Posts by Wade Burchette 1313 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Apr 2007
"Customers have told us E5 alone is no longer enough; they do not want multiple tools stitched together, they want one trusted solution."
Uh-huh. Your nose is getting quite long Pinocchio. I will tell you what customers have told them. It is the same thing I have told Microsoft repeatedly. "We never wanted AI, we never will want AI, get it off my machine now! Not tomorrow, NOW!" If customers really wanted AI, Microsoft wouldn't have forced people to take with Office 365, it would have stayed a standalone product. But since so few people wisely signed up for the extra AI in the Office subscription, Microsoft had to force bundle it and make you go through unclear steps to opt-out. Okay, maybe a few people asked Microsoft for something more. They are the exception, not the vast majority.
"we also feel strongly that we need to bring AI to billions of people who can't pay for subscriptions."
I think it is more like people who don't want to pay for AI subscriptions. Remember that so few people were signing up for Microslop's AI that Microslop added it into the Office 365 subscription and made you opt-out without telling you how or making it straightforward. If the masses wanted to pay for AI, Microslop wouldn't need to do that. No, it is not that people can't pay, it is that people don't want to pay. The market for AI is not as significantly smaller than the venture capitalists or clueless managements think.
As for me, I pay to make it go away permanently.
I would try the Office offline installer. That might work in Wine. It is worth trying.
"While its focus on privacy and on-device processing remains a competitive advantage, this value proposition needs to be communicated more effectively to reinforce user trust and adoption."
I tell you what I once did many years ago: buy a new LG phone over the Samsung only because LG had a removable battery after Samsung copied Apple's bad idea. The problem with Apple is that a significant number of their customers would buy iDirt for their houseplant and swear to you that this dirt is better than regular dirt and that using iDirt somehow makes them better. Apple has had anti-consumer idea after idea, and never once were they punished for it. I tried to punish Samsung for not including a removable battery, but I was in the minority and I lost that battle. Now every company has copied Apple and has a fixed battery, to our detriment, a lack of a headphone jack, to our detriment, and parts pairing, to our detriment.
Now Apple is doing something else to screw people over -- removing the SIM card. Make no mistake, the people in the Apple cult will not punish Apple for this travesty. And then Samsung, Google, et al will see that since Apple got by with screwing people, they will do the same thing.
User trust -- You don't have it Apple. You have user worship. I am not brand loyal, but I am brand disloyal. Because you, Apple, keep taking steps to screw over the customer to your benefit, never ours, I will never give you any of my money. I just wished the other companies wouldn't follow Apple's bad example.
Another unconscious bias that appears here in the US is that Microsoft assumes everyone lives in the Pacific timezone like they do. Windows 7 and earlier would ask you what timezone you lived in. Not anymore. Because Redmond is in the Pacific timezone, they assume you do as well.
For anyone cursed with Windows S-Mode, aka Stupid-Mode, SHIFT+F10 doesn't work. To get around the local account with Windows Stupid-Mode, I do this: (1) create a bogus @outlook or @hotmail email address. Use a bunch a random numbers and letters so you don't accidentally use it again. When asked for a name and birthday, just fill in junk. (2) Switch out of Stupid-Mode. (3) Create a proper local account in the settings. (4) Log out and then log in it to the local account. (5) Immediately delete the account with the one time bogus email address and forget all about it. (6) Immediately after that, triple-check to make sure bitlocker is turned off. Usually I turn it on and then off right away to make sure.
It seems to me that Microsoft's new motto is "If it ain't broke, then make an unwanted and unnecessary change and break it." One of these days Microsoft will go too far and a major business will switch to Linux. Word will get around, and another will and then another will. Then the people who work for these businesses will demand a Linux computer like they have at work. And soon enough to snowball will become a giant avalanche. Right now they can only get away with their utter contempt for the customer because they have major businesses captured. But a man can only take so much before he snaps ...
And Office 2003 didn't have that design abomination known as the ribbon. And sadly, Microsoft insists on putting it everywhere when it should never have been anywhere.
Whether it is auto-starting Word, to installing unwanted AI, to auto-starting Edge, to putting the stupid ribbon into everything, to encrypting the hard drive without permission, to making it next to impossible to not provide them any personal information to use the computer -- Microsoft shows once again that they assume their your computer is their computer and that they are wiser than the "customer". Who gave them the right to auto-start Word without my permission? No one, that is who. Sooner or later, they are going to go too far and businesses will jump ship to Linux, not because they want to, but because they are just too angry at what Microsoft is doing.
People who are aware of scams are the ones more likely to be scammed. Here is a study about that.
JC Penny -- a large clothing chain in the US -- is famous for having the "biggest sale of the year" every weekend. Once they tried making the sale prices their every day prices. It was a disaster and their sales plummeted bad. So now they are back to having the "biggest sale of the year" every weekend again.
I concluded from this that people want to think they are getting a deal, even if they aren't really. People love to boast about getting a deal, even if they know the product is perpetually sold at a discount. These companies know what they are doing. I think where HP went wrong was always saying "Just 1 left" even though the warehouse was full of the items.
I was thinking of this story from the CBC. It is a few years old, but I made sure to keep a bookmark of it. Identical twins sent their DNA to several of these testing sites, and each received a different result. 23andMe was the most different between the twins. And none of the DNA testers matched the heritage of the twins. The charts included are interesting.
What do you expect from a company that makes their employees sign mandatory binding arbitration clauses. And when the Oracle paid arbitration bites the hand that feeds them, Oracle sues the arbitrator. Oracle is pure evil. I am still convinced to this day that this company has a factory dedicated to kicking kittens and punching puppies, they are just that evil. I would choose to work at the local Qwick-E-Mart rather than to work for this evil company; and I would choose to pay twice as much for a competitor's product than to use Oracle's.
Blokada is your friend. This app blocks all manner of snooping done on your phone or tablet. You will be shocked to see how much snooping goes on with an Android device. I stick with version 5 personally, because that version is so damaging to Google, it is banned on their app store. Once the app is installed, you must whitelist a few system apps, such as Visual Voicemail and Phone and maybe a few other ones I cannot remember right now. I also dig through the settings and change my DNS to one that blocks malware.
But Blokada is my friend. It blocks Amazon's creepy ads in apps, it blocks Google's creepy tracking that is built-in to Android, it stops Whats-app from snooping on your conversations. It has blocked about 450,000 tracking/advertising requests since I bought Samsung S22 a few years ago. I recommend it for every Android device.
Well, the big OEM's are already shifting away from standards on their desktop computers. The power supply is a proprietary design, not a common standard. I had a friends whose Lenovo gaming desktop motherboard went bad. It was cheaper to buy an Asrock motherboard. But the Lenovo motherboard used a non-standard cooling fan and non-standard connectors for the power button -- fortunately it did use a standard ATX power supply and microATX motherboard design.
I think Intel could a long ways reducing e-waste simply by requiring OEM's to conform to standards, instead of proprietary components. And supporting a socket for more than 2 designs. (Look to AMD for that. AM4 lasted as long as DDR4 was being used. I don't expect AM5 to replaced until DDR6 comes out.)
Thinner, AI, quantum something or rather, an ugly case ... it seems like the phone manufacturers are going out of their way to give us the things we actually want: user-replaceable batteries, screws to easily disassemble the device and repair it, a headphone jack, and a microSD card slot. I'd pay extra for a phone with those features and would gladly replace my working S22 for that; but you would have to pay me a lot of money to replace my working phone for one with AI.
Often, the tracking is done by a third party, and not by the website itself. And those websites are full of third party scripts. Very few major websites are devoid of third party scripts. Let me give you an example: one local news website that I visit has 14 third party scripts, as identified by NoScript. Another one has 18 third party scripts. Many websites now will not work unless you enable certain third party scripts. That is a major problem. It is my opinion that a website should never require javascript to work and also should never require any third party scripts to work.
I am convinced that Microsoft has a fetish for AI right now because they know in their history they have missed on some big moneymaking ideas. For example: Windows Phone was a knee-jerk reaction to iPhone and Android; it failed badly. Zune was a knee-jerk reaction to iPod; it failed badly. Bing is a knee-jerk reaction to Google; it is still struggling against Google both in market share and performance.
Microsoft doesn't want to be left behind again. So they are doubling down -- actually quadrupling down -- on what the know-nothing know-it-all's say is the next BIG thing. While AI will have its uses, for the vast majority of people it will be useless.
I have decided to once a week to offer a polite suggestion through Microsoft's feedback hub telling them how we, the users of Windows, do not want Co-pilot or anything AI in any form. I even told them that I am willing to pay to make it go away. Maybe if we organize a polite "AI GO AWAY" spamming campaign on the feedback hub, Microsoft will finally get it through their thick skull how unwanted this is. (It must be polite, otherwise it goes straight to the trash bin.)
It wasn't just older NAS it broke. I could not connect to my fully patched, up-to-date, still supported QNap NAS after the update. I even disabled every file share option except for the highest level SMB. Still nothing. I kept getting some NTLM authentication error. I changed every group policy entry related to NTLM -- still no go. I even used the IP address instead of the name (i.e. \\192.168.1.xxx\) -- still no go. I went back to 23H2 and everything worked.
For example, Outlook Express.
Outlook Express was a very good free email application. It worked well enough for most people. So, naturally, it had to go. The replacement was Windows Mail, a flaming piece of garbage that was confusing to use and confusing to configure. Have you ever tried to change the server settings in Windows Mail? For years I believed that Windows Mail was designed to be horrible so that you will pay for Outlook -- not many people know about Thunderbird or other alternatives. And now the replacement in "new" Outlook. What brain dead idiot thought it was a good idea to have 3 distinct products with the exact same name? The "new" Outlook looks and feels a lot like outlook.com and not at all like the "classic" Outlook. So now when you search for help, you don't know if it is for "new" Outlook, "classic" Outlook, or outlook.com. (This decision must have been by the idiots who thought having two distinct versions of Teams, a business and consumer one, that each work completely different was a good idea. So when you search for help, you don't know if the instructions are for business Teams or consumer Teams.)
If Microsoft wants to give us a good free email program, bring back Outlook Express and incorporate OAuth2 in it. Simple, cheap, and good for the customer. So, naturally, it won't be done. Microsoft gave up on doing what is best for the customer when Windows 7 expired.
I have a QNap NAS and there was one update that was constantly rebooting and I had to downgrade. To downgrade, you have to power off the machine, remove all the hard drives including the M.2 drives if you have them, then turn on the NAS. Once there, you enter an IP address and you are given the option to install a new firmware. After the firmware is installed and the machine rebooted, you turn it off again and put all the drives back.
Don't forget, that to get license X you will also need to purchase a special license not openly listed, but the requirement will be buried deep in the terms of service. To purchase this special license, you must go to the licensing department. It is in a cellar at Microsoft's HQ behind a locked door marked "Beware of the leopard". Be sure to bring your flashlight. Woebegone to any business that does not purchase this special license.
The way I see it, this is Microsoft's way of introducing Windows as a Subscription.
Start first with a thin client with a yearly fee. And then the pricing creep will begin. Next, a $10 fee per year to use Windows with a local account at any time -- waived if you subscribe to Office 365. Oh wait, now it is an additional $10 per year for security updates, but if you subscribe to Office 365 that fee is waived. Oh wait, that fee is now it is $30 per year, but if you can still avoid the fee by paying for Office 365. Oh wait, the price for Office 365 just went up by $20. Good news, we've lowered the price of Microsoft 365 back to $99/year, and now it is mandatory to even use Windows at all, what a deal! Don't even bother switching to Linux, the cost to retrain your employees will exceed the cost of Microsoft 365. You were going to license it anyway, so just pay up.
That is the holy grail for Microsoft, making you pay just to use your computer.
"It smacks of 3DTV all over again."
Not true. 3DTV, if done right, is actually quite neat and entertaining. (The key is if it is done right, which often it wasn't on movies or home TV's.) AI PC's on the other hand have none of those advantages even if done right.
You just know the scammers will begin to deploy AI voices for themselves. It is only a matter of time before "Daisy" AI talks to "Larry" AI from the local bank. What a delight that would be. Neither would get tired of talking to each other. That will be a conversation that never ends.
Then it will only be a matter of time before "Larry" AI proposes to "Daisy" AI and they get married over the phone.
Coming soon, the all new Windows 12. It will be completely free, but if you want any updates, that will cost you $10 for the first year, but $30 for every year thereafter. Or, the fee can be waived if you provide Microsoft your personal information, agree to activate S-mode, use only Edge to browse websites, and purchase 5 apps each year from the Microsoft store or subscribe to Microsoft 365. Of course, education and government institutions will get all of this for free without restrictions so that they can instruct people on how to use Windows 12.
Samsung appliances are already on my "do not buy" list because of their terrible reliability. Now I see why they are so unreliable: Samsung is focusing on useless stuff you don't need -- like a camera in a washing machine -- instead of stuff you do need, like an appliance that will work well without needing any repairs for at least 15 years. Connecting the car to my appliance is yet another thing I don't need.
Dear Samsung: I rather buy my appliances from the other South Korean company, LG, because they are far more reliable. Your washer and dryer can automatically pick up my clothes and wash them and I still won't buy it because of how often it breaks down. If a product is unreliable, nothing else matters, period.
Along the same line of thought --
Apple sells a phone with an unremovable battery, Apple users go "meh". And then Samsung sees that Apple was not punished for doing the wrong thing, and now their phones have unremovable batteries.
Apple takes away the headphone jack on the phone, Apple users go "meh". And then Samsung sees that Apple was not punished for doing the wrong thing, and now their phones no longer have a headphone jack.
Apple implemented parts pairing just to prevent you from fixing your own product, Apple users go "meh". And then Samsung sees that Apple was not punished for doing the wrong thing, and now their phones have parts pairing too.
Of course, Apple is not the only company that kicks you hard in the groin and then demands you say thank you for the privilege. I am just using them to make a point. When did consumers become so apathetic to companies screwing us that we just accept and go on? Why aren't we doing more to punish companies that are openly doing us wrong? As shown by the Apple example, when one company is not punished for doing the wrong thing, other companies in their greed also follow suit. How did it get this way? Whenever people ask why I don't like Apple, I openly tell them it is because of how they did us wrong, and since we the consumer didn't punish them for doing wrong, now every other company is also doing the wrong thing.
I think we need to get more vocal telling people how they are being cheated. If enough people wake up, things can change.
"Copilot for Microsoft 365 is an add-on for which Microsoft expects $30 per user per month, with an annual subscription."
Ain't no way I will pay $360 per year to use this. In fact, even if Microsoft paid me $360/year, I still wouldn't use it. And I think I am in the majority. This will not be the big money maker Microsoft, Google, et al thinks it will be. A few out-of-touch managers will use it, but these are the kind of people who jump on every fad no matter how stupid. They are not the majority.
I much rather Microsoft start asking me what I want my computer to do, instead of doing everything without my knowledge or permission.
Bitlocker is turned on without my knowledge or permission. Drivers are installed without my permission. The Edge browser starts when the computer does without my knowledge or permission. Updates are installed without my permission. The useless AI junk is turn on without my permission. Telemetry is collected without my knowledge or permission.
And the list goes on. Microsoft forgot that this is my computer, not theirs. And since this is my computer, I know what is best for it, they never do.
About a decade ago, I decided to play with Exchange on a NAS that I have. I had a TechNet subscription which allowed me to get Server 2012 R2 and Exchange.
My first try: I install Server in a VM. I first installed the Essentials experience for the great backup it had. I then went to Microsoft's website for instructions on how to install Exchange. I followed the instructions to the letter. But Exchange didn't work. Neither by powershell nor by the new web browser interface. After getting nowhere trying to fix it, I finally discovered Essentials is incompatible with Exchange. Exchange didn't say that during the install.
Second try: So I format the VM and install Server 2012 again. This time I only installed the features and roles Microsoft said Exchange needed. Then I again followed Microsoft's instructions to the letter. Again, Exchange didn't work. Neither by powershell nor by the new web browser interface. After spending days looking up articles to fix the problem, I gave up and bought a book.
Third try: When I looked at the instructions in my book, I noticed quickly it had a step Microsoft never mentioned. I followed the book's instructions to the letter, and finally Exchange worked! I could do what I needed to do in the browser interface ...
... for a month. This was a server in a VM. I didn't touch anything in it. The backend of Exchange was still working, powershell was still working, but the browser interface didn't work anymore. The only that happened was Microsoft install security updates. I left the VM server completely alone, never changing anything. And Exchange broke itself. But since the calendar and email was still working, I left it alone. A year later, both stopped working. I changed nothing on the VM server. Not Exchange powershell worked. It completely broke itself.
I decided then and there that Exchange is not worth the trouble. It was such a broken mess that I don't know how anybody keeps using it. My experience was the pre-SatyaNad days, before he decided to get rid of quality control people to boost stock prices. I can't imagine how horrible it is now that even more testers have been shown the door.
I am certain that Intel will eventually turn things around. The real damage over the last few years is to their reputation. Companies that once would have never considered AMD are now openly saying they dumping their Intel servers for AMD ones. The way Intel has handled the damaged 13/14 chips has alienated all but the most blind fanboys. AMD is coming out this a winner only because they have been delivering the last several years.
It seems to me that advertisers only care if the money is good. For that reason, people who use ad-blockers are not the bad people, the advertisers are.
I use Firefox + NoScript and that blocks all of the malicious ads that redirect your browser. But some websites do not work on Firefox -- because testing on multiple products is so passe ... but that is a story for another day. So I use Brave on those websites. And a few try to guilt me into turning off my security software, what they call my ad-blocker. I make it a point to tell them that my security and privacy is more important than their profit. I also tell them that they are the evil ones for allowing malvertising to exist.
Ads are not a problem. It what they have become that is the problem. If ads went to the days when the internet went from luxury to necessity I wouldn't mind so much. If static, non-in-your-face, non-tracking, and safe ads worked once, they can work again.
The iron law of business acquisitions goes like this:
1 - Big business buys smaller business.
2 - Big business over time forces out all the people who created the smaller business.
3 - Smaller business product becomes worse because the people who cared about are gone and replaced by people who only care about profit.
4 - People stop using smaller business product.
Skype was once great; not anymore. LinkedIn was once great; not anymore.
Firefox also has their problems with privacy. Starting with version 128, Mozilla added an option "Allow websites to perform privacy-preserving ad measurement". Mozilla didn't openly tell you about this option, and it was turned on by default. From my point of view, "ad measurement" is just as wrong as third party cookie tracking and everything else Google does to track you.
The real question is: How does Microsoft know how many app minutes people are using to begin with? What I do on my computer is none of their business! How long I play a game is none of their business! Which program I install is none of their business! My personal information is none of their business!
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