I used to wonder about this back in the mid-'90s, but seeing the quality of some of the free software out there gives me the feeling that it's in a pretty good position at the moment. One reservation there is a common assumption that Linux==Ubuntu, which can be a pain in the ass if you want to experiment with occasional bits of software for which the source is unavailable or too troublesome to compile. (I personally find Ubuntu about as irritating as Windows, and for a lot of the same reasons.)
But all those people who don't really care too much about freedom of choice won't use anything other than Windows or Macs anyway (and, despite its many faults, even Windows is more customisable). While, on the other hand, widespread acceptance of Android, with its plethora of different apps and interfaces, has spurred a renewed interest in looking for new or different ways to use your devices.
I am mal-coordinated enough that I can only use my phone with two hands, no matter how big or small it is
If your phone is big enough, it's not a problem. I grew up with phones like this where you could wedge the handset between your head and shoulder, and use a pencil or a pinkie to work the dial. Of course, for many years, mobile phones didn't really look that much different: just push-buttons instead of a dial, and no wire between the phone and the wall.
I've been seriously considering getting another such machine, since I live some distance from regular power supplies, and these phones never needed batteries.
I hate push notifications. Especially when my attempts to suspend them don't stick, so the unwanted traffic costs big-time when roaming.
I set my mail client (K-9 Mail) to poll my 3 most-used addresses via POP3 at differing intervals, to keep traffic to a minimum, and limit the maximum size of the message.
I'm not really too fussed about RF radiation, since I'm already older than the half-life of Pu-238 (or that's how it feels sometimes) and sooner or later, something's got to make me croak.
I put the screen towards me (in my pants pocket) after an experience ~10 years ago when I managed to bugger up the outer screen of a Motorola clamshell while unloading some machinery off a trailer. It would have cost more than the phone was worth to fix it, so the screen stayed broken until the phone came up for replacement.
Familiarity with ions isn't necessarily universal - I had a chemistry professor at uni whose wife (a smart enough lady in other regards) told me her attempt to get to grips with chemistry at school ended with failure to understand ions.
I work on ads, not Android, and didn't know about this. Is it bad? Perhaps. It's recent, I haven't heard it discussed, and I don't know enough about what's going on to judge atm. But that article sure has an axe to grind.
It made front page on newspapers here in Australia. Not that I expect this case to register in the rest of the world, since both author and the app are Australian-oriented, but the developer makes it clear enough that he doesn't need all that information.
This brings the question of the legality of selling others information.
Legality, smegality. The law only applies if they get caught, and the chances of that are very small. And even if they did happen to get caught, the damage is already done, and your information is as good as public property.
I only use free email providers for things I don't really care much about - i.e. where I have an expectation that providing such an address will result in spam. I then process any of the messages remaining after the email provider's spam filtering by only downloading the headers via a POP3 client, and ruthlessly deleting anything I don't recognise.
But I already digress from what I came here to say: If Facebook (or anyone else) demands that you provide them with your real name (as they do), then no sane person can hope they will not sell your ID along with any other information they can scrape from your activity. Any assumption to the contrary is just living in cloud-cuckoo-land.
Generally, the worst distractions I get at home are the endless conference calls (and work-related phone calls) that seem to have no point other than to waste time.
This, however, is no different to what you'll always find in an office. There is always somebody who has to stand on his (or her) soapbox and tell everybody what they think. Or what they would think if they were capable of any kind of cogitative function. And usually at length.
This is where it helps to sustain a reputation for being cranky and abrasive (best start before you're hired if possible, so nobody is under any illusions) and insist on an agenda, so you can get away when relevant items have been dealt with.
But getting back to the point, the trouble with working at home is that a great many employers foster a culture of what my wife calls "presentism". What that implies to me is that the boss doesn't trust you not to slack off if he can't keep an eye on you. There's not much you can do about that, except find another boss or go it alone.
If the carriers would calm down a little on the shitware, there'd be less people rooting their phones.
True. My last phone (Sony/Ericson) never got updated beyond Android 2.1 by the manufacturer, and the asswipes did a deal with my telco to cripple tethering (despite said telco explicitly telling me they didn't have a problem with tethering). So I pretty much had to root the device to get the functionality I needed.
However, my more recent Galaxy Nexus (from the same telco) came with a much closer-to-stock ROM on it, and with less crapware, and I never did get around to rooting it.
Even now that I have flashed the device with a "real" stock image from Google (I got tired of waiting for JellyBean), I still haven't needed root access.
In my experience, cyanogen is the best android distro there is. If you can get an official build or an unofficial port of it for your device, you should be running it.
I'm not arguing, but as a happy "stock" droid 4.2.2 user on my Samsung Galaxy Nexus, I would be interested to know what makes it better.
I seriously considered CM when I had a Sony/Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro piece of abandonware, and was in fact making preparations to install CM when that machine died.
As a follow-up question, with subsequent upgrades of Cyanogen, do they follow a non-destructive procedure similar to Google's with Nexus devices, or do I have to blow away all my apps, settings etc every time I upgrade? I could see that getting a bit tedious. I put up with that once in order to get the phone out of the grasp of my lazy telco, and it was worth it, but I wouldn't want to have to do that every other month.
I've been getting yahoo mail via POP3 for several years (I think since ~2005?), and I've never been asked for one red cent. I'm quite sure I would remember something like that...
Even if he resolves the battery issue and the app store issue, and makes a kick ass stereo out of it...
Well, he'll never be able to make a kickass stereo out of it by adding wireless speakers. There just is not one decent example of these to be had. The best way (IMHO) of building a decent stereo is to find a combination of amplifier and speakers that you like and can afford (not necessarily in that order), and build a simple and stable linux box (for me that implies Slackware, but anything will work, even Fubuntu...) with a *good* (not necessarily expensive) soundcard and a big HDD, and use it to play your flac-encoded music with something like XBMC.
That's what I thought too, until I tried one. I've owned a few industrial-type vacs which worked well enough, in their own way, but are overly bulky for the home. I've abused the hell out of the dyson machine I bought ~3 years ago, and I'm still happy with it, whereas I usually start bitching and whining when machines stop working properly after a month. Only thing wrong with the dyson is that it's no good for wet stuff.
And incidentally, by far the best way to deal with Yahoo mail is via a proper email client (take your pick, Thunderfart, mutt, whatever rocks your boat). I can guarantee you'll never see any of their ads that way (unless Yahoo happens to be spamming you).
Don't let the door hit you on the way out. If you block ads, you're just a leech anyway
Bullshit. The internet was never created for the convenience of ad-whores. The attitude of marketroids that they have some divine right to plaster their drivel over every surface visible to the human eye just makes me want to smack the bastards in the teeth.
... which probably is sufficient answer to the asinine point made in the submission:
'For an education-oriented organization to do this is particularly troubling.'"
It has always been my experience that universities' IT departments are almost universally clueless. In fact, their level of cluelessness rivals and outstrips that of many banks. My (maybe just slightly cynical) assumption is that these colleges only employ their own graduates...
I have recently come to an acceptance that since a great many of the packages available in the Linux world are already highly mature, there is little point in devoting so much of my (now limited) traffic allowance to updating everything just for point-release packages that in the majority of cases solve issues I never encounter.
I now just keep a weather eye on slackware-current from time to time, or rebuild individual packages as I need them. There are also a few good repositories that I have no problems trusting, such as alienbob's (where I got KDE 4.10, which was just too nice to pass up, and which I'm too lazy to compile myself).
I didn't post the comment to which you responded, but I would make the point that with Slack, you can have all the advantages of an up-to-date desktop system and simple UNIX sysadmin. Of course, the more current you want it, the more you (may) have to build yourself, but it's a nice compromise where you only need to bother rebuilding things that will actually make a difference to your experience. Plus, I'm quite certain I can depend on Pat not to introduce spyware.
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Is or isn't? Either way, you've missed the point.
but just like every other mobile device its almost all unused dead space in the middle
That's because the first thing every user does when he gets the phone is put a picture of {his,her} {cat,dog,offspring} there.
I used to wonder about this back in the mid-'90s, but seeing the quality of some of the free software out there gives me the feeling that it's in a pretty good position at the moment. One reservation there is a common assumption that Linux==Ubuntu, which can be a pain in the ass if you want to experiment with occasional bits of software for which the source is unavailable or too troublesome to compile. (I personally find Ubuntu about as irritating as Windows, and for a lot of the same reasons.)
But all those people who don't really care too much about freedom of choice won't use anything other than Windows or Macs anyway (and, despite its many faults, even Windows is more customisable). While, on the other hand, widespread acceptance of Android, with its plethora of different apps and interfaces, has spurred a renewed interest in looking for new or different ways to use your devices.
Anybody know if Canonical is tracking users with Ubuntu Touch, like they are with the desktop distro?
they might not do MITM attacks on http requests, but instead DNS requests.
I guess a simple solution there would be to either use someone else's DNS, or alternatively run your own.
I am mal-coordinated enough that I can only use my phone with two hands, no matter how big or small it is
If your phone is big enough, it's not a problem. I grew up with phones like this where you could wedge the handset between your head and shoulder, and use a pencil or a pinkie to work the dial. Of course, for many years, mobile phones didn't really look that much different: just push-buttons instead of a dial, and no wire between the phone and the wall.
I've been seriously considering getting another such machine, since I live some distance from regular power supplies, and these phones never needed batteries.
I hate push notifications. Especially when my attempts to suspend them don't stick, so the unwanted traffic costs big-time when roaming.
I set my mail client (K-9 Mail) to poll my 3 most-used addresses via POP3 at differing intervals, to keep traffic to a minimum, and limit the maximum size of the message.
I'm not really too fussed about RF radiation, since I'm already older than the half-life of Pu-238 (or that's how it feels sometimes) and sooner or later, something's got to make me croak.
I put the screen towards me (in my pants pocket) after an experience ~10 years ago when I managed to bugger up the outer screen of a Motorola clamshell while unloading some machinery off a trailer. It would have cost more than the phone was worth to fix it, so the screen stayed broken until the phone came up for replacement.
Familiarity with ions isn't necessarily universal - I had a chemistry professor at uni whose wife (a smart enough lady in other regards) told me her attempt to get to grips with chemistry at school ended with failure to understand ions.
The government won't do anything about it because there's nothing in it for them.
You'll have to do it for yourself: the hosts file is your friend.
I work on ads, not Android, and didn't know about this. Is it bad? Perhaps. It's recent, I haven't heard it discussed, and I don't know enough about what's going on to judge atm. But that article sure has an axe to grind.
It made front page on newspapers here in Australia. Not that I expect this case to register in the rest of the world, since both author and the app are Australian-oriented, but the developer makes it clear enough that he doesn't need all that information.
This brings the question of the legality of selling others information.
Legality, smegality. The law only applies if they get caught, and the chances of that are very small. And even if they did happen to get caught, the damage is already done, and your information is as good as public property.
I only use free email providers for things I don't really care much about - i.e. where I have an expectation that providing such an address will result in spam. I then process any of the messages remaining after the email provider's spam filtering by only downloading the headers via a POP3 client, and ruthlessly deleting anything I don't recognise.
But I already digress from what I came here to say: If Facebook (or anyone else) demands that you provide them with your real name (as they do), then no sane person can hope they will not sell your ID along with any other information they can scrape from your activity. Any assumption to the contrary is just living in cloud-cuckoo-land.
Generally, the worst distractions I get at home are the endless conference calls (and work-related phone calls) that seem to have no point other than to waste time.
This, however, is no different to what you'll always find in an office. There is always somebody who has to stand on his (or her) soapbox and tell everybody what they think. Or what they would think if they were capable of any kind of cogitative function. And usually at length.
This is where it helps to sustain a reputation for being cranky and abrasive (best start before you're hired if possible, so nobody is under any illusions) and insist on an agenda, so you can get away when relevant items have been dealt with.
But getting back to the point, the trouble with working at home is that a great many employers foster a culture of what my wife calls "presentism". What that implies to me is that the boss doesn't trust you not to slack off if he can't keep an eye on you. There's not much you can do about that, except find another boss or go it alone.
If the carriers would calm down a little on the shitware, there'd be less people rooting their phones.
True. My last phone (Sony/Ericson) never got updated beyond Android 2.1 by the manufacturer, and the asswipes did a deal with my telco to cripple tethering (despite said telco explicitly telling me they didn't have a problem with tethering). So I pretty much had to root the device to get the functionality I needed.
However, my more recent Galaxy Nexus (from the same telco) came with a much closer-to-stock ROM on it, and with less crapware, and I never did get around to rooting it.
Even now that I have flashed the device with a "real" stock image from Google (I got tired of waiting for JellyBean), I still haven't needed root access.
In my experience, cyanogen is the best android distro there is. If you can get an official build or an unofficial port of it for your device, you should be running it.
I'm not arguing, but as a happy "stock" droid 4.2.2 user on my Samsung Galaxy Nexus, I would be interested to know what makes it better. I seriously considered CM when I had a Sony/Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro piece of abandonware, and was in fact making preparations to install CM when that machine died.
As a follow-up question, with subsequent upgrades of Cyanogen, do they follow a non-destructive procedure similar to Google's with Nexus devices, or do I have to blow away all my apps, settings etc every time I upgrade? I could see that getting a bit tedious. I put up with that once in order to get the phone out of the grasp of my lazy telco, and it was worth it, but I wouldn't want to have to do that every other month.
I've been getting yahoo mail via POP3 for several years (I think since ~2005?), and I've never been asked for one red cent. I'm quite sure I would remember something like that...
Even if he resolves the battery issue and the app store issue, and makes a kick ass stereo out of it...
Well, he'll never be able to make a kickass stereo out of it by adding wireless speakers. There just is not one decent example of these to be had. The best way (IMHO) of building a decent stereo is to find a combination of amplifier and speakers that you like and can afford (not necessarily in that order), and build a simple and stable linux box (for me that implies Slackware, but anything will work, even Fubuntu...) with a *good* (not necessarily expensive) soundcard and a big HDD, and use it to play your flac-encoded music with something like XBMC.
That's what I thought too, until I tried one. I've owned a few industrial-type vacs which worked well enough, in their own way, but are overly bulky for the home. I've abused the hell out of the dyson machine I bought ~3 years ago, and I'm still happy with it, whereas I usually start bitching and whining when machines stop working properly after a month. Only thing wrong with the dyson is that it's no good for wet stuff.
And incidentally, by far the best way to deal with Yahoo mail is via a proper email client (take your pick, Thunderfart, mutt, whatever rocks your boat). I can guarantee you'll never see any of their ads that way (unless Yahoo happens to be spamming you).
Don't let the door hit you on the way out. If you block ads, you're just a leech anyway
Bullshit. The internet was never created for the convenience of ad-whores. The attitude of marketroids that they have some divine right to plaster their drivel over every surface visible to the human eye just makes me want to smack the bastards in the teeth.
'For an education-oriented organization to do this is particularly troubling.'"
It has always been my experience that universities' IT departments are almost universally clueless. In fact, their level of cluelessness rivals and outstrips that of many banks. My (maybe just slightly cynical) assumption is that these colleges only employ their own graduates...
I've occasionally thought about forking Python just to call it Boomslang...
I have recently come to an acceptance that since a great many of the packages available in the Linux world are already highly mature, there is little point in devoting so much of my (now limited) traffic allowance to updating everything just for point-release packages that in the majority of cases solve issues I never encounter.
I now just keep a weather eye on slackware-current from time to time, or rebuild individual packages as I need them. There are also a few good repositories that I have no problems trusting, such as alienbob's (where I got KDE 4.10, which was just too nice to pass up, and which I'm too lazy to compile myself).
I didn't post the comment to which you responded, but I would make the point that with Slack, you can have all the advantages of an up-to-date desktop system and simple UNIX sysadmin. Of course, the more current you want it, the more you (may) have to build yourself, but it's a nice compromise where you only need to bother rebuilding things that will actually make a difference to your experience. Plus, I'm quite certain I can depend on Pat not to introduce spyware.