It depends on what business that company is in, and what level of demand exists for the skills required in that business..
Treating your employees well makes it easier to hire and retain good staff. This might not matter when your business needs low skilled workers, but the more specialised the field the smaller your available talent pool becomes and the greater range that exists between mediocre and great workers.
I've seen many such companies that treat their staff poorly, and they find it extremely difficult to recruit any experienced staff, and those they do get don't stick around for very long. They tend to hire younger less experienced staff, and the ones that turn out to be good only stick around long enough to get some experience on their resume' before going somewhere better.
Poor reputations can also spread, in many industries people talk to their peers and maintain contact with former colleagues, if a company mistreats its employees word soon spreads.
It depends not just on the company, but also on the layers of management immediately above you... If a large company gives a decent level of autonomy to their managers and you happen to get a good one then it can make for a decent workplace. On the other hand, the company itself may be fine but if your immediate manager is an asshole you won't want to work there long.
Console hardware stays the same, so although it may theoretically not perform as well as the top tier hardware available, it can often have better looking games... A console game does not need to cater to lower spec hardware, nor does it need to deal with disparate configurations or other background software impeding the game, nor is your memory wasted by os features that are unrelated to gaming. You can even program the hardware directly, bypassing the overhead caused by the various abstraction layers.
The value of "art" is entirely arbitrary, there are many extremely wealthy people who are willing to spend millions on works of art and often do so and this is precisely why some works of art are so expensive. They would be entirely worthless if noone was willing to pay.
On the other hand, production costs are over inflated by various groups demanding huge amounts because they can get away with it. There are many out of work actors who would work for close to minimum wage, which is a lot less than the millions demanded by the big names.
Anyone can produce a movie effectively for free, as evidenced by the huge amount of home produced content on sites like youtube. Modern cameras are decent quality and widely available at affordable prices, video processing software is widely available for free.
Sure experienced backstage people will achieve better results with the same tools, but in the grand scheme of things the studios pay these guys a pittance.
The problem is congestion, there is only a fixed amount of wireless spectrum that must be shared by everyone in the area, while any number of physical lines can be installed. If everyone starts using wireless then the performance will get worse across the board. Wired should be used whenever possible, leaving more wireless spectrum free for those cases when wired isn't possible.
The reason people say "open up bash and type" is because a textual interface is easier to explain vocally or in a textual medium like a website. Text is far more clear, you read out the instructions and they read back the output, they don't need to understand the output or interpret it, just read it. Compare that to a gui where you have to explain and describe and rely on both sides of the conversation understanding the way things have been described.
You could usually achieve the same result through a gui, only doing so would take twice as long to explain.
I've also seen many many cases of windows problems where "just open regedit and..." or something similar was the proposed solution, even very recently people have been proposing such hacks as the way to get rid of the windows 10 nagware - how is this better than the idea of opening a bash shell?
While i agree that linux in its current form is unsuitable for the average user, windows is even less suitable. Both systems can be limped along by users who have no idea what they're doing, but both are dangerous and can easily be broken by such users. General purpose computers are specialist tools designed by geeks for geeks, putting such systems in the hands of users who don't understand how to use them properly results in an epidemic of malware, fraud and other crime.
Users are better off with games consoles, chromebooks and ipads etc.
Convenience or performance... These security products are already bloated and slow enough as it is, if you add the extra overhead of passing the data to a sandboxed userland process for inspection it's going to make them even worse.
But you are right, endpoint protection software violates many security best practices... Extremely complex code, dealing directly with untrusted data and running with a high privilege level.
The only AV i run is on web and mail filtering boxes, the scanner runs under its own unprivileged user inside of a chroot, and the overhead of the setup is largely masked by the inherent network latency anyway.
People sell the machines with the drives still inside, sometimes it can be quite a considerable hassle to remove the drive and doing so significantly decreases the resale value of the laptop as it's no longer a fully working unit.
Or perhaps they never had anything on them to start with? Many companies keep a pool of spare drives for various reasons (e.g. hot spares incase any fail in a raid array), but these drives are discarded along with the live ones once they become obsolete. It's not uncommon for drives to be disposed of which have never been used at all.
Interestingly a few organisations have been bitten in the past, for instance by dos-based commercial disk wiping software which only wiped the first 8GB of any drive. I've even encountered a company that wanted to continue using such software because it was "much quicker at wiping large drives" which isn't surprising given that it doesn't wipe the whole drive.
Some people want to monitor the premises from a remote site... Some companies want to centralise their cctv monitoring to save costs. There is already an ethernet network present, cheaper than running separate cabling for ip cameras.
Booting them from ROM would actually make things worse, since you'd not be able to upgrade them the vulnerable version would remain there until the device was trashed. Those launching attacks could just exploit vulnerabilities and load their code into RAM, the backdoor would be lost after a reboot but these devices rarely reboot anyway.
And the problem with these devices is pretty much always due to their own crappy code and not the existing linux code the devices are running.
The same problem occurs with small wireless routers, the stock firmware is crap but there are several open source replacement firmwares which are much better. We need an open source distribution for CCTV cameras that can replace the terrible stock firmware.
Encrypting the kernel does nothing to improve security, as it's not true encryption but rather just obfuscation. The kernel has to be decrypted in order to execute, therefore every device must have the key so rather than cracking the encryption you just have to work out how to extract the key, or how to extract the decrypted kernel image. All it really does is create extra points of failure, waste resources and increase the risk of bugs.
And even if true, higher intelligence often equates to more affluent... People are more likely to pirate if they cannot afford to buy, or aren't sufficiently aware about cheaper/free alternatives.
Well the people making the procurements should have done a proper long term risk analysis and mitigation strategy before committing to the software in question...
For example, the software had a known expiry date - what was their business continuity plan for this inevitable event? They should have had a plan in place to migrate to something else before the software expired. The software is available from only one vendor - what was their exit strategy should this vendor cease to exist, cease offering the current product or significantly change their terms?
Computers have become critical to most organizations now, so it's extremely important to do a proper risk analysis.
The AC above has a much better solution - software becomes unsupported by the original vendor, so provide a copy of the source and indefinite usage rights to your customers but no right of redistribution. The customer can then choose to continue supporting it themselves or not.
In the case of Linux 1.0 the customer already has the source and already has distribution rights under the GPL, so nothing would change.
Of course the real fault is on the customers, they became dependent on software knowing full well that it had an expiry date but failed to develop a proper migration strategy in advance of that date.
AmigaOS allowed that, it wouldn't complain unless the media was actively being accessed at the time. AmigaOS didn't even have a way to "eject" media in software by default.
Who's to say the three letter agencies don't already have such information? And for that matter, similar leverage over all the other potential candidates?
People *Think* they trust the source too, when they actually have no actual proof of who the source is, for instance a spoofed email, or an email which actually came from the computer of someone they know (but that user had previously been infected with malware)...
While over population is a problem, simply reducing the population wouldn't solve the problems being discussed...
If most things were automated, and you then got rid of the majority of the unproductive population then demand for the goods produced by the robots would drop massively, resulting in many of those robots as well as those who owned and maintained them would now become unproductive too. You'd end up with a smaller population, but a similar percentage of unproductive citizens.
Capitalism actually encourages excessive population, more kids mean people to look after you when you get old, more customers for your products, more (and thus cheaper) labour available.
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It depends on what business that company is in, and what level of demand exists for the skills required in that business..
Treating your employees well makes it easier to hire and retain good staff. This might not matter when your business needs low skilled workers, but the more specialised the field the smaller your available talent pool becomes and the greater range that exists between mediocre and great workers.
I've seen many such companies that treat their staff poorly, and they find it extremely difficult to recruit any experienced staff, and those they do get don't stick around for very long. They tend to hire younger less experienced staff, and the ones that turn out to be good only stick around long enough to get some experience on their resume' before going somewhere better.
Poor reputations can also spread, in many industries people talk to their peers and maintain contact with former colleagues, if a company mistreats its employees word soon spreads.
It depends not just on the company, but also on the layers of management immediately above you... If a large company gives a decent level of autonomy to their managers and you happen to get a good one then it can make for a decent workplace. On the other hand, the company itself may be fine but if your immediate manager is an asshole you won't want to work there long.
They used to offer 4GB and 8GB models too, the 16GB was actually the highend model a few years back.
Storage capacities increase, not really news...
Console hardware stays the same, so although it may theoretically not perform as well as the top tier hardware available, it can often have better looking games...
A console game does not need to cater to lower spec hardware, nor does it need to deal with disparate configurations or other background software impeding the game, nor is your memory wasted by os features that are unrelated to gaming.
You can even program the hardware directly, bypassing the overhead caused by the various abstraction layers.
The value of "art" is entirely arbitrary, there are many extremely wealthy people who are willing to spend millions on works of art and often do so and this is precisely why some works of art are so expensive. They would be entirely worthless if noone was willing to pay.
On the other hand, production costs are over inflated by various groups demanding huge amounts because they can get away with it. There are many out of work actors who would work for close to minimum wage, which is a lot less than the millions demanded by the big names.
Anyone can produce a movie effectively for free, as evidenced by the huge amount of home produced content on sites like youtube. Modern cameras are decent quality and widely available at affordable prices, video processing software is widely available for free.
Sure experienced backstage people will achieve better results with the same tools, but in the grand scheme of things the studios pay these guys a pittance.
How about i clean your toilet once for free, and you keep paying me a royalty every time you use the toilet for the next 70 years?
The problem is congestion, there is only a fixed amount of wireless spectrum that must be shared by everyone in the area, while any number of physical lines can be installed. If everyone starts using wireless then the performance will get worse across the board.
Wired should be used whenever possible, leaving more wireless spectrum free for those cases when wired isn't possible.
The reason people say "open up bash and type" is because a textual interface is easier to explain vocally or in a textual medium like a website. Text is far more clear, you read out the instructions and they read back the output, they don't need to understand the output or interpret it, just read it. Compare that to a gui where you have to explain and describe and rely on both sides of the conversation understanding the way things have been described.
You could usually achieve the same result through a gui, only doing so would take twice as long to explain.
I've also seen many many cases of windows problems where "just open regedit and..." or something similar was the proposed solution, even very recently people have been proposing such hacks as the way to get rid of the windows 10 nagware - how is this better than the idea of opening a bash shell?
While i agree that linux in its current form is unsuitable for the average user, windows is even less suitable. Both systems can be limped along by users who have no idea what they're doing, but both are dangerous and can easily be broken by such users. General purpose computers are specialist tools designed by geeks for geeks, putting such systems in the hands of users who don't understand how to use them properly results in an epidemic of malware, fraud and other crime.
Users are better off with games consoles, chromebooks and ipads etc.
Convenience or performance...
These security products are already bloated and slow enough as it is, if you add the extra overhead of passing the data to a sandboxed userland process for inspection it's going to make them even worse.
But you are right, endpoint protection software violates many security best practices... Extremely complex code, dealing directly with untrusted data and running with a high privilege level.
The only AV i run is on web and mail filtering boxes, the scanner runs under its own unprivileged user inside of a chroot, and the overhead of the setup is largely masked by the inherent network latency anyway.
People sell the machines with the drives still inside, sometimes it can be quite a considerable hassle to remove the drive and doing so significantly decreases the resale value of the laptop as it's no longer a fully working unit.
Or perhaps they never had anything on them to start with?
Many companies keep a pool of spare drives for various reasons (e.g. hot spares incase any fail in a raid array), but these drives are discarded along with the live ones once they become obsolete. It's not uncommon for drives to be disposed of which have never been used at all.
Interestingly a few organisations have been bitten in the past, for instance by dos-based commercial disk wiping software which only wiped the first 8GB of any drive. I've even encountered a company that wanted to continue using such software because it was "much quicker at wiping large drives" which isn't surprising given that it doesn't wipe the whole drive.
You can always download DBAN, just burn it to cd and boot.
All kinds of reasons...
Some people want to monitor the premises from a remote site...
Some companies want to centralise their cctv monitoring to save costs.
There is already an ethernet network present, cheaper than running separate cabling for ip cameras.
Booting them from ROM would actually make things worse, since you'd not be able to upgrade them the vulnerable version would remain there until the device was trashed. Those launching attacks could just exploit vulnerabilities and load their code into RAM, the backdoor would be lost after a reboot but these devices rarely reboot anyway.
And the problem with these devices is pretty much always due to their own crappy code and not the existing linux code the devices are running.
The same problem occurs with small wireless routers, the stock firmware is crap but there are several open source replacement firmwares which are much better. We need an open source distribution for CCTV cameras that can replace the terrible stock firmware.
Encrypting the kernel does nothing to improve security, as it's not true encryption but rather just obfuscation.
The kernel has to be decrypted in order to execute, therefore every device must have the key so rather than cracking the encryption you just have to work out how to extract the key, or how to extract the decrypted kernel image.
All it really does is create extra points of failure, waste resources and increase the risk of bugs.
And even if true, higher intelligence often equates to more affluent... People are more likely to pirate if they cannot afford to buy, or aren't sufficiently aware about cheaper/free alternatives.
Well the people making the procurements should have done a proper long term risk analysis and mitigation strategy before committing to the software in question...
For example, the software had a known expiry date - what was their business continuity plan for this inevitable event? They should have had a plan in place to migrate to something else before the software expired.
The software is available from only one vendor - what was their exit strategy should this vendor cease to exist, cease offering the current product or significantly change their terms?
Computers have become critical to most organizations now, so it's extremely important to do a proper risk analysis.
The AC above has a much better solution - software becomes unsupported by the original vendor, so provide a copy of the source and indefinite usage rights to your customers but no right of redistribution. The customer can then choose to continue supporting it themselves or not.
In the case of Linux 1.0 the customer already has the source and already has distribution rights under the GPL, so nothing would change.
Of course the real fault is on the customers, they became dependent on software knowing full well that it had an expiry date but failed to develop a proper migration strategy in advance of that date.
AmigaOS allowed that, it wouldn't complain unless the media was actively being accessed at the time. AmigaOS didn't even have a way to "eject" media in software by default.
Who's to say the three letter agencies don't already have such information? And for that matter, similar leverage over all the other potential candidates?
People *Think* they trust the source too, when they actually have no actual proof of who the source is, for instance a spoofed email, or an email which actually came from the computer of someone they know (but that user had previously been infected with malware)...
And the difference is that they get paid for their work, unlike an amateur or hobbyist...
While over population is a problem, simply reducing the population wouldn't solve the problems being discussed...
If most things were automated, and you then got rid of the majority of the unproductive population then demand for the goods produced by the robots would drop massively, resulting in many of those robots as well as those who owned and maintained them would now become unproductive too. You'd end up with a smaller population, but a similar percentage of unproductive citizens.
Capitalism actually encourages excessive population, more kids mean people to look after you when you get old, more customers for your products, more (and thus cheaper) labour available.
Which just goes to show that windows is unsuitable for end users. It's for geeks or users with a competent IT department supporting them.