bluntly, replacing the shell is a pretty deep modification
The program is CALLED "Classic Shell", that doesn't mean it's actually a shell overhaul (GNOME isn't a lawn ornament...). It's a simple ~5MB Installshield Wizard that puts a small overlay on the start button and preempts the internal Windows equivalent, providing a more traditional start menu interface reminiscent of either Windows 2000, XP(ish), or 7. The only other thing it touches with regards to the shell is that it can disable the 'hot corners' that Windows 8 seems to believe are actually useful on a desktop.
Step 1) Doesn't want Google observing them. Step 2) buys Android tablet, wholly controlled by Google.
At this point, the options are a bit sparse...Google, Apple, Microsoft, maybe Blackberry....I mean, about the only place you won't find that level of mess is an HP Touchpad running WebOS, because I can't see any of the infrastructure still being switched on. The fact of the matter is that, while not outright collusion, I'm unaware of a privacy focused company who has enough chops to release a tablet running their code.
If you were going to root it anyway why not buy an iPad and jailbreak it?
Different apps. I haven't been in Cydia recently, but I'd wager that the variety of apps that leverage the "rootedness" of an Android phone outnumber what's on an iPhone. Similarly, there are a number of apps (Rocketdial, GoSMS, etc.) that require a jailbreak on iOS, but will happily run on a standard issue Android phone.
Nothing preinstalled even talks to Google without you setting it up, so you're already off to a better start.
Well, at initial setup, there's not much that Google can ascertain - your Gmail address, your cell number, your phone carrier, and your location...but neutering that stuff at first run means that they get all of one data point - one more than I'd like, but still not much. Personally, my first installations are Xposed Framework and Xprivacy; I neuter my phone so thoroughly in that respect that it's a royal pain to use the GPS even when I want to...but I'm perfectly fine with that arrangement; ymmv.
Every Android update is going to fight to collect information about you. I don't see why you would buy into a system that by default will do exactly what you do not want.
Because if you're rooting, and more specifically installing a custom ROM, carrier updates become irrelevant. Depending on the ROM, some do OTA updates, others have more conventional means. Either way, I personally have never once installed a carrier/OEM update; I've never once seen one that I wasn't certain was going to make a mess.
tl;dr: Android sucks, except for all the alternatives. There are roundabout ways to get privacy on Android, and as annoying as it is that it's required to do that, Android is the only contemporary mobile OS that supports them at all.
You pose a genuinely interesting question - where, exactly, is the cutoff between "walled garden" and "open"? Google hasn't done much good in the way of proactively keeping their systems open - even the Nexus phones ship with locked bootloaders. KitKat severely limited the utility of MicroSD cards. Using an Android phone without a Gmail account isn't impossible, but it requires a whole lot of deliberate footwork. Lollipop is integrating some of the Samsung Knox stuff, as well as other security enforcing things. Google's "commit" frequency to the AOSP is lacking, especially since much of their work is done within their property apps (e.g. Maps, Gmail, Now, etc.), rather than the OS itself.
I would ultimately say that the ability to install apk's from third party sources, the ability for root-requiring applications to live in the Play Store, and the availability of apps that modify core system functions (e.g. RocketDial, GoSMS, NovaLauncher, etc.) keeps Google in the "not a walled garden" category. I remain unconvinced, however, that Google will stay this way - their recent steps regarding Android's architecture has consistently decreased openness, instead of increasing it. Personally, I still run Android because it's the worst except for all the rest. The next mobile OS that has Swype and XPrivacy is the next recipient of my mobile device dollars.
Hate to break it to you, but humans aren't the only ones who know and use language. We're not really that distinguishable from many animals if thats your deciding factor. Dolphins, Whales, Octopus... they all probably would like to have a word with you.
If I ever start a home business, I'll run it on some open source system. No Intuit products for me, not ever.
Obnoxiously, this is a situation where Open Source is still "note quite there". Quickbooks casts a pretty wide net in my experience, from the sole proprietor whose wife does the data entry, to the $30 million/year medium business that has a finance department and is using one of their enterprise editions, to "basically every accountant ever", who has quickbooks because all of his business clients have a quickbooks file that they e-mail him in order to have their taxes done. Now one of the reasons why Quickbooks is as popular as it is, is the fact that it's like Facebook - everyone uses it because everyone uses it. Even Microsoft failed back in 2007 when they tried to take them on.
The single reason why I see OSS have issues with the small business accounting software department is the fact that every title I've seen is double entry. GNUcash is, Xtuple is, and odoo is. Quickbooks is single entry, and populates the charts of accounts for you. I wanted Xtuple to work for me, but double entry accounting is a bit of an enigma to those without formal accounting training. One could argue that people who do the books should be familiar with regular accounting practices, but Intuit has made a fortune from nixing that requirement. Gnucash is a simple Installshield wizard, but Xtuple and odoo have their own issues in that they require networking experience as well (more so odoo; I think it's possible for Xtuple to do a fully local install). Most businesses, be it construction, interior design, small auto repair, landscaping, cupcake baking, etc...they don't exactly have someone familiar with both configuring a PostgreSQL server AND double entry accounting on their payroll...thus, Quickbooks again fills that void.
Intuit needs competition.The best they have right now is Xero, but they (and many of their competitiors) are web based SaaS titles that don't offer a self hosted option, at any price. I'm surprised that no one has come up with a solid, single-entry accounting title, be it either half the price, or full-on OSS. There's money to be made there, and right now, Intuit is getting it.
Using Windows in health care was a really stupid idea in my opinion.
If Linux was in the state it's presently in, back when computers were making inroads in healthcare situations, you may be on to something. Linux in the 90's, however, didn't play too well with most things who's I/O didn't involve an ethernet port.
Not your stupid idea, mind you. A stupid idea on the part of all the software developers who chose to target it. What you really need is a good and secure core OS with very few features, which you can upgrade forever without breaking compatibility.
Which distro do you target in this respect? Red Hat, I guess (it's one of the handful still here today that were around in 1995, but at the time, there were plenty of other promising distros that didn't survive)...but if breaking compatibility weren't a problem, Red Hat wouldn't still be issuing minor updates for RHEL 4, because everyone could just jump to RHEL 7 without a problem.
Then you need packages on top of that core to provide all the user-facing features like the desktop environment, which shouldn't ever need to be updated (since they should be relying on the core OS for security).
As a trivial example, assume we ran with this logic of never updating the desktop environment. I've got no issue with GNOME 2; it's functional. Old computer didn't have wireless, new one does. Old GNOME won't have a UI for connecting to a wireless network. i'm sure it can be command line scripted, but that script starts getting longer as more and more edge cases for the desktop UI come to light.
All the healthcare-specific applications shouldn't ever need to be rebuilt or updated (except for security updates).
...unless the laws change and you need different information entered. Or, you switch upstream providers and you need to alter the output. Or, it was built in Java and the new iterations of Java outright block interfaces that don't have super duper blessed certificate chains. Or the facility offers a new service that they didn't used to. Or the vendor goes out of business and you have to migrate to someone new anyway. Or, MySQL/Postgres does things a bit differently and you need to match the new version....The list of why software needs to be updated is endless - name ONE piece of software that was "done" in its first iteration. *MAYBE* something like nano or another very simple program, but software gets updated, especially in the medical field.
None of this 10-year support window requiring a large expensive rollout of new software when it runs out.
Okay, fine. There is plenty of medical equipment that requires regular replacement for new technology, equipment, resolution, and procedures. Should a year-old MRI machine have Windows 2000 drivers? Conversely, what's the statute of limitations for old hardware to get support? Would you want an MRI on a 25-year-old scanner?
No need to waste developer time on updating existing applications for new APIs when you could be developing the next great thing instead. So why isn't the whole healthcare infrastructure built on Linux?
So, computers stop being computers, and instead just become part of the embedded hardware? That can make some sense - no one ever complained about their Nokia phones not getting software updates. Super standard languages for certain things are wonderful; it's why HP Laserjet 8000 series printers are still on the road. However, if we're not updating software, we wouldn't be able to update hardware, except in terms of what the existing software can do.
The correct approach is the correct approach. Pardon the tautology, but it's true - minimally changing UIs and APIs can be good. In other areas, allowing software to be more radically altered makes the hardware a better investment. Knowing which is which, is almost the definition of wisdom.
It is sad to see that years of propaganda and fear-mongering by the government, politicians and police have actually worked out so well for them.
I might be wrong on this, but I don't quite think it's "propaganda" and "fear mongering" if you actually ruin lives over it.
Twenty years ago, the response to a peer-to-peer hosting network would have been "give me some of that".
Well, 20 years ago this wouldn't have been terribly practical (remember, back then dial-up was normal, broadband was not, and a 4GB hard disk was insanely large), but for the sake of the argument, I'll assume that the essence of this sentiment is "today's technology with yesterday's mindset, atmosphere, and culture". Today, if you know who you're dealing with, you can use something like Bittorrent Sync to do real-time replication. The P2P networks of that day (e.g. first-gen Napster and Gnutella), we were all "give me some of that" because they allowed the recipient to make use of the data, whereas this system does not.
Today, it's "imagine how the police could fuck you over if they wanted to".
It's a cost/benefit problem. A very low risk of legal trouble vs. music for free in a pre-Spotify, pre-Pandora world was worth it to most users of early P2P networks. Let's narrow down the market that could benefit from this: "Everyone with data" - 1,001 backup methodologies exist for this. Carbonite, Dropbox/GDrive/OneDrive (crude, but survives a system crash...), Amazon S3 all help. "Everyone with data they don't want on the hard disks of companies who will hand over data with a 'pretty please'" - WD MyCloud (and the Seagate & Buffalo equivalents), FreeNAS (and other DIY NAS units), BT Sync, and either family or friends who are willing to barter storing a backup drive at their place for storing a backup drive at yours. "Everyone with data they don't trust on the servers of family, friends, or companies" - Two externals and a safe deposit box, or a hole in the ground outside. "Everyone with data they don't trust on servers of family, friends, companies, and don't want to do a drive swap" -...who would be in this category?
With the problem of "storing your data somewhere" already fairly well solved by other means, let's disuss cost/benefit: not trusting a company with a known agenda (you're still trusting Storj, though...), and not building your own data backup device or buying one, but instead trusting a whole lot of complete strangers, in exchange for cryptocurrency-at-best. The cost/benefit just doesn't seem to solve a problem that isn't already solved in one form or another for virtually every use case already.
How much more will it take to admit to ourselves that most Western nations are now police states?
Well, "police state" is a complicated designation to give; to my knowledge it's most commonly labeled in retrospect. The situation here is that this storage model enters a well-populated field, introducing a problem most others don't have, the problem just happens to be a legal one. Even if we hand-wave the legal trouble away, technologically it raises plenty of questions that just don't really seem to solve more problems than they cause.
As an Origin owner, I will second this notion. My laptop has handled 18-hour-long video rendering jobs without a significant performance degradation over time. The support is unrivaled, and they can have some quite powerful specs. Additionally, both the CPU and GPU are removable/upgradeable/replaceable.
The original poster did say that he looked at the Clevo units; Origin basically hand-assembles, tests, and rebadges them. If Clevo is close, and you want a company to stand behind it, Origin is a great one.
I do, however, ultimately concur with some of the other posters here - compile jobs are likely better done on a server somewhere, letting a bunch of processors with a bunch of ECC RAM do the compile while the laptop itself does other not-compiling things.
I mean, it only makes sense to send a mars rover to scout out Eden Prime. Hopefully, the first person to land there will be able to understand the vision.
"2) It takes too long to make. You go and buy one in ten minutes."
Bought a gun recently? Even with CCW license to speed the process, it takes a lot longer than 10 minutes.
The GP's post was rather ambiguous; perhaps this was intentional. In some places, one can legally purchase a registered firearm in about 10 minutes (10...20...an hour...some favorable amount of time to waiting for a 3D print to finish). In other places, one goes to the right street corner with the correct unit of currency, be it a stack of unmarked $20's, 500g of cocaine, a trunk full of Tide detergent (not kidding)...and in about ten minutes you'll have the service weapon of a former police officer with a filed off serial number.
The point the GP was ultimately making was that if you need a gun quick for a crime of passion, the present unreliability of the plastic firearms and lengthy printing times, in conjunction with the initial cost of the printers themselves, mean that they're a possible solution, but not a pragmatic one.
How exactly are paper records any more secure? I've gone into a number of clinics and doctor's offices were the only "security" of their medical records is an easily broken into cabinet.
Perhaps they're not more secure in the literal sense, but they're less of an enticing target. It requires physical presence, and probably some form of breaking and entering. It requires physical transport (which likely means multiple trips), and either a LOT of work on a photocopier, or banking on the fact that no one will miss them. Once you have them, you need to go through them by hand and glean any useful information through manual file sifting.
Digital records are stolen through the Ethernet port. They won't be "gone", so they won't be "missed". They can be sifted, sorted, filtered, and pivoted until they produce useful information. If the records don't produce useful data, it'd be much more difficult to convict the thief of a crime, whereas physical record theft still leaves a laundry list of crimes with which to convict that are easier to prove.
Should the cabinets be locked? Yes...but the only place on a computer you need a crowbar to get what you want is in a game of Half-Life.
Fastest: Seagate. Best Warranty: Seagate. Best Cache: WD Red....or the Seagate...the article conflicts between the first two pages. Cheapest: WD Green.
Seagate notables: Full drive encryption available at a firmware level. AF and Legacy disks are separate models. WD Red notables: 5400RPM spindle speed. WD Green notables: None - nothing distinguishable from the Red drive, except a shorter warranty.
Atto results are shown on a messy graph with no clear numbers, but Seagate wins that benchmark as well (albeit with a closer delta).
HD Tune Pro results basically reflect the transfer rates from above. Seek times for the Seagate are 11ms for both write and read, with the WD Red having a 16/17 set of scores and the WD Green being less than an integer higher. Burst rates are again better on the Seagate (276R/304W), with the WD Green being 217/220 and the Red being 217/218.
Crystal mark, basically the same numbers.
Futuremark, prettier graphs with wonderful titles like "video editing" and "importing pictures", with the results a closer race, each drive having its own task at which it wins (even the green). Not much different from the 3TB numbers, and not that much different from each other.
There were no mentions of reliability metrics; presumably none of the disks failed during benchmarking. Consult your usual biases and experience regarding which drive is likely to fail or not - this was strictly a benchmark review, and shockingly, the enterprise-grade drive with the highest rotational speed and biggest cache that costs the most money got the best score.
If you can get into a bank, you get money account info, credit scores, security tips, former trades, credit cards, all sorts of good stuff. If you get into a retail environment or online store, it's almost as good. Basically, you get money to spend.
Yes, but banking breaches/CC Fraud is so common, that the two times it's happened to me, it's been "an errand" - pick up my dry cleaning, get a haircut, cancel my debit card and submit a fraud form, get drinks for company tonight, put some gas in the car. It's that prevalent that it's a well-trodden path, with laws, protections, procedures, canned forms, and an express line to get it squared away. Medical record fraud is a much more difficult problem. You don't need your particular credit card number. You DO need your particular medical file. An SSN change is its own LENGTHY process, as all the rest of your ID cards also need to be changed as well. I don't even know how that works with regards to actually receiving Social Security, either.
In a hospital though, the only unique thing you find out is if someone is sick and with what. That's a pain in the ass to work with.
Pardon my lack of SQL syntax, but...
SELECT * FROM patient_address WHERE current_prescriptions Contains "Oxycodone" OR "Percocet" AND WHERE area_code EQUALS "212" OR "914".
You now have a comprehensive list of houses to rob in Manhattan where you can get prescription painkillers. Simple B&E, and you've got bottles that can be sold on the street at $40/pill. Or, introduce a middle man - find a drug dealer who will pay a couple grand for a list like that, and make a few grand for sending an e-mail. Send that list - or subsets of it - to 50 different drug dealers, and you've got a year's salary in an afternoon.
the various hospital disasters I have read about demonstrate that there isn't much a hacker can really do to hurt people. Nurses at the end of the day don't do stupid things and doctors aren't much worse.
No, hospitals are a stupid place to expend effort.
If literally nothing else, call the owner of the hospital and blackmail him/her that if they don't deposit a million dollars into your offshore account in the Cayman Islands, that list will end up on Pastebin, and it would mean that the hospital would likely be litigated into oblivion and that person's life is over - WELL worth the million bucks to keep it quiet. For better or worse, we both lack creativity. I'm sure that if I were to spend an actual afternoon attempting to come up with nefarious ways to use data gleaned from a hospital, I could do better. The fact that such a list isn't actual bank account numbers doesn't mean that it's not worth real money to someone.
While "Hipsters" is the go-to answer to why vinyl records are all the rage, DJs are another part. Some songs are still pressed on 12" singles (most commonly EDM and hip-hop; frequently with instrumental versions as well), but the best selling vinyl pressing for quite some time now has been the Serato Timecode record. It allows DJs to use standard Technics 1200s (and newer models, like the Numark TTX and the Reloop 7000s) to still spin and scratch records, but without being limited by what's actually being pressed because it manipulates MP3 playback on a computer.
Amongst the reasons these records sell so well is because instead of having hundreds of records that get 1-2 plays a night, the same pair of records are played all night, so it's entirely realistic to go through a pair a month, depending on how much pressure is put on the needle. Serato is (or was-for-a-very-long-time depending on who's numbers you believe) the most popular DVS platform, with Traktor in second place, though it's more popular with DJs who use (MIDI) Controllers instead of vinyl. Serato and several other DJ software titles now support the vast number of controllers that have been released, so overall interest in DJing with timecode vinyl isn't quite as popular as it once was. Still, while Jack White’s Lazaretto sold over 75,000 copies this year, it pales in comparison to the number of club jocks who buy timecode records, in pairs, monthly.
Crow, listen to this guy. Assuming these things have 100MBytes/sec write speed, a simple RAID-1 will take over 22 hours to rebuild.
If you want 8TB of usable space, get 4x4TB and RAIDz2 (i.e. RAID6) them. Even if it's disposable data, the data must be of sufficient use to justify a FreeNAS build over a simple external. It's worth your time to do it right.
I answered most of your questions in this post, but the tl;dr version is that I don't mind ads based on what I post. I mind ads based on what I *don't* post, i.e. data that's extracted from my behavior. What I post is public. What I don't post is private. Not that hard.
1.) it's not a matter of having "something to hide". "I have nothing to hide" succinctly illustrates a foundational change in how privacy is viewed. Privacy is a RIGHT that should be compromised only under specific circumstances, at my discretion.
If it's private then don't put it out in public and companies like facebook won't have access to it.
I'm not talking about being upset with a situation like me saying "I just got a new car!" and then Facebook serving me ads for accessories or insurance. That's a tradeoff I'm okay with, for the very reason you specify. The think that grinds my gears is entirely different, and an example of it just happened today. I have a few PC repair clients. I call, text, and e-mail them. I do not contact them via Facebook. I do not have the Facebook app installed on my phone, we have no mutual friends, they've never e-mailed me at my e-mail address associated with my Facebook account, and I run Ghostery on my browser. To the extent that I can, I've opted out of whatever tracking Facebook lets me opt out of. So, how did Facebook know that I knew these clients? That's information I've not only not given them, but have gone out of my way to prevent Facebook getting. "Because I use the service at all" is a pretty poor reason why Facebook should have that information.
"I have nothing to hide" indicates that privacy is seen as a PRIVILEGE requiring a reason for its desire
No it is the justification for making things that may would have been private by default public instead. Yes previously photos that I took privately remained on my camera, now they are synced to my public folder on my cloud provider. I don't have to do that, but I choose to because it is convenient and I have nothing to hide, that's the tradeoff.
Agreed. Let me give you another example. Back in June, I went with a friend on a road trip to Pittsburgh. In anticipation of this trip, I updated Google Maps on my phone. I don't use it often, and I have auto-updates on my phone disabled, so it was a bit dated. When we got back home, I learned that Google has a "map history" 'feature' that's a part of the Maps app, that show you the routes you took. I was never notified of this change, and again, wherever possible, I opted out of Google's data collection. Maps is "convenient", and Google showing me ads for rest stops and gas stations while I'm driving is an acceptable tradeoff. Retaining that data, when no prompt was given to me? I had nothing to hide during that trip, but it's disrespectful to take data in that manner without giving the user the option to have it not collected. Depending on the tightness of your tin foil hat, there's no guarantee that they aren't taking that data anyway and just aren't showing it to you. "Don't use Maps then" is the likely answer, and I no longer do - I use CoPilot. The fact that the opt-out wasn't made known to me until after the data had been collected? That's not terribly justifiable.
2.) The major issue isn't the opt-in, but the unilateral way it's done. Retail is a science, and I get that...but the fact that opting out is becoming progressively less possible is a problem.
But it is possible, what people are taking issue with is that companies are now taking public data and cross-referencing it, that data wasn't private before and it isn't now.
Who my clients are is privileged information. I sync them with an Exchange server whose owners I know, and explicitly not to Google, Facebook, or anyone else. What I do and don't buy *should* be privileged information (which is why I don't use rewards cards). The cross-referencing is most definitely concerning, especially since the definition of "public" seems to essentially be "any time one human interacts with another", when there should certainly be a spectrum between "private" and "public".
Why is your personal info so precious to you? I have nothing to hide, if you do that's your problem.
Two reasons:
1.) it's not a matter of having "something to hide". "I have nothing to hide" succinctly illustrates a foundational change in how privacy is viewed. Privacy is a RIGHT that should be compromised only under specific circumstances, at my discretion. "I have nothing to hide" indicates that privacy is seen as a PRIVILEGE requiring a reason for its desire, i.e. "something to hide". The fact that you consider Facebook picking a Coke ad over a Pepsi ad a worthwhile tradeoff for your privacy is all well and good, and I personally am glad that the option is there. The fact that the system is becoming progressively less respectful of the concept of opting out for no given reason, on the other hand, is the problem.
2.) The major issue isn't the opt-in, but the unilateral way it's done. Retail is a science, and I get that...but the fact that opting out is becoming progressively less possible is a problem. If Google wants information about me, feel free to call and ask. I usually participate in surveys for that very reason - they're respectful enough to ask, and allow me to choose which data I wish to provide. Facebook and Google do no such thing.
There's a certain amount of understanding I can have with behavioral advertising. If I Google for "ski resorts Vermont", and they want to show me ads for ski resorts in Vermont, I'm 100% fine with that. I even try to click on ads when I know that they're incidentally what I'm looking for. However, if they're going to send me ads based on my e-mails and Facebook posts, which I cannot opt out of, then that is a different story.
I'm planning on setting up one of these in a month, and I'm considering FreeNAS and NAS4Free. I'm very interested in comments from anyone with experience with both.
I've used both, migrated between them, and support instances of both for different clients.
tl;dr: NAS4Free better adheres to the UNIX philosophy of "do one thing and do it well". FreeNAS does not - it does more stuff. Depending on your use case, either one of them can be a help or a hindrance.
Both of them essentially solve the same problem, essentially the same way: Get a bunch of hard disks recognized by a computer, and use the ZFS file system and various networking protocols together in order to facilitate data storage. Both of them have the same advantages of ZFS (Data security, "datasets", good performance in software RAID, snapshotting, compression, volume portability) and cons (you'll need plenty of RAM [ECC RAM is strongly recommended], hardware RAID controllers are only useful in JBOD mode, adding disks later on gets weird, etc.). If the ZFS tradeoff is worthwhile for you, then you're in the right place.
Pros, NAS4Free: --Runs better on lower spec'd hardware. --Faster startup time and generally snappier web interface. --Has all the core stuff (SMB, FTP, SSH, NFS, iSCSI), and notably, Transmission. --"More Open" than FreeNAS with regards to licensing.
Cons, NAS4Free: --Limited functionality beyond NAS stuff, i.e. no plugins, though there are a handful of tutorials for unofficial methods (I've personally set one up to run BT Sync and Plex, but it took about an hour and LOTS of command line fun). --Update schedule is erratic. --I've personally had some annoyances with their Samba implementation; it doesn't always respect "remember password" in mixed environments with mapped drives.
Pros, FreeNAS: --Extensible functionality with plugins; there are multiple avenues for media streaming and automatic downloading (Transmission, SabNZBd, XDM, etc.). There's also an OwnCloud plugin which is very nice, and an Amazon S3 plugin that allows for real-time replication to The Cloud (tm) if that's worthwhile. Depending on the environment, integration with Active Directory is possible. --ZFS Replication - you can have your datasets replicate to a secondary NAS somewhere else. --In-UI updating, automatic or scheduled. This is a new feature in 9.3 admittedly, but it no longer requires updates to be manually uploaded or the NAS to be taken offline for an update to be performed.
Cons, FreeNAS: --All those extra features come at a cost - you'll need to account for that when buying RAM. --Plugin updates aren't always immediate when the source program updates; when some programs update internally, it's not always reflected in the FreeNAS UI. --UI is more daunting at first go. Also, some things are a bit more quirky than they should be. --iSCSI is a bit more complicated to set up than on N4F.
I personally like the FreeNAS route myself, but that's also based on my extensive use of plugins, because I'm trying to do "one box to rule them all" - FreeNAS fits that bill better. If you either don't care about your NAS doing anything besides speaking FTP and SMB, or you've got an ESXi server running around that does all your other server-like stuff and you just need an iSCSI target, or you're building a FrankenNAS and need to squeeze the most out of your RAM, then N4F is probably more practical for your use case.
I've just done a few manual installs of Office 2013 and I did not have to set up a Microsoft account during the install procedure, but I actually install media and a volume license.
I'm guessing that "own" or "have" was supposed to go between "actually" and "install" - and that, good sir/madam, is the difference.
Volume licensed copies operate the same as Office always(ish) has - burn/extract ISO, run installer, agree to the EULA, pick your stuff if you want, let it sit, run an app, add your key via the 'account' menu, let the app activate, and restart. No muss, no fuss, and no internet needed at all except for the activation server (even that depending on whether you have a MAK or KLS).
Everyone else gets the crappy version...
Once you fork over your details, you then download a stub installer. The stub installer asks for the e-mail address and password used when making the purchase. That e-mail is now a part of your Microsoft account, which is now required to allow the software to operate. The stub then downloads everything. Don't want Access or Publisher? sucks to be you. The download will hopefully not-fail, because if it does, it fails spectacularly, and you're flushing temp files and obscure %programdata% directories to give the stub the "fresh meat" signal to try again. The download takes about half an hour on a 15/2 cable modem, but it's better left an overnight ordeal if you have suboptimal DSL. You can't store anything more than the stub, and a service runs in the background to auto-install any updates that come along.
Now, in Microsoft's defense, the SSO function between Win8 and Office 2013 is actually kinda cool, and the account also unlocks the mobile titles (also preferable than entering a product key on a phone). Also, since the license terms are just a smidge different on the consumer versions than the volume editions, the 'streaming installer' enforces the rental terms - it's essentially the only way to enforce a software subscription.
tl;dr - MS treats Volume Licenses like actual software, and retail licenses more like Netflix, so the difference is almost a given.
The DMCA was so badly written as to more or less entrench rent-seeking and remove property ownership from consumers.
Instead of saying "yes, you bought this product, it's yours", they've entrenched the "oh, you've only licensed it and we will tell you how you're allowed to use it".
Sorry, but if I bought it, I retain right of first sale. Which means I should be able to do anything I want with it, because it's my property.
This becomes much more interesting in 2014 than it was when the DMCA was first passed. Back in those days, "mobile software" was typically shipped on a CD, and installed on a mobile device by way of a docking station. This is far less common now than it was at that time. Moreover, the "this product is yours" logic becomes murky with tablets and other similar tech. I ran into this recently myself. A friend of mine gave me a tablet. He got it in a BOGO sale last year at Verizon Wireless; said BOGO sale only required a one year contract. The contract was fulfilled, and he gave it to me as a gift. As a T-Mobile subscriber, I was hoping to put my SIM card into it and use my data plan. Despite Verizon having no further claim to ownership on the device, the tablet was SIM unlocked, but had the ability to manually add APNs disabled. Thus, they can legally claim "SIM unlocked", but without rooting and manually editing the build.prop file, I can't add an APN to actually use another carrier.
Even beyond that oddly specific example, many tablets are largely dependent on other services. Samsung phones, if wiped without some sort of 'blessing' from Samsung, go into a locked state that require either reflashing or login. This is all well and good, but is removing that restriction technically a DMCA violation? Is the existence of a technological barrier the correct means to determine ownership of a device? On the other hand, if one were to modify a phone's baseband in such a way that has it working on the wrong frequencies, or configured in order to make a mess of the cell tower, does the "it's my phone" argument still hold? If a device is symbiotically linked to online services (it's quite a pain to use an Android device without a Google account, or an iPhone without iCloud, in their default states), how does the use of those services come into play with regards to the expectations of functionality?
Meh, this is why I'm still a Windows Mobile fan at heart - for all its faults, it ACTED like the device belonged to the owner, not Microsoft.
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bluntly, replacing the shell is a pretty deep modification
The program is CALLED "Classic Shell", that doesn't mean it's actually a shell overhaul (GNOME isn't a lawn ornament...). It's a simple ~5MB Installshield Wizard that puts a small overlay on the start button and preempts the internal Windows equivalent, providing a more traditional start menu interface reminiscent of either Windows 2000, XP(ish), or 7. The only other thing it touches with regards to the shell is that it can disable the 'hot corners' that Windows 8 seems to believe are actually useful on a desktop.
This is NOT like replacing GNOME with KDE.
Step 1) Doesn't want Google observing them.
Step 2) buys Android tablet, wholly controlled by Google.
At this point, the options are a bit sparse...Google, Apple, Microsoft, maybe Blackberry....I mean, about the only place you won't find that level of mess is an HP Touchpad running WebOS, because I can't see any of the infrastructure still being switched on. The fact of the matter is that, while not outright collusion, I'm unaware of a privacy focused company who has enough chops to release a tablet running their code.
If you were going to root it anyway why not buy an iPad and jailbreak it?
Different apps. I haven't been in Cydia recently, but I'd wager that the variety of apps that leverage the "rootedness" of an Android phone outnumber what's on an iPhone. Similarly, there are a number of apps (Rocketdial, GoSMS, etc.) that require a jailbreak on iOS, but will happily run on a standard issue Android phone.
Nothing preinstalled even talks to Google without you setting it up, so you're already off to a better start.
Well, at initial setup, there's not much that Google can ascertain - your Gmail address, your cell number, your phone carrier, and your location...but neutering that stuff at first run means that they get all of one data point - one more than I'd like, but still not much. Personally, my first installations are Xposed Framework and Xprivacy; I neuter my phone so thoroughly in that respect that it's a royal pain to use the GPS even when I want to...but I'm perfectly fine with that arrangement; ymmv.
Every Android update is going to fight to collect information about you. I don't see why you would buy into a system that by default will do exactly what you do not want.
Because if you're rooting, and more specifically installing a custom ROM, carrier updates become irrelevant. Depending on the ROM, some do OTA updates, others have more conventional means. Either way, I personally have never once installed a carrier/OEM update; I've never once seen one that I wasn't certain was going to make a mess.
tl;dr: Android sucks, except for all the alternatives. There are roundabout ways to get privacy on Android, and as annoying as it is that it's required to do that, Android is the only contemporary mobile OS that supports them at all.
What walled garden does Google have?
You pose a genuinely interesting question - where, exactly, is the cutoff between "walled garden" and "open"? Google hasn't done much good in the way of proactively keeping their systems open - even the Nexus phones ship with locked bootloaders. KitKat severely limited the utility of MicroSD cards. Using an Android phone without a Gmail account isn't impossible, but it requires a whole lot of deliberate footwork. Lollipop is integrating some of the Samsung Knox stuff, as well as other security enforcing things. Google's "commit" frequency to the AOSP is lacking, especially since much of their work is done within their property apps (e.g. Maps, Gmail, Now, etc.), rather than the OS itself.
I would ultimately say that the ability to install apk's from third party sources, the ability for root-requiring applications to live in the Play Store, and the availability of apps that modify core system functions (e.g. RocketDial, GoSMS, NovaLauncher, etc.) keeps Google in the "not a walled garden" category. I remain unconvinced, however, that Google will stay this way - their recent steps regarding Android's architecture has consistently decreased openness, instead of increasing it. Personally, I still run Android because it's the worst except for all the rest. The next mobile OS that has Swype and XPrivacy is the next recipient of my mobile device dollars.
Hate to break it to you, but humans aren't the only ones who know and use language. We're not really that distinguishable from many animals if thats your deciding factor. Dolphins, Whales, Octopus ... they all probably would like to have a word with you.
I see what you did there.
If I ever start a home business, I'll run it on some open source system. No Intuit products for me, not ever.
Obnoxiously, this is a situation where Open Source is still "note quite there". Quickbooks casts a pretty wide net in my experience, from the sole proprietor whose wife does the data entry, to the $30 million/year medium business that has a finance department and is using one of their enterprise editions, to "basically every accountant ever", who has quickbooks because all of his business clients have a quickbooks file that they e-mail him in order to have their taxes done. Now one of the reasons why Quickbooks is as popular as it is, is the fact that it's like Facebook - everyone uses it because everyone uses it. Even Microsoft failed back in 2007 when they tried to take them on.
The single reason why I see OSS have issues with the small business accounting software department is the fact that every title I've seen is double entry. GNUcash is, Xtuple is, and odoo is. Quickbooks is single entry, and populates the charts of accounts for you. I wanted Xtuple to work for me, but double entry accounting is a bit of an enigma to those without formal accounting training. One could argue that people who do the books should be familiar with regular accounting practices, but Intuit has made a fortune from nixing that requirement. Gnucash is a simple Installshield wizard, but Xtuple and odoo have their own issues in that they require networking experience as well (more so odoo; I think it's possible for Xtuple to do a fully local install). Most businesses, be it construction, interior design, small auto repair, landscaping, cupcake baking, etc...they don't exactly have someone familiar with both configuring a PostgreSQL server AND double entry accounting on their payroll...thus, Quickbooks again fills that void.
Intuit needs competition.The best they have right now is Xero, but they (and many of their competitiors) are web based SaaS titles that don't offer a self hosted option, at any price. I'm surprised that no one has come up with a solid, single-entry accounting title, be it either half the price, or full-on OSS. There's money to be made there, and right now, Intuit is getting it.
Using Windows in health care was a really stupid idea in my opinion.
If Linux was in the state it's presently in, back when computers were making inroads in healthcare situations, you may be on to something. Linux in the 90's, however, didn't play too well with most things who's I/O didn't involve an ethernet port.
Not your stupid idea, mind you. A stupid idea on the part of all the software developers who chose to target it. What you really need is a good and secure core OS with very few features, which you can upgrade forever without breaking compatibility.
Which distro do you target in this respect? Red Hat, I guess (it's one of the handful still here today that were around in 1995, but at the time, there were plenty of other promising distros that didn't survive)...but if breaking compatibility weren't a problem, Red Hat wouldn't still be issuing minor updates for RHEL 4, because everyone could just jump to RHEL 7 without a problem.
Then you need packages on top of that core to provide all the user-facing features like the desktop environment, which shouldn't ever need to be updated (since they should be relying on the core OS for security).
As a trivial example, assume we ran with this logic of never updating the desktop environment. I've got no issue with GNOME 2; it's functional. Old computer didn't have wireless, new one does. Old GNOME won't have a UI for connecting to a wireless network. i'm sure it can be command line scripted, but that script starts getting longer as more and more edge cases for the desktop UI come to light.
All the healthcare-specific applications shouldn't ever need to be rebuilt or updated (except for security updates).
...unless the laws change and you need different information entered. Or, you switch upstream providers and you need to alter the output. Or, it was built in Java and the new iterations of Java outright block interfaces that don't have super duper blessed certificate chains. Or the facility offers a new service that they didn't used to. Or the vendor goes out of business and you have to migrate to someone new anyway. Or, MySQL/Postgres does things a bit differently and you need to match the new version....The list of why software needs to be updated is endless - name ONE piece of software that was "done" in its first iteration. *MAYBE* something like nano or another very simple program, but software gets updated, especially in the medical field.
None of this 10-year support window requiring a large expensive rollout of new software when it runs out.
Okay, fine. There is plenty of medical equipment that requires regular replacement for new technology, equipment, resolution, and procedures. Should a year-old MRI machine have Windows 2000 drivers? Conversely, what's the statute of limitations for old hardware to get support? Would you want an MRI on a 25-year-old scanner?
No need to waste developer time on updating existing applications for new APIs when you could be developing the next great thing instead. So why isn't the whole healthcare infrastructure built on Linux?
So, computers stop being computers, and instead just become part of the embedded hardware? That can make some sense - no one ever complained about their Nokia phones not getting software updates. Super standard languages for certain things are wonderful; it's why HP Laserjet 8000 series printers are still on the road. However, if we're not updating software, we wouldn't be able to update hardware, except in terms of what the existing software can do.
The correct approach is the correct approach. Pardon the tautology, but it's true - minimally changing UIs and APIs can be good. In other areas, allowing software to be more radically altered makes the hardware a better investment. Knowing which is which, is almost the definition of wisdom.
It is sad to see that years of propaganda and fear-mongering by the government, politicians and police have actually worked out so well for them.
I might be wrong on this, but I don't quite think it's "propaganda" and "fear mongering" if you actually ruin lives over it.
Twenty years ago, the response to a peer-to-peer hosting network would have been "give me some of that".
Well, 20 years ago this wouldn't have been terribly practical (remember, back then dial-up was normal, broadband was not, and a 4GB hard disk was insanely large), but for the sake of the argument, I'll assume that the essence of this sentiment is "today's technology with yesterday's mindset, atmosphere, and culture". Today, if you know who you're dealing with, you can use something like Bittorrent Sync to do real-time replication. The P2P networks of that day (e.g. first-gen Napster and Gnutella), we were all "give me some of that" because they allowed the recipient to make use of the data, whereas this system does not.
Today, it's "imagine how the police could fuck you over if they wanted to".
It's a cost/benefit problem. A very low risk of legal trouble vs. music for free in a pre-Spotify, pre-Pandora world was worth it to most users of early P2P networks. Let's narrow down the market that could benefit from this: ...who would be in this category?
"Everyone with data" - 1,001 backup methodologies exist for this. Carbonite, Dropbox/GDrive/OneDrive (crude, but survives a system crash...), Amazon S3 all help.
"Everyone with data they don't want on the hard disks of companies who will hand over data with a 'pretty please'" - WD MyCloud (and the Seagate & Buffalo equivalents), FreeNAS (and other DIY NAS units), BT Sync, and either family or friends who are willing to barter storing a backup drive at their place for storing a backup drive at yours.
"Everyone with data they don't trust on the servers of family, friends, or companies" - Two externals and a safe deposit box, or a hole in the ground outside.
"Everyone with data they don't trust on servers of family, friends, companies, and don't want to do a drive swap" -
With the problem of "storing your data somewhere" already fairly well solved by other means, let's disuss cost/benefit: not trusting a company with a known agenda (you're still trusting Storj, though...), and not building your own data backup device or buying one, but instead trusting a whole lot of complete strangers, in exchange for cryptocurrency-at-best. The cost/benefit just doesn't seem to solve a problem that isn't already solved in one form or another for virtually every use case already.
How much more will it take to admit to ourselves that most Western nations are now police states?
Well, "police state" is a complicated designation to give; to my knowledge it's most commonly labeled in retrospect. The situation here is that this storage model enters a well-populated field, introducing a problem most others don't have, the problem just happens to be a legal one. Even if we hand-wave the legal trouble away, technologically it raises plenty of questions that just don't really seem to solve more problems than they cause.
As an Origin owner, I will second this notion. My laptop has handled 18-hour-long video rendering jobs without a significant performance degradation over time. The support is unrivaled, and they can have some quite powerful specs. Additionally, both the CPU and GPU are removable/upgradeable/replaceable.
The original poster did say that he looked at the Clevo units; Origin basically hand-assembles, tests, and rebadges them. If Clevo is close, and you want a company to stand behind it, Origin is a great one.
I do, however, ultimately concur with some of the other posters here - compile jobs are likely better done on a server somewhere, letting a bunch of processors with a bunch of ECC RAM do the compile while the laptop itself does other not-compiling things.
I mean, it only makes sense to send a mars rover to scout out Eden Prime. Hopefully, the first person to land there will be able to understand the vision.
"2) It takes too long to make. You go and buy one in ten minutes."
Bought a gun recently? Even with CCW license to speed the process, it takes a lot longer than 10 minutes.
The GP's post was rather ambiguous; perhaps this was intentional. In some places, one can legally purchase a registered firearm in about 10 minutes (10...20...an hour...some favorable amount of time to waiting for a 3D print to finish). In other places, one goes to the right street corner with the correct unit of currency, be it a stack of unmarked $20's, 500g of cocaine, a trunk full of Tide detergent (not kidding)...and in about ten minutes you'll have the service weapon of a former police officer with a filed off serial number.
The point the GP was ultimately making was that if you need a gun quick for a crime of passion, the present unreliability of the plastic firearms and lengthy printing times, in conjunction with the initial cost of the printers themselves, mean that they're a possible solution, but not a pragmatic one.
How exactly are paper records any more secure? I've gone into a number of clinics and doctor's offices were the only "security" of their medical records is an easily broken into cabinet.
Perhaps they're not more secure in the literal sense, but they're less of an enticing target. It requires physical presence, and probably some form of breaking and entering. It requires physical transport (which likely means multiple trips), and either a LOT of work on a photocopier, or banking on the fact that no one will miss them. Once you have them, you need to go through them by hand and glean any useful information through manual file sifting.
Digital records are stolen through the Ethernet port. They won't be "gone", so they won't be "missed". They can be sifted, sorted, filtered, and pivoted until they produce useful information. If the records don't produce useful data, it'd be much more difficult to convict the thief of a crime, whereas physical record theft still leaves a laundry list of crimes with which to convict that are easier to prove.
Should the cabinets be locked? Yes...but the only place on a computer you need a crowbar to get what you want is in a game of Half-Life.
Fastest: Seagate.
Best Warranty: Seagate.
Best Cache: WD Red....or the Seagate...the article conflicts between the first two pages.
Cheapest: WD Green.
Seagate notables: Full drive encryption available at a firmware level. AF and Legacy disks are separate models.
WD Red notables: 5400RPM spindle speed.
WD Green notables: None - nothing distinguishable from the Red drive, except a shorter warranty.
Sandra Benchmark results:
Seagate: 167W/168R.
WD Red: 138W/138R.
WD Green: 133W/133R.
Atto results are shown on a messy graph with no clear numbers, but Seagate wins that benchmark as well (albeit with a closer delta).
HD Tune Pro results basically reflect the transfer rates from above. Seek times for the Seagate are 11ms for both write and read, with the WD Red having a 16/17 set of scores and the WD Green being less than an integer higher. Burst rates are again better on the Seagate (276R/304W), with the WD Green being 217/220 and the Red being 217/218.
Crystal mark, basically the same numbers.
Futuremark, prettier graphs with wonderful titles like "video editing" and "importing pictures", with the results a closer race, each drive having its own task at which it wins (even the green). Not much different from the 3TB numbers, and not that much different from each other.
There were no mentions of reliability metrics; presumably none of the disks failed during benchmarking. Consult your usual biases and experience regarding which drive is likely to fail or not - this was strictly a benchmark review, and shockingly, the enterprise-grade drive with the highest rotational speed and biggest cache that costs the most money got the best score.
If you can get into a bank, you get money account info, credit scores, security tips, former trades, credit cards, all sorts of good stuff. If you get into a retail environment or online store, it's almost as good. Basically, you get money to spend.
Yes, but banking breaches/CC Fraud is so common, that the two times it's happened to me, it's been "an errand" - pick up my dry cleaning, get a haircut, cancel my debit card and submit a fraud form, get drinks for company tonight, put some gas in the car. It's that prevalent that it's a well-trodden path, with laws, protections, procedures, canned forms, and an express line to get it squared away. Medical record fraud is a much more difficult problem. You don't need your particular credit card number. You DO need your particular medical file. An SSN change is its own LENGTHY process, as all the rest of your ID cards also need to be changed as well. I don't even know how that works with regards to actually receiving Social Security, either.
In a hospital though, the only unique thing you find out is if someone is sick and with what. That's a pain in the ass to work with.
Pardon my lack of SQL syntax, but...
SELECT * FROM patient_address WHERE current_prescriptions Contains "Oxycodone" OR "Percocet" AND WHERE area_code EQUALS "212" OR "914".
You now have a comprehensive list of houses to rob in Manhattan where you can get prescription painkillers. Simple B&E, and you've got bottles that can be sold on the street at $40/pill. Or, introduce a middle man - find a drug dealer who will pay a couple grand for a list like that, and make a few grand for sending an e-mail. Send that list - or subsets of it - to 50 different drug dealers, and you've got a year's salary in an afternoon.
the various hospital disasters I have read about demonstrate that there isn't much a hacker can really do to hurt people. Nurses at the end of the day don't do stupid things and doctors aren't much worse.
No, hospitals are a stupid place to expend effort.
If literally nothing else, call the owner of the hospital and blackmail him/her that if they don't deposit a million dollars into your offshore account in the Cayman Islands, that list will end up on Pastebin, and it would mean that the hospital would likely be litigated into oblivion and that person's life is over - WELL worth the million bucks to keep it quiet. For better or worse, we both lack creativity. I'm sure that if I were to spend an actual afternoon attempting to come up with nefarious ways to use data gleaned from a hospital, I could do better. The fact that such a list isn't actual bank account numbers doesn't mean that it's not worth real money to someone.
Sorry for the self-reply, but this is a better DMC routine video; there are hundreds and hundreds of them on youtube...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
While "Hipsters" is the go-to answer to why vinyl records are all the rage, DJs are another part. Some songs are still pressed on 12" singles (most commonly EDM and hip-hop; frequently with instrumental versions as well), but the best selling vinyl pressing for quite some time now has been the Serato Timecode record. It allows DJs to use standard Technics 1200s (and newer models, like the Numark TTX and the Reloop 7000s) to still spin and scratch records, but without being limited by what's actually being pressed because it manipulates MP3 playback on a computer.
Amongst the reasons these records sell so well is because instead of having hundreds of records that get 1-2 plays a night, the same pair of records are played all night, so it's entirely realistic to go through a pair a month, depending on how much pressure is put on the needle. Serato is (or was-for-a-very-long-time depending on who's numbers you believe) the most popular DVS platform, with Traktor in second place, though it's more popular with DJs who use (MIDI) Controllers instead of vinyl. Serato and several other DJ software titles now support the vast number of controllers that have been released, so overall interest in DJing with timecode vinyl isn't quite as popular as it once was. Still, while Jack White’s Lazaretto sold over 75,000 copies this year, it pales in comparison to the number of club jocks who buy timecode records, in pairs, monthly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
My first thought was that this sounds a lot like the famed situation between Windows and Lotus. Personally, I miss Musicmatch.
That started seventeen minutes ago: http://hardware.slashdot.org/c...
Get with the times already.
You can't say "Get with the times" in a comment where Slashdot was scooped by ZDNet five days ago. That ship sailed.
Crow, listen to this guy. Assuming these things have 100MBytes/sec write speed, a simple RAID-1 will take over 22 hours to rebuild.
If you want 8TB of usable space, get 4x4TB and RAIDz2 (i.e. RAID6) them. Even if it's disposable data, the data must be of sufficient use to justify a FreeNAS build over a simple external. It's worth your time to do it right.
I answered most of your questions in this post, but the tl;dr version is that I don't mind ads based on what I post. I mind ads based on what I *don't* post, i.e. data that's extracted from my behavior. What I post is public. What I don't post is private. Not that hard.
Two reasons:
1.) it's not a matter of having "something to hide". "I have nothing to hide" succinctly illustrates a foundational change in how privacy is viewed. Privacy is a RIGHT that should be compromised only under specific circumstances, at my discretion.
If it's private then don't put it out in public and companies like facebook won't have access to it.
I'm not talking about being upset with a situation like me saying "I just got a new car!" and then Facebook serving me ads for accessories or insurance. That's a tradeoff I'm okay with, for the very reason you specify. The think that grinds my gears is entirely different, and an example of it just happened today. I have a few PC repair clients. I call, text, and e-mail them. I do not contact them via Facebook. I do not have the Facebook app installed on my phone, we have no mutual friends, they've never e-mailed me at my e-mail address associated with my Facebook account, and I run Ghostery on my browser. To the extent that I can, I've opted out of whatever tracking Facebook lets me opt out of. So, how did Facebook know that I knew these clients? That's information I've not only not given them, but have gone out of my way to prevent Facebook getting. "Because I use the service at all" is a pretty poor reason why Facebook should have that information.
"I have nothing to hide" indicates that privacy is seen as a PRIVILEGE requiring a reason for its desire
No it is the justification for making things that may would have been private by default public instead. Yes previously photos that I took privately remained on my camera, now they are synced to my public folder on my cloud provider. I don't have to do that, but I choose to because it is convenient and I have nothing to hide, that's the tradeoff.
Agreed. Let me give you another example. Back in June, I went with a friend on a road trip to Pittsburgh. In anticipation of this trip, I updated Google Maps on my phone. I don't use it often, and I have auto-updates on my phone disabled, so it was a bit dated. When we got back home, I learned that Google has a "map history" 'feature' that's a part of the Maps app, that show you the routes you took. I was never notified of this change, and again, wherever possible, I opted out of Google's data collection. Maps is "convenient", and Google showing me ads for rest stops and gas stations while I'm driving is an acceptable tradeoff. Retaining that data, when no prompt was given to me? I had nothing to hide during that trip, but it's disrespectful to take data in that manner without giving the user the option to have it not collected. Depending on the tightness of your tin foil hat, there's no guarantee that they aren't taking that data anyway and just aren't showing it to you. "Don't use Maps then" is the likely answer, and I no longer do - I use CoPilot. The fact that the opt-out wasn't made known to me until after the data had been collected? That's not terribly justifiable.
2.) The major issue isn't the opt-in, but the unilateral way it's done. Retail is a science, and I get that...but the fact that opting out is becoming progressively less possible is a problem.
But it is possible, what people are taking issue with is that companies are now taking public data and cross-referencing it, that data wasn't private before and it isn't now.
Who my clients are is privileged information. I sync them with an Exchange server whose owners I know, and explicitly not to Google, Facebook, or anyone else. What I do and don't buy *should* be privileged information (which is why I don't use rewards cards). The cross-referencing is most definitely concerning, especially since the definition of "public" seems to essentially be "any time one human interacts with another", when there should certainly be a spectrum between "private" and "public".
Why is your personal info so precious to you? I have nothing to hide, if you do that's your problem.
Two reasons:
1.) it's not a matter of having "something to hide". "I have nothing to hide" succinctly illustrates a foundational change in how privacy is viewed. Privacy is a RIGHT that should be compromised only under specific circumstances, at my discretion. "I have nothing to hide" indicates that privacy is seen as a PRIVILEGE requiring a reason for its desire, i.e. "something to hide". The fact that you consider Facebook picking a Coke ad over a Pepsi ad a worthwhile tradeoff for your privacy is all well and good, and I personally am glad that the option is there. The fact that the system is becoming progressively less respectful of the concept of opting out for no given reason, on the other hand, is the problem.
2.) The major issue isn't the opt-in, but the unilateral way it's done. Retail is a science, and I get that...but the fact that opting out is becoming progressively less possible is a problem. If Google wants information about me, feel free to call and ask. I usually participate in surveys for that very reason - they're respectful enough to ask, and allow me to choose which data I wish to provide. Facebook and Google do no such thing.
There's a certain amount of understanding I can have with behavioral advertising. If I Google for "ski resorts Vermont", and they want to show me ads for ski resorts in Vermont, I'm 100% fine with that. I even try to click on ads when I know that they're incidentally what I'm looking for. However, if they're going to send me ads based on my e-mails and Facebook posts, which I cannot opt out of, then that is a different story.
Well of course. Only the new versions boot from ZFS and can thus roll back easily.
Also, they changed to using the GRUB bootloader, which is going to make a mess in that respect.
I'm planning on setting up one of these in a month, and I'm considering FreeNAS and NAS4Free. I'm very interested in comments from anyone with experience with both.
I've used both, migrated between them, and support instances of both for different clients.
tl;dr: NAS4Free better adheres to the UNIX philosophy of "do one thing and do it well". FreeNAS does not - it does more stuff. Depending on your use case, either one of them can be a help or a hindrance.
Both of them essentially solve the same problem, essentially the same way: Get a bunch of hard disks recognized by a computer, and use the ZFS file system and various networking protocols together in order to facilitate data storage. Both of them have the same advantages of ZFS (Data security, "datasets", good performance in software RAID, snapshotting, compression, volume portability) and cons (you'll need plenty of RAM [ECC RAM is strongly recommended], hardware RAID controllers are only useful in JBOD mode, adding disks later on gets weird, etc.). If the ZFS tradeoff is worthwhile for you, then you're in the right place.
Pros, NAS4Free:
--Runs better on lower spec'd hardware.
--Faster startup time and generally snappier web interface.
--Has all the core stuff (SMB, FTP, SSH, NFS, iSCSI), and notably, Transmission.
--"More Open" than FreeNAS with regards to licensing.
Cons, NAS4Free:
--Limited functionality beyond NAS stuff, i.e. no plugins, though there are a handful of tutorials for unofficial methods (I've personally set one up to run BT Sync and Plex, but it took about an hour and LOTS of command line fun).
--Update schedule is erratic.
--I've personally had some annoyances with their Samba implementation; it doesn't always respect "remember password" in mixed environments with mapped drives.
Pros, FreeNAS:
--Extensible functionality with plugins; there are multiple avenues for media streaming and automatic downloading (Transmission, SabNZBd, XDM, etc.). There's also an OwnCloud plugin which is very nice, and an Amazon S3 plugin that allows for real-time replication to The Cloud (tm) if that's worthwhile. Depending on the environment, integration with Active Directory is possible.
--ZFS Replication - you can have your datasets replicate to a secondary NAS somewhere else.
--In-UI updating, automatic or scheduled. This is a new feature in 9.3 admittedly, but it no longer requires updates to be manually uploaded or the NAS to be taken offline for an update to be performed.
Cons, FreeNAS:
--All those extra features come at a cost - you'll need to account for that when buying RAM.
--Plugin updates aren't always immediate when the source program updates; when some programs update internally, it's not always reflected in the FreeNAS UI.
--UI is more daunting at first go. Also, some things are a bit more quirky than they should be.
--iSCSI is a bit more complicated to set up than on N4F.
I personally like the FreeNAS route myself, but that's also based on my extensive use of plugins, because I'm trying to do "one box to rule them all" - FreeNAS fits that bill better. If you either don't care about your NAS doing anything besides speaking FTP and SMB, or you've got an ESXi server running around that does all your other server-like stuff and you just need an iSCSI target, or you're building a FrankenNAS and need to squeeze the most out of your RAM, then N4F is probably more practical for your use case.
I've just done a few manual installs of Office 2013 and I did not have to set up a Microsoft account during the install procedure, but I actually install media and a volume license.
I'm guessing that "own" or "have" was supposed to go between "actually" and "install" - and that, good sir/madam, is the difference.
Volume licensed copies operate the same as Office always(ish) has - burn/extract ISO, run installer, agree to the EULA, pick your stuff if you want, let it sit, run an app, add your key via the 'account' menu, let the app activate, and restart. No muss, no fuss, and no internet needed at all except for the activation server (even that depending on whether you have a MAK or KLS).
Everyone else gets the crappy version...
Once you fork over your details, you then download a stub installer. The stub installer asks for the e-mail address and password used when making the purchase. That e-mail is now a part of your Microsoft account, which is now required to allow the software to operate. The stub then downloads everything. Don't want Access or Publisher? sucks to be you. The download will hopefully not-fail, because if it does, it fails spectacularly, and you're flushing temp files and obscure %programdata% directories to give the stub the "fresh meat" signal to try again. The download takes about half an hour on a 15/2 cable modem, but it's better left an overnight ordeal if you have suboptimal DSL. You can't store anything more than the stub, and a service runs in the background to auto-install any updates that come along.
Now, in Microsoft's defense, the SSO function between Win8 and Office 2013 is actually kinda cool, and the account also unlocks the mobile titles (also preferable than entering a product key on a phone). Also, since the license terms are just a smidge different on the consumer versions than the volume editions, the 'streaming installer' enforces the rental terms - it's essentially the only way to enforce a software subscription.
tl;dr - MS treats Volume Licenses like actual software, and retail licenses more like Netflix, so the difference is almost a given.
The DMCA was so badly written as to more or less entrench rent-seeking and remove property ownership from consumers.
Instead of saying "yes, you bought this product, it's yours", they've entrenched the "oh, you've only licensed it and we will tell you how you're allowed to use it".
Sorry, but if I bought it, I retain right of first sale. Which means I should be able to do anything I want with it, because it's my property.
This becomes much more interesting in 2014 than it was when the DMCA was first passed. Back in those days, "mobile software" was typically shipped on a CD, and installed on a mobile device by way of a docking station. This is far less common now than it was at that time. Moreover, the "this product is yours" logic becomes murky with tablets and other similar tech. I ran into this recently myself. A friend of mine gave me a tablet. He got it in a BOGO sale last year at Verizon Wireless; said BOGO sale only required a one year contract. The contract was fulfilled, and he gave it to me as a gift. As a T-Mobile subscriber, I was hoping to put my SIM card into it and use my data plan. Despite Verizon having no further claim to ownership on the device, the tablet was SIM unlocked, but had the ability to manually add APNs disabled. Thus, they can legally claim "SIM unlocked", but without rooting and manually editing the build.prop file, I can't add an APN to actually use another carrier.
Even beyond that oddly specific example, many tablets are largely dependent on other services. Samsung phones, if wiped without some sort of 'blessing' from Samsung, go into a locked state that require either reflashing or login. This is all well and good, but is removing that restriction technically a DMCA violation? Is the existence of a technological barrier the correct means to determine ownership of a device? On the other hand, if one were to modify a phone's baseband in such a way that has it working on the wrong frequencies, or configured in order to make a mess of the cell tower, does the "it's my phone" argument still hold? If a device is symbiotically linked to online services (it's quite a pain to use an Android device without a Google account, or an iPhone without iCloud, in their default states), how does the use of those services come into play with regards to the expectations of functionality?
Meh, this is why I'm still a Windows Mobile fan at heart - for all its faults, it ACTED like the device belonged to the owner, not Microsoft.