Posts by Updraft102

Adobe...sigh...issues critical patch...sigh...for Flash Player zero day

I was looking for information about Aerocool computer fans the other day, and their site's main menu didn't appear without Flash. I even tried changing my user-agent to that of an iPad to see if it would serve me a Flash-free version, but it was the same as before.

It doesn't meet the definition of a site I can't do without, of course... just an illustration that some idiot web designers out there still insist on Flash. Thankfully, that security nightmare known as Java has just about faded to total oblivion, and now it's time for Flash to follow.

Microsoft: Why we tore handy Store block out of Windows 10 Pro PCs

Re: July can't come soon enough

It seems they want us all to actually be Apple users, given how hard they are trying to drive people away from Windows.

You mean how stupid of MS to omit the native Win32 versions of such things so they could push the crappy, dull, gray app versions of them instead? I agree completely!

Re: You now see where the revenue stream is

"But think about this: what is to prevent Microsoft from blocking all programs that are not installed using their store?"

Why, to do that, they'd have to have the ability to modify (update) Windows at will without their customers having any say in the matter. Previously, any large changes in "features" like that would come in new Windows versions; users would implicitly signal their acceptance of the new "features" by installing or otherwise accepting the new version of Windows. How quaint!

When the market rejected Vista, it was an anomaly; when it rejected 8, it was a pattern, and such insolence by the unwashed masses will not be tolerated. Since Windows users can't any longer be trusted to dutifully upgrade whenever we're told to do so, the decision must be taken out of our hands. Enter "Windows as a service," where all "features" that would previously have been rolled out in new Windows versions will now be pushed out to all of our PCs whether we like it or not, with no customer approval needed whatsoever. The upgrade to 10 will be the last time MS has to convince its users to upgrade to a new Windows version; once they've done so, our PCs are Microsoft's property to do with as they will (and all the while, a certain percentage of tech "journalists" will be telling us why this is a good thing).

Just think of all of the fun a malevolent company like MS can have with us once we're all being "serviced" by them under Windows 10! We've only scratched the surface so far. Whatever devious plans you can dream up, rest assured that the reality is far worse... the individuals that make up MS have far more experience being evil than you do, and they can think up more horrific torments.

Re: I've come to the conclusion

The money stream is in trying to convince app developers to make Windows Store apps, which will in turn help to sell Windows phones (eventually), and without which MS does not stand a chance against Google and Apple in the mobile market.

After forcing everyone they can to upgrade to Windows 10, MS can point to the pool of Win 10 desktop users and claim to the app devs that these PC users are a built in market for Windows phone apps, so there's no need to wait and see if the Windows 10 phone eventually gains any traction-- with all of those desktop users just waiting to use your phone apps on their desktop PCs, why wait? Write us some nice Windows Store apps now!

That was the entire purpose of 8, just as it is the entire purpose of 10 now. We desktop users are no longer the focus of Windows (the last time we were was with Windows 7); remember, now it's "Mobile first, cloud first," which can also be interpreted as "desktop last." We've gone from being Microsoft's main focus to being only a means to an end, fellow desktop users. We're only useful to MS to the extent that we can be herded into a pen marked "Windows Store customers" and exploited as a means to trick app devs into writing oodles of Windows mobile apps, thereby making a credible Windows app store appear from the ether.

Vanity dating site BeautifulPeople popped

"'net scum are now offering data from a million BP users for sale."

Which ones are the net scum again-- the hackers or the BP users? (Both?)

Microsoft rethinks the Windows application platform one more time

"Therefore having metro on the laptop makes sense for at least some apps."

So bring metro (or whatever they are calling it these days) out when there is no mouse or touchpad detected, but where a touchscreen is present. Leave it up to the user to decide (in the tablet mode settings) whether to use metro if both a pointing device and a touchscreen are present, and for God's sake, get rid of metro completely when there is no touchscreen present!

Metro/modern/TIFKAM/UWP is for touchscreens, and should never be seen (by default, anyway) if there is no touchscreen present. There are too many compromises made for touchscreen use that are necessary evils when the user is handicapped by the lack of a proper pointing device and a relatively small screen. Why should users of devices that don't have those limitations have to put up with those UI compromises without any of the benefit?

On traditional PCs, we have plenty of screen space and a pointing device that can reliably hit a target of only a few pixels; why should we have to tolerate disappearing UI elements meant to conserve screen space (like URL bars on a typical mobile browser), menus that require excessive drilling down, and oversize controls meant to be usable with a big, fat finger that can cover thousands of pixels at once on a relatively tiny touchscreen? On a 6 inch, 1080i display, a circle of a quarter of an inch diameter covers over six thousand pixels! Which one is the one the user intended to activate with that big, fat thumb?

Re: Be afraid!

That's the idea there, though... by forcing everyone to upgrade to 10, and by forcing everyone in 10 to have the Windows store installed, MS can make the claim that there is a large pool of people just waiting to buy some nice apps... so app devs, get going! Fill that MS store with a bounty of wonderful apps that will entice people to buy Windows phones someday, since the lack of any good apps for them is seen as a major impediment to their "mobile first, cloud first" delusions.

Once we're all on 10, MS can change Windows to benefit itself however it wants without any pesky details like "do the customers want this?" popping up. Previously, any major changes in function would be rolled out in new Windows versions, and MS at least had an incentive to try to convince people that they wanted this stuff so that they'd upgrade to the new version. It didn't always work out in the customer's favor, but at least customer satisfaction got a seat at the table, so to speak.

WaaS, though, dispenses with this; MS can push out any update they want, and it will automatically install on all of our puters, since we no longer get to control such things, and that shall be that. No customer approval needed, and none requested. You'll get what MS wants you to have, nothing more and nothing less, forevermore. In other words, when you install Windows 10, you're not just signing off on all of the changes they've made since previous versions. You're also giving your stamp of approval for all the changes they can dream up in the future too, without even knowing what they are. Given Microsoft's record lately, that makes you either very brave or very masochistic.

Re: Be afraid!

They haven't given away 300 million. 300 million is the claimed total, but that includes sales of new machines that already have 10 installed, as well as the paid upgrades of enterprise PCs (which were never eligible for the free upgrade).

Upgrades of existing PCs only amounted to a tiny fraction of Microsoft's revenue anyway. Most PCs came with a certain version of Windows, and they'd go their entire life with that version installed. Upgrading to a new Windows used to be one of the things that got people to go buy a new PC, and it was the OEM sales to the PC makers that has long represented the bulk of Windows sales. Giving the product away to the subset of home users that were using 7 or 8 (even if they got them all to upgrade) would not cost MS all that much in lost sales. Most of the free upgrades went (or would have gone, had they managed to persuade all eligible users of 7 and 8 to do it) to people that never would have upgraded if they had to go out and buy 10 and perform the upgrade of their own volition.

That, of course, does not mean MS is just being nice and giving away something because that's how they roll. They didn't give away Internet Explorer out of generosity, and they're not being generous now. One would be wise to be wary of Redmondians bearing gifts.

Re: micro-shaft just wants a tollbooth for developers

The "flugliness" of TIFKAM (The Interface Formerly Known As Metro) is really remarkable. It's not just that it's touch-oriented and is thus terribly out of place on a regular PC. My Android tablet is touch-oriented, but the UI is far more attractive than TIFKAM. It seems that MS has had maximum ugliness as the design goal; if that's true, they've succeeded.

As you note, TIFKAM is excessively fat-finger friendly, with comically oversized controls and buttons. It's clearly meant for tiny screens, and as such, it keeps on-screen controls and options to a bare minimum, requiring a lot of drilling down through levels of menus to get to anything important. On a PC with a 25 inch monitor, that's just ridiculous. It's a poor use of the screen space, and is visually, ergonomically, and intuitively inferior to the traditional Windows interface.

They could have, yes. But it would have defeated the primary purpose of post-7 Windows: To use Microsoft's dominance of the desktop PC market to try to overcome the "chicken or egg" issue in order to force a mobile Microsoft app store into being. If all the Windows desktops could run Windows mobile apps, Microsoft could try to sell potential Windows app devs on the idea that they already had a market, so there's no need to wait and see if the Windows mobile market takes off... so get coding now, devs!

In that specific case, perhaps, if you have a library of tablet-mode apps you'd like to also use while the device is configured as a laptop.

Otherwise, TIFKAM for tablets and phones and traditional UI for laptops and desktops. The problem only comes in when the OS attempts (as Win 10 often does) to serve up an inappropriate UI for the platform in question-- and on a traditional (non-convertible, non-touch) laptop or a desktop, TIFKAM is an inappropriate UI.

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

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

The Windows 7 slow updates doesn't affect Vista, though. If it was really a function of the update servers being busy, I'd expect slowness across the board. But Vista is not eligible for the free update, and it's not the "new XP" that no one wants to give up like 7...

Re: Serious question

Win 10 is much, much worse than Vista.

Vista had a rough start with DRM and hardware makers (looking at you, Intel) getting the okay to sell PCs as "Vista capable" when they really shouldn't have, but it's evolved into a stable, usable product. The very popular Windows 7 is more or less Vista SE.

Windows 10... it started as crap and it's still crap. There are no signs things are getting any better, or that they ever will with 10, since all of the things that are bad about it are designed-in "features". It still can't decide if it's going to have a phone UI or a desktop UI... the PC user gets a confused, senseless mish-mash that's half TIFKAM (in all of its flat, gray ugliness, with its massive controls and wasted screen space when used on a typical PC display) and half native Win32.

Windows 10 still doesn't allow the user any control over updates installed, and most of the updates are still big monolithic things more akin to service packs than anything else (so you can't skip the bits you don't want; take it all or take none of it). It still refuses to allow the user to remove Cortana, Edge, Xbox, MS store, etc., through normal means, and it's getting worse, as now it won't even let the user switch Cortana to search engines other than the useless abomination known as Bing.

Windows 10 still refuses to stop phoning home with its "telemetry," even if the user wants no part of it (you can't turn it all the way off). It still unceremoniously uninstalls programs it wants to with every update (it has a particular thing for Speccy, which works fine with 10 if you can get 10 to leave it alone), and it restores "apps" the user has removed at each update as well.

Most or all of the things that are wrong with 10 are non-negotiable from Microsoft's perspective. It doesn't matter what the desktop users want, because 10 was not ever meant to serve our needs. It was meant only to use us as building materials to realize their new "Mobile first, cloud first" delusions. It's like we're asking MS to make us a desktop OS worthy to succeed Windows 7 on desktop devices, but MS (if we anthropomorphize it for a moment) is looking quizzically at us while it asks, "But how will THAT sell Windows mobile devices?"

Wasps force two passenger jets into emergency landings

Birgenair Flight 301.

Windows 10 free upgrade offer ends on July 29th

Re: The Last of Us

So they'll pay me $119 to install their adware-ridden OS on my PC?

It's not enough.

Daft draft anti-car-hack law could put innocent drivers away for life

Politicians write laws on things of which they have no clue all the time. Nearly all of the laws they make on any topic are like this!

It's been said that when all you have is a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail, and the legislator's hammer is the making of laws. No matter what the issue, they just know that the world will be better if they make some laws about it, whether they truly understand it or not (and it's almost always not). Does anyone really think politicians have better understanding of things they make policy about other than tech? The only skill that we know most politicians have is the ability to manipulate people, as that's how they were elected in the first place. Anything else? They seldom understand any of it-- and they don't know (or care) that they don't understand it, which is what makes them even more dangerous.

Microsoft's done a terrible job with its Windows 10 nagware

Re: The Terrible...

"Instead they've got off on the idea that we'd want to put our data in their cloud..."

They've gotten the idea that _they_ want us to put our data in their cloud, that _they_ want us to be profiled in our usage, that _they_ want us to buy Metro apps from their store (or at least to be able to do so, so we can be used to try to convince app devs to write Windows phone apps that also run on our PCs, so those devs don't have to worry about the complete absence of Windows 10 phones in the market). It's never been about what we want or need.

At this point, vetting every Windows Update for 7 and 8 individually is mandatory. I still get updates, but I check each one before installation, and I keep plenty of backups "just in case."

Microsoft's Windows 10 nagware storms live TV weather forecast

Re: $&%#! Microsoft!

They're charging for it now. Build a PC today and see if they will give you the OEM version of Windows 10 for free!

Toshiba notebook disk drive slims down. You like that, gamers?

Re: POP! Goes the Hard Drive!!

Toshiba has manufactured 2.5" hard drives for some time. Their 3.5" drive business was a recent acquisition from WD. This is probably an all-Toshiba design. Not sure if that is a good thing; I've seen some reports of poor reliability from Toshiba 2.5" drives.

I've got a couple of Hitachi-derived Toshiba hard drives myself. Don't know if they are as good as the HGST-branded ones, but I think it was a good bet. I've got backups in case of failure (which you should always have if you care about your data, regardless of drive type). And FWIW, they self-report as Toshiba drives, not Hitachi; they did change the string eventually.

Aroused Lycra-clad cyclist prompts Manchester cop dragnet

Men are presumed to be rapists and child molesters until proven otherwise. Didn't you know that? Witness the articles we've seen about airlines that have secret rules against allowing children flying alone to sit next to an unknown man... or, rather, it's the other way around, as the man is the one who is subject to the humiliation of getting up and changing seats when that happens. In other stories, there have been signs noted at playgrounds that single men not accompanied by a child are not permitted there.

In this world where we're told of "male privilege," typical behaviors for male children have been turned into criminal acts that require police intervention. Boys have ended up being arrested for such heinous crimes as biting a pop tart into the shape of a gun or drawing a picture showing a scene of war. It used to be that "boys will be boys", but now, apparently, it's "boys had better not be boys, or they will be inmates."

When raising the child, it has usually been the mother who wants to protect the child from everything and the father who wants the child to learn from his bumps and bruises. Hopefully, they'd arrive at a relatively happy medium somewhere in the middle. Now, though, the mother's way of looking at things seems to be mandatory: Things that were commonplace and normal in my childhood during the 70s and 80s, like letting an eight year old walk to school alone or allowing play outside without constant direct supervision or riding a bicycle with no helmet, would be neglectful or abusive now. Children are just about mummified in bubble wrap before being allowed outside now.

At present, we have considerably more women in colleges and universities than men, and the disparity is increasing. Perhaps it's not surprising that today's college students expect to never be offended by anything, and that they nearly have a panic attack if they hear an opinion other than their own. Campaign propaganda for candidates other than the one they like sends them running for their safe zones, and the university will gladly offer them counseling services to get over the trauma. I wish I was kidding!

No matter what the circumstances in divorce, the woman is almost always going to get the stuff, and the man is going to get the bills. The woman could be a drug-addicted criminal with a history of child abuse and will probably still get custody of the kids even if the husband is a clean, responsible member of the community. If she accuses him of something violent... or if any "she" accuses any "him" of something, it's apt to be believed without question, because everyone knows that men are just like that. (Just ask the Rolling Stone editors.)

So yeah, male privilege. Check yours today!

Windows 10 is an antique (and you might be too) says Google man

Hand-held touchscreen devices require big UI elements. Human fingers span tens of pixels on a 5 inch screen, and there's no feedback indicating what element will receive the tap before the tap takes place (in contrast with a mouse, where one can clearly see the position of the pointer before clicking). If one-handed operation is desired, it's even worse, as the thumb spans more pixels than the other digits. Additionally, one-handed operation favors the "portrait" orientation, which is seldom used with traditional PCs.

A system using the large controls that work with small-screened touch devices must use screen space sparingly, as there's not much to work with. Onscreen buttons and top-level menu options are sparse, with many actions requiring quite a bit of drilling before you can find what you're looking for. It's a necessary annoyance when one is dealing with a small screen intended to be used with human fingers.

A traditional PC interface has none of those limitations. A mouse pointer can easily and reliably hit a target that is only a few pixels wide, and the display is large enough to allow many more onscreen UI elements than would be feasible with a mobile device. To push that same touch-oriented UI onto a regular PC would be to waste much of that screen space, and to impose the annoyance of having to drill down through layers of menus when there is plenty of screen space for a faster, more elegant solution. It's a necessary annoyance with a mobile device, but an unnecessary one on a PC.

That's one of many areas where Windows 10 fails. Many of the menus and dialogs built into the OS are of the touch variety, with no standard versions available. One example is the touch-oriented Settings app, which is slated to replace the mouse-oriented Control Panel that has worked for us for decades. Changes like that are a step backwards in usability and UI design for the PC user. We're being asked to accept the compromises to make Windows work on mobile touch devices even though we aren't using them. It's all cost and no benefit... well, there is benefit, but it's not for us.

Sorry, Microsoft, no sale on that one.

The code for traditional Windows menus already exists from previous Windows versions, and it could very easily be selectively used on non-touch devices with no noticeable increase in the installed Windows footprint. In fact, I would guess the old Win32 dialogs from previous versions of Windows are still there in Windows 10, but are simply turned off, which would be normal for Microsoft.

If you use a resource editor to examine the hundreds of files that make up a Windows installation, you can see dozens of obsolete Windows dialogs from Windows versions long forgotten. These dialogs take up so little room (on disk or in memory) that it's better to leave them in than to take the slight risk that removing them will cause unexpected regressions in stability. Clearly, they're not taking up much room, or MS would undoubtedly have removed them from the code base years ago if there was any tangible benefit to doing so.

So, if that's the case (and it is), what's the rationale behind forcing PC users to muddle through with touch-oriented dialogs? Are you there, MS?

US bus passenger cracks one off for three hours

You don't think he will beat the rap?

Windows 10 debuts Blue QR Code of Death – and why malware will love it

Re: Penguin

I had a similar issue trying to get Kubuntu (the version of Ubuntu with the KDE desktop) 15.10 to work . The installer kept crashing before the installation was complete. It took a lot of tries, but it finally finished installing.

Twenty seconds or so after booting, it would either stop responding to the keyboard and mouse clicks or go into a full kernel panic (if you thought the XP/Vista/7 BSOD was bad, try the Linux version). It failed in one of these two ways every time, whether I booted from the installation USB drive or from the boot device (SSD).

So much for the vaunted "never crashes" Linux.

Vivaldi Jon: Mobile – yes. Feeds and an ad blocker… probably not

"Twenty years ago our pocket computers were as sophisticated as any desktop, only more reliable. Now they’re vastly more powerful, always connected, but the apps are sub-Fisher Price."

Vastly more powerful?

The most powerful mobile phones today are about on par with a 2007-era Core 2 Quad desktop. Which one is vastly more powerful than an I7-6700k desktop PC? I believe I would like to see that.

How Remix's Android will eat the world

Re: "Remix OS with...

It isn't shockingly ignorant for the IT press to comment about the relative lack of apps in the Windows Store. It reflects the choice a consumer would make-- they can have an established app marketplace with Android or iOS right now, or they can bet on Microsoft having one eventually. What Android or iOS may have had in their respective marketplaces six years ago isn't relevant, since there were no competitors that already had what they were trying to build at that time.

Windows 7's grip on the enterprise desktop is loosening

Re: Microsoft are keeping quiet

Telemetry was added to 7 and 8 with updates. GWX adware was added to 7 and 8 with updates. Win 7 gives me control over which updates I install, so I've avoided those "features" I don't want. I suppose there is a level of irony in Microsoft illustrating why control over updates is necessary as part of their effort to promote a product where control over updates is removed.

Win 10 doesn't give me the choice to avoid unwanted updates like those listed above-- not just because it doesn't have an option for "notify me when updates are available, but don't download them until I say so", but also because nearly all of the updates for Win 10 are big monolithic things that are more like monthly service packs than any updates we have had before. You can't separate the telemetry and adware updates from the necessary security updates; they're all in one single package.

Re: is this bit a leftover from earlier draft

You use Android and you call Windows malware prone?

Most Android devices are not kept up to date on security updates... a lot never get updated at all during their entire service life. Top tier makers like Samsung will usually push a few updates while the device is still in warranty, then you're on your own, and even Google's Nexus (where the updates were one of the selling points) get abandoned pretty quick once they're no longer the current generation.

I have a 7" Android tablet, but it sees little use compared to my PC. Why would I want to mess with a tiny screen device with the clumsy touch interface and even clumsier on-screen keyboard when I can use a real machine with a 25 inch monitor, real mouse, and mechanical-key keyboard, terabytes of local storage, not to mention more CPU power than my 8 year old laptop has (unlike nearly all smart phones)? It would be like driving around town on a riding lawnmower when I have a Lexus available.

I don't see very much value in mobile devices for my own use (other than doing it at work when I really should be working and not playing). If I'm out and about, I'd rather do whatever it is I am out doing than mess with a phone. If I am out with friends, I'd rather concentrate on that and let the glowing screens wait until I have time where I'm not doing anything else. And if that is the case, why would I stay out and use a phone for whatever when I can return home and do the same on my PC?

If I'm home, why bother with underpowered, clumsy things like phones and tablets when a PC with far superior ergonomics is available? I can use my PC for hours with relatively little discomfort, with the keyboard, mouse, and display all set up for maximum comfort, with a well-chosen chair and desk. The immobility is a strength if I don't have to be using it when I am out-- it means I can set everything up to be just right.

As for a console gaming system... it's a PC at its core anyway. Why would I buy one of those when my actual PC is superior in every way?

My tablet mainly sees use in situations when there is unavoidable waiting. It's a poor substitute for my actual PC, but it's a whole lot more portable. Fortunately, I am not in a job where I am subjected to long periods of waiting around (at airports or on planes, etc), so this time is minimized.

Browsing the web on the tiny 7 inch screen is frustrating and annoying for me. It's a small tablet, but still a little bit bigger than the biggest phones. I don't know how people can view them as anything but "it works in a pinch because I happen to have it on me, but it really sucks" devices.

Re: Whatever

Can we send Satya there?

But a lot of us never had to deal with that telemetry, since we have the option of choosing which updates are installed on our PCs (hint, hint). I've never had them on my Win7 machines, nor have I had to deal with GWX.

Re: Mobes replacing enterprise desktops?

Cortana is getting vengeance on people who use bad language by forcing upgrades to the OS that contains Cortana? How does Cortana manage to take actions before it is even installed?

While I tend to watch my language, I note that it could be that people who have found themselves with an unwanted upgrade to 10 are angrier than the average bear, and thus more likely to use profanity.

Re: Today, this morning, KB2952664 and KB3035583 magically unhid themselves

Until there is an aftermarket solution that can completely and permanently eliminate all traces of TIFKAM, 10 is not even a possibility for me. It's not a phone... it's not a tablet. It's a full PC... learn it, know it, live it, MS!

Re: But also remember

If you look further at the rate of change of each version of Windows, you will see that 7 is declining much more slowly than 10 is increasing. Most of the uptake in 10 is not coming at the expense of 7. With each coming month, more of the pool of people that were going to switch will have already done so, leaving us stalwarts in the Win 7 camp.

Hopefully, enough of us will resist 10 so as to force MS to extend security updates for a few years as they did with XP... by that time, their nutty gambit to use desktop PCs to create a mobile app market should have crashed and burned, so it wouldn't be as unthinkable as it is now. Maybe then they'll actually turn 10 into a reasonable product. Stranger things have happened!

The stats for market share are based on OS reported in user agent strings for web visitors, not unit sales.

If anything, the stats underestimate the number of PCs; I doubt Macs are seeing much use in manufacturing control or other such tasks. There are a great many still on Windows XP. Those devices are not out there browsing the web (and being counted), but they do exist.

As for lasting "much longer," I'll have to ask for your source on that. It's true that you can buy cheap in PCs, which is not true of Apple, but it doesn't mean that is the bulk of the market.

Right now, I have an 8 year old Asus laptop right here, currently running Win 7. To my left is a Compaq/HP laptop, 11 years old, running perfectly in its limited role, even after all this time. It was retired from standard duty because of obsolescence, even in this era of "Moore's law is ending".

Sorry to burst your bubble, but the reported numbers for Macs are just as trivial as they seem.

Nvidia's Tesla P100 has 15 billion transistors, 21TFLOPS

Re: how big a psu would one of these need?

Hop all you want if you think it will help!

PATRIOT Act axed, NSA spying halted ... wake up, Neo, it's just a dream in the US House of Reps

Re: Rolling Over in their Graves

No, the Founding Fathers of America did not support slavery. However, they recognized that they would need the help of the slave states to win a war of independence (clearly, that much was shown true in the war that followed). The abolition of slavery would have to wait, but there was never any doubt that it was going to happen in the minds of the founders. They were prolific writers; their thoughts on nearly any issue are now a part of the historical record.

Keep in mind, also, that before the independence of America, the slaveowners were all Englishmen, acting with the full support of their King. Slavery came to the shores of what is now the USA under the Union Jack; it was abolished (at great cost in blood and fortune) under the Stars and Stripes.

Thomas Jefferson is often cited as a "slave owner." He never intended to be; he inherited them, and the laws of Virginia prohibited a person in debt (which he was) from freeing them.

FCC won't track Do Not Track

Re: Snowden said it best

Too many sites require cookies to work-- blocking them by default and having to mess with whitelists is annoying, and you end up enabling them on many or most sites anyway (defeating the purpose of blocking them in the first place). It's better to let the sites set cookies, but use an addon that automatically deletes them soon thereafter (like Self-Destructing Cookies). The sites work, but the cookies don't persist long enough for any tracking to take place. I also use a manual cookie crusher addon that lets me kill cookies with a mouse click, if I don't want to wait for SDC to do it automatically.

In conjunction with a dynamic IP address (which has been the norm for every ISP I've had to date), outfits like Google will be able to collect bits and pieces of data about what you do and where you go, but it can't be connected to what you did yesterday or what you will do tomorrow, so it's useless.

If you use Flash, be aware that sites can store LSOs (local shared objects) that are not deleted with normal cookies, but can function just like tracking cookies. You'll need another addon, like BetterPrivacy, to wipe those "super cookies".

I leave Flash on "ask to activate", and I seldom actually need to activate it anymore. A ton of sites try to activate the plugin, but nearly all work just fine if I leave it blocked. What are those sites doing? I can only presume they're trying to track me, since the site functions perfectly well without Flash functionality. Keeping it blocked prevents LSO tracking and avoids the vulnerabilities that have long plagued the Flash plugin.

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

When will anti-malware programs start detecting and removing GWX from infected systems? There's no difference between the adware MS installs and the adware that is detected as a PUP and removed by most anti-malware programs.

Re: Another way?

The rollback actually worked after a failed upgrade attempt? Count yourself lucky... a lot of people had the rollback fail too, leaving the PC unbootable.

Obama puts down his encrypted phone long enough to tell us: Knock it off with the encryption

Re: I think he's discovered that it doesn't matter what he says

He didn't suffer any significant amount of racist hatred. That was a convenient accusation by the left, which equates opposition to a black person's ideas to opposition to black people (if it suits their agenda). They never appeared to notice the irony: by insisting that opposition to Obama's policies was really about his race, they denied him the opportunity to have his ideas seriously considered and debated on their merits. In doing so, they trivialized the policies they supposedly supported, since any serious idea is going to generate a significant amount of opposition.

Obama suffered "your policies are crap" hatred that sometimes extended to him personally, much as Bill Clinton did in his first term, before he "triangulated" and basically adopted the GOP's platform to steal their thunder and get re-elected. Obama's been a tyrant from the beginning... nothing has changed. It's just that now people are beginning to realize it.

It's funny that the same people who excoriated Bush 43 (and rightly so) for his support of the PATRIOT act are silent now that Obama's administration (the NSA being part of the executive branch) is actually doing the things that they were concerned that Bush COULD do (but never did).

Reprogrammble routers axed by TP-Link as FCC bans custom firmware

Re: But it's my router, I've bought it

This specific ruling by the FCC is a response to interference with airport weather radar, which operates on a narrow slice of the 5 GHz band and only is a concern for people within a certain radius of one of the weather sites (35 miles? I forget what it was). It makes a distinctive spike on the radar display, which points exactly toward the offender-- it would be really easy to use sniffers to narrow it down and catch him.

The case that inspired all of this was a little more than some ordinary idiot with an ordinary SOHO router and OpenWRT operating on an unlawful frequency in the front room with no other modifications. I don't remember the details, but it was something like an outdoor array of high-gain beamforming antennae operating under unlawful power that were inadvertently aimed right at the radar site. It was an edge case, and was someone who was determined enough to be able to put together a way to do what he did even if the router firmware is locked. The router doesn't even need to be a device sold as a router-- a PC can be a router, and good luck locking down a PC so that it can't do that.

Re: But it's my router, I've bought it

It's not at all like that.

Installing aftermarket firmware does not mean you will be using illegal frequencies. It merely means you will be able to select that IF you choose to break the law. Kind of like how I could choose to set up a C&C server and DDOS someone if I chose-- but I don't. My hardware is capable of doing illegal things, but that doesn't mean I will.

I have a lot of things that I could use to break the law. I have knives, which can be used to stab someone, but I don't do that. I have poisonous household chemicals, but I don't poison anyone. The FCC's rule that not only must I use only approved frequencies, but that I must be incapable of using unapproved ones, would be like banning my knives and any household chemicals that are toxic. While there are some people out there who want to do just that, most of us realize that it would be a really dumb idea. Those people determined to break the law will still find a way, but those who don't want to break the law will still find themselves unable to used the banned items for lawful and legitimate reasons.

Don't fear PC-pocalypse, Chromebooks, two-in-ones 'will save us'

Re: "Industry experts greatly exaggerated the death of the PC,"

Except that real PCs are still vastly superior to mobile devices in every way except mobility.

Back in the 80s, computers were often used with a 14 inch display (not counting the 19 inch TV used as a monitor). That's still bigger than a typical tablet, but a display of that size today would only be accepted on a laptop. These days, 24 inch displays (16:9, usually) and larger are the norm. We didn't spend all that time ramping up display sizes just to decide that the correct size is really five inches (or ten or eleven).

Bigger displays are better. It's why people like big TVs. Tablets will never get as big as dedicated monitors; it would be too cumbersome to haul around or to use a tablet that large, and the benefit of the large screen would be greatly outweighed by the poor portability, which is the only area where mobile devices outshine traditional PCs..

A mouse is also vastly superior to a touchscreen. It can be used for longer periods of time without fatigue, and it's much faster to move a hand between keyboard and mouse than keyboard and touchscreen. It's more precise, being able to hit a target only a few pixels in size quickly and reliably, which touch devices can't do with big, fat fingers and relatively small screens. Even doing simple things like cutting and pasting text is annoyingly cumbersome with touch devices; it's far easier to do with a mouse.

PCs are far more powerful than mobile devices, and while that may not benefit someone checking Facebook, there are a lot of things in which that matters.

The horse carriage went away as a serious transportation device because the car did it better. The PC, though, has not been eclipsed by mobiles for all purposes. There are still a lot of things a real desktop is better at than any mobile device... well, actually, that would be all things with the single exception of the high degree of portability. You compromise speed, storage, ergonomics, and display size to get that portability, and that is not universally a worthy trade-off.

Sexism isn't getting better in Silicon Valley, it's getting worse

How do you know the advances are unwanted before you make them?

Re: Can we stop this nonsense

Social welfare programs are a big part of why they are IN poverty. The rate of poverty is not any lower in the US since LBJ greatly expanded social welfare programs in the "war on poverty," but the rate of dependency on government has exploded. Marriage and intact families are way down, crime is way up. Dysfunctional communities that tolerate criminality and eschew education are the norm in the poor neighborhoods.

It's not about racial bias of US police. It's about blacks committing way more than their share of crimes relative to their slice of the population at large. They are 12-13% of the US population, but are responsible for over half of the murder-- and the biggest majority of these murders are against other blacks. Would it be better if the cops started going easy on black criminals who principally victimize other blacks? If they did, people would be complaining that black communities receive inadequate policing and that other neighborhoods receive better protection. It would be a valid complaint.

A lot of people are trying to provide better educational opportunities in poorer urban communities. Unfortunately, the very victims of these poor schools repeatedly vote for candidates who are in the pocket of teachers' unions, which stubbornly oppose any and all attempts to provide school choice or to base promotions and rate of pay on the quality of teachers rather than seniority. The teachers' unions scream bloody murder if anyone tries to impose any form of meritocracy upon them, or if they try to dismiss incompetent teachers or administrators. It's nearly impossible to fire an incompetent teacher in a public school.

In short, you're asking for more of the same policies that created the problems in the first place.

Microsoft wants to lock everyone into its store via universal Windows apps, says game kingpin

Re: Short on details..

Most home or small business computer owners have only ever used the version of Windows that came on their computer at the time of purchase. Offering those people free upgrades doesn't substantially harm Microsoft's bottom line, since they were never going to get any upgrade sales from the vast majority of users anyway (the real money is in OEM and enterprise sales, and those are not free) . The free upgrade helps Microsoft's bottom line by getting more people into the "potential Windows store customers" boat.

MS is trying to sell app devs the idea that they can make Windows mobile apps and automatically reach a built-in desktop PC market too (so don't worry about the relative lack of Windows mobile devices out there!). That was the clear purpose of 8, but it failed to catch on; 10 is nothing other than a second attempt at the same thing. The more people MS can corral into Windows 10, the more they can tell app devs that there are all these Windows desktop users just waiting to download mobile apps on their desktop PCs, so why not make some?

It's not true, of course, as the existing market of native Windows programs that were actually designed for the PC platform is already far bigger than Microsoft's store would be in their wildest dreams, but that's what they're trying to sell to app devs. So in order for MS to convincingly do that, people must upgrade in mass numbers to Windows 10. Only then will developing for the Windows Store (which works on 10 only) begin to make any sense at all as compared to developing for Win32 (which works on 10 and all other Windows versions too).

Re: @Shadmeister - Can you see what it is yet?

Backlash strangely absent?

Not where I've been looking. There is more hostility toward MS and Windows 10 than there has ever been since I can remember, including during the browser wars during the late 1990s.

This gambit can only work for MS if the Windows 10 market is so large as to render Win32 irrelevant. As it stands, Windows 10 has just hit 12.82% market share (netmarketshare.com), with other versions of Windows accounting for around 76% of the total. That's after 7 months of being given away to home users (which includes pretty much all gamers) for FREE.

By developing for the Windows store, game devs will (at the present time) be eliminating 86% of the Windows market as potential customers. While it may be that the distribution of gamers is higher within the Windows 10 group (who may have migrated to get DirectX12), it's still pretty foolish to cut off 86% of your potential customer base (and 30% of revenue) for little in return. A Win32 version reaches all of the previous Windows versions AND Windows 10, and doesn't come with a 30% tax.

I will be doing my part by continuing to shun Windows 10. If it ever gets to be a decent product (and I have my doubts about this ever happening), I might move from 7, but even then I won't be touching the Windows store or anything in it with a ten foot pole. If a given game is available only from the Windows Store, I guess I'll have to do without. For games or otherwise, it's Win32 or nothing. I have no use for "apps" on a desktop PC.

Converged PC and smartphone is the future, says Canonical's Mark Shuttleworth

I would have to agree. I don't think it is necessary or useful to try to converge dissimilar devices, or to try to create a single OS to run on them, a la Windows 10. Better synchronization between devices does not require them all to be running the same OS.

Desktops (including traditional laptops) and mobile devices have different needs. Mobile devices use touch screens that are much smaller than desktop screens, so a different approach in UI design is required. A mobile UI, when expanded to a desktop monitor and used with a mouse, is frustratingly sparse; it is a poor use of the expansive screen space. A desktop UI, though, is nearly unusable on a mobile touchscreen. The screen elements are too small relative to the screen size to be reliably hit with a fat finger. A mouse is still the superior pointing device, even with desktops that have touchscreen ability.

Mobile operating systems are built around the limitations of the devices upon which they run. They have less CPU power, less RAM, and a lot less storage than a desktop. Generally, they run a completely different architecture; ARM vs x86. If they ever did evolve to be as powerful as a desktop (which I doubt, as desktops don't hold still while mobiles keep getting better), a mobile OS would evolve right along with them, while still being optimized for the touch/small screen environment.

Trying to converge them just for the sake of doing so won't serve either group as well as dedicated platform operating systems will. Microsoft has done a particularly shabby job of it, with desktops being exposed to the klunky mobile elements and (as I understand) mobile users sometimes being exposed to the touch-unfriendly desktop elements. If they ever fix this, so that mobile devices only see the mobile UI and desktop users only see the desktop UI, it will essentially be two operating system shells built on one kernel-- which is getting pretty close to having two separate operating systems (like PC Ubuntu and Android, both of which are built on the Linux kernel, but with very different UIs).

I think Apple was right to say that there is no real value in convergence between mobiles and desktops. Data interoperability doesn't require it; the dissimilar platforms can already use the same file types. It sounds like what people need is better sync services.

Who hit you, HP Inc? 'Windows 10! It's all Windows 10's fault'

Re: Hardware quality also to blame

Touchpads without buttons?

Pass.

The first thing I do with any laptop I buy (or when I install a new OS on it, etc.) is to turn off tapping. I don't know how anyone can use touchpads with tapping enabled... in situations when I can't easily turn tapping off (Safe Mode, a Linux Live CD, when booting with a backup program's recovery CD, etc.), I am constantly inadvertently sending "taps" that are not intended.

I have no idea how you would click and drag without a button... I never had to find out.

Re: no compelling reason to ditch functional hardware

Yes, it's true that kids playing with toys have little need for a printer.

Adult stuff, though, often requires actual hardcopies, as I wrote in a reply to another message just a moment ago.