If you don't like DRM, don't consume it. But stop trying to take away my freedom to do so, thanks.
Look, I don't care much about ideological debates, but could we stop with the nonsensical wording? How exactly does one "consume" DRM? You can perhaps take advantage of, support, view content which makes use of DRM. That's all fine. But please don't "consume" DRM. You can't, not anymore than you can "consume" highways or the history of Somalia.
On a minor note, I should also point out that being against Mozilla implementing DRM support on Firefox does not "take away your freedom" to view content which makes use of DRM. Unless you're forced by someone or something to use solely Firefox for viewing all your movies or something like that, in which case you should probably reconsider the focus of your digital freedom fighting.
It's an acceptable tradeoff for me. Though I have loathed it since its inception, I have warmed up to Steam over the years, mostly because the huge discounts offered through sales have resulted in a vast library of games that the Steam client organizes pretty neatly for me. It also does away with any sort of installation hassle. I do not miss having to hunt one or more patches on a publisher's site to apply to my 1.0 version. I also don't miss physical media being subject to damage, having to search for a CD or no-CD patches or paying more than U$5 for a game.
It's not that I actively like Steam DRM, it's that, in light of the benefits it provides and in how is doesn't affect my usage pattern, I don't mind it. It's only when compared to activation limits, mandatory connection for single player and other aberrations that is shines in a benign light.
Yeah, just remeber Mass Effect was just as bad with its cookie-cutting, but since combat was fun and characters were interesting (compare and contrast: Garrus and Wrex versus Anders and... Fenris), it ended up being a good game. DA2 was so easy and repetitive it was painful. It's not what ruined it for me, though. At least not solely. Terrible dialogue, limited control over the poor plot and needless and jarring redesign (the Qunari and Flemeth, for instance) all contributed to a slightly below mediocre experience.
Some people like to keep their interests neatly divided.
Personally, when I open my music player, I want to see only songs, not videos or what have you. And I want to see them divided by folders, not by artist, by album, genre or whatever. Folders are way easier to organize - at least for those of us that kept a fairly organized selection from the start. So my (admittedly retro) software bundle of choice is Dolphin > Totem. Extremely simple and with a fairly clean interface, just the way I want it. I think I'm in a small niche, though.
I have not heard of Lucas Nussbaum or Neil McGovern before, but if retaining Lucas Nussbaum at the helm means Debian will continue to release what is IMO the best Linux server distribution out there, then there are no complaints from me.
I wholeheartedly agree. Also, McGovern puts the -Mc in Govern, so he's probably the man for the job.
Arguably, we have not properly adapted to cars. Traffic accidents are consistently among the top 3 causes of death in a bunch of countries. So, reponding to the OP, we are fucking dumbasses and that's that. Of course, self driving cars seem to be a much better alternative to a phone that enters silent mode when being driven around. Solve "driving" and you atuomatically solve "phone use while driving".
Double mismanagement: one is screwing up the update cycle deadline and the other is moving to Win 7. Win 8 is crap, but it's newer - by going with Win 7 they are effectively eschewing a few years of support. Of course Win 8 would be only marginally smarter. The sensible thing, of course, would be to run Linux, so in the event of another amazing display of incompetence like that (which is probably already in the pipeline), they could support an older version in-house for a tiny, tiny fraction of that cost.
Even CentOS is already using 1.0.1, and we're talking about a distribution that is still using kernel 2.6 and Gnome 2 (not even 2.32, but 2.28 still). So yeah, OpenSSL 0.9.8 and 1.0.0 are extremely ancient.
Racism is not merely having pride in your race, even if you're white.
Yeah, that's not racist, just stupid. Why should you have pride in something that's not an accomplishment (except for the late Michael, I guess)? And, if you don't believe your skin tone to be superior in any way, how would pride even enter the equation? I take my initial comment back: having pride on your race, whatever it is, is both racist and stupid.
I concur. For me, religion died the moment someone told me there were several of them. I briefly asked around about them (there was no internet then) and they all seemed contradictory and presented equal proof to their claims (none at all), so I chose none. In my case, though, it was the internet that brought back my faith, when I found a good book in which all answers are contained. It is called tvtropes and it is my god.
I hear you. LG's G2 is pretty much the same device as the nexus 5 but has a ~25% larger battery to accomodate the humongous display. It seems that pretty much the only companies not shooting for the highest specs possible today are Apple and Motorola, and they are both making pretty solid devices nevertheless. I also own a Nexus 4, and I'll hold out on upgrading until I see a Moto X2 or something like that. In fact, I was thinking about "upgrading" to a less powerful phone, like the Moto G, because shit, my Nexus 4 is underclocked to 1026MHz, undervolted and it still never lags, but drains my battery like mad. I love it, but only until the low battery alert pops up. Can't imagine making the switch to a device with a 1080p screen and 2.5 GHz quad-core processor.
P.S. - It's scary how I am not nearly as worried about government spying, I simply accept it as part of life. But Google really scares the shit out of me.
I don't know about scary, but it's definitely weird. While both corporations and governments are, morally, ever-changing amorphous blobs, governments have access to the police, among other entities entitled to use physical force. Especially in the current tense climate of terrorism, shootings and kiddie porn scares, I'd fear the government getting wrongly suspicious of me and letting loose their brutal human-stomping machine much more than just being targeted by a corporation, even though I know some corps can also destroy your life by filing lawsuits until you're broke, if they so desire. It's a complicated scenario, especially since things aren't so black and white and the government tends to bow to lots of corporations and do their dirty work for them, but still the government worries me way more than some corp, be it Google, Microsoft, Monsanto, BP, RIAA...
Well, a Harley also doesn't offer enough protection to make it reasonably safe, and I think they sell pretty well in the US. Bikes sell about 500.000 units a year in there, that's a pretty ok number, roughly one in every 600 people seem to buy one each year (is my math correct? It seems too many people). There are lots of drivers, like me, ready to sacrifice safety for efficiency. I'm not saying it's a smart choice, but I think it's a choice made enough times as to create a hefty market.
Apparently this will be done on an approved device's universal IMEI range. Vetting individual IMEIs is neither practical nor legal, as you can't stop someone from using a government approved, legally imported phone from using it on all networks.
And how is XP, by the way? I'm running 98, but it's getting a little long in the tooth. I'm thinking about upgrading to XP this April 8, when I'll consider it to be fairly well tested.
Brazilian here. AFAIK, the only IMEIs blocked are going to be those of phones that didn't go through Anatel's (Brazil's FCC counterpart) approval process. Meaning mostly chinese knockoffs. It's highly unlikely that your S3 won't work here, since S3s are sold locally (in both US and international versions, BTW).
The easiest way to solve traffic problems is to reduce traffic. The US (and plenty of other large countries) should focus on giving people opportunity to live close to where they work, to where their kids go to school. Building more roads, making them more efficient and/or offering public transportation only postpone the problem when you consider population growth, if those measures are all you take.
It definitely looks nice, but I think they went too far. Protection from the elements and increased efficiency due to reduced air drag are wonderful things we should have equipped street bikes with long time ago. However, it's too heavy (360kg) and too expensive ($24,000), meaning it's more akin to a thin smart car than to a bubble bike. I'd bet a gas-powered 100kg moped can beat the C-1's city commute energy efficiency at a $1,500 price point, especially if we bring manufacturing into the equation. When we do that, the moped can end up being better for the environment, too.
If I want to keep something secret from the US, I'll just use ICQ, since it's owned by russians. Of course, the downside of using ICQ in 2014 is that my messages will stay too confidential for the purposes of communicating.
To be fair, a PC from 2009, like an Athlon II, can be indistinguishable from a 2014 Core i3 when you're running, say, Windows, Office and Firefox. By comparison, an ARM processor from 2009, like the one in an iPhone 3GS or Motorola Milestone, is frustratingly slow even to browse simple websites. Pit against a Nexus 5 to have an idea of how much faster the pace of phone processing power is happening at than tradicional x86 right now.
Also, I'm pretty satisfied with my Nexus 4, except for heat and battery life. If I could exchange its processor for a quad-core cortex A7 like the one inside a Moto G (the damn thing lasts over 5 days with light use), I'd be happy to do so.
Sometimes I think some linux users are a bunch of luddites with strong right wing conservative leanings
and liberals wonder why others perceive them as arrogant, totalitarian, histrionic, narcissists
How the fuck can people take a discussion about a UI element to fucking politics? It's not even a good political discussion, it the same stereotyped shit we read about everyday, where there are only two fucking views on each subject and they are both ludicrously inflexible. I thought for certain no one would fall for the obvious, weak flamebait of the first post, but lo and behold, the discussion has degenerated into things like
Of course, that's why you elect politicians who'd love to stamp out free speech, right? To make it my problem, and make up for the fact your arguments are without merit?
Come on, tell me the truth: you guys disliked the new design and are poisoning the content, too, so as to encourage our transition to a better place, right? Because no one can be that unproductively disruptive unless on purpose.
Of course it does. Happened to me. Since my Nexus 4 updated to KitKat, I sometimes lose 3g signal. So there I was on the highway, trying to send a text, when, again, whatsapp refuses to send my message. I get frustrated, connect the phone to my laptop, fire up ADB and, lo and behold, the car crashes. It's ridiculous. I'm going to fucking sue Google.
Thanks for making the same point as the article with your "obviously Y because X". I don't think Snowden brought it. We've seen multiple times right here with Android vs iOS, Windows vs Linux, GPL vs Apache/BSD etc. People are forming opinions then sticking to them like sports teams. Nuance is out, and so seem to be reassessment and compromise. This is more evident in the US and I think it has to do with the polarized bipartisan system, but one can see it in other countries, too. I'd attribute it to the high bpm rhythm of communication and life. Too much news, too fast, the TV presenting them with headstrong showmen instead of analytical journalists because it makes for better ratings. It creates parrots who stick to a party's talking points, not critical thinkers. And, if you're being honest and really thinking about it, you can see yourself adopting such behaviour from time to time, automatically. It's somewhat concerning and probably not unrelated to the exponential growth of divorced couples. We don't know how to interact, we have firm, fixed beliefs and don't know how to deal with disagreement anymore, at least not in a productive way. All we do is drift towards those who think like we do and divide ourselves in thought factions.
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If you don't like DRM, don't consume it. But stop trying to take away my freedom to do so, thanks.
Look, I don't care much about ideological debates, but could we stop with the nonsensical wording? How exactly does one "consume" DRM? You can perhaps take advantage of, support, view content which makes use of DRM. That's all fine. But please don't "consume" DRM. You can't, not anymore than you can "consume" highways or the history of Somalia.
On a minor note, I should also point out that being against Mozilla implementing DRM support on Firefox does not "take away your freedom" to view content which makes use of DRM. Unless you're forced by someone or something to use solely Firefox for viewing all your movies or something like that, in which case you should probably reconsider the focus of your digital freedom fighting.
It's an acceptable tradeoff for me. Though I have loathed it since its inception, I have warmed up to Steam over the years, mostly because the huge discounts offered through sales have resulted in a vast library of games that the Steam client organizes pretty neatly for me. It also does away with any sort of installation hassle. I do not miss having to hunt one or more patches on a publisher's site to apply to my 1.0 version. I also don't miss physical media being subject to damage, having to search for a CD or no-CD patches or paying more than U$5 for a game.
It's not that I actively like Steam DRM, it's that, in light of the benefits it provides and in how is doesn't affect my usage pattern, I don't mind it. It's only when compared to activation limits, mandatory connection for single player and other aberrations that is shines in a benign light.
Yeah, just remeber Mass Effect was just as bad with its cookie-cutting, but since combat was fun and characters were interesting (compare and contrast: Garrus and Wrex versus Anders and... Fenris), it ended up being a good game. DA2 was so easy and repetitive it was painful. It's not what ruined it for me, though. At least not solely. Terrible dialogue, limited control over the poor plot and needless and jarring redesign (the Qunari and Flemeth, for instance) all contributed to a slightly below mediocre experience.
Some people like to keep their interests neatly divided.
Personally, when I open my music player, I want to see only songs, not videos or what have you. And I want to see them divided by folders, not by artist, by album, genre or whatever. Folders are way easier to organize - at least for those of us that kept a fairly organized selection from the start. So my (admittedly retro) software bundle of choice is Dolphin > Totem. Extremely simple and with a fairly clean interface, just the way I want it. I think I'm in a small niche, though.
I have not heard of Lucas Nussbaum or Neil McGovern before, but if retaining Lucas Nussbaum at the helm means Debian will continue to release what is IMO the best Linux server distribution out there, then there are no complaints from me.
I wholeheartedly agree. Also, McGovern puts the -Mc in Govern, so he's probably the man for the job.
Arguably, we have not properly adapted to cars. Traffic accidents are consistently among the top 3 causes of death in a bunch of countries. So, reponding to the OP, we are fucking dumbasses and that's that. Of course, self driving cars seem to be a much better alternative to a phone that enters silent mode when being driven around. Solve "driving" and you atuomatically solve "phone use while driving".
Double mismanagement: one is screwing up the update cycle deadline and the other is moving to Win 7. Win 8 is crap, but it's newer - by going with Win 7 they are effectively eschewing a few years of support. Of course Win 8 would be only marginally smarter. The sensible thing, of course, would be to run Linux, so in the event of another amazing display of incompetence like that (which is probably already in the pipeline), they could support an older version in-house for a tiny, tiny fraction of that cost.
Even CentOS is already using 1.0.1, and we're talking about a distribution that is still using kernel 2.6 and Gnome 2 (not even 2.32, but 2.28 still). So yeah, OpenSSL 0.9.8 and 1.0.0 are extremely ancient.
Racism is not merely having pride in your race, even if you're white.
Yeah, that's not racist, just stupid. Why should you have pride in something that's not an accomplishment (except for the late Michael, I guess)? And, if you don't believe your skin tone to be superior in any way, how would pride even enter the equation? I take my initial comment back: having pride on your race, whatever it is, is both racist and stupid.
I concur. For me, religion died the moment someone told me there were several of them. I briefly asked around about them (there was no internet then) and they all seemed contradictory and presented equal proof to their claims (none at all), so I chose none. In my case, though, it was the internet that brought back my faith, when I found a good book in which all answers are contained. It is called tvtropes and it is my god.
For me it would definitely be "replace your SoC without needing to replace a still perfectly good, expensive screen and/or battery"
I hear you. LG's G2 is pretty much the same device as the nexus 5 but has a ~25% larger battery to accomodate the humongous display. It seems that pretty much the only companies not shooting for the highest specs possible today are Apple and Motorola, and they are both making pretty solid devices nevertheless. I also own a Nexus 4, and I'll hold out on upgrading until I see a Moto X2 or something like that. In fact, I was thinking about "upgrading" to a less powerful phone, like the Moto G, because shit, my Nexus 4 is underclocked to 1026MHz, undervolted and it still never lags, but drains my battery like mad. I love it, but only until the low battery alert pops up. Can't imagine making the switch to a device with a 1080p screen and 2.5 GHz quad-core processor.
P.S. - It's scary how I am not nearly as worried about government spying, I simply accept it as part of life. But Google really scares the shit out of me.
I don't know about scary, but it's definitely weird. While both corporations and governments are, morally, ever-changing amorphous blobs, governments have access to the police, among other entities entitled to use physical force. Especially in the current tense climate of terrorism, shootings and kiddie porn scares, I'd fear the government getting wrongly suspicious of me and letting loose their brutal human-stomping machine much more than just being targeted by a corporation, even though I know some corps can also destroy your life by filing lawsuits until you're broke, if they so desire. It's a complicated scenario, especially since things aren't so black and white and the government tends to bow to lots of corporations and do their dirty work for them, but still the government worries me way more than some corp, be it Google, Microsoft, Monsanto, BP, RIAA...
Well, a Harley also doesn't offer enough protection to make it reasonably safe, and I think they sell pretty well in the US. Bikes sell about 500.000 units a year in there, that's a pretty ok number, roughly one in every 600 people seem to buy one each year (is my math correct? It seems too many people). There are lots of drivers, like me, ready to sacrifice safety for efficiency. I'm not saying it's a smart choice, but I think it's a choice made enough times as to create a hefty market.
Apparently this will be done on an approved device's universal IMEI range. Vetting individual IMEIs is neither practical nor legal, as you can't stop someone from using a government approved, legally imported phone from using it on all networks.
And how is XP, by the way? I'm running 98, but it's getting a little long in the tooth. I'm thinking about upgrading to XP this April 8, when I'll consider it to be fairly well tested.
Brazilian here. AFAIK, the only IMEIs blocked are going to be those of phones that didn't go through Anatel's (Brazil's FCC counterpart) approval process. Meaning mostly chinese knockoffs. It's highly unlikely that your S3 won't work here, since S3s are sold locally (in both US and international versions, BTW).
The easiest way to solve traffic problems is to reduce traffic. The US (and plenty of other large countries) should focus on giving people opportunity to live close to where they work, to where their kids go to school. Building more roads, making them more efficient and/or offering public transportation only postpone the problem when you consider population growth, if those measures are all you take.
It definitely looks nice, but I think they went too far. Protection from the elements and increased efficiency due to reduced air drag are wonderful things we should have equipped street bikes with long time ago. However, it's too heavy (360kg) and too expensive ($24,000), meaning it's more akin to a thin smart car than to a bubble bike. I'd bet a gas-powered 100kg moped can beat the C-1's city commute energy efficiency at a $1,500 price point, especially if we bring manufacturing into the equation. When we do that, the moped can end up being better for the environment, too.
If I want to keep something secret from the US, I'll just use ICQ, since it's owned by russians. Of course, the downside of using ICQ in 2014 is that my messages will stay too confidential for the purposes of communicating.
To be fair, a PC from 2009, like an Athlon II, can be indistinguishable from a 2014 Core i3 when you're running, say, Windows, Office and Firefox. By comparison, an ARM processor from 2009, like the one in an iPhone 3GS or Motorola Milestone, is frustratingly slow even to browse simple websites. Pit against a Nexus 5 to have an idea of how much faster the pace of phone processing power is happening at than tradicional x86 right now.
Also, I'm pretty satisfied with my Nexus 4, except for heat and battery life. If I could exchange its processor for a quad-core cortex A7 like the one inside a Moto G (the damn thing lasts over 5 days with light use), I'd be happy to do so.
Corporations exist because of government-made laws; in an anarchy, there are no corporations.
False. The only difference is they are then called gangs.
Sometimes I think some linux users are a bunch of luddites with strong right wing conservative leanings
and liberals wonder why others perceive them as arrogant, totalitarian, histrionic, narcissists
How the fuck can people take a discussion about a UI element to fucking politics? It's not even a good political discussion, it the same stereotyped shit we read about everyday, where there are only two fucking views on each subject and they are both ludicrously inflexible. I thought for certain no one would fall for the obvious, weak flamebait of the first post, but lo and behold, the discussion has degenerated into things like
Of course, that's why you elect politicians who'd love to stamp out free speech, right? To make it my problem, and make up for the fact your arguments are without merit?
Come on, tell me the truth: you guys disliked the new design and are poisoning the content, too, so as to encourage our transition to a better place, right? Because no one can be that unproductively disruptive unless on purpose.
Of course it does. Happened to me. Since my Nexus 4 updated to KitKat, I sometimes lose 3g signal. So there I was on the highway, trying to send a text, when, again, whatsapp refuses to send my message. I get frustrated, connect the phone to my laptop, fire up ADB and, lo and behold, the car crashes. It's ridiculous. I'm going to fucking sue Google.
Thanks for making the same point as the article with your "obviously Y because X". I don't think Snowden brought it. We've seen multiple times right here with Android vs iOS, Windows vs Linux, GPL vs Apache/BSD etc. People are forming opinions then sticking to them like sports teams. Nuance is out, and so seem to be reassessment and compromise. This is more evident in the US and I think it has to do with the polarized bipartisan system, but one can see it in other countries, too. I'd attribute it to the high bpm rhythm of communication and life. Too much news, too fast, the TV presenting them with headstrong showmen instead of analytical journalists because it makes for better ratings. It creates parrots who stick to a party's talking points, not critical thinkers. And, if you're being honest and really thinking about it, you can see yourself adopting such behaviour from time to time, automatically. It's somewhat concerning and probably not unrelated to the exponential growth of divorced couples. We don't know how to interact, we have firm, fixed beliefs and don't know how to deal with disagreement anymore, at least not in a productive way. All we do is drift towards those who think like we do and divide ourselves in thought factions.