Why are people using such old software? I'll give you one reason why.
I have a photo scanner which only has drivers for Windows XP through 7. I am not about to dump a perfectly good piece of equipment, which does the job perfectly, just because Microsoft wants to take more money off me.
I can imagine that out in corporate land, especially manufacturing, there are a lot of peripherals which don't have up-to-date drivers. Guess what OS will still be on those machines? Right, a version that does what is needed for the device to work.
A good reason for not keeping all your pictures on your phone.
I download all mine to local storage every couple of months or so and then clean out the phone. One, it frees up phone memory and two, if the phone gets lost or stolen, there's less for the finder to use against me.
Though you can't apparently do this with anything that needs X, because of udev2 issues, it works fine for plain headless servers. I have a number of these running. Just install a standard BASE system and then do the referenced items above, before installing anything on top of the base OS. Job done!
Um, no. You're forgetting all the pollen and nectar the bees are bringing back.
The hive will weigh more each night than the night before. You also have to allow for the bees that are being eaten or otherwise die away from the hive during the day.
I can't wait for that festing pile of bloat and compiler bugs to finally die, I really can't. Every single new release brings more code-generation bugs that we have to work around in our product, we're slowly working away at The Mgt. to get them to simply require LLVM or some other compiler that doesn't break things on every release, and whose maintainers will actually respond to bug reports rather than closing them all with WONTFIX, "if you squint at the spec from just the right angle and use your imagination then this showstopper bug is actually permitted".
Wait, what? Has gcc been taken over by Poettering, now?
Yep. I'm not really interested in the contact details. What I want to know is where an IP originates and what subnet it is part of. I would be happy for my contact details to be held somewhere and only passed on in accordance to local laws.
When I find that somebody has scanned my address, resulting in firewall drop messages, then I will assume that all addresses in the subnet containing that address could also be compromised. WHOIS tells me that info, and which country it is. Based on that, I'll drop the whole subnet, which also means less spam in my firewall logs.
I don't know if they still have this in the States, but in the rest of the world there is this thing called "TV", whereby you can get programmes broadcast through the air (ie wireless) by giant transmitters. You don't even need to have a computer to watch them!
"Alexander said that if Sony had gone after the hackers, it might have prompted them to throw artillery into South Korea once they saw someone attacking them back"
Throw artillery? That would be a good trick. I have a mental image of brawny NK soldiers hefting howitzers over the DMZ into South Korea.
Doesn't anyone now know how artillery works? I think the submitter meant "fire artillery".
There's two main areas of trouble I find. First, Apple has a very specific idea for how you're going to use the system, and they simplify as much as possible by removing things unrelated to the tasks they had in mind. But then the moment you do something slightly different you're pretty much out of luck.
Actually, that's more or less the same experience I had when I was a Windows user. Microsoft designers (!) obviously thought their users would use the programs in a particular way and if you wanted something different, well, tough.
Mind you, that was 15 years ago. Switched to Linux then and haven't looked back. I can't answer for either Apple nor Microsoft products since then, but from what I've heard, it seems that nothing much has changed in either camp.
I seem to remember some airplane that flew right around the world powered solely by solar panels.
And don't get me started on trolley buses, trams and electric trains. I assume that what the summary really meant was self-contained, wheeled vehicles.
As I recall, most Multics (Multicii? Multicesses?) ran at University shops all over the western world. They had a big requirement for multi-user access in a way that most businesses didn't - at the time.
What killed Multics was the Personal Computer - why be forced to use a terminal to access a mainframe somewhere else in the world, and over 300 baud if you were lucky, when you could have your own processing power right under your desk?
The original minicomputers, like PDP, VAX and Wang, were all small timesharing computers whose operating systems owed a lot to Multics (and subsequently Unix). PCs brought a whole change of emphasis.
Try to think as a domestic user rather than a business one. I used Skype regularly to video call my grandchildren halfway across the world and I'm willing to bet that is what many use it for, keeping in touch with distant relatives.
None of this IM nonsense, just a simple install onto any OS the far end has available and bingo! face to face calls made easy.
We've given up on Skype now. MS wanted to find out too much about me and I've had enough. Download all my contacts so that I can use Skype to call them? WTF? This is a phone, you dolts! If I wanted to phone them, I'd just call using the minutes I've already paid for.
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Why are people using such old software? I'll give you one reason why.
I have a photo scanner which only has drivers for Windows XP through 7. I am not about to dump a perfectly good piece of equipment, which does the job perfectly, just because Microsoft wants to take more money off me.
I can imagine that out in corporate land, especially manufacturing, there are a lot of peripherals which don't have up-to-date drivers. Guess what OS will still be on those machines? Right, a version that does what is needed for the device to work.
Yeah, but it's that "almost" that is often the problem.
Usually that's the bit you need for your own activities.
Um, no. Anyone who connects to my WiFi access point is going to get an RFC1918 address, and I suspect that will be the case for most domestic routers.
Good luck finding a coal powered plane...
Hmmm. Not going there - it contains the word "goat".
"Assume a spherical cow."
A good reason for not keeping all your pictures on your phone.
I download all mine to local storage every couple of months or so and then clean out the phone. One, it frees up phone memory and two, if the phone gets lost or stolen, there's less for the finder to use against me.
What did you think roots were for?
Then you need this:
http://without-systemd.org/wik...
Though you can't apparently do this with anything that needs X, because of udev2 issues, it works fine for plain headless servers. I have a number of these running. Just install a standard BASE system and then do the referenced items above, before installing anything on top of the base OS. Job done!
Um, no. You're forgetting all the pollen and nectar the bees are bringing back.
The hive will weigh more each night than the night before. You also have to allow for the bees that are being eaten or otherwise die away from the hive during the day.
I can't wait for that festing pile of bloat and compiler bugs to finally die, I really can't. Every single new release brings more code-generation bugs that we have to work around in our product, we're slowly working away at The Mgt. to get them to simply require LLVM or some other compiler that doesn't break things on every release, and whose maintainers will actually respond to bug reports rather than closing them all with WONTFIX, "if you squint at the spec from just the right angle and use your imagination then this showstopper bug is actually permitted".
Wait, what? Has gcc been taken over by Poettering, now?
Well, duh!
It's a landscape painting turned into a portrait, what did you expect?
You do know that Facebook owns Whatsapp?
Yep. I'm not really interested in the contact details. What I want to know is where an IP originates and what subnet it is part of. I would be happy for my contact details to be held somewhere and only passed on in accordance to local laws.
When I find that somebody has scanned my address, resulting in firewall drop messages, then I will assume that all addresses in the subnet containing that address could also be compromised. WHOIS tells me that info, and which country it is. Based on that, I'll drop the whole subnet, which also means less spam in my firewall logs.
I don't know if they still have this in the States, but in the rest of the world there is this thing called "TV", whereby you can get programmes broadcast through the air (ie wireless) by giant transmitters. You don't even need to have a computer to watch them!
Strange. I didn't know radar used photons.
"Alexander said that if Sony had gone after the hackers, it might have prompted them to throw artillery into South Korea once they saw someone attacking them back"
Throw artillery? That would be a good trick. I have a mental image of brawny NK soldiers hefting howitzers over the DMZ into South Korea.
Doesn't anyone now know how artillery works? I think the submitter meant "fire artillery".
You realize that means absolutely nothing, unless you are prepared to move out into a cheaper area?
If your house doubled in price, that likely means that you'll have to pay double (or more) for your next house, too. You gain nothing.
There's two main areas of trouble I find. First, Apple has a very specific idea for how you're going to use the system, and they simplify as much as possible by removing things unrelated to the tasks they had in mind. But then the moment you do something slightly different you're pretty much out of luck.
Actually, that's more or less the same experience I had when I was a Windows user. Microsoft designers (!) obviously thought their users would use the programs in a particular way and if you wanted something different, well, tough.
Mind you, that was 15 years ago. Switched to Linux then and haven't looked back. I can't answer for either Apple nor Microsoft products since then, but from what I've heard, it seems that nothing much has changed in either camp.
Any wheeled vehicle, perhaps.
I seem to remember some airplane that flew right around the world powered solely by solar panels.
And don't get me started on trolley buses, trams and electric trains. I assume that what the summary really meant was self-contained, wheeled vehicles.
You're seriously arguing against adding more, free(!), value to an existing product you own?
Hooray! We found somebody who has never run Microsoft software! Office ribbon, anyone?
Is there a password reset function?
Yes, but your email address has to have UUCP bangs in it :)
As I recall, most Multics (Multicii? Multicesses?) ran at University shops all over the western world. They had a big requirement for multi-user access in a way that most businesses didn't - at the time.
What killed Multics was the Personal Computer - why be forced to use a terminal to access a mainframe somewhere else in the world, and over 300 baud if you were lucky, when you could have your own processing power right under your desk?
The original minicomputers, like PDP, VAX and Wang, were all small timesharing computers whose operating systems owed a lot to Multics (and subsequently Unix). PCs brought a whole change of emphasis.
Try to think as a domestic user rather than a business one. I used Skype regularly to video call my grandchildren halfway across the world and I'm willing to bet that is what many use it for, keeping in touch with distant relatives.
None of this IM nonsense, just a simple install onto any OS the far end has available and bingo! face to face calls made easy.
We've given up on Skype now. MS wanted to find out too much about me and I've had enough. Download all my contacts so that I can use Skype to call them? WTF? This is a phone, you dolts! If I wanted to phone them, I'd just call using the minutes I've already paid for.
Ayup, the problem is the same as with Windows for that matter. However, the enormous variety of embedded systems limits the scope of any attack.
That's funny. I don't remember the vast number of IoT cameras limiting recent attacks... Be careful how you generalize.