Windows 8 - Deeper Impressions

[JorgeA]

Why tablets are failing miserably in higher education

 

While Apple and Google are fighting a FUD war for the hearts and minds of K-12 campuses, there's one area of education that neither has been able to penetrate with success: higher ed. Specifically, I'm referring to the conglomerate of colleges and universities across the US (and likely abroad).

 

[...]

 

Advertising professor and director of the above institute, Michael Hanley, called tablets out similarly to how I've done numerous times before: "Tablets are for entertainment purposes, not for writing papers and doing class projects -- key components of higher education".

 

He went on to say that, "Tablets are fine for reading material and accessing digital files, but for any type of coursework requiring sophisticated design, image manipulation or production, tablets fall far short. Of the 140 students in my classes this year, none used a tablet in class for academic purposes".

 

The writer has an odd take on the Surface, claiming that it's somehow superior to the iPad and Android tablets thanks to its mouse and keyboard possibilities, yet he pooh-poohs the use of mice and keyboards on these other tablets. Whether Surface or iPad, a tablet with a keyboard attached is a tablet with a keyboard attached, no?

 

Anyway, he performs a service by pointing out that tablets (the source of all Win8 evil) may have reached their high-water mark.

 

--JorgeA

 

 

 

[TELVM]

... Advertising professor and director of the above institute, Michael Hanley, called tablets out similarly to how I've done numerous times before: "Tablets are for entertainment purposes, not for writing papers and doing class projects -- key components of higher education".

 

He went on to say that, "Tablets are fine for reading material and accessing digital files, but for any type of coursework requiring sophisticated design, image manipulation or production, tablets fall far short. Of the 140 students in my classes this year, none used a tablet in class for academic purposes" ...

 

Could you have imagined, just ten years ago, that we'd someday need institute directors to explain us that we need serious computers to do serious computing?

 

 

[Flasche]

I checked out Whonix and it sounds interesting, if a bit of a challenge to get up and running. Thanks for the scoop.

 

Have you tried Tails, and if so, how does the experience compare to Whonix?

 

--JorgeA

 

 

I have tails on a flash drive. The biggest difference between Tails and Whonix is there standpoint. Tails is a portable secure OS while Whonix is not. Another thing to note would be that while both are secure and privacy oriented, Whonix is the most secure and safest of the two. (Whonix is over kill in privacy)

 

Here is a little neat list comparing the two (the tails info is from 0.16, but the basics should be correct) https://www.whonix.org/wiki/Comparison_with_Others#Introduction

[JorgeA]

Data Pirates of the Caribbean: The NSA Is Recording Every Cell Phone Call in the Bahamas

 

According to documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, the surveillance is part of a top-secret system – code-named SOMALGET – that was implemented without the knowledge or consent of the Bahamian government. Instead, the agency appears to have used access legally obtained in cooperation with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to open a backdoor to the country’s cellular telephone network, enabling it to covertly record and store the “full-take audio” of every mobile call made to, from and within the Bahamas – and to replay those calls for up to a month.

 

SOMALGET is part of a broader NSA program called MYSTIC, which The Intercept has learned is being used to secretly monitor the telecommunications systems of the Bahamas and several other countries, including Mexico, the Philippines, and Kenya. But while MYSTIC scrapes mobile networks for so-called “metadata” – information that reveals the time, source, and destination of calls – SOMALGET is a cutting-edge tool that enables the NSA to vacuum up and store the actual content of every conversation in an entire country.

 

All told, the NSA is using MYSTIC to gather personal data on mobile calls placed in countries with a combined population of more than 250 million people. And according to classified documents, the agency is seeking funding to export the sweeping surveillance capability elsewhere.

.

“Lawful intercept systems engineer communications vulnerabilities into networks, forcing the carriers to weaken,” says Christopher Soghoian, the principal technologist for the American Civil Liberties Union. “Host governments really should be thinking twice before they accept one of these Trojan horses.”

 

A long but informative read.

 

--JorgeA

 

[JorgeA]

I have tails on a flash drive. The biggest difference between Tails and Whonix is there standpoint. Tails is a portable secure OS while Whonix is not. Another thing to note would be that while both are secure and privacy oriented, Whonix is the most secure and safest of the two. (Whonix is over kill in privacy)

 

Here is a little neat list comparing the two (the tails info is from 0.16, but the basics should be correct) https://www.whonix.org/wiki/Comparison_with_Others#Introduction

 

Thanks, that was helpful!

 

Which one (Tails or Whonix) do you find easier to use?

 

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

 

... Advertising professor and director of the above institute, Michael Hanley, called tablets out similarly to how I've done numerous times before: "Tablets are for entertainment purposes, not for writing papers and doing class projects -- key components of higher education".

 

He went on to say that, "Tablets are fine for reading material and accessing digital files, but for any type of coursework requiring sophisticated design, image manipulation or production, tablets fall far short. Of the 140 students in my classes this year, none used a tablet in class for academic purposes" ...

 

Could you have imagined, just ten years ago, that we'd someday need institute directors to explain us that we need serious computers to do serious computing?

 

 

 

 

No, I could not have imagined that.

 

The spoiler is fantastic -- and totally to the point!

 

--JorgeA

[Tripredacus]

Documents show that the NSA has been generating intelligence reports from MYSTIC surveillance in the Bahamas, Mexico, Kenya, the Philippines, and one other country, which The Intercept is not naming in response to specific, credible concerns that doing so could lead to increased violence.

The 6th country that The Intercept refused to mention has been revealed as well. There was a spat between Greenwald and WikiLeaks on Twitter a few days ago that lead to it.

http://wikileaks.org/WikiLeaks-statement-on-the-mass.html

[Flasche]

Thanks, that was helpful!

 

Which one (Tails or Whonix) do you find easier to use?

 

--JorgeA

 

I find them similar. Though if your wondering about which one to use, I'd use Whonix unless you need a portable live OS, for Whonix is more secure.

[JorgeA]

This seems an odd thing, at least something I haven't heard of. Microsoft decides not to fix an IE8 zero-day vulnerabiliity.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/05/22/ie_8_zero_day_dumped_after_7_months_redmond_says_harden_up/

 

They now seem to have changed their mind:

 

Microsoft will patch IE zero day but doesn't give timeline 

 

Microsoft to fix critical IE bug that has gone unpatched for 6 months

 

Microsoft said Thursday it plans eventually to patch a vulnerability in Internet Explorer 8 that it's known about for seven months, but it didn't say when.

 

In a statement issued to media outlets, Microsoft said some patches take longer to develop than others and that "we must test every one against a huge number of programs, applications and different configurations," according to IDG News. "We continue working to address this issue and will release a security update when ready in order to help protect customers."

 

Or maybe the initial reports misinterpreted Microsoft's stance on this bug.

 

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

 

Thanks, that was helpful!

 

Which one (Tails or Whonix) do you find easier to use?

 

--JorgeA

 

I find them similar. Though if your wondering about which one to use, I'd use Whonix unless you need a portable live OS, for Whonix is more secure.

 

 

Thanks, Flasche. It's too bad Whonix doesn't have a live DVD or demo version, as it requires a full installation before you can try it, but I'll see if I can fit in the space (and time) to play with it.

 

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

Microsoft unveils Windows 8.1 with Bing for lower cost devices

 

Microsoft’s Free Windows To Come With Bings Attached

 

 

We had talked about this before; these posts add some new details.

 

--JorgeA

 

[JorgeA]

More about the tablet market and prospects for the Surface hybrid:

 

What Microsoft gets wrong about the tablet-laptop redundancy

 

While onstage at the Surface Pro 3 event, Microsoft vice president and Surface creator Panos Panay cited a pretty surprising statistic: 96 percent of iPad owners also own a laptop. Tablet and laptop ownership relationships are studied constantly, but I'd never before heard it phrased in such a way that made me feel so dumb for owning both. That was all I needed to hear at the time to buy the argument that tablets should be more like laptops in the quest to unify them, at least for the duration of the presentation.

 

[...]

 

While the 96-percent statistic seems to support Microsoft's narrative that tablets and laptops are a redundancy that hardware manufacturers have a duty to fix, overwhelming evidence suggests that is not true. Few people try to or want to use tablets like laptops, save for when they feel like they have to justify the cost and get every last inch of mileage out of it. Tablet popularity arose in a place where people were using laptops like tablets, or smartphones like tablets, but in suboptimal ways that showed a tablet was better.

 

Why the tablet is popular

 

Ever since the iPad landed in the market as a clear luxury item without a specifically defined use case, market researchers have been tracking it, alongside other tablets, to figure out what we actually use them for and where. In short, we use tablets almost everywhere we don't use laptops, or where we would use laptops in an absolute pinch but would prefer not to: bedrooms, living rooms, bathrooms, and kitchens. Tablets have filled in a particular kind of pared-down computer experience everywhere the laptop wasn't, or everywhere that it might have been incidentally but not quite suited to the job—sitting open and waiting to be spilled on, or nestled in some blankets on a couch or in a bed, the less-than-capacious battery trickling away.

 

[...] 

 

Microsoft's assumption is that the difference of purpose is for lack of a laptop that can act enough like a tablet. But this denies the tablet the niche that it built for itself out

of whole cloth...

 

--JorgeA

 

 

 

 

[Flasche]

Thanks, Flasche. It's too bad Whonix doesn't have a live DVD or demo version, as it requires a full installation before you can try it, but I'll see if I can fit in the space (and time) to play with it.

 

--JorgeA

 

If you have Virtual Box you can just download a VM strait from there site https://www.whonix.org/wiki/Download

[JorgeA]

Thanks again, Flasche. I'll have to get VirtualBox.

 

Some years ago when my Windows 98 PC got sick and I had to move to Vista, I looked into using a VM in order to be able to keep using certain programs that wouldn't run on the newer OS. I steered away from VMWare products as the EULA gave them the right to come into my home and audit my use of the software (even though it's a free product). Scr3w that.

 

In the end, Microsoft issued updates that made Vista compatible with a wider range of older software, so it became unnecessary to use a VM and I never did get that far.

 

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

Update on a post upthread about the NSA installing spying devices on hardware for export:

 

Angry Cisco CEO calls on Obama to rein in surveillance

 

John Chambers was reacting to the emergence of pictures showing National Security Agency (NSA) workers breaking open Cisco networking equipment in order to install surveillance tools in them. These devices would subsequently be resealed and sent out to customers, including Internet service providers and other major tech companies.

Chambers also called on Obama to implement new "standards of conduct" as soon as possible. Many US-based companies, including Cisco, have lost a great deal of customers to European and Asian rivals, due to a lack of trust from surveillance-wary customers.

 

Earlier this year, we caught up with Trend Micro CEO Eva Chen, who said, "Trend Micro is a Japanese company, so actually... we benefitted [from the PRISM scandal] because we saw companies, especially in Europe, start to say, 'I'm not sure I want to use US companies' services'".

 

--JorgeA