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Submission + - People Are Obtaining Windows 7 Licenses To Get Cheap Windows 10 (softpedia.com)

Submitted by jones_supa
jones_supa writes: Windows 7 has quickly started increasing its market share of desktop operating systems, nearing 61%. If you are wondering how come this is happening when Windows 10 is almost here, the reason is a simple trick people are using. Windows 10 will be available as a free upgrade for those running Windows 7 and 8, and the new OS will have the exact same hardware requirements as its predecessor, so the majority of PCs should be able to run it flawlessly. Because Windows 7 was launched in 2009, a license is more affordable than for Windows 8, so many users are switching to this version to take advantage of the Windows 10 free upgrade offer.

Submission + - Retro City Rampage Getting a DOS Version (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by jones_supa
jones_supa writes: There is an indie game port in works which certainly cracks a smile on one's face. Vblank Entertainment is bringing Retro City Rampage — its homage to 8-bit games and Grand Theft Auto — over to one of the influential gaming operating systems of all time: DOS! Retro City Rampage 486 is a port of Retro City Rampage DX, an enhanced version of the game featuring a story mode, arcade challenges, and free roaming. As the name suggests, if one wants to run the game natively, a beefy 486 CPU is required, along with 3.7 MB of disk space and 4 MB of RAM. But of course, DOSBox can be used as well. A release date for the DOS version of the game is not yet known.

Comment Facepalm (Score 3, Informative) 65

The study of 14 popular VPN providers found that 11 of them leaked information about the user because of a vulnerability known as 'IPv6 leakage'. The leakage occurs because network operators are increasingly deploying a new version of the protocol used to run the Internet called IPv6.

Aaarggghh!!! The summary does not explain the issue properly at all.

All that happens here is that the user's IPv4 traffic is tunneled through the VPN, but his IPv6 traffic is broadcasted past the VPN.

I'm sure this problem can be avoided with some reconfiguration. The easiest solution would be to simply chuck off the IPv6 subsystem in the operating system.

Submission + - Windows 7 Will Survive Windows 10 Frenzy, Gartner Expects

Submitted by jones_supa
jones_supa writes: Windows 10 is expected to launch in less than a month, and Microsoft hopes that most Windows 7 and 8 users will use their free upgrade offer. In the coming years, this would help to avoid another "Windows XP moment", with users clinging to a legacy operating system with their teeth and nails. Interestingly, a Gartner analyst still predicts that Windows 7 will continue to be the preferred operating system for the majority of users, and despite the aggressive marketing that tries to push Windows 10 to all devices across the world, many consumers would still prefer to hold on to their existing software rather than upgrade. "We're looking forward to a good replacement cycle around Windows 10. There is still going to be that wide histogram of reactions between people who want to move right now verses those who are still on Windows 95, but it's not going to be the damp squib Windows 8 was," adds John-David Lovelock, head of forecasting at Gartner. Ultimately, the extended support for Windows 7 will end in 2020, and for Windows 8 in 2023.

Comment Re:Evidence? (Score 2) 302

Be warned: It's a highly technical process that involves "clicking".

I once knew a guy who mastered perfectly the process of clicking, but then I saw him doing a doubleclick. Yep, you heard it right: two consecutive clicks performed quickly one after the other. Before that I didn't know that there are people that can actually do it. Simply put, my mind was blown. It's a very cool trick, you have to see it in real life to fully appreciate it.

Submission + - How IKEA Patched Shellshock (eweek.com)

Submitted by jones_supa
jones_supa writes: Magnus Glantz, IT manager at IKEA, revealed that the Swedish furniture retailer has more than 3,500 Red Hat Enterprise Linux servers. With Shellshock, every single one of those servers needed to be patched to limit the risk of exploitation. So how did IKEA patch all those servers? Glantz showed a simple one-line Linux command and then jokingly walked away from the podium stating "That's it, thanks for coming". On a more serious note, he said that it took approximately two and half hours to upgrade their infrastructure to defend against Shellshock. The key was having a consistent approach to system management, which begins with a well-defined Standard Operating Environment (SOE). Additionally, Glantz has defined a lifecycle management plan that describes the lifecycle of how Linux will be used at Ikea for the next seven years.

Comment Re:Windows update bug (Score 1) 517

by jones_supa (#50003051) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Are Post-Install Windows Slowdowns Inevitable?

There is a Windows update bug that will cause svchost to eat 1gb of ram everytime it does a Windows update check.

There's also another memory eating scenario. Try installing Windows 7 afresh and then try to install all updates from Windows Update. While the installation proceeds, TrustedInstaller.exe starts grabbing gobs of RAM, and the amount keeps creeping up after each update is installed. It can reach 10 gigabytes. :D

There's many other problems in Windows Update as well. It has always been kind of a hack.

Comment Re:Nope (Score 2) 517

by jones_supa (#50002967) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Are Post-Install Windows Slowdowns Inevitable?

Fun little thing to do:

Take a weak kneed intel Atom board, and do some simple office use tests with it with various older versions of windows. Start with NT4, then use Win2k, the XP, then 7, then 8.1. See how the ability to do simple things degrades as the OS expects more and more hardware just to draw the damned UI.

Go through Vista, 7, 8, and then 10. There would be no meaningful slowdown, and you might even notice that the computer would get slightly more snappy after each upgrade.

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