And these services for applying updates are because the OS doesn't provide a sensible repository system that could be used instead. Having a background updater for every application is stupid, but it's microsoft's fault that no better alternative exists.
There are no such background services when running these exact same applications on Linux, updates are installed through the system wide package manager.
GUI based like "regedit" ? Let's face it, both systems are just too complicated and utterly unsuitable for the average user... You can't expect people with zero knowledge of computing to manage updates, install software etc.
So buy hardware which is known to be compatible with linux... That's all windows users are doing, buying hardware that's known to be compatible... They don't buy an ARM based laptop and then complain that windows doesn't work on it.
As for battery life, that varies... On some some laptops linux has much better battery life, on others its much worse - again, pick your hardware appropriately.
While that makes sense for a Chromebook, Windows is still too complicated for users who don't understand anything about it... Users are still expected to install software themselves, know what they're installing and perform maintenance etc. It's simply not suitable for users with no understanding of the system, as those users just become infected with malware and thus a nuisance to everyone else.
Or you could just carry your own source of light, like a torch? I've never had problems finding my own car in the dark, it's actually easier when there are no lights whatsoever because your eyes adjust and everything is the same level of brightness... If there are light sources, your eyes adjust to that and the areas not covered by the lightsource look much darker.
Well with the possible exception of those running gentoo, 99% of end users will be running precompiled software that has to be compiled for a generic cpu as the distributor doesn't know exactly what type of processor its going to end up running on.
At some point you have to trust someone, be it the distributor from whom you're getting the os, the manufacturer or reseller supplying the hardware or even the supplier of the compiler...
The only thing you can practically do, is ensure everything you use is available from multiple opposing sources... Something that's in use by both the us and russian governments is unlikely to be backdoored as both organisations have sufficient resources to perform the due diligence checks.
Most of the things out their targeting ssh are just trying to brute force accounts, so they don't care what platform your ssh service is running on... If they are successful in getting in its highly likely that they wouldnt have a payload compatible with your system... I've setup a few such boxes as honeypots just to see what people would do with them.
I still have 3 sparcstation-20 machines in the garage, one of which is maxed out with 512mb ram and 4 cpus... I doubt it would run firefox very smoothly tho.
Speedtest sites don't tell the whole story, especially at higher speeds... Some of the speedtest sites are only on 100mbit themselves, even those on gigabit are usually sharing the bandwidth at their end... And then there's peering, the interconnect between your isp and the speedtest site might not have 1gbit of free capacity at the time your testing. The end devices (or the software running on them) might also not be up to the 1gbps rate - lots of cheaper gigabit nics can't handle wire speed, long or bad cabling, flash based speedtest apps etc.
I've had a box with 1gbps in a data centre for a few years now, and i can quite happily pull 1gbps doing torrent downloads and from some linux mirror sites, but i get a lot less from speedtest sites and many things download a lot slower because the other end or something in between can't handle it.
You need to test a variety of different things, and at different times of the day...
That's very true, and doesn't just apply to unix based systems... You should not be connecting a system to a public network unless you fully understand and control it, and windows is actually much worse in this regard because its massively more complicated than any unix.
Anybody with sufficient technical knowledge can fake an email to pass a casual user, but most people don't have that knowledge...
Just doing a spoofed SMTP transaction won't change the source ip that the message originates from, which will fail things like SPF checks and likely get flagged as spam (i.e. the recipient may never even see it)... And then there's things like S/MIME and PGP.
Faking a letter on the other hand may require a little effort as you describe, but anyone can do that... It's not really a lot of effort, doesn't require any specialist skills and would be extremely difficult (if not impossible) to prove it was fake.
You were lucky to get an unsubsidised n95... I had a carrier branded one which was horrendously unstable so the point of being unusable, some features were disabled (like the SIP client) and battery life was terrible. Debranding it and putting the stock nokia firmware on and it was much better.
Development of Concorde basically stopped... There was a second generation Concorde under development (http://www.concordesst.com/concordeb.html) which would have improved fuel economy, increased range and decreased noise. Had development continued then there would have been many other improvements by now too, especially if there had been competing supersonic airliners to spur development.
And companies should locate their workplaces somewhere that people can afford to park (or provide free parking), and somewhere which is within a short distance of affordable housing, and not in the same place as large number of other businesses. They should also make working hours more flexible, and encourage home working. All of these things would save the employees time and money, and improve working conditions.
There's also no reading or texting and you can't use your laptop while you commute. It's all dead time.
Some public transport is sufficiently dangerous that you'd not want to advertise that you have an expensive device like a laptop... Some people suffer from motion sickness which becomes MUCH worse if you're trying to read something. Often you don't get a seat and have to stand, it's difficult to use a laptop while standing.
For me, using public transport is dead time. When driving i'm concentrating on the act of driving, which at least keeps my mind occupied, when sitting/standing on a train i'm doing absolutely nothing.
And centralized business districts are the biggest cause of travel problems... Thousands of people converging on the same place at the same time, all forms of transit get ridiculously congested and painful to use. If things were more spread out, both in location and working times then most people could have a short and not too unpleasant journey to work.
Some people get travel sickness, which is usually much worse if you're not facing in the direction of travel... Rear facing seats would be terrible. Also, there are rear facing seats available in business class on some airlines.
Exactly, if you block things then employees will find ways round it... I went to a company that blocked "software download sites", so the users couldn't download things like firefox from mozilla.com etc, so they found alternative sites where they could download firefox - and these sites contained malware infested versions instead of legitimate firefox.
People these days have portable devices, you can allow them to take breaks using an isolated wifi network and their own portable devices...
The average corporate desktop is extremely vulnerable to attacks from websites (against the browser, the plugins, other applications etc), and trying to defend against such attacks is a huge pain and/or huge cost.
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And these services for applying updates are because the OS doesn't provide a sensible repository system that could be used instead. Having a background updater for every application is stupid, but it's microsoft's fault that no better alternative exists.
There are no such background services when running these exact same applications on Linux, updates are installed through the system wide package manager.
Because users are not locked in to those products, they are easy to avoid and/or widely known alternatives exist.
GUI based like "regedit" ?
Let's face it, both systems are just too complicated and utterly unsuitable for the average user... You can't expect people with zero knowledge of computing to manage updates, install software etc.
So buy hardware which is known to be compatible with linux... That's all windows users are doing, buying hardware that's known to be compatible... They don't buy an ARM based laptop and then complain that windows doesn't work on it.
As for battery life, that varies... On some some laptops linux has much better battery life, on others its much worse - again, pick your hardware appropriately.
While that makes sense for a Chromebook, Windows is still too complicated for users who don't understand anything about it... Users are still expected to install software themselves, know what they're installing and perform maintenance etc. It's simply not suitable for users with no understanding of the system, as those users just become infected with malware and thus a nuisance to everyone else.
Most octogenarians remember a time before there were street lights everywhere...
Or you could just carry your own source of light, like a torch?
I've never had problems finding my own car in the dark, it's actually easier when there are no lights whatsoever because your eyes adjust and everything is the same level of brightness... If there are light sources, your eyes adjust to that and the areas not covered by the lightsource look much darker.
Well with the possible exception of those running gentoo, 99% of end users will be running precompiled software that has to be compiled for a generic cpu as the distributor doesn't know exactly what type of processor its going to end up running on.
At some point you have to trust someone, be it the distributor from whom you're getting the os, the manufacturer or reseller supplying the hardware or even the supplier of the compiler...
The only thing you can practically do, is ensure everything you use is available from multiple opposing sources... Something that's in use by both the us and russian governments is unlikely to be backdoored as both organisations have sufficient resources to perform the due diligence checks.
You could even get 128mb simms in 1992, they were just horrifically expensive...
If you could find the special extended dimms for the video slots... I have a fairly mediocre CG6 in the SS20s in my garage.
Most of the things out their targeting ssh are just trying to brute force accounts, so they don't care what platform your ssh service is running on... If they are successful in getting in its highly likely that they wouldnt have a payload compatible with your system... I've setup a few such boxes as honeypots just to see what people would do with them.
I still have 3 sparcstation-20 machines in the garage, one of which is maxed out with 512mb ram and 4 cpus... I doubt it would run firefox very smoothly tho.
Speedtest sites don't tell the whole story, especially at higher speeds...
Some of the speedtest sites are only on 100mbit themselves, even those on gigabit are usually sharing the bandwidth at their end... And then there's peering, the interconnect between your isp and the speedtest site might not have 1gbit of free capacity at the time your testing. The end devices (or the software running on them) might also not be up to the 1gbps rate - lots of cheaper gigabit nics can't handle wire speed, long or bad cabling, flash based speedtest apps etc.
I've had a box with 1gbps in a data centre for a few years now, and i can quite happily pull 1gbps doing torrent downloads and from some linux mirror sites, but i get a lot less from speedtest sites and many things download a lot slower because the other end or something in between can't handle it.
You need to test a variety of different things, and at different times of the day...
That's very true, and doesn't just apply to unix based systems... You should not be connecting a system to a public network unless you fully understand and control it, and windows is actually much worse in this regard because its massively more complicated than any unix.
Anybody with sufficient technical knowledge can fake an email to pass a casual user, but most people don't have that knowledge...
Just doing a spoofed SMTP transaction won't change the source ip that the message originates from, which will fail things like SPF checks and likely get flagged as spam (i.e. the recipient may never even see it)... And then there's things like S/MIME and PGP.
Faking a letter on the other hand may require a little effort as you describe, but anyone can do that... It's not really a lot of effort, doesn't require any specialist skills and would be extremely difficult (if not impossible) to prove it was fake.
You were lucky to get an unsubsidised n95... I had a carrier branded one which was horrendously unstable so the point of being unusable, some features were disabled (like the SIP client) and battery life was terrible.
Debranding it and putting the stock nokia firmware on and it was much better.
Development of Concorde basically stopped...
There was a second generation Concorde under development (http://www.concordesst.com/concordeb.html) which would have improved fuel economy, increased range and decreased noise.
Had development continued then there would have been many other improvements by now too, especially if there had been competing supersonic airliners to spur development.
And companies should locate their workplaces somewhere that people can afford to park (or provide free parking), and somewhere which is within a short distance of affordable housing, and not in the same place as large number of other businesses. They should also make working hours more flexible, and encourage home working.
All of these things would save the employees time and money, and improve working conditions.
There's also no reading or texting and you can't use your laptop while you commute. It's all dead time.
Some public transport is sufficiently dangerous that you'd not want to advertise that you have an expensive device like a laptop...
Some people suffer from motion sickness which becomes MUCH worse if you're trying to read something.
Often you don't get a seat and have to stand, it's difficult to use a laptop while standing.
For me, using public transport is dead time. When driving i'm concentrating on the act of driving, which at least keeps my mind occupied, when sitting/standing on a train i'm doing absolutely nothing.
And centralized business districts are the biggest cause of travel problems... Thousands of people converging on the same place at the same time, all forms of transit get ridiculously congested and painful to use.
If things were more spread out, both in location and working times then most people could have a short and not too unpleasant journey to work.
With cheaper fuel we can go back to concorde, while loading and unloading wouldn't be any fast the actual flight time would be significantly less.
Some people get travel sickness, which is usually much worse if you're not facing in the direction of travel... Rear facing seats would be terrible.
Also, there are rear facing seats available in business class on some airlines.
Exactly, if you block things then employees will find ways round it...
I went to a company that blocked "software download sites", so the users couldn't download things like firefox from mozilla.com etc, so they found alternative sites where they could download firefox - and these sites contained malware infested versions instead of legitimate firefox.
People these days have portable devices, you can allow them to take breaks using an isolated wifi network and their own portable devices...
The average corporate desktop is extremely vulnerable to attacks from websites (against the browser, the plugins, other applications etc), and trying to defend against such attacks is a huge pain and/or huge cost.