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Windows 8 Desktop 'Just Another App'?
CWmike writes "Steven Sinofsky, president of Microsoft's Windows and Windows Live division, said this week that Windows 8 will let users treat the traditional desktop as 'just another app' that loads only on command. When it unveiled Windows 8's UI in June, Microsoft said it would feature a 'touch-first' interface to compete in the fast-growing tablet market. Underneath that, however, would be a traditional Windows-style desktop. 'Having both of [the] user interfaces [work] together harmoniously is an important part of Windows 8,' Sinofsky said in a blog post on Wednesday. The Metro-style UI — the one inspired by Windows Phone 7's tile-based design — will be the first to show up when a user boots a device. At that point, users reach a crossroads. 'If you want to stay permanently immersed in that Metro world, you will never see the desktop — we won't even load it (literally the code will not be loaded) unless you explicitly choose to go there,' Sinofsky said. 'If you don't want to do ... 'PC' things, then you don't have to and you're not paying for them in memory, battery life or hardware requirements.' If using a conventional PC with keyboard and mouse, Windows 8 users will run an 'app' to load the desktop, he said. 'Essentially, you can think of the Windows desktop as just another app.'"
This is the version of Windows that you skip, right? Every other version is the good version?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Before anyone jumps on the band wagon and says that we all have perfectly usable user space desktop apps for 28 years in the UNIX world, let me say that it is actually very important that now even Microsoft starts to understand that modularity is the way to go while designing complex systems. Moving various operating system components to the user space is just a logical conclusion of the research done during the last four decades. Look at the direction of modern OSii development, from MINIX to GNU. Started by GNOSIS, KeyKOS, EROS and Coyotos this trend seems to suggest that it is much more natural and reliable to design a secure capability-based system when all of the services are separated from each other. Now when even Microsoft is going in that direction - and it is not a trivial change for them, trust me - we can expect Apple and other OS vendors to follow which is a Good Thing. After all, even if people like you and me are using secure operating systems we still don't want to get spammed and dossed by all of the legacy machines out there. It turns out that the rumors that Microsoft is starting to take the latest research in operating systems seriously turned out to be true. This is good news for everyone.
Karma: Positive (probably because of superiour intellect)
quitting the Finder on a Mac, since Finder runs as a (rather persistent) application.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
I can't imagine they could do away with much more than explorer and maybe a hand full of DLL's. So, basically, we are given an extra step to load our desktops... probably while we are inundated with news feeds or advertisements. I wonder which HKey will turn this off.
Since the dawn of time, the Windows "Desktop" has always been an application. Before 95 it was progman. After, it was explorer. You've always been able to switch to a new shell with ini file or registry modifications.
Explorer has always been "just an app". You can edit system.ini and replace 'SHELL=explorer.exe' with any other application. e.g. LiteStep, a MAME front end, XBMC, etc.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
The Metro-style UI — the one inspired by Windows Phone 7's tile-based design — will be the first to show up when a user boots a device.
I sure hope it'll be easy to turn that off. It makes sense on a consumer box with a touchscreen, but for my work station, I have no intention of using the Metro UI.
Personally, I think a more elegant approach would be to allow the user to choose the GUI style via a menu/toggle on the login screen a la the Unix world.
This is an interesting idea that should not be too difficult to implement in a Linux Distro. How often do I boot up my laptop just to check email or look up something on google? Having an option to login quickly in a kiosk-mode with only a limited number of apps or full desktop might come in handy. Anyone set something like this up already? Pros - Cons? Probably just have something like TWM as well as my trusty XFCE-4 as an option at login.
Flexible bare-metal recovery for Linux/UNIX
1. Business will not deploy it
2. Only tablet or touch screen use in the consumer market
Why? Business will lockout the "Metro" interface, and just load the "desktop app" - at processor & memory cost - which in an Enterprise = lotsa $$
The consumer who still thinks of a PC a a traditional Windows desktop w/ traditional menus and apps will be turned off, because their new shiny toy will get crap performance w/o TONs of memory and horsepower. Because they'll want a desktop.
Dedicated OS's for dedicated devices guys - it just works better. less code = more harmony.
Enlightenment is a pipe dream. So where's the pipe?
"'Essentially, you can think of the Windows desktop as just another app.'"
Wow, that's great news! So, when does the app hit the iTunes store?
(Don't lie, you know damn well this is how the average uneducated user is going to respond to this notion.)
Can I have an o/s that boots to a command line?
And then run metro.com (the small client) or win.com (the big client)?
Sounds like the very first Windows. Just think where Microsoft might be right now if they had maintained clear architectural boundaries between the operating system kernel and the UI. The browser is part of the operating system?! Really?! Well, at least they're starting to figure things out. Maybe someday they'll decide to maintain a clean separation between the rest of their products as well. But I doubt it.
this sounds like a good choice. Granted, people like me may be up in rage because of the unfamilar feeling, but the fewer calls I get because people totally screwed up their own rig is a good thing in my book. As the first major desktop/notebook/netbook/whatever OS to embrace this idea (as in it's not a phone or PDA), it could verywell lead how it's really supposed to be done. Just please tell me I don't have to jailbreak my own computer...
For those who seek perfection there can be no rest on this side of the grave.
That's not the Droid I was looking for.
The difference is making it easy for common users to switch desktops, or even understand such a thing is possible. Linux users are familiar with switching desktops and the numerous ways options available. Most of us have toyed with Gnome and KDE and XFCE, E17, Nextstep, ect....
If Windows users had an option drop down in their login screen I wonder how many would replace their desktop environment. How long will it be before the common windows user installs a OSX clone? (not just a theme, but a true work-alike desktop)
Sinofsky is a fucking dipshit and he's overreaching. You couldn't get away with this on Linux because they would just jettison your dumb Metro window manager like used toilet paper. When Metro grows dated (almost there already) they're hardcoded and fucked. XAML & C++, eh? Can anyone see the obvious retardation? If you guessed that C++ doesn't have reflection and XAML is based entirely on reflection, you are correct. IThis, IThat, death-by-COM, surely that was what we were all clamoring for instead of an optimized WPF right?
I've been noticing a drumbeat on Slashdot. A daily Windows 8 post that looks interesting and/or controversial in the summary, but doesn't really tell me much I didn't already know, or turns out to be some MS rep. blogging about irrelevancies, in TFA.
Could we please stop posting about a new Windows 8 "feature" every day? This really isn't news until it ships, and we can assess the product as a whole. This is beginning to feel like a daily ad. At the very least, editors, I think you're being had here and should do something about it.
So that's what the drunken guys at Microsoft UK were working on?
For those who seek perfection there can be no rest on this side of the grave.
Wow. I had to look up the word 'shkotzim' - is there any subject, no matter how mundane (OS loading, for example) that can't be turned to anti-jewish sentiment?
In answer to your question : yes, this UI customisation issue IS the inevitable result of millennia of Jewish culture! It's what they've been planning ALL ALONG!
It was like this 15 years ago. If I would use the desktop interface:
C:\>cd windows
C:\windows>win.com
Would be awesome if there really was an open api for Customized desktop apps.
A little competition could go a long way.
Sounds like Windows 3.x. You booted into DOS and Windows installed and ran as an application on top of it. Of course, at the time my favorite DOS command was deltree, and my favorite folder to use it on was the root Windows 3.x folder.
Can we dispense with the GUI altogether?
The Windows desktop was already an app. It was called "Explorer.exe".
I'd love it even more if it was designed to be as accessible as possible from using a mouse rather than tablet.
I know it probably won't be and we will be stuck with fiddling around with the mouse position until we get it right where we want, but I can dream...
I, too, am in the camp that hates desktop OSes being turned in to "huge phones".
But with this, it really could be designed to be as accessible as possible using mice and keyboard.
Most applications on computers can be done very easily in the way they are implemented in this.
With plugins that have a little more access to hardware resources, things that require them can access them. (such as needing more speed, or requiring GPU or whatever)
Additionally, having the ability to run lite and full versions of programs is a very handy for being tiled in grids to display like this. Admittedly some programs wouldn't really work through this, but most can be run through this method.
There are a few tiling window managers out there already, some very impressive ones from what I have seen.
They should look at some of those and take some notes.
Am I going to get it? Depends what else they butcher with Ribbon. Ribbon, the awful freak-child between tablet OS functionality and desktop OS functionality. Ribbon, the thing that takes up a massive chunk of your screen, then has to be defended by removing yet another huge chunk of the screen (super huge statusbar) they added for GOD knows what reason and say "oh hey look it shows more files now!".
I skipped Vista and 7 because of many things, particularly that sad excuse of a security system UAC, the annoyingly over-sized window elements and generally wasteful on resources. (particularly Aero, just because I have a nice beefy GPU doesn't mean I want it running all the time! Don't bring up disabling it, please, that isn't the point.)
While I will certainly still be keeping this install active even if I DID get Win8, I'd rather get it so I can get some more RAM and slightly better hardware support for some things. (mainly for gaming)
This is an interesting idea that has shown up elsewhere... In OS X, there is the "full screen" mode, and many windows also have an oblong button in the top right which is used to show/hide extra toolbars, and many apps also use this to switch between "Simple" and "complex" modes, including the Finder.
The merit would be to force developers to include different interfaces for the same underlying program, and to consider this type of workflow during development. This definitely sounds like a good thing, because many desktop programs are very robust but lack similar tools in the burgeoning touch interface market.
Tablets are already very powerful and capable of handling these applications, but quickly porting them over would be clunky. Many of these apps would be perfectly usable with a touch interface, but are not available for those platforms despite the practicality. Audacity could work great with a touch interface for example, but we don't want to create an entirely new application when the same one could be used with a slightly different interface.
I think that positioning the interface choice so predominantly on the desktop will spur the maturation of touch interface on already existing applications, and it will be good for users because they will already be familiar, and will be able to switch back if they can't find a certain option. They'll be able to learn at their own pace without having the rug pulled out from under them. It will also help developers design more modular programs, and slowly build up the touch interface portion instead of having to design two separate applications and make either/or trade-offs for both of them.
It would be great to re-use all of our code and be able to switch from a touch interface to a mouse/keyboard interface at will. Dock your tablet and it becomes a desktop... for real this time. Take the screen off your desktop and you can walk around with it. Maybe future monitors will have lower-powered hardware built in so we can do this, and snap the monitor back on when we need more horsepower or different input options.
Twinstiq, game news
Fixed that for you.
I certainly don't. All my apps are pinned to taskbar and i use windows+tab to switch. Anything else is in the start menu and i can use the run bar. Or i use my dock.
Afraid of change much guys?
Explorer.exe is almost exactly analogous to Finder on a Mac: just an app that provides the familiar UI environment.
What's ironic is that this is pretty much doing Win98/IE4 in reverse. That was when Microsoft decided that not only did you have to load the standard UI at boot time, you had to load their web browser too, so they combined the browser and the UI into a single program. Unbundling the UI from the OS... hell, that's almost like rolling back to before Win95! First boot the OS, then (if you want) load the GUI. :)
While I can see plenty of good reasons for doing this, it's going to be very confusing to the users, who have no conception of the distinction between the OS and the UI. If you load Windows, and there's no Start button, no (My) Computer, no task bar, etc.... to most people that's not Windows. They don't care if the drivers and kernel and whatnot are all the same; it will be (for their perspective) an entirely different operating system.
So maybe it's time Microsoft changed the name?
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Well apparently, the general consensus seems to be that it's a Jewish anti-non-Jewish word.
Noun
shegetz (plural shkotzim or shegetzes (rare)) (Judaism, offensive) A gentile, a non-Jewish male.
But...with such a long and varied history of monopoly power, deception and downright dirty tricks, why would anyone trust Microsoft again when there are so many good free alternatives that have open communities and standards. Don't these guys get it? Focus on the XBox. There is still a market for a closed (and even evil) system here.
:-D)
(Granted, I am a grizzled old Unix advocate that would have said this 20 years ago as well.
1992 called; it wants DOS and Windows 3.1 back.
Hey! Port it to Linux!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
I can load angry birds as soon as my pc starts up... as long as I dont lose it among all my other app icons.
No, it isn't which is why Apple's trademark for an app store is stupid and wrong. They may think of it more as of an application for a phone or tablet, but not specifically an Apple labelled product. And Windows 8 is going to be for Microsoft Tablets, so the description still wouldn't be far off for the mainstream user who thinks of apps in the more modern parlance.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Windows 3.x was just another MSDOS executable.
and 5 years before that, Amiga Workbench was a multitasking GUI that ran on AmigaDOS
Yes, and now read the GGP, knowing what shkotzim means.
The GGP is himself being anti-Jewish. He's not really hiding it and it's not subtle.
So instead of "dropping to shell" we now go to the Desktop to "do PC stuff"?
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
In answer to your question : yes, this UI customisation issue IS the inevitable result of millennia of Jewish culture! It's what they've been planning ALL ALONG!
Folks in computer science are supposed to be experts at spotting patterns, and it seems to this shegetz that there is an unmistakable pattern developing here: M$FT was founded by some folks with fairly normal, plain-jane, ah, "vanilla"-sounding names, like "Gates", and "Allen", and yet, slowly but surely, the normal, plain-jane, ah, "vanilla"-sounding names are being pushed to the sidelines, in favor of more exotic names, like "Myhrvold", "Ballmer", and "Sinofsky".
And, again, if you're worth your salt in CompSci, then you'll have a talent for noticing patterns.
Not fuzzy chaotic background noise, but weird, statistically-significant [really uber-significant] patterns, which wouldn't present themselves were we observing a purely random Monte Carlo run of the roulette wheel.
Again: These kinds of patterns ARE NOT RANDOM.
But since Windows 2000, nay, NT it's just been incremental improvements. I still run Win7 in "Windows classic" Let me tell you what's impacted me over the years... Nothing. The kernel has improved (less blue screens) and now I have fancy window docking options. That's about it. Explorer.exe is still king. All the pain and suffering of Vista and its predecessors were introduced by different driver models that were only incrementally better than the last.
Apps have seen the biggest change, with ribbons (which I hate). I still run XP at home. Get off my lawn! And get off my desktop!
And I still rock Office 97 on my Win7 machine. It's all incremental since win32.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
they still can't "design" an attractive interface for shit! I give you the Windows 8 Explorer Toolbar Ribbon.
I've yet to meet the office worker that likes the Office style ribbon, which is exactly what it looks like.
I8-D
Ahm, so? It's the default on Linux, you have several tiers, you can use no graphics or windows at all (shell), "just X" with twm or just a root window, a full blown desktop like kde. You can even use something sophisticated like clutter without X (direct FB backend).
Sooo...What's the news, Microsoft?
On second thought, let's not go to Camelot. It is a silly place.
Saying the truth =/= anti-semitism. You're going to claim that the fact that there are also a disproportionate number of Jews involved in Hollywood is just a heathen rumor too? If there are under 15 million Jews in the whole world and only 5 million in the US, you would expect to see many more Mexican and African actors, directors, music producers and bankers, for example. This is not anti-semitism it's a verifiable fact. Jews stick together and when Jews are onto a good thing and easy money, they hire more Jews. Screw the goy. Equal opportunity employers so long as you are Jewish.
Sooooo..... is this Windows 8 touch interface what the Windows 7 Media Center became? In all fairness, if the Windows desktop really isn't loaded, and the touch interface will come up by itself, that's getting reasonably close to ... well, what everyone else has... But I have to wonder, based on past experiences with M$ reuse and rebranding, whether the Windows 8 touch interface is actually an updated Media Center rebranded, and to actually get anything done that requires more than just touching big squares would require that you load the desktop.
For instance, I can read and create Slashdot articles on my Android phone. (It's not pleasant, due to the screen size, but it can be done.) Can the same thing be done (easily) from the Windows 8 touch interface, or as a practical matter, would you need to load the desktop? (Note I said "need", not "want". What I'm looking for is some glimmer of hope that a Windows 8 tablet would be useful without having to drag around a keyboard and mouse for those times when you know, you wanted to write something.)
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I know I'm just wading in to the insanity here... but why do all occupations have to have representative populations that mirror cultural proportions?
Maybe a lot of Jews are just funny?
Is the NFL or the NBA representative of the US population at large?
And if everybody had been trying to kill off your people for several thousand years, wouldn't you tend to stick together too? And possibly have a small bit of distrust for "outsiders"? Who would you believe - thousands of years of history, or what some person is currently telling you?
"But this one goes to 11!"
Perhaps this indicates that I'm a fatalist, but can they just take me straight to the blue screen of death?
Is this really all that interesting? Isn't he probably just saying Explorer isn't the shell in W8? You've been able to set different shells for years haven't you?
Yeah this is the jewish persecution answer you normally get whenever you claim that jews are among the worst racists. You do realize that the whole 6 million jews business is based on only the word of a handful of jews, right? Yeah lots of jews were killed. Lots of them emigrated, too. A lot of blacks were killed, a lot of homosexuals were killed, a lot of mentally handicapped were killed and certainly a lot of Russian prisoners of war were killed. Now how much was systematic homicide and how much was not being able to feed the prisoners for lack of food because the German transport network was constantly under air attack?
Enough of the persecution story. Being persecuted does not allow you to sidestep the argument that jews are among the most racist humans on the planet. Like the americans, why don't you stop and wonder for a minute why it is that everybody hates you? Because you share the same attitude. It's all about us, and fuck everyone else.
With new Windows server OSes you can choose a "full" installation or a "core" installation. The core installation lacks a whole lot of shit, including the GUI. I mean you still have a mouse cursor and window manager, but the GUI as in explorer itself is missing. All command line interfacing (though as noted apps can run graphically if they wish). You can do it to save resources, though it can be a bit of a pain to administer.
Sounds like this is just the next step in making shit like that easier. It can apply to desktops, as well as servers, and is something that can be loaded or not on demand, rather than having to choose. Makes sense to me. Windows is actually fairly modular at a low level, they just don't make it that easy for users to disable things.
That's why I pay my monthly dues to the IJC.. Get over it..Fuckin' goyim!
Of the sixty(60) senior executives of the major Hollywood studios, trade unions, and talent agencies, fifty(50) are Jews or have Jewish spouses. This is a numerical representation of 83%. Jews are approximately 2% of the U.S. population.* Therefore Jews are over-represented among the senior executives of the major Hollywood studios, trade unions, and talent agencies by a factor of 41.5 times(4,150 percent).
Of the sixty-four(64) senior executives of the major television broadcast networks, cable networks, and production companies, fifty-seven(57) are Jews or have Jewish spouses. This is a numerical representation of 89%. Jews are approximately 2% of the U.S. population.* Therefore Jews are over-represented among the senior executives of the major television broadcast networks, cable networks, and production companies by a factor of 44.5 times(4,450 percent).
Of the fifty(50) senior executives of the major music labels and trade organizations, thirty-nine(39) are Jews. This is a numerical representation of 78%. Jews are approximately 2% of the U.S. population.* Therefore Jews are over-represented among the senior executives of the major music labels and trade organizations by a factor of 39 times(3,900 percent).
Of the forty-six(46) senior executives of the major radio broadcast networks and station owners, twenty-eight(28) are Jews. This is a numerical representation of 61%. Jews are approximately 2% of the U.S. population.* Therefore Jews are over-represented among the senior executives of the major radio broadcast networks and station owners by a factor of 30.5 times(3,050 percent).
Of the forty-six(46) senior executives of the major advertising corporations and trade associations, thirty-one(31) are Jews. This is a numerical representation of 67%. Jews are approximately 2% of the U.S. population.* Therefore Jews are over-represented among the senior executives of the major advertising corporations and trade associations by a factor of 33.5 times(3,350 percent).
Of the sixty-seven(67) senior executives of the major television and radio news networks, forty-seven(47) are Jews or have Jewish spouses. This is a numerical representation of 70%. Jews are approximately 2% of the U.S. population.* Therefore Jews are over-represented among the senior executives of the major television and radio news networks by a factor of 35 times(3,500 percent).
Since OS X 10.0.0, the Finder has been "just another app". The fact that it launches by default (like Explorer.exe in Windows), and doesn't have a Quit/Exit command (just like Explorer.exe) unless it is enabled through a little preference-file trickery, doesn't change the fact that it is just another app.
So they are creating a GUI that will work on any device. Or rather each device running Win8 will look like the other Win8 devices. Unfortunately, I think they will be one step behind Apple. When you run a ppt/keynote file on an external display but off your Macbook, the main display is your slides, and the secondary display can be notes (notes you've written into your ppt/keynote file). To me this is where it's at! Using multiple displays for different functions, and having both screens in the full screen mode. My main issue with Windows is the full screen settings. Play a game, it maxes out on the primary display (D1), switch displays and the you loose the the full screen option on D1. You want to play full screen on D2, too bad, switch your displays around. You want to show a full screen pic on D2 while pausing your full screen game on D1, too bad you can't do that. Currently I only have 2 screens (22" & 40"), but in the near future I plat to add a third (27"). At some point I will add a fourth (55+"). Additionally, I would really like to plug my phone/netbook into my desktop and have the phone be able to access the power of the desktop. Personally, this is where MSFT should go.
...jews are among the most racist humans...
$ETHNIC_GROUP is racist. *sigh*
I recall reading that the MetroUI itself was an html5 app. If that's the case I'm sure this version will be much better for customization than previous ones. Hacking the metroUI interface or replacing it with a different html5 app will be far easier than replacing the explorer.exe shell has been in the past. I'm sure it won't take too long before the mod community comes out with a replacement desktop UI that's actually slick and functional.
if they removed explorer? that was a big part of their browser fight several years ago. Now that they totally lost that fight they're going to just give us the option to quit the desktop? They made it sound like Jesus himself couldn't remove IE from Windows.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Jews stick together and when Jews are onto a good thing and easy money, they hire more Jews. Screw the goy. Equal opportunity employers so long as you are Jewish.
How is this different than any other race/group/clan/side of the tracks?
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Um sure except I wasn't saying any ethnic group is not racist. I was commenting on the post stating that jews stick together and offering an opinion as to why I think they would tend to stick together.
But I do find you fanciful stories of "food supply problems" being the reason millions of jews were killed in WWII quite humorous. Sure "a lot" of blacks, homosexuals, POWs, etc. were also killed in the war, but if you can point to any other group that was killed in the proportions jews were, I would love to have a link to your sources.
"But this one goes to 11!"
any ways at this places Big site a lot of users have dual screens and it is a mix of windows XP with windows 7 rolling out. Now I don't see a phone / touchpad GUI fitting in the big screen / multi tasking office world.
Your Struggle interests me. Do you have a book, perhaps written while in prison?
Since Seattle is somewhat known for being 'Metrosexual', does the new Metro UI mean that the new tech chiq is going to be 'Metro-hexual'?
the reason millions of jews were killed in WWII quite humorous.
Just like I find the idea of a few dozen jews smashing the bones of 750,000 burned jewish corpses to dust with tin cups at Treblinka humorous. I thought jews were supposed to be good at math. How many weeks did it take, you say? Oh, and how much fuel was required to burn all those bodies? 4% of all the state forest land in Germany - only for Treblinka? Impressive. It seems they are much better at telling stories than doing math - which would explain why they are all in Hollywood. Which is easier to believe - that the Nazi government managed to hide the systematic extermination of millions of people from the entire German population for half a dozen years, or that jews are liars and the Holocaust drama suits them very well? Don't get me wrong, I'm sure many thousands of jews were murdered, like many other of the "under-race-men". But I think the whole Holocaust thing is a little overhyped. Anyway, serves you right for killing jesus - oh no, another work of fiction.
Ok, sorry but I really can't have a serious discussion with an anonymous coward who is a Holocaust denier. Doesn't really matter to you I suppose - just keep rambling on your nonsense. I wasn't really paying attention anyway.
P.S. I happen to personally know two jews that were in concentration camps, and have told me of firsthand accounts of what happened there. I would dare you to look either of them in the eye and call them liars, or tell them that they are "over hyping" their time spent there.
P.P.S. I am not jewish, so your anti-semitic comments really have no effect
"But this one goes to 11!"
But actually it hase been already like this for a long time. You could prevent loading the explorer.
Sure "a lot" of blacks, homosexuals, POWs, etc. were also killed in the war, but if you can point to any other group that was killed in the proportions jews were, I would love to have a link to your sources.
As in millions of deaths? Look no further than Russians, between the Reich and Stalin. Japan was pretty ruthless to the Chinese: WW2 Casualties NeroMetrics. I've had someone argue that the simply because there are more of either of these groups that it's not as bad. Human deaths are human deaths. Beyond the WW2 how about how many people died during Mao's Cultural Revolution? Estimates are at ~60 million, no religious motives there either 20th Century Genocides.
Man blir trött av att gå och göra ingenting.
You may have missed the "in proportion" part. What percentage of the entire Russian population was killed? I was only referring to WWII deaths - obviously there have been plenty of other madmen bent on killing millions of people. But have any of them managed to wipe out 20-30% of a given ethnic group?
"But this one goes to 11!"
Hey Microsoft welcome back to 1992. You know that time when the OS ran the computer and a desktop environment ran on top of the OS, like DOS and Windows 1.0, and Unix and Motif or CDE or ...
There was a reason why Unix and Linux never stopped operating in that mode. Glad MS finally joined the club again.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
Seems like W8 is just some eye-candy bloat placed on-top of Win7. Work on Windows9 has already begun anyway so i'll skip Windows8.
i thought microsoft's line was that any memory not used is memory wasted (hence readyboost or wahatever that service is that keeps memory full of programs it thinks you use regularly) so why the big concern about saving memory all of a sudden?
I did touch-screen interface on an industrial PC running windows back in '96. We wanted to prevent guys on the line from playing games, so we told it to load our full-screen app instead of explorer.exe. I don't recall what we did ourselves to run other things ;-)
If the desktop only starts up on command, that means users will be presented with a black screen of death. How is this different from every other version of windows?
What percentage of the entire Russian population was killed? I was only referring to WWII deaths
Google it. So which country were all the Jews from? Keep in mind you're now comparing segments of multiple countries civilians against that of a single country. I hope you're not implying that one group's deaths count for more (care to define which race "Jewish" is?) than another.
But have any of them managed to wipe out 20-30% of a given ethnic group?
Are you ignorant of how Europeans and later the American government's encounters with the natives went? How about Native Taiwanese?
Man blir trött av att gå och göra ingenting.
Many have noted that a touch-oriented GUI is not helpful for a lot of things. Looks like the option of keyboards mice command lines and hopefully 'traditional' application menus command line switches etc will remain as well.
In other news, users can now simply type 'win' at the DOS prompt to load the windows desktop...
Oh, this isn't 1992?
Um, no. Outside of serious connoisseurs of Apple Kool-Aid, nobody thinks that Apple has a monopoly on the term "app".
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
Why not *gasp* MULTIPLE operating systems? Why do they always go all or nothing.
Lets have Win7-2 simply an upgrade to what is a fine operating system.
PLUS a new beaut fancy app-based IOS competitor with new functionality with an easy dev environ so people can produce the content and anything that is worthwhile goes into the next Windows release
I've (and im sure many others) been thinking for years why doesn't Microsoft keep IE as its bloated beautiful self and fork Firefox or similar and have a super speedy hip cool l33t trendy web 2.7 compatible browser that people will want to use.
IE isn't going anywhere half of what we use at work requires it full stop but it doesn't mean they cant have other products out there, trying new things, developing ideas
http://www.awfullybigmoustache.com
Anti-Semitism has nothing to do with conflicts in religious doctrine it is just a time honered way to segregate a small group of people who happen to be reletively successful in the business world. They made the perfect scapegoat for Hitler and the Arabs have taken the lead in making sure this strategy continues. Point out the successful Jews and tell the proles they are the reason they are poor and then let nature take it's course. The same pattern has been used throughout history. Of course the Arabs ran into a small problem when they repeatedly got their asses kicked but they have changed from using tanks and soldiers to using the "Palestinian" ordinance.
Apple can take their redefinition of common dictionary words and go jump in a lake.
What the heck does "or have Jewish spouses" have to do with ANYTHING?
This design is fine and good for Tablet PCs, but if the street doesn't go both ways, I will be skipping this and potentially subsequent releases of Windows. I may use Linux for everyday tasks, but I am a PC gamer and Windows is the only thing I can run any worthwhile game on. I don't want to see Metro after my initial bootup to configure a new gaming PC, and if there's a way to go immediately to the Windows desktop, I'm going to use it. If there isn't, Microsoft better be prepared to support Windows 7 for a very long time.
The Amarri pray for god, the Caldari pray for profit. the Gallente pray for peace, but the Minmatar pray their ships hol
Actually, a look @ the Guiness Book of World Records on greatest mass murders would reveal that the largest massacres happened in China, courtesy Chairman Mao's Red Guards, and then the Stalin's Soviet regime, under both the Collectivization of farms in the Ukraine, and all the internal deportations to the Gulag that happened during his regime.
Incidentally, I'm not the same AC as the holocaust denier above, and I do think that it's despicable that pro-Nazi as well as pro-Islamic activism is rampant on /., both from ACs as well as Cito and others like him above. I have no doubt about the 6 million Jews killed during WWII. It wasn't the Nazis alone who killed them - the Soviets too indulged in a lot of anti-Semitic pogroms.
Why have Stormfront when you have Slashdot?
Apple should be banned from working in English, and sentenced to being limited to words in Esperanto!
Is this something where one can just use a keyboard w/o mouse - like use the TAB and arrow keys to move between options, hit ENTER to select and after going in, just use keyboard shortcuts? Handy if one's mouse is not working, or doing weird stuff
I recall once in the 90s, under Windows 3.1, I had to help somebody whose mouse was not working, and she needed keyboard instructions to enter a certain application. It was painful to describe it before it got working.
Somehow, I'm not liking the idea of a CLI where you type Win. That's the thing I want to avoid w/ any OS - Windows, OS-X, Linux, BSD, whatever. Someone who loves the CLI so much can use one of the Linux or BSDs, or a Powershell enabled Windows w/ no GUI, if one so wants. Incidentally, if one goes w/ a Powershell enabled GUI, Vista would be fine: it's only b'cos of the way it manages its memory when the desktop is loaded that it sucks in comparison to XP, otherwise, from a Powershell interface, it'd be fine!
I'm going to design a car where the steering wheel retracts into the dashboard whenever you're not actually steering... makes sense, right? Good on you, Microsoft!
Microsoft is loading themselves up with every conceivable patent before W8 is released. My guess there will be patents from every aspect, beginning with the bios
I also am thinking of the many copyrights for the look and feel of W8.
Well, be ready to pay if you need W8. At least you will get something better than Windows 3.0 or some other infamous Microsoft catastrophes.
Linux GUI interface designers better develop hundreds of different arrangements, in order to show prior deployment. Otherwise, the Linux desktop or tablet interface will be slaughtered by the number of patents that are already being filed that will act as a deterrent.
Time for patents to apply to machinery, not to algorithms or generic methods.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
It cleverly caused all his statistics to come out to be about 2x what they should have been (since he doubled the sample size but "forgot" to include that in his calculation).
You know what they say. There's lies, there's damn lies, and then there's statistics...
I don't like this tiles approach, I don't constantly need to see the weather, I don't constantly need to see stocks or news on my screen. These tiles have processes that are going run all the time (even if tiled mode uses fewer resources). Stupid approach, a shitty attempt to spray paint and decorate a bloated old rusty OS. When I installed OS X Snow Leopard on my system, I think it ended up freeing close to 2 GB on my system (upgrade from Leopard) and things started running faster. On the other hand, MS decides to keep Windows in the background and runs some crappy touch-screen tailored (wtf?) tile based frontend, rather than focusing more polishing and optimizing their OS. Being a .NET for a bunch of years now, I'm very happy with their developer products, I wish their Windows team(s) would finally release something to impress just as much.
So you are saying that if there are no more windows, it isn't really Windows any more? I think they've long since moved Windows from being a descriptor to being a meaningless trademark. Kind of like how KFC no longer stands for Kentucky Fried Chicken - the official legal name of the company is 3 letters.
I'm just wondering if it will be just as robust as any windows os distro. If so, then when you actually call the app your device may just die as any other pc when start-up. I would like to see if microsoft has finally managed to create an interface that doesn't demand all your memory and trash your multitasking capability.
Windows mobile for me was just so sad to deal with. I was already slow a couple weeks after I got the phone...guess you can imagine what happened after a couple months.