How stupid is Windows? Let the bashing begin...

[oshunluvr]

Long story short: I work in a mixed OS environment. The client - 'cause Windows is so insecure - has imposed a bunch of "security" protocols on the Windows 10 installs including a requirement to use encryption on thumb drives.

Here's the punch line: If you insert a non-encrypted thumb drive, it lets you read FROM it but not write TO it. This means I can easily infect the Windows computer, but an infected Windows install won't pass it on to my thumb drive. Therefore, my thumb drive is more secure if I don't encrypt it.

Orwellian, isn't it?

[claydoh]

Lol. just lol. What sort of pay grade job comes up with that, and where can I apply?

[kubicle]

Those sort of restrictions/policies are usually in place to provide data security (that is, employees taking "sensitive" data with them and then leaving the usb stick on the coffee shop table...those things are somewhat easy to lose)...they do not really protect well against malware (as you pointed out), nor are they really meant to.

[oshunluvr]

Sadly, there is no sensitive or important data on these systems at all. They're simulation system that provide training. Useless to anyone else even if you had the data because the software is useless without the host system.

I guess my real frustration is the stupidity of so-called "security experts" that really just make it harder to work without adding any real security.

[GreyGeek]

The caliber of expertness of your "security experts" pervades the management of commercial and government IT shops. For example, when we changed governors the new tax commissioner knew that he knew nothing about computers and brought on an "assistant" tax commissioner who claimed to be a computer expert because she knew how to use Excel. So, even though the new governor campaigned on eliminating redundant systems and unnecessary employees, he replaced one very capable tax commissioner with two incompetent ones. The net financial result was that it cost taxpayers several million more dollars, and that at a time when the state had a $750M shortfall.

I've consulted both commercial and government ITs and from my own experience all the decisions regarding which software to buy, which security measures to take, ad nausum, were made by suits who usually had next to NO computer experience. Those who did know how to run the hardware and write the software had grit their teeth and do their best.

[woodsmoke]

Hi
Well, I was not going to go "after" MS but Gates deserves whatever he gets.

To keep things short, I set up the "dead animal" lab this afternoon and decided to add in a nice pic (in one of those clear plastic sheet protectors ) of a Coelocanth between the "sharks" and "the regular fish". (Keeping it simple here for folks that are not into the anatomy of fish or other critters).

So, to that end I decided to download a nice image from Wikipedia(tm) and print it off.



This is just a .jpeg. It is copyright free. It is in color. I put it in my "my documents" folder, not downloads.

There is one and only one "image" viewer / thingy on Win10 at the college, (folks have to get permission FROM ON HIGH... to add an app) for the college and it is "Windows Photo Viewer".

I literally could not get it to print on the network printer in the office.

I must have walked ...dunno... 6 times back and forth and spent more time actually putting dead animals into baggies and I did trying to print the stupid pic!

A few hours earlier I had printed some "paper / text" items to the printer so it "should" have been working.

I contacted IT, they went through their normal thing about viewing my computer remotely and also viewing the printer with it's settings and also "remotely" sent an image to it and the printer printed.

It was literally MY computer in MY lab and it was ONLY the Photo viewer on the computer.

So, I left campus and later got an e-mail from an IT person that had gone TO my lab, logged in, using his credentials, downloaded "AN" image from Wikipedia, he said it was a bird and it was a .jpeg and the computer would not print using Windows Photo Viewer (tm) to the networked printer.

So...he typed a few words into Windblows Word and printed it just fine from my lab to the networked printer.

He said that they will have to reinstall Windblows on my machine and it was not my fault.

Sigh...

I detest windblows.

woodsmoke

[Beerislife]

I'm almost tempted to boot into the windows partition on this machine! Not really! ������

I believe the warranty has expired on my IdeaCentre so I no longer need to keep Windblows around.

[GreyGeek]

When I retired in 2008 my employer asked if I could be available for consulting until the "new guy" got up to speed. I agreed and retained my WinXP in dual boot on my Gateway laptop, which was running PCLinuxOS at the time, which is still a fine distro. My Gateway contained the Qt4 based Client front end accessing a PostgreSQL back end containing the data for the homestead folks. Several "new guys" came and went and I helped most of them. In Jan of 2009 I switched to Kubuntu 9.04. In 2012 I purchased my current laptop. I noticed that I hadn't been asked to help for over a year so I contacted the guy in charge of programming (my son ). He said "Oh, I forgot to tell you that we outsourced homestead". I kept XP around for a couple years. I'd open it up every 3 months or so to update it. The last time I did that, circa 2016, the number of updates was over 100,000 kb files. It took several hours and reboots to complete. That's when I decided that Gates and company had to go. I recently had moved to BTRFS. I cleared the XP partition and added it to free space. Then I expanded my BTRFS using the resize command to take the entire drive. With every new LTS release I reformat my SDA drive and give it all to BTRFS. I suspect that with 23.04 I'll have to create two extra 512Mb partitions for grub and efi and give the rest to BTRFS.