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anyone can 'downgrade' a pc that comes preloaded from the manufacturer with windows 8 or 8.1 professional (oem/dsp edition) to windows 7 pro or vista business. it has to be built and sold by someone else. you can't build your own and buy your own system builder edition of windows 8/8.1 pro (which i think is a change from previous versions' downgrade rights). you must supply your own install media and valid key for the target version. telephone activation may be required which will give you a one-time use activation code for the downgrade. http://support.microsoft.com/k...

Windows 8.1 sends my every search query to Microsoft if I don't block them by IP at the DNS, router, and hosts file levels.

To configure Smart Search, you need to visit PC Settings, the new Metro-based replacement for Control Panel, and navigate to Search and Apps, and then Search.

Use Bing to Search Online. Enabled by default, this option determines whether Bing-driven web results appear in the Search results page. If you set this to Off, you will no longer see these results (and will only see Everywhere, Settings, and Files as options in the Search pane).

Your Search Experience. This option---available only when Use Bing to Search Online is set to On---determines whether Bing personalizes its search results for you and for your location. If you're going to leave Bing searching enabled, I recommend leaving this on its default: Get Personalized Results From Bing That Use My Location.

My advice? Leave it alone and give it a shot. But if you do end up wanting to turn off the Bing web integration, that's how you do so.

Windows 8.1 Tip: Configure Smart Search

It regularly disables my wireless card so that it can reset it and verify my connection by reestablishing the link with Microsoft's privacy-invading servers.

On occasions, the system is programmed to turn off the Wi-Fi adapter, when idle. This might be the reason for your spoiled Wireless connection. Troubleshoot the situation by deactivating this feature of Windows 8.1 and see if it works out.

Press Windows key + W on your keyboard to initiate Start search.
Type Network and Sharing Center in the search box and hit Enter to open its window.
In this window, choose your Wi-Fi network and the Wi-Fi Status screen will appear.
Click the Properties button near the lower left corner to open another window.
In Wi-Fi Properties window, click on the button titled Configure. Go to the Power Management tab; uncheck the following option and click OK button.
Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power.

If the problem persists, replace the adapter.

Windows 8.1 has a kind of crash I've never seen in any Windows version until this one: memory management.

The reason you've never seen this crash before is because it is also most likely a hardware error. MEMORY_MANAGEMENT error in Windows 8.1

In twenty years as a Windows home user, truly bizarre and outrageous behavior has always come down to a hardware problem --- sometimes an easy fix like resetting a chip or board, sometimes a warning that the system is EOL Time to pull the plug.

Now let's mention the one and only discussion we've seen about Windows 10 having a keylogger embedded in it while overlooking that random forum posters have said that it's because the OS is in beta but Microsoft has never confirmed that the keylogger would be removed.

There is no need to read the random forum post. Privacy Statements for Windows Technical PreviewThe Win 10 preview explicitly targets the enthusiast and the IT Pro. It is not an open public Beta as that term is generally understood.

Well this might not be for Mac users, Microsoft Project Siena might be a useful option for people on the Windows platform. http://www.microsoft.com/en-us...

clarified that you defrauded microsoft into giving you new product keys.

I think this is where your misunderstanding is coming from. Microsoft never provided new product keys to me. They simply re-activated the license after I switched out the hardware. Check out the Genuine Windows, in particular: "Usually, you need to activate Windows only once, unless you make a significant hardware change."

If my Windows installation wasn't legit, I wouldn't be getting Microsoft updates. Hence, no fraud or crime was committed. Except maybe using Windows until I get a new Mac system.

https://support.microsoft.com/...

PERTINENT QUOTE/EXCERPT:

"To use this Fix it solution, click the Fix it button or link under the Disable SSL 3.0 in Internet Explorer heading or under the Restore the original settings of SSL 3.0 in Internet Explorer heading. Then, in the File Download dialog box, click Run, and follow the steps in the Fix it wizard."

APK

P.S.=> Around here, I always read about how "slow" Microsoft is to patch things: Well, how come they've already issued SSL 3.x fixes to IE before other webbrowsers then in this case then?

...apk

Fix can be downloaded here.

when you give them funny names, or funny logos,

You mean security issues like this? http://windows.microsoft.com/w...

Interesting. I took this opportunity to check and it appears that XP SP2 does support PAE. I did not know that. I was mistaken because even with PAE, XP will still only support 4GB. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-u...

Regardless, the discussion has been quite illuminating. Thank you.

The file system manages data deduplication via garbage collection. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-u...

When an optimized file is deleted from the data deduplication-enabled volume, its reparse point is deleted, but its data chunks are not immediately deleted from the chunk store. The data deduplication feature's garbage collection job reclaims the unreferenced chunks.

Windows has had a command line package manager for quite some time now named DISM. It's usually described as an offline package management tool but works just fine on live systems.

Does this replace DISM or is this just a re-branding/update?

They must forfeit all privileges granted by copyright and patent law to allow others to pick up.

Who said anything about stopping support?
http://support2.microsoft.com/...

Says Win7 is still good until January 2020.

Yes, Windows 10 is bringing the classic desktop back, but it seems that it is becoming a unelegant mishmash of Modern UI widgets and classic Windows widgets.

Anyone can try Windows 10 for themselves if they have a spare box or can run Virtual Box. So far, "unelegant mishmash" is about right. Modern Apps seem like an emulation mode that intrudes on the desktop from time to time, even after taking steps to avoid them.
There's a lot of user feedback about improving the desktop over Modern-izing everything. All I want out of a new Windows is a better Windows 7, like performance improvements, bug fixes, a programming API that doesn't drive people insane, and more customizability (Windows 8, 8.1, and 10 are all less customizable than 7). But you get the feeling nobody at Microsoft wants to work on that old crufty Windows code and would rather plug on something all new - and bundling it with Windows is going to convince you to like it. At least the Preview Program gives you a chance to yell about it until it's released.

Well we can start with the memory limit. I'd only be able to use 1/4 of the RAM in my laptop if I had the 32 bit edition of Win7.

Sauce: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-c...

I personally have worked on at least 10 not-office-or-windows products at Microsoft, and all but one were profitable. You must be counting every 3-programmer skunk works project, projects that only ever existed on paper, and aquisitions rolled into other projects to come to that number.

You'd have to lump everything that makes a profit into either "Office" or "Windows" too. I started to type out a list of profitable products that are neither office nor windows, but the list is too long. Besides, check this out:

Here's their revenues and profits by division for the last two quarters: FY14 Q4, FY15 Q1.

Hmm, that's wierd. It looks like every single division is profitable, even Phone Hardware.

In other words, you're totally full of shit.

I personally have worked on at least 10 not-office-or-windows products at Microsoft, and all but one were profitable. You must be counting every 3-programmer skunk works project, projects that only ever existed on paper, and aquisitions rolled into other projects to come to that number.

You'd have to lump everything that makes a profit into either "Office" or "Windows" too. I started to type out a list of profitable products that are neither office nor windows, but the list is too long. Besides, check this out:

Here's their revenues and profits by division for the last two quarters: FY14 Q4, FY15 Q1.

Hmm, that's wierd. It looks like every single division is profitable, even Phone Hardware.

In other words, you're totally full of shit.

You have to install the compiler repos just like a Linux user would.

You also might be interested in Cygwin:
http://cygwin.com/

and Windows Services for UNIX:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us...

There is no cloud service provider that is approved for handling credit card information at this time. That is not an accident.

It's not clear which flavor of "cloud" you're referring to.

If you mean IaaS, Amazon AWS is PCI certified:

https://aws.amazon.com/complia...

If you mean PaaS, WIndows Azure is certified:

http://azure.microsoft.com/blo...

If you mean SaaS, Stripe is certified:

https://stripe.com/help/securi...

Of course, even if the service provider is certified, it's up to the customer to ensure that their own implementation is compliant - the service provider certification is just one checkmark in the requirements.

There are still 11 labs world-wide, and 5 of them are in the USA. http://research.microsoft.com/...

I suspect Silicon Valley is just a VERY high-cost location, and I know I wouldn't work there without 3x what I make now working in the midwest.

You can work remotely, you know...

If your process involves generating Office, documents, it's generally the easiest way. The server automation tools for generation of Office documents are basically scripts and wrappers around.... Office. So if you want to generate some report that spits out an Excel file at the end, you can bet it was generated in Excel the first time around because the reporting tool actually called Excel to fill in the fields.

This may have been correct 5 to 10 years ago, but you should never do this in a modern installation if you can possibly help it. Microsoft's official position is that "Microsoft does not recommend or support server-side Automation of Office."

You should be using the Open XML SDK to create Office documents in your web application. The default classes and methods are somewhat opaque, but fortunately, there are a lot of helper toolkits that run on top of OOXML SDK to make things much easier. I used Simple OOXML, which hasn't been updated for a while and has limited documentation, but works pretty well, and is free. These solutions are not only much more robust in a server-side situation, but you don't have to devote an Office license to the server.

If your process involves generating Office, documents, it's generally the easiest way. The server automation tools for generation of Office documents are basically scripts and wrappers around.... Office. So if you want to generate some report that spits out an Excel file at the end, you can bet it was generated in Excel the first time around because the reporting tool actually called Excel to fill in the fields.

This may have been correct 5 to 10 years ago, but you should never do this in a modern installation if you can possibly help it. Microsoft's official position is that "Microsoft does not recommend or support server-side Automation of Office."

You should be using the Open XML SDK to create Office documents in your web application. The default classes and methods are somewhat opaque, but fortunately, there are a lot of helper toolkits that run on top of OOXML SDK to make things much easier. I used Simple OOXML, which hasn't been updated for a while and has limited documentation, but works pretty well, and is free. These solutions are not only much more robust in a server-side situation, but you don't have to devote an Office license to the server.

Want a text based visio replacement? Try Visio.

FTFY.

IIRC, Powerpoint uses the same DatadiagramML standard. And these "whatever-ML" standards that Office uses are now part of OOXML (yeah, yeah, ODF blah blah blah), and are embedded into a zip file for packaging. That's all the docx, xlsx, pptx, and vsd formats are anymore. Everything since Office 2007 has used this XML-in-a-zip-archive format by default, with ever-more deprecated support for OLE with each new version.

Runner-up for text-based Visio replacement goes to: Visio (again) for it's SVG export capability. To be fair, its SVG export is no better than anyone else's. It's just that Visio's interface (IMO, of course) beats all comers until they're a gelatinous pile of formerly-structured matter. Even the "mighty" Adobe Illustrator is an imprecise pain-in-the-ass by comparison. It is, however, more "artsy" (and possibly more "fartsy" as well) and less "boring-ass systems diagrammy".

Word sucks, though. It's gotten better with 2010 and later, but it still pretty much sucks. Too much baggage, not enough actual need for pretty documents beyond what HTML can provide. I only use it when I just don't have the time or give-a-damn to make up an HTML document. I've never had sufficient give-a-damn to even start using *TeX (or click your "get started" link).

Want a text based visio replacement? Try Visio.

FTFY.

IIRC, Powerpoint uses the same DatadiagramML standard. And these "whatever-ML" standards that Office uses are now part of OOXML (yeah, yeah, ODF blah blah blah), and are embedded into a zip file for packaging. That's all the docx, xlsx, pptx, and vsd formats are anymore. Everything since Office 2007 has used this XML-in-a-zip-archive format by default, with ever-more deprecated support for OLE with each new version.

Runner-up for text-based Visio replacement goes to: Visio (again) for it's SVG export capability. To be fair, its SVG export is no better than anyone else's. It's just that Visio's interface (IMO, of course) beats all comers until they're a gelatinous pile of formerly-structured matter. Even the "mighty" Adobe Illustrator is an imprecise pain-in-the-ass by comparison. It is, however, more "artsy" (and possibly more "fartsy" as well) and less "boring-ass systems diagrammy".

Word sucks, though. It's gotten better with 2010 and later, but it still pretty much sucks. Too much baggage, not enough actual need for pretty documents beyond what HTML can provide. I only use it when I just don't have the time or give-a-damn to make up an HTML document. I've never had sufficient give-a-damn to even start using *TeX (or click your "get started" link).

No, you just use the Application Compatibility Toolkit which allows you to run an application with the exact level of permissions it requires to get things done regardless of the permissions assigned to the current user. Does your application need to be able to write to it's own program folder, but you want to prevent everything else from doing that, too? Application Compatibility Toolkit.

Is it easy to use? No, but it does work very well. The tools exist to get what you need done regardless of your environment. Granting users admin rights when they don't need them is just lazy.

What IP do you refer? They are licensing Nokia's patents. They didn't get them in the acquisition.

Microsoft Corporation and Nokia Corporation today announced that the Boards of Directors for both companies have decided to enter into a transaction whereby Microsoft will purchase substantially all of Nokia’s Devices & Services business, license Nokia’s patents, and license and use Nokia’s mapping services.

> Yea but the hatred of Microsoft is more resentment and jealousy than anything else. Sure geeks hate them but nobody else really does.

What are you smoking??

* http://bgr.com/2014/01/31/microsoft-windows-8-1-live-tiles/
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6596038
* http://ask-beta.slashdot.org/story/06/12/13/019241/why-does-everyone-hate-microsoft
* https://www.google.com/?#q=microsoft%20hate

People hate Microsoft because they keep trying push their shitty products, and don't have a clue about _good_ UI. Microsoft is all about vendor lock-in. They kick, scream, and drag there feet with open standards.

i.e. HOW many years did we have to put up with IE6 ??

This is a company that doesn't have a clue about what people want. They called Linux a "cancer", yet NOW they have tons of open source projects.

~ Unknown Soldier

Catpcha: thieving

--

Microsoft Windows 8: A 64-bit compilation of 32 bit extensions and a graphical shell for a 16 bit patch to an 8 bit operating system originally coded for a 4 bit microprocessor written by a 2 bit company that can't stand 1 bit of competition with 0 bit of understanding good UI.

If we measure success in terms of market share, Windows Phone was registering in the single digits as of January 2014. This is 4 years after the original WP7 released. So under 10% in 4 years is not a rousing success.

Financially success is probably not assured given such low market share. MS has not separated out their earnings and profits for Phone except recently: Q4 2014

Phone Hardware revenue was $2.0 billion, reflecting sales of Lumia Smartphones and other non-Lumia phones following the acquisition of NDS on April 25, 2014. Since the acquisition, we sold 5.8 million Lumia Smartphones and 30.3 million non-Lumia phones.

Phone Hardware gross margin was $54 million, reflecting revenue of $2.0 billion, offset in part by $1.9 billion cost of revenue, including amortization of acquired intangible assets and the impact of decisions to rationalize our device portfolio.

So gross margin is 0.054B / 2.0 B = 2.7% overall for phone. Note this is for all phones not just Windows Phone; however sales were only 5.8M. Financially that's terrible performance. If you compare it so Apple (and people will): 35M, $19B, (no margin reported).

On the upside, the support policy will be published on http://support2.microsoft.com/... and you'll be able to check the status of your chosen products regularly instead of just keeping your fingers crossed and hope that the "service" doesn't move from Beta to discontinued.

But all of them (Linux, UNIX, BSD) are posix-compliant, which is what many people mean these days when they say Linux, even if it's technically incorrect.

So is Windows Server... Does that mean OS X, Unix, BSD, and Windows Server are all 'sorta the samething'?

I've worked with MaxMind stuff on mobile IP location - as they guy says it's pretty useless. If the user is on wifi it's not too bad, at least the IPv4 stuff could pretty reliably get the state and often city. I never had any luck with IPv6 although they claim to support it better now.
The big kicker is if the user is on cellular - at least in the US most cell networks are natively IPv6, and they tunnel connections through giant NAT devices. This leads to two interesting effects - firstly the IPv4 address you see on the server is located at some random data center usually on the other side of the country from the user. Secondly, the IP (and therefore the data center) keeps changing - sometimes multiple times within a few minutes. Doing any kind of tracking leads to a device which appears to keep hopping back and forth between California and Kansas.

This Microsoft Research whitepaper talks more about these issues.

(and before anyone jumps on me for the privacy implications of trying to do this - in my specific case it was tracking devices in an enterprise environment for security purposes and everyone involved had given informed consent)

Is there anyone out there choosing to run Vista instead of Windows 7?

What's the highest version of IE that will run on Windows 7?

At least 11

We also know not to rely on the kernel version number to work out what the given version of Windows we're running on is capable of - you ask it if has the capability.

On Windows, the OS version is fine for most things. MS typically waits for new versions to introduce most new APIs. In cases where an application depends on APIs introduced with a new OS version, the programmer delay-loads any potentially problematic DLLs to avoid unfriendly errors issued by the OS loader, then checks the OS version in the startup code so that a friendlier "Sorry, FooBaz cannot run on systems prior to Windows XP" message can be shown.

Sometimes MS introduces a few new API functions with a service pack, or with an update to some subsystem. In those cases the recommended practice is to test for the individual functions on an as-needed basis. I believe this is the practice to which you are referring. Both approaches have their place.

I was actually moderately surprised by the fact that people were using the product name to work out the version - it's not even that easy to get that string. I think there's a WMI object that contains it, but it was only added in Vista. I can only assume it's generally developers using some form of helper library that maps the version number to friendly names for them.

No, the basic OS display name is trivially available by calling GetVersionEx() , the same function used to get the binary OS version numbers, and is returned in the szCSDVersion member of the OSVERSIONINFOEX struct (and the older OSVERSIONINFO struct). However, getting detailed OS info like "Data Center Edition" or "Small Business Server" is more complicated.

I wish I had come across this discussion earlier. There are a lot of posters here under the misapprehension that retrieving the Windows version name requires non-trivial coding.

- T

We also know not to rely on the kernel version number to work out what the given version of Windows we're running on is capable of - you ask it if has the capability.

On Windows, the OS version is fine for most things. MS typically waits for new versions to introduce most new APIs. In cases where an application depends on APIs introduced with a new OS version, the programmer delay-loads any potentially problematic DLLs to avoid unfriendly errors issued by the OS loader, then checks the OS version in the startup code so that a friendlier "Sorry, FooBaz cannot run on systems prior to Windows XP" message can be shown.

Sometimes MS introduces a few new API functions with a service pack, or with an update to some subsystem. In those cases the recommended practice is to test for the individual functions on an as-needed basis. I believe this is the practice to which you are referring. Both approaches have their place.

I was actually moderately surprised by the fact that people were using the product name to work out the version - it's not even that easy to get that string. I think there's a WMI object that contains it, but it was only added in Vista. I can only assume it's generally developers using some form of helper library that maps the version number to friendly names for them.

No, the basic OS display name is trivially available by calling GetVersionEx() , the same function used to get the binary OS version numbers, and is returned in the szCSDVersion member of the OSVERSIONINFOEX struct (and the older OSVERSIONINFO struct). However, getting detailed OS info like "Data Center Edition" or "Small Business Server" is more complicated.

I wish I had come across this discussion earlier. There are a lot of posters here under the misapprehension that retrieving the Windows version name requires non-trivial coding.

- T

And yet Microsoft has a known policy that they don't fix any exploit proven or not unless it is actively being exploited

Can you please cite the policy? A quick glance through the Microsoft Security Bulletins reveals that most of them have not been actively exploited before being patched.

Of course you could argue that Microsoft is lying, but many security researchers do (privately) report vulnerabilities to Microsoft, and you really don't think some of them will publicize the bugs if they aren't fixed in, like, a year?

Or are you actually trying to say they don't fix them unless they have been reported, which is an entirely different thing?

Microsoft does not publicize all vulnerabilities reported to them; and not every reporter will publicize it either. So how many they actually know about is unknown. This is reported by most people that are writing about the issue, especially those comparing Microsoft's practices to Open Source's and comparing the numbers for the CVE reports between the groups.

And yet Microsoft has a known policy that they don't fix any exploit proven or not unless it is actively being exploited

Can you please cite the policy?
A quick glance through the Microsoft Security Bulletins reveals that most of them have not been actively exploited before being patched.

Of course you could argue that Microsoft is lying, but many security researchers do (privately) report vulnerabilities to Microsoft, and you really don't think some of them will publicize the bugs if they aren't fixed in, like, a year?

Or are you actually trying to say they don't fix them unless they have been reported, which is an entirely different thing?

That's a load of BS. Is there even an API that returns the "marketing" version of the OS name? I know of no way to programmatically get the text "Windows 95" or "Windows 98", etc, in the Windows API, unless I build that string myself. The APIs that return the OS version use a completely different versioning convention (one that actually makes sense and is consistent).

Yes, the very same function that retrieves the binary OS version numbers also fills the relevant structure with the OS name string in the szCSDVersion field. It has been this way since at least Win95 and WinNT4 (note that I linked to the older structure layout; the newer layout is a superset). If you're a sufficiently confident Windows programmer to call BS on this, it's astonishing that you're unaware of it.

The premise of the TFA is still broken, though. A test for "Windows 9" as a method of avoiding the Win9x family would fail for "Windows Me" or "Windows Millennium" (I cannot recall how the function reports that OS name). Further, application compatibility settings, including those which allow the OS to lie to an application about the version, entirely mitigate the consequences of any proposed broken test for "Windows 9" text. Finally, Win8.1 and later lie to applications by default unless the application either includes recently specified manifest entries, or uses the newly introduced version helper functions. Outdated applications obviously won't be using either of those, so they can never see the actual post-Win8 version string from the API, thereby rendering any broken "Windows 9" test moot.

Maybe there is some way to dig through the registry and find that, but any app doing that deserves to be broken anyway.

I cannot be sure without looking it up, but the Application Compatibility Toolkit might provide a way to configure an application-specific registry redirect for applications which exemplify this level of programmer ignorance.

Trust me, MS doesn't give the slightest concern about any broken Java apps.

No, MS has a strong record of placing a high value on backward compatibility. If some popular Java app (or entire SDK version) won't run properly, MS knows the users are more likely to blame them, not whatever app/JVM vendor is actually at fault.

They named it Windows 10 for marketing reasons. End of story. Quit being retarded.

Yes and no. I think it's an in-joke. The "10" actually represents a binary 2, indicating their second attempt at a tolerable Win7 upgrade...

- T

That's a load of BS. Is there even an API that returns the "marketing" version of the OS name? I know of no way to programmatically get the text "Windows 95" or "Windows 98", etc, in the Windows API, unless I build that string myself. The APIs that return the OS version use a completely different versioning convention (one that actually makes sense and is consistent).

Yes, the very same function that retrieves the binary OS version numbers also fills the relevant structure with the OS name string in the szCSDVersion field. It has been this way since at least Win95 and WinNT4 (note that I linked to the older structure layout; the newer layout is a superset). If you're a sufficiently confident Windows programmer to call BS on this, it's astonishing that you're unaware of it.

The premise of the TFA is still broken, though. A test for "Windows 9" as a method of avoiding the Win9x family would fail for "Windows Me" or "Windows Millennium" (I cannot recall how the function reports that OS name). Further, application compatibility settings, including those which allow the OS to lie to an application about the version, entirely mitigate the consequences of any proposed broken test for "Windows 9" text. Finally, Win8.1 and later lie to applications by default unless the application either includes recently specified manifest entries, or uses the newly introduced version helper functions. Outdated applications obviously won't be using either of those, so they can never see the actual post-Win8 version string from the API, thereby rendering any broken "Windows 9" test moot.

Maybe there is some way to dig through the registry and find that, but any app doing that deserves to be broken anyway.

I cannot be sure without looking it up, but the Application Compatibility Toolkit might provide a way to configure an application-specific registry redirect for applications which exemplify this level of programmer ignorance.

Trust me, MS doesn't give the slightest concern about any broken Java apps.

No, MS has a strong record of placing a high value on backward compatibility. If some popular Java app (or entire SDK version) won't run properly, MS knows the users are more likely to blame them, not whatever app/JVM vendor is actually at fault.

They named it Windows 10 for marketing reasons. End of story. Quit being retarded.

Yes and no. I think it's an in-joke. The "10" actually represents a binary 2, indicating their second attempt at a tolerable Win7 upgrade...

- T

That's a load of BS. Is there even an API that returns the "marketing" version of the OS name? I know of no way to programmatically get the text "Windows 95" or "Windows 98", etc, in the Windows API, unless I build that string myself. The APIs that return the OS version use a completely different versioning convention (one that actually makes sense and is consistent).

Yes, the very same function that retrieves the binary OS version numbers also fills the relevant structure with the OS name string in the szCSDVersion field. It has been this way since at least Win95 and WinNT4 (note that I linked to the older structure layout; the newer layout is a superset). If you're a sufficiently confident Windows programmer to call BS on this, it's astonishing that you're unaware of it.

The premise of the TFA is still broken, though. A test for "Windows 9" as a method of avoiding the Win9x family would fail for "Windows Me" or "Windows Millennium" (I cannot recall how the function reports that OS name). Further, application compatibility settings, including those which allow the OS to lie to an application about the version, entirely mitigate the consequences of any proposed broken test for "Windows 9" text. Finally, Win8.1 and later lie to applications by default unless the application either includes recently specified manifest entries, or uses the newly introduced version helper functions. Outdated applications obviously won't be using either of those, so they can never see the actual post-Win8 version string from the API, thereby rendering any broken "Windows 9" test moot.

Maybe there is some way to dig through the registry and find that, but any app doing that deserves to be broken anyway.

I cannot be sure without looking it up, but the Application Compatibility Toolkit might provide a way to configure an application-specific registry redirect for applications which exemplify this level of programmer ignorance.

Trust me, MS doesn't give the slightest concern about any broken Java apps.

No, MS has a strong record of placing a high value on backward compatibility. If some popular Java app (or entire SDK version) won't run properly, MS knows the users are more likely to blame them, not whatever app/JVM vendor is actually at fault.

They named it Windows 10 for marketing reasons. End of story. Quit being retarded.

Yes and no. I think it's an in-joke. The "10" actually represents a binary 2, indicating their second attempt at a tolerable Win7 upgrade...

- T

Personally I think that floating point binary has it's advantages as it allows you to do lots of calculations really fast. However, with the number of financial and money processing applications out there, it's amazing that more languages don't have better support for decimal numbers. Even simple numbers like 0.1 can't be properly represented with floating point numbers. .Net has a native data type called decimal that does uses decimal floating point and is accurate to 28 or 29 digits, which makes it a great thing to use when dealing with money. I wish more languages would support something similar. Using binary floating point is a premature optimization that most applications don't need, and many programmers aren't aware of the side effects and the problems it could cause.

Ambilight and this are shit compared to Microsoft IllumiRoom.

Netflix offers several test streams for validating your speeds, and Google has a Video Quality Report

I find that the Speedtest.Net results are a realistic estimate of my actual best case upload/download speed, but there are certainly some websites which are much slower to load, for various reasons. If you suspect your ISP is throttling some websites intentionally, you can always browse through a VPN service.

As mentioned previously, local WiFi problems are often the root cause of slow page loads. Go wired. You can also use the network debugging tools built into Firefox (Network Monitor) and MSIE to try to determine what parts of a page are particularly slow.

I use the App for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8:
Windows: http://apps.microsoft.com/wind...
Phone: http://www.windowsphone.com/en...

Oracle gave a free license for J2SE, whereas Android and mobile devices use J2ME (which costs $$$ and is the money-maker side of Java - Oracle gives squat about J2SE or J2EE because they aren't profit centers).

Android and mobiles devices use Dalvik. The only thing that is Java related is the syntax which goes into the compiler, the stuff that comes out the other side of the compilation process is not Java bytecode and is not compatible with the Java runtime.

And it's really a patent license - that as long as your implementation is J2SE compatible, you're good.

You cannot file a patent for the single line of code "int printf(const char *, ...);", the API is literally a statement of a problem in the absence of the solution. The solution is the implementation of the code inside the functions which is the only part that is patentable.

Of course, if it's really about whether APIs can be copyrighted, this can have far-reach decisions, because it places a bunch of GPL'd stuff on the line. E.g., in the Linux kernel, there are a bunch of utility functions that are exported to GPL-only kernel modules (EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL). If copyright doesn't apply, then GPL protections can't apply either (since GPL requires copyright in order to function - the GPL grants you rights if you agree to terms, if you don't agree, you agree to standard copyright). And the kernel devs have looked down on proprietary drivers deliberately working around limitations to call those functions.

You fail. That is the opposite way around: all proprietary code is banned from touching the kernel at all by default; they have exceptions to the GPL which permits certain functions to be used without invoking the GPL's requirements. Those protections are based on the derivative works rule and applies because the finished binary is formed by combining actual code from the kernel. This does create a limitation which nVidia exploits with their module, i.e. if you build it on the end user machine and never copy it to a different computer then the GPL doesn't matter since it only controls distribution. Of course, if APIs being copyrighted is possible then this whole discussion is moot since Linux implements the POSIX API which would be wholly owned by AT&T (via Bell Labs) so Linux would be pretty dead.

GPL'd libraries are fine - since the library implementation is GPL'd. But it also means that someone else can use the same APIs and make a non-GPL'd version of the library for proprietary code, like say a non-free version of readline.

And this would be a problem why? They did the work, it's their right to do whatever they want with it.
Have you heard of Wine, an independent implementation of the Win32 API on top of Unix? Have you perhaps heard of Winsock, the Windows TCP/IP library that is used for all network access on Windows, the one which is a straight copy of the original API created by the BSD developers?

systemd just became WindowsPE.

This is a solution needed, only when you have become so mind-bogglingly complex, and binary-oriented like Windows.

Booting into runlevel S is so... practical.

None of which requires them to know the passwords that I enter into websites or applications.

They don't know those things unless you actually use it, so why - given that they outline all these details in their privacy policy - are you using it? There is really no reason to try this out except for interest sake, it isn't the release you would be testing software or hardware compatibility with.

-install the Program, we may collect information about your device and applications and use it for purposes such as determining or improving compatibility,
-use voice input features like speech-to-text, we may collect voice information and use it for purposes such as improving speech processing,
-open a file, we may collect information about the file, the application used to open the file, and how long it takes any use it for purposes such as improving performance, or
-enter text, we may collect typed characters and use them for purposes such as improving autocomplete and spellcheck features.
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-au/windows/preview-privacy-statement

Like all previous software test versions. So that users could test their actual applications

That's not what the technical preview is for, the details have not been finalized yet so testing your applications against it now is pointless, they make that point quite clear:

Windows Technical Preview may be substantially modified before it’s commercially released.
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-au/windows/preview

So I'm not sure where you're getting any idea that testing on this version would be of any benefit.

Then they detail how they may work to resolve issues:
Also, if your PC runs into problems, Microsoft will likely examine your system files. If the privacy of your system files is a concern, consider using a different PC. For more info, read our privacy statement.
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-au/windows/preview-faq#faq=tab0

So if you've gotten this far and you're paranoid about privacy would you not think "ok maybe this technical preview is not something i want to be involved in?"

The joy with which people defend the jackboot of their opressor as it pounds down upon their faces is a bit scary sometimes.

As is the joy with which people who don't read come up with conspiracy theories about how everybody is out to get you! I'm sure this is all some big conspiracy (probably with the NSA?) to get people to install this technical preview and get their passwords to their email (though I thought the NSA already had all this stuff) so they can find out if you're a terrorist.

Like all previous software test versions. So that users could test their actual applications

That's not what the technical preview is for, the details have not been finalized yet so testing your applications against it now is pointless, they make that point quite clear:

Windows Technical Preview may be substantially modified before it’s commercially released.
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-au/windows/preview

So I'm not sure where you're getting any idea that testing on this version would be of any benefit.

Then they detail how they may work to resolve issues:
Also, if your PC runs into problems, Microsoft will likely examine your system files. If the privacy of your system files is a concern, consider using a different PC. For more info, read our privacy statement.
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-au/windows/preview-faq#faq=tab0

So if you've gotten this far and you're paranoid about privacy would you not think "ok maybe this technical preview is not something i want to be involved in?"

The joy with which people defend the jackboot of their opressor as it pounds down upon their faces is a bit scary sometimes.

As is the joy with which people who don't read come up with conspiracy theories about how everybody is out to get you! I'm sure this is all some big conspiracy (probably with the NSA?) to get people to install this technical preview and get their passwords to their email (though I thought the NSA already had all this stuff) so they can find out if you're a terrorist.

Remember, trying out an early build like this can be risky. That's why we recommend that you don't install the preview on your primary home or business PC. Unexpected PC crashes could damage or even delete your files, so you should back up everything.

If you want to stop using Windows Technical Preview and return to your previous version of Windows, you'll need to reinstall your previous version from the recovery or installation media that came with your PC—typically a DVD. If you don't have recovery media, you might be able to create recovery media from a recovery partition on your PC using software provided by your PC manufacturer. You'll need to do this before you upgrade. Check the support section of your PC manufacturer's website for more info.

After you install Windows Technical Preview, you won’t be able to use the recovery partition on your PC to go back to your previous version of Windows.

Watch out! Installing this version of Windows disables the recovery partition.

Because it could be almost impossible to know.

De-compiling or tracing Windows is not a small task, especially not if we're talking kernels, signed-drivers, etc. With TPM etc. you may not even be able to investigate much of the boot process.

And monitoring packets that go back over the network - well, that's what TLS was INVENTED to make safe from even packet-level snooping.

So it's one of those things that's almost impossible to do, probably can't be done with reverse-engineering (or otherwise breaking the EULA of the software itself), and may not ever reveal the true story (i.e. what if MS put a flag onto machines they are interested in, which then return more data than they normally would?).

Did you know that Windows after XP contacts an MS-controlled server with your IP to "check" whether you're actually connected to the Internet or not? http://technet.microsoft.com/e...

Most people don't. And it's only because the knowledge is public that we really know. And how easy it would be to detect what information was being sent home by something like that if, say, rundll32.exe was talking out to an MS port with a TLS connection? Your firewall would allow it, you wouldn't be able to sniff it, and it would look like nothing more than an NCIS login which you can't block if you want Windows to think it's actually "online".

Plenty of people have people are already running Windows 10. Anyone can signup and download it for free: http://windows.microsoft.com/e...

I'm running it on this 2008 laptop right now. This box was previously running Windows 7 and was running slow after several years without a clean OS install. Windows 10 seems pretty snappy and is much more intuitive as a desktop OS than Windows 8.

A few features I like better than Windows 7 in my first 24 hours of usage:
*Improved task manager detail (looks like the Windows 8 version at a quick blush)
*Improved file transfer speed information (same as Windows 8)
*The start menu is back, and it's easy to add/remove items from the quick access list

Features I don't like as much:
*I can see bars of strength for my wifi connection but I haven't figured out how to easily see whether I'm connected via G, N, or AC and current Mbps settings of the connection
*The news application has potential, but is so slow starting up most people won't bother with it