You seem to be confused about what Free Software is, the focus isn't on it being "free of charge" it is on having the freedom to change it (or pay somebody to do it for you) if it doesn't do what you want. If you don't like it then improve it, but this is the big problem with free software today, so many of the users are like you who feel entitled to it and if it isn't exactly what you want you don't want to put in any contribution or effort to changing that.
Oh please! I'm so sick of that "support" line of BS, especially since its been reported that they FIRED the QA and testing teams.
Except that didn't happen, and more to the point MS has long had their concept of SDET roles.
This is about MONEY all right, its about making money off of YOU because with windows 10 YOU ARE THE PRODUCT and the OS is merely a carrot to get to you, your data, and your eyeballs.
Of course, it's been proven by Google - with Android, GMail, Google Maps, Search, etc... - for the last decade or so that this is the model that the vast amount of people prefer. Most people prefer no cost + targeted advertising while the tin-foil hat brigade harp on about spying and data selling even though that doesn't actually happen.
MSFT wants endless revenue and they make more by spying on you and selling that data to advertisers
I don't think you understand how targeted advertising works, this is not about "selling data". Can you point me to exactly where I can buy this data?
who then pay them AGAIN for ads on the start screen than they ever made on the OS. with previous versions they got paid less than $100 a unit every 3 years, now? They get paid 365 days a year by advertisers for unlimited access to your information and advertising space on your PC.
Unlimited access to your information? If you've got a source for that then I would love to see it, where can I get this? In any case while the system builders and sellers that pandered to Microsoft for years peddling their wares they fueled the dependence on Microsoft rather than investing in and contributing to a free platform, their greed is what trapped them. Thankfully I only use Windows for gaming and a few CAD things, everything else is done on OSX or Linux.
Businesses still use computers (personal and servers).
Linux owns the server market, as far as PCs in businesses are concerned do you really think that is going to achieve any of the things the GP said? Highly unlikely.
And consider this - it makes no sense for Microsoft to do it, yet they want that CAPABILITY.
They don't have the best track record when it comes to security.
See where this could be going?
Integrated ransomware, ripe for the picking.
Maybe you haven't been paying attention, Windows Update has had "Download and Install updates automatically" as the default for many years, this is not a new thing yet you're only just discovering this now.
For some of the stuff I do on Facebook, the Windows laptop is the easiest to do. It's got a large display and a decent keyboard. About the only thing that's easier to do from my phone is upload pictures and videos.
But if you were unable to do that from your Windows laptop would that stop you from doing it all together?
But here is my point: Why be hostile? What is the benefit of the forced upgrade?
Probably to focus their resources on supporting one platform. You're dealing with people who get fooled by "This is sanjay from Windows, your computer is telling us it has viruses" phone calls, sure they will have to go through an automatic update and restart but it means they are on the latest supported software.
Can you imagine what panic this user will go through if they say OK to the update?! All of the sudden your system is rebooting and installation screens are asking you questions and that only thing you know is that it deals with something you know nothing about!
Well that depends, what exactly are these questions? If it's a clean install then you would be asked about where to install it but that isn't the case with an upgrade. What are these confusing questions you're talking about?
Windows 10 uses you. You're the revenue source, because they sell ads. Of course they are willing to let you be a revenue source at no cost to them!
You were the revenue source before as well, except that you handed them money. There's no such thing as a free lunch, that's why the upgrade to Windows 10 costs nothing. Google has well and truly proven this model for many years and the vast majority of people love it, it doesn't cost you anything except having the occassional advert presented. Microsoft has jumped on the software model that Google proved out, that people prefer ads to upfront monetary charges. Microsoft is late to the game in that regard so at this point what you're saying isn't exactly a revelation.
Probably because majority of simple folks don't have any choice in the matter: They are locked in. Windows is all they know.
They don't care. And why would they? It runs their programs and they have their web browser, that's what an OS is for. You could say (and I already did in the comments somewhere) that they should use Linux but what does that really get them in terms of things they care about? Nothing really. Same thing with iOS, you can argue it is even more overtly hostile in not allowing you to change default programs or install alternative browsers and applications don't work if you don't upgrade the OS but again the majority of folks don't give a shit about that, and why should they?
If playing games is your primary use then sure even if you only use Windows to play games then it would be your primary OS and you can do everything else on Linux. There has been much theorizing (for years if we're honest) about how Windows -- and other proprietary programs -- could be used to spy on you, if you don't believe the hype or don't care about that (or value it less than the effort of dual-booting) then by all means just use Windows. I know these claims about backdoors were made many years ago and weren't substantiated by the multiple Windows source code leaks so indeed extrapolation of "telemetry data" to spying could be an equally invalid exagerration.
Shut down all windows computers during a specific planetary event, silence all political talk on issues that M$'s board approves but the majority rejects, shut down computers during critical election moments, silence all protest et al. This stuff is getting seriously out of hand and pretty wacked, it is getting very hard to understand what M$ is doing and why governments are accepting it, this is getting to be pretty wacked stuff, insane behaviour by a corporation.
Except they aren't doing any of those things, you made all that up, mainly because doing so would make absolutely no sense whatsoever nor would it have any impact. Microsoft may have a majority on desktop computing (interspliced with OSX, ChromeOS and other Linux distros) but they don't have even close to a controlling stake in personal computing which includes phones and tablets. How many people do you think are doing their "political talk" - or any social networking for that matter - from their Windows PCs?
You realize this isn't 1995 anymore, we have Android, iOS, OSX, ChromeOS, BSD, various Linux distros, etc... Microsoft has been demoted to just a small player in the personal computing market.
I know the memo was sent a good 20 years ago so surely you have recieved it by now, but have you heard of Linux? Sure it's not perfect either but you can modify it to make it do what you want, now that doesn't sound appealing to many people but if the nerds and geeks here are still Windows devotees trying to work against their OS then it's likely to remain prevalent for a long time to come.
The problem being that after years of struggling with unsupported OSes, RedHat managed to represent a hardware vendor friendly option that did pretty much what we wanted.
At the time that presented good value as a short-term gain, the problem was that this meant RedHat were the ones controlling the upstream. Nobody was interested in thinking ahead with "maybe RedHat won't always act in our best interests".
Fork and move on is not something the hardware vendors (and by extension, large IT organizations) will go along with you on.
I disagree, the hardware vendors are not dependent on systemd so they don't need to go along with you.
So there are zero supportable new Linux distros that provide the non-systemd experience.
I'm not sure what you mean by "new" but Gentoo and Slackware are just fine.
This is a big problem in and of itself, but also an indicator that there really isn't meaningful choice in distributions as they all just copy RedHat's moves now (even though Ubuntu, by install count far outnumbers them, RedHat still has the muscle by virtue of revenue).
Well no, that's wrong. As Devuan progresses and we see Gentoo and Slackware without systemd the only problem is people desperately clinging to RedHat despite multiple viable alternatives.
Yes. The issue isn't that it can't be done. The issue is that longstanding default behavior has changed. Since it appears that there's no good, solid reason for the change, people are objecting to it. Change for change's sake is bad.
So don't accept the change, it's Open Source so these things are not forced on you, otherwise you might as well be using proprietary closed-source software.
Still no Windows 10 drivers after a year from release, for a cheap model of laptop they might have pushed out 5-7 years ago, which was only certified for Windows 7? Yeah, not really surprising.
They do the same shit with their phones, not providing timely updates for Android devices.
That's the shitty behavior you expect from Apple or Microsoft, not what you should get out of a system that runs on tiny embedded machines up to 1000+ CPU supercomputers.
You seem to be confusing Linux and systemd, when you say the "system" what is it you mean? Indeed Linux does run on many embedded systems, on many millions of smartphones and on most supercomputers but these do not run systemd and Linux is not systemd.
Perhaps you are unfamiliar with how open source works, they made a change in their project that suits them. If you don't like their change or contribution (or indeed their project) then you don't need to accept it, they don't work for you. These fundamental concepts of contribution start to get forgotten as a community moves from appreciative of contributions to a dependency and sense of entitlement. You either break your dependency on Red Hat or you accept that they are going to do things you don't like.
I'd certainly like to see the sort of Facebook page that contains data enabling anybody to create a profile that can be used to "predict your every action and track your whereabouts with very high accuracy", most that I see are photos of parties, pets, food and sharing cat videos but an example of what you're talking about would really help the discussion. In terms of "predict your every action" that's just plain wrong, particularly when they can't even get targeted advertising remotely close to accurate. As far as tracking your whereabouts, that has been true ever since people started carrying cell phones, still a lot of older people are pretty ignorant of that fact.
But regardless of that, it still doesn't explain where you get the idea that all the polled people fall into the "stupid" category rather than the "inexperienced" category outside of your "kids these days" anecdote.
Well, one court circuit has created the precedent that APIs are copyrightable. That's not to say that same judgement applies in any other by default, you could still press the argument in another court (albeit with an uphill battle) that APIs can't be copyrighted.
Yes but as the GP pointed out, you can only even attempt to overturn that precedent if you have significant resources to fund a legal team to try to do it.
Two contradictory decisions can occur simultaneously in different circuits, it's how many of the social issues SCOTUS has dealt with lately have come to them. And that's probably where it would lead, to the Supreme Court, who would rule once and for all.
Well in this case one court ruled that APIs cannot be copyrighted, that judgement was overturned and the case was returned to that court with the ruling that APIs can indeed be copyrighted. The case proceeded on that basis and the argument was then "fair use". As it stands, the precedent in both circuits is that APIs can be copyrighted.
How about we leaving the teaching to the teachers and the armchair quarterbacks can go fuck themselves? I like that approach.
It's always the same old story (and in this case the same person submitting it: "theodp"). If the approach of code.org is so wrong then by all means these armchair commentators are free to come up with a superior curriculum. But they won't, they aren't capable, in fact the submitter in question has spent years submitting anti-code.org stories yet proposed no alternative.
So where in this poll is that distinction made? I'm sure many people aren't aware of the necessity for internet security, particularly those that didn't grow up going through the phase of paranoia about the security of internet shopping in the early days of the net.
These are two kinds of laptop offering different models for usage and monetization, the comparison highlights that Google's method is gaining in popularity. Obviously you're not interested in that but that doesn't mean the comparison is invalid.
And outsold Mac's in units? Dollars? Please.
"... in terms of shipments..." so yes, units. Dollars are not even relevant in this context because most of the profit from ChromeOS is not from selling the product but from monetizing the services.
This means nothing. Isolate the Mac business from Apple, and the Chromebook business from Google, which business would you rather own?
I'm not sure what you mean by the "Chromebook business from Google" since AFAIK the only Chromebook they make is the Pixel and in terms of Chromebooks that one isn't a big part of the market. Google isn't trying to make a business of selling Chromebooks or ChromeOS licenses, it's about the associated services and addressing user needs in a different way than traditional laptops.
Slashdot Mirror
You seem to be confused about what Free Software is, the focus isn't on it being "free of charge" it is on having the freedom to change it (or pay somebody to do it for you) if it doesn't do what you want. If you don't like it then improve it, but this is the big problem with free software today, so many of the users are like you who feel entitled to it and if it isn't exactly what you want you don't want to put in any contribution or effort to changing that.
the problen with the win10 forced update is that it doesnt run what they need to run.
What do people need to run that Windows 7 runs that Windows 10 doesn't?
Oh please! I'm so sick of that "support" line of BS, especially since its been reported that they FIRED the QA and testing teams.
Except that didn't happen, and more to the point MS has long had their concept of SDET roles.
This is about MONEY all right, its about making money off of YOU because with windows 10 YOU ARE THE PRODUCT and the OS is merely a carrot to get to you, your data, and your eyeballs.
Of course, it's been proven by Google - with Android, GMail, Google Maps, Search, etc... - for the last decade or so that this is the model that the vast amount of people prefer. Most people prefer no cost + targeted advertising while the tin-foil hat brigade harp on about spying and data selling even though that doesn't actually happen.
MSFT wants endless revenue and they make more by spying on you and selling that data to advertisers
I don't think you understand how targeted advertising works, this is not about "selling data". Can you point me to exactly where I can buy this data?
who then pay them AGAIN for ads on the start screen than they ever made on the OS. with previous versions they got paid less than $100 a unit every 3 years, now? They get paid 365 days a year by advertisers for unlimited access to your information and advertising space on your PC.
Unlimited access to your information? If you've got a source for that then I would love to see it, where can I get this? In any case while the system builders and sellers that pandered to Microsoft for years peddling their wares they fueled the dependence on Microsoft rather than investing in and contributing to a free platform, their greed is what trapped them. Thankfully I only use Windows for gaming and a few CAD things, everything else is done on OSX or Linux.
yet all I see in PC World, Curry's, Maplin and John Lewis are PCS RUNNING WINDOWS.
I think for most of the fucking high street it's still 1995.
They all have chromebooks and certainly Curry's has a wide selection of Android tablets as well as having iPads and Macs.
Businesses still use computers (personal and servers).
Linux owns the server market, as far as PCs in businesses are concerned do you really think that is going to achieve any of the things the GP said? Highly unlikely.
And consider this - it makes no sense for Microsoft to do it, yet they want that CAPABILITY.
They don't have the best track record when it comes to security.
See where this could be going?
Integrated ransomware, ripe for the picking.
Maybe you haven't been paying attention, Windows Update has had "Download and Install updates automatically" as the default for many years, this is not a new thing yet you're only just discovering this now.
For some of the stuff I do on Facebook, the Windows laptop is the easiest to do. It's got a large display and a decent keyboard. About the only thing that's easier to do from my phone is upload pictures and videos.
But if you were unable to do that from your Windows laptop would that stop you from doing it all together?
But here is my point: Why be hostile? What is the benefit of the forced upgrade?
Probably to focus their resources on supporting one platform. You're dealing with people who get fooled by "This is sanjay from Windows, your computer is telling us it has viruses" phone calls, sure they will have to go through an automatic update and restart but it means they are on the latest supported software.
Can you imagine what panic this user will go through if they say OK to the update?! All of the sudden your system is rebooting and installation screens are asking you questions and that only thing you know is that it deals with something you know nothing about!
Well that depends, what exactly are these questions? If it's a clean install then you would be asked about where to install it but that isn't the case with an upgrade. What are these confusing questions you're talking about?
Windows 10 uses you. You're the revenue source, because they sell ads. Of course they are willing to let you be a revenue source at no cost to them!
You were the revenue source before as well, except that you handed them money. There's no such thing as a free lunch, that's why the upgrade to Windows 10 costs nothing. Google has well and truly proven this model for many years and the vast majority of people love it, it doesn't cost you anything except having the occassional advert presented. Microsoft has jumped on the software model that Google proved out, that people prefer ads to upfront monetary charges. Microsoft is late to the game in that regard so at this point what you're saying isn't exactly a revelation.
Probably because majority of simple folks don't have any choice in the matter: They are locked in. Windows is all they know.
They don't care. And why would they? It runs their programs and they have their web browser, that's what an OS is for. You could say (and I already did in the comments somewhere) that they should use Linux but what does that really get them in terms of things they care about? Nothing really. Same thing with iOS, you can argue it is even more overtly hostile in not allowing you to change default programs or install alternative browsers and applications don't work if you don't upgrade the OS but again the majority of folks don't give a shit about that, and why should they?
If playing games is your primary use then sure even if you only use Windows to play games then it would be your primary OS and you can do everything else on Linux. There has been much theorizing (for years if we're honest) about how Windows -- and other proprietary programs -- could be used to spy on you, if you don't believe the hype or don't care about that (or value it less than the effort of dual-booting) then by all means just use Windows. I know these claims about backdoors were made many years ago and weren't substantiated by the multiple Windows source code leaks so indeed extrapolation of "telemetry data" to spying could be an equally invalid exagerration.
Shut down all windows computers during a specific planetary event, silence all political talk on issues that M$'s board approves but the majority rejects, shut down computers during critical election moments, silence all protest et al. This stuff is getting seriously out of hand and pretty wacked, it is getting very hard to understand what M$ is doing and why governments are accepting it, this is getting to be pretty wacked stuff, insane behaviour by a corporation.
Except they aren't doing any of those things, you made all that up, mainly because doing so would make absolutely no sense whatsoever nor would it have any impact. Microsoft may have a majority on desktop computing (interspliced with OSX, ChromeOS and other Linux distros) but they don't have even close to a controlling stake in personal computing which includes phones and tablets. How many people do you think are doing their "political talk" - or any social networking for that matter - from their Windows PCs?
You realize this isn't 1995 anymore, we have Android, iOS, OSX, ChromeOS, BSD, various Linux distros, etc... Microsoft has been demoted to just a small player in the personal computing market.
I know the memo was sent a good 20 years ago so surely you have recieved it by now, but have you heard of Linux? Sure it's not perfect either but you can modify it to make it do what you want, now that doesn't sound appealing to many people but if the nerds and geeks here are still Windows devotees trying to work against their OS then it's likely to remain prevalent for a long time to come.
The problem being that after years of struggling with unsupported OSes, RedHat managed to represent a hardware vendor friendly option that did pretty much what we wanted.
At the time that presented good value as a short-term gain, the problem was that this meant RedHat were the ones controlling the upstream. Nobody was interested in thinking ahead with "maybe RedHat won't always act in our best interests".
Fork and move on is not something the hardware vendors (and by extension, large IT organizations) will go along with you on.
I disagree, the hardware vendors are not dependent on systemd so they don't need to go along with you.
So there are zero supportable new Linux distros that provide the non-systemd experience.
I'm not sure what you mean by "new" but Gentoo and Slackware are just fine.
This is a big problem in and of itself, but also an indicator that there really isn't meaningful choice in distributions as they all just copy RedHat's moves now (even though Ubuntu, by install count far outnumbers them, RedHat still has the muscle by virtue of revenue).
Well no, that's wrong. As Devuan progresses and we see Gentoo and Slackware without systemd the only problem is people desperately clinging to RedHat despite multiple viable alternatives.
Yes. The issue isn't that it can't be done. The issue is that longstanding default behavior has changed. Since it appears that there's no good, solid reason for the change, people are objecting to it. Change for change's sake is bad.
So don't accept the change, it's Open Source so these things are not forced on you, otherwise you might as well be using proprietary closed-source software.
Still no Windows 10 drivers after a year from release, for a cheap model of laptop they might have pushed out 5-7 years ago, which was only certified for Windows 7? Yeah, not really surprising.
They do the same shit with their phones, not providing timely updates for Android devices.
That's the shitty behavior you expect from Apple or Microsoft, not what you should get out of a system that runs on tiny embedded machines up to 1000+ CPU supercomputers.
You seem to be confusing Linux and systemd, when you say the "system" what is it you mean? Indeed Linux does run on many embedded systems, on many millions of smartphones and on most supercomputers but these do not run systemd and Linux is not systemd.
Perhaps you are unfamiliar with how open source works, they made a change in their project that suits them. If you don't like their change or contribution (or indeed their project) then you don't need to accept it, they don't work for you. These fundamental concepts of contribution start to get forgotten as a community moves from appreciative of contributions to a dependency and sense of entitlement. You either break your dependency on Red Hat or you accept that they are going to do things you don't like.
I'd certainly like to see the sort of Facebook page that contains data enabling anybody to create a profile that can be used to "predict your every action and track your whereabouts with very high accuracy", most that I see are photos of parties, pets, food and sharing cat videos but an example of what you're talking about would really help the discussion. In terms of "predict your every action" that's just plain wrong, particularly when they can't even get targeted advertising remotely close to accurate. As far as tracking your whereabouts, that has been true ever since people started carrying cell phones, still a lot of older people are pretty ignorant of that fact.
But regardless of that, it still doesn't explain where you get the idea that all the polled people fall into the "stupid" category rather than the "inexperienced" category outside of your "kids these days" anecdote.
Well, one court circuit has created the precedent that APIs are copyrightable. That's not to say that same judgement applies in any other by default, you could still press the argument in another court (albeit with an uphill battle) that APIs can't be copyrighted.
Yes but as the GP pointed out, you can only even attempt to overturn that precedent if you have significant resources to fund a legal team to try to do it.
Two contradictory decisions can occur simultaneously in different circuits, it's how many of the social issues SCOTUS has dealt with lately have come to them. And that's probably where it would lead, to the Supreme Court, who would rule once and for all.
Well in this case one court ruled that APIs cannot be copyrighted, that judgement was overturned and the case was returned to that court with the ruling that APIs can indeed be copyrighted. The case proceeded on that basis and the argument was then "fair use". As it stands, the precedent in both circuits is that APIs can be copyrighted.
How about we leaving the teaching to the teachers and the armchair quarterbacks can go fuck themselves? I like that approach.
It's always the same old story (and in this case the same person submitting it: "theodp"). If the approach of code.org is so wrong then by all means these armchair commentators are free to come up with a superior curriculum. But they won't, they aren't capable, in fact the submitter in question has spent years submitting anti-code.org stories yet proposed no alternative.
So where in this poll is that distinction made? I'm sure many people aren't aware of the necessity for internet security, particularly those that didn't grow up going through the phase of paranoia about the security of internet shopping in the early days of the net.
"Your wife would like this" :)
That's a nice attempt to excuse the poor tracking but the fact is it simply does not work well.
This just proves that their tracking of individual users doesn't work very well.
their lower quality often created computers that barely functioned, or ran spastic.
Are you saying Celerons were defective parts?
The comparison should be to iOS tablets, not Mac.
These are two kinds of laptop offering different models for usage and monetization, the comparison highlights that Google's method is gaining in popularity. Obviously you're not interested in that but that doesn't mean the comparison is invalid.
And outsold Mac's in units? Dollars? Please.
"... in terms of shipments ..." so yes, units. Dollars are not even relevant in this context because most of the profit from ChromeOS is not from selling the product but from monetizing the services.
This means nothing. Isolate the Mac business from Apple, and the Chromebook business from Google, which business would you rather own?
I'm not sure what you mean by the "Chromebook business from Google" since AFAIK the only Chromebook they make is the Pixel and in terms of Chromebooks that one isn't a big part of the market. Google isn't trying to make a business of selling Chromebooks or ChromeOS licenses, it's about the associated services and addressing user needs in a different way than traditional laptops.