Posts by conscience

Not sure if Pai is genuinely an idiot, has political ambitions, or has taken a bribe from the cable companies, but hopefully he's not going to get away with this.

Waterfox has proved a good enough replacement for me so far, and it runs all my favourite extensions like NoScript, DownloadHelper, etc. Highly recommended.

If only Mozilla had any sane leadership maybe they would not be in this mess. Obviously they have vastly underestimated WHY people actually still use their browser: choice. Without the extra functionality and customisation offered by the old API and add-ons there is simply no reason to keep using Firefox at all for many users, especially as each update seems to make the browser worse.

The best thing Mozilla could do here is realise their mistake, change their minds about binning the old extensions and API, and apologise to users and devs alike. But even in the unlikely event that they did do a reverse, how many users who now have alternative browsers installed that can do everything they need with add-ons would even consider going back to Firefox? I'm not sure I would.

More DRM? No thanks.

This extra DRM seems pointless and unwanted.

Gamers won't want it turned on and will continue to cheat, mod, and generally customise their experience. All the DRM in the world won't stop workarounds, patching, cracks, edited files and custom hardware that enables gamers to get an advantage ranging from faster monitor, faster mouse and keyboard (both with a dozen buttons for speedy one-click macros each storing multi-key combos), plus other hardware cheat features built right in to 'gamer' motherboards etc. e.g. highlighting hidden opponents who otherwise wouldn't be visible.

Developers will make themselves very unpopular if they disable features if the option is not active, and publishers and developers risk the wrath of gamers and having to wait on Microsoft to patch it when it inevitably all goes wrong, potentially trashing the popularity and success of their games with bad reviews and an angry backlash from furious gamers denied access to their games.

Microsoft will likely abandon this sooner or later anyway, e.g. Microsoft shut down Games for Windows with zero consideration for the gamers, leaving devs and publishers to scramble to transfer their titles to Steam at their own expense or else piss off their customers by allowing Microsoft to kill their still played games.

And what do Microsoft achieve? More lock-in? Slurping more user data? Taking away even more control from the people who actually own the computer?

Business as usual for Microsoft, but no thanks.

Microsoft clearly greatly fears Google judging by this unleashing of the their PR FUD hounds.

Fake claims that Linux looks like shareware, can't run games, can't watch movies, can't open documents, graphic driver support, printer drivers, requires faith and hope to try to install anything that's not in your repo, fragmentation, is just as bad for data slurping, Munich... it's almost the whole Microsoft PR FUD rule book! Windows must be really crap if you have to scare people into using it.

Pity for those Microsofties that none of it is true! It must break their hearts that:

Linux looks however I want it to look. I wouldn't have mentioned it considering how bad Windows 10 and the Metro parts look!

Games run just fine. As well as 100s of Linux games titles available, most Windows games will work perfectly well too. I've yet to come across any movie or music disc that won't play/rip, and the Linux PC I use as a media player has over 500 movies, TV series, etc. on it.

I don't even need drivers for most things as they're built in to Linux, with much wider support than offered by Windows that still requires individual drivers or nothing works. I've yet to find graphics card that doesn't just work, the latest AMD Vega graphics cards even launched with a choice of drivers from AMD plus open source ones.

My printer works just fine, as do most printers, scanners and peripherals even ones that have been deliberately obsoleted by Microsoft on Windows. Even the old Logitech Ferrari steering wheel and pedals I picked up - with a 'Windows only' driver CD - 'just worked' when I plugged it in to my Linux PC.

Installing non-repo software is as easy as on Windows, e.g. download the file and then open it. Additionally the repo provides most things from a safe and secure source, unlike the game of chance downloading all your Windows software from random websites.

Fragmentation? Hardly. POSIX is pretty compatible y'know. You seem to be confusing fragmentation for choice,

Zero data slurping on Linux, so it's the OS of choice for users who value privacy. Windows 10 on the other hand deliberately leaks personal data like a sieve because Microsoft want to be Google.

Munich has been debunked years ago, showing that Microsoft intervened and paid for the PR situation there because it made them look so bad. Nobody actually believes Linux was a failure, and a bent report doesn't prove otherwise.

Microsoft should come up with a new slogan: "Windows 10 is so terrible we pay people to tell lies about other software in the hope you'll use ours instead!"

Sounds like one to avoid to me. Enough people are spying on us as it is!

It's good to see AMD bouncing back. Hopefully their great looking server chips coming onto the market can continue them on their upwards trajectory for a while yet and maybe even start take back some market share.

Knowledge is power

"in order for the lights to turn on when you walk into a room, the home must know what lights are in which rooms"

Wrong. It would also work just fine with a sensor that only connected to a lightbulb and a power source, without the need for any internet connectivity or data collection.

The only reason iRobot would even suggest otherwise is to make more money by selling all that customer data, betraying their customers in the process. A real 'Ratner moment' indeed.

Desperate PR stunt

This reads more like a desperate PR move so that people actually talk about the Microsoft App Store, something that isn't happening organically because it is a failure that few are interested in using.

Ubuntu on Windows 10 is one to avoid

I find the whole idea of Linux-on-Windows 10 truly odd by Microsoft. It can only be another of their traditional Embrace, Extend, Extinguish missions they wheel out to destroy any threat they perceive to their continued dominance. If MS really wanted parity for Windows applications and tools, rather than to destroy Linux, then why wouldn't they just write some of these software applications and tools that they say are currently missing from the Windows world instead of integrating/emulating a rival OS?

MS must have watched Android overtake Windows as most used OS for using the internet with dread, fearing it could/would turn their primary monopoly into an irrelevance. Linux certainly is a threat to Microsoft right now, what with Linux being streets ahead of their flagship Windows 10 OS. A fellow commentard hit the nail on the head when they suggested that Windows 10 was a pale imitation of Android rather than the full-fat OS it used to be, which besides there's more fragmentation and more adverts on Windows 10, is exactly what Windows appears to be these days.

Android uses the Linux kernel so MS can't currently slurp user data or establish any customer lock-in using it, so I can't help wondering if MS see Linux and emulating the Linux kernel as a way for them to one day finally infiltrate the mobile OS world with their bastardised hybrid proprietary/open source Linux-on-Windows 10 perhaps positioned as a drop-in replacement for Android with its Linux kernel? Obviously it is an insane thought, but MS aren't known for sensible ideas and all their other mobile efforts have failed spectacularly.

I had to laugh at Intel's sheer cheek here. With a story like that, I hope their lawyers have considered the penalty for perjury!

Apple might well design their own, but they'd have to hire the relevant hardware experts because its not so easy to do right, just ask Intel. Mind you, Intel have problems trying to make pretty much anything work properly, they have launched so much dud hardware they are (in)famous for it.

The whole idea of private, for-profit businesses getting any confidential NHS patient data stinks and needs making totally illegal immediately.

And no, it doesn't really matter whether it is Google, IBM or anyone else doing the snooping (before the PR shills start moaning about fairness). I don't even think the NHS itself should necessarily be allowed to use patient data in this way.

Blitzkrieg

And what happens at busy times like Christmas? There would be so many parcels falling that it'd be like the Blitz!

It's about birds?

Was it just me who expected this to be about two Dutch El Reg journalists?

systemd sucks

I'll be giving it a go right away.

Boom! And Microsoft goes and blows another of it's feet off. No wonder they are staggering around so much.

This is nothing but more open hostility toward Windows users. Again. I thought MS said they realised that they went too far with the forced upgrades, yet here they are STILL trying to force people into using Windows 10. Those geniuses at MS really never learn do they?

And no, Microsofties, we don't love to hate on Microsoft "just because" - it's the other way around and it's MS who appear to be at war with the majority of their own Windows users.

MS must be joking

Isn't MS asking for love a bit like a struck-off dentist starting a tooth pulling fan club?

What's to love? Their crap software that's badly designed, full of bugs and steals your data? Best I can do is vague amusement at the circus that is MS' repeated bad decisions and a laugh at how disconnected this VP actually is.

Icon: Because El Reg owe me half a cup of tea besides the new keyboard.

Sounds insane to me. Obviously I will NEVER use this 'feature' and would avoid buying any product with it included.

Making the switch to Linux is easier than some would have you believe...

I switched to Linux over a year ago, mainly because MS were messing with my Windows 7 install with dodgy updates with unwanted stuff so I'd been running without updates for a while (this was before MS killed the 2020/2023 Win7/8 support end of life dates on new processors - Grrr...). Even worse with a friend's Win8.1 laptop I support, even with updates turned off it still kept itself fully patched and up to date! I'd been putting off trying anything else as Windows had been OK enough to make do with from Windows 3.11 to Windows 7, but I wasn't prepared to use 8 at the time, or 10 when that came out and was planning to stay with 7 until 2020 until MS broke the updates and their agreement to provide security updates until 2020.

So off to Linux, picked Mint (Mate version) as it seemed highly recommended and downloaded the live CD to boot from to check all my hardware worked - and it did work out of the box. I dual booted and kept a Win 7 install 'just in case'. Then I clicked install and not long later everything was done and it worked perfectly.

However, rather than just experiment or switch between using both OSes as I expected to be doing, I've actually only ended up booting into Windows 7 less than 1% of the time ever since (without buying the latest Football Manager with the in-game editor for Linux, Windows is currently only required to cheat at FM with my old version of FM!).

Largely because of the MS fans/employees on here saying how Linux won't run games and various other software, I had been expecting not to be able to do without Windows, but I found that to be completely misleading as pretty much everything I did before was still available, only working better than ever under Linux and faster with less hassle. THIS is what MS don't want people to discover! Common software like office software, media stuff, programming tools, creative stuff to make music or be artistic is all catered for, all free and usually better than Windows versions. As for games, it turns out that there is a Linux version of Steam, and the WINE software supplied with Linux even allows me to run the Windows version of Steam and the games that aren't yet available for Linux with a 100% success rate (so far).

Obviously, if you rely on specific type of software then you should check it or an equivalent is available before swapping, but if you have the same experience I had then you'll be wondering why you didn't abandon MS many years ago. Even better news is that now there is no telemetry, no crap user interface, no forced downloads, my computer works much faster than before, doesn't reboot all the time, etc. etc.