Presumably no ideas are off the table...
Except the very one that can get them some market share: MAKE A BLACKBERRY HANDSET WHICH RUNS ANDROID.
Like Nokia, they do not get it.
1735 publicly visible posts • joined 29 Sep 2006
"""What we know about the NSA / NRO is only a sliver of the truth. Many more shocking revelations await and unless Edward Snowden is treated fairly by the citizens of the US those other abuses will never see the light of day. """
That would be true if Snowden really knows anything big, and if the public's interest is what really motivates him.
I'm on the opinion that he has mostly random stuff and that he's just another "useful idiot" who thinks he's doing a favour to the world.
If he has anything really big, and not the usual crap (yes, stealing and killing in wars) about what the US army and spies do, why is he holding it and not publishing it straight away??? aaah all that inteligence information has to be filtered... because he doesn't know what he has.
All nations have secrets, and like the reg notes, we're talking about powerful states. Of course they all abuse their powers. In England there is this little thing called "Legal interception" which is mandatory for telecoms.
Do you really think the UK government (not just the current one, but any) will not abuse this? HA!
Very easy.
You have done this well in advance before you are going to communicate.
Also nothing stops you from splitting and slicing your key into several parts, hiding them into several files, but not some of it that you have memorized. Then you can reassemble the key anywhere.
But the problem is the same, if the spooks figure or suspect that you have something, game over.
WTF.
Let's say that I have never experienced those corruption problems you describe, and that I can imagine lots ways to avoid them if really that's what you want.
Also let's say that most of those files are trivial to recreate, even when we're talking about disk layouts and the like (mdadm, lvm etc.) but if you can not/do not want to waste time I'm sure you are backing up your files, are you?
Files are not delicate flowers my friend, quite the contrary, but if you're a bit clumsy, here let me make it easy for you:
mkdir /var/etc_backup
rsync -avi --progress /etc/ /var/etc_backup/
There you go, it is free and you can make as many as you want, you can even use your imagination and add the date to the directory name, use incremental backups etc. Use those two lines each time you unluckiest person in the universe login into a linux box.
I always marvel at people who claim that anything with the complexity of the registry is what one needs to properly store the configuration of a computer.
Seriously this comes from a hardcore Windows guy for 10 years, who was yesterday migrating the home server from a single hard disk to a raid setup, not only did I migrated all the data manually not losing or corrupting a single file, I borked the init-ramfs completely and I could fix it all by hand using the vi version that comes with busybox.
It is probably some mix in between that and the fact that they are trying to outsmart Google on something and Google is not letting them having their way.
Since MS exist Google is one of the few companies that can show a stand to MS because it is one of the few large companies with no dependence on them for their revenue.
MS is used to everybody no matter the size bowing to them.
I'm glad they are getting (MS) some of their own medicine, when people say Google is evil they have no idea what MS can do/would do if allowed. For years MS massacred the industry to the point that software had to become in essence free as in beer to have any chance of success.
YACA = Yet Another Car Analogy.
What you do not get its this: "All distros are the same operating system" In the same way that all cars are cars in the end.
Some people prefers BMW, while other people prefers Audi. Other people just like a car they can tinkle with.
Other people just like to try new cars all the time, tune them up a bit then change it for another.
In the end it is all the same operating system with different degrees of conservationism (Stability).
Psst, most companies I have been working for in the last decade were 60:40 Linux/Windows.
In most companies deploying windows boxes hurt financially, while deploying Linux boxes don't.
Most start-ups have a much larger proportion of Linux boxes.
I do not know in which universe do you live, but on mine running Nightly beta builds Android doesn't crash, once on a blue moon I get the odd crap game to stop, but this is the game's fault.
Winphone is a stoneturd meaning that no matter how good the OS is (not great by the way), you can not change anything on it.
The more people can do things unexpected by the vendor the more useful the device is to the user base. Microsoft has chosen to stop unexpected before it is born.
Nokia = Good hardware, too sad it doesn't run an OS people like.
"""With Server 2012 Microsoft is at last bringing a viable platform to the table and Server 2012 R2 looks set to eclipse that"""
I love that, this is how always MS does things, the current version is the best ever.
Hyper-V in Win 2008 and 2008R2 is a turd, all I see in 2012/R2 is more shiny tools, and no convincing reason to move.
"""And have you tried pirating Windows 8 or Server 2012? It's pretty much impossible now with the trusted boot level security and activation checks."""
LOL!
No it is not, it is even easier than before.
The question is what is the point to INSIST on using Windows, it is overly complex and requires way too many servers to do anything. For example each time Microsoft produces a new version of Exchange it needs more and more servers.
"""Oh well, given the pile of featureless crap Chrome is, once Opera 12.x is no longer being supported, seems like I'll be a Firefox user."""
Do not worry, Firefox is engaged on the same stupid Chrome obsession and they are killing their browser too.
It is quite amusing to see how Google is gaining browser market share, not just by convincing users on other platforms to move to chrome, but causing other platforms to turn into Chrome.
"""If I had kids (god forbid)"""
This is not an attack, just a thought: Maybe you may be missing something by not having kids.
As a personal anecdote I can tell you that when I had my kids I realized I should have had them earlier.
"""I'm all happy for kids to play games every now and then"""
It is much better playing the games with them, it is win-win, you get some time to relax, they love activities with dad, they love seeing you killing the baddies. Also you can easily control how much time do they spend playing and what are they playing.
"""Thus, the value of the NHS must be expressed as something other than the tax that it doesn't pay. That value being that it has been known, occasionally, to cure people of illness and disease."""
Classic.
Also I'm all for taxing people using something like a proper scaled VAT and dropping all the other indirect taxes, taxing on how much you spend is the most democratic way of taxing, because if you want to opt out of it all it takes is to save money spending wisely. It is the only way in which those that have more wealth would pay a fair tax.
But the Politicos will surely end doing the worst thing, use an unfair VAT, abusive income revenue tax, lots of equally abusive indirect taxes, etc. Oh wait....
Choose your favourite:
XFCE, MATE, Cinnamon, Gnome Shell, KDE.
I know this is shocking to most non-linux users but even Gnome Shell is better than TIFKAM, and applications on Linux run as long as all the required dependencies are installed in the box, so it is only a matter of preference.
I personally do not like where Gnome Shell is going, but KDE, XFCE and MATE are excelent.
And making the effort to learn about Linux pays lots of dividends in terms of computing freedom, It costs in time and effort, but I have come to the point in which I can use any RPM/DEB based distro, if one becomes way too annoying I just simply jump to another.
Not everybody has the inclination to endure what it entitles to have freedom, and I respect that, but do not talk about stuff you do not know.
Linux UI not straightforward? maybe, not unified? depends. Broken, no sir.
Could it be that all those enterprise options are far less useful in a business environment than having a more workable Desktop environment?
I know this will come as a shock to you, Desktop mode is what business want/need/use on Enterprise computers.
Look I can wipe your device remotely!, thanks it is a piece of crap anyway.
It can be copied. period.
Having said that I buy what I like, and always download to check first. Back in the day when I could not download it was a friend lending me a tape to check stuff what lead me to buy.
Most people who manage any disposable income behave like that.
We know for sure that tablet users use cad software, spend countless hours drawing, composing music and coding PHP applications, and even writing books. Well we all know that is only 0.1% of the tablet users, the remaining 99.9% of tablet users tend to use them for useless stuff like reading, reading web pages or using the tablet as a remote for checking the torrents on the computer upstairs.
A surface tablet even with a keyboard and Windows 8 is maybe more useful than a regular iOS or Android tablet, but is about it, if you put a keyboard on it it can work more as a laptop at the expense of being less tablet.
The problem then is that you are unlikely to find applications that can seamlessly go from tablet to laptop mode and vice-versa and remain utile. No matter what MS does working with word and excel in tablet mode is of very little use for anything other than reading documents, if you want to do any serious editing you are going to get hold of the keyboard... and that horrible surface keyboard requires a table, can not be used on your lap like a laptop... Turning the whole experience into a pain in the back as you can not use it while vegetating on the sofa, that is where you use the tablet. If I have to sit on the sofa with the tablet on the table, I will rather go upstairs and sit comfortably with a nice chair and full keyboard and mouse.
Or here comes the interesting bit... I would use the laptop that I already have, that has a keyboard, Windows, the applications I require and that I can use on my lap without the screen falling on the floor. If this laptop dies I do not have to spend ~£800 but ~£400 for a replacement, and it comes with vast amounts of ram, processor and storage than the MS tablet.
This leads me to the conclusion that I do not need a MS tablet with full blown windows for such a huge amount of money. For what I would use a tablet for, an Apple or an Android table would do the same if not a better job, and because I do not need that expensive productive software on the tablet really I do not care about it being Windows.
I can see cases for using the MS tablet, as being so portable can be of some use to a certain type of user who need to open MS documents or other files from complex Windows applications, but not as many as to represent a nice chunk of the market.
In my opinion MS is targeting the wrong user, with the wrong price, and with the wrong OS.
An interesting question is what happens if another Office compatible suite appears on iOS and Android, and becomes popular. My point is that what MS was trying to prevent is precisely this without realizing that tablet users do not do anything productive with the tablets (at least not 99.9% of the time)
"""2: Trevor used commands to grant privileges. Would you prefer an enterprise use old-style passwd files to maintain their directory of users, accounts and privileges? Really? Or do you recognize that, well, text files are not really suitable for storing credentials and privileges?"""
Really, why not? go on, elaborate, for example Cisco must be doing a really shoddy job not recommending all customers to store the router credentials on a MS Microsoft AD domain, and spewing horrible text files on a console that contains usernames and encrypted password hashes.
I'm sure that a binary file being all that binarly and all improves system security a lot.
Also I'm sure that every single computing scenario out there requires the complexity of AD, and I'm also sure that no one else on the planet has managed to centralize authentication on a network other than Microsoft's AD.
You clearly do not know as much as you think you know about Unix/Linux land.
I think that you Windows guys need to relax, yes you have discovered the power of scripting, that is all good and fine, but most of us have known this for like... lots of years?, even on windows, (remember vbscript? or any other Admin RAD?)
In my opinion (yes mine you can disagree with it) I have work extensively in both environments: Powershell is not specially powerful, the syntax combines some of the worst aspects of Bash and Perl with the slowness of a .NET environment. It is not completely without hope, but it is just an OK environment compared to what windows offered before, and most of the power comes from what functionality the application vendor exposes to the shell.
But yes, it is so good to think that MS is the beginning and the end of the Computer industry.