Pawnstars scroogled advert not a laptop

[richb]

I do the opposite GG, forward my ISP mail to Gmail. I have two Gmail accounts, one I consider a throwaway I use for certain site registrations. I do not generally send personal information in any of my emails. I have not used encryption, but will look into it in case I need to send personal information.

[Feathers McGraw]

I do the opposite GG, forward my ISP mail to Gmail. I have two Gmail accounts, one I consider a throwaway I use for certain site registrations. I do not generally send personal information in any of my emails. I have not used encryption, but will look into it in case I need to send personal information.

If you use Android, check out APG with K9 Mail, the two work seamlessly together.

[richb]

If you use Android, check out APG with K9 Mail, the two work seamlessly together.

Thanks FM, I will.

[GreyGeek]

Very well said.

I'm not sure which I'm more concerned about: being spied on by big corps for profit, or being spied on by my own government, without my consent.

I hate the former because it's all part of of them trying to subconsciously control people, and I hate the latter because it makes a bit of a mockery of democracy.

Add to that mix corporations using big $$$ to bribe lawmakers into passing laws that exploit or deprive citizen of their rights and you have an awful brew.
Case in point: the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade "negotiations" that are going on right now.

[charles052]

So far, Win8 sales are way below projections because they have failed in the market place. The ad itself isn't any different than any of Microsoft's other ads -- just as deceptive and with lots of disinformation. Microsoft is notorious for tracking people's personal info. There was a website devoted to it called f***kmicrosoft.com which detailed how Microsoft created a hidden folder and stored in it logs of all your offline and online activities. Those logs were uploaded to Microsoft every so often and then reset. After that website revealed how to eliminate Microsoft's tracking of your activities Microsoft made the creation of those hidden files part of the boot up process, if they had been deleted, so that the everyday user could not defeat the snooping. Combine that with Microsoft's GUID, unique to each PC/USER, and which is added every document created on Windows, including Office document and emails. That allowed Microsoft to track who created documents or sent emails, and many other nefarious things.

I've been looking into that and they've been doing it for quite a while now, like Windows 98 or ME? I'm now seriously considering putting Linux on my laptop instead of 7. Yeah, I kinda figured they were doing stuff like that but it's funny that you can know something without really knowing.

As for Win8, I find it very interesting that 8 is such a failure because it's mostly because of Microsoft putting the Start screen 1st and lack of the start menu. This is very, very easily rectified. But consumers still don't want to touch it, probably due to horror stories and mass paranoia. Such is the public mindset, which makes me wonder about the future of the Linux desktop and whether it will ever achieve it rightful place as the top OS of personal computers? I think not. Linux, due to it's very nature of being more secure and customizable, works against it. People want easy. Not just easy, ridiculously easy! They literally want their hand held while their surfing the web or whatnot. For a Linux OS to ever be nearly as popular as Windows, it would have to set itself up entirely, getting it right on the 1st try and never require any kind of configurations or fixing/installing packages via command line... and it would have to look and act exactly like Windows 7.

The more and more I study people, the more and more I'm certain that they aren't as bright as older generations. Sure, we have a far wealthier resource of information thanks to the internet and so many various devices to access it, but how many are doing so instead of looking up porn, checking their facebook status, tweeting, or watching the latest Youtube vids? People used to make their own clothes, build their own houses, harvest their own crops, make their own butter, etc... Sure, none of it was as refined as it is today (which might actually be unhealthier for us, but that's a whole other topic) but they still knew how to do such things. How many people do you know can even come close to that skill level of survival and thriving on their own sweat and blood? Likely none or just 1 or 2 people. And yet, most people think that we, as a society, are more intelligent than those of yesterday. I see no evidence of that.

Furthermore, unless you're a conformist, you're all too often looked upon as a nutcase, a Linux/Apple fanboy, or some other sort of extremist. I know everyone one of you has experienced this at one point or another. It's a silly, childish tactic... and it's one that works brilliantly. Most people, deep down inside, really don't want to be different. This society screams and hollers everytime their individuality is compromised but that's a joke for the most part because most of us want to be just like the Joneses, drive that big SUV, have that Toyota Prius, get that Iphone 5, and they all shop at Walmart. It's the reason why we search out for others like us, so that we can find comfort and understanding from them.

So, while Microsoft's ads are misleading and dishonest, they do work brilliantly. H. L. Mencken, who while referring to tabloids trying to become more respectable and reaching out to a smarter audience (which he believed was mistake) made a statement that sums up this post near perfectly: “No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.”

[richb]

On the other side of the coin, some Open Source and Linux users are elitists and consider anyone using something else as ignorant and scoff at them. I decry such an attitude.

EDIT: I also do not subscribe to an argument that because we do not raise sheep and grow our own crops modern man is not as intelligent as our forebears. Skills are different that is all.

[Feathers McGraw]

On the other side of the coin, some Open Source and Linux users are elitists and consider anyone using something else as ignorant and scoff at them.

True. Most people just don't know why we use free software though. It's not their fault they don't know. If they know and have decided it's not important to them, that's fine too, and we can have an interesting conversation about it. If they remain wilfully ignorant, it's fair to scoff at their wilful ignorance.

EDIT: I also do not subscribe to an argument that because we do not raise sheep and grow our own crops modern man is not as intelligent as our forebears. Skills are different that is all.

Also true - we're just more highly specialised. Nobody can be an expert in everything, especially considering the amount of detail you need to know to be good at something now.

[richb]

I will only say that I do not scoff at people who disagree with me on software choices. That seems a bit extreme to me.

[Feathers McGraw]

I will only say that I do not scoff at people who disagree with me on software choices. That seems a bit extreme to me.

That's not what I said, though.

EDIT: Just to clarify: when I said "if they remain wilfully ignorant" I didn't mean "if they don't agree", I mean if they are aware that there is something else out there but they deliberately avoid considering whether it might be better for them.

That kind of closed-mindedness is ridiculously stupid.

[richb]

That's not what I said, though.

EDIT: Just to clarify: when I said "if they remain wilfully ignorant" I didn't mean "if they don't agree", I mean if they are aware that there is something else out there but they deliberately avoid considering whether it might be better for them.

That kind of closed-mindedness is ridiculously stupid.

I refuse to call some of my closest friends ridiculously stupid. They are not.

[Feathers McGraw]

I'm not sure we're on the same page here, and it's probably my fault for being unclear. Let me try and explain:

My brother uses Windows. He knows what free software is, he just doesn't think it's important to him. I think that's fair enough, even though I disagree.

He has considered it, and discounted it. Therefore, he is not being wilfully ignorant, he has made an informed decision. This places him in this category:

"If they know and have decided it's not important to them, that's fine too, and we can have an interesting conversation about it."

If, when I had first mentioned what free software was, he had told me to shut up and ridiculed it without knowing anything about it, then he would be being wilfully ignorant.

I doubt your friends fall under this category.

However, there are plenty of Apple and Microsoft fans who say that MacOS/Windows is better than Linux, without knowing anything about it, and without being willing to listen to someone explain what the differences are. These people may not be stupid, but I'd say that their attitude to this subject is.

I wouldn't scoff at people who think MacOS/Windows is better and actually have reasons for believing it. I'd just disagree, and want to have that interesting conversation - I want to know more about Windows and MacOS too.

[richb]

Understand now and agree.

[Feathers McGraw]

Understand now and agree.

Sweet

[SteveRiley]

What a hideous sentence!

That's just Microsoft trying to be hip. And failing, of course.

MS are trying to tell you that you can't watch videos offline... which is completely untrue. You can't watch videos offline unless you have them on local storage.

Does a Chromebook have the ability to store local copies of videos? If yes, then the claim is false. If no, then the claim is true.

MS are complaining that the Chromebooks can't open their proprietary document formats correctly!!

That one cracked me up, too. So did this: "Chromebook uses cheap imitations of Office...poor substitutes for the real thing." Microsoft's Office Web Apps, their online versions of the Office suite, are also fairly characterized as "cheap imitations of Office...poor substitutes for the real thing." HAHA!

Part of my job at Riverbed is competitive analysis. The worst kind of competitive differentiation claim is one that can be turned around and used against you.

No hair here. I just find Gmail serves all my needs, has very good spam filtering, and I do not receive unwanted emails from any merchants. So if they are tracking my activities they are not making very good use of them.

Google doesn't use Gmail tracking to send information about you to third parties. They use tracking to tailor advertisements for you, delivered within Google's walled garden.

[Feathers McGraw]

Does a Chromebook have the ability to store local copies of videos? If yes, then the claim is false. If no, then the claim is true.

Yes it's possible:
http://www.zdnet.com/yes-you-can-use...ne-7000006103/

I think Chromebooks cache the last 100 or so docs you have opened from Google Drive, so if one of those was a video file then you have access to it offline. Equally, you can put whatever you like on an SD card/USB stick and play that offline, too.

I think they were driving at the "no Netflix without wifi" thing, but that's a stupid point to make, because it affects Windows too.

If they meant "no DVDs" then I guess that's fair enough for the models that don't have DVD drives. I think this is all of them, but I haven't checked... then again, everyone I know likes to split video files up into lots of little bits and share them. I can't remember the last time I used an actual DVD. And it certainly doesn't make it fair to say that chromebooks can't play video files offline.

Your bit about Office Web Apps made me LOL.

You'd think that such a massive company could do better than this, attacking your competitors' products like this just makes you look insecure, like you know your own products aren't all they're made out to be and you're scared people might realise.

Feathers