I'm sharing my opinion: I think Debian is still king because of mostly 3 key areas it shines: simplicity, choice and community support.
Ubuntu thrived for some years on Deb's back, as it brought its simplicity front and center, all wrapped up in tried and true UI choices with Gnome (2) and Xorg (eventually birthing its own now defunct attempts at GUI - Unity, and dserver - MIR), and they spiced it up by pulling a RedHat on the support part: "hey, we got all the good things of Debian 6 months later, bicuzz pro QA and commercial level polish yadayada". Choice was, barely, still there, through different flavoured ISOs ranging from GUI preference to architectures and whatnot, and naming each individually for branding purposes, something typical from consumer-grade software.
It was well and good, until QA and polish stopped losing focus to marketing and stupid endeavours like dethroning Android or the tablet "market".
Like many, I was the kind who believed [insert letter]Ubuntu-like flavouring was essential in a distro. But now, in all honesty, I believe there are exactly 3 separations a distro really, truly needs - to GUI or not to GUI (Desktop vs server/headless), net-install vs 5 DVDs with all the internet in 'em bicuzz Africa and pacific Islands; and obviously, if you can live without compiling (most of us do), architecture. Release-wise, there should still be LTS, stable and, well, straight-from-the-chunk, but those are a matter of politics involved and not exactly "static" choices, such as the afforementioned architecture, server/desktop-bound or www-availability. Debian follows all these principles, and packs each flavour with exactly what they need.
The thing Debian makes best though is not their choice of flavouring, but the way they pass control onto you, the user. From the simply amazing installer:- you want a GUI? Pick from this not-so-verbose, yet essential list. You wanna continue this installation from ssh? Kewl, install ssh now, set up basic drivers, network and creds, and you're good to go. Do you want that graphical install instead? Maybe you want the ncurses one bicuzz you fancy them Nvidia GPUs which won't work until you can wget them from closedsource.nvidiacorp.bad.org ? Install gparted for all-you-can-eat partition choice. I'm not even getting on the REALLY advanced stuff.
Systemd, grub, dpkg, so straightforward, no complications. Aptitude and that god-send APT. Debian has the tools to get everyone NOT thinking too hard on stuff like dependency management, but still make an effort, ever feeling in control if need be. Updating, and UPGRADING are a breeze, both for individual packages and the distribution itself. Unnatended, or even hot upgrades work as intended and crash much less than most others - something only achieved with a very deep level of organization on the core development. Migrations to new releases are easy. Migrations to new machines are feasible without dedicated backup tools (although they are great if you can get them configured properly), and even when you have a problem, it's usually recoverable with a Google search or 2.
And the thing I love most about Debian, pretty much the same thing that makes me still love Windows: it doesn't fail on 95% the hardware people want to get it working. To y'all OS developers out there - packaging your distributions with the "bare minimum" of drivers is NOT that great a feature when you want your software to have the support a stable OS deserves (*cough* Archlinux*cough) - if you don't have a community large enough ABLE TO BOOT your OS effortlessly, there won't be a community to WANT to give back, and will end up with LACKING community support - read: death sentence in FOSS (well, unless you're RedHat).
It's that simply really. If a critical mass doesn't get to even install your OS successfully, you won't ever get the traction you need for it to be mainstream. But hey, maybe that's not what you want...
Typo: I mentioned the Fire wrong initially, I meant the original Kindle (the one we're both referring to I believe).
The Kindle had to have PDF support because a big chunk of the e-reader bound consumer base would also use it for scholarly articles, which are available from a panoplia of distributors, and it's a market that falls way off the Amazon book business. Just like Apple opens the iPhone to some Google/Microsoft/etc services, they gave way to this to make it somewhat marketable.
But the Kindle has low-to-no other functionality as an Amazon e-book and generic pdf reader, and it doesn't have some niceties for PDFs as it has for Amazon's formats. Other features, like their unlimited-forever 3g connectivity were for Amazon services and purchases exclusively, and even that was limited to countries where the Amazon book business actually has a pulse. You don't get an API for cool apps and widgets like, say, Android nor you have conveniences like bluetooth or a camera for conferencing, or HUMONGOUS storage for non-text media. They made a simple yet expensive device, and made it pretty much not worth the asking price unless you were really using that Amazon books, so this way it would mostly be sold to people who would use those services. Maybe 10 or 20% of buyers have completely neglected the Amazon book store, while some that initially planned to do so likely engaged in Amazon book purchasing, and this kind of client aquisition is a serious benefit to whatever they lost on Kindle cost-to-market.
The HomePod exists solely as a placeholder product for Apple to position themselves in the home assistant market, for the large pool of buyers already commited to the Apple brand - not much unlike the Apple TV, the Mac Mini, the MacBook Air, among others. Apple has a history of taking long to get in the game because when they do get in the game, they have their name to make it sell, then just market that specific characteristic as being reason for everything else being better. "When we decide to enter a segment, we do it with the best product/feature polish available".
The only difference being that, this time around, it is oh-so-much easier to make the device un-interoperable with third parties. The only interaction with such a device is sound - people just won't notice many of the flaws, on a system which's user experience is minimized to spoken or aloud interaction. or to a level, will excuse them much more easily. It's a lot like the Kindle Fire devices - make one device for exacty 2 or 3 features (buy ebook, read ebook, keep it closed to Amazon's ecosystem for experience/quality assurance "purposes", which are simply euphemisms for monetization), and make those solid enough so you can tell people they can do them instead of using "brand X" of the same feature. Maybe some time after you can add a browser or other non-trivialities that should have been there in the first place, but were simply too expensive or would take too long to produce. Macs moving to Intel and finally supporting Windows comes to mind...
I guess phillip morris and co aren't really getting the desired product adherence on their "heat-not-burn-definetely-not-vape" product, so they're back to old tactics of subsidizing "may" studies about vaping. I am a vaper, and I will tell you for sure: vaping IS addictive, surely a habit, and to an extent can be a social reason to transition to cigarretes, but the correlation of that transition on the young population is more likely to be out of individuals' environment for vaping already being a biased environment for smoking.
So until we get a study that takes into account this correlation, to me this is just more propaganda from a scientific lobby that is financed by an industry that has been in steep decline, not only due to e-cigarettes but also from societal patterns changing in evolved countries. I hope vaping goes away eventually - I love it, but it is a lesser evil. And by being the lesser evil of tobacco, I hope tobacco goes away much sooner than vaping. Because I know with a high degree of certainty I am more likely to die if I have a political reason to stop vaping and going back to smoking, you know, like the government baning ecigs...
If you really want solid science about ecigs, vaping, HEETS and real tobacco products comparison, you should lookup Doctor Konstantinos' Farsalinos work - he has been a reference in the unbiased nicotine research for the last 10 years now.
Ubunto Mobile; Unity switched for Gnome; that MIR thing nobody uses (even themselves)... Canonical has been trying so hard to reinvent the wheel, but it's like they're always 6 months behind... Like how they are always behind Debian and Gnome for releases...
They need to either get ideas out the oven that are very fresh, or focus on their main monetization. Maybe only stray for endeavors that can leverage that monetization. They have a thing or two to learn from the likes of Redhat or even Google (if you neglect the non-open source nature).
same question as above, now sans binaries: what if they allow their devs to build straight from Google's trunk and are allowed to take them home for personal use?
What if they internally host changed binaries, but allow their employees to take home and install those images for personal uses? How would that fit into the GPL?
It's not the first time a/. title fails or is modified for effect. In this case at least they used "probably", so they can get away with anything because that word turns everything speculative.
The only thing getting software and hardware out, of a company's doors to the end-user, is the simple fact that the user can value that product's features and spend money on it. In other words, it's the fact that B2C is a monetizing strategy just like B2B.
Companies restricting features and self-support of these products is part of that monetizing scheme. If monetizing is hampered to such an extent that the product's development/manufacturing is no longer profitable, companies stop making products. This is true for both B2B and B2C.
When a company sells phones, consoles, PCs at cost in order to profit from selling apps, games, software or even support or other services for that hardware, that's the moment end users/consumers stop getting stuff at cost from companies, and start getting it exclusively from the community. In the eyes of a company, a consumer buys the right to do what THE COMPANY, not the user, intended with the product. No more, no less. Companies have as much right to reduce the scope of their inventions as they see fit as real people. That's the kind of democracy we and our ancestors (as a society) agreed on.
I'm 99% sure "Google devices for the home" include the heavily discounted, old-gen Chromecast or the Chromecast Audio, which don't have the smart features everyone reading these headlines will immediately relate "devices for the home" to. You simply can't use a Chromecast as an assistant, or at least not as the same type of assistant the Echo or Google Home Mini.
And Chromecasts have added funcitonality (Video/High-quality Audio Streaming support) that most, or even all of the assistant devices DO NOT have, at least not embedded on the 29USD package.
Just like whatever government you have on your country, what shows up on the front-page of/. is democratic, and whoever uses it has the DUTY to change it if need be, and at the very least, the common sense to criticize only after taking action. There's a thing these days called the blockchain and PoS from which you can take some hints on. If you don't like the status quo, maybe hackernews is a better place for your high-level nerd stuff.
Now, replying to the post (because it doesn't make sense to hijack a thread simply for SJW'ing): if money is no object, I would look at Microsoft's ultra-portable lineup such as anything with Surface on the name these days. If memory doesn't fail me, there are currently 10, 11, 12, 13 and 15'' options on the Surface range and a lot of choice concerning form-factor, performance and battery levels. Wallet-wise though, they're all premium or ultra-premium devices, and surely never to be able to run any *NIX OS other than in a sandbox (thank you UEFI/SecureBoot...).
If saving is indeed a priority, I would advise on going for the very lowest tier of something that has a M3 CPU such as the Xiaomi Air 12.5. This way, you won't (or at least take a lot longer to...) face the same question you are presenting right now - a performance bottleneck-forced switch. There was a point in time Intel cared for keeping the Atom line up-to-standards for everyday web use, but no more, since most OEMs have neglected the entry-level, mini form-factor Windows in favour of touch and Android hybrid devices that can be "plannedly degraded".
I go to a doctor, he sees my eyes, he passes judgement. I can read his prescription, and I can chose to visit him again when I feel the need, or when he suggests it. I can ignore him, not buy anything. I can even get eye glasses for free and chose not to use them. Cuz, you know, I'm free like that, and so should you.
What I don't need is someone telling me I can't buy a product that I decide to do on the cheap, which I would use solely use for my own benefit, because that product purchase requires pointless REDTAPE - it's not a gun, it's not a car, it's not a strong radio device, it's not a flying one. So who gives a flying fuck?
You guessed right - opticians, doctors, and the money that stops flowing in the direction of overpriced, overmarketed crap that serves the exact same purpose. Those are the ones who care for stuff like this. Don't be an Ajit Pai and sell that stupid requirement as consumer protection.
I love stuff like Hubble. I just don't think they'll be lukcy in the UK - Daysoft lenses already has much of Europe covered for cheap, amazing, convenient contact lenses. And most of all, lenses that only need my check stating "I have a prescription for these, make this purchase my responsability". The only thing that can happen after I press that check is not consumer protection: it's consumer litigation because he didn't buy through establishment rules.
That is NOT basic consumer protection. That is basic capitalism.
Disagree with the former, partially argee with the later.
There is no market like the EU for smartphones - we pay full price for devices, and when we don't, providers subsidize the remainder of the price (usually a VERY small fraction - you no longer see premium phones discounted over 15% with carrier exclusivity cntracts anymore), and manufacturers are still paid full amount, if with a small discount due to volume and/or distribution rights/explusivity/etc.
And while I see the issue of the "many smaller markets" scenario, I believe it's amazing how companies, especially these new startups with all their vision and concept. fail to grasp that there is no issue with releaseing a phone for in the EU single market: they just don't have to make a full EU-wide release for it to sell everywhere. All they need to do is have one device with all the GSM/3g/LTE bands, pick one BIG, stable EU member (e.g. UK, France, Germany, Spain) and ensure the main reseller of the phone is the regional Amazon of that product, or in alternative, any reputed online shop with decent EU-bound shipping service and cost. Just as that happens, such a phone would now start being bought by anyone, anywhere in the EU, and all they had to do was respect a single country's regulation, and add one country's import and sales taxes. Marketing can be cross-borders. Is it that hard? OnePlus sold most of their devices in Portugal even before they had their site in Portuguese. They just needed Portugal as a shipping destination, and a single EU shipping center/warehouse from which to ship. I remember they distributed the phone in most, if not all EU countries for which teh OP1 supported the most basic LTE bands (for Portugal specifically, they missed one of the bands and the phone was still very usable in any carrier).
And that last sentence, I believe to each his own - devices are tailored to specific markets. Lenovo, Xiaomi et all make fortunes selling low and mid tier devices in developing markets. Premium devices usually flourish in the US/UK/Korea where not only purchasing power is high but regulations are mostly what every factory in Shenzen follows. Yet in China, there is only one real brand that shines and that is because it is THE de facto consensual premium brand, and just happens to be the brand with walled gardens experience, making it simply ideal for working on the Chinese microcosmos - Apple. Everyone else, be it Samsung or the local giants like Huawei or Oppo are all playing catch with the iPhones, and it's not a quality/marketing/price/features problem. It's just that they're not Apple. And no premium device is gonna make it in China until they flat out ban Apple from there, which has been attempted multiple times by what is obviously the influence of the local players (to which I have to take my hat off, Apple has been stoic to Chinese regulation and political antics against them. Bravo).
I've read some regional reviews (in portuguese) from outlets I take in high consideration, and also read the reviews from the usual suspects. The later are indeed of consensual aclaim, but the former are very critical, yet they come from artistic movie critics and avoid commercial titles.
Haven't seen the movie, and being a moderate fan of the saga, I can't say much, yet it seems to be expected from reviews of Star Wars (usually very biased from fandom) that titles such as Rogue One and The Force Awakens to be taken with a grain of salt. Rogue One comes to mind as an overhyped title from the saga that I couldn't really emphasize with most critic opinion - it did felt gritty in contrast to the main series, but everything else was simply exaggerated, such as performances (which I thought were mediocre with a few exceptions), the non-whitewash issue being brought up as an artistic added value (as if it shouldn't be standard...), and the plot feeling very convoluted while critics said it enlarged the larger storyline - it simply did not, all it does is end as a starting base for The Last Hope and reuse exactly 2 characters that I noted (Vader, because Vader and the deceased virtual captain pof the Death Star).
It seems obvious that this movie is being overhyped, and I am considering not paying the extra buck for seeing it in Imax just because of that.
title says it all, it was expected like months ago and nothing. Their problem was the US market was no place for that phone - the purists already have enough to chose from with iPhones, Pixels and OnePluses. Contract-free price is meaningless there.
Sell that phone at 400eur/380gbp on this side of the pond, where a LOT of phones are bought flat out, sans-strings attached, and where we really appreciate that effort, and you would notice a market response. How they fail to see this is beyond me. Did I mention Pixels and iPhones are ultra-expensive here, and OnePlus is not every european's cup of tea?
I bet you an arm that, for that price, stock would go kaput as soon as this hit a launch in London or Paris.
taxes are pretty irrelevant in most countries still - in most scenarios people simply don't have to post gains in their anual forms, because there is no legislation for such matters.
In everything else you say, you're likely right. But currently, I doubt they are probing the blockchain for criminal activity, as many of the transactions of late are trading activity and it would be to hard to really pinpoint criminality.
As I said, they haven't sold most of those bitcoins. That's the beauty of the blockchain - you can see the money flowing. Billionaires change everyday and current investment volatility is mainly what makes the top tiers change on whatever rich list you'd like to use this week.
I personally love the way you whishful think your way out of the argument, and end it with something that shows all over the previous text. Your example of a bubble alone says much about the rest of your logic, so I will rest my case now.
After a re-read of my own comment, I have much more cringeworthy typos and incoherences than the uncany use of "crypto" for these digital currencies (which some even state aren't that much crypto to begin with). But my opinion is solid.
Full disclosure: I dont invest in btc, but have seen some friends get in on the action and make some safe cash by exitting precautiously. I don't have any regrets not investing myself, as I don't have that much cash to gamble, even now that I knew it raised so much from the moments I considered it. I always saw it as gambling my family's future in a feeling, and being in IT, I like more deterministic ways of spending my hard-earned savings.
Opinion: I think cryptocurrency is being the victim of professional investor shenanigans just like the real estate/mortgage economy was before the 2007 crash - speculation over econo-babble like the subprime bonds packaging is nothing more than the equivalent speculation over techno-babble blockchain, smart-contracts and whatnot. People are basically investing in something that someone is ensuring them will have value, yet WE ALL KNOW its worth is, at present time, only based on demand and not in actual use. all investors knows this but hope they might exit before it stabilizes. They are just being too greedy.
But this is exactly why I, unlike the 2007 crash, don't think all the fuzz is actually bad for crypto - only greedy investors will lose when crypto stabilizes, i.e. crashes. Because it likely WILL CRASH according to MOST savvy sources, such as Warren Buffet. Even the notables that do support crypto aren't stating verbatim it won't crash - they just state they believe in the concept for what it was made. And that's not growing in value exponentially to make people rich, but to provide fiat to those that do not want to depend on the centralized, yet divergent supervision of standard fiat.
When it crashes, people that really trully do use crypto for goods/services transactions will swarm to acquire it. And that's the beauty of it's purpose.
I believe only the really dumb, really greedy people will lose A LOT with the burst of the bubble - those that really can't see the writtings on the wall, keep their money "there" expecting unlimited growth. I will even provide a tongue-in-cheek commentaire: the largest BTC portfolio is currently in the hands of people that invented and let Facebook slide right under their noses (the Winklevoss twins). That surely has to mean something, and it's beyond me how they haven't sold their position yet with their experience on being late to the party.
Yet they have been corroborated a gazillion times and are, unusually, one of the most trusted sources of relevant information these days. Gonzo style journalism sux at first, but it has a "raison d'etre" that sinks in pretty damn fast.
I did my third post on reddit sometimes the last month, warning about a bad scheme on Amazon Prime trials, and all I got was banter about not reading the fuking manual and whatnot... I think (most) redditors are septemberists of the internet who have absolutely no idea on argumentation and will instantly vote no on anything that even attempts to bash anything they appreciate (in this case, Amazon Prime). Bu oh well maybe I'm a septemberist myself on reddit so I digress.
One thing I'm sure off - not going to reddit whenever I feel like trying to get relevant info out on anything. I'll just make a facebook share and I'm sure none of my friends will unlike it #egorub
Which is why the title is "still" logically wrong by a very relevant 21%. Creating clickbait titles with the "still" buzzword instead of the essential "only" word, as in "still ONLY rent or buy" (i.e. as you said it - "do not stream").
Furthermore, I'd say there is blatant editorial manipulation (even if unintentional) in the title, as it applies the exact phrasing of the content article - "(54%) STILL rents and buys" - and replaces 54% with the fake value of a third, 33%.
That right there is how you turn a very acceptable statistic into market speculation. The type of speculation that gets users, investors and the industry into dropping physical support of media, and then those 21% of people that still value it to some degree, and especially the 33% that rely entirely on it, are in the shit.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sharing my opinion: I think Debian is still king because of mostly 3 key areas it shines: simplicity, choice and community support.
Ubuntu thrived for some years on Deb's back, as it brought its simplicity front and center, all wrapped up in tried and true UI choices with Gnome (2) and Xorg (eventually birthing its own now defunct attempts at GUI - Unity, and dserver - MIR), and they spiced it up by pulling a RedHat on the support part: "hey, we got all the good things of Debian 6 months later, bicuzz pro QA and commercial level polish yadayada". Choice was, barely, still there, through different flavoured ISOs ranging from GUI preference to architectures and whatnot, and naming each individually for branding purposes, something typical from consumer-grade software.
It was well and good, until QA and polish stopped losing focus to marketing and stupid endeavours like dethroning Android or the tablet "market".
Like many, I was the kind who believed [insert letter]Ubuntu-like flavouring was essential in a distro. But now, in all honesty, I believe there are exactly 3 separations a distro really, truly needs - to GUI or not to GUI (Desktop vs server/headless), net-install vs 5 DVDs with all the internet in 'em bicuzz Africa and pacific Islands; and obviously, if you can live without compiling (most of us do), architecture. Release-wise, there should still be LTS, stable and, well, straight-from-the-chunk, but those are a matter of politics involved and not exactly "static" choices, such as the afforementioned architecture, server/desktop-bound or www-availability. Debian follows all these principles, and packs each flavour with exactly what they need.
The thing Debian makes best though is not their choice of flavouring, but the way they pass control onto you, the user. From the simply amazing installer:- you want a GUI? Pick from this not-so-verbose, yet essential list. You wanna continue this installation from ssh? Kewl, install ssh now, set up basic drivers, network and creds, and you're good to go. Do you want that graphical install instead? Maybe you want the ncurses one bicuzz you fancy them Nvidia GPUs which won't work until you can wget them from closedsource.nvidiacorp.bad.org ? Install gparted for all-you-can-eat partition choice. I'm not even getting on the REALLY advanced stuff.
Systemd, grub, dpkg, so straightforward, no complications. Aptitude and that god-send APT. Debian has the tools to get everyone NOT thinking too hard on stuff like dependency management, but still make an effort, ever feeling in control if need be. Updating, and UPGRADING are a breeze, both for individual packages and the distribution itself. Unnatended, or even hot upgrades work as intended and crash much less than most others - something only achieved with a very deep level of organization on the core development. Migrations to new releases are easy. Migrations to new machines are feasible without dedicated backup tools (although they are great if you can get them configured properly), and even when you have a problem, it's usually recoverable with a Google search or 2.
And the thing I love most about Debian, pretty much the same thing that makes me still love Windows: it doesn't fail on 95% the hardware people want to get it working. To y'all OS developers out there - packaging your distributions with the "bare minimum" of drivers is NOT that great a feature when you want your software to have the support a stable OS deserves (*cough* Archlinux*cough) - if you don't have a community large enough ABLE TO BOOT your OS effortlessly, there won't be a community to WANT to give back, and will end up with LACKING community support - read: death sentence in FOSS (well, unless you're RedHat).
It's that simply really. If a critical mass doesn't get to even install your OS successfully, you won't ever get the traction you need for it to be mainstream. But hey, maybe that's not what you want...
Getouttahere!
Typo: I mentioned the Fire wrong initially, I meant the original Kindle (the one we're both referring to I believe).
The Kindle had to have PDF support because a big chunk of the e-reader bound consumer base would also use it for scholarly articles, which are available from a panoplia of distributors, and it's a market that falls way off the Amazon book business. Just like Apple opens the iPhone to some Google/Microsoft/etc services, they gave way to this to make it somewhat marketable.
But the Kindle has low-to-no other functionality as an Amazon e-book and generic pdf reader, and it doesn't have some niceties for PDFs as it has for Amazon's formats. Other features, like their unlimited-forever 3g connectivity were for Amazon services and purchases exclusively, and even that was limited to countries where the Amazon book business actually has a pulse. You don't get an API for cool apps and widgets like, say, Android nor you have conveniences like bluetooth or a camera for conferencing, or HUMONGOUS storage for non-text media. They made a simple yet expensive device, and made it pretty much not worth the asking price unless you were really using that Amazon books, so this way it would mostly be sold to people who would use those services. Maybe 10 or 20% of buyers have completely neglected the Amazon book store, while some that initially planned to do so likely engaged in Amazon book purchasing, and this kind of client aquisition is a serious benefit to whatever they lost on Kindle cost-to-market.
The HomePod exists solely as a placeholder product for Apple to position themselves in the home assistant market, for the large pool of buyers already commited to the Apple brand - not much unlike the Apple TV, the Mac Mini, the MacBook Air, among others. Apple has a history of taking long to get in the game because when they do get in the game, they have their name to make it sell, then just market that specific characteristic as being reason for everything else being better. "When we decide to enter a segment, we do it with the best product/feature polish available".
The only difference being that, this time around, it is oh-so-much easier to make the device un-interoperable with third parties. The only interaction with such a device is sound - people just won't notice many of the flaws, on a system which's user experience is minimized to spoken or aloud interaction. or to a level, will excuse them much more easily. It's a lot like the Kindle Fire devices - make one device for exacty 2 or 3 features (buy ebook, read ebook, keep it closed to Amazon's ecosystem for experience/quality assurance "purposes", which are simply euphemisms for monetization), and make those solid enough so you can tell people they can do them instead of using "brand X" of the same feature. Maybe some time after you can add a browser or other non-trivialities that should have been there in the first place, but were simply too expensive or would take too long to produce. Macs moving to Intel and finally supporting Windows comes to mind...
I guess phillip morris and co aren't really getting the desired product adherence on their "heat-not-burn-definetely-not-vape" product, so they're back to old tactics of subsidizing "may" studies about vaping. I am a vaper, and I will tell you for sure: vaping IS addictive, surely a habit, and to an extent can be a social reason to transition to cigarretes, but the correlation of that transition on the young population is more likely to be out of individuals' environment for vaping already being a biased environment for smoking.
So until we get a study that takes into account this correlation, to me this is just more propaganda from a scientific lobby that is financed by an industry that has been in steep decline, not only due to e-cigarettes but also from societal patterns changing in evolved countries. I hope vaping goes away eventually - I love it, but it is a lesser evil. And by being the lesser evil of tobacco, I hope tobacco goes away much sooner than vaping. Because I know with a high degree of certainty I am more likely to die if I have a political reason to stop vaping and going back to smoking, you know, like the government baning ecigs...
If you really want solid science about ecigs, vaping, HEETS and real tobacco products comparison, you should lookup Doctor Konstantinos' Farsalinos work - he has been a reference in the unbiased nicotine research for the last 10 years now.
Ubunto Mobile; Unity switched for Gnome; that MIR thing nobody uses (even themselves)... Canonical has been trying so hard to reinvent the wheel, but it's like they're always 6 months behind... Like how they are always behind Debian and Gnome for releases...
They need to either get ideas out the oven that are very fresh, or focus on their main monetization. Maybe only stray for endeavors that can leverage that monetization. They have a thing or two to learn from the likes of Redhat or even Google (if you neglect the non-open source nature).
same question as above, now sans binaries: what if they allow their devs to build straight from Google's trunk and are allowed to take them home for personal use?
What if they internally host changed binaries, but allow their employees to take home and install those images for personal uses? How would that fit into the GPL?
You mean the same courage as to use an anonymous handle for tongue in cheek comment?
LOL!
It's not the first time a /. title fails or is modified for effect. In this case at least they used "probably", so they can get away with anything because that word turns everything speculative.
title says it all
The only thing getting software and hardware out, of a company's doors to the end-user, is the simple fact that the user can value that product's features and spend money on it. In other words, it's the fact that B2C is a monetizing strategy just like B2B.
Companies restricting features and self-support of these products is part of that monetizing scheme. If monetizing is hampered to such an extent that the product's development/manufacturing is no longer profitable, companies stop making products. This is true for both B2B and B2C.
When a company sells phones, consoles, PCs at cost in order to profit from selling apps, games, software or even support or other services for that hardware, that's the moment end users/consumers stop getting stuff at cost from companies, and start getting it exclusively from the community. In the eyes of a company, a consumer buys the right to do what THE COMPANY, not the user, intended with the product. No more, no less. Companies have as much right to reduce the scope of their inventions as they see fit as real people. That's the kind of democracy we and our ancestors (as a society) agreed on.
That is so true it actually makes me think of every single one of my friends on the crypto-train as addicts of sorts.
I'm 99% sure "Google devices for the home" include the heavily discounted, old-gen Chromecast or the Chromecast Audio, which don't have the smart features everyone reading these headlines will immediately relate "devices for the home" to. You simply can't use a Chromecast as an assistant, or at least not as the same type of assistant the Echo or Google Home Mini.
And Chromecasts have added funcitonality (Video/High-quality Audio Streaming support) that most, or even all of the assistant devices DO NOT have, at least not embedded on the 29USD package.
Just like whatever government you have on your country, what shows up on the front-page of /. is democratic, and whoever uses it has the DUTY to change it if need be, and at the very least, the common sense to criticize only after taking action. There's a thing these days called the blockchain and PoS from which you can take some hints on. If you don't like the status quo, maybe hackernews is a better place for your high-level nerd stuff.
Now, replying to the post (because it doesn't make sense to hijack a thread simply for SJW'ing): if money is no object, I would look at Microsoft's ultra-portable lineup such as anything with Surface on the name these days. If memory doesn't fail me, there are currently 10, 11, 12, 13 and 15'' options on the Surface range and a lot of choice concerning form-factor, performance and battery levels. Wallet-wise though, they're all premium or ultra-premium devices, and surely never to be able to run any *NIX OS other than in a sandbox (thank you UEFI/SecureBoot...).
If saving is indeed a priority, I would advise on going for the very lowest tier of something that has a M3 CPU such as the Xiaomi Air 12.5. This way, you won't (or at least take a lot longer to...) face the same question you are presenting right now - a performance bottleneck-forced switch. There was a point in time Intel cared for keeping the Atom line up-to-standards for everyday web use, but no more, since most OEMs have neglected the entry-level, mini form-factor Windows in favour of touch and Android hybrid devices that can be "plannedly degraded".
I just had to fix that.
I go to a doctor, he sees my eyes, he passes judgement. I can read his prescription, and I can chose to visit him again when I feel the need, or when he suggests it. I can ignore him, not buy anything. I can even get eye glasses for free and chose not to use them. Cuz, you know, I'm free like that, and so should you.
What I don't need is someone telling me I can't buy a product that I decide to do on the cheap, which I would use solely use for my own benefit, because that product purchase requires pointless REDTAPE - it's not a gun, it's not a car, it's not a strong radio device, it's not a flying one. So who gives a flying fuck?
You guessed right - opticians, doctors, and the money that stops flowing in the direction of overpriced, overmarketed crap that serves the exact same purpose. Those are the ones who care for stuff like this. Don't be an Ajit Pai and sell that stupid requirement as consumer protection.
I love stuff like Hubble. I just don't think they'll be lukcy in the UK - Daysoft lenses already has much of Europe covered for cheap, amazing, convenient contact lenses. And most of all, lenses that only need my check stating "I have a prescription for these, make this purchase my responsability". The only thing that can happen after I press that check is not consumer protection: it's consumer litigation because he didn't buy through establishment rules.
That is NOT basic consumer protection. That is basic capitalism.
Disagree with the former, partially argee with the later.
There is no market like the EU for smartphones - we pay full price for devices, and when we don't, providers subsidize the remainder of the price (usually a VERY small fraction - you no longer see premium phones discounted over 15% with carrier exclusivity cntracts anymore), and manufacturers are still paid full amount, if with a small discount due to volume and/or distribution rights/explusivity/etc.
And while I see the issue of the "many smaller markets" scenario, I believe it's amazing how companies, especially these new startups with all their vision and concept. fail to grasp that there is no issue with releaseing a phone for in the EU single market: they just don't have to make a full EU-wide release for it to sell everywhere. All they need to do is have one device with all the GSM/3g/LTE bands, pick one BIG, stable EU member (e.g. UK, France, Germany, Spain) and ensure the main reseller of the phone is the regional Amazon of that product, or in alternative, any reputed online shop with decent EU-bound shipping service and cost. Just as that happens, such a phone would now start being bought by anyone, anywhere in the EU, and all they had to do was respect a single country's regulation, and add one country's import and sales taxes. Marketing can be cross-borders. Is it that hard? OnePlus sold most of their devices in Portugal even before they had their site in Portuguese. They just needed Portugal as a shipping destination, and a single EU shipping center/warehouse from which to ship. I remember they distributed the phone in most, if not all EU countries for which teh OP1 supported the most basic LTE bands (for Portugal specifically, they missed one of the bands and the phone was still very usable in any carrier).
And that last sentence, I believe to each his own - devices are tailored to specific markets. Lenovo, Xiaomi et all make fortunes selling low and mid tier devices in developing markets. Premium devices usually flourish in the US/UK/Korea where not only purchasing power is high but regulations are mostly what every factory in Shenzen follows. Yet in China, there is only one real brand that shines and that is because it is THE de facto consensual premium brand, and just happens to be the brand with walled gardens experience, making it simply ideal for working on the Chinese microcosmos - Apple. Everyone else, be it Samsung or the local giants like Huawei or Oppo are all playing catch with the iPhones, and it's not a quality/marketing/price/features problem. It's just that they're not Apple. And no premium device is gonna make it in China until they flat out ban Apple from there, which has been attempted multiple times by what is obviously the influence of the local players (to which I have to take my hat off, Apple has been stoic to Chinese regulation and political antics against them. Bravo).
I've read some regional reviews (in portuguese) from outlets I take in high consideration, and also read the reviews from the usual suspects. The later are indeed of consensual aclaim, but the former are very critical, yet they come from artistic movie critics and avoid commercial titles.
Haven't seen the movie, and being a moderate fan of the saga, I can't say much, yet it seems to be expected from reviews of Star Wars (usually very biased from fandom) that titles such as Rogue One and The Force Awakens to be taken with a grain of salt. Rogue One comes to mind as an overhyped title from the saga that I couldn't really emphasize with most critic opinion - it did felt gritty in contrast to the main series, but everything else was simply exaggerated, such as performances (which I thought were mediocre with a few exceptions), the non-whitewash issue being brought up as an artistic added value (as if it shouldn't be standard...), and the plot feeling very convoluted while critics said it enlarged the larger storyline - it simply did not, all it does is end as a starting base for The Last Hope and reuse exactly 2 characters that I noted (Vader, because Vader and the deceased virtual captain pof the Death Star).
It seems obvious that this movie is being overhyped, and I am considering not paying the extra buck for seeing it in Imax just because of that.
title says it all, it was expected like months ago and nothing. Their problem was the US market was no place for that phone - the purists already have enough to chose from with iPhones, Pixels and OnePluses. Contract-free price is meaningless there.
Sell that phone at 400eur/380gbp on this side of the pond, where a LOT of phones are bought flat out, sans-strings attached, and where we really appreciate that effort, and you would notice a market response. How they fail to see this is beyond me. Did I mention Pixels and iPhones are ultra-expensive here, and OnePlus is not every european's cup of tea?
I bet you an arm that, for that price, stock would go kaput as soon as this hit a launch in London or Paris.
taxes are pretty irrelevant in most countries still - in most scenarios people simply don't have to post gains in their anual forms, because there is no legislation for such matters.
In everything else you say, you're likely right. But currently, I doubt they are probing the blockchain for criminal activity, as many of the transactions of late are trading activity and it would be to hard to really pinpoint criminality.
As I said, they haven't sold most of those bitcoins. That's the beauty of the blockchain - you can see the money flowing. Billionaires change everyday and current investment volatility is mainly what makes the top tiers change on whatever rich list you'd like to use this week.
I personally love the way you whishful think your way out of the argument, and end it with something that shows all over the previous text. Your example of a bubble alone says much about the rest of your logic, so I will rest my case now.
After a re-read of my own comment, I have much more cringeworthy typos and incoherences than the uncany use of "crypto" for these digital currencies (which some even state aren't that much crypto to begin with). But my opinion is solid.
Full disclosure: I dont invest in btc, but have seen some friends get in on the action and make some safe cash by exitting precautiously. I don't have any regrets not investing myself, as I don't have that much cash to gamble, even now that I knew it raised so much from the moments I considered it. I always saw it as gambling my family's future in a feeling, and being in IT, I like more deterministic ways of spending my hard-earned savings.
Opinion: I think cryptocurrency is being the victim of professional investor shenanigans just like the real estate/mortgage economy was before the 2007 crash - speculation over econo-babble like the subprime bonds packaging is nothing more than the equivalent speculation over techno-babble blockchain, smart-contracts and whatnot. People are basically investing in something that someone is ensuring them will have value, yet WE ALL KNOW its worth is, at present time, only based on demand and not in actual use. all investors knows this but hope they might exit before it stabilizes. They are just being too greedy.
But this is exactly why I, unlike the 2007 crash, don't think all the fuzz is actually bad for crypto - only greedy investors will lose when crypto stabilizes, i.e. crashes. Because it likely WILL CRASH according to MOST savvy sources, such as Warren Buffet. Even the notables that do support crypto aren't stating verbatim it won't crash - they just state they believe in the concept for what it was made. And that's not growing in value exponentially to make people rich, but to provide fiat to those that do not want to depend on the centralized, yet divergent supervision of standard fiat.
When it crashes, people that really trully do use crypto for goods/services transactions will swarm to acquire it. And that's the beauty of it's purpose.
I believe only the really dumb, really greedy people will lose A LOT with the burst of the bubble - those that really can't see the writtings on the wall, keep their money "there" expecting unlimited growth. I will even provide a tongue-in-cheek commentaire: the largest BTC portfolio is currently in the hands of people that invented and let Facebook slide right under their noses (the Winklevoss twins). That surely has to mean something, and it's beyond me how they haven't sold their position yet with their experience on being late to the party.
Yet they have been corroborated a gazillion times and are, unusually, one of the most trusted sources of relevant information these days. Gonzo style journalism sux at first, but it has a "raison d'etre" that sinks in pretty damn fast.
I did my third post on reddit sometimes the last month, warning about a bad scheme on Amazon Prime trials, and all I got was banter about not reading the fuking manual and whatnot... I think (most) redditors are septemberists of the internet who have absolutely no idea on argumentation and will instantly vote no on anything that even attempts to bash anything they appreciate (in this case, Amazon Prime). Bu oh well maybe I'm a septemberist myself on reddit so I digress.
One thing I'm sure off - not going to reddit whenever I feel like trying to get relevant info out on anything. I'll just make a facebook share and I'm sure none of my friends will unlike it #egorub
Which is why the title is "still" logically wrong by a very relevant 21%. Creating clickbait titles with the "still" buzzword instead of the essential "only" word, as in "still ONLY rent or buy" (i.e. as you said it - "do not stream").
Furthermore, I'd say there is blatant editorial manipulation (even if unintentional) in the title, as it applies the exact phrasing of the content article - "(54%) STILL rents and buys" - and replaces 54% with the fake value of a third, 33%.
That right there is how you turn a very acceptable statistic into market speculation. The type of speculation that gets users, investors and the industry into dropping physical support of media, and then those 21% of people that still value it to some degree, and especially the 33% that rely entirely on it, are in the shit.