My personal first hard drive was 40 MB, you could hold it in your hand, and required special drivers just to access the whole thing. I didn't have to deal with those drum drives, thank goodness. People that I knew did, and that didn't sound like any fun whatsoever.
Try explaining what a 400 MB "hard drive" was, and that you could actually service the internals. Or that early computers didn't even come with hard drives, but ROM cartridges or tape or floppy disk drives.
If you can escalate yourself to admin rights if you have the ability to run arbitrary code, and you're sufficiently confident to throw it out as a general truth, then Windows security sucks anyway.
Anyone can. Well, anyone that's spent even 3 days studying how to inject code into DLLs. Even today on any system pre win10, and likely with win10 also as the security hole is big enough to drive a planet through. It's the biggest issue with the architecture. If you can run arbitrary code that enables you to inject code into a DLL, then pwnage is guaranteed. Why? Because you could, at least before win10, inject code into a system DLL, and choose exactly where you wished to inject it, say, something like a network access method that's frequently run by a process with system privs. Guess what happens the second a system priv process hits that DLL in the future? TBH it's been a few years since I played with this and I believe AV and the windows calls have been hardened but the capability still exists. There's a reason I don't run windows anywhere and actively discourage it in places I work. I've cleaned up the resulting windows mess more than once in my past, and quite frankly I think I'd prefer the pain of systemd over a windows server environment any day of the week.
I'll be honest, local rips are almost instant, remote clients do have a minor startup time. But I won't be using the cloud. Seem like a ready made trap for any number of cases. Besides, it's a home media server, for serving my files at home, for me only. Why do I need it on the cloud, and why would I want to stream from the cloud at a fraction of my data rates on the LAN? There's a reason I prefer hard media over streaming, and there's no reason I want to have my library lowered in quality to the equivalent of a netflix or hulu stream.
A) the system is a limited functionality system to begin with, so lots of things wouldn't be on the system to exploit.
B) zero-day exploits that I've seen all can leverage themselves into admin rights on windows without any additional help. If you can run arbitrary code on windows, you can root it.
There is no satisfactory replacement. Linux isn't going to be usable until the desktop settles down some, there's a package manager that runs on most versions (perhaps with a converter to translate it into either a.deb or a.rpm), and more applications are available. Mac OSX is limited to a very few computer models, not including low-end ones, and there's limits on the available applications.
I'd agree. Linux shot itself in the foot with Gnome and the whole systemd debacle that made it look a lot less stable and usable than it should be. Had the distros focused on stabilizing and simplifying the end user experience instead, it might have had a chance.
Microsoft produces Microsoft Office, and getting off that is difficult, because of the network effect, and some of the more advanced features, which are not duplicated in LibreOffice. There's other Microsoft software that is well designed for large business use, and AFAICT there aren't good F/OS equivalents.
Other than some minor irritants with later Office releases that are designed to destroy compatibility I have had few issues with dealing with Office documents over the past 5 years of being MS free. And there's nothing new there, MS has been effectively leveraging MS Office since Office 95 to force updates and keep the competition limping along or crashing.
Inertia.... There's really not that much pressure to move as long as large companies can still use W7 or W8.1.
Yep, the clock is ticking, although it was obviously years ago that MS was heading this way. In fact, the day Office 365 was announced, it was time to figure out how to remove MS from your stack. As for business applications, with few exceptions everything is moving to web-based data/application, so there's not much requirements to keeping you on windows. There's a reason IBM spearheaded its internal move to OSX across the board. The reason was that MS's plans were against any sane company's IT management policies.
Every time someone voluntarily went to a Windows 10 PC (even though there are alternatives), they have a horror story about it
Hyperbole = bollocks. My partner and I are on W10, it's heaps better than W7 or W8*, and we have no horror stories. Almost everything I use auto-saves, apps reload on reboot, and I have enough discipline to save Notepad files or Sql Manager queries if I want to keep them.
So you admit you take steps to guard yourself against purposeful OS actions and yet you claim that is merely an annoyance or less?
Yes, a computer should be getting updates if it ever connects to a network independent of whether or not it had internet connectivity. In this case, it is the other hosts on the network that create the risk.
Completely false. The only updates you need are specifically for the network stack and any applications that access the network. The rest are generally useless to you and may create problems. For instance, a bare XP from 2001 machine connected to a network behind a solid firewall and only running a text only mail client is relatively safe, as far as that system can ever be considered safe. It would not be any safer than a fully patched system running the same software under the same conditions.
Why does anyone worried about privacy, security, or really "owning" their computer run windows anymore? It's time to accept that windows is no longer a consumer OS, it is a subscription service that allows you access to things you think you own, only as long as you pay the piper (that subscription payment will be coming, just wait for it).
To answer the question: If you want a AAA game platform, just buy your $5K game console and be done with it. Yes, like any console, it can do more, but at what cost?
Yes, one fairly ridiculous thing is the network wizards or network "center" which just prevents access to basic network settings like turning wifi network cards on and off. Even in Windows 7 it sucks ball. I had to teach non-technical friends to type Win+R, then "control ncpa.cpl", or I created a desktop shortcut that does that. Then I get the same basic and useful window as in Windows XP!
Likewise, learn to type "diskmgmt.msc" or "compmgmt.msc" or Win+Pause or "devmgmt.msc", launch those from cmd.exe or win+r (I couldn't find a button to launch the run box on the Windows 7 start menu, wtf?). These mostly are GUIs from Windows 2000, NT4 or 95 albeit I would have to check if all of them still are there on 8.x and 10.
The GUIs were relatively consistent with NT4 and 9x IIRC. (NT4, 95, 98, and ME didn't have an MMC, it was available as an optional download, and win 2000 / XP didn't muck about much with the Control Panel layout and view until a later SP, IIRC, I don't have a VM for those anymore, so I can't say anything specific about them)
I got the HDHomeRun OTA receiver and paired it with some DVR software. That combination with a media server works really really well for 99.9% of what I would ever want to watch.
and there are some things which are really annoying at first, such ash CMD+TAB being application based instead of window-based
The CMD-TAB being process based is actually awesome (check it out - it is process based, all windows belonging to a single process show up as a single icon, you can, from the terminal, open macvim and sudo open macvim, and you'll have 2 separate icons in CMD-TAB) You can use CMD-` to flip through windows belonging to a single process. So instead of having to CMD-TAB through 23 browser "windows", you only skip through a single browser process. If you need to flip through browser windows, you use CMD-` and don't have to skip through any intervening other processes/windows. It's a significant usability improvement as soon as you get used to hitting the CMD-` combination. Then add Shift, and go backwards for either set.
As for the rest of your post, I agree. What sold me initially was that sleep/hibernate actually worked (in the early 2000s) when just about every windows laptop was a crap shoot on whether it would come up or not, and Linux, well, I had it running on multiple desktops and laptops and would get it to resume from sleep or hibernate provided they ever made it into hibernate maybe 1 in 10 times if the stars were aligned. I went from my cheap bought for purpose laptop to a much more powerful one and never looked back.
Not sure I'm going to be able to remember to push COMMAND everything instead of just using ctrl like a normal person...
I almost missed this - you can remap CMD, option (alt), and ctrl to your liking. I did that initially, before I decided to ditch windows entirely. It was easier getting accustomed to the rest of the system without also having to remember to undo your muscle memory.
There's a couple of differences in the keyboard short cuts. Muscle memory definitely needed to be unlearned regarding CTRL-c/v/x/del/ins and some other short cuts I used to use that I cannot recall offhand. The fact that there were multiple shortcuts in windows in the first place was annoying, as CUE 92 was specific and MS a signatory. Apparently they couldn't be bothered.
For most things, OSX is fine. Getting used to a track pad is interesting, but a far step above a mouse in most use cases, for me anyways. There's still a few places where I prefer a mouse, but not in my current daily routine. The package repository system? It's almost transparent for OSX, unless you want to dabble with 3rd party homebrew type stuff. What's sometimes infuriating is dealing with launchctl. But I understand it blows systemd out of the water, so I guess it's a wash on that one.:) Both are far superior to the cesspool otherwise known as the Registry.
Seriously, now when I go back to Win Xp, 7, 8. 8.1, 2008 (R2), 2012 (R2) etc, I feel like I keep on beating my head against a wall as I have to recall where specifically on this version various settings are so I can tweak various things like my network connections, disk configurations and so forth. Consistency is definitely not MS's goal with new releases.
Adium/Pidgin with OTR.... usable across a multitude of current server based IM systems and about as secure as you can be, considering all IMs can be intercepted and recorded.
Of course, developers are a very influential set. If, for example, a developer writes an app using Electron because it works well on both Linux AND Windows... it works well on Linux.
Most interesting. OSX is only 20% and equal to Linux on the desktop and windows in total makes up the other 60%? Seems very windows biased, and I'd question that based on the places I've been and the people I see using macs. I have seen lots of devs using linux in a vm, on a mac, but not as a desktop. I personally have used Linux as a desktop on multiple systems, it's serviceable, but not as straightforward as it could be. I keep going back to OSX instead. For my servers I run all linux however.
I have also used MS's toolchain, and it sucks pretty badly IMNSHO. I also have numerous dev friends, some who were exclusively Windows up until Win10's release. They have all moved to OSX and Linux and those development tool chains, and now can't believe they ever loved MS. Ignorance is bliss, I suppose. There is a reason MS is losing the server marketplace, all those parking websites be damned.
It's coming whether we like it or not, along with a whole slew of other automation. Pretty soon having a menial job will be rare. Pretty soon being well within someone being born today's lifetime. It will be interesting times as we observe how the economists and strategists deal with an ever increasing supply of available people for an ever shrinking need any people to actually do any work. That futuristic utopia of plenty appears to be heading our way, except it's not very futuristic nor much of a utopia, and plenty only for the elite.
until they can make individuals pay each time they experience a music or film performance
That is the desire, and what they receive out of subscriptions. Personally, I want my own music, played how I want, when I want, without reporting back to someone what I was playing. It's none of their business if I like "Kookaburra" 10 times a day.
Where do you live that the trucks drive 90 mph? I want to move there right now!
Try about 90% of the 48 contiguous states in the US. Yes, I've driven through just about all of them at this point, and trucks go exceedingly fast when you consider they are up to 80 tons of mass moving at those speeds and have stopping distances more than double the ability of even crappy cars.
Where I live they always drive 50-55 mph, in a 75mph zone, and they're blocking all the lanes so nobody can go any faster.
The other requirement is that they stay in the right lane, with proper spacing. Drive in Europe sometime, it's a major improvement in driving quality when the roads are moving.
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I also use Git for storing documents.
And yet git is poor for binaries.
My personal first hard drive was 40 MB, you could hold it in your hand, and required special drivers just to access the whole thing. I didn't have to deal with those drum drives, thank goodness. People that I knew did, and that didn't sound like any fun whatsoever.
Try explaining what a 400 MB "hard drive" was, and that you could actually service the internals. Or that early computers didn't even come with hard drives, but ROM cartridges or tape or floppy disk drives.
Exploding batteries. Exploding washing machines. I'm going to keep a safe distance from my Samsung TV.
My Samsung TV was on the wish list for replacement, but now I have a (semi) legitimate reason. Time to look at OLEDs!
If you can escalate yourself to admin rights if you have the ability to run arbitrary code, and you're sufficiently confident to throw it out as a general truth, then Windows security sucks anyway.
Anyone can. Well, anyone that's spent even 3 days studying how to inject code into DLLs. Even today on any system pre win10, and likely with win10 also as the security hole is big enough to drive a planet through. It's the biggest issue with the architecture. If you can run arbitrary code that enables you to inject code into a DLL, then pwnage is guaranteed. Why? Because you could, at least before win10, inject code into a system DLL, and choose exactly where you wished to inject it, say, something like a network access method that's frequently run by a process with system privs. Guess what happens the second a system priv process hits that DLL in the future? TBH it's been a few years since I played with this and I believe AV and the windows calls have been hardened but the capability still exists. There's a reason I don't run windows anywhere and actively discourage it in places I work. I've cleaned up the resulting windows mess more than once in my past, and quite frankly I think I'd prefer the pain of systemd over a windows server environment any day of the week.
I'll be honest, local rips are almost instant, remote clients do have a minor startup time. But I won't be using the cloud. Seem like a ready made trap for any number of cases. Besides, it's a home media server, for serving my files at home, for me only. Why do I need it on the cloud, and why would I want to stream from the cloud at a fraction of my data rates on the LAN? There's a reason I prefer hard media over streaming, and there's no reason I want to have my library lowered in quality to the equivalent of a netflix or hulu stream.
A) the system is a limited functionality system to begin with, so lots of things wouldn't be on the system to exploit. B) zero-day exploits that I've seen all can leverage themselves into admin rights on windows without any additional help. If you can run arbitrary code on windows, you can root it.
There is no satisfactory replacement. Linux isn't going to be usable until the desktop settles down some, there's a package manager that runs on most versions (perhaps with a converter to translate it into either a .deb or a .rpm), and more applications are available. Mac OSX is limited to a very few computer models, not including low-end ones, and there's limits on the available applications.
I'd agree. Linux shot itself in the foot with Gnome and the whole systemd debacle that made it look a lot less stable and usable than it should be. Had the distros focused on stabilizing and simplifying the end user experience instead, it might have had a chance.
Microsoft produces Microsoft Office, and getting off that is difficult, because of the network effect, and some of the more advanced features, which are not duplicated in LibreOffice. There's other Microsoft software that is well designed for large business use, and AFAICT there aren't good F/OS equivalents.
Other than some minor irritants with later Office releases that are designed to destroy compatibility I have had few issues with dealing with Office documents over the past 5 years of being MS free. And there's nothing new there, MS has been effectively leveraging MS Office since Office 95 to force updates and keep the competition limping along or crashing.
Inertia. ... There's really not that much pressure to move as long as large companies can still use W7 or W8.1.
Yep, the clock is ticking, although it was obviously years ago that MS was heading this way. In fact, the day Office 365 was announced, it was time to figure out how to remove MS from your stack. As for business applications, with few exceptions everything is moving to web-based data/application, so there's not much requirements to keeping you on windows. There's a reason IBM spearheaded its internal move to OSX across the board. The reason was that MS's plans were against any sane company's IT management policies.
Not sure I would classify 50 million/3 months (16.6667 million per month) as much lower than 17 million per month.
It is much lower than 29 million a month. Reading comprehension helps in discussions.
Great idea: leave a bunch of local root exploits available that can be leveraged once compromised by a zero day remote exploit.
And a zero day remote exploit wouldn't already have owned the system?
Every time someone voluntarily went to a Windows 10 PC (even though there are alternatives), they have a horror story about it
Hyperbole = bollocks. My partner and I are on W10, it's heaps better than W7 or W8*, and we have no horror stories. Almost everything I use auto-saves, apps reload on reboot, and I have enough discipline to save Notepad files or Sql Manager queries if I want to keep them.
So you admit you take steps to guard yourself against purposeful OS actions and yet you claim that is merely an annoyance or less?
Yes, a computer should be getting updates if it ever connects to a network independent of whether or not it had internet connectivity. In this case, it is the other hosts on the network that create the risk.
Completely false. The only updates you need are specifically for the network stack and any applications that access the network. The rest are generally useless to you and may create problems. For instance, a bare XP from 2001 machine connected to a network behind a solid firewall and only running a text only mail client is relatively safe, as far as that system can ever be considered safe. It would not be any safer than a fully patched system running the same software under the same conditions.
Why does anyone worried about privacy, security, or really "owning" their computer run windows anymore? It's time to accept that windows is no longer a consumer OS, it is a subscription service that allows you access to things you think you own, only as long as you pay the piper (that subscription payment will be coming, just wait for it).
To answer the question: If you want a AAA game platform, just buy your $5K game console and be done with it. Yes, like any console, it can do more, but at what cost?
Yes, one fairly ridiculous thing is the network wizards or network "center" which just prevents access to basic network settings like turning wifi network cards on and off. Even in Windows 7 it sucks ball. I had to teach non-technical friends to type Win+R, then "control ncpa.cpl", or I created a desktop shortcut that does that. Then I get the same basic and useful window as in Windows XP!
Likewise, learn to type "diskmgmt.msc" or "compmgmt.msc" or Win+Pause or "devmgmt.msc", launch those from cmd.exe or win+r (I couldn't find a button to launch the run box on the Windows 7 start menu, wtf?). These mostly are GUIs from Windows 2000, NT4 or 95 albeit I would have to check if all of them still are there on 8.x and 10.
The GUIs were relatively consistent with NT4 and 9x IIRC. (NT4, 95, 98, and ME didn't have an MMC, it was available as an optional download, and win 2000 / XP didn't muck about much with the Control Panel layout and view until a later SP, IIRC, I don't have a VM for those anymore, so I can't say anything specific about them)
I got the HDHomeRun OTA receiver and paired it with some DVR software. That combination with a media server works really really well for 99.9% of what I would ever want to watch.
They certainly can, if each one has their own dedicated connection. Now to go count the number of angels dancing on the head of a pin.
and there are some things which are really annoying at first, such ash CMD+TAB being application based instead of window-based
The CMD-TAB being process based is actually awesome (check it out - it is process based, all windows belonging to a single process show up as a single icon, you can, from the terminal, open macvim and sudo open macvim, and you'll have 2 separate icons in CMD-TAB) You can use CMD-` to flip through windows belonging to a single process. So instead of having to CMD-TAB through 23 browser "windows", you only skip through a single browser process. If you need to flip through browser windows, you use CMD-` and don't have to skip through any intervening other processes/windows. It's a significant usability improvement as soon as you get used to hitting the CMD-` combination. Then add Shift, and go backwards for either set.
As for the rest of your post, I agree. What sold me initially was that sleep/hibernate actually worked (in the early 2000s) when just about every windows laptop was a crap shoot on whether it would come up or not, and Linux, well, I had it running on multiple desktops and laptops and would get it to resume from sleep or hibernate provided they ever made it into hibernate maybe 1 in 10 times if the stars were aligned. I went from my cheap bought for purpose laptop to a much more powerful one and never looked back.
Not sure I'm going to be able to remember to push COMMAND everything instead of just using ctrl like a normal person...
I almost missed this - you can remap CMD, option (alt), and ctrl to your liking. I did that initially, before I decided to ditch windows entirely. It was easier getting accustomed to the rest of the system without also having to remember to undo your muscle memory.
There's a couple of differences in the keyboard short cuts. Muscle memory definitely needed to be unlearned regarding CTRL-c/v/x/del/ins and some other short cuts I used to use that I cannot recall offhand. The fact that there were multiple shortcuts in windows in the first place was annoying, as CUE 92 was specific and MS a signatory. Apparently they couldn't be bothered.
For most things, OSX is fine. Getting used to a track pad is interesting, but a far step above a mouse in most use cases, for me anyways. There's still a few places where I prefer a mouse, but not in my current daily routine. The package repository system? It's almost transparent for OSX, unless you want to dabble with 3rd party homebrew type stuff. What's sometimes infuriating is dealing with launchctl. But I understand it blows systemd out of the water, so I guess it's a wash on that one. :) Both are far superior to the cesspool otherwise known as the Registry.
Seriously, now when I go back to Win Xp, 7, 8. 8.1, 2008 (R2), 2012 (R2) etc, I feel like I keep on beating my head against a wall as I have to recall where specifically on this version various settings are so I can tweak various things like my network connections, disk configurations and so forth. Consistency is definitely not MS's goal with new releases.
Adium/Pidgin with OTR.... usable across a multitude of current server based IM systems and about as secure as you can be, considering all IMs can be intercepted and recorded.
Amongst developers - 20%
Of course, developers are a very influential set. If, for example, a developer writes an app using Electron because it works well on both Linux AND Windows... it works well on Linux.
Most interesting. OSX is only 20% and equal to Linux on the desktop and windows in total makes up the other 60%? Seems very windows biased, and I'd question that based on the places I've been and the people I see using macs. I have seen lots of devs using linux in a vm, on a mac, but not as a desktop. I personally have used Linux as a desktop on multiple systems, it's serviceable, but not as straightforward as it could be. I keep going back to OSX instead. For my servers I run all linux however.
I have also used MS's toolchain, and it sucks pretty badly IMNSHO. I also have numerous dev friends, some who were exclusively Windows up until Win10's release. They have all moved to OSX and Linux and those development tool chains, and now can't believe they ever loved MS. Ignorance is bliss, I suppose. There is a reason MS is losing the server marketplace, all those parking websites be damned.
They're not out yet, expected in the next couple of years though.
It's coming whether we like it or not, along with a whole slew of other automation. Pretty soon having a menial job will be rare. Pretty soon being well within someone being born today's lifetime. It will be interesting times as we observe how the economists and strategists deal with an ever increasing supply of available people for an ever shrinking need any people to actually do any work. That futuristic utopia of plenty appears to be heading our way, except it's not very futuristic nor much of a utopia, and plenty only for the elite.
until they can make individuals pay each time they experience a music or film performance
That is the desire, and what they receive out of subscriptions. Personally, I want my own music, played how I want, when I want, without reporting back to someone what I was playing. It's none of their business if I like "Kookaburra" 10 times a day.
Where do you live that the trucks drive 90 mph? I want to move there right now!
Try about 90% of the 48 contiguous states in the US. Yes, I've driven through just about all of them at this point, and trucks go exceedingly fast when you consider they are up to 80 tons of mass moving at those speeds and have stopping distances more than double the ability of even crappy cars.
Where I live they always drive 50-55 mph, in a 75mph zone, and they're blocking all the lanes so nobody can go any faster.
The other requirement is that they stay in the right lane, with proper spacing. Drive in Europe sometime, it's a major improvement in driving quality when the roads are moving.