Sure, but claiming Linux isn't a gaming OS is like claiming the Wii-U isn't a gaming console. It's not true at all, just because less games are made for it than another option. All the phrasing like "Linux doesn't run games" implies that something is wrong with Linux- and that influences perception.
If you can remember a phrase related to your children, pets, whatever, you can simply use an initialism. For instance, if your daughter Sally was born in 1999 in Tampa, you could remember the phrase "Sally was born in 99 in Tampa at 5 o'clock", and then your password is Swbi99iTa5o. The field of total sentences is massive, and this hooks the good parts of using pet, child, or spouse names, with the good parts of not using words as any percent of your password.
Upsides: You keep the password in your head. You can type the password quickly because it is short. Downsides: Bullshit like "you must have two numbers, two lowercase, two uppercase, two special" will incorrectly reject your secure password as if it were insecure. You can get around this by always postpending or prepending a short string with the same whatever-you-needs.
Solutions like "keep your passwords in a vault" have issues, though unlikely ones. Your online vault is a potential target for hackers (who wouldn't be looking to target anyone in particular- it's just a rich source of access tokens potentially), your local vault needs to be transported and cared for like any data, along with whatever decrypts it.
No, you own Windows 7. You also have a license to operate Windows 7. They cannot change this contract at any time. The WoW example is a really bad one, because with WoW you only own the client, and you must agree to their latest EULA in order to connect to their server- but you are free to continue running the WoW 1.0 client that you own for as long as you like. There's just nothing to connect it to.
> Linux is not an option for me. The software I run for work no longer has a version for Linux.
This is the kind of lock-in that is just so hard to fight. Most of the visible fight is on the side of games, because gamers are ultimately trendsetters in hardware and software, and are numerous, but all the myriad productivity business applications that are coded to only run on Windows is this death-grip on the software industry. If you absolutely had to, you might be able to VM it, or find a way to run it under WINE, but your most likely path is to just use Windows, and then buy another computer for your other needs. This is a win/lose for you: you get privacy and a real OS, but you have to maintain double compies. Microsoft, on the other hand, is grinning ear to ear.
> And I agreed the Windows 7 EULA, not the Windows 10 one. What if I disagree with the Windows 10 one?
Then it tries to back out all the million changes it just made and put you back on 7, lol.
> Are they trying to trick me into agreeing by other methods (i.e. automatically upgrading me?), giving me no reasonable option, etc.?
I think that's the track you'd have to walk down, but I'm pretty sure they have thought of it and have a pretty high confidence that they could defend it. The fact that Windows 10 can break you on attempted upgrade OR downgrade may be a solid attack vector, however, as maybe could an argument about downtime, etc? Who knows, its all jackdickery until someone with standing files a lawsuit.
Think about how vast the profits from the Windows 10 adware must be, for it to come to this. Microsoft considers it worthwhile to upset users, break people's computers who are using them in life-or-death situations, risk multiple valid legal angles, and absolutely infuriate a group of highly technical users who see this stuff and are busy switching their friends and small businesses to Linux. All that lost business, all that legal risk, and possibly even blood on their hands, all for those sweet sweet adbucks. It must just be so fucking many adbucks man, so fucking many.
It's under section 7, Internet-Based Services. The line for Windows Update says "To enable the proper functioning of the Windows Update service in software (if you use it), updates or downloads to the Windows Update service will be required from time to time..."- it also mentions that they will be downloaded without further notice to you. The second part isn't important, but the first part is- it means that Windows Update can essentially become any manner of beast that they want, *should you choose to use it*. Or at least, they would probably be able to use that in a legal dispute about all this Windows 10 trick-upgrade bullshit.
Linux is a much better gaming OS than Windows is. The developers just have to get on board with that fact. Don't mistake "most games aren't compiled for Linux" with that somehow being Linux's fault.
"Some games are still not designed to run on Linux" is more correct. This includes the subset of games that both (a) don't have a native Linux version and (b) use OS calls that WINE doesn't fully support yet.
Microsoft Windows doesn't run your games. Your games jumped through hoops to run under Microsoft Windows.
If executing a step of simulation in our universe (U) takes some nonzero amount of effort, E, in the universe one above us (U'), then there's an upper limit to how many universes U' can simulate. If U' is also a simulation in U'', then all that effort lays upon U''. The E amount grows exponentially.
This doesn't disprove the hypothesis, but it does mean that U' (or U'', or up to infinity) is at some point *fundamentally* different. Our ability to simulate universes is definitely finite, but to make Musk's argument compelling (that since we could maybe simulate a universe, we are likely to be inside of a simulation, or a deeply nested one) to the "one in billions" number, something above us needs to essentially have infinite energy, or not even have the concept of energy.
The idea that we are being emulated by an entity or realm with endless energy does not seems as appealing or interesting- that's pretty much positing something so alien and all powerful as to be a technologist's take on a divine realm.
If we discard the idea of infinite energy / no need for energy, then the odds of us being a simulation could still be large, but not massive. All of this assumes that such a simulation is possible, would be able to have consciousness or the illusion thereof, and qualia- all big assumptions given that, based on the materialist worldview, all this should be testable, should be provable, but that has not happened.
If we are simulated, and our universe uses data compression (say, not determining state exactly until interaction calculus need be performed), then maybe we could test it with some effect that generates a lot more decisions-per-moment in a space than the universe normally supports. Maybe when they see the sim taking longer, or drawing more power, they'll pull us up in a debugger, eh?
Anyway, the whole idea makes a bunch of assumptions. These could be true assumptions, but they are not proven, and many could be tested, and haven't been. I think it is too early to say it is overwhelmingly likely, or even possible at all.
Technically this is an improvement- it is no longer a dark pattern, there's no more trick. Obviously the sane thing to do is to simply stop forcing this OS change on the users, but each Windows 10 user must generate so much ad revenue that it is worth trying to stomp out each and every one.
Anyway, whatever. Install Linux, that's your only long term fix. You can turn off updates in Windows 7 or 8, or you can get some binary that tries to fight Microsoft on this, or you can do some doodlefuck in the registry. The point is, you're fighting the OS distributor, who is no longer trustworthy. Install Linux, or you must like this shit.
Shill prediction: At some point in the near future, the "free upgrade" goes away. At this point, however, they'll still offer it for free for users of assistive technology: ( https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.c... ). That's nice of them, but that *probably* means that pretty much anyone will still be able to get it for free, by turning this on. So the shill prediction is: that this becomes a "cool trick" that gets posted on forums and stuff, at some people looking to "pull one over" on Microsoft.
Windows 10 uses you. You're the revenue source, because they sell ads. Of course they are willing to let you be a revenue source at no cost to them!
> I think if I had known about the legal quagmire that is the IT industry at this point I would have studied law rather than computer science...
If anyone knew what Oracle was going to do, they just would have never used anything that they touch. If they buy something you care about, transition off IMMEDIATELY. Not doing so is a minimum six figure error for a company, and possibly 2-3 more orders of magnitude. Vastly too risky to touch, total poison.
> And yet when you compare kernel to kernel, Linux has had several orders of magnitude more bugs than the NT kernel.
First, I fucking doubt it.
Second, if you are going to compare a tiny kernel to a big kernel, it is not a useful comparison. Compare instead the set of Windows components, kernel included, that has equivalent features to the Linux kernel.
Just because Linux lets you grab the kernel straight up doesn't mean you have that need. If you have that need, you sure as fuck aren't using Windows, which doesn't have any comparable option. This isn't happening to end users going through a distro.
> Haha! First, "This wouldn't have happened if you were running Windows!" post.
I know you're kidding, but the solution for those who are grabbing the latest kernel and having problems was just to pick another kernel off the list of choices instead, and boot with that. And of course, if you are using a distro without doing that, you don't have these issues.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure, but claiming Linux isn't a gaming OS is like claiming the Wii-U isn't a gaming console. It's not true at all, just because less games are made for it than another option. All the phrasing like "Linux doesn't run games" implies that something is wrong with Linux- and that influences perception.
If you can remember a phrase related to your children, pets, whatever, you can simply use an initialism. For instance, if your daughter Sally was born in 1999 in Tampa, you could remember the phrase "Sally was born in 99 in Tampa at 5 o'clock", and then your password is Swbi99iTa5o. The field of total sentences is massive, and this hooks the good parts of using pet, child, or spouse names, with the good parts of not using words as any percent of your password.
Upsides: You keep the password in your head. You can type the password quickly because it is short.
Downsides: Bullshit like "you must have two numbers, two lowercase, two uppercase, two special" will incorrectly reject your secure password as if it were insecure. You can get around this by always postpending or prepending a short string with the same whatever-you-needs.
Solutions like "keep your passwords in a vault" have issues, though unlikely ones. Your online vault is a potential target for hackers (who wouldn't be looking to target anyone in particular- it's just a rich source of access tokens potentially), your local vault needs to be transported and cared for like any data, along with whatever decrypts it.
Settings > iTunes & App Stores, disable "Updates" under "Automatic Downloads".
If you already automatically downloaded one and it is nagging you, go delete it under "Storage".
> I am forced to upgrade my Mac and iPhone all the time.
Like you can fucking turn that off you know. All of it. Do you even settings bro?
No, you own Windows 7. You also have a license to operate Windows 7. They cannot change this contract at any time. The WoW example is a really bad one, because with WoW you only own the client, and you must agree to their latest EULA in order to connect to their server- but you are free to continue running the WoW 1.0 client that you own for as long as you like. There's just nothing to connect it to.
> any bad publicity is still cheaper than having to support 7 for the next 20 years
Maybe they could release a sequel to Windows 7 and charge for it. Windows 7 2? I don't know what you would call it....
> Linux is not an option for me. The software I run for work no longer has a version for Linux.
This is the kind of lock-in that is just so hard to fight. Most of the visible fight is on the side of games, because gamers are ultimately trendsetters in hardware and software, and are numerous, but all the myriad productivity business applications that are coded to only run on Windows is this death-grip on the software industry. If you absolutely had to, you might be able to VM it, or find a way to run it under WINE, but your most likely path is to just use Windows, and then buy another computer for your other needs. This is a win/lose for you: you get privacy and a real OS, but you have to maintain double compies. Microsoft, on the other hand, is grinning ear to ear.
> And I agreed the Windows 7 EULA, not the Windows 10 one. What if I disagree with the Windows 10 one?
Then it tries to back out all the million changes it just made and put you back on 7, lol.
> Are they trying to trick me into agreeing by other methods (i.e. automatically upgrading me?), giving me no reasonable option, etc.?
I think that's the track you'd have to walk down, but I'm pretty sure they have thought of it and have a pretty high confidence that they could defend it. The fact that Windows 10 can break you on attempted upgrade OR downgrade may be a solid attack vector, however, as maybe could an argument about downtime, etc? Who knows, its all jackdickery until someone with standing files a lawsuit.
Think about how vast the profits from the Windows 10 adware must be, for it to come to this. Microsoft considers it worthwhile to upset users, break people's computers who are using them in life-or-death situations, risk multiple valid legal angles, and absolutely infuriate a group of highly technical users who see this stuff and are busy switching their friends and small businesses to Linux. All that lost business, all that legal risk, and possibly even blood on their hands, all for those sweet sweet adbucks. It must just be so fucking many adbucks man, so fucking many.
It's under section 7, Internet-Based Services. The line for Windows Update says "To enable the proper functioning of the Windows Update service in software (if you use it), updates or downloads to the Windows Update service will be required from time to time..."- it also mentions that they will be downloaded without further notice to you. The second part isn't important, but the first part is- it means that Windows Update can essentially become any manner of beast that they want, *should you choose to use it*. Or at least, they would probably be able to use that in a legal dispute about all this Windows 10 trick-upgrade bullshit.
I mean, they weren't totally opt-in in 2013, and that was before Windows 10.
http://community.websense.com/...
Linux is a much better gaming OS than Windows is. The developers just have to get on board with that fact. Don't mistake "most games aren't compiled for Linux" with that somehow being Linux's fault.
> Linux does not run most games
STOP
"Some games are still not designed to run on Linux" is more correct. This includes the subset of games that both (a) don't have a native Linux version and (b) use OS calls that WINE doesn't fully support yet.
Microsoft Windows doesn't run your games. Your games jumped through hoops to run under Microsoft Windows.
I can't be bothered to keep track of EVERYTHING Microsoft does wrong, I am just one man!
4194304k ought to be enough for anyone
If executing a step of simulation in our universe (U) takes some nonzero amount of effort, E, in the universe one above us (U'), then there's an upper limit to how many universes U' can simulate. If U' is also a simulation in U'', then all that effort lays upon U''. The E amount grows exponentially.
This doesn't disprove the hypothesis, but it does mean that U' (or U'', or up to infinity) is at some point *fundamentally* different. Our ability to simulate universes is definitely finite, but to make Musk's argument compelling (that since we could maybe simulate a universe, we are likely to be inside of a simulation, or a deeply nested one) to the "one in billions" number, something above us needs to essentially have infinite energy, or not even have the concept of energy.
The idea that we are being emulated by an entity or realm with endless energy does not seems as appealing or interesting- that's pretty much positing something so alien and all powerful as to be a technologist's take on a divine realm.
If we discard the idea of infinite energy / no need for energy, then the odds of us being a simulation could still be large, but not massive. All of this assumes that such a simulation is possible, would be able to have consciousness or the illusion thereof, and qualia- all big assumptions given that, based on the materialist worldview, all this should be testable, should be provable, but that has not happened.
If we are simulated, and our universe uses data compression (say, not determining state exactly until interaction calculus need be performed), then maybe we could test it with some effect that generates a lot more decisions-per-moment in a space than the universe normally supports. Maybe when they see the sim taking longer, or drawing more power, they'll pull us up in a debugger, eh?
Anyway, the whole idea makes a bunch of assumptions. These could be true assumptions, but they are not proven, and many could be tested, and haven't been. I think it is too early to say it is overwhelmingly likely, or even possible at all.
This is a cool advancement, because it shows that the cars are getting good at sending a message. But do they LISTEN to honks?
> No reason whatsoever, except the entirety of observed data.
If you change the model every time you observe more data, you don't have a model, you just have data.
Alllllll these workarounds. Man, wouldn't it be great if your OS wasn't overtly hostile?
Technically this is an improvement- it is no longer a dark pattern, there's no more trick. Obviously the sane thing to do is to simply stop forcing this OS change on the users, but each Windows 10 user must generate so much ad revenue that it is worth trying to stomp out each and every one.
Anyway, whatever. Install Linux, that's your only long term fix. You can turn off updates in Windows 7 or 8, or you can get some binary that tries to fight Microsoft on this, or you can do some doodlefuck in the registry. The point is, you're fighting the OS distributor, who is no longer trustworthy. Install Linux, or you must like this shit.
Shill prediction: At some point in the near future, the "free upgrade" goes away. At this point, however, they'll still offer it for free for users of assistive technology: ( https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.c... ). That's nice of them, but that *probably* means that pretty much anyone will still be able to get it for free, by turning this on. So the shill prediction is: that this becomes a "cool trick" that gets posted on forums and stuff, at some people looking to "pull one over" on Microsoft.
Windows 10 uses you. You're the revenue source, because they sell ads. Of course they are willing to let you be a revenue source at no cost to them!
> I think if I had known about the legal quagmire that is the IT industry at this point I would have studied law rather than computer science...
If anyone knew what Oracle was going to do, they just would have never used anything that they touch. If they buy something you care about, transition off IMMEDIATELY. Not doing so is a minimum six figure error for a company, and possibly 2-3 more orders of magnitude. Vastly too risky to touch, total poison.
> And yet when you compare kernel to kernel, Linux has had several orders of magnitude more bugs than the NT kernel.
First, I fucking doubt it.
Second, if you are going to compare a tiny kernel to a big kernel, it is not a useful comparison. Compare instead the set of Windows components, kernel included, that has equivalent features to the Linux kernel.
Just because Linux lets you grab the kernel straight up doesn't mean you have that need. If you have that need, you sure as fuck aren't using Windows, which doesn't have any comparable option. This isn't happening to end users going through a distro.
> Everyone who configures their own kernel
No no, he asked who in their *right* mind, your statement precludes that! :P
> Haha! First, "This wouldn't have happened if you were running Windows!" post.
I know you're kidding, but the solution for those who are grabbing the latest kernel and having problems was just to pick another kernel off the list of choices instead, and boot with that. And of course, if you are using a distro without doing that, you don't have these issues.
No, but it requires pretty heroic effort to avoid it, so talking about them at the same time can be useful, depending on context.