Windows 8 Introduces a New Cross-App Data-Sharing System 213
There's been a lot of attention to the way Windows 8 looks; reader aabelro writes with an interesting look at one way it behaves. The article begins thus: "Microsoft has created a new mechanism for sharing information between applications in Windows 8 called Windows Share. Apps can share text, bitmaps, HTML, URI, files, and other type of data, and the usage scenarios are numerous. For example, the app receiving the information can post it to Tweeter or Facebook[, making] it easy to post information to a social network without actually visiting it." Here's a short (video) explanation at MSDN, too.
Re:Wrong again, Microsoft... (Score:2, Insightful)
When will MS work out that what we really want is a simple, stable platform, not more and more OS-integrated bells and whistles that, by the very nature of software itself, must introduce further bugs and resource consumption.
Not to mention all the wonderful opportunities this opens to script kiddies. Imagine having all your emails posted to Twitbook by the inevitable malware infection.
Re:hmm i wonder. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I'm sure the malware authors will love it! (Score:3, Insightful)
Every time I get close to the meaning of your post it slips away from me. Are you worried about some sort of privilege escalation attack carried out by a malicious program sharing things? A larger code base basically always exposes more attack surface, so I don't see why somebody would bring that up unless there was particularly good reason (which I don't see here). Sharing seems user-initiated in all cases, so such an attack would be awkward. Ah, perhaps shared information could be inspected by a malicious background program, sort of like a keylogger for the clipboard? That has nothing to do with admin privileges, though....
Maybe I'm looking too hard. Perhaps your post is just what it looks like: "[words that say Microsoft is evil and will give me a metaphoric high-5 with some social acceptance]". If not, what precisely did you mean?
already have this (Score:4, Insightful)
I've already got this in my CLI... it's called a pipe.
Re:Akonadi (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:When I see both 'new' and 'M$' in the same arti (Score:3, Insightful)
You just.. Please just stop using the $ in the Microsoft abbreviation.. I'm asking nicely. It makes it really hard to take your point seriously. I know it was all cool and shit a decade ago, but come on.
Thank you.
Re:On behalf of every trojan creator on the planet (Score:4, Insightful)
You do realize sharing the data this way requires explicit action from the user, right? He has to bring up the system menu and tap a button inconspicuously labeled "Share" on it, then select the target app.
It kinda helps to RTFA and watch the linked video, so you have some idea what it actually is before posting (this also applies to moderators, BTW). Hint: it's exactly what we've had for 3 years now on Android, only there it's called "intents".
Indeed, the whole point of this feature is to otherwise sandbox the apps completely so that they don't get any access to user's file system outside of their sandbox by default, not even read access (they can get access to standard folders such as "Documents" and "Pictures", but this requires an explicit confirmation from the user). Without such sandboxing, it's very typical for desktop apps to all run under the same account (on all platforms), and therefore their config files - with passwords, history, and other interesting stuff in them - are completely exposed. With a sandbox, like in Win8 (or WP7, or iOS, or - partially, if you forget /sdcard - Android), you need some way for apps to communicate for those scenarios where a task involves passing data from one to each other - and this thing is what enables it while, again, requiring explicit user interaction for every such communication.
Re:Android Intents (Score:4, Insightful)
It sounds like OLE reinvented for the web.