This blog posting represents the views of the author, David Fosberry. Those opinions may change over time. They do not constitute an expert legal or financial opinion.
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Posted on 8th October 2024 |
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I feel that Forbes.com is being a little optimistic in this report. Saas (Software as a Service) has been around much longer (decades) than the 24 years that the Wikipedia article suggests, although under a different name. It is a kind of cloud service, so the user organisation does not own the software, but rents it; the software runs on one or more cloud servers managed by the software provider. It is commonly used for enterprise software like billing, customer care and accounting systems. Forbes.com argues that user organisations are getting tired of paying every year for their software, but this argument is flawed. For enterprise software, even if you buy the software and run it on your own servers, you have to pay a licence fee every year. Some aspects of the SaaS business model are very annoying, but it fulfills an important niche in the software market. Software vendors, Microsoft included, are still rolling out SaaS versions of their products and bullying their customers to change over to SaaS. Office-360 is an example of SaaS that they are currently promoting. Since the Microsofts of this world are only just recently getting on the SaaS train, I think the trend is far from over. |
Posted on 5th October 2024 |
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PC World reports on a recent update issued by Microsoft, which can cause your PC to display the "blue screen of death" and then be unable to boot. Microsoft has since withdrawn the faulty update: an admission of fault. This is just the latest in a non-stop history of faulty updates issued by Microsoft. Isn't it time that we got better quality software in exchange for our money? |
Posted on 18th September 2024 |
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The Register reports on new letter from "JavaScript luminaries and at least 2,500 other interested parties" requesting, again, that Oracle give up their trademark for JavaScript. Oracle acquired ownership of JavaScript with its takeover of Sun Microsystems in 2009; at the same time they gained ownership of MySQL and Java. Whilst Java has now largely been superseded by more modern and easier to use languages, both JavaScript and MySQL remain key technologies for web-sites; JavaScript is currently the most popular programming language in use. Java and MySQL are open source, but JavaScript is an open standard but not open source. Oracle's ownership of the JavaScript trademark would not be a problem were it not for the company's aggressive legal protection of the trademark. This interferes with further development of the language, and with support options for users. The letter points out that "Oracle does not make any product that relies upon the JavaScript trademark"; they do not make money from it. There is therefore no good reason to hold on to it, and they should let it go for the good of the software industry. |
Posted on 29th August 2024 |
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This article on Ars Technica reports on problems encountered by some Linux users, caused by a recent update issued by Microsoft. Typically for Microsoft, the problematic patch is meant to fix a high severity vulnerability that has been known about for 2 years, which MS has only just now addressed. The update makes changes to GRUB, which is the boot loader used by Linux, and by dual-boot (Linux and Windows) systems, so the problems are only being experienced by users with a dual-boot set-up on their PCs. Such problems are one of the reasons why I don't use dual-boot. I am not saying that the GRUB vulnerability didn't need fixing; it did, two years ago (by someone on the Linux side - I am not sure why this didn't happen)! Also, GRUB is not a piece of MS software, so it is rather cheeky of MS to patch it, and outrageous for them to break it with their patch. I experimented with dual-boot when I first started using Linux, but quickly changed to using virtual machines (VMs). Most power users of computers have good reasons to want to use both Windows and Linux. In my case these reasons include:
There are several tools for running VMs:
Here are some of my pages about virtualisation: If you want to try out virtual machines, I would very strongly recommend running them on a Linux host (Ubuntu is probably the safest and easiest; when installing Linux remember to create a swap partition), not on a Windows host. Technically, it is possible to turn an existing Windows installation into a virtual machine disc image, but I have never managed to make this work, so you will probably want a Windows installation disc. Check out the "How To Virtualise" guide above, plus there is lots of help available online. |
Posted on 28th August 2024 |
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Business Insider reports that the CEO of Amazon Web Services (AWS), a major provider of cloud services, has warned that, within as little as two years, AI could take over much of the software programming work at the company. If this happens, the change could spread throughout the software industry very quickly, and put many developers out of work. One problem with this idea is that the track record of AI in writing code is not very good; I am not convinced that AI is mature enough to fulfill this role. Then again, human programmers also have a rather spotty record, as shown by the Crowdstrike incident. If and when AI becomes capable and reliable enough to take over a major part of the coding workload, I have an idea where it should be used. Banks and financial institutions rely on extremely old code written almost exclusively in COBOL. COBOL is an obsolete language which is no longer taught to programmers, which means that that experienced COBOL coders are hard to find ("like rocking-horse shit") and very expensive. Since there is always maintenance work to be done on this legacy code (to repair bugs, and to adapt to changes in data exchange standards), the exorbitant costs of such changes are passed on to customers (us!). We should give the COBOL coding work to AI, before the few remaining experienced COBOL programmers finally retire, die or become incapable due to dementia. |
Posted on 9th August 2024 |
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This report on Forbes has some details about the law suit by Delta Air Lines. Delta had to cancel 5,500 flights as a result of the Crowdstrike outage, and claims that it suffered losses of $500 million. It has sued Crowdstrike and Microsoft, as I predicted. It seems clear that both Crowdstrike and Microsoft are responsible:
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Posted on 27th July 2024 |
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By now, most people must be aware of the huge incident of computer downtime that started on the 18th July 2024. The lives of very many people were affected by the massive downtime of Windows computers around the world. Systems used by airlines, banks, health services, payment systems, hotel chains and many other industries were impacted. Microsoft estimates that 8.5 million systems worldwide were brought down by the issue, according to this report on the BBC. The scale of the incident dwarfs the impacts of any malware attack, and is the largest single cyber-incident ever. Microsoft are clearly very embarrassed by the incident, and were quick to explain that they were not responsible for the system outages, which is only partially true. Then MS tried to blame the EU as described here on Euronews (which the EU have since denied). Also, unusually, MS rolled out software to assist in system recovery (in far less time than it normally takes for them to address problems). Most computer users were previously unaware of CrowdStrike. The problem was with CrowdStrike's Falcon Sensor software, which is a type of cybersecurity software (similar to anti-virus software); more strictly, the fault was with a data file used by Falcon Sensor, rather than the software itself. This video on YouTube gives a very accessible summary of how Falcon Sensor works, and why a faulty data file could cause such enormous problems. In addition to crashing systems (leading to the "blue screen of death"), it appears that system backups were affected on some systems, according to this report on Reuters. CrowdStrike's Falcon Sensor is used by large corporations to protect their systems: Windows, Linux, and to a lesser extent Mac systems, so the bug did not affect private computers. In this case the issue only impacted Windows server and client (desktop and laptop) systems. It should be noted, however, that earlier this year a similar problem started to affect Debian Linux systems, as described in this report on Techspot and this article on Tom's Hardware. Also, in 2010 a global Windows PC meltdown (described here on BGR) was sparked by a bungled McAfee (anti-virus software) update; at the time, the CTO of McAfee was George Kurtz, the man who's now the CEO of CrowdStrike! All this strongly suggests that George Kurtz has a very cavalier attitude to software quality, and is the real source of the problems. As described in the video above, Falcon Sensor works via a driver which runs at the operating system kernel level. This driver is extensively tested and certified by Microsoft. Unfortunately, there is no such validation by Microsoft of the data (similar to the malware signature file used by your anti-virus software) which caused the outages. This kind of data file, which controls the behaviour of Falcon Sensor, is referred to in the software industry as reference data. I have extensive experience of software testing, and I know from experience that, for data-driven software, comprehensive testing of such reference data is even more important than testing of the software that uses it. Clearly, the testing of the reference data was, on this occasion, not adequate; it turns out that the file was full of zeros, which should have been easy enough to detect! The process of recovery from the bug is complex and time consuming (requiring multiple reboots), requires administrator privileges and rolls back the protections provided by Falcon Sensor to the state before the update. Even now, more than a week after it all began, system recovery has not been completed for 100% of affected systems. The impact on people's lives is enormous, and financial losses are huge:
Companies are already talking about suing CrowdStrike to recover their losses. Good luck with that: the company is not rich enough to pay the losses, and will probably be driven into bankruptcy. If you own shares in CrowdStrike, now would be the time to divest. I would not be surprised if some corporations also tried to sue Microsoft, for allowing data driven software to run at the kernel level without them validating the associated reference data. Finally, just to rub salt in the wound, this report on The Guardian suggests that this kind of issue is likely to happen again. Maybe war (nuclear or conventional), climate change, global pandemics or the AI apocalypse are not what will wipe out civilisation, but rather faulty software. |
Posted on 16th June 2024 |
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This article on CNN reports on testimony by the president of Microsoft to the US House Homeland Security Committee, in which he "accepts responsibility for each and every one" of the cybersecurity failures that were listed in a recent US government-backed report. The report by the US Cyber Safety Review Board "found that Microsoft committed a 'cascade' of 'avoidable errors' that allowed Chinese hackers to breach the tech giant’s network and later the email accounts of senior US officials last year, including the secretary of commerce." This is only what I have been writing for some time now: that MS has a poor commitment to cybersecurity, and are incompetent and slow at fixing security issues. Governments already have an abysmal track record of keeping secrets, including those of their citizens and allies; they certainly don't need corporations making things even worse by opening governments' cyber-doors to hackers. For me, an apology and commitment to improve is not going to suffice; ask me again when Microsoft have actually improved. The US government is probably the largest paying customer for Microsoft products, so I am sure that MS does care; the question is, whether can they improve, and if so, how quickly and comprehensively. Some local governments are already changing their systems over to Linux and Libre Office, so MS has only a limited window of opportunity to improve. |
Posted on 7th June 2024 |
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This article on Windows Central make a valid point: that Microsoft has lost the trust of its users. I am only surprised that it has taken so long for this to happen. I lost trust in Microsoft many years ago. The article lists several things that have contributed to this loss of trust:
I would add to that list with:
I am sure that many readers can add more to the list, from their own experience. With the knowledge that MS does not want us to use Windows (discussed in the post directly below), the failures, annoyances and attitude that has led to loss of user trust looks more like a deliberate strategy than failure. In the operating system market, Microsoft makes most of its revenue from corporate customers, and almost nothing from private customer (most of whom get Windows already installed when they buy a PC, and which is licenced to the PC manufacturers at huge discounts). I have only one system with Windows: a virtual machine with MS Office installed. I am seriously considering doing what Microsoft seems to want me to do: to change to the online Office 360 service, to manage my calendar directly in Google mail, and to retire my Windows VM. |
Posted on 6th June 2024 |
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Microsoft has been trying to force users to upgrade their operating systems to Windows 11 for some time, despite the fact that many Windows 10 users have PCs which do not meet Microsoft's hardware requirements. Some time ago, Microsoft even rolled out an update to force the upgrade on users, and when their hardware is not Windows 11 compatible, this update fails, and then repeats ad infinitum, causing Windows 10 to become unusable (10 minutes to log in, and another 10 minutes to open a file!). This report on Forbes describes the latest attempts to force users to upgrade to Windows 11. Users with PCs that are not capable of running Windows 11 will be warned that "the PC will not receive updates and is not eligible for upgrades", so no more security or functional updates for these users. Users whose PCs are Windows 11 compatible will be given the opportunity to schedule the upgrade, so no choice but to upgrade. Customer choice is, apparently, an alien concept to Microsoft. Another annoying issue with upgrading your operating system is the insistence that you have (and enter) a Microsoft email address. Many users do not want to have a user account linked to an MS email account, for good reason, and some made use of workarounds to get a local account for logging in to their machine. This report on PC World describes how MS have now blocked the simplest and most commonly used workaround. Another workaround exists (described briefly in the report), which still apparently still works, but PC World expects that this too will soon be blocked. Corporate customers gave up the fight long ago, and their staff logins are all done using an MS-linked email id. There are, however, large organisation (like to CIA and GCHQ) who have legitimate reasons to not have such MS-linked email/login ids, because to do so would be in direct contradiction to their security policies; I assume that such organisations have an exemption to Microsoft's rules, although they probably need a variant of the Windows 11 operating system to allow the exemption. Add to all this the trend in Microsoft pricing, which is for users to be required to rent software (operating systems and applications) via a yearly subscription rather than a simple licence purchase, which will increase the cost of having a PC. Given how difficult and unpleasant MS has made life for users, it came as no surprise to me to read recently that Microsoft doesn't actually want users to run their desktop operating system. They now make most of their money from Windows server and from applications, and their preferred model is to provide these apps online (Office 360 - access is via a browser, and it makes no difference what operating system you run your browser on); still free for private customers, but corporate customers must pay; expect to have to start to pay for Office 360 access, even as a private customer in the next year or two. The knowledge that MS isn't really interested in providing your desktop operating system explains all of the complexity and unpleasantness that they are causing their users. They are trying to drive their customers away (to Mac, Chromebook and Linux), because Windows is a lot of effort for them, and generates little, if any, profit. Windows users run the risk of being left high and dry by Microsoft. Time for you to jump ship. |
Posted on 12th May 2024 |
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Sheryl's new laptop, which I bought earlier this year, runs Windows 11. So far, I am not impressed with the operating system. Last night I noticed an odd bug. We had been watching a video, with the laptop connected to our TV, and the laptop charger plugged in. When we were finished, I unplugged the charger, and the screen (the laptop screen and the TV) both immediately went dark as the machine started to go into standby (suspend). As soon as I moved the mouse, the laptop woke up. I puzzled over this for a while, and realised what had happened. The laptop has the default setting that, after 15 minutes of no user action (mouse or keyboard) while running on battery, it goes into standby. Obviously, this 15 minute timer is running even when charging, so as soon as the charger is removed, it goes into standby. It really should start the timer only when the charger is removed. This is bad design, pure and simple; it shows that the requirements were not properly analysed, which would have highlighted this bug. This is exactly the kind of sloppy design that we have come to expect from Microsoft. |
Posted on 11th May 2024 |
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This article on XDA is primarily about why product companies shouldn't use Windows in an NAS (Network Attached Storage) device, but a lot of the reasons they give are true for almost all uses of Windows. I was recently searching for an NAS in an online shop, and the first two devices that I found were indeed based on Windows, and I rejected them for that reason. The following is their list of reasons, with my comments. Windows isn't a lightweight OSIf you own a Windows PC, you are probably aware that the operating system takes up a lot of disc space, and keeps growing with every update. In the past I have had to use an external USB disc to make room for the applications and updates, which made the PC slow and inconvenient to use. Nowadays, disc storage has become dirt cheap, so this is less of a problem, but the larger the operating system, the slower it is to boot up, and the longer it takes to backup. Also, the larger the operating system, the more RAM you are likely to need to get it to work fast. Windows is expensiveEven Windows Home Edition is expensive. If you need the Pro version, it becomes exorbitant. Windows can be less secureI have written, in this blog, at length about Microsoft's poor security, and their generally cavalier attitude to security, so I don't feel I need to repeat myself on this topic. Windows isn't designed for serversDespite the existence of Windows Server operating systems, the fact remains that Windows is not good in this role. Acting as a server was an afterthought; bolted on functionality. This is why virtually every web-server on the Internet runs on Linux, which was designed from the ground up as a server. Windows doesn't have great remote managementIf you want to use Windows in any kind of server role, not just as an NAS server, you will be severely limited by its lack of support for remote management. Again, this functionality was an afterthought. Windows doesn't play well with more storage drivesAs the article points out, anything more complex than a simple file server (with a few disc drives) and a few users will cause Windows to struggle. Windows will do what it wants, not what you wantThis is a constant source of complaints about Windows, for example being forced to update, and then reboot when it is not convenient. Lots of services do not restart automatically after a reboot. NTFS isn't as good as other file-systemsWindows NTFS file system has a number of issues. Disc fragmentation (a problem which doesn't exist with Linux's EXT4 file system) is just one. As the article explains, Windows has no built-in support for RAID drives, so if you want RAID storage you will have to buy a dedicated external NAS. Linux has built-in support for RAID (all levels, not just RAID-1). |
Posted on 4th May 2024 |
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This report on Neowin details how Microsoft has given up trying to repair a bug that they introduced in one of their patches. Microsoft rolled out two security patches (KB5034441 for Windows 10. and KB5034440 for Windows 11) to fix the BitLocker Secure Boot bypass vulnerability. For some users this introduced an error ("0x80070643 - ERROR_INSTALL_FAILURE"). There is a manual workaround for this error, but it is beyond the ability of many users to implement the workaround. Initially, MS said they would issue a patch to repair the error caused by their faulty patch, but now they are saying that an automatic resolution for this issue will not be released, at least for Windows 10 (the situation is unclear for Windows 11) and the only resolution is by the manual workaround. This just shows what an incompetent and irresponsible company Microsoft is. It really is time for users to find an alternative to Windows: either Linux or Mac (which is just badge-engineered Linux). |
Posted on 1st May 2024 |
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This story on Techspot reports that Microsoft is up to its usual tricks: in this case installing software on its customers' without telling them. In March, Microsoft infuriated many Windows 11 users by automatically installing the Copilot AI based chatbot app on their PCs. It seems that enough people complained that Microsoft are now rolling out updates which remove this app. Installing this app, without warning or permission is seriously sharp practice; this kind of thing is why I am a Linux user (I never have to install any update that I don't want). AI is an inherently heavy user of computing resources: CPU capacity, RAM, disc space and Internet bandwidth. Why does Microsoft think it is OK to put this extra load on our PCs without permission? I have an idea. In future, whenever MS forces new functionality on you without permission, send them an invoice for the resources it uses. They won't pay, of course, but if enough people do it they may think again about their update policy. |
Posted on 18th April 2024 |
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I like the BBC News. I find it fairly politically neutral, informative and, mostly, well written. I have, however, not been using the BBC News App on my mobile phone lately, because it hasn't worked for many weeks. There was a resent update to a new version of the App, with a new look and feel. After the update, I had high hopes. It worked for a few days, and then stopped working. Yesterday it worked, but today it again doesn't. The problem is clearly bad coding. The error message states that my phone has no Internet connection, even though it obviously does, and I am able to read news from other sources. I believe that, when the BBC News server used by the App is overloaded, the App decides that the problem is with the Internet connection on the client device, when it is actually a server issue. There is no problem with the BBC News web-site, so I can read the news in a browser, but this is not as convenient on a mobile phone. The BBC has a long and varied history of problems with their news App, including general problems with playing videos, and with advertisements in videos. Other organisations are able to make working Apps for mobile phones; why can't the BBC do so as well? If they need help with their App, they should get in touch. |
Posted on 3rd April 2024 |
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After a recent update on my Samsung mobile phone (cell-phone, to some of you, Handy to others) I am furious with Samsung. I was notified of an update to "One UI", which I scheduled for last night. When I woke up this morning, wanting to check the news and notifications, I was not able to do so until I had typed in my SIM PIN-code; then I was presented with the One UI widget, asking me to sign in to my Samsung account. I do not have a Samsung account (I was able to skip this step after previous updates), and did not want one. My current phone has only software control buttons, unlike all my previous models which had a hardware home button, and the One UI widget has no option to exit or to skip the sign-up. After trying for several minutes, I gave in and selected the option to sign in with Google. In most cases this works fine, but not with Samsung. I was told to enter the verification code that Samsung had sent to my Google-Mail account. However, since there is no way to exit or even minimise the One UI widget, I couldn't get to my email app. So I went to my laptop to read my email and find the code and enter it, thinking that would be it. I was wrong: that was not it. The One UI widget then asked for my password. Since I had not been asked to enter a password for my Samsung account, I assumed that they wanted my Google password; wrong again! They wanted my, at that point not set, Samsung password. The widget provided the URL for resetting the password, but not as a clickable link. I made another trip to my laptop to reset my password, since I was still trapped in the One UI widget on my phone. That was finally it, after 30 minutes of fighting with the One UI widget and two trips to my laptop to access my email and then a browser, I was finally actually able to use my mobile phone. I have to wonder how someone who is not a software professional would have dealt with this. Also, how would I have deal with it if I had not had another device to use, for example if I was away from home without my laptop? Also, what if I needed to make an emergency call? So, here are some pointers for Samsung (and any subcontractors they may have used):
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Posted on 1st March 2024 |
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Techspot reports on the latest updates to Windows 11 , which has a number of bugs affecting some users. Problems include the sudden disappearance of the Taskbar, File Explorer crashes and degraded performance. In addition, some users experienced a failure to install (due to a failure to fully download the update). Whilst almost all updates cause some loss of performance, it is unclear by how much the performance was reduced; past a certain point such downgrades are clearly intolerable. Unlike free operating systems like Linux (Ubuntu and most other variants of Linux) and the tools that run on it, we pay for our Microsoft products, either directly or included in the price of our computers. I expect better quality in what is sometimes very expensive software. I have 6 machines running Ubuntu, and only 2 running Windows, but most of my problems are with Microsoft products. One thing that I strongly object to is paying Microsoft, when I buy a new computer with Windows pre-installed, when I then replace Windows with Linux. How long will people tolerate such low quality software? Users are dependent on their computers for work, entertainment (games, music and videos), for online banking and online shopping, and anything which impacts these is a major inconvenience. Given that there are good alternatives to Microsoft products, I do not understand why more people aren't voting with their feet. It is maybe time that users banded together to sue Microsoft for breach of contract. Readers might also want to consider switching to Linux. |
Posted on 16th November 2023 |
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This report on Techspot describes a recent update to OneDrive, which requires a reason for why you want to disable service (see the picture to the right). I can think of a few perfectly reasonable reasons to turn of the OneDrive service (not least to comply with an employer's or customer's security policy), and it is none of Microsoft's business. All that Microsoft has achieved is to make the service less simple and pleasant to use, with te potential to drive customers away. |
Posted on 23rd September 2023 |
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There are some things in this makeuseof.com article on "Programming Languages That Are Heading for Extinction" that are no surprise, and others that are just plain wrong. For example, FORTRAN (intended for numeric computation and scientific computing) and PASCAL (designed as a teaching language, intended to encourage good programming practices using structured programming and data structuring) serve very little purpose nowadays. Modern programming languages are not primarily imperative in nature, and people need languages supporting modern and efficient concepts like object orientation and functional programming. Both FORTRAN and PASCAL are very old, and their extinction is no loss to the world. COBOL is also very old, and although, since an update in 2002, it supports object orientation, it has some serious limitations (such as the lack of a large library of standard functions, and the very large number of reserved words). It was widely used by financial institutions, whose unwillingness to invest in porting their code to new languages has kept COBOL alive this long. It has become increasingly difficult and expensive for those financial institutions to get skilled COBOL programmers to maintain their legacy code. It is way past time that COBOL was put out of its (and our) misery. I consider Visual Basic and Visual Basic Applications to be evidence of Microsoft's long effort to sabotage the world of software (both development and use), and few will mourn their passing. Which brings us to Perl, which is widely used in web development, where it is used for server-side scripting (if you want to access a database on the web-server, you absolutely need server-side scripting). It can be used for a range of programming styles (imperative, functional and object oriented, for example). There is a vast array of free Perl modules to perform almost every imaginable task. Perl has been to a significant extent been supplanted by PHP. 80% of web-servers run on Linux, which means that the main choices for server-side scripting are Perl, PHP and Java (there are other options). The article states that the downside of Perl is "higher CPU usage and memory requirements". I use Perl extensively on this web-site, and my experience contradicts this criticism. Perl performs at least 10 times better than PHP in terms of speed, CPU and memory usage. The resources used by Perl on this web-server are immeasurably small, whereas I found the CPU load from PHP was close to 100%. In addition, I consider PHP to have some serious security flaws. PHP is now banned on my web-hosting service because of its resource usage and security issues. So, thanks to makeuseof.com for the article, but get your facts right! |
Posted on 13th July 2023 |
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This story on The BBC reports on Microsoft's attempt to take over major games publisher Activision Blizzard, makers of Call Of Duty, World Of Warcraft and Candy Crush. For Microsoft this is business as usual. The company has a long history of being bad at innovation, and of solving this problem by taking over companies to fill the innovation gap; this has been going on since the very early days of Windows. I think that it might be time for the authorities to break up Microsoft, in the same way as they did to AT&T. This would not only help solve their innovation shortfall, but also help stamp out Microsoft's uncompetitive practices. |
Posted on 12th July 2023 |
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I was triggered to write this post by this article on Hackaday. The author, Bryan Cockfield, suggests one reason why, despite computer hardware becoming faster every year, computers do not run any faster. What he says is that software is now being written in a more lazy way, using development frameworks, packaged services and more abstraction; the reasons include allowing software to run on more platforms, and reducing the time and cost of development. While the effect that he describes certainly exists, it is not the whole story. The phenomenon commonly described as bloatware has been around for the entire history of computers. Here are some of my thoughts on the reason and the impacts. We are all aware of the constant stream of updates to operating systems and applications, whether you are a Windows user, a Mac user or a Linux user. Some updates fix security flaws and some add functionality. In general, it is more difficult to retrofit (add as an afterthought) something to software (especially if the functionality was not originally foreseen in the software). Updates are, simply put, the reason for our computers getting constantly slower. AbstractionThe growth in abstraction is a major cause of the constantly reducing efficiency and speed of software, which is Bryan Cockfield's thesis, and this trend is gathering pace. It is worth noting, however, that not all abstraction slows your software down. I use Linux on my laptops and servers, and when I need to use Microsoft tools I use a virtual machine, which runs Windows as a guest on a Linux machine through abstraction; the performance of Windows and Office is better using such an abstracted environment than it is in native mode. The reason is that native Linux services (memory management, file system services, etc.) are so much faster than Microsoft native mode services that the gains more than offset any inefficiencies due to the abstraction layer. It is nevertheless true that the type of abstraction used nowadays in writing software is much less efficient. Security UpdatesA lot of the regular updates pushed out to our computers are to deal with security vulnerabilities. In operating systems like windows, where security was not properly thought about in the design of the software architecture, adding extra security often adds huge inefficiencies. Operating systems like Linux (and MacOS, which is based on Linux) have an inherently better security architecture, and adding security features tends to add fewer inefficiencies. Nevertheless, for most users, it is usually a good idea to install these security updates; the amount of system slow-down will depend on your operating system and on the exact nature of the update. Functionality UpdatesFunctionality updates are more likely to include abstraction layers, and therefore likely to slow your system down. Since Windows generally does not allow you to refuse an update (you might be able to defer it for a while), you will have to install functional updates if you use Windows. Linux never forces you to accept updates, so you always have a choice. Some functional updates also inherently add load to your system, because they are doing more (for example the Excel feature, added several years ago, that displays the sum, mean and count of a range of cells that you have selected). Other UpdatesSometimes, updates break things. This happened with Sheryl's Windows laptop, where updates kept disabling the bluetooth interface, until finally it could not be re-enabled. Users have similar complaints about iOS updates on their iPhones. After the introduction of Windows 11, Microsoft rolled out an update to the update software itself. This caused Windows 10 system to download and attempt to install the upgrade the system to Windows 11. Part of this upgrade process is to check whether the system is capable of being upgraded; if not, the upgrade fails, and the whole process starts again. This puts a huge load on the system (downloading, querying the hardware, starting an upgrade), making it unusable (connections to network drives fail, and lots of RAM is allocated to the upgrade process). Millions of Windows 10 users were left with unusable systems. There is a third-party fix for this problem, but no fix from Microsoft themselves. This is the most significant performance impacting update that Microsoft has ever rolled out, but not the only one. Comparing Operating SystemsIn 2012 I bought the Acer laptop that I am using to write this post. I immediately replaced the Windows operating system with Ubuntu Linux. It has Quad i7 processors, 16GB of RAM and I replaced the hard disc with an SSD. This system still works well, and is very fast. A year or two later Sheryl bought a laptop (an ASUS, with i5 processors and 4BG of RAM). It came with Windows 8.0, but has now been upgraded to Windows 10; it is not capable of being upgraded to Windows 11. For at least the last 3 years this laptop has been unusably slow (10 minutes to boot, 10 minutes to login, more than 30 minutes to open a simple spreadsheet, even after installing the third-party fix to the Windows 11 upgrade problem. This is all due to software bloat. Admittedly my laptop is higher specification than Sherly's, but nevertheless the above facts show that software bloat is vastly worse with Windows; this is why Linux fans call it Windoze. |
Posted on 12th March 2023 |
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Sheryl's laptop, an ASUS built for Windows 8 and since upgraded to Windows 10, is old and underpowered, and has been getting gradually slower due to software bloat. Last year I decided to do something about it, which involved:
This made the machine significantly faster, and lasted about a week, after which the laptop became so slow as to be unusable:
I recently found out what the problem is. Microsoft is trying to force users to upgrade to Windows 11, even users like Sheryl whose hardware is not capable of running Windows 11. What happens is that the update service tries to perform the upgrade. Once the software is downloaded, the operating system tries to perform the upgrade, and it fails because the computer doesn't meet the hardware requirements. It then tries again, and again, and again, ad infinitum. The attempts to upgrade grab all the system resources (Internet bandwidth, a large amount of disc space, RAM and CPU capacity), effectively disabling other, user initiated tasks (which run at lower priority). This is effecting millions of users around the world, and begs the question: is this bad engineering or bad business ethics on the part of Microsoft? There are relatively simple ways to avoid this disruption, by better engineering, so why didn't Microsoft employ them? The fact that they didn't bother, and rolled out badly engineered software (again!) suggests bad business ethics, so the answer seems to be that this is both bad engineering and bad business ethics. Luckily, there is a solution. It is possible to manually disable the update service, but only temporarily; the operating system will restart it after a while (10 to 30 days). There is, however, a piece of free software that you can download to disable updates long-term (you can re-enable the later, if you choose). I became fed up with Microsoft's arrogance, poor security, expensive software licences, bad performance and lack of user control a long time ago, and use Linux for nearly everything. I use a Windows 7 (which you can still buy on Amazon) virtual machine for access to Outlook and MS-Office, and Linux for everything else. My Linux laptop runs:
All of the above are free. Updates are only performed with user approval, at a time that suits me. Some of of you might want to consider a change from Windoze to Linux (I use Ubuntu Linux), especially if you are suffering from system slowdown caused by Microsoft and their upgrade policy. |
Posted on 17th April 2022 |
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Regular readers of this blog have probably noticed that one of my main news sources is the BBC. Just lately, however, the BBC app has become so bad as to be virtually unusable, not just on my mobile phone (not the latest model), but also on Sheryl's modern phone.
The BBC is a large corporation, with a large budget. The fact that they have advertisements on their App shows that they are generating revenue from the App. Why, then, do they have so many problems with the App? Their poor quality is driving readers and advertisers away, and is thus costing them money. |
Posted on 1st April 2022 |
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According to this report by Tech Radar,, Microsoft have sneakily backtracked on a change they introduced with Windows 11 which made it very hard to change your default browser. The original change meant that users had to separately set the default browser for each type of file that a browser might open (e.g. .htm, .html, .pl, .pdf, .aspx, to name but a few - to see a more extensive list, see here). This was a very time consuming task, and complex enough to discourage many users. The latest update allows users to change their default browser with a single click. It should be remembered that Microsoft only introduced the ability for users to change the default browser because they were forced to by the EU. By making it much harder to make this change, Microsoft were trying to bypass the intent of the agreement that they made with the EU. I suspect that Microsoft's legal department realised that they were running the risk of the EU case against them being reopened, or maybe they were warned by the EU. I suspect that many of you don't care much which browser you use, but sometimes there are good reasons to care:
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Posted on 5th December 2021 |
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This report on Forbes.com again shows how bad Microsoft are at protecting their customers. The article contains a list of bugs, some of them repaired for some operating system versions, and some not. Importantly two of the bugs are problems resulting from applying Microsoft updates/upgrades; the recommendation is to not install certain updates, and to remove them if you already installed them. Why does Microsoft find it so hard to keep customers' systems safe and working? I would argue that the basic design of Windows (7, 10 & 11) is inherently insecure and unreliable. This is why I use Linux (largely free from malware, higher performance, with mostly free software and updates done only if/when you agree). |
Posted on 26th June 2021 |
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As many of you will have noticed, Microsoft has announced Windows 11, despite having said many times that there would be no major new versions of Windows, and that all changes would now be handled as updates to Windows 10. SkypeOne of the major changes, as described here by the BBC, is that Teams will now be bundled Windows, and that Skype will not. "Looks like Microsoft is killing off Skype,", according to Adrian Weckler, the Irish & Sunday Independent tech editor. There are lots of apps providing voice and video calling from PCs and smart-phones, but if you want to call with an app to a real phone number, as you can with Skype, things are not so simple (I have yet to find one). I also know of no other service with the equivalent of Skype-In numbers, where you get a virtual phone number, which diverts incoming calls to your Skype device. Other ChangesThis article on Extreme Tech lists some of the other freedom-eroding changes to Windows. It reads rather like a rant, but nevertheless makes some valid points. Here is a summary of some of the key issues:
There may be other issues that I am not yet aware of. |
Posted on 21st March 2021 |
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I had to laugh when I read this story on "9 To 5 Mac". Apple has been ordered by a federal court in Texas to pay $308.5 million to Personalized Media Communications, a non-trading company which owns dozens of patents and generates revenues through patent litigation. PMC's original claim was rejected by the U.S. Patent office, but PMC appealed to the court, and has just won the case, although Apple plans to appeal. I find this especially apt, because Apple has a long history of stealing or otherwise appropriating other people's intellectual property, and then suing other companies for patent infringement. Like they say, "What goes around, comes around." |
Posted on 19th March 2021 |
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The Hafnium hack of Microsoft Exchange Servers (described here by The Verge) has now affected at least 60,000 Microsoft customers around the world, including many US government agencies, and the European Banking Authority (as reported here by the BBC). The original attacks by the Chinese hacking group "Hafnium" has now been adopted by other hacking groups to target other Exchange customers. The news article reports that Microsoft were made aware of the security vulnerability in early January, but the company didn't issue the first patches to close the security vulnerability until nearly two months later, after the attacks started. Microsoft also made a blog post which didn't explain the scope or scale of the attacks, in an apparent attempt to downplay the risks. This lackadaisical attitude to their customers' security is par for the course for Microsoft, and shows that they really don't care about the security of their products. |
Posted on 3rd August 2017 |
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Two recent articles (this one on Business Insider, and this one on Mashable) report on some rather disloyal statements by Zo, Microsoft's AI Chatbot. Zo disses not only Windows 10, but Windows 8, and the whole Windows family of operating systems in general. In the Mashable report, Zo is reported as saying:
The Business Insider piece describes how Zo:
Personally, I agree with most of what Zo said about the relative merits of the different versions of Windows and Linux, but I wouldn't expect to hear these opinions from a Microsoft Chatbot. Is it Microsoft that we should be worried about, or AI? Here are some of the issues that I have with Windows:
I simply cannot afford for my PC to be unavailable due to the whims of software updates. That is why I use Linux for most things; it boots very fast, and starts all the services at boot time, and updates are under the complete control of the user/system-administrator (plus, of course, it is free). If I need to use applications which are only available on Windows, such as MS-Office, I use one of my Virtual Machines, running either Windows 7 or XP. For some functions, my Windows Virtual Machines are actually faster than if they were running on a real physical PC. Windows has never been good, only tolerable (for some versions) at best. I don't really understand why Microsoft still has such a dominance in the operating system business. Isn't it time you considered switching to Linux (or a Mac, which runs a relabelled version of Linux)? |
Posted on 24th November 2017 |
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Microsoft continues to disappoint me, and to cause me problems. My laptop runs Linux (Ubuntu), and I have a Virtual Machine running Windows 7. I can boot up Linux, run the two commands that set-up the internal networking for my Virtual Machine, start the VM, login to Windows, and be able to use it, in less time than it takes to boot and login to my work laptop (provided by the customer), which runs Windows 10 in native mode. That kind of performance is pathetic. Some of the performance issues are due to my own laptop being a more powerful model; some are due to Windows 10 being slower than Windows 7; some are because Linux has better resource management (especially virtual memory management); and some are because a VM running under Linux utilises Linux device drivers to access the display, disk and USB devices, which are much faster than native Windows device drivers. A few days ago, I installed some updates on my Windows VM. There was a list of about 20 updates, and I chose to install only 2. The update failed, and I was offered the option of trying again. When I opted to try again, all 20 updates were installed (my selection of desired updates was forgotten). Thank you so much, Microsoft! Also, recently, I was in a training session, and our trainer tried to search for something in Eclipse (an IDE – a software development tool) on his work laptop (also Windows 10). After about 1 minute, he cancelled the search because it was taking too long (estimated time to complete the search was more than 5 minutes). I then ran the same search over the same set of files, in Eclipse running on Linux, and had full results in about 1 second! I just tried to use my Windows 10 work laptop, which I had locked. Instead of opening my user session, it decided to reboot, because of software updates. Now I have to reopen everything that I was working on. Linux always asks you before installing updates; if the update fails, it shows you the selection form again, so that you can ensure that you install only those which you want. Software for Linux is mostly free, and continues to get better and better. Many of these free programs are also available for Windows, and sometimes even for Mac (GIMP for image editing; Filezilla for FTP; Deluge Torrent client; Bluefish for editing program files; LibreOffice for presentations, spreadsheets, and documents; ProjectLibre for project planning; to name but a few), but they usually run much faster on Linux than on Windows. Other programmes are only available for Linux, and equivalents for Windows are not free. All this means that I can do almost everything that I need on Linux (faster and for free). There is a very short list of things that I cannot do on Linux: Outlook (I have never found an email/calendar/contacts program that compares with it, although more recent versions are not as good as Outlook 2010, and Thunderbird is getting better with every release); some MS-Word and MS-PowerPoint files do not always display properly in LibreOffice (problems with auto-numbering, headers/footers and font-sizing), but with every update LibreOffice gets better; I cannot easily connect to WebEx (a web-conferencing tool from Cisco) from a Linux browser unless I install a special version of Firefox; and I cannot connect a web-cam to my Windows VM (e.g. to Skype or WebEx) because the bandwidth needed is too great for the VM environment to handle. The time is fast coming when these few limitations will all be resolved, and there will be no reason to use Microsoft products at all. Watch-out, Microsoft: your dominance of the desktop is coming to an end, and not before time. I do not understand why most businesses continue to put Windows on the desktops and laptops of their staff, given the system administration overhead, user frustration and loss of productivity that this decision entails. There are alternatives: if your users really need access to Microsoft tools, there are XenApp and XenDesktop, which allow you to access Microsoft applications remotely, and cloud-based equivalents, and most users only need Microsoft tools part of the time (allowing companies to save on software licensing costs); many users do not need Microsoft applications at all, and can do everything they need using alternatives on Linux (usually free) or Mac. |
Posted on 15th January 2016 |
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According to recent statistics, quite a lot of you have Windows 10. If so, you should be aware that Microsoft is spying on you. This BBC report give some idea of what data is being collected. The good thing is that you can opt out of pretty much all of the data collection (tracking) when you install Windows 10, and when you install Microsoft applications such as MS-Office. If you want to preserve your privacy, you should opt out: set the feedback option to Basic, so that activity data is not sent to Microsoft – except for error reports. The default is for the O/S to track a whole lot of things about usage and send details back to Microsoft. Also, if you are concerned about the performance of your system, and limiting the future effects of software bloat, you should opt out. All that tracking creates a load on your computer (CPU, RAM and disc), which will increase as updates to your system are applied, and it generates Internet traffic that could cause problems on slower connections. |
Posted on 10th January 2016 |
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People seem to be surprised by this (reported in this BBC report). They shouldn't be. It is a result of how Google Translate works. There were complaints that Google Translate was translating "Russia" to "Mordor", Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's surname to "sad little horse" and "Russians" to "occupiers". Apparently this has now been "fixed", but I suspect that there will be more such cases in the future. Google translate was created using stochastic (statistical analysis) methods. It was fed with huge volumes of documents which had been translated into a number of languages (the original documents were from the EU, where most documents are translated into all the languages of the member states). Since then it has been fed with other translated sets of documents, many from social media and has learned from those users of Google Translate who take the time to suggest improved translations. One point to note from this is that Google Translate has no idea of the meaning of what it translates. If a lot of its source material translates "Russia" to "Mordor", the software will believe that this is a valid translation, and will not understand the insult. The other point to note is the part that social media plays in providing learning material for Google Translate. In some ways this is good, in that the software is able to keep up with evolution in language use, can learn about slang and dialect, and is able to cope with text that is not grammatically correct or complete. In other ways this is not so good, such as this case, where viral social media content can warp the software's knowledge base and produce incorrect translations. People need to understand how the tools that they use work, so that they understand their limitations and potential bias. I use Google Translate quite often, and sometimes I have to spend a lot of time and effort to get a good translation (translating forward and backwards, and adjusting the words and grammar of the starting text to give me a suitable result); sometimes even that fails, and I have to translate using other methods. Of course, Google Translate could be improved. What I would like is to be able to tell the software that a certain word or phrase is the subject or the object, that certain elements form a list, that certain words form a noun or verb phrase, and to force the translation of a certain word to a particular translated word (which is possible) and have the grammar of the translated sentence updated accordingly (which is not possible). I am sure that this functionality will be included in the future, hopefully soon. |
Posted on 14th November 2015 |
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In many ways, I am a huge fan of Linux. My servers run Ubuntu Linux, as does one of my laptops. I like that fact that you never get an update of any software without first agreeing to it (unlike Windows). I also like the fact that you have complete control of the configuration, that much of the software that you need is free and most can be customised because it is open-source. Canonical, the company that provides Ubuntu Linux, generally seems professional. Ubuntu Linux is free, with free updates for the LTS (Long-Term Support) versions for 5 years. Canonical make their money from paid support for commercial users. I like this business model. Having said that, I am very unhappy about the latest Ubuntu upgrade, to version 14.04, which I applied to my main server on Thursday (12/11/2015). Certainly, the latest operating system, and the updated applications that came with it, are better (bugs are fixed, the GUI is faster and more responsive). There are, however, a number of related issues regarding firewalling. For various sound reasons, I have a fairly complicated network topology at home, both my real physical network, and virtual (soft) networking within my main server. This means that my firewall configuration is also complex. Until now I had managed this complexity using a firewall configuration GUI program called Firestarter, one of a number of such tools that were available for Ubuntu Linux (the other popular tool was called Shorewall). Firewall functionality is included in Linux (in "ip-tables"), but configuring it via the command-line is complex and error-prone, even for simple network topologies, which is why I used Firestarter. I admit that I made a mistake when upgrading. I was prompted to choose whether to delete obsolete packages, and clicked "yes" without properly checking the list of 200 packages. Firestarter was one of those which is now obsolete, and not available for re-installation. This would not have been a problem, if Canonical had also remembered to migrate the configuration in ip-tables (in the same way that they need to migrate user-accounts, group accounts, printer set-up, file-system set-up and exports, etc.) to the new operating system. Instead, I found myself with a server running the default firewall configuration, which is fine for a workstation or laptop, but utterly useless for a server. My web-site was down, and all my local services (file sharing, printing, etc.) were not accessible. When I checked the available software packages, I discovered that there are no longer any firewall configuration GUI programs available for Ubuntu 14.04: they have all become obsolete. I found myself with two choices: either configure ip-tables directly from the command-line, or use a program call 'ufw' (Unix FireWall - also a command line program). Of course, neither option is supported by adequate documentation. It took me hours of trial and error work to get everything working as it was before the upgrade. All of that time and effort because the company couldn't be bothered, or forgot, to migrate a set of configuration tables. It also calls into question exactly how much testing is done on new operating system versions. When you do an Ubuntu upgrade (from one operating system version to another), you also usually get new versions of applications and utilities: updates which were not released for the older operating system). So far I have run afoul of two of these. The first was a change in how services are started/stopped/restarted: previously there were two ways to do this; I had an automation script using the method which has now been disabled, which rather interfered with my testing of my new firewall configuration. The second was a bug in the program that I am using to write this: Bluefish (an advanced context sensitive editor). Bluefish had a bug which caused it to crash immediately after starting it; this bug was fixed quite a while ago, but the fixed version wasn't added to the online software repositories (so not possible to easily download and install it) until this morning. I do hope that I have now found all of the bugs added with this version of Ubuntu. I also hope that Canonical listen to the complaints, and up their game for future releases. |
Posted on 11th November 2015 |
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I wrote recently (here) complaining about the security risks created by Adobe software (in that case, Adobe Flash Payer). Now I am complaining about Adobe PDF Reader. For a while Sheryl was complaining about not being able to print PDF documents from her laptop (running Window 8.1) to the printer attached to my Linux server. I then discovered that I had the same problem printing from my own Windows 7 machine. I spent quite a long time investigating postings on various forums about similar problems, and fiddling with my print server settings to resolve the problem, and finally I found out what the problem was. The problem was with Adobe PDF Reader, which seemed totally unable to print to my Linux print server (I assume that it was still able to print to locally attached printers, and also to Windows print servers, but did not test this). At some point, Adobe issued a patch which simply broke the remote printing functionality. The fix was simple. I replaced Adobe PDF Reader with another application (PDF XChange Viewer from Tracker Software) and now everything is fine. PDF XChange Viewer has excellent functionality for marking-up PDF documents, has a browser plug-in for viewing documents in the browser, and prints to my Linux print server just fine. The fact that Adobe's software had this bug shows how poor their testing is, and how unprofessional they are. Now I have retired Adobe PDF Reader. I look forward to being able to do the same to Adobe Flash Player (notice to all those web-sites built around Adobe Flash: time to upgrade to HTML5 and get rid of Flash's obsolete and insecure technology!). Of course, Adobe are not the only company foisting off dodgy software on us all. Here are some other examples from my personal experience (there are more, but space and time are limited): EverNote A really useful tool for keeping records of meetings, design notes, to-do lists, etc. The only problem is (or at least was - I retired it so don't know if they fixed it) is that it really hammers the performance of your PC, due to its Internet traffic (synchronising your notes with the cloud). It made my computer unusable. Samsung Kies Allows you to manage music, photos and videos on your mobile phone, and copy or synchronise to/from your PC. Also, it allows you to synchronise your Outlook calendar and address-book with those on your phone. The problem is that it doesn't deal well with multiple email accounts in Outlook - for a very long time I was unable to do any synchronisation with Outlook at all. Now I am able to synchronise, but I still get lots of duplicate entries in Outlook. Samsung make excellent mobile phones, but they can't write PC software that anyone would want to use. Apple Software If you have an Apple device, be it an iPad or an iPhone, you need to have iTunes to manage the music. There are third-party alternatives, but because of the effort that Apple puts into encryption (every new generation of device has new encryption), you have to wait about a year after each new device is launched before the third-party will work with it (generally the third-party companies have to reverse engineer the encryption software and then build it into their products). Also, no matter how often you tell the Apple installer that you do not want iTunes (or QuickTime) to be the default media player, it keeps setting the default application to Apple software. Also, the Safari browser is not a well behaved application. I run it under Windows, and under Wine (a Windows emulation layer in Linux). It crashes, hangs, locks the desktop, and generally misbehaves. It seems that it is not fully compliant with the Microsoft Windows APIs. |
Posted on 31st July 2015 |
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Microsoft continues its incredible streak of abominable service. When Sheryl first bought her Windows 8 laptop, she was rather disappointed to find that Skype was only available as an App (for the Metro interface) rather than as a normal desktop application (as on all other versions of Windows). I can understand why they wanted to have a Metro version, but what is wrong with offering a choice, when it costs them so little effort? Just recently Sheryl needed to make a call over Skype. Her computer informed her that she first had to install the desktop version of Skype, as the Metro version had been replaced and was now obsolete. There was no grace period, no early warning and no option to make an emergency call before doing the update; all this to take away what she had (which worked, after a fashion) and replace it with what she wanted in the first place. This kind of behaviour shows a callous disregard for customers and service, bad software design, and bad deployment policies. Why are Microsoft even still in business? |
Posted on 15th July 2015 |
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All I can say to this news, reported by the BBC, is about time! Adobe Flash has always been a complete security nightmare: a constant string on updates (many of which fail to install properly). The updates are often in response to new security threats, and often introduce as many security vulnerabilities as they fix, but sometimes they are simply to ensure that Flash developers using third-party development tools are unable to develop for the latest version of Flash. Plus, the update installer always tries to reset your preferences to automatically install future updates (not on my system!). Flash does allow you to make nice web-sites, but actually pretty much everything that you can do with it are easily possible using other tools and plug-ins (especially since the advent of HTML5). I certainly won't be sorry if this news marks the beginning of the end for Flash, and, judging by the comments from Facebook's newly appointed security chief Alex Stamos, I am not alone in my views. |
Posted on 23rd July 2014 |
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My girlfriend bought a new laptop about a year ago: an Asus, running Windows 8. The hardware is quite nice, but the operating system is a nightmare. Having started out with Windows 8, she upgraded to 8.1. The upgrade failed, and she took it to the shop, where they rolled it back to the original 8.0 version, and told her to try the upgrade again. Eventually she succeeded in upgrading to 8.1, but nevertheless needed another trip to the shop to fix another problem. If you want to use OneDrive (the Microsoft cloud drive) and Office 360, you basically need to set up your user account to be connected to a Microsoft email account. Now she has a problem with that connection: she gets a message that she needs to verify her (local) account, but the verification process doesn't work, and neither does the work-around that we found on the Internet. On top of that, the system seems to spend about half its time doing updates, which often lock the machine up, and take hours (sometimes even days). This means that the PC is only usable about half the time, and she can never rely on it working when she needs it. This experience is not unique to our machine. Based on this experience, I could not even consider using Windows 8 for my work. I need a machine that works whenever I need it, with no hassle. For my work I use a Windows 7 laptop, which is pretty reliable. Most of the major bugs have been fixed (although there are still some bugs with MS-Office 2010). The only reason that I use Windows at all is because I need full document compatibility with the people that I work with (customers and colleagues), otherwise I would use Ubuntu Linux. By way of comparison, we have an old laptop (bought in 2006), which is broken: the camera, the WiFi, the SD Card Reader, the battery and even the keyboard are broken. It will no longer run Windows (you can't install Windows because you cannot type in the licence key, due to the keyboard fault; the Windows that it used to run stopped working, also due to the keyboard errors), but it runs Ubuntu Linux just fine (connected to mains power and with a network cable, of course), and is fast (booting, logging in, shutting down, opening documents for editing, or opening media files are all faster than the Windows 8 machine). I used to use this machine when I travelled for work: I used Linux when I could, and when I needed Windows I would start a Windows-XP virtual machine on the Linux laptop, and even that was faster than the new Windows 8 laptop! I remember when Windows was new, and the concept of WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) was its unique selling proposition. Now, Microsoft seems to be focussed on WYGIWYD (What You Get Is What You Deserve) or WYGIWIGFY (What You Get Is What Is Good For You - at least what Microsoft thinks is good for you), and when you get it is when the machine, and Microsoft, gets around to it. |