I wonder... they have your IP address, and could possibly have your browsing history. So your ISP analyzes your history, and sees a bunch of connections to Mullvad and not much else. And they ring up Mullvad and say, we'd like the browsing history for IP XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX. Where is the guarantee of privacy here?
I've found that the trick is to search for "how to fix X in Ubuntu", rather than "how to fix X in Linux". World of difference. Same probably applies for Mint.
The thing is this: a lot of people use Linux for the 'cred', rather than to address a specific need. They feel that they're better than the average computer user, and have a deeper understanding of how their computer works. Look at Kjella. He thinks of himself as a doctor at a doctor's conference who can smugly ignore any medical advice you have to give, or as some mathematician in the presence of ignoramuses. He's incredibly proud of himself, and how smart he is, and how much he knows about computers.
But I'll be blunt: it's mostly all worthless knowledge. You're learning very little about your computer, and mostly about the inner guts of the particular sub-system you're configuring. There is no mental advantage to fiddling around for two days getting your soundcard working. It does not give you some advantage. It does not teach you worthwhile skills. I was so happy when alsa and alsaconf came along, since I could get my sound up and running in under an hour. And when pulseaudio came out, I simply stopped having to think about sound at all, it would just work. In no way have I lost anything valuable here. Ditto for anything else that used to be a bitch to set up but usually isn't anymore.
You can avoid these people by using Ubuntu or Mint, since they deride it as a newbie-only OS. Their pride will simply not allow most of them to use it. And yet, you get all of the same functionality. Hell, even Linus Torvalds uses Fedora Workstation because it's easy to install.
If you DON'T stay current, then you have as little choice as to what happens to your linux kernel and distro as any Windows user has over their OS.
Not quite true. I don't care about kernel release notes and distro package changes until they matter. That is, it either breaks something I care about, or adds something I care about. When it comes to things I care about, I have complete control over my own computer.
And that's all that matters to me. (By definition) If I can't configure one distro to suit my needs, there has always been another one available.
No one has time to go through every single fucking line of code for every driver, utility, application, etc. So you end up "trusting" the open source community.
Open source doesn't mean the code is perfect. I don't think anyone believes that. There will always be security holes, whether added maliciously or accidentally, in virtually every operating system I am aware of. But that's not the same as having the vendor introduce unwanted features, or deliberately degrade user experience, or preventing the user from modifying their own settings, or preventing them from running software that didn't come from an approved app store....all of which have been done in recent years. It's gotten to the point where it's debatable who actually owns the computer, you or the OS vendor.
I have not seen this to the same extent in open source OSes, even including Android.
Some of us would rather skip the illusion of safety and open-ness and get on with our lives without kidding ourselves.
Safety is never guaranteed with code of any significant complexity. Openness can be.
Amen. I've got 5 moderately-sized rocks from the Grand Canyon, some pumice from Haleakala and a Ford Escort transmission in my basement. When they apocalypse comes, I'm going to be sitting pretty.
I'd rather not live in a society where they have to try and legislate good manners.
A lot of the people on that freeway have rather hellish lives. They have insane commute times, parking fees, sit in polluted gridlock, shitty jobs, not enough sleep, etc. But you want to force them to spend hours stuck in traffic every week, because their tires will eventually wear out the road by your house, which you want to remain pristine. I can only say that it seems like the lesser of two evils by far, and that courtesy and manners are a two-way street.
But as it is, considering you still need to use the terminal to do something as simple as changing the resolution when the OS doesn't support the GPU drivers, or installing an application...
How to install software. Of course, not everything is going to be in your distro's repository, so sometimes I have to go to a website and download a.deb or.rpm file myself. Haven't compiled anything from source in years.
Oh - I'll bet you thought that "My Computer" meant it was yours.
It does.
The hardware is yours, the data arguably so.
The data is also mine. Who are these people arguing otherwise?
Licensed software is not yours - you just have permission to use it.
Sad but true. I have never seen such a clear-cut argument as to why operating systems shouldn't be licensed.
I've sent feedback to Google asking that they restore widget functionality to the app. This is only the most recent example of such activity by Google - where's the hue and cry over that?
Android isn't locked down, so you are able to choose a competing voice app. If Google's changes become too obnoxious, their user base will dwindle. In that way customers still have a small say about what goes on in their device. If you must get your apps only from the vendor-approved store, then you are completely at the vendor's mercy. There is no competition.
but if you insist that Microsoft fix PEBKAC errors, you lose the right to complain about them removing en masse the end-user's ability to choose for themselves how their systems will be configured, patched and maintained.
You are solving the problem of PEBKAC errors, but introducing tremendous ability for software vendors to harm you. You no longer have control over your own machine. You will pay what they tell you to pay, and put up with whatever they tell you to put up with. If they want to spy on you they will do so. If they want to insert ads into apps they will do so. If they want to move you to a subscription... etc.
I can see the appeal of such a system in constrained environments like school netbooks and gaming consoles. Much less maintenance. But it must never make its way into general-purpose computers. Especially now that much of our news, media and socializing is routed through it. No one company should have control over all of that.
I've been told (at Boyd Autobody) that if I don't give the guy a 10/10 rating, he'll call me to find out why. The impression I got was that I'd better voice my complaints to his face right now or keep my trap shut later when they call with the survey. I was looking forward to telling the survey person that I'm giving a 10\10 rating because he threatened to harass me if I didn't, but they didn't end up calling.
They also tend to be far more polluting that a gas powered car. From the production of the batteries to the coal fired power plant that generates the electricity.
Every time you say this I will shock you through your keyboard, but with a minimum of CO2. From the Wikipedia:
Even when the power is generated using fossil fuels, electric vehicles usually, compared to gasoline vehicles, show significant reductions in overall well-wheel global carbon emissions due to the highly carbon-intensive production in mining, pumping, refining, transportation and the efficiencies obtained with gasoline.
They even have a dandy little chart with Tailpipe and total CO2 produced for electric and gasoline cars.
You can't charge them below 0C. So you'd need a heated garage. Lithium ion batteries can be used at temperatures down to -40C, but they can't discharge as fast. So you're right at the limit. My rule of thumb is: if you get square tires, don't use your battery.
You nailed it on the head. 3D works for games because the game is just for you, and the scene changes as you move around. Of course you could give everyone Occulus Rifts or the equivalent, but watching TV is something of a casual, social activity for most people. They want to be able to see each other, and the bowl of peanuts, or see what the dog is up to and so forth.
Soldner took a patch or three to become fully stableReviewer: buggy, server problems
simpler -- but better looking --... games got all the critical praiseReviewer: disappointing graphics
multiplayer war gameReviewer: no single-player mode
From the summary alone, it looks like the reviewers hit the nail on the head. They can only review what they've received, without patches that may or may not be added in the future.
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder... they have your IP address, and could possibly have your browsing history. So your ISP analyzes your history, and sees a bunch of connections to Mullvad and not much else. And they ring up Mullvad and say, we'd like the browsing history for IP XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX. Where is the guarantee of privacy here?
Your Britain may not be great, but I still like it.</pokemongo>
I've found that the trick is to search for "how to fix X in Ubuntu", rather than "how to fix X in Linux". World of difference. Same probably applies for Mint.
The thing is this: a lot of people use Linux for the 'cred', rather than to address a specific need. They feel that they're better than the average computer user, and have a deeper understanding of how their computer works. Look at Kjella. He thinks of himself as a doctor at a doctor's conference who can smugly ignore any medical advice you have to give, or as some mathematician in the presence of ignoramuses. He's incredibly proud of himself, and how smart he is, and how much he knows about computers.
But I'll be blunt: it's mostly all worthless knowledge. You're learning very little about your computer, and mostly about the inner guts of the particular sub-system you're configuring. There is no mental advantage to fiddling around for two days getting your soundcard working. It does not give you some advantage. It does not teach you worthwhile skills. I was so happy when alsa and alsaconf came along, since I could get my sound up and running in under an hour. And when pulseaudio came out, I simply stopped having to think about sound at all, it would just work. In no way have I lost anything valuable here. Ditto for anything else that used to be a bitch to set up but usually isn't anymore.
You can avoid these people by using Ubuntu or Mint, since they deride it as a newbie-only OS. Their pride will simply not allow most of them to use it. And yet, you get all of the same functionality. Hell, even Linus Torvalds uses Fedora Workstation because it's easy to install.
My system slows down every time it beeps. I added a sound effect to let me know when a batch script completes:
powershell -c (New-Object Media.SoundPlayer "%exBinDir%\finished.wav").PlaySync();
It locks for about five seconds before finished.wav starts beeping.
The point was to show that the prevailing interpretation at the time was wrong.
It was an epic fail, then.
If you DON'T stay current, then you have as little choice as to what happens to your linux kernel and distro as any Windows user has over their OS.
Not quite true. I don't care about kernel release notes and distro package changes until they matter. That is, it either breaks something I care about, or adds something I care about. When it comes to things I care about, I have complete control over my own computer.
And that's all that matters to me. (By definition) If I can't configure one distro to suit my needs, there has always been another one available.
No one has time to go through every single fucking line of code for every driver, utility, application, etc. So you end up "trusting" the open source community.
Open source doesn't mean the code is perfect. I don't think anyone believes that. There will always be security holes, whether added maliciously or accidentally, in virtually every operating system I am aware of. But that's not the same as having the vendor introduce unwanted features, or deliberately degrade user experience, or preventing the user from modifying their own settings, or preventing them from running software that didn't come from an approved app store. ...all of which have been done in recent years. It's gotten to the point where it's debatable who actually owns the computer, you or the OS vendor.
I have not seen this to the same extent in open source OSes, even including Android.
Some of us would rather skip the illusion of safety and open-ness and get on with our lives without kidding ourselves.
Safety is never guaranteed with code of any significant complexity. Openness can be.
"They" apocalypse. I'm going to have a cry now.
America is the world's reserve currency.
Amen. I've got 5 moderately-sized rocks from the Grand Canyon, some pumice from Haleakala and a Ford Escort transmission in my basement. When they apocalypse comes, I'm going to be sitting pretty.
So how did she say that the robot unexpectedly activated and took her by surprise?
She scrawled it in her own blood: "I HAVE BEEN TAKEN BY SURPRISE".
Either that, or they have security cameras.
I'd rather not live in a society where they have to try and legislate good manners.
A lot of the people on that freeway have rather hellish lives. They have insane commute times, parking fees, sit in polluted gridlock, shitty jobs, not enough sleep, etc. But you want to force them to spend hours stuck in traffic every week, because their tires will eventually wear out the road by your house, which you want to remain pristine. I can only say that it seems like the lesser of two evils by far, and that courtesy and manners are a two-way street.
But as it is, considering you still need to use the terminal to do something as simple as changing the resolution when the OS doesn't support the GPU drivers, or installing an application...
How to install software. Of course, not everything is going to be in your distro's repository, so sometimes I have to go to a website and download a .deb or .rpm file myself. Haven't compiled anything from source in years.
How to set the resolution.
Oh - I'll bet you thought that "My Computer" meant it was yours.
It does.
The hardware is yours, the data arguably so.
The data is also mine. Who are these people arguing otherwise?
Licensed software is not yours - you just have permission to use it.
Sad but true. I have never seen such a clear-cut argument as to why operating systems shouldn't be licensed.
I've sent feedback to Google asking that they restore widget functionality to the app. This is only the most recent example of such activity by Google - where's the hue and cry over that?
Android isn't locked down, so you are able to choose a competing voice app. If Google's changes become too obnoxious, their user base will dwindle. In that way customers still have a small say about what goes on in their device. If you must get your apps only from the vendor-approved store, then you are completely at the vendor's mercy. There is no competition.
but if you insist that Microsoft fix PEBKAC errors, you lose the right to complain about them removing en masse the end-user's ability to choose for themselves how their systems will be configured, patched and maintained.
You are solving the problem of PEBKAC errors, but introducing tremendous ability for software vendors to harm you. You no longer have control over your own machine. You will pay what they tell you to pay, and put up with whatever they tell you to put up with. If they want to spy on you they will do so. If they want to insert ads into apps they will do so. If they want to move you to a subscription... etc.
I can see the appeal of such a system in constrained environments like school netbooks and gaming consoles. Much less maintenance. But it must never make its way into general-purpose computers. Especially now that much of our news, media and socializing is routed through it. No one company should have control over all of that.
I will remember. These advances are like my children, they will change the world. Now if you will excuse me, I am waiting for my EESU to arrive.
A Tesla with 1000 kg of battery would weigh about 3000 kilograms
They already have those.
Stop with the ribbon or stop with the criticism? Although, one leads to the other...
I've been told (at Boyd Autobody) that if I don't give the guy a 10/10 rating, he'll call me to find out why. The impression I got was that I'd better voice my complaints to his face right now or keep my trap shut later when they call with the survey. I was looking forward to telling the survey person that I'm giving a 10\10 rating because he threatened to harass me if I didn't, but they didn't end up calling.
Time to dust off my phrenology calipers! Of course, now it looks like I'll have to remove the skull before performing any measurements...
Meanwhile, my popups tell me to buy Office365. Maybe Microsoft is just throwing things at the wall to see what sticks...
I wonder how many people on here will come out and apologise for being wrong
None, but I'll apologize if I'm wrong. :)
(No I won't)
They also tend to be far more polluting that a gas powered car. From the production of the batteries to the coal fired power plant that generates the electricity.
Every time you say this I will shock you through your keyboard, but with a minimum of CO2. From the Wikipedia:
Even when the power is generated using fossil fuels, electric vehicles usually, compared to gasoline vehicles, show significant reductions in overall well-wheel global carbon emissions due to the highly carbon-intensive production in mining, pumping, refining, transportation and the efficiencies obtained with gasoline.
They even have a dandy little chart with Tailpipe and total CO2 produced for electric and gasoline cars.
You can't charge them below 0C. So you'd need a heated garage. Lithium ion batteries can be used at temperatures down to -40C, but they can't discharge as fast. So you're right at the limit. My rule of thumb is: if you get square tires, don't use your battery.
If their entire budget is 5.83 billion, how can they be "tapping $8.5 billion in federal funding" as per the summary?
You nailed it on the head. 3D works for games because the game is just for you, and the scene changes as you move around. Of course you could give everyone Occulus Rifts or the equivalent, but watching TV is something of a casual, social activity for most people. They want to be able to see each other, and the bowl of peanuts, or see what the dog is up to and so forth.
Exactly. Just look at the summary:
Soldner took a patch or three to become fully stable Reviewer: buggy, server problems
simpler -- but better looking -- ... games got all the critical praise Reviewer: disappointing graphics
multiplayer war game Reviewer: no single-player mode
From the summary alone, it looks like the reviewers hit the nail on the head. They can only review what they've received, without patches that may or may not be added in the future.
Where's our jetpack?
Here. There's only one, so you'll have to share.