Posts by bombastic bob

Microsoft bans common passwords that appear in breach lists

Re: @codysydney: Because, Dear Commentard.

this guy over 50 uses 'keepass' to try to manage the password chaos... then I only have to really remember ONE password (what the hell was it, anyway...)

(it wasn't the one in that XKCD comic, either)

the movies give us the answer

doesn't anyone remember the movie 'Hackers'? You know, the most common passwords:

love, sex, money, secret, and of course, god.

just ban those and we're fine.

and, of course, this:

https://xkcd.com/936/

Republicans threaten to derail internet transition

past performance predicting potential problems

"If Marco Rubio is asking for a delay until this latest set of reforms can be seen to be working, he's not acting irrationally, he's simply noting history."

a well written conclusion.

It seems that ICANN is one of MANY "non-profits" being used for 'other than honorable' purposes someplace beneath the surface. Mrs. Clinton's foundation is another great example. Take money from those who are NOT working in the best interest of the world, or the American people for that matter, and don't say it's to influence you, but pay out mega-salaries to yourself and your relatives and your friends out of that non-profit's "budget", like there's no tomorrow or end to the incoming cash.

THAT, and engage in POLITICAL MANEUVERINGS (like paid lobbyists) as was pointed out in the article.

I'm guessing that a LOT of people *SMELL* the corruption. I do. it's a reason to pull back the reigns and have another look.

Letting go of IANA at some point in the future is a GOOD idea. Handing it over to a potentially corrupted ICANN (remember, they're in California) without sufficient legal protection for THE PEOPLE, would be a HUGE mistake. We might just find that China gets way too many IPv4 address blocks re-assigned, for example, leaving ISPs to use NAT and making IPv4 blocks *UNAFFORDABLE*. And *NOT* widely adopting IPv6 beforehand!

You wanted innovation? We gave you Clippy the Paperclip in your IM client

The Silicon Valley world view

"The second problem is that it shows the limitations of the Silicon Valley world view."

There's more truth in that one line than is apparent from reading it, even reading it multiple times.

where do I begin? the pervasive politics? 'too much money' without the discipline MOST people have in accumulating wealth? A 'bubble' of like-minded immature inexperienced elitists who 'feel' that they know better than the rest of us do on what's "best for us" ? And they busily 'sycophant' one another into believing their own B.S. (it's sorta like that in Redmond, too).

At some point, like the 'dot bomb' bubble from a decade-and-a-half ago, this house of cards MUST collapse under its own weight. Even the 'unicorns' must go.

LinkedIn plays down '117 million users' breach data sale

I always want salt on my hash

"prior to the breach, passwords were hashed but not salted."

sprinkling some salt on my hash now.

I normally dislike social media, but admit to having a linkedin profile. got the warnings from linkedin, the first one being an e-mail from 2AM, and the 2nd when I attempted to log in [I logged in specifically to reset my password, convenient].

So yeah, they wanted me to reset my password, and so did I.

Funny, when I logged in yesterday, I couldn't find the "change password" command and got caught up in updating my profile (and forgot to do it). This morning I remember "I didn't change the password". Well, they 'helped' and made it easy. Looks like 'I forgot my password' is the fastest way to get there.

Maybe THAT is the problem - make it easier to ACTUALLY! CHANGE! THE! PASSWORD!!!

The PC is dead. Gartner wishes you luck, vendors

Re: The PC...

"The PC's demise is greatly exaggerated."

WELL! SAID!

As you pointed out, SALES are dead. well, not ENTIRELY dead. Just dropping and low.

why?

a) user perception of "better". Win-10-nic and "Ape" don't 'look better' or 'perform better' than existing (say windows 7) machines. Moore's law isn't making them 'faster enough' than 'what you already own'.

b) the 4-inchers [aka 'phone zombies'] who do ALL of their computing on a 4-inch phone screen, do faceb**ch, tw*tter, and texting [the new 'messenger'] MOST of the time. They buy new 'toys' to do this with, and they're nearly always a 4-inch 'phone factor'.

- which leads to -

c) SALES are currently driven by the 4-inchers. This drives CLUELESS MARKET-DROIDS into "feeling" that "the PC is dead". which is WRONG.

HOW TO FIX IT:

give people a reason to WANT to get a new PC/laptop to replace the old one!

[as of now, "Ape" and Win-10-nic are DIS-incentives to get something new]

/me points out: sales figures are more like a derivative, not an integral, and nobody is tracking "the depletion rate" of existing machines, now are they? So it's an incomplete picture at best.

Microsoft shifts Windows 7 and 8.1 fixes to 'rollup' bundles

Will the rollup silently include KB3035583 and (unwanted) telemetry?

Has Micro-shaft discovered JUST HOW MANY OF US are NOT getting any updates (or deliberately NOT installing a certain handful of updates) because of their AGGRESSIVE GWX marketing tactics? And, the alleged SPYWARE being added to 7 and 8.x via Windows Update?

Not to mention the more RECENT discovery, having GWX 'up'grades to Win-10-nic AUTOMATICALLY SCHEDULED FOR US.

I take it that this will be THEIR way of STOPPING us from picking and choosing which updates we DO install.

Thanks, Micro-shaft. We really _NEEDED_ that...

Microsoft .NET Core update asks developers: How you doin'?

Re: Cross platform

"But like you say, lots of ill feeling in some parts of the Linux world."

yes.

I don't like '.Not's bass-ackwards way of doing things, being inefficient among other stuff. CAIRO, OpenGL, and other standard graphics libraries have been around for quite a while in the open source world, to abstract graphics from the display surface or OS. But they're not "Microsoft's Creation". Same with whatever ELSE ".Not" might do 'for you'. Poorly.

The _ONLY_ reason '.Not Core' would exist is for Microsoft to "leverage" every non-Windows operating system too, like the way they build TELEMETRY into it and require "opt out" to get rid of it. "Their fingers in EVERYTHING" in other words.

A few years ago a single 'Mono' "app" [tomboy] was added to the default Gnome 2 install. HOWLS ensued. *NOBODY* WANTED to haul in the 'mono'-lithic pile of CRAP that was needed to support THAT! ONE! APPLICATION! [one I don't even use]. It was subsequently REMOVED and eventually replaced with something that did NOT have a "mono" dependency.

I doubt ".Not Core" will be any BETTER than mono. More ginormous monolithic inefficient libraries, I'm sure.

I'll stick with gtk, qt, or native X11 coding thanks, or use something like wxWidgets which can be adapted from an MFC C++ application with some effort. [gtk and Qt and wxWidgets are _ALREADY_ cross-platform, too!]

The Windows 10 future: Imagine a boot stamping on an upgrade treadmill forever

Re: Dependency Hell

there's an easy fix to that: a) static link [don't rely on already-installed non-updated shared libs], and b) install dependencies yourself, with name changes as needed.

Example, if you need ffmpeg with your appLICATION, include ffmpeg source as part of the distro (for GPL compliance), and ship it with a re-named binary built from that source (or installed into a particular location), all nicely STATIC LINKED to avoid ANY dependency issues with shared libs / DLLs.

With the exception of certain shared MICRO-SHAFT libraries, this is practical and generally does not increase the memory footprint by much. It's what *I* do. POSIX included.

"the slow decline of Windows and PCs into irrelevance"

you're wrong about that. you can't look at NEW computer sales to measure what people are actually using, particularly for business, which is still using windows and desktop/notebook computers.

Although I'd like to see them use LINUX or BSD desktop/notebook computers...

"Savvy users will make all their business apps have web frontends"

Why, so they can look like "Universal" windows CRapps? Puh-lease...

Better off using Py-gtk or Qt than web-based front-ends. Or wxWidgets [which you can translate an MFC appLICATION into with reasonable effort, as long as it's not relying on ".Not"].

Then your GUI applications will run on Winders, Linux, Mac, maybe even Open Solaris. Whatever platform you want, pretty much.

That'd kill the MICROSOFT OS NEAR-MONOPOLY really fast, wouldn't it?

Re: "Makes Windows 10 seem like an infection. Quite apt"

"Got a pop-up yesterday telling me when my Windows 10 upgrade was scheduled. Microsoft need to be hit with the world's biggest anti-trust suit."

I'm waiting for a 'The Register' article on this. Saw one on Tom's Hardware, e-mailed URL to Reg staff yesterday...

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/windows-10-auto-schedules-updates,31802.html

El Reg, this one's pretty heinous. As bad as the malware-looking "upgrade now" or "upgrade later"

Re: So...

"Or are you just going to sit on the same version of Linux forever?"

I typically don't upgrade my BSD machines [other than patches] to bleeding edge. Why bother if it's working? patch the infrequent vulnerabilities. no need for 'bleeding edge' if what you have already works. It's why I'm sticking with Windows 7 for my windows boxen.

As for Linux, I typically stick with one version of THAT as well. It's more stable, particularly for software development. If I upgraded a particular ubuntu build machine (a virtualbox VM) that has patched compilers [patched by me] for a particular CPU, I'd have to re-do the patches. better to leave it 'as-is', because it's *STABLE*. So what if it's 3 years old.

'Bleeding edge' is *OVER*-*RATED*

Flash zero day phished phoolish Microsoft Office users

Re: If I had a genie...

I've heard that in the publishing world, Adobe products are some of the best. What they should NOT have done is Flash, Shockwave, etc. [the biggest security craters on the intarwebs]. Those things are probably costing the company more than they were ever worth, especially reputation-wise.

Re: Tempting to say : 'Good'

"Or the fact you can still embed shit shit in an Office document?"

could be worse, a mail reader could OPEN THOSE AUTOMATICALLY in order to "preview" the attachment. You know. like 'Virus Outbreak' aka 'Microsoft Outlook'.

And the article suggesting that Win-10-nic is any kind of "mitigation" for this is laughable.

"Oooh look a really funny thing, it's in a '.doc' file attached to this e-mail, I need to open the document to view it, I have Office and it can open those"

The fork? Node.js: Code showdown re-opens Open Source wounds

Re: Without open source there would be no leftpad

"...and then what would we do?"

learn how to code without some 3rd party library?

Seriously, maybe it should wake people up to the *evils* of things *like* 300kb java libraries. Do we REALLY need THIS on EVERY web site? It's worse than an irritation. It's a PLAGUE, or a CANCER. 'Teh Intarwebs' needs an enema.

/me points out (again) I hand-code my html and use '<table>' to format it really nice. Why can't others do this? 1/10 the size, or even smaller, faster loads, faster renders, yotta yotta...

(fortunately, MOST open source is far less trivial, and far more useful, than 'leftpad')

Americans cutting back on online activity over security and privacy fears

credit vs debit card

Related to this is how the American banking laws protect credit cards BETTER than debit cards.

As it turns out, if you use a CREDIT card to pay for something online (from an American bank), you can reverse that charge pretty much 'for no reason' within ~30 days of getting your statement, and the money won't go to the vendor [or scammer]. As I understand it, the USA is the only country that does this. And, for this reason, I do *NOT* use debit cards for online purchases. That way if I'm ripped off I can reverse the charge. Also card holders are only responsible for $50 on scams.

but it's a LOT harder to get your money back for debit cards, or from a fraudulent e-check, or any kind of direct access to your bank account. not sure what happens in those cases.

I got new debit cards right away after both the Target and Home Depot breaches. The bank gladly handed them out when I went there in person to get them re-issued, barely any waiting, like they were waiting for me.

Kill Flash now? Chrome may be about to do just that

Re: Off-topic (almost)

"If you have to unblock Javascript just to view the page content, then they're doing it wrong."

WELL SAID!

A couple of years ago, things worked fine if you used noscript and 'gnash' (it's a POSIX thing) rather than Adobe's plugin. Gnash being open source was LESS likely to do evil things, and it had the extra interesting capability of doing automatic stream captures to a directory of your choice. Unfortunately gnash is behind the latest moving target on FLASH specs, and didn't work last time I tried it.

So now I happily disable all flash plugins, on everything, period (even gnash). And I use 'noscript'. It's like "safe surfing". It's amazing how many viruses and hijacks will NOT happen if you block javascript and flash. [and I have others do the same, and it works, even on a Vista system]

And blocking HTML5 content by default, particularly ads - that is *EXACTLY* what *I* want to do! More people should do the same. If *EVERYBODY* does this, then it would force ad servers to use static content again. And, NO SCRIPTING.

/me pointing out that you can make a nice, readable web page by using '<table>' to size columns. I like making the content 85% of the screen width so it's easier on the eyes. no need for script. drop-down menus are overrated.

Criminals exploit zero day Flash vulnerability

Re: Sure it can

there _WAS_ gnash, that used to "sort of" work, but doesn't seem to be keeping up with the moving target aka "standards". So after disabling flash entirely, I don't miss it at all.

Google asks Unicode to look over 13 new emoji showing professional women

Unicode has gone far too beyond what was necessary.

"Unicode has gone far too beyond what was necessary."

I suppose we could just include UNICODE alphabets for all of the Tolkein languages, and Star Trek languages (Klingon, Romulan, Vulcan), and any OTHER sci-fi fictional language for that matter.

No, wait...

http://www.klingonwiki.net/En/Unicode

(an attempt WAS made...)

Re: Why "Music = rock" only?

"Agreed. Let's have emoji for musicians playing musical saw, theremin, glass harmonica and spoons."

don't forget washboard. we can use 'Bender' the robot in that one.

Re: Prejudice

"Your post shows shameful lack of appreciation for the strands of diversity in the community we represent."

hook, line, *AND* sinker!

You did not get the humor nor satire, did you?

Personally, I am *SO* *SICK* *AND* *TIRED* of all of the political-correctness "diversity" nonsense. Why can't we just recognize people as 'human' and NOT make race/sex/appearance/behavior/whatever a criteria for ANYTHING? Are all too many of us as immature as a 4 year old, needing a doll that "looks like me" or something? Or in this case, an emoji. Cue 'rainbow brigade' emoji list ad infinitum. I wonder what the 'gay' one will look like...

But the final conclusion of the original poster was the correct one: let's just abandon the use of emojis, period.

"Your last point completely disregards the feelings of those people"

Not surprising. 'Feel', the new 'F' word as far as I'm concerned. Everybody has them, they're a poor basis for decision making, too many people *feel* instead of *think*, and maybe that's how we got here...

thanks for playing, though.

(or was the smiley at the end an indication of satire?)

Windows 10 build 14342: No more friendly Wi-Fi sharing

Re: symlink support for Linux subsystem

"Also, annoyingly, the arguments to MKLINK are swapped relative to 'ln -s'. Never miss up a chance to be incompatible with other systems, I guess."

There's the RIGHT way, the WRONG way, the MILITARY way, and the MICROSOFT way.

[guess which way THEY chose?]

what I would like to see is a hard-link to a file that does what you see in POSIX systems; that is, it increases the reference count on the physical storage for the file, allowing you to refer to it from anyplace on that volume, and it appears as if it IS "the file" from any of them, but deleting any of those references doesn't delete the actual file until the actual file has no more references.

So Microsoft's 'junctions' really are like symbolic links, and NOT like hard links at all. When you do a 'dir' listing they show up as 'junction', etc. etc. (though I don't recall if a file alias shows up differently or not). And don't even get me started on attributes like 'hidden' and the security things associated with them... *shudder*.

have they fixed the 2D FLUGLY? probably not...

So, have they fixed the 2D FLUGLY (flat/ugly)? probably not...

and I doubt they fixed the adware/spyware or the preponderance of "the Store". Or that 'start thing' (ok I can run classic shell, so it's on ME for that one).

Until Micro-shaft can address THESE! MAJOR! PROBLEMS! I'm not touching Win-10-nic for anything OTHER than verifying that the appLICATIONS that I write are COMPATIBLE with it.

they need a serious CLUE-By-FOUR applied to something...

GitHub pricing change

it's still pretty cheap

So, it's still a pretty cheap cloud-based solution for private projects where multiple developers [particularly remote developers] can collaborate. I've been doing a lot of contract work where the repositories are on (private) github repositories, and I've created a few public ones for my own stuff. It's not perfect, has it's flaws and irritations, but works well enough.

What I didn't see in the article is whether or not these prices are higher or lower than before. Or is that "forthcoming" ?

Blocking ads? Smaller digital publishers are smacked the hardest

Re: Their loss someone else's gain

"Advertising is such an all round shitty thing I am surprised it isn't more regulated for the good of everyone."

I disagree. advertising is GOOD for many reasons. It's just that we should be able to choose whether or not to view it. And, like FAX spamming, and TEXT spamming (and to some extent, e-mail spamming if you consider paid bandwidth), when it costs the RECIPIENT to view advertising, various gummint agencies should either regulate it heavily, or make bandwidth-heavy methods illegal 'for the good of everyone'.

That being said, advertising can be GOOD. You can advertise your skills to get hired, or hiring managers can advertise an available job, and maybe a simple sign on a store is a form of 'advertising' too (I'm looking for a place to buy drain cleaner - hey, there's a hardware store!). It's been around since capitalism came into existence. And I don't want to replace capitalism, because the "something else" would be a WHOLE! LOT! WORSE!!!

Re: "Incentivized" - yech!

"What pushed me to ad blocking was the fact that I can get the computational clap from reputable sites"

that sort of thing has made a few headlines recently (on 'The Register' specifically).

this is why AD BLOCKING (and script blocking, and flash blocking) is part of what I like to call "safe surfing". Think of the ad/script/flash blocker as a CONDOM on your web browser. They shouldn't blame us for using the "net condom" because the alternative is NO web surfing, or risk getting the 'computational clap' as you so eloquently put it.

"I still think network level ad blocking is a terrible idea though, and I'm still kind of expecting some legal or regulatory move to put the kibosh on the whole idea."

ACK, since it 'breaks the internet' and violates any concept of 'net neutrality'.

a simple client-based program or web browser plugin is a better idea. phone providers could even pre-install them. MITM-based filtering works for corporate firewalls, but doing that for wide release again "breaks the internet". It's a pandora's box we don't need opened.

Re: Saving bandwidth

ACK on the 'saving bandwidth' part. If ad-makers would STOP IT with the scripting and the 'flashing' and soon to come, HTML5 video, I doubt people would block them [they'd simply ignore them like I have come to do by habit].

On a related note, the article states:

"The research reckoned that smaller publishers are most at risk from the rapid adoption of ad-blocking software as they often solely rely on revenues from advertising to continue operating."

This may be true, but I doubt anybody cares. I think "better advertising revenue model" is due. They need to find out what ads people will NOT block, and then do those. I can think of ways to put ads on the page that would NOT be blocked. It's called an 'ad banner'. No scripting, no CDNs, a simple graphic with a link. It works. It won't be blocked. It won't be noticed by "the bots" because it will appear to be CONTENT. you could even put a small ad banner in the middle of article text, and as long as there's no obvious scripting and iframes and all that, it will look JUST like content to the bots.

And I doubt anyone would complain, especially if the graphics' file sizes are small. It would be like an ad 'in the middle of' a newspaper article, right below the "continued on page A5" or whatever. People see that ad. It works. And content makers can take a lesson from the hundreds of years of newspaper publishing on THAT one.

Russia poised to unleash 'Son of Satan' ICBM

Re: So ...

I think you and I posted that at about the same time (which is why I missed it when I added my previous comment)

"great minds" and all that

Pootie misses the cold war

Looks like Pootie simply misses the cold war. He "felt" more powerful back then. This new missile is his 'compensation' for... well... heh heh heh.

Microsoft bods tell El Reg: We've re-pivoted open-source .NET Core

Lipstick on a boar

well, ".Not core" is lipstick on a boar as far as I'm concerned.

a photo of their project manager wearing a T shirt with a FLUGLY 2D 'modern' windows logo didn't help. ew.

If they wanted to put a 'face' on the open sourceness, they should've just hired the guy that invented the thing....no, wait...

".Not" is bass-ackwards, and pretends to be 'object oriented' at the expense of resources and performance. You do NOT need to get multi-verse, universe, galaxy, solar system, planet, continent, yotta yotta, atom... just to get 'atom'. It's REDONKULOUSNESS at its best, and no WONDER Windows performance took a dive beginning with Server 2003 [where the UI became VERY "dot Notty" compared to Server 2k and XP].

Windows developers are better coding for the Win32 API (on windows 7, where ~2/3 of windows computer users still are), at least until Microsoft actively tries to stop us.

Can ad biz’s LEAN avert ADPOCALYPSE?

Re: Dear Advertisers, the solution is simple.

even a simple static graphic would be ok with me, NOT in my face, NOT moving, NOT consuming excess bandwidth, NOT tracking my web browsing, and NOT scripted. 'Banners'. they're fine, too. like a newspaper, as you pointed out. They've been in the newspapers for hundreds of years, right? Only recently, when it's possible to have them grab your nose and TWEEK it a few times, did they become heinous.

and 'targeted' advertising, let's say on "El Reg", would consist of "what people who read The Register might be interested in buying". THAT kind of 'targeting' is OK with me. Like a newspaper or magazine.

Gobble away! Charter-Time Warner Cable merger OK'd by FCC

I have been putting off business cable with TWC because of this

I have been putting getting a 'business cable' connection with TWC because of this. Business expense of having a fixed IP DSL with lousy bandwidth is bad enough. monthly price more than doubles to get significantly better bandwidth with cable. I wouldn't doubt that business connections via the cable (which may be the only real option I have) are in ANY way covered by any FCC requirements prior to a merger. I can only imagine that the kinds of "boiler room support in India" I've gotten from the DSL company would be ANY BETTER after a TWC/Charter merger. And so I've tolerated the lousy DSL with a fixed IP address for way longer than I should have.

I guess some more 'wait and see' is in order. A typical TWC biz cable connection would cost around $150/month for 3Mbit up/down and a fixed IP address (or about $110 for 1.5mbit up/down). I'm sure it can only get WORSE, not better, after the merger.

FCC urged to pause its fight against America's $20bn cable-box rip-off

Re: Good. Now we know their names.

"Let's brand "Corporate Shill" on their foreheads so they can't hide that fact"

how about a mandatory mailing of all of their major contributors? One page-full would do [all that stuff is public record]. alternatively, a web page.

tracking all of the non-profit [shell?] corporations (527, 501(c)(4,6)) that have surfaced because of 'campaign finance reform' (quoted cynically) might be a bit trickier... [how many lead to 'George Soros' for example, like 'MoveOn.org']

perhaps an alternative would be a mandatory RIBBON BAR worn on the chest, similar to ribbons and medals for military. Each one indicates a major contributor. then whenever a ConGrab-man stands up to speak, you'll see it all on whatever cable network is televising. Heh, yeah, cable network televising Con-Grab. back to THAT again.

Re: "60 congressmen, largely Republican..."

"Says it all really..."

not the 'republican' part, just the 'congressmen' part. cong-grab needs an enema. [not soap-boxing any more on this, as the rest would be obvious - yeah I'm a Trump supporter]

Re: Small pay-TV providers

keep in mind that a cable provider typically has a 'localized monopoly'. I can only get Time Warner, and with their new merger, I'm sure that customer service will suffer somehow. TWC has recently been bragging (in ads) about improved service, raised their rates a couple of times, and switched us all over to digital cable boxen. The 'rent' is free... for now. Will be $/month at some point (for the cheap, featureless box).

Since the switchover I've noticed malfunctioning channels on more than one occasion, had them try to bill me for a tech visit post-self-install [caused by their screwed up database] because the boiler plate said "let me send a tech over" [week later] tech arrives, "I know what's going on" makes a phone call, it's fixed. THAT kind of thing (then they try to BILL ME for THEIR f-up). And some of the channels had WRONG aspect ratios that couldn't be corrected. And I can't disable channels I never want to see, like MSNBC or a spanish-language channel or whatever (so channel surfing MUST scan THROUGH them). And re-scan doesn't stop 'the weather channel' from popping up an irritating 'malfunction' message.

And let's not forget the occasional stutters, pixelization, and black screens that seem to happen now that it's "all digital". Analog didn't really have THOSE problems...

Maybe it's time to force cable companies to allow others to use THEIR WIRES (at a reasonable fee, of course), similar to the way it happened with telcos. And now it's working with POWER COMPANIES (using the local utility's lines to deliver THEIR power THEY generate, usually solar).

But yeah, utilities are like that. They're "regulated" but not necessarily in OUR favor...

(and I've never seen a 'small pay-TV provider', not even once)

New Firefox versions will make you activate all new add-ons – except one hacker favourite

HTML5 in adverts? I blocked the FLASH ones easily enough!

To think that adverts switching to HTML5 would be a GOOD thing... it's *NOT*.

they're MUCH easier to BLOCK when they use FLASH! How? DISABLE THE FLASH PLUGIN!

(we should keep advertisements in the 'flash' ghetto, for our own good)

Also 'NoScript' helps eliminate flash content. It's amazing how much FASTER a web site that does NOT load embedded video content will display, compared to the alternative...

Official: Microsoft's 'Get Windows 10' nagware to vanish from PCs in July

Re: I'll believe it when I see it...

same here (I'll believe it when I see it). you would think that GWX would have that 'drop dead date' for the offer already built-in, or COULD have. A simple update to GWX that disables the popup windows would be sufficient. How hard could THAT be? or as someone else pointed out, just add line 25 "if past the date, STOP" to their stupid BASIC program that (as Calculon would point out) has an extra 'GOTO 10' line in it.

Re: Why July

"Start thinking for yourself and you might find Windows 10 OK."

As I saw someone else say in this forum, "Dear Mr. Pot, this is Kettle, please revise your statement regarding color". Or something like that.

And I won't find Windows 10 'OK'. I gave it a fair chance a year ago during the 'insider' program. It failed to meet expectations, by a wide margin.

But I DO agree, that they ARE listening [via spyware] as you pointed out.

The 'new' Microsoft? I still wouldn't touch them with a barge pole

WOW!

nice way of putting it all in that article.

I have often said SIMILAR THINGS (and on Microsoft's own discussion board over at answers.microsoft regarding Win-10-nic, even), and generally contrasted them to 'Business 101', aka "the customer is always right, and Burger King's "Have it YOUR way" policy.

What Microsoft is doing is TAKE it OUR way, or we SHOVE IT DOWN YOUR THROAT, so we can (later on) start charging you for it as a SUBSCRIPTION because we *CAN*.

Their giveaway program for Win-10-nic is like a drug dealer giving free samples so he can later scam people with confiscatory pricing, once his 'customers' are addicted to whatever substances he's selling.

This policy dates back to the early noughties during the whole ".Net" initiative. A bit of study would reveal that PASSPORT was their new tollbooth for the information superhighway. Nobody bought into it back then, and then "dot bomb" happened. But ~15 years later that undead horse is BACK again, as the "Microsoft Logon". Who knew?

So, again, WOW to what was said in that article. I'm *VERY* happy to see that at least SOMEONE ELSE besides me thinks that way. Many thanks, kudos, 'dittos', etc.

Have Microsoft-hosted email? Love using Live Mail 2012? Bad news

Re: Give us a breakdown, MS!

well, slightly OT (but it WAS in the article), net stats (like statcounter) seem to indicate that it might be relatively accurate at 300 million. What they're NOT saying is that it's about 1/3 of their customer base using either 8, 8.1, or 10. The rest of us are on 7, Vista, XP, or maybe something else. And that's just based on "who hits the internet" and with Micro-shaft spyware running, I have to wonder how much of that 'traffic' was generated by the spyware...

So if 2/3 of the customer base REFUSE to downupgrade to Win-10-nic, even when it's FREE, they should be paying a LOT of attention to that. But they're not.

Re: Modern synchronization technologies?

"However MS would be mad to drop POP3 and IMAP from Hotmail so other clients apart from Outlook-the-client would carry on working, except for WLM which sees a @hotmail.com or @outlook.com address and automatically configures itself for a nonexistent protocol. Perhaps there's some way to trick it into configuring manually for IMAP."

I certainly hope you're right about this, because if Thunderbird stops being able to read my MSN e-mail (which I've had since MSN was in beta, and I continue to pay $5/month for the e-mail along with 'just in case' dial-in access which I've used on occasion, most recently LAST YEAR), then I'm *DUMPING* my MSN account and e-mail address and anything ELSE that has to do with outlook, hotmail, msn mail, or anything SIMILAR.

I'm not going to use their Win-10-nic mail client. I tested that one a year ago during the insider program, and it tried to screw up my IMAP folders. Fortunately it did no real damage. It's also 2D FLUGLY. And it doesn't run in Linux.

'I thought my daughter clicked on ransomware – it was the damn Windows 10 installer'

Re: Slow checking for updates...

re: not believing the 300 million...

Another possibility is that, like the "Ape" (8.x) sales figures, about 1/3 of users actually *LIKE* the 2D FLUGLY and other "features" of Ape (and now Win-10-nic).

that leaves the OTHER 2/3 of us *SCREAMING* *BLOODY* *MURDER* and vowing to NEVER {down}UPGRADE to 10, *EVAR*.

strangely, Micro-shaft ignores the 2/3, believes the 1/3 to be "everyone", and *INSISTS* the rest of us MUST! HAVE! Win-10-nic!!!

Re: 300 million infections

"Did anyone watch an episode of Equinox (Channel 4) called "The King of Chaos" which aired around 2000?"

unfortunately, no. But I *did* see 'Kingsmen' and the big-bad offers free phone service with a 'special' feature... maybe that's what's behind Win-10-nic?

OK not *that* but still...

Windows 10 free upgrade offer ends on July 29th

Re: No more nagware?

"Does that mean that after July 29 Windows 7/8 users will be left in peace?"

that seems to be the MAIN concern for a lot of us. I fear it is NOT the case.

Promise?

"Windows 10 free upgrade offer ends on July 29th"

PROMISE???

And what makes us think that GWX will *GO AWAY* simply because the 'free' downupgrade goes away?

Ex-HP boss Carly Fiorina sacked one week into new job

Re: Seriously America...

"are these candidates seriously the best you can come up with to run your country?"

sorry, I couldn't run this year.

(actually, at my last on-site job, my predecessor *DID* run for president, I kid you not! In 2008. Richard something. I forget. You can google it)

Re: Next stop for Fiorina

why not put Fiorina in charge of sacking half of the U.S. gummint... "downsizing" Trump style! With Fiorina as the axe-lady. (perfect!)

DATE: January, 2017

FROM: President Trump

TO: half of the government

SUBJECT: YOU ARE FIRED!

Carly gets to pick which half

Re: well, that the UK prez you folk chose ain't much good either!

"Another Churchill quote"

Churchill was BRILLIANT. I was irked when Obaka 'dissed' him by sending the bust back... (ok it was supposedly 'on loan' from Tony Blair but still... not a smart thing to do)

Re: Same old, same old

"They elected Ronald Reagan, they elected George Bush (Jr), they will elect Trump."

hopefully. It could've been worse: Carter, Mondull, AlGore, Kerry, ...

(better to pick the lesser of 2 evils - Cthulhu or Clinton - I pick Cthulhu)