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Re: Are we just running in place?

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On Fri, Oct 30, 2015 at 07:53:00PM +0000, Johnny B Good wrote:
> On Fri, 30 Oct 2015 13:43:47 +0000, gareth wrote:
> 
> > "RS Wood" <rsw@therandymon.com> wrote in message
> > news:d9h7ivF1apvU1@mid.individual.net...
> >> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/10/15/
> junk_your_it_now_before_it_drags_you_under/
> > 
> > 
> > Very well said.
> > 
> > Give me a machine with GHz speed, and astronmical sized hard disk, a
> > retina display,
> > but otherwise completely lacking in system software, so that I can
> > control from the ground up, just as I did with my first experience of a
> > PDP-11/20 back in 1971.
> > 
> > I always revelled in close contact with the machine, and as time has
> > progressed, I feel more and more divorced from the computers that I
> > love.
> 
>  That pretty well echoes my own experience with Microsoft windows from 
> win95osr2 and windows 2000 on. To my mind, win2k (classic desktop with 
> open each folder in its own window option) was the epitome of 
> 'connectedness' to the computer hardware which MSFT has been eroding with 
> each successive release of its successor OSes.
> 
>  In my own case, I solved that problem by simply not "upgrading" from 
> win2k. However, that strategy finally failed me with a recent (and long 
> overdue) hardware upgrade which forced me to finally upgrade the host OS 
> to Linux Mint 17.1 KDE 64 bit (the least retro/klunky option I could see 
> available to fit my needs).
> 
>  As much as typical windows users might think win7 is now the best option 
> out of the current OS offerings from MSFT, that's not the case for me, 
> hence my migration to a *nix based solution. Despite the major downsides 
> to using a Linux DE, I feel the situation with MSFT's offerings has 
> reached such a new low that I'd rather face the disappointments of Linux 
> than suffer at the hands of MSFT, especially in view of their latest 
> privacy policy enshrined in windows 10 now being pushed onto win7/8 users 
> as a "Free Upgrade".
> 
>  TBH, until win10, I think MSFT demonstrated a high level of integrity in 
> regard of their customers' privacy. Looking at the traffic analysis of 
> the "telemetry" that was published recently, it's hard to decide whether 
> it was commercial pressure to compete with Google et al in data mining 
> their cash cow resource or pressure from the NSA and GCHQ as the 
> motivating force behind this 'change of heart'. I suspect it was a 
> combination of both.
> 
>  The bad news for everyone, expert computer user and mere consumer alike, 
> is that the increasing sophistication and complexity of the support chips 
> (including CPUs) used in PCs and smart phones and tablets is allowing for 
> more sophisticated 'traitorware' to be embedded within the very fabric of 
> those electronic devices to the point where the choice of OS will make 
> absolutely no difference to the security of your personal and private 
> data.
> 
>  If anyone is naive enough to think that the use of retro pre-traitorous 
> hardware (eg Pentium 2 based PC kit) will make a difference in your 
> 'visibility' to your nation's security services, think again. Even if you 
> stay disconnected from the internet with your retro computing activities, 
> the advent of social media means that your immediate friends and 
> relatives will be 'ratting you out' to the authorities simply as a side 
> effect of their own lack of interest in what others know about 
> themselves. That, and the fact that pretty well everything your 
> government needs to know about you is now stored and accessed 
> electronically means your life remains an open book to those with the 
> wherewithal and a motive to take a close look at your profile and more 
> recent activities. Trying to 'stay off grid' will likely make you look 
> like an interesting target worthy of closer scrutiny simply because of 
> your failure to follow the herd mentality.
> 
Ditto.  The average consumer completely fails to understand the
significance of all of their personal information to the designs of
malicious interests.  They naively assume that "the government" or
large corporate interests have no interest in amassing psychometric
dossiers on the entirety of the population, and that they presumed
innocuous nature of their lives and interests provide sufficient
protection from abuses of power.  It may be true that most people will
never have their information abused for criminal or quasi-criminal
purposes, but the mere fact of the existence of their personal
information in clandestine files and databases is a latent threat at
best.

In Canada the RCMP desperately wants to classify environmental
activists in the same category as terrorists.  (Never mind that large
numbers of the RCMP are themselves criminals and terrorists in their
own right.)  Universities are full of spies and recruited informers,
and commercial corporations are increasingly becoming partners with
intelligence agencies where they are not outright front organizations.

The casualty figures may be in the fractional percentage range, but it
is very clear that police and intelligence agencies are making war on
civilian populations in the West and they are leveraging large scale
data mining operations in support.  The assumption that people
commonly make, "I've done nothing wrong; I have nothing to hide", is
incorrect when the motivation for one or another form of attack is to
make someone take actions against their interests for political
purposes.  The industrialization of financial fraud and certain other
forms of property crime is made much easier for those who have access
to great masses of information about the public, and if anyone thinks
the people involved in the intelligence community are above that they
should bloody well think again.

>  Leaving that depressing view of our current situation to one side for 
> the time being to get back on topic, it's always struck me, since the 
> days of windows 95, that MSFT's mission statement could accurately be 
> restated as "Never allow hardware developments to be reflected back to 
> the user as improvements in system responsiveness."
> 
>  They seem to have seen it as their duty to bloat the OS and apps just 
> sufficiently to maintain the user experience typical of 1995 in spite of 
> all the potential performance gains in successive generations of PC 
> hardware over the past two decades. Quite obviously, the result of the 
> MSFT/OEMs cartel's desire to drive the sales of new PC hardware. This 
> 'cartel effect' is so blatantly obvious as to have been informally given 
> the name "Wintel".
> 
>  The only hardware improvement that has escaped MSFT's attention being 
> the advent of SSD storage devices which have not only improved 
> responsiveness but also sidelined the 'rapid ageing' effect of a bunch of 
> invented pagefile options designed to accelerate the performance sapping 
> effects of runaway FS fragmentation induced by the kakamaimee defaults in 
> the single huge partition, 'all your eggs in one basket' setup of the 
> typical OEM configured windows PC.
> 
>  In short, the answer to the question posed by this thread's subject line 
> is a resounding "Hell, yes!" (at least as far as windows afflicted PC 
> hardware is concerned).

It is probably fair to say that in many ways, the art of software
engineering is going backwards.  Rather than a continued refinement of
best practices what we too often see is the accretion of needless
technical debt and a great squandering of finite resources.  To the
last the most critical loss is the resource of productive man years.



--
The practitioners of Freemasonry are the rabid Islamic extremists of
Christiandom.  Heroin makes them invincible and all-knowing, and
therefore superior to mere mortals.  Their primary distinguishing
characteristic is the habit of Orwellian doublethink which permits
them to be uncivilized while faking participation in civil society.
Pound for pound they are umatched for sheer density of stupid.

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Thread

Are we just running in place? RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com> - 2015-10-30 15:53 +0300
  Re: Are we just running in place? "gareth" <no.spam@thank.you.invalid> - 2015-10-30 13:43 +0000
    Re: Are we just running in place? Dan Espen <despen@verizon.net> - 2015-10-30 10:28 -0400
      Re: Are we just running in place? Stan Barr <plan.b@bluesomatic.org> - 2015-10-30 15:34 +0000
        Re: Are we just running in place?     wje@acm.org (Bill Evans) - 2015-10-30 09:05 -0700
          Re: Are we just running in place? Dan Espen <despen@verizon.net> - 2015-10-30 13:25 -0400
            Re: Are we just running in place? Bob Eager <news0005@eager.cx> - 2015-10-30 17:28 +0000
            Re: Are we just running in place? scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2015-10-30 18:32 +0000
              Re: Are we just running in place? Jorgen Grahn <grahn+nntp@snipabacken.se> - 2015-11-01 20:01 +0000
                Re: Are we just running in place? Paul Sture <nospam@sture.ch> - 2015-11-04 10:11 +0100
                Re: Are we just running in place? scott@alfter.diespammersdie.us (Scott Alfter) - 2015-11-04 22:29 +0000
                Re: Are we just running in place? Larry Sheldon <lfsheldon@gmail.com> - 2015-11-04 16:44 -0600
                Re: Are we just running in place? Dan Espen <despen@verizon.net> - 2015-11-04 23:04 -0500
                Re: Are we just running in place? Larry Sheldon <lfsheldon@gmail.com> - 2015-11-04 22:34 -0600
                Re: Are we just running in place? RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com> - 2015-11-05 10:30 +0300
                Re: Are we just running in place? Stephen Chadfield <stephen@chadfield.com> - 2015-11-05 13:39 +0000
          Re: Are we just running in place? Bob Eager <news0005@eager.cx> - 2015-10-30 17:30 +0000
            Re: Are we just running in place? Stan Barr <plan.b@bluesomatic.org> - 2015-10-31 08:05 +0000
        Re: Are we just running in place? Paul Sture <nospam@sture.ch> - 2015-11-04 10:01 +0100
      Re: Are we just running in place? "gareth" <no.spam@thank.you.invalid> - 2015-10-30 17:34 +0000
        Re: Are we just running in place? Dan Espen <despen@verizon.net> - 2015-10-30 13:49 -0400
          Re: Are we just running in place? "gareth" <no.spam@thank.you.invalid> - 2015-10-30 18:23 +0000
            Re: Are we just running in place? scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2015-10-30 18:59 +0000
            Re: Are we just running in place? Mike Spencer <mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> - 2015-11-01 01:33 -0300
            Re: Are we just running in place? Paul Sture <nospam@sture.ch> - 2015-11-04 10:19 +0100
              Re: Are we just running in place? Bob Eager <news0005@eager.cx> - 2015-11-04 21:21 +0000
        Re: Are we just running in place? scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2015-10-30 18:33 +0000
          Re: Are we just running in place? Uncle Steve <stevet810@gmail.com> - 2015-11-01 12:59 -0500
            Re: Are we just running in place? scott@alfter.diespammersdie.us (Scott Alfter) - 2015-11-03 17:29 +0000
              Re: Are we just running in place? fmassei@gmail.com - 2015-11-03 10:14 -0800
        Re: Are we just running in place? Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2015-10-30 18:39 +0000
          Re: Are we just running in place? "gareth" <no.spam@thank.you.invalid> - 2015-10-30 19:22 +0000
            Re: Are we just running in place? "Dirk T. Verbeek" <dverbeek@xs4all.nl> - 2015-10-30 20:27 +0100
              Re: Are we just running in place? bde@besplex.bde.org (Bruce Evans) - 2015-10-30 20:08 +0000
                Re: Are we just running in place? Richard Kettlewell <rjk@greenend.org.uk> - 2015-10-30 21:21 +0000
                Re: Are we just running in place? bde@besplex.bde.org (Bruce Evans) - 2015-10-31 04:15 +0000
                Re: Are we just running in place? scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2015-11-02 14:19 +0000
                Re: Are we just running in place? bde@besplex.bde.org (Bruce Evans) - 2015-11-02 16:15 +0000
                Re: Are we just running in place? Dan Espen <despen@verizon.net> - 2015-11-02 12:29 -0500
                Re: Are we just running in place? scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2015-11-02 19:13 +0000
                Re: Are we just running in place? bde@besplex.bde.org (Bruce Evans) - 2015-11-02 21:25 +0000
                Re: Are we just running in place? scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2015-11-03 14:03 +0000
            Re: Are we just running in place? Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2015-10-30 21:11 +0000
        Re: Are we just running in place? Mike Spencer <mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> - 2015-11-01 01:23 -0300
      Re: Are we just running in place? RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com> - 2015-10-30 20:05 +0000
    Re: Are we just running in place? Johnny B Good <johnny-b-good@invalid.ntlworld.com> - 2015-10-30 19:53 +0000
      Re: Are we just running in place? Uncle Steve <stevet810@gmail.com> - 2015-11-01 12:09 -0500
    Re: Are we just running in place? "gareth" <no.spam@thank.you.invalid> - 2015-11-01 09:42 +0000
      Re: Are we just running in place? jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> - 2015-11-01 13:33 +0000
        Re: Are we just running in place? "Rod Speed" <rod.speed.aaa@gmail.com> - 2015-11-02 12:45 +1100
          Re: Are we just running in place? Morten Reistad <first@last.name.invalid> - 2015-11-02 11:06 +0100
    Re: Are we just running in place? Waldek Hebisch <hebisch@math.uni.wroc.pl> - 2015-11-03 22:06 +0000
      Re: Are we just running in place? Morten Reistad <first@last.name.invalid> - 2015-11-03 23:43 +0100
        Re: Are we just running in place? jmfbahciv <See.above@aol.com> - 2015-11-04 13:52 +0000
      Re: Are we just running in place? BartC <bc@freeuk.com> - 2015-11-03 23:46 +0000
        Re: Are we just running in place? Waldek Hebisch <hebisch@math.uni.wroc.pl> - 2015-11-04 04:35 +0000
          Re: Are we just running in place? Morten Reistad <first@last.name.invalid> - 2015-11-04 10:24 +0100
            Re: Are we just running in place? Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> - 2015-11-04 09:55 +0000
              Re: Are we just running in place? Morten Reistad <first@last.name.invalid> - 2015-11-04 12:42 +0100
          Re: Are we just running in place? BartC <bc@freeuk.com> - 2015-11-04 14:57 +0000
            Re: Are we just running in place? Dan Espen <despen@verizon.net> - 2015-11-04 11:29 -0500
            Re: Are we just running in place? scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2015-11-04 16:43 +0000
            Re: Are we just running in place? Morten Reistad <first@last.name.invalid> - 2015-11-04 17:55 +0100
              Re: Are we just running in place? BartC <bc@freeuk.com> - 2015-11-04 18:04 +0000
                Re: Are we just running in place? scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2015-11-04 18:48 +0000
                Re: Are we just running in place? "Osmium" <r124c4u102@comcast.net> - 2015-11-04 13:05 -0600
                Re: Are we just running in place? BartC <bc@freeuk.com> - 2015-11-04 19:36 +0000
                Re: Are we just running in place? Morten Reistad <first@last.name.invalid> - 2015-11-04 21:15 +0100
                Re: Are we just running in place? BartC <bc@freeuk.com> - 2015-11-04 21:35 +0000
            Re: Are we just running in place? Kees Nuyt <k.nuyt@nospam.demon.nl> - 2015-11-04 21:07 +0100
        Re: Are we just running in place? Richard Kettlewell <rjk@greenend.org.uk> - 2015-11-04 10:36 +0000
      Re: Are we just running in place? "gareth" <no.spam@thank.you.invalid> - 2015-11-03 23:52 +0000
        Re: Are we just running in place? Andrew Swallow <am.swallow@btinternet.com> - 2015-11-04 02:56 +0000
          Re: Are we just running in place? "gareth" <no.spam@thank.you.invalid> - 2015-11-04 11:05 +0000
        Re: Are we just running in place? Waldek Hebisch <hebisch@math.uni.wroc.pl> - 2015-11-04 03:12 +0000
          Re: Are we just running in place? Morten Reistad <first@last.name.invalid> - 2015-11-04 10:02 +0100
            Re: Are we just running in place? Andreas Eder <a_eder_muc@web.de> - 2015-11-08 11:48 +0100
        Re: Are we just running in place? Paul Sture <nospam@sture.ch> - 2015-11-04 10:36 +0100
        Re: Are we just running in place? "John Jackson" <jj@nospam.com> - 2015-11-05 09:01 +1100
          Re: Are we just running in place? "gareth" <no.spam@thank.you.invalid> - 2015-11-05 00:09 +0000
      Re: Are we just running in place? Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> - 2015-11-04 11:03 -0500
        Re: Are we just running in place? Bob Eager <news0005@eager.cx> - 2015-11-04 21:25 +0000
        Re: Are we just running in place? Stan Barr <plan.b@bluesomatic.org> - 2015-11-05 08:01 +0000
  Re: Are we just running in place? "78lp" <78lp@nospam.com> - 2015-10-31 15:09 +1100
  Re: Are we just running in place? "gareth" <no.spam@thank.you.invalid> - 2015-10-31 11:11 +0000
    Re: Are we just running in place? RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com> - 2015-10-31 14:57 +0300
    Re: Are we just running in place? Dan Espen <despen@verizon.net> - 2015-10-31 10:19 -0400
      Re: Are we just running in place? "gareth" <no.spam@thank.you.invalid> - 2015-10-31 16:28 +0000
    Re: Are we just running in place?     wje@acm.org (Bill Evans) - 2015-10-31 04:14 -0700

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