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Valve, the online software distribution company, is shipping 300 prototype Steam Machines to beta testers on Friday. The lucky few hundred will receive both Steam's hardware and SteamOS, its Linux-based software for video games, for testing, as the company pushes to establish an open-source gaming platform. Will it fix the "catastrophe"?
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Hmm, I don't see much use for running SteamOS on a normal PC, because I could just install Steam and have exactly the same thing.
.-.
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I'm assuming that it might be useful as a dedicated machine at some point. Also, there would be a theoretical performance improvement in just having one OS before your game.
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TTFN - Kent
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Legit is a complementary command-line interface for Git, optimized for workflow simplicity. "Too legit. Too legit to quit."
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In yet another disclosure from Edward Snowden's pile of leaked NSA documents, The Washington Post has revealed that the US surveillance agency may be using Google's advertising cookies to track and "pinpoint" targets for government hacking and location-tracking. Google: a division of the NSA since 1997
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I've always thought Facebook was the NSA's invention to get people to keep tabs on each other for them.
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Yeah, George Orwell would be pretty happy (or really sad) about Facebook.
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TTFN - Kent
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Nokia's largest manufacturing center and a key piece of Microsoft's devices and services deal, is frozen along with Nokia's other Indian assets and unable to be transferred to Microsoft. The Indian government is awaiting payment on up to $3.4 billion from Nokia in taxes and penalties dating back to 2006.
"Lalalalalala, you will never get this," says the Indian government to Microsoft.
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UPDATE: The Indian government lifted the freeze on Nokia'a assets [^] , clearing the Chennai phone factory for transfer to Microsoft.
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Mary Jo Foley conducted what may be Steve Ballmer's final press interview while he is still CEO of Microsoft in late November. The major parts of that chat were posted today at CNN's Fortune website but Foley has some expanded portions of her chat with Ballmer on her ZDNet column today as well. So, we're all in agreement then?
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I think I prefer Vista to Windows 8 ::ptui:: , though.
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His biggest mistake...next to firing anyone with the intelligence, vision and balls to talk him out of it.
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And ME wasn't on his watch? What about the Ribbon? 
modified 11-Dec-13 23:29pm.
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I'm sorry: Vista was his biggest mistake? You're kidding me.
Vista was a mess because it was so late and they handled the bad publicity terribly, but they recovered quickly and produced their best OS ever in Windows 7. Windows 8 was not only hamstrung and driven on the road side of the road (to mix metaphors) by internal politics, they haven't recovered with Windows 8.1. Worse: their timing of releasing it on the crest of a move towards tablets and mobile devices was truly awful and it has directly contributed to a decline in PC sales for the first time ever.
I can't help but think there's a little stock-price concern in his reticence to name the current selling Windows OS as his biggest mistake. Regardless of the technical merits of Windows 8 and the need for an OS to move forward and keep up with hardware, I feel the handling of the Windows 8 product has been a much larger issue for Microsoft than Vista ever was.
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Sorry, don't agree. Windows 8 is way better than Vista. People need to get over the start menu/screen bullshiite.
I agree trading the start menu for the start screen/menu was a stupid decision. Even so, I find Windows 8 eminently as usable and even more performant and stable than Windows 7. I have been using windows 8 daily for my job for over a year.
If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.-John Q. Adams
You must accept one of two basic premises: Either we are alone in the universe, or we are not alone in the universe. And either way, the implications are staggering.-Wernher von Braun
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.-Albert Einstein
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Upvoted.
Personally, I like the Start screen better than the Start menu. Cascading menus is not a great user experience. The fact is that people are used to it.
I'm not saying the Start screen is great. That would be subjective anyway. But, for my mileage, the Start screen is faster and keeps the noise out of the way. For example, SQL Server creates two separate folders and a dozen or so icons. All of which I almost never need to use. The Start Menu lets me hide all of that. I have quick access to what I need.
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tgrt wrote: subjective
Absolutely.
tgrt wrote: The fact is that people are used to it.
Yes, so let us continue to use it if we choose. Same with menues, we who prefer menues should be able to continue using them.
tgrt wrote: The Start Menu lets me hide all of that. I have quick access to what I need.
Yes indeed, and I can even right-click to run as administrator or another user.
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PIEBALDconsult wrote: Yes, so let us continue to use it if we choose. Same with menues, we who prefer menues should be able to continue using them.
When windows 95 came out, people were also complaining about how you could not circumvent the (system heavy) GUI and that the cmd was a crappy version of DOS while Windows was still hogging resources in the background.
In the end, I don't think it was a bad decision because thanks to Windows you don't have to worry so much about being cross compatible with all the different drivers; which has been a huge step forward in software development on the PC. And saying that command-lines are better because multitasking is pointless would be a bold statement nowadays; but people were pretty serious about that back then.
Windows 8 is also a big step forward in usability and trying to create the same standard for desktop and mobile devices is a good decision. That people aren't used to it and therefor complaining, is a passing thing.
Also, there are alternatives to Windows. Ubuntu, ChromeOS/Android, Mac... It's not like really have no choice.
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0bx wrote: When windows 95 came out ... could not circumvent the ... GUI
Of course you could, also in Windows 98. I always booted 98 (I never used 95) to the command line and only started Windows when I needed to.
0bx wrote: command-lines are better
That depends on the task. I spend most of my day working at the command line even today, because it's more suited for the tasks I have.
0bx wrote: multitasking
Multitasking isn't the issue, the interface is.
0bx wrote: Also, there are alternatives to Windows
In this room I have more OpenVMS systems than Windows systems.
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You can also just stay with an older version of the OS till they End of support for it too.
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I don't care whether Windows 8 is better or worse than Vista as a product. What I see is that uptake of Windows 8, and general consumer reaction, has been terrible, and their efforts to address this were far worse than what they did for Vista.
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Chris Maunder wrote: general consumer reaction, has been terrible
And was driven by poorly managed PR and poor advertising. (Dancing Surface Pros? Give me a break.) In fact, the reviews were ignored by M$ and never really addressed. That was Balmer's poor decision, not Windows 8 / Metro / Start Screen.Chris Maunder wrote: their efforts to address this were
non-existent.
So I guess we agree on something. 
If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.-John Q. Adams
You must accept one of two basic premises: Either we are alone in the universe, or we are not alone in the universe. And either way, the implications are staggering.-Wernher von Braun
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.-Albert Einstein
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Exactly. The Windows 8 launch, consumer reaction and subsequent followup are, to me, a far bigger mess than the Vista mess ever was.
The thing is I never really got why everyone hated Vista.
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Chris Maunder wrote: I never really got why everyone hated Vista
UAC.
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And drivers. The OEMs dragged their feet on drivers, which were the biggest source of stability issues with Vista.
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