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3201

Living Room / Re: Knight to queen's bishop 3 - Snowden charged with espionage.

« Last post by 40hz on July 06, 2013, 12:13 PM »

There's still something wrong with this whole story. All of it...

-TaoPhoenix (July 06, 2013, 11:03 AM)

There is.

Despite all the international "outrage," it seems the game plan that gets everyone off the hook is to make it impossible for him to be granted asylum anywhere.


                                          Ca'n't stay here!                                                                                     Ca'n't stay here!


This way you don't have any country helping or (technically) hindering him. Now everyone can continue to pretend outrage, claim to abide by international law and treaty - and most importantly, not force a showdown with  the Obama administration or the United States government. (Note: I consider these to be two separate governments at this point.)

The end result will be Snowden will eventually return (or be returned) to the United States hoping to tell his full story in an open court.

That will never be allowed to happen.

At best, he'll wind up in front of some "special court" that deals with national security issues in a closed session, from which will emerge a heavily redacted and thoroughly 'slanted' series of "news" releases that will serve to convey the message that:

• Snowden is either a traitor - or a delusional megalomaniac at best
• whisleblowers, as a class, are not to be trusted
• the concerns about any real and/or potential abuses of government surveillance systems are greatly exaggerated
• this is all for your protection
• we really need to have more trust our "elected government"
• and just to allay any other concerns, some toothless additional safeguards and purely token review processes will be implemented going forward

Next, the mainstream media will do it's part to show Snowden to be a genuine threat to national security (Fox/CBS) - or - a misguided fool who caused irreparable harm to the US irrespective of his alleged good intentions (CNN/NBC). Possibly public television will also do one of it's usual "say nothing controversial or critical of the government" special reports where two dozen experts all weigh in and cancel each other's opinion out.

After which Mr. Snowden will disappear into some remote US federal "supermax" isolation unit such as ADX Florence for the rest of his life and mostly be forgotten. Not that it will matter much since the deprivation regimen a prisoner endures while being held in such a facility pretty much guarantees the average detainee's mind and spirit will be completely broken (by design) in less than 5 years.

Amazing how advances in the study of human psychology have brought about such a humane and effective penal system in the United States beginning around 1980. More on that here.

3202

Living Room / Re: Gadget WEEKENDS

« Last post by 40hz on July 06, 2013, 06:40 AM »

[/url])[/i] Being a coffee fanatic connoisseur,

-40hz (July 05, 2013, 03:07 PM)

you too?  I've been trying out the different brew methods for the past 7 years.  I went from drip, to aeropress, to french press.  And now the one I've settled on is the v60 method where you control the water temperature, weight the amount of water and beans, and time the whole thing.  The baristas at the local foo foo shop taught me how to do it, and I do it on the weekends.  Awesome!

-superboyac (July 05, 2013, 04:04 PM)

I learn something new every day. The V60 method? Hmm...  

Reminds me of a drastically more precise version of the old Chemex pot method which I've used in the past.

Agree on the water temp and prewashing the filter. It does make a difference. As does pre-wetting the grounds ("puffing" them to use the old Chemex term for it). And the timing - which should never exceed 6 minutes for a brew cycle no matter how large the full pot.

But the precision and the recommended tare weights...now those V60 numbers are definitely something worth experimenting with. In cooking, the top chefs will always tell you "weigh - don't measure ingredients" to get consistently superior results...

Gonna have to look into that V60 thing more closely.  

3203

Living Room / Re: Worth Reading: Trevor Pott's editorial on NSA PRISM and its real ramifications

« Last post by 40hz on July 06, 2013, 06:22 AM »

And good luck.

-IainB (July 06, 2013, 03:20 AM)

Thx, I expect I'll need it. But I also expect to work for it.

3204

Living Room / Re: Worth Reading: Trevor Pott's editorial on NSA PRISM and its real ramifications

« Last post by 40hz on July 05, 2013, 08:18 PM »

^ In my world, you are only as defeated as you are willing to allow yourself to be. I'm not the type who believes I can't ever be beaten. But I am absolutely certain I will never be defeated, beaten or not. So again: Non serviam to any who expect me to just lie down.
 

3205

Living Room / No country for amateurs - the danger of supposedly secure messaging

« Last post by 40hz on July 05, 2013, 04:22 PM »

Cryptocat = fail!

This from ArsTechnica:

Bad kitty! “Rookie mistake” in Cryptocat chat app makes cracking a snap
Programming flaw makes it trivial to bypass crypto used by activists and journalists.

by Dan Goodin - Jul 5, 2013 8:00 pm UTC
[/i]

Developers of the Cryptocat application for encrypting communications of activists and journalists have apologized for a critical programming flaw that made it trivial for third parties to decipher group chats.

The precise amount of time the vulnerability was active is in dispute, with Cryptocat developers putting it at seven months and a security researcher saying it was closer to 19 months. Both sides agree that the effect of the bug was that the keys used to encrypt and decrypt conversations among groups of users were easy for outsiders to calculate. As a result, activists, journalists, or others who relied on Cryptocat to protect their group chats from government or industry snoops got little more protection than is typically available in standard chat programs. Critics said it was hard to excuse such a rudimentary error in an open-source piece of software held out as a way to protect sensitive communications.

"It was simply a matter of what I would call a fairly rookie mistake," independent security researcher Adam Caudill told Ars. "They didn't understand the data they were working with. Key generation code is one of the most critical parts of a crypto system because it doesn't matter what else you get right if you get that wrong."

Where it really gets scary is when you consider this:

Given recent revelations that National Security Agency officers routinely store encrypted communications indefinitely, it's reasonable to assume other governments do the same. That means encrypted data could conceivably be deciphered years or decades after it was intercepted as vulnerabilities are uncovered or as new attacks and faster computers become available.

"This is where an issue like this can be so devastating," Caudill wrote in his own analysis of the Cryptocat blunder. "If those encrypted messages have been saved anywhere—any users engaged in activity that their local government doesn't care for are now at risk."

One more thing to worry about...

Yeah. Problem

 

3206

Living Room / Re: Gadget WEEKENDS

« Last post by 40hz on July 05, 2013, 03:07 PM »

Re: Keurig

They're expensive, you pay a fortune for the coffee (average $0.75 per cup for coffee you brew yourself?), and I personally think they make an inferior cup of coffee.*


But...

My GF wanted and got one - and shortly afterwards discovered that hardly anybody local to us carries decaf K-cups. And when they do, the choices are extremely limited (as in one brand, one brew) for people like her that can't consume caffeinated coffee or tea for medical reasons.

Then she found these:



Now she just loads up with her favorite drip grind coffee and she's in business.

(She says they also work great with loose tea or a teabag crammed into them. Celestial Seasonings   brand is easiest since there's no tags or strings to remove first.)

Available for $7.95 most places. Pays for itself with the first box of K-cupped coffee you don't have to buy.

But who really cares about that. It's really more that you get to use your snazzy Keurig and brew up your favorite blend of coffee or tea.

Nice.

----------------------------------------------
*ADDENDUM

Being a coffee fanatic connoisseur,  I bit the bullet and shelled out an absolutely ludicrous amount of money a while back (actually it was a gift card I'd been hanging onto for something like this) and got a Technivorm Moccamaster. There's just no going back after you've had coffee made using one of these. Not worth it btw - unless you have "the coffee thing" real bad.

3207

General Software Discussion / Re: Ad blockers, newspaper sites, etc.

« Last post by 40hz on July 05, 2013, 02:28 PM »

I always liked how Jupiter Broadcasting (home of the Linux Action Show, and others) handled part of the revenue question. (Note: they also have a purely voluntary "subscription" model and have some regular advertisers on their shows. These advertisers regularly provide very good discount codes for Jupiter's visitors.)



They put affiliate links at the bottom their pages. But only after they first did a series of public announcements about how they worked. As was explained, if you're shopping at any of the listed sites, and you go there from the links, Jupiter gets a small percentage of each sale. It doesn't have any effect on the prices the person who uses them pays, or the discounts they may receive. The customer prices and terms are the same as if they went to the sites directly. But going through the link earns Jupiter Broadcasting a little something each time.

Sounds like a win-win to me. Costs you nothing out of pocket - and it helps support something you like.

3208

General Software Discussion / Re: Enables/disable internet access based on a time schedule

« Last post by 40hz on July 05, 2013, 02:06 PM »

^Just out of curiosity...have you tried telling your son what the acceptable hours for internet usage are first?

Reason I ask is because there really isn't a simple "technical" solution for what you want to do if he doesn't want to respect your wishes.

-40hz (July 05, 2013, 07:30 AM)

+1000 - Because if you try to make it a game by pitting your child against a security device. You'll most likely soon find out the kids are really good at games.

Talk to your kids...as parents, we're supposed to be doing that anyway.

-Stoic Joker (July 05, 2013, 08:33 AM)

Agree despite not being a parent.

And while I'm on my soapbox, I might as well say I take a very dim view of using technology as a chaperon or preventative measure. I even find those ankle monitors they put on people who are under home arrest to be both demeaning and counter productive. Because they don't encourage personal responsibility. All they do is instill the fear of punishment or reprisal - which tends to feed into hatred and resentments down the road.

Had a friend with similar concerns about his own children's web use. I declined to set him up with the monitoring "nanny software" he wanted. I suggested instead that he talk to his kids about what the situation was and why he was concerned. He's a bright guy. And his kids (12 and 14 at the time) are no dummies either.

I also suggested he leave out all the kiddie porn hype and online predator scare tactics the schools were using and focus instead on how you could be embarrassed years later by something you did online today if some school rival decided to humiliate you two or three years from now. How it might make a some college acceptances a problem if you got a little too vocal about somebody's gender, ethnicity, or race when you were trading barbs. How some silly pictures of you screwing around with your friends, or getting drunk, or flashing your boobs "for just a second," could come back to haunt you years later when applying for a job or a security clearance. I also suggested he go show them the Internet archive project - and how nothing is ever really gone forever. Especially if somebody is ever out to get you for some reason or another.

Truth is, most kids don't really understand the meaning of fear. (And who wants to make them excessively paranoid anyway?) But they do understand shame and humiliation. And social standing in their peer groups. So why not focus on that as a tool to educate and encourage some maturity and personal restraint instead?

I made some suggestions about possible rules that were necessary, but which also respected his kids personal dignity and acknowledged them as persons in their own right rather than just "his kids."

He then sat down and had a chat with his kids. And from that he conveyed his "understanding" about how web access was going to work in their home:

------------------

Cardinal Rule: Any of your friends who go online with you in your home are subject to the same rules you are.
You however are subject to the agreed upon rules no matter where you are accessing the web from - your friend's homes included.

Specifics to follow, with the understanding that these "rules" are guidelines and are to be observed in the spirit for which they are intended. They are not to be taken purely literally  - or as a basis for playing word and definition games. When in doubt about whether something is kosher - ask first. If there's no one around to ask - better hold off until you clear it.

• No porn or adult sites
• No hate forums, or going around slagging people on social media sites
• No giving out 'secure' information like your home address, any phone numbers, or personal info - such as  when your parents are or aren't home, etc.
• No posting personal pictures except in places previously approved.
• No NSFW pictures to be posted anywhere
• No "hooking up" with anybody you only know from "meeting" them online. Ever. Period.
• No online purchases without adult approval - even if it is "your own money"
• Internet usage hours are to be discussed and (optionally) renegotiated periodically.
• Weekends, summer and other holidays will have extended usage hours - with the understanding that, during the regular school year, they will be reduced as deemed appropriate.
• Access to the Internet "for school use" must be done within the allowed hours during the school year. If you put off a project till 10 o'clock the night before it's due, and you need the Internet to complete it, you are going to be out of luck.
• Violations of the above understanding will almost certainly result in suspension of access privileges, and very likely garner additional restrictions such as not having your friends over, or you going out.

It worked out well for him and his children. There were a few very minor incidents early on. Most likely to test just how serious he and his wife were about it. A day or two without the web got the message across they were very serious. After that it was smooth sailing with periodic discussions and rule renegotiations as the kids got older.

YMMV.

Luck!

3209

General Software Discussion / Re: This week's episode of the suicide of Microsoft: Helping gov't exploit your pc

« Last post by 40hz on July 05, 2013, 07:43 AM »

More good advertising for Linux etc.

-tomos (July 05, 2013, 03:47 AM)

If so it's only hastening the day when Ballmer makes good on his threats to haul Linux into court for allegedly violating "hundreds" of Microsoft's patents.

 

3210

General Software Discussion / Re: Enables/disable internet access based on a time schedule

« Last post by 40hz on July 05, 2013, 07:30 AM »

^Just out of curiosity...have you tried telling your son what the acceptable hours for internet usage are first?

Reason I ask is because there really isn't a simple "technical" solution for what you want to do if he doesn't want to respect your wishes.

In order to make it "tamper resistant" you'd really have to implement the time restriction on a device he has extremely limited access to - like the router. Because anything on his PC is ultimately going to be hackable by him.

True there are a few commercial 'child minder' programs that are relatively bullet proof when it comes to unauthorized overriding. But they introduce potentially problematic hidden programs, and modify way the PC performs its normal bootup sequence - a move which is generally considered not to be a good idea. And even that can eventually be gotten around by somebody with enough technical acumen.

So (if it is at all possible) I think you might be better off trying to reach a genuine agreement with your son on this matter. At least it's worth a try IMO.

If nothing else, it could lead to a very interesting discussion between the two of you.
 

3211

Living Room / Re: Knight to queen's bishop 3 - Snowden charged with espionage.

« Last post by 40hz on July 04, 2013, 02:34 PM »

An alternative explanation is that they all know that they are as bad as each other..

-dr_andus (July 04, 2013, 12:30 PM)

Precisely.

When the president Nixon visited China back in 1972, there was a great deal made of the extreme lengths China was going through to absolutely insure his safety while there.

When the question came up on the news, I remember one of the big anchormen (Cronkite? or Brinkley?) asking the reporter on the scene how security arrangements were progressing. The reporter made some comment to the effect that both China's state security agencies and the US Secret Service were cooperating closely, and that arrangements were proceeding with an amazing degree of speed and efficiency. The reporter also said that the security people from both nations seemed to hitting it off extremely well on both the personal and professional level.

That prompted the anchorman to say something along the lines of how secret services seem to have much in common and act the same - no matter which  flag they serve.

I think the same rule applies here. Government spies behave like government spies the world over. About the only thing that seems to differentiate the deeds they do in service to their masters is the size of budget given them,  and the degree to which their masters are willing to turn a blind eye towards violations of law committed under the guise of national security.

We all know that.

But we can't really "prove" it.

The NSA, however, is in the enviable position of being able to provide incontrovertible proof of exactly how - and to what degree - other nations are spying on their own citizens.

And that is not the sort of laundry any government is anxious to see aired out in public.

There's an old saying that goes: "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." And it's now being said again.



This time around, however, it's not being said by anyone who's anything like that first guy...

3212

Living Room / Re: Knight to queen's bishop 3 - Snowden charged with espionage.

« Last post by 40hz on July 03, 2013, 01:30 PM »

Needin' a bit of breathing room.

-Stoic Joker (July 03, 2013, 01:00 PM)

He won't get it.

As soon as they think public interest and support for Snowden has dropped enough, the US will make its move.

I'm guessing he'll be ordered to leave wherever he is very shortly. Then the plane he's on will experience "unexpected mechanical problems" that force an emergency landing in a country that either has an extradition treaty with the US - or has an "unimportant" enough local government that the SEALS can be sent in on a "T&T" (i.e. tranquilize & transport) mission.

Extra points (exchangeable for favorable trade deals and special immigration quotas) will be awarded to the nations participating in this choreography who express the best faux diplomatic outrage and/or most convincing 'human rights' hand wringing.

Breathing room?

More like a temporary stay of execution.

It's all "puppet theater" going forward. China and Russia are already out. The EU is largely cooperating with the Obama administration. South America is posturing and making a lot of noise - purely for their local politics - and not much else.



Nope. I'm betting Mr. Snowden will be back, and in US custody, in less than six weeks.

3213

General Software Discussion / Re: Wave? Good-bye!

« Last post by 40hz on July 03, 2013, 01:10 PM »

@IainB - I'll +1 with you on Wave. I could never see what the big deal (or even the gist of it) was with that orphan.
I've since ensconced Wave in the same gallery in my memory palace I've put Chandler, the APL programming language,  all of deconstructionist literary theory, transformational grammar, the 'new' math, and the concepts of Slavoj Žižek, Jacques Lacan and Jacques Derrida in.
 

-40hz (July 02, 2013, 10:33 AM)

Hahaha, very droll, if a little unkind.
As for APL, yes, but I recall reading somewhere that APL had been used by Readers' Digest at one time to just about run their entire marketing operation - no?

-IainB (July 03, 2013, 08:26 AM)

Perhaps. But kindness is too valuable an emotion to waste on total idiocy. Or something as half-baked as Wave.

Re: APL

I'm not sure about that. I cut my teeth on it on a Honeywell mainframe. I do remember it was fantastic at heavy-duty math and matrix calculations. And it was very 'dense' in that unique symbols replaced keywords. And you could do very complex things using very little code as this complete implementation of Conway's Life Game algorithm in APL shows:



But I also remember it was so difficult to to read (and even harder to remember how you did something 15 minutes after you keyed it in) that, for most APL programmers, "debugging" meant rewriting from scratch anything that didn't work right.

I don't miss it.

3214

Living Room / Re: Dannon "fruit on the bottom" yogurt missing in Miami

« Last post by 40hz on July 03, 2013, 12:47 PM »

Just bought some here in CT yesterday. There was plenty more of that (plus a half dozen other flavors) in the case at my local...

What I can't find anywhere is the boysenberry, which was always one of my favorites. I haven't been able to find that one for years.

-app103 (July 03, 2013, 11:37 AM)

+1. That was probably my all time fav - and it did go missing about two years ago now that I think about it. What's up with that? Blueberry is a poor substitute.

3215

Living Room / Re: Knight to queen's bishop 3 - Snowden charged with espionage.

« Last post by 40hz on July 03, 2013, 12:26 PM »

The first rule of spycraft is don't get caught.

-wraith808 (July 03, 2013, 11:46 AM)

Yes indeed. As fictional spymaster George Smiley said: You're a spy whose cover has been blown. As things stand you have only to decide whether you'd rather run to a country who will execute you, or merely put you in imprison for the rest of your life.

Spying is an ugly game. More often than not with equally ugly outcomes for its participants.



 

3216

Living Room / Re: The real difference between a desktop pc and every other gadget you have.

« Last post by 40hz on July 03, 2013, 07:56 AM »

There's already a semi-revolt going on in the enterprise arena. Check out this ArsTechnica article on Facebook and the Open Compute Project.

How Facebook threatens HP, Cisco, and more with its “vanity free” servers
Ars tours Facebook's DIY-hardware lab to learn why it embraces open source hardware.
by Sean Gallagher - Jul 2, 2013 1:00 pm UTC


Ars recently visited Facebook's campus to get a tour of the server lab from Senior Manager of Hardware Engineering Matt Corddry, leader of Facebook's server hardware design team. What's happening at Facebook's lab isn't just affecting the company's data centers, it's part of Facebook's contribution to the Open Compute Project (OCP), an effort that hopes to bring open-source design to data center server and storage hardware, infrastructure, and management interfaces across the world.

Facebook, Amazon, and Google are all very picky about their server hardware, and these tech giants mostly build it themselves from commodity components. Frank Frankovsky, VP of hardware design and supply chain operations at Facebook, was instrumental in launching the Open Compute Project because he saw the waste in big cloud players reinventing things they could share. Frankovsky felt that bringing the open-source approach Facebook has followed for software to the hardware side could save the company and others millions—both in direct hardware costs and in maintenance and power costs.

Just as the Raspberry Pi system-on-a-board and the Arduino open-source microcontroller have captured the imagination of small-scale hardware hackers, OCP is aimed at making DIY easier, effective, and flexible at a macro scale. What Facebook and Open Compute are doing to data center hardware may not ultimately kill the hardware industry, but it will certainly tilt it on its head. Yes, the open-sourced, commoditized motherboards and other subsystems used by Facebook were originally designed specifically for the "hyper scale" world of data centers like those of Facebook, Rackspace, and other cloud computing providers. But these designs could easily find their way into other do-it-yourself hardware environments or into "vanity free" systems sold to small and large enterprises, much as Linux has.

And open-source commodity hardware could make an impact beyond its original audience quickly because it can be freely adopted by hardware makers, driving down the price of new systems. That's not necessarily good news for Hewlett-Packard, Cisco, and other big players in corporate IT. "Vanity free," open-source designed systems will likely drive innovation fast while disrupting the whole model those companies have been built upon...

Note: OCP isn't just an idea. It's a live project involving some of  the biggest names in the business. More on OCP can be found here.

"Hack the Planet!"

3217

Living Room / Re: Knight to queen's bishop 3 - Snowden charged with espionage.

« Last post by 40hz on July 03, 2013, 07:21 AM »

I'm not sure that they're "cowed"

-tomos (July 03, 2013, 06:30 AM)

No?

Hmm...

-------------------------------------------------------------------

From:   Office of the President - United States of America

To:        All Member Nations of the EU and South America

Subject:  Snowden

Here's the deal:

The US would consider it a gesture of good faith that you neither offer nor assist Mr. Snowden in obtaining political asylum, nor grant him free passage through your airspace.

In return, our NSA agrees not to go public with all the information it has meticulously compiled on all the dirty dealings of your government - as well as the frankly criminal "activities" and questionable "lifestyles" of many of your elected officials.

Do we have a deal? No need to directly respond to this offer. Actions speak louder than words.

We'll be watching!  

Thanking you in advance for your understanding and cooperation.



P.S. Remember - what comes around goes around - and one hand washes the other!

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I think it went something like that.

3218

Living Room / Re: 10 signs you may have OCD

« Last post by 40hz on July 02, 2013, 03:45 PM »

I apologize for the rant.  And yes, I do enjoy a good rant every now and then.   :Thmbsup

-superboyac (July 02, 2013, 03:16 PM)

Interesting...how do you feel about that?  

Sorry. Couldn't resist.

And on a more serious note, your point is well taken.

3219

Living Room / Re: 10 signs you may have OCD

« Last post by 40hz on July 02, 2013, 01:48 PM »

It would have been totally epic if there were only 9 signs on the list...

-wraith808 (July 02, 2013, 11:40 AM)

      LOL! And agree! Or if one got repeated.

3220

Living Room / Re: Microsoft ending TechNet subscription activations effective august 2013

« Last post by 40hz on July 02, 2013, 01:00 PM »

Best bet is to install it on my last "primary" computer, which was running on Windows 7 Home Premium. It was built in May 2006 but it was fairly high-tech for its time. It has an AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+, 2200.0 MHz, 4 GB Corsair SDRAM, an nVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT w/ 512 MBytes of GDDR3 SDRAM, and three HDDs internal. I haven't used it very much since I got my current machine

-J-Mac (July 02, 2013, 08:53 AM)

That's the smart and recommended way to to it.

I threw Linux in my second best machine and soon discovered I was using it almost exclusively when I (mostly) switched over.  I still keep Windows 7 Pro on my "main" best laptop - although I have currently carved out about 500Gb of its 1TB for use with Linux since then. Thank happiness for things like GParted which allow you to do that safely and easily. And for Linux's talent for dual booting and maintaining a peaceful coexistence with existing Windows installations.
 

Besides, Windows is already bought and paid for. So why should I only have one OS when I can just as easily have two or more? (Nobody's paying me for an exclusive.) So between my Win and Nix boxes plus my "bought for a song used" Mac Mini, I have all the bases covered. No matter what OS the app I want to use runs best on.

As I said, Linux is all about choice - even when your first choice isn't always Linux.  

3221

General Software Discussion / Re: Wave? Good-bye!

« Last post by 40hz on July 02, 2013, 12:26 PM »

It's a variant on the old "Pure vs Applied Sciences" argument. I *totally* bet that Google invented some new "technologies" to make Wave.

-TaoPhoenix (July 02, 2013, 12:08 PM)

^Amen!  

Especially if the 'collateral' developments paid for the effort of launching what was arguably an insane project.

Like the space program, going to the moon was largely PR and pure science. The real day to day benefit was realized in developing all the technologies that made the voyage possible. The investment of going to the moon paid us back a thousandfold.

Yup. Google (and the 'old school' NASA) are crazy alright. Crazy like a fox.

3222

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows "Blue"

« Last post by 40hz on July 02, 2013, 12:12 PM »

Regarding some of Softpedia's reported 'rumors'...what are these guys smoking?

"The Redmondians are reportedly planning to make Windows Blue a low-cost or even free operating system, just to make sure all users will make the move to the new OS....

-TaoPhoenix (November 28, 2012, 02:02 PM)

That's simple wishful thinking on Softpedia's part. Free on that scale is not something Microsoft does. Besides, they already made that very move when they turned a complete blind eye towards all the installations using "borrowed" OEM media for Windows95 and Office back in the 90s. Dell's copies of Windows and Office got passed around quicker than a spliff at a Grateful Dead concert back then. That was what established Microsoft as "what got used."

Letting everybody grab a copy for "free" effectively neutered Wordperfect, Lotus, Novell, Netscape, Harvard Graphics, Borland - and just about everyone else who was actual competition. That also prevented BSD and Linux from gaining anything other than a toehold on the desktop. So there's really no need to repeat that market growth strategy again. Now it's time to cash in on it.

The Windows SDK would also be updated to the new release, while Microsoft would encourage developers to create apps for Windows Blue, with a lowered focus on Windows 8.

I think that's largely wishful thinking too - as borne out by Microsoft's recent announcement ending TechNet software subscriptions.

Microsoft wants big developers who can pay the tariff and play the game Microsoft's way. They're not interested in dealing with 5,000 small developers - no matter how innovative.

Anybody that has a product Microsoft truly wants will wither be sued into submission, sell out to Microsoft - or face a protracted and expensive patent battle. Microsoft could also simply take what it wants and then tell the smaller guy: "Come sue me - and may the man with the deepest pockets win!" That's a strategy that worked wonders for all those Asian knockoff shops.

Nope. It's all been done before with the railroad companies, auto manufacturers, airlines and telcos. It will be done again with software development.

In fact, it already is being done.

Right now I'm waiting to see if Microsoft finally makes good on Ballmer's threats about legal action and finally goes after Linux big time for patent infringement. Considering how Linux really is their only possible competitor for a desktop operating system, now would seem to be the time considering Win8's poor sales record.

Microsoft couldn't even give things away in order to compete. Linux is already free for the taking. Ditto for LibreOffice. And the advantages gained from consumer inertia and corporate FUD paranoia can only continue to serve Redmond for so long...

 

3223

General Software Discussion / Re: Wave? Good-bye!

« Last post by 40hz on July 02, 2013, 10:33 AM »

@IainB - I'll +1 with you on Wave. I could never see what the big deal (or even the gist of it) was with that orphan.

I've since ensconced Wave in the same gallery in my memory palace I've put Chandler, the APL programming language,  all of deconstructionist literary theory, transformational grammar, the 'new' math, and the concepts of Slavoj Žižek, Jacques Lacan and Jacques Derrida in.
 

3224

Living Room / Re: Microsoft ending TechNet subscription activations effective august 2013

« Last post by 40hz on July 02, 2013, 09:18 AM »

Plus I would then have to reinstall all my software (gobs of it!!) and that is when I would find out that a lot of it won't run on Linux. (Is that even a little accurate??)

-J-Mac (July 02, 2013, 08:53 AM)

That's a lotta accurate.

Windows software is Windows software. Linux software is Linux software.

You can get some programs to run in a non-native environment. But not always. And usually not without some gotchas.

If you're absolutely wedded to a large number of titles in your Windows software library, you're stuck with Windows. That or running your stuff in a Windows virtual environment under Linux. Which amounts to the same thing - so why bother?

Some WINE and Crossover aficionados might try to tell you otherwise. But that's pretty much the way things are as of right now.

Sorry.  

3225

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows "Blue"

« Last post by 40hz on July 02, 2013, 08:50 AM »

I swear this was their inspiration for Metro.

 

(Note: I gave it a quick run last weekend. About all I can say is: if "sucks ever so slightly less" is the same thing as "significantly fixed and improved" in their virtual reality, then they've met the goal with aplomb.)


With ads like this, can we get some idea where Microsoft's brain is at these days? Especially at the 20 second mark with that "you want some?" move. Jeezus Redmond! What were you thinking?