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Windows 7 RTM Support Ending Soon
jones_supa writes with this news from Ars Technica: "Windows 7 users will have to install Service Pack 1 if they want to continue to receive security fixes and other support beyond April 9th. With the release of a Service Pack, Microsoft's policy is to support the old version for two years. Windows 7 Service Pack 1 was released on 22nd February, 2011, so the phasing out of support is happening more or less on schedule. In spite of a growing number of post-Service Pack 1 fixes and updates, Microsoft has shown no signs of shipping a second Service Pack. Should Service Pack 1 be the sole major update for Windows 7, it will continue to receive mainstream support — which encompasses both security updates, non-security bugfixes, and free phone support — until 13th January 2015. Extended support — security fixes and paid incidents only — will continue until 14th January 2020."
If you don't have service pack 1 installed you are an idiot anyway to run a non-updated system.
2015 - year of the linux desktop
Now, look, MS... I don't know what's in your mind lately, by I get better support from other operating systems.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
I think I can make it to the next bearable version of Windows, assuming they keep following the "every other version is crap" strategy. There's no way I'm every going to buy the mobile operating system they've released for my desktop.
A service pack is a roll up of all the important and critical updates into one big package. You can apply a service pack to any install to bring it up to that patch level without going through the intermediate stages.
The service packs are often slipstreamed into install media to produce a (fairly) up to date install right off the disk.
I'm one of those "sympathisers" here who doesn't loathe Microsoft.
Hot damn though, anyone here who does install Win7 SP1 regularly (as I do) there's about 2 to 300mb of patches and at least..70 or so of the bastards, they take forever to install as well (disk thrash)
For goodness sakes, just release SP2 already you bastards.
Use dism.exe. It will let you capture freshly installed machine - even with installed applications - back into an install image, i.e. slipstreaming. From the install image it will work exectly like the original image, only it will have all of the installed service packs, updates and patches already installed.
Reading slashdot one-liner: (irm http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot).rdf.item | fl title,desc*
Pirates get updates for 7, too.
Service packs also typically include hotfixes that may not be rolled out to the community at large, especially hardware-specific hotfixes. Of course, there are also the few Service Packs that actually roll out new features (e.g. Windows XP Service Pack 2)
A service pack is a form of configuration management. Think of every binary in the Windows operating system as a program with a version. Microsoft wants to encourage developers to support the latest version of their patched OS. That is, of course, feasibly impossible, especially when some developers are confronted with major behavioral change in one OS program update that their application is dependent upon. So having a "blessed" minimal collection of binary versions makes Microsoft only responsible for those versions. It then becomes incumbent for the developers to make sure their application works to SP1 versions of all those OS programs, and the developers cease to be responsible for making their app work with the original OS binary/daemon that was released with the Windows 7 rollout. (And yes, this is a descriptive simplification of the issue.)
There is more going on with a service pack than just throwing together the latest version of each OS binary. Yes, I wish Microsoft would put out an SP2 already, even if they want to commit corporate suicide by abandoning Windows 7 to get customers to move to Windows 8.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
You mean they where releasing security updates for people running SP0 ?!?
Absolutely. Since a service pack could break userland applications you want to maintain them side by side for a while so that there is sufficient time for userland to adapt.
Just like a recent Linux kernel might be at say 3.7.8, ie... so Windows 7 SP1 is 7.1 and the concept of is unused by Microsoft?
No, The Windows kernel does have the concept of <major>.<minor>.<increment>, but it is not the same as the OS version. The version of Windows kernel on the netbook I am using now is 6.1.7601. To the general public, this is Windows 7 (Service Pack 1). It is like how Linux Mint 14 does not use Linux kernel version 14
Or blindly buy the next version.
Or wait for a newer, better version to be hyped.
Or keep up with service packs to extend the life of the product.
Like they do for Windows XP, which still hasn't properly reached "end of life" in the world yet. If you think nobody bought Vista, 7 or 8, then I'm sorry but you're mistaken. Doesn't mean that that's SENSIBLE, but that's what happens on all scales and in all markets.
When WinXP was at its life cycle, there was only Vista so nobody wanted to upgrade. There was a HUGE customer demand for Microsoft to continue support, and Microsoft listened. With Win8 being a poo pile and I expect Win9 will not be much better. Will Microsoft listen to to the customers again or will they cut their own throat?
A reason to not run Windows in moving vehicles...
So if I want to write and test code while riding the bus to and from work, what should I be using instead of Windows? Are MacBook Air and System76 the only options?
I recently installed Windows 7 on two machines. It took 5 hours on both machines to download, setup all patches. It restarted itself about 15 times. The Windows update process is ridiculous.
So when are they dropping support for Windows 8? With all the discussion about dropping support for 7 and XP, maybe I will go back to using Vista.
I dropped my RFTM support for Windows after XP (and went with Linux), after MS decided to rename things and provide a near useless search function, since it does not include the old names in the search with links to newly re-named things.
Linux might not be much better with the different init and configuration systems, but I am NOT going to paying in order to put up with that. It's especially not worth dropping a few thousand dollars to install Microsoft's OSs on all my systems if they're going to speed up the end of life cycle...
There sure are, people like me who have a spanking new free copy sitting on a shelf, and a VM that's been moved to an external drive
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Then perhaps "the majority of its customers" should donate another $20,000 to finish ReactOS Foundation's current round of fundraising. ReactOS is a project to make an open-source binary-compatible clone of Windows XP.
The easiest thing Homeland Security can do is to force longer, deeper penetration of the latest security fixes for all consumer operating systems.
It's amazing to me how anybody could feel comfortable applying 300mb of fixes. What the hell is in there that fixes security?
1) Mandate absolute transparency and allow user to select downloading and installation only of security-critical code.
2) Force manufacturers not to add in anything else to those portions that are really security-critical.
3) Create a list of vulnerabilities that is updated daily, and grade operating systems against whether they have fixes for them. If they believe in obscurity they must still give a code-name for the vulnerability and security researchers must be told what they mean, show the code and allow them to vet how well the vulnerability was fixed. An automated scoreboard and forum could be developed that aggregates the results of this distributed attack on peevishness by companies like microsoft and oracle who leave huge numbers of fixes unpatched until a good PR moment.
4) Force manufacturers to continue providing fixes (security patches only) to all users. It is not reasonable to allow the majority of the market to become a time-bomb and individual businesses, private users are held hostage.
5) In the case of an open source / community developed distribution, provide the same guidelines and services as is done by Homeland Cybersecurity for commercial vendors, however forcing a community is impossible. Instead a community or a manufacturer (like RedHat) can at least be graded on its response and the availability in an open repository of the required fixes.
6) Do all this for applications, libraries and drivers, not just operating systems.
7) Do this for routers
8) Do this for websites.
9) Define security and the maintenance of security as a process requiring transparency by manufacturers in order to encourage users to adopt patches and make them easier to download.
10) Provide help, guidance and code to community distros and programming teams who can choose to use it, which will make it easier to more frequently issue security patches. It should be a lot easier for users (even on linux) to maintain an up to date system without worry of something breaking or being unable to back up settings, data, etc.
The responses of Microsoft and Oracle to the security realities confronting their customers is pathetic, medieval and takes advantage of general apathy and cluelessness. The result is a never-ending pool of machines vulnerable to every attack to appear in the wild.
This would remove a huge amount
haha. since windows xp will die april 2014 you'd better buy win 7 and transition over. that's what I've done for the machines in my household that need to run windows, no way I'm supporting that windows 8 crap at home.
nonsense, look at the support lifecycle web page, win 7 has 11 years planned, vista 10 years.....more or less the lifespan is the same
It's pretty clear you don't understand what a Windows Service Pack is and is not, despite you calling other people idiots in your ignorance. So allow me to attempt to correct your misconceptions.
Do you know how many security patches are in the average Windows SP?
Yes, all the ones that had previously been released for the given version of Windows up to the time of release of the Service Pack. Service Packs are not, nor ever have been, a sole source for the installation of security updates. They offer a convenient package for the cumulative set of prior released security updates, but they do not patch "new" vulnerabilities that have not been previously patched. That is, all the security patches they include are already available separately on Windows Update. For a period of time, two years for Windows, new security updates are made available for both the SP version and whatever came before it, so your security risk is largely imagined. The only issue here is the two year support period is coming to a close so patches will no longer be offered for the original Windows 7.
I'm sorry but anybody who has waited this long and not applied SP1 is indeed an idiot because every script kiddie on the planet uses those patches and SPs to reverse engineer new exploits specifically targeting fools that don't update the thing.
Dude, script kiddies don't wait for Service Packs. SPs do not patch previously unknown security issues. They merely include all the previously released security patches in a single update (among many other updates). Hackers wanting to reverse engineer a security update can do so as soon as it's released as part of the monthly MSFT patch cycle. Why wait for a Service Pack? And yes, I say hackers. Reverse engineering binaries and creating exploit code is generally outside the realm of script kiddies. If you keep up-to-date with monthly Windows updates you have all the security patches that the system with the Windows SP has. In fact, if the latter isn't keeping up-to-date with monthly patches you have more than the Windows SP system has.
So there really is no excuse......you can take a bare drive and have a fully loaded fully patched Win 7 system in less than an hour and a half
I'm going to tell you something that is going to surprise you. The two year support overlap for Windows patches isn't about you. Microsoft doesn't invest the no doubt significant additional resources of developing multiple versions of a given patch for different Service Pack releases so home users have a nice two years to update. The issue here is corporate customers who have anywhere from 10's to 10's of thousands of computers to update. Service Packs for modern releases of Windows include hundreds to thousands of updates, and quite often, new features. They can and do introduce breaking changes, and so there's no guarantee that software that used to work will continue to after a Service Pack (though in the overwhelming majority of cases it should). Systems need to be tested before deploying a SP, and for larger companies, two years isn't unreasonable. Deploying a major OS update to 10,000 computers in a sane way with minimal breakage is not trivial.
In future, please understand what you discuss before flaming others.
Sorry about that when I "talk turkey" I forget sometimes to break it down. Win 7 SP1 does have "extras" if you want to call them that but many of those "extras" are security related, such as making Windows Firewall harder by putting in rules that cover corner cases users have run into since RTM was released. If you only apply the individual patches? You don't get these security enhancements so you are worse off than if you just used SP1.
And as you know with WSUS Offline even the smallest of SMBs can have all the advantages of WSUS without need for a WinServer so there really is no excuse not to have done testing in the 2 years MSFT has given and have SP1 rolled out by now. There really is a lot more security fixes in SP1 than in the single patches and if one were to have to hunt down all the KB articles to get all the fixes that aren't included in the single patches frankly they have just wasted more time than they would have testing and deploying SP1, so honestly it just don't make any sense not to. This isn't like XP SP2 and SP3 where there was risks of hang ups and software not playing nice afterwards, I have deployed more SP1 installs than I can count and haven't seen a single issue arise from deploying SP1. in fact checking the forums when it first came out i noticed the only ones having issues with deployment turned out to either be infected or even rooted and the malware was trying to actively stop deployment. But on a clean system SP1 is painless,there really isn't a point in staying on RTM.
Hell for shits and giggles when it came out I ran speed tests on both RTM and SP1 and I have to say that all the tests fell with margin for error, there really wasn't any difference worth noting so the guy saying "I don't need teh bloat!" is full of shit because there isn't any.
finally as for script kiddies? You are forgetting the "smart cow" dilemma in that all it takes is one guy to do the work and then the web spreads it like wildfire. So it doesn't take EVERY script kiddie doing this, it only takes ONE script kiddie having enough skills to do VERY basic reverse engineering and with all the tutorials online honestly it doesn't take a super genius to pull this off. Once the ONE GUY has done the work it will quickly spread through the boards and IRCs and suddenly they ALL have this attack vector in their toolkit. A good analogy is piracy, think little Johnny knows how to crack the latest SecuROM or TAGES? Nope but he knows where to get a crack by the guys that DO know how to crack those, so you end up with somebody with almost no skill able to do the same task as those that have skill thanks to the way things spread on the web. this is why DRM will never work, it only takes 1 out of 7 billion to figure it out before little Johnny can read an NFO and perform the same task.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I'm not going to go to win7 or the disgusting win 8.
Thanx to Steam, I am now posting this in Ubuntu and downloading a new game.
I'm looking forward to learning all about Ubuntu :)
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
RTM just means "Release to Manufacturing" and has been around since the Windows 95 days (and probably even earlier internally, but I first encountered the terminology referencing the retail version of Win95 as opposed to any OSRs).
FC Closer
You're lucky that WU even still works on XP. Few years down the road, XP will be where 98/ME have been for some time now, unable to download any updates at all. Then, you're practically stuck with the base RTM install, and all of the vulns that comes with.
FC Closer
Well I just came back from trying out a new drummer, he's tight, kicking, and oh yeah his little brother owns a kick ass studio....SCORE!
With any luck I can get my tunes recorded, get back on the road, and just breathe the sweet air of freedom. Freedom from dumbasses infecting their PCs, freedom from FOSSies who think they are hot shit but come off like a 14 year old fangirl, just get back on stage, let the music and the crowd work its way deep into my blood, and let the music flow through me and wash all my problems away. Nothing like it, better than any drug, just bliss in a bottle.
So I don't blame ya a bit for getting back into music as I'm sitting here typing with 2 fingers because i took the tips off the rest tearing into my beautiful red 5 string and loving the hell out of it. While I have multiple basses now, from fender to Washburn, this baby is my "go to" and if you haven't seen it here is one like it. Squire only had that series for 2 years, 95-97 and the rumor was they yanked it because these Pro Tones were outselling the regular Fenders. The tone is just juicy, that swamp ash is heavy as hell but gives it a nice dark tone and the low B will shake your guts out, too awesome.
Anyway don't sweat the morons, just point out when they are spreading FUD and bullshit so those that don't know better have the facts and then walk away. Hell it doesn't matter how many facts you rub their noses in the FOSSie won't listen anyway, they'll just keep spouting the same bullshit with zero evidence to back it up, so why waste time dealing with morons? Life is too short, just enjoy it and suffer no fools.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
How in the hell did you catch such a tiny ball with that little stick? hell I was called "crotch killer" when i played baseball because i kept hitting the pitcher in the balls, i sure as hell couldn't whip a ball that small and get it close enough to that little stick for anybody to catch squat LOL!
And your nephew is right and wrong at the same time. yes you DO build up calluses but if you play 4 string for a long time you get a thinner flatter callus and then when you play a 5 string, especially one with the really fat strings like I like, its gonna tear those calluses clean off which is why I'm typing sans fingertips. On most basses the top string is between 102-105mm, whereas on my 5 string its 130mm. That much wider string means much thicker windings which requires a different style of callus. after a couple weeks of playing the 5 exclusively I'll get fat round hard calluses instead of the thin slicks I had playing my acoustic 4 string.
But honestly when the music is cooking you don't even feel it. when my last band won "best band in state" the crowd was going apeshit as I was tearing into the last 5 songs and when the set was over Isaac (the singer) leaned over and said "Jesus Christ man, don't that hurt?" and I looked down and that pearl white pickguard was streaked red with blood. i have been ripping into those strings so hard it literally ripped the calluses clean off my first two fingers on my right hand. But the roar of the crowd and the rush from the music had me so high i honestly didn't even feel a sting, the rush was just too great for pain to even enter into it. The next day i used half a bottle of superglue to make a scab for the missing skin and was right back on stage that night like nothing ever happened.
But you should pick up an instrument and give it a whirl, its never too late to pick up. if you were able to whip a ball around like that playing a keyboard wouldn't be hard at all, tons of tutorials online and you can get a cheap board for a little of nothing. Or get your nephew to show you some of the basics like the box pattern on the bass, nice thing about bass is there are a ton of easy songs you can play when you are starting out, AC/DC and Judas priest bass lines are some of the simplest lines ever written but they are catchy as hell, then you can always work your way up later to the harder stuff like Rush.
Just remember NOBODY is perfect, there will ALWAYS be somebody better, hell I've been playing for nearly 30 years now and there are still some Rush songs my stubby fingers will never be able to play, YYZ or La Villa Strangiato (which is pretty much the hardest song ever recorded, i know plenty of guitarists and drummers that have also tried and failed that one) just a couple of examples. but just because there are others better doesn't mean i can't get a crowd to bouncing and THAT is ultimately what matters. When you have the crowd jumping and the music is pumping its unlike anything words can describe, its like an electric current joining you to your band and to the audience. i have actually had to watch videos of myself because we had a killer crowd and what i was playing was frankly beyond me, it was the energy from the crowd that made me better than i was.
BTW I don't know if I gave you this link or not but if not might want to forward this link to your nephew and if you want to play guitar or bass check it out yourself. these guitars and basses are cheap but good, they of course won't compare to say a $1000 Fender or even my $700 Squire but they have good tone and since they copy fender and Gibson you can customize the hell out of 'em dirt cheap. In my last band we would get cheap instruments like this to give away during raffles but these sounded good enough the guitarist ended up with half a dozen and I had one of the jazz basses for ages until i got hooked on 5 string and swapped it for a second 5 for a spare.
But I'm telling ya man you gotta try it at least once, hell if I could walk out onstage not 2
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
While practice might help you still have to be born with some serious eye/hand coordination to hit such a small target on the move. I played baseball for nearly 5 years and no matter how much I practice the poor pitcher would be squealing like a girl before the game was over, every damned time, straight for the pitcher's crotch LOL!
As for how I started playing bass? I got a guitar and kept putting bigger strings on it because "it isn't deep enough" until a friend said "What you need isn't a guitar" and handed me his brother's P-Bass. it was love at first sight, I hit that low e on that Fender half stack and the room started vibrating in time with the note and feeding back into the bass and that was it....I was hooked. But I had to play plenty of shitty gigs to get the exp and hone my chops, I was in a house band for 2 years which is like being a human jukebox, if ANYBODY in the band knows a requested song they will try it and you have to figure it out then and there, even if you have never heard of the song. This is hard but it teaches you to have "go to" patterns that will work in any key that sound good so you can cover up the fact you are really hunting for the next note LOL. A couple of years playing country behind chicken wire like the Blues Brothers (that was a hell job) that taught me how to improvise, it all comes down to just getting out there and doing it, doesn't matter if you think you are terrible to start, you lock in with that kick drum and most folks will be happy.
And I'm sorry but there ARE two kings of bass, and that is Geddy Lee of Rush and Billy Sheenan. Those two can create melodies that we ordinary men will never be able to replicate. check out "La Villa Strangiato" sometime and see what I mean. I saw the Rush documentory and there was all these famous players, guy that play 6 days a week and have made crazy money for dozens of years and they ALL said the same thing "Thought I was hot shit....until I tried to play la Villa Strangiato" and the bitch is...he's NOT showing off. Its one of the most beautiful melodies I've ever heard, its just fucking HARD. Geddy himself said he had to build the song in sections and then learn how to play it live because it was damned near beyond HIS skills, but he said "there just wasn't anything else that would work, it HAD to be that way for the song".
As far as JP goes, its not the leads that are easy, those can be insanely hard, for example Hellion/Electric Eye, but the rhythm is some of the simplest there is, its all about the "chug" and getting everyone locked in tight. This is one of the hardest things to do when you are playing bass, is its always tempting to "add" more than is needed, when sometimes you have to accept that less is more sometimes. Because when the bass and drums are locked together in perfect time you can hit the audience like a cannon blast, the kick drum just magnifies your power for a hell of a punch.
Have you ever thought about using your programming skills in the music industry? There are several products I can think of off the top of my head that a good programmer could make that would sell like hotcakes and really help a lot of the DIY crowd. For example imagine a program that scanned a track or song and pointed out which frequencies were too loud and where it was too soft so that you don't need to be an expert on EQs to get a good even mix? and any bass player will tell you we need a digital automated compressor but nobody makes one. every bass has notes that will be more loud than other notes because the wood and strings vibrate the body just right with those notes to make them spike, so a digital compressor that would track the notes and make sure it all comes out even without the "pumping" that the current compressors do (you I'm sure have heard how when some play slap/pop the bass just pops in and drops out just as quick? That is the compressor pumping) would be a slice of heaven but nobody makes one, at least not at any price that a normal person can afford. I've heard there are "smart compressors" in
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Yeah I quickly learned that in all the pro sports you are either born with it or you are not. I had a friend where 4 out of his 5 siblings went on to be pro or semi-pro (he would have too but blew his knee out playing college football) and one day when his folks and mine were sittin g there watching us play HS baseball I came right out and asked "How did you end up with so many pro athletes in one family?" and his dad looked at me like it was the most obvious thing in the world and said "I chose my wife based on athletic ability PERIOD. I chose a woman that was at least as good if not better than me in every sport because i knew our kids would be incredible" and he was right, 5 out of 6 went on to scholarships and pro or semi-pro careers and now most are teaching sports.
This is why it'll never bother me if somebody is "better" than I am on the bass, because there are some that simply have genetic advantages over me.; I got to play the bass player from Cinderella's 12 string once, I was picking up some strings before the concert and he was there having his basses restrung and shopping. When I asked "How in the world can you play a neck that wide?" he said "Easy, like this" and I swear his fingers were so long they wrapped completely around that neck which was nearly as wide as 3 necks put together! This is why Geddy can do a run that starts on the second fret and lands on the twelve in less than four seconds, his fingers are so long he barely has to move his hand to pull that run off, whereas with my stubby fingers I have to do a large slide just to reach the notes. So there will always be guys with longer fingers and better reaches but unlike in sports I can still compete because if you can write a catchy groove that counts for a lot more than technical ability. Look at Vai or Malmsteen, they can smoke most players but their songs sound like guitar lessons and thus don't get people pumped whereas if you put on Electric Eye or Wheels of Fire (if you haven't heard that check it out, it pumps as good as classic Priest) the next thing you know everybody is bouncing and you are doing 90 in a 55 LOL, you just can't help getting into the groove.
As for why nobody has done it? Simple nobody gives us bass players any love LOL. A good 85% of the gear out there is made for guitarists ONLY and we bass players have to make do with the scraps which is why I said you could make some damned good money. if you were to target bass players you could easily become the Fender of bass gear, nobody really targets to bass players. Think we bass players don't like wild looking basses or cool sounding effects? of course we do but nobody caters to us at an affordable price. The few that make cool looking basses and gear frankly charge assraping prices for them and its really not fair, with today's ARM DSPs it doesn't cost any more to target the bass freqs than it does guitar freqs but nobody does it. as I said there are a LOT of opportunities to target the DIY crowd and the bass players but nobody is really targeting that market so its pretty much wide open. What we really need is a digital following compressor to even out the tone, maybe the same in an EQ to even out string response, and a good bass overdrive that is volume sensitive so when you play hard it kicks in but when you back off it cleans up. Guitarists have had that for years with tube amps but tubes on bass sucks as it adds too much noise so a good digital with noise suppression would sell like mad.
Anyway back to the grind, hope you have a great week..peace.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Dude I ain't coded in more than half a decade and my only coding exp was VB 6 which is as dead as Disco. For these programs to work they would need to be coded for speed and VB was a lot of things but a close to real time language it wasn't. You might be able to get the EQ analyzer written in VB but the pedals would probably have to be written in either assembly or maybe C, something that runs as close to bare metal as humanly possible to keep the tracking real time and my skills are nowhere near that. I wrote VB GUIs to local DBs for places like junkyards, not exactly the kind of work that would lend itself to writing a music app.
Besides one would have to be good at math and frankly its been too many years since I've needed more than basic math and I now suck at it. They say you use it or lose it and while I was kick ass at math in HS I haven't really needed it since so the skills have long since disappeared. I tried checking out my oldest boy's college trig book and frankly it might as well been in German for all I could keep up, I just haven't used advanced math in too damned long for my old butt to pull it off anymore.
As for my oldest he is gonna be wrapped up in designing his games, he is so fucking pissed at every survival horror becoming a CoD ripoff that he wants to redefine the genre by making both a SP and co-op MP game that will be pants wettingly scary, one that ramps up the terror and then throws your back against the wall and keep you pushed to the limit. who knows it might be a hit, the kid knows horror like the back of his hand and there does seem to be a serious niche going unfilled for a true survival horror that cares about scares more than set pieces, but he'll be too busy with that to help his old uncle with music stuff.
And trust me I know ALL ABOUT rehab, I spent my last year of HS in a bed because i faceplanted at 60MPH+ onto the pavement wearing nothing but a pair of PE shorts. Know the scars that Joker had in Dark Knight? Picture what those look like when they were fresh and you had what i looked like, it took over 4 hours and 80 stitches to put my face back together and another 4 hours for them to pick all the bits of street embedded in my body out. It was a good 2 and a half years of hell to get back on my feet and to this day i still can't grow a full beard or a proper goatee (it looks like I have a goatee but IRL its a Fu Manchu mustache grown long enough to connect up with the beard so the scars are covered) but you just gotta push through. One of my fingers on my left hand is permanently bent because the docs told me "you got a choice, it can be stuck straight or it can be stuck bent but the joint is so damaged that short or replacing the joint and holding it together with pins its gonna end up stuck" and I knew that I wouldn't be able to play bass with it stuck straight so I chose to have it bent instead. At the end of the day you do what you gotta do, not really any choice unless you consider laying down and dying a choice which i don't.
And finally on genetics, sure you have to have the drive to do the work and get great but if you aren't born with the right tools you'll only be able to get to a certain point and that is it. Luckily in music it doesn't matter as truly great songs have been written that are beyond simple to play but I fully accept that if I played 20 hours a day I'd never be able to do some of the things Geddly and Sheenan do simply because they have a longer reach. Its like how scientists can tell you whether you'll be a marathon runner or a sprinter by simply seeing which muscles you have, the long distance runners have muscles that don't build up lactic acid like most folks do while sprinters have muscles that burn fuel like crazy which quickly builds the lactic acid (thus making them worthless for distance) but gives them an advantage in sprints. I remember an interview with Van Halen where they asked Eddie if he could have anything what it would be and he said "an extra finger on my left hand" because even he had things he couldn't do
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Relax. I am a developer and have no interest in destroying the software industry, even if I could.
All I am saying is that critical vulnerabilities can be patched without sliding 100s of mb of crap in with them, and without creating artificial barriers to adoption.
Your suggestion "I would be able to sue" is both incorrect and misunderstands my point (or I was unclear, if so sorry). I didn't mean "force a website to do x". I meant "provide guidelines" and if you want to stretch it, you can grade a site on whether it is delivering malware of old libraries that are known to be broken. Not that it would be useful to many people.
Also your statement "products become obsolete"? Sure. But if you continue to distribute them then what. I don't expect a small software company to commit resources enough to drive them into bankruptcy. But I am saying that if much of the country is running on hacked machines then a company as big as MS could do something about it, and if they can't then perhaps it would be a good use of tax dollars to ensure that they can. Also, the person who determines if a product is obsolete or not is the end-user. Not the vendor. If someone is using Windows XP without any problem for their purpose, why are you going to force them to scrap their computer and buy some more powerful one to run Windows 8 or whatever? Why not instead, if there are known vulnerabilities, at least provide patches to them? (There is at least one project which does this, for linux, I believe.)
Sorry if I was unclear. I do not support any draconian control of the industry by the government. But I do think that if a company grows as big as Microsoft or Oracle, that holding back patches until 50 have been accumulated, requiring 300MB of downloads or else a system is not "secure", and assigning a very short end of life instead of simply writing patches (only for security issues) is not in the realm of the fantastic.