Windows Archive

Microsoft provides more detailed on what, exactly, this functionality, dubbed the Windows Platform Binary Table, is supposed to be for (.docx file!), and how it works. From reading the document, it becomes clear that installing tracking software - which is what Lenovo is using this for - is not exactly what Microsoft had in mind.

The Windows PC world is such a mess.

Project Astoria is fascinating. If you look at the leaked documenation, you'll see Microsoft is running (parts of) the Android subsystem and Linux kernel in kernel mode. This should be nice for performance, but at the same time, it doesn't seem like something that'll be good from a security standpoint.

The leaked documentation also explains that in Project Astoria, all activities belong to a back stack within a single task. In regular Android, activities can belong to different tasks, with their own back stacks. If I'm reading this right (and please, do correct me if I'm wrong - this isn't exactly my expertise), this should simplify the back button behaviour - and is probably a consequence of Project Astoria only being able to run one process at a time.

Another fun part of Astoria: there's a WebKit rendering engine in there. Yes, Windows 10 Mobile will have a WebKit rendering engine. Fascinating.

I can think of a few developers who are probably poking around this code as we speak. Good move by Microsoft.

Just imagine if the Xbox One had a developer switch, so you could do all sorts of cools tuff with Windows 10 on it.

Whether we're talking tiny smartphone applications, or entire operating systems, people now expect software to be free. It's a reality that, obviously, hurts software makers the most. If you'd told me only a few years ago Microsoft would adapt to this new reality this (relatively) quickly, I wouldn't have believed it.

These are pretty insane numbers.

Tom Warren's got a good piece up in which he interviews a number of people responsible for the development of Windows 10. Lots of interesting bits of information, but this one stood out to me.

What he calls "practice runs", I call the most expensive failure in Microsoft's - and possibly all of technology's - history. When you add up all the years of development, marketing, the endless amount of bribes cash injections to keep Nokia from dumping Windows Phone, the actual acquisition of Nokia's mobile assets, the subsequent wholesale dumping of all those assets - it adds up to billions and billions of dollars down the drain, wasted, for naught. And the poison icing on this horrible cake?

They're continuing to scale down the phone part of Windows even further.

The practice run quote made me look back upon the past few years of reporting about Windows Phone and Nokia, about how many of us - myself at the forefront here on OSNews - realised years ago what a colossal failure Windows Phone was, and that small number of people insisting all was well with Windows Phone, how its market share was growing rapidly, how Nokia was doing great financially (*), and so on, and so forth. There were no tanks in Baghdad.

In this case, it sucks to be right, because these "practice runs" cost thousands and thousands of people their jobs.

With Windows 10 being released in a few hours, bookmark the knowledge base article or download the update blocker tool mentioned in the article right away. While one can debate the merits - or lack thereof - of forced automatic updates, there's one huge, giant misstep Microsoft has taken with this: they will also force graphics drivers updates through Windows Update, and without this tool, there's no way to block them.

I have had such horrible experiences with graphics drivers updates over the course of my life - from back in the 3dfx days all the way up until my current Radeon 970X Special Overlocked Whatever Edition With Kittens - that I am very careful and deliberate about these updates. I generally schedule some time for these late on Friday, but only when I know I won't have any work over the weekend so I have a few days of performing possible fixes.

So, when I checked Windows Update last night and say that Microsoft secretly wanted to shove an AMD Radeon graphics driver update down my throat, I nearly panicked. To be clear: my machine is running the official AMD drivers from the AMD website, and not the AMD drivers Microsoft itself distributes through Windows Update. Had I not blocked this update, who knows what could've happend with possible conflicts or version mismatches or whatever.

Luckily, I found this tool and blocked the update - and as it turns out, that was probably the right thing to do. This past weekend, Microsoft forced a completely broken NVIDIA graphics driver update to its Windows 10 users, causing a whole slew of problems.

My view might be horribly jaded, but I have the suspicion that graphics driver updates are a huge source of issues with Windows. As such, who in their right mind at Microsoft thought it would be a good idea to force these update upon users?

We'll get some registry switch within a matter of weeks or even days I'm sure, but the prospect of forced automatic updates is an odd one - I've had some issues with Windows updates not working out very well in the recent past, and as such, I kind of like to retain control over how and when updates are applied.

That being said, I'm sure it's great news for the huge loads of outdated, insecure machines you have to fix on holidays while visiting family.

No matter how much work Microsoft puts into cleaning up Windows, crappy OEMs like Samsung will undo all their work.

How about that line of Surface laptops and desktops, Microsoft?

Most. But not all.

There's one utility that I need to use quite often that, seemingly, hasn't been updated - at least, not considerably - since at least Windows 95, or possibly even Windows 3.x. Using this utility is an exercise in pure frustration, riddled as it is with terrible user interface design and behaviour that never should have shipped as part of any serious software product.

This is the story of the dreaded Character Map. I'll first explain just how bad it really is, after which I'll dive into the little application's history, to try and find out why, exactly, it is as bad as it is. It turns out that the Character Map - or charmap.exe - seems to exist in a sort-of Windows build limbo, and has been stuck there since the days Microsoft scrapped Longhorn, and started over.