Ice worked in the it dept at two separate universities in the past that have given out public IP addresses to all of their wired computers. I guess when ip's were plentiful (ipv4) and security wasn't all that big, that was OK. These days though, everyone is firewalling up, and handing out internal addresses it makes no sense to continue paying for all that ip range.

There used to be a management piece that allowed you to block the installation of certain specific executables. It would be a nice feature, if this were set in Windows directly, or in group policy or something so I could finally block those stupid coupon sites my users seem to always install and destroy their computers. Since the apps install to a user profile, its hard to block.

I really just want to write "WRONG" as the entire content of this post and just leave it at that. The article seems to have some of the facts, but not all. Yes, Cyanogen the company has decided to shut down. And CyanogenMod, the open source version of the OS released by Cyanogen based on Android also decided to change their name because they don't want to get sued. But facts seem to end there. CM will continue on under another name. If you are running CM on any of your devices, rest assured, aside from a name change, the next build will be more of the same.
Where I am getting frustrated with this article is the notion that this is a big win for Google. I have to disagree. Google or alphabet or whatever they want to call themselves may have created the android OS, but they release it in an open source format. They do this to get it out there on as many devices as they can. More importantly, they do this to get it into the hands of as many developers as they can. There are a number of things that I actually thought were part of android, that only later when reading stock android was adding certain features did I realize were actually only part of CM. That's really what open source is about, the ability for a wide variety of people to work to better something together. A lot of times things seem to make sense when one person is working on them, but later we come to find out that they don't make sense to others.
If Google actually wanted to rein in android, they would simply retool with proprietary code, and release the next version of their OS closed source. The only thing they actually seem to be concerned with are phones that are still running old versions of the OS. This makes is hard not for them, but for application developers to support their applications in that ecosystem. We have seen Google take steps in the recent year or two to modularize some of the core components of Android so that those pieces can be updated even if the OS itself has not been.

I think this is neat in general. It's always good to backup your stuff, and for most people its too difficult to actually do that. I would love to see it as a NAS device instead of a drive though.

So I am driving this rental right now that has an option for something called MirrorLink. They didn't activate it on the car, but I did a little (very little) digging and as far as I can tell its an app that allows you to push the screen from your phone to the screen in the car. With more cars starting to come with screens for the backup cameras, I think it makes perfect sense. Instead of re-inventing a way to make your car do all the things your phone can do, just send the content to the car. Granted, this isn't going to work for every app, but I think it would be a good step in the right direction. They could come up with some kind of mode that when your phone is paired with the car, it everything runs at the resolution of the car's screen, to make it easier for you to touch the interface.

Google Auto is supposed to already be MirrorLink enabled. I wish it were enabled in the rental, I would love to try it out.

What I really like about Skype for business is how I cannot add anyone to my contact list. It just tells me that that particular feature is not working right now. It does this to me on every computer I have put the client on.

I wish they would add video conferencing to slack. I'd use that.

What I have seen seems to contradict what all these clickbait articles you've been posting are spewing. Let's try a test. Open up Windows Update from the control panel. Go look at important updates. This screen shows you all the critical and security updates available for your computer. You will see that Win10 is not on this list. You will find it under optional updates. That means that unless you click the box to install it, or blindly just accept when your computer tells you that updates are available, it won't install.

I used to recommend that average users just let windows update install automatically. But over the last several years Microshit has released a number of updates that clearly did not go through any sort of QC testing before being pushed out, in many cases putting computers into reboot loops and the like. It is currently my recommendation to set your updates to prompt, and to prompt that they are available, not just ready to install. Unless there is some big bug, I will generally keep my computer one month behind on updates, in an effort to keep my PC from becoming a victim of poor testing.

Moving forward into the Windows 10 world, I realize that they don't give a lot of options in the updates timing. I believe this will change, but in the meantime, a virtual machine with WSUS installed, and a group policy on all the windows PC's in your house should be sufficient to block any unwanted updates from hitting your windows 10 machines. You will need to be proactive though to approve updates every month. It's real simple, just put a reminder on your calendar. Microsoft releases new updates every month on the 2nd Tuesday. I would suggest scheduling your updates after that.

I have tried several of the online IDE's. I think in general it is a good idea to move toward. I would love to see the online IDE built into my dev_website with SSH access so I can really test what I am doing. My experience has been there is a shortcoming on the testing side. This leads to me having to try pushing/pulling code in different locations to get testing done, which inevitably leads to anger. Which as you all know, leads to hate, & hate leads to suffering. In most cases, if I have SSH access, I just end up SSHing in and using emacs anyway. It's faster.

The problem with media is that data tends to degrade and technology tends to move forward. Who says you are going to have an optical disk drive in your computer in as little as 5 years? Still its an option. Maybe instead of asking what's the best, maybe you should focus on multiple options. First and foremost, make copies of everything. Take one copy to the bank and have a safety deposit box. It's old school, but unless the bank is robbed, or maybe a fire your documents are safe. Take another copy and get one of those fire lock boxes they sell at the hardware store. I don't know how good they really are in a fire, but its gotta be better than that one desk drawer they are stuffed into now. Finally upload everything to the cloud. Pick a good cloud...or multiple clouds. Encrypt your data.

I'm just irritated that someone somewhere thought it was necessary to say TCP/IP card as opposed to network card.

They said the upgrade would be free for a year? Or the full version of the OS will be free for the first year? I am really just curious what the OEM price will be. Eventually I need to rebuild my PC, and I don't obviously want to play the upgrade game. I am also curious, as many OEM's bundle Windows and that bundle comes at a particular price point. Perhaps the cost of a computer from the big Mfgs will go down with the cost of windows. Time will tell I suppose.

Let's face it. With the exception of cash, there isn't an easy way to pay where you cannot become compromised. It seems like every week another retailer has their databases compromised. Do I really believe even for a moment that letting google, apple, or someone else manage my cards for me will stop that? Can you imagine a situation where one of these companies is compromised and not just one but maybe all of your accounts become compromised with it?

Really? Who installs PowerPoint on the server? Cause you are gonna be all like, hold up let me unrack this server and connect a projector to it...right.

Maybe it's just me, but I feel the future of stamps is going to be a world that doesn't use stamps. How much mail do you really send that you are still buying stamps? I realize lots of businesses still send things out usps, but they are probably printing their own postage at this point anyway and not using actual stamps.

There is an ACM interest group for colleges, I have been to it several times. It's called SIGUCCS. It's held yearly always in a different city. Check it out.