people are no doubt running to the store to pay for a roll of tinfoil with a Bitcoin, but it's really not the Orwellian nightmare that you might expect.
Wait a second. You can't call people who object to tracking paranoid because the tracking is provably being done. Why do you think people who object to being spied on are somehow nutty for objecting to it?
From my point of view, there are two problems. The biggest one isn't the ads themselves, but the tracking that is used with them. That needs to die a fast, painful death. The other problem, which is about the ads themselves, is that advertising is ubiquitous. When you can't even take a piss in many public restrooms without having to look at another damned ad, it's no mystery why people want to see advertising itself die.
Beyond that, it kind of sucks and there's really no point in denying it. Netflix by itself is no cable substitute. There's no point in pretending Netflix is something it's not.
I'm not pretending. Netflix by itself completely replaces cable to my satisfaction. Admittedly, that's a pretty low bar because cable sucks completely. Sure, Netflix and the like doesn't satisfy everyone's needs (what does?), but there's no need to be dismissive of people for whom it works or accuse them of being deceptive or misguided.
Personally, Netflix not only compares very well to a $200 cable package, it is superior to a $200 cable package. Cable offers nothing of interest to me that I can't get from Netflix, but Netflix is a much better viewing experience.
I have a moderately long list of pain points, but the biggest one for me is all those damned dependencies. For the most part, my list is the same as most everyone else who has used it and found it wanting. There's no need to go into detail, as these details can be easily found pretty much anywhere that discusses systemd.
For my own collection of systems, there's only one use that counts: that's me -- and this is a big deal for me. For my needs, both on my servers and workstations, systemd presents a lot of downsides and no upsides. Therefore, I reject it. I would prefer the relatively short-term pain of migrating my systems over the long-term pain of dealing with systemd -- but I rather that I could just continue to use Debian without having to use systemd at all.
The summary is completely wrong. They are not discussing systemd, just whether packages can depend on a specific init system. I thought there was some kind of moderation here?
Yes, and this is really the key point. That there are packages that depend on systemd is the root problem -- it means that it's very difficult to use an init system other than systemd. If I could just select my preferred init system like I can select my preferred DE, then I wouldn't have an issue over systemd at all, since I could just avoid it entirely.
Indeed. Which is why I hate Red Hat with a burning fire of a thousand suns. I stopped using Red Hat for my own systems many years ago, and I am greatly irritated that its influence is so hard to avoid.
In my mind, this comes down to whether we want a better functioning OS or an OS that adheres to the mindset that I think attracted many of us to Linux in the first place.
I don't think that systemd, on the whole, gives us a better functioning OS at all.
The systemd problem will force me to stop using Debian, a prospect that I dread for a number of reasons (but mostly because changing all my servers and workstations will be a lot of work). Could it be that this is a sign I might not have to leave? Oh, please let it be so!
Yes, this is a great point. I do care, but in the opposite way that Intel wants me to. Many of the apps I use are native, and all of the apps I write for Android are native. So, I doubt I will ever use an x86 based device. Unless there is some super-special advantage to what Intel is offering, the pain and impact of the change would be too much.
I couldn't care less what processor is in my phone or tablet. I only care if my phone or tablet can do what I want it to do. I suspect that I'm in the majority here. So, Intel, please explain to me why it matters whether my devices contain ARM or x86 architecture?
That's why apps now have functionality metrics (Firefox seems really big on it for example).
Are you talking about products looking at the functionality that people are using in the field to determine what features to drop or keep? If so, then these metrics are a bit of a plague today, since the assumption seems to be that you can determine how important a feature is by how often it's used. This results in very important, rarely used features getting dropped. (The obvious most recent example is the Windows start menu).
Judging by the output of the UX crowd over the past few years, they actually seem to believe that worse is better. It's kindof funny seeing him arguing against the proposition.
By that logic, everything sucks. C++, Haskell, HTML, all of it.
And yet, most of the code written in those languages results in a better track record than CSS. In fact, most professionally produced code that has problems fails in edge cases. Most the the CSS I encounter has problems in the main use cases.
sure, you can break things, but at least you'll usually get something that's still readable.
True, about 80% of the time when I have a problem with CSS-based pages, I can still sorta read the pages. Often I have to do annoying things like resize my browser, reduce my font sizes, or other types of workarounds before the page becomes readable, though, so that's sorta weak sauce. Nonetheless, there's still an annoying high rate of breakage -- I'd say about half of the websites I go to present some amount of functionality loss or unreadable text due to CSS.
But even worse than that, the limitations of CSS make web designers choose designs that are just bad (for instance, my own pet peeve of pages that have a fixed width or limited ability to handle arbitrary window sizes. Yes, you can do these properly with CSS, but it's much more difficult to do, so most web designers don't.
I'm not saying it's impossible to make a great, robust web page using CSS. I've done it. I am saying, however, that for nontrivial web pages it's much more difficult than making the equivalent page without it and it's much easier to mess it all up. In my view, that makes it a poor tool.
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And that is "upgrade only when I tell you to."
people are no doubt running to the store to pay for a roll of tinfoil with a Bitcoin, but it's really not the Orwellian nightmare that you might expect.
Wait a second. You can't call people who object to tracking paranoid because the tracking is provably being done. Why do you think people who object to being spied on are somehow nutty for objecting to it?
From my point of view, there are two problems. The biggest one isn't the ads themselves, but the tracking that is used with them. That needs to die a fast, painful death. The other problem, which is about the ads themselves, is that advertising is ubiquitous. When you can't even take a piss in many public restrooms without having to look at another damned ad, it's no mystery why people want to see advertising itself die.
Meh. When Netflix starts showing ads, I'll just stop using it. No problem.
Yes, this. And the switchover to digital broadcasting means that there are more people than ever who simply can't receive OTA broadcasts.
Beyond that, it kind of sucks and there's really no point in denying it. Netflix by itself is no cable substitute. There's no point in pretending Netflix is something it's not.
I'm not pretending. Netflix by itself completely replaces cable to my satisfaction. Admittedly, that's a pretty low bar because cable sucks completely. Sure, Netflix and the like doesn't satisfy everyone's needs (what does?), but there's no need to be dismissive of people for whom it works or accuse them of being deceptive or misguided.
Netflix compares poorly to a $200 cable package.
Personally, Netflix not only compares very well to a $200 cable package, it is superior to a $200 cable package. Cable offers nothing of interest to me that I can't get from Netflix, but Netflix is a much better viewing experience.
One.
I have a moderately long list of pain points, but the biggest one for me is all those damned dependencies. For the most part, my list is the same as most everyone else who has used it and found it wanting. There's no need to go into detail, as these details can be easily found pretty much anywhere that discusses systemd.
For my own collection of systems, there's only one use that counts: that's me -- and this is a big deal for me. For my needs, both on my servers and workstations, systemd presents a lot of downsides and no upsides. Therefore, I reject it. I would prefer the relatively short-term pain of migrating my systems over the long-term pain of dealing with systemd -- but I rather that I could just continue to use Debian without having to use systemd at all.
The summary is completely wrong. They are not discussing systemd, just whether packages can depend on a specific init system. I thought there was some kind of moderation here?
Yes, and this is really the key point. That there are packages that depend on systemd is the root problem -- it means that it's very difficult to use an init system other than systemd. If I could just select my preferred init system like I can select my preferred DE, then I wouldn't have an issue over systemd at all, since I could just avoid it entirely.
Indeed. Which is why I hate Red Hat with a burning fire of a thousand suns. I stopped using Red Hat for my own systems many years ago, and I am greatly irritated that its influence is so hard to avoid.
You can have your tamper-resistant logs right now, without systemd.
In my mind, this comes down to whether we want a better functioning OS or an OS that adheres to the mindset that I think attracted many of us to Linux in the first place.
I don't think that systemd, on the whole, gives us a better functioning OS at all.
It isn't developers or distro maintainers who hate systemd
I'm a developer and I hate systemd.
Yes, nondevelopers do use Linux on the desktop. I personally know 6 of them.
The systemd problem will force me to stop using Debian, a prospect that I dread for a number of reasons (but mostly because changing all my servers and workstations will be a lot of work). Could it be that this is a sign I might not have to leave? Oh, please let it be so!
Yes, this is a great point. I do care, but in the opposite way that Intel wants me to. Many of the apps I use are native, and all of the apps I write for Android are native. So, I doubt I will ever use an x86 based device. Unless there is some super-special advantage to what Intel is offering, the pain and impact of the change would be too much.
I couldn't care less what processor is in my phone or tablet. I only care if my phone or tablet can do what I want it to do. I suspect that I'm in the majority here. So, Intel, please explain to me why it matters whether my devices contain ARM or x86 architecture?
Fortunately, they are very easy to permanently disable. At least for now.
Now I have to use a voice scrambler for all my phone calls.
The app store lock-in is the primary reason why I won't ever own an iDevice.
That's why apps now have functionality metrics (Firefox seems really big on it for example).
Are you talking about products looking at the functionality that people are using in the field to determine what features to drop or keep? If so, then these metrics are a bit of a plague today, since the assumption seems to be that you can determine how important a feature is by how often it's used. This results in very important, rarely used features getting dropped. (The obvious most recent example is the Windows start menu).
Judging by the output of the UX crowd over the past few years, they actually seem to believe that worse is better. It's kindof funny seeing him arguing against the proposition.
By that logic, everything sucks. C++, Haskell, HTML, all of it.
And yet, most of the code written in those languages results in a better track record than CSS. In fact, most professionally produced code that has problems fails in edge cases. Most the the CSS I encounter has problems in the main use cases.
sure, you can break things, but at least you'll usually get something that's still readable.
True, about 80% of the time when I have a problem with CSS-based pages, I can still sorta read the pages. Often I have to do annoying things like resize my browser, reduce my font sizes, or other types of workarounds before the page becomes readable, though, so that's sorta weak sauce. Nonetheless, there's still an annoying high rate of breakage -- I'd say about half of the websites I go to present some amount of functionality loss or unreadable text due to CSS.
But even worse than that, the limitations of CSS make web designers choose designs that are just bad (for instance, my own pet peeve of pages that have a fixed width or limited ability to handle arbitrary window sizes. Yes, you can do these properly with CSS, but it's much more difficult to do, so most web designers don't.
I'm not saying it's impossible to make a great, robust web page using CSS. I've done it. I am saying, however, that for nontrivial web pages it's much more difficult than making the equivalent page without it and it's much easier to mess it all up. In my view, that makes it a poor tool.