Title: View from the Chair

Author: Martin Moene

Date: 01 September 2015 07:29:43 +01:00 or Tue, 01 September 2015 07:29:43 +01:00

Summary: 

Body: 

Alan Lenton, chair@accu.org

Well it’s mid-August as I write this, and I guess that, as is traditional, the summer rains are due to end immediately after the bank holiday weekend. The next Committee meeting is due in September – just in time for the autumn rains to have set in...

The traditional summer dead-news period has, at least on a tech level, been somewhat enlivened this year by the arrival of Windows 10. A number of people have asked me why I’m so ambivalent about it, given that I’ve been using and programming Windows since Windows 3.1 (the first usable version). There isn’t the space to go into that issue in depth here, but here is the crux of my worries about the direction of Windows 10:

There are a number of issues, but for me the killer issue is the compulsory updates issue. Why? Obviously I suspect that sooner or later Microsoft will brick my computer, and everyone has concentrated on that in the tech press. But for me that is only a side issue, though an important one. It is the somewhat longer term implications of compulsory updates that worry me much more. You need to understand that although you may be able to accept, reluctantly perhaps, Windows 10 as it stands, you will have absolutely no choice about what it looks like, and what it does, in the future.

Even now, the more perceptive of the tech press are murmuring about this being ‘the last’ release of Windows. They are probably correct, but not one of them has understood the implications. Microsoft can use compulsory update for whatever it wants and you have no choice about. How about adverts for instance? Imagine having adverts displayed by the operating system? You think Ad-Blocker will be able to handle that? Impossible, do I hear you say? Sorry, but Microsoft has already done it – a few months back they used the older version of update to put an advert for Windows 10 into everyone’s system tray!

Obviously, I could go on at length, but I won’t. Do I think Microsoft are malicious? No, quite to the contrary. They are a business whose business model has been seriously undermined by technical innovations and societal developments outside the scope of their model. They are trying to develop a new business model which will restore their fortunes, and I would point out that they are doing so without resorting to the morally bankrupt methods of the big media companies.

Good luck to them, I say. I don’t have to like it, and if they succeed I will probably take my day-to-day usage (i.e. my custom) over to Linux or BSD with an Xfce desktop. But that’s my option as a customer, and if enough people do it, they’ll probably have to re-think things.

And as a last thought on the subject, I’ll just point out that if compulsory updates had been in Windows 7, we would all have ended up running Windows 8...

Moving on to a happier topic – ACCU Conference 2016 – I’d like to remind people that sometime between this issue of CVu being published, and the next one in November, the call for conference papers usually comes out. So, I thought I’d remind everyone to start thinking now about presenting at the conference. If you’ve never done it before, now is always a good time to start. Take it from me – even if you thought you knew the topic you wanted to present, building up the presentation will improve your understanding of it. And, if you want to be purely selfish about it, it definitely looks good on your CV!

If you’ve not done it before, help is available, and the local groups are always open to people trying out their putative conference presentations at a local meetings. Go on, give it a try.

I mentioned in the last edition the question of what we should set as the quorum for the on-line voting we now have. If anyone reading this knows of other organizations that have adopted this and what their decisions were, perhaps you could drop me a line with the details. For the record I’m moving towards the idea that the quorum for online should be twice that of the quorum for physical events, but I’m prepared to be persuaded otherwise, if the reasons are good.

I think that’s about all for now, so, I’ll sign off while keeping my fingers crossed that there won’t be another power cut at the next committee meeting. There shouldn’t be; the power people had a large hole dug in the middle of the street for several days after the last one!

Have fun programming.

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