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Slash and burn! No sense keeping options that aren't currently adding any value. I haven't seen anyone posting any code, really. If it becomes necessary later we can find another way.

That would be the <pre> tag that ACs on slashdot abuse a lot too. Although it does tend to make the post stand out, it is not the ideal use of the tag. I kept it as an allowed tag mainly from tradition with slashcode and possibly for formatting short blocks of source code inside a comment.

Looks like I might need to break with tradition.

And that start menu is a mess.

To be fair, this is a dev build that wasn't intended for public release. The version that is released will likely be very different.

WinXP was good enough...if you were content never to migrate to x86-64. XP 64 bit edition was a mess, and I can't imagine anyone now saying "4 gigs of ram oughtta be enough for anyone".

Otherwise though, yes, I see your point (at least if we're accepting that "enough" refers to "for use as a desktop workstation").

While it is by no means my intention to woo anyone AWAY from linux, it is worth pointing out that you've always had options for replacing the standard windows GUI at least back to the late 90s if not earlier. Two I had experience with years back were Litestep (and holy hell was this thing a resource hog) and BB4Win, which was actually quite pleasant to use, and was pretty strictly based on the Blackbox wm for *nix.

That Microsoft has sought to sweep these under the rug rather than nurture the further development of alternative WM's however has a lot to do with all the grumbling. When Unity came out as the default wm for Ubuntu, the move wasn't to another OS, as it was for many dealing with Windows 8, but rather simply to one of the many wm alternatives available. Modularity is absolutely a strength that Microsoft would do best to recognize before it's too late.

The real question is whether organizations will finally ever learn to get off the MS teat by then. It's a tough proposition because of custom and legacy applications that just won't die.

But MS has shown no indication they can or. will make Windows any better. Every change since Win95/2K has been achingly small and hard-won. Just refinements. At some point you simply can't refine any more. You're done. The software is finished.

So what you would need is, sorry, a new paradigm to sell people on. MS had one, called Metro, that has been soundly rejected by every thinking human. And now they're out of ideas and firing people. WINE has as good a chance of supplanting Win7 as does Win9.

I kind of agree. WinXP was also "good enough" for a long time. Win7 fixed a couple remaining quirks and added some usable new tricks that are good and appreciated (I use Win-Shift-Right and Win-Shift-Left to move windows around multiple monitors every day at work). Win8 seems to bring nothing useful to the user experience, and at the expense of a whole lotta hardship, pain, suffering, relearning, and misery.

WIn9 needs to be the next product in the upgrade path for corporations. That means it needs to be every bit as useful as Win7 was, but better, and none of the hardship of Win8. Not clear a simple fucking start button is going to be enough. My corporation is not planning to move to Win8 any time soon, I can tell you that.

There are already companies like Stardock capitalizing on this by offering paid software to change the look and behaviour of your desktop. There's clearly demand.

Not a bad idea, perhaps it is time for Windows to become more like unix with users able to customise all parts of the OS to suit their needs. That way it would be flexible enough to endure another two decades as the dominant OS. As it is Google may well yet eat Microsoft's lunch.

Thanks, I'd never heard of it. For anyone else LMGTFY:

Betteridge's law of headlines is an adage that states: "Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no." It is named after Ian Betteridge, a British technology journalist, although the general concept is much older. The observation has also been called "Davis' law" or just the "journalistic principle". In the field of particle physics, the concept has been referred to as Hinchliffe's Rule.

Betteridge's law makes life so simple.

In this case, I'm not sure why anyone should be excited about an update that makes it easier to ignore new features. They still have a very schizophrenic interface. And that start menu is a mess.

I'll stick to linux where I can decide what window manager or desktop environment I'll use.

Windows 7 is good enough. The problems it does have are largely fixable. People don't buy new computers just to get a new OS at this point in time and they don't feel the need to upgrade their current computer to the latest and greatest, either. The OS upgrade treadmill is running out of steam for Microsoft. They also already charge a pretty hefty fee for Windows 7 and make a lot of money doing so. Instead of trying to make a new OS every two years and fragmenting their user base they should focus on refining what they already have as they'll still make a boatload of money off it and they won't drive users away with change they don't want.

Cheers,
-WW

Betteridge.

Congratulations, you have figured out how to override word-wrap. Consider this message a bug-report.

If you'll remember, their initial announcement didn't quite hit the mark: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbWgUO-Rqcw People were disappointed that games were almost a footnote, and such focus was put on the Xbox's TV-related functions. Since then, Microsoft has turned around on a bunch of issues. I see this sutdio closing as their final admission of defeat when it came to their pre-launch strategy. Given that the last E3 was 100% games for Microsoft, with no bullshit, I'd say this is just a sign that they are focusing on games. Mind you, this is a failure for Microsoft, since they did not enter the games market to make games: the Xbox was always a trojan horse through which Microsoft would enter (and take control of) your living room. Bringing the Xbox back to being merely about games might allow them to break even, but it does not fit with their long term strategic goals.

I'd still say this console generation is underwhelming, but I expect Microsoft to last through it. I'm not sure we'll see an Xbox Two however (or whatever they decide to call it...).

Thirded. The flat style, more damningly with every option hidden under invisible hot areas, is a a freaking abomination that seems to have infected every web and desktop and handheld platform.

It's horrific, ugly, and actively user hostile. Designers must die. I hope that KDE does it right.

I am nostalgic for lots of old things, but floppy disks aren't one of them. Rest in peace, funky tech!

I do like the idea of a firewall OS that can run in memory and be rebooted to a clean state if ever there's a compromise. Amazing how much effort and time go into figuring out how to dickish things to other peoples' systems. Firewall - set phasers on "deep fry gonads!"

I totally agree with your assessment of this new raging trend in flat icons. I fucking hate it. I hate it on IOS, I hate it on Microsoft Office 2013. I'm probably about to hate it on Android, if history serves. Even my wife hates the new IOS7 relative to the previous look. Why change just for change's sake? Oh yeah: fashion. Get offa my lawn!

I'm not totally smitten with KDE, but when I want a "full" desktop, I always choose it over Gnome. I liked Gnome 1 quite a bit; Gnome 2 less, Gnome 3 and Unity not at all. Meanwhile, KDE gives me what I want on Linux, which is lots and lots of tweakability. People say it's too complicated but I like it. That said, I'm hugely nostalgic for KDE3. It does "look" visually a bit old these days, but it was a damned usable desktop. KDE4 is slicker and better looking in so many aspects, but the Plasma Desktop with its widgets really doesn't wow me.

I give this project credit though, for running a properly-managed project. With the exception of the KDE4.0 debacle, they've generally kept the project moving forward with sensible design choices. I know why they abandoned KDE3 and redid the desktop in a way that each built component can be repurposed. It was a lot of work but I think from a design/architecture perspective they are much better placed now to grow and innovate in the future, so good on 'em. If KDE5 is truly faster, better optimized, and less memory intensive, that's also a huge win.

That said, maybe I'm getting curmudgeonly, but I truly find all I really need in a Linux desktop is a file manager, task tray for a few apps that require it, and a launcher. Windowmaker still offers me all of that, plus full keystroke configurability for things I do often like minimizing or shading windows pulling up the launcher, and so on. I have trouble seeing what else the enormous Desktops really provide at this point. Lastly, I find for some reason, whenever I leave a bittorrent client running for a long time on KDE4 things start to come unglued and eventually the GUI crashes. I am pretty careful to make sure whenever I am torrenting I'm doing so from Openbox or Windowmaker or something like that. Not sure what the deal is, but it's proof they've got some work to do.

Meanwhile, congrats KDE team. I will absolutely look forward to installing this.

Actually, that would be truly awesome. I've never played the game but it looks an awful lot more fun than first-person shooters, which bore me. These Kerbels are pretty close to Minions, no?

Righto. Nadella's name error is 100% editor-fail. You are entitled to a full refund! All your bytes back!

system that could be booted from a floppy disk and run from memory

Not long from now, in fact it may have happened already, a substantial portion of the population will have never used or even seen a floppy disk.

I didn't use his name in the original title or my summery, I cheaped out with Microsoft announced: followed by the blockquote.

A poor attempt to connect the poorly designed console with the shuttering of what was supposed to be a major outlet of content. If the console was as good as it should of been, perhaps the studio would actually have something to do with it.
Ok, all honesty, one too many beers that night.

Bleh. More Windows 1x style flat icons. It looks like that might be fixable through themes though. I hope this version kicks butt because lately I've been tiring of the weight of KDE; enough so I could see myself dropping it and LXQT certainly has my attention.

That calendar looks like a substantial improvement though.

On the next *ubntu release (14.10), I'll have to retry KDE again. I'll admit that it's been many years since I last played with it.

I fondly remember the math department at my university running KDE version 1 off a dual core 400Mhz Hershey Bar Pentium connected to several hundred X thin clients. I probably spent more time tinkering with the KDE desktop than learning whatever math program they where trying to make us use in that lab.

And while we're at it, Microsoft CEO's name is Nadella ...

Last release: June 26.
Download size: 280MB

Ah, I was wondering why the author's note had nothing to do with the article.

Yep, the studio they closed is the one that was working on their TV content. This will not affect the games.

It's the most polished and usable environment, with a real file manager instead of a pretend one. It seems as if they're almost always making the right choices over there (KDE4 beta distro debacle aside).

KDE doesn't get nearly enough respect in my opinion. Smooth software that works properly, and Linux GUI you can actually live in.

XBox Entertainment Studios had a short life. It was announced only a year ago, but design decisions led to poor reviews. Among its weaknesses, the software was bloated and slow, and Microsoft not only hobbled it with DDR3 memory but also needlessly restricted the games to using only 6 of the 8 cores.

You're mixing up the XBone and the studios here...

I'll still comment on it anyway. This is one of the only generations, from memory, where one can build an affordable computer that is stronger than the consoles. That has always been true before, but only a while after the consoles came out. But it was true the day they came out, this time. The IGN team made a 600$ computer, not long ago, that can outperform an Xbox One... If you bought the kinect model and pay for xbox live, you're looking at pretty much the same price for the inferior console experience...

Those consoles are seriously underpowered.

keeping those little green dudes alive actually takes on importance

I assume that my kerbel that has been (accidentally) orbiting the sun for over a year counts as alive, right?

There's no time like the present to become less dependent on the cloud. What would you do if your email provider stopped providing email? Most people who are dependent on it would lose not only the ability to send or receive email, but would lose years of emails. There are multiple ways to download all of your email from your email provider and let the email provider provide just the routing.

Another cloud provider is file storage websites whom scan and analyze files that you upload to them. I admit that I haven't found a drop in replacement that can handle how easy it is to sync files between tablet/phones and your computer, but an alternative would be to just limit how much data that you actually need to have everywhere. Maybe a portable 2TB hard drive?

The last most concerning trend is to trust advertising agencies such as Google with all of your contact details. For the low price of $0, millions of people have voluntarily given this advertising agency access to not only all of their contacts, but who their favorites are (I'm not sure if call metadata is included). Governments have spent thousands of dollars to make sophisticated tools to extract phone books for cell phones without the person knowing, yet now everyone has voluntarily submitted their phone address book to an advertising agency.

Since cloud based tools have become so popular, it is starting a trend where instead of having a copy of a program that's under your control, you merely access the web-based interface of the program in which access can be denied at any time (Google Reader, Office 365, etc...). By making it cloud based publishers have eliminated threats to piracy and has made their dependent users even more dependent on them (you subscribe to a service, rather than purchase a copy of the software). I ultimately believe that cloud based things are slowing the development of better offline open source tools.

By "outsourced employee", do you mean the Nokia workers that were laid off, or the foreigners that will be hired? Or Both? ;)

I prefer to pronounce it like bilge.

I wonder if any Nokia employees were originally excited to think they would be working for Microsoft, only to have their dreams crushed to find out Microsoft was quickly going to throw them off the boat.

My impression is that most Nokiaites were pretty depressed about the buy-out and nostalgic about the good old days when Nokia was a leader and a source of Finnish pride.

Every single outsourced employee should send a hateful letter to Microsoft senior management in ODF format. Just to be a jerk.

Hey - editor here. No offense, but I'm reluctant to publish this one.

a) it's already a big deal at Slashdot. don't want to be sloppy seconds/late to the party.
b) it's kind of all conspiracy and conjecture anyway.

Does anyone feel strongly about this one?

er, second link.
let's see...1..2...3....brain has now suffered a BSOD.

But I screwed the pooch on that first link.....;P

If the Supreme Court ruled that Aeroe is a cable company does the FCC really have any choice about whether or not to grant them the status of a cable company? I'm obviously not a lawyer but it seems to me that if the Supreme Court says they're a cable company than the FCC doesn't have a whole hell of a lot of leeway to argue otherwise.

-WW

So they are cutting 18,000 jobs, mostly from Nokia divisions not working on Microsoft compatible products.

I plug it into the standard 110V wall charger. Although I have the faster 220V charger

Is there an advantage to using the smaller charger? It seems odd to use it when you have the more powerful one.

Yeah, if ever someone earned the name "MonkeyBoy" it was Ballmer, doing that awful, painful-to-watch, sweaty jump-a-thon. Makes me cringe just to think about it.

Guess it makes a good around-town or city car, but a lousy car for expeditions of any sort. Right tool for the right job then. It occurs to me: it's the Chromebook of cars. I don't mean that in a disrespectful way.

Errr... seems the Developers! chant was from another video clip. Monkey dance still a monkey dance though.

Ballmer's nickname arose from his infamous monkey dance video where he screams Developers! Developers! Developers! while dancing like a (rather chubby) monkey on stage at a Microsoft event.