In my experience, email, sky and phonecalls have their uses.
Email is for something that can wait - when I have the time I will read the email. Also, it is only good if the conversation is short (not many replies) and slow. Phonecalls, for me, are good for urgent matters ("Hi, internet connection for client X is not working, I tried connecting my own PC, checked the wiring, I get an IP, but no internet access"), especially if realtime conversation is needed ("OK, try it now").
I would hate doing the realtime urgent one over email because it would mean that I would need to check my email every minute.
Skype is somewhere in the middle - I am more likely to notice the message faster and then we can have an almost-realtime conversation.
I prefer phonecall over text when I need to explain stuff to people because I would rather talk than type a full page of explanations (to which there will be questions etc).
An emailed inquiry with specific information, maybe including a screenshot, is far superior. Then I can send a reply with specific instructions, a photo of the solution, and links for more information.
For the realtime conversations, I usually just ask the person to email me a screenshot or something while we are on the phone.
For email to work, both parties need to write more information, because if I need to send many messages to get the information (for example, I send two questions, get an answer to one, have to repeat the other), with delays of 5 - 30 minutes between replies, then I will waste more time checking my email than I would if we just talked.
Well, a department could be allocated, say, $300/month for small expenses that do not need a paper trail.
In my country there was a similar scandal - the army bought forks and knives for ~70EUR a piece.
However, the problem was that it bought a lot of them (resulting in a huge sum). Another is the "public purchases" law that allows for such corruption (you can write requirements so that only one supplier fits them etc). OTOH, they should have been able to just send a couple of privates to the supermarket and asked them to buy forks or something like that.
There has to be some sort of "cheap stuff" exception, as long as the amount of money is small. If a cup broke, it should be possible to just go and buy one (not gold plated etc) instead of taking several months to organize a "public purchase".
While paper trails are great, I do not think there is a reason for a paper trail for purchasing, for example, a cheap pen.
Also, the summary says that those regulations were already ignored in practice. This, in my opinion, is bad as selective following of rules can lead to a spiteful manager punishing an employee for ignoring the rules everyone else is ignoring. So, either follow the rules or change them.
Yes, why not? With maintenance, you can run a lathe or some other equipment for a very long time, why should a computer be different (bonus points if the equipment actually depends on the computer to run)?
Also, from the various underhanded tactics Microsoft has used to trick people into upgrading, I'd say they really really want users to upgrade.
I do not have any 32bit Windows 10 computers, but at least Windows 7 x64 cannot run 16bit software (unless I use XP mode), but 32bit version can. Also, some drivers or 32bit software does not work with 64bit OS. For example, DScaler4 with Leadtek Winfast PVR2000 analog TV input card (I use it when somebody asks me to record a VHS tape to DVD) is very unstable in Windows 7 x64, but works great in Windows 7 x86. So, my HTPC has 32bit Windows for this reason - it also has only 4GB RAM (a bit less usable) and is fast enough or recording VHS or watching a movie, including deinterlacing 1080i video (yadifx2) for live TV.
Microsoft wants everyone to use Windows 10. Including the users of older computers (32bit CPU and/or less than 4GB RAM), so they made a 32bit version, it would be bad if 32bit version users were left out of the nagging, unintended upgrades, forced updates, forced reboots, telemetry and other fun Windows experience.
Why not? I do not live in the USA, but I like the way Trump does as he promised and considers the needs of the USA first.
Neither Putin, nor Trump should consider the needs of my country over those of their own countries - that's the job of the leaders of my country (and I think that the should consider the needs of my country first - only do what is profitable for other countries if it is profitable for my country too or avoids an invasion).
Either nobody should profit from pollution (preferred result) or my country (or the USA in Trump's case as he is working for the USA, not my country) should also profit from CO2, or at least, not incur any losses associated with it while some other country profits.
So, enact some import tariffs that allow local businesses (less polluting) to compete with the factories in China (more polluting) and everything will be great. Otherwise this agreement is only going to help China and similar countries as the other countries stop competing all by themselves.
As for the aid to third world countries - the idea is great, but it needs some way of making sure that the money ends up being used for reducing pollution and not, say, disappears into the pockets of the leaders of that country.
IMO, any environmental agreements are incompatible with free trade, unless both countries have the same laws. Otherwise you just hurt your own businesses.
Let's say you open a factory in your country - the laws say that you cannot dump toxic waste into a nearby river, so you have to pay for proper disposal, the cost of that is passed to the consumer by way of increased price. That's OK. What's not OK, is that I can then open a similar factory in China (or wherever), dump the toxic waste into a river (either because of the lax laws or because I knew who to bribe), then making the product is cheaper for me and I can sell it cheaper than you (and still make money).
So, unless import tariffs are placed on products from countries with less strict environmental laws, all it does is shift the pollution (and jobs) to the less strict country. That may be fine in case of dumping toxic waste into a river (after all, it only matters that the rivers in my country are clean, if other countries are fine with rivers full of toxic waste then I guess it's OK), but if I understand correctly, CO2 affects everyone regardless of where it was produced.
If self-driving car services do develop as expected, it's entirely possible that a car will lose all atraction very soon.
I really doubt it. I know that I would not want to replace my car with what is essentially a taxi service. Here's why: 1. I like to own something, instead of paying for a service. I own my car. 2. I like to customize the car, for example, install a better sound system (than stock), use a tape deck instead of a CD player etc. 3. My car is parked right here, I do not need to call and wait for it (especially during peak usage times). 4. I like to carry things in my car that I may need (like an air compressor, a flashlight or a set of sockets). I would have to take them to the "taxi" and then remember not to leave them there. I can now just leave them in the trunk etc. 5. Sometimes the stuff in #3 may be too heavy or inconvenient to carry manually along with some other cargo. so I would have to go multiple times to the car to empty it out. 6. My car may be clean or not, that depends on me. I may get an autonomous taxi full of vomit or garbage (it's autonomous, there is no driver to take the car to be cleaned after driving a very drunk or sick passenger to his destination). 7. I dislike paying money, especially the micropayments. I need to pay money for fuel and maintenance of my car (but then I can do some of the maintenance myself and save money), but I would dislike paying each time I use the car and especially paying different amounts based on the cargo I carry, the time I keep it parked (if the parking lot is free) etc.
TLDR: I currently have my own car instead of using taxi all the time not just because taxi costs more. Even if taxi cost was the same as using my own car, I would still mostly use my own car.
You can look at this from a different angle (km prices from your example): Driving 1000km using an electric car costs $29.9 Driving 1000km using a gasoline car costs $111
Electric car saves $81.1/1000km. Electric car costs $30k (I already have a gasoline car). I would have to drive 370370km to get even. That would take me a long time (I do not drive that much).
Maintenance costs may be a different matter as my current car sometimes requires patching rust holes, but then I would think that in 370000km the new car would also require maintenance and it may be more expensive. I still think that if I had $30k, I could use some of it to restore my car (you know, replace the upholstery, repaint the car etc, but this is optional) and spend the rest on fuel (as needed, while keeping the rest of the money in a savings account etc) and be better off. This is in addition to the fact that I do not really like the modern computerized cars where you may not even be able to replace the tires or a lightbulb without needing to go to the "authorized service" and paying a lot.
Recent improvements in battery technology promise batteries that will last the life of the car.
What is the "life of the car"? My current car is 35 years old (and still does not need an engine overhaul btw), will the electric car battery last 35 (or more) years?
Sure, when the EV technology is good enough and when gasoline becomes harder to come by I will consider replacing the gasoline engine in my car with an electric motor (I could also use the gasoline engine to generate the electricity to charge my now-electric car).
Right, because nobody every breaks into buildings and messes with (or steals) computers.
If somebody broke into my home and stole my computer, I would be more unhappy because they stole my computer and not because now they can hack it (they can just pull the HDD out and connect it to another PC or boot my PC from a live CD if they want to access the data).
There is also the possibility of a trusted software vendor getting hacked and their application ending up with some code that exploits that "local user" vulnerability you didn't patch. You use that software regularly, you install the bad update, you run the application... you are the local user and now you've been exploited. Guess you needed that patch, after all.
And in Windows XP days my user was the admin - there was no need to exploit privilege escalation bug if the program was bad. Now my user is still the admin, but UAC sometimes pops up asking for my approval.
OTOH, if I opened a wrong email attachment, it could encrypt my data even if running as limited user (me) on a fully patched system (or Linux). So, on a single user computer it is kinda pointless ("The malware encrypted all my data, but at least the system files are unaffected, yay!").
History has shown us otherwise.
So, with today's forced updates, everybody updates more often? Even Windows 7 or 8? I used to update my Windows 7 PCs (not very often, but I did), until GWX and telemetry showed up. And now I cannot even pick and choose to not install telemetry, so Windows Update got disabled. Though I will install the specific patch on my Windows 7 and Windows XP laptops as those may be exposed to the internet without a router.
I would say that when telemetry and GWX came out, more people disabled updates if they wanted to avoid installing Windows 10.
You don't trust Microsoft's patch to do the job, but you trust their manual procedures? And you trust that no part of the system will act to protect the services you've removed? You do realize that Windows has had system file protection (and automatic repair and restoration of said files) since Windows 7, right?
Microsoft's patch means running their (new) code on my computer. It may just do what is promised, but it may also flip some registry or group policy setting that disables telemetry (enterprise edition). I do not know either way, so I would be back to sniffing packets on my router looking for any communication between that PC and Microsoft. On the other hand, I expect the manual workaround to work as promised, because I really doubt that Microsoft had the foresight to make uninstalling SMBv1 support also mess up the other settings.
Microsoft is the cause why a lot of end users disable updates. There is/was a setting to only install security patches and not install the rest. Microsoft then made telemetry and Windows10 appear as security patches so they would get installed. The users disabled automatic updates and started installing security patches manually (those users who bothered to do it, anyway). After that, Microsoft stopped providing patches individually, so that if you wanted to install a security patch, you had to install telemetry and GWX as well. So the users stopped installing updates completely.
If Microsoft made it possible to only install security patches (and chose which ones, I may not need a patch that protects my computer from a local user) and preferable made it so that not every patch required a reboot, I think more people would update their OS. Of course, now that Microsoft has lost the trust of its users, it may be extremely difficult to earn in back.
I chose to uninstall the protocol from my Windows 10 computer (Microsoft published workaround) instead of installing the patch because I do not trust the patch to not re-enable telemetry on my PC.
I kinda like Windows 7, it's like updated XP. Of course, it requires more RAM and faster CPU than XP (each new version of Windows is said to be faster than the previous one, but actually runs slower on the same hardware), but overall it is quite good. And I can have the Windows2000 style UI instead of the new tablet-style UI of Windows 8 and 10.
As for updates, because this has been happening for a while now, it's way past incompetence and is pretty much certainly malice.
But even when updates were not malicious (mostly), requiring restart for pretty much any update is still extremely inconvenient. On Linux I need to restart if I update the kernel or a lib that everything uses, but I can update openssl or bash without a reboot. Windows even has a hot patching capability for its DLLs, just that it is not used.
Well, the different OSs serve a bit different purposes. Linux is great on a server and good on a desktop if it is managed by somebody competent. Linux on a desktop is kind of like an automatic system (say, a car with automatic transmission) - whne it works, it's great, but when there is a problem, there problem is usually difficult to solve. For example - video card drivers. Usually Linux detects the video card automatically and works OK (disregarding games for now), but if it does not have the proper driver for my video card, then installing it is much more difficult than doing that on Windows.
Also, there are software that only works on Windows or even a specific version of Windows. I have a good navigation software (Garmin MobilePC), but it does not work on Windows 10 or Linux.
In addition, Linux can run some games, but not all games that Windows can.
So, In some cases, Linux is an incomplete solution (games for example), so I would need to dual boot (since VMs usually do not have good graphics performance), but since Windows can do pretty much everything that Linux can, I might as well run Windows and use a Linux VM or server (for things that Linux does better than Windwos).
Also, why does almost every update require a reboot? I mean on Linux you need to reboot only when updating the kernel (though there are ways to avoid even that) or a reboot may be more convenient if the update affected a lib that pretty much everything uses (glibc).
But with Windows, almost any update requires a reboot, sometimes more than once. Couldn't they just restart the affected services (in this case, the SMB service)? I remember somebody writing that Microsoft places special empty space in all its libs so that they can be patched while in memory. I guess this feature is not used...
If people are still using Windows XP, then maybe Microsoft could not make a better OS for them? At least until recently, most people installed updates. But then the whole Windows 10 nonsense started - spyware being installed as a critical update, Windows 10 nag screen too. At some point Windows 10 was installed automatically even if you closed the nag window. And Windows 10 is crap, or rather, it is a relatively good OS, but with spyware and adware right from Microsoft, oh, and Windows now automatically updates itself and reboots (for home users at least) and sometimes the updates introduce new problems.
The solution was to disable automatic updates and to optionally install the really important updates (not the Windows 10 nagware that Microsoft says is important)..Of course then Microsoft started to release all updates in one big package, so you could not install a security patch without installing spyware. Because of this, Microsoft created a bigger problem than it had with Windows XP. Since now people do not really want to update, stopping support for Windows 7 will not result in people hurrying to install Windows 10.
I have a PC with Windows 10 and have spent some time disabling its telemetry (some may still be left, but at least I did not see any traffic for a good while from that PC to microsoft). However, I cannot install this update, because it may turn telemetry back on (or hide it better). Thankfully, there is a workaround (disabling SMBv1) that does not require installing the patch.
This (calling everybody you disagree with Nazi) may also soften the people's opinion about the real Nazis.
What I mean, there are not a lot of people remaining who remember living under the Nazis, most of the people know about them from history books etc. So, to somebody not really into history, getting called a Nazi for his beliefs may result in that person thinking "well, what I want (more equal pay between workers and business owners, reduction of the influence of large corporations, preserving our culture (foreigners can learn to act like us) is not that unreasonable and I certainly do not want to kill people based on their religion or nationality alone. If this makes me a Nazi, then maybe the Nazis were the good guys after all."
I think this is because the "elite" fell asleep in their comfortable places and forgot the people.
For me and my country, the EU is great, but I can see how that may be annoying to the people in richer countries.
Another problem is the refugees. Now, I do not think that they all should be shot for illegally crossing the border etc, however, I remember Germany inviting them to come (instead of reluctantly accepting them) causing more refugees to come. It turned out that Germany cannot handle them all, so it forced other countries to accept them. This highlighted a few problems: 1. Germany has too much control in what is supposed to be a union, as opposed to the other countries being colonies of Germany. Kinda like the USSR where Moscow had all the power (though EU is not communist and is not so obsessed with military as the USSR was). It may not matter to my country - as we would have to obey someone anyway - be it Russia, Germany, the US or some other powerful country. But, I can understand why the people of the UK or France may not like that. 2. The EU has essentially no external border security. Before my country joined the EU, there was doubt on whether it should be accepted because it may have leaky external borders (with Belarus etc). It turns out all external EU borders are leaky. It may be OK if everyone who is coming is not a criminal, but if I was in control of ISIS I would send quite a few members disguised as refugees.
There also has been too much looking out for the interests of banks and big corporations over the interests of the people and small businesses.
Yea, it also leaves a log by default, so I can always just read the message again if I forget some detail. When talking over the phone I either have to write it down (good if I can do it at the time) or record the conversation (also good, but needs preparation).
No, I do not want to have a long conversation via SMS too. However, I may not be able to check my email very often (maybe my current job is away from a PC or I do not have a job and am doing something away from a PC), but I would like to be notified of the answer faster than the next time I check my email.
After receiving the SMS, I would find some paper and a pen and would call back to ask for the additional information or check my email for it.
To me, a text message is good for short conversations that require intermediate speed response.
If you want me to drop everything I do and talk to you, call me, but in some cases (say, I'm driving) I may be unable to answer, then I'll call you back as soon as I can, hopefully you will be able to answer then. This is OK if what you need to talk about only has value in that instant or you really need a fast response from me r you need a confirmation that I have received the info.
If you want to tell me something, but it can wait an hour or so, send me a text message, I'll read it as soon as I can.
If you want to tell me something, but this does not require fast action from me, send me an email, I check my email a few times a day.
So, to me, "You are (not) hired" is quite appropriate for SMS. It does not require me to drop everything and talk to you, but lets me know quite quickly about the result.
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In my experience, email, sky and phonecalls have their uses.
Email is for something that can wait - when I have the time I will read the email. Also, it is only good if the conversation is short (not many replies) and slow.
Phonecalls, for me, are good for urgent matters ("Hi, internet connection for client X is not working, I tried connecting my own PC, checked the wiring, I get an IP, but no internet access"), especially if realtime conversation is needed ("OK, try it now").
I would hate doing the realtime urgent one over email because it would mean that I would need to check my email every minute.
Skype is somewhere in the middle - I am more likely to notice the message faster and then we can have an almost-realtime conversation.
I prefer phonecall over text when I need to explain stuff to people because I would rather talk than type a full page of explanations (to which there will be questions etc).
An emailed inquiry with specific information, maybe including a screenshot, is far superior. Then I can send a reply with specific instructions, a photo of the solution, and links for more information.
For the realtime conversations, I usually just ask the person to email me a screenshot or something while we are on the phone.
For email to work, both parties need to write more information, because if I need to send many messages to get the information (for example, I send two questions, get an answer to one, have to repeat the other), with delays of 5 - 30 minutes between replies, then I will waste more time checking my email than I would if we just talked.
Well, a department could be allocated, say, $300/month for small expenses that do not need a paper trail.
In my country there was a similar scandal - the army bought forks and knives for ~70EUR a piece.
However, the problem was that it bought a lot of them (resulting in a huge sum). Another is the "public purchases" law that allows for such corruption (you can write requirements so that only one supplier fits them etc). OTOH, they should have been able to just send a couple of privates to the supermarket and asked them to buy forks or something like that.
There has to be some sort of "cheap stuff" exception, as long as the amount of money is small. If a cup broke, it should be possible to just go and buy one (not gold plated etc) instead of taking several months to organize a "public purchase".
While paper trails are great, I do not think there is a reason for a paper trail for purchasing, for example, a cheap pen.
Also, the summary says that those regulations were already ignored in practice. This, in my opinion, is bad as selective following of rules can lead to a spiteful manager punishing an employee for ignoring the rules everyone else is ignoring. So, either follow the rules or change them.
Windows could emulate 16bit - the software is usually very old, so the performance impact of emulation should not be noticeable.
Yes, why not? With maintenance, you can run a lathe or some other equipment for a very long time, why should a computer be different (bonus points if the equipment actually depends on the computer to run)?
Also, from the various underhanded tactics Microsoft has used to trick people into upgrading, I'd say they really really want users to upgrade.
I do not have any 32bit Windows 10 computers, but at least Windows 7 x64 cannot run 16bit software (unless I use XP mode), but 32bit version can. Also, some drivers or 32bit software does not work with 64bit OS. For example, DScaler4 with Leadtek Winfast PVR2000 analog TV input card (I use it when somebody asks me to record a VHS tape to DVD) is very unstable in Windows 7 x64, but works great in Windows 7 x86. So, my HTPC has 32bit Windows for this reason - it also has only 4GB RAM (a bit less usable) and is fast enough or recording VHS or watching a movie, including deinterlacing 1080i video (yadifx2) for live TV.
Microsoft wants everyone to use Windows 10. Including the users of older computers (32bit CPU and/or less than 4GB RAM), so they made a 32bit version, it would be bad if 32bit version users were left out of the nagging, unintended upgrades, forced updates, forced reboots, telemetry and other fun Windows experience.
Why not? I do not live in the USA, but I like the way Trump does as he promised and considers the needs of the USA first.
Neither Putin, nor Trump should consider the needs of my country over those of their own countries - that's the job of the leaders of my country (and I think that the should consider the needs of my country first - only do what is profitable for other countries if it is profitable for my country too or avoids an invasion).
Either nobody should profit from pollution (preferred result) or my country (or the USA in Trump's case as he is working for the USA, not my country) should also profit from CO2, or at least, not incur any losses associated with it while some other country profits.
So, enact some import tariffs that allow local businesses (less polluting) to compete with the factories in China (more polluting) and everything will be great. Otherwise this agreement is only going to help China and similar countries as the other countries stop competing all by themselves.
As for the aid to third world countries - the idea is great, but it needs some way of making sure that the money ends up being used for reducing pollution and not, say, disappears into the pockets of the leaders of that country.
IMO, any environmental agreements are incompatible with free trade, unless both countries have the same laws. Otherwise you just hurt your own businesses.
Let's say you open a factory in your country - the laws say that you cannot dump toxic waste into a nearby river, so you have to pay for proper disposal, the cost of that is passed to the consumer by way of increased price. That's OK. What's not OK, is that I can then open a similar factory in China (or wherever), dump the toxic waste into a river (either because of the lax laws or because I knew who to bribe), then making the product is cheaper for me and I can sell it cheaper than you (and still make money).
So, unless import tariffs are placed on products from countries with less strict environmental laws, all it does is shift the pollution (and jobs) to the less strict country. That may be fine in case of dumping toxic waste into a river (after all, it only matters that the rivers in my country are clean, if other countries are fine with rivers full of toxic waste then I guess it's OK), but if I understand correctly, CO2 affects everyone regardless of where it was produced.
If self-driving car services do develop as expected, it's entirely possible that a car will lose all atraction very soon.
I really doubt it. I know that I would not want to replace my car with what is essentially a taxi service. Here's why:
1. I like to own something, instead of paying for a service. I own my car.
2. I like to customize the car, for example, install a better sound system (than stock), use a tape deck instead of a CD player etc.
3. My car is parked right here, I do not need to call and wait for it (especially during peak usage times).
4. I like to carry things in my car that I may need (like an air compressor, a flashlight or a set of sockets). I would have to take them to the "taxi" and then remember not to leave them there. I can now just leave them in the trunk etc.
5. Sometimes the stuff in #3 may be too heavy or inconvenient to carry manually along with some other cargo. so I would have to go multiple times to the car to empty it out.
6. My car may be clean or not, that depends on me. I may get an autonomous taxi full of vomit or garbage (it's autonomous, there is no driver to take the car to be cleaned after driving a very drunk or sick passenger to his destination).
7. I dislike paying money, especially the micropayments. I need to pay money for fuel and maintenance of my car (but then I can do some of the maintenance myself and save money), but I would dislike paying each time I use the car and especially paying different amounts based on the cargo I carry, the time I keep it parked (if the parking lot is free) etc.
TLDR: I currently have my own car instead of using taxi all the time not just because taxi costs more. Even if taxi cost was the same as using my own car, I would still mostly use my own car.
You can look at this from a different angle (km prices from your example):
Driving 1000km using an electric car costs $29.9
Driving 1000km using a gasoline car costs $111
Electric car saves $81.1/1000km. Electric car costs $30k (I already have a gasoline car). I would have to drive 370370km to get even. That would take me a long time (I do not drive that much).
Maintenance costs may be a different matter as my current car sometimes requires patching rust holes, but then I would think that in 370000km the new car would also require maintenance and it may be more expensive. I still think that if I had $30k, I could use some of it to restore my car (you know, replace the upholstery, repaint the car etc, but this is optional) and spend the rest on fuel (as needed, while keeping the rest of the money in a savings account etc) and be better off. This is in addition to the fact that I do not really like the modern computerized cars where you may not even be able to replace the tires or a lightbulb without needing to go to the "authorized service" and paying a lot.
Recent improvements in battery technology promise batteries that will last the life of the car.
What is the "life of the car"? My current car is 35 years old (and still does not need an engine overhaul btw), will the electric car battery last 35 (or more) years?
I guess that would be fine in the areas around the refineries, but not so much further away or in other countries (that import gasoline).
Sure, when the EV technology is good enough and when gasoline becomes harder to come by I will consider replacing the gasoline engine in my car with an electric motor (I could also use the gasoline engine to generate the electricity to charge my now-electric car).
Right, because nobody every breaks into buildings and messes with (or steals) computers.
If somebody broke into my home and stole my computer, I would be more unhappy because they stole my computer and not because now they can hack it (they can just pull the HDD out and connect it to another PC or boot my PC from a live CD if they want to access the data).
There is also the possibility of a trusted software vendor getting hacked and their application ending up with some code that exploits that "local user" vulnerability you didn't patch. You use that software regularly, you install the bad update, you run the application... you are the local user and now you've been exploited. Guess you needed that patch, after all.
And in Windows XP days my user was the admin - there was no need to exploit privilege escalation bug if the program was bad. Now my user is still the admin, but UAC sometimes pops up asking for my approval.
OTOH, if I opened a wrong email attachment, it could encrypt my data even if running as limited user (me) on a fully patched system (or Linux). So, on a single user computer it is kinda pointless ("The malware encrypted all my data, but at least the system files are unaffected, yay!").
History has shown us otherwise.
So, with today's forced updates, everybody updates more often? Even Windows 7 or 8? I used to update my Windows 7 PCs (not very often, but I did), until GWX and telemetry showed up. And now I cannot even pick and choose to not install telemetry, so Windows Update got disabled. Though I will install the specific patch on my Windows 7 and Windows XP laptops as those may be exposed to the internet without a router.
I would say that when telemetry and GWX came out, more people disabled updates if they wanted to avoid installing Windows 10.
Link, please?
https://technet.microsoft.com/...
You don't trust Microsoft's patch to do the job, but you trust their manual procedures? And you trust that no part of the system will act to protect the services you've removed? You do realize that Windows has had system file protection (and automatic repair and restoration of said files) since Windows 7, right?
Microsoft's patch means running their (new) code on my computer. It may just do what is promised, but it may also flip some registry or group policy setting that disables telemetry (enterprise edition). I do not know either way, so I would be back to sniffing packets on my router looking for any communication between that PC and Microsoft.
On the other hand, I expect the manual workaround to work as promised, because I really doubt that Microsoft had the foresight to make uninstalling SMBv1 support also mess up the other settings.
I use some 16bit programs on my Windows 7 PC in XP mode, which is an XP virtual machine.
Microsoft is the cause why a lot of end users disable updates. There is/was a setting to only install security patches and not install the rest. Microsoft then made telemetry and Windows10 appear as security patches so they would get installed. The users disabled automatic updates and started installing security patches manually (those users who bothered to do it, anyway). After that, Microsoft stopped providing patches individually, so that if you wanted to install a security patch, you had to install telemetry and GWX as well. So the users stopped installing updates completely.
If Microsoft made it possible to only install security patches (and chose which ones, I may not need a patch that protects my computer from a local user) and preferable made it so that not every patch required a reboot, I think more people would update their OS. Of course, now that Microsoft has lost the trust of its users, it may be extremely difficult to earn in back.
I chose to uninstall the protocol from my Windows 10 computer (Microsoft published workaround) instead of installing the patch because I do not trust the patch to not re-enable telemetry on my PC.
I kinda like Windows 7, it's like updated XP. Of course, it requires more RAM and faster CPU than XP (each new version of Windows is said to be faster than the previous one, but actually runs slower on the same hardware), but overall it is quite good. And I can have the Windows2000 style UI instead of the new tablet-style UI of Windows 8 and 10.
As for updates, because this has been happening for a while now, it's way past incompetence and is pretty much certainly malice.
But even when updates were not malicious (mostly), requiring restart for pretty much any update is still extremely inconvenient. On Linux I need to restart if I update the kernel or a lib that everything uses, but I can update openssl or bash without a reboot. Windows even has a hot patching capability for its DLLs, just that it is not used.
Well, the different OSs serve a bit different purposes. Linux is great on a server and good on a desktop if it is managed by somebody competent. Linux on a desktop is kind of like an automatic system (say, a car with automatic transmission) - whne it works, it's great, but when there is a problem, there problem is usually difficult to solve.
For example - video card drivers. Usually Linux detects the video card automatically and works OK (disregarding games for now), but if it does not have the proper driver for my video card, then installing it is much more difficult than doing that on Windows.
Also, there are software that only works on Windows or even a specific version of Windows. I have a good navigation software (Garmin MobilePC), but it does not work on Windows 10 or Linux.
In addition, Linux can run some games, but not all games that Windows can.
So, In some cases, Linux is an incomplete solution (games for example), so I would need to dual boot (since VMs usually do not have good graphics performance), but since Windows can do pretty much everything that Linux can, I might as well run Windows and use a Linux VM or server (for things that Linux does better than Windwos).
Also, why does almost every update require a reboot? I mean on Linux you need to reboot only when updating the kernel (though there are ways to avoid even that) or a reboot may be more convenient if the update affected a lib that pretty much everything uses (glibc).
But with Windows, almost any update requires a reboot, sometimes more than once. Couldn't they just restart the affected services (in this case, the SMB service)? I remember somebody writing that Microsoft places special empty space in all its libs so that they can be patched while in memory. I guess this feature is not used...
This, so many times this.
If people are still using Windows XP, then maybe Microsoft could not make a better OS for them? At least until recently, most people installed updates. But then the whole Windows 10 nonsense started - spyware being installed as a critical update, Windows 10 nag screen too. At some point Windows 10 was installed automatically even if you closed the nag window. And Windows 10 is crap, or rather, it is a relatively good OS, but with spyware and adware right from Microsoft, oh, and Windows now automatically updates itself and reboots (for home users at least) and sometimes the updates introduce new problems.
The solution was to disable automatic updates and to optionally install the really important updates (not the Windows 10 nagware that Microsoft says is important)..Of course then Microsoft started to release all updates in one big package, so you could not install a security patch without installing spyware. Because of this, Microsoft created a bigger problem than it had with Windows XP. Since now people do not really want to update, stopping support for Windows 7 will not result in people hurrying to install Windows 10.
I have a PC with Windows 10 and have spent some time disabling its telemetry (some may still be left, but at least I did not see any traffic for a good while from that PC to microsoft). However, I cannot install this update, because it may turn telemetry back on (or hide it better). Thankfully, there is a workaround (disabling SMBv1) that does not require installing the patch.
This (calling everybody you disagree with Nazi) may also soften the people's opinion about the real Nazis.
What I mean, there are not a lot of people remaining who remember living under the Nazis, most of the people know about them from history books etc. So, to somebody not really into history, getting called a Nazi for his beliefs may result in that person thinking "well, what I want (more equal pay between workers and business owners, reduction of the influence of large corporations, preserving our culture (foreigners can learn to act like us) is not that unreasonable and I certainly do not want to kill people based on their religion or nationality alone. If this makes me a Nazi, then maybe the Nazis were the good guys after all."
I think this is because the "elite" fell asleep in their comfortable places and forgot the people.
For me and my country, the EU is great, but I can see how that may be annoying to the people in richer countries.
Another problem is the refugees. Now, I do not think that they all should be shot for illegally crossing the border etc, however, I remember Germany inviting them to come (instead of reluctantly accepting them) causing more refugees to come. It turned out that Germany cannot handle them all, so it forced other countries to accept them. This highlighted a few problems:
1. Germany has too much control in what is supposed to be a union, as opposed to the other countries being colonies of Germany. Kinda like the USSR where Moscow had all the power (though EU is not communist and is not so obsessed with military as the USSR was). It may not matter to my country - as we would have to obey someone anyway - be it Russia, Germany, the US or some other powerful country. But, I can understand why the people of the UK or France may not like that.
2. The EU has essentially no external border security. Before my country joined the EU, there was doubt on whether it should be accepted because it may have leaky external borders (with Belarus etc). It turns out all external EU borders are leaky. It may be OK if everyone who is coming is not a criminal, but if I was in control of ISIS I would send quite a few members disguised as refugees.
There also has been too much looking out for the interests of banks and big corporations over the interests of the people and small businesses.
Yea, it also leaves a log by default, so I can always just read the message again if I forget some detail. When talking over the phone I either have to write it down (good if I can do it at the time) or record the conversation (also good, but needs preparation).
No, I do not want to have a long conversation via SMS too. However, I may not be able to check my email very often (maybe my current job is away from a PC or I do not have a job and am doing something away from a PC), but I would like to be notified of the answer faster than the next time I check my email.
After receiving the SMS, I would find some paper and a pen and would call back to ask for the additional information or check my email for it.
To me, a text message is good for short conversations that require intermediate speed response.
If you want me to drop everything I do and talk to you, call me, but in some cases (say, I'm driving) I may be unable to answer, then I'll call you back as soon as I can, hopefully you will be able to answer then. This is OK if what you need to talk about only has value in that instant or you really need a fast response from me r you need a confirmation that I have received the info.
If you want to tell me something, but it can wait an hour or so, send me a text message, I'll read it as soon as I can.
If you want to tell me something, but this does not require fast action from me, send me an email, I check my email a few times a day.
So, to me, "You are (not) hired" is quite appropriate for SMS. It does not require me to drop everything and talk to you, but lets me know quite quickly about the result.