On July 20, 2016 7:19:35 PM EDT, Zenaan Harkness <zen@freedbms.net> wrote:
>On Wed, Jul 20, 2016 at 09:17:52AM -0700, Spencer wrote:
>> >Microsoft would lose a large part of its market share in the
>> >business and consumer markets
>>
>> I am confident that even after the collapse, businesses running 98
>and XP
>> will still be paying for support q:
>
>I never understood why folks upgraded from WfWG3.1 - 98 was -never- as
>stable, except when nothing was installed (including drivers). Not to
>mention those ghastly green hills...

I never understood why anyone would run Windows -at all-. Linux and *BSD have both been totally usable for 20+ years now...

In '93 when WfWG 3.11 came out and even in '98, Linux was basically a hobbyist OS. Nowadays the problem isn't the OS but the applications. If you're just using a web browser, it's not a problem, but that's essentially what ChromeOS is from the perspective of the average user, and Android is rapidly filling that space and has plenty of applications.

Which brings up an interesting point more relevant to the original topic, which is that to have any amount of security you really need to know what you're doing. I'm not holding my breath for the government to do anything about that besides exploit it to increase its own power and spy on us.

The first thing that should come to one's mind when thinking of government's relationship to private industry and cybersecurity is AT&T's (and others) cooperation with the NSA and the government's subsequent shielding of them from any liability for it. That which is permitted rapidly becomes mandatory when government has all kinds of extra laws it can enforce at its own discretion, and privileges like indemnification that it can extend or withdraw as it likes.