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Post by Slinger on Feb 13, 2019 14:16:30 GMT
When visiting Microsoft seminars I sometimes realise there is so much on offer but most of it is hidden from home users who just shout at their laptop when Windows is not performing at their behest. The services on offer from Azure are simply mind blowing. I am now drawing up a 5-year plan to migrate virtually everything - e-mail, files, shares, virtual machine replicas, Active Directory authentication, applications, webfeeds - to the cloud. There will come a time within that period where what we can offer teachers and students outside of our network will be exactly the same as inside. No matter where they are, their files and applications will remain available. Truly seamless computing. Domains will die out, to be replace with Device Affinity and User Affinity. This is going to take me neatly to retirement. I love a challenge! I asked a question yesterday about how much storage we could have as part of our new style Microsoft 365 for Education agreement. The reply, delivered so casually that I had to ask them to repeat it, was 1PB. Yes, that's one quadrillion bytes of storage. Free. I get the feeling that unless one has some sort of interest in computers beyond using them for social media, emails, etc. the default position on "the cloud" is one of mistrust - something along the lines of "why should I put all of my eggs in one basket, and then give somebody I don't know the basket to look after?" Regular news reports of major institutions being "hacked" do nothing to foster trust, because, in people's minds, it's all the same thing. Education, from the ground up, is required. Hopefully, the generation currently being educated in schools and universities around the country will have a great deal more knowledge, and information, than their parents, and grandparents. You are in the happy(?) situation of having had to keep up to date, and having new technology explained to you by experts, or at least having access to the information required to educate yourself. The rest of us, speaking as a 65-year-old retiree, not so much. |
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Post by MartinT on Feb 13, 2019 16:24:26 GMT
Yes, I see that Paul. I guess I'm trying to do my little bit. I do manage by example and have put ALL my files into OneDrive for a number of years now. As the key speaker said yesterday, they are safer there than on a local drive and I agree. Not to mention the beauty of being able to access my docs from any device anywhere.
It's going to be a lot of change management, starting with the governors who have just learned how to use calculators and complain bitterly that I have forced them to use our e-mail for GDPR compliance. One of them is still on AOL!!
Anyway, I thought it might interest a few members.
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Post by Slinger on Feb 13, 2019 16:44:21 GMT
I definitely found it interesting, and as you know I'm a huge Micr$haft fan. Despite my mickey-taking, I still find myself unable to put my full trust in this nebulous "cloud" everyone talks about.
What I did find quite amusing (although it might just be my sense of humour) was when WD, Synology, et al started selling their personal clouds, home clouds, cloud stations, etc. If the thought that you can have a "cloud" in your living room didn't confuse the poor buggers who had just grasped the fact that THE cloud is definitely NOT in your living room, then probably nothing ever will.
Ring any bells, Martin? (No pun intended, for once)
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Post by Clive on Feb 13, 2019 16:57:28 GMT
Running your entire environment from a network takes me back....when I worked for Digital we had a UNIX environment which loaded from well, let's call it a private cloud....well before we had "clouds". The idea was that you could walk up to any workstation, logon and within a few seconds you had you own tailored environment, desktop, apps and full set of files. We put this into all the design centres at Rover in their Honda days. Maybe it was this that did for them!
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Post by MartinT on Feb 13, 2019 17:41:17 GMT
As some wag said to me once: the 'cloud' is just remote servers.
As far as our staff and students are concerned, they couldn't give a damn whether their files are on our local 24TB RAID-10 file server or hosted down the internet. They just want them to be there at all times and to load fast. And that's as it should be. The technology is my headache, they just want it all to work.
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Post by MartinT on Feb 13, 2019 17:42:22 GMT
I remember the 'telling-bone' well!
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Post by Slinger on Apr 6, 2019 18:43:15 GMT
How annoying is it that even in this day and age a lot of software does not allow one to choose which disk drive it installs on, and instantly grabs a chunk of one's "C" drive? When I built this computer I put my Win10 OS on a 240GB SSD and intended that the OS was pretty much all I'd have on it. I put in 3 x 2TB SATA drives for the "heavy lifting" stuff.
Now, less than 18 months on, I have had to order a 480GB SSD as I'm down to the last 54GB on my original SSD drive.
I haven't chosen to install anything on my "C" drive during that time, it's just been filled up with things that gave me no choice.
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Post by MartinT on Apr 6, 2019 19:12:51 GMT
The Program Data folder, especially.
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Post by Slinger on Apr 9, 2019 16:15:56 GMT
OS transferred to the new SSD with absolutely zero problems. Thank you "MiniTool Partition Wizard" for a painless transfer with minimal input from me.
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Post by Slinger on May 16, 2019 13:41:21 GMT
Global virus fear prompts update for old WindowsFears of a massive global computer virus outbreak have prompted Microsoft to issue security updates for very old versions of its Windows software. One patch is for Windows XP, which debuted in 2001 and Microsoft stopped supporting in 2014. Microsoft said the patch closed a hole that could be used to spread a virus. Malicious hackers exploiting it could kick off a worldwide outbreak like the 2017 Wannacry worm, which hit thousands of machines. Risky connection
It was " highly likely" the vulnerability would be exploited if it went unpatched, wrote Simon Pope, Microsoft's director of incident response, in a blog about the bug. He said the bug could be exploited simply by connecting to a vulnerable machine over the internet. " Any future malware that exploits this vulnerability could propagate from vulnerable computer to vulnerable computer in a similar way as the WannaCry malware spread across the globe in 2017," he said. This danger prompted the release of a patch that closes the loophole in: Windows XP Windows 2003 Windows 7 Windows Server 2008 SOURCEMORE
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Post by Slinger on May 16, 2019 13:50:53 GMT
Last year it was the "Spectre," "Meltdown," and "Foreshadow," flaws that were worrying Intel, as they threatened the integrity of its processors. They patched those, but this year's model has been found, the attractively named "Zombieload." It's even been given its own logo.  The company [Intel] has said that data centres are likely to be worst affected by the fixes required. But it added that the impact on most PC owners should be minimal. The latest flaw could theoretically allow an attacker to spy on tasks being handled by any Intel Core or Xeon-branded central processing unit (CPU) released since 2011. Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud are among the major cloud computing platforms to power their data centres with the technology. They have taken steps to avoid their clients noticing any impact or being put at risk. But the tech giants may need to invest in extra computer servers if the software patches involved take a major toll on performance. Zombieload was discovered by researchers at Graz University of Technology in Austria and KU Leuven university in Belgium. They said it could allow hackers to steal sensitive data or provide the means to unscramble encrypted files. "[This could affect] user-level secrets, such as browser history, website content, user keys, and passwords, or system-level secrets, such as disk encryption keys," they explained. SOURCE/MORE |
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Post by MikeMusic on May 16, 2019 15:53:24 GMT
Am I correct to assume my XP Virtual Window in W7 is ok.
Never goes out of its box
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Post by Slinger on May 16, 2019 16:07:52 GMT
Am I correct to assume my XP Virtual Window in W7 is ok. Never goes out of its box If you read my "MORE" link, Mike, it'll tell you a bit, well... more. Like most of these things though the chance of infection is extremely low as long as you remember to use anti-virus software, etc., don't open dodgy emails, and your browsers are up to date. |
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Post by MikeMusic on May 16, 2019 16:08:49 GMT
Thanks Paul
Only use XP Virtual window for FoxPro
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Post by MartinT on May 16, 2019 16:44:35 GMT
Guys, the bug is in Intel (and possibly AMD) processors. It will therefore affect all Operating Systems. Yes, your W7 could be vulnerable too, Mike.
The recommended workaround is to disable Hyperthreading (HT) in the BIOS, if you have a setting for it. There goes 40% of your processing performance. There are bound to be another round of fixes for devices and OS. You can't just fix it with a Windows update, so look at your machine vendor site for the latest BIOS but you may as well give it a couple of months because it won't be quick (if it happens at all).
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Post by Slinger on May 16, 2019 16:46:24 GMT
Guys, the bug is in Intel (and possibly AMD) processors. It will therefore affect all Operating Systems. Yes, your W7 could be vulnerable too, Mike. The recommended workaround is to disable Hyperthreading (HT) in the BIOS, if you have a setting for it. There goes 40% of your processing performance. There are bound to be another round of fixes for devices and OS. You can't just fix it with a Windows update, so look at your machine vendor site for the latest BIOS but you may as well give it a couple of months because it won't be quick (if it happens at all). That's not the post Mike was talking about. Read the one above it, Martin. |
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Post by MartinT on May 16, 2019 16:49:11 GMT
Thanks, I skim read them as about the same issue. So, that's two things for you to worry about, Mike  |
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Post by MikeMusic on May 16, 2019 19:30:11 GMT
There was me thinking I was ok.....
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Post by MartinT on May 16, 2019 20:35:02 GMT
Perhaps your processors predate the issue? |
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Post by MikeMusic on May 17, 2019 9:22:00 GMT
Could well be
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