There, I said it again: Windows 8 sucks, but not for the obvious reasons you're probably already familiar with. As computers advance, they're prone to change. This has been a constant ever since I first laid eyes on a computer in the very early eighties. Some change is obviously good, like multitasking and memory protection. Other changes, like the Modern UI, not so much. And yet another category, like present-day app stores and DRM, are downright evil.

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As an example of projects I like to do in my free time, the website Secanje.nl just went live. A group of friends went out and researched the fate of a considerable number of Serbian soldiers who died in the aftermath of WWI in the early 20th century. A small number of monuments sprinkled across a handful of Dutch cemeteries commemorates their sacrifice. Starting today their memory has a place on the world wide web as well, which I'm proud to host.

Click here to visit the site

Let's get one obvious point out of the way before I even start this blog: when it comes to computers, I welcome change to the way I use my computers. I have for the past 32 years, so fear of change is not why my skepticism towards Windows 8 changed into outright loathing this afternoon. Here's why.

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Starting today, this website places cookies in your browser because I've started testing the Piwik analytics tool. The Piwik tool runs completely self-hosted from my own server, from within the Area536.com domain. The Piwik analytics tool tracks visitor behavior within www.area536.com and nowhere else, and only I as the administrator get to see the resulting data. If you don't like me setting cookies in your browser, you should get a modern browser that supports the do-not-track setting because Piwik dutifully respects that. The short and sweet here would be: if you don't want me to see which of my pages you visit, don't visit them. I own this place, so obviously I can see what you're doing here regardless of any cookies. At least there's no big corporate snoop like Google reading along over your shoulder.