You could ask about their views on Coreboot and Libreboot and you can look up the licensing yourself. Coreboot has non-free software in it which is stripped out in the Libreboot distribution. Let's not talk about "Coreboot vs. Libreboot" as if they're opposed. As far as I can tell, both work together harmoniously whether Libreboot is a part of the GNU Project or not.
One small correction to what I wrote above: Libreboot is not a fork of Coreboot, Libreboot is a distribution of Coreboot without proprietary binary blobs. The parallel to GNU Linux-libre is still apt as both Libreboot and GNU Linux-libre distribute code without proprietary software included.
What is the difference b/w Coreboot and Libreboot?
Libreboot is a Coreboot distribution which contains only free software. This difference is akin to why GNU Linux-libre (a fork of Linus Torvalds' Linux kernel) exists. GNU Linux-libre strips out the non-free blobs from the upstream Linux kernel and distributes the rest (possibly with other modifications related to doing this job which aren't necessary to get into to understand the point I'm making here). I recommend that you look up the respective project websites and reading about them.
Why does the GNU project need both?
Where did you get this idea? I don't recall anyone authoritative saying anything like this. One can boot GNU/Linux using Libreboot on a number of systems (rms runs such a device, for instance, and I'd be surprised if the FSF's systems don't run Libreboot).
[...] Stallman is talking as if Leah can't go back to her original project
Where are you getting this part? I see no indication that Stallman said Leah Rowe is somehow forbidden from developing Libreboot further. Stallman is clearly speaking on behalf of the GNU Project, not Libreboot, and he can say who gets to join GNU just as any other free software project leader gets to decide who joins their project.
Thanks for referring to the discussions that occurred when this first became public. The mailing list discussions and changes in the FSF's website make it clear that Leah Rowe is arguing on behalf of someone else—a former FSF employee whose identity was revealed when their bio was removed from the FSF Staff and Board webpage. The Libreboot project has not been "stolen" from the community as anyone is free to copy the project (before or after leaving the GNU Project) and develop the code further. That is why this is not a loss for software freedom, Libreboot users, or anyone who wishes to continue development (even continuing under the GNU Project again). This freedom is part of what makes free software so great and worth celebrating for its own sake. Only proprietary software really ends up becoming truly inactive because nobody but the proprietor is allowed to develop that code further.
One note on the reddit.org discussion pointed to in one of the links: poster "jammer170" claims:
Not "more free", but "more open". Stripping out binary blobs is important in the open source movement.
But that's almost exactly backwards; that assessment is woefully mistaken about the difference between the older free software movement (which objects on ethical grounds to proprietary software) and open source (a development methodology and right-wing friend of proprietors which finds it more convenient to help developers by sharing software development work but doesn't seriously object to proprietary software). This distinction is relevant to understand why Libreboot exists: Libreboot is a fully-free fork of Coreboot just as GNU Linux-libre is a fully-free fork of the Linux kernel. Both Coreboot and the Linux kernel contain non-free software in them. Both Libreboot and GNU Linux-libre projects inherit code from upstream and remove the non-free blobs (plus possibly make some other modifications beyond the scope of this point) and then distribute completely free software variants of their upstream projects. Thus GNU Linux-libre and Libreboot might not be able to run on all of the hardware their upstream projects run on but what systems can run either Libreboot and/or GNU Linux-libre are doing the jobs those programs do with free software.
This reddit.org discussion is not well sourced on this point, jammer170 makes the aforementioned points with no pointers to help readers understand this distinction nor why this distinction matters. The FSF has published essays (old, new) to explain why free software matters, why the open source movement eschews software freedom, and Richard Stallman devotes a section of his talks to clearly explaining the difference between the philosophies of the free software movement and open source including how those different philosophies play out in practical terms on the ground. Usually that difference comes down to free software activists taking steps to ensure software freedom while open source enthusiasts go along with whatever a proprietor requests.
I normally wouldn't give your clumsy and inept follow-up a response, but I'm feeling more charitable. Your response is akin to concluding that because not all Americans have time or inclination to become great writers or orators therefore Americans don't need freedom of speech. Your response both ignores what has been going on for decades and (perhaps purposefully) fails to understand the difference between freedom and obligation.
Apparently billions of computer users "patch, upgrade, use, [and] enjoy" their computers and they don't all have PhDs. But what most computer users don't have is complete control over their computers. People apparently need to ensure their own privacy (a critical human need) on computers. With software freedom people have options including learning to program (even small programming tasks), learning sysadmin tasks (even minor tasks), and learning what is relatively safe or risky to do with a computer. Software freedom grants permission to understand what any program on their computer does. Software freedom includes hiring the work out to others, and asking friends and family for help. Without software freedom many things about the computer are unknowable because, by definition, one does not have the freedom to truly understand what the computer is doing and share that with others (including by improving programs) no matter how technically skilled and willing they are to learn.
I refer you to my previous comment on this theme and the ridiculous posts which fail to debunk the always-listening = spying theme by claiming to know what proprietary software does. Not only are such claims ridiculous on their face, but even if the spying were handled locally, it's trivially easy to record, compress, and store data from the device either uploading it with other data when the user expects something to be uploaded or buffer the spying fruit until a later time. And there's nothing stopping interesting background information from being captured too. The purpose of the captured data is subjective—a tracker owner may have intended to use the device to do one thing, but the background audio/video reveals something of interest in another context. The solution, of course, is to grant computer owners as much control over their computers as they can have by having all computers run nothing but free software.
The update will prevent the handset for charging [...]
In other words, the proprietor always had this capability (and, no doubt, other things indicating true control over what this computer will do). So even if you think you'd like to retain the hardware and fix it, give or sell such services to others (including devices where this update may have already been applied), or even work with others to make fixes and publish the results so as to let others alter (what they believed was) their device, you are in for a surprise—your plan is being undermined by those who truly own the device (and that's not the set of people who paid for the tracker).
Soon, you'll speak your wants into the air -- anywhere -- and a woman's warm voice with a mid-Atlantic accent will talk back to you...
(read in a woman's warm voice with a mid-Atlantic accent)...and your computer will listen to everything in mic range. No need for that activity light on the mic/camera; it was operated by proprietary (read: always untrustworthy) software to begin with, and wasn't present on trackers (a more honest name for the devices also known as cell phones, mobile phones). You'll come to expect omnipresent listening, ostensibly waiting for you to give the command to signal that the computer should do something for you so you feel like you're in control. But in reality your computer has been doing something for so many proprietors all along—letting an uncountable number of parties spy on you. Because you brought these devices and services into your home, your car, and your workplace. Revel in the convenience of never really knowing if you're alone.
And don't worry: they're not spying on you for your safety. The spying "feature" works on your tracker, your home computers, and various needlessly Internet-enabled devices like your next refrigerator, a child's toy, a lightbulb socket, and more.
The power of a software proprietor won't be deterred by a few lawsuits or fines. You read it in Microsoft's response, their "listening systems" tell them things, things their users can't help but divulge as long as they are running Microsoft's software. This is what proprietors do because they control the software their users run and their users (no matter how long they've run the software, no matter how well they keep up with what configuration options are available) are no match for source code kept hidden from the users when the users only get binaries.
To expect differently is to announce that one doesn't understand the power proprietors have, use, and how they make their money and wield their power.
It's sad to read about people in other posts "rolling back" Windows 10 to something (presumably another proprietor's software, perhaps even another variant of Windows) where they think they will have more control. Microsoft has already demonstrated (via so-called "forced upgrades" of Windows 7 to Windows 10) that they can and will deploy whatever software they want to any networked Windows endpoint they wish. As long as you insist on running the proprietor's software you have a lot less freedom to control how that software behaves than you think you do.
Nobody in India has an issue with Google's approach.
That's an extraordinary claim. This requires extraordinary evidence. I doubt you have the evidence to stand behind this. You presented no evidence of this. It reads as if you're saying there are no Indians who understand that it is in Google's interest to continue to offer gratis services which feed a business model built in part on spying thus making their network service a trap.
Thanks to the power of the proprietor, you'll never know the answer to your questions even if Microsoft claims to tell you what happened. Without software freedom, you won't be able to get source code diffs that would let you recompile and verify the binaries Microsoft distributes. One of many reasons only the proprietor can trust their proprietary software.
And this is all in pursuit of something nobody needs—third-party remote driving or proprietary software driving. As Bradley Kuhn has pointed out, software freedom doesn't kill people, your security through obscurity kills people. I'm no fan of the driverless vehicle but it's worth noting how one-sided it is; the party being left out of knowing how their vehicle will behave is the vehicle's owner. This is a recipe for bad outcomes and we already have evidence of one driverless vehicle killing someone and the VW proprietary exhaust scandal adding more pollutants killing people more slowly.
I've got to say, this seems creepy to me. It's not just spying on kids, it's spying on whoever is in range. It's basically an open mic in your home, transmitting to god knows who.
So is a "smart" TV, a laptop computer, a tracker (a more appropriate name for a cell phone or mobile phone which recognizes the activity it does the most), and so many other voice-activated gadgets with network connectivity all running proprietary (read: untrustworthy by default) software. And a lot of these devices have cameras in them too, also under proprietary software control. And virtually all of them have been used by kids for years. Some of these devices have geolocation hardware in them too, that must make it easier to geotag the data the proprietors can acquire, keep, and share. I think it's great that people are finally getting around to thinking about the security and privacy implications when this is presented to them in the form of a toy but really this is far too late in coming.
Departing from the parent comment, situations like this are also a constant reminder of the profound inadequacies of modern-day IT experts who choose to surround themselves with these things, not in an experimental way to investigate them but as consumers who apparently value minor convenience more than their own privacy.
Only software freedom helps you enjoy all of these devices in a way where you, the user and owner of the device, can have a real say in what gets recorded, where that data is copied, and thus who gets access to that data. It's not about shutting these things out of your life entirely, it's about respecting who should control this data.
You're getting upset about the wrong thing because you apparently believe that software proprietors can be trusted. Ultimately who would tell you that a particular variant of Windows allows you switch some privacy-busting feature off? The proprietor — the very party you can't trust to tell you the truth.
Structurally no proprietor is any different in this regard: they're all untrustworthy by default no matter what they tell you a feature is for, how to disable that feature, or whether you can trust them with your data. The free software movement has been saying this for decades. More recently, Windows Telemetry had a preference setting which meant nothing (any updates to which falls into the trap described above), and the underlying structural problem with proprietary software remained as-is including software you don't even know is running on a proprietary OS. Snowden also clued us all into how Apple, Microsoft, Google, and so many other businesses are "partners" with spy agencies. There's really no good reason for tech-literate people not to know better than to trust proprietary software and argue from the perspective that the proprietor should mistreat you a little less.
Jill Stein is running a scam and is successful doing it - she can keep all the $6-7M that leftist dupes give her.
Evidence? Ironic and sad that in a story centered on a lack of evidence (Democrats have yet to prove any Russian voter interference) you'd raise this accusation without proof.
I'd expect one either pays for the space used at whatever the going rate was when the year elapsed, or whatever rate was locked in when one entered this agreement, or one chooses to lose data exceeding the amount of space one is willing to pay for. This seems quite straightforward to me and fair.
But what is neither straightforward nor fair is what one always has to look out for -- impossible "unlimited" storage promises because they're always a lie. There isn't unlimited storage available. So it's always a matter of nailing down precisely what limits will be set up to restrict your use. And, as a side note, be prepared to defend your use against anyone who wants to claim you're "abusing" the space merely by making the space hold "too much" or transferring "too much" data when you're buying into an "unlimited" storage space.
Seagate claims you'll get a year of unlimited storage just for buying the hard drive
When previous so-called "unlimited" storage systems came out they were canceled and the storage system provider (and their sycophants here on/.) tried to pretend that one could "abuse" said storage merely by uploading too much data. Since this flies in the face of unlimited storage, it's worth asking what exactly does "unlimited storage" mean here?
An article stressing that Democrats don't have a history of fighting for voting rights, aren't doing so now, and how the Democrats (and their media friends at CNN) are still peddling self-contradictory logic about the security of American elections (which are simultaneously strong enough to dismiss any criticism as "conspiracy theory" but weak enough to be interfered with by Russians).
With a voting machine that runs on free software, counties can hire whom they wish to reprogram the machines to conform to new voting laws yet to be passed into law, counties can make changes to their voting paper layouts that the current voting machine software can't parse (perhaps changes needed in order to accommodate more candidates as a result of more people taking an interest in setting policy), counties become less beholden to whatever limitations the proprietors put into current software and more in control of their elections. Those who champion competition and user choice should join the Green Party's push here.
Voter-verified paper ballots are critical to recountable, verifiable elections, but there's nothing wrong with having a machine read or print a voter-verified paper ballot. There's value to the blind and illiterate voter in being able to vote without having to bring a trusted friend into the booth and divulging (what should be) a private matter.
I have no objections to manual vote counts based entirely on voter-verified paper ballots, I think that's an important part of how elections should be run. But I don't see a free software-driven voting machines any voter can optionally use as either pointless or bad. The Green Party is shaming the Democratic Party here both on principle and in practical terms.
It's good you're using free software, and you should use more of it (preferring a free software OS and a computer that runs nothing but a free OS with free software on top of it). But you shouldn't feel relieved. Just because your browser got things wrong in this test doesn't mean your proprietary (therefore untrustworthy-by-default) OS will fail too. People visit these sites and erroneously think they're safer using a proprietary OS to run their free software browser (or worse, they endorse a proprietary browser written by a company known to spy on its users). I'm guessing you chose MacOS for some convenience. You should know that software in control of the keyboard, mouse, camera, and mic find that a convenient choice for their interests too.
Your response strikes me as typical of programmers in that they don't recognize how their work can affect a great deal more people than almost all of the examples you cite. With the possible exception of mishandling food, none of the other examples come close to affecting the same order of magnitude of people as programmers can.
The recent VW emissions scandal is a perfect example: VW's proprietary software was used in around 11 million VW cars worldwide (that VW admits to) from model years 2009-2015. Comparable proprietary software was used in more cars of other makes and model years. VW's software apparently turned some VW cars into cars that never should have been sold. Other makes and models of cars are also showing bad signs of polluting too much and not being in line with regulations. The full scope of the damage has not been accounted for. Only centralized food processors working on very highly used ingredients have the potential for that kind of adverse impact.
This creates a situation that kills us slowly instead of quickly by polluting our air in ways our (admittedly inadequate) regulation framework was designed to disallow. Proprietary software cheated those tests by behaving radically differently in regular driving than in testing mode. These cars should all be taken back by their manufacturers at full cost to the manufacturer, giving the current owner a complete refund of whatever they paid for the car, and the manufacturer's higher-ups should pay with criminal penalties and huge fines because this is a serious environmental matter. Programmers know their software is widely used (some programmers even value the wide reuse of their code) but rarely do programmers brag that their software treats people ethically and well.
Being "aware of their moral compass" is too low a standard and something programmers have typically balked at besides. As Brad Kuhn points out, software freedom doesn't kill people, security through obscurity kills people, yet programmers today still debate the value of software freedom for its own sake instead preferring to either work on proprietary software outright, or choosing to value a non-free software-allowing right-wing corporate reaction to free software known as "open source". Read just about any/. thread today and you'll find plenty of technically literate people who balk at introducing ethics into the discussion, or try to explain away giving us all the means of helping ourselves via software freedom. Our best chance of finding and fixing the cheating car code is to require copylefted free software for all vehicles and make transfer of the complete corresponding source code and build instructions for said software with ownership of the vehicle. But we choose not to do our best motivated in part by those who would rather not enter into a moral discussion because they place business desires above how people ought to treat other people.
One easy way to help fix this is helping those who help us. Today the Linux kernel is used in a lot of products that end up in people's homes, listening and watching them all the time via cameras and mics controlled with proprietary software. It's hardly a stretch to imagine that non-technical customers are being spied on without their knowledge or consent. It's bad enough that Linus Torvalds' fork of the Linux kernel allows proprietary software (as opposed to GNU Linux-libre which does not), but GPL violations are rampant. We can help the Software Freedom Conservancy by funding their efforts to pursue GPL violations, and I hope you'll do so. We owe the entirety of free software routers to comparable efforts, freeing code from Linksys which we can apparently reuse in many other routers. That freed software and its derivatives makes routers more trustworthy, improv
Regarding "the absence of someone convenient to pick on": Hillary Clinton has only herself to blame for her losing campaigns. The 2016 campaign was hers to lose and her incompetence apparently found a way to lose the electoral vote (the only vote that counts) to another candidate her campaign would not stop making fun of. Instead of spending 3 "debates" worth of time joining Trump in pointing fingers of disgust at each other, she could have chosen to raise practical arguments against that resonated with workers (such as the workers hurt by NAFTA, which she endorsed). Instead of taking money from the big banks and continuing the wars Obama kept going from Bush (as well as the drone war Obama escalated so much it's mostly Obama's legacy now), she could have done as Bernie Sanders did and raised money from the public in small donations and done as Sanders didn't by taking a new stance against empire-building. But she apparently didn't see that having the US go through another term like Obama's was never in the US' interests, only the elites whom she both was and whose interests she defended.
I can see why anyone would find the Snopes interview article confusing (how legitimate can a news source be if they're publishing "erroneous stories"?), but I'd say this is merely the latest symptom of calling erroneous story publishers "legitimate publications". First, you have to understand whose interests are being served by corporate media. It's not the general US public's interest. The US are among the most propagandized people on the planet and the US is the chief source of world terror. Maintaining the latter requires the former.
Second, go back to the 2003 invasion of Iraq and recall that the New York Times saw fit to publish factually inaccurate headline stories from Judith Miller. Miller would later retire and the Times would later apologize but in nowhere near as public a manner as they did with the far less important lies of Jayson Blair (which included a large spread and a well-attended public event that was also carried on C-SPAN). You can count on the Times to champion the pro-war position, despite that war costs lives, trillions of dollars, and most Americans don't want war. Following suit with a pro-war US presidential candidate such as Hillary Clinton (a Syrian "no-fly" zone that she secretly tells her bankster friends will "kill a lot of Syrians") is de rigueur.
Slashdot Mirror
You could ask about their views on Coreboot and Libreboot and you can look up the licensing yourself. Coreboot has non-free software in it which is stripped out in the Libreboot distribution. Let's not talk about "Coreboot vs. Libreboot" as if they're opposed. As far as I can tell, both work together harmoniously whether Libreboot is a part of the GNU Project or not.
One small correction to what I wrote above: Libreboot is not a fork of Coreboot, Libreboot is a distribution of Coreboot without proprietary binary blobs. The parallel to GNU Linux-libre is still apt as both Libreboot and GNU Linux-libre distribute code without proprietary software included.
Libreboot is a Coreboot distribution which contains only free software. This difference is akin to why GNU Linux-libre (a fork of Linus Torvalds' Linux kernel) exists. GNU Linux-libre strips out the non-free blobs from the upstream Linux kernel and distributes the rest (possibly with other modifications related to doing this job which aren't necessary to get into to understand the point I'm making here). I recommend that you look up the respective project websites and reading about them.
Where did you get this idea? I don't recall anyone authoritative saying anything like this. One can boot GNU/Linux using Libreboot on a number of systems (rms runs such a device, for instance, and I'd be surprised if the FSF's systems don't run Libreboot).
Where are you getting this part? I see no indication that Stallman said Leah Rowe is somehow forbidden from developing Libreboot further. Stallman is clearly speaking on behalf of the GNU Project, not Libreboot, and he can say who gets to join GNU just as any other free software project leader gets to decide who joins their project.
Thanks for referring to the discussions that occurred when this first became public. The mailing list discussions and changes in the FSF's website make it clear that Leah Rowe is arguing on behalf of someone else—a former FSF employee whose identity was revealed when their bio was removed from the FSF Staff and Board webpage. The Libreboot project has not been "stolen" from the community as anyone is free to copy the project (before or after leaving the GNU Project) and develop the code further. That is why this is not a loss for software freedom, Libreboot users, or anyone who wishes to continue development (even continuing under the GNU Project again). This freedom is part of what makes free software so great and worth celebrating for its own sake. Only proprietary software really ends up becoming truly inactive because nobody but the proprietor is allowed to develop that code further.
One note on the reddit.org discussion pointed to in one of the links: poster "jammer170" claims:
But that's almost exactly backwards; that assessment is woefully mistaken about the difference between the older free software movement (which objects on ethical grounds to proprietary software) and open source (a development methodology and right-wing friend of proprietors which finds it more convenient to help developers by sharing software development work but doesn't seriously object to proprietary software). This distinction is relevant to understand why Libreboot exists: Libreboot is a fully-free fork of Coreboot just as GNU Linux-libre is a fully-free fork of the Linux kernel. Both Coreboot and the Linux kernel contain non-free software in them. Both Libreboot and GNU Linux-libre projects inherit code from upstream and remove the non-free blobs (plus possibly make some other modifications beyond the scope of this point) and then distribute completely free software variants of their upstream projects. Thus GNU Linux-libre and Libreboot might not be able to run on all of the hardware their upstream projects run on but what systems can run either Libreboot and/or GNU Linux-libre are doing the jobs those programs do with free software.
This reddit.org discussion is not well sourced on this point, jammer170 makes the aforementioned points with no pointers to help readers understand this distinction nor why this distinction matters. The FSF has published essays (old, new) to explain why free software matters, why the open source movement eschews software freedom, and Richard Stallman devotes a section of his talks to clearly explaining the difference between the philosophies of the free software movement and open source including how those different philosophies play out in practical terms on the ground. Usually that difference comes down to free software activists taking steps to ensure software freedom while open source enthusiasts go along with whatever a proprietor requests.
I normally wouldn't give your clumsy and inept follow-up a response, but I'm feeling more charitable. Your response is akin to concluding that because not all Americans have time or inclination to become great writers or orators therefore Americans don't need freedom of speech. Your response both ignores what has been going on for decades and (perhaps purposefully) fails to understand the difference between freedom and obligation.
Apparently billions of computer users "patch, upgrade, use, [and] enjoy" their computers and they don't all have PhDs. But what most computer users don't have is complete control over their computers. People apparently need to ensure their own privacy (a critical human need) on computers. With software freedom people have options including learning to program (even small programming tasks), learning sysadmin tasks (even minor tasks), and learning what is relatively safe or risky to do with a computer. Software freedom grants permission to understand what any program on their computer does. Software freedom includes hiring the work out to others, and asking friends and family for help. Without software freedom many things about the computer are unknowable because, by definition, one does not have the freedom to truly understand what the computer is doing and share that with others (including by improving programs) no matter how technically skilled and willing they are to learn.
I refer you to my previous comment on this theme and the ridiculous posts which fail to debunk the always-listening = spying theme by claiming to know what proprietary software does. Not only are such claims ridiculous on their face, but even if the spying were handled locally, it's trivially easy to record, compress, and store data from the device either uploading it with other data when the user expects something to be uploaded or buffer the spying fruit until a later time. And there's nothing stopping interesting background information from being captured too. The purpose of the captured data is subjective—a tracker owner may have intended to use the device to do one thing, but the background audio/video reveals something of interest in another context. The solution, of course, is to grant computer owners as much control over their computers as they can have by having all computers run nothing but free software.
In other words, the proprietor always had this capability (and, no doubt, other things indicating true control over what this computer will do). So even if you think you'd like to retain the hardware and fix it, give or sell such services to others (including devices where this update may have already been applied), or even work with others to make fixes and publish the results so as to let others alter (what they believed was) their device, you are in for a surprise—your plan is being undermined by those who truly own the device (and that's not the set of people who paid for the tracker).
(read in a woman's warm voice with a mid-Atlantic accent) ...and your computer will listen to everything in mic range. No need for that activity light on the mic/camera; it was operated by proprietary (read: always untrustworthy) software to begin with, and wasn't present on trackers (a more honest name for the devices also known as cell phones, mobile phones). You'll come to expect omnipresent listening, ostensibly waiting for you to give the command to signal that the computer should do something for you so you feel like you're in control. But in reality your computer has been doing something for so many proprietors all along—letting an uncountable number of parties spy on you. Because you brought these devices and services into your home, your car, and your workplace. Revel in the convenience of never really knowing if you're alone.
And don't worry: they're not spying on you for your safety. The spying "feature" works on your tracker, your home computers, and various needlessly Internet-enabled devices like your next refrigerator, a child's toy, a lightbulb socket, and more.
The power of a software proprietor won't be deterred by a few lawsuits or fines. You read it in Microsoft's response, their "listening systems" tell them things, things their users can't help but divulge as long as they are running Microsoft's software. This is what proprietors do because they control the software their users run and their users (no matter how long they've run the software, no matter how well they keep up with what configuration options are available) are no match for source code kept hidden from the users when the users only get binaries.
To expect differently is to announce that one doesn't understand the power proprietors have, use, and how they make their money and wield their power.
It's sad to read about people in other posts "rolling back" Windows 10 to something (presumably another proprietor's software, perhaps even another variant of Windows) where they think they will have more control. Microsoft has already demonstrated (via so-called "forced upgrades" of Windows 7 to Windows 10) that they can and will deploy whatever software they want to any networked Windows endpoint they wish. As long as you insist on running the proprietor's software you have a lot less freedom to control how that software behaves than you think you do.
That's an extraordinary claim. This requires extraordinary evidence. I doubt you have the evidence to stand behind this. You presented no evidence of this. It reads as if you're saying there are no Indians who understand that it is in Google's interest to continue to offer gratis services which feed a business model built in part on spying thus making their network service a trap.
Fun fact: Earth is not in peril. Earth can continue to exist without humans.
Thanks to the power of the proprietor, you'll never know the answer to your questions even if Microsoft claims to tell you what happened. Without software freedom, you won't be able to get source code diffs that would let you recompile and verify the binaries Microsoft distributes. One of many reasons only the proprietor can trust their proprietary software.
And this is all in pursuit of something nobody needs—third-party remote driving or proprietary software driving. As Bradley Kuhn has pointed out, software freedom doesn't kill people, your security through obscurity kills people. I'm no fan of the driverless vehicle but it's worth noting how one-sided it is; the party being left out of knowing how their vehicle will behave is the vehicle's owner. This is a recipe for bad outcomes and we already have evidence of one driverless vehicle killing someone and the VW proprietary exhaust scandal adding more pollutants killing people more slowly.
Eric "The Constitution guarantees due process, not judicial process" Holder has returned to working for Covington & Burling, whose clients include many of the banks Holder chose not to prosecute when he was Attorney General (despite considerable evidence) and as the Intercept points out, President-elect Trump has made America Goldman's again so if you voted for Trump thinking you were dodging the Goldman Sachs favoritism Hillary Clinton showed, that didn't work.
So is a "smart" TV, a laptop computer, a tracker (a more appropriate name for a cell phone or mobile phone which recognizes the activity it does the most), and so many other voice-activated gadgets with network connectivity all running proprietary (read: untrustworthy by default) software. And a lot of these devices have cameras in them too, also under proprietary software control. And virtually all of them have been used by kids for years. Some of these devices have geolocation hardware in them too, that must make it easier to geotag the data the proprietors can acquire, keep, and share. I think it's great that people are finally getting around to thinking about the security and privacy implications when this is presented to them in the form of a toy but really this is far too late in coming.
Departing from the parent comment, situations like this are also a constant reminder of the profound inadequacies of modern-day IT experts who choose to surround themselves with these things, not in an experimental way to investigate them but as consumers who apparently value minor convenience more than their own privacy.
Only software freedom helps you enjoy all of these devices in a way where you, the user and owner of the device, can have a real say in what gets recorded, where that data is copied, and thus who gets access to that data. It's not about shutting these things out of your life entirely, it's about respecting who should control this data.
You're getting upset about the wrong thing because you apparently believe that software proprietors can be trusted. Ultimately who would tell you that a particular variant of Windows allows you switch some privacy-busting feature off? The proprietor — the very party you can't trust to tell you the truth.
Structurally no proprietor is any different in this regard: they're all untrustworthy by default no matter what they tell you a feature is for, how to disable that feature, or whether you can trust them with your data. The free software movement has been saying this for decades. More recently, Windows Telemetry had a preference setting which meant nothing (any updates to which falls into the trap described above), and the underlying structural problem with proprietary software remained as-is including software you don't even know is running on a proprietary OS. Snowden also clued us all into how Apple, Microsoft, Google, and so many other businesses are "partners" with spy agencies. There's really no good reason for tech-literate people not to know better than to trust proprietary software and argue from the perspective that the proprietor should mistreat you a little less.
Evidence? Ironic and sad that in a story centered on a lack of evidence (Democrats have yet to prove any Russian voter interference) you'd raise this accusation without proof.
I'd expect one either pays for the space used at whatever the going rate was when the year elapsed, or whatever rate was locked in when one entered this agreement, or one chooses to lose data exceeding the amount of space one is willing to pay for. This seems quite straightforward to me and fair.
But what is neither straightforward nor fair is what one always has to look out for -- impossible "unlimited" storage promises because they're always a lie. There isn't unlimited storage available. So it's always a matter of nailing down precisely what limits will be set up to restrict your use. And, as a side note, be prepared to defend your use against anyone who wants to claim you're "abusing" the space merely by making the space hold "too much" or transferring "too much" data when you're buying into an "unlimited" storage space.
When previous so-called "unlimited" storage systems came out they were canceled and the storage system provider (and their sycophants here on /.) tried to pretend that one could "abuse" said storage merely by uploading too much data. Since this flies in the face of unlimited storage, it's worth asking what exactly does "unlimited storage" mean here?
Time magazine, being mainstream American corporate media, would do well to give Trump the nod in order to try and get into his good graces and thus increase the odds of access. Paraphrasing CBS' Les Moonves who told the audience at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media, and Telecom Conference, such a move would not be good for America, but it could be very good for Time Magazine.
An article stressing that Democrats don't have a history of fighting for voting rights, aren't doing so now, and how the Democrats (and their media friends at CNN) are still peddling self-contradictory logic about the security of American elections (which are simultaneously strong enough to dismiss any criticism as "conspiracy theory" but weak enough to be interfered with by Russians).
With a voting machine that runs on free software, counties can hire whom they wish to reprogram the machines to conform to new voting laws yet to be passed into law, counties can make changes to their voting paper layouts that the current voting machine software can't parse (perhaps changes needed in order to accommodate more candidates as a result of more people taking an interest in setting policy), counties become less beholden to whatever limitations the proprietors put into current software and more in control of their elections. Those who champion competition and user choice should join the Green Party's push here.
Voter-verified paper ballots are critical to recountable, verifiable elections, but there's nothing wrong with having a machine read or print a voter-verified paper ballot. There's value to the blind and illiterate voter in being able to vote without having to bring a trusted friend into the booth and divulging (what should be) a private matter.
I have no objections to manual vote counts based entirely on voter-verified paper ballots, I think that's an important part of how elections should be run. But I don't see a free software-driven voting machines any voter can optionally use as either pointless or bad. The Green Party is shaming the Democratic Party here both on principle and in practical terms.
It's good you're using free software, and you should use more of it (preferring a free software OS and a computer that runs nothing but a free OS with free software on top of it). But you shouldn't feel relieved. Just because your browser got things wrong in this test doesn't mean your proprietary (therefore untrustworthy-by-default) OS will fail too. People visit these sites and erroneously think they're safer using a proprietary OS to run their free software browser (or worse, they endorse a proprietary browser written by a company known to spy on its users). I'm guessing you chose MacOS for some convenience. You should know that software in control of the keyboard, mouse, camera, and mic find that a convenient choice for their interests too.
Your response strikes me as typical of programmers in that they don't recognize how their work can affect a great deal more people than almost all of the examples you cite. With the possible exception of mishandling food, none of the other examples come close to affecting the same order of magnitude of people as programmers can.
The recent VW emissions scandal is a perfect example: VW's proprietary software was used in around 11 million VW cars worldwide (that VW admits to) from model years 2009-2015. Comparable proprietary software was used in more cars of other makes and model years. VW's software apparently turned some VW cars into cars that never should have been sold. Other makes and models of cars are also showing bad signs of polluting too much and not being in line with regulations. The full scope of the damage has not been accounted for. Only centralized food processors working on very highly used ingredients have the potential for that kind of adverse impact.
This creates a situation that kills us slowly instead of quickly by polluting our air in ways our (admittedly inadequate) regulation framework was designed to disallow. Proprietary software cheated those tests by behaving radically differently in regular driving than in testing mode. These cars should all be taken back by their manufacturers at full cost to the manufacturer, giving the current owner a complete refund of whatever they paid for the car, and the manufacturer's higher-ups should pay with criminal penalties and huge fines because this is a serious environmental matter. Programmers know their software is widely used (some programmers even value the wide reuse of their code) but rarely do programmers brag that their software treats people ethically and well.
Being "aware of their moral compass" is too low a standard and something programmers have typically balked at besides. As Brad Kuhn points out, software freedom doesn't kill people, security through obscurity kills people, yet programmers today still debate the value of software freedom for its own sake instead preferring to either work on proprietary software outright, or choosing to value a non-free software-allowing right-wing corporate reaction to free software known as "open source". Read just about any /. thread today and you'll find plenty of technically literate people who balk at introducing ethics into the discussion, or try to explain away giving us all the means of helping ourselves via software freedom. Our best chance of finding and fixing the cheating car code is to require copylefted free software for all vehicles and make transfer of the complete corresponding source code and build instructions for said software with ownership of the vehicle. But we choose not to do our best motivated in part by those who would rather not enter into a moral discussion because they place business desires above how people ought to treat other people.
One easy way to help fix this is helping those who help us. Today the Linux kernel is used in a lot of products that end up in people's homes, listening and watching them all the time via cameras and mics controlled with proprietary software. It's hardly a stretch to imagine that non-technical customers are being spied on without their knowledge or consent. It's bad enough that Linus Torvalds' fork of the Linux kernel allows proprietary software (as opposed to GNU Linux-libre which does not), but GPL violations are rampant. We can help the Software Freedom Conservancy by funding their efforts to pursue GPL violations, and I hope you'll do so. We owe the entirety of free software routers to comparable efforts, freeing code from Linksys which we can apparently reuse in many other routers. That freed software and its derivatives makes routers more trustworthy, improv
Regarding "the absence of someone convenient to pick on": Hillary Clinton has only herself to blame for her losing campaigns. The 2016 campaign was hers to lose and her incompetence apparently found a way to lose the electoral vote (the only vote that counts) to another candidate her campaign would not stop making fun of. Instead of spending 3 "debates" worth of time joining Trump in pointing fingers of disgust at each other, she could have chosen to raise practical arguments against that resonated with workers (such as the workers hurt by NAFTA, which she endorsed). Instead of taking money from the big banks and continuing the wars Obama kept going from Bush (as well as the drone war Obama escalated so much it's mostly Obama's legacy now), she could have done as Bernie Sanders did and raised money from the public in small donations and done as Sanders didn't by taking a new stance against empire-building. But she apparently didn't see that having the US go through another term like Obama's was never in the US' interests, only the elites whom she both was and whose interests she defended.
I can see why anyone would find the Snopes interview article confusing (how legitimate can a news source be if they're publishing "erroneous stories"?), but I'd say this is merely the latest symptom of calling erroneous story publishers "legitimate publications". First, you have to understand whose interests are being served by corporate media. It's not the general US public's interest. The US are among the most propagandized people on the planet and the US is the chief source of world terror. Maintaining the latter requires the former.
Second, go back to the 2003 invasion of Iraq and recall that the New York Times saw fit to publish factually inaccurate headline stories from Judith Miller. Miller would later retire and the Times would later apologize but in nowhere near as public a manner as they did with the far less important lies of Jayson Blair (which included a large spread and a well-attended public event that was also carried on C-SPAN). You can count on the Times to champion the pro-war position, despite that war costs lives, trillions of dollars, and most Americans don't want war. Following suit with a pro-war US presidential candidate such as Hillary Clinton (a Syrian "no-fly" zone that she secretly tells her bankster friends will "kill a lot of Syrians") is de rigueur.