Bet you anything you like Vista will ship with it integrated as part of Windows Security Center. Now, if you've looked at that, you'll see it gives a nice idiot-proof interface like this:
FIREWALL: ON ANTIVIRUS: OUT OF DATE
Microsoft Antivirus is out of date. To keep it up to date, click here.
ANTI SPYWARE: ON
No mention that alternative products even exist.
"Gee, no need to buy antivirus any more, comes included. Aw, got to pay an annual fee. Never mind, where's my credit card?"
The real measure of success for the nextgen optical media will likely be the adult film industry
So you want to watch some ugly middle aged couple who can only claim to be teenagers because of lots of makeup, careful lighting and poor image quality in high definition with bags of detail?
10 years ago, your average Technic kit consisted of a few hundred brightly-coloured blocks which were fairly generic, maybe one or two unusual pieces, and they all fitted together in more-or-less the same way. You could even fit them to traditional lego bricks.
I was given two kits for Christmas 2004. The first consisted entirely of beams which were smooth top and bottom and had to be fitted together with axles. Not very useful in conjunction with the old parts. The second consisted of bricks in about 6 or 7 different colours, all similar shades, and almost impossible to tell one shade from another in the printed instructions. None of the colours were the traditional Lego bright primary colours. Which was a bit of a bugger if you wanted to build the robot the included instructions covered as the whole look was ruined if you got the colours wrong.
I later discovered that these two kits were close to the top of the Technic range and the range itself had narrowed to no more than about half a dozen or so kits available in your average toyshop.
It's been said before, but... "Won't be out until 2007"?! I don't think other commentators have worked their sums out properly.
Let's say a year before Apple have anything tooled to the desktop market using these chips. That's 2008. Let's say another year before there's anything half-decent to put in a laptop - that's 2009.
Now, everyone else has said "3 years with the same processor in a laptop? Mad!".
But it's not 3 years. Considering Apple announced their move to Intel in the middle of last year, and the chips going into their laptops hadn't changed much for some time before then, it would be closer to 4 or 5 - albeit assuming the PPC G5 is never produced in a cool enough form for laptop use.
What you're saying is a rehash of the argument that "Information security isn't secure when the algorithm's security depends on its secrecy".
Thing is, does the same thing hold true when you're talking about detecting fakes (say), as opposed to building strong encryption? If I announce "Well, we can tell this photo isn't genuine because this part which shouldn't be in focus is", I've effectively announced to any potential fraudsters who might be listening "OK, folks, you need to learn to get your focusing correct".
Realistically, the only way such an algorithm remains secure is if it cannot be beaten even with a full understanding of how it works - and I would ask if such an algorithm even exists yet. If the algorithm is anything less than 100% effective, chances are it doesn't.
Trouble is, on Windows, by the time it's locked down enough to be secure, people can't do useful work on it
Which is, of course, complete cobblers. Badly designed software which runs on Windows may make it substantially harder, but we're talking about a stock exchange here. The amount of money in question is easily enough to ensure that software which requires admin privileges simply doesn't exist.
It's easy to make something secure - at least in theory. When you're dealing with a system which has well defined requirements, and people who are only likely to be using one or two systems as part of their work, it's really not that hard.
Start with the basic premise that nobody can do anything. Group policies make this quite possible to enforce across an enterprise which is running Windows. Next, start dividing people into groups according to their job, and allowing those groups to do what they need, and nothing more, in order to do their job.
Yes, this does take a long time. Yes, it is harder work than just giving them PCs and locking down anything which appears to be a security hole as and when you see it. But it's a helluva lot more secure. Just disabling the Windows Scripting Host and wrapping any admin scripts in a batch file which temporarily re-enables it would go a long way towards improving security.
A bit of careful configuration at the server completes the task. Block all attachments in email, then let through what you think you need. That which is let through should go through a thorough virus scanning, from a virus scanner which receives regular updates, before the user even sees it.
I know as techies we often don't like dealing with getting our selfs "dirty" dealing with the business,
That's as maybe. But 99% of the time, it's business needs that drive technology, not the other way around.
As long as they are decent programmer its easy to teach them a new langange.
Most of my experience is in sysadmin rather than development, but I'd say much of the same applies.
Though I would take it a step further and say if someone who's in IT isn't prepared/able to look into broadening their experience with alternative languages. systems or methodologies, then they probably shouldn't be in IT. "Unix" is one thing. "Will only look at Solaris" is quite another.
Realistically, assuming your company requires any base of experience whatsoever, there is no way any new hire will be up to speed in anything under a couple of months. The extra few weeks it might take for them to be passably comfortable with the language it's written in or the system it's running on is nothing compared to the amount of work involved if they didn't have any concept of writing decent code, troubleshooting systems or whatever's appropriate.
Obviously you make allowances depending on how much experience you're looking for when you go hiring. But even then I'd expect to see a certain amount of enthusiasm and willingness to consider how best to solve a problem.
Anyway, just because it's easy to learn doesn't necessarily mean that it's a bad programming language.
No, but sooner or later it means that there are a bunch of colleges churning out people who've become "experts" having taken a 6 week course in the language with no prior IT experience.
Doesn't take long for it to become apparent that so many people who claim to know the platform are inexperienced fools. Once that happens, salaries drop.
Afghanistan hadn't had the US interfering on and off for most of the last 15 years. I'm also wondering if Saddam was rather more popular with his people than the Taliban were with theirs.
What I'm driving at is I believe that part of the rationale behind remaining in Iraq was to ensure that whoever does wind up running the country is at least reasonably malleable. Not that I agree with it.
This is exactly what any employer would do anywhere,
Who pays the US Government? The US taxpayer, right?
That makes the President the people's employee. Now either the government is there for the benefit of the people - in which case, it should be doing that which is right for the people - or it isn't, in which case, why on Earth do the people put up with it?
For that matter if there are three madmen in a country why not simply kill them.
Because if they're running the country you don't know who will step up to replace them. "May have WMD" could easily become "May have WMD and... ooh look, there goes Syria."
Re:Upgrade or keep crashing
on
Buy Vista or Else
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Vista is the next step in improving security and it took a lot of effort to develop this OS, the entire submission is a flamebait: if you were Microsoft, would you work 6 years on a new product and give it for free?
Why not? Linus Torvalds did;)
All joking aside, I agree with you insofar as no-one's giving away major upgrades to commercial operating systems. But you've sidestepped the issue which was first raised by Douglas Adams in 1995 and AFAICT still exists:
"The idea that Bill Gates has appeared like a knight in shining armour to lead all his customers out of a mire of technological chaos neatly ignores the fact that it was he who by peddling second-hand, second-rate technology, led them all into it in the first place."
Say you get sued for DOWNLOADING, not uploading, 5 $GENERIC songs.
AFAIK the record industry hasn't yet set up a bunch of honeypots to spot that - and that's the only way they could get you for downloading.
Not because they couldn't (they could), but because it's easier just to fire up your handy-dandy P2P client, go searching for a well-known track, then sue the people behind the first few IP addresses which claim to have the track available.
Given the number of people using P2P, the RIAA/BPI could quite easily script this bit right up to the point of sending out letters to ISPs demanding that they reveal the identity of a given user.
Could you not simply go out and buy the CDs that those songs are on (cash purchase at used record store) and claim fair use?
ICBW but I don't think we in the UK have a concept of "fair use". Even if we did, I doubt any sane lawyer could argue that "Fair use" extends to "Making it available to the whole Internet".
Not that we had anything that critical or sensitive where I worked, but I always found it silly to bar someone from bringing in their laptop.
There is logic in it, if you think about it from a "corporate IT putting out a blanket rule" perspective.
That rule that applies to you also applies to Sharon, a blonde hairdresser by trade who's just taken a second job in the bank to supplement her income.
Sharon has a laptop of her own, and wants to bring it on so she can get on the Internet in her lunch hour - after all, she's not allowed to use company computers for personal web surfing.
Unlike yourself, Sharon's never heard of virus scanning (well, she has, but she was checked by her doctor when she started seeing her new boyfriend, so that's all right). She thinks spyware is the name of the next James Bond film.
Now the bank has a number of business critical systems running Windows. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Auto Update is disabled. This is because, despite Microsoft's best efforts, such updates occasionally break things. Instead, updates are trialled on a test network and then, following a change control procedure, are applied. This procedure takes a while, so at any one time most of the critical Windows systems can be a good few weeks behind on patches. This rises when testing reveals problems, and it rises even further when the system in question was built and maintained by an outside company - their update, assuming they provide one in a reasonable timescale, is subject to the same test requirements and change control as a Microsoft update.
Meanwhile, Sharon's PC, which is swimming in spyware, trojans and viruses, is merrily scanning the network for vulnerabilities.
Perspective, yes; this isn't the biggest deal at all. But it's not just that, it's indicative of an entire eco-obesession that frequently misses the big picture.
Example: I drive a car with a small engine and a catalytic convertor. It therefore is (relatively) environmentally friendly, no?
Except my previous car had a larger engine yet consistently achieved better fuel efficiency. I suspect the larger engine wasn't being thrashed just to get to 30mph is much of the issue - an engine being driven hard is never as efficient as one idling.
Example 2: I don't have double glazing. Oh dear.
Well, I don't have cavity wall insulation either. 30% of heat is lost through the wall, 10% through the window. Priorities, eh?
Example 3: I buy the majority of my food through the local supermarket rather than the local farmers' market.
You seen the prices at my local farmers' market? It's a special treat, I simply don't have the money to buy everything I eat there.
All joking aside, I have a story about something vaguely-pr0n related.
Years ago, I worked for a school. The school used an ISP which provided a proxy service to filter out (amongst other things) porn. Thing is, the proxy was fantastically unreliable. Quite often, you'd find things getting through which clearly shouldn't.
Now, the only way to report this was to phone their helpdesk. Incoming email - including mail sent to their helpdesk - was also subject to a filter. So you couldn't email saying "www.sex.com isn't filtered" because the email itself would be filtered for the word "sex".
The icing on the cake was the people employed on the helpdesk were under strict instructions that if a customer was to say or do anything construed as being remotely offensive (such as direct them to a porn site or utter any vaguely sexual phrase), they were to terminate the call. Furthermore, they wouldn't accept that there could be anything wrong with their systems unless presented with irrefutable evidence.
A typical conversation therefore went like this:
Me: Hi, I'd like to report an issue with your filtering system. Them: Sure, what's the problem? Me: It doesn't appear to filter anything. Them: Yes it does. Me: No it doesn't. Here, I'll give you an example. Them: OK. Me: Are you behind the filter now? Them: Yes Me: OK, type "lesbian spanking XXX" into Google. Them: That is offensive and I am terminating this call. <CLICK>
... redial...
Me: Hello, I'd like to report an issue with your filtering system. Them: What's the problem? Me: It doesn't appear to filter anything. Them: Yes it does. Me: No it doesn't. Here, I'll give you an example. Them: OK. Me: But understand that from now on this conversation is going to contain a lot of potentially offensive stuff, so I please don't cut the call off. Them: That's OK, I understand. Me: Right, type "lesbian spanking XXX" into Google. Them: Er... I don't think I should do that.
That's interesting. So presumably they'll keep the same Dynax/Maxxum lens mount?
Even so, I still think it's a great loss. They never really recovered from the (what were they thinking?!) business decision to not produce a new digital SLR for years, letting Canon and Nikon thrash them in the market.
The audience you're trying to reach couldn't be bothered to RTFM that came free with their machine;
I haven't seen a manual shipped with a PC in a long time. Even "Getting Started with Windows" (complete with license certificate glued on the front) has gone, in favour of a license sticker on the machine itself.
what makes you think they're going to buy another book? There have been no shortage of books on the subject, and people are still underinformed.
Why do they want to be informed? Few people are aware of exactly how ignorant they are on any particular aspect of their PC. Frankly, someone who can get their own computer up and running, install a word processor and set up a home network with router/firewall/wireless on their own is probably in the top 15-20% of the population.
There's a reason there are so many PC's inundated with spyware - the computer doesn't always let you know when you've done something badly. So many people have simply no idea when they're doing something wrong, there's no negative feedback, they don't see a problem.
Example: Mr. J. Average has got his shiny new PC and broadband connection, rather proud to have set it up himself, thinking "This isn't so hard - that kid down the road who would have wanted money is taking the mick..."
He's installed the firewall because the computer said this was "recommended", and anti-virus software which came free. There was something on there about "pay for monthly updates" but J. Average isn't stupid - you don't have to update your word processor monthly, so that sounds like a way of conning money out of people. Don't buy the updates, save a bit of money. Clever, eh?
He's heard vaguely of spyware but reckons he's got the firewall turned on (and it says here that makes the Internet safer...) and anti-virus software, so he should be OK.
Two months later and the Antivirus software is hideously out of date. And our friend J. A. receives an email from his friend, which apparently contains a "funny picture". He tries opening the picture and it won't open. Ah well, such is life. He deletes the email and thinks no more of it.
From this day on, things start going downhill, computer-wise. It just seems to be getting slower, and it's only a few months old. J. A. saw some software advertised on one of the seedier websites he sometimes visits which said "Your Computer May Be Running Slowly! Optimize? Yes/No" so he bought that, but it didn't seem to do much. If anything, the problem's worse.
In desparation, J. A. calls the tech support line.
A pot plant in Baghdad answers the phone.
J. A. can't really understand the begonia, but he said something about "spyware... don't support software faults... nothing the matter with the PC". Well, clearly something is the matter. It takes 15 minutes to start up, doesn't shut down properly, his homepage keeps on changing. And he can't let the kids use it for their homework any more (which was the original idea) because more often than not the homepage has changed to hardcore pornography.
Stuff it, says JA. Calls the kid down the road.
Now the kid down the road sees this all the time. Frankly, he's got better things to do than stick spybot S&D on there, wait for it to spend hours going through a painfully slow scan (which wouldn't be so slow were the PC not completely bogged down), then give a lecture on safe internet use which he knows will be forgotten as soon as he walks out the door. So he charges for the work and doesn't bother with the lecture. Instead, he sets up Spybot to "immunise" against everything.
Now Spybot's immunisation essentially means setting a bunch of registry keys read-only. Kid goes home, J. A. finds that a bunch of his legitimate software no longer works properly (because it wants read/write access to bits of the registry which were set readonly) and he can't install software any more (well, he can, but the installer always complains that it "can't set a registry key", whatever that means).
J. A. soldiers on. Makes a mental note not to speak to the kid down the road again. At least the porn's gone and his children can use the computer again.
Lots of people don't want to rebuild their entire PC from scratch - they'd far rather it JFW.
So Linux (or indeed any OS upgrade) is a no-go.
And regarding the AV software - Books tend to be around a while. In two years' time AVG may have gone commercial, and made their product suck even more than Norton's. Better to emphasise the basics - get a half-decent product and update it regularly as old AV software is worse than useless.
If you strip it right down to the fundamentals, there is nothing the matter with Windows.
However, Microsoft spent years enthusiastically bolting on bits of code without the remotest care for security, in some cases giving the code access to the system at its very lowest levels. What they need to do is what was done with OpenBSD. Stop adding functionality, go back and audit what's already there. Everything. From the ground up.
Thing is, OpenBSD could do this because it didn't have pressures to release a new product every couple of years. Unless and until Microsoft decide that the main thing people want from the next version of Windows is "the same thing, but more secure", it won't happen.
Slashdot Mirror
Bet you anything you like Vista will ship with it integrated as part of Windows Security Center. Now, if you've looked at that, you'll see it gives a nice idiot-proof interface like this:
Microsoft Antivirus is out of date. To keep it up to date, click here.No mention that alternative products even exist.
"Gee, no need to buy antivirus any more, comes included. Aw, got to pay an annual fee. Never mind, where's my credit card?"
Same was true at a school I worked at.
Thing is, it was a boarding school so kids received email from loving parents all the time.
My boss' official recommended solution was "Tell the parents to mis-spell 'love' as 'luv'".
My recommended solution was "Don't buy in security from some company that would have difficulty securing a tin of salmon".
The real measure of success for the nextgen optical media will likely be the adult film industry
So you want to watch some ugly middle aged couple who can only claim to be teenagers because of lots of makeup, careful lighting and poor image quality in high definition with bags of detail?
Sooner you than me.
You seen any recent Lego kits?
10 years ago, your average Technic kit consisted of a few hundred brightly-coloured blocks which were fairly generic, maybe one or two unusual pieces, and they all fitted together in more-or-less the same way. You could even fit them to traditional lego bricks.
I was given two kits for Christmas 2004. The first consisted entirely of beams which were smooth top and bottom and had to be fitted together with axles. Not very useful in conjunction with the old parts. The second consisted of bricks in about 6 or 7 different colours, all similar shades, and almost impossible to tell one shade from another in the printed instructions. None of the colours were the traditional Lego bright primary colours. Which was a bit of a bugger if you wanted to build the robot the included instructions covered as the whole look was ruined if you got the colours wrong.
I later discovered that these two kits were close to the top of the Technic range and the range itself had narrowed to no more than about half a dozen or so kits available in your average toyshop.
Cause of Lego financial difficulties or result?
It's been said before, but... "Won't be out until 2007"?! I don't think other commentators have worked their sums out properly.
Let's say a year before Apple have anything tooled to the desktop market using these chips. That's 2008. Let's say another year before there's anything half-decent to put in a laptop - that's 2009.
Now, everyone else has said "3 years with the same processor in a laptop? Mad!".
But it's not 3 years. Considering Apple announced their move to Intel in the middle of last year, and the chips going into their laptops hadn't changed much for some time before then, it would be closer to 4 or 5 - albeit assuming the PPC G5 is never produced in a cool enough form for laptop use.
This nude of Britinet Spears has been photoshopped
I've never heard of Britinet Spears, how would I know what she's supposed to look like anyway?
What you're saying is a rehash of the argument that "Information security isn't secure when the algorithm's security depends on its secrecy".
Thing is, does the same thing hold true when you're talking about detecting fakes (say), as opposed to building strong encryption? If I announce "Well, we can tell this photo isn't genuine because this part which shouldn't be in focus is", I've effectively announced to any potential fraudsters who might be listening "OK, folks, you need to learn to get your focusing correct".
Realistically, the only way such an algorithm remains secure is if it cannot be beaten even with a full understanding of how it works - and I would ask if such an algorithm even exists yet. If the algorithm is anything less than 100% effective, chances are it doesn't.
Trouble is, on Windows, by the time it's locked down enough to be secure, people can't do useful work on it
d itorials/dumb/
Which is, of course, complete cobblers. Badly designed software which runs on Windows may make it substantially harder, but we're talking about a stock exchange here. The amount of money in question is easily enough to ensure that software which requires admin privileges simply doesn't exist.
It's easy to make something secure - at least in theory. When you're dealing with a system which has well defined requirements, and people who are only likely to be using one or two systems as part of their work, it's really not that hard.
Start with the basic premise that nobody can do anything. Group policies make this quite possible to enforce across an enterprise which is running Windows. Next, start dividing people into groups according to their job, and allowing those groups to do what they need, and nothing more, in order to do their job.
Yes, this does take a long time. Yes, it is harder work than just giving them PCs and locking down anything which appears to be a security hole as and when you see it. But it's a helluva lot more secure. Just disabling the Windows Scripting Host and wrapping any admin scripts in a batch file which temporarily re-enables it would go a long way towards improving security.
A bit of careful configuration at the server completes the task. Block all attachments in email, then let through what you think you need. That which is let through should go through a thorough virus scanning, from a virus scanner which receives regular updates, before the user even sees it.
http://www.ranum.com/security/computer_security/e
I know as techies we often don't like dealing with getting our selfs "dirty" dealing with the business,
That's as maybe. But 99% of the time, it's business needs that drive technology, not the other way around.
As long as they are decent programmer its easy to teach them a new langange.
Most of my experience is in sysadmin rather than development, but I'd say much of the same applies.
Though I would take it a step further and say if someone who's in IT isn't prepared/able to look into broadening their experience with alternative languages. systems or methodologies, then they probably shouldn't be in IT. "Unix" is one thing. "Will only look at Solaris" is quite another.
Realistically, assuming your company requires any base of experience whatsoever, there is no way any new hire will be up to speed in anything under a couple of months. The extra few weeks it might take for them to be passably comfortable with the language it's written in or the system it's running on is nothing compared to the amount of work involved if they didn't have any concept of writing decent code, troubleshooting systems or whatever's appropriate.
Obviously you make allowances depending on how much experience you're looking for when you go hiring. But even then I'd expect to see a certain amount of enthusiasm and willingness to consider how best to solve a problem.
Anyway, just because it's easy to learn doesn't necessarily mean that it's a bad programming language.
No, but sooner or later it means that there are a bunch of colleges churning out people who've become "experts" having taken a 6 week course in the language with no prior IT experience.
Doesn't take long for it to become apparent that so many people who claim to know the platform are inexperienced fools. Once that happens, salaries drop.
Afghanistan hadn't had the US interfering on and off for most of the last 15 years. I'm also wondering if Saddam was rather more popular with his people than the Taliban were with theirs.
What I'm driving at is I believe that part of the rationale behind remaining in Iraq was to ensure that whoever does wind up running the country is at least reasonably malleable. Not that I agree with it.
This is exactly what any employer would do anywhere,
Who pays the US Government? The US taxpayer, right?
That makes the President the people's employee. Now either the government is there for the benefit of the people - in which case, it should be doing that which is right for the people - or it isn't, in which case, why on Earth do the people put up with it?
For that matter if there are three madmen in a country why not simply kill them.
Because if they're running the country you don't know who will step up to replace them. "May have WMD" could easily become "May have WMD and... ooh look, there goes Syria."
Vista is the next step in improving security and it took a lot of effort to develop this OS, the entire submission is a flamebait: if you were Microsoft, would you work 6 years on a new product and give it for free?
;)
Why not? Linus Torvalds did
All joking aside, I agree with you insofar as no-one's giving away major upgrades to commercial operating systems. But you've sidestepped the issue which was first raised by Douglas Adams in 1995 and AFAICT still exists:
"The idea that Bill Gates has appeared like a knight in shining armour to lead all his customers out of a mire of technological chaos neatly ignores the fact that it was he who by peddling second-hand, second-rate technology, led them all into it in the first place."
Forgive my American ignorance, but wouldn't this not work in the UK because of their "guilty until proven innocent" system?
We don't have a "guilty until proven innocent" system, unless it's a criminal case being brought under terrorism legislation.
In criminal cases, the burden of proof is "beyond reasonable doubt". In civil cases, it's generally "on the balance of probabilities".
Copyright infringement is a civil offence, hence the amount of evidence needed to win a case is somewhat reduced.
Say you get sued for DOWNLOADING, not uploading, 5 $GENERIC songs.
AFAIK the record industry hasn't yet set up a bunch of honeypots to spot that - and that's the only way they could get you for downloading.
Not because they couldn't (they could), but because it's easier just to fire up your handy-dandy P2P client, go searching for a well-known track, then sue the people behind the first few IP addresses which claim to have the track available.
Given the number of people using P2P, the RIAA/BPI could quite easily script this bit right up to the point of sending out letters to ISPs demanding that they reveal the identity of a given user.
Could you not simply go out and buy the CDs that those songs are on (cash purchase at used record store) and claim fair use?
ICBW but I don't think we in the UK have a concept of "fair use". Even if we did, I doubt any sane lawyer could argue that "Fair use" extends to "Making it available to the whole Internet".
Not that we had anything that critical or sensitive where I worked, but I always found it silly to bar someone from bringing in their laptop.
There is logic in it, if you think about it from a "corporate IT putting out a blanket rule" perspective.
That rule that applies to you also applies to Sharon, a blonde hairdresser by trade who's just taken a second job in the bank to supplement her income.
Sharon has a laptop of her own, and wants to bring it on so she can get on the Internet in her lunch hour - after all, she's not allowed to use company computers for personal web surfing.
Unlike yourself, Sharon's never heard of virus scanning (well, she has, but she was checked by her doctor when she started seeing her new boyfriend, so that's all right). She thinks spyware is the name of the next James Bond film.
Now the bank has a number of business critical systems running Windows. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Auto Update is disabled. This is because, despite Microsoft's best efforts, such updates occasionally break things. Instead, updates are trialled on a test network and then, following a change control procedure, are applied. This procedure takes a while, so at any one time most of the critical Windows systems can be a good few weeks behind on patches. This rises when testing reveals problems, and it rises even further when the system in question was built and maintained by an outside company - their update, assuming they provide one in a reasonable timescale, is subject to the same test requirements and change control as a Microsoft update.
Meanwhile, Sharon's PC, which is swimming in spyware, trojans and viruses, is merrily scanning the network for vulnerabilities.
I don't think I need to spell out the rest...
Some perspective please.
Perspective, yes; this isn't the biggest deal at all. But it's not just that, it's indicative of an entire eco-obesession that frequently misses the big picture.
Example: I drive a car with a small engine and a catalytic convertor. It therefore is (relatively) environmentally friendly, no?
Except my previous car had a larger engine yet consistently achieved better fuel efficiency. I suspect the larger engine wasn't being thrashed just to get to 30mph is much of the issue - an engine being driven hard is never as efficient as one idling.
Example 2: I don't have double glazing. Oh dear.
Well, I don't have cavity wall insulation either. 30% of heat is lost through the wall, 10% through the window. Priorities, eh?
Example 3: I buy the majority of my food through the local supermarket rather than the local farmers' market.
You seen the prices at my local farmers' market? It's a special treat, I simply don't have the money to buy everything I eat there.
They'd better allow for a free tradein/swap if their pre-n routers aren't compatible with the final spec.
Like they have so many times in the past, yes?
</sarcasm>
All joking aside, I have a story about something vaguely-pr0n related.
... redial ...
Years ago, I worked for a school. The school used an ISP which provided a proxy service to filter out (amongst other things) porn. Thing is, the proxy was fantastically unreliable. Quite often, you'd find things getting through which clearly shouldn't.
Now, the only way to report this was to phone their helpdesk. Incoming email - including mail sent to their helpdesk - was also subject to a filter. So you couldn't email saying "www.sex.com isn't filtered" because the email itself would be filtered for the word "sex".
The icing on the cake was the people employed on the helpdesk were under strict instructions that if a customer was to say or do anything construed as being remotely offensive (such as direct them to a porn site or utter any vaguely sexual phrase), they were to terminate the call. Furthermore, they wouldn't accept that there could be anything wrong with their systems unless presented with irrefutable evidence.
A typical conversation therefore went like this:
Me: Hi, I'd like to report an issue with your filtering system.
Them: Sure, what's the problem?
Me: It doesn't appear to filter anything.
Them: Yes it does.
Me: No it doesn't. Here, I'll give you an example.
Them: OK.
Me: Are you behind the filter now?
Them: Yes
Me: OK, type "lesbian spanking XXX" into Google.
Them: That is offensive and I am terminating this call. <CLICK>
Me: Hello, I'd like to report an issue with your filtering system.
Them: What's the problem?
Me: It doesn't appear to filter anything.
Them: Yes it does.
Me: No it doesn't. Here, I'll give you an example.
Them: OK.
Me: But understand that from now on this conversation is going to contain a lot of potentially offensive stuff, so I please don't cut the call off.
Them: That's OK, I understand.
Me: Right, type "lesbian spanking XXX" into Google.
Them: Er... I don't think I should do that.
That's interesting. So presumably they'll keep the same Dynax/Maxxum lens mount?
Even so, I still think it's a great loss. They never really recovered from the (what were they thinking?!) business decision to not produce a new digital SLR for years, letting Canon and Nikon thrash them in the market.
The audience you're trying to reach couldn't be bothered to RTFM that came free with their machine;
I haven't seen a manual shipped with a PC in a long time. Even "Getting Started with Windows" (complete with license certificate glued on the front) has gone, in favour of a license sticker on the machine itself.
what makes you think they're going to buy another book? There have been no shortage of books on the subject, and people are still underinformed.
Why do they want to be informed? Few people are aware of exactly how ignorant they are on any particular aspect of their PC. Frankly, someone who can get their own computer up and running, install a word processor and set up a home network with router/firewall/wireless on their own is probably in the top 15-20% of the population.
There's a reason there are so many PC's inundated with spyware - the computer doesn't always let you know when you've done something badly. So many people have simply no idea when they're doing something wrong, there's no negative feedback, they don't see a problem.
Example: Mr. J. Average has got his shiny new PC and broadband connection, rather proud to have set it up himself, thinking "This isn't so hard - that kid down the road who would have wanted money is taking the mick..."
He's installed the firewall because the computer said this was "recommended", and anti-virus software which came free. There was something on there about "pay for monthly updates" but J. Average isn't stupid - you don't have to update your word processor monthly, so that sounds like a way of conning money out of people. Don't buy the updates, save a bit of money. Clever, eh?
He's heard vaguely of spyware but reckons he's got the firewall turned on (and it says here that makes the Internet safer...) and anti-virus software, so he should be OK.
Two months later and the Antivirus software is hideously out of date. And our friend J. A. receives an email from his friend, which apparently contains a "funny picture". He tries opening the picture and it won't open. Ah well, such is life. He deletes the email and thinks no more of it.
From this day on, things start going downhill, computer-wise. It just seems to be getting slower, and it's only a few months old. J. A. saw some software advertised on one of the seedier websites he sometimes visits which said "Your Computer May Be Running Slowly! Optimize? Yes/No" so he bought that, but it didn't seem to do much. If anything, the problem's worse.
In desparation, J. A. calls the tech support line.
A pot plant in Baghdad answers the phone.
J. A. can't really understand the begonia, but he said something about "spyware... don't support software faults... nothing the matter with the PC". Well, clearly something is the matter. It takes 15 minutes to start up, doesn't shut down properly, his homepage keeps on changing. And he can't let the kids use it for their homework any more (which was the original idea) because more often than not the homepage has changed to hardcore pornography.
Stuff it, says JA. Calls the kid down the road.
Now the kid down the road sees this all the time. Frankly, he's got better things to do than stick spybot S&D on there, wait for it to spend hours going through a painfully slow scan (which wouldn't be so slow were the PC not completely bogged down), then give a lecture on safe internet use which he knows will be forgotten as soon as he walks out the door. So he charges for the work and doesn't bother with the lecture. Instead, he sets up Spybot to "immunise" against everything.
Now Spybot's immunisation essentially means setting a bunch of registry keys read-only. Kid goes home, J. A. finds that a bunch of his legitimate software no longer works properly (because it wants read/write access to bits of the registry which were set readonly) and he can't install software any more (well, he can, but the installer always complains that it "can't set a registry key", whatever that means).
J. A. soldiers on. Makes a mental note not to speak to the kid down the road again. At least the porn's gone and his children can use the computer again.
Lots of people don't want to rebuild their entire PC from scratch - they'd far rather it JFW.
So Linux (or indeed any OS upgrade) is a no-go.
And regarding the AV software - Books tend to be around a while. In two years' time AVG may have gone commercial, and made their product suck even more than Norton's. Better to emphasise the basics - get a half-decent product and update it regularly as old AV software is worse than useless.
If you strip it right down to the fundamentals, there is nothing the matter with Windows.
However, Microsoft spent years enthusiastically bolting on bits of code without the remotest care for security, in some cases giving the code access to the system at its very lowest levels. What they need to do is what was done with OpenBSD. Stop adding functionality, go back and audit what's already there. Everything. From the ground up.
Thing is, OpenBSD could do this because it didn't have pressures to release a new product every couple of years. Unless and until Microsoft decide that the main thing people want from the next version of Windows is "the same thing, but more secure", it won't happen.