On 18/10/2011 9:15 AM, Invisible wrote:
>>> And yet, every PC I've had a chance to observe is still running XP.
>
>> Past time to get a new job.
>
> True, but not for this particular reason. ;-)
>

True but it is symptomatic.

>>> Now obviously I haven't been able to observe every PC in the country.
>>> I'm sure a small minority of them are running something newer.
>
>> Most new PCs come with Win 7 now. It is after all the year of the worn
>> tuppence.
>
> My new laptop [which isn't so new now] came with Vista. I don't use it 
> all that often [I don't leave the house much], but it's there.
>
> Question is, how often does the average person buy a new PC? Not very 
> often.
I bought my current Laptop a year ago and my previous one two years 
before that. That one came with Vista and a Win 7 upgrade disc.
I change my laptops, about every two years for one reason or another. 
But then I don't have a desktop and use them a lot. I also travel a lot 
so I want a Pov-worthy one.
On my last contract the consultancy firm (CSC) were rolling Win 7 out to 
all their laptops from either Windows Server 2008 or Vista. The client 
were going from Vista to Win 7.

>
>> Time you changed your town.
>
> Of all the reasons to move to another town "because the tills run 
> Windows XP" has to be one of the lamest reasons ever! :-P
Okay! I did not see *tills *I'll give you that. But even so... ;-)

-- 
Regards
     Stephen

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>> Question is, how often does the average person buy a new PC? Not very
>> often.

> I change my laptops, about every two years for one reason or another.

Clearly you have drastically more money than me. I'm still trying to 
scringe together enough money to afford the CPU to go with the 
motherboard I just bought...

>>> Time you changed your town.
>>
>> Of all the reasons to move to another town "because the tills run
>> Windows XP" has to be one of the lamest reasons ever! :-P
> Okay! I did not see *tills *I'll give you that. But even so... ;-)

By an unusual coincidence, I've just come back to my desk after trying 
to fix one of the three Windows NT machines we're still using... I 
wonder if that control software works on XP?

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On 18/10/2011 11:42 AM, Invisible wrote:
>>> Question is, how often does the average person buy a new PC? Not very
>>> often.
>
>> I change my laptops, about every two years for one reason or another.
>
> Clearly you have drastically more money than me. I'm still trying to 
> scringe together enough money to afford the CPU to go with the 
> motherboard I just bought... 

True, time you changed your job. It is not as if I am more clever than 
you. I failed my 11 plus. >:o

-- 
Regards
     Stephen

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On 10/18/2011 2:20, Invisible wrote:
> I just said that not /many/ people are using it yet.

I think you're mistaken. I haven't seen any machines but my old ones running 
Win7, and even my old ones two generations back are running Vista at this point.

> I still don't get how you can take megabytes of unformatted raw binary and
> glean anything remotely useful from it, but hey. Apparently there's some
> kind of black magic that makes this possible...

"I can't do this. Thus, it must be magic."  I feel like playing Yoda here.

> If you try something, and it doesn't work, you can keep trying it over and
> over again, or you can try something else. Which option is the most rational?

The "something else" would be "ask someone."

Unfortunately, software development has turned into a social endeavor the 
last decade or so. You can no longer obtain, learn, and use software without 
talking to other people who have written or obtained, learned, and used the 
same software.

> latest Ubuntu basically asks you for a username and password, and then just
> *installs* itself. Next time the PC reboots, you have a fully-functional
> Ubuntu install.

And you know something funny? People who made that work get a lot of flak 
from the rest of the Linux developer community because they're working on 
user friendliness instead of on patching the kernel to frobulate 3% faster 
or something.

> Essentially, things have evolved to the point where you can compare Windows
> and Linux, and see that each of them actually have merits compared to the
> other. And the point we're currently arguing about is one of them. On
> Windows, you just *install* stuff, and it works. Under Linux, you try to
> install stuff, and mostly it just works... except when it doesn't. And then
> all hell breaks lose.

I've never had software from a repository not "just work" when I installed 
it. Certainly no worse than Windows, which will still occasionally get 
confused enough to need you to uninstall and reinstall a device driver.

> And it irritates me when people tell me I don't know what I'm talking about...

It would probably help if you less often proclaimed that you don't know what 
you're talking about in other fields. :-)

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   How come I never get only one kudo?

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On 10/18/2011 1:12, Invisible wrote:
> On 17/10/2011 07:10 PM, Darren New wrote:
>
>> Um, lots, yes. You think there haven't been any new internet protocols
>> since mid-1990's?
>
> Basically, yes?

http://www.ietf.org/download/rfc-index.txt

> Active Directory uses Kerberos authentication, but by default it still
> generates weak-arse LANMAN password hashes for backwards compatibility. So
> it doesn't matter how strong Kerberos may or may not be, because you can
> just attack LANMAN instead.

Well, unless you've installed one of the newer operating systems in the last 
12 years, or changed the default.

> That's just one example of how backwards compatibility tends to completely
> ruin any attempt at security.

It's an example of how someone who knows the default is insecure and doesn't 
need the backward compatibility hasn't yet changed their AD to use the more 
secure hashing?

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   How come I never get only one kudo?

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> Unfortunately, software development has turned into a social endeavor
> the last decade or so. You can no longer obtain, learn, and use software
> without talking to other people who have written or obtained, learned,
> and used the same software.

That is unfortunate indeed. Finding the manual can be hard sometimes, 
but it's infinitely easier than finding a human being who actually knows 
WTF they're talking about and yet somehow still has the time to tell you 
about it...

>> latest Ubuntu basically asks you for a username and password, and then
>> just
>> *installs* itself. Next time the PC reboots, you have a fully-functional
>> Ubuntu install.
>
> And you know something funny? People who made that work get a lot of
> flak from the rest of the Linux developer community because they're
> working on user friendliness instead of on patching the kernel to
> frobulate 3% faster or something.

Well, yeah, but as a user, you can just vote with your feet... It's not 
exactly news that many Linux users consider user friendliness and easy 
usibility to be undesirable.

>> Essentially, things have evolved to the point where you can compare
>> Windows
>> and Linux, and see that each of them actually have merits compared to the
>> other. And the point we're currently arguing about is one of them. On
>> Windows, you just *install* stuff, and it works. Under Linux, you try to
>> install stuff, and mostly it just works... except when it doesn't. And
>> then
>> all hell breaks lose.
>
> I've never had software from a repository not "just work" when I
> installed it. Certainly no worse than Windows, which will still
> occasionally get confused enough to need you to uninstall and reinstall
> a device driver.

Problem #1 is when the software you want isn't in the repository, or is 
in a different repository. Problem #2 is when the package depends on a 
different version of some core library that everything in the entire 
system uses.

I've seen crappy Windows drivers do lame things. Applications tend to 
work reasonably well - except stuff written for Windows 3. (It depresses 
me how much software of that kind I still have to deal with at work...)

>> And it irritates me when people tell me I don't know what I'm talking
>> about...
>
> It would probably help if you less often proclaimed that you don't know
> what you're talking about in other fields. :-)

Alternatively, I guess I could just not talk at all. That would fix 
it... I mean, everybody thinks I'm an idiot, but I don't have to remind 
myself of that constantly I guess.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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On 18/10/2011 6:14 PM, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> I mean, everybody thinks I'm an idiot, but I don't have to remind 
> myself of that constantly I guess. 
If that were so then you would be ignored. *No one* thinks that you are 
an idiot. Your interactive drivers need upgrading, that's all. One of 
the reasons that people keep saying get a new job. Is because you need 
to get out of your rut and the longer you leave it the harder it will be.
Honestly you are liked and respected. Do you think that Jim and Darren 
would spend hours writing to you if they thought that you were an idiot. 
Neither of them seem to be the sort of people that enjoy running someone 
down.

PS Would a line of kisses help? ;-)

:-* :-*

:-P

-- 
Regards
     Stephen

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On 10/18/2011 1:15 AM, Invisible wrote:
>> Time you changed your town.
>
> Of all the reasons to move to another town "because the tills run
> Windows XP" has to be one of the lamest reasons ever! :-P

Actually, its semi-probable that "office machines" will remain supported 
for longer, and run far older versions. The reason being that the code 
on them is mission critical, not 100% certain to work on a newer 
version, and thus businesses are likely to cling to them by their 
fingernails *much* longer than the home users do. They need to know the 
things are stable, and even more so when the last "stable" one wasn't 
all that stable to start with.

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On 18/10/2011 09:07 PM, Patrick Elliott wrote:

> Actually, its semi-probable that "office machines" will remain supported
> for longer, and run far older versions.

Quite. Often moving to a new version means spending time testing that 
everything still works right. And time is money, right?

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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On 10/18/2011 3:42 AM, Invisible wrote:
>>> Question is, how often does the average person buy a new PC? Not very
>>> often.
>
>> I change my laptops, about every two years for one reason or another.
>
> Clearly you have drastically more money than me. I'm still trying to
> scringe together enough money to afford the CPU to go with the
> motherboard I just bought...
>
>>>> Time you changed your town.
>>>
>>> Of all the reasons to move to another town "because the tills run
>>> Windows XP" has to be one of the lamest reasons ever! :-P
>> Okay! I did not see *tills *I'll give you that. But even so... ;-)
>
> By an unusual coincidence, I've just come back to my desk after trying
> to fix one of the three Windows NT machines we're still using... I
> wonder if that control software works on XP?
Should. XP was the "upgrade" for both 98 and NT, replacing both. So, 
there isn't likely a reason it wouldn't. Unless, of course, there is 
some wrench in the gears, due to some minor quirk they changed between 
NT and XP, which suddenly hosed those specific applications. That is 
generally why, combined with pure ignorance of even if they would work, 
and how well, that keeps old crap in the system.

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