What’s wrong with Windows 8

Everyone’s doing it and why should I not do the same ? Yeah yeah everyone’s been bad mouthing how horrible windows 8 and thought, why should I be left behind. So here’s my 2p on the subject.

I remember being one of the first to get a laptop with XP.. having used Windows 95 / 98 and ME plus Windows NT, Windows 2000, I was looking forward to it. I was young, naïve and stupid (actually last two don’t have an expiration date). I loved it yet in tons of places I kept reading that the changes were too far and users need to educate themselves yet again.

Just read this one.. it’s not that bad.. if you really want me to dig some, I will try

http://reviews.cnet.com/windows/microsoft-windows-xp-home/4505-3672_7-6534881.html

Of course we know how that went, XP did eventually coerce people into converting.. XP however wasn’t all that hyped..

Next up, we had the long anticipated Longhorn.. I was still relatively young (naïve and stupid) and what did I do, I installed the leaked alpha on my PC and played with it. Was a little disappointed not to see .NET integration into the system but oh well it was only an alpha.. things dragged on and we had Vista.

Vista was great, it did everything XP did and even more. There was only one drawback and that was a new shiny driver model. Crap Microsoft gave the OEMs just over a year to prepare drivers… Of course what happened, Vista was slated because of UAC and being buggy as hell (thank you OEMs.. my personal favourite was NVidia.. their drivers were worse than stock shipped by Vista).

“you can put lipstick on a pig, but it is still a pig“

All Microsoft did was to release rebranded Vista as Windows 7. Sure there were a few changes like toning down the UAC tiny bit but the main thing was that drivers had already matured in this time and bingo.. people loved Windows 7 like they loved XP..

Of course around that time, iPhones came and iPads came and Droids started running riot.. Microsoft was under pressure to deliver and they were working on Windows 8. The Metro UX plus a tiled interface was their answer. And they took away the start button. Just look at the two screen and tell me what you think of those !!

Most PCs after a few months of usage and installation crap-ware look like Picture 1. Is Windows 8 Metro UI that bad ? It looks cleaner and simpler, the icons are larger. Users can choose to pin / unpin what Start Screen shows. I keep hearing that power users hate Metro UI. What exactly is a power user ? My personal take is someone who has become adapt at clicking the icons on the desktop like in Picture 1. By that definition, I was never really a power user. Neither is my wife nor is my daughter, in fact they don’t even care about desktop forget the start menu

So if this is not a criticism of the larger easily clickable icons, what is it about ? You know it.. it’s the little blue orb that was called the Start Button. That thing that has been usually in the bottom left corner. This is about “Who moved my cheese?”
All would have been fine, if Microsoft had just left that in place and used that to toggle visibility of Metro UI / Start Screen.

Oh Microsoft what have you done !!

Enthasiasts beware

I have been a keen buyer of unlocked / sim free devices for years. The reason.. more manageable contracts and you get the latest and greatest updates without worrying about Telco’s update approval red tape.. Unfortunately my experiences over the last 1.5 years tell me that things aren’t the same..

Ever since Nokia released first Windows Phone 7 product, the update release cycles have been secretive. Even developers do not have access to new releases like before. I don’t necessarily blame Nokia for it but something has changed with Microsoft WP Team. Windows Phone 8 was supposed to get around this by OTA… guess what..it hasn’t.. Portico was released days after #WP8 became public and surprise surprise.. its rolling across all locked / Telco managed devices.. the only ones who are left behind are the enthusiasts who getting it the last. So much for shelling out your hard earned cash..

If you think this was the end of my rant.. it isn’t… I also learned recently that by default, Windows Phone while having the capability to do NFC Secure wallet payment has been shipped neutered.. yes it has a big piece missing and it requires your Telco to release that piece.. now you my enthusiast friend are stuffed.. if your Telco starts supporting Secure Wallets stuff, be prepared to flash your devices with Telco ROM.. that’s your only hope as things stand today.

I suppose I better go back to coding now. Have a fantastic evening..

OT: UK and the European Union

I guess what has happened recently is probably for the good of European Union.
I personally believe that EU as a single market doesn’t work. We need a closer union, I’m a unionist while being capitalist.. i know usually they dont go hand in hand.

I was hoping that EU would become a formal federal country but those plans were dashed by our ex-prime minister Tony Blair who favoured weaker ties and single market and opened EU out to new members.

I guess it was about time for UK to make its mind up. And by the looks of it we have decide to be outside the private members club. Having veto’d the changes to Lisbon Treaty will essentially force rest of the countries to work / coordinate by other means / creation of a new club and since UK didn’t signup to it, it won’t have a say – which is good for Federal Europe but not for UK’s single market idea.

i personally would have prefered budgetary caps – rather than being able to borrow more and more. we shall see what happens next

OT: What the Creation Hymn means to me.

Let me start by saying that I am an atheist. Most people – a lot of Indians at the very least (I know) have found my thoughts very non-Indian. Well I was born in a very moderate Hindu family and I studied in a Catholic school. If that was not enough I have travelled across India and substantially around Europe.
My search for what Hinduism is – led to critical review of what religions really are. And last time i thought of it was “ancient control mechanism which were justified before the evolution of civil laws”…. i know that’s a mouthful.

So where does creation hymn come in. Well its a part of Rig Veda.. the first of the Veda (Sacred Hindu texts that for a long time were not accessible to the general population). I came across this translation and something inside me just clicked. You have to remember that Rig Veda goes a long long time back – at least around 2500 BC. To me, it adds to my atheistic view of the world and universe as such. If this thought existed before any of the religions, do we have to believe in such obviousness just for the sake of believing ? Here it goes:

Not even nothing existed then
No air yet, nor a heaven.
Who encased and kept it where?
Was water in the darkness there?
 Neither deathlessness nor decay
No, nor the rhythm of night and day:
The self-existent, with breath sans air:
That, and that alone was there.
Darkness was in darkness found
Like light-less water all around.
One emerged, with nothing on
It was from heat that this was born.
Into it, Desire, its way did find:
The primordial seed born of mind.
 Sages know deep in the heart:
What exists is kin to what does not.
Across the void the cord was thrown,
The place of every thing was known.
Seed-sowers and powers now came by,
Impulse below and force on high.
Who really knows, and who can swear,
How creation came, when or where!
Even gods came after creation’s day,
Who really knows, who can truly say
When and how did creation start?
 Did He do it? Or did He not?
Only He, up there, knows, maybe;
Or perhaps, not even He.

This translation was done by V. V. Raman. He’s a professor at University of Rochester and i found him on WordPress

http://acharyavidyasagar.wordpress.com/