The message I've tried to send went through, but the original problematic message is still stuck. It's an e-mail with a >25MB attachment that was supposed to be sent via a GMail account, until I noticed later on it's too big and violates GMail policies... but I receive no message that the e-mail couldn't be sent, and I still can't click the damn thing and delete it, nor can I move it anywhere else. The metro interface is very limiting in this situation.

If I try to send a new message, it just gets stuck in the outbox and I can't even delete that one!

Anybody has issues with this, or should I just switch to another e-mail client?

Here's Apple's "slide to unlock" patent:

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=8,046,721.PN.&OS=PN/8,046,721&RS=PN/8,046,721

This patent, although approved, was rejected when it was used in a courtroom against HTC. Many companies are wasting money on patenting stupid and vague things in order to harass small startups. When you can't make do - sue.

The good:

• Straightforward installation, kudos on the new license agreement! It's actually readable!
• Fast boot, fast UI, no glitches at all. When placing a metro app on the side, it's a smooth transition, there is no flickering of the desktop and my desktop apps aren't going crazy.
• Good compatibility. Although I had to reinstall VMWare in order to get it running, and the graphics driver crashed on me before I downloaded the official one from nVidia, and Windows Live apps were screwed up, it was mostly smooth sailing. If this were a clean installation, everything would be tip-top.
• The new sounds - pleasant, simple, non intrusive. 
• The new "PC settings" option. Although it's waaay waaaay underfeatured, it's a good start. If your mom & pop want to set up their PC, they won't get scared as they once used to when they opened up Control Panel.
• "Simplicity" - wanna launch a browser? There's the icon, click the damn thing. Wanna listen to music? Sure - there's the icon (ehm... tile) for that. How about I wanna go back? Just press the windows button. It's that simple. You can put Windows 8 on your computer illiterate friends' and parents' desktops and have a piece of mind, they won't screw anything up, they won't call you to ask how to get out of "this and that". There are no bundles of icons and no toolbars to crowd the screen.
• "Refresh PC", "Recycle PC". You can reinstall pretty much everything and fix almost any problem with this... OVER THE PHONE! "Click this" and you're done! No DVDs, no reinstalls... it just works.

The bad:

• Metro. OH GOD WHY!? I get it though... Microsoft wants to create a nice friendly ecosystem that you can enjoy on your tablet, as well as on your PC. If you create an app for RT, it should run on x86/x64, and I respect that. But why the hell did you have to demote the desktop to a single tile? It's that tile where I spend 98% of my day on! And even worse, it's completely cut off from the metro UI. While metro can intrude and present notifications on the desktop (which I find to be great), there is no vice versa. The desktop shuts up when it's not being used, and that's a bad thing.
• The metro UI. OH GOD KILL ME NOW ARGHHAHAH!!! - To elaborate... I'm using a widescreen monitor in a comfortable chair. My hands are in front of me, and I'm using a keyboard/mouse combo. I'm not on a tablet. Read my lips Microsoft - I DO NOT WANT HUGE INTERFACES on a huge widescreen monitor! Why the hell do I have to have every single app show up in full screen? Even if it's just a crappy mail client, I want to see what's going on in the background. I don't want a 10ft user interface on my desktop.
• The metro UI/desktop inconsistencies. Right click in a metro app - a huge menu pops up... wanna click quickly on an item in it? NOPE! You have to drag your mouse over to the huge label that just popped up and click the damn thing, as if I'm using a finger. Here's a hint, Microsoft: if I'm using a mouse, I don't need that big of a menu. Remember Windows 7 and it's touch interface? When things on the taskbar got "touched", a large finger-friendly menu popped up... when it was the mouse doing that, the menu was shorter and smaller - mouse friendly, if you will. Alright... now how about you right click the recently used apps on the left sidebar? A plain windows UI menu pops up! Click on the date/time in the system tray... an old fashioned Windows Vista/7 like box pops up... click on the language bar - and here you have a HUGE language menu selection bar! Click on the sound icon next to it, and here's classic windows next to it. Click the network icon next to it, and here's a metro sidebar popping up! Click the action center icon on the left, and it's back to plain old Windows UI again. MAKE UP YOUR MIND! And what's up with that right click? Sometimes you get plain popup menu, sometimes you get a popup bottom-bar with some options, sometimes it pops up on top, and there's very little to do here! Say I want to delete an e-mail in the mail app... you right click it and... wait, what? Where's the delete button? Oh, it's UP THERE, in the top-right corner! Ok... Now, I want to drag the mail into a separate folder... I can't? Wait, what? I want to create a new folder... I can't? OH COME ON!
• You'll be using the desktop. A lot. If you're sitting in front of a PC, you're most likely a multitasker. A few computer illiterate folks will appreciate the simplicity of the Metro Start menu, as I have stated above, but after a while, you'll find it very difficult to read e-mail and then quickly switch to another song in a music app while in Metro. On a tablet, this would be normal, but this is the desktop - we won't go back to the stone age. I want to get s**t done.
• Network settings. Why oh why can't I do anything in PC settings with the network without switching to the old interface in the control panel!? Are you mad?
• The control panel. It's still there, and you'll have to use it if you want to set stuff up.
• The start menu. Although it's fast, I see no reason for it to take the whole screen, and for it to be so drastically lacking in customization. I can't even drag a shortcut to it.
• Everything else. It's plain ol' Windows 7. There. Windows 8 is an updated, polished Windows 7 with the Metro UI pretending it's boss, when in fact it's just NOT. The metro UI on the PC should have been broken down and separated into layers for non full-screen, mouse-friendly use, but not this. Instead of trying to fuse the desktop with tablets, Microsoft just threw up it's tablet UI on the desktop and created a desktop "tile". BAD.

Imagine if Google released an x86 android "desktop" where you could basically use the android touch screen apps (even those have buttons), and marketed it as a Windows competitor? Well, we'd laugh it off and tell the big G to go screw himself. No multitasking, no shuffling with activities, big lacks in customization... But what different is that from this? An oversized mobile platform on a 22" screen with an app store acting as the commander in chief of my PC? Please, no. Go away.

Back to the desktop, the best "app" on this system. I won't be using many metro apps on my PC, that's for sure.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PiratesVsTemp_English.jpg

Microsoft needs to promote international piracy or lower the Earth's temperature - it's that simple.

IDWMaster said:

nightski said:

*snip*

You could sync over your local area network, and write an app to interface with the Zune's networking APIs. I've been working on a program that connects to my WLAN and streams music from my computer (currently, it can only stream one file, because I haven't figured out how the XML parsing APIs work yet).

 

The ZuneHD stores music in the /Flash2/Content folder

The /Flash2/Content/Artist folder stores Album Art

The names are maintained in an internal database that is inaccessible by developers. 

Holy necrobump, Batman!

If Apple and Adobe were in good relations and this lead to Flash being ported and fully supported on the iPhone, Steve would have gone on about the brilliancy and the unprecedented potential of flash apps on the "worlds most advanced smartphone platform"... In short - I hate PR stunts, Steve is just talking out of his * again and has no real opinion of his own.

turrican said:

bureX said:

*snip*

I couldn't agree with you more. What I find most disturbing is that they ( big corps and media ) are trying to turn the Internet into a Cable TV. Where Internet means "Facebook + YouTube + Twitter", big brother watching you all the time and they sell you crap they think you need by automated ads all over the place.

 

It is indeed very disgusting to watch it happen. Sadly, the general morons ( the public ) out there are totally clueless and follow every darn "new hip thing" like a herd of sheeps.

 

Come to think of it, it is also very creepy and frightening to watch. It's like living in a sci-fi movie where 99% of the population have become corporate zombies or something.

 

Facebook history "Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg with his college roommates and fellow computer science students Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes.[7] The website's membership was initially limited by the founders to Harvard students, but was expanded to other colleges in the Boston area, the Ivy League, and Stanford University. It later expanded further to include (potentially) any university student, then high school students, and, finally, to anyone aged 13 and over. The website currently has more than 400 million active users worldwide" ...my eye ball. There are big big corps behind all this crap I tell ya!

What I find most disturbing is that they ( big corps and media ) are trying to turn the Internet into a Cable TV.

That's where NetNeutrality should step in, preserving the Internet for everybody, even the current die-hard Facebook freaks in case if they ever snap out of it. But, alas, some appeal courts in the US are doin' it wrong.

Facebook may become a cool thing to use again when people start using it in a way that does not defy all rules which a civilized person should follow. Would you go around poking people you barely know and asking if they would like to attend your sex life seminar? Well, unless you're a freakin' creep, the answer is a resounding NO. Found a picture of a cute kitty online? I don't care. Like your new shampoo? I don't care. Join the "I like mermaids" group? I don't care. You're in need of assistance because someone in your family is ill? I don't... wait... I DO CARE, but hey, if you've used your Facebook magic a little more rationally, maybe you wouldn't be in a "boy who cried out WOLF" situation right now, would you?

A lot of websites are now integrating Facebook as a preferred login method and it's just a matter of time before somebody abuses that silly script and phishes the hell out of the naive non-techy FB population. On that glorious day I will be behaving in a manner similar to the following video:

/rant

OnTopic: Facebook will not unseat Google or any other search engine anytime soon because Google gets work done, facebook gets you laid off. The pinnacle of procrastinating that is Facebook will never EVER solely take the lead on the Interbutts. *rises fist towards the bright moon*

Recently tried to watch "Serial Experiments Lain" on YouTube and couldn't get what the heck was going on, so I just gave up. Maybe I'm just a shallow "baka gaijin", but what the heck...

Ray7 said:

Palm's senior vp of software and services takes off. Others given shares to stick around.

 

As Engadget points out, this is probably to prevent a mass exodus before/during any sale of the company.

 

And if you still want a Pre, then Amazon is now offloading them at an unsurprisingly low price.

Palm has the best mobileOS currently available IMHO, it would suck if they went under... A few good apps in their app store and a new device or two running webos is their best shot of getting back on their feet again.

spivonious said:

What a great addition to a 6 year-old thread.

Probably just a sponge salesman... he's banned until sometime in the year 2015 by the looks of it.

CreamFilling512 said:

rhm said:

*snip*

Yeah but you can use a netbook for actual work instead of just dicking around.

Is that a punchline from the Onion? It's perfect for this thread - I applaud you. 

PaoloM said:

bureX said:

*snip*

I often wondered about people complaining about this when they spend 10+ hours a day in front of a huge LCD monitor...

I do too, hence, I'm asking if it's actually true.

kitron said:

I had a chance to use one yesterday for about an hour at home, a friend brough one over.

 

quick review

 

-UI is very fast no lag or stuttering at all. Basicly feels like the ui is alive.  When you interact with something it responds as if you are touching a physical object, much faster than my iphone 3g.

-Screen feels bigger than it actually is, probably because you hold the device  closer to you.

-The book reading experience is very cool in ibooks.

-Used it for about an hour and the battery went down from 92% to 86% while I was constantly moving from app to app and playing videos. Brightness was set to max.

-Keyboard is not very comfortable somehow I think I prefer typing on the iphone.

-Feels  a bit too heavy, something that actually started to bother me after using it for about 10 minutes.

 

I think it has amazing potential.  Right now I am not buying one, I would wait for a next version.

 

Does reading books hurt the eyes after a while (or is there an optimal brightness setting that will null this effect out)? 

Sven Groot said:

bureX said:

*snip*

That's not a shadow, that's ClearType using the position of the colour subpixels to enhance the appearance of the text.

Yeah, ClearType does that... but I have never really examined it before on this zoom level and I was wondering why was that effect somewhat shifted to the right side (making it look like a shadow). However, I still agree with CreamFilling512 - gdipp really looks like it's adding more weight to the font.

ZippyV said:

I let WindowsUpdat install most of the drivers. Except the NVidia ones.

Last time I did that, my HP ProtectSmart driver stopped working

(by the way, I suck at math)

Bass said:

Google Talk is essentially just a XMPP client.

This.

Google is a bit dry when it comes to native (aka non-web) apps, but Gtalk is not that hard to improve. I'm not the biggest open source advocate, but if they don't wish to dedicate any time or resources towards it's improvement, maybe releasing it out as OS to the hackers and tweakers is a good idea.

Sven Groot said:

Sven Groot said:

*snip*

Some results with various maximum values of k:

 

Max. value of k     Formula value                    Execution time
100,000,000         5.9999998200000059999997770956   15s
10,000,000,000      5.9999999982000000009369275168   208s
50,000,000,000      5.9999999996400000005856836804   1069s

 

This is done using decimal. If that's precise enough, and my code has no bugs, we can conclude the product converges quite slowly. Again, this was done on a cluster with 56 nodes (most of which aren't very fast, though). Done locally, it wouldn't taken me about 33 hours. Note that the 100,000,000 job (the first one) takes unnecessarily long because the system I'm using isn't optimized for short jobs.

 

There, I think I can now safely claim the most elaborate solution to this problem.

There, I think I can now safely claim the most elaborate solution to this problem. 

If I may interject, I suggest we purchase the following gadget (maybe it's listed on ebay, eh?):

...and calculate the product convergence all the way to k=6.1871539834134776012651492465284 x 10^34 (the reciprocal value of Planck's length). Maybe we can halt the Folding@Home or the Seti@Home projects for a temporary period while we use the available CPU time for the calculation of the said problem. After all, this IS channel9, not channel 8.9999999999873293. I, for one, will not stand for this mathematical discrepancy. If anybody has watched the movie Pi, there is a magic number out there that can make all computers become self-aware, predict the functioning of the stock market and reveal god to the Jewish people (maybe it can even aid in the making of lumpless pudding*). If we all work together, maybe we can find this neatly secluded needle in the haystack... or maybe not... after all, I've got some lumpy pudding to tend to (it has just cooled down enough to please my picky taste buds)... Happy april fools day everybody

Bass said:

bureX said:

*snip*

Wow. Did you also program your FPGA to try to compute it for you?

We'll make a steampunk version eventually