Michelle's corner

A post by Audio Book Junkie proompted me to write this - http://mikefinn.booklikes.com/post/1309418/installing-windows-10-was-like-stepping-into-a-full-body-scanner-at-the-airport

I.T. has been my career since my teens. I'm in my mid forties now. So I've been in this game since the early days of MS DOS. I work on systems including Solaris (Unix), have operated ICL mainframes and am fortunate that I have enough skill in this field to be able to make my own choices.

I saw Google rise up against Microsoft of the day with the promise, "Do no evil!" which is a promise which is now a giant albatross around their neck; and oh, how I wish it would strangle them.

The purpose of this is not to scare you, it's to empower you.

What I'm saying here, it really IS that bad and has been for a while. And it is going to get worse.

The fact is that whenever you play one of those quizzes, whenever you do questionnaires, you are being profiled. It is reckoned that the average person's basic profile is worth about $800 US on the open market. It allows that person to be targeted.

Not only that, but information even on government infrastructure isn't secure. The US government lost the fingerprints of six million government workers in September - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/09/23/opm_loses_millions_more_fingerprints/

- you can't reset fingerprints like you can reset passwords. Doh!

Google, and other services, are profiling anything that you pass on to their servers. They were recently involved in donating equipment and services to UK schools and were found to be profiling children as young as seven - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-34994207 - According to Google, that's fine because they're not targeting them with adverts ... but they ARE profiling them.

There is a massive switch to bring people in to the cloud. Companies exist to make money and little things like laws are no barrier. After all, when you have enough money, you are above the law. Right?! Pesky things like legislation is only good to keep the little people under control. This goes back hundreds of years; it's nothing new. Patents were used to control innovation right back in the days of the steam engine. Companies colluded over light bulbs to ensure that companies that created longer lasting light bulbs, paid money to the other companies to make retribution for saving the customer money - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel

Corporations control people with fear. We don't have in-depth technical knowledge, and we certainly don't know what they're getting up to behind closed doors. Corporations control the news feeds and thus create fear. One of the most blatent things I saw was a documentary by Michael Moore, "Sicko." If you search my postings, you'll find my review on it. Moore shows clips of Fox News laughing and calling him an out and out liar about the British health system. Well, I'm in the UK. He is right and Faux News is the mouthpiece for a corporation.

LifeLock got stung a few days ago with a $100 million US fine for violating charges of misleading customers. - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/12/17/lifelock_fined_100m/

Microsoft made a critical mistake with Windows XP. It was running for more than a decade and they had real problems pushing people on to the next version of their operating system. So they are now engaged in pushing people to the cloud. HEAVILY. A week ago it was reported that when users turn nag options off, they just turn them back on again and keep nagging.

The reason is that once you're in the cloud, you are then paying an ongoing subscription - Adobe did this a while ago with their PhotoShop product and they're minting it - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/12/11/adobe_q4_fy2015_results/

They have changed the model; rather than pay once for a product, you're now paying for an on-going subscription. Nothing illegal about it. Just damn expensive for everyone.

The Internet has helped us sleep-walk in to this situation. Always connected, we can get at our cloud storage wherever and whenever we want. The problem is that it's costing us. Cloud services are having cock-ups at a tremendous rate. Not a week goes by without someone (mostly Google) reporting brown outs or whole system failures. Here's the latest from three days ago - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/12/17/bungled_storage_upgrade_led_to_google_cloud_brownout/

And they're also causing other services to fail. Another Google outage on the 9th also affected Snapchat that were using their services - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/12/09/snapchat_titsup_on_heels_of_google_app_engine_outage/

3rd December - Microsoft 365 and Azure portals hit the deck for all of Europe - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/12/03/office_365_goes_offline/

Trust cloud at your peril... they're also mining it as well.

It also costs you in data backhaul. Even people in the US are now finding that previously all-you-can-eat deals are now having their contracts changed mid-term to include extra costs - 13,000 Comcast customers complained about data caps recently imposed without agreement - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/12/17/13000_complaints_re_comcast_data_caps/

This stuff is just from this month, people. (well, except for the Phoebus cartel, obviously.)

Things have now become so crazy that the Washington Poast has azed it's "What was fake on the Internet this week," column, claiming, "Where many once wrote celebrity death hoaxes or “satires,” they now run entire, successful websites that do nothing but troll convenient minorities or exploit gross stereotypes." https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/12/18/what-was-fake-on-the-internet-this-week-why-this-is-the-final-column/ In other words, as El Reg put it when covering this article, "as with many things online these days, the internet has out-crazied the crazy."

Open Source

People frequently don't understand the open source economic model.

This guy trolls the audience for the first 3.5 minutes, but by 7 minutes in, you get the gist of what developers get out of contributing to a community... things that money can't buy (and you can leave the presentation at that point if you wish) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9p3nT4ujUk8 "You have to speculate, to accumulate."

Software is not a product in itself. It is a service which enables you to do other things. That's why Microsoft and others are moving away from selling you an operating system, and giving you a subscription service.

YES - BIG COMPANIES are moving on to the Open Source economic model.

Read this - https://opensource.com/education/13/2/open-source-economic-model

Light bulb goes, "Ping!"

So, basically, for a chunk of this, the free software that's out there is actually funded and paid for by business who are paying for the consultancy services that are needed to keep open source running.

But by being open, the rest of the world is running on it, for free.

So rather than paying big business for your software, they're paying for it and you're getting it for free.

Is that ultra cool or what!!!!!

Things aren't always straightforward though. There are some things you need to know...

1) If you're a lone user, then there is a learning curve, or else you're going to have to pay for exactly those consultancy services that the big corporates are paying for.

There are help communities, but you have to learn to navigate help forums and possibly use IRC to chat with volunteers who can help you. Or else use tutorial videos. All new software comes with a learning curve, even when you upgrade your Windows or Office package, there's been learning to be done. Open Source will not save you from that. Expect a learning curve and, if possible, use a local I.T. guru to help you get used to a new operating system.

I've taken a number of my friends over to Linux Mint, and after spending a day with them, they're fairly self sufficient.

2) Packages come, and packages go. This happens in the commercial world even.

Microsoft retired their, "Money," software some time ago. Regardless of the user base, they retired it. Other commercial software packages have gone, regardless of their utility, simply because they're not earning money. The same in the Open Source community. The larger packages are still around, and some of them are backed by corporations. But this is a moving world. Change is the only constant. Deep breath. I know that you don't want to hear this, but like the oak tree gets blown down in the heavy wind, the blade of grass survives.

3) Backup, backup, backup.

As an I.T. professional, I say this so often, and very few people ever listen. Failure is not if, it is when. Hard drives crash, whether they are spinning rust, or modern flash-based SSD drives. Back up your data. Frequently. Use two external USB drives and back up to each alternately. I.T. support are not magicians, nor do we have access to dust-free labs to repair your failed hard disk!

Software is massively on the rise that tricks you in to installing it (usually coming in through spam e-mail that claims an unpaid invoice) and then encrypts your data, charging you money for the de-cryption key. You only have two ways out, pay up, or rely on a backup. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/12/14/gamer_ransomware_grows_up_now_popping_uk_euro_businesses/

OK, so now which way do you go?

What I should have done by this point is twofold. I should have raised your awareness about commercial enterprises and also  turned your head towards Open Source a little.

There are three basic layers... Hardware, Opearting System and Software.

Hardware is an awkward one.

For most people, buying a pre-built system is where the action is. Walk in to a high street store, hand over some cash and come out with a box. Simple. The world is changing in terms of warantees and returns. Choose your retailer wisely. That's about all I can say... and also have your data backed up, because if that magical electronic box ever has to go back to the shop, they'll wipe it. Point number 3 above.

Building your own is more complicated. You need to work out what parts  go with what other parts. Also, each separate part comes with its own warantee and if something fails, you've then got to diagnose which part has failed. For this, a friendly tech support person is needed and, sometimes, if the machine is a few years old, things have moved on so fast that spares can't be obtained.

The pre-built boxes usually have corners cut to save money. The machines built from parts usually perform better. With a home-build, you can usually specify where you want to spend your money; a better processor, or better graphics.

Having said that, for the average user, even a corner-cut pre-built high street machine will usually do everything that's needed.

Laptops are another kettle of fish. To get battery life longer, and to get fast performing, heat generating components in a small package, corners are cut. Mind blowing statistics sell boxes. Ask Volkswagen about cutting corners and fixing the numbers. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-34324772

Operating System

For a pre-built box out of the high street, it will usually come with an operating system. The company has usually paid the manufacturer for the right to have their OS pre-installed. Other software companies will also chip in, like anti-virus firms which put a limited, three month license on there. After all, it is most likely that when it expires, someone will just hand over a credit card than find an alternative.

Home-build systems come without an operating system and you have to either buy a copy of Windows, or use a free one. Personally, I'm using Linux Mint at the moment.

Now... the operating system determines  the software that runs. Apple software won't run on Microsoft Windows, and neither will Windows software work on an Apple Mac. Same with Linux... to a degree.

There is emulation, but that's a faff and drains resources. So choose your operating system wisely.

One of the common things is that people will buy a pre-built PC and then replace the Operating System with one of their choosing; knowing full well that if it the hardware went wrong, they might have to reinstall the original operating system before sending it back.

Various things are done to avoid warantees and limit choices. Microsoft enacted with Windows 7, a system that would read the serial number of the microprocessor in your computer and profile the hardware. If you made significant changes, or tried to install your purchased copy of Windows on to a different machine, the activation system would say, "no dice."

Software

The software suite you choose to run, is key to your portability. But if you're switching packages then you have to be prepared for a  learning curve. Some of the most popular Open Source software has so much developing resource behind it, that it will work on Linux and Windows. Some of it will also work on Mac.

Some of these are The Gimp (photoshop equivalent) and Libre Office (Office suite); also Celtx (script writing) You can bet that you're not going to find Internet Explorer on anything other than Windows, so consider Firefox, and load the plug-in, U-Block for advert protection.

...you can get those up and running on Windows, which will buy you time to hit the learning curve before Microsoft starts getting worse with its push to get everyone on to the cloud.

And it is coming. They've already put effort in with Hewlett Packard to create the Stream, a PC with bugger all storage on board and everything pushed to the cloud; helpfully with a year, or two, free storage and use of the Office 365 suite.

If you're using Linux, then much of this software is in, "repositories," and if you've got some time and an old computer, you might want to consider following a series I did installing Linux Mint on a seven year old laptop - as frequently Open Source is developed without much of the bloat that is in commercial software -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6HBV51eD3A

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhOanVJlb6w

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PVkyQtutAQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHM16CY3_ZY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBvzWsaYP08

The key thing is to realise that you have choices. There are no easy rides, it'll either cost you in cash or learning curve. The only difference is that Open Source is now getting easier to use and the amount of  cash that the corporates are charging, is getting larger.