Windows Windows 8 Marmite thread... Because you either love it or hate it

Greetings!

 

China escalates rhetoric in campaign to ban Windows 8
http://www.networkworld.com/article/2359711/security/china-escalates-rhetoric-in-campaign-to-ban-windows-8.html

 

-- "if you play a Windows CD backwards you hear Satanic messages"

-- "It's even worse than that; play it forwards and it installs Windows"

 

Kinda makes me wonder if some people would be gullible enough to believe it, or that they get away with doing something like that. Isn't attacking foreign interests something that would come with diplomatic consequences, i can imagine some quiet word have been exchanged.

 

The US has been ragging on Lenovo products for the last year, accusing it of containing all sorts of hardware level backdoors to allow for Chinese industrial and governmental espionage. The US government has banned Lenovo products from all its IT. I suspect this is just retaliatory.

 

Has anyone demonstrated a workable crack or backdoor on a Lenovo product or is this just all hype and theoreticals?


On second thought, I suppose I should ask is there is a backdoor specific to Lenovo products since the OS installed on it is already full of holes.

 

Yup, apparently they have.

 

And the paranoia extends beyond just Lenovo products. You're probably correct that this is retaliatory fallout related to Section 516 of the continuing resolution that provides funding for various agencies within the federal government. Specifically, Section 516a and b state:

It's a pretty broad measure, but when you get down to the purchasing level within the respective agencies, each procurement department can have a slightly different interpretation. The initial knee-jerk reaction was to ban anything made in China. You can imagine how quickly it took for department heads to create a list of exceptions when they found out they couldn't get a new iPhone that year. Some of us in the video world weren't so lucky, and some of my video engineering colleagues are still fighting the battle with procurement and IT departments.

 

Redmond is patching Windows 8 but NOT Windows 7, say security bods
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/06/06/patch_piker_redmond_means_win_8_fixes_skip_7_researchers_say/

 

Wow actually suprised to see techy folk not minding W8. Was expecting most to hate it...

 

the only real haters are those who haven't given it a chance, they tried it once, without any guidance and took an instant dislike to it.

those who have taken the time to learn it actually get on with it.

 

I wouldn't agree completely Rich, but I'd agree a lot of instantly dislike it without spending more than a day with it.

 

Maybe we should get them a guide dog

 

Yh I suppose all the bad publicity (well thats all I saw) made myself allready chosen in my mind that I'm not going to like it... guess I'll have another look (and spend more than a few minutes with it )

 

Greetings!

Again this...
Its just another way of doing the same thing, without offering nothing of valour over the previous way.

 

Like most other things, just with a new skin on it with a few small added features to make it feel different (WoW, COD, Smart phones, etc, etc). Always wound me up wiht WoW that for my shoulder enchant I always had to farm some faction - every flipping expansion!!

 

Win8's changes were introduced to cater to touch screen devices (where it works rather well) and low-power mobile devices (again, shorter boot times, lower hardware requirements). Whether you think these changes were well implemented is another story, but it wasn't just change for the sake of change.

 

Greetings!

Thats the thing. In a non-touch, high-power device its just change for change.

 

Except to make better use of the entire screen when using the start menu. I don't know about you but I was never looking anywhere else on the screen when I was searching for something in the classic start menu. I was looking at the start menu.

Anyone recall if people complained so much when the XP start menu was introduced? After all, that was a change that didn't 'do much' too.

 

Oh, god, yes. People complained loads about XP.