Windows 10 gets a lot of criticism around here, but I suspect most of the criticism comes from people who haven't actually use it. If you do use it the reality is far worse.
This is a good point. Having read all the horror stories and comments, I don't want to risk using Windows 10. So, yes, at least implicitly I'm criticizing it without having used it. I'll stick with Linux Mint and very occasional use of a Windows 8.1 partition (which I really don't need except for seldom played games).
I run Windows 10 in a virtual machine but even then it loves to phone home and that is before I even log in.
Here is a simple test for people running Windows 10. Download Wireshark . You will have to do a little reading to get an idea of how Wireshark works and reports what it sees but it is well worth it. Once you get a basic understanding of how Wireshark works then do the following:
1) Make sure you don't have any web services such as browsers, mail clients or torrents running.
2) Start Wireshark and select the network port you are using.
3) You should notice that your PC's IP address will talk to your router's IP and vice versa, so you will get a small amount of network traffic there.
4) Now any other network traffic is part of what the OS or any applications that you failed to stop is trying to send and receive.
5) To be fair you may see a few incoming IP's that are trying to crack your system which hopefully should block them so there shouldn't be too many (worry if there are).
6) Note down any regular IP address that your machine is receiving (ie. Incoming) and the IP addresses that your machine is sending to (ie. Outgoing).
7) Now you can turn off Wireshark because you will need to start a browser and this will make it go ballistic.
8) Bring up an IP address reporting site. I use this one and enter the IP addresses you find. You should find the results interesting.
If you find that your Windows 10 OS is not chatty then congratulations you aren't running Windows 10.:-)
If you were running a Linux OS then by doing the above you would not see any suspicious network traffic (well hopefully not, but you will be aware) unless your update service which you control kicks in.
Actually, it would be interesting to do what I have suggested with Windows 7/1/8.1. Any volunteers?
Warning: Only run Wireshark at home. Don't run Wireshark in any other place unless you have written permission to do so since by doing so you could be arrested for being a "cracker" which is a criminal offence.
Note the difference between the words "hacker" and "cracker", the so called IT technical writers have been getting wrong for well over 20 years.
So if you get a flat and someone drives up and says why don't you just take this Porsche for free, you'd say no?
Of course what you aren't told unless you read the contract (err EULA) for you "free" Porsche is that the company has the right to monitor your usage for advertisement purposes and anything else that the said company finds useful. Of course, all information will be held in the strictest confidence unless an appropriate authority requests that information. The company also has the right to update your "free" Porsche without prior notice as well as anything that the company deems important and you don't have any rights to refuse.
What! I hear you say but I get a free Porsche. Yes! you do but so does everyone else so where is the uniqueness in that. Of course, the cops are going to have a field day as every idiot (err user) tries to drag everyone else and the said company to whom you agreed to their contract (err EULA) will have all your driving habits available to convict you.
I personally would just change my flat tyre with my spare or just call roadside assist (err the WEB). Also, why would I want to change my Mclaren Racer for a pedestrian Porsche?
Actually, Barancles Nerdgasm used to work for Microsoft and has a few Youtube videos on Windows 10 which he fully admits is a reasonably fine operating system. However, he pulls no punches when it comes to the privacy features of windows 10 which he finds appalling.
I installed Windows 10 Genuine Malware edition:-) on a virtual machine running under Linux and even after turning off all the privacy features the OS still likes to call home ( Wireshark is your friend here) and that is even before I log into the OS. Needless to say, I don't trust Windows 10 and I have not started up its virtual machine since then.
Note: I actually use the following IP address lookup site to determine which machines Windows 10 was talking to and "You Guessed it" they were all owned by Microsoft. It would not be too bad (well maybe) if those sites were in the country where I live which is Australia but they were in other countries including the USA. I can understand authentification at a stretch but the sheer amount of information being sent was ridiculous.
Well maybe it makes sense if you don't have analog inputs on your TV?
You are quite right, however, most modern TV's including UHD, 4K, 1080p, whatever do have AV inputs. The main problem you have with low-resolution graphics is scaling and smoothing so the game looks presentable on a large screen TV.
It must also be noted that pretty well all NES and SNES games were designed with a 4:3 aspect ration so on a 16:9 aspect ratio TV (the industry standard) you are going to have black bars left and right of your screen. It is possible to "stretch" or even "clip to size" the video feed but the results in most cases will not be satisfactory.
Microsoft Windows NT is a variant of VMS which was originally developed by Digital Equipment Corp which sued Microsoft over infringement but settled out of court
I can run software. On a computer. And most of the time, uncertainty doesn't foul up the result. Does it matter if it's Linux or Windows? No. As long as I get the value I expect, financial or otherwise, I could care less which whiny little basement dweller wrote the kernel.
Ah! I see the problem here. You want a value that you expect even though it may not be the correct value. Sounds like a good management strategy to me.
The reason why Linux will never make it to the mainstream desktop is because OS X is the best and easiest UNIX-based GUI to use. And things, "just work."
I take it you have never heard of the "Microsoft Tax"?
Linux seems to be doing fine on most computing devices except the desktop.
Android (has a Linux kernel) has 86.2% compared to Apple's 12.9% of market as per Q2 2016 market share.. Also Android tablets account for 66.1% while IOS accounts for 27.87% of market share.
As for Super Computers, Linux dominates with about 99%.
Note: The figures I gave you are Q2 2016 so they are current.
There are major distros that are systemd free, and not only because systemd was removed from them, but because they never had it (Slackware)... or at least only have it as a non-required option (Gentoo).
Well according to Distro Watch Slackware rates 16 and Gentoo rates 36 on the list of page hits so they must be major distibutions.
Emacs has been around since 1976 -- I've used it almost daily since 1985. Let's see if systemd is still here and useful in 40 years.
Well systemd has already six years under its belt and quite a few major Linux distributions have adopted it.
While we are at it lets start another emacs verses vi flame war (mid 1980's), since I have been using both since 1980 although personally I prefer vi mainly because it is on all Unix systems by default (emacs is not). On second thoughts lets not.
not true, their are good desktops that have taken over from the archaic relics of the past decades (GNOME, KDE).
MATE and CINNAMON is where it's at. XFCE4 is quite good too
You do know that Xfce and KDE were first started in 1996 and Gnome released in 1999. So saying that KDE and Gnome are relics compared to Xfce is totally wrong. Basically as far as computing goes all Desktops and/or Session Mangers either stagnate or evolve and most including KDE have evolved. Of course, personal preferences are at play here.
In case you are wondering MATE and CINNAMON are both spinoffs of Gnome.
As for which desktop is better, personally I like KDE plasma and I have used pretty much all major desktops over the last 35 years, however at least with Linux desktops you do have the choice and you can configure most of them to your own personal preference. Of course, we could always start the 1980's flame war over emacs verses vi. On second thoughts let's not.:-)
I don't know that maintaining a web browser in the face of Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Opera and the rest makes any sense?
Actually, it does since you have the option to use what you like.
Also, a standalone mail client? I haven't used one of those in nearly 5 years now. So, do I care that it hasn't updated? Do its users want it to become more like Outlook? I think probably not.
I do find that KMail is a very configurable client but I personally just use Gmail now. At least I have the choice.
My gripe with KDE the last time I tried to use it was lack of font scaling support for 4K screens... I assume that KDE5 is addressing that, but how well? Next time I set up a desktop I might try it, but for now I'm happy enough with what comes "out of the box" with Ubuntu, and was unhappy enough with the last Kubuntu I tried that I've left KDE to go grow up some.
Can't really comment on 4K fonts although I never had any issue with 1080p fonts. I did try Mint at one stage and still have it in a virtual machine but my main distribution is Fedora (now at 24) which I like although I don't begrudge other people liking other distributions since at least we have the choice.
I hope it does continue to improve, I used to really prefer KDE to Gnome
Personally, so do I since I find very easy to configure the KDE environment to my liking. The only time I switched to Gnome was when KDE 4.0 was released. My wife was so annoyed with the instability that I switched her to Gnome. Unfortunately, Gnome and KDE don't play very well together and I switched to Gnome until KDE 4.1 came out then we switched back.
MATE and CINNAMON have that. KDE is a relic of bygone era, smarter people have moved on
I have used Mint and personally I still like KDE which I have as part of my Fedora 24 spin. KDE to me still has the more configurable graphical interface out of all the window and session managers and I have used pretty much all of the competing offerings.
Of course, if you like a particular GUI over another then that is fine. At least with Linux and all the distributions out there you have compleat freedom to choose what you like and configure it to your tastes, which is how it should be unlike a certain "phone-home" OS which will remain nameless.
Now that's said can we please comment on how emacs is better then vi or vice versa. -- Ducks for cover:-)
Konqueror would seem to be the best file manager for power users and programmers. it's very configurable. I don't think I could find as good a replacement for it.
Konqueror is a web browser and it does work very well if you wish to make it a file manager, however, it is nowhere near as good as Dolphin which is so configurable that IMHO puts all other file managers to shame. I follow the Unix paradigm. "The right tool for the right job" and using a Web Browser as a file manager is not really using the right tool.
If you have Fedora 24, KDE spin it ships standard with QupZilla which is sort of like Chrome (pretty much all browsers are sort of like Chrome) except it gives you allot more privacy and it actually does quite well on many browser benchmarks. Yes, I know you can easily lock down Chrome although good luck with a certain operating system which I won't name.
Mainly I remember it was often a pain getting to much of the information I wanted. The web was such a huge leap forward in terms of navigation - it's no wonder everyone quickly moved on from gopher.
Not really. How good a web-site is dependent on the web-site developer. What made the web useful are the search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. With Gopher or to put it other terms "A little burrowing animal" all you could do was follow links while today's search engine saved you the trouble of following links to present information in a form that is easier to get to a site of possible interest to you.
Yes, Gopher was useful in its day but times change and much better solutions became available.
You have a point there. I have the Skylake chipset with a GA-Z170M-D3H motherboard and it's latest BIOS is "f7". Just to be sure I checked the update site and it is still the same. I guess they have not got the memo yet.
My motherboard only supports Windows 8, 10 and "other OS, which means it supports Linux. Since I run Fedora 24 I can even use secure boot if I wish although by default it was not enabled.
you are far less likely to be caught [if you enter fake names] than should you leave them blank
Please explain.
When the Census letters were mailed out all had a unique number related to each address they were mailed to. Basically, if you have a physical mailing address then the Post Office and conversely the government knows about it as well. In addition, the Government knows via the Births Deaths and Marriages Office (also include immigrants) your name. By the way, Governments in all countries in the world do this and have been doing this for a few thousand years now.
If you live in a society chances are that society has a form of government that needs to know the people who live in it. Yes, you could call it Big Brother but unless the government knows something about the people that live in the area under their control then how can they assist or even oppress them.
BTW. When I mention "oppress" it is a really stupid government that thinks that this method is the best unless they want to end up swinging from a rope or at the wrong end of a firing squad.
Personally I took the risk of putting in fake names and DOB and dodgy address, I know that in theory makes me potentially liable for a large fine, but a fine can easily be fought or paid, identity theft because the morons at the ABS can't do security is much harder and more expensive to rectify.
Oh! really clever aren't you.
When you get the ABS letter for your address it has a unique number on it which makes it incredibly easy to know which address that number is from. So putting in a bogus address is sure to raise a huge red flag and a please explain from the Government.
If you think all the people in the ABS are morons then think again. Some have Master's and PhD's in Mathematics and Statistics as well as computer science, so it would be very easy to track you down. Let's put it this way. "Did you fill out the census from your home or mobile?" - you did well say hello to a fine.
Personally, I am still trying to get onto the census website since it is so busy and when I do I will be doing the census from a Linux operating system using a more trusted web browser such as QupZilla (comes standard with Fedora 24). If you have done the Census from Windows 10 and using the Edge browser congratulations you have just given a foreign country your information even though some of it may be fraudulent.
A DDOS attack does nothing to attack the integrity or security of the data. The success of a DDOS attack only indirectly calls data safety into question - if they were not able to defend against DDOS, perhaps they're also not good enough to maintain security.
As an aside, I'm currently living in Australia, and the site worked fine for me at about 6pm.
What you said is certainly true. I tried at about 7:45 PM and from then on every 30 minutes and eventually I just gave up since the site was so busy or under DDOS attacks.
What would be interesting (ABS take note) is how many of those DDOS slave machines were running a version Microsoft Windows and what version was the most compromised. I am sure we could think of a few more statistics to highlight but unfortunately, most people won't learn.
As for security. If people have installed (err! Updated) or purchased a PC with Windows 10 and by default Windows 10 has telemetry including a keystroke logger then those people have effectively given Microsoft all their information. What about Google Chrome? Well it does like to collect information if you let it (it's pretty easy to turn off) however it does not log your keystrokes and if you are worried about it then use a web browser that is reasonably secure.
For those people who used the Edge browser to fill out the Census. Sigh!
But the new shit is so much better than the old shit. Ever try using wordperfect on an original green monitor IBM PC? I grew up with a 300baud modem and learned how to get around the limitations (like scheduling downloads while I'm sleeping), so I'm perfectly fine with 5mbs service and don't need 10GB/s.
I never knew you could get a 5 millibit/second service. Is that where you need a blanket and very smoky fire?:-)
There are 60, 70, 80 year olds that literally wrote the books on what our modern society is built on.
What are "books"?
You can get them in epub which is one of the many formats that are are available for your book reader . Personally I use Calibre which works perfectly under Fedora 24. My wife actually uses a Kobo reader.
Kids nowadays, can't even do a simple web search. Next, they will be telling us they need an easy mode in games like Dark Souls and Bloodborne... Oh! Wait.
Why is this surprising anyone? Have any of you tried to go to the PirateBay or savedeo.com with Chrome? It won't let you...it pretends it can't find the site. I used Chrome when it first came out...it was fast and the UI was nice. But since then, Chrome has slowed down a lot, and I've gone back to firefox which is basically a kludgy mess, but at least it doesn't censor my access.
I don't have any problems with "http://thepiratebay.se.com/" on Chrome, Firefox, QupZilla or Konqueror. Maybe it's the operating system you are running those browsers on because all of them run perfectly under Fedora 24 or even Linux Mint 18.
Until the day a legislation gets passed where only hardware may be sold where UEFI secure boot can't be disabled, and
where UEFI signatures will only be allowed for kernels that have such an "anti pirate" spyware module inside.
Also works great for political ideas. Just put anything you don't like your people to read onto the blacklist. Iran, China and friends will love this.
Many mainstream Linux distributions (Fedora, Mint, CentOS, Debian, Ubuntu.. etc) support UEFI secure boot. Try "secure boot" and the name of your Linux distribution in a search engine.
Slashdot Mirror
Windows 10 gets a lot of criticism around here, but I suspect most of the criticism comes from people who haven't actually use it. If you do use it the reality is far worse.
This is a good point. Having read all the horror stories and comments, I don't want to risk using Windows 10. So, yes, at least implicitly I'm criticizing it without having used it. I'll stick with Linux Mint and very occasional use of a Windows 8.1 partition (which I really don't need except for seldom played games).
I run Windows 10 in a virtual machine but even then it loves to phone home and that is before I even log in.
Here is a simple test for people running Windows 10. Download Wireshark . You will have to do a little reading to get an idea of how Wireshark works and reports what it sees but it is well worth it. Once you get a basic understanding of how Wireshark works then do the following:
1) Make sure you don't have any web services such as browsers, mail clients or torrents running.
2) Start Wireshark and select the network port you are using.
3) You should notice that your PC's IP address will talk to your router's IP and vice versa, so you will get a small amount of network traffic there.
4) Now any other network traffic is part of what the OS or any applications that you failed to stop is trying to send and receive.
5) To be fair you may see a few incoming IP's that are trying to crack your system which hopefully should block them so there shouldn't be too many (worry if there are).
6) Note down any regular IP address that your machine is receiving (ie. Incoming) and the IP addresses that your machine is sending to (ie. Outgoing).
7) Now you can turn off Wireshark because you will need to start a browser and this will make it go ballistic.
8) Bring up an IP address reporting site. I use this one and enter the IP addresses you find. You should find the results interesting.
If you find that your Windows 10 OS is not chatty then congratulations you aren't running Windows 10. :-)
If you were running a Linux OS then by doing the above you would not see any suspicious network traffic (well hopefully not, but you will be aware) unless your update service which you control kicks in.
Actually, it would be interesting to do what I have suggested with Windows 7/1/8.1. Any volunteers?
Warning: Only run Wireshark at home. Don't run Wireshark in any other place unless you have written permission to do so since by doing so you could be arrested for being a "cracker" which is a criminal offence.
Note the difference between the words "hacker" and "cracker", the so called IT technical writers have been getting wrong for well over 20 years.
So if you get a flat and someone drives up and says why don't you just take this Porsche for free, you'd say no?
Of course what you aren't told unless you read the contract (err EULA) for you "free" Porsche is that the company has the right to monitor your usage for advertisement purposes and anything else that the said company finds useful. Of course, all information will be held in the strictest confidence unless an appropriate authority requests that information. The company also has the right to update your "free" Porsche without prior notice as well as anything that the company deems important and you don't have any rights to refuse.
What! I hear you say but I get a free Porsche. Yes! you do but so does everyone else so where is the uniqueness in that. Of course, the cops are going to have a field day as every idiot (err user) tries to drag everyone else and the said company to whom you agreed to their contract (err EULA) will have all your driving habits available to convict you.
I personally would just change my flat tyre with my spare or just call roadside assist (err the WEB). Also, why would I want to change my Mclaren Racer for a pedestrian Porsche?
How to fix your PC: http://www.ubuntu.com/download...
How do I run MS Office and Adobe CC on that?
Oh! you mean the free genuine green parrot editions of MS Office and Adobe CC?
Well, you can use "Wine" or a virtual machine running Windows 10 genuine Malware edition which you can get here for free.
Actually, Barancles Nerdgasm used to work for Microsoft and has a few Youtube videos on Windows 10 which he fully admits is a reasonably fine operating system. However, he pulls no punches when it comes to the privacy features of windows 10 which he finds appalling.
I installed Windows 10 Genuine Malware edition :-) on a virtual machine running under Linux and even after turning off all the privacy features the OS still likes to call home ( Wireshark is your friend here) and that is even before I log into the OS. Needless to say, I don't trust Windows 10 and I have not started up its virtual machine since then.
Note: I actually use the following IP address lookup site to determine which machines Windows 10 was talking to and "You Guessed it" they were all owned by Microsoft. It would not be too bad (well maybe) if those sites were in the country where I live which is Australia but they were in other countries including the USA. I can understand authentification at a stretch but the sheer amount of information being sent was ridiculous.
Well maybe it makes sense if you don't have analog inputs on your TV?
You are quite right, however, most modern TV's including UHD, 4K, 1080p, whatever do have AV inputs. The main problem you have with low-resolution graphics is scaling and smoothing so the game looks presentable on a large screen TV.
It must also be noted that pretty well all NES and SNES games were designed with a 4:3 aspect ration so on a 16:9 aspect ratio TV (the industry standard) you are going to have black bars left and right of your screen. It is possible to "stretch" or even "clip to size" the video feed but the results in most cases will not be satisfactory.
Even WinNT was a redo of Unix.
Microsoft Windows NT is a variant of VMS which was originally developed by Digital Equipment Corp which sued Microsoft over infringement but settled out of court
I can run software. On a computer. And most of the time, uncertainty doesn't foul up the result. Does it matter if it's Linux or Windows? No. As long as I get the value I expect, financial or otherwise, I could care less which whiny little basement dweller wrote the kernel.
Ah! I see the problem here. You want a value that you expect even though it may not be the correct value. Sounds like a good management strategy to me.
If a modern kernel were to panic once 65+ processes were running, I wonder how far it would get through the boot process.
Well, I have over 270 processes which run flawlessly under Fedora 24 on my desktop on boot. Does that count?
Actually, if a critical process fails on boot then the machine will crash. Solution: fix that critical process.
Similarly, if an application fails it will also crash. Again the solution if to fix that failing application.
The above applies to all operating systems. Unfortunately many people like to shoot the messenger instead of finding and resolving the problem.
The reason why Linux will never make it to the mainstream desktop is because OS X is the best and easiest UNIX-based GUI to use. And things, "just work."
I take it you have never heard of the "Microsoft Tax"? Linux seems to be doing fine on most computing devices except the desktop.
Android (has a Linux kernel) has 86.2% compared to Apple's 12.9% of market as per Q2 2016 market share.. Also Android tablets account for 66.1% while IOS accounts for 27.87% of market share .
As for Super Computers, Linux dominates with about 99%.
Note: The figures I gave you are Q2 2016 so they are current.
There are major distros that are systemd free, and not only because systemd was removed from them, but because they never had it (Slackware)... or at least only have it as a non-required option (Gentoo).
Well according to Distro Watch Slackware rates 16 and Gentoo rates 36 on the list of page hits so they must be major distibutions.
I think it is like Emacs without the editor part.
Emacs has been around since 1976 -- I've used it almost daily since 1985. Let's see if systemd is still here and useful in 40 years.
Well systemd has already six years under its belt and quite a few major Linux distributions have adopted it.
While we are at it lets start another emacs verses vi flame war (mid 1980's), since I have been using both since 1980 although personally I prefer vi mainly because it is on all Unix systems by default (emacs is not). On second thoughts lets not.
not true, their are good desktops that have taken over from the archaic relics of the past decades (GNOME, KDE).
MATE and CINNAMON is where it's at. XFCE4 is quite good too
You do know that Xfce and KDE were first started in 1996 and Gnome released in 1999. So saying that KDE and Gnome are relics compared to Xfce is totally wrong. Basically as far as computing goes all Desktops and/or Session Mangers either stagnate or evolve and most including KDE have evolved. Of course, personal preferences are at play here.
In case you are wondering MATE and CINNAMON are both spinoffs of Gnome.
As for which desktop is better, personally I like KDE plasma and I have used pretty much all major desktops over the last 35 years, however at least with Linux desktops you do have the choice and you can configure most of them to your own personal preference. Of course, we could always start the 1980's flame war over emacs verses vi. On second thoughts let's not. :-)
I don't know that maintaining a web browser in the face of Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Opera and the rest makes any sense?
Actually, it does since you have the option to use what you like.
Also, a standalone mail client? I haven't used one of those in nearly 5 years now. So, do I care that it hasn't updated? Do its users want it to become more like Outlook? I think probably not.
I do find that KMail is a very configurable client but I personally just use Gmail now. At least I have the choice.
My gripe with KDE the last time I tried to use it was lack of font scaling support for 4K screens... I assume that KDE5 is addressing that, but how well? Next time I set up a desktop I might try it, but for now I'm happy enough with what comes "out of the box" with Ubuntu, and was unhappy enough with the last Kubuntu I tried that I've left KDE to go grow up some.
Can't really comment on 4K fonts although I never had any issue with 1080p fonts. I did try Mint at one stage and still have it in a virtual machine but my main distribution is Fedora (now at 24) which I like although I don't begrudge other people liking other distributions since at least we have the choice.
I hope it does continue to improve, I used to really prefer KDE to Gnome
Personally, so do I since I find very easy to configure the KDE environment to my liking. The only time I switched to Gnome was when KDE 4.0 was released. My wife was so annoyed with the instability that I switched her to Gnome. Unfortunately, Gnome and KDE don't play very well together and I switched to Gnome until KDE 4.1 came out then we switched back.
nope.
MATE and CINNAMON have that. KDE is a relic of bygone era, smarter people have moved on
I have used Mint and personally I still like KDE which I have as part of my Fedora 24 spin. KDE to me still has the more configurable graphical interface out of all the window and session managers and I have used pretty much all of the competing offerings.
Of course, if you like a particular GUI over another then that is fine. At least with Linux and all the distributions out there you have compleat freedom to choose what you like and configure it to your tastes, which is how it should be unlike a certain "phone-home" OS which will remain nameless.
Now that's said can we please comment on how emacs is better then vi or vice versa. -- Ducks for cover :-)
Linux was never alive to begin with. It's market share has always been in the toilet. Nobody takes it seriously as an operating system.
You are quite right Linux's market share is so abysmal that billions of people actually use it daily without being aware of it.
If you are going to Troll, do it properly.
Konqueror would seem to be the best file manager for power users and programmers. it's very configurable. I don't think I could find as good a replacement for it.
Konqueror is a web browser and it does work very well if you wish to make it a file manager, however, it is nowhere near as good as Dolphin which is so configurable that IMHO puts all other file managers to shame. I follow the Unix paradigm. "The right tool for the right job" and using a Web Browser as a file manager is not really using the right tool.
If you have Fedora 24, KDE spin it ships standard with QupZilla which is sort of like Chrome (pretty much all browsers are sort of like Chrome) except it gives you allot more privacy and it actually does quite well on many browser benchmarks. Yes, I know you can easily lock down Chrome although good luck with a certain operating system which I won't name.
Mainly I remember it was often a pain getting to much of the information I wanted. The web was such a huge leap forward in terms of navigation - it's no wonder everyone quickly moved on from gopher.
Not really. How good a web-site is dependent on the web-site developer. What made the web useful are the search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. With Gopher or to put it other terms "A little burrowing animal" all you could do was follow links while today's search engine saved you the trouble of following links to present information in a form that is easier to get to a site of possible interest to you.
Yes, Gopher was useful in its day but times change and much better solutions became available.
coincidence?
You have a point there. I have the Skylake chipset with a GA-Z170M-D3H motherboard and it's latest BIOS is "f7". Just to be sure I checked the update site and it is still the same. I guess they have not got the memo yet.
My motherboard only supports Windows 8, 10 and "other OS, which means it supports Linux. Since I run Fedora 24 I can even use secure boot if I wish although by default it was not enabled.
you are far less likely to be caught [if you enter fake names] than should you leave them blank
Please explain.
When the Census letters were mailed out all had a unique number related to each address they were mailed to. Basically, if you have a physical mailing address then the Post Office and conversely the government knows about it as well. In addition, the Government knows via the Births Deaths and Marriages Office (also include immigrants) your name. By the way, Governments in all countries in the world do this and have been doing this for a few thousand years now.
If you live in a society chances are that society has a form of government that needs to know the people who live in it. Yes, you could call it Big Brother but unless the government knows something about the people that live in the area under their control then how can they assist or even oppress them.
BTW. When I mention "oppress" it is a really stupid government that thinks that this method is the best unless they want to end up swinging from a rope or at the wrong end of a firing squad.
Personally I took the risk of putting in fake names and DOB and dodgy address, I know that in theory makes me potentially liable for a large fine, but a fine can easily be fought or paid, identity theft because the morons at the ABS can't do security is much harder and more expensive to rectify.
Oh! really clever aren't you.
When you get the ABS letter for your address it has a unique number on it which makes it incredibly easy to know which address that number is from. So putting in a bogus address is sure to raise a huge red flag and a please explain from the Government.
If you think all the people in the ABS are morons then think again. Some have Master's and PhD's in Mathematics and Statistics as well as computer science, so it would be very easy to track you down. Let's put it this way. "Did you fill out the census from your home or mobile?" - you did well say hello to a fine.
Personally, I am still trying to get onto the census website since it is so busy and when I do I will be doing the census from a Linux operating system using a more trusted web browser such as QupZilla (comes standard with Fedora 24). If you have done the Census from Windows 10 and using the Edge browser congratulations you have just given a foreign country your information even though some of it may be fraudulent.
A DDOS attack does nothing to attack the integrity or security of the data. The success of a DDOS attack only indirectly calls data safety into question - if they were not able to defend against DDOS, perhaps they're also not good enough to maintain security.
As an aside, I'm currently living in Australia, and the site worked fine for me at about 6pm.
What you said is certainly true. I tried at about 7:45 PM and from then on every 30 minutes and eventually I just gave up since the site was so busy or under DDOS attacks.
What would be interesting (ABS take note) is how many of those DDOS slave machines were running a version Microsoft Windows and what version was the most compromised. I am sure we could think of a few more statistics to highlight but unfortunately, most people won't learn.
As for security. If people have installed (err! Updated) or purchased a PC with Windows 10 and by default Windows 10 has telemetry including a keystroke logger then those people have effectively given Microsoft all their information. What about Google Chrome? Well it does like to collect information if you let it (it's pretty easy to turn off) however it does not log your keystrokes and if you are worried about it then use a web browser that is reasonably secure.
For those people who used the Edge browser to fill out the Census. Sigh!
But the new shit is so much better than the old shit. Ever try using wordperfect on an original green monitor IBM PC? I grew up with a 300baud modem and learned how to get around the limitations (like scheduling downloads while I'm sleeping), so I'm perfectly fine with 5mbs service and don't need 10GB/s.
I never knew you could get a 5 millibit/second service. Is that where you need a blanket and very smoky fire? :-)
There are 60, 70, 80 year olds that literally wrote the books on what our modern society is built on.
What are "books"?
You can get them in epub which is one of the many formats that are are available for your book reader . Personally I use Calibre which works perfectly under Fedora 24. My wife actually uses a Kobo reader.
Kids nowadays, can't even do a simple web search. Next, they will be telling us they need an easy mode in games like Dark Souls and Bloodborne ... Oh! Wait.
Why is this surprising anyone? Have any of you tried to go to the PirateBay or savedeo.com with Chrome? It won't let you...it pretends it can't find the site. I used Chrome when it first came out...it was fast and the UI was nice. But since then, Chrome has slowed down a lot, and I've gone back to firefox which is basically a kludgy mess, but at least it doesn't censor my access.
I don't have any problems with "http://thepiratebay.se.com/" on Chrome, Firefox, QupZilla or Konqueror. Maybe it's the operating system you are running those browsers on because all of them run perfectly under Fedora 24 or even Linux Mint 18.
Until the day a legislation gets passed where only hardware may be sold where UEFI secure boot can't be disabled, and where UEFI signatures will only be allowed for kernels that have such an "anti pirate" spyware module inside.
Also works great for political ideas. Just put anything you don't like your people to read onto the blacklist. Iran, China and friends will love this.
Many mainstream Linux distributions (Fedora, Mint, CentOS, Debian, Ubuntu .. etc) support UEFI secure boot. Try "secure boot" and the name of your Linux distribution in a search engine.