I'm currently doing a very complicated documentation job about a system I've not worked on previously (its essentially been abandoned and I have to put together what they've done so it can be continued). I'm going to put on a few Radiohead tracks and see if it gets any easier.
Perhaps, but like beer intellect is a solution as well as a problem; the sublime joys of a persons chosen intellectual endeavor blows blissful ignorance out of the fucking water. Exasperation at the absurdity and comparative stupidity of the world simply provides the higher ability person with contrast.
So I guess the only people who are truly free are those who can go out into the world buck naked and completely uneducated, survive, mine and refine their own minerals, build a workshop, build their own computer components in that workshop, assemble them and write their own drivers, OS, and other applications. But wait, they're still dependent on oxygen, water, food, and suitable living conditions.
Freedom is exactly that, which is why nobody is truly free and its probably a good thing they aren't. However, in general, freedom is better than dependency.
More to the point, the feeling of independence that people get using an OS such as Linux over Windows is an illusion. Are you going to write drivers for every piece of hardware you own? Are you going to write your own applications for everything you need to do? You can depend on Joe Developer or you can depend on the MS Team, but either way you can't get it all done yourself.
The fact that, if forced to, you CAN do these things though gives you far more freedom than a Windows user.
"MS getting their claws into education" is a flawed argument. Back in the 90's it was Apple who had a death grip on education. It didn't do much for their market after those people graduated because they would go to work and only see Windows computers.
Firstly, Apple used MS office on their computers anyway, and secondly there was no Apple presence in education in the UK at that time - it was all Acorn.
Is it so bad that fixing a computer is a "dark art"? How many things can the average person fix on their own anyhow? People don't do their own electrical and plumbing work (for the most part). Yet everyone fully expects to be able to control the water coming from the faucet and the electricity powering their stuff. People don't fix their own cars (again, for the most part). Yet everyone fully expects to be able to control their car on the road. If all a person uses their computer for is surfing the web, writing documents, and even the occasional game or two, why do they need an OS where they have to know how to fix and manage everything else?
Lots of people can fix their own cars. Lots of people can handle plumbing. Almost everyone can cook, screw in simple fixtures in their home, fit a plug etc. Just because learned helplessness is common in some areas, doesn't mean it is a good thing.
Some distributions, such as Ubuntu, have figured this out. Face it, the only advantage the average person sees in Linux is that it is free and there are plenty of apparent disadvantages (I have to do what to play my new video game?). But then again, Windows and Mac OS X appear free as well since the computers they buy come pre-installed with them.
Ubuntu hasn't "figured it out" because as you pointed out making things like games work requires at least the willingness to figure stuff out. I don't think they could figure it out either without compromising the essence of the OS.
What Google has done is cooperate with the Chinese government in their censorship programs. To me, 'dont be evil' went out of the window right there and then.
In any case, outdated Linux stereotype? Not at all. I love Linux but the fact is it still requires some fiddling, and that is fine with me because fiddling is learning. Anti-libertarianism? Well, I think right-leaning capitalism libertarians are a bit wacky but I didn't express it there. What I was saying is that having a free (libre) computer experience does and will always require some legwork, and some people do prefer ease to freedom. I was certainly not advocating them doing so.
Me too (my reaction to its use here is partly because it reminds me of that arsehole). It must be a sign that the old guard are feeling threatened if their spokespeople must resort to that level of name calling though.
You don't understand what an ad hominem is. I can insult some and refute their point in parallel, and it isn't ad hominem so long as the refutation doesn't depend on the insult. You fail, you twat. (See how that works?)
I've yet to see how it would be possible. The degree of hand holding most casual users require seems to me to be fundamentally incompatible with them being truly in control of their own computin experience.
It comes back to MS getting their claws into education; they get to produce generation after generation of computer user to whom anything beyond the basic MS office interface may as well be magic - and that if it goes wrong they must immediately call a wizard to come fix it, because such dark arts are forbidden to them.
This is exactly the point I was making, idiot. The choice to vote Hitler (OK then, Hitlers party for the nitpicker) into a position of democratic power led to the swift loss of democracy, pretty much as he had promised to do.
Again, lying sack of shit. I didn't enumerate the alternative (modern PCs running free software) because to anybody with a functioning brain it was obvious from the context of the article.
So you just come along with some ridiculous bullshit about wanting to push obselete hardware on schools. You are truly pathetic.
Wow. You made a portmanteau of the words 'free' and 'retard'. Well, thats me converted. I'm going to format my Linux box, spend a few hundred on Windows and install it today!
A modern PC can be used to do that, which makes you a lying sack of shit. If you can only make some petty jibe by completely misrepresenting my point, you've lost the argument already.
I hate to break it to you, but most students aren't aspiring office drones either. This touches a philosophical debate at the heart of education; is the point to open minds or just to train people for jobs? Most teachers I know in the UK (and I know a lot, including my mother and my wife) want to teach, rather than train.
At the risk of being yelled at for a Godwin, remember that Hitler was bought to power in an election as legitimate as some recent US ones.
Point is not that MS are Nazis (Such comparisons diminish the horrors of Nazism), but that certain free choices diminish choice further down the line. The FSF aren't telling people Windows 7 ought to be banned; they are trying to warn people that choosing Windows 7 will impact on their choices further down the line.
Which bit sounds rabid? They are making a bullet point argument focusing on technical issues, and mounting a fairly calm protest (the policeman on horseback in the video looks bored to shit, in fact).
What exactly have they said makes them raving ideologues as opposed to people with a rational opinion about technology?
ChromeOS will just be another way of controlling you really; Google is, in a very MS-like move, intending to use their operating system to leverage people onto their cloud services. How free or not their OS will be irrelevant because its goal is to have you shove all your data off to Google.
To be blunt, you want a free OS you download and install Linux. Yes, Linux can be an absolute pain in the arse, you sometimes need to faff around to get the simplest things to work whereas a whole bunch of features you don't need work out of the box, but no matter how much of a mess it gets, it is always YOUR mess.
As G. B. Shaw said, "Liberty means responsibility, that is why most men dread it"
If you want to be free, be prepared to spend Saturday screwing around on the command line. If its too much hassle, go ahead and place your data in the hands of Google or MS.
Wrong. Children learn to work on the platform that's mostly used in Businesses today, giving them the necessary skills to obtain a job.
Nope, you are wrong. Children shouldn't be receiving a vocationally focused education, especially when given their age the software of the moment will likely be surpassed by the time they enter the workplace. Children deserve a proper education on computers, not just a limited set of skills on one vendors software.
You are wrong elsewhere in your post, but frankly I don't have the time to feed the MS trolls that much.
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I'm currently doing a very complicated documentation job about a system I've not worked on previously (its essentially been abandoned and I have to put together what they've done so it can be continued). I'm going to put on a few Radiohead tracks and see if it gets any easier.
Perhaps, but like beer intellect is a solution as well as a problem; the sublime joys of a persons chosen intellectual endeavor blows blissful ignorance out of the fucking water. Exasperation at the absurdity and comparative stupidity of the world simply provides the higher ability person with contrast.
Freedom is exactly that, which is why nobody is truly free and its probably a good thing they aren't. However, in general, freedom is better than dependency.
The fact that, if forced to, you CAN do these things though gives you far more freedom than a Windows user.
Firstly, Apple used MS office on their computers anyway, and secondly there was no Apple presence in education in the UK at that time - it was all Acorn.
Lots of people can fix their own cars. Lots of people can handle plumbing. Almost everyone can cook, screw in simple fixtures in their home, fit a plug etc. Just because learned helplessness is common in some areas, doesn't mean it is a good thing.
Ubuntu hasn't "figured it out" because as you pointed out making things like games work requires at least the willingness to figure stuff out. I don't think they could figure it out either without compromising the essence of the OS.
It made me die a little inside :(
What Google has done is cooperate with the Chinese government in their censorship programs. To me, 'dont be evil' went out of the window right there and then.
In any case, outdated Linux stereotype? Not at all. I love Linux but the fact is it still requires some fiddling, and that is fine with me because fiddling is learning. Anti-libertarianism? Well, I think right-leaning capitalism libertarians are a bit wacky but I didn't express it there. What I was saying is that having a free (libre) computer experience does and will always require some legwork, and some people do prefer ease to freedom. I was certainly not advocating them doing so.
It is; every mechanism that you come to depend on places you, in part, under the control of the person who controls access to that mechanism.
Me too (my reaction to its use here is partly because it reminds me of that arsehole). It must be a sign that the old guard are feeling threatened if their spokespeople must resort to that level of name calling though.
You don't understand what an ad hominem is. I can insult some and refute their point in parallel, and it isn't ad hominem so long as the refutation doesn't depend on the insult. You fail, you twat. (See how that works?)
I've yet to see how it would be possible. The degree of hand holding most casual users require seems to me to be fundamentally incompatible with them being truly in control of their own computin experience.
It comes back to MS getting their claws into education; they get to produce generation after generation of computer user to whom anything beyond the basic MS office interface may as well be magic - and that if it goes wrong they must immediately call a wizard to come fix it, because such dark arts are forbidden to them.
This is exactly the point I was making, idiot. The choice to vote Hitler (OK then, Hitlers party for the nitpicker) into a position of democratic power led to the swift loss of democracy, pretty much as he had promised to do.
Again, lying sack of shit. I didn't enumerate the alternative (modern PCs running free software) because to anybody with a functioning brain it was obvious from the context of the article.
So you just come along with some ridiculous bullshit about wanting to push obselete hardware on schools. You are truly pathetic.
Sorry, but I don't trust the cloud either. Lets not get into the delusion that Google are any better than Microsoft.
No, but they can apparently become 64-bit for a small fee.
Wow. You made a portmanteau of the words 'free' and 'retard'. Well, thats me converted. I'm going to format my Linux box, spend a few hundred on Windows and install it today!
Flamebait? Really? The MS workers must've got up early today.
A modern PC can be used to do that, which makes you a lying sack of shit. If you can only make some petty jibe by completely misrepresenting my point, you've lost the argument already.
I hate to break it to you, but most students aren't aspiring office drones either. This touches a philosophical debate at the heart of education; is the point to open minds or just to train people for jobs? Most teachers I know in the UK (and I know a lot, including my mother and my wife) want to teach, rather than train.
At the risk of being yelled at for a Godwin, remember that Hitler was bought to power in an election as legitimate as some recent US ones.
Point is not that MS are Nazis (Such comparisons diminish the horrors of Nazism), but that certain free choices diminish choice further down the line. The FSF aren't telling people Windows 7 ought to be banned; they are trying to warn people that choosing Windows 7 will impact on their choices further down the line.
CIOs are generally smart people with the capacity to plan for the future. I sincerely doubt anybody likes vendors lock-in.
Yes, because what I just said was that schools should dump modern computers for 8-bit antiques.
Ever heard the phrase 'strawman'?
[Citation needed]
Which bit sounds rabid? They are making a bullet point argument focusing on technical issues, and mounting a fairly calm protest (the policeman on horseback in the video looks bored to shit, in fact).
What exactly have they said makes them raving ideologues as opposed to people with a rational opinion about technology?
ChromeOS will just be another way of controlling you really; Google is, in a very MS-like move, intending to use their operating system to leverage people onto their cloud services. How free or not their OS will be irrelevant because its goal is to have you shove all your data off to Google.
To be blunt, you want a free OS you download and install Linux. Yes, Linux can be an absolute pain in the arse, you sometimes need to faff around to get the simplest things to work whereas a whole bunch of features you don't need work out of the box, but no matter how much of a mess it gets, it is always YOUR mess.
As G. B. Shaw said, "Liberty means responsibility, that is why most men dread it"
If you want to be free, be prepared to spend Saturday screwing around on the command line. If its too much hassle, go ahead and place your data in the hands of Google or MS.
Nope, you are wrong. Children shouldn't be receiving a vocationally focused education, especially when given their age the software of the moment will likely be surpassed by the time they enter the workplace. Children deserve a proper education on computers, not just a limited set of skills on one vendors software.
You are wrong elsewhere in your post, but frankly I don't have the time to feed the MS trolls that much.
And often, going fishing will result in you coming back with no fish whilst at most supermarkets you can pretty much be sure to get a fish.
The difference is, in one case you can get your own fish and the other you keep having to pay every time you want to eat fish.