don't panic ! Every now and then politician make suggestions. In this case it was the (acting) interior minister. For it to become law it has to go thru parliament and it it would, the courts will be called. There is already enough resistance to this from other political parties. That is the great thing about democracy and independant jurisdiction: anyone can thow up ideas for debate and debate is good. In the end majority and courts decide
my PC is a workhorse. Due to MS-Office it has to be Windows. I don't really care for 7, 8 or 10. The OS the foundation for the applications. I do not need any of the fancy stuff - just a robust platform. So I stay on 7 until no longer supported. And by then I hope that WINE is good enought to run MS Office under Linux - or better M$ has a Linux version - yes I would even pay for it
I have visited the US over a dozen times. what a beautiful country & great people. I have so many friends there. But now I will not go there any longer - until the administration behaves again as I expect in a civilized country. I foresee the tourist numbers - and thus $$$ revenue dropping now. what a shame - I hope I can visit this wonderful country again some day. Greetings from myheart to all you americans that have made my many visists to enjoyable
That is exactly what will happen with the Internet of Things in a few years: Lot's of expensive and well functioning machines connected to outdated software.
more and more "things" (cars, stereos, cameras etc) can only be operated with an iPhone or Android smartphone. Volvo even plans to do away with car keys and open the car with the smartphone. Cars and other hardware live longer than most techno-fads. So how do you open your Volvo (which probably lasts 20+ years) when the smartphones of the future do not have the matching app any more ? The McLaren story is a great example that we going the wrong direction. A long living asset like a car shall not be dependant on short cycle electronics.
seems these hacks and leaks happen almost every day now. I am convinced it can happen to ANY of us - any day. So we must develop a reslience against these inevitables leaks.
Cars last much longer than smartphones. 50 years old Volvos are not uncommon in Europe. iOS and Android will be gone by then - how will I open that car ? I own a 66 Mustang - the keys still work just fine
I was in a very similar situation 2 years ago and installed a Grandstream GXV3140 (http://www.grandstream.com/products/ip-video-telephony/gxv3140) at the home of the target person. To my knowledge the only hardware Skype phone on the market I setup the Skype account such that only registered persons can call and set it to autoanswer. It has worked since then without any problems. The firmware update function can also be automated such that the phone checks and installs updates on a regular basis. Sound and video Quality is good. would do it again if I had to
I need to do my work that requires certain applications. And I want them to run on my PC because I do not want to use cloud services. I keep my data for years in local archice. For all this I do not really care on which OS it runs. It is the applications I want - and lets face it the most applications still exist for windows. And a program that ran fibe on Win95 back then still runs on Win7. Forget the Mac- changes OS every few years. Linux ? yes I would like to - but even with LTS versions I need to re-install the OS every 2-3 years. My XP ran fine for 8 years. Now you understabnd why I use Windows - it just does the job. All else is academical.
Ease of use is the key to the mass market. Installing software: Windows: run the installer - ready. Linux: If I am lucky, I can use the packet manager. Id the desired software is not in te packet manager, I have to first decide which Linux I want the software for. RPM or a DEB package? The installation will the tyoicall tell me that some library is missing or outdated.
Hardware drivers: Windows drivers come with pretty much any product. Linux drivers ????
long term OS support: XP has been running for 10 years. Unless I chaned machines, I did SP's and patches but all my softeare stayed installed. Linux: every 6 months or so I need to re-install. Ubunti LTS veresions give me 2 years - lately even 5. As said - XP had 10.
long term Application support: Windows: When I changed from XP to 7 2 yrears ago, I could re-install all my trusted applications - no new expsense. Linux: commercial packages typical wont run any more
So why on earth would I use Linux on my desktop ?
Don' t getme wrong - I like Linux - my server runs Linux and for special projects I use Linux as well - By for everyday work it's windows. I just works and causes me less pain. Honestly I do not understand all these stories about unstable Windows. I have OS autoupdate and Secunia PSI autoupdate- Never had crashes - - its rock stable work horse
yes - I like adminer so I can do some work from any PC in the company. but for serious work I prefer Navicat (www.navicat.org). Not free but just excellent. especially the many import/export formats
I am not really interested in the OS. I am interested in applications thtat privide value to me. A good email client (I prefer Outlook 2010, but Thundervird is also fine), an office applicauon (MS-Office or LibreOffice), Firefox, Banking Software, Tax Software etc. I choose the OS that lets me run these apps reliably and where I can install them very easy. And I want hardware (printer, webcam, Card Reader etc.) to be automatically recognized and just work. If I take al these requirements, Windows is really the obvious choice for a workstation. And BTW - I run SuSE on my servers.
I have led virtual teams for many years. A very effective and cheap way to hold the team together is something PHYSICAL. A T-Shirt, a Mug, bumper sticker etc. When I did this the first time (it was a mug with our team logo) - I was surprised about the positive effect it had.
3 years with a T61 ? Not impressed ! we have a T40 that must be 5 or 6 years old - still perfect. And we also have a Lenovo R50 with a 1.4Ghz Celeron. Must be 8 years old and is still in regular use - totally sufficient for email, browsing and Text editing. Nothing beats that Thinkpad keyboard. Dell ? It depends: Had a D630 that past 3 years from my company. That was a real good robust machine. Now they gave me an E5410 - disappointing ! Feels cheaps and the keyboard is not as good as the D630
It strikes me as odd that Stallman and many/. readers demand free and opensource software all the time. How is software different from any other product or service ? Do we expect car designers to "opensource" their car designs and give them away for free ?. Maybe the cars should be free as well. Come on ! Most people work to feed their family. And if a programmer spends hist work time on developing software he wants/must get paid because THAT is how he feeds his his family. And somebody must pay that salary - and like for all other products/services it should be the customer. I am willing to to pay a REASONABLE price for my software. We can debate if MS is overcharging - but I would not expect them to give away their software.
I had signed up for an account just to play with it. Then I read the T&C's. Once I did though, I instantly deleted my account. Any email send to you is treated like a registered letter. They require you to check your mailbox every 24h (maybe it was more - cannot recall). So you could really miss deadlines. Its not only that nobody needs this (we already have S/Mime and PGP/GPG) - it can actually be harmful to you to have an account. Therefore: under no circumstances use DE-Mail - don't even get an account - and if you have one - cancel it right away.
A friend asked me to restore her PHD thesis that she had written in the late 80ies in Word 4.0 for MS-DOS). She still had the files on 5 1/4" Floppies. I always keep one of these drives around, so the pure data steeam was not too much effort. But Word 2000 (the oldes I had available) would not read these files. I asked some collegues and one of them still had a copy of MS-Works - do not recall which version. That could read the Word 4.0 files. From there via another version of MS-Works to Word 2000 and now Word 2007. What was most astonishing: all the footnotes and the table of content were perfectly preserved. Key Learning #1: Whenever one changes technology or software - bring your data to the current media and data formats. Key Learning #2: nothing beats ASCII: I can still read/edit my ASCII files that I did in 1977 on my KIM-1 (they transferred via RS-232 to my first PC)
I am 55 - and have gone thru a divorce - yet I do not share your advice. Archives and things are only a burden if the later steal your time or are used against you. Since 1980 I have a digital diary (originally on a CP/M system) and since 1994 I have archived all my emails. In 1999 I switched to digital fotos and also took fotos of all my important documents. Every year has its own folder to organize my data. My entire digital archive is about 200GB and exists on 3 disks - one off-site. Storage cost is trivial and of course they are all encrypted (Truecrypt). They is no burden at all to keep that archive - but here and there it has helped my to lookup something from my past. Information - if well organized and protected - is an asset. Would I post it on facebook etc. ? No way !!! This is my life and I will not trust it to anyone outside. When I pass away some day, my kids will inherit the USB disks (yes they they the password).
We had a burglary recently and asked police to help us to secure our home. They pointed out that unless it is a targeted, intruders seek the easy way to get into your home. Police statistics show that if a burglar cannot get in within 3 minutes, he will give up. The statistics also show that the main entry points for burglar are main door, patio door and groundfloor windows. In a standard gouse, all it takes is a beefy screwdriver to crack the hinges. So the first thing you should do is add additional security hinges to doors and windows on the ground floor. In Germany these are available from www.abus.de. We installed FAS101 and FTS3003 - They are abot 35€ a piece. I am sure you will find similar products in other countries. They will withstand 1 ton pressure and are easy to mount and operate. For a total of 500€ we have now a security where it will take more than 3 mins to break in. Should be good enough to preotect from the occasional intruder. If somebody really wants to get in, they will. It is just a matter of time and tools.
Of course 4GB is much better. But is it required for the average user ? My wife is a passionate photografer with a high end camera. She uses Photoshop Elemenst. And you know what - she is perfectly happy with her 2.4Ghz dual Core CPU and Windows 7 32-bit. And again - most users do not even use photoshop or other heavy duty gear. They have a compact camera and use simple tools like Paint.Net or Irfanview - is even that. I see that must do NOTHING to their photos - they just look at them as they are.
Once the average consumer has a functioning PC, he will not replace it until he has to. Even memory upgrades are rare. The bulk of my my neighbours are on P4's with 1GB and XP - and are happy.
Many PC vendors deliver 64-bit Win-7 with their gear - thats how you arrive at 50%. For the normal enduser there is no advantage in 64-bit. In the contrary ! The bulk of apps and drivers is still 32-bit. And the "normal" user does just fine with 2GB memory. I fully understand the advantages of 64-bit. For programmers, people working with CAD and other heavy stuff it is the way to go. But the masses use their PC to do email, browse the web, do wordprocessing, look at photos - thats it. A 1.6Ghz CPU with 1GB mem and 32-bit OS will do just fine. Robostness is much more important.
In Germany most WLAN Routers ARE sold with encryption enabled. The Top selling brand here is AVM with their "Fritz-Box". That has WPA2 on by default and the key is different for every device sold.
YES - I have all my data on a Truecrypted drive on my PC. This drive is backed up up to 2 USB drives (Truecrypted) in an alternating fashion at least once a month using robocopy . One disk is with friends 20 miles away. I do read- tests on the USB disks every month to verify they are still readable. If that would fail (it never did) I would replace that disk (call it a manual RAID configuration). Every 3 years or so a get a fresh set of disks simply because i need more capacity. The old disks I donate (after wiping them ). This scheme has worked for 12 years now and saved me after disk crash last year. Yes it does cost some money - not much though. The 1TB disk is 80€, so are the 2 USB disks each. Refreshing the disks all 3 years means I spend 240€ every 3 years - comes out to 80 per year or 6.66€ a month. I gladly pay that money top be independant and have full control over my data. Oh - any me "core data" is on a 16GB USB stick (Truecrypted) and on my keychain. So I have that data with me all the time - even when there is NO network connectivity. Cloud access for "always on" requires a mobile broadband flat rate. That costs more then 6.66€ a month. I only need a cheap GSM contract. So I argue that it is actually cheaper to store my data on my own devices.
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don't panic !
Every now and then politician make suggestions. In this case it was the (acting) interior minister.
For it to become law it has to go thru parliament and it it would, the courts will be called.
There is already enough resistance to this from other political parties.
That is the great thing about democracy and independant jurisdiction: anyone can thow up ideas for debate and debate is good. In the end majority and courts decide
spot on !
and you can build a nice, searchable archive with Email which you can even host on your own PC. No cloud dependancy
my PC is a workhorse. Due to MS-Office it has to be Windows. I don't really care for 7, 8 or 10. The OS the foundation for the applications.
I do not need any of the fancy stuff - just a robust platform. So I stay on 7 until no longer supported.
And by then I hope that WINE is good enought to run MS Office under Linux - or better M$ has a Linux version - yes I would even pay for it
I have visited the US over a dozen times. what a beautiful country & great people.
I have so many friends there.
But now I will not go there any longer - until the administration behaves again as I expect in a civilized country.
I foresee the tourist numbers - and thus $$$ revenue dropping now.
what a shame - I hope I can visit this wonderful country again some day.
Greetings from myheart to all you americans that have made my many visists to enjoyable
That is exactly what will happen with the Internet of Things in a few years:
Lot's of expensive and well functioning machines connected to outdated software.
more and more "things" (cars, stereos, cameras etc) can only be operated with an iPhone or Android smartphone.
Volvo even plans to do away with car keys and open the car with the smartphone.
Cars and other hardware live longer than most techno-fads.
So how do you open your Volvo (which probably lasts 20+ years) when the smartphones of the future do not have the matching app any more ?
The McLaren story is a great example that we going the wrong direction.
A long living asset like a car shall not be dependant on short cycle electronics.
seems these hacks and leaks happen almost every day now.
I am convinced it can happen to ANY of us - any day.
So we must develop a reslience against these inevitables leaks.
Cars last much longer than smartphones.
50 years old Volvos are not uncommon in Europe.
iOS and Android will be gone by then - how will I open that car ?
I own a 66 Mustang - the keys still work just fine
I was in a very similar situation 2 years ago and installed a Grandstream GXV3140 (http://www.grandstream.com/products/ip-video-telephony/gxv3140) at the home of the target person.
To my knowledge the only hardware Skype phone on the market
I setup the Skype account such that only registered persons can call and set it to autoanswer.
It has worked since then without any problems.
The firmware update function can also be automated such that the phone checks and installs updates on a regular basis.
Sound and video Quality is good.
would do it again if I had to
I need to do my work that requires certain applications. And I want them to run on my PC because I do not want to use cloud services. I keep my data for years in local archice. For all this I do not really care on which OS it runs. It is the applications I want - and lets face it the most applications still exist for windows. And a program that ran fibe on Win95 back then still runs on Win7. Forget the Mac- changes OS every few years. Linux ? yes I would like to - but even with LTS versions I need to re-install the OS every 2-3 years. My XP ran fine for 8 years. Now you understabnd why I use Windows - it just does the job. All else is academical.
Ease of use is the key to the mass market.
Installing software:
Windows: run the installer - ready.
Linux: If I am lucky, I can use the packet manager. Id the desired software is not in te packet manager, I have to first decide which Linux I want the software for. RPM or a DEB package?
The installation will the tyoicall tell me that some library is missing or outdated.
Hardware drivers: Windows drivers come with pretty much any
product. Linux drivers ????
long term OS support: XP has been running for 10 years. Unless I chaned machines, I did SP's and patches but all my softeare stayed installed.
Linux: every 6 months or so I need to re-install. Ubunti LTS veresions give me 2 years - lately even 5. As said - XP had 10.
long term Application support:
Windows: When I changed from XP to 7 2 yrears ago, I could re-install all my trusted applications - no new expsense.
Linux: commercial packages typical wont run any more
So why on earth would I use Linux on my desktop ?
Don' t getme wrong - I like Linux - my server runs Linux and for special projects I use Linux as well - By for everyday work it's windows. I just works and causes me less pain.
Honestly I do not understand all these stories about unstable Windows. I have OS autoupdate and Secunia PSI autoupdate- Never had crashes - - its rock stable work horse
use http://www.clonespy.com/ and let it run some days/weeks
I have done this ecercise just last week for 120,000 files - ran one night on an old P4
yes - I like adminer so I can do some work from any PC in the company. but for serious work I prefer Navicat (www.navicat.org). Not free but just excellent. especially the many import/export formats
I am not really interested in the OS. I am interested in applications thtat privide value to me. A good email client (I prefer Outlook 2010, but Thundervird is also fine), an office applicauon (MS-Office or LibreOffice), Firefox, Banking Software, Tax Software etc.
I choose the OS that lets me run these apps reliably and where I can install them very easy.
And I want hardware (printer, webcam, Card Reader etc.) to be automatically recognized and just work.
If I take al these requirements, Windows is really the obvious choice for a workstation.
And BTW - I run SuSE on my servers.
I have led virtual teams for many years. A very effective and cheap way to hold the team together is something PHYSICAL. A T-Shirt, a Mug, bumper sticker etc.
When I did this the first time (it was a mug with our team logo) - I was surprised about the positive effect it had.
3 years with a T61 ? Not impressed ! we have a T40 that must be 5 or 6 years old - still perfect. And we also have a Lenovo R50 with a 1.4Ghz Celeron. Must be 8 years old and is still in regular use - totally sufficient for email, browsing and Text editing. Nothing beats that Thinkpad keyboard.
Dell ? It depends: Had a D630 that past 3 years from my company. That was a real good robust machine. Now they gave me an E5410 - disappointing ! Feels cheaps and the keyboard is not as good as the D630
It strikes me as odd that Stallman and many /. readers demand free and opensource software all the time.
How is software different from any other product or service ?
Do we expect car designers to "opensource" their car designs and give them away for free ?. Maybe the cars should be free as well.
Come on ! Most people work to feed their family. And if a programmer spends hist work time on developing software he wants/must get paid because THAT is how he feeds his his family. And somebody must pay that salary - and like for all other products/services it should be the customer.
I am willing to to pay a REASONABLE price for my software. We can debate if MS is overcharging - but I would not expect them to give away their software.
I had signed up for an account just to play with it. Then I read the T&C's. Once I did though, I instantly deleted my account. Any email send to you is treated like a registered letter. They require you to check your mailbox every 24h (maybe it was more - cannot recall). So you could really miss deadlines. Its not only that nobody needs this (we already have S/Mime and PGP/GPG) - it can actually be harmful to you to have an account. Therefore: under no circumstances use DE-Mail - don't even get an account - and if you have one - cancel it right away.
A friend asked me to restore her PHD thesis that she had written in the late 80ies in Word 4.0 for MS-DOS).
She still had the files on 5 1/4" Floppies. I always keep one of these drives around, so the pure data steeam was not too much effort.
But Word 2000 (the oldes I had available) would not read these files. I asked some collegues and one of them still had a copy of MS-Works - do not recall which version.
That could read the Word 4.0 files. From there via another version of MS-Works to Word 2000 and now Word 2007.
What was most astonishing: all the footnotes and the table of content were perfectly preserved.
Key Learning #1: Whenever one changes technology or software - bring your data to the current media and data formats.
Key Learning #2: nothing beats ASCII: I can still read/edit my ASCII files that I did in 1977 on my KIM-1 (they transferred via RS-232 to my first PC)
I am 55 - and have gone thru a divorce - yet I do not share your advice. Archives and things are only a burden if the later steal your time or are used against you.
Since 1980 I have a digital diary (originally on a CP/M system) and since 1994 I have archived all my emails. In 1999 I switched to digital fotos and also took fotos of all my important documents. Every year has its own folder to organize my data. My entire digital archive is about 200GB and exists on 3 disks - one off-site. Storage cost is trivial and of course they are all encrypted (Truecrypt).
They is no burden at all to keep that archive - but here and there it has helped my to lookup something from my past.
Information - if well organized and protected - is an asset.
Would I post it on facebook etc. ? No way !!! This is my life and I will not trust it to anyone outside. When I pass away some day, my kids will inherit the USB disks (yes they they the password).
We had a burglary recently and asked police to help us to secure our home. They pointed out that unless it is a targeted, intruders seek the easy way to get into your home.
Police statistics show that if a burglar cannot get in within 3 minutes, he will give up.
The statistics also show that the main entry points for burglar are main door, patio door and groundfloor windows. In a standard gouse, all it takes is a beefy screwdriver to crack the hinges.
So the first thing you should do is add additional security hinges to doors and windows on the ground floor. In Germany these are available from www.abus.de. We installed FAS101 and FTS3003 - They are abot 35€ a piece. I am sure you will find similar products in other countries. They will withstand 1 ton pressure and are easy to mount and operate. For a total of 500€ we have now a security where it will take more than 3 mins to break in. Should be good enough to preotect from the occasional intruder. If somebody really wants to get in, they will. It is just a matter of time and tools.
Of course 4GB is much better. But is it required for the average user ?
My wife is a passionate photografer with a high end camera. She uses Photoshop Elemenst. And you know what - she is perfectly happy with her 2.4Ghz dual Core CPU and Windows 7 32-bit.
And again - most users do not even use photoshop or other heavy duty gear. They have a compact camera and use simple tools like Paint.Net or Irfanview - is even that. I see that must do NOTHING to their photos - they just look at them as they are.
Once the average consumer has a functioning PC, he will not replace it until he has to. Even memory upgrades are rare. The bulk of my my neighbours are on P4's with 1GB and XP - and are happy.
Many PC vendors deliver 64-bit Win-7 with their gear - thats how you arrive at 50%. For the normal enduser there is no advantage in 64-bit. In the contrary ! The bulk of apps and drivers is still 32-bit. And the "normal" user does just fine with 2GB memory. I fully understand the advantages of 64-bit. For programmers, people working with CAD and other heavy stuff it is the way to go. But the masses use their PC to do email, browse the web, do wordprocessing, look at photos - thats it. A 1.6Ghz CPU with 1GB mem and 32-bit OS will do just fine. Robostness is much more important.
In Germany most WLAN Routers ARE sold with encryption enabled. The Top selling brand here is AVM with their "Fritz-Box". That has WPA2 on by default and the key is different for every device sold.
YES - I have all my data on a Truecrypted drive on my PC. This drive is backed up up to 2 USB drives (Truecrypted) in an alternating fashion at least once a month using robocopy . One disk is with friends 20 miles away. I do read- tests on the USB disks every month to verify they are still readable. If that would fail (it never did) I would replace that disk (call it a manual RAID configuration). Every 3 years or so a get a fresh set of disks simply because i need more capacity. The old disks I donate (after wiping them ). This scheme has worked for 12 years now and saved me after disk crash last year. Yes it does cost some money - not much though. The 1TB disk is 80€, so are the 2 USB disks each. Refreshing the disks all 3 years means I spend 240€ every 3 years - comes out to 80 per year or 6.66€ a month. I gladly pay that money top be independant and have full control over my data.
Oh - any me "core data" is on a 16GB USB stick (Truecrypted) and on my keychain. So I have that data with me all the time - even when there is NO network connectivity.
Cloud access for "always on" requires a mobile broadband flat rate. That costs more then 6.66€ a month. I only need a cheap GSM contract.
So I argue that it is actually cheaper to store my data on my own devices.