I’ve been using Windows 10’s technical preview a bit today in a virtual machine.

It’s far, far better than Windows 8. Still too garish, and too flat though.

But an absolutely terrible feature in the OS is that like Unity and other crappy OSes and interfaces before it,  it sends all searches inside the OS to Microsoft with no way in the UI to turn it off.

So for instance if you search for “rectal thermometer,” Microsoft knows about it.

This is what happens when you click on the built-in Search feature:

First of all, why would I want to see come crap about Alyssa Milano when I click on “Search?”

Second, why would I want to send any search to Microsoft, ever, if done inside the OS itself?

Yeah, yeah, cloud everything. But I’m not interested in the cloud. I’m interested in having a computer that does only what I want it to do, not a machine that spews my data all over the internet for the NSA and everyone to see.

There is no obvious way to turn this “feature” off in the UI, though I am sure with a GPO or similar it’s achievable.

But there should be a way to kill it that doesn’t require someone with a career in IT to find.

Still evaluating the OS – probably something more comprehensive about it all later.

As I’ve said numerous times, I don’t understand people who get stuck on music they listened to when they were 12-20 – which seems to be the most common age range at which to become musically incapacitated.

Seems like 95%+ of people this happens to.

If you liked Madonna in 1988 and still like music from that time now, you by all rights should like Charli XCX now.

Fuck, “Boom Clap” sounds just like Madonna if her music had been slightly inflected by hip hop.

I liked Madonna in 1988, and I like Charli XCX now.

Not liking Lorde I can understand a little better. Her music is more sui generis and blends usually-disparate sounds and is much stranger (and better, IMO).

That said, I just don’t operate in the mode of many people where everything that happened before they turned 25 was great, and everything after that is irredeemably terrible.

“Boom Clap” is a damn fun fine song, if you like pop. And I do like pop and many other genres too.

As I said and as history shows, Supreme Court decisions that are presumed at the time to have “limited impact” do not.

A sampling of court actions since Hobby Lobby suggests that Ginsburg has the better of the argument. She was right: the decision is opening the door for the religiously observant to claim privileges that are not available to anyone else.

What was odd was seeing so many people who should’ve known better – people on the liberal side of the debate – breathe a sigh of relief and claim the decision would only apply to the limited case of Hobby Lobby.

Ah, the whimsical joy that must be present in being so vapidly ignorant of history.

Someone at Microsoft got a clue.

Windows 10 actually looks pretty good.

Metro banished, mostly. Configurable. Proper window drop shadows and other signs of actual design so everything on the desktop doesn’t doesn’t look like a Fisher Price toy box combined with a paint factory explosion. Windowed Metro apps. Better command line. And other needed features.

I believe I read somewhere there will be full binary compatibility from Windows Phone up to the desktop OS, which developers will love.

Since that idiot Steven Sinofsky left Microsoft (he was responsible for the Metro disaster and I believe the terrible Office bar) I figured things would get getter in the Windows world.

Now if we can just get the Metro crap out of the server interface, which is one of the most ridiculous design decisions I have ever seen.

It’s good to see. Google needs the competition. Amazing to think that Microsoft is benign now and Google is full-on fucking evil.

Strange how things work out.