I agree - I was always surprised that they are doing it, and that they think they can get away with it. It is a very clear example of anti-competitive practices - nearly a textbook example.
Good to see that they are not getting away with it.
We do need lawsuits, because this is illegal. It is no doubt sensitive data, it is not just personalisable data, Facebook is actually working hard on making it personalised data. And there is no consent given. So Facebook does not have any right to do this.
You can mitigate risk, but it requires encapsulation of questionable software. Encapsulation in terms of local system access, but also encapsulation in terms of network access. Essentially, you need either a sandbox, or a virtual machine connected to a separate (heavily filtered) network.
However, the support for either is very weak in Windows XP, which makes it a poor choice as your main OS. And that is what we are talking about here. (Once you virtualise it, the risk becomes much easier to manage.)
Actually, Google Talk was fricking awesome. Especially when it still supported XMP, and there were a number of desktop and mobile clients for it.
Now this is all history, and you have to use the sanctioned Google app, which does like to crash a lot. So yes, Google Talk was great (at some point). Hangouts is just ok.
I have to say that I like the recent set of Android buttons: back, home, tasks. Three icons, they look reasonably logical, and they are all useful.
But Android tried many permutations on the way there, and on phones with hardware buttons you often see the back button on the right. You may also have a menu, camera or search button, again included in a random permutation. They really should have come up with a more sensible way of organising the buttons than in a straight row.
That is just Android. Yes, it is powerful, yes, it is configurable in great detail, but it never was and never will be particularly stable. Reboots, crashes, random battery drain, those are just part of the package.
Yes, the tablet market has dried up. There are some decent cheap Windows 10 tablets, but on the Android side, you only get a lot of super cheap and nasty stuff (probably worse than the Nexus 7), or you can pick one of the three premium tablets, which are still behind a decent mobile phone.
If you can find the Xperia Z4 Tablet, that is still worth a buy.
Which is true. You are much more likely to be killed on the way to or from the airport than in the air. But those are individual cases, and nobody cares about those.
I agree that Windows had too many unsuccessful attempts at HiDPI. The problem goes back to high resolution (VGA+) monitors under Windows 3.1.
However, Windows 10 has finally delivered a reasonable solution. Yes, some legacy apps look blurry, but that is a problem with the app, not with Windows.
Linux on the other hand used to be excellent for HiDPI, certainly back in the days of Windows 3.1. But it has since lost that ability under many toolkits.
Yes, both MATLAB/Simulink and NI LabView come to mind. But both are graphical representations of data flow, and not control flow. You can abuse them to represent control flow, but that is neither efficient nor pretty.
As said above, since the demise of GOTO, control flow charts are really much less useful than they used to be.
There was a variation for block oriented programming that was derived from Pascal, containing a table like layout and graphical symbols for IF/THEN/ELSE, WHILE and FOR loops. Lego Mindstorm V1 did something similar - and I thought it was quite beautiful. But little has happened since.
I agree, I am surprised it took this long to make this happen. There are clearly efficiency savings to be made, and I would not mind driving a different route every once in a while.
Of course Uber also started as a "ride sharing" app, with the same idea. And just like there, I wonder whether this is just once again an excuse to pay less than minimum wage.
> In some cases you actually do need emergency global 'off' switches that are never meant to be used in normal operation.
Yes, if you run a simple experiment, and there is the possibility for harm, a single red button is a good idea.
But if shutting down the server room costs $100 000 000, then a single red button is not a good idea. Instead, you have two parallel power distribution system, with some physical separation, and there are two off switches. Of course there should be sign that explains how to use the switch, and I guess that is where this story eventually leads.
Exactly. Android is much more powerful in many ways, while iOS seems restrictive beyond reason. But it does work well, incredibly well (which I would not say for Android - it just works, kind of).
What I find shocking that even on an i7 CPU with 16GB of RAM, Chrome cannot scroll smoothly. I do not really care whether it uses 1GB or 3GB of RAM, but smooth scrolling is something I do expect.
Yes, there are always going to be hardware interfaces that require Windows XP. We have an electron microscope that runs Windows XP - you do not throw that away just because patches have run out. But you do isolate it: only necessary network connections are enables, for example to a file server that does run a current OS.
But a few hardware connect PCs are not what this problem is about. This is about office machines still running Windows XP because some idiot web interface still mandates IE6. The web interface should have long be upgraded, and even so IE6 and Windows XP should have long been moved into a virtual machine. Sure, virtual machines can be hacked, too, but usually the restore process is much easier.
Exactly. Microsoft stopped selling Windows XP over 8 years ago (!). I doubt many of the affected computers are older than 8 years.
It is more likely that people made use of the "downgrade" option in professional licensing, which allowed them to install Windows XP despite the fact that it was no longer on sale. That should be been a clear warning that support will not last forever.
But no, organisational inertia means that IT kept setting up new Windows XP system long after the system was discontinued. I think there is clearly one party at fault, and it is IT.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree - I was always surprised that they are doing it, and that they think they can get away with it. It is a very clear example of anti-competitive practices - nearly a textbook example.
Good to see that they are not getting away with it.
We do need lawsuits, because this is illegal. It is no doubt sensitive data, it is not just personalisable data, Facebook is actually working hard on making it personalised data. And there is no consent given. So Facebook does not have any right to do this.
You can mitigate risk, but it requires encapsulation of questionable software. Encapsulation in terms of local system access, but also encapsulation in terms of network access. Essentially, you need either a sandbox, or a virtual machine connected to a separate (heavily filtered) network.
However, the support for either is very weak in Windows XP, which makes it a poor choice as your main OS. And that is what we are talking about here. (Once you virtualise it, the risk becomes much easier to manage.)
Better an amateur third party program than no program at all.
Actually, Google Talk was fricking awesome. Especially when it still supported XMP, and there were a number of desktop and mobile clients for it.
Now this is all history, and you have to use the sanctioned Google app, which does like to crash a lot. So yes, Google Talk was great (at some point). Hangouts is just ok.
I have to say that I like the recent set of Android buttons: back, home, tasks. Three icons, they look reasonably logical, and they are all useful.
But Android tried many permutations on the way there, and on phones with hardware buttons you often see the back button on the right. You may also have a menu, camera or search button, again included in a random permutation. They really should have come up with a more sensible way of organising the buttons than in a straight row.
1. Backup
2. Enough money to buy a new one
3. Encryption
That is just Android. Yes, it is powerful, yes, it is configurable in great detail, but it never was and never will be particularly stable. Reboots, crashes, random battery drain, those are just part of the package.
Yes, the tablet market has dried up. There are some decent cheap Windows 10 tablets, but on the Android side, you only get a lot of super cheap and nasty stuff (probably worse than the Nexus 7), or you can pick one of the three premium tablets, which are still behind a decent mobile phone.
If you can find the Xperia Z4 Tablet, that is still worth a buy.
That would be my guess, too. So it is "infeasible" to reveal the number without upsetting the population.
Which is true. You are much more likely to be killed on the way to or from the airport than in the air. But those are individual cases, and nobody cares about those.
I agree that Windows had too many unsuccessful attempts at HiDPI. The problem goes back to high resolution (VGA+) monitors under Windows 3.1.
However, Windows 10 has finally delivered a reasonable solution. Yes, some legacy apps look blurry, but that is a problem with the app, not with Windows.
Linux on the other hand used to be excellent for HiDPI, certainly back in the days of Windows 3.1. But it has since lost that ability under many toolkits.
That is mostly because it just does not work on tablets. Neither the hardware drivers nor the GUI is suitable for tablets.
I tried a number of Ubuntu flavours, and none of them handle HiDPI in a reasonable way. Some are worse than others, of course, so there is hope.
Yes, both MATLAB/Simulink and NI LabView come to mind. But both are graphical representations of data flow, and not control flow. You can abuse them to represent control flow, but that is neither efficient nor pretty.
As said above, since the demise of GOTO, control flow charts are really much less useful than they used to be.
There was a variation for block oriented programming that was derived from Pascal, containing a table like layout and graphical symbols for IF/THEN/ELSE, WHILE and FOR loops. Lego Mindstorm V1 did something similar - and I thought it was quite beautiful. But little has happened since.
I agree, I am surprised it took this long to make this happen. There are clearly efficiency savings to be made, and I would not mind driving a different route every once in a while.
Of course Uber also started as a "ride sharing" app, with the same idea. And just like there, I wonder whether this is just once again an excuse to pay less than minimum wage.
Of course. I am just waiting for the statement by BA that it was "not their fault", and they are therefore not paying compensation to passengers...
I would not be too worried.
a) It is not clear that the contractor is the only person to blame.
b) Maybe there is some small print that was violated.
c) Even if they have to pay, there is probably a limit of 5 Million...
> In some cases you actually do need emergency global 'off' switches that are never meant to be used in normal operation.
Yes, if you run a simple experiment, and there is the possibility for harm, a single red button is a good idea.
But if shutting down the server room costs $100 000 000, then a single red button is not a good idea. Instead, you have two parallel power distribution system, with some physical separation, and there are two off switches. Of course there should be sign that explains how to use the switch, and I guess that is where this story eventually leads.
That is exactly my experience, too. They are just too greedy - or the contracts with expedia etc are anti-competitive in nature.
Yes, I am sure people said the same about Silverlight, ActiveX and the Quicktime plugin.
Exactly. Android is much more powerful in many ways, while iOS seems restrictive beyond reason. But it does work well, incredibly well (which I would not say for Android - it just works, kind of).
Indeed. And what about the tracking of not-users, both by Facebook and by Google? That would seem distinctly worse to me.
What I find shocking that even on an i7 CPU with 16GB of RAM, Chrome cannot scroll smoothly. I do not really care whether it uses 1GB or 3GB of RAM, but smooth scrolling is something I do expect.
Yes, there are always going to be hardware interfaces that require Windows XP. We have an electron microscope that runs Windows XP - you do not throw that away just because patches have run out. But you do isolate it: only necessary network connections are enables, for example to a file server that does run a current OS.
But a few hardware connect PCs are not what this problem is about. This is about office machines still running Windows XP because some idiot web interface still mandates IE6. The web interface should have long be upgraded, and even so IE6 and Windows XP should have long been moved into a virtual machine. Sure, virtual machines can be hacked, too, but usually the restore process is much easier.
Exactly. Microsoft stopped selling Windows XP over 8 years ago (!). I doubt many of the affected computers are older than 8 years.
It is more likely that people made use of the "downgrade" option in professional licensing, which allowed them to install Windows XP despite the fact that it was no longer on sale. That should be been a clear warning that support will not last forever.
But no, organisational inertia means that IT kept setting up new Windows XP system long after the system was discontinued. I think there is clearly one party at fault, and it is IT.