I'm more interested in how the author's going to relate unclean water, poverty wages, LGBTwhatever "rights" etc to pushing for the progress of *science*. Science exists to answer questions, it's not about social morality, unless you're into sociology or related fields. I'd rather see some hard-core science being funded than any "science" funds diverted to social funds. There's other avenues for that, and science itself as a field shouldn't need to worry about it. As for the M4S, you don't want to distract from the primary purpose, which, amazingly, isn't a statement about social conditions but rather about a dedication to science. Any "backlash" the author thinks they see is merely a refusal to dilute the message and we should applaud the M4S for not diluting their message.
when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?
What if.
We can make a whole series of what ifs. Let's start with "What if life spontaneously started on earth?" It is possible, it is not even improbable, we can't rule it out. That one should be at the top of the list until some more improbable possibility becomes less improbable. This position does not preclude other life originating elsewhere.
I didn't see any squirming there. Experiments making the RNA precursors using electric sparks in a "primordial soup" were done decades ago. We're no closer to "creating" life then than now. Suppose one day we did create life, that would be life from an intelligent creator, wouldn't it?
But creating life means we will know how it can happen, and then can assess whether random chance would make it happen and the odds of that. Hint, yes random chance can make life happen as the evidence is all around you, and the odds are greater than most will think.
Different shops, different needs. Shop A has special snowflakes with disparate machines. This was far prior to the age of WSUS. Was talking specifically about the pre WSUS statement regarding images and best practices. Doesn't always work.
The small money bound shops, call them B, most wouldn't spend a dime on IT unless they absolutely had to.
I have dealt with both extremes, and the "happy" middle.
Sure, this has some discussion of when Business/Enterprise customers can expect to see updates, but doesn't relate the "forced" aspect. Note that there is no statement that they can be avoided. There's wishy-washy wording in there. This, while older, has the verbiage I remember being finalized last year. Another story implying there's no stopping the upgrades, but, like you, I cannot find the original smoking gun that made me walk away from Win10 as a viable OS. That was over 2 years ago, and digging through thousands of google stories on "forced enterprise windows 10 upgrades" isn't what I am doing today.
You are not the only source for that information; I was in the industry back then and I remember how slow the move from NT4 and 2K was. It was a hair faster than the move from 98, which companies which didn't need a true multi-user environment were just getting around to installing over 95 around the time XP came out.
At any rate, good to see you finally cite a source.
Honestly, if sources you want, I could have provided more, including for the (W)SUS stuff. I just figured that was so minor I didn't provide them. They're 1 google away, after all.:)
As for the image/deploy process you're talking about, that's great, if you run a 1 or 2 machine type shop. Try running with 100s of different sets of hardware and about half as many configurations as you have people. I wasn't in a regular shop with clone copies for everyone. Each one of our special snowflakes had their own needs, and were spending upwards of 20K per machine to get those needs fulfilled. IT's support requirements where more like "here's our configuration, you support it". Were I in a standard shop, sure, that would be awesome.
Finally, for XP uptake, it was far far faster than NT4 or 2K where I was. In fact, 2K wasn't even a blip on our radar when XP came out, which was a rather big blob. TBH, XP was just 2K with the fisher-price GUI. I was never really a fan of anything related to it other than the default background, which was nice green rolling hills. Win95 had tons of issues in our environment, so many never ran it, staying on WFW 3.11 instead. And post 95 it was pretty much a straight migration to NT as new machines came in for those on windows, 98/ME never had a chance.
Prior to Windows 10 you could disable automatic updates entirely
That's kind of the point regarding the Win10 you must update statement that started these discussions.
Absent WSUS, which we were only without for a year and a half,
Really? (W)SUS didn't come out until 2005. Last I recall, XP was released in 2001.
So, you mean, by the time most businesses would have upgraded to XP, WSUS was out and this whole back-and-forth is largely pointless?
Nice rewording there. I said companies remained on XP. Nothing about XP's own take up could be inferred from that statement.
I stipulated competent IT teams, not just dedicated.
So MS Services isn't competent? I'll be sure to note that next time.
You're living in MS fairytale land. I can assure you that small businesses don't as a rule run WSUS, nor have IT folks that deal with it.
Does that mean they can't? I mean, if all of this is really a concern and there is a solution available, why can't they utilize that solution?
Sure, they can, if they'd prefer to run in the red.
Then they should have an AD to manage logins, at the very least. It costs less to pay someone to click a few buttons to add and remove accounts on a central server than it costs to have them walk across the building to do the same thing. Bonus if they install even a low-end SAN solution and store user profiles and documents on it; then they don't even have to reimage machines when someone leaves the company. These are things that should be considered once a company reaches about 20-25 workstation users and should certainly be in place by 50.
It's a solid argument. Many won't pay for it. I've seen 5 year old Dell laptops with busted keys and cracked screens in daily use. If they won't spend $300 for a new base laptop, you really think you're going to get them to pay $50+/hr for IT support?
Apple, on the other hand, killed off the server version of OS X and never bothered migrating the management tools; those are just gone now. If I recall correctly, Microsoft has actually stepped up to fill that gap on the Mac platform.
Most companies don't run local mail anymore; it's too much of a hassle to deal with RBL bullshit and spam. What's mail got to do with this, anyway?
Essentially, pointing out that while they use computers, they aren't IT shops in any sense of the word.
You can't, on one hand, say downtime costs tens of thousands of dollars (30% of a Fortune 100's workstation users being unable to work for 2 days), then turn around and say $5000 is too much to pay to fix it. If something is going to cost me $10k to ignore or $5k to fix, the reality is that it's actually going to save me $5k to fix it.
Who said anything like that? Honestly, those kind of remarks are bordering on Trumpian claims. A small shop that uses computers won't be idle for days if their systems are down. It'll be inconvenient, maybe, but not serious. A Fortune 100 has a dedicated IT staff. This portion of the discussion doesn't apply to them.
We actually agree on this point. Where it falls apart is that, while sysadmins would go back and eventually install updates after testing them, end users were disabling the updates, then not installing them later.
And my point is that the same forces driving sys admins to disable it drove regular users to disable it. I do agree with your conclusion about them not following through afterwards, however the fault remains with MS in the first place, for forcing more than necessary down users throats. By way of comparison, Apple AFAIK has only used the mandatory push once. In over 5 years.
WSUS or no WSUS, sysadmins can still disable automatic updates on Win 10 Enterprise, so nothing changes for a company that has at least 5 computers and buys the right version of Windows
And with Win10, Enterprise or not, you will be forced to accept all updates within a 9-12 month window. I'm too lazy to look it up again for precision. It is no longer your choice. You will upgrade, soon or sooner.
Well, then, I guess it's a good thing one has been included since XP SP2. Mind you, it didn't really get good until Vista, but it was there. It's really a non-issue wince Vista, though, as one has been included, with a "deny by default" configuration, since Vista.
I recall some vague thing around SP2+ that while things were better, it was still best to not connect directly without a router + firewall in place. You are correct that once Vista came out, that concern seemed to diminish significantly.
especially in the face of Intel's AMT exploits, which are OS-agnostic; even the best software firewall won't stop that from being exploited as the ME grabs the packets and the OS never even sees them.
Well, if you have hardware with AMT in it.:)
Also running all processes at System was another problem, directly with XP and still an issue with W10, although it's a touch more difficult to execute an overflow as System.
Was, was, was, was, was. All I hear from you is a stream of "was". Really, only system services run as System anymore; it's something they started fixing with Vista and it's taken some time to get all the software vendors on board with running their applications as the user, but we're finally there. If it's still an issue on your Win 10 system, talk to the app vendor who hasn't been keeping up; Microsoft made it a pain in the ass to keep following the old and insecure model and that's really all they can do without everyone bitching about how they broke that one mission critical application.
I can honestly tell you it's still a problem with Server 2012. It has little to do with the fact that the app process has a lower than system token. If any DLL used by the app, or, honestly, if the app can load a DLL, you can execute any arbitrary code with System privs. Like I mentioned, it used to be simple, it's harder now, but by no means impossible. The problem I'm highlighting is the core issue with Windows itself - it's insecure by design. That design has not changed since 2012 or, in fact, since NT4, in any meaningful way. Bandaids are starting to lean.
Yes, the problem dates back to early versions of Windows, but the problem persists due to recent versions of applications.
As mentioned above - it has little to do with the apps. It's actually an inherent "feature" if you will of the OS.
Microsoft could fix it in the next release, but all of those applications that rely on it (still, even though they should not) would break and users would blame Microsoft, rather than the application vendors.
Like you're doing right now.
Hopefully I've laid clear why the blame is appropriately laid at MS's feet.
However, the quality never got worse than the original lossy recording despite the format shifts.
It can't be worse. It can't be better. It's lossless. It was probably larger though.
Re original lossy format files: I didn't care about the slightly larger file post lossless conversion, it was an accepted short-coming.
Given player history, I prefer all my files in the same format for simplicity.
How is that simpler in a way that's important?
In the way that the multiple targeted players could all play all the same songs and managing meta data becomes much simpler because everything is the same format. Managing multiple formats across thousands of files isn't something I wish to deal with. I like simplicity.
I'm talking XP for this one. I thought that was obvious, as that's where WU on the client started? WU always had the ability to do exactly what MS has completed with Win10, so disabling it way back then was the intelligent move for systems admins that needed to keep things running and avoid fire drills. Had MS followed a sensible update process with mandatory critical patches that only fixed holes and with proper warning if it would fubar an API which, admittedly, can happen, then people would have trusted them. As it was, MS acted like they knew better what should run on your computer and treated the updates as en blanc permission to reconfigure whatever they deemed appropriate. So admins started disabling this WU process, word got out, and many others saw their problems go away when they disabled it, so it spread. If disabling WU hadn't fixed something, then people would have stopped disabling WU.... So who do you blame?
In truth, MS systems can be semi-secure at least from the bot-net spewing bits if MS had a sensible configuration and firewall in place on their OS. Ideally you'd have a separate firewall between you and the internet, but not having one on system caused massive issues. (I'm sure you recall the study that dropping a new XP system without an external firewall on the internet to update it via WU would infect it before it could even start downloading?) Also running all processes at System was another problem, directly with XP and still an issue with W10, although it's a touch more difficult to execute an overflow as System. (This is the root of most if not all of MS's exploit issues with their apps)
WSUS servers weren't even available at one time.:)
When were WSUS servers not available for Windows 10? It's been a standard offering wince Win2k3.
I wasn't aware we were only discussing Win10, or even just post 2k3. Since most people in business are running flavors of XP through W7 that I've been aware of (yes, at least 3 Fortune 100 companies I personally know of were running XP as recently as 2 years ago) and only recently moved to W7. At least 2 have had issues with upgrades, in one case taking down 30% of the company's computers for about 2 days. This is with dedicated IT support teams in place, and they still can't get it right. At least they only rolled it out to portions of the company at a time.
As for 5 licenses, no, most won't have a running WSUS.
No competent IT person would quote $5k, as you only the Windows Server 2012 or newer system that is already running your domain controller and AD; tick the box to enable WSUS and add it to your policies; done. As an added bonus, a competent IT person would thoroughly test each update before adding it to WSUS and avoid the "issues" you allude to. It shouldn't take more than a day for a mid-level ($75-100/hr) tech to get working; in fact, it should only take an hour or two. That's $75-200 for a competent tech, up to $800 if he's really really slow.
You're living in MS fairytale land. I can assure you that small businesses don't as a rule run WSUS, nor have IT folks that deal with it. They generally contract with a low-bid support firm that sends some random clown over when called to "support" them. The going rate is under $60/hr for what the SMB considers no more than helpdesk support. And they complain about it. These are under 100 people shops. They they don't run their own internal mail, they don't even have servers actually, and they're running off the shelf systems they buy from Dell. So the $5K quote is actually realistic for them to upgrade to Windows Enterprise and get a domain server.
This isn't even what I do for a living, but I could set it up with one hand tied behind my back.
As could I, but I won't do it for $20 or $30 / hr.
But, as for Win10, that doesn't make any difference either because everything will get pushed within 9 or 12 months, whatever the latest arbitrary deadline is.
Not so with WSUS. No version of Windows that is configured to use a WSUS server looks anywhere other than the configured WSUS server for updates.
Right, and that WSUS server will push those updates after 'x' time, as determined by MS, unless you take steps to isolate your WSUS server and do some other non-standard things to it. There's a reason W10 uptake by business has been, well, let's say it's been "slow". There's also a reason IBM chose to go with Apple instead and invest the resources to generate a new business service model for Apple.
Will you say the same of Mac users who disable automatic updates because Apple has released a few bad video drivers (more than just that, but it's what I recall off the top of my head) for older Macs? What of Linux and BSD users?
You're shifting the blame conversation.:) As for bad video drivers, I don't recall those and was never subject to them. I was subject to the upgrade issues with 10.11 and 10.12, but that's a different issue and can be fixed. However, Apple doesn't automatically update (or doesn't on my systems, but will nag. I do apply updates on my schedule.
So it's Microsoft's fault people disabled Windows Update during the time before Windows 10, back when Microsoft did allow you to install updates by category? Going back at least as far as XP SP2, I know you could opt to have just "Critical Updates" installed, and those were just security patches.
I was under the impression those procedural tricks sun-setted circa 2000, which would make those patents all expire by 2020 at the very very latest, if they're not already expired. Like you, I'd need to see the full list of related patents, and that's just not important enough at this point.
Ditto on the bit rot. Kind of sucks when the disks are no longer in production. Your rips are the only thing you'll have after that, besides the legal piece of plastic that makes your rips legal.
As for existing MP3s, they are what they are, but I wouldn't rip anything new into that format.
There are certain types of music that absolutely do not compress well and result in artifacts (even in 320 kbps MP3s, but MP3s suck, we all know that) I haven't tried the same source with Vorbis because space isn't the premium it used to be and lossless compression at 3 or 4:1 is perfectly fine for me.
The only reason is if you're switching formats and need to re-encode. In that case, encoding from a base lossless to a different format will, after the second round, be better than not having the intermediate lossless version in place. For example, initially my library was MP3 for portability and space purposes. Then it was re-ripped to monkeyaudio, converted to flac, then Apple lossless. There are some original lossy sources that I keep underneath a "lossy" directory that I no longer have viable original sources for (bit rot really does happen and apparently accelerates over time) One day, should I come across an original, I can replace those now many times converted lossy originals. However, the quality never got worse than the original lossy recording despite the format shifts. Given player history, I prefer all my files in the same format for simplicity.
Well, since AAC was a standard first set pre 1997, it would seem all the original patents are no longer valid. There might some some features of later extensions to AAC that are still under one patent or another, but the original standard should be encumbrance free.
I did experiment. Ran MP3s at even 320kbps, Ogg, AAC, and the lossless monkeyaudio, FLAC, and Apple's lossless. On good home audio equipment I can easily tell the difference between lossy and lossless, depending on original source quality. Hint, Breakfast at Tiffany's is not good audio source material (just to bring back a 90s meme, can't recall if it's true or not) Some older vinyl and even badly recorded CDs (terrible master tapes or bad mixing) just aren't going to have any more fidelity in lossless vs lossy. I store them in lossless anyways, to prevent format shifting degradation over time. And I have shifted lossless several times now, it's far easier than re-ripping all source.
It's less than 5-fold. For phone usage, I generally convert on the fly to a lossy format which actually doesn't seem to impact transfer speeds. I only use my phone through headphones or the car which road noise alone makes lossless almost pointless.
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Hey, those jurors are pretty smart - they get paid for going to trial, and apparently not only from the feds.
I'm more interested in how the author's going to relate unclean water, poverty wages, LGBTwhatever "rights" etc to pushing for the progress of *science*. Science exists to answer questions, it's not about social morality, unless you're into sociology or related fields. I'd rather see some hard-core science being funded than any "science" funds diverted to social funds. There's other avenues for that, and science itself as a field shouldn't need to worry about it. As for the M4S, you don't want to distract from the primary purpose, which, amazingly, isn't a statement about social conditions but rather about a dedication to science. Any "backlash" the author thinks they see is merely a refusal to dilute the message and we should applaud the M4S for not diluting their message.
So you, specifically, didn't find the answer to this question. And that precludes anyone else from discovering it how?
when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?
What if.
We can make a whole series of what ifs. Let's start with "What if life spontaneously started on earth?" It is possible, it is not even improbable, we can't rule it out. That one should be at the top of the list until some more improbable possibility becomes less improbable. This position does not preclude other life originating elsewhere.
I didn't see any squirming there. Experiments making the RNA precursors using electric sparks in a "primordial soup" were done decades ago. We're no closer to "creating" life then than now. Suppose one day we did create life, that would be life from an intelligent creator, wouldn't it?
But creating life means we will know how it can happen, and then can assess whether random chance would make it happen and the odds of that. Hint, yes random chance can make life happen as the evidence is all around you, and the odds are greater than most will think.
Different shops, different needs. Shop A has special snowflakes with disparate machines. This was far prior to the age of WSUS. Was talking specifically about the pre WSUS statement regarding images and best practices. Doesn't always work.
The small money bound shops, call them B, most wouldn't spend a dime on IT unless they absolutely had to.
I have dealt with both extremes, and the "happy" middle.
Sure, this has some discussion of when Business/Enterprise customers can expect to see updates, but doesn't relate the "forced" aspect. Note that there is no statement that they can be avoided. There's wishy-washy wording in there. This, while older, has the verbiage I remember being finalized last year. Another story implying there's no stopping the upgrades, but, like you, I cannot find the original smoking gun that made me walk away from Win10 as a viable OS. That was over 2 years ago, and digging through thousands of google stories on "forced enterprise windows 10 upgrades" isn't what I am doing today.
You are not the only source for that information; I was in the industry back then and I remember how slow the move from NT4 and 2K was. It was a hair faster than the move from 98, which companies which didn't need a true multi-user environment were just getting around to installing over 95 around the time XP came out.
At any rate, good to see you finally cite a source.
Honestly, if sources you want, I could have provided more, including for the (W)SUS stuff. I just figured that was so minor I didn't provide them. They're 1 google away, after all. :)
As for the image/deploy process you're talking about, that's great, if you run a 1 or 2 machine type shop. Try running with 100s of different sets of hardware and about half as many configurations as you have people. I wasn't in a regular shop with clone copies for everyone. Each one of our special snowflakes had their own needs, and were spending upwards of 20K per machine to get those needs fulfilled. IT's support requirements where more like "here's our configuration, you support it". Were I in a standard shop, sure, that would be awesome.
Finally, for XP uptake, it was far far faster than NT4 or 2K where I was. In fact, 2K wasn't even a blip on our radar when XP came out, which was a rather big blob. TBH, XP was just 2K with the fisher-price GUI. I was never really a fan of anything related to it other than the default background, which was nice green rolling hills. Win95 had tons of issues in our environment, so many never ran it, staying on WFW 3.11 instead. And post 95 it was pretty much a straight migration to NT as new machines came in for those on windows, 98/ME never had a chance.
320 kbps. The differences were apparent even on my car audio driving down the road. Again, the source material matters.
Prior to Windows 10 you could disable automatic updates entirely
That's kind of the point regarding the Win10 you must update statement that started these discussions.
Absent WSUS, which we were only without for a year and a half,
Really? (W)SUS didn't come out until 2005. Last I recall, XP was released in 2001.
So, you mean, by the time most businesses would have upgraded to XP, WSUS was out and this whole back-and-forth is largely pointless?
Nice rewording there. I said companies remained on XP. Nothing about XP's own take up could be inferred from that statement.
I stipulated competent IT teams, not just dedicated.
So MS Services isn't competent? I'll be sure to note that next time.
You're living in MS fairytale land. I can assure you that small businesses don't as a rule run WSUS, nor have IT folks that deal with it.
Does that mean they can't? I mean, if all of this is really a concern and there is a solution available, why can't they utilize that solution?
Sure, they can, if they'd prefer to run in the red.
Then they should have an AD to manage logins, at the very least. It costs less to pay someone to click a few buttons to add and remove accounts on a central server than it costs to have them walk across the building to do the same thing. Bonus if they install even a low-end SAN solution and store user profiles and documents on it; then they don't even have to reimage machines when someone leaves the company. These are things that should be considered once a company reaches about 20-25 workstation users and should certainly be in place by 50.
It's a solid argument. Many won't pay for it. I've seen 5 year old Dell laptops with busted keys and cracked screens in daily use. If they won't spend $300 for a new base laptop, you really think you're going to get them to pay $50+/hr for IT support?
Apple, on the other hand, killed off the server version of OS X and never bothered migrating the management tools; those are just gone now. If I recall correctly, Microsoft has actually stepped up to fill that gap on the Mac platform.
It's IBM.
Most companies don't run local mail anymore; it's too much of a hassle to deal with RBL bullshit and spam. What's mail got to do with this, anyway?
Essentially, pointing out that while they use computers, they aren't IT shops in any sense of the word.
You can't, on one hand, say downtime costs tens of thousands of dollars (30% of a Fortune 100's workstation users being unable to work for 2 days), then turn around and say $5000 is too much to pay to fix it. If something is going to cost me $10k to ignore or $5k to fix, the reality is that it's actually going to save me $5k to fix it.
Who said anything like that? Honestly, those kind of remarks are bordering on Trumpian claims. A small shop that uses computers won't be idle for days if their systems are down. It'll be inconvenient, maybe, but not serious. A Fortune 100 has a dedicated IT staff. This portion of the discussion doesn't apply to them.
We actually agree on this point. Where it falls apart is that, while sysadmins would go back and eventually install updates after testing them, end users were disabling the updates, then not installing them later.
And my point is that the same forces driving sys admins to disable it drove regular users to disable it. I do agree with your conclusion about them not following through afterwards, however the fault remains with MS in the first place, for forcing more than necessary down users throats. By way of comparison, Apple AFAIK has only used the mandatory push once. In over 5 years.
WSUS or no WSUS, sysadmins can still disable automatic updates on Win 10 Enterprise, so nothing changes for a company that has at least 5 computers and buys the right version of Windows
And with Win10, Enterprise or not, you will be forced to accept all updates within a 9-12 month window. I'm too lazy to look it up again for precision. It is no longer your choice. You will upgrade, soon or sooner.
Well, then, I guess it's a good thing one has been included since XP SP2. Mind you, it didn't really get good until Vista, but it was there. It's really a non-issue wince Vista, though, as one has been included, with a "deny by default" configuration, since Vista.
I recall some vague thing around SP2+ that while things were better, it was still best to not connect directly without a router + firewall in place. You are correct that once Vista came out, that concern seemed to diminish significantly.
especially in the face of Intel's AMT exploits, which are OS-agnostic; even the best software firewall won't stop that from being exploited as the ME grabs the packets and the OS never even sees them.
Well, if you have hardware with AMT in it. :)
Also running all processes at System was another problem, directly with XP and still an issue with W10, although it's a touch more difficult to execute an overflow as System.
Was, was, was, was, was. All I hear from you is a stream of "was". Really, only system services run as System anymore; it's something they started fixing with Vista and it's taken some time to get all the software vendors on board with running their applications as the user, but we're finally there. If it's still an issue on your Win 10 system, talk to the app vendor who hasn't been keeping up; Microsoft made it a pain in the ass to keep following the old and insecure model and that's really all they can do without everyone bitching about how they broke that one mission critical application.
I can honestly tell you it's still a problem with Server 2012. It has little to do with the fact that the app process has a lower than system token. If any DLL used by the app, or, honestly, if the app can load a DLL, you can execute any arbitrary code with System privs. Like I mentioned, it used to be simple, it's harder now, but by no means impossible. The problem I'm highlighting is the core issue with Windows itself - it's insecure by design. That design has not changed since 2012 or, in fact, since NT4, in any meaningful way. Bandaids are starting to lean.
Yes, the problem dates back to early versions of Windows, but the problem persists due to recent versions of applications.
As mentioned above - it has little to do with the apps. It's actually an inherent "feature" if you will of the OS.
Microsoft could fix it in the next release, but all of those applications that rely on it (still, even though they should not) would break and users would blame Microsoft, rather than the application vendors. Like you're doing right now.
Hopefully I've laid clear why the blame is appropriately laid at MS's feet.
However, the quality never got worse than the original lossy recording despite the format shifts.
It can't be worse. It can't be better. It's lossless. It was probably larger though.
Re original lossy format files: I didn't care about the slightly larger file post lossless conversion, it was an accepted short-coming.
Given player history, I prefer all my files in the same format for simplicity.
How is that simpler in a way that's important?
In the way that the multiple targeted players could all play all the same songs and managing meta data becomes much simpler because everything is the same format. Managing multiple formats across thousands of files isn't something I wish to deal with. I like simplicity.
I'm talking XP for this one. I thought that was obvious, as that's where WU on the client started? WU always had the ability to do exactly what MS has completed with Win10, so disabling it way back then was the intelligent move for systems admins that needed to keep things running and avoid fire drills. Had MS followed a sensible update process with mandatory critical patches that only fixed holes and with proper warning if it would fubar an API which, admittedly, can happen, then people would have trusted them. As it was, MS acted like they knew better what should run on your computer and treated the updates as en blanc permission to reconfigure whatever they deemed appropriate. So admins started disabling this WU process, word got out, and many others saw their problems go away when they disabled it, so it spread. If disabling WU hadn't fixed something, then people would have stopped disabling WU.... So who do you blame?
In truth, MS systems can be semi-secure at least from the bot-net spewing bits if MS had a sensible configuration and firewall in place on their OS. Ideally you'd have a separate firewall between you and the internet, but not having one on system caused massive issues. (I'm sure you recall the study that dropping a new XP system without an external firewall on the internet to update it via WU would infect it before it could even start downloading?) Also running all processes at System was another problem, directly with XP and still an issue with W10, although it's a touch more difficult to execute an overflow as System. (This is the root of most if not all of MS's exploit issues with their apps)
WSUS servers weren't even available at one time. :)
When were WSUS servers not available for Windows 10? It's been a standard offering wince Win2k3.
I wasn't aware we were only discussing Win10, or even just post 2k3. Since most people in business are running flavors of XP through W7 that I've been aware of (yes, at least 3 Fortune 100 companies I personally know of were running XP as recently as 2 years ago) and only recently moved to W7. At least 2 have had issues with upgrades, in one case taking down 30% of the company's computers for about 2 days. This is with dedicated IT support teams in place, and they still can't get it right. At least they only rolled it out to portions of the company at a time.
As for 5 licenses, no, most won't have a running WSUS.
No competent IT person would quote $5k, as you only the Windows Server 2012 or newer system that is already running your domain controller and AD; tick the box to enable WSUS and add it to your policies; done. As an added bonus, a competent IT person would thoroughly test each update before adding it to WSUS and avoid the "issues" you allude to. It shouldn't take more than a day for a mid-level ($75-100/hr) tech to get working; in fact, it should only take an hour or two. That's $75-200 for a competent tech, up to $800 if he's really really slow.
You're living in MS fairytale land. I can assure you that small businesses don't as a rule run WSUS, nor have IT folks that deal with it. They generally contract with a low-bid support firm that sends some random clown over when called to "support" them. The going rate is under $60/hr for what the SMB considers no more than helpdesk support. And they complain about it. These are under 100 people shops. They they don't run their own internal mail, they don't even have servers actually, and they're running off the shelf systems they buy from Dell. So the $5K quote is actually realistic for them to upgrade to Windows Enterprise and get a domain server.
This isn't even what I do for a living, but I could set it up with one hand tied behind my back.
As could I, but I won't do it for $20 or $30 / hr.
But, as for Win10, that doesn't make any difference either because everything will get pushed within 9 or 12 months, whatever the latest arbitrary deadline is.
Not so with WSUS. No version of Windows that is configured to use a WSUS server looks anywhere other than the configured WSUS server for updates.
Right, and that WSUS server will push those updates after 'x' time, as determined by MS, unless you take steps to isolate your WSUS server and do some other non-standard things to it. There's a reason W10 uptake by business has been, well, let's say it's been "slow". There's also a reason IBM chose to go with Apple instead and invest the resources to generate a new business service model for Apple.
Will you say the same of Mac users who disable automatic updates because Apple has released a few bad video drivers (more than just that, but it's what I recall off the top of my head) for older Macs? What of Linux and BSD users?
You're shifting the blame conversation. :) As for bad video drivers, I don't recall those and was never subject to them. I was subject to the upgrade issues with 10.11 and 10.12, but that's a different issue and can be fixed. However, Apple doesn't automatically update (or doesn't on my systems, but will nag. I do apply updates on my schedule.
So it's Microsoft's fault people disabled Windows Update during the time before Windows 10, back when Microsoft did allow you to install updates by category? Going back at least as far as XP SP2, I know you could opt to have just "Critical Updates" installed, and those were just security patches.
"Critical
I have, music source matters. Breakfast at Tiffany's maybe not, other music - definitely.
expire 2017... i.e., this year. More caffeine needed.
I was under the impression those procedural tricks sun-setted circa 2000, which would make those patents all expire by 2020 at the very very latest, if they're not already expired. Like you, I'd need to see the full list of related patents, and that's just not important enough at this point.
Ditto on the bit rot. Kind of sucks when the disks are no longer in production. Your rips are the only thing you'll have after that, besides the legal piece of plastic that makes your rips legal.
As for existing MP3s, they are what they are, but I wouldn't rip anything new into that format.
There are certain types of music that absolutely do not compress well and result in artifacts (even in 320 kbps MP3s, but MP3s suck, we all know that) I haven't tried the same source with Vorbis because space isn't the premium it used to be and lossless compression at 3 or 4:1 is perfectly fine for me.
The only reason is if you're switching formats and need to re-encode. In that case, encoding from a base lossless to a different format will, after the second round, be better than not having the intermediate lossless version in place. For example, initially my library was MP3 for portability and space purposes. Then it was re-ripped to monkeyaudio, converted to flac, then Apple lossless. There are some original lossy sources that I keep underneath a "lossy" directory that I no longer have viable original sources for (bit rot really does happen and apparently accelerates over time) One day, should I come across an original, I can replace those now many times converted lossy originals. However, the quality never got worse than the original lossy recording despite the format shifts. Given player history, I prefer all my files in the same format for simplicity.
I fully expect that. It's why we keep offline backups. So far, no problem, even on a hack.
Well, since AAC was a standard first set pre 1997, it would seem all the original patents are no longer valid. There might some some features of later extensions to AAC that are still under one patent or another, but the original standard should be encumbrance free.
I did experiment. Ran MP3s at even 320kbps, Ogg, AAC, and the lossless monkeyaudio, FLAC, and Apple's lossless. On good home audio equipment I can easily tell the difference between lossy and lossless, depending on original source quality. Hint, Breakfast at Tiffany's is not good audio source material (just to bring back a 90s meme, can't recall if it's true or not) Some older vinyl and even badly recorded CDs (terrible master tapes or bad mixing) just aren't going to have any more fidelity in lossless vs lossy. I store them in lossless anyways, to prevent format shifting degradation over time. And I have shifted lossless several times now, it's far easier than re-ripping all source.
It's less than 5-fold. For phone usage, I generally convert on the fly to a lossy format which actually doesn't seem to impact transfer speeds. I only use my phone through headphones or the car which road noise alone makes lossless almost pointless.
And yet Opera is now owned by a Chinese company. Opera is not on any system I own and should I ever need to install it, it would only be in a VM.