I just wish it were a config option when running on a desktop with 8GB of RAM! The built-in PDF reader is useless for many purposes if you can't dependably alt-tab to it for reference. The built in email app is similarly annoying, but mostly because it loses it's state when reloaded, so I'm back to keeping a Firefox window with Gmail running. Explorer is really annoying in metro-land when it quits, so you need to make sure links open in the desktop version. My current strategy is to just pretend Metro does not exist. Occasionally it reminds me, and I hate it:)
If Microsoft aspires to be the size of Valve (that is, somewhere around 400 employees and perhaps $2 billion in market value), then more power to them. I suspect they are looking more toward Apple. People who buy Apple stuff are looser with their money. This was true with Macs, iPods, and now phones and tablets. Kudos to MS for trying for the high-end initially, but they are destined to target market share - it's in their DNA.
Apple is dragging down some of the tech indexes (with help from Oracle). CSCO (Cisco) has similar performance and SNE (Sony) crushed them. A rising tide lifts (almost) all boats.
What's awesome about this is that they added that as an option at around the same time they improved RDP to make it not such a big deal to require a GUI anymore.
Why is it so hard for them to NOT FORCE US into their Metro crap ?
The funny part is they think that the Windows Store will be a big revenue source. Because people who buy low-end gadgets are really known for their willingness to buy software...
That's actually a minor point for me. I don't really care if the Start Menu takes up 1/4, 1/2, or the whole screen. What I hated most, they addressed: 1. The way I launch apps and control panels is to hit the Windows key and then start typing the name. Win 8 broke this (except for apps). Now it works again! 2. You had to hunt all over the place to find settings. Some were in the "charms", some in the control panels. Now they have (almost?) everything in the charms.
I did not see whether they address the Metro apps just quitting by themselves when in the background, so I guess I will still just avoid running Metro apps. I would also like to shrink the size of the individual app buttons. Classic Shell is of course still an option. I still don't like all of the magic corners and gestures, but I've mostly learned those. Besides, if Windows was easy they'd be Apple - I'm very accustomed to struggling with MS products at first, it's a great custom that harkens back to the wonderful days of.ini files.
I'm very happy that Google is willing to conduct these grand experiments to solve age-old problems.
That said, this sounds just as bad as their last attempt, with the stupid "Priority" email box. All it will mean is that you have to occasionally open a new tab to make sure nothing got misfiled. Just like things that got excluded from the priority email box, and for that matter the automatic spam filtering.
it won't be long until even the Apple-haters have haters ("I remember when hating Apple was COOL...")
I think I made that jump with the anti-Bush posts on here. I didn't like Bush - I thought he was awful. But it could be a story about ice cream and the anti-Bush nutters would infest the discussion. I grew to hate people who I was probably idealistically aligned with.:)
I don't know if you have an Android or an iPad, but I've never experienced "black bars" on my Android. Wacky stretching, yes. Weird misplaced GUI elements, yes. Apps where the touch area and GUI element no longer line up, yes. Teeny tiny controls on the app as it scales down poorly to my phone, yes. But never black bars.
I don't have an iPad, but my understanding is that some phone apps will use black bars instead of trying to stretch. In light of how Android does it, I can see why they went that route. It may look silly, but at least the app looks exactly the way the developer intended it to.
Google told the Android developers a long time ago that they should prepare their apps for a variety of resolutions and DPIs.
They may have "told them", but they didn't get the memo. Android works great when you have one of the most popular devices. Otherwise, you get lots of weird rendered screens, games that "work" on the phone, but really need a tablet-sized screen to work the controls, odd placement as stuff tries to orient itself on an untested screen size, apps that flat-out won't work with your device, etc.
I have an android phone and an android tablet, and I generally like them very much. That said, my mom's iPad is a smoother experience. Even my old iPhone was a smoother - if slower - experience. Maybe the newest contenders (Windows and RIM) have a smoother experience than Apple, but I haven't tried those platforms yet.
They are stuck with a bunch of odd resolutions and encouraged developers to target them all directly, resulting in debacles like the black bars when they went widescreen.
I have to kind of chuckle because, well, Android...
It also has to be fairly repetitive. That might fit in with your "creative" category. Call me skeptical, but when my front door trim rots out, I'm pretty sure there will always* be a human involved in the replacement process.
Think about all of the people that have access to these drawings in electronic form. You have the designers, the testing folks, the documentation people, the people who approve changes, the entire manufacturing operation, and anyone with authority to oversee the project. If any of those people view the document on a compromised computer or themselves are compromised, the drawing is in the wild.
And "compromised" does not necessarily mean "internet". And you don't even need a compromise - people make mistakes, systems are imperfect. Someone could toss a server or workstation in the trash, screwing up the wipe. A leased computer could go back without getting cleaned up. They could even accidentally wire up the "secure" computer to the LAN/WAN, wireless could accidentally be left on, USB ports left active, bluetooth, etc.
Spying has been going on for a long, long time and is a very difficult problem to solve. Hell, even a compromised cleaning crew could snatch stuff.
NYC is a special case because the density of taxis and taxi use is high enough that street hailing actually works pretty well.
The area where it works well is actually restricted to Manhattan. They had to start letting livery cabs pick up in Brooklyn because the yellow cab service was so poor out there. I have caught cabs in Harlem, but you are right they are a lot less frequent up there.
Your logic is OK, but I think there is a bright spot: history. This isn't the first time we've had massive societal change as a result of improved productivity. Agriculture meant we could no longer roam around and gather our food. Then improved agriculture made us more urban as subsistence farmers became food producers. Then the industrial revolution and mechanized farming virtually eliminated farming as an occupation.
If you went to someone 300 years ago and told them that only 1% of the population would be farming, they would not have conceived how society could endure. I think we are at that point now. We've long had all of our basic needs met mostly by machines and now we are moving on to having our luxuries provided as well. I don't think the transition will be very friendly to a certain demographic, but at the end of the day I think people will end up doing something productive with their time.
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In 8.1 they seem to have added more settings to charms. In 8.1, they now search everything and not just apps (just like Windows 7 does).
Thanks! But now I don't need this. There are lots of great Windows + shortcut keys, but I don't use them enough to keep them memorized.
Oops sorry wrong guy!
I don't know where you live, but escrow is typical in PA and NJ.
I just wish it were a config option when running on a desktop with 8GB of RAM! The built-in PDF reader is useless for many purposes if you can't dependably alt-tab to it for reference. The built in email app is similarly annoying, but mostly because it loses it's state when reloaded, so I'm back to keeping a Firefox window with Gmail running. Explorer is really annoying in metro-land when it quits, so you need to make sure links open in the desktop version. My current strategy is to just pretend Metro does not exist. Occasionally it reminds me, and I hate it :)
If Microsoft aspires to be the size of Valve (that is, somewhere around 400 employees and perhaps $2 billion in market value), then more power to them. I suspect they are looking more toward Apple. People who buy Apple stuff are looser with their money. This was true with Macs, iPods, and now phones and tablets. Kudos to MS for trying for the high-end initially, but they are destined to target market share - it's in their DNA.
Apple is dragging down some of the tech indexes (with help from Oracle). CSCO (Cisco) has similar performance and SNE (Sony) crushed them. A rising tide lifts (almost) all boats.
I see info about headless servers...
What's awesome about this is that they added that as an option at around the same time they improved RDP to make it not such a big deal to require a GUI anymore.
Why is it so hard for them to NOT FORCE US into their Metro crap ?
The funny part is they think that the Windows Store will be a big revenue source. Because people who buy low-end gadgets are really known for their willingness to buy software...
That's actually a minor point for me. I don't really care if the Start Menu takes up 1/4, 1/2, or the whole screen. What I hated most, they addressed:
1. The way I launch apps and control panels is to hit the Windows key and then start typing the name. Win 8 broke this (except for apps). Now it works again!
2. You had to hunt all over the place to find settings. Some were in the "charms", some in the control panels. Now they have (almost?) everything in the charms.
I did not see whether they address the Metro apps just quitting by themselves when in the background, so I guess I will still just avoid running Metro apps. I would also like to shrink the size of the individual app buttons. Classic Shell is of course still an option. I still don't like all of the magic corners and gestures, but I've mostly learned those. Besides, if Windows was easy they'd be Apple - I'm very accustomed to struggling with MS products at first, it's a great custom that harkens back to the wonderful days of .ini files.
Yeah, I can barely tolerate the new compose. It's bad enough that I might want to Greasemonkey that mother.
I'm very happy that Google is willing to conduct these grand experiments to solve age-old problems.
That said, this sounds just as bad as their last attempt, with the stupid "Priority" email box. All it will mean is that you have to occasionally open a new tab to make sure nothing got misfiled. Just like things that got excluded from the priority email box, and for that matter the automatic spam filtering.
China?
it won't be long until even the Apple-haters have haters ("I remember when hating Apple was COOL...")
I think I made that jump with the anti-Bush posts on here. I didn't like Bush - I thought he was awful. But it could be a story about ice cream and the anti-Bush nutters would infest the discussion. I grew to hate people who I was probably idealistically aligned with. :)
I don't know if you have an Android or an iPad, but I've never experienced "black bars" on my Android. Wacky stretching, yes. Weird misplaced GUI elements, yes. Apps where the touch area and GUI element no longer line up, yes. Teeny tiny controls on the app as it scales down poorly to my phone, yes. But never black bars.
I don't have an iPad, but my understanding is that some phone apps will use black bars instead of trying to stretch. In light of how Android does it, I can see why they went that route. It may look silly, but at least the app looks exactly the way the developer intended it to.
Google told the Android developers a long time ago that they should prepare their apps for a variety of resolutions and DPIs.
They may have "told them", but they didn't get the memo. Android works great when you have one of the most popular devices. Otherwise, you get lots of weird rendered screens, games that "work" on the phone, but really need a tablet-sized screen to work the controls, odd placement as stuff tries to orient itself on an untested screen size, apps that flat-out won't work with your device, etc.
I have an android phone and an android tablet, and I generally like them very much. That said, my mom's iPad is a smoother experience. Even my old iPhone was a smoother - if slower - experience. Maybe the newest contenders (Windows and RIM) have a smoother experience than Apple, but I haven't tried those platforms yet.
They are stuck with a bunch of odd resolutions and encouraged developers to target them all directly, resulting in debacles like the black bars when they went widescreen.
I have to kind of chuckle because, well, Android...
I'm a Mac fan, and I think the iPhone is all right. I'm not an Apple hater.
That said, I completely agree. We are now reporting about non-news as news?
Not in India!
It also has to be fairly repetitive. That might fit in with your "creative" category. Call me skeptical, but when my front door trim rots out, I'm pretty sure there will always* be a human involved in the replacement process.
* always = my lifetime :)
You got a citation for that?
I bet Bradley Manning does.
Think about all of the people that have access to these drawings in electronic form. You have the designers, the testing folks, the documentation people, the people who approve changes, the entire manufacturing operation, and anyone with authority to oversee the project. If any of those people view the document on a compromised computer or themselves are compromised, the drawing is in the wild.
And "compromised" does not necessarily mean "internet". And you don't even need a compromise - people make mistakes, systems are imperfect. Someone could toss a server or workstation in the trash, screwing up the wipe. A leased computer could go back without getting cleaned up. They could even accidentally wire up the "secure" computer to the LAN/WAN, wireless could accidentally be left on, USB ports left active, bluetooth, etc.
Spying has been going on for a long, long time and is a very difficult problem to solve. Hell, even a compromised cleaning crew could snatch stuff.
NYC is a special case because the density of taxis and taxi use is high enough that street hailing actually works pretty well.
The area where it works well is actually restricted to Manhattan. They had to start letting livery cabs pick up in Brooklyn because the yellow cab service was so poor out there. I have caught cabs in Harlem, but you are right they are a lot less frequent up there.
Your logic is OK, but I think there is a bright spot: history. This isn't the first time we've had massive societal change as a result of improved productivity. Agriculture meant we could no longer roam around and gather our food. Then improved agriculture made us more urban as subsistence farmers became food producers. Then the industrial revolution and mechanized farming virtually eliminated farming as an occupation.
If you went to someone 300 years ago and told them that only 1% of the population would be farming, they would not have conceived how society could endure. I think we are at that point now. We've long had all of our basic needs met mostly by machines and now we are moving on to having our luxuries provided as well. I don't think the transition will be very friendly to a certain demographic, but at the end of the day I think people will end up doing something productive with their time.
He was a billionaire before he was mayor.