The ONLY reason to run Windows is Windows applications. Once you remove the ability to run Windows apps from Windows, no-one will buy it because it is not what they need.
They can get the same functionality from any free Linux. Any reasonable Linux distribution will provide useful analogues to Windows apps that will provide "good enough" functionality for the vast majority of users.
One of the problems is that the money just isn't there, at least here in Toronto. I've done this work in the past, and although I had happy customers, it was exhausting.
The kind of competence and depth of knowledge to really be able to fix the problems on a small to medium business network can command a near six figure salary ($CAD) at a large company: You'll need to charge at least $100CAD an hour to make a similar net by consulting,
Not many small to medium businesses are going to be willing to pay that sort of rate, even though it'll probably be cheaper in the long run as the competent consultant will probably get more done in 1 hour than the 20$/hr "expert" will get done all day.
Anyone with the use of their hands and a few tools from the local hardware store can make a "zip gun" from scrap metal. It doesn't take a genius to make such a gun, which will be just as effective as what comes out of a 3D printer. This is a well known and common criminal practice, for many years now. Sure, it's illegal but it happens all the time.
But now we have a new way to make a "zip gun": Instead of a few bucks worth of hand tools and some scrap we need a computer and a 3D printer, which costs a LOT more! And usually the sort of people who have such equipment probably have something better to do than making stupid 3D printed zip guns.
But this is so terribly scary that the media has to freak out and the gummint has to ban it. Lots of money, time and effort wasted over this non-problem. But the media and the politicians all have to keep us scared or we might start thinking for ourselves and they can't have that.
"Author Harlan Ellison describes the zip guns gangs used in 1950s New York City as being made from tubing used in coffee percolators or automobile radio antennas, strapped to a block of wood for a handle. A rubber band powered the firing pin, which the shooter pulls back and releases to fire."
The design of the Internet is such that if you simply deliver the "Internet" to an endpoint, the traffic is in accordance with the principles of Net Neutrality. So if an ISP comes along and delivers a filtered, manipulated and piecemeal subset of the Internet, then are they really delivering THE Internet?
Why not demand "truth in advertising"? If an ISP wants to abuse net neutrality, then they can't claim they are delivering the Internet: At best they can claim to be delivering "Part, but not all of the Internet, manipulated, blocked, and changed for our profit and your annoyance". Then consumers can decide what they really want to pay for.
The golden calf named "information transparency" is exactly why "libertarianism" can never work.
"Information transparency" is a ideal state which can never be achieved, since there will ALWAYS be a person or group who can benefit by manipulating, obfuscating or hiding information and will do so.
Look at the efforts by Russia to influence elections around the world using social media: The original idea of social media was to allow people to freely communicate and share information for their own benefit, while allowing the providers to make some money off aggregating the information in a relatively harmless way.
What we GOT from social media is a massive propaganda machine that is being used by power brokers to twist unsuspecting minds and commit mass surveillance. Much of the political polarization and build-up of angst in western culture can be traced to this massive and malicious abuse of social media. Note also it has been abused both by outsiders AND insiders.
So the holy grail of "Information transparency" is right there on the web RIGHT NOW: Funny how it has been twisted and made into a weapon!
Yes and no. Dropping the price of telephone calls will reduce the incentive to smuggle cell phones for benign "calls to mom", but will do nothing to prevent the hardened criminals who want to run their criminal enterprises from inside using cellphones.
All that's needed here is deployment of simple cell phone jammers. No cell service, no problems.
Yes. If you have Administrator access, you own the system. So what they are really saying is "Hey, if you already own the Windows system then you can do bad things with the Windows system!"
He's not just focussing on phones: He's talking about all kinds of new tech that is Internet-enabled or surreptitiously recording your private information and not fully controlled by the consumers.
He's talking about thermostats provided by your power utility that are controlled remotely by that utility to reduce your power consumption when they feel like it.
He's talking about vendors who are locking the owners into expensive service contracts or buying parts and supplies at forced inflated prices, using CFAA and DMCA to keep users from doing their own mainternance.
All of these problems occur because of the way that consumers and citizens are prevented from having full control over the devices we purchase: With the business-slanted contracts and laws that prevent us from knowing what the software is doing and what our devices are surreptitiously reporting back to businesses and governments.
Richard Stallman has been warning about these problems for many years.
The PM levels from gasoline engines that meet Euro 4 are very low: It's the diesels that produce a lot of particulates. In the gasoline engines, the cat cooks off any drops of fuel left over, so there's really only gas coming out of the tailpipe and virtually no particulates.
Also note that in Euro 5 & 6 there are standards for PM for gasoline engines with direct injection, so it's not like they are ignoring the problem.
I'd even go further and say that most new bikes on sale today are cleaner than cars, as they use fewer resources to build, less fuel to run and meet the same emissions standards (Euro 4).
And since even the Royal Enfield is now Euro 4 compliant, I wouldn't limit the scope to "1st world contries".
Yeah, that's old data. What the Mythbusters did was interesting, but it is no longer applicable. New bikes are FAR cleaner than models from just a few years ago. See my posts above for further details.
Hanoi can make the sale of the heavily polluting two-stroke street scooters illegal (like we did) and provide some sort of assistance to owners to "trade up" to a scooter with a four stroke engine and appropriate pollution controls (bounty, rebate, ???). That should clear up the problem in a few years. Since they already make a lot of scooters like that, they are already producing the solution to their problem!
Yeah, that's old data. What the Mythbusters did was interesting, but it is no longer applicable. New bikes are FAR cleaner than models from just a few years ago. My Ducati Scrambler Icon has a catalytic converter and electronic fuel injection (also ABS for safety!) so it's very clean: It meets the "Euro 4" standards. See my post above for further details.
TL;DR - Multiple reports of how motorcycles are such bad polluters are no longer true as emissions regulations are being applied to bikes. Unmodified new production street legal bikes are now among the cleanest vehicles on the road.
Yeah, what the Mythbusters did was interesting, but it is no longer applicable. New bikes are FAR cleaner than models from just a few years ago.
My Ducati Scrambler Icon has a catalytic converter and electronic fuel injection (also ABS for safety!) so it's very clean: It meets the "Euro 4" standards: Euro 4 emission limits (petrol)
CO - 1.0 g/km
HC - 0.10 g/km
NOx - 0.08
PM - no limit
And this isn't some "special" bike: It's actually one of Ducati's least expensive models. The majority of large motorcycle manufacturers sell bikes in Europe, and these standards are *mandatory* for all new bikes sold there as of 2017, so all those manufacturers are meeting these standards for most of their products. It's unfortunate that the MythBusters did their testing when they did: If they did it now, they would find the situation with bikes in the late part of this decade to be VERY different as to the results.
We've seen with Royal Enfield that manufacturers in "less developed" countries can adapt modern tech to make their bikes clean to Euro 4 standards.
Viet Nam is already producing a LOT of scooters for export, and many of these models are built with modern technology so they are affordable and clean: All they need to do is trade out the old bikes for new, cleaner bikes.
Here's a suggestion: Make it the responsibility of the car maker to build a car that is safe from external hacking. Then, if some car gets hacked and someone gets hurt, then the car maker has to pay. Simply say "If your car is hackable, then it is NOT 'fit for purpose' so you can't sell it, and we're not going to let you EULA your way out of responsibility."
VERY quickly you will see "features" like Bluetooth connectivity, Internet access and every other vulnerable, useless farkle disappear. Car makers will make d*mn sure there's NO access from any external device since they won't want the liability for building a hacker-vulnerable car.
The USA did this back in the 1960s with Ralph Nader and his efforts to hold the car makers accountable for building unsafe cars, so they can do it again.
Quote: "Attempts were made in 2015 and 2016 to change Utah law to accommodate Tesla, but the car dealers and other automakers rebuffed the efforts."
I know Utah is weird, but the "car dealers" and "automakers" have a veto over state government and the media reports this as though it's somehow normal? What part of "democracy" do Americans not understand?
Since most greenlit productions these days are repeats of comic book movies and previous hits (remaking the Matrix, really??) a lot of writers could be replaced by a photocopier. That's not a lot of leverage.
The business model is broken. Striking won't fix it.
I'd be filthy, stinking rich if I had a dime for every time a developer made the same well-known security mistake over and over and over even after their code was pen tested and it was pointed out to them with a fully documented POC and screenshots.
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It doesn't make the laptops "unbootable", it just makes so that Windows can't boot.
That's not unbootable: That's an opportunity to install Linux. Problem solved!
The ONLY reason to run Windows is Windows applications. Once you remove the ability to run Windows apps from Windows, no-one will buy it because it is not what they need. They can get the same functionality from any free Linux. Any reasonable Linux distribution will provide useful analogues to Windows apps that will provide "good enough" functionality for the vast majority of users.
One of the problems is that the money just isn't there, at least here in Toronto. I've done this work in the past, and although I had happy customers, it was exhausting.
The kind of competence and depth of knowledge to really be able to fix the problems on a small to medium business network can command a near six figure salary ($CAD) at a large company: You'll need to charge at least $100CAD an hour to make a similar net by consulting,
Not many small to medium businesses are going to be willing to pay that sort of rate, even though it'll probably be cheaper in the long run as the competent consultant will probably get more done in 1 hour than the 20$/hr "expert" will get done all day.
Let alone the content itself, which is mostly commercials and so-called "shows" that would insult the intelligences of the average 14 year old.
Anyone with the use of their hands and a few tools from the local hardware store can make a "zip gun" from scrap metal. It doesn't take a genius to make such a gun, which will be just as effective as what comes out of a 3D printer. This is a well known and common criminal practice, for many years now. Sure, it's illegal but it happens all the time.
But now we have a new way to make a "zip gun": Instead of a few bucks worth of hand tools and some scrap we need a computer and a 3D printer, which costs a LOT more! And usually the sort of people who have such equipment probably have something better to do than making stupid 3D printed zip guns.
But this is so terribly scary that the media has to freak out and the gummint has to ban it. Lots of money, time and effort wasted over this non-problem. But the media and the politicians all have to keep us scared or we might start thinking for ourselves and they can't have that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"Author Harlan Ellison describes the zip guns gangs used in 1950s New York City as being made from tubing used in coffee percolators or automobile radio antennas, strapped to a block of wood for a handle. A rubber band powered the firing pin, which the shooter pulls back and releases to fire."
The design of the Internet is such that if you simply deliver the "Internet" to an endpoint, the traffic is in accordance with the principles of Net Neutrality. So if an ISP comes along and delivers a filtered, manipulated and piecemeal subset of the Internet, then are they really delivering THE Internet?
Why not demand "truth in advertising"? If an ISP wants to abuse net neutrality, then they can't claim they are delivering the Internet: At best they can claim to be delivering "Part, but not all of the Internet, manipulated, blocked, and changed for our profit and your annoyance". Then consumers can decide what they really want to pay for.
This object is long, cylindrical and "covered" in organic matter? Wanna bet it's also tapered at both ends and smells bad?
People, it's a TURD!
This is the respect humans have in the galaxy: Aliens throw their shit at us.
The golden calf named "information transparency" is exactly why "libertarianism" can never work.
"Information transparency" is a ideal state which can never be achieved, since there will ALWAYS be a person or group who can benefit by manipulating, obfuscating or hiding information and will do so.
Look at the efforts by Russia to influence elections around the world using social media: The original idea of social media was to allow people to freely communicate and share information for their own benefit, while allowing the providers to make some money off aggregating the information in a relatively harmless way.
What we GOT from social media is a massive propaganda machine that is being used by power brokers to twist unsuspecting minds and commit mass surveillance. Much of the political polarization and build-up of angst in western culture can be traced to this massive and malicious abuse of social media. Note also it has been abused both by outsiders AND insiders.
So the holy grail of "Information transparency" is right there on the web RIGHT NOW: Funny how it has been twisted and made into a weapon!
Yes and no. Dropping the price of telephone calls will reduce the incentive to smuggle cell phones for benign "calls to mom", but will do nothing to prevent the hardened criminals who want to run their criminal enterprises from inside using cellphones. All that's needed here is deployment of simple cell phone jammers. No cell service, no problems.
Yes. If you have Administrator access, you own the system. So what they are really saying is "Hey, if you already own the Windows system then you can do bad things with the Windows system!"
So it's a meaningless and irrelevant story.
He's not just focussing on phones: He's talking about all kinds of new tech that is Internet-enabled or surreptitiously recording your private information and not fully controlled by the consumers.
He's talking about thermostats provided by your power utility that are controlled remotely by that utility to reduce your power consumption when they feel like it.
He's talking about vendors who are locking the owners into expensive service contracts or buying parts and supplies at forced inflated prices, using CFAA and DMCA to keep users from doing their own mainternance.
All of these problems occur because of the way that consumers and citizens are prevented from having full control over the devices we purchase: With the business-slanted contracts and laws that prevent us from knowing what the software is doing and what our devices are surreptitiously reporting back to businesses and governments.
Richard Stallman has been warning about these problems for many years.
I think Richard Stallman must feel like Cassandra these days. All the bad tidings he's been warning about for years are coming true.
Shouldn't it be a "safari" instead?
The PM levels from gasoline engines that meet Euro 4 are very low: It's the diesels that produce a lot of particulates. In the gasoline engines, the cat cooks off any drops of fuel left over, so there's really only gas coming out of the tailpipe and virtually no particulates.
Also note that in Euro 5 & 6 there are standards for PM for gasoline engines with direct injection, so it's not like they are ignoring the problem.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Agreed!!
I'd even go further and say that most new bikes on sale today are cleaner than cars, as they use fewer resources to build, less fuel to run and meet the same emissions standards (Euro 4).
And since even the Royal Enfield is now Euro 4 compliant, I wouldn't limit the scope to "1st world contries".
Yeah, that's old data. What the Mythbusters did was interesting, but it is no longer applicable. New bikes are FAR cleaner than models from just a few years ago. See my posts above for further details.
Hanoi can make the sale of the heavily polluting two-stroke street scooters illegal (like we did) and provide some sort of assistance to owners to "trade up" to a scooter with a four stroke engine and appropriate pollution controls (bounty, rebate, ???). That should clear up the problem in a few years. Since they already make a lot of scooters like that, they are already producing the solution to their problem!
Yeah, that's old data. What the Mythbusters did was interesting, but it is no longer applicable. New bikes are FAR cleaner than models from just a few years ago. My Ducati Scrambler Icon has a catalytic converter and electronic fuel injection (also ABS for safety!) so it's very clean: It meets the "Euro 4" standards. See my post above for further details.
TL;DR - Multiple reports of how motorcycles are such bad polluters are no longer true as emissions regulations are being applied to bikes. Unmodified new production street legal bikes are now among the cleanest vehicles on the road.
Yeah, what the Mythbusters did was interesting, but it is no longer applicable. New bikes are FAR cleaner than models from just a few years ago.
My Ducati Scrambler Icon has a catalytic converter and electronic fuel injection (also ABS for safety!) so it's very clean: It meets the "Euro 4" standards: Euro 4 emission limits (petrol)
CO - 1.0 g/km
HC - 0.10 g/km
NOx - 0.08
PM - no limit
And this isn't some "special" bike: It's actually one of Ducati's least expensive models. The majority of large motorcycle manufacturers sell bikes in Europe, and these standards are *mandatory* for all new bikes sold there as of 2017, so all those manufacturers are meeting these standards for most of their products. It's unfortunate that the MythBusters did their testing when they did: If they did it now, they would find the situation with bikes in the late part of this decade to be VERY different as to the results.
We've seen with Royal Enfield that manufacturers in "less developed" countries can adapt modern tech to make their bikes clean to Euro 4 standards.
Viet Nam is already producing a LOT of scooters for export, and many of these models are built with modern technology so they are affordable and clean: All they need to do is trade out the old bikes for new, cleaner bikes.
"And it is, of course, highly unlikely that race is even an input into the system." Yeah, sure. Either prove it beyond any doubt or STFU.
Agreed 100%.
Here's a suggestion: Make it the responsibility of the car maker to build a car that is safe from external hacking. Then, if some car gets hacked and someone gets hurt, then the car maker has to pay. Simply say "If your car is hackable, then it is NOT 'fit for purpose' so you can't sell it, and we're not going to let you EULA your way out of responsibility."
VERY quickly you will see "features" like Bluetooth connectivity, Internet access and every other vulnerable, useless farkle disappear. Car makers will make d*mn sure there's NO access from any external device since they won't want the liability for building a hacker-vulnerable car.
The USA did this back in the 1960s with Ralph Nader and his efforts to hold the car makers accountable for building unsafe cars, so they can do it again.
"How to Steal a Million". 1966 movie with Peter O'Toole and Audrey Hepburn. Lots of fun. :)
Quote: "Attempts were made in 2015 and 2016 to change Utah law to accommodate Tesla, but the car dealers and other automakers rebuffed the efforts."
I know Utah is weird, but the "car dealers" and "automakers" have a veto over state government and the media reports this as though it's somehow normal? What part of "democracy" do Americans not understand?
Since most greenlit productions these days are repeats of comic book movies and previous hits (remaking the Matrix, really??) a lot of writers could be replaced by a photocopier. That's not a lot of leverage.
The business model is broken. Striking won't fix it.
"Those security guys worry too much!"
I'd be filthy, stinking rich if I had a dime for every time a developer made the same well-known security mistake over and over and over even after their code was pen tested and it was pointed out to them with a fully documented POC and screenshots.
And of course, "I am altering the deal, pray I do not alter it any further!".
I entirely agree. That's why I look to FOSS for my systems. It's not always possible, but my private info is on FOSS systems.