting as if there is no desktop? Because there is. All this "I hate TIFKAM" bullshit is just a distraction, regardless of what twisted reasoning you give it, because the desktop is still there and it has been improved.
I see the tiles once per day on boot. Then, because my desktop tile is first in the stack I press the RETURN key and all I get is Desktop.
Tell me, what do you do in your 30 years of IT? Project Management? Cleaning the monitors? Because this is not rocket science. Such visceral hatred for one extra tap on a key is just fucked up.
What's depressing is that ALL of this Windows8 hate comes from the industry.
End users look at you as if you're mad when you talk about a learning curve between 7 and 8. As far as they universally seem to be concerned, 8 is easier. Press the big buttons. It's computing for the McDonalds employee level and they like it that way.
You do when it turns out that the 'hammer' you thought you were buying turns out to be an orange on a stick.
You don't. Builders don't tend to talk like that.
In any case, nobody with an iota of professionalism could describe Windows 8 that way. It literally does every single thing that Windows 7 does, plus a whole lot more, plus it runs faster, uses less resources and offers improved tools and a lot more information about those tools.
Seriously. If you pick Windows 7 over Windows 8 and you're an admin, you suck at your job and you should be fired. Only an idiot would refuse a better tool simply because it comes with a different colour scheme.
I don't love it but it's just a launcher. The start menu was also just a launcher. If either bothered me, I'd change them. It's pretty bloody easy to do so and very well-documented.
If the aesthetic properties of a tool you work with are enough to shit on your opinion of its utility, you're a bad workman.
You rarely if ever hear the phrase "ew, the new orange on this hammer is so yucky, what a horror. I'm going back to bashing nails in with my head", do you?
Too many fucking divas in this industry. Newsflash, people. We are not artists. We are not visionaries. We are not genius savants. We are mechanics. I have been offered a new hammer. It may be ugly but it hammers straighter and it damps recoil better than the old hammer. It also hits just as hard while being considerably lighter to carry around. Does its ugliness concern me?
No. I have no business being concerned and no right to be concerned. I am not Gok Wan, I am a fucking mechanic.
Perhaps stupidly, the easiest OS to secure is probably Windows 8 because it has built in on-by-default AV and firewall.
That doesn't mean its the most secure. I could build you debian server than would give anyone pause - in fact, that's probably the most secure OS build that I personally could produce. However, just because it runs on debian or a fork thereof doesn't mean it's secure - Exhibit A being Eadon's blog.
Oh dear.
Looks like ChromeOS is not getting widespread support and has therefore failed and is useless and should be junked.
No? But those are the arguments which are used for Windows Phone, aren't they?
I wonder if the downvotes all came from ChromeOS users. If so, either Larry or Sergey has more than one Reg account, it seems.
Well, one downside of running an XP box is that you can only run an XP box. Hyper-V will jut as happily run any OS you care to load it up with.
It's brilliant with a Technet subscription because you can test anything and everything is available.
For now. Some fuckbag in accounts at MS has killed that plan, sadly. But at least they're offering the freebie trials.
So for some folk [with certain hormone issues - eg thyroxine] they can eat dramatically less than you or I AND PUT ON WEIGHT...
Are you saying that a problematic thyroid gland can cause you to metabolize fat from air?
Because, y'know, the dear old (calories in - calories out) equation is at least consistent with things like thermodynamics and conservation of energy. Whereas, since fat is an energy store, you appear to be saying that we can magically make more energy than we intake simply by having a glandular disorder.
That seems unlikely to me.