I had a company spokeperson at my university lecturing about the benefits of Bluetooth tracking. They stated it was used for improving traffic, but at what cost?
Many countries also have electronic tolling booths that require RFID devices in cars (it's called eToll/GoVia in Australia). So it's not only license plate readers that people have to watch out for.
It's not that simple. Many users don't know what UEFI or Restricted Boot are. If they see a Certified for Windows 8 logo on a computer when they're buying it, they don't know that means extra restrictions for them.
Not everybody cares about computers, which is why Restricted Boot is so bad.
Richard's story, The Right To Read, has already sort of predicted this move.
But not only were [free operating systems] illegal, like debuggers—you could not install one if you had one, without knowing your computer's root password. And neither the FBI nor Microsoft Support would tell you that.
Despite what people say about Restricted Boot, it opens up the world of computers to a whole new set of attacks... by megacorporations like Microsoft.
Some of those things mentioned in TFA aren't software, so I'm not sure the term "open source" even applies. H.264 is not software, but there is Free software that supports it. The issue regarding H.264 is freedom, because it is encumbered by software patents.
... However, if I am visiting somewhere and the machines available nearby happen to contain non-free software, through no doing of mine, I don't refuse to touch them. ...
Likewise, I don't need to worry about what software is in a kiosk, pay phone, or ATM that I am using. I hope their owners migrate them to free software, for their sake, but there's no need for me to refuse to touch them until then.
On a side note, will this person be using Free BIOS and Free firmware? RMS uses a Lemote computer (MIPS) in order to achieve this. Also, his website linked to Vimeo, which requires non-free JavaScript in order to run.
(replace "Free" with "open source" if you prefer that term)
How can you expect to have control of your computing, if your company uses proprietary operating systems and doesn't let you control it? SSL/TLS snooping is the least of your problems; if they own the computer and they're in control, they can spy on you anyway.
As a rule I avoid computers I don't own whenever possible. I only use such computers for trivial tasks, or perhaps work if I can't use my own. If I don't own the computer or if it has proprietary software on it, I immediately assume I'm being spied on.
I thought GNOME 3 required hardware acceleration as well? Except for fallback mode, if you can even call that a desktop. It's like GNOME 2, except no functionality whatsoever.
If you girlfriend wants to keep using Unity 2D she could just keep using Ubuntu 12.04LTS until 2017. It's also reasonably easy to install other desktop environments such as XFCE, which is very similar to GNOME 2 (perhaps what she's used to?).
I hope Dell puts in a decent wireless card, that works in all GNU/Linux distributions. My current Dell laptop has an Intel WiFi card and it sucks. I have to use non-free firmware and even on Windows it behaves weird.
Switching directly to GNU/Linux seems to cause too many compatibility problems. I spent a year dealing with mostly free software on my Windows computer. Switching to GNU/Linux was a breeze.
Half the time I think people hate GNU/Linux so much because it's so different to what they're used to.
I still have Windows in a Virtual Machine in case I need to get Windows compatible, although I don't use it that often. (I also have my old Win partition dual-booted, but I don't use it)
As time went on, FSF decided they didn't like Freedom Zero anymore. Users like Apple were using the software the "wrong way" by not contributing to FSF community ecosystem, danceline, and parade floats. So they rewrote the license to restrict Freedom Zero rights... now you can't run software unless I can run it too.
That is incorrect. You do not have to accept the terms of the GPL to run the program alone. Let me cite the GPLv3 itself:
You are not required to accept this License in order to receive or run a copy of the Program.
More resources means people will think they can make more people. Which, of course, will be worse in the long run since underground water never lasts forever, and it will be a larger population to starve.
Once that's complete (if it's not already), they'll still be quite a bit behind where LO started, even if they don't end up removing any functionality, because Go-oo wasn't donated to Apache, and is still under the GPL. So, they'll have something that is much larger, much slower, much harder to maintain, and they'll be way behind on features. At that point, the question becomes can they possibly catch up?
Well IBM is apparently ending the Symphony fork, which may help in terms of features. Besides, the Apache license is better than the LO tri-license. I always thought having three copyleft licenses was kind of defeating the purpose of copyleft, since someone could easily fork the code under only one of the licenses which would be useless to the original project.
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I had a company spokeperson at my university lecturing about the benefits of Bluetooth tracking. They stated it was used for improving traffic, but at what cost?
Many countries also have electronic tolling booths that require RFID devices in cars (it's called eToll/GoVia in Australia). So it's not only license plate readers that people have to watch out for.
Most computer users don't know what a BIOS even is, let alone how to get into it.
It's not that simple. Many users don't know what UEFI or Restricted Boot are. If they see a Certified for Windows 8 logo on a computer when they're buying it, they don't know that means extra restrictions for them.
Not everybody cares about computers, which is why Restricted Boot is so bad.
Richard's story, The Right To Read, has already sort of predicted this move.
Despite what people say about Restricted Boot, it opens up the world of computers to a whole new set of attacks... by megacorporations like Microsoft.
Will Firefox OS have driver and firmware blobs like almost every other smartphone? If so, I won't be buying.
Some of those things mentioned in TFA aren't software, so I'm not sure the term "open source" even applies. H.264 is not software, but there is Free software that supports it. The issue regarding H.264 is freedom, because it is encumbered by software patents.
Perhaps relevant:
http://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html
On a side note, will this person be using Free BIOS and Free firmware? RMS uses a Lemote computer (MIPS) in order to achieve this. Also, his website linked to Vimeo, which requires non-free JavaScript in order to run.
(replace "Free" with "open source" if you prefer that term)
How can you expect to have control of your computing, if your company uses proprietary operating systems and doesn't let you control it? SSL/TLS snooping is the least of your problems; if they own the computer and they're in control, they can spy on you anyway.
As a rule I avoid computers I don't own whenever possible. I only use such computers for trivial tasks, or perhaps work if I can't use my own. If I don't own the computer or if it has proprietary software on it, I immediately assume I'm being spied on.
Yes, because we all know Microsoft invented the smartphone... wait, what?
Because we can all see how important Microsoft's smartphone inventions have been to the public, by the success of their phones. </sarcasm>
I thought GNOME 3 required hardware acceleration as well? Except for fallback mode, if you can even call that a desktop. It's like GNOME 2, except no functionality whatsoever.
If you girlfriend wants to keep using Unity 2D she could just keep using Ubuntu 12.04LTS until 2017. It's also reasonably easy to install other desktop environments such as XFCE, which is very similar to GNOME 2 (perhaps what she's used to?).
I hope Dell puts in a decent wireless card, that works in all GNU/Linux distributions. My current Dell laptop has an Intel WiFi card and it sucks. I have to use non-free firmware and even on Windows it behaves weird.
One of these would be great: Realtek, Ralink, Amtel, ADMTek, Atheros.
Switching directly to GNU/Linux seems to cause too many compatibility problems. I spent a year dealing with mostly free software on my Windows computer. Switching to GNU/Linux was a breeze.
Half the time I think people hate GNU/Linux so much because it's so different to what they're used to.
I still have Windows in a Virtual Machine in case I need to get Windows compatible, although I don't use it that often. (I also have my old Win partition dual-booted, but I don't use it)
Last time I checked Android contains a lot of proprietary software, including drivers. That's the main reason why the FSF does not approve of it.
App stores often have ridiculous terms. The fact that some devices won't even let its users install software is just dumb.
Sorry, am I missing something? I didn't know Apple used the GPLv2?
That is incorrect. You do not have to accept the terms of the GPL to run the program alone. Let me cite the GPLv3 itself:
Of course you assume that the water will actually be given to Africa. More likely it will be bottled up and sold to the rest of the world.
A win for corporatism and jobs for the world, and an overall loss for Africa.
More resources means people will think they can make more people. Which, of course, will be worse in the long run since underground water never lasts forever, and it will be a larger population to starve.
What Africa needs is education, not more water to be exported to other countries.
Yes, but only on the backend. No tracking cookies are served to the user and it's on a separate domain, so what it's powered by isn't relevant.
Well IBM is apparently ending the Symphony fork, which may help in terms of features. Besides, the Apache license is better than the LO tri-license. I always thought having three copyleft licenses was kind of defeating the purpose of copyleft, since someone could easily fork the code under only one of the licenses which would be useless to the original project.
I wonder how much of the money is actually going to the scientists that invented it? My guess is probably not much.
If they used HTTP mobility+speed it would be HTTP MS. But I suppose S&M makes things a whole lot more exciting. Dirty bastards. ;)
Last time I checked, Facebook uses these things called cookies. You should look it up.
No, but since Facebook is apparently the "preferred" platform by Congress, it would be a great deal of the communications.
It was the only option I saw when I visited the page.