http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/04/12/why_pc_sales_are_declining_old_pcs_still_work_just_fine.html

tl;dr: PCs have reached good enough. A decent computer from 5 years ago will probably run productivity software today just as well as it would have done then (my office PC, for instance, is running Office 2010 on XP). There's nothing to be gained by upgrading for most users so they don't. Hence PC lifespans are greatly increased.

I must say, I think there's probably some truth in this. For many people we've reached the point where upgrading will not offer enough tangible benefit to be worth the cost so they either upgrade infrequently or not at all. Probably, although he doesn't touch on this, we've reached a point where the market is saturated - the majority of new sales today will be upgrades/replacements rather than completely new adoptions. This drop in growth of the userbase manifests itself as reduced sales, but is to be expected.

I just love a good bit of conspiracy/mystery/rumour!

8 hours ago, evildictait​or wrote

@GoddersUK: Bah. Missed out 2k. Also 2k3 == Windows XP == NT 5.0 And you missed out 7. But yeah.

hmm... but from an end user perspective 7 is just Vista with a few performance enhancements and a shiny new skin. Anything that works on one should work on the other. It was basically an iterative release with a skin to trick people...

My rationale was that 2k and xp are brothers (as per their NT version numbers 5.0 and 5.1) while their cousin (2k3/2k3R2) served as the father of another set of brothers Vista, 7, 8 and 8.1 (again: NT 6.0, 6.1, 6.2 and 6.3). I guess you could argue that I should start that family with Vista and lump 2k3 with the other NT 5 systems, though. (Although I'm aware that from 7 onwards MS are too worried that changing the major NT version number will break too many third party apps so that may not be a reliable guide, the fact they match with my analysis is more coincidence than anything.)

It's also true that there are major differences between 8.1 and Vista, the problem is pinpointing the major upgrade - it's a result of the sum of a series of more incremental changes, with no obvious "major" candidate. So while I think 7 is basically Vista and 8 is basically 7 I don't think 8 is basically Vista.

Anyway, I just realised the metaphor I used above makes me look like a retard...

10 minutes ago, evildictait​or wrote

NT4 -> XP -> XP SP2 -> Vista -> 7 -> 8 -> 8.1

NT4 -> 2000 -> XP SP2 -> Vista (or, perhaps 2k3 here)  -> 8 surely? Then again it all depends how you define a major version - marketting, method of release, adoption/life cycle, NT version number, UX or internal changes?

EDIT: In fact I think I'd go for:

NT 4 > 2000 > 2K3 > (8?)

Well that was unexpected. Although the BBC have stated that one of the things holding an iPlayer WP app back as a bug in WP7 they hoped would be fixed.

(Note: It's not listed as published by the BBC and I can find no mention of it on their site, but it was being pushed on one of the official Microsoft facebook pages so I'm going to assume it's fairly legit, if unofficial. Also I only have WP7 so I can't vouch for it).

Windows Blue will be called 8.1 and be a free update delivered through the store. How exciting!

Not really much else to say as that blog post doesn't carry much more information.

1 hour ago, evildictait​or wrote

*snip*

Ah yes, but it is not serviced by IBM. 

Also I'm not sure hardware counts for the purposes of this challenge. (Otherwise you could claim that, for example, a number of bridges have been maintained for longer than 10 years, but that's an unfair comparison).

The programme run is still the same too

35 minutes ago, evildictait​or wrote

*snip*

Find me any computer program - by any company - that is in general use with an meaningful in-service arrangement that is longer than 5 years - never mind the 10 that XP has been in service.

Challenge, accepted!

http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/13/04/25/1610244/texas-companys-antique-computers-are-for-production-not-display

It's even still serviced by an IBM trained technician!

Yes, Windows 8 does carry a learning curve. No, it's not intuitive (but is any software if you put it in front of someone who's never used a computer... that's simply not the target market), but that's not necessarily a bad thing. What's important is how efficient it is when you know how to use it and how easy it is to learn. For the most point Windows 8 only falls down on the last point where, if you don't RTFM, you may take a while to learn about things like the charms bar. (The only big issue that comes to mind for the penultimate point is running Metro apps in a window.)

6 hours ago, Bas wrote

*snip*

Don't they? OEMs aren't just rolling a bunch of dice and then buying whatever number comes out of that times a million.

They must be pretty epic dice if they can roll 100...

19 hours ago, wastingtime​withforums wrote

*snip*

Hm. You're right. Makes not much sense, since there's often internal IE6 dependency. OK, scratch that IE8 point.

I meant what would be the point of releasing XP SE if it reaches end of life at the same time as XP?

You can already get XP "SE" anyway - go to Windows Update and install the updates. If someone's not done that they're not going to pay $30 to do so from a CD...

7 minutes ago, wastingtime​withforums wrote

And by bundling XP SE with IE8 (instead of IE6) they can retire it at regular XP's deadline too.

And what exactly would that achieve?

EDIT: Although most corner shops probably have better IT systems than the UK government anyway...

EDIT: In fact, the MS spokesperson in that article is quoted as saying:

This has not changed the underlying nature of Skype's peer-to-peer (P2P) architecture, in which supernodes simply allow users to find one another (calls do not pass through supernodes)

(And quite honestly I don't want that to change...)

41 minutes ago, Dr Herbie wrote

@figuerres: I think you'll find they invented...  ...And towels.

Hey, you sass that hoopy Steve Jobs? There's a frood who really knows where his towel is!

Jan 08, 2013 at 5:51 PM, wkempf wrote

"If you don't pay for it, you are the product." No one is being conditioned to accept continued incursions. Advertising is a necessary alternative to paid services. Always has been, and always will be. No, what's changing is that we, as customers, are becoming less willing to actually pay for anything. As such, we're getting what we've asked for.

Skype (real time video and audio, at least) is p2p. It costs Microsoft jack to run, except a few login servers.

http://uk.nook.com/

4 hours ago, evildictait​or wrote

*snip*

But without encryption, the pagefile, any syncronised documents and the VPN keys are all recoverable

1) I'm not suggesting they don't encrypt, I'm just suggesting that they shouldn't be relying on encryption. If I ask how I know my data is safe and they say encryption I won't be satisfied (although I will be less dissatisfied than I am at the moment).

2) I'm precisely suggesting they wouldn't sync the documents. They'd log onto the database, say via SSH, view what they needed to, change what they needed to and be done with it. There may be cases where a specific individuals files are required offline and they have to keep them locally, but that should never need to be more than a handful of individuals in one go. That's just an unavoidable risk. Yes, encrypt but don't have a false sense of security. Work in a remote/virtual desktop on the server if needs be.

3) The VPN keys are hopefully password protected. That user's keys should be revoked and replaced as soon as the laptop is lost. Even better your logs will help you know if any data has been compromised, who's data and even some clue as to by whom.

4) The pagefile: Not my area of expertise. But your complete database with millions of people's records won't be in there, right? Regardless, you've made the bad guys' job harder.

If you work for a company, and you don't have encryption on your work tablet/laptop then you shouldn't be allowed to take it outside. And even if you didn't want to ever take it outside, encryption won't hurt.

Bitlocker everything, do it now. Now add two-factor auth and swipe access to your offices. Until you've done that, everything else is just pretending you've got security.

I'm not disagreeing. But I don't think "it's encrypted" is an excuse for having that stored locally data on a portable device. And it's only cold comfort - after all you have to assume that once an attacker has physical access to a machine it's compromised (sure, it helps that you probably won't get it back so surreptitiously sticking a key logger in there won't help them but I'd argue that the point still stands).

2 hours ago, evildictait​or wrote

2. Don't ever put data on laptops, or take laptops out of buildings (this makes it hard for the government employees to work from home, meet contractors etc, so there is a large cost associated with this. 

It may be true for some of the data that gets lost (e.g. a laptop with security plans for a major event) that not putting it on a laptop would be an inconvenience, but there are many many cases of lost data (and it's not just the government that this happens to) where they leave behind a laptop or portable storage device that has a database of individuals' data on it. There is no excuse for this ever being on a personal computer. If they need to work out of the office they should VPN onto the corporate network and access the data remotely.

I applaud encryption of the data, it's a step in the right direction. But, in the words of XKCD, "strictly speaking it's better than the alternative, yet someone is clearly doing their job horribly wrong". 

EDIT: Of course, even on the server, the data should still be encrypted.

1 hour ago, evildictait​or wrote

In fairness, that's because we've had a whole bunch of idiots leave laptops on trains before :/

Although encrypting data that often shouldn't be on the laptops in the first place is not exactly what I would term a solution...

(time is 2:36.34 onwards)

But then what do we expect? After all the UK government considers "wish-it-was-two-factor" authentication to be secure.