The past few hours fighting with Windoze really has me depressed. I had a PC computer for about 12 years before the Internet was made available to the Public (not counting my TRS-80 and Atari 1000). I knew what every file on the computer did and why it was there.
Windoze is in every sense a cyber whore. Every orifice is available for use by strangers. Invite in a friend who wants to give you something for free (think Google or LogMeIn or DropBox or AVG) – you are offering up your computer’s security for a free shiny bobble that you want, You are trusting that they have no malicious intent and that they won’t ever lose control of their own security.
There was an episode of the Simpson’s based on the premise of “What if the entire Internet was down one day?”. That’s becoming a really serious question. What if it was down for a month? What if there was some state sponsored cyber attack that was so lethal and comprehensive that just allowing your computer to connect to the Internet would make it unusable?
If we went back (at least temporarily) to a world with PCs that aren’t connected to the Internet at all, what would you still be able to do with them? My guess is the answer is: Shockingly little.
Where can you still buy software on a physical medium? What media devices are left that still are included in a new PC? CD/DVD/USB thumb drive?
How would you pay your bills? Know what your bank balance is? Could your bank even mail out paper statements any more? Would ATM networks fail? Could gas stations still pump gas? Could WalMart operate its cash registers? Would traffic lights still work? Would power plants go offline? [ghost of Y2K]
At startup, most software these days “Calls home” to see if an updated version is available. How many products would fail to start if there is no Internet connectivity? Could we file tax returns on paper? Could ADP still process payrolls? Would Social Security recipients still get their money on the 3rd?
One of the selling points for the Internet in the beginning was that the design meant there would be no “single point of failure” – a nuclear bomb could destroy Chicago and the Internet would just keep on humming, routing around any failures. Have we now bet our entire society and civilization on the single point of failure called the Internet? [That’s mostly a rhetorical question]
Living in a cave in Afghanistan is looking a bit more attractive.
Without the internet, would nuclear power plants still work? Yes, absolutely. They’re self-contained and secure. Would the electrical power thus generated get to where it’s needed? If it’s the Obama/Clinton/Gore “smart grid”, probably not.
Could businesses file monthly/quarterly tax returns on paper? Not without a change in current law.
Will “enterprise” software that requires periodic registration/user confirmation from a central database still work? Not for long.
Would guys like me who could make stand-alone MS-DOS or UNIX-based PCs produce amazing results rule the workplace again? You betcha.
One of the structural problems with all MS Windows platforms is that there is no software portability. If you’ve installed and customized a program on one Windows machine there is no good way to back up that one particular program installation so that it can be duplicated on another machine when/if the original machine fails. You have to back up the entire system. Such system backups don’t allow for hardware failures where you’re having to reinstall on a “supported” but structurally different platform. For example, try moving your Windows installation from an Intel CPU machine to an AMD machine. It’s impossible to do without encountering the blue screen of death and resorting to registry hacks. The quickest and most reliable approach is to start over fresh, buy all new software and thus spend weeks trying to get the functionality back that you lost. Hence the attraction of “cloud computing”, but most users don’t realize how they are exchanging reliability and security for “convenience”.
It’s all because of that awful central registry file that is the foundation of the Windows OS. Any program can pretty much write whatever proprietary garbage it wants to into that registry file. So over time it becomes almost impossible to tell what information in the file is current/needed vs. what’s bad/obsolete/redundant. The UNIX/LINUX OS doesn’t seem to have that kind of structural problem. Software is pretty much compartmentalized such that a problem (whether due to honest error or intentional hack) in a program isn’t permitted to compromise other programs or the OS.
You point to the main reason I’m reluctant to upgrade to Win7, having been burned before. Many of my “tools” going back to about 1996 are based on Visual Basic and Access Basic. One of the DLL files I rely on only was packaged with C++ (of which I own a copy), but all the stuff I purchased are “Upgrades” from prior versions – so without having the entire chain of software that make my current software legitimate, I can never reinstall it. The beginning of the chain wouldn’t even install in XP if you wanted it to. My current computer doesn’t have a 5 1/2″ floppy drive. Last time my computer was fried, I caved and bought yet another copy of Office with Access, but use it for almost nothing, no longer working for a big corporation. I’m still running Office 2007 in Office 2000 compatibility mode, since running it natively will break the Visual Basic tools to access the database.
The past 6 months, I’ve been rewriting the tools I use to work using just web pages. I’m probably at the point now that I could toss Windows and survive okay. (or just say “Screw the web site”, and go live in a cave in Afghanistan) But in the big scheme of things, it was a lot of wasted effort to prepare for an eventual divorce. I’m up in the air if I should head toward Fedora or an iPad or maybe an Android Tablet. Gnome has it’s own issues about SUperUser issues. It really doesn’t like you running Gnome as root. I’m not a college allowing CompSci students on my computer hacking away trying to code their way out of a chroot prison. I generally like the approach of staying as a limited user, and having Gnome prompt me for root’s password when it needs it. I can jump to a command line and su or sudo things, but would rather that I could do things in Gnome. Webmin filles a lot of holes in that area.
The thing I don’t like about the Apple family is the paternalistic attitude – that “We” will decide what apps are in the App Store, and our word is final. On the positive side, that means it is less likely that Apps will have security risks (for now)…. but it gives enormous anticompetitive powers to Apple to control software development.
One of the little things I realized with my Fedora experience was how several of programs I already use are available on Fedora and likely started there- putty, Gimp… gedit is close enough to ConText for my purposes. I don’t use elaborate editors. I like Simple. I could probably use edlin in a pinch.
I was looking at eMachines over at WalMart this morning. I know they’re basically cheap crap, but maybe that’s all I need. they have an AMD computer for $289, and an Intel computer with a 20″ LED monitor for $389. I spent more than that on an HP mini-laptop that I ended up tossing in the garbage after a couple months when the power supply fried the second time. (The main problem was the screen was too small for my eyes to see and do useful work)
Nuclear power plants have a significant weakness which the Fukushima fiasco pointed out and we should have learned from the multiday blackout of most of the East Coast about 7 years ago.
Nuclear power plants are designed to operate at a steady state generating a constant power output. They also rely on external power to operate safely. If “the grid” suddenly loses a large amount of its power consumption, the nuclear plants have to go into emergency shutdown to avoid destroying the power distribution system. As the plants trip offline, the grid gets more and more unstable.
Once a nuclear plant SCRAMs, it takes days to restart it safely. If the grid hasn’t come back, the plant is dependent on its backup generators (or in a few better thought out plants, nearby hydro power not dependent on diesel fuel)
If you’re driving your car at 70 MPH down the freeway and slam on the brakes in an emergency stop, in theory your car will come to a safe straight stop. But with enough cars doing it enough times with drivers of different skill levels, eventually one won’t
The worm used to target the Iranian uranium centrifuges is a big warning of what is possible. A guest from Israel on John Batchelor made the boast “We have the capability to make every city in the Middle East go dark any time we want to”. Is that true? Don’t know. Is it plausible? Probably so.
I agree completely that the external grid is necessary to support nuclear plant operation. The grid (or a small convoy of fuel trucks) is required to maintain the plant in safe shutdown after the supply of fuel for the emergency diesels (usually 7-14 days worth) is exhausted. If the grid goes offline in the U.S. then the nuke plants will trip because the main reactor coolant pumps (not the emergency pumps) are usually powered directly from the grid. And that’s why it’s always a good idea to have a few hydro or fossil plants around to “restart” the grid. Diversity in this scenario is good. You’d never want to put all your eggs in one basket.
Unless there has been an accident or equipment malfunction, there’s nothing physical or mechanical that prevents a plant from being restarted fairly quickly following a scram. (We’re talking 4-12 hours to complete the startup checks.) What usually takes “days” is the NRC reports that have to be filed, but more important is the business reality that once the reactor is down, the utility has an unexpected window of opportunity to complete any deferred maintenance that needs to be done.
but that’s assuming that society itself is reasonably normal. Superimpose on that that gas stations have no power to pump gasoline, phones are down, traffic signals are not working, armed gangs are hijacking fuel trucks, etc… Bringing the grid back up requires careful coordination of matching supply and demand and not tripping relays that shut the grid back down. The requires communication and the ability to continue to monitor remote devices. How much of that is still running over dedicated leased lines? Having more power generation using natural gas – especially from local sources is probably a very good thing. It’s easy to fine tune and speed up and slow down to match demand
After I wrote that, some old synapses kicked in. For a short while, people in government were toying with the idea of forcing power companies to offer broadband over the power lines, an idea that quickly died for a variety of reasons.
But part of the background is that power companies do in fact use their transmission lines to run their own communication networks, independent of the phone company. The main hangup for a more general use of those lines is that digital signals won’t make it past a transformer, and the closer you get to the end customers, the more you bump into transformers stepping down the voltage.
SCRAM – days to restart – two primary reasons 1) Endless safety analysis to assess if all systems responded correctly or not and then to document it all and transmit to the NRC 2) Commercial nuclear plants burn “dirt” – any resemblance between a commercial fuel assembly and a functioning fuel rod in a “real” reactor is purely and intentionally coincidental – every possible bad aspect of waiting for the fuel to stabilize is there in spades. You have to wait for the “poisons” to subside for a bit so you can restart and make neutrons again.
Sorry – pushed the button and my autoresponse was on.
I am as worried — at least! — about even being able to afford Internet service by the time America’s Nero is finished destroying the economy.
“What if tomorrow there was no Internet?”
I would get out my old game of Railroad Tycoon II Gold edition. I really liked that game. I called G.O.D Gathering Of Developers in Baltimore when they use to make it there. I suggested to them, actually the company I worked for at the time a whole group of use got on the conference call and suggested Double-heading locomotives, just charge twice as much for maintenance. Have the bulldozer scrape and scrape the same place charging money each time you click on it in a location to reduce the grade. That would have been awesome upgrades. There were others that I don’t remember, now.
that was a long time ago.
I bought another XP machine on E-pay (Laptop). Screw that windows 7. No classic view or control panel. I am going Ubuntu (linux) if I need to learn a new OS.