I have to give props to Google for what they did with ChromeOS in the past couple of years.
While I still have a "regular" Windows 10 PC mostly for games and odd app or two, everything else is done on Asus CN60 chromebox (Haswell i3, upgraded to 16GB RAM and 128 GB m.2 SATA HD). While this model is too old to support Crostini or virtualization (pushing 5 years now), it satisfies pretty much my every need - and as you said: it runs the OS that not actively working against me.
If only Pixel Chromebooks were not $1300, I would probably buy one tomorrow.
Oh, for sure - I was being conservative. Just look what they are doing with Crave right now: $10 to start, another $10 for "HBO+movies", another tier coming down within next 3-6 months.....until it's as expensive as their cable offering, with 720p quality and barely usable app across all platforms.
I think common sense will prevail, for once - and I will tell you why.
If you go to Bell's web store, and price out an average "bundle" they sell (TV, Internet, landline), you will arrive at roughly $100/month. This is WITHOUT any mobile plan. Their mobile plans start at $85/month, for 1GB data (with Bonus! 4GB which they will give you for certain period of time, then will count on your complacency and laziness not to cancel and charge you extra later) and usual voice/SMS, etc. So we are looking at ~$200/month for their combined services.
Now, on top of this revenue stream, they want to siphon any and all data that their customers create while traversing their network so they can sell it to the highest bidder, with no incentives or benefits to the customers whatsoever.
No discounts, no "points", no coupons, no extra data/voice minutes - nothing.
Their argument "well, Google and Facebook have been doing it for years" is also bullshit.
Think what you want about Google, they actually provide some tangible benefit to their "users/customers" in the form of their services, free of charge: GMail, Maps, Google Apps, YouTube, unlimited Photos storage, 15GB of cloud storage, etc. You do pay for this through your agreement that Google can do whatever they please with your personal data, but that's your choice. Don't like it? Close your Google account, find somebody you like, self-host, whatever works for you.
So to me, this looks like either Bell severely misunderstood Google's and Facebook's business model, or they are hoping their customers are dumb and gullible enough to actually fall for this "humble proposal" of theirs.
"I mean, in a perfect world, they would give you discounts or they would give you points or things that consumers would more tangibly want, rather than just the elimination of a pain point -- which is what they're offering right now."
I eliminated my pain point with pfSense, Pi-Hole, VPN and bunch of Firefox add-ons close to two years ago.
Re-read your question - no, about:config is the "scary" settings (more in-depth, with low-level and experimental options), about:preferences is the "regular" one.
Ok, so let's do a quick price comparison. Picked the same configuration for both - i5, 8GB RAM, 128GB storage All prices are in US$, taken directly from Google's and Microsof't web stores, no discounts applied.
You know...you are actually right! Maybe it is not as "information dense" as the old Google News design (on what Google used to call "comfortable" setting, IIRC) and it's not as customizable (no news sources, weighing and such) but it is actually quite usable.
A plus in my book with Bing News is that they are not as insistent of you being logged in everywhere, all the time as Google is. (ie. I can still get very serviceable news aggregator site with some customization even in logged off state)
"Fitbit isn't doing as well as they were and I see them just sticking to high end stuff and maybe some more acquisitions of other wearable products and companies."
This was a pretty good prediction:
"Fitbit is on the brink of buying smartwatch maker Pebble for around just $40 million"
Long time mobile admin here, working for a sizeable law firm (one of the former BlackBerry's bread-and-butter markets)
We went from over 1000 OS7 devices (Bold, Torch, Curve and the like) in 2008/2009 to a current mix of 950+ iOS devices and 150 or so OS10 devices (Z10, Q10, Classic, Passport) devices today.
Priv is not even a factor in this mix, despite us being ready for it on day one by installing BES12 late last year and getting a pack of "Gold Premium - Android For Work" CALs.
Since Nov/Dec 2015 up until today (early June), we got exactly 6 requests to activate Priv. Six. Four in the first couple of weeks after the release, two after Christmas. That's it.
Out of those 6, 3 users are now admitting they made a mistake (old school BlackBerry users who went from Bold 9900 to Q10/Classic, bought the Priv because it said "BlackBerry" on it, with no research into what they were getting themselves into)
They are now looking into either going back to Classic/Passport (while it's still available) or kicking the tires on the iPhone 6.
The remaining 150 BB10 users are basically waiting for their contracts to expire, then having no option to upgrade to new BB10 device (since they will be essentially EOL) the expectation is that pretty much all of them will move to iPhone.
Seconded. Since I am considered to be a go-to IT guy for my friends and family and about 90% of them are using Chrome anyway, the transition from LogMeIn (and VNC for couple of them) was easy. On their side it was just one plugin to install, per-session passwords (PINs) are nice (nothing to write down and/or remember (forget)), great performance regardless of platform.
And in related news, Skrillex will be suing for copyright infringement and trademark dilution. Skrillex was quoted as saying, "I own bad electronic music, dammit! I work hard to make loops in Garageband and press Play on my Macbook!"
I see Skrillex has already been covered, logging out of this thread satisfied.:P
After seeing the latest "innovations" both Unity and Gnome 3 brought to the table, I made a switch to Arch Linux with OpenBox, permanently.
IMHO both Unity and Gnome 3 are doing a great disservice to Linux
"Optimized for tablets..." What tablets? Where are the Linux tablets? All I see is out there are iPads and Androids, with Microsoft joining the fray with Windows 8 soon.
What will probably end up happening is what we've already seen with Linux on desktops: Ubuntu and possibly some other tablet-optimized distro will try to sign up a hardware vendor (say, Dell, since they seem to be somewhat friendly to the idea)....and fail, due to the market realities (aka. other OS vendors with deep pockets and deeper market penetration will eat their lunch)
Then they will try to position themselves as an alternative OS on somebody else's tablet (be it Android or Win8), with minuscule uptake (hobbyists and enthusiasts) - mostly because they will have too many rough edges being not fully optimized to run on proprietary hardware.
In the meantime the majority of Linux laptop/desktop users will struggle with the tablet-optimized UI....or switch to something more usable, maybe even go back to Windows.
Second paragraph of the TFA: "It's a sad fact of human nature that people tend to want things for as low a price as possible."
Huh? Why would that be sad part of human nature? Aren't all living organisms essentially opportunistic? I know this is not really live or die kind of situation, but.....
...or spend half as much (~$90 on Amazon) and get Linksys Slug (NSLU2).
If you crave wireless, WRTSL54GS fits the bill too.
Granted, you get no screen, but you can always ssh into it if you need to.
"You have written that Linux, simultaneously, acts too much like Windows, and does not act enough like Windows!"
Is that how my rant sounded like?...:)
I guess what I am trying to say is - there is this idea in certain parts of Linux community that in order for Linux to become more "popular", it needs to look and behave like Windows as much as possible, so potential Windows converts will have less issues when they try to use Linux.
Problem is - Linux is not all that good when it's trying to act like Windows (through Wine, customized GUIs that look like Windows and such), so if all you need to do is run Windows apps, why use Linux to do Windows job when you can use the real thing?
As for the article, I don't think more than 5% of posters in this thread even glanced over it.
I guess this depends on the vantage point, right?
If you started your computing life on UNIX and liked it, you would gravitate towards UNIX-like apps and tools. The reality today is that 90+% of users have never seen anything else but some version of Windows or the other.
If I had any points I would mod you up, actually.
After using Linux for last couple of years (ran it either side-by-side with Windows or as the only OS for some time) I came to the conclusion that it is essentially redundant and suffering from the "me too!" problem as you described.
I also got tired of looking for equivalents and "alternatives" for my Windows apps.
They never worked as advertised or were either too complicated or too feature-less to be used as real replacements.
I tried WINE, then after a while asked myself - why am I emulating Windows and fixing obscure DLL problems when I could run Windows natively, with no problems?
I just love how Alex Wolfe and InformationWeek in general keep baiting Linux community into reading and commenting to this self-important tripe.
Couple of days ago there was "Ubuntu is hard to install on laptops" article (utter bs, btw), now this.
The reason for all this?
Diminishing readership, which leads to less ad revenue.
Solution? Write semi-inflammatory articles that will sure bring clicks to the site.
Forbes' Brian Caulfield said it the best in his recent article "Tech Boom, Media Bust" - traditional IT rags (and their accompanying web sites) are things of the past, bloggers are killing them.
Slashdot Mirror
I have to give props to Google for what they did with ChromeOS in the past couple of years.
While I still have a "regular" Windows 10 PC mostly for games and odd app or two, everything else is done on Asus CN60 chromebox (Haswell i3, upgraded to 16GB RAM and 128 GB m.2 SATA HD). While this model is too old to support Crostini or virtualization (pushing 5 years now), it satisfies pretty much my every need - and as you said: it runs the OS that not actively working against me.
If only Pixel Chromebooks were not $1300, I would probably buy one tomorrow.
Let me assure you, they are not politely asking out of the goodness in their hearts:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...
Oh, for sure - I was being conservative. Just look what they are doing with Crave right now: $10 to start, another $10 for "HBO+movies", another tier coming down within next 3-6 months.....until it's as expensive as their cable offering, with 720p quality and barely usable app across all platforms.
"Competing with Netflix and Prime", they call it.
I think common sense will prevail, for once - and I will tell you why.
If you go to Bell's web store, and price out an average "bundle" they sell (TV, Internet, landline), you will arrive at roughly $100/month.
This is WITHOUT any mobile plan. Their mobile plans start at $85/month, for 1GB data (with Bonus! 4GB which they will give you for certain period of time, then will count on your complacency and laziness not to cancel and charge you extra later) and usual voice/SMS, etc.
So we are looking at ~$200/month for their combined services.
Now, on top of this revenue stream, they want to siphon any and all data that their customers create while traversing their network so they can sell it to the highest bidder, with no incentives or benefits to the customers whatsoever.
No discounts, no "points", no coupons, no extra data/voice minutes - nothing.
Their argument "well, Google and Facebook have been doing it for years" is also bullshit.
Think what you want about Google, they actually provide some tangible benefit to their "users/customers" in the form of their services, free of charge: GMail, Maps, Google Apps, YouTube, unlimited Photos storage, 15GB of cloud storage, etc.
You do pay for this through your agreement that Google can do whatever they please with your personal data, but that's your choice.
Don't like it? Close your Google account, find somebody you like, self-host, whatever works for you.
So to me, this looks like either Bell severely misunderstood Google's and Facebook's business model, or they are hoping their customers are dumb and gullible enough to actually fall for this "humble proposal" of theirs.
My vote is on the latter.
"I mean, in a perfect world, they would give you discounts or they would give you points or things that consumers would more tangibly want, rather than just the elimination of a pain point -- which is what they're offering right now."
I eliminated my pain point with pfSense, Pi-Hole, VPN and bunch of Firefox add-ons close to two years ago.
Don't forget those sweet, sweet tailored ads, popping up on every screen you lay your eyes upon!
Re-read your question - no, about:config is the "scary" settings (more in-depth, with low-level and experimental options), about:preferences is the "regular" one.
Yep, either type about:preferences in the location bar, or go Options...General through the menus. You'll land in the same spot.
about:preferences
Scroll down to Browsing section.
Uncheck "Recommend extensions as you browse"
There! I made it even better!
My bad - I got flipped to Canadian store.
So the real difference is $170.
In other news, Canucks are being fleeced for their electronics......
Ok, so let's do a quick price comparison.
Picked the same configuration for both - i5, 8GB RAM, 128GB storage
All prices are in US$, taken directly from Google's and Microsof't web stores, no discounts applied.
Pixel Slate - $1299
Slate Keyboard: $259
Pixel Pen: $129
Total: $1687
Surface Pro 6 - $899
Surface Type Cover - $129
Surface Pen - $99
Total: $1127
Will even throw a year of O365 Home to Surface configuration ($79), final total: $1206
Now, is the Pixel Slate *REALLY* worth nearly $500 extra?
You know...you are actually right!
Maybe it is not as "information dense" as the old Google News design (on what Google used to call "comfortable" setting, IIRC) and it's not as customizable (no news sources, weighing and such) but it is actually quite usable.
A plus in my book with Bing News is that they are not as insistent of you being logged in everywhere, all the time as Google is. (ie. I can still get very serviceable news aggregator site with some customization even in logged off state)
"Fitbit isn't doing as well as they were and I see them just sticking to high end stuff and maybe some more acquisitions of other wearable products and companies."
This was a pretty good prediction:
"Fitbit is on the brink of buying smartwatch maker Pebble for around just $40 million"
http://www.businessinsider.com...
Long time mobile admin here, working for a sizeable law firm (one of the former BlackBerry's bread-and-butter markets)
We went from over 1000 OS7 devices (Bold, Torch, Curve and the like) in 2008/2009 to a current mix of 950+ iOS devices and 150 or so OS10 devices (Z10, Q10, Classic, Passport) devices today.
Priv is not even a factor in this mix, despite us being ready for it on day one by installing BES12 late last year and getting a pack of "Gold Premium - Android For Work" CALs.
Since Nov/Dec 2015 up until today (early June), we got exactly 6 requests to activate Priv. Six.
Four in the first couple of weeks after the release, two after Christmas. That's it.
Out of those 6, 3 users are now admitting they made a mistake (old school BlackBerry users who went from Bold 9900 to Q10/Classic, bought the Priv because it said "BlackBerry" on it, with no research into what they were getting themselves into)
They are now looking into either going back to Classic/Passport (while it's still available) or kicking the tires on the iPhone 6.
The remaining 150 BB10 users are basically waiting for their contracts to expire, then having no option to upgrade to new BB10 device (since they will be essentially EOL) the expectation is that pretty much all of them will move to iPhone.
Seconded.
Since I am considered to be a go-to IT guy for my friends and family and about 90% of them are using Chrome anyway, the transition from LogMeIn (and VNC for couple of them) was easy.
On their side it was just one plugin to install, per-session passwords (PINs) are nice (nothing to write down and/or remember (forget)), great performance regardless of platform.
They can generate mediocre techno
And in related news, Skrillex will be suing for copyright infringement and trademark dilution. Skrillex was quoted as saying, "I own bad electronic music, dammit! I work hard to make loops in Garageband and press Play on my Macbook!"
I see Skrillex has already been covered, logging out of this thread satisfied. :P
After seeing the latest "innovations" both Unity and Gnome 3 brought to the table, I made a switch to Arch Linux with OpenBox, permanently.
IMHO both Unity and Gnome 3 are doing a great disservice to Linux
"Optimized for tablets..." What tablets? Where are the Linux tablets? All I see is out there are iPads and Androids, with Microsoft joining the fray with Windows 8 soon.
What will probably end up happening is what we've already seen with Linux on desktops: Ubuntu and possibly some other tablet-optimized distro will try to sign up a hardware vendor (say, Dell, since they seem to be somewhat friendly to the idea)....and fail, due to the market realities (aka. other OS vendors with deep pockets and deeper market penetration will eat their lunch)
Then they will try to position themselves as an alternative OS on somebody else's tablet (be it Android or Win8), with minuscule uptake (hobbyists and enthusiasts) - mostly because they will have too many rough edges being not fully optimized to run on proprietary hardware.
In the meantime the majority of Linux laptop/desktop users will struggle with the tablet-optimized UI ....or switch to something more usable, maybe even go back to Windows.
Second paragraph of the TFA: "It's a sad fact of human nature that people tend to want things for as low a price as possible."
Huh?
Why would that be sad part of human nature?
Aren't all living organisms essentially opportunistic?
I know this is not really live or die kind of situation, but.....
Ouch. :P
Owned!
...or spend half as much (~$90 on Amazon) and get Linksys Slug (NSLU2).
If you crave wireless, WRTSL54GS fits the bill too.
Granted, you get no screen, but you can always ssh into it if you need to.
"You have written that Linux, simultaneously, acts too much like Windows, and does not act enough like Windows!"
Is that how my rant sounded like?...:)
I guess what I am trying to say is - there is this idea in certain parts of Linux community that in order for Linux to become more "popular", it needs to look and behave like Windows as much as possible, so potential Windows converts will have less issues when they try to use Linux.
Problem is - Linux is not all that good when it's trying to act like Windows (through Wine, customized GUIs that look like Windows and such), so if all you need to do is run Windows apps, why use Linux to do Windows job when you can use the real thing?
As for the article, I don't think more than 5% of posters in this thread even glanced over it.
I guess this depends on the vantage point, right?
If you started your computing life on UNIX and liked it, you would gravitate towards UNIX-like apps and tools. The reality today is that 90+% of users have never seen anything else but some version of Windows or the other.
If I had any points I would mod you up, actually.
After using Linux for last couple of years (ran it either side-by-side with Windows or as the only OS for some time) I came to the conclusion that it is essentially redundant and suffering from the "me too!" problem as you described. I also got tired of looking for equivalents and "alternatives" for my Windows apps.
They never worked as advertised or were either too complicated or too feature-less to be used as real replacements.
I tried WINE, then after a while asked myself - why am I emulating Windows and fixing obscure DLL problems when I could run Windows natively, with no problems?
I just love how Alex Wolfe and InformationWeek in general keep baiting Linux community into reading and commenting to this self-important tripe.
r ring-print-blogs-tech-media-cx_bc_0716techmedia.ht ml
Couple of days ago there was "Ubuntu is hard to install on laptops" article (utter bs, btw), now this.
The reason for all this?
Diminishing readership, which leads to less ad revenue.
Solution? Write semi-inflammatory articles that will sure bring clicks to the site.
Forbes' Brian Caulfield said it the best in his recent article "Tech Boom, Media Bust" - traditional IT rags (and their accompanying web sites) are things of the past, bloggers are killing them.
http://www.forbes.com/technology/2007/07/16/redhe
Mostly not paying attention, since I have a life to live outside of Slashdot.
You?