So in order for a website to remain free for the users use, they will need to post more advertisements to make up for it.
First, a website with advertisements isn't "free". Readers pay for it by viewing the advertisements. That aside, a very high number of websites carry advertising when they don't need to. Web hosting is very, very cheap (you can host a decent web site with a decent reader base for about $10/mo), so unless you're a biggie, you can afford to run on your spare change. The web would be much better off if that advertising just went away.
If you don't like advertising on you favorite site. Then you better find them a business model where they can keep running (as it isn't free for them) and feed their family's. Otherwise just suck it up as the cost of having free access to their data.
No. It's not my job to come up with a business model for other people. They can figure it out themselves and if they can't, then I guess their website goes away. Since most of the websites that rely heavily on advertising don't actually bring that much added value to the web, I won't really mourn them.
Yes, I never claimed to be representative of the mainstream.:)
Still, getting Windows and Office for $100 isn't a bad deal.
Well, I actively don't want Office, either. But yes, Windows alone for $100 would be a (relatively) good deal. I recently had to buy Windows for my daughter, and it was $150 -- and not for the good version. However, it borders on impossible that we'd see even that level of value from Microsoft.
(The bulk of this comment was irrelevant to what I was saying, so I'm only addressing the parts that relate.)
How does downtime risk have anything to do with pricing model? It doesn't.
It does if you are getting billed monthly for the right to use your computer. If something goes wrong with the billing, you're hosed. And billing errors are very, very common.
So if you equate "have Yet Another fixed recurring expense" and "expose myself to loss of the use of my computers if a mistake is made" then that's completely invalid.
Well, it's a good thing that I didn't do that, then.
Maybe you were trying to speak to some sort of DRM failure month-to-month, but that issue already exists with other licenses that are paid up front. Just search around for all the issues people have with AutoCAD related to activation.
AutoCAD is a great example of (one flavor) of what I mean, yes. But I'm not sure how pointing out the flaws in AutoCAD justifies putting similar flaws into Windows.
With Windows if you change your MAC address, you have to reactivate, BUT you are still able to use the computer completely, just don't get updates until you fix the activation issue, which is usually as simple as running the Activate Windows program. So even then you aren't facing downtime.
If they do it like that. I don't know that they will. However, Windows activation is also a terrible standard to uphold, since it simply sucks. I have three machines within arms reach that refuse to activated at all, despite a ton of time spent with Microsoft support.
When will people wake up and realize that the gov't (even though they suck at their job most of the time in the civil area) is there to protect its constituents at all times and with whatever force required. When the gov't fails to do that, that is when they have failed you. People want to be "nice" and live in a box.
This is a fascinating comment. First, we are not "constituents" of the government. We are citizens of a nation, and the government works for us. Secondly, I think I disagree that the government's job is to protect the citizens with "whatever force is required". The uncertainty comes from what you mean by "protect citizens". I think that it's more protective of citizens to behave in a way that isn't morally reprehensible. The government completely and totally failed us when it began torturing people.
The underlying implication of your comment, though, is the most curious of all: it appears that you think that the only legitimate role of government is to make war, and further that the government is better at that than at its civil duties. I disagree with both of those implications.
I think Microsoft would be smart to offer something like, "Pay $100/year, and get an always-up-to-date version of Windows, Office, antivirus updates, some basic MDM functionality, and 100 GB of OneDrive storage. Cancel at any time, and keep your current version of Windows and Office, but you won't get any updates or patches beyond critical security updates."
That might be more palatable to many people, but it wouldn't do a thing for me -- mostly because I actively do not want frequent Windows updates, Microsoft AV updates, MDM functionality, or any OneDrive storage at all.
I run a business. Why the fuck would I want to have Yet Another fixed recurring expense and expose myself to loss of the use of my computers if a mistake is made?
APK's posts aren't moderated down because people don't want others to know about the magic of hosts files. They're moderated down because they are spam.
I feel just the opposite. I would love to see targeted ads die a horrible, painful death. Not because of the ads themselves, but because of the spying that needs to happen to make the idea work.
People would still use AdBlock if ads were unobtrusive and static.
I know I would (well, not ABP specifically, because I don't trust it, but you get the idea), but not because of the silly notion that I just want stuff for free. It's because the thing that I object to more than anything else about ads is the tracking that comes with them. Unobtrusive, static ads track you just as much as the loud, obnoxious ones.
So, selling something is now considered "freeloading"? I think you need to check your dictionary.
There is an argument to be made that mandated buy-back of electricity being a bad thing, but you should make that argument rather than wrongfully accusing people selling electricity of being freeloaders or equating that with welfare.
The local trash monopoly did something similar. Trash service is about $60 a month, but you can take your trash to the landfill for $15 per ton.
This happened to me in a small town I lived in, too. I took my trash directly to the landfill, spending about $10/mo doing it that way vs $50/mo for trash pickup. The trash company decided that wasn't right and got a city ordinance passed requiring everyone to use their service. Fortunately, I moved out of town shortly after that.
Not in my state. They'll cut you off for lack of payment, no problem. There is a medical exception where if you need the electricity to run medically essential equipment, they won't cut you off, but that's it.
If we allow only those who can afford electricity or solar to have it, the poorer segments are deprived and that ends up hurting everybody.
But that's what we have right now anyway. Only those who can afford electricity can have it.
Basic services are provided to just about everyone.
Fine, then the regulations should be that the house has a way to get electricity. They shouldn't specify what that way should be, nor that the people living in the house have to have an active account with the power company. After all, doesn't that lat requirement work against the poorer segments of society? If they can't afford electricity, they can get evicted? That doesn't sound helpful.
you'll learn to appreciate Pizza Hut for being, at least, edible.
Talk about damning with faint praise. Pizza Hut is barely edible, anyway (although, I admit, it's good if you compare it to the likes of Dominos or Little Ceasers). If I lived someplace where the only pizza option was Pizza Hut, I still wouldn't go to Pizza Hut. I'd make my own pizza. Then, at least, I'd have a pizza that was actually tasty.
Yes, those are the ideals of agile. But I have never seen any of them successfully done in the real world. Instead agile as implemented (which never resembles the ideal) just makes everything worse.
Good lord, I could not agree more. From what I've learned in the last three companies I worked for that used agile, agile means that an ungodly amount of time is spent in meetings and constant, meaningless record-keeping. God, I hate agile. It gets in the way of doing good, timely work.
Perhaps because that's not the most important part of the quote. Those are not big issues for Linus, but they may be big issues for VGPowerlord. I don't know. I do know that they are very big issues for me.
Why is choice important to me? I would think the answer was self-evident: so I have the freedom to arrange my systems in any way I choose. This is the #1 problem that I'm having -- Debian, the distro that has built its reputation on the notions of choice and user benefit -- has effectively said that those notions aren't so important to them after all. So I can no longer trust Debian.
As to systemd in particular, I think the objections to it have been articulated pretty well, and many of them I agree with. There's little point in rehashing all that here, since my focus is not on whether or not systemd is a good thing but on the General Resolution.
factual errors (e.g., that it's monolithic, and therefore not UNIXy)
I don't think that's a factual error at all. I think it's accurate. The counterarguments really address things that are slightly different than the claim. For example, just because a system is distributed as a whole bunch of binaries doesn't mean that it's not monolithic or that it's "UNIXy".
I found Russ Allberry's analysis pretty compelling. Why do you disagree?
I did not. However, it's a bit difficult to engage in a point-by-point response here. My big picture take is that while the use of systemd has clear advantages to the people who must maintain the distros themselves (and to users of the OS in certain use cases), it does so at a cost to the users. For those of us that get no real benefit from systemd at all, this means that its inclusion is nothing but cost.
I'm really wondering what I'm missing here, because this seems like much ado about nothing, and I haven't been able to get anyone who is really concerned about it to explain why it's really a big problem.
I hope I was able to help. In short: the outrage is less about systemd in particular as it is about the fact that if nothing is done, systemd will be effectively required.
I thus far have seen noone complain about the systemd part of systemd but only about the coupling between systemd and logind
I have seen people complain about it (I have complained about aspects of it myself), but perhaps the reason that these complaints aren't harped about endlessly is that the root problem is not systemd itself. It's that systemd is becoming impossible to do without if you want to do without it.
That's why the coupling issue you bring up is a big deal. And even there, it's not that issue in particular, is the general problem of its use becoming mandatory.
If they would have done that, they would have found that systemd is just fine.
You assume far too much here. I've installed it, configured it, administered it. I don't want it. It isn't some magical artifact that you'll love if you just use it. It's a tool, and it can be appropriate for some cases and inappropriate for others. That's why the ability to choose whether or not to use it is so important, and that choice is what is going away. That's the entire complaint right there.
Slashdot Mirror
So in order for a website to remain free for the users use, they will need to post more advertisements to make up for it.
First, a website with advertisements isn't "free". Readers pay for it by viewing the advertisements. That aside, a very high number of websites carry advertising when they don't need to. Web hosting is very, very cheap (you can host a decent web site with a decent reader base for about $10/mo), so unless you're a biggie, you can afford to run on your spare change. The web would be much better off if that advertising just went away.
If you don't like advertising on you favorite site. Then you better find them a business model where they can keep running (as it isn't free for them) and feed their family's.
Otherwise just suck it up as the cost of having free access to their data.
No. It's not my job to come up with a business model for other people. They can figure it out themselves and if they can't, then I guess their website goes away. Since most of the websites that rely heavily on advertising don't actually bring that much added value to the web, I won't really mourn them.
Yes, I never claimed to be representative of the mainstream. :)
Still, getting Windows and Office for $100 isn't a bad deal.
Well, I actively don't want Office, either. But yes, Windows alone for $100 would be a (relatively) good deal. I recently had to buy Windows for my daughter, and it was $150 -- and not for the good version. However, it borders on impossible that we'd see even that level of value from Microsoft.
(The bulk of this comment was irrelevant to what I was saying, so I'm only addressing the parts that relate.)
How does downtime risk have anything to do with pricing model? It doesn't.
It does if you are getting billed monthly for the right to use your computer. If something goes wrong with the billing, you're hosed. And billing errors are very, very common.
So if you equate "have Yet Another fixed recurring expense" and "expose myself to loss of the use of my computers if a mistake is made" then that's completely invalid.
Well, it's a good thing that I didn't do that, then.
Maybe you were trying to speak to some sort of DRM failure month-to-month, but that issue already exists with other licenses that are paid up front. Just search around for all the issues people have with AutoCAD related to activation.
AutoCAD is a great example of (one flavor) of what I mean, yes. But I'm not sure how pointing out the flaws in AutoCAD justifies putting similar flaws into Windows.
With Windows if you change your MAC address, you have to reactivate, BUT you are still able to use the computer completely, just don't get updates until you fix the activation issue, which is usually as simple as running the Activate Windows program. So even then you aren't facing downtime.
If they do it like that. I don't know that they will. However, Windows activation is also a terrible standard to uphold, since it simply sucks. I have three machines within arms reach that refuse to activated at all, despite a ton of time spent with Microsoft support.
When will people wake up and realize that the gov't (even though they suck at their job most of the time in the civil area) is there to protect its constituents at all times and with whatever force required. When the gov't fails to do that, that is when they have failed you. People want to be "nice" and live in a box.
This is a fascinating comment. First, we are not "constituents" of the government. We are citizens of a nation, and the government works for us. Secondly, I think I disagree that the government's job is to protect the citizens with "whatever force is required". The uncertainty comes from what you mean by "protect citizens". I think that it's more protective of citizens to behave in a way that isn't morally reprehensible. The government completely and totally failed us when it began torturing people.
The underlying implication of your comment, though, is the most curious of all: it appears that you think that the only legitimate role of government is to make war, and further that the government is better at that than at its civil duties. I disagree with both of those implications.
I think Microsoft would be smart to offer something like, "Pay $100/year, and get an always-up-to-date version of Windows, Office, antivirus updates, some basic MDM functionality, and 100 GB of OneDrive storage. Cancel at any time, and keep your current version of Windows and Office, but you won't get any updates or patches beyond critical security updates."
That might be more palatable to many people, but it wouldn't do a thing for me -- mostly because I actively do not want frequent Windows updates, Microsoft AV updates, MDM functionality, or any OneDrive storage at all.
I run a business. Why the fuck would I want to have Yet Another fixed recurring expense and expose myself to loss of the use of my computers if a mistake is made?
I could see slashdot easily going the product placement route where every 5th article is an article that was paid to be put there.
That would be at least an order of magnitude better than what we have right now.
APK's posts aren't moderated down because people don't want others to know about the magic of hosts files. They're moderated down because they are spam.
all the un-targeted stuff deserves to be blocked.
I feel just the opposite. I would love to see targeted ads die a horrible, painful death. Not because of the ads themselves, but because of the spying that needs to happen to make the idea work.
People would still use AdBlock if ads were unobtrusive and static.
I know I would (well, not ABP specifically, because I don't trust it, but you get the idea), but not because of the silly notion that I just want stuff for free. It's because the thing that I object to more than anything else about ads is the tracking that comes with them. Unobtrusive, static ads track you just as much as the loud, obnoxious ones.
So, selling something is now considered "freeloading"? I think you need to check your dictionary.
There is an argument to be made that mandated buy-back of electricity being a bad thing, but you should make that argument rather than wrongfully accusing people selling electricity of being freeloaders or equating that with welfare.
The local trash monopoly did something similar. Trash service is about $60 a month, but you can take your trash to the landfill for $15 per ton.
This happened to me in a small town I lived in, too. I took my trash directly to the landfill, spending about $10/mo doing it that way vs $50/mo for trash pickup. The trash company decided that wasn't right and got a city ordinance passed requiring everyone to use their service. Fortunately, I moved out of town shortly after that.
Not in my state. They'll cut you off for lack of payment, no problem. There is a medical exception where if you need the electricity to run medically essential equipment, they won't cut you off, but that's it.
If we allow only those who can afford electricity or solar to have it, the poorer segments are deprived and that ends up hurting everybody.
But that's what we have right now anyway. Only those who can afford electricity can have it.
Basic services are provided to just about everyone.
Fine, then the regulations should be that the house has a way to get electricity. They shouldn't specify what that way should be, nor that the people living in the house have to have an active account with the power company. After all, doesn't that lat requirement work against the poorer segments of society? If they can't afford electricity, they can get evicted? That doesn't sound helpful.
you'll learn to appreciate Pizza Hut for being, at least, edible.
Talk about damning with faint praise. Pizza Hut is barely edible, anyway (although, I admit, it's good if you compare it to the likes of Dominos or Little Ceasers). If I lived someplace where the only pizza option was Pizza Hut, I still wouldn't go to Pizza Hut. I'd make my own pizza. Then, at least, I'd have a pizza that was actually tasty.
Foodies can indeed be poor -- but they still wouldn't be in a Pizza Hut. They'd be somewhere that has at least reasonably decent food.
a Pizza Hut spokesperson said in a statement, "so that the focus of dining can be on the most important part — the enjoyment of eating!"
Anyone who cares about the enjoyment of eating wouldn't be in a Pizza Hut in the first place.
Yes, those are the ideals of agile. But I have never seen any of them successfully done in the real world. Instead agile as implemented (which never resembles the ideal) just makes everything worse.
Then fix it.
You say that as if its possible.
Good lord, I could not agree more. From what I've learned in the last three companies I worked for that used agile, agile means that an ungodly amount of time is spent in meetings and constant, meaningless record-keeping. God, I hate agile. It gets in the way of doing good, timely work.
Perhaps because that's not the most important part of the quote. Those are not big issues for Linus, but they may be big issues for VGPowerlord. I don't know. I do know that they are very big issues for me.
I'd doubt that Linux is alienating power users. What it is alienating is traditionalist system admins.
I know a lot of non-sysadmin Linux users who very alienated by this whole thing.
Why is choice important to me? I would think the answer was self-evident: so I have the freedom to arrange my systems in any way I choose. This is the #1 problem that I'm having -- Debian, the distro that has built its reputation on the notions of choice and user benefit -- has effectively said that those notions aren't so important to them after all. So I can no longer trust Debian.
As to systemd in particular, I think the objections to it have been articulated pretty well, and many of them I agree with. There's little point in rehashing all that here, since my focus is not on whether or not systemd is a good thing but on the General Resolution.
factual errors (e.g., that it's monolithic, and therefore not UNIXy)
I don't think that's a factual error at all. I think it's accurate. The counterarguments really address things that are slightly different than the claim. For example, just because a system is distributed as a whole bunch of binaries doesn't mean that it's not monolithic or that it's "UNIXy".
I found Russ Allberry's analysis pretty compelling. Why do you disagree?
I did not. However, it's a bit difficult to engage in a point-by-point response here. My big picture take is that while the use of systemd has clear advantages to the people who must maintain the distros themselves (and to users of the OS in certain use cases), it does so at a cost to the users. For those of us that get no real benefit from systemd at all, this means that its inclusion is nothing but cost.
I'm really wondering what I'm missing here, because this seems like much ado about nothing, and I haven't been able to get anyone who is really concerned about it to explain why it's really a big problem.
I hope I was able to help. In short: the outrage is less about systemd in particular as it is about the fact that if nothing is done, systemd will be effectively required.
I thus far have seen noone complain about the systemd part of systemd but only about the coupling between systemd and logind
I have seen people complain about it (I have complained about aspects of it myself), but perhaps the reason that these complaints aren't harped about endlessly is that the root problem is not systemd itself. It's that systemd is becoming impossible to do without if you want to do without it.
That's why the coupling issue you bring up is a big deal. And even there, it's not that issue in particular, is the general problem of its use becoming mandatory.
If they would have done that, they would have found that systemd is just fine.
You assume far too much here. I've installed it, configured it, administered it. I don't want it. It isn't some magical artifact that you'll love if you just use it. It's a tool, and it can be appropriate for some cases and inappropriate for others. That's why the ability to choose whether or not to use it is so important, and that choice is what is going away. That's the entire complaint right there.