These rules have been in my sig (and are better explained there) going on for a decade now. For how old these rules are, they still apply. Every virus in that last 10 years exploits 1 or more of these rules. The more you are aware of them as an IT professional, the better your system design will be to mitigate risk.
Laws of computer stupidity 1) 99% of computer users do not know what they are doing. 2) Computer users do not read. 3) If a computer user can click on it, they will. conversely, if a computer user needs to click on it, they won't. 4) You can patch software, but you can't (legally) patch stupid. 5) The premise of monkey rule: If you can't train a monkey to use it, you can't train a human to use it.
We all know how this will end. Google, Facebook et al are going to just drop all EU content and depending on how aggressive the individual laws are may even just block entire countries outright.
Every major web property needs to do this right now especially if it's a search engine (Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo), a social network of any kind (Facebook, Twitter, private webforums, blogs) or a user hosted content provider (Wikipedia, YouTube, SoundCloud). Pull out of all EU countries and explicitly block access to them. I mean, how do you do business in these countries when they've effectively banned hyperlinking.
Frankly, when GDPR happened they should've pulled out right then and there, but they didn't because of "The potential market share". Well that potential market share is about to cost you billions in GDPR fines alone making any gains a loss sum game. Now imagine the billions lost from this law, and the next law, and the next law...
This will continue for as long as these sites put up with getting fined for doing their purpose. The only way stupid laws ever get repealed is when the law causes unnecessary harm and pisses off enough voters. Every major web property shutting down for the EU sounds like it would get the job done.
The cynic in me believes that Intel is targeting reviewers that are pro AMD. Kyle was pretty big on AMD as of late with the Nvidia NDA and Intel shenanigans.
On the other hand, I've been reading HardOCP for decades now. I can't see Kyle jumping to Intel just for a big bag of money.
I never will understand this obsessive need to try and kill systems that just work.
AS/400 based system are some of the most reliable systems money can buy. They can handle insane amounts of workloads and can scale from small systems to complete mainframes. The only real issue with them is terminals (which is a minor issue with modern terminal emulation) and the hardware and software maintenance costs, but you do get what you pay for.
I'll almost guarantee that they will switch to some "modern" system running either a Java or Web based backend that will either get hacked, crash due to excessive load, or both, and probably pay twice as much as they're currently paying now to switch vs upgrading their current setup.
That incentive was savings on tax revenue Amazon would have paid if they built in the area.
Since Amazon isn't coming to the area, not only are they out any tax revenue that Amazon would have generated, but any potential Tax revenue generated by the hired employees.
Unless they find another 3 billion dollar revenue generator, they get nothing but what the current property generates. probably a few million tops.
The Fable of the Wolves and the Sheepherders. (or Why DNT Is Stupid) Originally Published on October 27, 2012
Once upon a time, there was a group of 4 sheepherders that tended to their sheep in the far far away land of internetia. Farmer Bill, Steve, Larry and Gary tended their flocks and would try to draw more sheep with either better grass, or shelter from the weather, or protection from predators. it got so competitive that sheep from other farms would jump the fences because some farms offered better comforts than others.
One day, a large pack of wolves (Genus: advertis infectus) started eating the sheep. The farmers responded accordingly. Farmer Bill first bought a "Tracking Protection" Caliber Shotgun. Which sometimes killed some wolves but would take about 10-30 shots before it killed them. Farmer Gary built a doghouse in which the sheep hired a German adblockplus and a Dutch noscript to protect them, which worked very well. Farmer Larry also built a doghouse, but was not as nice as Farmer Gary's doghouse. Eventually a German Adblockplus moved in, but it would get sick due to the cold getting into the doghouse and some wolves would get to the sheep. Eventually, Farmer Bill saw how well the sheepdogs worked and finally built a kennel by his own design to attract sheepdogs directly, but it was so badly designed that very few sheepdogs took the opportunity to live in it, and the few that did couldn't do their job well because they were sick all of the time. Farmer Steve didn't seem to do anything worthwhile and the sheep we so enamored by Steve's aura and immaculate looking farm that they didn't seem to care.
The wolves, losing many a comrade to the Sheepdogs, decided they needed to take action. First they asked the grass to stop growing if the sheepdogs protected the sheep that hired the sheepdogs, but the grass didn't stop growing. Finally the Wolves went to the World Carnivore Collection Consortium (W3C) and proposed the following treaty.
The farmers would have a can of Red Paint handy that the Sheep could use to put a Red X on their back. Any Sheep with the red X on their back would not be touched by the wolves. However, according to the rules, the Farmer could not paint the sheep themselves.
Farmer Gary and Steve adopted the practice quickly. Some Astute sheep noticed that the sheep with the Red X never got attacked by wolves and put the Red X on themselves, while other sheep didn't trust the wolves and still hired the sheepdogs. Farmer Larry wasn't too fond of the paint, since he secretly had a wolf as a pet, but eventually he made the red paint available as well as built a better doghouse for the Sheepdogs.
Farmer Bill, on the other hand, saw an opportunity to turn this into a feature that could protect his sheep and draw some sheep from other farms, since so many sheep jumped his fence to go to the nicer pastures of Firefox Ranch and Chrome Acres. But he had to find a way to follow the rules but get as many Sheep to put on the Red X as possible. Then he had the solution. His solution was to ask the sheep if they wanted the default pasture experience. If they wanted the Experience, all they had to do was put a Red X on their back. Eventually all of the sheep in the 10th pasture had a red X on their back.
The wolves noticed all of the Red Xs at the IE Corral and started crying foul. When Farmer Bill said he was following the rules and wouldn't change the policy, they first changed the treaty to not allow farmers to tell the sheep about the red paint, but the damage was already done, So the wolves decided to take a different approach to combat the problem. First they went to the Apache Fertilizer Co. and convinced them to add something to their fertilizer that when ingested by any Sheep in the IE corral, that it would dissolve the red X on their back. Other Wolves, such as the one named 'Yahoo' decided to ignore the Red X on the IE sheep altogether and started attacking the sheep Regardless if they had paint on their back or not.
If I remember correctly, Microsoft had this OEM deal on Windows 10 where the OS was free if the hardware met certain minimum specs. I believe that 32GB of HDD space was one of the requirements. Because of this, a ton of desktops and laptops were made with this spec in order to maximize profits. That's why there's so many of them out there.
If this is true then its a problem of their own doing.
To be fair I haven't run into game ending flaws in rendering using Edge recently, but that not the reason I don't use it. The main reason why I use Firefox (and Chrome) over Edge is it's user interface. Edge's interface is broken, idiot designed and needs to die in a fire.
For example. I use a lot of bookmarks. The way I use them is I add the bookmarks toolbar, create a folder (IE: news, weather, games, etc) and then bookmark each site in the respected folder and sort them top to bottom from most to least used. Chrome, Firefox, even IE does this correctly while Edge still struggles to do this right. At first you couldn't even put a folder in the bar, then you could but couldn't sort them. Then you could sort then but the sync would sort them backwards, or worse duplicate them. Then sync stopped working altogether. then it would cut off long names, ETC
On top of all that, they even got clicking on the folders wrong. In Chrome and Firefox, you click on a folder, the folder opens, and then you can just highlight other folders to see their contents. in Edge (and IE) you click on a folder and then have to double click the next folder (one click to close the one you were in. Another click to open the one you're currently on) to open it, which slows you down and is infuriating. This simple UI adjustment would make Edge almost on par with it's peers in usability and ease of use.
This is just one of many stupid decisions they made to the user interface. I haven't even started on History management, extension issues and other UI things. To be fair some of them have been fixed over time (like importing and exporting bookmarks from other browsers since you'll be doing that a lot because sync is broken and using extensions with inprivate browsing) but there's still a lot to be desired.
Simply put, If they would fix the interface issues instead of focusing on idiotic useless features like "I CAN DRAW ON THE SCREEN!!" they might have been a little more competitive.
Microsoft had a popular browser. The problem was they pissed it away by doing nothing with it.
I don't know if it was caused by the antitrust ruling in the hope that a competitor would show up for IE, or by sheer incompetence, but Letting IE6 wither while Vista was being developed was one of the absolute dumbest moves Microsoft ever did. The only reason IE7 and IE8 happened was Firefox was creeping on their share and by the time they got IE's IU together Chrome passed them both. Then they fragmented the browser between OS'es which did more damage, then instead of fixing IE's speed issues, they developed Edge, further fragmenting their base. At one point, there was Three IE's (counting XP) and Edge vs One chrome and one Firefox.
This isn't the only thing Microsoft has done this too either. Windows Mobile, DirectX, Hell Even the Microsoft Store between 8, 8.1 and 10 with DirectX probably being the best example. If they supported previous OS'es the game industry would be all in for DirectX, Instead they tied it to OS revisions and it's got so bad now there's version fragmentation between Windows 10 releases. They fragmented all of their tech to the point that no one moves forward and everyone has to support the lowest common denominator. Meanwhile their competitors move forward with their one unified supported version.
Fragmentation is whats killing Microsoft. They need to do whatever it takes to kill it be it free OS upgrades for all previous versions or supporting the latest software and API's on all supported operating systems.
Basically, anything that has a trunk can't sell. Nobody is selling them. The Honda accord isn't even selling. Even AWD cars aren't selling, so it's not the Crossover/SUV fad driving down car sales.
Simply put, No one wants to deal with the tiny trunk that a coupe or sedan has when a hatchback has a ton more cargo space, Especially when the rear seats are folded down. The writing's been on the wall for years too. Ten years ago everybody wanted either a crossover or a small stationwagon. GM knew this when they designed the Cruize, that's why they had two versions of it. The hatchback sells well, the sedan does not.
It would be smarter for GM to keep Lordstown active building hatchback cruzes instead of sedans since they are so similar, convert the volt and bolt into a hatch and build both of them in Hamtramck, and switch Oshawa over to truck manufacturing, but who knows whats going through their head right now.
It's 2018. This crap has been going on for almost 8 years now. And it's not just Bing. Just about every search engine with ads has or has had this problem.
If it's a popular app, and your search engine has ads. Guaranteed there's a Virus Inc. buying adwords for it.
1) If someone is buying Adwords for any app, and it's NOT the company or group that maintains the software, ban it. 2) If you can't verify #1, don't allow it until you can. 3) It if sounds or feels shady in any way, don't allow it. 4) If it's going to a aggregate site not directly affiliated to the company, ban it. 5) If ANYONE auto redirects from the Adword link in any way. Legit or not. even after a minute. ban it. 6) Every dropper malware I see only drops a payload once. If you see one drop. Ban it. In fact ban every ad with that domain for at least a month or more. Preferably for life. 7) Since you're monitoring every click anyway, browse the link when it's clicked every time and make sure they are getting a clean page. If at any time, you're being redirected because it sees the traffic coming from you or the script is actually stupid enough to drop malware to your IP, ban it. 8) Better yet, enforce and serve the complete ad site yourself and pull it cloudflare style. Check any links or files clicked or downloaded from the site. Guaranteed your IP's / crawlers are blacklisted so that a malware payload won't drop if you pull it. Best case is that it never drops a payload cause you're pulling it and sending it to the user. Worse case is it drops malware on your pull request, at that point, show the user the "Site has a problem" page and ban it.
Only drawback is that you can't run x64 apps, and x86 apps run slower since it emulates x86, but devs can recompile for native arm64 and if all you're doing is web browsing and document processing, it should be more than adequate, with almost double the battery life vs an x86 processor.
The fact that it took 6 years for people to realize that it was stupid just affirms to me that either people are gullible idiots, or I can see the future.
I'm already seeing Verizon 5G micro-towers going up in my area, Although they haven't announced availability in our area as of yet. Supposedly it's launching in Houston and LA in October.
So far, they're claiming 300Mbps with a 1Gbps Peak, and no data caps at $70/month. Although they're not saying anything about no throttling, but I'm sure they'll have something in place to throttle heavy users at peak times or at a certain data cap.
If they can truly deliver those speeds, especially with a light to zero touch throttling policy similar to Verizon FIOS, they will give cable serious competition and pretty much own the rural market with little to no competition other then other future 5G carriers. If they run it like Verizon Wireless and cap/throttle, it's lip service.
I don't know why these internet companies still do business in the EU.
If Facebook alone pulled out of the EU (let alone Google or Wikipedia) because they didn't want to deal with this BS, these laws would be rescinded in days.
Of course it would never happen because investors.
To be fair, there was probably a lot more money thrown around for Russian meddling, but thats beside the point.
The main reason Hillary lost is because she was literally the worst candidate the DNC could've chose. Back when she announced her candidacy in 2015 I posted this which listed all of her past scandals, and that you had better choices, even on the democrat side
After the Access Hollywood scandal, Trump should've been done. Period. Any other candidate would have been sunk, and Trump would've lost to any other candidate running against him. The difference is that he was running against Hillary, and all he had to do was divert people's attention away from the scandal by addressing the issue once, and then going back to his core voter issues while Hillary spun in circles trying to capitalize on the scandal instead of focusing on her core voter issues.
From my experience in this election, I can tell you that Trump was resonating with voters. I live in the rust belt (More Specifically North East Ohio, Western PA) where there is a ton of Democrat support. Almost all of the people I knew that traditionally voted Democrat were voting Trump, including my Grandfather, who was a WWII vet, a Retired Union leader who worked in the Railroad Business, and Voted straight Democrat except for Eisenhower. When I asked him why, he said he was the first Candidate he saw in decades that gets that Free Trade and especially Steel Dumping is killing heavy industry in this country and he felt he was the only candidate to actually fix it instead of talking about fixing it. Most of the other voters had similar reasons. Here on Slashdot, it was the H1B issue drawing voters since he was against it (but as of this post still hasn't done anything about it, which is going to hurt him come November)
Surprisingly, Almost no one I asked that went from voting Democrat to Trump voted for him because of Hillary Scandals or "Crooked Hillary" or any anti Hillary message that you commonly saw with these Russian troll ads. They voted for Trump cause They liked Trump's stance on issues (particularly anti free trade) vs Hillary. Many of them also like Sanders over Hillary because of the same issues and reasons, since many of Sanders issues were similar to Trump when it came to Jobs. It wouldn't surprise me in the least that Sanders would be in the White House if he won the nomination.
They can use Google's web based office suite as a chrome app, so they have an office suite, and I think the chrome app even allows for offline use that will sync to drive once it goes online. Never tried offline mode with mine. It will do about 90% of what most home users do with a PC.
In the end however, it's a $200 web browser that can now emulate an android tablet and soon run Linux apps. Anything you can do online you can do on a chromebook assuming that you're online and it doesn't need a third party plugin like Java (or very soon, Flash) Android support works but you better have a touchscreen to really take advantage of it (it does work with mouse and keyboard though). Linux support will really open this platform wide. If it's easy to install apps through a storefront it will pretty much be the Linux Distro of choice for desktop use.
I mentioned the printer under the assumption that they wanted to go full on chromebook with no external PC. Any PC with chrome will work as a printer conduit once you add you account to google chrome and setup your printer using the cloud print site.
If you want to remove the PC completely from the equation, then a cloud ready printer is the only option.
Chromebooks are great if all you want to do is browse the web. Just don't spend a lot of money on it.
Simply put, stay away from the Pixelbook unless you enjoy lighting money on fire. It's over $1000 and you'll get 5 years tops out of it guaranteed, even with the crazy specs it has. If you're going to spend that much you might as well stick with a Mac. At least you'll get at minimum 7-10 year use out of it. After the Pixel EOL, The only way I would even consider a Pixelbook right now is if Google flat out announces a commitment to a 7-10 year software support strategy for it.
The HP Chromebook X2 or the Samsung Chromebook Pro would be the highest I would pay for one and only if I was going to use it daily. There are also cheaper alternatives out there. Personally, I wouldn't spend more than $200 for one.
Printer wise, you need a cloud print enabled printer. Epson's are cheap, are very easy to setup, and their scanners can scan directly to Google Drive out of the box, but it is an inkjet so if you don't print often it will dry up and then it's toss the printer time, so buy an Epson XP-440 all in one for $50 and only if you really need to print. HP and Canon's also have printers that are cloud print capable, but tend to be harder to setup and can be more expensive.
And that T430 cost just as much, if not cheaper than the pixel.
Back when the Pixel was announced, I posted this. Basically, I said it was unsellable and was "Light money on Fire stupid"
Five years later, that statement still stands. If you bought one of these things, You basically paid $250/Year for a portable web browser. You could have bought a brand new chromebook every year and saved money.
The fact that Google stuck with their five year software support model for a system this expensive that clearly has hardware more than capable enough to support whatever new features come out of ChromeOS is a testament to stay as far away from these high end chromebooks as you can.
This is what is currently on the 1.1.1.1 site (which I'm assuming that's what Firefox is using since it's owned by Cloudflare)
Privacy First: Guaranteed. We will never sell your data or use it to target ads. Period.
We will never log your IP address (the way other companies identify you). And we’re not just saying that. We’ve retained KPMG to audit our systems annually to ensure that we're doing what we say.
Frankly, we don’t want to know what you do on the Internet—it’s none of our business—and we’ve taken the technical steps to ensure we can’t
Of course, like any other DNS Resolver, you have to trust what they're saying is true, but vs. your ISP DNS (which most firefox users are using by default) or Google Public DNS, Cloudflare would be a privacy improvement. Not sure if it's better than Quad9 security wise though.
The biggest issue I have is that the settings aren't exposed by the settings menu and has to be configured using about:config. I would like to see better controls for it and possibly a list of supported DNS providers to choose like how I can choose Search engines.
Slashdot Mirror
These rules have been in my sig (and are better explained there) going on for a decade now. For how old these rules are, they still apply. Every virus in that last 10 years exploits 1 or more of these rules. The more you are aware of them as an IT professional, the better your system design will be to mitigate risk.
Laws of computer stupidity
1) 99% of computer users do not know what they are doing.
2) Computer users do not read.
3) If a computer user can click on it, they will. conversely, if a computer user needs to click on it, they won't.
4) You can patch software, but you can't (legally) patch stupid.
5) The premise of monkey rule: If you can't train a monkey to use it, you can't train a human to use it.
We all know how this will end. Google, Facebook et al are going to just drop all EU content and depending on how aggressive the individual laws are may even just block entire countries outright.
Every major web property needs to do this right now especially if it's a search engine (Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo), a social network of any kind (Facebook, Twitter, private webforums, blogs) or a user hosted content provider (Wikipedia, YouTube, SoundCloud). Pull out of all EU countries and explicitly block access to them. I mean, how do you do business in these countries when they've effectively banned hyperlinking.
Frankly, when GDPR happened they should've pulled out right then and there, but they didn't because of "The potential market share". Well that potential market share is about to cost you billions in GDPR fines alone making any gains a loss sum game. Now imagine the billions lost from this law, and the next law, and the next law...
This will continue for as long as these sites put up with getting fined for doing their purpose. The only way stupid laws ever get repealed is when the law causes unnecessary harm and pisses off enough voters. Every major web property shutting down for the EU sounds like it would get the job done.
The cynic in me believes that Intel is targeting reviewers that are pro AMD. Kyle was pretty big on AMD as of late with the Nvidia NDA and Intel shenanigans.
On the other hand, I've been reading HardOCP for decades now. I can't see Kyle jumping to Intel just for a big bag of money.
I never will understand this obsessive need to try and kill systems that just work.
AS/400 based system are some of the most reliable systems money can buy. They can handle insane amounts of workloads and can scale from small systems to complete mainframes. The only real issue with them is terminals (which is a minor issue with modern terminal emulation) and the hardware and software maintenance costs, but you do get what you pay for.
I'll almost guarantee that they will switch to some "modern" system running either a Java or Web based backend that will either get hacked, crash due to excessive load, or both, and probably pay twice as much as they're currently paying now to switch vs upgrading their current setup.
That incentive was savings on tax revenue Amazon would have paid if they built in the area.
Since Amazon isn't coming to the area, not only are they out any tax revenue that Amazon would have generated, but any potential Tax revenue generated by the hired employees.
Unless they find another 3 billion dollar revenue generator, they get nothing but what the current property generates. probably a few million tops.
The Fable of the Wolves and the Sheepherders. (or Why DNT Is Stupid)
Originally Published on October 27, 2012
Once upon a time, there was a group of 4 sheepherders that tended to their sheep in the far far away land of internetia. Farmer Bill, Steve, Larry and Gary tended their flocks and would try to draw more sheep with either better grass, or shelter from the weather, or protection from predators. it got so competitive that sheep from other farms would jump the fences because some farms offered better comforts than others.
One day, a large pack of wolves (Genus: advertis infectus) started eating the sheep. The farmers responded accordingly. Farmer Bill first bought a "Tracking Protection" Caliber Shotgun. Which sometimes killed some wolves but would take about 10-30 shots before it killed them. Farmer Gary built a doghouse in which the sheep hired a German adblockplus and a Dutch noscript to protect them, which worked very well. Farmer Larry also built a doghouse, but was not as nice as Farmer Gary's doghouse. Eventually a German Adblockplus moved in, but it would get sick due to the cold getting into the doghouse and some wolves would get to the sheep. Eventually, Farmer Bill saw how well the sheepdogs worked and finally built a kennel by his own design to attract sheepdogs directly, but it was so badly designed that very few sheepdogs took the opportunity to live in it, and the few that did couldn't do their job well because they were sick all of the time. Farmer Steve didn't seem to do anything worthwhile and the sheep we so enamored by Steve's aura and immaculate looking farm that they didn't seem to care.
The wolves, losing many a comrade to the Sheepdogs, decided they needed to take action. First they asked the grass to stop growing if the sheepdogs protected the sheep that hired the sheepdogs, but the grass didn't stop growing. Finally the Wolves went to the World Carnivore Collection Consortium (W3C) and proposed the following treaty.
The farmers would have a can of Red Paint handy that the Sheep could use to put a Red X on their back. Any Sheep with the red X on their back would not be touched by the wolves. However, according to the rules, the Farmer could not paint the sheep themselves.
Farmer Gary and Steve adopted the practice quickly. Some Astute sheep noticed that the sheep with the Red X never got attacked by wolves and put the Red X on themselves, while other sheep didn't trust the wolves and still hired the sheepdogs. Farmer Larry wasn't too fond of the paint, since he secretly had a wolf as a pet, but eventually he made the red paint available as well as built a better doghouse for the Sheepdogs.
Farmer Bill, on the other hand, saw an opportunity to turn this into a feature that could protect his sheep and draw some sheep from other farms, since so many sheep jumped his fence to go to the nicer pastures of Firefox Ranch and Chrome Acres. But he had to find a way to follow the rules but get as many Sheep to put on the Red X as possible. Then he had the solution. His solution was to ask the sheep if they wanted the default pasture experience. If they wanted the Experience, all they had to do was put a Red X on their back. Eventually all of the sheep in the 10th pasture had a red X on their back.
The wolves noticed all of the Red Xs at the IE Corral and started crying foul. When Farmer Bill said he was following the rules and wouldn't change the policy, they first changed the treaty to not allow farmers to tell the sheep about the red paint, but the damage was already done, So the wolves decided to take a different approach to combat the problem. First they went to the Apache Fertilizer Co. and convinced them to add something to their fertilizer that when ingested by any Sheep in the IE corral, that it would dissolve the red X on their back. Other Wolves, such as the one named 'Yahoo' decided to ignore the Red X on the IE sheep altogether and started attacking the sheep Regardless if they had paint on their back or not.
Some Sheep as well as
If I remember correctly, Microsoft had this OEM deal on Windows 10 where the OS was free if the hardware met certain minimum specs. I believe that 32GB of HDD space was one of the requirements. Because of this, a ton of desktops and laptops were made with this spec in order to maximize profits. That's why there's so many of them out there.
If this is true then its a problem of their own doing.
To be fair I haven't run into game ending flaws in rendering using Edge recently, but that not the reason I don't use it. The main reason why I use Firefox (and Chrome) over Edge is it's user interface. Edge's interface is broken, idiot designed and needs to die in a fire.
For example. I use a lot of bookmarks. The way I use them is I add the bookmarks toolbar, create a folder (IE: news, weather, games, etc) and then bookmark each site in the respected folder and sort them top to bottom from most to least used. Chrome, Firefox, even IE does this correctly while Edge still struggles to do this right. At first you couldn't even put a folder in the bar, then you could but couldn't sort them. Then you could sort then but the sync would sort them backwards, or worse duplicate them. Then sync stopped working altogether. then it would cut off long names, ETC
On top of all that, they even got clicking on the folders wrong. In Chrome and Firefox, you click on a folder, the folder opens, and then you can just highlight other folders to see their contents. in Edge (and IE) you click on a folder and then have to double click the next folder (one click to close the one you were in. Another click to open the one you're currently on) to open it, which slows you down and is infuriating. This simple UI adjustment would make Edge almost on par with it's peers in usability and ease of use.
This is just one of many stupid decisions they made to the user interface. I haven't even started on History management, extension issues and other UI things. To be fair some of them have been fixed over time (like importing and exporting bookmarks from other browsers since you'll be doing that a lot because sync is broken and using extensions with inprivate browsing) but there's still a lot to be desired.
Simply put, If they would fix the interface issues instead of focusing on idiotic useless features like "I CAN DRAW ON THE SCREEN!!" they might have been a little more competitive.
Microsoft had a popular browser. The problem was they pissed it away by doing nothing with it.
I don't know if it was caused by the antitrust ruling in the hope that a competitor would show up for IE, or by sheer incompetence, but Letting IE6 wither while Vista was being developed was one of the absolute dumbest moves Microsoft ever did. The only reason IE7 and IE8 happened was Firefox was creeping on their share and by the time they got IE's IU together Chrome passed them both. Then they fragmented the browser between OS'es which did more damage, then instead of fixing IE's speed issues, they developed Edge, further fragmenting their base. At one point, there was Three IE's (counting XP) and Edge vs One chrome and one Firefox.
This isn't the only thing Microsoft has done this too either. Windows Mobile, DirectX, Hell Even the Microsoft Store between 8, 8.1 and 10 with DirectX probably being the best example. If they supported previous OS'es the game industry would be all in for DirectX, Instead they tied it to OS revisions and it's got so bad now there's version fragmentation between Windows 10 releases. They fragmented all of their tech to the point that no one moves forward and everyone has to support the lowest common denominator. Meanwhile their competitors move forward with their one unified supported version.
Fragmentation is whats killing Microsoft. They need to do whatever it takes to kill it be it free OS upgrades for all previous versions or supporting the latest software and API's on all supported operating systems.
they used to sell hardware based 2FA keys from verisign, but they dropped support once the Paypal app came out.
It's the #1 reason why I don't use the app. To use it you have to disable your old hardware key, which still works for me.
Basically, anything that has a trunk can't sell. Nobody is selling them. The Honda accord isn't even selling. Even AWD cars aren't selling, so it's not the Crossover/SUV fad driving down car sales.
Simply put, No one wants to deal with the tiny trunk that a coupe or sedan has when a hatchback has a ton more cargo space, Especially when the rear seats are folded down. The writing's been on the wall for years too. Ten years ago everybody wanted either a crossover or a small stationwagon. GM knew this when they designed the Cruize, that's why they had two versions of it. The hatchback sells well, the sedan does not.
It would be smarter for GM to keep Lordstown active building hatchback cruzes instead of sedans since they are so similar, convert the volt and bolt into a hatch and build both of them in Hamtramck, and switch Oshawa over to truck manufacturing, but who knows whats going through their head right now.
It's 2018. This crap has been going on for almost 8 years now. And it's not just Bing. Just about every search engine with ads has or has had this problem.
If it's a popular app, and your search engine has ads. Guaranteed there's a Virus Inc. buying adwords for it.
1) If someone is buying Adwords for any app, and it's NOT the company or group that maintains the software, ban it.
2) If you can't verify #1, don't allow it until you can.
3) It if sounds or feels shady in any way, don't allow it.
4) If it's going to a aggregate site not directly affiliated to the company, ban it.
5) If ANYONE auto redirects from the Adword link in any way. Legit or not. even after a minute. ban it.
6) Every dropper malware I see only drops a payload once. If you see one drop. Ban it. In fact ban every ad with that domain for at least a month or more. Preferably for life.
7) Since you're monitoring every click anyway, browse the link when it's clicked every time and make sure they are getting a clean page. If at any time, you're being redirected because it sees the traffic coming from you or the script is actually stupid enough to drop malware to your IP, ban it.
8) Better yet, enforce and serve the complete ad site yourself and pull it cloudflare style. Check any links or files clicked or downloaded from the site. Guaranteed your IP's / crawlers are blacklisted so that a malware payload won't drop if you pull it. Best case is that it never drops a payload cause you're pulling it and sending it to the user. Worse case is it drops malware on your pull request, at that point, show the user the "Site has a problem" page and ban it.
I wonder if Windows 10 mobile starts rising from the dead over this.
If I remember correctly it's licensing fee was cheaper than $40 and just about every android phone could run it.
Then upgrade it to full blown Windows 10 for free.
https://support.microsoft.com/...
Only drawback is that you can't run x64 apps, and x86 apps run slower since it emulates x86, but devs can recompile for native arm64 and if all you're doing is web browsing and document processing, it should be more than adequate, with almost double the battery life vs an x86 processor.
This "Standard" was stupid from day one.
Hell, I illustrated why it was stupid back in 2012 with a fairy tale story nonetheless.
The fact that it took 6 years for people to realize that it was stupid just affirms to me that either people are gullible idiots, or I can see the future.
A Slashdot article directly above the article it duplicated?
I'm already seeing Verizon 5G micro-towers going up in my area, Although they haven't announced availability in our area as of yet. Supposedly it's launching in Houston and LA in October.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/...
So far, they're claiming 300Mbps with a 1Gbps Peak, and no data caps at $70/month. Although they're not saying anything about no throttling, but I'm sure they'll have something in place to throttle heavy users at peak times or at a certain data cap.
If they can truly deliver those speeds, especially with a light to zero touch throttling policy similar to Verizon FIOS, they will give cable serious competition and pretty much own the rural market with little to no competition other then other future 5G carriers. If they run it like Verizon Wireless and cap/throttle, it's lip service.
I don't know why these internet companies still do business in the EU.
If Facebook alone pulled out of the EU (let alone Google or Wikipedia) because they didn't want to deal with this BS, these laws would be rescinded in days.
Of course it would never happen because investors.
To be fair, there was probably a lot more money thrown around for Russian meddling, but thats beside the point.
The main reason Hillary lost is because she was literally the worst candidate the DNC could've chose. Back when she announced her candidacy in 2015 I posted this which listed all of her past scandals, and that you had better choices, even on the democrat side
After the Access Hollywood scandal, Trump should've been done. Period. Any other candidate would have been sunk, and Trump would've lost to any other candidate running against him. The difference is that he was running against Hillary, and all he had to do was divert people's attention away from the scandal by addressing the issue once, and then going back to his core voter issues while Hillary spun in circles trying to capitalize on the scandal instead of focusing on her core voter issues.
From my experience in this election, I can tell you that Trump was resonating with voters. I live in the rust belt (More Specifically North East Ohio, Western PA) where there is a ton of Democrat support. Almost all of the people I knew that traditionally voted Democrat were voting Trump, including my Grandfather, who was a WWII vet, a Retired Union leader who worked in the Railroad Business, and Voted straight Democrat except for Eisenhower. When I asked him why, he said he was the first Candidate he saw in decades that gets that Free Trade and especially Steel Dumping is killing heavy industry in this country and he felt he was the only candidate to actually fix it instead of talking about fixing it. Most of the other voters had similar reasons. Here on Slashdot, it was the H1B issue drawing voters since he was against it (but as of this post still hasn't done anything about it, which is going to hurt him come November)
Surprisingly, Almost no one I asked that went from voting Democrat to Trump voted for him because of Hillary Scandals or "Crooked Hillary" or any anti Hillary message that you commonly saw with these Russian troll ads. They voted for Trump cause They liked Trump's stance on issues (particularly anti free trade) vs Hillary. Many of them also like Sanders over Hillary because of the same issues and reasons, since many of Sanders issues were similar to Trump when it came to Jobs. It wouldn't surprise me in the least that Sanders would be in the White House if he won the nomination.
They can use Google's web based office suite as a chrome app, so they have an office suite, and I think the chrome app even allows for offline use that will sync to drive once it goes online. Never tried offline mode with mine. It will do about 90% of what most home users do with a PC.
In the end however, it's a $200 web browser that can now emulate an android tablet and soon run Linux apps. Anything you can do online you can do on a chromebook assuming that you're online and it doesn't need a third party plugin like Java (or very soon, Flash) Android support works but you better have a touchscreen to really take advantage of it (it does work with mouse and keyboard though). Linux support will really open this platform wide. If it's easy to install apps through a storefront it will pretty much be the Linux Distro of choice for desktop use.
I mentioned the printer under the assumption that they wanted to go full on chromebook with no external PC. Any PC with chrome will work as a printer conduit once you add you account to google chrome and setup your printer using the cloud print site.
If you want to remove the PC completely from the equation, then a cloud ready printer is the only option.
Chromebooks are great if all you want to do is browse the web. Just don't spend a lot of money on it.
Simply put, stay away from the Pixelbook unless you enjoy lighting money on fire. It's over $1000 and you'll get 5 years tops out of it guaranteed, even with the crazy specs it has. If you're going to spend that much you might as well stick with a Mac. At least you'll get at minimum 7-10 year use out of it. After the Pixel EOL, The only way I would even consider a Pixelbook right now is if Google flat out announces a commitment to a 7-10 year software support strategy for it.
The HP Chromebook X2 or the Samsung Chromebook Pro would be the highest I would pay for one and only if I was going to use it daily. There are also cheaper alternatives out there. Personally, I wouldn't spend more than $200 for one.
Printer wise, you need a cloud print enabled printer. Epson's are cheap, are very easy to setup, and their scanners can scan directly to Google Drive out of the box, but it is an inkjet so if you don't print often it will dry up and then it's toss the printer time, so buy an Epson XP-440 all in one for $50 and only if you really need to print. HP and Canon's also have printers that are cloud print capable, but tend to be harder to setup and can be more expensive.
And that T430 cost just as much, if not cheaper than the pixel.
Back when the Pixel was announced, I posted this. Basically, I said it was unsellable and was "Light money on Fire stupid"
Five years later, that statement still stands. If you bought one of these things, You basically paid $250/Year for a portable web browser. You could have bought a brand new chromebook every year and saved money.
The fact that Google stuck with their five year software support model for a system this expensive that clearly has hardware more than capable enough to support whatever new features come out of ChromeOS is a testament to stay as far away from these high end chromebooks as you can.
This is what is currently on the 1.1.1.1 site (which I'm assuming that's what Firefox is using since it's owned by Cloudflare)
Privacy First: Guaranteed.
We will never sell your data or use it to target ads. Period.
We will never log your IP address (the way other companies identify you). And we’re not just saying that. We’ve retained KPMG to audit our systems annually to ensure that we're doing what we say.
Frankly, we don’t want to know what you do on the Internet—it’s none of our business—and we’ve taken the technical steps to ensure we can’t
Of course, like any other DNS Resolver, you have to trust what they're saying is true, but vs. your ISP DNS (which most firefox users are using by default) or Google Public DNS, Cloudflare would be a privacy improvement. Not sure if it's better than Quad9 security wise though.
The biggest issue I have is that the settings aren't exposed by the settings menu and has to be configured using about:config. I would like to see better controls for it and possibly a list of supported DNS providers to choose like how I can choose Search engines.
San Fransisco would never allow rickshaws in the city
They have trolleys. With the influx of Tech money, they could finally afford that line expansion they wanted to do since 1915