Posts by Paradroid 140 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Jan 2011
Not sure why you're being downvoted, perhaps it's your final comment, but I think you're absolutely correct on the first point. Theresa Payton is wrong to be concerned about the repercussions of banning TikTok because that already happened a long time ago. Google left China because it wasn't worth it for what they were being forced to do. Facebook tried to get in and never got anywhere despite being run by the worlds biggest sycophant.
Outlook for Android had a shameful popup that looked like a system card, asking which browser to open links in. It made out like it was possible to just select Edge, when in reality it would have triggered a download due to not even being installed.
I made sure to uninstall Outlook from my phone, and migrate my paid Exchange service. I'm sure MS doesn't care about my £80 a year sub, but I felt a lot better.
If that's your experience of using it then I won't disagree with you, but I see it the other way round. Why would users be positive about a new UI if they can't even run it? And aside from the UI changes, is there really enough to convince people to go out and buy a new computer? Of course not.
You are 100% right that the aggressive advertising and disrespect of user preferences is a major turnoff though. I blew away the partition and went with Fedora, can't be bothered with it all any more.
If I understand the Windows licensing model correctly, Windows 11 upgrades are free, but they collect a licence fee when new hardware is sold. You can see where I'm going here.
It was said that the artificially restrictive hardware requirements were to help PC vendors sell more hardware, but it's at least as much about Microsoft bringing revenue in.
Just CHARGE MONEY for Windows upgrades like the good old days. Then you can let it run on any reasonably modern hardware. There is a condition of course - if it's paid software, stop milking users with aggressive pushes for data grabbing apps and complimentary services. Offer them, but once a user makes their decision, leave them alone.
Exactly right. People are reading the quotes and thinking it's just him being a dick as usual. But watch the video of the interview and this is clearly a different person to the one from ten or perhaps five years ago.
He used to be inspirational in the early days, and this sudden shift to hard-line political views always seemed odd. But there's a huge mental health decline right there to see, just from the way he talks.
Hope a link isn't unwelcome but this ad-block situation has prompted an epic deconstruction of Google by Cory Doctorow:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/22/who-wins-the-argument/#corporations-are-people-my-friend
It's both depressing reading and also uplifting to see someone do such a clear analysis of what's likely going on.
This is exactly how I'm looking at it. Google looks like they're protecting users privacy but actually they're closing the door on the independent advertising industry, which they can do when they build the tracking directly into Chrome.
The good old Privacy Sandbox. It isn't private and it isn't secure.
I don't know if the regulations permit this level of flexibility but it's fair to say that Safari doesn't have an monopoly on macOS.
But to try and argue the toss with iOS/iPadOS Safari is comical given that even if you choose another browser it's still a skin over safari.
It was in the news a few weeks ago that Apple were set to argue on iMessage as well. Shameful again.
We've had similar assistants in desktop OS for years and nobody uses them.
This is slightly different but will it matter? It'll probably generate dubious content but that can easily be done already by opening a browser window
Typical Microsoft approach - no vision whatsoever. Throw in the latest crap just to be first, and hope someone likes it.
What most people want from a desktop OS is pretty simple. Good windowing and task management, high efficiency with great battery life. Seamless updates. Respect user preferences and keep data secure.
Good news though, Fedora 39 is out next month.
Cameron was a reckless idiot for risking it all on a referendum to win the election. However, it was Johnson who threw his support behind it and that's what took it over the line. Suddenly you didn't have to be a Farage thrall to vote leave. And of course, Johnson did it purely for self-gain
I don't hate Microsoft but they've always been incredibly greedy. Whatever they have is not enough, which leads to aggressive tactics (pushing Edge), and wild kneejerk reactions like turning Windows into a tablet OS because the iPad.
The Azure DevOps tools really frustrate me when I have to use them. Just enough functionality to make Azure look good to managers, architects, and rule of one zealots, but a pain to use for devs.
It's not always an option but if this country is going to be successful we really need to start buying home grown tech, like Germany just did with Nextcloud.
I'd upvote you twice if I could. Google is of course not perfect but Workspace is incredibly streamlined and easy to manage. In comparison the Office admin portal or whatever it's called this week is a total joke.
This move is classic rule of one thinking where the only thing that matters is having one system. To hell with user satisfaction and productivity.
As a side note the reason I moved from O365 to Workspace is because Microsoft decided to throw up a fake default browser popup in their Android Outlook client to try and trick users into installing Edge. Theres a way to respectfully cross-promote products and that is not it.
I'd argue it's the best release since Windows 7 rather than the worst since ME. Windows 10 was ok but still had quite a bit of the failed Windows 8 interface kicking around, and some really primitive UI that made it look like Microsoft couldn't afford a design department. Windows 11 is a lot more polished and consistent.
It's not perfect - the new start menu was initially very limited, and the hardware requirements are frustrating, but on the right machine, it's a really nice OS.
I'm a frontend developer, which is one of the most platform-indepedent roles, so it doesn't really matter which OS I use. Although *nix works better so Windows is at a disadvantage (without using WSL).
But how many roles are like that? Many businesses still lock information away in proprietary file formats like Office, and for that, despite there being options available, Windows is strongest.
In my role, Windows actually has the worst software support. It lacks the lovely indie apps of the Mac, and the inbuilt package management of Linux. Ironic given the dominance of Windows in the 90s for software.
You jest but I actually want this option - with a more reasonable price tag of course! Microsoft, please let me pay you per year or per release for a well-maintained, private, secure, ad-free operating system. Oh and it needs to get out my way on choice of web browser, and let me log in with a local account.
When the S10 launched some reviewers complained about the in-display fingerprint sensor being slow. I've owned an S10+ for nearly two years and have no idea what they're talking about.
Came very close to replacing my phone with a Pixel 6 Pro, but what bothered me more was losing a basic face unlock feature. Having basic face unlock and the fingerprint sensor for biometrics is my favourite setup by far
I'm going to defend Gnome 40. Was running PopOS happily but with 21.04, found myself unhappy with the increasing divergence from Gnome 3, and the glitches. Switched to Fedora and am loving the vanilla Gnome 40 experience. Slick and easy to use, with very few pain points.
I agree with the criticism of weird UI simplification, and covering the title bar with controls is an annoyance too, but this is a trend across all OS at the moment. Instead of going deeper on the things that make desktop better than mobile, designers are attempting to make desktop as limited as mobile.
As it stands now, I rate Gnome 40 higher than macOS since they tried to make it look like an iPad with Big Sur.
Never mind the price (which does appear outrageous on the face of it), what about the styling?
One of the nice side-effects of paying premium prices for products is that as well as performance, you expect to get premium design. The sort of design that says the owner has taste, like the Bowers and Wilkins range. This latest Apple effort looks like headphones from Smyths Toys. The red/pink colour in particular is horrendous.
The other thing is performance. When the HomePod launched there was a bunch of people who thought the traditional hifi industry had just been made obsolete the way Palm and Nokia were in 2007. Which turned out not to be true of course. It's surely the same here - are these really going to sound massively better than B&W and the Sony WH-100XM4? It's possible I admit, but doubtful.
For a public web site with accessibility and search engine considerations this is not the right technology. For apps there's big, established players like React, Angular and Vue.
I understand the point that Blazor means C# developers can build web sites without any JavaScript knowledge, but how often is that the right option compared to skilling your devs up in JS, or hiring some front end devs on a permanent or temporary basis. Occasionally maybe, but not often
I mostly agree with you that Apple are not out to prevent other OSs being installed as Apple haters are making out, but the T2 chip was quite a hassle for Linux to work round and was only possible because of the desire of a lot of people. Not much chance of getting anything less common than Linux (e.g. BSD, Heroku) running unless you're prepared to run it off an external drive.
I wrote an article about a very similar theory a few years ago, no proof though sorry (on an old blog site that got taken down). The idea for the article came from noticing how much virtualisation is already going on with the Xbox One, a platform that obviously cannot afford poor performance. While Microsoft doesn't always make the right decisions around UI, their ability to write seriously impressive system code has never been in doubt in my mind. So it seems highly likely that we will see Windows morph into a Linux kernel, with maybe a couple of virtualisation layers (one for Windows/Xbox games and another for legacy apps), with a Windows-style UI over the top.
I'm convinced that there are people inside of Microsoft looking at what's being spent to maintain the core Windows OS, who are not impressed. That same opinion is probably behind some of the more aggressive marketing in the OS these days.m And with the performance gap that now exists between Windows and Linux, the writing is on the wall.
(Edit: found an archive of the article, a bit out of date now, but just my claim above doesn't sound like BS) https://web.archive.org/web/20180905111053/http://www.blitterandtwisted.com/2017/02/future-of-windows-linux-and-a-built-in-xbox.html)
For plenty people, a tenkeyless keyboard is a great option.
The review says it's ideal for smaller desks, but this misses a much more important advantage - it puts your mouse or trackball much closer to your keyboard. Also I like it because it makes it easier to centre the qwerty part of my keyboard up with my screen, which my OCD seems to require. While still keeping my trackball close enough.
There's definitely a difference of approach between Microsoft and Sony.
On the Microsoft side there's no such thing as an Xbox exclusive any more, because they release everything on PC now too (a.k.a Microsoft exclusive). So their game engines have to be scalable, and therefore a bit more abstract from the hardware.
On the Sony side, they have always made the PS3 and PS4 punch above their weight with first party exclusives because those developers know exactly what hardware they are dealing with. And we've already seen some impressive PS5 tech demos like Unreal and Ratchet and Clank, which benefit from the custom SSD.
I prefer the Sony approach, but arguably it's going to get less relevant over time if they continue with PC ports of their games.
Yes. Even the accommodating and level-headed EU is now criticising China and their one-sided relationship with the rest of the world.
I am no fan of Trump by any means but do wonder if anyone else would have taken aim at China in the (blunt) way he did. Cameron and Osborne certainly didn't. Alongside the chaos Trump has caused domestically and globally, he may well be remembered as a sort of necessary evil with regard to changing the narrative on China.
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