Xbox One in China in September 23rd

It may be a shame that the Xbox One is more expensive than the Playstation 4 unless it comes bundled without its own Kinect that the console can sell better to catch up with its rival one day. The cost of $600 is already a concern for the Chinese markets and especially on how genuine this system is as the market in China is full of cheap but inferior-ass products. Not to mention that there are so much rip-offs product everywhere in China that will SURELY PISS YOU OFF. However, another obstacle for Microsoft is that some of the offices in various Chinese countries were already seized by the Chinese authorities for whatever unknown reasons. It may probably affect the plans to release the new technologies Microsoft has done and especially that the Xbox One was already released a year ago in western countries. That included Windows 8.1 which was also released a year ago.
However, the truth is that some national proposal is required if Microsoft wants to sell this console in China by forming the joint-venture as there are also local companies in China as well.

Quad-Core 3G Windows 8.1 Tablet for $99

This was made with the collaboation with Microsoft and Intel and that will mean that it is using the Intel CPU inside this tablet and it was shown at Computex. Of course, they may be more of these ultra-low cost tablets done by the two companies as well. One of the companies, Kingsing from China is launching their own Windows 8.1 tablet for $99 with Quad-Core CPU and 3G. But unfortunately, 1GB of RAM is going to be a problem for this thing like we may recommended having 2GB of RAM no matter how simple looking the interface can be. The animations are everywhere and with Windows 8, there are newer features than the ones in Windows 7 but we can be sure that only one or two Modern apps on screen take up memory, not the others.

Robert Scoble - Give up Windows Phone in favor of Android?

Nowadays, it seems that only Onedrive and Outlook are getting better for sure but it is not the same for Windows Phone and Android nowadays. For Windows Phone, there isn't so much apps released for it. Perhaps, there may be more interesting apps you can get on IOS and Android but it seems that Windows Phone has already done better with the amount of sufficient modern features and technologies that can be comparable to its rivals. But Microsoft Android phones? Well that's kind of stupid unless Windows Phone is lagging way too behind. It might have put Blackberry to shame no matter how good looking Blackberry is but as the performance is kind of better for Windows Phone, it is already what Blackberry is lagging behind with the unusual interactivity. Windows Mobile 6.5 back then was having some backported modern interface to keep itself on par with IOS and Android with multi-touch points, modern touch capable with the modified interface. Those were all before Windows Phones popped up to become more on par and Blackberry must have planned too late or something.
Not to mention that even Nokia was planning Android devices in addition to Windows Phones but it may be rare to see a bunch of people using Nokia Android phones due to the recent Microsoft layoffs. Sure, Nokia was more like a third-party before being bought by Microsoft but having Microsoft Android devices is like an unusual idea to me.
Another thing is that the Google Glass Robert Scoble blogged about. For me, it is a serious security vulnerability when this thing is worn. People may wear it for security breach as if certain buildings disallow the use of this technology. People may wear it for piracy of the media which is a fucking bad thing to extend piracy even further, STOP THAT! Or people may wear it for other bad things in daily lives. The worst thing is that there may be real-life mimicing of Robocop the technology similar to Google Glass. I don't know what will they do with that since it has both good and bad sides.
Lastly, the Hackathon was already started by Microsoft with the main person responsible for that being the new CEO. If Microsoft can do better after the recent layoffs and with the new CEO, then there may be better chances to bring customers back. During the previous events Microsoft was involved in such as the WPC, it appeared that they planned well and right.

Foursquare with Cortana

Foursquare is some social application/service I had used to record down the places I visited although I don't record down immediately the moment I enter various places to be frank when doing the Check-In feature so expect the timing to be damn late but we should be able to admit or whatever we had done there. Now there is Foursquare mixed with Cortana but I don't know how will she help us out in certain things once we have visited various places. Will she describe the new places we visit for the first time as well as to tell us on what to do there?
Also, I don't know if there's a similar answer to this for IOS and Android but even then, I don't use the voice command thingy at all. Maybe I can straight away turn that feature off no matter what as I may be shy to use it.

Live Lock Screen app for Windows Phone 8.1

This may surely put the IOS to shame due to its lack of the live lock screen and wallpaper but this one's inaccurate in terms of performance as people know that there's already some lag in the beta version of the app. The cool thing about the Live Lock Screen app is that you get the custom layout and custom fonts instead of the standard Segoe UI font that is everywhere in today's Microsoft products. It may look comparable to the Android OS since the Windows Mobile 6 onwards might have the third-party interface and live wallpapers and stuffs. Windows Phone on the other hand doesn't have these and Samsung is already leading like hell that puts HTC on life support or something.
I don't know what the app looks like in action since I don't have the Windows Phone but the minimum requirement is that you will need 1GB of RAM in order to work without lag. Until then, we don't know if there's some performance improvement in the final version of the app that will be coming out in Windows Phone 8.1.
Will that come out in the next Windows OS for tablets as well, unless some retarded desktop and laptop users may want this similarity badly for the next Windows OS for desktop and laptop besides the one for the tablets?

Microsoft's explanation regarding opposition of government's personal data request

Following the accusations of Microsoft about the company helping the various security agencies in certain actions, it seemed that Microsoft already turned on against them after some months to protect the customers' privacy. The company believed that 80%+ of customers believed that the proper search warrant is required in case some criminal has done something wrong for instance. Not to mention that the top lawyer of the company had done the interview about this with Wall Street Journal.
The interview video can be found at this site: http://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-explains-why-they-oppose-government-demands-for-personal-data and it looks like the company will continue to oppose the on-going personal data request. The next step will be to oppose the same thing coming from other countries.
But then, here's another recent problem, it appeared that the Russian government had passed some law that required the tech giants to store the data of Russian users to the Russian data centers or they might be banned. We already suspected that that motive is the same as the one the US government is doing such as the on-going cyber-spying on users that may affect the business trust.
And of course, is going to the cloud technology a freaking mistake or something? To me, it can't be some kind of a mistake. It's supposed to be part of the future of the technology. However, there may be problems with that. Firstly, there isn't some security for the cloud technology in the first place and Microsoft has to do something in encrypting it like they already did with Onedrive recently. You can also use Spideroak which also goes against the illegal data collection thingy. Secondly, anything you synchronize will be stored in the cloud storage and if you happen to remove your data by mistake, it will also be gone from the cloud storage, so you may need to perform the backup elsewhere in the safe location. Third, cloud virtualization may require tons of bandwidth like when you use the god-damn Windows Azure technology.
Nowadays, the company seems to be using the cloud technology ever since two years ago. You get the hybird, public and private cloud in which you can do the same thing in your home as well with the private-cloud powered NAS devices you can buy from the retail store.

OneDrive for Windows Phone

Windows Phone users, be glad that OneDrive is back, even more secure than better. Apparently, this is the last update for Windows Phone 7.5 while Windows Phone 8 and 8.1 are still on-going which still have some Windows 8 related backdoors that they still have to freaking fix them. I don't know if the next Windows OS will not have any single backdoors for better security and performance as this is something I may expect for future performance improvement. Until Windows 8 was released, I probably expected that all of the traces of Windows Vista technology should be changed completely for faster OS but another challange approached the hell out of Microsoft ever since last year as things were the complete disaster for Windows 8.
If there's Windows Phone 9 or something in the future that will be based on the next Windows OS, provided that there are no stupid backdoors everywhere, then, there will be a better person for IT security powered consumers to buy those phones with the secure Outlook and Onedrive apps.

Unified Technology Event for Enterprises

It appears that this year's TechEd will be the last according to Microsoft but this is not the end for that. It may seem that certain Microsoft services will be merged into one big event next year. They may have the plans to consolidate the Microsoft Management Summit and separate various conferences relating to various Microsoft business tools they're using into one single-super event. When they're planning this merging plan, it seems that more information will be revealed sometime next year in May when the big event will start. Things will be expected in September next year and that's going to take a long time from now.
But note that this is not meant to replace WPC or even BUILD events as those two events will also be planned as well. You can guess the next Windows OS will be part of those events so of course, you're going to attend them. But, do you want to see something unpromising from that OS in the event? Will you get disappointed from what you see in the future? Who knows? After some layoffs in which I already know the god-damn news tons of times from multiple websites including Neowin, we don't know if Microsoft is going to do anything better. For future events, they've better reveal right things for the products they're developing and promoting.

Russian government dumps Microsoft software in favor of homegrown software

OK, I might have done some Linux OS related security research before getting prepared in blogging here. The first thing is that any Linux OS with the SELinux is kind of no longer secure as that security technology was made in the US after all. You can try to use those Linux OSes for the sake of security but even then, after sometime, you will still be spied once the spies have already found out what Linux OS you're using. Tails OS was already affected by that due to the SELinux thingy and especially for various Firefox variants including the controversial derivative, Tor, which has been used by both good people and cyber-criminals. The protection of privacy from Microsoft is at the beginning with Outlook and Onedrive but the other stupid bills are attempting to render the protection plans useless. Will that affect the globe or US only? Yes, it is almost GLOBALLY! Even foreign leaders and brands are the similar victims that they demand the explanations from the spies but of course, there will be lies to avoid the jail sentence or something.
What the Russian government is planning to do is to ditch the US-made technology in favor of the locally made one but Microsoft software is not the only one being ditched as other brands of software will be ditched as well. Thankfully, the bill they're planning doesn't outright ban the import products but we're not sure if there are actually Russian-made products by then.
So, nowadays, Microsoft may seem to be doing better in terms of security but we're not sure if they're going to do things right with the next Windows OS or perhaps fix the true purpose of Xbox One. Also, the spying agencies in the UK and US are getting much worse and certain ISPs in the US are completely ass in everything besides being against the internet freedom we already know of.

Windows Threshold Update

OK, sure are many changes being explained at WPC as we know more information from the Neowin website regarding Windows Threshold.
The first thing is that the Start Screen will be completely turned off for desktop users and what we saw was the Start Menu combined with the Start Screen elements on the right side. For tablet users, it will be using modern UI instead by default but we're not sure if the desktop mode will be completely removed as it is still TOUCH-UNFRIENDLY.
OK, that was before the WPC took place but according to Neowin, there are more stuffs Microsoft is planning to do such as the chage of Taskbar, the implementation of Cortana, etc. Jeez, we don't want to see a modernized looking AI like she looks like a freaking 32X Assistant or something where the body is completely textureless with no shading whatsoever. Like what is that, a cell-shaded AI with no shades whatsoever? Not to mention that Cortana is probably from the Sci-Fi FPS Halo series in which things are looking futuristic and it may be a problem for Microsoft as futuristic things surely take up tons of skills, resources and creativity.
Another thing Microsoft should fix is that for desktop users, there should be only desktop apps as modern apps are for tablet users as suited and mixing two types is like a no-no if the company wants the OS to be much better than the original Windows 8.
Well, after the WPC event, it seems that things are expected to change.

More privacy commitment from Microsoft

As presented at Windows Partner Conference which is the event Microsoft was involved, they were aiming for better privacy measures and protection for their customers from normal bad guys to even the government and security agencies in which those agencies everyone knows of have been even worse and more evil and more corrupted by now. So, the real liars about the on-going illegal surveillance thing is likely to be those evil agencies we know of and they already have a bunch of their supporters who are trying to make and revive a bunch of stupid laws to extend the spying power.
One of the security solutions for the next Windows for Microsoft is that they need to check to see if there are any backdoors in it including its features as calling wrong parts of the government for security checks in their products can result in more backdoors being injected. Maybe they should call the right governments and then try to remove the backdoors if detected. Another nice thing is that Microsoft will continue to challenge any more data disclosure requests coming from the US government in a brave way that those evils I just talked about above will not be happy about what Microsoft is planning to do like an IT hero.
More information we already blogged about included the stronger encryption of Microsoft services as well as Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit which may look like an in-house cyber-police station or something in fighting cybercrime all by themselves.
And after that important and interesting presentation, I'm sure that many customers and fans of Microsoft including the business partners will be really happy about that although a bunch of retards will troll on the protected services as of this time like 'they are for destructive bad guys' for instance. Maybe those retards should stop whinning like that and we're here to support internet freedom, not live in corrupted places. As if those idiots can make us like fucking scarred to do anything to those stuffs they think are illegal such as a 'friendly photography of a wonderful place' which has been photo-taken by many people whom those idiots take that place for a criminal place for instance, like those idiots want the recent photographers arrested or something. Perhaps, I might have seen such news where some photographer was a victim of this stupidity and that some stupid program should be stopped according to him.

Metal Slug Defense? (More like Metal Slug Tug of War)

Well, this one's more like a Tug of War kind of game instead of Tower Defense to me as you deploy your units to protect your deployment elevator acting as a base and to wipe out your opponent's base and forces. There may be Tower Defense elements such as to wait for unit production process to finish before you deploy another same unit as well as to wait for the amount of unit generation points to build up as needed for deployment. You can level up the AP buildup by tapping on the bottom-left but just like deploying units, you will need APs. Not to mention that your troops must be strong enough and your AP buildup speed must be fast in order to push through all the way to the enemy base. Once again, it's more like Tug of War with Metal Slug instead of Tower Defense because the real Tower Defense with Metal Slug should be top-down instead of 2D-side view as if you can place a bunch of turrets and solders around the area attacking waves of enemies.
As days go on, there are characters from KOF and other fighting games added to MSD although some characters don't seem to be using their weapons at all but the moves from those games are cool looking in MSD. Not to mention that there are additional missions and stages which are more complicated than the main stages as stated by the ultra high difficulty level.
Next is the couple of downfalls:

• The gameplay concept: The title is misleading as if the game's more like the Tug of War with Metal Slug instead.
• Weird cloning: While there can be multiple normal solders, having clones of main characters may seem to be kind of weird.
• POW Resucing: No official instructions on how to rescue them.
• In-App Purchases: You're gonna need those medals to buy the stronger units but the downside is that they require that your AP buildup to be extremely fast and they take up lots of APs to deploy.

Rhythm of Fighters

Sure are tons of rhythm games coming in this year and the ones we already anticipated are the Bemani series of games coming in this year including the new BeatStream which I might have ranted about it for being more unoriginal than BeatCraft Cyclon, Project Diva F 2nd as well as IA Colorful or something for PS Vita. A stranger game was probably Sailor Zombie AKB48 arcade game which has some rhythm elements in it and people don't seem to accept the concepts like that. Of course, speaking of something unacceptable, it seems that SNK Playmore is coming up with a bunch of spinoffs almost nobody cares for. This year, we get Rhythm of Fighters and Metal Slug Defense.
ROF is probably KOF with rhythm game and it looks like it's fighting + rhythm combined just like the other games that make use of this combination. However, I don't know how those other games work but this one doesn't seem to mix together. I mean you're not hitting your opponent to every beat or perhaps blocking your opponent's attack to the beat. Instead, the attack takes place after a set of notes but having special and desperation moves included as part of the genre combination may seem to be a problem as those moves take up tons of seconds and especially when you do multi-combo normal moves which cause the same problems as well and there's no way to cancel any of these moves should you make a mistake.
My thoughts of improvements may include:

• One Normal Note: A normal attack via one punch or one kick per note.
• One Normal Hold Note: A continuous normal attack. The attack is abrupted should you let go of the normal hold note.
• One Special Note: A special attack per special note. (Note: This requires some rests after this note.)
• Flick Note: Kind of useless to me as if it is complicated to have a normal attack and the corresponding direction at the same time. (Not an improvement)
• Desperation Move: Serious problem in combining these two genres as the desperation moves take up few to several seconds. (Not an improvement)

Also, the graphics are old-school for some reason as we understand that not all characters are playable in KOF XIII but there are some songs and backgrounds taken from KOF XIII and the Atomiswave era KOF games. Not to mention that there will be additional songs coming in.
Gameplay concept is by far the most difficult thing and especially for attempts to combine two genres at the same time which may pose the serious problem. Other problems include the use of old-school graphics instead of remaking them into the style of KOF XIII as well as the songs from various SNK Playmore Pachinko games which may seem like a strange move for me.
Rhythm of Fighters may seem to be okay overall and especially for Metal Slug Defense which is also okay to me as well. Perhaps, SNK Playmore should try to focus on the sequels to the main series instead of the strange-ass spin-offs. KOF Sky Stage was already mediocre enough to me due to completely unacceptable gameplay concept that makes ROF kind of decent.

Left 4 Dead Survivor for arcades

Left 4 Dead 2 has been popular and on-going with tons of campaigns and DLC campaigns for unlimited fun to play on both Steam and Xbox 360 but it seems that Taito has decided to go further with the arcade version of it with permissions from Valve. Perhaps, the amount of campaigns should fit in the modern arcade games that use of the service with arcade game accounts stored on the servers where you can gain access to newer content as well as to save progress but what's up with the characters in the arcade version? Not to mention that the voice acting combined with the different characters may fit in the Japanese arcades as if there won't be Asia version of those Nesica X Live games anytime soon. But the arcade version? Is that even necessary? How can an FPS game fit into the arcades like that? There was Half-Life 2 arcade version back then with HD widescreen graphics but L4D Survivor may not seem to be using up so much power of Taito Type X3 due to the fact that the graphics may seem to be same under 7th Generation console level in which the game could have been on Taito Type X2 instead. Other games that don't use Type X3's full power may include USF IV to be honest but the thing is, there won't be anymore Type X2 games that the Nesica X Live has to move on to its successor. The main reason is that Windows XP Embedded is likely to expire two years later and the arcades as we know them using PC-based hardware are likely to change as well. Maybe the older games using Windows XP Embedded will either be succeeded or abandoned.
You know, the arcade version is going to be targeted towards those who haven't played the game before on Steam or Xbox 360 but the costs for playing through every missions will be overall much larger than the consumer version price due to so much predicted hogging coming from the amount of campaigns and fun available. But better still, you may as well wait for the upcoming sequel to Half-Life 2 which will be coming in the future. Hopefully, the sequel will look next-gen-ish because the sequel coming out like that at the present isn't going to look evolved anyway.

Digital Expo Day 2 - Mi TV Box obtained!

The setup seemed to be easy for me after realizing that one of the HDMI ports of the living room TV refuses to work. I don't know why but I don't think anyone had plugged in some HDMI cable to HDMI 1 port because nobody uses that until I tried to plug in the cable that came with TV Box into that port and then the device refused to display something on the screen. The remote control surely works by default as indicated by the front light but even then, nothing is shown on the screen. Eventually, I plugged in the HDMI 2 cable into the back of the TV box and it finally showed me something on the screen. Turns out something was wrong with the HDMI 1 port or something. Maybe someone tempered with the ports of the TV before it was purchased back then so there goes the HDMI 1 port. The HDMI cable that came with the TV box I bought was supposed to work as I saw it being plugged in but the one running the booth is trying to find the router that will enable the wireless connection to that as a test so that things can be proven that the device works before I had confirmed the purchase but things were so noisy that I eventually asked for setting up at home instead.
Unfortunately, even when I bought the superior one which cost me $149, certain apps are missing compared to what was shown at Digital Expo. Where's the Mac Dock thingy and where are certain apps like Cloud TV? And better yet, why is this missing the Google Play store so that we can try out even more apps for watching whatever we want like we already saw at Digital Expo such as the Cloud TV, Hulu, Netflix, etc. Since this device is running the custom Android OS, it may be the case on why certain common services are missing.
So, if you're trying to get a phone that runs Cyangenmod or perhaps install Cyangenmod on your Android device, you have to know which common apps are present or not. By default, when installing Cyangenmod on your Android device, you should also include those Google apps in the device as well.

Digital Expo Day 1

Sure are loads of Smart TVs and Android TVs including the new brands I have never seen before. Companies such as Ainol, Xiaomi, and various Android TVs like the E-Box, Xiaomi TV Boxes and other stuffs which were being shown at the Singapore Expo, demonstrating on various apps where you can watch whatever you want. Not to mention that certain remote controls have the abilities to do mouse nagivation in the way of the Wii Remote but you do not want to play Android games with that, right? One of the Android TVs that is completely different is the one from Xiaomi. The interface is different and you don't see the common buttons on the bottom of the screen such as the back button, the home button and the button that opens up the list of apps you have open. Not to mention that the settings window is completely different.
One cool thing about the Android TVs or Android Mini-PCs is that you can use Miracast where you can connect whatever Android or IOS device wirelessly to it as long as your device supports it. Unfortunately for me, my IOS and Android devices are like too old to support that and it was kind of regretful that I was not able to fulfill my curiosity and future plans with the use of Miracast. The problem is that the OS on my devices is quite old enough that I am not able to get the clean gameplay video capture of various Android and IOS games I have played. Sure, you can use Miracast on any device but depending on the specs, the performance will be good or perhaps unstable.
Plus, you can use the USB storage devices and USB mouse and keyboard on those Android smart TVs. The specs we already saw were good with quad-core CPU and 2GB of RAM but they are not on par with the superior smartphone specs we see today.

More robust encryption support for Onedrive and Outlook

OK, a brave move from Microsoft and this may look like it is their first step. The next step will be to encrypt the other services like the Xbox Live, Windows Azure, Office 365 and even the Windows OSes. I don't know if the upcoming Windows 9 or perhaps the next update to Windows 8.1 will include the improved encryption for the OS as well as the encryption support for the Bitlocker which is already affected by the backdoor of the on-going illegal cyber-surveillance. The remaining problem is the CPU itself as some Intel technology that powers those CPUs is already affected by that similar backdoor as well even if Microsoft is already doing their best to respect their customers by then.
It surely took Microsoft before the year end to encrypt their services but then, this is just at the beginning. Try not to be cocky about this because we don't know if some dumbass will come crying to Microsoft for the data request again and especially that the other dumbasses will try to come up with a stupid law that will extend the power of the on-going spying which may challenge the hell out of Microsoft and other tech companies.
Bravos to Microsoft and if they can keep on protecting and respecting their customers' privacy this way by encrypting other services besides Onedrive and Outlook, then it may be a better reason to continue using them again. Not to mention that even Internet Explorer and Windows OSes should have the similar security as well.
The fight for internet freedom and privacy protection never ends. We will keep on blogging about this in addition to the upcoming products. That should keep this blog as active as ever unless some corrupted dumbass scares the hell out of us like blogging about something that goes against the internet freedom will land us in trouble.

Blackphone is being shipped to buyers

It won't be long before this smartphone focused on privacy protection is being released. However, there may be some initial flaws upon seeing the specs of this device.
The first thing is that there may be front and back cameras in which I don't know if they will be intercepted by the cyber-spies even with the amount of software security inside. Maybe, there should be a cameraless version of Blackphone that can be useful for extra military security. Sure, maybe they should make that version besides shipping the original.
Another downside is how highly expensive this phone is, $629 for this giant piece of security is like holding people back from buying it and besides, the apps on this device may seem to be quite different than the popular ones. Some of the handy ones like Disconnect, secure alternative search engines like DuckDuckGo and others, etc., their camera app, etc. but I don't know if those apps will require invitation to get your friends to use the same apps as well for security. No, we don't want that. We want to use those alternative apps while being able to contact our friends through them without any stupid invitation or other notification telling me to get them to use the same apps as well. It's unnecessary for them to know those apps. Why don't we import Facebook, Twitter, Whatapp and local friends into those secure apps that easily? Why is this feature kind of difficult to implement by then? Also, can't you even know that not all people use the secure-ass alternatives like that? If something really goes wrong with the company like they're going to betray us with this privacy violation thingy through their services and apps, why don't we ditch it and use the popular and more secure alternatives?
Other than these advantages, it shouldn't be a problem using this smartphone if you're interested in buying it.