I'm incredibly disappointed in DirecTV's On Demand service. After using Comcast's On Demand service DirecTV's version has been a bitter disappointment. The selection is very limited. Much of what is offered is still SD.The interface is designed to lure you into the paid content, and unless you subscribe to premium channels most of the free movies are unavailable. I'm not sure what the point of even having it is.
I'm guessing On Demand offerings are controlled to some degree by the content providers. The rest is likely controlled by the capacity of the service providers. These issues aside, most broadcast companies are starting to embrace the concept of video on demand service. DirecTV not offering much in the way of broadcast on demand is an issue. I don't know if they have been shut out or if they just haven't shown interest in providing the service.
At any rate if you have DirecTV and the appropriate hardware to go online with it there is no harm in looking, but you will be better off with other streaming services. DirecTV's On Demand is no match for services like Netflix or Hulu.
I have noticed a trend among gamers and people that work in computer security related fields. There are always a few of them in every encounter that insist that they don’t need antivirus protection. They say they are careful or that it degrades performance. Regardless of how careful a person is online antivirus protection is a must with Windows. People that subscribe to the “Being Careful is Enough” myth think that malware only comes from downloading suspicious files, running software that isn’t patched, visiting the wrong web-sites, or using Java or Flash in your web browser. Malware is clearly spread in all these ways, but it is also spread in ways that require little more than a network connection and the use of software over said network.
Security vulnerabilities are found in web browsers, plug-ins and pretty much any application used online all the time. New ones are frequently found faster than they can be patched. There are hackers that find these vulnerabilities and sell them to organized crime groups. Web servers are hacked and used to distribute malware through vulnerabilities. That means the simple act of visiting a website can infect your computer. This can happen even if you only visit trusted sites. Your trusted sites could easily become the next target for an attack. You wouldn't know until after the fact.
Being careful is still a must. An antivirus package wont catch everything but it is your last defense when simply being careful isn’t enough. Most antivirus scanners include other types of malware these days, be sure to use one that does. There are several free options that score well on independent laboratory testing.
As for gamers that argue that antivirus degrades system performance, this used to be true with certain products and older hardware but really isn't the case today. Computers are much faster and antivirus products are not bloated like they once were.
Edward Snowden says that it is our duty to use an adblocker. I think he is making a preposterous claim to be honest, but not because I disagree with the intended result. Adblockers can be used for security purposes, but are hardly necessary. Using an adblocker to block everything instead of removing flash or Java (not to be confused with JavaScript) is a lazy approach that isn't good for the economic health of content providers. A better approach is to disable java script and flash or maybe just flash because security benefits from disabling JavaScript are dubious at best. Much of the modern web wont display or work properly with JavaScript disabled so if you feel the need to disable it maybe you shouldn't be online to begin with. Flash is another matter. Kill it with fire. There are better standards replacing flash and unless you absolutely have to use it for work or educational purposes it should be avoided. The bottom line is that it is better to disable the services being exploited than to just block all advertising. Most legitimate web sites don’t use intrusive advertising such as animated ads with loud sounds and Pop-ups/unders. If you want to avoid malware and exploits stop using plugins, run a real-time antivirus and be more careful. Use of an adblocker is fine, just take some time to disable plugins like flash that pose security risks and whitelist sites that aren't intrusive with advertising. Content isn't free and if you wont pay for it by viewing a few non-intrusive ads it will disappear or get put behind a paywall.
After the November 12th update to Windows 10, code-named "Threshold 2" you may have noticed that the start menu now includes app advertisements.
The Start menu may show you occasional recommendations of apps you could install when you open it. This is yet another feature that clutters the new and improved Start Menu for Windows 10 users. I'm guessing Microsoft is trying to encourage Windows 10 users to install and use more apps from the Store.
While cross platform apps are kind of cool and getting the word out may be important, I'm not sure this is the way to go about things. Microsoft needs to do more to encourage developers to port their apps over from Android and iOS to for their mobile devices before they try pushing us to use apps from their store on the PC.
This isn't really that big of a deal, but I'm sure there will be bloggers that are either victims of FUD or just want to capitalize on it posting all kinds of nonsense on the subject. You know the type. The ones convinced that Microsoft is spying on our every move and ratting us out for our downloads.
Don't break out your foil hat. This isn't a conspiracy. You can easily disable these ads, if you don't appreciate them. Go to Settings > Personalization > Start. Just disable the “Occasionally show suggestions in Start” option.
I think most people are aware of this but I feel the need to get it out there because of the misinformation and bad comparisons I keep reading. You don't have an Android phone. Android is an operating system that can be installed on any device with compatible hardware, not a type of phone. I don't see people with iPhones calling their phones iOS phones. That would be kind of silly.
The reason I mention this is because there are so many phones that utilize Android that questions about hardware and comparisons to Apple products done in this matter are all useless and result in junk data. People try to categorize them all as Android phones vs iPhones. People that categorically compare their iPhone to every make and model of phone that uses Android are being ridiculous and don't even realize it.
It is the same as the people that said they had a "Microsoft Computer" in the 1980's and 1990's because they were using MS-DOS or Windows on it. They didn't have one, there was no such thing on the market at the time. Microsoft with very few exceptions was strictly a software company. It was difficult to answer questions because there were so many existing chip-sets and configurations on the market, but these folks couldn't even tell you the brand name. They just said "Microsoft". Flash forward to present day when Microsoft actually does sell hardware like the Surface and the Lumia I don't ever hear the annoying phrase "Microsoft Computer" anymore.
Most have probably already heard about this, but it is just to funny. I initially heard about this on the radio and it made me laugh. Yes, I still listen to radio at times.
A police officer stopped a Google self driving car Thursday November 12th in Mountain View, California. I can only imagine the look on the officer's face when there was no driver. The car did apparently have a passenger.
The car wasn't speeding. It wasn't weaving. It wasn't driving erratically. It was just driving too slowly. Slowly enough to back traffic up behind it. It traveling at 24 miles per hour in a 35 mph zone, according to the Mountain View Police Department. 22400(a) of the California Vehicle Code doesn't allow drivers to impede traffic in this manner, but there was no ticket issued as there was no driver. I guess a ticket could have been issued to Google but that seems silly. I wonder how Google would react to such a citation?
Google says that these vehicles are capped at a speed of 25 mph. It seems that this may have been the first incident involving one of these prototypes cars and a traffic stop. Will it be the last? At least it was on the amusing side rather than the unsafe side of things.
Usually a firmware upgrade shouldn't be done unless there is a hardware compatibility issue, performance problem, or exploit. There is always a risk with firmware upgrades that should be taken into consideration. An upgrade gone wrong may cause your computer to not start properly. If there is a power loss or other interruption your computer may not be able to boot afterwards. If you determine that you need a firmware upgrade there are steps to go through to make sure the upgrade is successful.
Check the current version of the BIOS against the version you are upgrading to. Also it may be a good idea to obtain a copy of your current version should you need to roll it back for any reason.
Use a reliable power source. Don't trust your battery with a laptop. Plug it in. Use a UPS with a desktop if possible.
Ensure that you have the appropriate boot media for your system if needed. In most cases on modern systems the process can be completed with a utility that runs in Windows but this may not be the case with older systems. You may need a bootable floppy disk or CD-ROM for the process on older systems.
For modern systems that use an executable within Windows it is a good idea to ensure everything is patched and up to date before you attempt the firmware upgrade. Also close any unnecessary programs that may be running before you start the process.
The utility for upgrading your BIOS will vary by manufacturer, but is usually a straight forward process as long as you take some simple precautions and read the documentation before attempting the upgrade.
Firmware makes use of nonvolatile memory and is present on a variety of devices. It isn't just limited to your computer's BIOS/CMOS. When you power off your device the information stored in the firmware is still there. In the case of the BIOS it instructs the computer what to do with all the devices when the system receives power. Your computer can't start without it so only upgrade your BIOS when necessary and be cautious.
Glary Utilities didn't seem bad at first but some of the functions don't really do anything accept make users that don't understand how certain things work feel better. For example, a registry cleaner will have 0% impact on system performance unless you are using something like Windows 95 and a very small amount of RAM. Registry size and duplicate or empty registry keys don't slow things down any more. Computers have gotten much faster since this was an issue back in the mid to late 90's. When I got a better look at Glary Utilities I decided to advise people to stay clear of it. All in one utility packages like this contain a lot of filler and techno babble with very little substance. A large majority of the functions either do nothing to help or even worse create other problems that may not be immediately evident. Glary Utilities contain these functions which have been shown time and time again to be useless or even harmful in many cases (some of this is included in the "1 click maintenance" option):
Registry Repair
Registry Cleaner (Potentially dangerous & does nothing to speed up your computer)
Registry Defrag (Useless for any computer less than 15 years old with Windows XP or higher)
Software Update (Third party software hosted at their own site, better, safer and more accurate to just download from actual publisher.)
Defrag (Already handled automatically and better by Windows. Usage may result in file system errors.)
Memory Optimizer (Snake oil. Third party utilities do not and will not optimize your ram. They actually serve to slow your computer down.)
If you gain any improvement it was from one of the functions duplicated by Glary Utilities that are already built into Windows. Any thing else helpful in Glary Utilities is handled better by various stand alone utilities.
What is with the ridiculous amount of people posting claims online that Windows 10 has a keylogger? Are people simultaneously really so very paranoid and ignorant?
Windows 10 doesn't have a keylogger. Certainly not in the malware sense. People are paranoid. They read something a blogger posted about the EULA online and draw wild conclusions about what Windows is doing. They read pseudo-news reports that touch on licensing terms but don't contain any examples, explanations, or evidence of these things happening at a software level. Claims about disabling software, disabling access to torrent sites, and keyloggers being built into Windows should be ignored and possibly ridiculed. I won't be breaking out a tin foil hat anytime soon. Microsoft isn't keeping a secret list of your downloads to sell to anti-piracy groups or law enforcement and they aren't recording your keystrokes and reading your e-mail.
A keylogger is software or even a hardware device that logs every key you press on your keyboard. It captures everything you type with the intent of finding personal messages, passwords, credit card numbers, and other data. I suppose if you are incredibly paranoid and use the strictest possible terms to define things you could call anything that captures characters a keylogger, but you wouldn't be right. By that definition your keyboard and your word processor would be keyloggers.
The "Inking & Typing" function is what many bloggers are in an uproar over. A keylogger records everything you type and the data is identifiable as yours. The correct term for what is erroneously being a called a keylogger in Windows 10 is "Text Analyses Engine" and it has a completely different function then a keylogger does This isn't a keylogger.
Microsoft isn't collecting personal or identifiable data via "Inking & Typing". Anonymous data is gathered for product improvement. This data is used to improve the handwriting visual translation engine, to improve the user dictionary, language library and spell check functions in Windows. The data is put through rigorous, multi-pass scrubs to ensure it does not collect sensitive or identifiable fields (e.g., no email addresses, passwords, alpha-numerical data, etc.) according to Microsoft. They also say that the data is broken into very small bits and stripped of sequence data so it cannot be put back together or identified. Data samplings collected are limited; Microsoft isn't capturing all your keystrokes, nor are they reading your email or collecting banking info.
Don't succumb to FUD. If you are worried change your privacy settings. It is easy enough to do.
A user at a forum I help moderate frustrated me today with a bit of ignorance. This person made the claim that most of the security features that we try so hard to put in place are useless in regards to computers and the internet. This person further claimed that security such as antivirus & firewalls only give the illusion of security, that they don't actually do anything. The claims were based on watching one episode of "Adam Ruins Everything". This was the only source cited for the argument.
This is of course an extreme over simplification of things on the part of the poster. A well secured, properly configured, and well monitored computer system does have a a measure of real security. It isn't just an illusion. It isn't an easy or simple thing to break into most systems. It takes a measure of knowledge and skill that the general public usually does not possess.
"Adam Ruins Everything" is hosted by a comedian and is slightly educational but mostly sketch comedy. Getting internet security or network administration information from it is almost as silly as all those people that got their news from "The Daily Show" with John Stuart. It isn't very accurate in many cases and is more about opinion and laughs than reality. The angle they put on everything is designed to get ratings from a specific demographic more than it is to disseminate any real facts.
The episode the poster was referring to was "Adam Ruins Security" and it is the second of 7 episodes thus far. It isn't internet security specific or even on topic for this thread the poster was commenting in at all. The episode was clearly just a ratings grab and not a useful commentary or documentary of security. At best it is highly editorial work that doesn't give a complete picture on the arguments presented. The increasing trend to treat editorials, comedy shows, reality shows, or any combination of the three as news or documentary sources is alarming.
Penn & Teller had a show a ways back titled "Penn & Teller: Bullshit!" that was clearly motivated by their own political views that many people either took to be factual or confused with legitimate documentary programming. "Adam Ruins Everything" isn't quite as bad but it's close.
There are more reasons to uninstall flash than to keep it, but I'm not going to cover those at this time. Uninstalling Flash completely does more to help kill the sickly standard and usher in better choices from content providers, but some people may not be ready to remove it completely just yet. For them I suggest simply disabling it in their web browser of choice. This will give a feel for which sites which sites still use flash and for whether or not it is actually needed. It will gives a way to go back easily should the need arise.
Disable Flash in Chrome:
Type chrome:plugins in the address bar to open the Plug-ins page.
On the Plug-ins page that appears, find the “Flash” listing.
To disable Adobe Flash Player completely, click the Disable link under its name.
If you have two listings you have both the Adobe Flash Player plugin installed separately and the one shipped with chrome. Disable them both.
Disable Flash in Firefox:
Go to the menu button in the upper right-hand corner.
In the Add-ons Manager tab, select Plugins.
Go to Shockwave Flash and select Never Activate
Disable Flash in IE:
Select the gear button in the upper right-hand corner.
You can roll back a driver via windows update and then block it from being installed. Here are the steps I used to remove an offending webcam driver from Windows Update.
Press Windows Key + X and select Device Manager.
Right click device that uses the driver you want to uninstall and select Uninstall.
Check the “Delete the driver software for this device” option and click OK.
Windows will uninstall the device and delete the driver software downloaded from Windows Update.
You can install fresh drivers software afterwards
There is a “Never install driver software from Windows Update” option Windows 10. It seems to be hidden in the old Control Panel, but there is a shorter way to get to it and I don't recall at the moment.
This may or may not work. If Windows is replacing manufacturer drivers with its own you might give this a try. There is a tool that can be used if this doesn't help.
Open the Control Panel (not the new settings menu) by right-clicking the Start button and selecting Control Panel.
Go to System and Security > System > Advanced system settings.
Select the Hardware tab
Select Device Installation Settings
Select the “No, let me choose what to do" option.
Select “Never install driver software from Windows Update.”
Microsoft was and may still be providing a downloadable tool to that can block or hide updates. It is meant for troubleshooting or handling bugs really. It was called “Show or hide updates” troubleshooter for Windows 10.
It will searches for available updates and allows the user to “hide” them and prevent Windows Update from automatically installing them. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3073930?utm_source=twitter is where it can be found.
Please don't use registry cleaners or registry cleaning functions in other utilities! Extra registry entries do not slow your computer down! There is no need to shrink your registry! There are hundreds of thousands of entries in your registry. Windows isn't slowed down or even affected by registry keys left over by uninstalled programs. Individual registry entries are small. You could remove several thousand entries and not affect the size of it or how long it takes windows to access information in it. Back in the days of Windows 95, tiny amounts of memory, and slower hard drives, a smaller registry could have made a fractional difference in performance. That isn't the case today. There simply are not any legitimate benchmarks showing a performance boost from cleaning the registry on modern machines. This is a left over practice from older technology. It is another one of those PC performance myths that just wont seem to die.
If you are using computer that is 10 or even 15 years old and you have an original Windows installation that has had several thousand of programs installed and uninstalled over the last 10 or 15 years you might benefit from a smaller registry size. This computer would also need to have a fairly small amount of RAM for it to matter.
Removing or changing an incorrect registry value is certainly something that should be done if the key value is causing problems installing or running something. I have never relied on a registry cleaner to do this this however. I don't like using a shotgun approach on a problem if a precision instrument is available. If I knew enough to diagnose it as a registry issue I usually knew how find and correct it manually. For example, I have had to make registry changes to get software to run in wine and I have also had to make registry changes in the manual removal of certain types of malware. As a general tip for speeding a computer up however registry cleaning programs are useless.
BY JOHN BEAULIEU - ORIGINALLY SUBMITTED TO SETUIX.COM
What is ReactOS you ask? The people behind ReactOS present it as an open-source operating system that aims to be binary-compatible with computer software and drivers made for Microsoft Windows. Development started in 1998, but the software is still in an alpha state. Yes, you read that correctly. It has been developed almost 17 years and has not even made it to a beta state. In reality ReactOS is little more than a heavily promoted hobby.
ReactOS is mostly written in C, with some parts like explorer.exe written in C++. Thus far it only partially implements Windows API functions. Some of this is provided by parts from the WINE project that provides a method for running Windows applications on a Linux environment and the rest is implemented by the work of ReactOS developers. Progress has been very slow. Though the project is quite active it suffers from a lack of developers with the time and skills needed to produce a beta release.
It should be noted that ReactOS itself was spawned from a failed 1996 project by the name of FreeWin95. FreeWin95, as the name indicates, was a project to create a free replacement for Microsoft Windows 95. FreeWin95 had not released anything by 1997. ReactOS was started in 1998 as an attempt to revive the project but focus instead on a free implementation of Windows NT instead of Windows 95. Windows versions like Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Server are all built on the Windows NT architecture.
The people responsible for the ReactOS project seem to be more interested in attention wherever they can get it than building any real partnerships to help them develop a stable release. Publicized and or promoted demonstrations of the operating system have been given to Russian politicians. In 2012 Vladimir Putin was also given a demonstration. Dmitry Medvedev given a demonstration during a visit to a high school 2011. Viktor Alksnis met with project coordinator and was given a demonstration of the project 2007. There is a ReactOS YouTube channel with mostly testing videos and a couple debugging videos. ReactOS has a slick and maintained web-site, it’s own foundation and runs frequent fundraisers. All this work yet when it comes down to getting a beta release very little is happening. The people leading the project point to all the daily incremental activity in development that is not producing quantitative results as proof of the projects vitality and relevance.
In January 2006 there was bit of controversy started. A claim was made that ReactOS contained code from Microsoft Windows. The developers responsible for maintaining the ReactOS code repository disabled access pending an internal audit. The relationship between ReactOS and Wine became strained. Wine barred several developers from providing contributions to their project presumably to avoid the stigma of the controversy and to keep Wine from getting sucked into a mess. There is still some low level cooperation for bug fixes between the projects but that is about it.
ReactOS sought to clarify what they defined as clean-room reverse engineering. They claimed to be using a strict definition under US Law. They conducted an internal source audit. Access to the code repository was restored shortly after. They never made any details public and there was never any actual proof that the code in question was not stolen. It seems fishy to me that all they did was an internal audit without presenting any tangible evidence afterward. I have to seriously wonder about the potential of a project that remains in alpha even after reverse engineering the software they aim to replace or compete with.
ReactOS is going nowhere fast. It was started as a project in 1998 and has had 27 releases since 2004. All of them alpha releases and in micro-version increments. The current release is is 0.3.17 and it is not suitable for any real use. At best it is toy for playing around with in a virtual machine. It can be used for testing purposes but does not have any real value for anyone other than developers.
They cite issues of being a volunteer project and having members with other things in life to focus on. That is all fine and well but I can think of several other volunteer supported projects that at least have usable products available for download. Maybe they should spend less time on PR shots with Russian politicians and failed fundraisers. ReactOS is maintained by small groups of developers working in their spare time. They don’t have the financial support or enough substantial development to be taken seriously. The ReactOS Project needs to quit resting on their potential and actually do something because they are turning into the longest running joke in the history of operating system development.
While I have a strongly negative opinion of the project and the direction it is heading I would absolutely love to see ReactOS become a legitimate viable alternative to Microsoft Windows. The premise has so much potential, but it is being wasted. They need corporate sponsors and partners. I hope at some point they have some strong corporate partnerships and the funding to bring in some full time developers with the right skill-sets. Unless these things happen I do not see ReactOS ever amounting to more than a well publicized hobby.
You can read more about ReactOS at their web-site:
You can also get involved with the project there. If you are an idealistic developer with a lot of time to devote they could certainly use the help. If you have money to invest tech projects they could certainly use a financial partner devoted to getting a working stable release finished.
It seems that Blizzard does not mind leveling shortcuts or gold sales as long as they are the ones getting paid for it. For $60 you can boost a new or existing character on World of Warcraft to 90 with decent gear, but if Blizzard suspects you of bottling or using AFK means to effectively do the same thing (level without actually playing to get there) they will give you an account suspension in a heart beat.
Blizzard introduced tokens that provide a method of buying and selling gold in game through them for World of Warcraft recently. The WoW Token gives players with extra gold the ability to use it to cover their subscription cost, and gives players who want to purchase gold a way to do it through Blizzard. Blizzard strongly opposes 3rd party gold sellers and takes actions against both sellers and buyers.
In may Blizzard banned 100,000 accounts for using bots and other 3rd party exploits for a 6 month time period.. Presumably a good portion of the people banned could have been involved in 3rd party gold farming and sales. Many of the banned players were using automation to gain levels and better gear.
After years of trying to prevent gold farming and sales it looks like they have decided they would rather profit from it and remove some competition. Blizzard now provides the means to effectively purchase a higher level character with better gear and a somewhat obtuse method of buying and selling gold through them.
Now I realize that there are some differences in how all of this affects the game economy and that there are reasons that using a third party can have a larger impact on inflation in the game economy. That is why the effective use of in game gold sinks is required. Gold sinks are in game items or services sold by a vendor or NPC. The gold spent effectively disappears from the game economy rather than going to another player.
I also understand that there are many other unscrupulous people that are involved in stealing account information as a means to liquidate characters and sell their gold and items. Not all 3rd party gold sellers are involved in this practice. Every industry has scam artists.
World of Warcraft is an aging game that has suffered some decline in subscriptions. I think the fact that they are trying to find ways to provide services that they have tried to prevent others from providing has more to do with making money than improving the player experience for those that want shortcuts or providing account security. They can’t effectively stop botting or 3rd party sales for virtual goods and services and they can’t sell gold at the low rates available elsewhere. It is very clear to me that this is all just a hypocritical attempt at making some money under the guise of being safe secure and official.
