I don't see how it is possible to make any conclusion with respect to whether or not we have a say in matters, UNTIL we actually say something.
Look at American history. I will just leave it at that. In general, we (or at least, the vast majority) stand bent over all the time while the government just rams its dick in our ass and we just take it like fucking sheep.
The whole Prism program Snowden leaked is proof enough that We The People really don't have shit to say in any government matters. It's those assholes in power who are running the show and twisting everything to their own desire. I also seriously doubt many people would give a damn enough to "call our senators, congressmen, presidents, popes, PTA members, florists, undertakers and anyone else that will list, and demand he be given a full pardon." You seriously overstate the intelligence of the average American. He's really better off just staying away from this country, because there is no way here in the "land of the free" (I mean... prison/surveillance state...) he will get his rights to due process and a speedy and fair trial. That's why he left in the first place and it was a good call.
Ubuntu, I can believe. Debian, I can also believe--if using testing or unstable, and/or generally not knowing what you're doing. So I would guess on the Debian side, it would have to be a classic case of PEBKAC, or willfully doing something that could potentially be dangerous. I figure RHEL and its derivatives would be equally rock-solid, though I'm sure if you really want to destroy one of those systems you could. For what it's worth, I tend to prefer the cleanliness of a fresh install though, while keeping my/home partition intact.
I had Windows XP become unstable (nice new buggy Ethernet drivers...) and even completely die on me after a service pack update. But thanks to the way Linux works, with its elegant use of separate system and home partitions (if desired), the ability to just scrap / and set the mount point for/home right during install means I never experience what you're talking about. I just nuke the system and use my existing user data, and a fresh install is up and running with all my customizations in no time. A few system-wide settings may need to be re-adjusted or backup configuration files copied back over, but in general I don't have to worry about that. Some programs might need to be installed also, but again, because Linux distributions tend to come with a good selection of packages that's never too much of a problem either.
Don't even get me started on my abysmal experience with Windows, from the mid 1990s to 2006 when I jumped ship just in time for Vista. Installing, setting up and maintaining it is no fun at all. It's a fucking chore, and it tends to be about as useful as a V-Tech kid's electric learning toy until you've populated it with enough third-party programs.
A prime (though now older) example: Extended Support Release. A.K.A., let's finally bring back what people and businesses wanted all along: an end to this extension breaking/updating chaos, constant unnecessary UI changes with minimal new features of actual value, with a forced rapid-update cycle. But only after endless Microsoft-style "we're right, everyone else is wrong" shitslinging.
This news, of a distinct "feature" release every couple versions/months, just screams of the next step in bringing some sanity back to the Firefox release cycle--which is to say, making it a bit *more* like it used to be. Which on its own is not bad--it's a good thing--but it's ridiculous that it's taken this long for them to bring back the distinction between "major" and "minor" versions.
Too bad it seems like a year or two goes on between each major positive change/improvements in the Firefox development cycle. Which is especially disturbing, because the powers that be sitting in their offices at the Mozilla Corporation practically destroyed the development cycle overnight.
True... it is definitely a good first step. But unfortunately, if someone keeps using Internet-based services from Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo, Google, Apple, etc., then switching the OS wouldn't help one bit. As a Linux user, this whole Prism thing has really changed the way I think about trusting the companies I give information to in the form of just using their services. Just running Linux saves you from a lot of things... but the NSA, honestly, is not really one of them. Not the way they're leeching raw data from the some of the major cores of the Internet itself.
After Google announced the killing of XMPP/Federation in Google Talk and soon enough the NSA programs were unveiled, I made the decision to create an XMPP account an a Jabber server in another country. I'm currently looking into doing my own encryption with GPG in the future, but I seriously doubt I will have any luck with that. Unfortunately, in both cases it would be difficult if not impossible to get people to join (switch to XMPP, start using encryption). I mean... who would want to add another set of steps just to send e-mail? In my experience... most people just don't care, and this is especially true about things they don't understand (like... this surveillance).
Unfortunately, people are about as likely to switch to something like Linux as they are to give up all U.S.-based major service providers. Which is to say, it's not gonna happen.
I thought the same thing when I first read the title, but from what I tell, there is a subtle difference. Instead of a "major" Firefox release full of nothingness basically every fucking month like it is now, they intend every third release to be less boring and actually bring new/major features. So... they're bringing back the "major versions" they threw out on their Google copying spree, only they won't be designated by major version numbers... they'll be designated by every third major version number.
If that means we no longer hear about every god damn Firefox release on Slashdot and other technology news sites, then I'll be happy. Just skipping versions 24, 25, 27, 28, 30, 31, etc. and covering only versions 23, 26, 29, 32, etc. would be a hell of an improvement. Especially assuming these versions really *are* worth writing about (ie. more than just a bug-fix release with a major number bump).
Mozilla keeps backing up and making their release plans more like the old, while still refusing to go back to the original release style that worked. Ironically, they defended their stance like it was the end of the world for the longest time... then they, slowly, seem to be getting the point that their genius idea is not so fucking brilliant after all. This just reeks of an organization with advertising and $$$ at the top of the management all right. Ever since that fucking Mozilla Corporation was founded. Well... at least they seem to be getting the clue (slowly).
The real problem, at least with the Prism spying, is not on your computer. Well, it might be if you run Windows (the idea of secret backdoors seems more real than ever now), but that's beside the point. It's the fact that the government has chosen to parasitize its chosen host companies directly, right on the Internet, installing splitters right at the source: between the host company and its ISP, with top-secret government-controlled datacenters in between for long-term storage of all of their traffic... everything that goes in, everything that goes out. The only way this can be avoided is by choosing services whose providers are *not* in the United States and therefore not subject to this FISA court crap. I have been running Linux since 2006, but trust me: Linux is no protection against this. The government has penetrated the Internet itself, right where it counts: at the pipes of all the major U.S.-based world-wide communications providers' connections.
Well, once things noticeably start getting screwy, then I'll jump ship. But last time I checked, there wasn't even a Adblock Plus fork that was maintained to the level of the original and kept up-to-date. I figure with the extension being as popular as it is, once the time comes that it really is best to leave ABP behind, the developers of the forks will finally start to take the maintenance of their extensions seriously and ABP will finally have a worthy alternative. I doubt that that's changed in the last couple months since looking into alternatives.
Is it useful a month later? In the vast majority of cases, I'd say "fuck no." Only if you've been kidnapped or something, in which case by a month or so authorities will already have been notified much in advance, and the records would still be there for the FBI to notify the cell phone service provider to save data for that one account. I'd say there is NO GOOD REASON for them to be storing tracking data for more than a month and a half. None at all.
I have actually started to try learning German (have been taking a break from it though), but there's no way I could read a whole article written in it. But if based on your summary you are talking about the automatically whitelisted sites by default... just uncheck the box! All it adds is one step upon first installation that can be performed in under ten seconds to disable the advertising whitelist, and it works just as it did before. No changes that I am aware of, and I have been using it for years.
Good point, now if only all the browsers would remove this extra, completely useless code and maybe build in something that *really* works. Too bad the major ones would never have the balls to go the extra mile by introducing *real* anti-tracking (and anti-advertisement in general) features.
Yet, Mozilla seems hell-bent on supporting this destined-to-be-ignored flag, while they remove everything--even Javascript settings--from the GUI. Pure irony.
I do have the Do Not Track setting turned on, but only as a final "fuck off." My real lines of defense are disabled third-party cookies, NoScript, DoNotTrackMe and AdBlock Plus. Anyone who really trusts in that header is a nut.
Interesting. I've even done various web searches to find out what the difference between the two are, and the most I could find is that Wikipedia article. I wonder why they don't make it more clear on their own site exactly what the difference is.
I don't know, but when I want to search using queries that may bring in potentially "illegal" search results, I just use Ixquick. To be honest though, I don't know what the difference (other than name) is between the two. Both Ixquick and Startpage are run by the same people, they both look practically identical, and you probably couldn't go wrong with either one. I just happened to find out about Ixquick first and saw a few more mentions of it on different websites so I just use it. Ixquick does not log any user IP addresses. According to Wikipedia article on Ixquick, Startpage is just an "easier-to-remember" alias of the same exact search engine. Ironically, I find Ixquick's fewer letters to be faster and easier to type.
Based on the pictures of GNOME 3 on that page of that Fedora 19 review, it looks like GNOME 3's GUI is still fat. It looks pretty much exactly the same as it looked a long time ago... ugly and with tons of wasted screen space. I still see that "title bar and extra padding" you mentioned that's supposedly been fixed.
GNOME 3 is a disaster. Hell, KDE4 was too for that matter, but I'm pretty sure after this much time of it being officially released, it was well on its path to becoming a very decent environment and showing promising results. They both fucked up. Only it seems the GNOME project fucked up worse, and they're still struggling to get people to use their desktop. No surprise; it seems they're still dumbing it down, as I noticed in the latest Fedora GNOME 3 *hides* the Log Out option by default... until you install another window manager or desktop environment and reboot. And as usual, no way of "correcting" this behavior without messing with registry values. What the fuck?
The problem is these fucking idiots in charge who want to be 100% in control of everything, never taking any outside input or criticism, and telling everyone who doesn't like the direction they're going to fuck off. It's ironic that, since inception, they said the GNOME 2 desktop was going away and that the "fallback mode" was only intended to be used if 3D hardware/drivers are not available. They continuously said that they were not going to provide a "desktop" environment; either use GNOME 3 as we want to force it down your throat or get the hell out of here. Hell, when it was announced that GNOME 3 fallback mode was being deprecated, they stood by their words: they were not going to bring a traditional environment back. It wasn't until at least *weeks* later, and then they announce GNOME Classic mode. WTF?
Too little, too late. After Unity, MATE, Cinnamon, Consort and who knows what else spawned using GTK+ (typically using "traditional" GUI elements), the GNOME project tries to "win back" users. Just for the way they act alone (read: ASSHOLES) they don't even deserve any users. If they would get someone besides the hard-headed, artistic, creative, marketing type idiot running their project, then maybe it wouldn't be getting run into the ground.
Good luck finding a company that would actually bring such a Frankenstein OS that modifies Windows Phone in ways that Microsoft would never approve of to market... and who the hell would want to do that anyway?
Try installing Opera or Chrome in, say, a Debian or openSUSE desktop. Just download a package (setup/executable in Windows), double-click, enter root password, and a little GUI interface to the package manager will ask a few questions (roughly equivalent to "I Agree, Next, Next, Next..."), and then it will get down to business installing the package and needed dependencies. Nothing is stopping other major companies from supporting their potential users on Linux by providing a pre-compiled binary package.
Yeah... it's more complex. It's more like like Windows, requiring you to find the site for the program, get to the download page and start downloading the file, open it once it's complete, authenticate yourself, and run through a brief wizard (typically just warning about third-party packages and/or enabling additional repositories for dependencies). All manually. But, if that's the kind of thing people "like" with Windows, then they should have no problem using that same method to install programs on Linux, right? They even get the additional possibility of malware by installing software from untrusted sources, but that's again--ironically--just like Windows.
Well, I interpreted "Linux" to be a kernel, and therefore anything that runs the Linux kernel would be "Linux." The original post was going on about OS X's market share, and then just said: "Has Linux's?" Not exactly strong on the details.
There is (or was) a server-oriented version of Mac OS X, so there's clearly people running it as a server... so just to confuse things up a bit more, you could just as easily say that Macs could count as desktops, laptops and servers...
Either way, if just talking about GUIs, Android itself probably has enough market dominance by now to compete well with plain Mac OS X... hell, it's probably got iOS whipped, and I'd bet iOS is more popular than Mac at this point.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't see how it is possible to make any conclusion with respect to whether or not we have a say in matters, UNTIL we actually say something.
Look at American history. I will just leave it at that. In general, we (or at least, the vast majority) stand bent over all the time while the government just rams its dick in our ass and we just take it like fucking sheep.
The whole Prism program Snowden leaked is proof enough that We The People really don't have shit to say in any government matters. It's those assholes in power who are running the show and twisting everything to their own desire. I also seriously doubt many people would give a damn enough to "call our senators, congressmen, presidents, popes, PTA members, florists, undertakers and anyone else that will list, and demand he be given a full pardon." You seriously overstate the intelligence of the average American. He's really better off just staying away from this country, because there is no way here in the "land of the free" (I mean... prison/surveillance state...) he will get his rights to due process and a speedy and fair trial. That's why he left in the first place and it was a good call.
I've operated and admined thousands of Windows based PCs and I have never once seen a system update that broke anything.
Lucky you.
Ubuntu, I can believe. Debian, I can also believe--if using testing or unstable, and/or generally not knowing what you're doing. So I would guess on the Debian side, it would have to be a classic case of PEBKAC, or willfully doing something that could potentially be dangerous. I figure RHEL and its derivatives would be equally rock-solid, though I'm sure if you really want to destroy one of those systems you could. For what it's worth, I tend to prefer the cleanliness of a fresh install though, while keeping my /home partition intact.
I had Windows XP become unstable (nice new buggy Ethernet drivers...) and even completely die on me after a service pack update. But thanks to the way Linux works, with its elegant use of separate system and home partitions (if desired), the ability to just scrap / and set the mount point for /home right during install means I never experience what you're talking about. I just nuke the system and use my existing user data, and a fresh install is up and running with all my customizations in no time. A few system-wide settings may need to be re-adjusted or backup configuration files copied back over, but in general I don't have to worry about that. Some programs might need to be installed also, but again, because Linux distributions tend to come with a good selection of packages that's never too much of a problem either.
Don't even get me started on my abysmal experience with Windows, from the mid 1990s to 2006 when I jumped ship just in time for Vista. Installing, setting up and maintaining it is no fun at all. It's a fucking chore, and it tends to be about as useful as a V-Tech kid's electric learning toy until you've populated it with enough third-party programs.
In what ways have you seen this?
A prime (though now older) example: Extended Support Release. A.K.A., let's finally bring back what people and businesses wanted all along: an end to this extension breaking/updating chaos, constant unnecessary UI changes with minimal new features of actual value, with a forced rapid-update cycle. But only after endless Microsoft-style "we're right, everyone else is wrong" shitslinging.
This news, of a distinct "feature" release every couple versions/months, just screams of the next step in bringing some sanity back to the Firefox release cycle--which is to say, making it a bit *more* like it used to be. Which on its own is not bad--it's a good thing--but it's ridiculous that it's taken this long for them to bring back the distinction between "major" and "minor" versions.
Too bad it seems like a year or two goes on between each major positive change/improvements in the Firefox development cycle. Which is especially disturbing, because the powers that be sitting in their offices at the Mozilla Corporation practically destroyed the development cycle overnight.
True... it is definitely a good first step. But unfortunately, if someone keeps using Internet-based services from Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo, Google, Apple, etc., then switching the OS wouldn't help one bit. As a Linux user, this whole Prism thing has really changed the way I think about trusting the companies I give information to in the form of just using their services. Just running Linux saves you from a lot of things... but the NSA, honestly, is not really one of them. Not the way they're leeching raw data from the some of the major cores of the Internet itself.
After Google announced the killing of XMPP/Federation in Google Talk and soon enough the NSA programs were unveiled, I made the decision to create an XMPP account an a Jabber server in another country. I'm currently looking into doing my own encryption with GPG in the future, but I seriously doubt I will have any luck with that. Unfortunately, in both cases it would be difficult if not impossible to get people to join (switch to XMPP, start using encryption). I mean... who would want to add another set of steps just to send e-mail? In my experience... most people just don't care, and this is especially true about things they don't understand (like... this surveillance).
Unfortunately, people are about as likely to switch to something like Linux as they are to give up all U.S.-based major service providers. Which is to say, it's not gonna happen.
Which Chrome? The one that has a fox with a fiery tail for a logo? Oh, wait...
I thought the same thing when I first read the title, but from what I tell, there is a subtle difference. Instead of a "major" Firefox release full of nothingness basically every fucking month like it is now, they intend every third release to be less boring and actually bring new/major features. So... they're bringing back the "major versions" they threw out on their Google copying spree, only they won't be designated by major version numbers... they'll be designated by every third major version number.
If that means we no longer hear about every god damn Firefox release on Slashdot and other technology news sites, then I'll be happy. Just skipping versions 24, 25, 27, 28, 30, 31, etc. and covering only versions 23, 26, 29, 32, etc. would be a hell of an improvement. Especially assuming these versions really *are* worth writing about (ie. more than just a bug-fix release with a major number bump).
Mozilla keeps backing up and making their release plans more like the old, while still refusing to go back to the original release style that worked. Ironically, they defended their stance like it was the end of the world for the longest time... then they, slowly, seem to be getting the point that their genius idea is not so fucking brilliant after all. This just reeks of an organization with advertising and $$$ at the top of the management all right. Ever since that fucking Mozilla Corporation was founded. Well... at least they seem to be getting the clue (slowly).
The real problem, at least with the Prism spying, is not on your computer. Well, it might be if you run Windows (the idea of secret backdoors seems more real than ever now), but that's beside the point. It's the fact that the government has chosen to parasitize its chosen host companies directly, right on the Internet, installing splitters right at the source: between the host company and its ISP, with top-secret government-controlled datacenters in between for long-term storage of all of their traffic... everything that goes in, everything that goes out. The only way this can be avoided is by choosing services whose providers are *not* in the United States and therefore not subject to this FISA court crap. I have been running Linux since 2006, but trust me: Linux is no protection against this. The government has penetrated the Internet itself, right where it counts: at the pipes of all the major U.S.-based world-wide communications providers' connections.
You mean like practically every major technology/communications company?
Well, once things noticeably start getting screwy, then I'll jump ship. But last time I checked, there wasn't even a Adblock Plus fork that was maintained to the level of the original and kept up-to-date. I figure with the extension being as popular as it is, once the time comes that it really is best to leave ABP behind, the developers of the forks will finally start to take the maintenance of their extensions seriously and ABP will finally have a worthy alternative. I doubt that that's changed in the last couple months since looking into alternatives.
Is it useful a month later? In the vast majority of cases, I'd say "fuck no." Only if you've been kidnapped or something, in which case by a month or so authorities will already have been notified much in advance, and the records would still be there for the FBI to notify the cell phone service provider to save data for that one account. I'd say there is NO GOOD REASON for them to be storing tracking data for more than a month and a half. None at all.
I have actually started to try learning German (have been taking a break from it though), but there's no way I could read a whole article written in it. But if based on your summary you are talking about the automatically whitelisted sites by default... just uncheck the box! All it adds is one step upon first installation that can be performed in under ten seconds to disable the advertising whitelist, and it works just as it did before. No changes that I am aware of, and I have been using it for years.
Good point, now if only all the browsers would remove this extra, completely useless code and maybe build in something that *really* works. Too bad the major ones would never have the balls to go the extra mile by introducing *real* anti-tracking (and anti-advertisement in general) features.
Yet, Mozilla seems hell-bent on supporting this destined-to-be-ignored flag, while they remove everything--even Javascript settings--from the GUI. Pure irony.
I do have the Do Not Track setting turned on, but only as a final "fuck off." My real lines of defense are disabled third-party cookies, NoScript, DoNotTrackMe and AdBlock Plus. Anyone who really trusts in that header is a nut.
Interesting. I've even done various web searches to find out what the difference between the two are, and the most I could find is that Wikipedia article. I wonder why they don't make it more clear on their own site exactly what the difference is.
I don't know, but when I want to search using queries that may bring in potentially "illegal" search results, I just use Ixquick. To be honest though, I don't know what the difference (other than name) is between the two. Both Ixquick and Startpage are run by the same people, they both look practically identical, and you probably couldn't go wrong with either one. I just happened to find out about Ixquick first and saw a few more mentions of it on different websites so I just use it. Ixquick does not log any user IP addresses. According to Wikipedia article on Ixquick, Startpage is just an "easier-to-remember" alias of the same exact search engine. Ironically, I find Ixquick's fewer letters to be faster and easier to type.
It was intended to be funny, not serious. I'm sure there are laws against practically everything, somewhere in the world.
I don't think there are any laws against fucking up the ass, but you might want to check with your local government to make sure...
http://www.linuxbsdos.com/2013/07/08/fedora-19-review-schrodingers-cat/2/
Based on the pictures of GNOME 3 on that page of that Fedora 19 review, it looks like GNOME 3's GUI is still fat. It looks pretty much exactly the same as it looked a long time ago... ugly and with tons of wasted screen space. I still see that "title bar and extra padding" you mentioned that's supposedly been fixed.
GNOME 3 is a disaster. Hell, KDE4 was too for that matter, but I'm pretty sure after this much time of it being officially released, it was well on its path to becoming a very decent environment and showing promising results. They both fucked up. Only it seems the GNOME project fucked up worse, and they're still struggling to get people to use their desktop. No surprise; it seems they're still dumbing it down, as I noticed in the latest Fedora GNOME 3 *hides* the Log Out option by default... until you install another window manager or desktop environment and reboot. And as usual, no way of "correcting" this behavior without messing with registry values. What the fuck?
The problem is these fucking idiots in charge who want to be 100% in control of everything, never taking any outside input or criticism, and telling everyone who doesn't like the direction they're going to fuck off. It's ironic that, since inception, they said the GNOME 2 desktop was going away and that the "fallback mode" was only intended to be used if 3D hardware/drivers are not available. They continuously said that they were not going to provide a "desktop" environment; either use GNOME 3 as we want to force it down your throat or get the hell out of here. Hell, when it was announced that GNOME 3 fallback mode was being deprecated, they stood by their words: they were not going to bring a traditional environment back. It wasn't until at least *weeks* later, and then they announce GNOME Classic mode. WTF?
Too little, too late. After Unity, MATE, Cinnamon, Consort and who knows what else spawned using GTK+ (typically using "traditional" GUI elements), the GNOME project tries to "win back" users. Just for the way they act alone (read: ASSHOLES) they don't even deserve any users. If they would get someone besides the hard-headed, artistic, creative, marketing type idiot running their project, then maybe it wouldn't be getting run into the ground.
Good luck finding a company that would actually bring such a Frankenstein OS that modifies Windows Phone in ways that Microsoft would never approve of to market... and who the hell would want to do that anyway?
Try installing Opera or Chrome in, say, a Debian or openSUSE desktop. Just download a package (setup/executable in Windows), double-click, enter root password, and a little GUI interface to the package manager will ask a few questions (roughly equivalent to "I Agree, Next, Next, Next..."), and then it will get down to business installing the package and needed dependencies. Nothing is stopping other major companies from supporting their potential users on Linux by providing a pre-compiled binary package.
Yeah... it's more complex. It's more like like Windows, requiring you to find the site for the program, get to the download page and start downloading the file, open it once it's complete, authenticate yourself, and run through a brief wizard (typically just warning about third-party packages and/or enabling additional repositories for dependencies). All manually. But, if that's the kind of thing people "like" with Windows, then they should have no problem using that same method to install programs on Linux, right? They even get the additional possibility of malware by installing software from untrusted sources, but that's again--ironically--just like Windows.
Well, I interpreted "Linux" to be a kernel, and therefore anything that runs the Linux kernel would be "Linux." The original post was going on about OS X's market share, and then just said: "Has Linux's?" Not exactly strong on the details.
There is (or was) a server-oriented version of Mac OS X, so there's clearly people running it as a server... so just to confuse things up a bit more, you could just as easily say that Macs could count as desktops, laptops and servers...
Either way, if just talking about GUIs, Android itself probably has enough market dominance by now to compete well with plain Mac OS X... hell, it's probably got iOS whipped, and I'd bet iOS is more popular than Mac at this point.
Maybe I should have clarified that I was talking about the Internet Protocol SUITE.