. What can you do in Pascal that you can't do in C++, or Python, or Java?
So the world only needs 3 languages? Everything from Lua to OjectiveC to Javascript to Haskell... we already have C++, Python, and Java.
And frankly that's an odd 3 to choose. Why Python? Why not Javascript? Why not Lisp?
Maybe we just need Pascal, Lisp, and C#.
"all the extra typing"? I don't even know what to say to that. 99% of programming, is design and debugging. 1% is the actual "typing out the code". If you lost 50% of your time to typing out the code due to typing out begin and and I've got serious concerns about the design.
and reduced readability
begin
Formatting, indentation, and syntax highlighting make using being and end work just fine as block markerers. end
Plus I admit I hate python's semantic white space. At least begin and end don't get mangled simply by copy and pasting a snippet. And since all the semantic information is in the content, the IDE can do the pretty formatting FOR YOU to improve readability.
That was it. That was why corporations went with it.
That's a big part of it, but you do have to factor in activeX. While it was always a bit of a boondoggle on the consumer internet; it did provide some much needed glue that those old browsers didn't have.
Wanted your cool new enterprise intranet application to be able to print to the receipt printer? Or upload local files with an elegant interface? Or (and a long list of other stuff.) There simply was no cross-platform way to do it. Netscape Plugsins OR ActiveX... and if the enterprise had the luxury of controlling what people were using so it could pick just one... and IE in addition to everything else you said ALSO was easy to manage via AD group policy etc. So it just made sense to use it.
And once they'd gone down the activeX road, and became dependent on it... well the whole planet has suffered for that mistake.:)
What's next, are you going to start talking about how there's a worm hidden in everyone's ring 0?
Reboot. Solved.
which "tells windows not to report it" and "doesn't show up in the registry editor"
So I kept it in laymen's terms? is there really any need to be technical with respect to how that's accomplished?
(why a virus would have to write in the registry in the first place is beyond me)
Usually to hide a gazillion triggers to restart / heal itself after at reboot.
They're far, far more likely to be built off CatPicturesScreensaver.exe than from some crazily smart drive-by which is completely undetectable and doesn't do anything... until the doomsday comes.
That's harder to say really.
There is going to be a clear confirmation bias. Like the idea that all criminals are stupid... just watch cops. Yes, LOTS of criminals are stupid. But the ones that are smarter? The ones that don't get caught? Where its not even obvious a crime was ever committed? Can we really say there's more dumb criminals than smart ones based on the fact that we don't see them as much?
I agree with you, but I'm not so sure what the ratio of good unobtrusive stuff to in your face nonsense really is. I concede we're not likely facing 'james bond' grade viruses... and I think the majority out there is the fast and dirty social engineering to get a toolbar added to your browser... but I think we underestimate the just how prevalent unobtrusive malware might be; simply because by virtue of being unobtrusive we don't even know when were infected.
And for the less technical... they simply would just never know. They'd never complain, because nothing was 'wrong'. Eventually it would get old, replaced, or they'd pay some kid to wipe and refresh it because they were giving it to someone else and they'd be none the wiser that it was ever infected.
I found my parents computer once had been very discretely turned into someone elses "cloud storage". I only stumbled over it by complete fluke. I was troubleshooting something else; and just stumbled over it as there was a lock preventing a folder move or rename or something like that and that and it got me to look deeper.
I can only speculate that I've missed an unknown number of others over the years.
If this botnet is that good then unless you can monitor all your traffic to and from the suspected infected system with a separate, knowingly uncompromised system.
Pretty much. Yes. Unless its designed to overload your centrifuges and not communicate with the internet.
I think a good botnet would be dormant offline and invisible to the kernel, making an offline scan using the suspected system to inspect itself useless as well.
Which is I said it needed to be an offline scan.
If this awesome botnet gets me, hey...oh well.
Agreed. That level of security is out of most our reach.
However, the point remains that you could be part of a pretty run of the mill botnet, have your passwords harvested, and a variety of other nasty stuff and you'd have little to no chance of catching it in time. Even if it wasn't hyper-adept at hiding from the kernel itself.
Just not being particularly "obtrusive" will let run for months... perhaps years before you catch it. And most botnets these days qualify for "unobtrustive" because if they start throwing up piles of ads, redirecting your searches, and puking all over the place you'll wipe and rebuild and take them out. And they're in it for the longer game... while the puke on your system shit is just looking for some quick ad revenue before you find someone to "fix it" again.
Yeah, that's a TN panel. It's good for gaming; as it gets the response times etc where they need to be, but its not really suitable for anything that requires an accurate color space; which was one of my requirements.
It's also telling that even with a GTX970 you are finding running at 4k to be a bit hit and miss.
1080p is painful to watch.
And that's unfortunate too because 99% of content is not available yet for QHD / UHD so your going to be looking at a lot of 1080p content for a while yet.
I'd rather have QHD panel (2560x1440) and be able to run everything at native, have an accurate color space due to it not being TN (I ended up with a PLS display this round; and had IPS units previously) ~and~ its not as fast as a TN panel, but its still good enough for games.
Im glad your out there blazing the trail for us. But I just don't think 4k is really here quite yet.
- it's hard to do any kind of virus research at all when you've got antivirus trying to delete every infected file you're examining.
What kind of special flower does "virus research" on their "main" computer that they use for ANY thing else? I don't even look at them on a NETWORK that has access to anything else.
I agree that a/v products value is dubious at best. But good god man... your basically telling us the equivalent of "I don't bother with brakes in my daily commuter car because I like to study car wrecks... and... well those darn things prevent them from happening."
I use visual and audible cues like an oddly running HDD: going by the activity light mostly using SSDs.
Because a botnet is going to need a lot of hard drive on your computer with GB of extra RAM?
Also, fan operation, CPU temp, resource monitoring stuff.
Unless you've been coopted to mine bitcoins or something, your CPU temperature isn't going to be noticeable if your part of a botnet either.
Just checking out what.exes are running and/or in startup once in a while is a good habit.
Sure it is; for the low hanging fruit. The really good stuff doesn't show up in taskmanager because its told windows not to report it. It doesn't show up in the registry editor either. And windows explorer can't see the files on disk. Or maybe it's hiding in plain sight... some common service replaced by a malware version; that still performs all the original functions, but also does something... extra.
The idea that anyone could detect anything sophisticated with "visual cues" and "checking stuff" is laughable; on any OS.
An offline scan is usually required, that flags everything not known specifically to come from a trusted vendor... and the resulting list is probably going to be overwhelming anyway for the average person / average system. Only the most secure managed environments would be able have any real confidence.
We're definitely talking about different things here.
After all, how can walmart pay a 2.17% dividend if they're only making ~1% profit?:)
I was talking return on investment (ROI) where as you are talking about profit margins on goods sold. They are not the same thing.
A $100,000 investment to create a business selling widgets that cost $1/unit to produce and sell for $1.01 and sells 2 million units a year.
The profit margin on the product is 1% (1.01/1.00) On the other hand the ROI is 20% (2M x 0.01 profit/unit = $20,000 per year) 20,000/100,000 = 20%
I would definitely consider investing $100,000 in company that would earn me 20% back in year:); even if it only makes 1% margin on units. I wouldn't touch with a 100 foot pole a company that would only return 1% a year.
4.4% is a LOT more than govt bonds pay. It's not 1985 any more.
Hmm... 2.2% is the best I can find in the states on term deposit. GIC's in Canada are up to 2.85%. But if you have literally millions to invest you can generally do better than advertised retail. So I think my claim that 4.4% is only 1.5% better than they could find in a guaranteed investment vehicle is a reasonable claim.
Calls from slashdotters that redmond is abandoning surface might hold water.
Honestly, calls from/. about Microsoft are usually full of crap.
That said, Microsoft abandoning Surface RT is probable. The surface pro on the other hand is a solid concept that is getting better with each iteration.
Combine this with Gaben's steam machines, OS, and broad support for an approachable commodity linux
Steam Machines and Steam OS is Valve's hedge against being one-punched out of business by a hypothetical future microsoft where everything goes through the microsoft app store. They see ios... they saw Windows RT... they saw the OSX app store and an OSX that blocks app installs by default from 'elsewhere', they saw the microsoft app store launch with windows 8. And they realized if they didn't have -something- they could be squeezed out of existence a couple iterations down the road.
I think the overall flop of windows 8 and the app store have really taken the pressure off valve to actually have a steam machine. Although they say they are still working on them; as long as Microsoft remains an 'open platform' that users can develop for, and install software from anywhere easily; I don't see the steamos/steambox being a big deal.
and its hard to really see where microsoft makes money
Not really.
Office (of course) Servers (incl. CALs, Remote Desktop CALs or whatever they are called this week) Enterprise desktop OSes (so win 8 isn't being widely deployed; enterprises are still paying for software assurance etc to keep installing windows 7 and MS is making great money at it.)
Bing profitability is apparently close, if not already there. There's definitely money in skype as well; although it surely hasn't paid for itself yet. And Xbox is has been profitable as well, for several years by all accounts.
i have an asus 4k monitor, 1 ms gtg 60hz on displayport
1ms gtg though means TN display right? If performance / gaming is your primary and only driving consideration that's fine.
But I wanted something that does better with picture quality and color representation than a TN will deliver. I ended up with Asus as well but selected a 27" QHD PLS based panel; (the pair of which so far I'm very happy with.)
But I know they'll be obsoleted with really good 4K stuff soon.
Still the fact that you are choosing to game at 2560 on 980GTX (a better card than I have) says a lot too (not about you personally; but about the current state of UHD gaming).
Are there any good monitors at that resolution though? I bought a pair of 27" screens this holiday season and ended up opting for 2560x1440 because 3840x2160 were all terrible for gaming; with pretty much any video card it seemed.
So if you are going to shell out for a top-line nvidia card... what monitor are you pairing it with? A 30Hz QuadHD monitor with high lags, and latency?
I don't get the logic of that.
I couldn't find a good 3840x2160 screen that was remotely any good at least at the price ranges I was looking at? How much do you have to spend to get a good 4K screen - that's decent build quality, decent at gaming, and decent at picture quality?
I know they are -coming- but what is actually HERE?
I can touch start, type a specific sequence of keys (usually only 3, sometimes 2), press Enter, all without moving my hands from the keyboard and also without losing focus on what I'm reading or working on.
a) that does work in 8. But i agree the context switch is an unwelcome burden.
b) That sort of workflow is a power user thing to do. See below.
it still serves as a reminder that Win8 wrested-away a reasonable feature.
That's fair. I'm not arguing that 8 or 8.1 was an improvment in every way. But the old start menu was a disaster of legacy crap glued together. And it was replaced by a set of reasonable features too... the start screen caters to casual users search (and looks a lot like OSX launchpad) AND it supports real searching better than the start menu ever did being full screen.
The way you and I used the start menu... it still works... but I agree there is a cognitive burden to the mode switch.
So the only loss was a mode-switch free way to keyboard activate programs quickly that you already knew the names of... doesn't that sound like a power users utility to you? It does to me... and its an itch that's been well scratched.
Launchy, Executor, FARR... and others all not only support that feature, but go beyond what windows 7 ever did. So why cling backwards with classic shell... when we should be looking forward; embracing the things 8.1 got right, and using a power tool like launchy for its shortcomings.
Don't get me wrong, I firmly believe something like launchy should be bundled with windows. But then I think calculator.exe and notepad.exe are pretty worthless too compared to speedcrunch and notepad++...
I realize I'm replying to you a second time here; but I this sub-thread sort of illustrates my point quite well.
In addition to windows, I use OSX and *nix. And OSX, most notably doesn't have a start menu. And I don't miss it there. I certainly don't miss it to the point that I feel compelled to find a "MakeOSX work like windows 7 please" start menu utility.
In OSX: I have my most frequent apps on the dock (essentially pinned apps on the system tray). I use launchpad if I need to browse and search for an app (its a full scree application launcher tool; essentially windows 8's start screen - but its more limited).
And finally I use spotlight if i know what I want and can just type a few characters (eg. to launch terminal.app on OSX users who don't have it docked, etc)
So when I was first faced with 8.1; my observation was pretty much ok. Last round OSX borrowed from Windows. This round Windows is copying OSX and the start menu is souped up OSX application luancher. Neat. But what about the other stuff i did with the start menu ? Access control panels, computer properties (system control panel), shutdown, etc... oh its all rightclick off the start button. Cool. Start menu pinned apps --> custom tool bar. We've had this capability forever; just rarely needed it before. Solved. And the search widget? Hmmm.... ok... yeah I miss that for quick search program launching. I see I can still do it from the start screen, but like you noted the context switch is overkill for that.
What I need is "spotlight" for windows; and it doesn't have one. But lets be honest here, most non-power users don't use spotlight on OSX to launch programs. And while I'd like window to include one, I'm a power user... and just like the built in calculator is worthless and I always install a replacement (in my case SpeedCrunch is the one i like), I'd like a little desktop search / program launcher... So Launchy (which goes back to XP), but there are others such as Executor, and FARR (find and run robot).
And frankly that's what blows my mind. What windows 8 "needs" is Spotlight (or Launchy) built in; yet somehow that one little short coming that only power users even needed turned itself into "Lets stick our heads up our asses and re-create everything that was wrong with the start menu just to get at the one little thing it actually did well back" instead of "Lets just make something does that missing bit well"... oh wait... someone already did... years ago... for XP and they've been updating it ever since. Lets use that.
How would an end user discover A. that this is possible and B. what keywords to use on Google to learn how?
A) First, we aren't talking about joe-average end user. We are talking about intelligent windows-savvy power-users.
So how do you discover it? Same way we power users discover most things about the user interface by clicking on things.
Right click on your taskbar. Its the first option... "Toolbars"... hmm... what's all this about a savvy power user might ask themselves for that is what savvy power users are apt to do?
what keywords to use on Google to learn how?
Well, having now discovered it: "windows 8 taskbar toolbar" works the 2nd result is pretty much a tutorial on them.
Although taskbar toolbars have been around for a while... Windows 7 has them too. And Vista. And XP. I kinda-sorta think even Windows 98 might have had them.
You can use Jump Lists from apps pinned to the Taskbar in Windows 8 but having 10+ apps pinned to your Taskbar tends to make it needlessly cluttered, especially when you have multiple non-pinned apps open at the same time.
Agreed. But how typical is that REALLY? And your most common 5-10 apps are probably open all the time anyway, and pinned apps are just a partial solution.
Toolbars the other part. The stuff you don't use THAT frequently should go in a toolbar... a toolbar is basically like the pinned list on the old start menu, which can hold another 20-50 apps depending on your screensize and icon settings etc.
Hell you can even point a toolbar to the "start menu" folder and get a hierarchical popup back. Although crafting your own smaller customized list is probably more useful.
With the exception of point 5 and 6, which are simply just good advice (but #5 wouldn't have helped him here; and #6 makes it difficult to provide a criminal service -- after all someone else needs to know about it.)
All your suggestions have caveats and vulnerabilities. I'm picking on 1 and 4 in particular below, but there are issues with 2, 3, 5 too.
Step 1) NEVER carry incriminating evidence with you. Encrypted or not.
Good advice, but how exactly do you accomplish this? Either your data is somewhere with you. Or you have remote access to it, and there will be evidence that you do in fact have remote access to it if they seize your laptop WHILE YOU ARE USING IT to remotely access it.
Plus if YOU have remote access to it, then so does somebody else; if they can somehow convince the remote system they are you; or if there is some unpatched exploit they know about that you don't. (And you should assume there IS.)
After all what is it they say about stuff you don't EVER want leaked online? Oh right... DON'T PUT IT ONLINE. That runs directly counter to your advice to "always put it online".
You can't have it both ways.
4) use a dead-mans switch on that servers encrypted data
And then if the internet goes down due to a storm, beaver, or backhoe somewhere; all your records are gone and your now out of business. No idea who you owe what, or what people owe you; or where any of your assets and contacts nor how to reach them...Oh yeah. That's a great plan.
2) use a VPN/SSH Tunnel/etc (and/or both) to connect to the server where your data is. (make sure that server is located in a non-extraditing country, and filtered from you by a few shell companies)
If they have enough network surveillance at their disposal in place to unmask tor users, a couple VPNs and shell corporations isn't going to work. It might work to keep boris and igor from being able to find you. But I wouldn't rely on it to keep the FBI at bay if they are genuinely interested in shutting you down; and you live in the states.
This is nothing new. The 'exhaust sound' was part of the design criteria of the 1st Gen Mazda Miata. Trying to recreate British sports cars (Lotus).
Yes, everyone knows that the exhaust 'note' is engineered and tuned like everything else. And since the engine is going to make some noise, it should be a pleasant noise.
What is new is faking it outright. Its one thing to alter the length, diameter, thickness, and shape of an actual exhaust pipe transporting the actual exhaust to get a more pleasing sound. Its something entirely different to play engine-noise-track-1 through the speaker system. Or to add an air pump which just takes fresh air and pumps it through a tube to make extra noise.
For document searches, and other REAL searches, the start menu in win7 is too small.
But, yes, your right about it as a handy tool for launching programs, and if you dig back in my posting history about win8, you'll find that the search widget as a quick launch program shortcut is the only thing about the windows 7 start menu I think was really lost and doesn't have a proper replacement in 8. (yes the start screen works, but a full screen UI just to launch CMD or gpedit or mstsc, putty,... etc, etc, is silly.
If they added that search widget functionality (and/or just gave it better autocomplete/history) to the Win+R ("Run" shortcut); or gave us that search functionality as a standalone taskbar gadget optimized for launching programs (not documents etc) we wouldn't really need the win7 search function.
"I would remind a lot of people here that windows division brings in a lot of revenue for Microsoft in form of infamous "windows tax" and I seriously doubt they're willing to just lose this revenue stream after investing as much as they did into it to keep it."
You mean that paragraph? How is giving away upgrades for one yeear to existing customers "giving up the revenue"?
Every single new computer from the day it launches are going to still be paying for it. All enterprise / corporate customers are still going to be paying for it.
All the free upgrade for a year does is, they hope, transition a big bunch of people with windows 7 and 8 to over to windows 10. Most of those people wouldn't have upgraded if if it wasn't free. So they aren't even giving up that much revenue by giving it away.
Everyone knows historically very few people don't buy operating system upgrades. They get the new OS when they get a new computer. Due to the computer replacement cycle slowing down as cpu and graphics advances have slowed down this would have the effect of slowing the adoption of Windows 10.
Microsoft clearly hopes to jump-start windows 10 adoption by giving it to a pile of existing users for free. Users who wouldn't have upgraded, and certainly wouldn't have paid to upgrade. And frankly, at that price, it might well work. And a year is long enough even for cautious people with windows 7 (especially) to see what the reaction is like before deciding to upgrade.
Its a pretty good move by Microsoft. Quite frankly, I've got a mix of windows 7 and 8 computers at home for example, and I'd have been happy to standardize on 8.1 but I wasn't willing to shell out several hundred for several Windows 8 pro upgrades. But I might well just take everything to windows 10 at release.
Sure, I'll be on the look out for new fine print before I make a final decision. That's just common sense. But your reading of the current situation is entirely unjustified.
Every new computer with windows 10 will be paying for windows. Every corporate / enterprise VLA is still paid. Microsoft clearly hasn't just thrown away their wholesale/retail/volume licensed windows revenue stream to chase rent.
The fact that it's forced full-screen rather than snapped is the problem. At least with the Windows 7 Start menu, I could see a bit of what I was working on in the corner of my screen, which provided some subconscious continuity. In fact, if I had a program snapped to the right side (Windows+Right), I could see all of it while the Start menu was open. But with Windows 8's Start screen, everything is covered up. The full-screen context switch imposes a cognitive burden similar to going through a doorway and forgetting what you came in for.
All true. No argument. Now, as you are clearly both intelligent and a power user: why exactly do you use the start screen so much in 8.1?
Create custom taskbar menus and pin the apps you use. Documents folder is pinned. Control panels, system properties, etc is right-click on the start button? I can go days without using the start screen on windows 8.1. And when I do use it to search for some obscure thing I rarely use, the fact that its full screen instead of crammed into a corner of the screen is actually a benefit.
Don't get me wrong, I think bringing the start menu back with 10 is the right move for a LOT of reasons. And primarily I completely agree that the way the OS throws them back and forth between the classic and modern UIs is a problem; that shouldn't happen unless they want it to.
You don't need classic shell; you just need to pin and create custom toolbars.
The reason I don't like classic shell, is that while it rejects the mistakes of Windows 8; it PRESERVES the mistakes of Windows 7. The classic start menu is an abomination. Clearly what they did with win 8 isn't the correct solution; but at its heart the startmenu is a fixed size POPUP window stuck in the corner containing 2 operating modes, with an arbitrarily deep nested folder heirarchy, and then a bunch of widgets (search), pinned apps, automatically adding frequently/most used apps, and so forth all bolted onto it. It is categorically a terrible bit of user interface.
Windows 8 got the start screen wrong. But Classic Shell clings to a UI that's at least as terrible but is "familiar". We need to try something new. Maybe windows 10 will get it right... i haven't tried it yet.
Feature availability may vary by device. Some editions excluded. More details at http://www.windows.com./"
There is no information on windows.com at this time
Sure there is, scroll down to the bottom:
*It is our intent that most of these devices will qualify, but some hardware/software requirements apply and feature availability may vary by device. Devices must be connected to the internet and have Windows Update enabled. ISP fees may apply. Windows 7 SP1 and Windows 8.1 Update required. Some editions are excluded: Windows 7 Enterprise, Windows 8/8.1 Enterprise, and Windows RT/RT 8.1. Active Software Assurance customers in volume licensing have the benefit to upgrade to Windows 10 Enterprise outside of this offer. We will be sharing more information and additional offer terms in coming months.
So "excluded editions" are enterprise versions etc; most of which are already separately covered by Software Assurance etc.
And the feature availability may vary by device? I expect that simply means if your device doesn't have a camera no 2-way skype calling, if there's no microphone no 2-way voice, and cortana won't work. If there's no touch screen... there's no touch features. Etc etc etc.
I would not be making bold claims like yours just yet - we don't know their business model yet
Claiming they are moving to a subscription model for the OS is what needs evidence here. Yes, they already have a subscription model for Onedrive, and office 365, etc and yes it wouldn't be surprise to see that expanded. But there is no evidence of that here, YET.
"free for a year" in this context is pretty clearly an upgrade window, after which if you are still running 7 and want to upgrade you will have to pay. Just as if you are still running 7 you can't get 8 for $15 or $45 or any of the other launch deals that were available.
And if you build a new PC, and want to install 10 on it, you will have to buy it in some form. That is not going to be free.
Maybe but she WAS being harassed so she was only reacting (poorly) to a situation; I suppose that helped to allow it to balloon out of proportion.
But individual people cannot "make" something go viral... that's on the larger community to collectively make happen.
So why did we collectively CARE enough to make it happen? Is her gender a factor to why we (as a society) cared enough about the story?
Would we have cared as much if an ex-girlfriend of a developer posted about her former boyfriend having slept with a journalist that resulted in some slightly extra coverage? Could he have cried foul and QQ as Zoe did? Or would we just roll our eyes and moved onto the next story?
He's the right color so the greatest PR money could buy convinced tons of poor innercity blacks that this [successful person] really understands what life is like in the ghetto, is truly one of their own, and really wants to help them gain opportunities and is not a member of the monied political class at all. Automatically getting about 13% of the vote is a great start to any campaign, that plus the approximately 50% who vote [Republican] anyway and you get to be president.
It's so simple, kids, and that's why we have President Herman Cain. And its why all the last six presidents have been black. black vote + 50% partisan vote... its just an unbeatable combo.
Nice theory you got there, but reality turns out to be just a little more complicated. Now if voters were frictionless spheres in a vaccuum... then maybe you'd have something.
Slashdot Mirror
. What can you do in Pascal that you can't do in C++, or Python, or Java?
So the world only needs 3 languages? Everything from Lua to OjectiveC to Javascript to Haskell... we already have C++, Python, and Java.
And frankly that's an odd 3 to choose. Why Python? Why not Javascript? Why not Lisp?
Maybe we just need Pascal, Lisp, and C#.
"all the extra typing"? I don't even know what to say to that. 99% of programming, is design and debugging. 1% is the actual "typing out the code". If you lost 50% of your time to typing out the code due to typing out begin and and I've got serious concerns about the design.
and reduced readability
begin
Formatting, indentation, and syntax highlighting make using being and end work just fine as block markerers.
end
Plus I admit I hate python's semantic white space. At least begin and end don't get mangled simply by copy and pasting a snippet. And since all the semantic information is in the content, the IDE can do the pretty formatting FOR YOU to improve readability.
That was it. That was why corporations went with it.
That's a big part of it, but you do have to factor in activeX. While it was always a bit of a boondoggle on the consumer internet; it did provide some much needed glue that those old browsers didn't have.
Wanted your cool new enterprise intranet application to be able to print to the receipt printer? Or upload local files with an elegant interface? Or (and a long list of other stuff.) There simply was no cross-platform way to do it. Netscape Plugsins OR ActiveX... and if the enterprise had the luxury of controlling what people were using so it could pick just one... and IE in addition to everything else you said ALSO was easy to manage via AD group policy etc. So it just made sense to use it.
And once they'd gone down the activeX road, and became dependent on it... well the whole planet has suffered for that mistake. :)
What's next, are you going to start talking about how there's a worm hidden in everyone's ring 0?
Reboot. Solved.
which "tells windows not to report it" and "doesn't show up in the registry editor"
So I kept it in laymen's terms? is there really any need to be technical with respect to how that's accomplished?
(why a virus would have to write in the registry in the first place is beyond me)
Usually to hide a gazillion triggers to restart / heal itself after at reboot.
They're far, far more likely to be built off CatPicturesScreensaver.exe than from some crazily smart drive-by which is completely undetectable and doesn't do anything... until the doomsday comes.
That's harder to say really.
There is going to be a clear confirmation bias. Like the idea that all criminals are stupid... just watch cops. Yes, LOTS of criminals are stupid. But the ones that are smarter? The ones that don't get caught? Where its not even obvious a crime was ever committed? Can we really say there's more dumb criminals than smart ones based on the fact that we don't see them as much?
I agree with you, but I'm not so sure what the ratio of good unobtrusive stuff to in your face nonsense really is. I concede we're not likely facing 'james bond' grade viruses ... and I think the majority out there is the fast and dirty social engineering to get a toolbar added to your browser... but I think we underestimate the just how prevalent unobtrusive malware might be; simply because by virtue of being unobtrusive we don't even know when were infected.
And for the less technical... they simply would just never know. They'd never complain, because nothing was 'wrong'. Eventually it would get old, replaced, or they'd pay some kid to wipe and refresh it because they were giving it to someone else and they'd be none the wiser that it was ever infected.
I found my parents computer once had been very discretely turned into someone elses "cloud storage". I only stumbled over it by complete fluke. I was troubleshooting something else; and just stumbled over it as there was a lock preventing a folder move or rename or something like that and that and it got me to look deeper.
I can only speculate that I've missed an unknown number of others over the years.
If this botnet is that good then unless you can monitor all your traffic to and from the suspected infected system with a separate, knowingly uncompromised system.
Pretty much. Yes. Unless its designed to overload your centrifuges and not communicate with the internet.
I think a good botnet would be dormant offline and invisible to the kernel, making an offline scan using the suspected system to inspect itself useless as well.
Which is I said it needed to be an offline scan.
If this awesome botnet gets me, hey...oh well.
Agreed. That level of security is out of most our reach.
However, the point remains that you could be part of a pretty run of the mill botnet, have your passwords harvested, and a variety of other nasty stuff and you'd have little to no chance of catching it in time. Even if it wasn't hyper-adept at hiding from the kernel itself.
Just not being particularly "obtrusive" will let run for months... perhaps years before you catch it. And most botnets these days qualify for "unobtrustive" because if they start throwing up piles of ads, redirecting your searches, and puking all over the place you'll wipe and rebuild and take them out. And they're in it for the longer game... while the puke on your system shit is just looking for some quick ad revenue before you find someone to "fix it" again.
Asus PB287Q with a GTX970
Yeah, that's a TN panel. It's good for gaming; as it gets the response times etc where they need to be, but its not really suitable for anything that requires an accurate color space; which was one of my requirements.
It's also telling that even with a GTX970 you are finding running at 4k to be a bit hit and miss.
1080p is painful to watch.
And that's unfortunate too because 99% of content is not available yet for QHD / UHD so your going to be looking at a lot of 1080p content for a while yet.
I'd rather have QHD panel (2560x1440) and be able to run everything at native, have an accurate color space due to it not being TN (I ended up with a PLS display this round; and had IPS units previously) ~and~ its not as fast as a TN panel, but its still good enough for games.
Im glad your out there blazing the trail for us. But I just don't think 4k is really here quite yet.
- it's hard to do any kind of virus research at all when you've got antivirus trying to delete every infected file you're examining.
What kind of special flower does "virus research" on their "main" computer that they use for ANY thing else? I don't even look at them on a NETWORK that has access to anything else.
I agree that a/v products value is dubious at best. But good god man... your basically telling us the equivalent of "I don't bother with brakes in my daily commuter car because I like to study car wrecks... and... well those darn things prevent them from happening."
I use visual and audible cues like an oddly running HDD: going by the activity light mostly using SSDs.
Because a botnet is going to need a lot of hard drive on your computer with GB of extra RAM?
Also, fan operation, CPU temp, resource monitoring stuff.
Unless you've been coopted to mine bitcoins or something, your CPU temperature isn't going to be noticeable if your part of a botnet either.
Just checking out what .exes are running and/or in startup once in a while is a good habit.
Sure it is; for the low hanging fruit. The really good stuff doesn't show up in taskmanager because its told windows not to report it. It doesn't show up in the registry editor either. And windows explorer can't see the files on disk. Or maybe it's hiding in plain sight... some common service replaced by a malware version; that still performs all the original functions, but also does something... extra.
The idea that anyone could detect anything sophisticated with "visual cues" and "checking stuff" is laughable; on any OS.
An offline scan is usually required, that flags everything not known specifically to come from a trusted vendor... and the resulting list is probably going to be overwhelming anyway for the average person / average system. Only the most secure managed environments would be able have any real confidence.
Just about every supermarket everywhere disagrees with you... http://smallbusiness.chron.com...
We're definitely talking about different things here.
After all, how can walmart pay a 2.17% dividend if they're only making ~1% profit? :)
I was talking return on investment (ROI) where as you are talking about profit margins on goods sold. They are not the same thing.
A $100,000 investment to create a business selling widgets that cost $1/unit to produce and sell for $1.01 and sells 2 million units a year.
The profit margin on the product is 1% (1.01/1.00)
On the other hand the ROI is 20% (2M x 0.01 profit/unit = $20,000 per year) 20,000/100,000 = 20%
I would definitely consider investing $100,000 in company that would earn me 20% back in year :); even if it only makes 1% margin on units. I wouldn't touch with a 100 foot pole a company that would only return 1% a year.
4.4% is a LOT more than govt bonds pay. It's not 1985 any more.
Hmm... 2.2% is the best I can find in the states on term deposit. GIC's in Canada are up to 2.85%. But if you have literally millions to invest you can generally do better than advertised retail. So I think my claim that 4.4% is only 1.5% better than they could find in a guaranteed investment vehicle is a reasonable claim.
They are making money
4.4% profit.
That's not making money hand over fist on an investment. If I was in a business venture making 4.4% profit, I'd shut down and do something else.
Nobody is going to run a business to make 1.5% more than they can get out of GICs and govt bonds
Calls from slashdotters that redmond is abandoning surface might hold water.
Honestly, calls from /. about Microsoft are usually full of crap.
That said, Microsoft abandoning Surface RT is probable. The surface pro on the other hand is a solid concept that is getting better with each iteration.
Combine this with Gaben's steam machines, OS, and broad support for an approachable commodity linux
Steam Machines and Steam OS is Valve's hedge against being one-punched out of business by a hypothetical future microsoft where everything goes through the microsoft app store. They see ios... they saw Windows RT... they saw the OSX app store and an OSX that blocks app installs by default from 'elsewhere', they saw the microsoft app store launch with windows 8. And they realized if they didn't have -something- they could be squeezed out of existence a couple iterations down the road.
I think the overall flop of windows 8 and the app store have really taken the pressure off valve to actually have a steam machine. Although they say they are still working on them; as long as Microsoft remains an 'open platform' that users can develop for, and install software from anywhere easily; I don't see the steamos/steambox being a big deal.
and its hard to really see where microsoft makes money
Not really.
Office (of course)
Servers (incl. CALs, Remote Desktop CALs or whatever they are called this week)
Enterprise desktop OSes (so win 8 isn't being widely deployed; enterprises are still paying for software assurance etc to keep installing windows 7 and MS is making great money at it.)
Bing profitability is apparently close, if not already there.
There's definitely money in skype as well; although it surely hasn't paid for itself yet.
And Xbox is has been profitable as well, for several years by all accounts.
Azure? I don't know.
OneDrive? I don't know.
i have an asus 4k monitor, 1 ms gtg 60hz on displayport
1ms gtg though means TN display right? If performance / gaming is your primary and only driving consideration that's fine.
But I wanted something that does better with picture quality and color representation than a TN will deliver. I ended up with Asus as well but selected a 27" QHD PLS based panel; (the pair of which so far I'm very happy with.)
But I know they'll be obsoleted with really good 4K stuff soon.
Still the fact that you are choosing to game at 2560 on 980GTX (a better card than I have) says a lot too (not about you personally; but about the current state of UHD gaming).
For 3840x2160 - Low end
Are there any good monitors at that resolution though? I bought a pair of 27" screens this holiday season and ended up opting for 2560x1440 because 3840x2160 were all terrible for gaming; with pretty much any video card it seemed.
So if you are going to shell out for a top-line nvidia card... what monitor are you pairing it with? A 30Hz QuadHD monitor with high lags, and latency?
I don't get the logic of that.
I couldn't find a good 3840x2160 screen that was remotely any good at least at the price ranges I was looking at? How much do you have to spend to get a good 4K screen - that's decent build quality, decent at gaming, and decent at picture quality?
I know they are -coming- but what is actually HERE?
I can touch start, type a specific sequence of keys (usually only 3, sometimes 2), press Enter, all without moving my hands from the keyboard and also without losing focus on what I'm reading or working on.
a) that does work in 8. But i agree the context switch is an unwelcome burden.
b) That sort of workflow is a power user thing to do. See below.
it still serves as a reminder that Win8 wrested-away a reasonable feature.
That's fair. I'm not arguing that 8 or 8.1 was an improvment in every way. But the old start menu was a disaster of legacy crap glued together. And it was replaced by a set of reasonable features too... the start screen caters to casual users search (and looks a lot like OSX launchpad) AND it supports real searching better than the start menu ever did being full screen.
The way you and I used the start menu ... it still works... but I agree there is a cognitive burden to the mode switch.
So the only loss was a mode-switch free way to keyboard activate programs quickly that you already knew the names of... doesn't that sound like a power users utility to you? It does to me... and its an itch that's been well scratched.
Launchy, Executor, FARR... and others all not only support that feature, but go beyond what windows 7 ever did. So why cling backwards with classic shell... when we should be looking forward; embracing the things 8.1 got right, and using a power tool like launchy for its shortcomings.
Don't get me wrong, I firmly believe something like launchy should be bundled with windows. But then I think calculator.exe and notepad.exe are pretty worthless too compared to speedcrunch and notepad++...
I realize I'm replying to you a second time here; but I this sub-thread sort of illustrates my point quite well.
In addition to windows, I use OSX and *nix. And OSX, most notably doesn't have a start menu. And I don't miss it there. I certainly don't miss it to the point that I feel compelled to find a "MakeOSX work like windows 7 please" start menu utility.
In OSX:
I have my most frequent apps on the dock (essentially pinned apps on the system tray).
I use launchpad if I need to browse and search for an app (its a full scree application launcher tool; essentially windows 8's start screen - but its more limited).
And finally I use spotlight if i know what I want and can just type a few characters (eg. to launch terminal.app on OSX users who don't have it docked, etc)
So when I was first faced with 8.1; my observation was pretty much ok. Last round OSX borrowed from Windows. This round Windows is copying OSX and the start menu is souped up OSX application luancher. Neat. ... ok... yeah I miss that for quick search program launching. I see I can still do it from the start screen, but like you noted the context switch is overkill for that.
But what about the other stuff i did with the start menu ?
Access control panels, computer properties (system control panel), shutdown, etc... oh its all rightclick off the start button. Cool.
Start menu pinned apps --> custom tool bar. We've had this capability forever; just rarely needed it before. Solved.
And the search widget? Hmmm.
What I need is "spotlight" for windows; and it doesn't have one. But lets be honest here, most non-power users don't use spotlight on OSX to launch programs. And while I'd like window to include one, I'm a power user... and just like the built in calculator is worthless and I always install a replacement (in my case SpeedCrunch is the one i like), I'd like a little desktop search / program launcher... So Launchy (which goes back to XP), but there are others such as Executor, and FARR (find and run robot).
And frankly that's what blows my mind. What windows 8 "needs" is Spotlight (or Launchy) built in; yet somehow that one little short coming that only power users even needed turned itself into "Lets stick our heads up our asses and re-create everything that was wrong with the start menu just to get at the one little thing it actually did well back" instead of "Lets just make something does that missing bit well"... oh wait... someone already did... years ago... for XP and they've been updating it ever since. Lets use that.
How would an end user discover A. that this is possible and B. what keywords to use on Google to learn how?
A)
First, we aren't talking about joe-average end user. We are talking about intelligent windows-savvy power-users.
So how do you discover it? Same way we power users discover most things about the user interface by clicking on things.
Right click on your taskbar. Its the first option... "Toolbars"... hmm... what's all this about a savvy power user might ask themselves for that is what savvy power users are apt to do?
what keywords to use on Google to learn how?
Well, having now discovered it: "windows 8 taskbar toolbar" works the 2nd result is pretty much a tutorial on them.
Although taskbar toolbars have been around for a while... Windows 7 has them too. And Vista. And XP. I kinda-sorta think even Windows 98 might have had them.
You can use Jump Lists from apps pinned to the Taskbar in Windows 8 but having 10+ apps pinned to your Taskbar tends to make it needlessly cluttered, especially when you have multiple non-pinned apps open at the same time.
Agreed. But how typical is that REALLY? And your most common 5-10 apps are probably open all the time anyway, and pinned apps are just a partial solution.
Toolbars the other part. The stuff you don't use THAT frequently should go in a toolbar... a toolbar is basically like the pinned list on the old start menu, which can hold another 20-50 apps depending on your screensize and icon settings etc.
Hell you can even point a toolbar to the "start menu" folder and get a hierarchical popup back. Although crafting your own smaller customized list is probably more useful.
You are missing the point.
No. You are. You can't have perfect security.
With the exception of point 5 and 6, which are simply just good advice (but #5 wouldn't have helped him here; and #6 makes it difficult to provide a criminal service -- after all someone else needs to know about it.)
All your suggestions have caveats and vulnerabilities. I'm picking on 1 and 4 in particular below, but there are issues with 2, 3, 5 too.
Step 1) NEVER carry incriminating evidence with you. Encrypted or not.
Good advice, but how exactly do you accomplish this? Either your data is somewhere with you. Or you have remote access to it, and there will be evidence that you do in fact have remote access to it if they seize your laptop WHILE YOU ARE USING IT to remotely access it.
Plus if YOU have remote access to it, then so does somebody else; if they can somehow convince the remote system they are you; or if there is some unpatched exploit they know about that you don't. (And you should assume there IS.)
After all what is it they say about stuff you don't EVER want leaked online? Oh right... DON'T PUT IT ONLINE. That runs directly counter to your advice to "always put it online".
You can't have it both ways.
4) use a dead-mans switch on that servers encrypted data
And then if the internet goes down due to a storm, beaver, or backhoe somewhere; all your records are gone and your now out of business. No idea who you owe what, or what people owe you; or where any of your assets and contacts nor how to reach them...Oh yeah. That's a great plan.
2) use a VPN/SSH Tunnel/etc (and/or both) to connect to the server where your data is. (make sure that server is located in a non-extraditing country, and filtered from you by a few shell companies)
If they have enough network surveillance at their disposal in place to unmask tor users, a couple VPNs and shell corporations isn't going to work. It might work to keep boris and igor from being able to find you. But I wouldn't rely on it to keep the FBI at bay if they are genuinely interested in shutting you down; and you live in the states.
This is nothing new. The 'exhaust sound' was part of the design criteria of the 1st Gen Mazda Miata. Trying to recreate British sports cars (Lotus).
Yes, everyone knows that the exhaust 'note' is engineered and tuned like everything else. And since the engine is going to make some noise, it should be a pleasant noise.
What is new is faking it outright. Its one thing to alter the length, diameter, thickness, and shape of an actual exhaust pipe transporting the actual exhaust to get a more pleasing sound. Its something entirely different to play engine-noise-track-1 through the speaker system. Or to add an air pump which just takes fresh air and pumps it through a tube to make extra noise.
That is new. And nobody really wants that.
For document searches, and other REAL searches, the start menu in win7 is too small.
But, yes, your right about it as a handy tool for launching programs, and if you dig back in my posting history about win8, you'll find that the search widget as a quick launch program shortcut is the only thing about the windows 7 start menu I think was really lost and doesn't have a proper replacement in 8. (yes the start screen works, but a full screen UI just to launch CMD or gpedit or mstsc, putty, ... etc, etc, is silly.
If they added that search widget functionality (and/or just gave it better autocomplete/history) to the Win+R ("Run" shortcut); or gave us that search functionality as a standalone taskbar gadget optimized for launching programs (not documents etc) we wouldn't really need the win7 search function.
"I would remind a lot of people here that windows division brings in a lot of revenue for Microsoft in form of infamous "windows tax" and I seriously doubt they're willing to just lose this revenue stream after investing as much as they did into it to keep it."
You mean that paragraph? How is giving away upgrades for one yeear to existing customers "giving up the revenue"?
Every single new computer from the day it launches are going to still be paying for it. All enterprise / corporate customers are still going to be paying for it.
All the free upgrade for a year does is, they hope, transition a big bunch of people with windows 7 and 8 to over to windows 10. Most of those people wouldn't have upgraded if if it wasn't free. So they aren't even giving up that much revenue by giving it away.
Everyone knows historically very few people don't buy operating system upgrades. They get the new OS when they get a new computer. Due to the computer replacement cycle slowing down as cpu and graphics advances have slowed down this would have the effect of slowing the adoption of Windows 10.
Microsoft clearly hopes to jump-start windows 10 adoption by giving it to a pile of existing users for free. Users who wouldn't have upgraded, and certainly wouldn't have paid to upgrade. And frankly, at that price, it might well work. And a year is long enough even for cautious people with windows 7 (especially) to see what the reaction is like before deciding to upgrade.
Its a pretty good move by Microsoft. Quite frankly, I've got a mix of windows 7 and 8 computers at home for example, and I'd have been happy to standardize on 8.1 but I wasn't willing to shell out several hundred for several Windows 8 pro upgrades. But I might well just take everything to windows 10 at release.
Sure, I'll be on the look out for new fine print before I make a final decision. That's just common sense. But your reading of the current situation is entirely unjustified.
Every new computer with windows 10 will be paying for windows. Every corporate / enterprise VLA is still paid. Microsoft clearly hasn't just thrown away their wholesale/retail/volume licensed windows revenue stream to chase rent.
The fact that it's forced full-screen rather than snapped is the problem. At least with the Windows 7 Start menu, I could see a bit of what I was working on in the corner of my screen, which provided some subconscious continuity. In fact, if I had a program snapped to the right side (Windows+Right), I could see all of it while the Start menu was open. But with Windows 8's Start screen, everything is covered up. The full-screen context switch imposes a cognitive burden similar to going through a doorway and forgetting what you came in for.
All true. No argument.
Now, as you are clearly both intelligent and a power user: why exactly do you use the start screen so much in 8.1?
Create custom taskbar menus and pin the apps you use. Documents folder is pinned. Control panels, system properties, etc is right-click on the start button? I can go days without using the start screen on windows 8.1. And when I do use it to search for some obscure thing I rarely use, the fact that its full screen instead of crammed into a corner of the screen is actually a benefit.
Don't get me wrong, I think bringing the start menu back with 10 is the right move for a LOT of reasons. And primarily I completely agree that the way the OS throws them back and forth between the classic and modern UIs is a problem; that shouldn't happen unless they want it to.
You don't need classic shell; you just need to pin and create custom toolbars.
The reason I don't like classic shell, is that while it rejects the mistakes of Windows 8; it PRESERVES the mistakes of Windows 7. The classic start menu is an abomination. Clearly what they did with win 8 isn't the correct solution; but at its heart the startmenu is a fixed size POPUP window stuck in the corner containing 2 operating modes, with an arbitrarily deep nested folder heirarchy, and then a bunch of widgets (search), pinned apps, automatically adding frequently/most used apps, and so forth all bolted onto it. It is categorically a terrible bit of user interface.
Windows 8 got the start screen wrong. But Classic Shell clings to a UI that's at least as terrible but is "familiar". We need to try something new. Maybe windows 10 will get it right... i haven't tried it yet.
VB.NET is nothing like BASIC of old, and Dijkstra's observations about BASIC simply do not apply to VB.NET.
Feature availability may vary by device. Some editions excluded. More details at http://www.windows.com./"
There is no information on windows.com at this time
Sure there is, scroll down to the bottom:
*It is our intent that most of these devices will qualify, but some hardware/software requirements apply and feature availability may vary by device. Devices must be connected to the internet and have Windows Update enabled. ISP fees may apply. Windows 7 SP1 and Windows 8.1 Update required. Some editions are excluded: Windows 7 Enterprise, Windows 8/8.1 Enterprise, and Windows RT/RT 8.1. Active Software Assurance customers in volume licensing have the benefit to upgrade to Windows 10 Enterprise outside of this offer. We will be sharing more information and additional offer terms in coming months.
So "excluded editions" are enterprise versions etc; most of which are already separately covered by Software Assurance etc.
And the feature availability may vary by device? I expect that simply means if your device doesn't have a camera no 2-way skype calling, if there's no microphone no 2-way voice, and cortana won't work. If there's no touch screen... there's no touch features. Etc etc etc.
I would not be making bold claims like yours just yet - we don't know their business model yet
Claiming they are moving to a subscription model for the OS is what needs evidence here. Yes, they already have a subscription model for Onedrive, and office 365, etc and yes it wouldn't be surprise to see that expanded. But there is no evidence of that here, YET.
"free for a year" in this context is pretty clearly an upgrade window, after which if you are still running 7 and want to upgrade you will have to pay. Just as if you are still running 7 you can't get 8 for $15 or $45 or any of the other launch deals that were available.
And if you build a new PC, and want to install 10 on it, you will have to buy it in some form. That is not going to be free.
Maybe but she WAS being harassed so she was only reacting (poorly) to a situation; I suppose that helped to allow it to balloon out of proportion.
But individual people cannot "make" something go viral... that's on the larger community to collectively make happen.
So why did we collectively CARE enough to make it happen? Is her gender a factor to why we (as a society) cared enough about the story?
Would we have cared as much if an ex-girlfriend of a developer posted about her former boyfriend having slept with a journalist that resulted in some slightly extra coverage? Could he have cried foul and QQ as Zoe did? Or would we just roll our eyes and moved onto the next story?
He's the right color so the greatest PR money could buy convinced tons of poor innercity blacks that this [successful person] really understands what life is like in the ghetto, is truly one of their own, and really wants to help them gain opportunities and is not a member of the monied political class at all. Automatically getting about 13% of the vote is a great start to any campaign, that plus the approximately 50% who vote [Republican] anyway and you get to be president.
It's so simple, kids, and that's why we have President Herman Cain. And its why all the last six presidents have been black. black vote + 50% partisan vote... its just an unbeatable combo.
Nice theory you got there, but reality turns out to be just a little more complicated. Now if voters were frictionless spheres in a vaccuum... then maybe you'd have something.