Using what, a VM? That's probably the easiest and most cross-platform, but that hardly makes it easy (especially since VMs that are designed for easy use make extremely poor sandboxes). AppArmor or SELinux or some such? Well beyond the capabilities of most users. A dedicated low-privilege user account? That's possible on pretty much any platform, but will still leave a mess that you'll have to clean up afterward.
Besides, I'd really rather stop before the attacker gets arbitrary code execution on my machine. Java is disabled or simply not present on my machines, thank you.
They've patched 6 of the 19 vulns that were reported back in April. Three were patched a couple months back as part of their usual 4-month patch cycle. As far as I know, those were never used in the wild. Three more were patched just recently, in response to rampant in-the-wild use and inclusion in exploit kits, etc.
Of course, that leaves 13 still unpatched, and while apparently quite a few of them are defense-in-depth (insufficient, on their own, for full compromise), when you've got that many unpatched vulns it is totally unsurprising that somebody can chain a few of them together into a working exploit.
Why are you making drafts of 160-char messages? That doesn't seem like an even slightly important feature.
With that said, you pretty much can through one of two mechanisms: Copy the drafted text to the clipboard and then paste it into a text to yourself (yes, you can copy text out of a SMS as well, so it's not that hard to recover) or simply leave the text half-composed, hit the Start button (or press-and-hold the Back button to switch to another app), and when you want to get back to your "draft" just use the task switcher to get back to the still-open SMS session, with your draft text sitting there waiting for you.
The first of these has been possible since NoDo (1.5 years), the second since Mango (1 year).
The appeal of the tiles: they provide at-a-glance information. I can see how many emails, IMs, Facebook notifications and messages, and so on are waiting for me, without launching anything. I can see the current weather, or a forecast. I can track a friend's status updates, etc. Yeah, it's all pretty basic stuff, but it really does improve the experience a bit. Too bad I spend virtually no time in the Start screen...
The appeal of Metro-style apps: sandboxed, simple UI, can subscribe to a simple inter-process "sharing" system. Can display live updates on their tiles. I feel that the simplicity is taken too far, but for a lot of users, that's probably the level they want.
The appeal of the Marketplace: app discovery, automatic app updates, apps have been vetted for safety, apps follow you from PC to PC, you can get and leave ratings on apps. One of the best user-facing features of Win8, in my opinion, if it weren't for the looming walled garden aspect.
The appeal of the desktop: mutli-monitor taskbar and wallpapers that can cover multiple monitors too. Window chrome that updates along with the background slideshow (a suprisingly pleasant visual effect). Vastly improved file management UIs.
The appeal of Live ID integration: use your Live ID to log into your PC, have access to your documents and apps and bookmarks and contacts and calendar, have your settings remembered, be able to reset your password through an alternate email account, automatic integration with Live ID-based services.
The appeal of the features: ISO mounting, Client Hyper-V, reset/refresh (restore the PC to a specific snapshot state, or remove all user changes entirely). The ability to track your data usage (for built-in cellular chips, for example) and limit certain actions to while on WiFi or other unlimited networking. Anti-virus (basically, Security Essentials) now built into Defender.
The behind-the-scenes appeal: lower memory usage. Faster startup. Lots of new or improved exploit mitigations (like ForceASLR to mandate relocating DLLs linked without the/DYNAMICBASE flag).
That's not an exhaustive list, by any means. However, it should give you a good idea of the kinds of things people like in Win8. I personally think the Start screen (with the tiles) looks awful and is a pain to use, but fortunately, I don't have to. I launch programs by just typing the start of their name and hitting Enter, or by hitting Winkey+R and typing the binary name.
But... that would mean there are people who actually bought Windows phones, and sufficient numbers of them to make writing apps for the platform worthwhile! <GP's head explodes>
Liftport has been around for a while, but they've run into a number of troubles. I don't know what your age or life expectancy is, but if you take their roadmap seriously, it's quite possible that there will still be a space elevator in your lifetime.
Of course, if you take their roadmap without a pretty serious grain of salt, you probably haven't been following them for the last six or so years. It's been adjusted backward many times.
Not at all; that's a ludicrous claim of any reasonably free society (including once rather worse off than the USA). For example, it's completely legitimate to write a book in which the character plots the execution of a real-world individual, and to include the full details of that plan in the book. Nothing about your writing becomes illegal until you try to use the book as a mechanism to break a law which is completely unrelated to writing (specifically, conspiracy to commit murder) by doing things like telling other people that they should, in real life, follow the plan laid out in the book. Even in that case, it's not the actual writing that is the illegal part, it's the use to which you put the writing. If you don't actually engage in a conspiracy to commit murder, you can write about murder all you like. Indeed, you may instead use the book for completely legal purposes (random example: as part of a course for bodyguards, where the plan as outlined in the writing is used as a scenario in which you now have to defend the target).
On DRM, however, it's a different issue. It is illegal to operate a system for breaking DRM, regardless of the purpose of breaking the DRM or the way the system is used. For example, you're not legally allowed to defeat DRM for the purposes of making a backup, even though you're explicitly legally permitted to make personal backups of copywrited works. You're also not legally permitted to break the DRM on an item which you paid for under an agreement of perpetual use, even if the company that provided the item has gone out of business without compensating you for the breach of contract.
It is also illegal to break DRM for the purpose of commiting actual copyright infringement - that is, the distribution of unlicensed copies outside the scope of fair use exceptions - but that makes sense, right? Wrong! The copyright infringement is illegal, sure, but breaking DRM is neither a sufficient nor necessary step toward copyright infringement. It is one avenue which helps enable copyright infringement, of course, but so are VCRs, handheld video recording equipment (camcorders, etc.), memorizing a song, writing down the words of a speech, and many other legally completely valid devices or behaviors. DRM gets singled out as an area where merely doing something which may enable copyright infringement is itself illegal. That's bullshit, but it's the law.
Wait, seriously? That's so stupid on so many levels that I honestly don't believe it.
Lets start with the EULA concept. Microsoft is a quite heavy user of EULAs. A court case that said EULAs were unenforceable would hurt MS considerably. On the flip side, the GPL is explicitly not an EULA; it says absolutely nothing with regard to use or the permissions of users; its only restrictions are on distribution. Far from being some kind of harmful precedent, EULAs being overturned would have exactly zero legal effect on the GPL.
Then let's move on to what the GPL actually is. It's a copyright license, and a rather complex one. It relies on copyright law itself to enforce the "copyleft" terms. This is the same copyright law that also allows things like reselling (doctrine of first sale) by treating IP as an item of property. Although first sale itself has relatively little meaning as directly relates to the GPL, attacking creative uses of copyright law is very much not in a GPL supporter's best interest.
Then there's the whole concept behind the GPL; that people should be able to adapt and modify and reuse your code. This is very much not Apple's philosophy. Yes, they use some open-source code themselves, and some of it is under GPL (or variations thereof), but of course, that's exactly the same code that Pystar was reselling... with some extra work on their part to adapt it to non-Apple hardware. That's exactly in the spirit of the GPL.
Now, as I heard it, the reason Pystar lost was because they were found to be violating copyright - that is, they were directly redistributing Apple's copyrighted and proprietary software updates without a license to do so - and I could see how Groklaw might support that idea. I'd think it a bit strange, and certainly contrary to the ideals of F/LOSS, for them to argue that it's illegal to re-"sell"software packages which you received because of other software that you bought and then resold, but I can believe that a strict reading of copyright law does not include a provision for such things. The idea of Groklaw supporting EULAs, though... that's just whacked. If true, I have a lot less respect for them than I used to.
Yes. It can be turned off at install, at first boot (for pre-loaded images), or at any time while logged in. There are even instructions from Microsoft for doing so!
So what? If the feds want to know what you're downloading and such, it's a hell of a lot easier to go through your ISP. Smartscreen as a sniffing vector is technically true but completely irrelevant to the difficulty of the attack you propose.
I was wondering how long it would take before somebody brought up Cryptocat, and whether the person doing so would have a clue or not. Looks like the answers are "not long" and "no".
The goal of SmartScreen is to warn the user against running malicious software. The goal of Cryptocat is to make a user's chat session completely untappable. Not only are these two goals quite different, but most of the weaknesses of Cryptocat are based on an environment that SmartScreen simply doesn't have. Also, it's not "no more secure than using no crypto at all"; it's "no more secure than using a web-based chat client over https without any additional crypto".
Note that of course I'm talking about the web-app version here, not the local client (browser plugin, etc).
Cryptocat has two major weaknesses against its current implementation, and a few potential weaknesses. Let's compare them against SmartScreen 1. Cryptocat is served over https, but by default most browsers will try http first. Cryptocat will redirect you to https, but if somebody is running SSLStrip (or any of the other proxying tools built using it) on your network, you'll never see the redirect. Instead, the site and all of its javascript will be sent to the proxy over https, and to your browser (potentially after modification, such as injection of a script that just steals the chat data) over http. 1.1 Smartscreen will only ever attempt to connect over SSL. SSLStrip is no threat to it
2. Cryptocat relies on the server being trusted, because it gets its code from the server. If you want to make sure somebody (some government?) doesn't intercept your chat session... don't use Cryptocat, or you're screwed. This is a promise that the web-based Cryptocat can't make, even though it really wants to. 2.1 Smartscreen relies on the server being trusted, because that's where the authoritative version of the blacklist is. This is true whether the blacklist is local or remote, so from the perspective of SmartScreen's functionality, it makes no difference. As for privacy, if somebody (government, etc.) wants to spy on you... don't use Windows. Microsoft doesn't need SmartScreen to be able to tell a lot more info about your PC than "anonymous user #1403947 executed the following downloaded programs". If you don't trust them, why the fuck are you running their OS in the first place?
3. Cryptocat, being browser-based, is vulnerable to a family of attacks against the browser and its session. For example, things like clickjacking, XSS, CSRF, and so on. Security is only as strong as the weakest link, and Cryptocat has a lot of weak links. However, even if your browsing session is compromised, your secret chat conversation isn't leaked until you hold it overa browser-based chat system. 3.1 SmartScreen runs before before the downloaded program could have a chance to take over your computer. However, if your computer is already compromised, the attacker has no need of SmartScreen, and if your computer isn't compromised, SmartScreen doesn't offer any new way for a (non-MS) attacker to compromise your privacy.
Intellectual property is actually part of constitutional law, at least in the USA. That's the extreme opposite, by definition, of "illegal". Now, if you want to claim that it's immoral, outdated, invalid, unenforceable, too broad, broken, economically harmful, or should be prohibited on other constitutional grounds, go right ahead. Claiming that something which is established in the highest legal code of the nation is "illegal" just makes you look like an idiot.
Now, I don't know for sure that you're an American citizen, but that's where IV is located and the set of laws they operate under, so your comment is pointless otherwise.
In any case, I disagree with you quite strongly. First of all, you seem to be unaware of the breadth of IP law. For example, trademarks are IP. Just because I "independently" come up with my own logo and product name that looks exactly like the one on your very succesful product line doesn't mean I'm allowed to sell knock-off "duplicates" under that brand. That's enforced by IP law. So are things like trade secrets (if you break an employment contract by selling insider knowledge, IP is the reason the company can sue you - otherwise, they could only fire you).
Furthermore, while I agree that the copyright and patent systems are both out of control an doperating far in excess of how they should, the core of both seems like a good idea to me. Without copyright, it's essentially impossible to make a living doing things like writing books or taking photographs, no matter how good you are, if you can only ever get paid for each work once. It's also both very hard to make a living writing software, and impossible (under the otherwise-current set of laws) to prevent soembody from taking your open-source software and forking it closed-source. Without patents, there's very little value in R unless you manage to make something that can't be reverse engineered or simply duplicated, your competitors will clone it and leave you with the sunk cost. Patents are supposed to allow R&D to provide a return on invesment, and in many cases, they do work.
That they need to be reigned in, I fully agree with. Don't go saying they're univerally and inherently wrong unless you've really thought about what a world without any of the impacts of those laws (as opposed to one without only the negative impacts) would be like... and don't go calling them "illegal" unless you simply want to look like a fool.
The funny/sad thing is how, as you espouse the current state of Linux, you're completely clueless about the current state of Windows. As it happens, I use both (my main workstation runs Windows, but I have a lot of older hardware around that got migrated to Linux). Here's the current state on both sides:
Mostly, but not entirely, true. Autoconfiguration tools are good enough for almost every configuration, but there are still exceptions. I still have to manually configure the resolution options (after each major video driver update, no less) for one of my laptops, for example. I'm sure it's the hardware's fault, but it worked fine on Windows.
Completely, blatantly, and absurdly false. Stop thinking that an 11-year-old OS represents "Windows". XP's driver database is horribly outdated, and its automatic driver search is nearly nonexistent... but when its last major update (SP3) was released, it was still better at PC hardware compatibility than any Linux distros I could find at the time, and I went through eight of the most popular in the attempt. Vista fixed the "automatic searching for drivers" issue just fine, and I've never seen a Win7 (RTM, much less SP1) disc that didn't include the required drivers for both my wired ethernet and WiFi devices. On the other hand, the last Fedora installation I attempted couldn't find the ethernet driver for three-year-old hardware (it got the equally old WiFi, so I really have no idea what was going on there, and another distro worked fine, but... yeesh).
This is one of the big advantages of Linux, no question about it. Of course, this is also part of why Win8 includes its built-in Marketplace (where, somewhat contrary to the name, most of the software available so far is free). Windows RT will take an extra step toward the "everything works out of the box" goal, at the cost of breaking backward compatibility with x86 apps.
You are not bound, and never have been bound, to a specific shell on Windows. If you want to run Plasma as the default shell, that's entirely possible; KDE for Windows has been around for years now, and the registry value to select your shell has been around since at least Windows 95. Also, as for "usibility regressions", I'd take the worst of every other UI feature from any version of Windows since 2000 in exchange for the instant search (introduced in Vista and maintained through Win8, although I prefer the Vista/Win7 implementation over the Win8 implementation).
My grandmoth used to teach computing courses (including fairly advanced Excel stuff, more than I knew) at her senior center. She might have been able to use KDE, but would hav had to re-learn all the names. She'd have hated Calc and found it useless, but then, she broke the 80/20 rule (for Excel, at least) on a regular basis. Probably atypical for the 70-something she was at the time, but since we're swapping anecdotes... no, Linux would not have passed (unless I'd configured Office in Wine for her, at least; I highly doubt she'd have managed that herself).
This is a joke. Leaving aside the fact that neither I nor anybody I know "[worries] about viruses, spyware, etc." to any degree beyond tracking cookies (equally a problem on Linux) and not installing software off sketchy sites (partially mitigated by software repositories on Linux, but malicious apps have historically been served through repo systems on occasion and for stuff not in the repos, you're on your own), no OS where the user has the ability to get root is ever truly secure. Malware targets Windows primarily - it makes no economic sense to do otherwise, and the point of malware is economic gain - but that's a matter of market share. The marketshare of Linux is to Mac as that of Mac is to Windows, and even as OS X security improves, the incidence of malware on OS X is also beginning to rise as its marketshare crosses the line into profitability. With that said, there have been Java and Flashplayer exploits which were cross-platform, including Linux.
Given the talk of "application architecture" and the presence of concepts like "debug mode" being a run-time switchable state, or XSS being able to execute code on the server, I'm guessing it probably involves PHP. Atrociously bad configuration, even by the already abysmal standard of "you're using PHP", but possible. Probably also possible in a few other frameworks, but that's the only one I've seen recently used where sufficiently shitty web apps could be persuaded by the client to run arbitrary code on the server.
Some of us like to get off of this continent from time to time. Flights aren't all a matter of "oh no, five hours is much too long a drive to go see grandma, let's fly!". Additionally, I have to travel for work. Even leaving aside overseas trips, flying is the only way to maintain my schedule (and some of our clients *are* overseas).
Besides, you're ignoring the TSA getting their filthy hands onto other transit facilities. It's not just airports anymore.
The only way to avoid the TSA would be to leave the US (without flying) and never return. Don't think I haven't considered it, but right now, that's not a practical option.
Generally, I agree with you ("smartphone" for me means a programmable mobile phone) but these days, almost any device has some programmable ability (as the summary points out, these phones can run Java ME code).
A more modern definition of "smartphone" might include things like a sensor suite (camera isn't enough anymore, a GPS at least is expected), a powerful processor (which it has, at least powerful enough to easily qualify), a touchscreen, and some kind of "app store" even if it's almost nothing compared to what Apple and Google offer.
Actually, you really can. KDE has been available on Windows for years, basically ever since 4.x was released (yes, including the pre-release-quality "releases" for x < 2).
Additionally, Windows has long had a registry value that specifies which process it should launch as a shell. Traditionally, this was used for creating kiosk systems that ran dedicated software and neither needed nore wanted Explorer running in the background. However, it's possible to do full shell replacement using the same tweak.
I'd be quite surprised to see one. The only API that Microsoft allows third-party developers to use on Windows RT is WinRT (well, and web apps of course). Although it is possible to write native apps using WinRT, the dev tools make it very easy to compile those apps for multiple architectures (ARM for Windows RT, x86 and x64 for "normal" Win8). So, unless somebody intentionally limits their market share to Windows RT only, for absolutely no benefit to themselves, I really don't expect to see Windows RT-exclusive apps at all.
Besides, most people will probably write WinRT (Metro-style) apps using a managed language, like C# or Javascript. That gets you compatibility with both Win8 and Windows RT without even the trivial hassle of recompiling.
Since the GP was obviously joking, and you are... not obviously joking, I'm going to guess it's you ("Zaphod The 42nd") who are the asshole here. You might want to think a lot more closely about what you post online in the future. I wouldn't even bother replying to such obvious idiocy if it hadn't been modded up.
P.S. <joke-with-a-care-of-truth>If my parents had tried to take me to McDonalds as any time I was over the age of 6 and knew what food should actually taste like, I'd have assaulted them myself!</joke-with-a-cor-of-truth> Seriously, it's not exactly child abuse or anything, but it certainly isn't behavior I would encourage in any parent... especially if the kids' taste *was* already picky to the point of insisting on junk food.
Win+M, Alt+F4. (That's "Minimize All" followed by "Close program" for those not familiar with standard Windows shortcuts.) Enter if I want shutdown, or select a different option.
If you know the hotkeys, the standard stuff in Windows is easy to use entirely from the keyboard. Also, many of us bind (or use computers with pre-bound) specific keys for power control. For example, I set the Power button to be "safe shutdown", the lid close action (laptop) to "suspend", and Fn+F4 (again, laptop, but it's the "sleep" key that many keyboards have) to "hibernate".
I agree that the duration of copyright is ridiculous. The lack of any kind of automatic "abandonment" for it (such as exists for trademarks) is also perhaps part of the problem. Of course, to pull from your (counter)examples, most countries do appear to have fair-use terms in their copyright laws.
Not all countries have VAT, but even where they do, that's completely tangential to what I was talking about. The tax is on sale of the goods, not on continuing posession of them (like the person I was responding to was suggesting). Some places do apparently tax ongoing posession (so claims another responder, but the country named was the UA which does not have VAT) but in general, posession of most types of property is not taxed - only the transfer of posession, or gain of wealth.
Admittedly, this is about WP8, and so there's no guarantee that they won't manage to actually lock the bootloader properly this time. However, quite a few WP7 devices already have bootloader unlocks and custom ROMs available. All of the HTC phones, the gen1 Samsung phones, and some of the Lumias are currently able to load and run custom ROMs.
Actually, that raises an interesting question: just how hard will it be to port WP8 unofficially? The difference in the hardware is going to be significant, but not necessarily crippling (for example, the HD2, a WinMo phone, has several very nice WP7 custom ROMs available for it which work around the fact that it doesn't quite conform to the WP7 chassis spec).
Furthermore, the question of "what (aside from hardware-dependent features) will WP8 get that WP7.8 wont?" is quite relevant. There's no reason that I can see why WP7.8, even if it sticks with the current kernel design, couldn't feature Skype call integration and proper turn-by-turn navigation.
In fact, my suspicion is that this whole thing is yet another collassal marketing/branding fuckup by Microsoft. Obviously, WP8 will support hardware than no WP7.x phone has; that's fine and will provide a compelling upgrade path. But unless there's some serious reason that the current phones can't run WP8 (the only thing that comes to mind is that a 1GHz ARM chip might be too slow, and even then that only applies to the earlier WP7 devices) I suspect they'll actually release "WP7.8" as simply a build of WP8 that lacks the drivers for new hardware. In which case, the obvious question is "Why not just call it WP8 the way Apple calls it iOS 5 even on phones that can't fully use iOS 5 features"?
The only answer I can see to that is because Microsoft, especially where phones are concerned, has absolutely no fucking clue how to do branding properly. The approach they're taking is already making people forget claim the death of WP7 as a platform, even as another update for it rolls out now (Tango) and a fourth (Apollo, or whatever they're calling 7.8) has been announced. All Microsoft had to do to forstall that was announce that WP8 would in fact come to WP7 devices, but due to the older hardware would be unable to use some features.
Actually, MS already does this for PCs. At the "Microsoft Stores" (including online, I believe) you can order Wintel PCs (laptops and "conventional" tablets). They come with Win7, Ofice 2010, Security Essentials, and the Windows Live apps (which aside from Mesh I have little use for, but they're easy to remove). They're obviously manufactured by "normal" OEMs, but come without the in-your-face OEM branding and shovel-loads of crappy or trial software.
I suspect they are priced just a bit higher than those crap-laden boxes, but then, time is money.
Android, in the form used in most tablets and phones, is most certainly not free. The Android Open Source Project (AOSP) is free, and you can make a quite respectable OS from it, but many of the things that people think of as "Android" features are actually *Google* features, and Google charges licensing fees for them.
Want access to the Android Market (excuse me, Google Play)? That will cost. Want access to Google's map data for built-in navigation? That will cost. Want to use Google's mail and calendar and contacts and chat apps for Android? That will cost. Want Google's support in modifying the OS for your devices and market? That will cost (actually, it costs anyhow, it's just a question of whose developers you're paying).
The truly bottom-of-the-price-chart Android tablets and phones do use AOSP, on crap hardware with crap drivers. That saves on licensing the OS, buying quality parts, and integrating the OS well. Of course, you get what you pay for; a slow and buggy experience that falls well short of what could be achieved on a Nexus or Droid or Galaxy with comparable specs.
The other people using AOSP are those who are investing heavily in building their own OS, and use Android as a starting point. The Kindle Fire, Nook Color, and Nook Tablet are all running Android, but they don't really look and feel like Android devices because, in the Google Android sense, they aren't. They run Amazon Android or B&N Android, and while those companies have sent Google very little if any money in licensing costs, they have spent lots of money on internal development costs.
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Using what, a VM? That's probably the easiest and most cross-platform, but that hardly makes it easy (especially since VMs that are designed for easy use make extremely poor sandboxes). AppArmor or SELinux or some such? Well beyond the capabilities of most users. A dedicated low-privilege user account? That's possible on pretty much any platform, but will still leave a mess that you'll have to clean up afterward.
Besides, I'd really rather stop before the attacker gets arbitrary code execution on my machine. Java is disabled or simply not present on my machines, thank you.
They've patched 6 of the 19 vulns that were reported back in April. Three were patched a couple months back as part of their usual 4-month patch cycle. As far as I know, those were never used in the wild. Three more were patched just recently, in response to rampant in-the-wild use and inclusion in exploit kits, etc.
Of course, that leaves 13 still unpatched, and while apparently quite a few of them are defense-in-depth (insufficient, on their own, for full compromise), when you've got that many unpatched vulns it is totally unsurprising that somebody can chain a few of them together into a working exploit.
Why are you making drafts of 160-char messages? That doesn't seem like an even slightly important feature.
With that said, you pretty much can through one of two mechanisms:
Copy the drafted text to the clipboard and then paste it into a text to yourself (yes, you can copy text out of a SMS as well, so it's not that hard to recover) or simply leave the text half-composed, hit the Start button (or press-and-hold the Back button to switch to another app), and when you want to get back to your "draft" just use the task switcher to get back to the still-open SMS session, with your draft text sitting there waiting for you.
The first of these has been possible since NoDo (1.5 years), the second since Mango (1 year).
The appeal of the tiles: they provide at-a-glance information. I can see how many emails, IMs, Facebook notifications and messages, and so on are waiting for me, without launching anything. I can see the current weather, or a forecast. I can track a friend's status updates, etc. Yeah, it's all pretty basic stuff, but it really does improve the experience a bit. Too bad I spend virtually no time in the Start screen...
The appeal of Metro-style apps: sandboxed, simple UI, can subscribe to a simple inter-process "sharing" system. Can display live updates on their tiles. I feel that the simplicity is taken too far, but for a lot of users, that's probably the level they want.
The appeal of the Marketplace: app discovery, automatic app updates, apps have been vetted for safety, apps follow you from PC to PC, you can get and leave ratings on apps. One of the best user-facing features of Win8, in my opinion, if it weren't for the looming walled garden aspect.
The appeal of the desktop: mutli-monitor taskbar and wallpapers that can cover multiple monitors too. Window chrome that updates along with the background slideshow (a suprisingly pleasant visual effect). Vastly improved file management UIs.
The appeal of Live ID integration: use your Live ID to log into your PC, have access to your documents and apps and bookmarks and contacts and calendar, have your settings remembered, be able to reset your password through an alternate email account, automatic integration with Live ID-based services.
The appeal of the features: ISO mounting, Client Hyper-V, reset/refresh (restore the PC to a specific snapshot state, or remove all user changes entirely). The ability to track your data usage (for built-in cellular chips, for example) and limit certain actions to while on WiFi or other unlimited networking. Anti-virus (basically, Security Essentials) now built into Defender.
The behind-the-scenes appeal: lower memory usage. Faster startup. Lots of new or improved exploit mitigations (like ForceASLR to mandate relocating DLLs linked without the /DYNAMICBASE flag).
That's not an exhaustive list, by any means. However, it should give you a good idea of the kinds of things people like in Win8. I personally think the Start screen (with the tiles) looks awful and is a pain to use, but fortunately, I don't have to. I launch programs by just typing the start of their name and hitting Enter, or by hitting Winkey+R and typing the binary name.
But... that would mean there are people who actually bought Windows phones, and sufficient numbers of them to make writing apps for the platform worthwhile!
<GP's head explodes>
Liftport has been around for a while, but they've run into a number of troubles. I don't know what your age or life expectancy is, but if you take their roadmap seriously, it's quite possible that there will still be a space elevator in your lifetime.
Of course, if you take their roadmap without a pretty serious grain of salt, you probably haven't been following them for the last six or so years. It's been adjusted backward many times.
Not at all; that's a ludicrous claim of any reasonably free society (including once rather worse off than the USA). For example, it's completely legitimate to write a book in which the character plots the execution of a real-world individual, and to include the full details of that plan in the book. Nothing about your writing becomes illegal until you try to use the book as a mechanism to break a law which is completely unrelated to writing (specifically, conspiracy to commit murder) by doing things like telling other people that they should, in real life, follow the plan laid out in the book. Even in that case, it's not the actual writing that is the illegal part, it's the use to which you put the writing. If you don't actually engage in a conspiracy to commit murder, you can write about murder all you like. Indeed, you may instead use the book for completely legal purposes (random example: as part of a course for bodyguards, where the plan as outlined in the writing is used as a scenario in which you now have to defend the target).
On DRM, however, it's a different issue. It is illegal to operate a system for breaking DRM, regardless of the purpose of breaking the DRM or the way the system is used. For example, you're not legally allowed to defeat DRM for the purposes of making a backup, even though you're explicitly legally permitted to make personal backups of copywrited works. You're also not legally permitted to break the DRM on an item which you paid for under an agreement of perpetual use, even if the company that provided the item has gone out of business without compensating you for the breach of contract.
It is also illegal to break DRM for the purpose of commiting actual copyright infringement - that is, the distribution of unlicensed copies outside the scope of fair use exceptions - but that makes sense, right? Wrong! The copyright infringement is illegal, sure, but breaking DRM is neither a sufficient nor necessary step toward copyright infringement. It is one avenue which helps enable copyright infringement, of course, but so are VCRs, handheld video recording equipment (camcorders, etc.), memorizing a song, writing down the words of a speech, and many other legally completely valid devices or behaviors. DRM gets singled out as an area where merely doing something which may enable copyright infringement is itself illegal. That's bullshit, but it's the law.
Wait, seriously? That's so stupid on so many levels that I honestly don't believe it.
Lets start with the EULA concept. Microsoft is a quite heavy user of EULAs. A court case that said EULAs were unenforceable would hurt MS considerably. On the flip side, the GPL is explicitly not an EULA; it says absolutely nothing with regard to use or the permissions of users; its only restrictions are on distribution. Far from being some kind of harmful precedent, EULAs being overturned would have exactly zero legal effect on the GPL.
Then let's move on to what the GPL actually is. It's a copyright license, and a rather complex one. It relies on copyright law itself to enforce the "copyleft" terms. This is the same copyright law that also allows things like reselling (doctrine of first sale) by treating IP as an item of property. Although first sale itself has relatively little meaning as directly relates to the GPL, attacking creative uses of copyright law is very much not in a GPL supporter's best interest.
Then there's the whole concept behind the GPL; that people should be able to adapt and modify and reuse your code. This is very much not Apple's philosophy. Yes, they use some open-source code themselves, and some of it is under GPL (or variations thereof), but of course, that's exactly the same code that Pystar was reselling... with some extra work on their part to adapt it to non-Apple hardware. That's exactly in the spirit of the GPL.
Now, as I heard it, the reason Pystar lost was because they were found to be violating copyright - that is, they were directly redistributing Apple's copyrighted and proprietary software updates without a license to do so - and I could see how Groklaw might support that idea. I'd think it a bit strange, and certainly contrary to the ideals of F/LOSS, for them to argue that it's illegal to re-"sell"software packages which you received because of other software that you bought and then resold, but I can believe that a strict reading of copyright law does not include a provision for such things. The idea of Groklaw supporting EULAs, though... that's just whacked. If true, I have a lot less respect for them than I used to.
Yes. It can be turned off at install, at first boot (for pre-loaded images), or at any time while logged in. There are even instructions from Microsoft for doing so!
So what? If the feds want to know what you're downloading and such, it's a hell of a lot easier to go through your ISP. Smartscreen as a sniffing vector is technically true but completely irrelevant to the difficulty of the attack you propose.
I was wondering how long it would take before somebody brought up Cryptocat, and whether the person doing so would have a clue or not. Looks like the answers are "not long" and "no".
The goal of SmartScreen is to warn the user against running malicious software. The goal of Cryptocat is to make a user's chat session completely untappable. Not only are these two goals quite different, but most of the weaknesses of Cryptocat are based on an environment that SmartScreen simply doesn't have. Also, it's not "no more secure than using no crypto at all"; it's "no more secure than using a web-based chat client over https without any additional crypto".
Note that of course I'm talking about the web-app version here, not the local client (browser plugin, etc).
Cryptocat has two major weaknesses against its current implementation, and a few potential weaknesses. Let's compare them against SmartScreen
1. Cryptocat is served over https, but by default most browsers will try http first. Cryptocat will redirect you to https, but if somebody is running SSLStrip (or any of the other proxying tools built using it) on your network, you'll never see the redirect. Instead, the site and all of its javascript will be sent to the proxy over https, and to your browser (potentially after modification, such as injection of a script that just steals the chat data) over http.
1.1 Smartscreen will only ever attempt to connect over SSL. SSLStrip is no threat to it
2. Cryptocat relies on the server being trusted, because it gets its code from the server. If you want to make sure somebody (some government?) doesn't intercept your chat session... don't use Cryptocat, or you're screwed. This is a promise that the web-based Cryptocat can't make, even though it really wants to.
2.1 Smartscreen relies on the server being trusted, because that's where the authoritative version of the blacklist is. This is true whether the blacklist is local or remote, so from the perspective of SmartScreen's functionality, it makes no difference. As for privacy, if somebody (government, etc.) wants to spy on you... don't use Windows. Microsoft doesn't need SmartScreen to be able to tell a lot more info about your PC than "anonymous user #1403947 executed the following downloaded programs". If you don't trust them, why the fuck are you running their OS in the first place?
3. Cryptocat, being browser-based, is vulnerable to a family of attacks against the browser and its session. For example, things like clickjacking, XSS, CSRF, and so on. Security is only as strong as the weakest link, and Cryptocat has a lot of weak links. However, even if your browsing session is compromised, your secret chat conversation isn't leaked until you hold it overa browser-based chat system.
3.1 SmartScreen runs before before the downloaded program could have a chance to take over your computer. However, if your computer is already compromised, the attacker has no need of SmartScreen, and if your computer isn't compromised, SmartScreen doesn't offer any new way for a (non-MS) attacker to compromise your privacy.
Intellectual property is actually part of constitutional law, at least in the USA. That's the extreme opposite, by definition, of "illegal". Now, if you want to claim that it's immoral, outdated, invalid, unenforceable, too broad, broken, economically harmful, or should be prohibited on other constitutional grounds, go right ahead. Claiming that something which is established in the highest legal code of the nation is "illegal" just makes you look like an idiot.
Now, I don't know for sure that you're an American citizen, but that's where IV is located and the set of laws they operate under, so your comment is pointless otherwise.
In any case, I disagree with you quite strongly. First of all, you seem to be unaware of the breadth of IP law. For example, trademarks are IP. Just because I "independently" come up with my own logo and product name that looks exactly like the one on your very succesful product line doesn't mean I'm allowed to sell knock-off "duplicates" under that brand. That's enforced by IP law. So are things like trade secrets (if you break an employment contract by selling insider knowledge, IP is the reason the company can sue you - otherwise, they could only fire you).
Furthermore, while I agree that the copyright and patent systems are both out of control an doperating far in excess of how they should, the core of both seems like a good idea to me. Without copyright, it's essentially impossible to make a living doing things like writing books or taking photographs, no matter how good you are, if you can only ever get paid for each work once. It's also both very hard to make a living writing software, and impossible (under the otherwise-current set of laws) to prevent soembody from taking your open-source software and forking it closed-source. Without patents, there's very little value in R unless you manage to make something that can't be reverse engineered or simply duplicated, your competitors will clone it and leave you with the sunk cost. Patents are supposed to allow R&D to provide a return on invesment, and in many cases, they do work.
That they need to be reigned in, I fully agree with. Don't go saying they're univerally and inherently wrong unless you've really thought about what a world without any of the impacts of those laws (as opposed to one without only the negative impacts) would be like... and don't go calling them "illegal" unless you simply want to look like a fool.
The funny/sad thing is how, as you espouse the current state of Linux, you're completely clueless about the current state of Windows. As it happens, I use both (my main workstation runs Windows, but I have a lot of older hardware around that got migrated to Linux). Here's the current state on both sides:
Given the talk of "application architecture" and the presence of concepts like "debug mode" being a run-time switchable state, or XSS being able to execute code on the server, I'm guessing it probably involves PHP. Atrociously bad configuration, even by the already abysmal standard of "you're using PHP", but possible. Probably also possible in a few other frameworks, but that's the only one I've seen recently used where sufficiently shitty web apps could be persuaded by the client to run arbitrary code on the server.
http://arijitvsdelta.blogspot.co.uk/
He mentions on there that the shirt was designed by Cory Doctrow, and can be acquired here:
http://shirt.woot.com/offers/threat-level-doctorow (it's currently sold out, though).
Some of us like to get off of this continent from time to time. Flights aren't all a matter of "oh no, five hours is much too long a drive to go see grandma, let's fly!". Additionally, I have to travel for work. Even leaving aside overseas trips, flying is the only way to maintain my schedule (and some of our clients *are* overseas).
Besides, you're ignoring the TSA getting their filthy hands onto other transit facilities. It's not just airports anymore.
The only way to avoid the TSA would be to leave the US (without flying) and never return. Don't think I haven't considered it, but right now, that's not a practical option.
Generally, I agree with you ("smartphone" for me means a programmable mobile phone) but these days, almost any device has some programmable ability (as the summary points out, these phones can run Java ME code).
A more modern definition of "smartphone" might include things like a sensor suite (camera isn't enough anymore, a GPS at least is expected), a powerful processor (which it has, at least powerful enough to easily qualify), a touchscreen, and some kind of "app store" even if it's almost nothing compared to what Apple and Google offer.
Actually, you really can. KDE has been available on Windows for years, basically ever since 4.x was released (yes, including the pre-release-quality "releases" for x < 2).
Additionally, Windows has long had a registry value that specifies which process it should launch as a shell. Traditionally, this was used for creating kiosk systems that ran dedicated software and neither needed nore wanted Explorer running in the background. However, it's possible to do full shell replacement using the same tweak.
I'd be quite surprised to see one. The only API that Microsoft allows third-party developers to use on Windows RT is WinRT (well, and web apps of course). Although it is possible to write native apps using WinRT, the dev tools make it very easy to compile those apps for multiple architectures (ARM for Windows RT, x86 and x64 for "normal" Win8). So, unless somebody intentionally limits their market share to Windows RT only, for absolutely no benefit to themselves, I really don't expect to see Windows RT-exclusive apps at all.
Besides, most people will probably write WinRT (Metro-style) apps using a managed language, like C# or Javascript. That gets you compatibility with both Win8 and Windows RT without even the trivial hassle of recompiling.
TL;DR: Mod parent down.
Since the GP was obviously joking, and you are... not obviously joking, I'm going to guess it's you ("Zaphod The 42nd") who are the asshole here. You might want to think a lot more closely about what you post online in the future. I wouldn't even bother replying to such obvious idiocy if it hadn't been modded up.
P.S. <joke-with-a-care-of-truth>If my parents had tried to take me to McDonalds as any time I was over the age of 6 and knew what food should actually taste like, I'd have assaulted them myself!</joke-with-a-cor-of-truth> Seriously, it's not exactly child abuse or anything, but it certainly isn't behavior I would encourage in any parent... especially if the kids' taste *was* already picky to the point of insisting on junk food.
Win+M, Alt+F4.
(That's "Minimize All" followed by "Close program" for those not familiar with standard Windows shortcuts.)
Enter if I want shutdown, or select a different option.
If you know the hotkeys, the standard stuff in Windows is easy to use entirely from the keyboard. Also, many of us bind (or use computers with pre-bound) specific keys for power control. For example, I set the Power button to be "safe shutdown", the lid close action (laptop) to "suspend", and Fn+F4 (again, laptop, but it's the "sleep" key that many keyboards have) to "hibernate".
I agree that the duration of copyright is ridiculous. The lack of any kind of automatic "abandonment" for it (such as exists for trademarks) is also perhaps part of the problem. Of course, to pull from your (counter)examples, most countries do appear to have fair-use terms in their copyright laws.
Not all countries have VAT, but even where they do, that's completely tangential to what I was talking about. The tax is on sale of the goods, not on continuing posession of them (like the person I was responding to was suggesting). Some places do apparently tax ongoing posession (so claims another responder, but the country named was the UA which does not have VAT) but in general, posession of most types of property is not taxed - only the transfer of posession, or gain of wealth.
Admittedly, this is about WP8, and so there's no guarantee that they won't manage to actually lock the bootloader properly this time. However, quite a few WP7 devices already have bootloader unlocks and custom ROMs available. All of the HTC phones, the gen1 Samsung phones, and some of the Lumias are currently able to load and run custom ROMs.
Actually, that raises an interesting question: just how hard will it be to port WP8 unofficially? The difference in the hardware is going to be significant, but not necessarily crippling (for example, the HD2, a WinMo phone, has several very nice WP7 custom ROMs available for it which work around the fact that it doesn't quite conform to the WP7 chassis spec).
Furthermore, the question of "what (aside from hardware-dependent features) will WP8 get that WP7.8 wont?" is quite relevant. There's no reason that I can see why WP7.8, even if it sticks with the current kernel design, couldn't feature Skype call integration and proper turn-by-turn navigation.
In fact, my suspicion is that this whole thing is yet another collassal marketing/branding fuckup by Microsoft. Obviously, WP8 will support hardware than no WP7.x phone has; that's fine and will provide a compelling upgrade path. But unless there's some serious reason that the current phones can't run WP8 (the only thing that comes to mind is that a 1GHz ARM chip might be too slow, and even then that only applies to the earlier WP7 devices) I suspect they'll actually release "WP7.8" as simply a build of WP8 that lacks the drivers for new hardware. In which case, the obvious question is "Why not just call it WP8 the way Apple calls it iOS 5 even on phones that can't fully use iOS 5 features"?
The only answer I can see to that is because Microsoft, especially where phones are concerned, has absolutely no fucking clue how to do branding properly. The approach they're taking is already making people forget claim the death of WP7 as a platform, even as another update for it rolls out now (Tango) and a fourth (Apollo, or whatever they're calling 7.8) has been announced. All Microsoft had to do to forstall that was announce that WP8 would in fact come to WP7 devices, but due to the older hardware would be unable to use some features.
Actually, MS already does this for PCs. At the "Microsoft Stores" (including online, I believe) you can order Wintel PCs (laptops and "conventional" tablets). They come with Win7, Ofice 2010, Security Essentials, and the Windows Live apps (which aside from Mesh I have little use for, but they're easy to remove). They're obviously manufactured by "normal" OEMs, but come without the in-your-face OEM branding and shovel-loads of crappy or trial software.
I suspect they are priced just a bit higher than those crap-laden boxes, but then, time is money.
Android, in the form used in most tablets and phones, is most certainly not free. The Android Open Source Project (AOSP) is free, and you can make a quite respectable OS from it, but many of the things that people think of as "Android" features are actually *Google* features, and Google charges licensing fees for them.
Want access to the Android Market (excuse me, Google Play)? That will cost. Want access to Google's map data for built-in navigation? That will cost. Want to use Google's mail and calendar and contacts and chat apps for Android? That will cost. Want Google's support in modifying the OS for your devices and market? That will cost (actually, it costs anyhow, it's just a question of whose developers you're paying).
The truly bottom-of-the-price-chart Android tablets and phones do use AOSP, on crap hardware with crap drivers. That saves on licensing the OS, buying quality parts, and integrating the OS well. Of course, you get what you pay for; a slow and buggy experience that falls well short of what could be achieved on a Nexus or Droid or Galaxy with comparable specs.
The other people using AOSP are those who are investing heavily in building their own OS, and use Android as a starting point. The Kindle Fire, Nook Color, and Nook Tablet are all running Android, but they don't really look and feel like Android devices because, in the Google Android sense, they aren't. They run Amazon Android or B&N Android, and while those companies have sent Google very little if any money in licensing costs, they have spent lots of money on internal development costs.