Guru Meditation #48454C50

 

I miss my Amiga days!  :wub:

So, there are already several freeware options to bypass Metro when booting Windows 8? That speaks volumes....

I can't see why not, especially if they are a business with young employees to whom emoticons are as familiar and as unexceptional (not to mention far more universally understood worldwide) as text.

 

That's almost like saying the male and female pictograms on public restrooms (Including those in big corporations) are too frivolous in a professional environment.

 

Guru Meditation #48454C50

Those are two completely different things. One is an internationally reconsider symbol for bathrooms and the other is a emoticon.

Those are two completely different things. One is an internationally reconsider symbol for bathrooms and the other is a emoticon.

 

I think pictographs have been around for hundreds of years (and more) and emoticons are just a newer addition to a family that includes traffic signs, those cute symbols on bathrooms and the informative and colorful icons scattered all over our desktops. They all serve the purpose of conveying information through visual shorthand, and I can't see any logical reason to reject the usefulness or propriety of one over the other.

 

Emoticons have been migrating into common usage for years. At this point they are probably just as international as any pictographs ever created. Employees accustomed to seeing them every day would probably barely even register that Emote as anything but a humanizing emotional reinforcement of Microsoft's regret at the crash of the operating system. Its good human engineering!

 

I suspect this was tested in focus groups, and that in this instance The big "M" has correctly interpreted the changing sensibilities of likely users. In fact it's one of the few changes I can get behind.

This is the image we use for toilets in Wellington, New Zealand  :lol:

 

 

So I would say New Zealand is an emoticon friendly place 

 

I agree with Devon, it gives the mundane a bit of a human touch.

I miss my Amiga days!  :wub:

LoL. Amigas ruled!  B)

 

I was also alluding to the fact that programmers have a history of being a little whimsical in the OS (even if they hide it)

I have a question.... and forgive me if it sounds dumb.... it seems that our interest is in FSX and that we need an operating system to get the thing to work.... i am not a PC guru by any means so was wondering IF there is any other OS that can run FSX at all?

 

I'm tipping that because FSX came from the MS studios then it was designed to run only on MS software....?

 

Just a thought... as it would be great if it could run on other user freindly bug free systems...

 

Cheers

 

dug

possibly OS/2

Sorry,it might run on linux using Wine

http://www.winehq.org/

 

http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=7775

Well after I lost my boot block on my Windows XP disk, I'm currently running on Vista (32-bit) After turning off UAC and aero (For performance) FSX runs just as stable as it did on XP. So for me Vista is fine. I only have a C2D so moving to Win 7 64 bit probably wouldn't do much as for as performance, VAS wise I probably would benefit. To do so though would require a full reinstallation which I'm just not up to at this point. When I'm able to upgrade my system, I'll probably go with Win 7 64bit, and forgo Win 8!

The important reality for me is FSX and all my addons run marvelously on Windows 8.

 

What else matters ?   :rolleyes:

 

Steve

Windows 8 is what happens when a company designs software for its own marketing and strategic purposes rather than to fit a customer need.

 

From a developer's perspective, it's dead end for me (.NET 4.5 framework brought absolutely NOTHING to the table other than tools to help one get their application in the Windows 8 store).  It has nothing I want (over .NET 4.0) and it has nothing any of my clients/customers want.  It's bad practice to dictate to customers and developers ... it always ends up NOT working.  Even worse practices is to dictate how people should use devices and then really make a horrible "new UI" that most find confusing.  But their is a long list of really cool technologies Microsoft started to develop (Silverlight, ClickOnce deployments, and more) then just abandoned because they were technologies directly competing against "Metro" and Windows 8 store.  I've come to really like Silverlight 5, but it clearly needs more work and it was sadly terminated just as it was starting to take off.  Click Once deployments were great also, very limited in what they could do, but had Microsoft expanded on ClickOnce, they could have been yet another great application deployment tool ... but the key being ClickOnce could be deployed on any IIS server and not from the Windows 8 store.

 

Let's wait for Windows 9, shall we?

 

Windows "Blue" (which many believe will be Windows 9) is being rushed out sometime this year (as early as June release candidate -- and to add insult to injury MSDN Ultimate subscribers like myself may not get to see any RC, we'll have to wait for mass release ... this does nothing but alienate developers) ... sadly it's VERY much the same direction as Windows 8 with only minor changes around it's search feature.  You will need to wait for Windows 10 and hope Microsoft change the path THEY have chosen (unlikely) ... hopefully their desktop/mobile/laptop plans don't consume too much of their enterprise products revenue (which is what is keeping Microsoft profitable at the moment).  Ballmer sadly can't think outside the box.

 

I think the key to the next couple of years will be how Microsoft react or not (just stay the course).  But so far, all indications is that they are staying the course and an unfortunate reality of that decision is a lot of hardware manufacturers are going to suffer.

 

But as others have pointed out, you can make Windows 8 be almost exactly like Windows 7 ... but what's the point in that?   Personally I think Microsoft could have been so much more than they are today, lost potential ... it is sad ... their demise was NOT inevitable if they had a good leader and a good executive branch.  Ballmer having his internal executives/divisions compete against each other is probably a key to so many technology failures.

I don't see the point in slavishly changing your operating system each year at the dictate of MS. Certainly industry and commerce doesn't either! One of the largest banks in the UK took 6 years to change from win 3.11 to XP. and will probably take the same to convert to win 7. They are not going to spend money completely changing their systems each year.  XP works and works well. So there's no need to change it until absolutely necessary. As I said before win8 is a side show. If it did do what everyone wanted and was an advance on win7 then it would sell. It's not seen as an upgrade. In fact MS are well known for producing downgrades "Vista" and "Flight" being but two examples!

I don't see the point in slavishly changing your operating system each year at the dictate of MS. Certainly industry and commerce doesn't either! One of the largest banks in the UK took 6 years to change from win 3.11 to XP. and will probably take the same to convert to win 7. They are not going to spend money completely changing their systems each year. XP works and works well. So there's no need to change it until absolutely necessary. As I said before win8 is a side show. If it did do what everyone wanted and was an advance on win7 then it would sell. It's not seen as an upgrade. In fact MS are well known for producing downgrades "Vista" and "Flight" being but two examples!

Lol. When I opened my bank account, I saw that my banker was using Windows XP, and he was creating my account via some "secure" intranet. Worst of all, he was using "Internet Explorer (provided by Chase)". IE was definately pre-IE 8. I believe it was the first Internet Explorer to be shipped with Windows XP (6 or something).

 

Oh well. I haven't been hacked yet.

 

I don't see the point in slavishly changing your operating system each year at the dictate of MS.

 

Who actually does?

 

Personally I only change operating system when I buy a new PC. I've never installed one myself.

 

My company, like most companies, only changed operating system when it became advantageous. Changing operating systems is a major expense. There's the cost of new applications as well as that of the operating system, plus the expense of ensuring that applications still work (or of finding alternatives). There's also the cost the switch over itself - ensuring the relevant applications are available to staff, including those with laptops.

 

Nevertheless we all will eventually change.  I can remember similat complaints on every change over. They began with the change from MS-DOS to Windows.

The change over from DOS was welcomed in many ways as it got rid of the famous "Erase C:\ [y/n]" Ooops oh sh-one-t!!! Many companies including large UK banks ran earlier versions of DOS that had the above command without the added "are you sure [y/n]!"

 

And, the other thing to remember is that changing from DOS to win 3.11 didn't entail having to buy new equipment or circmnavigating security measures to ensure everything copied over correctly. Also one could shove in a new HD or MB without any problems. Nowadays these are made difficult by MS in the "interests of security" or do they really mean "in the interests of more control!"