So, if you threaten to destroy an entire nation or people, and you don't have the ability to carry out your threat, you get booted off Twitter. But if you make the threat and actually have a credible possibility of making it happen, then it's newsworthy and they leave it on.
Translation: We're scared of Trump and don't want to have to take action unless it's for something that no one will criticize us for.
Because you're not going to be able to mandate shifting the schedule of every person on the continent. Because even if you could legislate that, doing so would have a cost in the millions or billions.
Most people love having the extra daylight at the end of the work day rather than the beginning, even in the winter. So, assuming you have the goal of shifting an hour, what's easier, shift to daylight savings time one summer and never switch back, or redo, reprint, and sort out the logistical nightmare of switching every schedule on the continent by an hour?
Hey, whatever works. I just wish we could get, essentially, a permanent daylight savings time in North America too.
I will say, though, that reports that losing an hour of sleep causes heart attacks strains credibility. Anyone who is that fragile who doesn't go to bed an hour earlier is just demonstrating Darwinism anyway.
A better headline would be as given in the subject. I honestly don't see the need for Office at all. And anyone who sniffs the software-as-a-service glue ought to be placed in the same category as those who refuse to vaccinate their kids. Both groups are caving to pressure from those who do not have their best interests in mind, pandering to a concept of dubious value, and creating a worse environment for everyone else.
The problem isn't the file system. It isn't multiple desktops. It isn't the fact that Linux users feel entitled to free (as in beer) stuff. It's the education level of Linux users.
As much as Linux has tried to make inroads with the common joe, the general Linux user still displays a higher level of computer competence than other platforms. Which means they are less likely to put up with Dropbox's shenanigans when they do stupid things to make you pay.
Example: Bob has used 1.5 out of his 2gb of free space. Alice, his sister, shares a folder of family history photos and documents. Bob subscribes, but finds out suddenly he has exceeded his free space. Dropbox says, delete, or pay you freeloader.
Now, inexperienced users, they are more inclined to shell out. They may not know how silly this is, or they may not want to bother climbing the learning curve enough to try and find an alternative. Or some combination of the two. Linux users, on the other hand, say hey, wait a minute. How are you justifying "charging" the entire size of a shared folder to the size limit of every recipient?!? I know what a soft link is, and that's not the way that works. I'm not paying for this shit. Moreover, most Linux users are smart enough to make moving to an alternative like Syncthing a prospect that's not so daunting.
Dropbox should have adjusted its method of enticing users to pay. Like charging for something that's actually value added. Depending on the laziness and/or inexperience of users to maintain your business model isn't sustainable. Cutting off the smart users, and then telling them its their fault and calling them entitled freeloaders, that's not good business. Because for those people, the recommendations they then make to other users suddenly becomes "anything but Dropbox".
It's also a slap in the face of the community who wrote most of the software making the stack they used to get where they are.
Just remember, once the goodwill is lost, it's not coming back. Dropbox, you've been warned.
Scores don't matter, and neither does the article.
Seriously, if people don't care about TV show ratings, how much less do they care about articles talking about how people don't care about TV show ratings. Or meta discussions about TV show ratings.
It's amazing how Americans hide behind their constitution to justify all sorts of egregious things.
It's also amazing how ignorant about it that Americans are. So, here, let me educate you on your own constitution. The right to "free speech" as you call it, has limits. It's "free" so long as it remains in the boundaries of that is generally called "protected speech". It's been hashed out in case law for a long time, and is still being hashed out, and what is or isn't is more complex than can be explained here, but generally courts find that your right to free speech ends when it impinges on the rights of someone else or on the public good. This goes to the right to free anything. None of the rights are absolute, and this is a very good thing. Speech enjoys more protection than other rights, simply because it is not an inherently invasive action. However there are many cases where speech is restricted, and on a daily basic. You can't knowingly lie about someone publicly, or damage their reputation or impune them, because that's slander/libel. That's a civil law restriction on free speech. There are also criminal ones. My earlier example about how communicating for the purpose of encouraging someone to commit suicide is a crime, that is an example. Another one is communicating secrets to foreign entities, which can be treason. So, what you said, is demonstrably false. Banning people's speech because it is disliked it is absolutely not against the founding principles of your country, as long as the speech that is disliked is not protected speech.
So the real question is, is communicating false assertions about vaccines, is that protected speech. I have no doubt some people actually believe it the stories about vaccines, despite how provable false they are. But then again, there is such a thing as criminal stupidity. Where simply believing it because some rabid conspiracy nut said it isn't enough to protect you from basic fact checking before spreading it around like a canker on society. Because of the public endangerment involved, I think there is a good case to be made that it's not protected speech. It would be interesting to test in court. I suspect that anyone trying to argue that spreading nutball conspiracy theories about vaccines to the point that it is a danger to public health is protected speech would have an uphill battle justifying it in court. Where, presumably, the light of reason is supposed to prevail. Even in the US.
My second youngest almost died as a new infant from a disease that almost everyone is immunized against, or should be, because someone like you convinced enough parents not to vaccinate their kids that my son was able to get it before he was old enough to be vaccinated himself.
Communicating to encourage suicide is a crime. Communicating to encourage wacko vaccine theories should be too.
A major selling point of Palemoon is that it doesn't break existing extensions
This can't be stressed enough. The original article actually failed to make the biggest selling point of Pale Moon, which is that it works, and it keeps working release after release without breaking things.
Pale Moon became popular because Mozilla just couldn't stop breaking things and trying to tell the users what sort of UI they should want. In fact, Mozilla has been quite content to shed any technical merit they had for almost any reason at all. It all started when they saw Chrome beginning to become successful, and immediately decided to emulate Google's development environment. They adopted Google's rapid release and versioning methodology on a project that was neither technically nor culturally suited for it. They broke extensions by the truck load with that little gem, and instead of slowing down and letting the extension system catch up, their solution was to write a script that automatically scanned their extensions and just disabled the ones which hadn't caught up yet. Then they went all hell bent on adopting major UI changes that were demonstrably unpopular by the majority of its user base. And if alienating the extensions authors wasn't enough, many of the UI changes then went on to destroyed themes on back-to-back-to-back releases. It reminds me of one of my country's more famous (and intensely divisive) prime ministers who, when he realized he'd alienated half my country, proceeded to give them the finger from his seat on a train as he was passing through their area. That's Mozilla. They have repeatedly gone out of their way to alienate users, and then the ones who have stayed loyal they proceeded to give the finger to with.
All of this was in an attempt at emulating Chrome's burgeoning success. The problem is, they never figured out... you simply cannot surpass someone else by playing copycat on their methods. This is important so I'm going to say it again. Mozilla cannot copy Google and be better than Google. All they did with Firefox was alienate their existing user base in favour of a product that could never be quite as good at being Chrome as Chrome was. And now they are running headlong into inevitability again. See here for details.
The Pale Moon project has done for the browser what Mozilla should have done. It was originally a patch on an earlier FF ESR, they have since essentially departed from Firefox, though they still borrow some bits when it makes sense to do so. It's what Firefox should have been if they hadn't taken the detour into crazy six years ago.
The biggest selling point of Pale Moon is they don't break prod. By that, of course, I mean they go out of their way to maintain a stable user presentation. I have had to make one browser tweak in the several years I have been using Pale Moon to let it keep using my decade old theme. Extensions just work, and keep working. Under the hood there have been major changes, but they do it in a way that keeps things working. UI changes are ones that make sense, not simply done in a desperate attempt to make their browser different set it apart in an attention-seeking way.
A gun is only a tool too, but it only has one real purpose, which makes it heavily biased towards being a tool to catalyze violence. Capitalism is a tool, but that doesn't make it amoral or without its own bias. It is inherently based on foundation of greed.
Capitalism is like an aircraft that is inherently unstable. You need constant inputs from the pilot, or (in the case of some aircraft) a computer constantly making adjustments for it to even just fly straight and level. In this case, the constant adjustments are the myriad of consumer protection, anti trust, and other laws that are intended to prevent that greed from consuming the system. Without those constant adjustments, it goes quickly out of control.
We need a system that is inherently stable. There will always be people intent on cheating the system anyway, and without that system being naturally stable, those people unbalance it even further in complex and chaotic ways. Competition and self interest don't need to be left out the new system. I'm sure we can come up with a way to incentivize productivity and innovation without those incentives being essentially turning over ownership of major portions of world production and resources into the hands of a vanishingly small number of ultra wealthy.
Hunger is amoral. Greed is desire without discipline, and there are very much moral implications there. Don't try and sugar coat greed as something else.
No one has died due to socialism. Many people have died due to single-party dictatorships that called themselves socialist.
In many ways, Canada could be called socialist. Strong social programs including universal medical care. Not nearly as far down that spectrum as some, but still very successful and a higher standard of living and higher average life span than the US, so that says something.
There is nothing that says that competition has to be absent in a socialist system. What socialism is saying is that there has to be a better way to distribute income and wealth than the system we currently have. Capitalism is failing to attract young people because in its natural state, it is a system that encourages coalescence of wealth into the hands of a very few. A system of financial oligarchs. The whole array of financial rules that try to make stock trading fair, anti-trust laws, and consumer protection legislation work to partially correct some of the more egregious natural effects of capitalism, but those protections are failing more and more.
Young people are failing to flock to capitalism's banner for the reason that they are simply better informed. The standard of living has improved all around and the young don't have to fight for survival. They are more global thinkers, and less personally greedy. And they are seeing the results of generations of capitalism and what it is doing not just to third world countries but our own. Corporations are getting absolute erections at the possibilities afforded by the use of technology to control and gather wealth. iphones and their walled garden, smart TV's and home voice controllers that send all your voice to central servers for processing, social media that is rife with fake news and social manipulation, DRM methods that restrict people from even the fair use of their purchases. Pharmaceutical companies purchased by larger corporations where their product is subsequently raised in price, not by double, but by factors of ten or a hundred.
I don't have a replacement system to propose that fixes everything. But I do know that we have to have a discussion about it and try something, because the system we have is broken, and it's getting brokener.
Greed is simply not a principle that can sustain good public policy.
what gives you the right to censor anything you think is
The word "censorship" only applies when performed by a government on public speech. This is a private forum and the moderators here have every right in the world to pick and choose what they want to have displayed here.
whats next? who even determines what content comes and what goes
Yes, wanting to remove a post that is egregiously racist, is tantamount to public book burning. That was sarcasm, in case anyone wasn't aware.
While I agree that speech that is close to the border of what is or isn't racist can be a tough call, in cases like the post in question there is really no question. Really it comes down to determining the intent of the person making the speech. Is it intended to defame, or incite anger or hatred towards a race or class of people? If the context of the speech makes that a clear yes, then the content should be removed.
The question is, do/you/ have difficulty making that determination for the post in question? Forget the whole "slippery slope" nonsense and generalities that people who like to post racist content hide behind. Do you have any difficulty parsing the clear intention of the poster in this instance?
This is exactly what every good administrator, and most good power users, have been doing for years now with VirtualBox or something similar. And with significantly less resources required on the computer to do it, I might add.
Typical Microsoft. Take something everyone already does. Add the ability to do it in Windows automatically, but require more resources than it already takes. Drive the sales of new hardware, computer manufacturers are happy, Microsoft is happy. If adoption isn't high enough, then they start interfering with the old ways users were already doing it.
And they wonder why they are constantly accused of not innovating.
Funny, but it's not an inapt assessment. Cylons were, at least in the reboot, AI robots that turned on their creator. Facebook is essentially the same thing. Not AI, of course, but something that has a momentum all its own.
The thing is, at this point, anyone who uses Facebook deserves what they get. It has been revealed time and time again as the sewer of society. A cesspit of extortion, racketeering, and organized social manipulation. Why we are even still discussing it is really beyond me. It needs to be put out of our misery.
It's unfortunate that the modding on this will be a battleground between the bleeding hearts and those with common sense, because it's not even really a political issue.
My own political leanings have taken a large turn to the left myself from my Alberta-born roots, but no matter what your stripe is, this is something we really need to look at outside a traditional political context. Game designers (and bear with me because this is relevant) have learned that while players WANT to be given the tools to easily 'win' (quick levelling, cheat codes, legs up and ways to buy their way to the top), that it is often self-defeating. People are wired to seek ways to reduce the challenge, to make things easier. In a game this consists of levelling up, powering up, etc. But when, especially in MMORPGs or even just traditional RPGs, once you have levelled to the point that there is little challenge, the game becomes unfun and people gravitate away from it. The magic in any computer game is in making the journey fun, not in the arrival at that state where it's no longer a challenge. Even the pay-to-win games where they use payment schemed to allow players to shortcut game time have learned that you can only go so far, that if you let people simply buy their way to the top instantly, that they lose interest quickly and there goes their revenue stream. So P2W games have become a balancing act to let people pay that money for things that will reduce the apparent challenge but that have little overall effect because once they make it too easy their golden goose goes somewhere else.
In the same context, I believe that this leads to an effective way to bypass the political paradigm for the basic income issue. Because, simply, no matter what way you look at it it's a bad idea. It's a bad idea from a financially conservative point of view, because you are using a tax-paying working base to pay for the lifestyle of a non-productive segment of society, and no matter how much automation we throw at things, this is just going to be ultimately unsustainable. And it's also a bad idea from a socially liberal perspective. You remove the challenge for people, and they start losing the ability to meet challenges. Putting in that safety net takes away one's motivation and personal initiative. In short, while people will think they want this, because we are all wired to try and reduce challenge, in the end it is actually bad for the recipients. So even though some people will always seek such a situation, no one can truly thrive in conditions that remove consequences and challenge. Eliminating financial stress at no cost to the recipient removes a powerful motivator.
We see this with lottery winners. It's so common a trope that it's essentially at the level of cliche, that lottery winners commonly squander their money and end up less happy and fulfilled than before the win. Handing someone money does not make them value it or magically give them the discipline to properly manage it.
at the end of the day it seems simpler to just run an emulator or FPGA system
There is some truth to this. But I would not mind having a physical system. Not sure how much I'm willing to pay for this, but there is something to be had to have an actual Amiga. But then I'm the type who has kept a pair of actual Amiga Corp joysticks back from before their purchase by Commodore.
The Amiga was one of those crazy amazing things where things just lined up in the universe to produce something that was an engineering work of art. The way tasks were offloaded onto hardware like that amazing programmable blitter, was a decade ahead of its time. One of the reason I don't mind supporting actual hardware is to support that. Commodore made many mistakes, to be sure, but companies like Microsoft ("who would ever want to run more than one program at a time?") who were beginning their rein of terror with their counter-marketing was at least equally to blame. The Amiga is in company with the Avro Arrow and the Tucker automobile - other projects that were light years ahead of their time.
How about using the space for the useless second sim card for a real headphone jack?
There was a business report on Apple talking about the slowdown with their phones, and how Apple was smart and foresaw that and pushed harder for their online streaming revenues. Nice. People are getting tired of their hardware, and they know it.
In reality, though, little gimmicks like this aren't intended to actually entice users - it's just intended to keep them in the news. It's advertising.
Linux right now is an operating system build by and for programmers. The user experience hasn't been a priority, because the more technically minded a person is, the less of a UI is needed or even desirable. When Windows 95/98 came out, I used the Windows 3.1 progman program manager for years because I hated the start menu. When Windows 10 came out (after I had long since abandoned my faithful progman), I downloaded a start menu replacement because I hated the new tablet-esque interface. Programmers and technical people want their computers to do what/they/ tell it to do, not for the computers to try and tell you what you want.
Linux fills that role, and fills it well. The reason why there are hundreds of distros is that the programmers and technical base Linux started with resist the dumbing down required for end users. And they violently resist any changes that smack of the computer telling/them/ what to do. For Linux to replace Windows on the general user's desktop, a couple things needs to happen. A distro needs to make sure it can cater to both sides. It needs a dumb person's UI/and/ a UI for power users. You need both in one distro because, culturally, Linux needs to continue to service the power users. Without the power users, you won't have the technical base of people to help the idiots. I;m not sure you can really combine the two goals effectively any more. And secondly, it needs a lot of money. No programmer in his spare time is going to write a UI for idiots. It's not going to happen.
How about simply not forcing updates at all? I have to go to more and more extreme measures to prevent automatic updates. I have always chosen my updates myself, vetted them, and applied them as required. Now I not only have to disable windows update, but scheduled processes that will automatically un-disable the service.
This is necessary, since Microsoft cannot be trusted to make those decisions for us. Updates to fix bugs that introduce more issues than the problems the fix, like the first round of Spectre/Meltdown patches. Nothing goes on my computer that gets unfettered update access, including the OS. Windows Update Mini Tool and the threads that talk about how to use it are your friends. That's only half the battle, though. We shouldn't have to go through this. Machine learning should not be deciding when to update my computer. That's the wrong fix for this problem. The right fix is putting that back into the hands of the user. I take the Douglas Adams approach to my computer. It will do what/I/ tell it to do, or I will reprogram it with a large axe if necessary.
I am surprised that people put up with ceding that kind of control to Microsoft. Anyone that thinks that rapid response to developing threats is the reason Microsoft went that way is hopelessly naive. It's about control, and we need to demand it back.
So you're suggesting that pulling out the USB device before logically ejecting causes physical damage to the port? How is this even remotely linked? It's absurd. Are you suggesting there is an electro-mechanical lock inside that engages when the device it inserted and remains engaged until the device is logically ejected? From sure knowledge I can tell you there certainly isn't.
Slashdot Mirror
So, if you threaten to destroy an entire nation or people, and you don't have the ability to carry out your threat, you get booted off Twitter. But if you make the threat and actually have a credible possibility of making it happen, then it's newsworthy and they leave it on.
Translation: We're scared of Trump and don't want to have to take action unless it's for something that no one will criticize us for.
Cowards.
Make a policy and stick to it, or don't have one.
*pacefalm*
That's weird, since Microsoft invented the Blue Screen of Death.
To Jefrey Dahmer's credit, he stopped killing and eating people after he was caught, convicted and imprisoned.
Because you're not going to be able to mandate shifting the schedule of every person on the continent. Because even if you could legislate that, doing so would have a cost in the millions or billions.
Most people love having the extra daylight at the end of the work day rather than the beginning, even in the winter. So, assuming you have the goal of shifting an hour, what's easier, shift to daylight savings time one summer and never switch back, or redo, reprint, and sort out the logistical nightmare of switching every schedule on the continent by an hour?
Hey, whatever works. I just wish we could get, essentially, a permanent daylight savings time in North America too.
I will say, though, that reports that losing an hour of sleep causes heart attacks strains credibility. Anyone who is that fragile who doesn't go to bed an hour earlier is just demonstrating Darwinism anyway.
A better headline would be as given in the subject. I honestly don't see the need for Office at all. And anyone who sniffs the software-as-a-service glue ought to be placed in the same category as those who refuse to vaccinate their kids. Both groups are caving to pressure from those who do not have their best interests in mind, pandering to a concept of dubious value, and creating a worse environment for everyone else.
Running a predictive algorithm on a computer is not AI. Please, everyone, stop using the term AI for everything.
The problem isn't the file system. It isn't multiple desktops. It isn't the fact that Linux users feel entitled to free (as in beer) stuff. It's the education level of Linux users.
As much as Linux has tried to make inroads with the common joe, the general Linux user still displays a higher level of computer competence than other platforms. Which means they are less likely to put up with Dropbox's shenanigans when they do stupid things to make you pay.
Example: Bob has used 1.5 out of his 2gb of free space. Alice, his sister, shares a folder of family history photos and documents. Bob subscribes, but finds out suddenly he has exceeded his free space. Dropbox says, delete, or pay you freeloader.
Now, inexperienced users, they are more inclined to shell out. They may not know how silly this is, or they may not want to bother climbing the learning curve enough to try and find an alternative. Or some combination of the two. Linux users, on the other hand, say hey, wait a minute. How are you justifying "charging" the entire size of a shared folder to the size limit of every recipient?!? I know what a soft link is, and that's not the way that works. I'm not paying for this shit. Moreover, most Linux users are smart enough to make moving to an alternative like Syncthing a prospect that's not so daunting.
Dropbox should have adjusted its method of enticing users to pay. Like charging for something that's actually value added. Depending on the laziness and/or inexperience of users to maintain your business model isn't sustainable. Cutting off the smart users, and then telling them its their fault and calling them entitled freeloaders, that's not good business. Because for those people, the recommendations they then make to other users suddenly becomes "anything but Dropbox".
It's also a slap in the face of the community who wrote most of the software making the stack they used to get where they are.
Just remember, once the goodwill is lost, it's not coming back. Dropbox, you've been warned.
Scores don't matter, and neither does the article.
Seriously, if people don't care about TV show ratings, how much less do they care about articles talking about how people don't care about TV show ratings. Or meta discussions about TV show ratings.
It's amazing how Americans hide behind their constitution to justify all sorts of egregious things.
It's also amazing how ignorant about it that Americans are. So, here, let me educate you on your own constitution. The right to "free speech" as you call it, has limits. It's "free" so long as it remains in the boundaries of that is generally called "protected speech". It's been hashed out in case law for a long time, and is still being hashed out, and what is or isn't is more complex than can be explained here, but generally courts find that your right to free speech ends when it impinges on the rights of someone else or on the public good. This goes to the right to free anything. None of the rights are absolute, and this is a very good thing. Speech enjoys more protection than other rights, simply because it is not an inherently invasive action. However there are many cases where speech is restricted, and on a daily basic. You can't knowingly lie about someone publicly, or damage their reputation or impune them, because that's slander/libel. That's a civil law restriction on free speech. There are also criminal ones. My earlier example about how communicating for the purpose of encouraging someone to commit suicide is a crime, that is an example. Another one is communicating secrets to foreign entities, which can be treason. So, what you said, is demonstrably false. Banning people's speech because it is disliked it is absolutely not against the founding principles of your country, as long as the speech that is disliked is not protected speech.
So the real question is, is communicating false assertions about vaccines, is that protected speech. I have no doubt some people actually believe it the stories about vaccines, despite how provable false they are. But then again, there is such a thing as criminal stupidity. Where simply believing it because some rabid conspiracy nut said it isn't enough to protect you from basic fact checking before spreading it around like a canker on society. Because of the public endangerment involved, I think there is a good case to be made that it's not protected speech. It would be interesting to test in court. I suspect that anyone trying to argue that spreading nutball conspiracy theories about vaccines to the point that it is a danger to public health is protected speech would have an uphill battle justifying it in court. Where, presumably, the light of reason is supposed to prevail. Even in the US.
My second youngest almost died as a new infant from a disease that almost everyone is immunized against, or should be, because someone like you convinced enough parents not to vaccinate their kids that my son was able to get it before he was old enough to be vaccinated himself.
Communicating to encourage suicide is a crime. Communicating to encourage wacko vaccine theories should be too.
This can't be stressed enough. The original article actually failed to make the biggest selling point of Pale Moon, which is that it works, and it keeps working release after release without breaking things.
Pale Moon became popular because Mozilla just couldn't stop breaking things and trying to tell the users what sort of UI they should want. In fact, Mozilla has been quite content to shed any technical merit they had for almost any reason at all. It all started when they saw Chrome beginning to become successful, and immediately decided to emulate Google's development environment. They adopted Google's rapid release and versioning methodology on a project that was neither technically nor culturally suited for it. They broke extensions by the truck load with that little gem, and instead of slowing down and letting the extension system catch up, their solution was to write a script that automatically scanned their extensions and just disabled the ones which hadn't caught up yet. Then they went all hell bent on adopting major UI changes that were demonstrably unpopular by the majority of its user base. And if alienating the extensions authors wasn't enough, many of the UI changes then went on to destroyed themes on back-to-back-to-back releases. It reminds me of one of my country's more famous (and intensely divisive) prime ministers who, when he realized he'd alienated half my country, proceeded to give them the finger from his seat on a train as he was passing through their area. That's Mozilla. They have repeatedly gone out of their way to alienate users, and then the ones who have stayed loyal they proceeded to give the finger to with.
All of this was in an attempt at emulating Chrome's burgeoning success. The problem is, they never figured out... you simply cannot surpass someone else by playing copycat on their methods. This is important so I'm going to say it again. Mozilla cannot copy Google and be better than Google. All they did with Firefox was alienate their existing user base in favour of a product that could never be quite as good at being Chrome as Chrome was. And now they are running headlong into inevitability again. See here for details.
The Pale Moon project has done for the browser what Mozilla should have done. It was originally a patch on an earlier FF ESR, they have since essentially departed from Firefox, though they still borrow some bits when it makes sense to do so. It's what Firefox should have been if they hadn't taken the detour into crazy six years ago.
The biggest selling point of Pale Moon is they don't break prod. By that, of course, I mean they go out of their way to maintain a stable user presentation. I have had to make one browser tweak in the several years I have been using Pale Moon to let it keep using my decade old theme. Extensions just work, and keep working. Under the hood there have been major changes, but they do it in a way that keeps things working. UI changes are ones that make sense, not simply done in a desperate attempt to make their browser different set it apart in an attention-seeking way.
A gun is only a tool too, but it only has one real purpose, which makes it heavily biased towards being a tool to catalyze violence. Capitalism is a tool, but that doesn't make it amoral or without its own bias. It is inherently based on foundation of greed.
Capitalism is like an aircraft that is inherently unstable. You need constant inputs from the pilot, or (in the case of some aircraft) a computer constantly making adjustments for it to even just fly straight and level. In this case, the constant adjustments are the myriad of consumer protection, anti trust, and other laws that are intended to prevent that greed from consuming the system. Without those constant adjustments, it goes quickly out of control.
We need a system that is inherently stable. There will always be people intent on cheating the system anyway, and without that system being naturally stable, those people unbalance it even further in complex and chaotic ways. Competition and self interest don't need to be left out the new system. I'm sure we can come up with a way to incentivize productivity and innovation without those incentives being essentially turning over ownership of major portions of world production and resources into the hands of a vanishingly small number of ultra wealthy.
Hunger is amoral. Greed is desire without discipline, and there are very much moral implications there. Don't try and sugar coat greed as something else.
Your signature speaks volumes about your message.
No one has died due to socialism. Many people have died due to single-party dictatorships that called themselves socialist.
In many ways, Canada could be called socialist. Strong social programs including universal medical care. Not nearly as far down that spectrum as some, but still very successful and a higher standard of living and higher average life span than the US, so that says something.
There is nothing that says that competition has to be absent in a socialist system. What socialism is saying is that there has to be a better way to distribute income and wealth than the system we currently have. Capitalism is failing to attract young people because in its natural state, it is a system that encourages coalescence of wealth into the hands of a very few. A system of financial oligarchs. The whole array of financial rules that try to make stock trading fair, anti-trust laws, and consumer protection legislation work to partially correct some of the more egregious natural effects of capitalism, but those protections are failing more and more.
Young people are failing to flock to capitalism's banner for the reason that they are simply better informed. The standard of living has improved all around and the young don't have to fight for survival. They are more global thinkers, and less personally greedy. And they are seeing the results of generations of capitalism and what it is doing not just to third world countries but our own. Corporations are getting absolute erections at the possibilities afforded by the use of technology to control and gather wealth. iphones and their walled garden, smart TV's and home voice controllers that send all your voice to central servers for processing, social media that is rife with fake news and social manipulation, DRM methods that restrict people from even the fair use of their purchases. Pharmaceutical companies purchased by larger corporations where their product is subsequently raised in price, not by double, but by factors of ten or a hundred.
I don't have a replacement system to propose that fixes everything. But I do know that we have to have a discussion about it and try something, because the system we have is broken, and it's getting brokener.
Greed is simply not a principle that can sustain good public policy.
I see you also posted anonymously.
The word "censorship" only applies when performed by a government on public speech. This is a private forum and the moderators here have every right in the world to pick and choose what they want to have displayed here.
Yes, wanting to remove a post that is egregiously racist, is tantamount to public book burning. That was sarcasm, in case anyone wasn't aware.
While I agree that speech that is close to the border of what is or isn't racist can be a tough call, in cases like the post in question there is really no question. Really it comes down to determining the intent of the person making the speech. Is it intended to defame, or incite anger or hatred towards a race or class of people? If the context of the speech makes that a clear yes, then the content should be removed.
The question is, do /you/ have difficulty making that determination for the post in question? Forget the whole "slippery slope" nonsense and generalities that people who like to post racist content hide behind. Do you have any difficulty parsing the clear intention of the poster in this instance?
This is exactly what every good administrator, and most good power users, have been doing for years now with VirtualBox or something similar. And with significantly less resources required on the computer to do it, I might add.
Typical Microsoft. Take something everyone already does. Add the ability to do it in Windows automatically, but require more resources than it already takes. Drive the sales of new hardware, computer manufacturers are happy, Microsoft is happy. If adoption isn't high enough, then they start interfering with the old ways users were already doing it.
And they wonder why they are constantly accused of not innovating.
Funny, but it's not an inapt assessment. Cylons were, at least in the reboot, AI robots that turned on their creator. Facebook is essentially the same thing. Not AI, of course, but something that has a momentum all its own.
The thing is, at this point, anyone who uses Facebook deserves what they get. It has been revealed time and time again as the sewer of society. A cesspit of extortion, racketeering, and organized social manipulation. Why we are even still discussing it is really beyond me. It needs to be put out of our misery.
It's unfortunate that the modding on this will be a battleground between the bleeding hearts and those with common sense, because it's not even really a political issue.
My own political leanings have taken a large turn to the left myself from my Alberta-born roots, but no matter what your stripe is, this is something we really need to look at outside a traditional political context. Game designers (and bear with me because this is relevant) have learned that while players WANT to be given the tools to easily 'win' (quick levelling, cheat codes, legs up and ways to buy their way to the top), that it is often self-defeating. People are wired to seek ways to reduce the challenge, to make things easier. In a game this consists of levelling up, powering up, etc. But when, especially in MMORPGs or even just traditional RPGs, once you have levelled to the point that there is little challenge, the game becomes unfun and people gravitate away from it. The magic in any computer game is in making the journey fun, not in the arrival at that state where it's no longer a challenge. Even the pay-to-win games where they use payment schemed to allow players to shortcut game time have learned that you can only go so far, that if you let people simply buy their way to the top instantly, that they lose interest quickly and there goes their revenue stream. So P2W games have become a balancing act to let people pay that money for things that will reduce the apparent challenge but that have little overall effect because once they make it too easy their golden goose goes somewhere else.
In the same context, I believe that this leads to an effective way to bypass the political paradigm for the basic income issue. Because, simply, no matter what way you look at it it's a bad idea. It's a bad idea from a financially conservative point of view, because you are using a tax-paying working base to pay for the lifestyle of a non-productive segment of society, and no matter how much automation we throw at things, this is just going to be ultimately unsustainable. And it's also a bad idea from a socially liberal perspective. You remove the challenge for people, and they start losing the ability to meet challenges. Putting in that safety net takes away one's motivation and personal initiative. In short, while people will think they want this, because we are all wired to try and reduce challenge, in the end it is actually bad for the recipients. So even though some people will always seek such a situation, no one can truly thrive in conditions that remove consequences and challenge. Eliminating financial stress at no cost to the recipient removes a powerful motivator.
We see this with lottery winners. It's so common a trope that it's essentially at the level of cliche, that lottery winners commonly squander their money and end up less happy and fulfilled than before the win. Handing someone money does not make them value it or magically give them the discipline to properly manage it.
There is some truth to this. But I would not mind having a physical system. Not sure how much I'm willing to pay for this, but there is something to be had to have an actual Amiga. But then I'm the type who has kept a pair of actual Amiga Corp joysticks back from before their purchase by Commodore.
The Amiga was one of those crazy amazing things where things just lined up in the universe to produce something that was an engineering work of art. The way tasks were offloaded onto hardware like that amazing programmable blitter, was a decade ahead of its time. One of the reason I don't mind supporting actual hardware is to support that. Commodore made many mistakes, to be sure, but companies like Microsoft ("who would ever want to run more than one program at a time?") who were beginning their rein of terror with their counter-marketing was at least equally to blame. The Amiga is in company with the Avro Arrow and the Tucker automobile - other projects that were light years ahead of their time.
I hope the revival is successful.
How about using the space for the useless second sim card for a real headphone jack?
There was a business report on Apple talking about the slowdown with their phones, and how Apple was smart and foresaw that and pushed harder for their online streaming revenues. Nice. People are getting tired of their hardware, and they know it.
In reality, though, little gimmicks like this aren't intended to actually entice users - it's just intended to keep them in the news. It's advertising.
Linux right now is an operating system build by and for programmers. The user experience hasn't been a priority, because the more technically minded a person is, the less of a UI is needed or even desirable. When Windows 95/98 came out, I used the Windows 3.1 progman program manager for years because I hated the start menu. When Windows 10 came out (after I had long since abandoned my faithful progman), I downloaded a start menu replacement because I hated the new tablet-esque interface. Programmers and technical people want their computers to do what /they/ tell it to do, not for the computers to try and tell you what you want.
Linux fills that role, and fills it well. The reason why there are hundreds of distros is that the programmers and technical base Linux started with resist the dumbing down required for end users. And they violently resist any changes that smack of the computer telling /them/ what to do. For Linux to replace Windows on the general user's desktop, a couple things needs to happen. A distro needs to make sure it can cater to both sides. It needs a dumb person's UI /and/ a UI for power users. You need both in one distro because, culturally, Linux needs to continue to service the power users. Without the power users, you won't have the technical base of people to help the idiots. I;m not sure you can really combine the two goals effectively any more. And secondly, it needs a lot of money. No programmer in his spare time is going to write a UI for idiots. It's not going to happen.
How about simply not forcing updates at all? I have to go to more and more extreme measures to prevent automatic updates. I have always chosen my updates myself, vetted them, and applied them as required. Now I not only have to disable windows update, but scheduled processes that will automatically un-disable the service.
This is necessary, since Microsoft cannot be trusted to make those decisions for us. Updates to fix bugs that introduce more issues than the problems the fix, like the first round of Spectre/Meltdown patches. Nothing goes on my computer that gets unfettered update access, including the OS. Windows Update Mini Tool and the threads that talk about how to use it are your friends. That's only half the battle, though. We shouldn't have to go through this. Machine learning should not be deciding when to update my computer. That's the wrong fix for this problem. The right fix is putting that back into the hands of the user. I take the Douglas Adams approach to my computer. It will do what /I/ tell it to do, or I will reprogram it with a large axe if necessary.
I am surprised that people put up with ceding that kind of control to Microsoft. Anyone that thinks that rapid response to developing threats is the reason Microsoft went that way is hopelessly naive. It's about control, and we need to demand it back.
So you're suggesting that pulling out the USB device before logically ejecting causes physical damage to the port? How is this even remotely linked? It's absurd. Are you suggesting there is an electro-mechanical lock inside that engages when the device it inserted and remains engaged until the device is logically ejected? From sure knowledge I can tell you there certainly isn't.