Language Selection

English French German Italian Portuguese Spanish

Microsoft: The end of 'my' is nigh

Submitted by srlinuxx on Monday 30th of May 2005 06:04:39 PM Filed under
Microsoft

Those folders on your Windows desktop will still be yours -- but in the future you'll need to figure that out on your own.

Ending a longstanding tradition, Microsoft Corp. plans to stop using the word "my" as the default prefix for such folders as "My Documents," "My Music," "My Pictures" and others along those lines. Starting in the next Windows version, due out next year, folders will be known simply as "Documents," "Music," and so on.

With any other product, such a minor change probably wouldn't even be noticed. But the Microsoft operating system runs on more than 90 percent of the world's personal computers, and its persistent use of the word has been one of its most conspicuous characteristics -- helping to fuel widespread use of the "my" prefix in the technology industry.

Granted, computer users might not celebrate the change as much as they did the retirement of Microsoft's unpopular "Clippy" animated assistant. But some experts in the language of technology clearly won't be sorry to see "my" disappear from the next Windows version.

The practice was an artificial attempt to create a personal connection between people and their computers -- "to capture the loyalty of an egocentric population," said Naomi Baron, linguistics professor at American University in Washington, D.C.

"I don't know if we ever, as users, reacted the way that Microsoft hoped we would," Baron said.
"Some people might have, but I think in essence it was just extraneous language," she said.

The technique seems especially outdated now that computers and technology have become such a normal part of everyday life, she said.

Full Article.

»

analogous

Submitted by srlinuxx on Monday 30th of May 2005 06:36:07 PM.

I think that little jester is more than a coincidence. More than the old "my" method being childish as stated, I think it probably reflects M$ growing attitude that the whole computer/internet shabang belongs to them - including /your/ computer. It's isn't "my"ne anymore. With each M$ release, windows users lose more and more freedom, more and more ownership. Viva la linux!

----
You talk the talk, but do you waddle the waddle?

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.

More in Tux Machines

Cinnamon 3.8 Desktop Environment Released with Python 3 Support, Improvements

Scheduled to ship with the upcoming Linux Mint 19 "Tara" operating system series this summer, the Cinnamon 3.8 desktop environment is now available for download and it's a major release that brings numerous improvements, new features, and lots of Python 3 ports for a bunch of components. Among the components that got ported to Python 3 in the Cinnamon 3.8 release, we can mention cinnamon-settings, cinnamon-menu-editor, cinnamon-desktop-editor, cinnamon-settings-users, melange, background slideshow, the switch editor and screensaver lock dialogs, desktop file generation scripts, as well as all the utilities. Read more

Canonical Releases Kernel Security Updates for Ubuntu 17.10 and Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

For Ubuntu 17.10 (Artful Aardvark) users, today's security update addresses a bug (CVE-2018-8043) in Linux kernel's Broadcom UniMAC MDIO bus controller driver, which improperly validated device resources, allowing a local attacker to crash the vulnerable system by causing a denial of service (DoS attack). For Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) users, the security patch fixes a buffer overread vulnerability (CVE-2017-13305) in Linux kernel's keyring subsystem and an information disclosure vulnerability (CVE-2018-5750) in the SMBus driver for ACPI Embedded Controllers. Both issues could allow a local attacker to expose sensitive information. Read more

Security: Updates, Reproducible Builds, Match.com and More

  • Security updates for Tuesday
  • Reproducible Builds: Weekly report #156
  • A Match.com glitch reactivated a bunch of old profiles, raising concerns about user data

    A Match Group spokesperson confirmed that a “limited number” of old accounts had been accidentally reactivated recently and that any account affected received a password reset. Match.com’s current privacy statement, which was last updated in 2016, says that the company can “retain certain information associated with your account” even after you close it. But that Match Group spokesperson also told The Verge that the company plans to roll out a new privacy policy “in the next month or so,” in order to comply with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR); under the new policy, all those years-old accounts will be deleted. The Verge has requested clarification on which accounts will qualify for deletion, and what “deletion” will specifically entail, but has not received a response as of press time.

  • New hacks siphon private cryptocurrency keys from airgapped wallets

    Like most of the other attacks developed by Ben-Gurion University professor Mordechai Guri and his colleagues, the currency wallet exploits start with the already significant assumption that a device has already been thoroughly compromised by malware. Still, the research is significant because it shows that even when devices are airgapped—meaning they aren't connected to any other devices to prevent the leaking of highly sensitive data—attackers may still successfully exfiltrate the information. Past papers have defeated airgaps using a wide array of techniques, including electromagnetic emissions from USB devices, radio signals from a computer's video card, infrared capabilities in surveillance cameras, and sounds produced by hard drives.

  • New hacker group targets US health-care industry, researchers say

    The group, which Symantec has named “Orangeworm,” has been installing backdoors in large international corporations based in the U.S., Europe and Asia that operate in the health-care sector.

    Among its victims are health-care providers and pharmaceutical companies, as well as IT companies and equipment manufacturers that work for health organizations.

today's howtos

More on Tux Machines: About ● Gallery ● Forum ● Blogs ● Search ● News ● RSS Feed

Part of Bytes Media ● Sister sites below.

TechBytes Techrights button

Powered by Drupal, an open source content management system

Content available under CC-BY-SA CC

© by original authors

Powered by CentOS 6.5 (GNU/Linux), Varnish, and Drupal 6