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The cloud like everything else has it's place in the world. It is IMHO one of the safest places to store data. But and this is a Big But, do you trust the people on the other end/side ? There has been only 1 case that I'm aware of where an employee at a cloud server company was stealing data/info from customers.

I had a customer once that had his business broken into and they took everything and I mean everything, even books on the shelf. But they missed 1 backup tape. It was a week old but, I managed to get him up and running from that one backup tape. After that he wanted me to lock down his system, I advised against this but, he wanted to try it. The lock-down lasted only 2 days because, first you logged into computer (BIOS level), then logged into system, logged into the programs, and then you had to log into each and every file you opened. I even restricted access to only certain websites and had 3 firewalls, anti-virus, and anti-malware also. Backup tapes were changed daily and removed from the business. Imagine needing 4 different passwords just to open a Word document or a PDF file!

The biggest problem with hackers is the people at the workplace or home that don't practise safe computer usage. Next is IT managers or business owners that don't want to spend the time or money to safeguard a system. It takes time to setup user right/ privileges, closing open ports, setting up complicated wirewalls like oneway ones, doing updates and such. Not to many businesses even want to higher the people or enough people to do the work instead they rely on outside help which, complicates things. I'm sure jhparkhill can attest to what I'm saying. So how much trust do you have in others?

cheers
Ray
That reminds me of an old fellow I was hired to update his old hand drawn files to computer files. this guy owned a welding shop and one of his employees showed him how he could use computers to send a file to a laser cutting shop down the road. The old guy was so impressed, he went out and BOUGHT a computer system. Well, when he hired me to do the drawings, I could tell he was DEATHLY afraid of computers. I only took a week to do this job but I was trying to show him how to back up all the stuff, keep it backt up and monthly make a CD which was to be taken home and put in a safe place. He had no clue as to what I was talking about. He couldn't even open a file, i doubt he could even turn the compute on. the story is MUCH more complicated than this, involving a very complex story with another employee.
 
Hmmm, interesting discussion, especially since some of us old f**ts have actually been in the computer-tech world most of our lives. I've been a software developer and IT entrepreneur for 38 years now and still make my living every day doing tech-stuff -- writing Windows desktop, web, and mobile software for a variety of clients.

As a developer and software seller, I love the cloud and subscription-based revenue. It makes the business model work -- you can smooth out your income, better predict your revenue streams and know that the little upgrades are being paid for.

As a user I absolutely *hate* the cloud and subscription-based software. It's not that I mind paying for what I use and there are genuine benefits to the always-updated model. But the loss of control is simply an outrageous risk that cloud marketers, cheap owners, and lazy IT staff have convinced the world is okay to ignore. The risks are insidious... like this one that caused me to abandon the Microsoft O365 suite forever: I owned and was happy with Office 2016. One of my consulting clients switched their company to O365 and while I was logged into their system, the MS update software quietly *upgraded* my personal Office 2016 to O365. No way to avoid it, and no path to downgrade back to my own software. I felt robbed, but oh well, times change. But then the client went bankrupt a year later. Since the original O-365 install had been tied to their corporate account, when they disappeared so did my access to the software and cloud-stored data. No way to retrieve it. No way to recover the info that was not related to the bankrupt client.

Being an IT pessimist, I didn't actually lose much, but I have turned down offers from other clients to 'be on their license' to make file sharing easy! LibreOffice for Windows has completely replaced the MS Office suite, Thunderbird Mail has replaced Outlook, and so on. I use Sketchup and F360 for the home shop hobby work, and thank this thread for the other options like FreeCad that I'll try.

The day is coming when you will be forced into a subscription model that you don't want, even it if is "free". Microsoft did it with Office, and Win10 is a Patch-Tuesday-update from the same path.

The main thing to take away is to absolutely not trust any 3rd party with all your information. That local backup of both your software and your data may be all that keeps you working some day. If it can't be rebuilt and run without an internet connection, the application has no place in a business/mission critical stack. Otherwise, it is there for fun.

Rod
 
Hmmm, interesting discussion, especially since some of us old f**ts have actually been in the computer-tech world most of our lives. I've been a software developer and IT entrepreneur for 38 years now and still make my living every day doing tech-stuff -- writing Windows desktop, web, and mobile software for a variety of clients.

As a developer and software seller, I love the cloud and subscription-based revenue. It makes the business model work -- you can smooth out your income, better predict your revenue streams and know that the little upgrades are being paid for.

As a user I absolutely *hate* the cloud and subscription-based software. It's not that I mind paying for what I use and there are genuine benefits to the always-updated model. But the loss of control is simply an outrageous risk that cloud marketers, cheap owners, and lazy IT staff have convinced the world is okay to ignore. The risks are insidious... like this one that caused me to abandon the Microsoft O365 suite forever: I owned and was happy with Office 2016. One of my consulting clients switched their company to O365 and while I was logged into their system, the MS update software quietly *upgraded* my personal Office 2016 to O365. No way to avoid it, and no path to downgrade back to my own software. I felt robbed, but oh well, times change. But then the client went bankrupt a year later. Since the original O-365 install had been tied to their corporate account, when they disappeared so did my access to the software and cloud-stored data. No way to retrieve it. No way to recover the info that was not related to the bankrupt client.

Being an IT pessimist, I didn't actually lose much, but I have turned down offers from other clients to 'be on their license' to make file sharing easy! LibreOffice for Windows has completely replaced the MS Office suite, Thunderbird Mail has replaced Outlook, and so on. I use Sketchup and F360 for the home shop hobby work, and thank this thread for the other options like FreeCad that I'll try.

The day is coming when you will be forced into a subscription model that you don't want, even it if is "free". Microsoft did it with Office, and Win10 is a Patch-Tuesday-update from the same path.

The main thing to take away is to absolutely not trust any 3rd party with all your information. That local backup of both your software and your data may be all that keeps you working some day. If it can't be rebuilt and run without an internet connection, the application has no place in a business/mission critical stack. Otherwise, it is there for fun.

Rod
Thankyew for that Rod, you said it much better than I could. However, I know exactly what "the cloud"ers are up to. As you say "free" until the day you have no choice but to use their media. When I back my stuff up on various media that I own, I know that I can unplug my computer, or disconnect the media, I am much safer. As to those evil microsux people, I try my best to block them from making their alleged "upgrades". Oh, sure, there are some upgrades, but I don't believe for a moment microsux is ONLY upgrading. I also believe in aliens (just kidding). Every time microsux "upgrades" my computer, it actually makes my computer work some way I don't want it to. I have to spend a couple hours fixing it. What ever happened to that Justice Office stopping them from doing things people don't want? microsux lied back in 1998 and continue to lie to this day
 
More old F**t stuff. Back when I was young, in the military doing the Nav-Aids stuff, we got a brand new IBM PC with a 8086 cpu with 1 meg of memory for restoring flight plans if the mainframe went done. Anyway I remember we were reading up on the new PC and saying who the hell is Microsoft? Should of bought they stock LOL. Microsoft did a coup degra when they came out with Windows 95. At the meeting of techs and IT people, Microsoft gave us all a free copy of Win95 & Office95 and every copy had the same activation code, later I found out every single copy across the world had the same CD code. So everybody installed them on numerous computers. That was pretty much the death of 3.11 & Netware and pretty much Apple, at the time. I still think business dictates what we all use for OS's. I wish people would use Linux systems more but the support isn't there, the 16 year old kid down the block hasn't a clue about Linux. Oh well.

Cheers
Ray
 
More old F**t stuff. Back when I was young, in the military doing the Nav-Aids stuff, we got a brand new IBM PC with a 8086 cpu with 1 meg of memory for restoring flight plans if the mainframe went done. Anyway I remember we were reading up on the new PC and saying who the hell is Microsoft? Should of bought they stock LOL. Microsoft did a coup degra when they came out with Windows 95. At the meeting of techs and IT people, Microsoft gave us all a free copy of Win95 & Office95 and every copy had the same activation code, later I found out every single copy across the world had the same CD code. So everybody installed them on numerous computers. That was pretty much the death of 3.11 & Netware and pretty much Apple, at the time. I still think business dictates what we all use for OS's. I wish people would use Linux systems more but the support isn't there, the 16 year old kid down the block hasn't a clue about Linux. Oh well.

Cheers
Ray
Thanx for the Linux blurb. I have had most of my computers double operating systems. It is easy to install Linux, so much safer too. You can run "windows" on Linux as just another program. Har har har--this just shows what crap microsux is. But I'm wondering, if I ran windows as a program in Linux, would it prevent them from fiddling with MY computer? I'd do almost anything to stop all the companies from continually "needing" to upgrade my system, program, etc. We have advertising pop ups blockt, but how do we block popups from all the programs we have installed? I use AutoCAD and it continually puts up a popup that says to visit their site to get all the new goodies. this is 2004 Architectural CAD (but it works fine for mechanical and electrical). Frankly, it is far more difficult to use than modern 3D stuff but who can afford the new stuff?

Furthermore, win95 was the absolute WORST OS micrusucs ever made. It crashed every 15 minutes. It wiped out, what I estimate at 20K$ worth of work and I was not able to recover it. Ever since that, I have had it in for those sukky people.
 
I wish people would use Linux systems more but the support isn't there, the 16 year old kid down the block hasn't a clue about Linux.

That last bit is the key. While I greatly prefer Linux, I would say that any OS, including Mac, Windows, and Linux (and yes, I know Linux is just a kernel, but let's not worry about that distinction for the moment) is going to require support for the average user. Certainly I have found that to be true as a former software engineer who now serves as the unofficial go-to support person for family, friends, and office co-workers - sooner or later, everyone has something that doesn't quite work right. It may be user error; it may be a new piece of hardware (or an old piece of hardware) that isn't recognized; very often it may be an issue with an application (maybe not an error but just how to do something), or it could be a hardware problem - none of these latter are necessarily due to the OS at all.

For many, many years my parents used a Linux (Ubuntu) machine with few problems. They switched because Windows 8 was so hard for them to get used to, but they had no trouble with Ubuntu - other than the normal odds and ends as noted above - a new printer here, a user error there, how to do something in an application, and so on. I was close enough to resolve any problems they ran into. But then they moved 4 hours away, and their old laptop began to give up the ghost. It quickly became apparent that phone support was not sufficient, and it was very difficult to "run up there" to solve it. And here's the kicker - no one in the area would work on it, because it was Linux. So, I wound up encouraging them to replace it with a new Windows 10 machine. :(

You can run "windows" on Linux as just another program. Har har har--this just shows what crap microsux is.

I think this goes both ways. You can run some Windows programs on Linux using Wine or Crossover, but many programs work only partially or not at all that way. Or you can install a virtual machine (e.g., VirtualBox or VMWare) and run Windows near-flawlessly. But you can also install a virtual machine (again, VirtualBox or VMWare come to mind) on Windows, and install Linux on it, and run it near-flawlessly. Cygwin provides a Linux shell environment, running as an app under Windows. And supposedly, the new WSL 2 (Windows Subsystem for Linux) will allow directly running various Linux distros, but I haven't had any reason to try that.
 
That last bit is the key. While I greatly prefer Linux, I would say that any OS, including Mac, Windows, and Linux (and yes, I know Linux is just a kernel, but let's not worry about that distinction for the moment) is going to require support for the average user. Certainly I have found that to be true as a former software engineer who now serves as the unofficial go-to support person for family, friends, and office co-workers - sooner or later, everyone has something that doesn't quite work right. It may be user error; it may be a new piece of hardware (or an old piece of hardware) that isn't recognized; very often it may be an issue with an application (maybe not an error but just how to do something), or it could be a hardware problem - none of these latter are necessarily due to the OS at all.

For many, many years my parents used a Linux (Ubuntu) machine with few problems. They switched because Windows 8 was so hard for them to get used to, but they had no trouble with Ubuntu - other than the normal odds and ends as noted above - a new printer here, a user error there, how to do something in an application, and so on. I was close enough to resolve any problems they ran into. But then they moved 4 hours away, and their old laptop began to give up the ghost. It quickly became apparent that phone support was not sufficient, and it was very difficult to "run up there" to solve it. And here's the kicker - no one in the area would work on it, because it was Linux. So, I wound up encouraging them to replace it with a new Windows 10 machine. :(



I think this goes both ways. You can run some Windows programs on Linux using Wine or Crossover, but many programs work only partially or not at all that way. Or you can install a virtual machine (e.g., VirtualBox or VMWare) and run Windows near-flawlessly. But you can also install a virtual machine (again, VirtualBox or VMWare come to mind) on Windows, and install Linux on it, and run it near-flawlessly. Cygwin provides a Linux shell environment, running as an app under Windows. And supposedly, the new WSL 2 (Windows Subsystem for Linux) will allow directly running various Linux distros, but I haven't had any reason to try that.
I didn't know that. I tried to get WINE to work on a SUSE machine but couldn't get it to work. That would have been nice. I never heard of Crossover. NOwadays, I generally don't use Linux too much but when I did, I always preferred it because seemed to me to be so much more powerful for it's size. Years ago, I tried Red Hat when it was hot and a few others, but always preferred SUSE. I hear a lot about Ubuntu but have never tried it.
 
Crossover is a commercialized and tuned version of WINE - I've not tried it, as I am allergic to non-FOSS software, but supposedly it can run things like Microsoft Office much better than plain WINE.

I should note that my understanding is that with enough wine, any program looks pretty good ... :)
 
Crossover is a commercialized and tuned version of WINE - I've not tried it, as I am allergic to non-FOSS software, but supposedly it can run things like Microsoft Office much better than plain WINE.

I should note that my understanding is that with enough wine, any program looks pretty good ... :)
I make wine and I do plenty of whining. What is FOSS?
 
Sorry for the acronym - FOSS = "Free and Open-Source Software." WINE is FOSS; Crossover, however, is neither free nor completely open-source (there are proprietary bits built on top of the open-source WINE).

Plenty of whining here as well, at least according to my wife! :)
 
Sorry for the acronym - FOSS = "Free and Open-Source Software." WINE is FOSS; Crossover, however, is neither free nor completely open-source (there are proprietary bits built on top of the open-source WINE).

Plenty of whining here as well, at least according to my wife! :)
Actually, I don't mind paying for something,that is, what it is REALLY worth, and that would be about $10 for an operating system that I can use over and over for all my new computers. Maybe $20 for a good 3-D CAD system, etc. Thing is, that ALL software is over charged for if it is not free. the developers of FREE software generally don't have enough time to make their software bullet-;proof the first time because they probably are holding down a job somewhere else. By overpaying for MOS we have made several billionaires and many, many millionaires. These people don't need, nor deserve these fortunes, particularly when every 18 months a new system comes out makeing problems for older software.
 
Hi Guys,

Interesting thread ! I feel quite sure that you have all deduced from my avatar that I'm a Linux user, actually Q4OS and the Trinity desktop.

I've been a Linux user for many years, about 1989/90 ish. For me it started with Yggdrasil Linux, my wife bought me a book with it bound into the cover, several 5.25 floppy disks if I remember. In those days you had to find all the code to suit your hardware, modify it if needed and then compile it. Often many times.

Today just download a live CD ISO, burn it to a CD and boot from it.
For all Winblows users it that easy. You don't even need to install anything unless you want to. Just run it from the CD.

On a slightly different note I use Qcad and whilst you can use it freely I bought a license for it. Mainly because I wish to support the author and take advantage of some of the bits that you don't get in the community version. Of course the license is perpetual so you can use it forever, but after 12 months unless you renew you don't get any more upgrades.
 
Hi Guys,

Interesting thread ! I feel quite sure that you have all deduced from my avatar that I'm a Linux user, actually Q4OS and the Trinity desktop.

I've been a Linux user for many years, about 1989/90 ish. For me it started with Yggdrasil Linux, my wife bought me a book with it bound into the cover, several 5.25 floppy disks if I remember. In those days you had to find all the code to suit your hardware, modify it if needed and then compile it. Often many times.

Today just download a live CD ISO, burn it to a CD and boot from it.
For all Winblows users it that easy. You don't even need to install anything unless you want to. Just run it from the CD.

On a slightly different note I use Qcad and whilst you can use it freely I bought a license for it. Mainly because I wish to support the author and take advantage of some of the bits that you don't get in the community version. Of course the license is perpetual so you can use it forever, but after 12 months unless you renew you don't get any more upgrades.
Ya know, I have known about booting from CD but I have never done that. Thanx for reminding me, I'll try that. Who would you suggest to try? I like SUSE and am familiar with it but don't know if SUSE has kept up with things or if they still exist. I down loaded a SUSE from the new owners a couple years ago and they had changed the look quite a bit from 9.2 which I bought many years ago. I know Ubuntu is very popular and another too and have never tried them as I know SUSE well and why change after all?
 
Booting from a CD (or a USB drive if set up as a boot device) is a great way to try out a distro, but I always feel like it runs much, much slower that way than it does when installed.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it - which is to say, if you like SUSE, stay with it.

Unless you just want to try other distros. As far as I can tell*, there are two three major distinctions between distros: 1) What user interface does it use? 2) What package manager does it use (what is the mechanism for adding software)? and 3) Does it strictly limit itself to open-source software, or does it allow use of proprietary software (especially drivers) where needed? Actually #1 is a bit of a red herring, because so many of the distros offer multiple UIs - the standard Ubuntu UI is Gnome, but it can be had with KDE, xfce, MΑΤΕ, and a dozen more; I believe OpenSUSE offers a similar range of UIs. And as for #2, many different distros share the same package manager system - as best I can tell, the two most common package managers are rpm (Fedora, SUSE) and deb (Debian, Ubuntu).

*Caveat - I have used Ubuntu for years and years, but have barely touched other distros - so while I would consider myself Linux-savvy, that is really limited to just the one distro. While there are many folks who are quite religious in their support of a given distro, I use Ubuntu simply because it is the one I started with, and it does what I need - so back to, if it ain't broke, don't fix it!
 
Booting from a CD (or a USB drive if set up as a boot device) is a great way to try out a distro, but I always feel like it runs much, much slower that way than it does when installed.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it - which is to say, if you like SUSE, stay with it.

Unless you just want to try other distros. As far as I can tell*, there are two three major distinctions between distros: 1) What user interface does it use? 2) What package manager does it use (what is the mechanism for adding software)? and 3) Does it strictly limit itself to open-source software, or does it allow use of proprietary software (especially drivers) where needed? Actually #1 is a bit of a red herring, because so many of the distros offer multiple UIs - the standard Ubuntu UI is Gnome, but it can be had with KDE, xfce, MΑΤΕ, and a dozen more; I believe OpenSUSE offers a similar range of UIs. And as for #2, many different distros share the same package manager system - as best I can tell, the two most common package managers are rpm (Fedora, SUSE) and deb (Debian, Ubuntu).

*Caveat - I have used Ubuntu for years and years, but have barely touched other distros - so while I would consider myself Linux-savvy, that is really limited to just the one distro. While there are many folks who are quite religious in their support of a given distro, I use Ubuntu simply because it is the one I started with, and it does what I need - so back to, if it ain't broke, don't fix it!
I tried Red Hat and a couple others when it was relatively new, but they are, as far as I know, gone.
 
Hi Guys,

All the commercial Linux proponents are still there and promoting their services, Red Hat, SuSe and others. The major differences are as had being said are the two major package managers. Other than that all the other differences a mainly down to the desktop that you want to use.

I personally like and use "Trinity" derived from KDE3, I also support the development.

As far as speed is concerned running from a CD can seem slower. What happens here is the bulk of the OS is loaded into memory and parts are swapped in and out as required. For low memory machines this can be a bit of a drag, but the parts that are in memory will run just as fast as they would as if the whole lot was being read from the HDD.

I've an eight processor machine with 12 Gb ram. Linux will use all the processors where Winblows only uses two ! Memory wise I've never seen swap used at all, infact most of the time I'm only using a fraction of my available memory.

A live CD, of which there are dozens, is a great way to explore and evaluate Linux. Certainly much safer than installing something that you may not prefer.
 
With all of this discussion about Linux I will have to get back to trying it. I tried to use it a while back because I have a Dell Inspiron without a hard drive which no longer works because it keeps trying to update Windows 10 and there is not enough room for even the operating system. I was using it for my sit in the chair at night and surf until it just would not work. I got sidetracked with other things but I should try again soon. Not really important to get this computer working but it just upsets me that I have something which does not work because of stupid decisions by Dell.
 
With all of this discussion about Linux I will have to get back to trying it. I tried to use it a while back because I have a Dell Inspiron without a hard drive which no longer works because it keeps trying to update Windows 10 and there is not enough room for even the operating system. I was using it for my sit in the chair at night and surf until it just would not work. I got sidetracked with other things but I should try again soon. Not really important to get this computer working but it just upsets me that I have something which does not work because of stupid decisions by Dell.
Yes, that is one of the things that keeps me awake at night, gives me kidney problems (anger issues) and high blood--the corporations trying to tell ME what to do with MY stuff! I blame microsux for most of the problems. Everything is always trying to "update". I have to go into task manager and turn off all the "update services" There isa a lot more I COULD turn off if I only knew what they are. Turning on the task manager, you can see how bloated microsux is. A great deal of those programs running in the background are just bloat unfortunately, I don't know which is which as the names often are simply criptic.
 
I have put several people on KDE for everyday computing with no major complaints and I also prefer it for everyday computing. But I prefer Redhat for more business like environments. I agree, try several out until you get one that your happy with. My main computer is a Win10 machine and am very happy with it. I prefer Eagle 7.6 which is the last version before they were bought out by Element and they made it a subscription program, sucks. When I was doing the IT stuff I use to complain that the programmers always screwed up the programs. So I decide to get my Computer Programmer/Analyst papers, that's when I found out that programmers used faulty programs to write programs and there wasn't always time to test the software on every machine ever made. I have 5 computers here to test my software and that's still not enough. Back in the day one of my best customers had problems every month with 1 Win95 machine and the rest Win98's. Because I like a good soldier I kept very good records of all work that was done on each machine. I found that if we kept the machines always on which, we did so the automated maintenance could work over each night, would crash ever 28 days. If we rebooted the computers on the 28 day, they were fine. I notified Microsoft, they in turn duplicated my tests and 3 months later put out a bulletin. But no thank you. I still stand by what I said, "business or our work place dictates what we use at home". I found that @95% of the people that use computers don't want to know anything more than to get them through their day. They use to tell me stop, do I really need to know this - well no - then stop telling me.

Hardware and software, it's nothing personal, it's just business.

Ray
 
Yes, that is one of the things that keeps me awake at night, gives me kidney problems (anger issues) and high blood--the corporations trying to tell ME what to do with MY stuff! I blame microsux for most of the problems. Everything is always trying to "update". I have to go into task manager and turn off all the "update services" There isa a lot more I COULD turn off if I only knew what they are. Turning on the task manager, you can see how bloated microsux is. A great deal of those programs running in the background are just bloat unfortunately, I don't know which is which as the names often are simply criptic.

Actually there are 2 spots you need to look at, 1 - Task Manager and 2- the Services. You can Google the names of each and decide which ones to turn off/disable but, PLEASE set a new restore point before turning stuff off. You can also use a program called CCleaner to look at what's starting up on boot up. I have noticed over the years that Microsoft is hiding more and more of the settings.

Ray
 

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