If it weren't for the French, we'd be like Canada or Australia.
It seems to me like you'd be better off if you were more like Canada or Australia. Australia certainly has better protections for its citizens in many areas than the US does, and by all accounts the same is true for Canada.
And sure, this is an Australian company doing a shitty thing, but the truth is that companies everywhere try anything and everything they think they can get away with. And remember, they're sending the data to the US to be processed because the fuckery they want to do is legal in the US but not Australia.
Talk to Aussies and you find they hate their government and think politicians are lying cheating scumbags with their snouts in the trough, but if you criticize them you can be charged by sedition laws by John Howard:
I'm not sure why John Howard would want to though, given that neither he nor the party he led (past tense) are in government currently.
You're sure about that? I mean, not even most people here are running data centers from their basements. (...or are they?)
Nope, not sure in the slightest. But you don't need to be running a data center to need something more powerful and expandable than a glorified tablet.
Portable desktop? Just a marketing gimmick. It's too underpowered to be a desktop.
Too underpowered to be your desktop, that is. Or mine. Or most of Slashdot's. (But then, so are basically all All-In-Ones and pre-builts.) But to the "average" home user who only uses a computer for email and web browsing, it'll be sufficient.
It's an interesting idea, but not practical for my use and costs more than I'd be willing to pay for such a thing.
Isee. So if one is getting shitty service (what else) from their cell phone company and decides to improve the service on their own at their own cast, it's illegal. And you're stuck with the shitty service.
To play devil's advocate on this one, if doing so can actually further fuck the mobile phone network, then it being illegal isn't such a bad thing.
At the best of times, buying things because it/the collection will be worth a fortune down the track is dumb. The cases where something does get valuable decades down the line involve a combination of scarcity and desirability. And it's nigh on impossible to predict what will be that combination.
In general, if anyone cares enough to buy it in the first place when it's new, they do so in sufficient quantity that it never gets that scarce. If not many get sold to begin with, it's usually because not many people want it, so it's unlikely that enough people will want it enough years down the line to get into bidding wars over it.
So in short, buy a thing because you want the thing for its own sake, not because you want money down the line. Buy shares in a company if you want that.
Imagine having a phone that you could watch broadcast TV, listen to the radio, browse the web, transmit to your car radio, use a remote, and do point to point VHF like a walky talky.
I can't say I particularly care to watch broadcast TV on the go (hell, I almost never watch it even at home). Or point-to-point VHF, either... that's what making phone calls is for. Everything else on that list can, to a certain extent, already be done with what I've already got.
All the current mainstream smartphones could do that if they wanted to but most people don't seem to want their phones deciding when to turn themselves on.
Basically, yeah. I'm uncomfortable with the idea of my phone making decisions on its own. On paper it sounds like a good idea to have your devices anticipate your needs and do things to minimise how much you need to manually operate them, but these things at best never quite work right, usually get something or other hilariously wrong, and at worst entirely fuck everything up.
And in any case... if we're talking inconveniences we must eliminate, needing to press a button on my phone and drag a finger across its screen before I use it for something is pretty far down the priority list. Likewise needing to scroll across a screen to launch the app I want. If it was something that I could program some "do not disturb" hours into and have it automatically reject any incoming calls during those hours (after ringing briefly so I'm not completely oblivious that someone's tried to contact me), then that'd be something I'd like. Or if I could set up some home automation and the phone could log in and switch things on when it detects I'm almost home (probably possible now as a DIY project, but requiring more electronics and programming skill than I have).
Microsoft has the same problem: change is hated by their users. Probably even more so, in the Windows ecosystem.
There's a reason for this: in the Windows world, change is mostly for the worse. Sure there are some important steps forward and changes for the better in amongst it, but it always seems like those are eclipsed by dumb decisions and change for the sake of change.
No-one's saying that all computers should be "content-sipping machines", just that such machines should be available to those who only ever sip content and want to remain absolutely clueless about how they work, rather than them get their shit exploited because they don't (and probably never will) know how to secure something themselves. "Proper" computers and operating systems should still be available to those of us who want them and can handle the responsibility.
Huh. I hadn't thought about that. I was more or less under the impression that it was just an older SoC, but was always a bit puzzled by the inclusion of a hardware video decoder. It actually makes perfect sense that it turns out to be the other way round and they're just re-purposing a media-oriented SoC.
That home invasion type scenario is so remote in probability it is not worth worrying about.
Indeed. In my nearly thirty-three years on this planet, not once have I been victim to a home invasion, and there's basically no reason to expect that I ever will be.
There is that statistic about the accessible loaded gun creating a risk for its owner, but I wonder if it decreases the risk (of crime victimization generally) of its owner's neighbor? I imagine that a whole block of armed people will have less crime than a block of unarmed people.
I imagine quite the opposite, actually. I live in a country that has pretty strict gun laws and almost non-existent gun ownership, and amazingly enough less crime than heavily armed parts of the US. What most pro-gun people don't tend to consider is that when everyone has guns, it's more likely that someone will lose their cool and fire one in anger at someone else. Or just be a dick and use one to commit crimes. Everyone else having guns doesn't actually prevent that... you might be able to shoot back, assuming you weren't the one shot to begin with, but it won't prevent deaths that wouldn't have happened had there not been guns there to begin with.
Indeed. Given what Microsoft has done to undermine other operating systems and their vendors, it is amusing to see the same thing done to them and them crying foul.
The point since day one was to hinder the spread of non-commercial alternatives.
More accurately, to hinder non-Microsoft alternatives on their hardware... it's not like Microsoft would tell Apple "sure, we'll let you put iOS on the Surface" even if Apple had any interest in doing that. It just so happens that the only software that people try to put on Microsoft-branded hardware are non-commercial projects.
and how much support do you think apple will provide to set up and run a non macOS operating system (i.e. linux)? hmmm??? zilch. zero. nada.
True. But it's also true that they don't actively hinder such things either, and how well Linux works on any given Mac depends entirely on how well Linux supports the chipsets its hardware happens to use. As it happens, I am running Linux on a MacBook, and it's working just fine.
And really, it's no less Linux support than you get from most computer manufacturers.
In fact, no, people would not start to code because there is wide use
People who previously weren't programmers taking it up? Maybe some, but negligible numbers. Almost certainly not getting into driver development, anyway. I was more thinking of people who were already programmers shifting their attentions from Windows and starting to contribute to the open source ecosystem. Plus greater driver contributions from hardware manufacturers.
or we would have seen free and open source drivers on windows since a long time. Especially if what Microsoft say is true, ie that most crashes are due to buggy drivers.
I think the main reason there aren't really any open source drivers for Windows is that there's largely no point; working Windows drivers already exist for more or less everything, and most people who think there should be open source drivers for things and have the ability to make it happen don't tend to want a mostly closed system such as Windows. And in all honesty, crashes in Windows aren't common enough these days for it to be worth anyone's time writing an entirely new driver for something.
...but his desire to prioritize the "freedom" of systems over those systems actually doing anything useful is totally unreasonable.
I do have to agree there.
While I believe that the computing world would be a better place if all software was Free, Stallman's approach to advocating it does little to move things in that direction. He divides everything into "entirely Free" and "not entirely Free", and everything in the latter category is demonized. A more useful approach would be to advocate mostly Free systems (ie, Free aside from the odd wireless driver or whatnot, such as Ubuntu) over entirely non-Free ones (ie, Windows). As these mostly Free systems gain actual wide use and further developer attention, their quality improves and it becomes easier to replace the non-Free bits with completely Free.
It would probably help more to know how they got hold of the support line. Everywhere the number is given there should be some clear text indicating that there is a support fee required to use it.
I would expect something along the lines of Googling " phone support" and calling the number they get. Even if it is stated everywhere the number is supplied that there's a fee, people are remarkably unobservant when it comes to useful information like that. Hardly anyone ever reads all the information that would be useful for them, at most they read what gives them the answer they want.
The right way for geeks to celebrate christmas or thanksgiving day is to not celebrate them at all. Geeks are supposed to be smart enough to not believe in imaginary friends in the sky and to not celebrate the biggest genocide in history eating turkey.
Speak for yourself. Not being American we don't do the whole Thanksgiving thing, but Christmas and Easter we do. Our Christmas and Easter celebrations have absolutely zero to do with religion, and are instead basically an excuse for the family to gather together and have a good meal and a drink or three.
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If it weren't for the French, we'd be like Canada or Australia.
It seems to me like you'd be better off if you were more like Canada or Australia. Australia certainly has better protections for its citizens in many areas than the US does, and by all accounts the same is true for Canada.
And sure, this is an Australian company doing a shitty thing, but the truth is that companies everywhere try anything and everything they think they can get away with. And remember, they're sending the data to the US to be processed because the fuckery they want to do is legal in the US but not Australia.
Talk to Aussies and you find they hate their government and think politicians are lying cheating scumbags with their snouts in the trough, but if you criticize them you can be charged by sedition laws by John Howard:
I'm not sure why John Howard would want to though, given that neither he nor the party he led (past tense) are in government currently.
Except that even in Mac OS 9 it was possible to use a mouse with more than one button.
You're sure about that? I mean, not even most people here are running data centers from their basements. (...or are they?)
Nope, not sure in the slightest. But you don't need to be running a data center to need something more powerful and expandable than a glorified tablet.
Portable desktop? Just a marketing gimmick. It's too underpowered to be a desktop.
Too underpowered to be your desktop, that is. Or mine. Or most of Slashdot's. (But then, so are basically all All-In-Ones and pre-builts.) But to the "average" home user who only uses a computer for email and web browsing, it'll be sufficient.
It's an interesting idea, but not practical for my use and costs more than I'd be willing to pay for such a thing.
Isee. So if one is getting shitty service (what else) from their cell phone company and decides to improve the service on their own at their own cast, it's illegal. And you're stuck with the shitty service.
To play devil's advocate on this one, if doing so can actually further fuck the mobile phone network, then it being illegal isn't such a bad thing.
While you can do that, to some of us, DIY is more fun.
At the best of times, buying things because it/the collection will be worth a fortune down the track is dumb. The cases where something does get valuable decades down the line involve a combination of scarcity and desirability. And it's nigh on impossible to predict what will be that combination. In general, if anyone cares enough to buy it in the first place when it's new, they do so in sufficient quantity that it never gets that scarce. If not many get sold to begin with, it's usually because not many people want it, so it's unlikely that enough people will want it enough years down the line to get into bidding wars over it. So in short, buy a thing because you want the thing for its own sake, not because you want money down the line. Buy shares in a company if you want that.
Imagine having a phone that you could watch broadcast TV, listen to the radio, browse the web, transmit to your car radio, use a remote, and do point to point VHF like a walky talky.
I can't say I particularly care to watch broadcast TV on the go (hell, I almost never watch it even at home). Or point-to-point VHF, either... that's what making phone calls is for. Everything else on that list can, to a certain extent, already be done with what I've already got.
All the current mainstream smartphones could do that if they wanted to but most people don't seem to want their phones deciding when to turn themselves on.
Basically, yeah. I'm uncomfortable with the idea of my phone making decisions on its own. On paper it sounds like a good idea to have your devices anticipate your needs and do things to minimise how much you need to manually operate them, but these things at best never quite work right, usually get something or other hilariously wrong, and at worst entirely fuck everything up.
And in any case... if we're talking inconveniences we must eliminate, needing to press a button on my phone and drag a finger across its screen before I use it for something is pretty far down the priority list. Likewise needing to scroll across a screen to launch the app I want. If it was something that I could program some "do not disturb" hours into and have it automatically reject any incoming calls during those hours (after ringing briefly so I'm not completely oblivious that someone's tried to contact me), then that'd be something I'd like. Or if I could set up some home automation and the phone could log in and switch things on when it detects I'm almost home (probably possible now as a DIY project, but requiring more electronics and programming skill than I have).
Microsoft has the same problem: change is hated by their users. Probably even more so, in the Windows ecosystem.
There's a reason for this: in the Windows world, change is mostly for the worse. Sure there are some important steps forward and changes for the better in amongst it, but it always seems like those are eclipsed by dumb decisions and change for the sake of change.
No-one's saying that all computers should be "content-sipping machines", just that such machines should be available to those who only ever sip content and want to remain absolutely clueless about how they work, rather than them get their shit exploited because they don't (and probably never will) know how to secure something themselves. "Proper" computers and operating systems should still be available to those of us who want them and can handle the responsibility.
Huh. I hadn't thought about that. I was more or less under the impression that it was just an older SoC, but was always a bit puzzled by the inclusion of a hardware video decoder. It actually makes perfect sense that it turns out to be the other way round and they're just re-purposing a media-oriented SoC.
"Cheap" was a higher priority for the project than "powerful" or "up-to-date". For its intended use, and many secondary uses, it's perfectly adequate.
The anti-touch commenters here echo the comments of anti-mousers decades ago -- "Not for me." We know how that worked out.
Well, yes. Some people still don't like the mouse. Some use it anyway out of necessity, others bend over backwards to avoid using it.
That home invasion type scenario is so remote in probability it is not worth worrying about.
Indeed. In my nearly thirty-three years on this planet, not once have I been victim to a home invasion, and there's basically no reason to expect that I ever will be.
There is that statistic about the accessible loaded gun creating a risk for its owner, but I wonder if it decreases the risk (of crime victimization generally) of its owner's neighbor? I imagine that a whole block of armed people will have less crime than a block of unarmed people.
I imagine quite the opposite, actually. I live in a country that has pretty strict gun laws and almost non-existent gun ownership, and amazingly enough less crime than heavily armed parts of the US. What most pro-gun people don't tend to consider is that when everyone has guns, it's more likely that someone will lose their cool and fire one in anger at someone else. Or just be a dick and use one to commit crimes. Everyone else having guns doesn't actually prevent that... you might be able to shoot back, assuming you weren't the one shot to begin with, but it won't prevent deaths that wouldn't have happened had there not been guns there to begin with.
Indeed. Given what Microsoft has done to undermine other operating systems and their vendors, it is amusing to see the same thing done to them and them crying foul.
Maybe so, but it's better that what we're free to do with as we will is crap than there be nothing that we're free to do with as we will.
The point since day one was to hinder the spread of non-commercial alternatives.
More accurately, to hinder non-Microsoft alternatives on their hardware... it's not like Microsoft would tell Apple "sure, we'll let you put iOS on the Surface" even if Apple had any interest in doing that. It just so happens that the only software that people try to put on Microsoft-branded hardware are non-commercial projects.
and how much support do you think apple will provide to set up and run a non macOS operating system (i.e. linux)? hmmm??? zilch. zero. nada.
True. But it's also true that they don't actively hinder such things either, and how well Linux works on any given Mac depends entirely on how well Linux supports the chipsets its hardware happens to use. As it happens, I am running Linux on a MacBook, and it's working just fine.
And really, it's no less Linux support than you get from most computer manufacturers.
In fact, no, people would not start to code because there is wide use
People who previously weren't programmers taking it up? Maybe some, but negligible numbers. Almost certainly not getting into driver development, anyway. I was more thinking of people who were already programmers shifting their attentions from Windows and starting to contribute to the open source ecosystem. Plus greater driver contributions from hardware manufacturers.
or we would have seen free and open source drivers on windows since a long time. Especially if what Microsoft say is true, ie that most crashes are due to buggy drivers.
I think the main reason there aren't really any open source drivers for Windows is that there's largely no point; working Windows drivers already exist for more or less everything, and most people who think there should be open source drivers for things and have the ability to make it happen don't tend to want a mostly closed system such as Windows. And in all honesty, crashes in Windows aren't common enough these days for it to be worth anyone's time writing an entirely new driver for something.
...but his desire to prioritize the "freedom" of systems over those systems actually doing anything useful is totally unreasonable.
I do have to agree there.
While I believe that the computing world would be a better place if all software was Free, Stallman's approach to advocating it does little to move things in that direction. He divides everything into "entirely Free" and "not entirely Free", and everything in the latter category is demonized. A more useful approach would be to advocate mostly Free systems (ie, Free aside from the odd wireless driver or whatnot, such as Ubuntu) over entirely non-Free ones (ie, Windows). As these mostly Free systems gain actual wide use and further developer attention, their quality improves and it becomes easier to replace the non-Free bits with completely Free.
It would probably help more to know how they got hold of the support line. Everywhere the number is given there should be some clear text indicating that there is a support fee required to use it.
I would expect something along the lines of Googling " phone support" and calling the number they get. Even if it is stated everywhere the number is supplied that there's a fee, people are remarkably unobservant when it comes to useful information like that. Hardly anyone ever reads all the information that would be useful for them, at most they read what gives them the answer they want.
The right way for geeks to celebrate christmas or thanksgiving day is to not celebrate them at all. Geeks are supposed to be smart enough to not believe in imaginary friends in the sky and to not celebrate the biggest genocide in history eating turkey.
Speak for yourself. Not being American we don't do the whole Thanksgiving thing, but Christmas and Easter we do. Our Christmas and Easter celebrations have absolutely zero to do with religion, and are instead basically an excuse for the family to gather together and have a good meal and a drink or three.