1996 called. Bill Clinton wants his Telecommunications Act act back. It let 6 corporations own 90% of all media by 2012. You know, before Trump was ever elected.
But don't let facts get in the way of your soapbox.
Textbook example of whataboutism. Can we focus on the thing that is being done right now, please? Rather than distract with something from 20 years ago?
Sure, raw chicken is fine, unless it has salmonella. In which case you are pretty much definitely getting ill.
It might be the case that our grandparents didn't worry about it, because salmonella was much rarer then with different farming techniques, but that doesn't mean that you can ignore it *now*...
Also, food poisoning sucks sooooo much I'd rather take some precautions than risk it again...
The odds of new customers heading this warning never to use Logitech products ever again is minuscule, meanwhile, it's likely at least a small percentage of the affected users will act against their own self interest and buy the new system despite knowing better from this experience.
End result for Logitech is likely positive, despite the fact that in a sane society it would sound their death knell.
Perhaps. But the drip drip does get through eventually. DRM on music was railed against for years before it became publicly accepted that it was a bad thing. We haven't had any big cloud failures yet but the message is getting through. Just wait until Valve or Amazon or Google make a big error. And then wait a bit longer... public understanding of tech is slow to change, but it does change.
That and legislation, because the market doesn't fix everything when companies are colluding, even if people care.
Urgh. I know imagination is not a valued trait here but you could atleast try. Repeat after me: "other people have lives that work differently"
If you haven't been on the site for 10 years then it's difficult to take your assessment seriously. If it had no value then people wouldn't use it. You're right, nobody *needs* it. But that doesn't mean it doesn't have value.
And I don't know why you're being so superior, if you use email then who's to say that all that information hasn't been captured and processed by Google or whoever? I suppose you encrypt your emails and share keys too? No I didn't think so. If you do then you are in an extremely narrow group who is able to impose that palaver on your friends.
If enough of your friends have uploaded their phone contacts, or email address book, then they already have your name, and who you are in contact with. That without even going into what can be done with facial recognition on their photos of you. Again, to get out, it's not just up to you, you have to persuade everyone you know to quit also.
I mean there is value in social networks, maybe not for you but different people have different setups and being where your friends are is useful. Staying in loose-contact with people outside the 6 or 7 that you are able to meet regularly is much easier, and in some cases only possible, with tools. But that's just personal choice, and you are free to make other choices.
The real issue here is that *you* are on Facebook whether you are signed up or not. If a sufficient number of your friends are, if the service is popular enough, then they can construct you from the hole that you leave. Your ability to opt out is being eroded.
At some point we're going to have to legislate and determine what is acceptable and normal in the digital-age. I know saying that on/. is virtual heresy... but this is moving past what the individual can do to protect themselves. We will have to act collectively to protect individual rights.
The BBC have an opinion piece that sums-up the changes across America in the last 50 years, and from my only semi-informed opinion it does have some plausible points.
The main thrust being that the US works better when it has a common foe to unite against. When the shared values between the different political parties are more obvious because of the scary 'other' that the Soviets represented. When enemies are taken away then internal divisions become paramount, and paralysis occurs.
There is an opinion on the Verge about how everybody has dud products once in a while... but at this point in a product, when you're building your brand in a new area, can easily taint the reputation permanently and kill off the entire project.
I guarantee this will have unintended consequences. Interviews will be much longer. We'll hear stories of people who BS their way through interviews to much higher positions than they're actually qualified for. It's going to be a learning process for companies. I know I've already shared this with other managers on my team...many of us hire folks in CA.
Or.... how about you offer the salary that you think is reasonable for the position? Interview the skill-level of the candidate? Rather than trying to judge it based on what someone else previously thought they were worth. You've no idea how good the previous employer was at judging their worth.
From the article: âoeFacebook isnâ(TM)t a luxury,â Darling said. âoeItâ(TM)s a utility in our lives. For something that big to be so secretive and powerful in how it accumulates your information is unnerving.â
That's one of her problems right there. It may be a utility, but it is not a mandatory utility. It is opt-in. Life goes on just fine without it. Some sheeple seem to think it's required that you sign up for a facebook account. It's a proven privacy violator. And as far as ethics go, Facebook is in the same category as uber. Just use other technologies instead.
*Some* sheeple like to quote simple "fixes" that put all the blame on the victim. Read some of the other posts why just leaving Facebook doesn't necessarily help - they have enough information now that your gap can be inferred from the friends that you have that *are* on Facebook.
I mean taking open source Android is inspectable, and far closer to a working system than any of those that you mention. If you want freedom and control it would be a better place to start.
Why not a device sold with a full featured standard Linux distribution with standard Window systems X11 and Wayland. There never was a need for Google to make yet another incompatable window system when it could have easily adapted X or Wayland to its needs. And please, I dont mean Ubuntus phone with Mir, which was a mistake since Canonical could have worked with Wayland folks to get whatever they needed added to Wayland for their phone project, Canonical coming up with Mir was sheer idiocy and threatened to splinter the Linux ecosystem into a bunch of incompatible window systems.
Eh? There never was a need..? Android was started years before Wayland existed.
What fundamental problem cannot be solved by trivially tweaking or skinning the existing OSes?
Freedom and control.
True, you can make Android give you a lot of this, but it takes quite a bit of work and technical knowledge.
More than creating an OS from scratch? I think a better starting point for this would be AOSP with whatever privacy controls you want layered on top. Which is the sort of thing that already exists, if that's important to you.
I would rather not get my hardware and OS from a company that generates over 90% of its income from advertisements.
Apple and Windows/amd64 OEMa have their issues but they do at least, for the most part, treat teh person buying the device as the customer, not the person buying the spy data.
*sigh*, this trope is getting pretty dull. Why are you willing to trust *any* company? Do we actually have any evidence of Google acting badly with people's data? Should be some by now. I get that modern tech trends are worrying - but I can't bring myself to be any more scared of Google than Microsoft or Apple, especially since MS have turned into a data company now too.
Could one do software development and testing while offline, with one of these puppies? e.g. Can I have linux in a VM or use docker containers etc in chromeos?
It's pretty straightforward. I haven't tried VMs though
Isn't that the exact problem - that we think we know how hard it is, but maybe we really don't? We have well-trained ourselves to expect very little of computer systems, they are woefully unreliable in ways that we just wouldn't expect from other things eg architecture or medicine. I think one of the most dangerous assumptions you can make is that things are easy and it's all fine - that's exactly the point where you end up with a 911 call system go down because of an integer overflow.
If you think "code is hard", then maybe SlashDot isn't the right site for you.
Yeah, you might actually be a good programmer then. All coders think they're better than they are - a bit of humility, and admitting the profession is woefully underdeveloped, would go a long way.
Having a smartphone is crucial in this day and age. I get it. But even a $200 phone, untethered from any carrier contract, will let you install the apps you need, will allow you to take good pictures, surf the web, and listen to music.
I guess web, music and photos are crucial to millenials. Or maybe they don't understand what crucial really means.
I just don't get this reflexive "bah millenials" stuff. Do you not see how much you have just turned into the old guy who shakes his fist at the children?
Are you seriously telling me that you can live a normal western life without access to the internet? That a normal existence can be had without music? They're not crucial like food, water & shelter, but come pretty soon after that, otherwise what actually is the point of life without the fun things?
they probably bought diversity since the billions they poured in "girl code" bootcamps didn't deliver the right kind of females they need to fill their ratios (i.e. non-white, non-asian).
It's becoming increasingly expensive and difficult to live up to their level of phony.
Ah, Slashdot, the bastion of white male insecurity. Why rail so hard against this stuff? It affects you hardly at all? Are you so unsure about your place in the industry that any attempt to get any other perspectives is somehow offensive to you? Can you not just let things happen without being an arsehole about it?
1) You personally not using technology is NOT resisting the spread of it. It still spreads. You can't resist the spread of technology. Even if you don't use it other people will, and this spreads it.
It often amuses me the number of people on this site in particular that crow about how they're not on Facebook, or they have their address book not synced to Google / Apple, and therefore are somehow 'off the grid'. They never think that this information is available by other means because other people do use the systems... phone books are highly corollated between groups and if enough of your address book have smartphones and have synced their addressbook not only is your name and number and address shared, probably your entire friendship group can be generated too. Networks can survive without some of the nodes.
2) You can use the technology while refusing the stupid abuses. For example, despite the moronic statement, in the article you can have a phone and not answer it. All cell phones have answering machines and if it is important, they text.
Interestingly maybe (and offtopically), this is very culturally dependent. In the UK you text someone if it's not urgent, and call if it is. Probably because here traditionally it cost money to call and didn't (or less) to text, whereas in the US (I'm assuming you're there) the billing was opposite to that.
KDE Plasma is very nice. It is currently the most advanced and polished desktop, of all o/s (not just Linux). Little annoyances (like incompatible clipboards) are a thing of the past. It's a very pleasant environment.
Between the old school GNOME and the buggy Cinnamon, KDE is a pretty good option.
Agreed - I was a dedicated 3.5 user and never followed into KDE 4 - through all its iterations over years I never liked it and used other WMs instead. Installed 5 about six months ago and never felt the need to look elsewhere.
It's like the least surprising thing in the world - the Note 7 got fantastic reviews and they are unlikely to have broken their large-phone making ability since then. Couple that with it being taken off sale / recalled so early means there's a good number of people that might have wanted a Note 7, but couldn't get one, so didn't get anything. There would be pend-up demand, so as long as they didn't make it worse, and wasn't flammable this time, it was gonna sell...
Slashdot Mirror
1996 called. Bill Clinton wants his Telecommunications Act act back. It let 6 corporations own 90% of all media by 2012. You know, before Trump was ever elected.
But don't let facts get in the way of your soapbox.
Textbook example of whataboutism. Can we focus on the thing that is being done right now, please? Rather than distract with something from 20 years ago?
Sure, raw chicken is fine, unless it has salmonella. In which case you are pretty much definitely getting ill.
It might be the case that our grandparents didn't worry about it, because salmonella was much rarer then with different farming techniques, but that doesn't mean that you can ignore it *now*...
Also, food poisoning sucks sooooo much I'd rather take some precautions than risk it again...
Guess again.
The odds of new customers heading this warning never to use Logitech products ever again is minuscule, meanwhile, it's likely at least a small percentage of the affected users will act against their own self interest and buy the new system despite knowing better from this experience.
End result for Logitech is likely positive, despite the fact that in a sane society it would sound their death knell.
Perhaps. But the drip drip does get through eventually. DRM on music was railed against for years before it became publicly accepted that it was a bad thing. We haven't had any big cloud failures yet but the message is getting through. Just wait until Valve or Amazon or Google make a big error. And then wait a bit longer... public understanding of tech is slow to change, but it does change.
That and legislation, because the market doesn't fix everything when companies are colluding, even if people care.
Urgh. I know imagination is not a valued trait here but you could atleast try. Repeat after me: "other people have lives that work differently"
If you haven't been on the site for 10 years then it's difficult to take your assessment seriously. If it had no value then people wouldn't use it. You're right, nobody *needs* it. But that doesn't mean it doesn't have value.
And I don't know why you're being so superior, if you use email then who's to say that all that information hasn't been captured and processed by Google or whoever? I suppose you encrypt your emails and share keys too? No I didn't think so. If you do then you are in an extremely narrow group who is able to impose that palaver on your friends.
If enough of your friends have uploaded their phone contacts, or email address book, then they already have your name, and who you are in contact with. That without even going into what can be done with facial recognition on their photos of you. Again, to get out, it's not just up to you, you have to persuade everyone you know to quit also.
I mean there is value in social networks, maybe not for you but different people have different setups and being where your friends are is useful. Staying in loose-contact with people outside the 6 or 7 that you are able to meet regularly is much easier, and in some cases only possible, with tools. But that's just personal choice, and you are free to make other choices.
The real issue here is that *you* are on Facebook whether you are signed up or not. If a sufficient number of your friends are, if the service is popular enough, then they can construct you from the hole that you leave. Your ability to opt out is being eroded.
At some point we're going to have to legislate and determine what is acceptable and normal in the digital-age. I know saying that on /. is virtual heresy... but this is moving past what the individual can do to protect themselves. We will have to act collectively to protect individual rights.
The BBC have an opinion piece that sums-up the changes across America in the last 50 years, and from my only semi-informed opinion it does have some plausible points.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/worl...
The main thrust being that the US works better when it has a common foe to unite against. When the shared values between the different political parties are more obvious because of the scary 'other' that the Soviets represented. When enemies are taken away then internal divisions become paramount, and paralysis occurs.
You sound angry.
Have you looked through your own post history..?
The phone helps mask your social disorders/psychological issues. Good for you!
Try living in a city, and therefore interacting with several thousand people every single day. See how long you can keep that up.
Not everyone is a needy extrovert.
There is an opinion on the Verge about how everybody has dud products once in a while... but at this point in a product, when you're building your brand in a new area, can easily taint the reputation permanently and kill off the entire project.
https://www.theverge.com/2017/...
> You mean the fact that Single Women just out of college earn more than their male counterparts, but an average of 8%?
Well then - this law helps you too. Everybody wins.
I guarantee this will have unintended consequences. Interviews will be much longer. We'll hear stories of people who BS their way through interviews to much higher positions than they're actually qualified for. It's going to be a learning process for companies. I know I've already shared this with other managers on my team...many of us hire folks in CA.
Or.... how about you offer the salary that you think is reasonable for the position? Interview the skill-level of the candidate? Rather than trying to judge it based on what someone else previously thought they were worth. You've no idea how good the previous employer was at judging their worth.
I love how this was passed thru (the law) because of male/female pay issues.
Yet another way that feminism is good for everyone.
From the article: âoeFacebook isnâ(TM)t a luxury,â Darling said. âoeItâ(TM)s a utility in our lives. For something that big to be so secretive and powerful in how it accumulates your information is unnerving.â
That's one of her problems right there. It may be a utility, but it is not a mandatory utility. It is opt-in. Life goes on just fine without it. Some sheeple seem to think it's required that you sign up for a facebook account. It's a proven privacy violator. And as far as ethics go, Facebook is in the same category as uber. Just use other technologies instead.
*Some* sheeple like to quote simple "fixes" that put all the blame on the victim. Read some of the other posts why just leaving Facebook doesn't necessarily help - they have enough information now that your gap can be inferred from the friends that you have that *are* on Facebook.
I mean taking open source Android is inspectable, and far closer to a working system than any of those that you mention. If you want freedom and control it would be a better place to start.
Why not a device sold with a full featured standard Linux distribution with standard Window systems X11 and Wayland. There never was a need for Google to make yet another incompatable window system when it could have easily adapted X or Wayland to its needs. And please, I dont mean Ubuntus phone with Mir, which was a mistake since Canonical could have worked with Wayland folks to get whatever they needed added to Wayland for their phone project, Canonical coming up with Mir was sheer idiocy and threatened to splinter the Linux ecosystem into a bunch of incompatible window systems.
Eh? There never was a need..? Android was started years before Wayland existed.
What fundamental problem cannot be solved by trivially tweaking or skinning the existing OSes?
Freedom and control.
True, you can make Android give you a lot of this, but it takes quite a bit of work and technical knowledge.
More than creating an OS from scratch? I think a better starting point for this would be AOSP with whatever privacy controls you want layered on top. Which is the sort of thing that already exists, if that's important to you.
I would rather not get my hardware and OS from a company that generates over 90% of its income from advertisements.
Apple and Windows/amd64 OEMa have their issues but they do at least, for the most part, treat teh person buying the device as the customer, not the person buying the spy data.
*sigh*, this trope is getting pretty dull. Why are you willing to trust *any* company? Do we actually have any evidence of Google acting badly with people's data? Should be some by now. I get that modern tech trends are worrying - but I can't bring myself to be any more scared of Google than Microsoft or Apple, especially since MS have turned into a data company now too.
Just curious.
Could one do software development and testing while offline, with one of these puppies? e.g. Can I have linux in a VM or use docker containers etc in chromeos?
It's pretty straightforward. I haven't tried VMs though
https://www.lifewire.com/insta...
Isn't that the exact problem - that we think we know how hard it is, but maybe we really don't? We have well-trained ourselves to expect very little of computer systems, they are woefully unreliable in ways that we just wouldn't expect from other things eg architecture or medicine. I think one of the most dangerous assumptions you can make is that things are easy and it's all fine - that's exactly the point where you end up with a 911 call system go down because of an integer overflow.
If you think "code is hard", then maybe SlashDot isn't the right site for you.
Yeah, you might actually be a good programmer then. All coders think they're better than they are - a bit of humility, and admitting the profession is woefully underdeveloped, would go a long way.
No, he presents facts too:
I guess web, music and photos are crucial to millenials. Or maybe they don't understand what crucial really means.
I just don't get this reflexive "bah millenials" stuff. Do you not see how much you have just turned into the old guy who shakes his fist at the children?
Are you seriously telling me that you can live a normal western life without access to the internet? That a normal existence can be had without music? They're not crucial like food, water & shelter, but come pretty soon after that, otherwise what actually is the point of life without the fun things?
they probably bought diversity since the billions they poured in "girl code" bootcamps didn't deliver the right kind of females they need to fill their ratios (i.e. non-white, non-asian).
It's becoming increasingly expensive and difficult to live up to their level of phony.
Ah, Slashdot, the bastion of white male insecurity. Why rail so hard against this stuff? It affects you hardly at all? Are you so unsure about your place in the industry that any attempt to get any other perspectives is somehow offensive to you? Can you not just let things happen without being an arsehole about it?
1) You personally not using technology is NOT resisting the spread of it. It still spreads. You can't resist the spread of technology. Even if you don't use it other people will, and this spreads it.
It often amuses me the number of people on this site in particular that crow about how they're not on Facebook, or they have their address book not synced to Google / Apple, and therefore are somehow 'off the grid'. They never think that this information is available by other means because other people do use the systems... phone books are highly corollated between groups and if enough of your address book have smartphones and have synced their addressbook not only is your name and number and address shared, probably your entire friendship group can be generated too. Networks can survive without some of the nodes.
2) You can use the technology while refusing the stupid abuses. For example, despite the moronic statement, in the article you can have a phone and not answer it. All cell phones have answering machines and if it is important, they text.
Interestingly maybe (and offtopically), this is very culturally dependent. In the UK you text someone if it's not urgent, and call if it is. Probably because here traditionally it cost money to call and didn't (or less) to text, whereas in the US (I'm assuming you're there) the billing was opposite to that.
I think the GNOME team would disagree.
KDE Plasma is very nice. It is currently the most advanced and polished desktop, of all o/s (not just Linux). Little annoyances (like incompatible clipboards) are a thing of the past. It's a very pleasant environment.
Between the old school GNOME and the buggy Cinnamon, KDE is a pretty good option.
Agreed - I was a dedicated 3.5 user and never followed into KDE 4 - through all its iterations over years I never liked it and used other WMs instead. Installed 5 about six months ago and never felt the need to look elsewhere.
It's like the least surprising thing in the world - the Note 7 got fantastic reviews and they are unlikely to have broken their large-phone making ability since then. Couple that with it being taken off sale / recalled so early means there's a good number of people that might have wanted a Note 7, but couldn't get one, so didn't get anything. There would be pend-up demand, so as long as they didn't make it worse, and wasn't flammable this time, it was gonna sell...