the most obvious solution is to uninstall third party driver management and hand it all over to Windows Update to avoid clashes.

This is neither obvious nor desirable, never a solution. Windows is an OS written by Microsoft. Generally, Microsoft makes no hardware, yet, the OS runs on hardware.

So the obvious solution is for MS to publish and adhere to standards for device drivers interfacing and integrating with the OS, and keep shut. Otherwise, Microsoft should be the sole mfr. of all hardware that is supported by and on Windows.

H/w vendors aim to make money by making their products superior - faster, better resolution / frame rate / quality etc. So they tend to keep their innovations private. If MS demands all h/w mfrs to send their code to Seattle and get it certified for every version and release, the vendors would be afraid of backstabbing, and code, architecture, design reaching their competitors.

So only obvious way is to release a standards compliance OS and keep shut. Or else, like Linux, MS can open source their OS and allow the distribution makers to bundle the OS, h/w, appln s/w, printer drivers and updates to all of them. Or else MS must put up and shut up while ambitious companies like NVidia, Samsung etc. try to innovate..

Question: Who owns the device drivers for hardware?

In the Linux world, the h/w vendor publishes specs, or conforms to standards, so the kernel guys write drivers and merge it. The distributors like RedHat keep sending updated drivers.

In the Windows World, Microsoft seems to have deep distrust of h/w vendors, despite not making any hardware by themselves. MS does not enjoy any h/w vendor having control of the OS internals, but such control is essential for the h/w to work.

If MS published interface or device driver standards, and adhered to them, then again the device mfrs wouldn't have issues. But MS keeps changing WDDM, DirectX and other interfaces, very often and without prior notice to h/w guys.

Atleast in Linux, if somebody wanted to use a display h/w with just some poor standard such as VESA without any fancy acceleration stuff, they can get it without instability and proprietary shims and stuff. Windows users are doomed by design.

Oh, wait, you didn't need to pass a test for that.

I'm just trying to think how that would have been possible. I think back then there was a medical exception you could plead for. I didn't. I passed the 20 WPM test fair and square and got K6BP as a vanity call, long before there was any way to get that call without passing a 20 WPM test.

Unfortunately, ARRL did fight to keep those code speeds in place, and to keep code requirements, for the last several decades that I know of and probably continuously since 1936. Of course there was all of the regulation around incentive licensing, where code speeds were given a primary role. Just a few years ago, they sent Rod Stafford to the final IARU meeting on the code issue with one mission: preventing an international vote for removal of S25.5 . They lost.

I am not blaming this on ARRL staff and officers. Many of them have privately told me of their support, including some directors and their First VP, now SK. It's the membership that has been the problem.

I am having a lot of trouble believing the government agency and NGO thing, as well. I talked with some corporate emergency managers as part of my opposition to the encryption proceeding (we won that too, by the way, and I dragged an unwilling ARRL, who had said they would not comment, into the fight). Big hospitals, etc.

What I got from the corporate folks was that their management was resistant to using Radio Amateurs regardless of what the law was. Not that they were chomping at the bit waiting to be able to carry HIPAA-protected emergency information via encrypted Amateur radio. Indeed, if you read the encryption proceeding, public agencies and corporations hardly commented at all. That point was made very clearly in FCC's statement - the agencies that were theorized by Amateurs to want encryption didn't show any interest in the proceeding.

So, I am having trouble believing that the federal agency and NGO thing is real because of that.

The Technican Element 3 test wasn't more difficult than the Novice Element 1 and 2 together, so Technican became the lowest license class when they stopped having to take Element 1.

The change to 13 WPM was in 1936, and was specifically to reduce the number of Amateur applicants. It was 10 WPM before that. ARRL asked for 12.5 WPM in their filing, FCC rounded the number because they felt it would be difficult to set 12.5 on the Instructograph and other equipment available for code practice at the time.

It was meant to keep otherwise-worthy hams out of the hobby. And then we let that requirement keep going for 60 years.

The Indianapolis cop episode was back in 2009. It wasn't the first time we've had intruders, and won't be the last, and if you have to reach back that long for an example, the situation can't be that bad. It had nothing to do with code rules or NGOs getting their operators licenses.

A satphone is less expensive than a trained HF operator. Iridium costs $30 per month and $0.89 per minute to call another Iridium phone. That's the over-the-counter rate. Government agencies get a better rate than that. And the phone costs $1100, again that's retail not the government rate, less than an HF rig with antenna and tower will cost any public agency to install.

You think it's a big deal to lobby against paid operators because there will be objections? How difficult do you think it was to reform the code regulations? Don't you think there were lots of opposing comments?

And you don't care about young people getting into Amateur Radio. That's non-survival thinking.

Fortunately, when the real hams go to get something done, folks like you aren't hard to fight, because you don't really do much other than whine and send in the occassional FCC comment. Do you know I even spoke in Iceland when I was lobbying against the code rules? Their IARU vote had the same power as that of the U.S., and half of the hams in the country came to see me. That's how you make real change.

you might as well upgrade Ubuntu while you're you are contributing to the reversal of society.

You mean upgrading to Windows 10 contributes to progress in society? Thanks. I understand you are in some call center helping terrified people with their nightmarish Windows 10 upgrades, in the name of progress.

I'd rather downgrade myself to barbarism....

"what do you think of Win10" ... maybe it's a cute girl asking.

If a cute girl asks your opinion on Win10, you better find another cute girl who doesn't ask you stupid questions.

Oh... so you mean those who work need to stay updated on "Experiments" installing an operating system on a bloody hardware? I'm getting my work done on my Ubuntu14 desktop, thank you.

Please get the latest updates on when the first Windows 10 RTM version came out, when the release of RTM versions was stopped, when it was restarted, how Windows 10 installed on old hardware, how it gets installed on current hardware etc. etc. Too much work it seems. Might as well stay in the basement... than risk getting stuck with garbage operating systems that gets in the way of getting work done.

I guess MS still strongly feels this site gets so many eyeballs so it is worth relentless ads brazenly disguised as stories or Experiments... so inspire of Troll mods the site is worth defending...

We don't want no stinking Windows10 stories. Submitters, editors... leave us nerds alone.

Yep, there are a lot of flashing lights and beeps sending code in the computer world. I still hear phones using "... -- ..." to indicate an incoming SMS.

OpenSSL has first-to-market advantage, and anyone who hasn't evaluated the quality differences will choose the simpler license. Plus there are other alternatives, like Amazon's new SSL-in-5000-lines which is also gift-licensed.

The time for OpenSSL to dual-license was when it was the only available alternative to entirely proprietary implementations. That might indeed have funded a quality improvement.

I don't know a thing about the quality of GnuTLS or the Amazon thing. I've seen enough of the insides of OpenSSL to know it's not pretty, but am not a crypto guy and this don't work on it.

Maintaining FIPS compliance did not make anything easier. It's essentially a prohibition on bug repair, as you have to recertify afterward. But the people who wanted FIPS were the only ones who were actually paying for someone to work on OpenSSL.

I don't think any of the other Free Software projects ever tried to be FIPS certified.