Microsoft and Apple create a better user experience gratis
The two giants work together to create a universal gain in security and ease of use without any necessary purchase of new hardware or services to implement.
316 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Aug 2008
For that kind of money, I don't understand why Apple is thinking they get something out of this by enriching Google who should be their competitor given ChromeOS and other attempts to keep people somewhere other than on Apple products. Apple could improve their own co-financed search engine, maybe even pick up the ashes of AltaVista. But it's probably must easier to just accept the Google dosh.
Microsoft sent me notice just this morning that if I didn't login again on my OneDrive account that they would freeze it and my files might disappear. One would expect them to take the hint after two years of non-use that I didn't care to participate in their file manipulation scheme and won't be using it again. This AI thing makes me determined to keep it that way.
I heard that Microsoft was making the Surface devices easier to repair as a selling point to contract with Apple anythhing.
But with the right-to-repair movement catching some momentum, I wondered if they are more motivated by a foreshadowing of compliance mandates.
So, I read the subtitle of this article as "Replacement components available in US, Canada, France--only for now"
Before the advent of 7zip, WinRAR could compress a SQL Server backup file to one-tenth of its original size and unpack it before any of the contemporaneous zip applications could even get started. Defeating the payment nag was trivial once you found the free version.
After Microsoft began to include a compressed backup option in its Standard versions of SQL Server, the compression was only about one-fourth and recovery was slow, but predictable. So, no extra steps necessary and we lived with it.
Yes, it's all 7-Zip now if you roll your own file compression, on Windows at least. I just like to remember why some of the older stuff was great in its day.
When I worked under a Microsoft support contract, answering the phones as Microsoft Tech Support, we had the occasional call for NT4 on an Alpha. Our callers would tell us that they would not give up their machines because of the 64-bit processing and the calculation rate being much faster for their large batch processing tasks, frequently performed with the assistance of custom applications.
One of the supervisors of the contract had a side hustle as a recycler of old circuit boards and harvesting the gold from them. Believe me, he made some cash that way. One day, he ran across an old Alpha system which had by then been discontinued. He brought it in and we could finally see what we were being described over the phone.
The trouble usually was that when NT4 had a new service pack, many of the older Alpha systems would not update. It seems that the firmware necessary for boot would burn in and not accept updates. We had to tell the Alpha people that we could not fix hardware, that they were stuck unless they could replace the relevant parts.
It's not always Microsoft that is at fault, they're just a convenient target because of their tendency to create faults.
Where did the backlash to The Cloud go? I heard briefly, most likely on this site, that some were awakening to the absurdity of The Cloud and paying by the minute and the byte for all server operations was not cost effective. Only those without the capacity to manage their own infrastructure needed the assistance of the Giants (Amazon, Google and Microsoft). Only feeble-minded management followed the trend of The Cloud, but the realization of the expenses and new points of failure were beginning to take hold.
Oh well, on to the next big thing. What is it? Globally managed block-chains for user IDs on subscription services for any device. Got to be a security related thing in there somewhere-and a fee structure, of course.
I worked in a shopping mall back in the day. I remember when a new large department store opened with the latest in energy conservation measures. Their claim was that the specially designed climate control system gathered body heat from shoppers to recycle it throughout the premises, thereby lowering energy consumption. All of the local media repeated these claims whenever the mall was mentioned in the "news."
The fact of the matter was that the store was in a desert climate and didn't need to be heated. With a daily high temperature of 104-degrees F (40-C) for over 100 days a year and the average annual low about half that, most commercial buildings had massive cooling systems and rarely used heating.
When the environmental pretense begins to take hold, what happens is that the claims of extraordinary and magical properties increase instead of the beneficial and practical stuff.
OpenShell does indeed work with Windows 11, though a simple jpg file is necessary to replace the Start button if you want to open the menu with a click and not just the Windows key. Even older Classic Shell skins work with it, the ones that let you choose colors and fonts. It almost makes the rest of Windows 11 tolerable.
Just so you know--I've got half a dozen Linux VMs for various services as required by the people I support. Windows 11, run by the institutional support people, is getting less and less use. It's just more stuff moved around into more places. Not what myself or many others wanted.
Microsoft owns your computer, keyboard and all. Any choice of what functions in what way is not your concern.
This may mean that I can only get screenshots like I want them from other operating systems. My work involves that often enough that Windows is getting to be less useful daily. I'll be looking for the registry hack fix for this or just stay on the Linux VM all day.
Couldn't be that the MS people actually believe they make bulletproof software, thus preventing them from improving anything and eliminating this threat also?
We have all seen management like this. They won't allow improvement since they only approve perfection. No changes necessary, ever.
It's like the Microsoft version of a Mac Mini. One mini-DP port, two USB C ports, one Ethernet port, three USB A ports and two different power buttons. One of those is for a UEFI boot and one is for a USB C device boot.
I hope the two power button options mean that I could run any flavor of Linux for ARM that I can muster onto a USB stick. By muster, I mean compile and abuse as I like.
Now to find the time to break this thing at work while I tell them I'm testing Windows 11 before we have no choice but to use it in our corporate environment.
All four data centers would be in basically the same place. Hickory, Conover and Maiden are all adjacent, and on the same Interstate 40, except for Maiden being just a few miles south.
The author might just take a look at a map. But this being Microsoft-based, maybe he used Bing...
I'm not sure that any of this further automation of Microsoft patching will help anything.
Having been a sysadmin for too many years and having to run Microsoft domains for most of that time, I have often wondered how much of my life has been wasted waiting for Microsoft to patch their software, reboot my systems and keep me waiting at the spinning balls until the update completes at 5%, 23%, 74% and inevitably hanging at 100% for what seems like hours. Not to mention the unpatched defects, vulnerabilities and other unknowns that make me test every system for some basic functionality after patching.
I once thought of figuring out how many days, weeks or months it added up to over the years. I'm afraid to know the answer.
VMWare, even the free ESXI, was once much more useful than any Microsoft or Oracle product for virtual servers, especially for spinning off Linux web servers so you could do real sites without the cringe-worthy IIS. Now, Microsoft has learned from (or stolen from) VMWare, AWS et al.
Times have changed and, like everything else, not always for the best.
Doesn't that eliminate the possibility of purchase of this thing in multiples for larger organizations? Keyboards are usually the first thing that users damage and replacing them is commonplace. But pairing the ID device with only the original keyboard is Apple gone arrogant again. Right to repair not an issue for them, then.
1) Oracle said that JEDI “virtually assures DoD will be locked into legacy cloud for a decade or more” Ummm, the cloud technologies are a service. I doubt any vendor would be able to sustain a "legacy cloud" as hardware and software would change without regard for this single contract, though it would be like the Pentagon to find a way to make that happen.
2) Oracle, the company which has kept licensing and costs so structured as to keep their clients on decade-old versions, said “stated objectives of flexibility, innovation, a broad industrial base, and keeping pace with evolving technology,” Really, Oracle? Really?
3) Oracle again: “stated objectives of flexibility, innovation, a broad industrial base, and keeping pace with evolving technology,” See all of the above. The cloud will change. The Pentagon will (slowly) change. Having a single source for services most likely won't alter either party to the contract.
4) The DoD “has little idea what type of cloud services will exist in 2025,” Oracle said. And neither does Oracle. JEDI is a contract for services that can give the Pentagon a place to go without forcing endless bidding and quibbling, like Oracle is attempting to ensure happens now. Hopefully, even the government will realize that Oracle is in decline and newer, more efficient data services are likely to come from somewhere else. Any cloud services provider will be able to keep up with those improvements. That is, if the Pentagon doesn't contract with Bill and Ted's Most Excellent Could, run out of a basement in Cleveland.
Pentagon contract, check, lots of terms and conditions that can be endlessly quibbled, check, length of contract most likely negotiable, check, additional unforeseen expenses, check.
Final bill for taxpayers: $100 billion to $1 trillion over two decades or more. By that time, the original purpose and goals will be completely forgotten and one of the alphabet soup agencies will have hundreds of permanent staff to manage the contractors.
They may be a criminal class according to the facts and figures, considering the high rate of those convicted of crimes or resigning just before being arrested.
We call them unindicted co-conspirators or persons of interest until such time as they are actually serving a sentence, but why quibble over details.
I understand why Google wants own the IoT (global domination of all things that tech can touch, and more) but what makes them think that people want the internet on everything?
If given a choice, I will always want my appliances simple. I don't want a toaster that talks back or reports to Google that I burnt the whole wheat again.
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"...aggressive actions, such as punching, stabbing, shooting, kicking, and strangling."
Sounds like an average day at the park with my 5-year old nephew. If his friends are with him? Add any other sort of mayhem.
But in an ordinary crowd, I have no confidence in any surveillance technique other than trained observers with mirrored sunglasses and walkie-talkies.
Other regions had their EC2 instances so slow as not to allow most data traffic. Since our proud cloud-first management had mandated the move of the authentication and authorization SSO systems to the cloud less than a month ago, the entire organization had a holiday from web services for most of the day.
Interesting how the art of conversation is suddenly revived in such circumstances.