Windows 8 prospects

Gotta keep that cash cow rolling! All hail the Windows phone.

128-bit OS? Who are they kidding? What's it going to run on, PS3s using segment:offset addressing like the 8086?

Quoting:- Cloud storage: This is pretty much guaranteed. Already many OS makers are shifting document storage online and by 2012 storing data locally will be considered a legacy process.

Oh, yes, yes. Everyone's moving to "cloud" storage. What a crock.

Of course everyone will be using cloud storage. That's why homes have no locks on doors and window shades are only used to keep out sun glare. Plus, it's ever so preferable to lease storage from M$ or Apple with their primary emphasis on altruism rather than profit. Why would anyone want to keep their own private data when you can pay an unconcerned 3rd party to do it for you? Plus we all know that there's no such thing as privacy.

Ugh, I think I used up my sarcasm quota for the day.

All essential services are networked-- water, electricity, phone; we do our banking and shopping online; streamlined cloud PCs and smartphones are the wave of the future. Oh sure, there will be holdouts out here in Grumpy Geek land, but most people will go for cheap and convenient. Except it's really not cheap because it means forking over monthly fees, but charging customers a little up front and a little every month is a proven winner.

Ben Franklin said that anyone who was willing to give up freedom for security deserves neither. The same can be said of privacy (or ownership) & convenience.

Microsoft needs to get back on the horse and not wait more than 3 years between major OS releases. Their inability to follow XP with anything at all until Vista and then finally release a "service pack" in the form of Win 7 both killed their bottom line as well as gave the enterprise more reasons to cling to what now is a 10-year-old OS.

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." Please, quote it correctly.

As for the cloud, feel free not to live on it, and feel free to lecture those who try to live on the cloud, when it decides to rain. I certainly do.

Cloud storage is nothing new at all, I'd say.

People have been posting personal pictures, vids and data to social network and video sites for years. E-mails have been saved by ISP's for years as well. GMail and MS Live Office (or how the thing is called this November, because it changes every quarter) already hold many data. Your house (and photos of your street?) is probably on Google maps. So people are already pretty used of other people storing their data.

Things have to go wrong badly before people start caring about their privacy I think. At least that's my own behaviour currently. Most people don't do the grandma-selftest before posting stuff to the internet, that is.