Windows 8 - Deeper Impressions

[JorgeA]

The September 2013 issue of Smart Computing magazine has a feature on Windows 8.1, and I have two questions that I'm hoping somebody here will have the answer for.

1. Regarding Internet Explorer 11, the article says:

...IE11 also lets you have as many simultaneous tabs open as you want. And if you use multiple Win8.1 devices, you'll be able to access those tabs from any of them.

[emphasis added]

Question: How can other devices access the tabs that you have open in (for example) your PC? Does the information about what tabs you have open go to some kind of cloud database?

2. Regarding the integrated local+Web search:

The new Windows 8.1 search tool is significantly enhanced. It's powered by Bing, and it gives you near-instant access to the Web, your files, apps, SkyDrive files, and more.

[emphasis added]

Question: Is it possible to change this search engine to something other than Bing? If I don't want Bing keeping track of my searches (especially of what I have in local storage -- MYOFB), can I do it via Ixquick or DuckDuckGo?

--JorgeA

[dencorso]

1. Probably because IE11 might just be a kind of local front-end to the actual browser, which should be running fully (or maybe just mostly) on the cloud... That means one can open some tabs on each device but all devices see all the open tabs, and one can also close anay tab on any of the devices involved, regardless of whether that particular tab had been originally opened on the selfsame device or not (and meanwhile any number of eavesdroppers from the many third-parties with access to that cloud might be inspecting what you do).

2. Probably not. Maybe Google, on afterthought.

Remember when amazon.com sent Animal Farm and 1984 kindle editions down the memory hole? And remember that all involved fully failed to see what was being done in Orwellian terms, at least until customers began to point it out while complaining? Consider that a (technologically primitive) preview of what's to come...

[Tripredacus]

So is this true that a Microsoft Account can only use a maximum of 3 IP addresses within a 24 hour period?

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windows/en-US/7dc30c8c-765c-41d0-a173-d9062760043d/microsoft-accounts-have-ip-daily-limit

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

More on the story that TELVM just mentioned ...

Reversal: Windows 8.1 now available to developers via MSDN and TechNet, torrent leaks were the only option before this ( TechSpot 2013-09-09 )

Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2 RTM released on TechNet and MSDN ( NeoWin 2013-09-09 )

Backpedaling on a minor little thing though. TechNet is still dead and MSDN remains as expensive as always. Furthermore, while some are celebrating this little change, the real story is that thanks to their fast updating cycle "RTM" has been redefined to mean NOT-READY to release to manufacturing. There are more changes being developed post-RTM so what we have here is an ever-changing codebase that is anything except "frozen" as has been the case in the past. Windows is now literally a clone of chrome, both the OS and browser from Google. Well done boys!

Xbox suckiness ...

Xbox One dashboard previewed in leaked YouTube video ( TechSpot 2013-09-09 )

Ugghhhh! Microsoft's Metro tunnel vision (Metrovision ? ) on full display for everyone to see. I guess it's appropriate since one of the influences for the Windows 8 abomination was the Xbox dashboard in the first place. There is a video at the link but be warned that besides confirming that Microsoft has lost its mind by doing the unthinkable of blurring the two most opposite of computing platforms - game consoles and workstations, the YouTube author is just horrible at filming and should either be ridiculed into oblivion or hired at Microsoft. It sucks that bad, but I guess that is perfectly appropriate given the circumstances with Microsoft and her fanboys these days. Here is a screengrab to save you from going crazy watching this utterly ridiculous clip ...

Windows 8.1: My Opinion Elaborated ( TweakGuides 2013-Sep )

Well written critique on the suckiness of Microsoft Windows 8 and related. Drives home a lot of points we made here over the past 4,000 posts in this thread and two years overall in the blogosphere. Two thumbs up!

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

IT Solutions Provider Arkoon Vows Support for Windows XP After Microsoft's April 2014 Deadline ( Maximum PC 2013-09-09 )

Here is a company that will specifically support Windows XP beyond the Microsoft deadline. While I applaud their entrepreneurship, this is not what is needed for the greater community. These folks are just going to satisfy the sheep crowd that live under constant fear of hacker boogeymen exploiting some obscure flaw. What we need are OEM's to buck Microsoft and supply hardware and drivers for Windows XP. For that to happen the people need to become activists and contact them directly. Here is my personal recommendation ...

If you want to really make a difference here is what you can do ...

Call or write letters ( not email ) to all the involved parties. Gigabyte, Asus, MSI, AMD, Intel ( ... etc ). Tell them to continue supplying drivers for Windows XP and 2003 ( aka Windows 5.1 and 5.2 ) and NOT just Vista, 7, 8, 8.1 ( aka Windows 6.0, 6.1, 6.2, 6.3 ).

Remind them that Windows XP accounts for fully 1/3 of all Windows installations. Here's some telemetry they can chew on: If they total up all of Vista and Windows 8 computers and then multiply it by four it is still less than Windows XP. Economically it makes no sense to support Vista or Windows 8. How would their shareholders feel about this sort of fiscal mismanagement?

Also mention that by following Microsoft's will they are complicit in their cynical planned obsolescence, willing co-conspirators with a convicted monopolist to obsolete perfectly working current hardware and future hardware. Tell them that you will be contacting your government representatives and asking them to once again punish Microsoft for predatory and monopolistic practices and will be suggesting that all collaborators should also be investigated and punished.

If we can get Intel to cooperate then AMD would jump on board, and vice versa. Recall how the news of potential future soldered CPU's got the "enthusiasts" in an uproar and AMD quickly responded by remaining committed to socketed processors. A day or two later Intel did the same, probably out of peer pressure.

They play hardball in their backroom deals, it is time for the customers to do the same.

AVAST: 96 percent of U.S. schools will be affected by loss of Windows XP support ( NeoWin 2013-09-09 )

Oh look, another fanboy FUDfest! By the way, this comment thread is a perfect illustration of the young age of the clueless NeoKids. In comment after comment they are busy criticizing school districts for not throwing away cash on Windows 8 garbage. Children simply don't understand the facts because their daddies are busy working and paying their bills. The fact is that school districts don't have any money at all therefore they don't pay for anything. We do! The taxpayers are buying this junk. Specifically it is the neighboring homeowners that foot the bills whether or not they have any children in school in the ifrst place. Education spending is the black hole of taxpayer budgeting and we are always screwed! This is what is so evil about the whole thing, especially the strategy of Apple and Microsoft to cash in on us, taking our money and yet we never actually get these products ourselves. They wind up warehoused in schools, abused and stolen and mistreated by kids that don't even need them in the first place. Let them eat pencils.

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

More Security issues. Tom's Hardware is getting pretty good articles out there these days. These two are great recaps of the recent revelations reported in Der Spiegel which Jorge has mentioned ...

Online Security Pioneer Predicts Grim Future ( Tom's Hardware 2013-09-09 )

"The NSA has for years been capturing and storing almost everything imaginable," he told Tom's Guide, "including massive amounts of data exchanged among Americans who are not suspected of any crime."

[...]

Kocher also pointed out that cybersecurity in the United States does not exist in a vacuum. The NSA is hardly the only government organization that wants your data, or has the means to acquire it.

"The spying problem doesn't end with the NSA," he said. "Every intelligence agency worldwide wants the same material, and now they're all going to be benchmarked against NSA's known powers. There will be a huge pressure to catch up to NSA, and where this leads is not pretty."

That is an important point IMHO. While all these leaks have helped to educate us, they will have a profound effect on other governments spurring yet another arms race, this time over spying. The worst part is that they will watch and then notice that nothing has really changed over here and they will take that as meaning this is acceptible and ratchet up their own efforts. Hence, the point of this story and our "grim future".

How the NSA Gets Into Your Smartphones ( Tom's Hardware 2013-09-09 )

I was just wondering when Snowden would do something useful like specify some areas where the spooks are NOT able to penetrate ...

Amidst the string of impressive NSA victories is one surprising failure: The report in Der Spiegel seems to suggest that the NSA might not have an easy way into Apple devices.

However, according to the article, co-authored by Marcel Rosenbach, Laura Poitras and Holger Stark, "the documents leave no doubt that if the intelligence service defines a smartphone as a target, it will find a way to gain access to its information."

Lots more detail in the article covering Blackberry and Android also. For some reason WP is hardly mentioned. I wonder why?

While Tom's Hardware is definitely NOT a fanboy site, it does get a clueless child every now and then ...

What is the deal with the NSA scare articles lately? If you people are suprised by any of this crap then you are years behind.

No one is looking to get into your phone, computer, bla bla bla unless you have something to hide. Anyone with any sensitive data has it encrypted onto a drive that isnt even plugged into a network. Cant hack into something that isnt plugged in.

That is an almost inexplicable level of ignorance. It's like Peak Stoopid. Notice that if you just change the subject from "government spying" to "Microsoft" then he sounds exactly like a MicroZealot or MetroTard. Ah, to be young and ignorant and foolish again.

[JorgeA]

New details in how the feds take laptops at border

Aside from the other issues that this story touches on, the following excerpt caught my eye:

When he returned, two agents were waiting for him, including one who specialized in computer forensics. They seized House's laptop and detained his computer for seven weeks, giving the government enough time to try to copy every file and keystroke House had made since declaring himself a Manning supporter.

[emphasis added]

Correct me if I'm wrong (please!!), but this strikes me as improbable. Unless the laptop already had a keylogger installed, there's no way that even the NSA could reconstruct every (or any) keystroke the guy had input previously. And of course, if they did have a kelogger installed already, then there was no need to steal borrow confiscate his laptop, as they could simply record what he was doing.

What do you think?

--JorgeA

Edited September 11, 2013 by JorgeA

[JorgeA]

Windows 8.1: My Opinion Elaborated ( TweakGuides 2013-Sep )

Well written critique on the suckiness of Microsoft Windows 8 and related. Drives home a lot of points we made here over the past 4,000 posts in this thread and two years overall in the blogosphere. Two thumbs up!

Two thumbs up indeed -- I'd give it five thumbs if I had that many.

There's so much good, insightful stuff in there that the entire three-part post would be worth quoting here, but I'll stop myself.

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

So is this true that a Microsoft Account can only use a maximum of 3 IP addresses within a 24 hour period?

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windows/en-US/7dc30c8c-765c-41d0-a173-d9062760043d/microsoft-accounts-have-ip-daily-limit

Huh, it's hard to say. The question seems to be poorly worded:

We are having a hard time getting our students a Microsoft Account on their Microsoft RT. It is giving us a limit of 3 per day. Is there anyway to raise the limit.

Maybe I'm misinterpreting it, but the way it reads, it makes me wonder why anbody would want more than even one single Microsoft Account on their RT (or any computing device), so why would this question even come up.

I must be missing something in the scenario.

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

1. Probably because IE11 might just be a kind of local front-end to the actual browser, which should be running fully (or maybe just mostly) on the cloud... That means one can open some tabs on each device but all devices see all the open tabs, and one can also close anay tab on any of the devices involved, regardless of whether that particular tab had been originally opened on the selfsame device or not (and meanwhile any number of eavesdroppers from the many third-parties with access to that cloud might be inspecting what you do).

2. Probably not. Maybe Google, on afterthought.

Remember when amazon.com sent Animal Farm and 1984 kindle editions down the memory hole? And remember that all involved fully failed to see what was being done in Orwellian terms, at least until customers began to point it out while complaining? Consider that a (technologically primitive) prevue of what's to come...

Thanks, dencorso.

If you're right about No. 1, that would make the situation about as bad as I'd thought, and for the reasons that you describe.

I do remember when amazon.com removed (ironically) those books from customers' Kindles. That did serve (or should have served) as a general warning of the, umm, "possibilities" presented by this kind of technology!

--JorgeA

[TELVM]

Windows 8.1: My Opinion Elaborated ( TweakGuides 2013-Sep )

Well written critique on the suckiness of Microsoft Windows 8 and related. Drives home a lot of points we made here over the past 4,000 posts in this thread and two years overall in the blogosphere. Two thumbs up!

Kudos to Koroush! :thumbup Worth reading every bit of it. I've followed this guy's tweak guides (more like treatises in fact) for years, and learned a lot in the process.

This paragraph perfectly summarises the righteous indignation of power desktop users upon this Tiles joke for retards:

... I can't resist, as this bastardization of Windows makes me quite angry. Having used every version of Microsoft's operating systems since 1988 (MS-DOS 5.0), this is the first time I truly believe that Microsoft has lost its way. To put it bluntly, Windows 8.1 is a mish-mash of interfaces, and in some cases borderline deceptive options, mainly to serve Microsoft's dubious ambitions in the mobile device arena, rather than consumers and businesses. It will only serve to further confuse and alienate the average PC user, and hasten the PC's demise. I've used Windows 8 as my daily OS since the Preview back in June 2012, and I can honestly say it seems like one step forward, four steps back when compared to Windows 7 ...

^ Homeric!

[dencorso]

I am a customer at amazon from incept time. I may have been one of the very first customers they've ever had abroad. I never owned a Kindle up to now, and do not intend to acquire one ever. Of the books I've decided to buy since that technology exists, only a handful were Kindle only, and each and everyone of those few I desisted from buying precisely because they were Kindle only. Although I do use web mail, that's the only form of "cloud storage" I decided to accept as unavoidable. And I don't leave extensive collections of old e-mails there, I download what I think should be kept and delete all the rest regularly. I've drawn my personal line in the ground at Win 7. I don't use it for anything important at present, but I'm experimenting with it, with a view on the day (I do hope still very far away) neither 98SE nor XP SP3 will suffice for my daily chores. But that's that. Even if I made a concentrated effort, I still wouldn't be able to care less for Win 8+ and/or any kind of cloud tech than I do already.

I do remember when amazon.com removed (ironically) those books from customers' Kindles. That did serve (or should have served) as a general warning of the, umm, "possibilities" presented by this kind of technology!

Yet, it seems it either didn't serve as a warning at all, or if it did, people forget way too fast (it happened in 2009, after all).

[JorgeA]

I do not care about icon designs, or resigns. When it comes to programming. All I care about if the **** thing could work on my 9x, and OS9 machines and still do the same **** job without invading my privacy. Not to burst anybodys bubble, Being gitty over the new Windows ( whatever it is called ) is a complete waste of time. I do not see the reason to deal with these newer OSes at all. ( Until I get to the workplace and that one program will not read my painstaken glory ). When I browse My documents, and etc folder my screen does not need to look like my Cable Box GUI. All I want to see is a list that is tight, readable and compact, so I can quickly browse through everything. I am not a five year old, clicking away at the music tones of the error Ding Ding Ding error sounds of 95. I am a big grown person who needs stuff to be done, Remember Bob ? I am sure somebody here remember the many variants of Bob. Bob was a fun thing, when computers were private, cool, and fun thing. But nowadays Newer OSes seems to be about collecting infromation on the end-user, creating a perminant record AKA a Criminal profile. Then using that information against people ( cough facebook, twitter, etc ). See what they are doing is making it easier for morons to use the touch screen ( AKA mouse interface all over ). interface. So that everybody can get addicting to touching. No more real keyboard, you know the type hackers, and real programmers were into. Everything is crap made for crap people. Remember the good days when you could zoom directly to a file, with a command, or quickly open and close windows, while taking a snap shot ASAP, and then jumping into your mail, in a blink of an eye. No more. Your going to have a whole new generation of slow minded computer users, who can't even think past the GUI.

Yup.

I also remember the days when everything was done at the DOS prompt. Back then I felt like I understood exactly what was going on, it was as if the machine were an extension of my body. Today, in some ways I am a spectator as to what's happening on my computer, although I've developed a decent grasp of events beneath the surface. By hiding the inner workings of the OS, automating functions and simplifying the interface, Metro (if and when it displaces the Desktop completely) is going to accelerate that process of turning the user from an active partner to an almost purely passive spectator who has no clue what's going on inside... and won't even have any way to learn.

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

I am a customer at amazon from incept time. I may have been one of the very first customers they've ever had abroad. I never owned a Kindle up to now, and do not intend to acquire one ever. Of the books I've decided to buy since that technology exists, only a handful were Kindle only, and each and everyone of those few I desisted from buying precisely because they were Kindle only. Although I do use web mail, that's the only form of "cloud storage" I decided to accept as unavoidable. And I don't leave extensive collections of old e-mails there, I download what I think should be kept and delete all the rest regularly. I've drawn my personal line in the ground at Win 7. I don't use it for anything important at present, but I'm experimenting with it, with a view on the day (I do hope still very far away) neither 98SE nor XP SP3 will suffice for my daily chores. But that's that. Even if I made a concentrated effort, I still wouldn't be able to care less for Win 8+ and/or any kind of cloud tech than I do already.

Ditto on that last sentence!

As you know, I have a special fondness for 98FE and Vista. But Win7 is acceptable, although I haven't yet made it my main (work) OS. Once I make the switch I'll probably install some kind of Vista theme (especially for the convex taskbar) and then wait and see what MSFT does with Windows 9 and beyond. If they stick to their present course, my next OS after that will be some flavor of Linux. Assuming that those folks haven't messed THAT up by then...

--JorgeA

P.S. I have what must be a first-generation Kobo e-reader. I got it because it was the only one of its kind I could find, that's easy both to set up and to connect without using wireless (an inherently insecure technology IMHO). But after my first purchase I would only ever put fiction on it -- books with references are a nightmare if you want to see what's in the notes. Nor do I have any idea how far into the book I am. More recent e-readers have better features, but seem to require wireless (like sitting in the Barnes & Noble store) to register and set up. No, thanks!

Edited September 11, 2013 by JorgeA

[jaclaz]

Correct me if I'm wrong (please!!), but this strikes me as improbable. Unless the laptop already had a keylogger installed, there's no way that even the NSA could reconstruct every (or any) keystroke the guy had input previously. And of course, if they did have a kelogger installed already, then there was no need to steal borrow confiscate his laptop, as they could simply record what he was doing.

What do you think?

--JorgeA

Naah, not only it is the usual FUD, but taking a "plain" full, complete forensic image of the disk would take - say - at the most 4 hours and even if the GI guys made a chipoff or similar physical extraction of RAM and ROM/EPROM (why? ).

Translation:

They simply wanted to harass the user and/or it was so low priority that it went at the end of the backlog, or rectius, the PC was ready after a few hours but was sent back only when it was asked for.

The green are facts, the red pure speculation:

They seized House's laptop and detained his computer for seven weeks, giving the government enough time to try to copy every file and keystroke House had made since declaring himself a Manning supporter.

The guy asked it back after seven weeks, and got it back the day after.

Seven weeks after the incident, House faxed a letter to immigration authorities asking that the devices be returned. They were sent to him the next day, via Federal Express.

As a side note:

House, an Alabama native, said he didn't ask for any money as part of his settlement agreement and said his primary concern was ensuring that a document containing the names of Manning Support Network donors didn't wind up in a permanent government file. The court order required the destruction of all his files, which House said satisfied him.

Yeah, sure, you can trust on their word that the CIA guys (or NSA or the military or whomever) have fully obeyed and destroyed each and every file and each and every copy they made of them.

If they do have a list of all Manning Support Network donors, surely it comes from some other source

Now, if I had a PC of mine seized and then returned to me by the Feds (and if I was suspected to be involved in something like the Manning case) I would look for a keylogger placed in it while they had it in their possession, or - safer, wipe it and either destroy it or sell it on e-bay the very day after I got it back, but that's another story.

jaclaz

Edited September 11, 2013 by jaclaz