Comments on: I have a dream http://strom.wordpress.com/2007/08/27/i-have-a-dream/ New and improved with just a hint of lemon Mon, 28 Dec 2009 20:05:05 +0000 http://wordpress.com/ hourly 1 By: strom http://strom.wordpress.com/2007/08/27/i-have-a-dream/#comment-49829 strom Tue, 28 Aug 2007 15:57:10 +0000 http://strom.wordpress.com/2007/08/27/i-have-a-dream/#comment-49829 I must chime in that the freedom you speak of in this article is what will be lost if you truly want a safe PC. You won’t have the freedom to run any program you choose, edit, move or delete any file on your system. Most likely you won’t be able to even get to the true kernel and core OS files on your machine. I work for Gainesville State College and we have accomplished much of what you hope for here through hardware standardization and locking down the OS – thereby limiting our users’ freedom. A crash, lock-up or blue screen is usually an indication that some hardware component in the machine is failing, not a trashed OS. In most cases our users are more than willing to trade complete freedom to do what they wish to a computer in order to gain stability and reliability. Unfortunately, I see a day when MS and other OS vendors will force “Trusted Computing” and such initiatives on us that will remove our freedom to format our hard drives to install an alternate OS or dual-boot. May we never give up too much of our “freedom” to do what we wish with our computers. Be careful, you might get what you ask for and find that true freedom is what you traded to get it! By the way, my primary family computer has been running for almost 5 years now with Windows XP. All users but myself are Power Users. I am an administrator and my account has a strong password. This machine is rock-solid stable as the day I brought it home. Based on this experience I completely believe that the majority of home computers running Windows XP would also be stable if they were simply configured to take advantage of the security built into the OS right out of the box. This also means that every app downloaded off the net does NOT end up getting installed on this computer unless it is from a reputable vendor or trusted source. -- Brandon Haag, a current university IT manager I must chime in that the freedom you speak of in this article is what will be lost if you truly want a safe PC. You won’t have the freedom to run any program you choose, edit, move or delete any file on your system. Most likely you won’t be able to even get to the true kernel and core OS files on your machine. I work for Gainesville State College and we have accomplished much of what you hope for here through hardware standardization and locking down the OS – thereby limiting our users’ freedom. A crash, lock-up or blue screen is usually an indication that some hardware component in the machine is failing, not a trashed OS. In most cases our users are more than willing to trade complete freedom to do what they wish to a computer in order to gain stability and reliability. Unfortunately, I see a day when MS and other OS vendors will force “Trusted Computing” and such initiatives on us that will remove our freedom to format our hard drives to install an alternate OS or dual-boot. May we never give up too much of our “freedom” to do what we wish with our computers. Be careful, you might get what you ask for and find that true freedom is what you traded to get it!

By the way, my primary family computer has been running for almost 5 years now with Windows XP. All users but myself are Power Users. I am an administrator and my account has a strong password. This machine is rock-solid stable as the day I brought it home. Based on this experience I completely believe that the majority of home computers running Windows XP would also be stable if they were simply configured to take advantage of the security built into the OS right out of the box. This also means that every app downloaded off the net does NOT end up getting installed on this computer unless it is from a reputable vendor or trusted source. — Brandon Haag, a current university IT manager

]]> By: strom http://strom.wordpress.com/2007/08/27/i-have-a-dream/#comment-49824 strom Tue, 28 Aug 2007 14:55:01 +0000 http://strom.wordpress.com/2007/08/27/i-have-a-dream/#comment-49824 Shame on you. You must have forgotten what things were like 20 years ago. A command line that was "friendly" to a small number of people and to take advantage of that command line I had to "pip A:\*.txt B:\". come now. Memory failed on a regular basis and floppies were a horror of reliability. I had a sabbatical project on 5.25 with no less than five copies. There is so much more that many of us remember fondly but when we think about it we are glad that we were among the "anointed (mathematically and logically skilled)" and could take advantage of the tools. Although I must say that my fingers still sometimes twitch with a desire to use WordStar keystrokes. I have just hauled out my early PC bible Inside the IBM PC: access to advanced features and programming by Peter Norton. I don't think my wife would survive long if she needed to use this book to get things done. By the way she does medical records transcription on-line and is constantly teaching her employers ways to more efficiently use there tools, including Word. As we added the internet the geek level did not go down. It got worse remember command line ftp? vedit? When the nasties started showing up you had to load a bunch more stuff on your computer to protect yourself. Neither the early Mac or the Windows machines were a joy to use. (Now I have just made those with computer religion angry) Today I am using Vista Home Premium. It just does not crash. Only one device that I used with my computer, does not like Vista. My old Handspring PDA will not sync under Vista. Imagine that! I use it to keep a list of the books that I have read. (I'm old and sometimes can't remember which mystery or science fiction titles I have read before. Am running AVG free and Zone Alarm (I confess I still don't trust windows security completely, although I suspect that they might face anti-trust action if they really did it right) If I did not want those, my ISP (Charter) provides a complete suite firewall, spyware, and antivirus. I have a 5GB connection to the internet with a Linksys wireless switch/router/NAT. Since I put in my first NAT a few years ago I have had only two "virus" issues that did not do any harm because they were caught upon entry before they could run. My anti-spyware's only complaint has been tracking cookies and most of those I want to keep. I'll vote for today over yesterday. My grandkids megapixel pictures download in a second or two as opposed to, well my brain refuses to calculate the hours at dial up speeds. What more could an old retired geek want? -- Dale Hobart, retired university IT manager Shame on you. You must have forgotten what things were like 20 years ago. A command line that was “friendly” to a small number of people and to take advantage of that command line I had to “pip A:\*.txt B:\”. come now. Memory failed on a regular basis and floppies were a horror of reliability. I had a sabbatical project on 5.25 with no less than five copies. There is so much more that many of us remember fondly but when we think about it we are glad that we were among the “anointed (mathematically and logically skilled)” and could take advantage of the tools. Although I must say that my fingers still sometimes twitch with a desire to use WordStar keystrokes. I have just hauled out my early PC bible Inside the IBM PC: access to advanced features and programming by Peter Norton. I don’t think my wife would survive long if she needed to use this book to get things done. By the way she does medical records transcription on-line and is constantly teaching her employers ways to more efficiently use there tools, including Word.

As we added the internet the geek level did not go down. It got worse remember command line ftp? vedit? When the nasties started showing up you had to load a bunch more stuff on your computer to protect yourself. Neither the early Mac or the Windows machines were a joy to use. (Now I have just made those with computer religion angry)

Today I am using Vista Home Premium. It just does not crash. Only one device that I used with my computer, does not like Vista. My old Handspring PDA will not sync under Vista. Imagine that! I use it to keep a list of the books that I have read. (I’m old and sometimes can’t remember which mystery or science fiction titles I have read before. Am running AVG free and Zone Alarm (I confess I still don’t trust windows security completely, although I suspect that they might face anti-trust action if they really did it right) If I did not want those, my ISP (Charter) provides a complete suite firewall, spyware, and antivirus. I have a 5GB connection to the internet with a Linksys wireless switch/router/NAT. Since I put in my first NAT a few years ago I have had only two “virus” issues that did not do any harm because they were caught upon entry before they could run. My anti-spyware’s only complaint has been tracking cookies and most of those I want to keep.

I’ll vote for today over yesterday. My grandkids megapixel pictures download in a second or two as opposed to, well my brain refuses to calculate the hours at dial up speeds. What more could an old retired geek want? — Dale Hobart, retired university IT manager

]]> By: Ramon Ray http://strom.wordpress.com/2007/08/27/i-have-a-dream/#comment-49745 Ramon Ray Mon, 27 Aug 2007 23:55:19 +0000 http://strom.wordpress.com/2007/08/27/i-have-a-dream/#comment-49745 Hi David...I don't think your dream will ever come true.... Windows is here to stay and the entire ecosystem. What's going to happen more and more are Web apps - that's the dream that will happen! ;) Ramon Ray, Editor @ Technology Evangelist, http://www.smallbiztechnology.com Hi David…I don’t think your dream will ever come true…. Windows is here to stay and the entire ecosystem. What’s going to happen more and more are Web apps – that’s the dream that will happen! ;)

Ramon Ray, Editor @ Technology Evangelist, http://www.smallbiztechnology.com

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