Well not everybody will have the knowledge to do these things. I understand that, but you can perfectly use something like WebDAV if you know a little bit about Linux/Apache, and when you do you can give your friends access and split the bills for hosting if you like. It's more that if people realize that there are options for most of that stuff things are totally doable.
As far as converting YouTube videos to DailyMotion it is really easy to do. Just get any YouTube downloader app from CNET Download.com and just upload the video afterwards. Main issue is copyrights, but DailyMotion has a lot of stuff so it's not like you cannot live without it.
Panama being a tax haven is what has driven the incredible success they have as an economy being just a tiny country with few people. Panama City is starting to look a lot like Miami, and I know people doing construction projects there and you don't get asked to give 10% of the contract to whatever government official as it is the unwritten rule in a lot of institutions in neighboring countries.
Well, I have been to all of those countries and what you said is the equivalent of me saying the US is the worst country in the world because they didn't allow peaceful demonstrations like Occupy Wall Street to go on. I think you have to look at the big picture since no country is perfect and to me, those countries I mentioned have a very high standard of quality living: nature, good healthcare, good education, inexpensive, democracies, etc.
I know there is racism against blacks in the US, but believe me you are worse off in there. A girl from Ecuador was kicked in the face on a Spanish metro while boys were screaming at her to go back to her country, and when the police had the video recording and saw what happened they didn't do anything because the girl was too afraid to testify. There was a Mexican that was killed by high school football jocks in Pennsylvania and the police tried to cover the incident, I believe either the feds or some state authority got involved afterwards and it was all over the news.
If you truly want to feel like an alien go to Russia and let me know about it. And btw, even with that crap, I like Russia quite a bit.
The minute Canonical manages to get commercial driver support for lots of stuff I don't think you will be whining as much. Linux is built around choice, nobody forces you to use Mir or Wayland. So just choose whichever you like the most. And there are several Unix kernels, Linux being one of them. Trying to make a category of Linux in itself won't fly. OpenBSD was tough competition and you cannot go lower down the chain than this. It all worked out in the end, people like Gentoo bringing ports functionality from BSD.
Hell if anything I believe GTK+ and Qt were truly an issue at some point, and even then it all worked out. Fragmentation is what makes Linux extremely awesome. There is a zero bs attitude from users and developers and we have seen that quite a bit with OpenOffice and Gnome.
Hmm, I don't know, Europe has a lot of good things but I do consider racism is less of an issue in the US, especially the east coast than what some friends of me had to endure in the Netherlands, Spain and Germany. They are wonderful countries but talk to any immigrant that does not look European and that knows both sides of the pond. I guarantee you most responses will favor the US.
Panama and Costa Rica. Being some of the stables countries in Latin America you truly have a level of freedom that needs to be lived in order to know that is real, without the crazy issues of having corrupt authorities on your ass. They truly are immigrant friendly plus Panama has pretty good levels of infrastructure. Those countries might feel like a small town sometimes but honest to god, they are truly wonderful places to live if you are able to secure a decent monthly payment.
I actually have a successful business in Venezuela and I'm not employed or paid by the government.
When they nationalized assets from companies they did pay compensation. So far they regained control of two companies that used to be state companies, like a big steel mill and the state telephone and internet company. They also took control of big corporations that controlled grain distribution for farmers and decided who they would finance (read people with big money). They nationalized failed banks instead of giving bailout money to corrupt bankers, and also started splitting farm land from big landowners (again by giving them money) so that the land could become more productive.
I have to say that a lot of these programs were actually pretty good, especially when it comes to banks and the state phone company, which keeps the cheapest cell phone rates and best internet service throughout the country. But on some other fronts they created more problems than they solved. When they nationalized cement factories because they were exporting a lot of the production instead of selling it locally, they replaced capitalist corruption with government inefficiency, since when they took it they created a major mess on the cement supply. Nowadays is better but in general I failed to see nationalizations as a bad thing. If it is used selectively it can actually be very good.
The firearms issue in Venezuela is not a despotic one either. In my case I actually prefer to be allowed to carry firearms even if I don't own one myself, but I can totally see where they are coming from. Venezuela is ridden with violence, and it's not only firearms, it's just easier for people to start hitting or screaming at each other for something they don't agree with here than in other countries I have seen. And the fact that I know one person that got shot and another one that was beaten to a pulp because some thugs were trying to get ahold of their guns really makes it safer for you not to own guns here. The guy who was shot had to carry a colostomy bag for months. Besides, the law is being discussed by a congress that is composed of chavistas and opposition alike.
And for the government taking money from the rich, I would really like to see where you got that from? I haven't seen that happening even once.
I'm sorry that you think that everybody that supports the government here is receiving grants and cannot be an independent thinker. But after being burned by extreme capitalism before Chavez came to power, it is hard for me to support the other guys. It's hard for you to understand what we went through but I just wrote to let you know that it's not only about poor people or communists or whatnot. More about rights and trying to enjoy a little bit more equality, which I believe is more visibly in the US than it ever was in Venezuela.
And the funny thing is that there are all these alternatives out there. If you really cannot live without commercial systems, at least spread out the information among several of them that are owned by different companies. Or you can just use something like DuckDuckGo as your search engine, French DailyMotion for videos, rent your own website/e-mail and get your own domain. You can use that system to put files on the "cloud" with old-fashioned FTP.
Those are very easy things to do, even if they are not flashy as using the latest Google Drive, etc.
As a Venezuelan, I can tell you that we are not governed by a despotic government. Scream at me if you like but we just had an election after the other president we had died, people were kind of undecided between two candidates that represented two very different political ideologies. One of them won and while people might feel angry that does not give you the right to say that is despotic. In fact, I believe that is how true democracy should work. Who says that I cannot vote for a socialist government in a democracy? If anything, I think Venezuelans have been enjoying a lot of political freedoms in that regard with a couple of issues. A country is not only composed of rich people and corporations dictating what is good for everybody else.
Having said that, the current Venezuelan government has made some colossal mistakes regarding currency exchange controls that is affecting all the industry. They make Chavez look like Adam Smith in a way.
This is my take on this issue, and I do believe not only that you can do a lot, but that the feds had to say that crap that if you do they will focus on you since they are worried a lot of people will think extra hard now to avoid them. It's like the Borg saying resistance is futile. Anyways, this is my list:
-Install Hardened Gentoo. If you want to be extra paranoid download the source packages directly from the creators and compare hash keys.
-Get a Linux VPS in a country that either has strong privacy laws like France, or from a country that is willing to fight off US foreign policy. Venezuela is geographically close and you can set up an account with the state company CANTV, but they only speak Spanish.
-Install your own mail server on the VPS and install WebDAV to create your own "cloud" storage service.
-Make sure they allow you to run the tun/tap kernel module so you can run OpenVPN with zero issues. Install Squid and OpenVPN. Keep in mind that a lot of things like certain YouTube stuff, Netflix and others might be blocked by regional distribution issues.
-Use IceCat as your web browser. It has some extra privacy features. Make sure you disable Google Safe Browsing and any other similar systems that phone home back to Google. You can use Yandex Safe Browsing API but that takes extra work.
-Think real hard what to do with your smartphone. Right now the only secure alternative is just using a dumb phone, but an Android device with Cyanogenmod and an alternate app store can do the trick. Especially since Cyanogen is working on a feature to really restrict what an app can do with your info by creating honeypots.
-If the e-mail server setup is too painful, get an e-mail account with a Russian or a Chinese provider like Yandex.com (also in English) or 163.com (Chinese only). Needless to say, use GnuPG with your e-mails, as painful as that may be. Note that the subject and the From/To/CC fields are visible to anyone. Consider using an alternative to e-mail for secure communications.
-Keep in mind that using something like Tor means that "Like all current low latency anonymity networks, Tor is vulnerable to traffic analysis from observers who can watch both ends of a user's connection." Also a malicious exit node could send modified code to identify who was doing the original requests.
-If you truly have to use stuff like Facebook, or use websites that ask for birthdates or whatnot, provide as much false information as you can.
-If you use services like Evernote, switch to Tomboy and get a Snowy backend.
-Avoid using credit cards or electronic payments.
-Play disc-based games on a console that is not connected to the internet, since playing games for Linux are a joke. If you have to do multiplayer go with local multiplayer either with LANs (a dying genre) or a console (party games, rock band, etc).
I have done some of the stuff mentioned above and by far the coolest one is the VPN, since it also works wonders in places with restricted internet. But in general you have to strike a balance between convenience and security.
After living for quite a bit in some of the places listed, I can totally confirm that France, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macao have a better deal. But with the clear exception of France, which I consider the true socialist countries from the list along with Scandinavian countries, All the "Chinese" places are hardly related to socialism. Hell, the internet connection in mainland is a joke, based in no small part because of the draconian firewall that makes all the traffic go to Beijing (At least that's what a traceroute returns with ChinaNet in Shanghai). Crap maybe I should move to Hong Kong myself:)
I think you fail to realize that there should be more options available to you as a consumer. On one side we have publishers like EA becoming distributors, on the other you have steam which is the defacto store for new digital games. GOG is mostly for nostalgia games if you haven't checked. Hell, even Apple couldn't pull it off with books. And if you translate what is happening with video games distribution to other forms of arts like books, music and paintings, I believe it will be easier for you to understand my point.
But what are big publishers doing for them? It seems Microst took a lot of flag for nothing. At least Steam was able to bring some prices down and has sales from time to time in order to push us into PC internet DRM, run their software while gaming and phone home every month.
The problem is that not everybody will get rid of them. Let's say Microsoft outraged a million users that are actually willing to dump them. They will still get a lot more of new people based on the 360 success no matter what people on the internet say. Then they will play and think, hey this does not affect me or maybe even think that's the way new things are. Then they will see a PS4 or even a Wii U which are cheaper and have fewer restrictions, and only then they will realize what they have lost.
It's the same deal as a book publisher. People can complain all they want here about not needing publishers and what not. Sure you can self-publish to Amazon and others, but the kind of exposure you get if you have good materials is way better when it's done by marketing professionals. There are also the cash advances as people mention, the whole knowing how the distributions channels work, shipping internationally, etc, etc. So people really need to take their geek hat out of this one, since I believe not only that publishers are important, but that they will always be around to have a healthy industry, in the same way record companies exists for the music business and art galleries or foundries do their part with the fine arts.
But sure, as far as the Microsoft move goes, it is absurd to actually impose a publisher on someone. Having a publisher is the smart move but you should be free to do whatever you want because there can be occasions when you simply cannot secure a publisher until you have some kind of success.
Microsoft has created some decent products lately like Windows Phone, Bing and even the Hotmail revamp comes to mind. Just the fact Apple copied their "flat" graphic style now speaks volumes of what they have accomplished in the mobile arena. Sure they have issues and the XBox One launch is a disaster but they are a big company that can tolerate some bad iterations of overall successful products, like Windows.
The issue is that Microsoft established a lot of good faith based on the 360 and some people just refuse to believe bad news when they hear it until they get to use a new product that will be handicapped. But after several days of the whole news I actually feel they will get away with it because they are promoting stuff like sharing your digital library in a household. It's kind of the same deal how Steam was able to infect us with DRM and having to run their software every time you want to run your games by making special deals with publishers and devs to have some games cheaper.
In the end, business models change but to be honest I do not know how these console manufacturers expect to sell as many consoles as they think they can in a weak economy. Nowadays you can get an AMD A10 budget gaming PC for like $270 and you get to do a lot more stuff with it too. Plus you have all these previous generation consoles that are really good, from the PS3 to the 360 and even the Wii (which is dirt cheap now), that people have way too much entertainment in their hands.
I want to ask what kind of stuff do you like the most of the Wii U aside from gaming? Is it better than the XBox360 for that? I know at least you are saving a ton of energy since the Wii U is extremely power efficient. Which titles are your kids playing on the Ouya?
Slashdot Mirror
Well not everybody will have the knowledge to do these things. I understand that, but you can perfectly use something like WebDAV if you know a little bit about Linux/Apache, and when you do you can give your friends access and split the bills for hosting if you like. It's more that if people realize that there are options for most of that stuff things are totally doable.
As far as converting YouTube videos to DailyMotion it is really easy to do. Just get any YouTube downloader app from CNET Download.com and just upload the video afterwards. Main issue is copyrights, but DailyMotion has a lot of stuff so it's not like you cannot live without it.
Panama being a tax haven is what has driven the incredible success they have as an economy being just a tiny country with few people. Panama City is starting to look a lot like Miami, and I know people doing construction projects there and you don't get asked to give 10% of the contract to whatever government official as it is the unwritten rule in a lot of institutions in neighboring countries.
Well, I have been to all of those countries and what you said is the equivalent of me saying the US is the worst country in the world because they didn't allow peaceful demonstrations like Occupy Wall Street to go on. I think you have to look at the big picture since no country is perfect and to me, those countries I mentioned have a very high standard of quality living: nature, good healthcare, good education, inexpensive, democracies, etc.
I know there is racism against blacks in the US, but believe me you are worse off in there. A girl from Ecuador was kicked in the face on a Spanish metro while boys were screaming at her to go back to her country, and when the police had the video recording and saw what happened they didn't do anything because the girl was too afraid to testify. There was a Mexican that was killed by high school football jocks in Pennsylvania and the police tried to cover the incident, I believe either the feds or some state authority got involved afterwards and it was all over the news.
If you truly want to feel like an alien go to Russia and let me know about it. And btw, even with that crap, I like Russia quite a bit.
The minute Canonical manages to get commercial driver support for lots of stuff I don't think you will be whining as much. Linux is built around choice, nobody forces you to use Mir or Wayland. So just choose whichever you like the most. And there are several Unix kernels, Linux being one of them. Trying to make a category of Linux in itself won't fly. OpenBSD was tough competition and you cannot go lower down the chain than this. It all worked out in the end, people like Gentoo bringing ports functionality from BSD.
Hell if anything I believe GTK+ and Qt were truly an issue at some point, and even then it all worked out. Fragmentation is what makes Linux extremely awesome. There is a zero bs attitude from users and developers and we have seen that quite a bit with OpenOffice and Gnome.
Hmm, I don't know, Europe has a lot of good things but I do consider racism is less of an issue in the US, especially the east coast than what some friends of me had to endure in the Netherlands, Spain and Germany. They are wonderful countries but talk to any immigrant that does not look European and that knows both sides of the pond. I guarantee you most responses will favor the US.
I really doubt somebody from Sweden will agree with you, and as I said before, countries like Panama and Costa Rica are truly good.
Panama and Costa Rica. Being some of the stables countries in Latin America you truly have a level of freedom that needs to be lived in order to know that is real, without the crazy issues of having corrupt authorities on your ass. They truly are immigrant friendly plus Panama has pretty good levels of infrastructure. Those countries might feel like a small town sometimes but honest to god, they are truly wonderful places to live if you are able to secure a decent monthly payment.
I actually have a successful business in Venezuela and I'm not employed or paid by the government.
When they nationalized assets from companies they did pay compensation. So far they regained control of two companies that used to be state companies, like a big steel mill and the state telephone and internet company. They also took control of big corporations that controlled grain distribution for farmers and decided who they would finance (read people with big money). They nationalized failed banks instead of giving bailout money to corrupt bankers, and also started splitting farm land from big landowners (again by giving them money) so that the land could become more productive.
I have to say that a lot of these programs were actually pretty good, especially when it comes to banks and the state phone company, which keeps the cheapest cell phone rates and best internet service throughout the country. But on some other fronts they created more problems than they solved. When they nationalized cement factories because they were exporting a lot of the production instead of selling it locally, they replaced capitalist corruption with government inefficiency, since when they took it they created a major mess on the cement supply. Nowadays is better but in general I failed to see nationalizations as a bad thing. If it is used selectively it can actually be very good.
The firearms issue in Venezuela is not a despotic one either. In my case I actually prefer to be allowed to carry firearms even if I don't own one myself, but I can totally see where they are coming from. Venezuela is ridden with violence, and it's not only firearms, it's just easier for people to start hitting or screaming at each other for something they don't agree with here than in other countries I have seen. And the fact that I know one person that got shot and another one that was beaten to a pulp because some thugs were trying to get ahold of their guns really makes it safer for you not to own guns here. The guy who was shot had to carry a colostomy bag for months. Besides, the law is being discussed by a congress that is composed of chavistas and opposition alike.
And for the government taking money from the rich, I would really like to see where you got that from? I haven't seen that happening even once.
I'm sorry that you think that everybody that supports the government here is receiving grants and cannot be an independent thinker. But after being burned by extreme capitalism before Chavez came to power, it is hard for me to support the other guys. It's hard for you to understand what we went through but I just wrote to let you know that it's not only about poor people or communists or whatnot. More about rights and trying to enjoy a little bit more equality, which I believe is more visibly in the US than it ever was in Venezuela.
And the funny thing is that there are all these alternatives out there. If you really cannot live without commercial systems, at least spread out the information among several of them that are owned by different companies. Or you can just use something like DuckDuckGo as your search engine, French DailyMotion for videos, rent your own website/e-mail and get your own domain. You can use that system to put files on the "cloud" with old-fashioned FTP.
Those are very easy things to do, even if they are not flashy as using the latest Google Drive, etc.
I don't know about you but I use Bing everyday. It is the only true alternative to Google Search imho.
As a Venezuelan, I can tell you that we are not governed by a despotic government. Scream at me if you like but we just had an election after the other president we had died, people were kind of undecided between two candidates that represented two very different political ideologies. One of them won and while people might feel angry that does not give you the right to say that is despotic. In fact, I believe that is how true democracy should work. Who says that I cannot vote for a socialist government in a democracy? If anything, I think Venezuelans have been enjoying a lot of political freedoms in that regard with a couple of issues. A country is not only composed of rich people and corporations dictating what is good for everybody else.
Having said that, the current Venezuelan government has made some colossal mistakes regarding currency exchange controls that is affecting all the industry. They make Chavez look like Adam Smith in a way.
This is my take on this issue, and I do believe not only that you can do a lot, but that the feds had to say that crap that if you do they will focus on you since they are worried a lot of people will think extra hard now to avoid them. It's like the Borg saying resistance is futile. Anyways, this is my list:
-Install Hardened Gentoo. If you want to be extra paranoid download the source packages directly from the creators and compare hash keys.
-Get a Linux VPS in a country that either has strong privacy laws like France, or from a country that is willing to fight off US foreign policy. Venezuela is geographically close and you can set up an account with the state company CANTV, but they only speak Spanish.
-Install your own mail server on the VPS and install WebDAV to create your own "cloud" storage service.
-Make sure they allow you to run the tun/tap kernel module so you can run OpenVPN with zero issues. Install Squid and OpenVPN. Keep in mind that a lot of things like certain YouTube stuff, Netflix and others might be blocked by regional distribution issues.
-Use IceCat as your web browser. It has some extra privacy features. Make sure you disable Google Safe Browsing and any other similar systems that phone home back to Google. You can use Yandex Safe Browsing API but that takes extra work.
-Think real hard what to do with your smartphone. Right now the only secure alternative is just using a dumb phone, but an Android device with Cyanogenmod and an alternate app store can do the trick. Especially since Cyanogen is working on a feature to really restrict what an app can do with your info by creating honeypots.
-If the e-mail server setup is too painful, get an e-mail account with a Russian or a Chinese provider like Yandex.com (also in English) or 163.com (Chinese only). Needless to say, use GnuPG with your e-mails, as painful as that may be. Note that the subject and the From/To/CC fields are visible to anyone. Consider using an alternative to e-mail for secure communications.
-Keep in mind that using something like Tor means that "Like all current low latency anonymity networks, Tor is vulnerable to traffic analysis from observers who can watch both ends of a user's connection." Also a malicious exit node could send modified code to identify who was doing the original requests.
-If you truly have to use stuff like Facebook, or use websites that ask for birthdates or whatnot, provide as much false information as you can.
-If you use services like Evernote, switch to Tomboy and get a Snowy backend.
-Avoid using credit cards or electronic payments.
-Play disc-based games on a console that is not connected to the internet, since playing games for Linux are a joke. If you have to do multiplayer go with local multiplayer either with LANs (a dying genre) or a console (party games, rock band, etc).
I have done some of the stuff mentioned above and by far the coolest one is the VPN, since it also works wonders in places with restricted internet. But in general you have to strike a balance between convenience and security.
After living for quite a bit in some of the places listed, I can totally confirm that France, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macao have a better deal. But with the clear exception of France, which I consider the true socialist countries from the list along with Scandinavian countries, All the "Chinese" places are hardly related to socialism. Hell, the internet connection in mainland is a joke, based in no small part because of the draconian firewall that makes all the traffic go to Beijing (At least that's what a traceroute returns with ChinaNet in Shanghai). Crap maybe I should move to Hong Kong myself :)
I think you fail to realize that there should be more options available to you as a consumer. On one side we have publishers like EA becoming distributors, on the other you have steam which is the defacto store for new digital games. GOG is mostly for nostalgia games if you haven't checked. Hell, even Apple couldn't pull it off with books. And if you translate what is happening with video games distribution to other forms of arts like books, music and paintings, I believe it will be easier for you to understand my point.
btw, I was replying to the AC but somehow my post got screwed, lol.
You understand that false advertising is recognized as something very bad in most societies?
But what are big publishers doing for them? It seems Microst took a lot of flag for nothing. At least Steam was able to bring some prices down and has sales from time to time in order to push us into PC internet DRM, run their software while gaming and phone home every month.
Reliable and decent corporation? Hmm, let me think. Nah maybe a non-profit will do.
The problem is that not everybody will get rid of them. Let's say Microsoft outraged a million users that are actually willing to dump them. They will still get a lot more of new people based on the 360 success no matter what people on the internet say. Then they will play and think, hey this does not affect me or maybe even think that's the way new things are. Then they will see a PS4 or even a Wii U which are cheaper and have fewer restrictions, and only then they will realize what they have lost.
Haha nice, I wish I had mod points for you. You know getting a Slashdot account isn't that hard :)
It's the same deal as a book publisher. People can complain all they want here about not needing publishers and what not. Sure you can self-publish to Amazon and others, but the kind of exposure you get if you have good materials is way better when it's done by marketing professionals. There are also the cash advances as people mention, the whole knowing how the distributions channels work, shipping internationally, etc, etc. So people really need to take their geek hat out of this one, since I believe not only that publishers are important, but that they will always be around to have a healthy industry, in the same way record companies exists for the music business and art galleries or foundries do their part with the fine arts.
But sure, as far as the Microsoft move goes, it is absurd to actually impose a publisher on someone. Having a publisher is the smart move but you should be free to do whatever you want because there can be occasions when you simply cannot secure a publisher until you have some kind of success.
Microsoft has created some decent products lately like Windows Phone, Bing and even the Hotmail revamp comes to mind. Just the fact Apple copied their "flat" graphic style now speaks volumes of what they have accomplished in the mobile arena. Sure they have issues and the XBox One launch is a disaster but they are a big company that can tolerate some bad iterations of overall successful products, like Windows.
The issue is that Microsoft established a lot of good faith based on the 360 and some people just refuse to believe bad news when they hear it until they get to use a new product that will be handicapped. But after several days of the whole news I actually feel they will get away with it because they are promoting stuff like sharing your digital library in a household. It's kind of the same deal how Steam was able to infect us with DRM and having to run their software every time you want to run your games by making special deals with publishers and devs to have some games cheaper.
In the end, business models change but to be honest I do not know how these console manufacturers expect to sell as many consoles as they think they can in a weak economy. Nowadays you can get an AMD A10 budget gaming PC for like $270 and you get to do a lot more stuff with it too. Plus you have all these previous generation consoles that are really good, from the PS3 to the 360 and even the Wii (which is dirt cheap now), that people have way too much entertainment in their hands.
I want to ask what kind of stuff do you like the most of the Wii U aside from gaming? Is it better than the XBox360 for that? I know at least you are saving a ton of energy since the Wii U is extremely power efficient. Which titles are your kids playing on the Ouya?