Linux doesn't offer a compelling reason to change, it didn't 20 years ago, it didn't 10 years ago, and it doesn't today. Not to more than about 1.5% of desktop users anyway.
There's one that I've found gets people's attention: Linux is free, as in beer. Every time there's a new, expensive version of Windows released, I get more people asking about Linux. Not many change, but at least they consider it.
I've seen that complaint many, many times before, and it was always used as an excuse not to use Linux, with the implication that the lack of OSS drivers was caused by the devs not providing them rather than putting the blame on the OEMs as is right and proper. If the OP wasn't doing that, it's the first time I've ever seen it.
Key- and screen-loggers? Pretty standard stuff I believe. All that's required is the wrong virus or trojan sneaking on to your machine somehow.
I presume, then, that you're not that familiar with Linux or how people use it. Aside from the fact that almost all of the virus/trojan programs out there won't run directly on a Linux machine, you still need root (Or, in Windows-speak Administrator.) rights to install new software. Not only that, most Linux users get their software from their distro's repositories and nowhere else. I won't say that it's impossible to infect a Linux box if you try hard enough, but I will say that it's exceptionally hard to do without the user assisting you. I know; I've had malicious websites try to slip in a drive-by download and all that happens is I get a dialog box asking me if I want to download the file and if so, where to put it. And, since most main-stream distros use SELinux, it's next to impossible for a program like that to do any damage to the system files.
The problem is my employer requires an account with that bank.
If so, just use it as a transfer account. Let your employer use it for direct deposit of your paychecks, then transfer the funds to a different account at whatever bank you prefer, leaving only enough money behind to keep the account open. There's no reason your employer needs to know, and nothing that they can honestly object to if they do find out.
All it takes is someone filming your keyboard and screen while you log in and your security is completely bypassed.
And how are they supposed to do that? Magic? I only access secure sites from my PC desktop, at home. It doesn't have a web camera attached and doesn't run Windows.
And who's fault is that? It's not the Linux devs because they've wanted to write OSS drivers for those cards ever since they came out, but alas, the OEMs won't release the specs. I'd suggest that you check the facts before you post such drivel, but I know that people like you are only interested in spreading anonymous FUD.
It also assumes, I'll admit, that the majority are aware that there's a choice, and that the other choices work as well as, or better than what they're used to. As long as people make fun of "The Year of the Linux Desktop," people are going to be afraid to try it because they think it's hard to learn. I have a friend who's a computer columnist among other things, and he still thinks that you need access to a Unix guru to run Linux because that was true twenty five years ago when he first looked at it. I've tried to get him to understand that for most people, they need no more tech support with Linux than with Windows, but he's in his eighties now, and a bit set in his ways.
The point of my comment was to suggest that things like that will drive more and more people away from Windows so that eventually, only those users who can't or won't think for themselves will be left with it.
But the Year of the Linux desktop is right around the corner amirite?:P
I don't know about anybody else, but that came for me over eight years ago. This is strictly a Linux household, and the only time I ever run under Windows is at a private social club I belong to where they have some Windows boxes for gaming. I used to be a Windows-internals geek back when I did tech support. Now, if one of those gaming boxes has problems I ask somebody else for help because I've happily forgotten all of that.
...if I'm doing multiple reinstalls in a single day...
...you've got major problems with your OS. Why do you keep reinstalling the same borked version of Windows when you know it's not going to work for you? That's pretty much the classic definition of insanity!
Back when Melissa and The Love Bug came out, I was working at an ISP. You'd be amazed (or maybe you wouldn't) at how many techs sent out emails warning everybody not to click on those emails and how many responded by using reply-to-all. It was quite entertaining while it lasted, especially as I was one of the few people in the company who wasn't using Outlook, meaning that my email client wasn't vulnerable.
If all you want to do is prevent their owners from controlling them and most of the controllers use a fairly narrow band, that's all you need to jam. And, you don't have to jam a wide area, just a big enough radius to keep the drones out of your way.
Erm, drones typically navigate by GPS signals, without direct control necessarily. They won't continue "straight", they'll follow their flightpath. If under remote control, typical programming has them maintain location for a period of time...
My understanding is that the problem here isn't pre-programed drones, it's drones controlled by fools who are trying to get pictures or videos of the action. If they're programmed to hover if their signal drops, that's fine; they're now a fixed obstacle to be avoided, not a constantly moving distraction.
Like stay parked on a freeway with a wildfire raging nearby?
If you're caught on a freeway between off-ramps, there's not much you can do except sit tight and wait. I know, because I was stuck that way one night for over an hour while the remains of a nasty crash were cleaned up enough to get at least one lane open. I was on the up side of a grade and the wreck was on the down-slope so I couldn't even see what was going on. Naturally, we all turned our engines and lights off to save gas. It was slightly foggy, so the first sign I had that things would be moving soon was when the fog suddenly turned tail-light red. Maybe the CHP should have had the drivers evacuate sooner, but I wasn't there and I'm not in the position to have an informed opinion.
If these people are flying their drones unlawfully then reasonable measures should certainly be allowed to stop them.
Yes, they certainly should. Alas, that's not going to stop some fool with more money than brains from misusing a drone that way, or from suing the agency after the fact. And, if they can persuade a jury that their drone wasn't really interfering, they might even collect. This bill is just an attempt to close the barn door before the horse escapes so that those frivolous lawsuits either don't get filed in the first place or get thrown out if they do.
All of those drones are controlled by transmissions on a fairly narrow band. Jamming that band would make the drones continue on in a straight line and eventually out of the danger zone. Of course, you'd have to make sure that they were heading in a safe direction before you started jamming, but the odds are that almost none of them would be heading on a collision course unless their owners were exceptionally stupid.
Having to find important emails in the thousands of spam emails is a problem...
Maybe it wouldn't be such a problem if you deleted everything in your spam folder daily instead of just letting it sit there until it's 30 days old and gets removed automatically.
For trains like that, they probably have one man for each side. Not only that, one starts from the front and the other from the rear so that there's no confusion over which wheel they're hearing.
I don't know if the railroads still do this, but you used to see men walking down the length of a train tapping each wheel with a hammer and listening to the way they rang. They did this because if a wheel was going bad (i.e., cracking) they wouldn't sound right. It might have looked like busy-work, or featherbedding, but it prevented many train wrecks and saved countless lives.
Maintaining a presence on the 'dark' side of the moon so you can have even better astronomy is pretty cool.
Not just better telescopes, or even bigger ones. Imagine how big you can make radio telescopes there, and how much more sensitive they'll be with the Moon insulating them from all of the Earth's radio output.
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Linux doesn't offer a compelling reason to change, it didn't 20 years ago, it didn't 10 years ago, and it doesn't today. Not to more than about 1.5% of desktop users anyway.
There's one that I've found gets people's attention: Linux is free, as in beer. Every time there's a new, expensive version of Windows released, I get more people asking about Linux. Not many change, but at least they consider it.
Then you have the issue of "do my programs run on it". If your answer is, "no, but similar programs do", then you've lost, you might as well give up.
Or, you make sure that Wine is installed and for the most part, you can say, "Yes, they will."
I've seen that complaint many, many times before, and it was always used as an excuse not to use Linux, with the implication that the lack of OSS drivers was caused by the devs not providing them rather than putting the blame on the OEMs as is right and proper. If the OP wasn't doing that, it's the first time I've ever seen it.
Key- and screen-loggers? Pretty standard stuff I believe. All that's required is the wrong virus or trojan sneaking on to your machine somehow.
I presume, then, that you're not that familiar with Linux or how people use it. Aside from the fact that almost all of the virus/trojan programs out there won't run directly on a Linux machine, you still need root (Or, in Windows-speak Administrator.) rights to install new software. Not only that, most Linux users get their software from their distro's repositories and nowhere else. I won't say that it's impossible to infect a Linux box if you try hard enough, but I will say that it's exceptionally hard to do without the user assisting you. I know; I've had malicious websites try to slip in a drive-by download and all that happens is I get a dialog box asking me if I want to download the file and if so, where to put it. And, since most main-stream distros use SELinux, it's next to impossible for a program like that to do any damage to the system files.
The problem is my employer requires an account with that bank.
If so, just use it as a transfer account. Let your employer use it for direct deposit of your paychecks, then transfer the funds to a different account at whatever bank you prefer, leaving only enough money behind to keep the account open. There's no reason your employer needs to know, and nothing that they can honestly object to if they do find out.
All it takes is someone filming your keyboard and screen while you log in and your security is completely bypassed.
And how are they supposed to do that? Magic? I only access secure sites from my PC desktop, at home. It doesn't have a web camera attached and doesn't run Windows.
And who's fault is that? It's not the Linux devs because they've wanted to write OSS drivers for those cards ever since they came out, but alas, the OEMs won't release the specs. I'd suggest that you check the facts before you post such drivel, but I know that people like you are only interested in spreading anonymous FUD.
However that assumes that the majority care.
It also assumes, I'll admit, that the majority are aware that there's a choice, and that the other choices work as well as, or better than what they're used to. As long as people make fun of "The Year of the Linux Desktop," people are going to be afraid to try it because they think it's hard to learn. I have a friend who's a computer columnist among other things, and he still thinks that you need access to a Unix guru to run Linux because that was true twenty five years ago when he first looked at it. I've tried to get him to understand that for most people, they need no more tech support with Linux than with Windows, but he's in his eighties now, and a bit set in his ways.
The point of my comment was to suggest that things like that will drive more and more people away from Windows so that eventually, only those users who can't or won't think for themselves will be left with it.
But the Year of the Linux desktop is right around the corner amirite? :P
I don't know about anybody else, but that came for me over eight years ago. This is strictly a Linux household, and the only time I ever run under Windows is at a private social club I belong to where they have some Windows boxes for gaming. I used to be a Windows-internals geek back when I did tech support. Now, if one of those gaming boxes has problems I ask somebody else for help because I've happily forgotten all of that.
...if I'm doing multiple reinstalls in a single day...
...you've got major problems with your OS. Why do you keep reinstalling the same borked version of Windows when you know it's not going to work for you? That's pretty much the classic definition of insanity!
It wouldn't be surprising if in a near version of Windows, we see a way to have 'uncopyable' or 'unscreenshotable' sections.
Which will only be a problem for those of you who still insist on using Windows. The rest of us will go on about our business with no problems at all.
Another exception, also in the UK: The Book of Common Prayer. The Crown holds the rights and they are considered to be perpetual.
Back when Melissa and The Love Bug came out, I was working at an ISP. You'd be amazed (or maybe you wouldn't) at how many techs sent out emails warning everybody not to click on those emails and how many responded by using reply-to-all. It was quite entertaining while it lasted, especially as I was one of the few people in the company who wasn't using Outlook, meaning that my email client wasn't vulnerable.
If all you want to do is prevent their owners from controlling them and most of the controllers use a fairly narrow band, that's all you need to jam. And, you don't have to jam a wide area, just a big enough radius to keep the drones out of your way.
It doesn't really matter what bands the telemetry use; all you need to do is make it impossible for whatever ID10T is using it to maintain control.
Erm, drones typically navigate by GPS signals, without direct control necessarily. They won't continue "straight", they'll follow their flightpath. If under remote control, typical programming has them maintain location for a period of time...
My understanding is that the problem here isn't pre-programed drones, it's drones controlled by fools who are trying to get pictures or videos of the action. If they're programmed to hover if their signal drops, that's fine; they're now a fixed obstacle to be avoided, not a constantly moving distraction.
Like stay parked on a freeway with a wildfire raging nearby?
If you're caught on a freeway between off-ramps, there's not much you can do except sit tight and wait. I know, because I was stuck that way one night for over an hour while the remains of a nasty crash were cleaned up enough to get at least one lane open. I was on the up side of a grade and the wreck was on the down-slope so I couldn't even see what was going on. Naturally, we all turned our engines and lights off to save gas. It was slightly foggy, so the first sign I had that things would be moving soon was when the fog suddenly turned tail-light red. Maybe the CHP should have had the drivers evacuate sooner, but I wasn't there and I'm not in the position to have an informed opinion.
No need for EMTs to improvise. All they have to do is include a Wrist Rocket in their kit, plus appropriate ammo.
If these people are flying their drones unlawfully then reasonable measures should certainly be allowed to stop them.
Yes, they certainly should. Alas, that's not going to stop some fool with more money than brains from misusing a drone that way, or from suing the agency after the fact. And, if they can persuade a jury that their drone wasn't really interfering, they might even collect. This bill is just an attempt to close the barn door before the horse escapes so that those frivolous lawsuits either don't get filed in the first place or get thrown out if they do.
All of those drones are controlled by transmissions on a fairly narrow band. Jamming that band would make the drones continue on in a straight line and eventually out of the danger zone. Of course, you'd have to make sure that they were heading in a safe direction before you started jamming, but the odds are that almost none of them would be heading on a collision course unless their owners were exceptionally stupid.
Having to find important emails in the thousands of spam emails is a problem...
Maybe it wouldn't be such a problem if you deleted everything in your spam folder daily instead of just letting it sit there until it's 30 days old and gets removed automatically.
For trains like that, they probably have one man for each side. Not only that, one starts from the front and the other from the rear so that there's no confusion over which wheel they're hearing.
I don't know if the railroads still do this, but you used to see men walking down the length of a train tapping each wheel with a hammer and listening to the way they rang. They did this because if a wheel was going bad (i.e., cracking) they wouldn't sound right. It might have looked like busy-work, or featherbedding, but it prevented many train wrecks and saved countless lives.
Maintaining a presence on the 'dark' side of the moon so you can have even better astronomy is pretty cool.
Not just better telescopes, or even bigger ones. Imagine how big you can make radio telescopes there, and how much more sensitive they'll be with the Moon insulating them from all of the Earth's radio output.