Replies

fp wrote:

I have been arguing the intentional collapse of education for years. You may want to check out the political section of the This Week posts @my blog, dbdebunk.com and The PostWest, my political blog. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/07/the-great-british-brexit-robbery-hijacked-democracy Once data are collected, particularly by for profit corporations for whom it is easier to monetize them than to provide goods and services of values to customers, where they end up and to what use they are being put is unknown and uncontrollable and the chance of misuse is almost 100%.

In the early 1970s, the Carnegie Foundation released a report on the state of education in the US which report said that if a foreign power were doing to our education system what we were doing to it we would consider it an act of war.

GaryK

fp wrote:

> then instead of railing against the inevitable, it behooves those of us who see it coming, and who can imagine a very dark side to all this The problem is, to reiterate, that you can’t solve systemic problems by individual action. They require collective action and that is something that Americans are very weak at. The attempts to marginalize “political” comments here is one reflection of this. Americans are indoctrinated with individualism and that compromises their ability to get together to combat systemic problems. Those who own the country — and now they are the few monopolistic tech companies–know and understand this and exploit it. It is a quite effective oppression method to which most Americans are blind.

I wouldn’t say blind, just naive, and individual awareness of a problem is a prerequisite for collective action. But that’s precisely why right wingers want to destroy the education system–they hate and fear the very concept of “collective” and its ramifications, like unions. By keeping people ignorant and sensually sated they preclude individual awareness and thus banding together in common cause and thus collective action. They prefer instead the illusion of collective action in the current iteration of voting, wherein two parties try to provide candidates within a mutually acceptable range and let them pretend to be independent. That that can occasionally backfire and give us what we have now didn’t occur to them apparently.

GaryK

David F wrote:

Brexit was mainly about immigration and nothing to do with privacy laws. GDPR will be incorporated into UK law (which is a matter of fact) and will in all probability be kept in a similar form (or left untouched) to maintain parity with the rest of Europe because of it’s importance to trade.

My point was not that this particular EU initiative caused Brexit, but that persistent EU bureaucratic overreach caused Brexit. Intrusion is intrusion whether it comes from rapacious corporations  or well-meaning nanny states.

GaryK

fp wrote:

The problem is that this will not stop here.

And I agree with you.

One quibble: Most people, without giving it a thought, will simply trade their personal data for some trendy software geegaw. Not a good thing, but that is what happens.

So, because, as you say (and I deeply respect your experience), the problem will not stop here, then instead of railing against the inevitable, it behooves those of us who see it coming, and who can imagine a very dark side to all this, to work to limit the use of all this personal data to humane and societally beneficial ends. We can do that. There are social-justice ends that can be served by big data. There are poverty and food-distribution and health ends that can be served by big data. The dark siders will surely win only if no engages them. And taking the position that “I’m going to block you from coming into my cave” seems to me futile in the long run.

GaryK

fp wrote:

It’s ttitudes like yours that brought us here. Those who will not worry about their own privacy and security do not deserve to have them and they won’t. Unfortunately, they seem to be the majority these days and the impose the consequences on all of us.

I swear it wasn’t me.

GaryK

Ascaris wrote:

It makes sense for saltwater fish to worry about salt, if they were capable of doing so. Too much of it will kill them. Even so, the analogy doesn’t hold. A saltwater fish is defined as such by the salt it lives in. If salt is telemetry, it would mean that all of us are defined by the telemetry that spies on us. You may have given up, but not all of us are willing to have our entire existences summed up by what some hostile third party has learned by spying on us. If anyone wonders why every corporation and government thinks it’s okay to spy on anyone, anytime, it’s attitudes like privacy belonging in a museum (which would be hard, because people seldom go to see intangible concepts on display). I’m chagrined that more of my fellow saltwater fish have been willing to trade privacy for baubles, but I don’t have any right to presume to know better for anyone else. In the same way, no one has the right to decide for me. It’s a shame that people who have already given up their own privacy don’t support my right to choose for myself as I do for them.

There are too many unwarranted assumptions and conclusions here to deal with individually, but I want to single out one: Not only do I support your right to choose for yourself, I respect your decision immensely. Only it’s quixotic. This fight is over. Privacy is an antique concept, and the harvesting of your personal data is only going to get worse. I wish it were otherwise, but the simple truth is that, like some Star Trekian galactic monster, corporations and the government (and there’s not much difference anymore) want data, and they’re going to get it. Is that a good thing? No. Is it inevitable? Yes. You can fight it all you want, but you’ll be wasting time that’s better spent on other pursuits. You can expect someone soon will seriously float the idea of making it illegal to block telemetry. (“What have you got to hide?” they will ask.) I don’t like it, but it’s not a fight you can win except in symbolic and meaningless ways, like blocking MS telemetry in the name of striking a blow for freedom.

GaryK

It’s Group A for me. I don’t care about telemetry.

I think MS has gone off the rails.

I will continue to use Win7 until a) I die or b) it dies.

GaryK

ch100 wrote:

Gary, WSUS downloads only those update which are approved. Many admins tend to approve everything or use the default rule to approve all Important (Critical & Security) updates, but in most cases this is overkill and uses too much bandwidth. The only updates which have to be approved are those which are needed. I agree with you that there is some work going into learning how to use WSUS effectively, but if you have many users under management, it is a lot more effective than running login scripts. However, the best solution for the task at hand is the one which works best for you 🙂

Absolutely. For larger organizations, WSUS is a godsend.

GaryK

ch100 wrote:

Why not using tools designed for the purpose like WSUS instead of the old fashioned login scripts?

WSUS is a great alternative. I suggested logon scripts as an alternative to trusting users to check a network share every day to see if there were updates to install, which in my experience (and with my users) is not viable. As far as WSUS, I just never got into it. When I first looked at it lo those many yeas ago I was supporting multiple, space-constricted, SBS 2003 boxes connected to slow DSL lines. The boxes didn’t have the space and the DSL lines didn’t have the bandwidth for the WSUS downloads. At the time, WSUS just seemed like overkill., and I found other ways to cope. I have come to prefer touching user boxes (remotely) on a regular basis. Connecting to them and running Windows Update gives us a feel for how the boxes are running and lets us spot anomalies and catch and release them early and quickly before they do too much damage. Ultimately you have to make choices that work best with how your mind works (or in my case doesn’t).

GaryK

anonymous wrote:

There is simply no parallel universe in which having a 5-10 email conversation with everyone on my network about when it’s safe to let Windows Update patch and hand holding step by steps on what needs to be dug into and disabled is going to be EASIER for me than to upload patches as I install them for myself and ask everyone once to check their network folder once a day for anything new to install on their end.

Just a partial solution, but with important updates I sometimes use a login script to install patches downloaded to a network share–sometimes three or four. It makes the login take a bit longer, but this way I’m sure they get installed without having to worry about a user forgetting or just deciding he/she is too busy to bother.

GaryK

abbodi86 wrote:

KUC is not my tool, i just share info with the developer 🙂 the tool is targeted for Group-A, and i don’t think Komm will create another version for security-only updates KUC started in the first place to provide all and any available applicable updates, specially hotfixes which is the definition of Group-A

I’d love to try this out, but when I go to the KUC Downloads I see about 100 beta versions. I’m not sure which executable (for Win7/32) to choose. What version are you using?

GaryK

PKCano wrote:

Shhhh! If you call it a Sercive Pack, there’s something about having to extend service and EOL. So it’s a Rollup.

I can’t believe I’m nostalgic for the old Microsoft.

GaryK

Is a “Super Rollup” what used to be called a “Service Pack?”

GaryK

Anonymous wrote:

agreed, neither is good.. but inconsistency of Updates that affect millions of PC’s especially in and enterprise environment is very scary…

Agreed. Terrifying.

GaryK

Anonymous wrote:

In my WSUS controlled Environment. I also just got KB3003057 after getting the KB3308923 the other day..I installed 3008923 and it did not want reboot. seems like MS is doing some shady things behind the scenes…

Sadly it’s recently become easy to believe MS is doing shady things behind the scenes, but more than likely it’s simply incompetence. Neither is good, but a lot of these problems are consistent with a department getting its budget slashed and people being frantically overworked.

GaryK

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