No it isn't. The OS's job is to provide an interface to the hardware, not access control. However if you feel that is appropriate then go implement it in one of the various FOSS operating systems and prove that it's more secure, clearly it would be in your interest to do so.
I'm not even going to bother addressing the rest of your post, so I can only assume you're trolling me. Either that, or you honestly have no idea what operating systems have been doing for a long time now. Just in case it's the latter, I will explain:
Every single operating system today has a multitude of security mechanisms of various forms, and various levels of effectiveness. From ACLs, to Group Policy, to Gatekeeper, to SELinux, security has very much become, if not always been, a crucial part of every non-trivial operating system on the planet. If you really don't believe that, then there's nothing I can do to convince you otherwise.
So in other words, the whole article/summary is flamebait/clickbait. Only an idiot would install a server and not configure an admin password.
Saying that "Linux has malware!" because morons misconfigure an application running on Linux, is like saying "Windows has malware!" because SQL Server was installed with a blank sa password. I mean, sure, Windows does have malware, but this is just clickbait nonsense.
Because a) bluetooth security is more often than not, a steaming pile of wank,
The artbiter of access to any resource the browser has access to is in the browser itself (if you haven't configured any additional layers of access control). If the user allows access to a specific resource (in this case a bluetooth device) then what part of bluetooth security are you worried about?
Because the browser should *not* be the arbiter of access to hardware. That's the OS's job. Period. A web browser is particularly unique among applications in that it should at no point ever be considered trustworthy enough to have direct system level access, because it regularly deals with potentially hostile information.
b) Bluetooth is used in a huge variety of places
So are home networks and network-connected devices, your browser has access to this too. Not only that but many people expose their network through various external interfaces other than the browser for home automation, security, etc... and have done for a long time.
You basically made my point now. There are literally millions of computers that are constantly being infected by malware of various kinds. And one machine in a household will usually infect all the other machines in that same household. Bluetooth devices have largely been shielded because of the layers of steps required in order to compromise one. Google is removing a large number of these steps with this new technology, turning it from being a PITA, to trivial. It's a brave new world to exploit!
c) the internet is a ridiculously hostile place
Then don't connect your devices to it, that's in your power.
That's just nonsensically extreme. We are in an age where more and more services are now either only available on the internet, or are at least significantly more difficult to access outside of the internet. Hell, even standard mail service is being reduced. Short of becoming Amish, not having internet access is just not viable.
*I'm* not worried about my own equipment, because I know what I'm doing. I'm worried about all the millions of people out there that don't have my level of expertise, and will be ripe for the plucking. You really expect people that set their password to "12345" to have the skill to not click "yes" on every random thing that comes across their screen?
But, I guess you're right. Fuck 'em. Stupid me for actually caring about the security of people who otherwise don't know better.
Because a) bluetooth security is more often than not, a steaming pile of wank, b) Bluetooth is used in a huge variety of places, and finally c) the internet is a ridiculously hostile place.
Internet Explorer has already taught us what can happen when you give a browser too much access to underlying hardware. Hell, drive-by malware infections are *still* an issue, mostly because of shitty ad-networks that happily pass malware onto legitimate sites. It also taught us how ruthlessly malicious actors will jump on any and all exploits.
All you need is one or two bugs to exploit and before you can blink, a random server is able to connect to devices all around you, all because you happened to browse CNN or whatever at just the wrong moment, and the ad-network just shoved malware onto your machine. You want random websites being able to connect to and modify heart monitors, insulin pumps, baby monitors, your house environment system, etc?
This is a whole level of risk beyond someone managing to sneak your webcam and microphone on. This has the potential to actively cause damage to things outside of your computer, and possibly even cause deaths.
The browser isn't the issue. The issue is the drive-by ad-network delivered malware that people don't even know they're getting when they visit a random site. Even if you go to a site that you trust, there's *still* no guarantee that you're safe because they may serve something malicious by accident. This has happened more than enough times that this scenario should be front and center in everyone's minds.
At an absolute minimum, *some* process outside of Chrome needs to be the final arbiter of what can reach a Bluetooth device, even if it's just a process that presents the user with a "Yes or No" dialog when a site tries to do anything Bluetooth related.
There are already enough issues with poorly secured Bluetooth devices. The last thing we need is to roll out the red carpet to every malware author on the planet.
Anything that provides a firewall between the internet and a device. eg: Client software that needs to be manually installed by the user onto their machine, which facilitates communication between the web and a device, in a restricted and controlled manner, only permitting a predefined set of operations to occur.
Apparently no one at google ever saw Jurrasic Park, or they would know that scene with the line "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should."
The internet is a cesspool of fetid, rotting miasma, and you want it to be able to control real world things with no managed server in between? Are they really that thoughtless? Apparently they are!
Really, it's a matter of expectations, and Dunning Kruger effect. Throw in a little bit of ego, and fun times await.
Software development today is where it is because of several decades of lessons learned. That being said, there is still a massive gulf between enterprise software and consumer software. The subject of my comment is because I remember when I first played around with setting up Oracle, and how frustrating it was. Over a decade later, not much has changed.
The problem is there is now a very different level of expectation. When computers were older, they were expected to be difficult, because... well.... they were. But nowadays, it's easier to assemble a PC than to build a lego model. In the consumer space, software is generally more accessible than it ever was (although with the way UIs have been going lately, focusing more on being artistic than useful, I'd argue that we're taking a step backwards).
So people now think that computers are easier than ever, when the harsh reality is that computers are actually even more complicated than ever before, because they do more and more behind the scenes, and *someone* has to code that in.
What bothers me the most are hotshot people who look at this complexity and, instead of trying to overcome it, they just take the easiest way out they can, lessons learned be damned. The end result are bullshit like the NoSQL movement, because people consider SQL to be "too hard". Boy are they in for a shock when it comes time to actually query that hodge-podge of JSON to produce reports 'n stuff.
I remember a "team lead" that argued with a developer who rightly refused to use a floating point field to store currency information. The developer had to explain in detail exactly how the floating point format actually worked, and why it would be a really bad idea. It took 2 hours of insistent explanation before the hotshot acquiesced.
The problem is that it is too late. You can't come in long after the fact, when you should have been protecting your patents from the beginning.
You never know until you try? If they win, then it's worth it for them to do so. Besides, it's not like they have anything better to do now, since they appear to be giving up entirely on making new phones. CEO's gotta make is yacht payments somehow.
Right. And you know what? There are *still* businesses using DOS. There are *still* businesses using Novell... mainframes, whatever, for the simple reason that the business case to upgrade just isn't there.
I'm not going to waste my time debating this with you any further, because you either don't understand, or don't care, about the interplay between business needs and IT spending, or the effort and costs required to perform a major platform switchover. You'd rather myopically accuse me of making "bad decisions", because that's so much easier than acknowledging that maybe, just maybe, realizing that real life is a lot more complicated than you'd like it to be.
You are making so many assumptions that I'm just in awe that you haven't gone completely deaf from the noise within your own echo chamber.
I've notice that Apple has really shit the bed when it comes to... well... everything. It's like since Jobs died, Cook pulled the rudder right off the boat and now he's just standing there, looking confusedly at the rudder in his hand.
But it's another thing entirely to be charging massive premiums for hardware so old that I'm surprised the parts are even still being manufactured. Where is Apple sourcing their parts at this point, Ebay?
I want a new Mac for work, and I want to give employees the option of using a Mac instead of Windows, given how brain-damaged Microsoft is being with respect to Windows 10, but I'll be damned if I'm going to drop 2-3k per machine on hardware whose PC equivalent can be purchased for peanuts on Craigslist.
As far as CPUs are concerned, they arn't really that big of a deal because lets face it, the past *several* generations of CPUs from Intel have only incremental differences in performance. Most of the differences have gone into power efficiency improvements, and support for newer accessory technologies like DDR RAM, USB, PCI, onboard GPU, etc. But there have been massive jumps in what GPUs can do, and currently available Macs are a joke by comparison. Right now, for example, there's not even any point in porting current AAA games to Mac because the hardware won't be able to run them.
There is something to be said about taking the conservative approach for some things, for example one thing I like about OSX is that Apple doesn't make massive fundamental changes the way Microsoft does. And Apple's support is still second to none. But Apple really needs to pull their thumb out and start refreshing their hardware.
Apple has a massive opportunity right now with the whole Windows 10 fiasco, very similar to how IBM had an opportunity with OS/2 during the turbulent switch between Windows 3.1 and Windows 95. Unfortunately, also like IBM, I'm expecting Apple to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory because they're management is too paralyzed by their own undeserved egos to do what needs to be done.
The basic Microsoft Office, yes. But even then, it was borderline unusable until the 2011 came out, and parts of it are *still* crap. Office 2004 was so bad it wasn't even worth pirating. There is no Visio for Mac, nor Project.
And this ignores the fact that Mac simply wasn't even a realistic option as recently as a decade ago. Macs have only really gained popularity in the past few years, so unless a business only came into existence recently, you used Windows because that was the only option, period. And once momentum sits in, it's extremely difficult to perform and organization-wide platform change.
I don't know what experience you have with business IT, but it sounds like your impression of it is grossly oversimplified compared to reality.
Ditto here. I have had a number of seagate drives over the years. Way back when, Seagate was *it*. You simply didn't bother buying anything else. I don't know what happened, but their quality has gone through the floor so hard that it made a crater.
All the seagate drives I've bought in the last decade are all long dead. External, internal, 3.5", 2.5", doesn't matter. They all died.
The final straw was when I bought their hybrid drive. Died after 6 months. Had it RMA'ed. The new one died a month later. RMA'ed. The new one had bad sectors right out of the box. RMA'ed one more time. It died after maybe 6 weeks or so. I gave up at that point.
Now I only buy Western Digital, and so far I've yet to have a failure among the dozen or so drives I've purchased.
You've clearly never worked with lucrative clients that demanded documentation in Microsoft Office formats. Here in the real world, making the client happy takes precedence over the inconvenience of using Microsoft software.
Well maybe NASA wouldn't have internal management and budget issues if congress didn't keep using it to play political football with.
Is it any wonder that NASA hasn't done anything spectacular in the past several decades, with all the bullshit games that various senators play, whether it's trying to keep federal funds funneling into their state, or some anti-science moron forces NASA to be managed by conspiracy theorists?
OEM licenses are not transferable. If you got Windows 7 with your machine, it's an OEM license. If you upgrade to Windows 10, it's still an OEM license.
Honestly, stick with Windows 7 for the time being. There is very little in Windows 10 that could be considered compelling unless you have a specific use case that Windows 10 happens to satisfy, but with all the continually accumulating negatives, that use case would have to be pretty darn serious and specific to justify either losing control of your machine, or having to pay through the nose to not lose functionality.
Oh, don't get me wrong. I have done my absolute utmost to keep microsoft out of our infrastructure unless absolutely necessary.
The real issues is all the desktops, because employees insist on using windows, because that's what they know.
Meanwhile, Apple has basically be shitting the bed for the past two years with their product lineup. I don't mind paying a premium price for good hardware, but peddling hardware that is obsolete is just... offensive.
For those that would use linux if they could, they are still stuck cause they still need office to interact with our clients. OpenOffice and LibreOffice just flat out arn't good enough. I tried Impress the other day, just to see the state of it. It's so shockingly broken and unusable that I would be embarrassed to create a presentation with it.
Microsoft Project? It's the defacto standard for project management, and nobody uses anything else.
Finance? It's go Quickbooks or go home. And they *only* make a Windows version. (No, that online crap doesn't count)
Email? Email=Outlook. For most non-technical people, the basically equate to the same thing.
Microsoft software has become nothing more than the cost of doing business, and that's that. If we were to switch to something else, the only thing that would happen is that we would lose business because it becomes significantly more difficult to communicate with our clients.
So saying that we "chose" to use Microsoft is like saying that someone who lives in a cholera infested area "chose" to drink beer, and that attitude won't win you any favours.
I foresee this to be just the beginning. As long as people can continue to stick with Windows 7, there won't be *that* much of an uproar, but once support expires and companies are faced with being forced to upgrade to Enterprise edition cause Microsoft has mutilated the consumer editions so badly, there will be a reckoning.
These moves by Microsoft amount to nothing less than extortion. Our company uses Windows 7 Pro as our standard desktop because Enterprise costs approx 3 times more, and we arn't going to get 3 times the value for it.
By doing what they are doing with Windows 10, they are basically holding companies like ours over a barrel because if we stick with Pro, we end up with *reduced* functionality.
I can say right now that I'm going to be sticking with Windows 7 for as long as humanly possible. Maybe Apple can get away with this kind of silliness since, despite their billions in the bank, they are still basically a niche company so no one cares. No one is forced to use Apple.
On the other hand, people ARE forced to use Microsoft because they have an almost perfect monopoly on PCs and business computing. As long as people can continue to stick with Windows 7, I don't see too much of a fuss happening, but I see a massive shitstorm in Microsoft's future, and they deserve every single turd.
Slashdot Mirror
No it isn't. The OS's job is to provide an interface to the hardware, not access control. However if you feel that is appropriate then go implement it in one of the various FOSS operating systems and prove that it's more secure, clearly it would be in your interest to do so.
I'm not even going to bother addressing the rest of your post, so I can only assume you're trolling me. Either that, or you honestly have no idea what operating systems have been doing for a long time now. Just in case it's the latter, I will explain:
Every single operating system today has a multitude of security mechanisms of various forms, and various levels of effectiveness. From ACLs, to Group Policy, to Gatekeeper, to SELinux, security has very much become, if not always been, a crucial part of every non-trivial operating system on the planet. If you really don't believe that, then there's nothing I can do to convince you otherwise.
I can see why you responded as AC.
So in other words, the whole article/summary is flamebait/clickbait. Only an idiot would install a server and not configure an admin password.
Saying that "Linux has malware!" because morons misconfigure an application running on Linux, is like saying "Windows has malware!" because SQL Server was installed with a blank sa password. I mean, sure, Windows does have malware, but this is just clickbait nonsense.
Great. Now what about their iMacs and Mac Minis?
Because a) bluetooth security is more often than not, a steaming pile of wank,
The artbiter of access to any resource the browser has access to is in the browser itself (if you haven't configured any additional layers of access control). If the user allows access to a specific resource (in this case a bluetooth device) then what part of bluetooth security are you worried about?
Because the browser should *not* be the arbiter of access to hardware. That's the OS's job. Period. A web browser is particularly unique among applications in that it should at no point ever be considered trustworthy enough to have direct system level access, because it regularly deals with potentially hostile information.
b) Bluetooth is used in a huge variety of places
So are home networks and network-connected devices, your browser has access to this too. Not only that but many people expose their network through various external interfaces other than the browser for home automation, security, etc... and have done for a long time.
You basically made my point now. There are literally millions of computers that are constantly being infected by malware of various kinds. And one machine in a household will usually infect all the other machines in that same household. Bluetooth devices have largely been shielded because of the layers of steps required in order to compromise one. Google is removing a large number of these steps with this new technology, turning it from being a PITA, to trivial. It's a brave new world to exploit!
c) the internet is a ridiculously hostile place
Then don't connect your devices to it, that's in your power.
That's just nonsensically extreme. We are in an age where more and more services are now either only available on the internet, or are at least significantly more difficult to access outside of the internet. Hell, even standard mail service is being reduced. Short of becoming Amish, not having internet access is just not viable.
*I'm* not worried about my own equipment, because I know what I'm doing. I'm worried about all the millions of people out there that don't have my level of expertise, and will be ripe for the plucking. You really expect people that set their password to "12345" to have the skill to not click "yes" on every random thing that comes across their screen?
But, I guess you're right. Fuck 'em. Stupid me for actually caring about the security of people who otherwise don't know better.
Because a) bluetooth security is more often than not, a steaming pile of wank,
b) Bluetooth is used in a huge variety of places,
and finally c) the internet is a ridiculously hostile place.
Internet Explorer has already taught us what can happen when you give a browser too much access to underlying hardware. Hell, drive-by malware infections are *still* an issue, mostly because of shitty ad-networks that happily pass malware onto legitimate sites. It also taught us how ruthlessly malicious actors will jump on any and all exploits.
All you need is one or two bugs to exploit and before you can blink, a random server is able to connect to devices all around you, all because you happened to browse CNN or whatever at just the wrong moment, and the ad-network just shoved malware onto your machine. You want random websites being able to connect to and modify heart monitors, insulin pumps, baby monitors, your house environment system, etc?
This is a whole level of risk beyond someone managing to sneak your webcam and microphone on. This has the potential to actively cause damage to things outside of your computer, and possibly even cause deaths.
The browser isn't the issue. The issue is the drive-by ad-network delivered malware that people don't even know they're getting when they visit a random site. Even if you go to a site that you trust, there's *still* no guarantee that you're safe because they may serve something malicious by accident. This has happened more than enough times that this scenario should be front and center in everyone's minds.
At an absolute minimum, *some* process outside of Chrome needs to be the final arbiter of what can reach a Bluetooth device, even if it's just a process that presents the user with a "Yes or No" dialog when a site tries to do anything Bluetooth related.
There are already enough issues with poorly secured Bluetooth devices. The last thing we need is to roll out the red carpet to every malware author on the planet.
Anything that provides a firewall between the internet and a device. eg: Client software that needs to be manually installed by the user onto their machine, which facilitates communication between the web and a device, in a restricted and controlled manner, only permitting a predefined set of operations to occur.
All aboard the nope-train to nopeville!
Apparently no one at google ever saw Jurrasic Park, or they would know that scene with the line "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should."
The internet is a cesspool of fetid, rotting miasma, and you want it to be able to control real world things with no managed server in between? Are they really that thoughtless? Apparently they are!
Really, it's a matter of expectations, and Dunning Kruger effect. Throw in a little bit of ego, and fun times await.
Software development today is where it is because of several decades of lessons learned. That being said, there is still a massive gulf between enterprise software and consumer software. The subject of my comment is because I remember when I first played around with setting up Oracle, and how frustrating it was. Over a decade later, not much has changed.
The problem is there is now a very different level of expectation. When computers were older, they were expected to be difficult, because... well.... they were. But nowadays, it's easier to assemble a PC than to build a lego model. In the consumer space, software is generally more accessible than it ever was (although with the way UIs have been going lately, focusing more on being artistic than useful, I'd argue that we're taking a step backwards).
So people now think that computers are easier than ever, when the harsh reality is that computers are actually even more complicated than ever before, because they do more and more behind the scenes, and *someone* has to code that in.
What bothers me the most are hotshot people who look at this complexity and, instead of trying to overcome it, they just take the easiest way out they can, lessons learned be damned. The end result are bullshit like the NoSQL movement, because people consider SQL to be "too hard". Boy are they in for a shock when it comes time to actually query that hodge-podge of JSON to produce reports 'n stuff.
I remember a "team lead" that argued with a developer who rightly refused to use a floating point field to store currency information. The developer had to explain in detail exactly how the floating point format actually worked, and why it would be a really bad idea. It took 2 hours of insistent explanation before the hotshot acquiesced.
The problem is that it is too late. You can't come in long after the fact, when you should have been protecting your patents from the beginning.
You never know until you try? If they win, then it's worth it for them to do so. Besides, it's not like they have anything better to do now, since they appear to be giving up entirely on making new phones. CEO's gotta make is yacht payments somehow.
Right. And you know what? There are *still* businesses using DOS. There are *still* businesses using Novell... mainframes, whatever, for the simple reason that the business case to upgrade just isn't there.
I'm not going to waste my time debating this with you any further, because you either don't understand, or don't care, about the interplay between business needs and IT spending, or the effort and costs required to perform a major platform switchover. You'd rather myopically accuse me of making "bad decisions", because that's so much easier than acknowledging that maybe, just maybe, realizing that real life is a lot more complicated than you'd like it to be.
You are making so many assumptions that I'm just in awe that you haven't gone completely deaf from the noise within your own echo chamber.
I've notice that Apple has really shit the bed when it comes to... well... everything. It's like since Jobs died, Cook pulled the rudder right off the boat and now he's just standing there, looking confusedly at the rudder in his hand.
But it's another thing entirely to be charging massive premiums for hardware so old that I'm surprised the parts are even still being manufactured. Where is Apple sourcing their parts at this point, Ebay?
I want a new Mac for work, and I want to give employees the option of using a Mac instead of Windows, given how brain-damaged Microsoft is being with respect to Windows 10, but I'll be damned if I'm going to drop 2-3k per machine on hardware whose PC equivalent can be purchased for peanuts on Craigslist.
As far as CPUs are concerned, they arn't really that big of a deal because lets face it, the past *several* generations of CPUs from Intel have only incremental differences in performance. Most of the differences have gone into power efficiency improvements, and support for newer accessory technologies like DDR RAM, USB, PCI, onboard GPU, etc. But there have been massive jumps in what GPUs can do, and currently available Macs are a joke by comparison. Right now, for example, there's not even any point in porting current AAA games to Mac because the hardware won't be able to run them.
There is something to be said about taking the conservative approach for some things, for example one thing I like about OSX is that Apple doesn't make massive fundamental changes the way Microsoft does. And Apple's support is still second to none. But Apple really needs to pull their thumb out and start refreshing their hardware.
Apple has a massive opportunity right now with the whole Windows 10 fiasco, very similar to how IBM had an opportunity with OS/2 during the turbulent switch between Windows 3.1 and Windows 95. Unfortunately, also like IBM, I'm expecting Apple to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory because they're management is too paralyzed by their own undeserved egos to do what needs to be done.
The basic Microsoft Office, yes. But even then, it was borderline unusable until the 2011 came out, and parts of it are *still* crap. Office 2004 was so bad it wasn't even worth pirating. There is no Visio for Mac, nor Project.
And this ignores the fact that Mac simply wasn't even a realistic option as recently as a decade ago. Macs have only really gained popularity in the past few years, so unless a business only came into existence recently, you used Windows because that was the only option, period. And once momentum sits in, it's extremely difficult to perform and organization-wide platform change.
I don't know what experience you have with business IT, but it sounds like your impression of it is grossly oversimplified compared to reality.
Ah yes, the good old days when Seagate actually put effort into quality. You'll *never* see that kind of lifetime on their current drives.
Ditto here. I have had a number of seagate drives over the years. Way back when, Seagate was *it*. You simply didn't bother buying anything else. I don't know what happened, but their quality has gone through the floor so hard that it made a crater.
All the seagate drives I've bought in the last decade are all long dead. External, internal, 3.5", 2.5", doesn't matter. They all died.
The final straw was when I bought their hybrid drive. Died after 6 months. Had it RMA'ed. The new one died a month later. RMA'ed. The new one had bad sectors right out of the box. RMA'ed one more time. It died after maybe 6 weeks or so. I gave up at that point.
Now I only buy Western Digital, and so far I've yet to have a failure among the dozen or so drives I've purchased.
You've clearly never worked with lucrative clients that demanded documentation in Microsoft Office formats. Here in the real world, making the client happy takes precedence over the inconvenience of using Microsoft software.
Well maybe NASA wouldn't have internal management and budget issues if congress didn't keep using it to play political football with.
Is it any wonder that NASA hasn't done anything spectacular in the past several decades, with all the bullshit games that various senators play, whether it's trying to keep federal funds funneling into their state, or some anti-science moron forces NASA to be managed by conspiracy theorists?
Microsoft is supposedly going to be making the Enterprise version available to everyone through subscription licensing. $7/month or some such.
OEM licenses are not transferable. If you got Windows 7 with your machine, it's an OEM license. If you upgrade to Windows 10, it's still an OEM license.
Honestly, stick with Windows 7 for the time being. There is very little in Windows 10 that could be considered compelling unless you have a specific use case that Windows 10 happens to satisfy, but with all the continually accumulating negatives, that use case would have to be pretty darn serious and specific to justify either losing control of your machine, or having to pay through the nose to not lose functionality.
Now get that god damn icon off my computers.
Oh, don't get me wrong. I have done my absolute utmost to keep microsoft out of our infrastructure unless absolutely necessary.
The real issues is all the desktops, because employees insist on using windows, because that's what they know.
Meanwhile, Apple has basically be shitting the bed for the past two years with their product lineup. I don't mind paying a premium price for good hardware, but peddling hardware that is obsolete is just... offensive.
For those that would use linux if they could, they are still stuck cause they still need office to interact with our clients. OpenOffice and LibreOffice just flat out arn't good enough. I tried Impress the other day, just to see the state of it. It's so shockingly broken and unusable that I would be embarrassed to create a presentation with it.
Microsoft Project? It's the defacto standard for project management, and nobody uses anything else.
Finance? It's go Quickbooks or go home. And they *only* make a Windows version. (No, that online crap doesn't count)
Email? Email=Outlook. For most non-technical people, the basically equate to the same thing.
Microsoft software has become nothing more than the cost of doing business, and that's that. If we were to switch to something else, the only thing that would happen is that we would lose business because it becomes significantly more difficult to communicate with our clients.
So saying that we "chose" to use Microsoft is like saying that someone who lives in a cholera infested area "chose" to drink beer, and that attitude won't win you any favours.
I foresee this to be just the beginning. As long as people can continue to stick with Windows 7, there won't be *that* much of an uproar, but once support expires and companies are faced with being forced to upgrade to Enterprise edition cause Microsoft has mutilated the consumer editions so badly, there will be a reckoning.
These moves by Microsoft amount to nothing less than extortion. Our company uses Windows 7 Pro as our standard desktop because Enterprise costs approx 3 times more, and we arn't going to get 3 times the value for it.
By doing what they are doing with Windows 10, they are basically holding companies like ours over a barrel because if we stick with Pro, we end up with *reduced* functionality.
I can say right now that I'm going to be sticking with Windows 7 for as long as humanly possible. Maybe Apple can get away with this kind of silliness since, despite their billions in the bank, they are still basically a niche company so no one cares. No one is forced to use Apple.
On the other hand, people ARE forced to use Microsoft because they have an almost perfect monopoly on PCs and business computing. As long as people can continue to stick with Windows 7, I don't see too much of a fuss happening, but I see a massive shitstorm in Microsoft's future, and they deserve every single turd.