* Posts by Trevor_Pott

6991 publicly visible posts • joined 31 May 2010

It's true, the START MENU is coming BACK to Windows 8, hiss sources

Trevor_Pott Gold badge

Re: Had enough of Microsoft.. start menu whingers

Android and iOS are consumptive, monotasking operating systems. You don't do productivity work on them, so nobody cares overmuch if they suck giant monkey balls at actually being useful.

OSX has a dock bar that is almost a start menu - it's far better than Windows' task bar - and it has an application folder that works just like a start menu, can be resized, moved around, and - most critically - can be on the screen at the same time as other items, important for then you're trying to follow instructions or do research.

Ubuntu with unity is quite shit, as the rise of Mint has proven more than adequately.

An OS without a productivity interface is fine for the majority of devices because the majority of devices are consumptive - not productive - in nature. There are still hundreds of millions of units per year that will ship with a productive OS, even if that number is overwhelmingly dwarfed by the consumptive fondletat.

So, STFU about your desire to impose your way of life on everyone else. We're demanding choice. You're demanding we don't get access to said choice. That makes you an asshole, pure and simple.

Trevor_Pott Gold badge

To be honest, this would only solve 35% of my whinging. I still have a significant number of gripes with Windows 8 - not the least being that Microsoft seem to think that their own customers aren't worth listening to - but this would move it from "no go" territory into "I will reluctantly agree to work with this".

The other 50% of my whinging won't be addressed until Microsoft deal with the clusterfuck that is VDI licensing.

If Microsoft is serious about fixing Windows 8, then the instant I see proof that this is happening I will write Microsoft a personal thank you, a thank you from my company (a Microsoft Partner) as well as publish a thank you on The Register, WeBreakTech, Trevorpott.com, Petri.co.il and everywhere else I can get it published. They will deserve that for finally acknowledging that we are the customer and we won't buy something unless it meets our needs.

But Microsoft and I can't be friends until VDI licensing is fixed. That's just the way it has to be.

PayPal 13 plead guilty to launching DDoS attacks

Trevor_Pott Gold badge

Re: Personally Torn

Bullshit. There are plenty of instances of things getting rammed through various governmental bodies against the explicit will of the overwhelming majority of the people. Everything from the US refusing to do something about guns to the Canadian government privatizing our natural resources so we can sell our water.

The will of the people means nothing. 30% of the popular vote is all it takes to get a majority in my country, thanks to massive gerrymandering. The US has been begging for a viable third choice for ages. Poll after poll finds some of the most hotly pushed bills in most nations seeing massive pushback from the people.

Your vote means fucking nothing. You mean fucking nothing. The only way to change that is to tear the system down and rebuild it from scratch. What's in place - all over the place - exists only to protect those already in power. That you believe otherwise only shows how shockingly effective the propaganda machine in your particular neck of the woods happens to be.

Trevor_Pott Gold badge

Re: Logic

That phone in your pocket...how many people were raped, tortured, maimed and killed for the tantalum and niobium it contains? How many children were maimed, worked nearly to death or otherwise victimized to assemble it?

Those banks that ruined the economy, how many people actually went to jail for their actions? How many members of any government were even mildly rebuked for violating various civil rights?

The fourth amendment of the USA is now null and void within 100 miles of any border. Who went to jail for tearing up their constitution?

People murdered in Iraq? Afghanistan? Haiti? Kosovo? Darfur? Burma? South Sudan? and on and on and on. Some of the murderers, rapists, torturers and maimers wore American flags. Some wore British. Who goes to jail for ordering a napalm strike on a civilian village, or illegally invading a country and causing a million deaths?

Oppress an entire gender, or people for the colour of their skin. Abuse, demean and torture people for their sexual orientation or even just their physical appearance. Who goes to jail? All? Some? Most? Any at all?

If you commit a crime by yourself you go to jail. If you commit that same crime in large enough numbers you get off scott free. This is the lesson of hundreds of thousands of years of human history. What's more, legal isn't moral and moral isn't legal. Neither bear any relation at all (except coincidentally, on occasion) to "ethical."

Your votes don't count.

Voting with your wallet doesn't count.

Protesting in the streets amounts to nothing.

So what does that leave? People need avenues for having their voices heard and for enacting change. Real ones that actually work.

When 95% of the US population supports restrictions on automatic weapons and mandatory background checks for any firearm then it should fucking well happen. When it doesn't then the system is flat out broken.

When a whistleblower releases information about government malfeasance then that individual should be protected, not persecuted. When the laws favour keeping the citizens cowed and in the dark the system is flat out broken.

Paypal made a choice, people responded in a peaceful manner. Nobody was raped, tortured, mailed or killed. Nobody was abused or traumatised. One person alone is a criminal. Thousands or millions taking such peaceful, non-violent action is a legitimate attempt to find and exercise a means of protest that is actually effective.

The people deserve a voice. Hundreds of years have gone into silencing the "official" means of making your desires known. I see no problems whatsoever with inventing new ones.

Morally and ethically, at least, there's a fuck of lot less blood on the hands of someone using LOIC than on those of the people who sold you your cell phone.

It's interesting, however, see where your priorities are. Subservient respect for authority and damned be the people. Nice.

Inside Steve Ballmer’s fondleslab rear-guard action

Trevor_Pott Gold badge

@proud2bgrumpy

What is the point of a multitasking-capable OS if the UI - and all the associated coded libraries and applications - can't and won't multiask? The ability to flick a slider to switch between one task a time isn't multitasking, either.

Trevor_Pott Gold badge

Re: No, Liam, I won't be using a fondleslab as my primary computer.

iTat. I take it, anonymous coward, that your venomous reaction means you are an iTit? Or it that an iGit? Don't bother answering, I wouldn't want you to have to shake yourself out of you iStupor.

Don't think, just buy. iTat: for those who desperately need to be different and unique...just like everyone else.

Trevor_Pott Gold badge

Re: No, Liam, I won't be using a fondleslab as my primary computer.

Oh, and Anonymous Coward

A) Yes, I'm a loud-mouthed opinionated dick.

B) It's not pigeon holing when I set out specific criteria as well as what is required to change my opinion on the topic. It's a valid complaint with a detailed analysis.

C) You obviously missed the two separate posts in which I stated pretty clearly I was trolling people. Honestly, how to achieve critical cognition with a forehead that slants so sharply?

D) You have yet to actually prove me wrong at anything, you've basically just whined about how unfair it is that people upvote someone who is making fun of the pit of electronic tat you've attached your self-worth to. Boo-hoo-hoo. Cry me a fucking river.

E) Proof not promises is what the people here quite obviously demand. Maybe it's because we're old enough to have finished high school and moved out of our parents' basements. We've seen trends come and trends go and we don't jump on just any old bandwagon. What's on the table has to be demonstrably better than what we have now before we give fucks.

And last, but certainly not least...

F) why do you care so much? So there are a (significant, by percentage) group of people who feel that they don't want to be early adopters of a new technology and will wait for that technology to more than prove itself before they change their existing, working, profitable workflows over to a new class of device. Why does this bother you so much? What compelled you to align your self worth with a bit of technology? You should get some help, buddy. Serious, honest-to-gods help. You'll feel better about yourself after you do.

Trevor_Pott Gold badge

Re: No, Liam, I won't be using a fondleslab as my primary computer.

Have you used any of that software, oh brave Anonymous Coward? I have. It's shit. Talking up Adobe finger paints as somehow equivalent to a precision-pointer-driven interface does nothing but demonstrate that you haven't clue one about the topic.

What's more, even if you can write such amazingly complex and wonderful software that it somehow makes up for the imprecision of the input methodology, you still haven't dealt with the fact that A) Touch controls by nature obscure a significant chunk of the screen and B) no touch-based OS has demonstrated any interest whatsoever in providing a proper multitasking environment. (The Wind River modification to Android put to one side for now, that is mostly used to make Android desktops, not fondlestroke padlets.)

Let's say you add enough toys to a fondleslab to support a multitasking environment. You also redesign the OS to cope with the fact that a significant chunk of the world isn't wired for search/voice as an input methodology (and no, that's not a "choice", that's actual genetics that dictate how our brains work.) Then you add support for a set of precision pointers, keyboard, multiple monitors, etc. Why do you have?

A PC.

The only way to make a tablet into a productivity device is to reinvent the PC. (Or do something dramatically different like combine it with a neural impulse actuator.)

I can see how some people flirt close to the idea of turning a tablet into a PC, but they never quite do. You see, if they did so then nobody would need two devices. Also, they wouldn't need to keep buying new tablets every year, because they'd have one device that did everything they want. So nobody is going to actually make a productivity-based tablet. It's not good business.

You'll also note - actually scratch that, I doubt you have 12 functional brain cells to rub together, you probably weren't able to notice the bolded letters - that I said "how long does it take the average individual to create finished works of equal quality based on devices of each input paradigm?"

The ability to suck out loud, but do it on your shiny bit of personal self-worth - now available in diamond, if you are feeling particularly genitalialy inadequate - is utterly irrelevant. The only thing that matters is productivity. Productivity = profit. The device is either superior at the productivity tasks in question or it is not.

I will not debate the superiority of tablets for portability or for consumption of media. They aren't, however, productivity devices. They may have apps that allow you to (badly) approximate productivity tasks, but you must do so with no appreciable multitasking ability and in every case I've seen so far you have to choose to sacrifice either quality or speed compared to a real computer.

I think the reason people are upvoting me here is that they understand the above. They don't feel the need to attach themselves to the "new" and "shiny" in order to feel like they have a sense of meaning in their life. They care about getting shit done and then charging someone for it so that they can go on and do the things they care about.

If what you care about is pretending that tablets can be used for productivity, go hard. But that's a hobby, that's not professional creative endeavours. It doesn't pay the bills; only edge cases are going to be able to pay the bills using a monotasking fondlewidget.

So I return to my previous statement prove me wrong. Show a range of creative activities in which tablets can produce equal or superior quality works faster than we can with PC.

You'll excuse me if I don't wait around for you to do so. I've actual work to do.

Trevor_Pott Gold badge

Re: No, Liam, I won't be using a fondleslab as my primary computer.

We're not seeing a mere "sidelining" of productivity-based interfaces, but their active persecution and destruction. Microsoft have no commitment to maintaining them, or - frankly - to their professional users. The GUI in Windows 8 is totally inadequate, period. It's made even more so by the quite obvious gutting of it in order to force the world towards their preferred "new hotness" of Metro Monotasking "Fuck You Pro Users!" UI.

I have no problem if they want to include Metro for those who prefer to pay at their consumption devices like primitives. But gutting the productivity UI in order to do so was asinine. Failing to address the issue in subsequent revisions (to say nothing of banning productivity applications on a productivity UI from the Windows store) only demonstrated their long term goal to refuse all computing to the lowest common denominator.

You may enjoy slanted foreheads mewling at flat glass and wishing desperately they had something as productive as burnt sticks and a cave wall, but I do rather prefer getting shit done.

Trevor_Pott Gold badge

Re: At the risk of downvotes

Except for the part where none of the manufacturers or OS vendors are remotely interested in creating a tablet that actually supports productivity. They take a perfectly productive OS (like Windows 7) and turn it into Windows 8.

I grok the need for a touch interface on the go. I grok the convenience of a tablet. (I do own several, and a Galaxy Note 2). But the bit where we are supposed to have a single productive/convenient converged hybrid just isn't something anyone seems to give a flying fuck about.

Tablets are seen as a way to part punters from money in exchange for something they need to refresh regularly. They are locked down, unfixable, unexpandable, unupgradable walled gardens. Nobody is going to mess with that formula and risk turning a tablet into something that people only feel needs to be upgraded every 5-10 years.

That means that creating a "good enough" tablet that does everything we actually want in a productive manner is simply off the table. If they did that, they'd have nothing to sell us two years hence.

In the meantime, we'll get buckets of dead fish heads like Windows 8. So for the forseeable future tablets are consumption-dominant with "productivity" being something you have to really work at...and they'll not get anywhere close to PCs for productivity before the end of the decade. This I promise you.

Trevor_Pott Gold badge

+1 bootman

Also, who the fnord are you to tell me what I must learn to live with? Hmmm?

Trevor_Pott Gold badge

Re: No, Liam, I won't be using a fondleslab as my primary computer.

Took you long enough, mmeier. You actually require proof to change my mind. Not assertions, claims, lies, damned lies and misinterpreted statistics. And the proof on the table is twofold:

1) Windows 8 is selling "like a bucket of cold sick."

2) Trolling you is a hilarious way for me to spend a friday after a shitty week.

Actually, I'll add another item: HA HA.

You'll never convince anyone of your marketing tripe because you're an enormously condescending douche. Even if you were peddling a cure for cancer nobody would want anything to do with it because it was associated with you. You denigrate any brand that you associate your personal sense of self-worth to by virtue of douching it up to everyone. You are, for all intents and purposes, the anti-salesman.

Now, I can be just as douchy, but when I do so I am typically not trying to sell someone to someone. Usually I'm unwinding after a long day/week/project/what-have-you by winding other people up. I use hyperbole and colourful metaphors to present an extreme view of something that is quite transparently grounded in truth.

It gets a chuckle out of those who recognize the truth. It gets a hearty belly-laugh out of those who recognize the truth in what I'm saying, the grey area around the edges of what I'm saying and enjoy the fact that I'm trolling the fanboys of $whatever_I'm_taking_the_piss_out_of. Said fanboys, however, get their panties all in a knot and provide free entertainment for the masses by being butthurt on the internet.

Hurray!

Perhaps, for you own sanity, you should consider not taking criticism of a company and products so personally. We get that you like it. You may even have Ballmer's smiling face on a Microsoft Logo background tatooed on your penis. Congratulations, I'm glad you found something to identify with.

But it's just a company, dude. They're just products. It's not the be-all and end-all of the fucking universe here. Microsoft fucked up this round. More to the point, they pissed off a lot of formerly loyal people. Some, like myself, used to be staunch evangelists.

They fucked up by not meeting our requirements. In fact, not only did they not met our requirements, they outright rejected those requirements twice in a row. Microsoft know what we want, they just don't care.

And they're paying the price for it right now.

The fact that point this out gets you all hot and bothered probably means you need some help, buddy. Serious, honest-to-gods help. I have an anxiety disorder. I know how bad it can get. You really, truly need to get your head read because your fixation with this stuff just isn't healthy.

Some back-and-forth on the interbutts between friends is one thing, but you're into "unhealthy obsession" territory. Disconnect. Log off. Go meet some people and realize that, at the end of the day, this is all just stuff. It's just a fucking computer. It's just some goddamned software. People will buy what meets their personal needs...why do you need to care if they buy your favourite brand? Why do other people have to change their requirements and desires to be just like yours? What is it that fuels this obsession you have with reshaping the whole world in your own image?

Life's too short to actually get wound over any of it, man. Chill the fuck out.

Peace.

Trevor_Pott Gold badge

Re: So that's one fondleslab

XP on a tenth the requirements of a nexus 7 could do something magical that fondle fruit just can't: multitask.

Real multitasking. Where multiple applications and documents can overlap, easily exchange information, you can look at one and type into the other or track multiple items subconsciously (such as file transfer bars) while working on something else. Really useful for making video editing, audio editing, photo editing, any writing that requires research, development or so on and so forth not a gigantic agony of assery.

With a tenth the specs. Productivity = profit.

Trevor_Pott Gold badge

Re: No, Liam, I won't be using a fondleslab as my primary computer.

Oh, look, it's your bullshit made up manufacturer's numbers again. And your mistaken belief that 8ish hours is acceptable battery life. You're not only wrong, you're also a douchenozzle too!

And I do intend to enjoy my likes.

Perhaps when you're done spreading lies you can get some likes of your very own.

XOXOXO

--Trevor

P.S. So far as I know I published an article today on The Register. Maybe you missed it. It was about Microsoft. Snoochie Boochies.

Trevor_Pott Gold badge

Re: Consumer vision

Go to the store, download an application for the deprecated multitasking UI. What's that, can't do it? Monotasking fisher-price bullshit apps only? Where's the hierarchical application list that allows you to have something else on the screen to help guide your selection when choosing an application? Where's the ability to run all applications in multiple overlapping and arbitrarily sized workspaces?

Funny, seems to me to make 8.11 for fondlegroups actually productive you need to use third-party tools. Otherwise all you have is a television. It can display one goddamned thing at a time, no matter how many buttons are on your remote control.

Microsoft have utterly abandoned the desktop. They've zero commitment to it and Windows 8 is less functional and productive than Windows 7 was. It's a consumption OS. Pure and simple.

Hardware does not a transformable system make. Your OS and the applications need to work well both in fondle mode and in productivity mode. And no, "full screen-grabbing, one-maybe-two-things-at-a-time, context switching, search-crutch-dominated" fuckery is not "working well" in productivity mode.

Microsoft have made it clear that Metro and Metro apps are the only future they give any fucks about whatsoever. That, however, isn't creating a productivity-friendly OS or app ecosystem. It's a consumptive one, no matter how they - or fanmonds like yourself - try desperately to convince the world otherwise.

It is of interest to me, however, that you have a bizzare compulsion for others to accept Microsoft's piety and technical "superiority" in order to quell your inner demons. Why do you tie your self worth to a company?

I have no such loyalty - except to Ninite - and never will.

Productivity = profit. Anything that gets in the way of productivity is out the door. Anything that can prove it can do better than what I already have will be eagerly used.

--Typed on my Lenovo X230. Bought in June because it came with Windows 7.

Trevor_Pott Gold badge

Re: No, Liam, I won't be using a fondleslab as my primary computer.

Swiftkey and I still haven't figured out how to work together. I am trying, but it's still very tough going.

Trevor_Pott Gold badge

Re: No, Liam, I won't be using a fondleslab as my primary computer.

Windows tablets have shit battery life and gave up on having a proper multitasking OS for that bullshit 8.11 for Fondlegroups "two things at a time, tops" crapfest.

Windows tablets are just as much post-productivity devices as iTat. Not that I'd expect a fairly proven brand tribalist like you to be capable of understanding such concepts. URG SAYS LURV MICROSOFT

UG, UG. MICROSOFT.

Trevor_Pott Gold badge

Re: No, Liam, I won't be using a fondleslab as my primary computer.

Liam's an opensorcerer, not a hipster twit.

The commenters may be hipsters. I'm convinced Liam was just trolling.

Trevor_Pott Gold badge

Re: Reg Users are not typical

Nobody here - not one fucking person - is claiming tablets won't take off. They're not claiming tablets won't outsell PCs. They aren't even saying tablets won't be more popular.

There are always more content consumers than content creators.

The point that everyone is trying to make - and that the polyfondle hipsterati can't grok - is that tablets won't replace the PC. They are an and not and or. They will replace the PC for consumption amongst consumers. They won't replace the PC amongst content creators and there are still several hundred million of us around the world.

So go, consume. Please. Pay your money and fondle your rounded patent-encumbered magic shiny box. I make good money off the likes of you.

But the tablet is not killing the PC. It is replacing the television, print media and other consumptive activities.

PC sales will fall. Then they'll level out and stay there with minimal growth for decades. How many fridges, really, need to be sold every year? Tea kettles? Coffee makers? But everyone still buys them. Acquiring them is even part of the right of passage into adulthood. Replacing them a subject of fierce household debate over time and requirements. This is where the PC now lives.

To say that the tablet will "kill" the PC is like saying the introduction of the microwave will kill the oven. Not going to happen.

Trevor_Pott Gold badge

Re: Consumer vision

The problem with the hotdeskitng tablet idea is that gets you into a fundamentally new paradigm of device. That's not a tablet. Tablet's are monotasking, consumer-driven with interfaces that are great big fat touch targets with terrible screen real estate usage. They are optimized for consumption with no thoughts given over to productivity.

How do you use a mouse with an operating system that refuses to recognize the mouse, treat it as a first class input device if it does recognize it, or not speak to a significant number of features (such as more than one mouse button) in the very rare instances an App is aware that more than fondlebuggery exists?

What you are trying to describe is what Windows 8 should have been but wasn't and likely never will be. An operating system - and applications - that work in portable, fondlestroking mode and in a stable, precision, multitasking productivity mode.

Nobody is interested in building that. That takes innovation, resources and a lot of effort. It requires two full UIs. Not just for the OS, but for every app!

Creatives and the productivity minded just aren't a big enough market to continue supporting in the mind of people who chase "growth" over actual revenue. So they get shafted. It will be a decade - probably more - before that pendulum swings 'round again. When it does, we'll be talking about post-tablet devices.

A tablet with a keyboard and mouse is as like a 500 button universal remote for a television with one channel...and so far the only effort to build a digital multitool gave us Windows 8: the spork of the new millenium.

Trevor_Pott Gold badge

Re: Consumer vision

I don't dispute that fondleslabs will be big.

I absolutely do dispute that they will "kill" the desktop.

Fondleslabs aren't a replacement for the PC. They're a replacement for the television and print media. Content consumption. Not creation.

Where I get uppity is the suggestion that "an established market" such as "professionals who need professional tools" is somehow going to disappear in a puff of fondlefucking. It won't...and the companies who abandon the professional in favour of chasing Sally Slanted Forehead will be pissing away a huge market - and margin - even if it is a static market.

Fondlespanking devices of all flavours are an and not an or unless you happen to be very, very poor. In which case - and pardon the bigotry for a pragmatic moment - who gives a fuck? Poor people are getting poorer. Rich are getting richer. The wealth gap is widening, not shrinking. So the money is at the top, not in a race to the bottom.

Despite not wanting to rub myself all over some glass and orgasm loudly to the brand name du jour I still do belong to a cohort of individuals whose money is valuable, even desired.

Imagine that. Or is an app required to do so? I don't know how it works these days...

Trevor_Pott Gold badge

Re: No, Liam, I won't be using a fondleslab as my primary computer.

I don't believe software for tablets will get "better" unless they become WIMP PCs. The underlying theory of usage is just so different. Consumption based, not productivity based. In mofetn fondlefuckery keuboards and mice are fifth-class input methods. Behind grunting and rolling your penis around on the screen.

An evolution into a productivity-based device would so fundementally alter their OS and app designs, APIs, basic rules of use, etc that they br a different class of device...the aformentionned post-post-productivity PCs that re-embreace productivity.

We're at lrast a decade away from that. Probably two. This is not an "around the corner" evolution. Fondlecrap isn't going to magically gain proper multitasking, arbitrarily resizable, overlappable app spaces or other goodness frequently used by professional content creators.

It's crap today. All signs point to it being even worse crap tomorrow. "It might suck less some day so IT'S THE FUTURE" convinces me of nothing. Show me proof, with today's purchasable tech, as described above. Other2wise you're blowing smoke.

Go ask OQO about redefining the future. It's inevitable, you see.

In3vitale.

Trevor_Pott Gold badge

Re: No, Liam, I won't be using a fondleslab as my primary computer.

I said nothing about being "a techie." I said "I'm a content creator." Far bigger group.

But yeah, yiu knwo what, you're right. It's okay to just write off hundreds of millions of peoplle around the world. Fuck those guys and their not liking touch.

Hipsters forever. Amen.

Trevor_Pott Gold badge

Re: No, Liam, I won't be using a fondleslab as my primary computer.

I have tablets with keyboards and mice. They are univ3rsally crap. They are nowhere near as productive as a real PC. Next.

Trevor_Pott Gold badge

Re: No, Liam, I won't be using a fondleslab as my primary computer.

And my point was "I don't care about consumers." Content creaters are users too.

Trevor_Pott Gold badge

Re: No, Liam, I won't be using a fondleslab as my primary computer.

It was typed from my Samsung Galaxy Note 2 while in bed. I'm unable to sleep (anxiety) and thus trolling the interbutts.

I can type 100 WPM on this thing. It's just not all that accurate. I always have to take anything I try to "create" on fondleslabs to a real PC for post-processing. But hey, the downvoters think I'm fulla shit, so obviously I'm just holding it wrong.

Oh well.

Trevor_Pott Gold badge

Re: No, Liam, I won't be using a fondleslab as my primary computer.

Did I say cloid apps can't be productive? Where? I just made a video using goanimate.com. The past two days of my life have ben spent being productive in the cloud.

My issue was with the inpit methods. Precision pointers and keyboards are critical for making quality work in a reasonabke timeframe.

You CAN create on a fondleslab. It just takes 10x as long. Maybe in the future we'll have apps that make up for the inherant assness of the input type. We don't current have such tools today, nor any real hope of them in the near future. What we have instead is 6 years of touch being useful for nothing more than consumption and no notable forward motion beyond marketing and broken promises.

Want to convince me touch and voice are good enough to go toe to toe with the keyboard, stlyus and mouse? I've laid out above what's required. Repeated assertions won't change my mind. Anecdotes mean nothing. Only concrete scientific evidence that has been reproduced and addresses the diversity of human thought and perception will change my mind. That is what it takes to alter a lifetime of personal experirnce, decades of professional experience and years of dedicated research into the topic (which I have done.)

Whrere the app lives is a separate argument. How we use the damned thing is all that I was addressing. As for convincing me of the wonders of touch...

...proof.

Trevor_Pott Gold badge

Re: Fallacious argument

You can't use logic in these arguments. Brand Tribalism will trump any attempt at rational arguments.

-- Sent from Samsung Galaxy Note 2.

Trevor_Pott Gold badge

Re: No, Liam, I won't be using a fondleslab as my primary computer.

Prove me wrong.

Have a large group of individuals create quality multimedia; writing, touched up photos, audio, video, quality code, animation, 3d design and more on both fondleslabs and desktops. Let them have access to any software or hardware they desire for the devices, but restrict input methods on the next-gen types to touch and voice only.

Now, how long does it take the average individual to create finished works of equal quality based on devices of each input paradigm? When you can prove that the majority of people - or even the small subset of non-linguistic thinkers I belong to - can produce better quality works, faster by using touch, arm waving and voice then I will give fucks.

Until then, it's just the gnashing of teeth and the wailing of hipsters. I demand evidence...what I've seen thus far makes touch an inherently consuptive input methodology. That is not just my personal experience, it is looking at large quantites of research on the topic by well-funded scientists.

So...prove that this is "just my opinion" by doing the hard work to prove me wrong.

...you can prove it, can't you?

Trevor_Pott Gold badge

No, Liam, I won't be using a fondleslab as my primary computer.

I am not ready for a post-productivity input paradigm. I am too old and set in my ways to make the jump. Touch is a consumptive design method. I can't think of myself as "just another consumer." So I'll keep keyboards and precision pointers around. I'll use old tech if I have to. I'll even exit IT and look for a new career as a writer.

These young pups can have their Microsoft Tiles 8.11 for fondlegroups. I'll resign myself to being one of the few who create, not consume...even if that makes me anathema to the hoi polloi and the digital hipsters of the new millenium.

WIMP works well with how my brain works. Search doesn't, commandline doesn't and one-thing-at-a-time swipy fondle groping doesn't either.

Fondleslabs and Kinects may well be the future of the endpoint. PowerShell may well be the future of the admin. If so, I'll be cast adrift with no interface to call my own, no device that works well for the way my brain processes information.

That's okay. The older I get, the less I care. I can, in fact, live happily without needing up-to-date computers and the approval of the internet. Eventually, the pendulum will come back 'round, and they'll realise that people like me are an "untapped market." Just like the CLI saw a resurgance, I expect the post-post-productivity computer design to be a productivity-based one once more.

I'll spend my retirement with computers that don't suck. In the interim, I'll spend my time makeing the stuff the young fondleslabbers consume. On my desktop, laptop and netbook.. My old, oudated, GET OFF MY GODDAMNED LAWN machines.

And I'll charge the poxy whoreson hipsterati through the nose to access my content, too.

Ta.

Spinning rust and tape are DEAD. The future's flash, cache and cloud

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The NSA thanks you for this article.

Microsoft tarts up software licensing to fend off 'a few clicks and a credit card' rivals

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Microsoft's licensing complexity is a strategic play on their part. I will believe that Microsoft have evolved to even be corporately capable or caring about the customer (or their partner ecosystem) the day they rationalism VDI licensing to get rid of per-endpoint billing.

Crap that requires you to meter the number of devices you use to connect to a VDI instance that itself is subject to a "CAL" metering system for every Microsoft product it touches is just a hose job. If Microsoft want to make licensing even close to as easy as their competition then metering - be it VDI or CALs - has to die.

I am willing to bet a fairly large amount of money that Microsoft are culturally incapable of that. So much so that I am not only moving myself (and as many customers as I possibly can) as far away from Microsoft as possible, I am donating heavily to open source projects which will make it easier (and in some cases possible) to move away from Microsoft.

The current hope is to save enough on licensing in 2014 that we can hire a full time developer and devote him to coding on the Weyland/Weston project until we get a reliable FreeRDP server working in an enterprise-class Linux distribution. After that, ReactOS.

Maybe neither project will ever truly come to fruition. But it's better to put the effort - and my money - into community projects that benefit everyone instead of pumping those same dollars into Microsoft's coffers, validating their user (and partner!) hostile licensing shenanigans.

Oddly enough, I have a great deal of respect for Microsoft's technology. In many ways even more than the scattered open source community which seems to be tearing itself apart more than is normal. I just can't bring myself to keep cranking tokens into the slot machine, however, praying to a $deity that doesn't exist that Microsoft will one day offer licensing in a fair and rational manner.

No matter how many announcements they make, no matter how hard they try to whip the press - or their evangelist base of brand tribalists - into a frenzy about "the new hotness" in licensing, it's a sham until they address the actual problems that have been around for years.

Oracle Microsoft doesn't have customers. They have hostages.

Concerning Microsoft's Azure pitch to cloud service providers

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Re: Shouldn't be allowed

Microsoft's entire business is run on Azure. In addition, Windows Server technologies both come out of Azure and feed back in for future development. Windows Server and Azure are completely interlinked in their development to the point that one can no longer be separated from the other.

Short version: you're full of shit.

Why Microsoft absolutely DOESN'T need its own Steve Jobs

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Re: $1000s to replace apps?

For some people the cost is low. Certainly not for all, I doubt even for "most" and absolutely not for the "high value eyeballs" that everyone wants to capture. Your Aunt Tilly isn't representative of the world at large...and certainly not representative of the chunk of it that companies aim to monetize.

SaaS superstars' cynical sales schemes make them dinosaurs-in-waiting

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Oh my gods...

...I agree with someone from Gartner. Clearly, I am going to hell.

Saturn's moon Titan had swamps, say astroboffins

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Uh....

...who thinks Titan might harbour life? Really? There's liquid methane on that moon. It's very nearly too cold for there to be self sustaining biochemical processes, let alone anything we'd recognize as life....

Happy Thanksgiving, Apple. Now how about THREE more patent legal battles for dessert?

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Re: If you troll your patents..

They patented rounded corners. Also ridiculous software bullshit like "bounce back on scroll." All of which was invented by others.

Apple are a patent troll. I don't care if they make widgets too, they're the trolliest troll this side of trollsville and I hope they die by that particular sword. All umpteen billion worth of cash they have locked away tightly from taxes.

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Re: If you troll your patents..

Indeed. Sympathy felt for Apple is negative. Glee. I feel glee.

Maybe if they become target of enough patent trolls, Apple will stop being one themselves and start pushing for reforms too.

SLAPPING an iPhone out of a corporate drone's hand: You're not the only one who longs to do it

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For the record, the conversation about this article went something like this:

Trevor: "Hey Adam, you're the Microsoft guy that uses all the Microsoft with added Microsoft, eh?"

Adam: "Uh...yeah?"

Trevor: "I don't think we really talk all that much about enterprise support of smartphones; can you do a comparison of your Win Phone widgety tilewhatsit against the iPhone?"

Adam: "Sure."

It seriously was just an idea that was pulled from the ether. No particular reason, other than "this is something Adam knows stuff about and is qualified to write about and there's no way I'm spending my money on buying one of those wretched things, so +++Adam".

UK parents to splurge £3 BEELLLIIIION on kids' tech gifts at Christmas

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Religious humbuggery?

I think it's great that religion is being pushed out of xmas. Avarice and naked capitalism aren't all that much better, but I'm down with almost anything that reduces the influence and reach of authoritarian xenophobic moral absolutists. Down with that sort of thing.

Personally, I celebrate the solstice. Because science.

What lies beneath Microsoft's Cloud OS?

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Re: pivotal?

They're actually pretty different. But that, good sir, is another article entirely...

Keep an eye out!

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Re: Cloud OS

Disagree entirely. You aren't even remotely understanding Google's business model. Google cares nothing about you putting your data in their datacenter. Google Mail, Google Docs and all such things are nothing more than offerings to get you addicted to the cloud. Google doesn't care if you use Google Docs or LibreOffice's upcoming SaaS offering. They don't care if you use Chrome or Firefox. They only care that you do your work online, not locally.

Would Google prefer that you use Chrome over Firefox? Sure. But it's really no skin off their nose if you don't. Would they like to datamine your documents and e-mail? Sure, but it's really no skin off their nose if they can't.

Ultimately, they make their money through your generalized addiction to the net. No on element - email, document, browsing, etc - is enough for them to form a complete picture of an individual. Get the person hooked on thinking of "the computer" as "the network" and "the browser" as "the gateway to my apps and information", however, and suddenly you own that user.

Google are everywhere. They have trackers and Analytics and what-have-you on virtually every site on the internet. Amazon-hosted SaaS app? Awesome! They're probably using Google Analytics.

The only real competitor Google has is Microsoft. Microsoft want to own your data. More importantly, Microsoft want to keep Google out. Microsoft wants to mine your data and they don't want to let Google do so.

So wherever Microsoft can capture data, a user, a website, what-have-you it disappears from Google's Giant Map Of All Of Humanity. That's A Bad Thing as far as Google is concerned. So Google needs to break Microsoft. More importantly, they need to break people from Microsoft.

That means getting them off Windows and off Office and off IE. Google will use any and ever tool to do so. ChromsOS, Android, Chrome, Firefox, FirefoxOS, Libre Office, Google Docs...it doesn't matter. What matters is killing that Redmondian Black Hole that Google can't extract data from. Nobody else is really a threat, (well, Facebook...but they are already on the "rapid decline" portion of the exercise,) because everyone else plays ball.

Next up: breaking into China...

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Re: all well and good in theory

Not really. It always takes Microsoft 3 tries. The first try is ME/Vista/Windows 8. The second try is mostly workable, sort of. The third try is amazing.

Then they "reorganise", decide they need to tear up every single one of their perfectly functional products, piss off their entire user base, burn their partners, create incomprehensible UIs, make their licensing even more draconian and push out another 1.0 turd.

Your alternatives are: Oracle ('nuff said), Apple (fucks given about enterprise = 0), Google (the NSA wishes they were this intrusive), Amazon (run at a loss to capture market share then turn the knobs until long after their screams for mercy have faded into a background din), VMware (dude, where's my strategy?), or Open Source (all right, we have two hands, a GPS and a Sherpa...where's our ASCII?).

HA HA, BUSINESS!

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Re: Cloud OS

All right, let me try to clear this up:

Google's Chrome OS is about running endpoint software applications in a browser. This is mostly so that they can be run as cloudy SaaS apps, but far more importantly so that the application is standards-based and can run on any operating system. ChromeOS's sole purpose is to break the requirement for Windows on the endpoint.

ChromeOS can run an application locally or it can run it from anywhere on the internet, but at the end of the day it is just Linux with a browser on it.

CloudOS is about running backend applications and entire operating systems anywhere you want. Locally, at a service provider, on the Azure cloud. The entire purpose is to lock you into Microsoft's ecosystem so you have to pay Microsoft rental fees to access your own data forever. Your applications can be anything - and they don't have a requirement for any form of user interface - and they can run anywhere.

CloudOS is viewed as the back-end that would power the kinds of SaaSy apps that google wants us all to become addicted to with ChromeOS. Microsoft recognizes that they have lost their endpoint monopoly and are thus seeking a backend monopoly to make up for it.

Google are trying to free us from dependence on any one operating system, or even browser (thus why they fund Mozilla.) If we feel like we have choice as long as we use standards-based web apps then we'll use standards-based web apps! People like to feel they have choice. Anything on the web, Google can track it, monitor it and advertise against it. Google wins.

Microsoft have figured out that there is more money in holding your data hostage than there ever was in holding your endpoint OS and UI hostage. (Thought they'll give that a go, too, for as long as they possibly can.) Hold someone's endpoint or UI hostage and they'll install something like Classic Shell or uBit Menu. Damned people and their damned choice. Had to control.

Hold your data hostage and they'll pay you and pay you and pay you and pay you. If you hold their data you hold their entire business. Once you have them all by the balls you can then start turning the knobs, one at a time. Works for Oracle, Cisco, EMC...

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Re: A Chain is only as Strong as it's Weakest Link

RAT doesn't make Metro go away, you arrogant twatdangle. It just forces you to install that utter turd on your local system.

As for your "if you don't use PowerShell for administration you aren't a competent sysadmin" get fucked.

Jackass.

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@Wade

Well said. Completely agree. Though Windows 7 needs Classic Shell to get the up arrow back, and you need to disable Snap, because Snap is just-sub-Microsoft-Licensing-class evil in software form.

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Re: Cloud OS

...

I...I don't even know where to begin. I am going to need a lot of sleep before I can even begin to figure out how you could conflate the two concepts. Also: there's no S in my name.

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Re: Interesting.

Agree. See here.

Microsoft wields turkey knife, slices Surface to $199 for Black Friday

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US centric, much?

The Aussie writer says "the day after thanksgiving", meaning the day after American thanksgiving, despite the fact that the real thanksgiving is celebrated over a month earlier.

Nice to see the USA has so utterly taken over the culture and thoughts of even Australians that they cannot separate one nation's (false and at the wrong time) observance of a holiday from the entire rest of the world.

Awesome.

Keeping warm in winter the el Reg way: Setting a NAS box ON FIRE

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Mushroom

Re: hit the thing with a semi

I say nothing!