Those are the kind of things that won't make a company change its practices, only retreat further into finding new ways to hide cheating software while simultaneously not helping the people who get cars (VW was hardly the only car manufacturer to engage in this cheating).
Freeing the car software by distributing complete source code and build/install instructions under a free software license plus making cars that use the same or compatible software would help the car owner far more. This is entirely reasonable to demand on its own sake as an affected vehicle owner and precisely because this case highlights the unjust power over everyone's need to breathe cleaner air. As a minor practical matter, car owners who aren't so technical could take a copy of the software to someone they trust for inspection, modification, and reinstallation (just as car owners take their cars to garages, detail cleaners, tire shops, and any other specialist firm to get work done). It's worth noting that my call is not a call for "open source" or "opening" anything. The open source development methodology is quite content to throw aside its own message if that development methodology gets in the way of business desires for control over the user (as is the heart of the case both in this scandal and in this discussion thread). The older free software social movement has the right take on things: demand respect for users' software freedom to liberate users from the control of proprietary software.
Software freedom (respecting a computer user's freedoms to run, share, and modify software at any time for any reason even commercially) is valuable for its own sake and the car manufacturers know it. That's why they're willing to pay some money or send a small number of people to jail now. Those steps protect their ability to cheat again leveraging the power of proprietary software (user-subjugating software) when they think they can get away with it.
Don't blame the free software movement for that. The free software hackers who make the Linux-libre variant of the Linux kernel spend time deblobbing the upstream kernel (Linus Torvald's variant) which contains non-free software. This difference is at the heart of the philosophical difference between the older free software movement and the younger open source development methodology. They don't see proprietary (non-free, user-subjugating) software the same way.
...people from the free software movement and the open source camp often work together on practical projects such as software development. It is remarkable that such different philosophical views can so often motivate different people to participate in the same projects. Nonetheless, there are situations where these fundamentally different views lead to very different actions.
The idea of open source is that allowing users to change and redistribute the software will make it more powerful and reliable. But this is not guaranteed. Developers of proprietary software are not necessarily incompetent. Sometimes they produce a program that is powerful and reliable, even though it does not respect the users' freedom. Free software activists and open source enthusiasts will react very differently to that.
A pure open source enthusiast, one that is not at all influenced by the ideals of free software, will say, "I am surprised you were able to make the program work so well without using our development model, but you did. How can I get a copy?" This attitude will reward schemes that take away our freedom, leading to its loss.
The free software activist will say, "Your program is very attractive, but I value my freedom more. So I reject your program. I will get my work done some other way, and support a project to develop a free replacement." If we value our freedom, we can act to maintain and defend it.
That's actually a non-sequitur but you offer it as if it were a proper response to the point the grandparent post made. That's no justification for Apple's choices. Be it employing Foxconn, a firm with worker labor standards so low they installed suicide nets on the building outer wall after a spate of worker suicides came to public attention, or Pegatron which seemed to have lower standards than Foxconn, forbidding recycling extractable & usable spare parts from old computers, freeing the source code to systems they're not distributing anymore such as the Newton (distributing non-free code is bad as well), setting up devices to be bricked if non-authorized repair workers work on the device like they do with the iPhone 7, campaigning against right-to-repair laws, practicing censorship, spying on users, or pioneering tax avoidance techniques, there are lots of good reasons to not do business with Apple.
I recall that being an entirely different issue from what's at issue in this/. thread. This thread concerns possibly buggy free software in need of some maintenance and review. Microsoft's patent licence for.NET core is a threat of a different kind—Microsoft's patents covering software in Mono and licensing that doesn't grant users the freedoms of free software work together to grant Microsoft the power to extracting patent royalties from free software distributors.
This means no matter how much skill Android users possess Android users can't usefully investigate and fix the leveraged vulnerabilities themselves should they wish to do so or hire someone to do so on their behalf. The most they could do is write an exploit which demonstrates the bug, report the bug with the exploit program, and hope the proprietor takes corrective action. Upgrading to another version of proprietary software is no real fix as it could (at best) mean trading in fixes for these bugs in for other bugs the users are prevented from usefully investigate and fix. The user being rather helpless to improve their own situation or help their community all along the way. This is how proprietary (read: non-free, user-subjugating) software treats its users.
All complex software has bugs, proprietary OSes and apps are no exception, but as the GNU Project points out, "The difference between free software and nonfree software is in whether the users have control of the program or vice versa. It's not directly a question of what the program does when it runs. However, in practice nonfree software is often malware, because the developer's awareness that the users would be powerless to fix any malicious functionalities tempts the developer to impose some.". Since there aren't any free software tracker (none might be possible so long as the phone network insists on proprietary control over the user's device) this is also an opportunity to learn to say no to proprietary control and do without a tracker (and, yes, particularly given the context of this thread it is proper to call them 'trackers' and not 'cell phones' or 'mobile phones', names which help obscure the main reason organizations want users to get these devices and install apps in the first place).
It's easy to say "Evil speech is harmful" but not so easy to put any meaning to that glib statement. Noam Chomsky reminds us that free speech means being very tolerant for views one does not agree with which gives rise to the idea that the fix for whatever one might deem 'bad speech' is more speech: "Goebbels was in favor of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you're really in favor of free speech, then you're in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise. Otherwise, you're not in favor of free speech." Niemoller ("First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out-because I was not a Socialist.... Then they came for me-and there was no one left to speak for me.") reminds us to ask how long until one's ideas are deemed "evil", "terroristic", or whatever other language triggers censorship on a particular hosting service.
In the meantime, it's easy to upload to multiple places (such as archive.org) and host one's videos on one's own server thus avoiding YouTube's censorship altogether. I know this is a difficult tack to take on/.; take one look at any story having to do with proprietary software and see how quickly the posts advocating software freedom for its own sake are downvoted (without comment, of course, due to the structure of/.'s moderation system) while business-friendly (pro-DRM, pro-tinkering at the edges of giving into proprietary control) posts are left alone or upvoted. A far cry from what/. used to be when it began. I imagine different discussion sites have differing ad-hoc effective defintions for what's objectionable. All the more reason to host one's own blog.
According to https://www.raptorcs.com/TALOS... Raptor Engineering is working on Talos II. They claim it "Libre-friendly, powerful, and competitively priced the new, POWER9-based Talos II takes flight in early August 2017!" so not long to wait before we can evaluate the specs and price. Debian GNU/Linux has a POWER9 port which I'd expect would run on such hardware.
Even the third-party solutions that aim to turn this spying off aren't 100-percent successful.
Of course they're not. The proprietor determines how successful anyone's programs will be because with proprietary software the proprietor sets the rules. "Turning off" spying for proprietary software means nothing no matter what a GUI, configuration changes, or some admin tells you because none of these things can compete with the degree of control the proprietor has over the program or (in the case of proprietary OSes like Windows and MacOS) the system. One who uses such a system expecting privacy controls to respect the user's wishes is fighting a fight they cannot win, by design. That is the nature of proprietary (non-free, user-subjugating) software.
Therefore the decision has to be made: proprietors push you to consider what you really want. Do you want the freedoms of free software even if that means lacking some of the conveniences proprietary software ostensibly offers (some of those conveniences are genuine and robustly implemented but come with a heavy price of non-freedom, some of those conveniences are completely illusory and traps for people who write from the quoted perspective above like DRM)? Free software (software users are free to run, inspect, share, and modify) is available and meets a lot of modern needs even on older hardware that doesn't contain backdoors like the Intel AMT. Arguments against software freedom invariably come from those prioritizing convenience over the privacy users say they want (including standing by such speech by "jailbreaking" their phones; a telling word about the default status of the phone's user).
Microsoft said in a statement that it "discovered a warning message that should have existed was missing when a user attempted to store their OneDrive folder on a non-NTFS filesystem -- which was immediately remedied." According to Ars, Microsoft's position, apparently, is that OneDrive should always have warned about these usage scenarios and that it's only a bug or an oversight that allowed non-NTFS volumes to work.
Their statement and the explanation they offer are a clear example of leveraging the power software proprietors all have: the power to make the terms of the product or service work the way they want it to work and change those terms at any time (including whether to notify users or get the user's consent).
I think it's a service to ship products known to work with fully-free OSes (such as the OSes the FSF points us to) right out of the box, and comes with free software installed (such as a free BIOS with no blobs). Even merely identifying which hardware will work with a fully-free system is doing us a favor; I've certainly appreciated this investigative effort for routers and desktop computers. I also think it's a service to do this with more hardware than was offered before; not just laptops but systems capable of being reasonably adequate desktop and speedy multi-core server systems which really work for many modern uses (the FSF's servers are such systems, for instance, as they show these systems can do real-world service and workstation jobs). When John Sullivan said "Users now have more options than ever when it comes to hardware they can trust" he was right. Finally, other distributors have done this before and I'm glad to see more distributors do the same even if they're distributing more of the same hardware we already knew would respect our software freedom. To say these organizations offer nothing of value strikes me as unfair to what they're offering and the work involved in providing the service commercially. Ultimately that's an example of what I explained in my parent post about eschewing software freedom for its own sake.
It's a shame that software freedom isn't the norm: one can't be sure a free BIOS, for instance, will work on a newer system, or that the system doesn't come with backdoors advertised as sysadmin conveniences (like Intel's AMT). There's still more work to be done on software freedom, more firmware to be understood and freed, more hardware that needs free software drivers. I'm guessing that work will be done by people who do the tough investigative work and take the risks of offering liberated hardware for sale, not by those who think nothing of value has been added.
Coveted by people who value computing in freedom, and not evaluating only by convenience and price as most computer users are taught to do. This is another example of the division between a free software activist and an open source enthusiast as the FSF pointed out years ago in a couple of essays (older essay, newer essay).
/. is mostly filled (since years ago) by open source enthusiasts—business-first commenters for whom software freedom is never celebrated for its own sake (sometimes even chastising software freedom should someone dare to bring it up), and where any discussion of software freedom is begrudgingly tolerated only on stories where software freedom is the only way to avoid the calamity described in the story. Otherwise, evaluations come down to convenience and price with virtually no acknowledgement for how things got to be how they are.SaaS, pro-DRM are the focus (even while virtually every DRM story is about how customers are being treated badly with DRM) with discussions focusing on tinkering at the edges (DRM scheme X is not as painful as DRM scheme Y) which tacitly accepts that DRM is right and proper, and plenty of excuse-making for those in power over computer users. It's sad for those who remember that/. conversations used to be far more insightful. Fortunately there are plenty of other tech discussions around these days and/. loses its relevance as/. has long come off as just another corporate so-called "journalism" repeater site with pointers to readily-available press releases. Interesting like watching a trainwreck, but sad knowing it was better and could be better again if more people were interested in mature discussions without belittling.
All variants of Microsoft Windows could be malware because all proprietary software could be malware. There's no reason to point to just Windows 10 as it shares the same problems other non-free OSes and non-free programs do. The only way to get software you can trust is to only run free software on your computer—software that respects one's freedom to run, share, inspect, and modify.
When you prioritize convenience by saying "leaving it [Windows] isn't a viable option" you've narrowed the allowable terms of debate such that only proprietary (untrustworthy) software can do the job. You've come up with something that is meant to sound strong-willed ("Amount of data required to be sent to Microsoft to ensure proper operation of Windows is 0 bytes.") but it actually weak-willed because it's a condition you're willing to cave in on. The solution is to stand up for software freedom for its own sake, hire people to write the free software you need to do the job and modify the job parameters to be solved by free software that already exists by pressing free software into service, not caving into proprietary software. The moment you cave into proprietary software again you're right back at the software you cannot trust and you've solved nothing.
Until Microsoft changes the source code to do something else. That's the thing about source code: people alter it and make programs do different things, so we need the freedoms of free software to control our computers, help keep people honest, and treat each other ethically.
But the freedoms of free software are still missing. Having a snapshot of what Windows code looked like at one time doesn't grant one the freedom to improve that code, distribute (including commercially) that code (or a variant of that code), and thus control one's computer or help one's community by distributing improved code.
Not just a tax avoiding company, but led by one who seems to value glib vaguely-feelgood nonsense akin to President Trump's 'make America great again': "I care deeply about America. I want America to do well. America's more important than bloody politics from my point of view.". Dealing with politics is part of dealing with the very topics he goes on about such as health care delivery. If Apple or Cook cared as much as he claims (which is a bit confusing since he clearly wants us to believe he cares but he also says "I could give a crap about the politics of it" which some people erroneously say to mean they don't care but the misstatement actually means they care), then he'd support universalizing Medicare. HR676 does this on a national scale, and Apple should endorse this and encourage California's Congresspeople to help bring it to a vote and vote for it. Apple doesn't just have employees in California, after all, they've got a lot of employees in other US states all of whom deserve health care as a right.
What users need is software freedom (the freedom to run, edit, and share the complete corresponding source code to the software) so they can alter the software as they wish, point the device to whatever site they want for updates, and genuinely own their computers. There's no good reason to keep a domain going and address this in a monopoly-sustaining surface level way. Keeping a domain going is not really the issue nor is that a thorough solution to the underlying problem.
I highly recommend the book & documentary "The Corporation"—watch it online and buy a copy. I highly recommend the 2-disc DVD set because the interviews and extras on the second DVD are compelling. It continues to be valuable to debunk the corporate-friendly media that passes for informative entertainment today. I watch this documentary at least once a year and I always manage to find something I'd almost forgotten in it. It's deeply informative, compelling, and the underlying thesis is intriguing. Rewatching with the audio commentary (particularly the Joel Bakan commentary which continues the examination and places a few figures in a more interesting context, such as one of the CEOs that got high praise for his interview but can be seen in an entirely different light when one thinks about his role as a CEO) is also highly recommended.
I see on their homepage (linked above) that they're working on a sequel as well.
Apple's OSes also don't properly handle the Matroska container by default. Matroska is used a lot in modern multimedia (including a limited subset of the Matroska container used for years in WebM). I think that Apple's choices help render Apple's OSes as also-rans and I wouldn't be surprised if this is based in Apple's preference for patent-encumbered stuff to which Apple is a licensee or beneficiary.
That's a question we can't answer without knowing more about the application and ultimately modern developers do develop for multiple OSes. One approach is to release the program as free software (users purchase the program and get a copy of the program licensed such that they may run, inspect, share, and modify the software) and users may help port the program to other systems and architectures. But ultimately your business needs are not more important than society's needs for not running any arbitrary program their browser is instructed to download and run. That's the model we have now and it's highly unsafe.
I'm not convinced that client-side calculation is a good thing in the cases you list because what you call "a form submission and a full page reload" doesn't strike me as tedious, too long, or generally bad. I think that the most commonly used web browsers have made a horribly bad tradeoff by allowing ad-hoc downloaded code to be executed client-side and have full access to the user's computer. I'm distinguishing between code one has a chance to run, study, modify, and share (free software browser code) and free software one downloads ad-hoc as part of a webpage (for which no browser, not even free browsers, has yet given the user a chance to truly leverage the freedoms of free software before executing, despite license notification and add-ons to handle running only free software like LibreJS). Javascript and other client-side programming languages are too powerful to do what browsers commonly do today in default installs. This creates a lot of vectors for security problems akin to using insecure plugins which take unvetted input from a web server and run it. I don't think a round-trip page reload is problematic in light of the security risks that come with running what is realistically unvettable code. The successes I see with NoScript and friends tell me that not running code client-side by default is the right way to go.
I'd much rather take the path CSS appears (to me) to be taking: figure out what non-executing features people need and make CSS syntax do those jobs. If you need form validation, bring up your needs to people who discuss CSS and perhaps you can find a way to do regular expression-based validation with a regex parser that's not as powerful as PCRE but sufficiently powerful to tell if this phone number or credit card number is likely to be valid. But I'm not even convinced that server-side validation here is the problem you think it is.
I also don't think that walled garden censorship is an excuse for justifying that everything should be implementable on the web. Those are separate issues and neither acknowledges legitimate privacy and security concerns with modern browsing in default settings (which I believe is what most users use). Programmers have always accepted that not every program can run in every environment or be implemented with every programming language. It's time privacy and security get higher priority and people learn to say no due to considered tradeoffs. Technical limitations of this sort can be right and proper to have.
CSS doesn't bother me because (as far as I know) CSS has no way to do the things I don't like about running unvettable programs client-side such as reading/altering/deleting client-side files, doing stuff over the network, detecting client settings, and more. CSS is specification, not programming, but even if it were programming it wouldn't have to offer an API that lets programmers do the things programmers do with Javascript. Sure, some font and image handlers are broken and specially-crafted fonts or images can leverage that broken code taking advantage of an insecurity. But that's not CSS's fault. A font or image library fix and that security hole is patched, no changes to CSS are being made.
I'm not saying ditch Windows. I'm saying let's fix this. If we can't fix it, then we ditch Windows.
You should be saying ditch proprietary software precisely because nobody but the proprietor (the very party you can't trust) is legally allowed to fix this (where the word "fix" is a fix from the user's perspective, of course, since the software already works as the proprietor has programmed it to work). That's what proprietary software means and that power over the user is why proprietors distribute their software without respecting a user's freedoms to run, share, and modify the software at any time for any reason. The system's behavior can change at any time, so even if someone monitors what a particular variant of a non-free, user-subjugating OS does now that can change later. Perhaps the software only does something bad under conditions one doesn't typically reach, or maybe an update changes how the software behaves. Furthermore, said software updates don't have to come through an updating program which seeks a user's approval before installation (such as Windows Updates).
The GNU Project has no shortage of proprietary Microsoft malware and that includes universal backdoors, snooping on user's activities, ignoring user's settings on so-called 'privacy' settings, and sending identifiable data to Microsoft and third parties ("even if a user turns off its Bing search and Cortana features, and activates the privacy-protection settings").
Fastest at delivering its users into the hands of a known spy and needless (from the user's perspective) activity tracker: Google. But this declaration of capitulation to that interest ("Chrome won") highlights a difference between the older free software movement and the younger open source endeavor. That view exhibits the limits of allowable debate of the open source development methodology which is designed to chiefly serve business desires and eschew software freedom (the freedom to run, share, and modify published computer software at the heart of the social movement known as the free software movement). Chrome is said to "win" something valuable when measured by business values, namely short-term popularity or convenience without regard to user's needs, needs that can only be met with software freedom (including increased security, inspectability, and letting users control their own computers). Fortunately most of Firefox's code is free software and can be improved independently of motivations to give into such valuation and endorse non-free software such as Chrome.
Despite being deprecated by MSFT for years, SMB1 is alive and well with Sonos. There is no SMB2+ support, there is no timeline nor any commitment to add SMB2+ support.
I'm not familiar with this product or Sonos but this sounds proprietary.
I don't understand how a company that prides itself on making premium audio products doesn't put security ahead of other software development priorities. One juicy scandal can cause way more damage than the modest cost of implementing readily-available SMB2-3.11 server/client software packages.
Not reimplementing any part of the product is more profitable and most computer users are non-technical so they don't understand what SMB is let alone which revision is known to be insecure. Users should be advised to liberate themselves from Sonos' control over the user's computers; seek other ways to play the audio, ways that respect a user's freedom to run, modify, and share (including commercially). Perhaps reconsider Sonos if they distribute products that respect a user's software freedom. After all, if the security issues you describe are important enough that should be sufficient justification to seek the freedoms you deserve with or without Sonos' help.
Asking about one's skill with editing old code has nothing to do with the need for treating other people ethically by respecting users' software freedoms. Just because you aren't skilled enough to track what's going on in code from week to week doesn't justify denying users the freedom to run, inspect, share, and modify the code running on their computers. Non-technical users (which probably are in the majority) can either learn programming, hire out the job, get someone they trust to help them gratis, or a combination of these things. But the decision should be up to them to make, just as your learning curve is apparently steep enough for you to review week-old code and think it to be "shit".
It's the freedom of software that's crucial, not a development methodology of an unstable ABI. Binary firmware blobs are a source of problems; firmware is remarkably powerful and capable and there's no way to have good security with non-free firmware. Firmware for the system persists and provides spying powers that span OSes (install whatever OS, the firmware that acts as a keylogger keeps working). Proprietors including Google make considerable money from spying, but I suspect the real competition for them is in being a monopoly for the spying data they can provide—don't let others provide data proprietor X can provide or else the value of proprietor X's data goes down.
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Those are the kind of things that won't make a company change its practices, only retreat further into finding new ways to hide cheating software while simultaneously not helping the people who get cars (VW was hardly the only car manufacturer to engage in this cheating).
Freeing the car software by distributing complete source code and build/install instructions under a free software license plus making cars that use the same or compatible software would help the car owner far more. This is entirely reasonable to demand on its own sake as an affected vehicle owner and precisely because this case highlights the unjust power over everyone's need to breathe cleaner air. As a minor practical matter, car owners who aren't so technical could take a copy of the software to someone they trust for inspection, modification, and reinstallation (just as car owners take their cars to garages, detail cleaners, tire shops, and any other specialist firm to get work done). It's worth noting that my call is not a call for "open source" or "opening" anything. The open source development methodology is quite content to throw aside its own message if that development methodology gets in the way of business desires for control over the user (as is the heart of the case both in this scandal and in this discussion thread). The older free software social movement has the right take on things: demand respect for users' software freedom to liberate users from the control of proprietary software.
Software freedom (respecting a computer user's freedoms to run, share, and modify software at any time for any reason even commercially) is valuable for its own sake and the car manufacturers know it. That's why they're willing to pay some money or send a small number of people to jail now. Those steps protect their ability to cheat again leveraging the power of proprietary software (user-subjugating software) when they think they can get away with it.
Don't blame the free software movement for that. The free software hackers who make the Linux-libre variant of the Linux kernel spend time deblobbing the upstream kernel (Linus Torvald's variant) which contains non-free software. This difference is at the heart of the philosophical difference between the older free software movement and the younger open source development methodology. They don't see proprietary (non-free, user-subjugating) software the same way.
The GNU Project points out:
That's actually a non-sequitur but you offer it as if it were a proper response to the point the grandparent post made. That's no justification for Apple's choices. Be it employing Foxconn, a firm with worker labor standards so low they installed suicide nets on the building outer wall after a spate of worker suicides came to public attention, or Pegatron which seemed to have lower standards than Foxconn, forbidding recycling extractable & usable spare parts from old computers, freeing the source code to systems they're not distributing anymore such as the Newton (distributing non-free code is bad as well), setting up devices to be bricked if non-authorized repair workers work on the device like they do with the iPhone 7, campaigning against right-to-repair laws, practicing censorship, spying on users, or pioneering tax avoidance techniques, there are lots of good reasons to not do business with Apple.
I recall that being an entirely different issue from what's at issue in this /. thread. This thread concerns possibly buggy free software in need of some maintenance and review. Microsoft's patent licence for .NET core is a threat of a different kind—Microsoft's patents covering software in Mono and licensing that doesn't grant users the freedoms of free software work together to grant Microsoft the power to extracting patent royalties from free software distributors.
This means no matter how much skill Android users possess Android users can't usefully investigate and fix the leveraged vulnerabilities themselves should they wish to do so or hire someone to do so on their behalf. The most they could do is write an exploit which demonstrates the bug, report the bug with the exploit program, and hope the proprietor takes corrective action. Upgrading to another version of proprietary software is no real fix as it could (at best) mean trading in fixes for these bugs in for other bugs the users are prevented from usefully investigate and fix. The user being rather helpless to improve their own situation or help their community all along the way. This is how proprietary (read: non-free, user-subjugating) software treats its users.
All complex software has bugs, proprietary OSes and apps are no exception, but as the GNU Project points out, "The difference between free software and nonfree software is in whether the users have control of the program or vice versa. It's not directly a question of what the program does when it runs. However, in practice nonfree software is often malware, because the developer's awareness that the users would be powerless to fix any malicious functionalities tempts the developer to impose some.". Since there aren't any free software tracker (none might be possible so long as the phone network insists on proprietary control over the user's device) this is also an opportunity to learn to say no to proprietary control and do without a tracker (and, yes, particularly given the context of this thread it is proper to call them 'trackers' and not 'cell phones' or 'mobile phones', names which help obscure the main reason organizations want users to get these devices and install apps in the first place).
It's easy to say "Evil speech is harmful" but not so easy to put any meaning to that glib statement. Noam Chomsky reminds us that free speech means being very tolerant for views one does not agree with which gives rise to the idea that the fix for whatever one might deem 'bad speech' is more speech: "Goebbels was in favor of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you're really in favor of free speech, then you're in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise. Otherwise, you're not in favor of free speech." Niemoller ("First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out-because I was not a Socialist. ... Then they came for me-and there was no one left to speak for me.") reminds us to ask how long until one's ideas are deemed "evil", "terroristic", or whatever other language triggers censorship on a particular hosting service.
In the meantime, it's easy to upload to multiple places (such as archive.org) and host one's videos on one's own server thus avoiding YouTube's censorship altogether. I know this is a difficult tack to take on /.; take one look at any story having to do with proprietary software and see how quickly the posts advocating software freedom for its own sake are downvoted (without comment, of course, due to the structure of /.'s moderation system) while business-friendly (pro-DRM, pro-tinkering at the edges of giving into proprietary control) posts are left alone or upvoted. A far cry from what /. used to be when it began. I imagine different discussion sites have differing ad-hoc effective defintions for what's objectionable. All the more reason to host one's own blog.
According to https://www.raptorcs.com/TALOS... Raptor Engineering is working on Talos II. They claim it "Libre-friendly, powerful, and competitively priced the new, POWER9-based Talos II takes flight in early August 2017!" so not long to wait before we can evaluate the specs and price. Debian GNU/Linux has a POWER9 port which I'd expect would run on such hardware.
Of course they're not. The proprietor determines how successful anyone's programs will be because with proprietary software the proprietor sets the rules. "Turning off" spying for proprietary software means nothing no matter what a GUI, configuration changes, or some admin tells you because none of these things can compete with the degree of control the proprietor has over the program or (in the case of proprietary OSes like Windows and MacOS) the system. One who uses such a system expecting privacy controls to respect the user's wishes is fighting a fight they cannot win, by design. That is the nature of proprietary (non-free, user-subjugating) software.
Therefore the decision has to be made: proprietors push you to consider what you really want. Do you want the freedoms of free software even if that means lacking some of the conveniences proprietary software ostensibly offers (some of those conveniences are genuine and robustly implemented but come with a heavy price of non-freedom, some of those conveniences are completely illusory and traps for people who write from the quoted perspective above like DRM)? Free software (software users are free to run, inspect, share, and modify) is available and meets a lot of modern needs even on older hardware that doesn't contain backdoors like the Intel AMT. Arguments against software freedom invariably come from those prioritizing convenience over the privacy users say they want (including standing by such speech by "jailbreaking" their phones; a telling word about the default status of the phone's user).
Their statement and the explanation they offer are a clear example of leveraging the power software proprietors all have: the power to make the terms of the product or service work the way they want it to work and change those terms at any time (including whether to notify users or get the user's consent).
I think it's a service to ship products known to work with fully-free OSes (such as the OSes the FSF points us to) right out of the box, and comes with free software installed (such as a free BIOS with no blobs). Even merely identifying which hardware will work with a fully-free system is doing us a favor; I've certainly appreciated this investigative effort for routers and desktop computers. I also think it's a service to do this with more hardware than was offered before; not just laptops but systems capable of being reasonably adequate desktop and speedy multi-core server systems which really work for many modern uses (the FSF's servers are such systems, for instance, as they show these systems can do real-world service and workstation jobs). When John Sullivan said "Users now have more options than ever when it comes to hardware they can trust" he was right. Finally, other distributors have done this before and I'm glad to see more distributors do the same even if they're distributing more of the same hardware we already knew would respect our software freedom. To say these organizations offer nothing of value strikes me as unfair to what they're offering and the work involved in providing the service commercially. Ultimately that's an example of what I explained in my parent post about eschewing software freedom for its own sake.
It's a shame that software freedom isn't the norm: one can't be sure a free BIOS, for instance, will work on a newer system, or that the system doesn't come with backdoors advertised as sysadmin conveniences (like Intel's AMT). There's still more work to be done on software freedom, more firmware to be understood and freed, more hardware that needs free software drivers. I'm guessing that work will be done by people who do the tough investigative work and take the risks of offering liberated hardware for sale, not by those who think nothing of value has been added.
Coveted by people who value computing in freedom, and not evaluating only by convenience and price as most computer users are taught to do. This is another example of the division between a free software activist and an open source enthusiast as the FSF pointed out years ago in a couple of essays (older essay, newer essay).
/. is mostly filled (since years ago) by open source enthusiasts—business-first commenters for whom software freedom is never celebrated for its own sake (sometimes even chastising software freedom should someone dare to bring it up), and where any discussion of software freedom is begrudgingly tolerated only on stories where software freedom is the only way to avoid the calamity described in the story. Otherwise, evaluations come down to convenience and price with virtually no acknowledgement for how things got to be how they are.SaaS, pro-DRM are the focus (even while virtually every DRM story is about how customers are being treated badly with DRM) with discussions focusing on tinkering at the edges (DRM scheme X is not as painful as DRM scheme Y) which tacitly accepts that DRM is right and proper, and plenty of excuse-making for those in power over computer users. It's sad for those who remember that /. conversations used to be far more insightful. Fortunately there are plenty of other tech discussions around these days and /. loses its relevance as /. has long come off as just another corporate so-called "journalism" repeater site with pointers to readily-available press releases. Interesting like watching a trainwreck, but sad knowing it was better and could be better again if more people were interested in mature discussions without belittling.
All variants of Microsoft Windows could be malware because all proprietary software could be malware. There's no reason to point to just Windows 10 as it shares the same problems other non-free OSes and non-free programs do. The only way to get software you can trust is to only run free software on your computer—software that respects one's freedom to run, share, inspect, and modify.
When you prioritize convenience by saying "leaving it [Windows] isn't a viable option" you've narrowed the allowable terms of debate such that only proprietary (untrustworthy) software can do the job. You've come up with something that is meant to sound strong-willed ("Amount of data required to be sent to Microsoft to ensure proper operation of Windows is 0 bytes.") but it actually weak-willed because it's a condition you're willing to cave in on. The solution is to stand up for software freedom for its own sake, hire people to write the free software you need to do the job and modify the job parameters to be solved by free software that already exists by pressing free software into service, not caving into proprietary software. The moment you cave into proprietary software again you're right back at the software you cannot trust and you've solved nothing.
Until Microsoft changes the source code to do something else. That's the thing about source code: people alter it and make programs do different things, so we need the freedoms of free software to control our computers, help keep people honest, and treat each other ethically.
But the freedoms of free software are still missing. Having a snapshot of what Windows code looked like at one time doesn't grant one the freedom to improve that code, distribute (including commercially) that code (or a variant of that code), and thus control one's computer or help one's community by distributing improved code.
Not just a tax avoiding company, but led by one who seems to value glib vaguely-feelgood nonsense akin to President Trump's 'make America great again': "I care deeply about America. I want America to do well. America's more important than bloody politics from my point of view.". Dealing with politics is part of dealing with the very topics he goes on about such as health care delivery. If Apple or Cook cared as much as he claims (which is a bit confusing since he clearly wants us to believe he cares but he also says "I could give a crap about the politics of it" which some people erroneously say to mean they don't care but the misstatement actually means they care), then he'd support universalizing Medicare. HR676 does this on a national scale, and Apple should endorse this and encourage California's Congresspeople to help bring it to a vote and vote for it. Apple doesn't just have employees in California, after all, they've got a lot of employees in other US states all of whom deserve health care as a right.
What users need is software freedom (the freedom to run, edit, and share the complete corresponding source code to the software) so they can alter the software as they wish, point the device to whatever site they want for updates, and genuinely own their computers. There's no good reason to keep a domain going and address this in a monopoly-sustaining surface level way. Keeping a domain going is not really the issue nor is that a thorough solution to the underlying problem.
I highly recommend the book & documentary "The Corporation"—watch it online and buy a copy. I highly recommend the 2-disc DVD set because the interviews and extras on the second DVD are compelling. It continues to be valuable to debunk the corporate-friendly media that passes for informative entertainment today. I watch this documentary at least once a year and I always manage to find something I'd almost forgotten in it. It's deeply informative, compelling, and the underlying thesis is intriguing. Rewatching with the audio commentary (particularly the Joel Bakan commentary which continues the examination and places a few figures in a more interesting context, such as one of the CEOs that got high praise for his interview but can be seen in an entirely different light when one thinks about his role as a CEO) is also highly recommended.
I see on their homepage (linked above) that they're working on a sequel as well.
Apple's OSes also don't properly handle the Matroska container by default. Matroska is used a lot in modern multimedia (including a limited subset of the Matroska container used for years in WebM). I think that Apple's choices help render Apple's OSes as also-rans and I wouldn't be surprised if this is based in Apple's preference for patent-encumbered stuff to which Apple is a licensee or beneficiary.
That's a question we can't answer without knowing more about the application and ultimately modern developers do develop for multiple OSes. One approach is to release the program as free software (users purchase the program and get a copy of the program licensed such that they may run, inspect, share, and modify the software) and users may help port the program to other systems and architectures. But ultimately your business needs are not more important than society's needs for not running any arbitrary program their browser is instructed to download and run. That's the model we have now and it's highly unsafe.
I'm not convinced that client-side calculation is a good thing in the cases you list because what you call "a form submission and a full page reload" doesn't strike me as tedious, too long, or generally bad. I think that the most commonly used web browsers have made a horribly bad tradeoff by allowing ad-hoc downloaded code to be executed client-side and have full access to the user's computer. I'm distinguishing between code one has a chance to run, study, modify, and share (free software browser code) and free software one downloads ad-hoc as part of a webpage (for which no browser, not even free browsers, has yet given the user a chance to truly leverage the freedoms of free software before executing, despite license notification and add-ons to handle running only free software like LibreJS). Javascript and other client-side programming languages are too powerful to do what browsers commonly do today in default installs. This creates a lot of vectors for security problems akin to using insecure plugins which take unvetted input from a web server and run it. I don't think a round-trip page reload is problematic in light of the security risks that come with running what is realistically unvettable code. The successes I see with NoScript and friends tell me that not running code client-side by default is the right way to go.
I'd much rather take the path CSS appears (to me) to be taking: figure out what non-executing features people need and make CSS syntax do those jobs. If you need form validation, bring up your needs to people who discuss CSS and perhaps you can find a way to do regular expression-based validation with a regex parser that's not as powerful as PCRE but sufficiently powerful to tell if this phone number or credit card number is likely to be valid. But I'm not even convinced that server-side validation here is the problem you think it is.
I also don't think that walled garden censorship is an excuse for justifying that everything should be implementable on the web. Those are separate issues and neither acknowledges legitimate privacy and security concerns with modern browsing in default settings (which I believe is what most users use). Programmers have always accepted that not every program can run in every environment or be implemented with every programming language. It's time privacy and security get higher priority and people learn to say no due to considered tradeoffs. Technical limitations of this sort can be right and proper to have.
CSS doesn't bother me because (as far as I know) CSS has no way to do the things I don't like about running unvettable programs client-side such as reading/altering/deleting client-side files, doing stuff over the network, detecting client settings, and more. CSS is specification, not programming, but even if it were programming it wouldn't have to offer an API that lets programmers do the things programmers do with Javascript. Sure, some font and image handlers are broken and specially-crafted fonts or images can leverage that broken code taking advantage of an insecurity. But that's not CSS's fault. A font or image library fix and that security hole is patched, no changes to CSS are being made.
You should be saying ditch proprietary software precisely because nobody but the proprietor (the very party you can't trust) is legally allowed to fix this (where the word "fix" is a fix from the user's perspective, of course, since the software already works as the proprietor has programmed it to work). That's what proprietary software means and that power over the user is why proprietors distribute their software without respecting a user's freedoms to run, share, and modify the software at any time for any reason. The system's behavior can change at any time, so even if someone monitors what a particular variant of a non-free, user-subjugating OS does now that can change later. Perhaps the software only does something bad under conditions one doesn't typically reach, or maybe an update changes how the software behaves. Furthermore, said software updates don't have to come through an updating program which seeks a user's approval before installation (such as Windows Updates).
The GNU Project has no shortage of proprietary Microsoft malware and that includes universal backdoors, snooping on user's activities, ignoring user's settings on so-called 'privacy' settings, and sending identifiable data to Microsoft and third parties ("even if a user turns off its Bing search and Cortana features, and activates the privacy-protection settings").
Fastest at delivering its users into the hands of a known spy and needless (from the user's perspective) activity tracker: Google. But this declaration of capitulation to that interest ("Chrome won") highlights a difference between the older free software movement and the younger open source endeavor. That view exhibits the limits of allowable debate of the open source development methodology which is designed to chiefly serve business desires and eschew software freedom (the freedom to run, share, and modify published computer software at the heart of the social movement known as the free software movement). Chrome is said to "win" something valuable when measured by business values, namely short-term popularity or convenience without regard to user's needs, needs that can only be met with software freedom (including increased security, inspectability, and letting users control their own computers). Fortunately most of Firefox's code is free software and can be improved independently of motivations to give into such valuation and endorse non-free software such as Chrome.
I'm not familiar with this product or Sonos but this sounds proprietary.
Not reimplementing any part of the product is more profitable and most computer users are non-technical so they don't understand what SMB is let alone which revision is known to be insecure. Users should be advised to liberate themselves from Sonos' control over the user's computers; seek other ways to play the audio, ways that respect a user's freedom to run, modify, and share (including commercially). Perhaps reconsider Sonos if they distribute products that respect a user's software freedom. After all, if the security issues you describe are important enough that should be sufficient justification to seek the freedoms you deserve with or without Sonos' help.
Asking about one's skill with editing old code has nothing to do with the need for treating other people ethically by respecting users' software freedoms. Just because you aren't skilled enough to track what's going on in code from week to week doesn't justify denying users the freedom to run, inspect, share, and modify the code running on their computers. Non-technical users (which probably are in the majority) can either learn programming, hire out the job, get someone they trust to help them gratis, or a combination of these things. But the decision should be up to them to make, just as your learning curve is apparently steep enough for you to review week-old code and think it to be "shit".
It's the freedom of software that's crucial, not a development methodology of an unstable ABI. Binary firmware blobs are a source of problems; firmware is remarkably powerful and capable and there's no way to have good security with non-free firmware. Firmware for the system persists and provides spying powers that span OSes (install whatever OS, the firmware that acts as a keylogger keeps working). Proprietors including Google make considerable money from spying, but I suspect the real competition for them is in being a monopoly for the spying data they can provide—don't let others provide data proprietor X can provide or else the value of proprietor X's data goes down.