Even in remotest Africa, Windows 10 nagware update burns satellite link cash | Hacker News Reader

Even in remotest Africa, Windows 10 nagware update burns satellite link cash

theregister.co.uk

35 pointsalister7 comments

Living and working in rural locales will leave you with the feeling that many software developers assume you've got the same fast, unlimited connectivity that they have. For users like myself, with each forced batch of updates you can almost hear some well-connected urbanite scoff about pilfering "only" a few extra gigs from your connection, this week. "They won't even miss it!", they muse. And for the average user with metered connectivity, that's probably true--until the bill arrives. Or, like in parts of Africa or eastern Europe (where account usage is typically prepaid), when your data quota for the month maxes out (== connectivity loss) hours away from the nearest company service desk or kiosk within a week of topping off your account and barely doing more than checking email. Unlike me, however, very many people so afflicted by second or third world connectivity don't have the luxury of not using Windows . . .

Obligatory article about YouTube: they reduced the size of the page from 1.2MB to a 98KB. All of a sudden, average page latency INCREASED because people in remote areas could now access YouTube (where previously browsing the site was too slow)

http://blog.chriszacharias.com/page-weight-matters

Satellite internet has I think a 5 or 6gb/monthly limit. Nature of the beast. After that you lose connection. No idea what exactly the spec is for africa.

That may have been the plan you were on but there are all the kinds of plans available. A remote hydro electric plant I worked at got some kind of malware and burned through several thousand dollars of bandwidth and the ISP forgave the bill on the condition that they upgrade to a more expensive plan, probably from $700 a mo to $1000

I was more pointing to the average end-user who in no way will get anything but basic satellite, as I assume the article was, and not a resource capable entity. I would hope a power plant would not let windows anywhere near them.

Even in power plants, Windows tends to be the rule rather than the exception. The wind, hydroelectric, and solar facilities I'm familiar with run entirely on Windows, right down to the SCADA and process control systems.

I have only ever seen one control system that did not use windows for the HMI. It was back in 2002 at a electric distribution utility their SCADA system ran on a DEC Alpha with some kind of unix. I've been to 30+ power plants since then, all windows. I deployed linux to 3 power plants and it was a pain in the ass because nobody knew anything about maintaining linux in the remote areas where the power plants were.

All of the PLC programming software from the big manufacturers runs on windows. this is reality.

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