Posts by Jim-234 192 posts • joined 17 Aug 2012
If Microsoft is greedy enough to try to force everyone to have a Microsoft account to use Windows 11 instead of a local account, I can see a severe level of push back.
They already spy on you enough as it is, no need to give them complete control of your computer.
Perhaps maybe we could ask people to stop leaving the back doors to their systems open so the crooks can come in and harvest all the passwords?
That's really the root of this, sure blame the users for re-using the same passwords sometimes, but why not crack down on those storing all the passwords a bit more. If they were doing their job most of this wouldn't be a problem.
It appears the solution to corporate types loosing all the customers passwords is to trust another corporation to keep it all safe and it will be all better like because they are so much smarter than the users. Okay so what happens when the corporations that the other corporations make you use to get access happen to get hacked one day? My guess is they will blame it on the users again.
I have this suspicion that the lately renamed Zuckerbook company will build the worst kind of dystopian corporate controlled virtual prison.
You can only do and say what ZuckerFace allows you do do and say and anything not to their liking will be banned.
Intrusive advertising all over the place and your every movement, word and chat sent to advertisers.
Then if you behave in "good" according to Zuckerbook, things go well, when you are a bit of a rebel, things go bad, eventually they start selling the ability to manipulate people to other companies (much like they did on ZuckerBook for "research").
I would much prefer to enjoy something such as Second Life (which I used for years), where you can pay and be the actual customer, not the product.
Yes, you meet the worst of people in an open setting but you also get to meet the best of people and the rest of people.
I guess it will all come down to, do you like doing exactly what some ZuckerFace like character does and be under their control for "free" and maybe "safer"? or do you want to take risks like in the real world, pay your way and be able to enjoy doing things the way you want.
I'm guessing in near future where you own nothing but rent everything from your corporate overlords, they will let you enjoy the virtual world to distract you from the horrible hovel of a corporate owned beehive apartment you are forced to live in.
systemd
I ran into a couple Dell laptops that had discrete video chips from AMD that went bad and would crash a normal Linux or Windows install when it got going.
Devuan worked right out of the box forcing the intel chipset video and let me use the laptops that would otherwise have been discarded.
I'm sure with more work, I could have gotten another distribution to work, but these weren't exactly worth spending hours on.
Who's religion gets to dictate to everybody else what is "obscene"?
In general practice when people go on about "obscene", usually they mean something that they are not comfortable with based on their social / religious viewpoints.
"Obscenity" was routinely used in many western countries, for decades, to punish those who's artistic viewpoints did not perfectly align with the hetero-normative, christian viewpoints.
In my 2017 I'll often get the steering required warning even when I have had both hands on the wheel for a very long time. It seems if you don't move the wheel at all because you are driving down a long straight stretch of road, the system gets nervous that a human shouldn't be able to keep their hands still for that long...
So another round of blaming users and passwords.
How about companies stop being cheap asses about security, so criminals don't keep going in the back door and stealing all the customer information (including passwords) right out of their databases?
It seems there is no actual punishment for lax security policies at big companies that let criminals walk away with entire databases of hundreds of millions of users and all their passwords and details.
But oh those same users should have to pay more / jump through more hoops because nobody seems to want to pay to keep their servers properly secure?
And your "recovery pin" is essentially a password, so when that database is stolen... ??? Let me guess, they will say it's all the users fault..
So soon, owning your own high performance personal computer will be the mark of some kind of dangerous underground freedom loving rebel.
I guess for everybody else, they can just have systems that can't hardly do anything and have to connect to some corporate owned server somewhere that does all the backend processing but it's all good as long as the corporations are the ones using up all the energy and not the citizens.
Classic example of trying to ration pie to people instead of getting back in the kitchen and making as much pie as everybody wants.
If it wasn't all about politics, you could make plenty of power so there is no shortages, in a way that doesn't pollute the planet.
So Windows 10 was basically promised to be "free" upgrades for the "supported life of the system"...
So how do you get everybody to have to pay Microsoft for an OS upgrade?
Force the system to be "past the supported life".
Put in some requirements that block all but the latest systems that Microsoft just got licence fee money for, with some bogus hardware requirements and lists.
Microsoft gets to collect new license fees, and the customers get to have to purchase a whole new PC so Microsoft can get their cut. It wouldn't do for Microsoft to just simply charge you for Windows 11 and let you keep using your perfectly good PC now would it?
This is a rare opportunity for the courts to break the near monopoly Big Tech is trying to force on the consumer.
If Apple wins, consumers all across the world for a long time are going to be the losers.
Especially if Apple is allowed to continue with their unfair, undocumented, unaccountable, obtuse stands or approving or disapproving apps that essentially say they can do anything they want for any reason or no reason and tough for any developer they don't like.
This is mostly an issue because in many parts of California, you can only get a permit if you happen to be rich or politically well connected or politically powerful.
Other states have rules that anyone that passes the background check, completes the classes & tests, and pays the fee gets the permit regardless of their social station.
Some folks however are of the opinion that the common people should not be able to carry weapons to protect themselves and such protection should only be afforded to the rich, politically powerful and politicians who always seem to have plenty of people with weapons surrounding them, I guess their lives matter more?
The Samsung Tizen OS is actually pretty decent for what you need it for on a watch.
The applications that Samsung has put out cover most of what is really practical to do with the watch.
It's very easy to customize how you want it to look and it doesn't go around bothering you.
The google wear OS is a horrible monstrosity that basically wants to tell you what it thinks you should want in stupid dumb ways and is very hard to customize and use as a decent daily driver.
I'm on my 4th version of the Samsung watch and I hope to be able to keep going, but if they totally mess up the software, why bother.
So instead of complaining, use it and enjoy it & then when you are not actively using it, do some mining with it & give it 6 months to 12 month depending on your power rate and you'll have most likely gotten all your money back and have a card left that cost you nothing when all is said and done.
Then on top of that it will still have decent resale value.
Or you could be happy that Nvidia will "save" you by making sure that you have to pay for the card, can't make any money on the side with it & it's worth very little when you upgrade.
For all the iPhone lauders.
Your 5+ year old iPhone,
Does the battery still reasonably work and hold a decent charge?
With the latest software update does the phone still perform nicely or has it slowed down considerably?
I know few people in my friends and family that are happy with the performance of their iPhones after 4 years, let alone more. Generally a mix of either battery life / battery issues or the latest software updates making the phone crawl force them to upgrade their iphones in 3 to 4 years at the most.
It seems a lot of this could have been stopped at the very beginning by ending the stupid practice of allowing those with power and money to conduct private prosecutions of those they want to go after.
If this isn't the perfect example of why you can't allow private rich corporations and people to use the law as their own private weapon, I don't know what else would make the point?
The amount paid out to the victims of this horrible fraud is insultingly low and nobody seems to be talking about that.
All the high and mighty judges that were so eager to be vindictive need to personally go and offer groveling apologies to every single innocent victim they sentenced and then put in some real work towards making things right and making sure those responsible for the fraud get proper punishment on par with the suffering they caused by their greed.
Perhaps a ban on Fujitsu doing any more work at all in the UK until all the victims have been fully compensated for the destruction of their lives would be in order. If Fujitsu thinks it's too tough, well they can sue the post office...
I would say that your approach is a very bad idea.
Apparently most of the world decided to give a virtual monopoly on software to a couple large multi billion dollar (mostly American) companies.
Perhaps they could be held to account that their software is so insecure that opening something in your e-mail allows the take over of your computer?
It seems instead of fixing the root of the problem by suggesting those who get extremely wealthy writing the software don't produce buggy code, you suggest that the least technical end users should have their livelihoods under constant threat of being destroyed by arrogant know it all types who want to have fun setting traps for people instead of actually working on trying to not have such an insecure operating system be responsible for all their business.
Your solution most likely would do nothing more than simply enable some IT people with a god complex to go around terrorizing the workers at their company while making nothing actually more secure and making doing actual business very difficult.
I seem to recall this same kind of thing going on every Xeon CPU launch, where they say the new processor is 2.65x or something faster than some xxx generation but then when you look at the processors that are lined up for comparison, usually the new latest one has a bunch more cores than the old one.
Considering that core count matters greatly in software licencing these days, it might be nice if they could clearly show what it looks like if you compare the different generations of CPUs using exact same core count and exact same clock speed...
One of the reasons I much prefer Linux over Microsoft Windows 10 is the "Automatic Updates" that quite often cause serious issues and can leave your computer unusable until you decide that a re-install is probably quicker than trying to fix whatever mess they made.
If I want updates, I'll update when I'm good and ready.
How about we say you force automatic updates, you are responsible for fixing any systems that the update crashes... Oh and good luck when an upgrade to Mint happens to mess with your Nvidia drivers and you have disk encryption.....
I got the higher end of the 3 batch the Ultra model and first thing went to go look for apps to remove.
Facebook was there, but surprisingly there was a handy option to uninstall which it happily did and nothing Facebook related appeared.
That alone makes we glad to upgrade from my Note 8 which had 3 Facebook spyware groups installed and their "Facebook App Manager" kept re-enabling itself after every reboot and using a fair bit of data without my consent.
I guess Samsung eventually got the point, at least for now.
Considering that most flagship phones blow right past the $1000 mark, I think it's a bit disingenuous for anyone to complain about people wanting to keep their phones as long as possible.
Apart from marginally better cameras each generation, there is no real reason for many not to simply use their phone for 4 or more years.
Then if the phone's batteries happen to magically die after 2 years, most likely anybody not locked into apple will pick a different brand.
Going to a "phone store" to get the phone or a service plan is probably the worst idea ever.
Call up the customer support line on most major carriers here in the USA and they will tell you pretty plainly NOT to go to (their own) branded stores for a phone unless you enjoy being a chump.
If they had the option to turn it into a manageable IP connected security camera that would probably be the single application that would make this explode in popularity.
Attach a charger cable stick the phone somewhere with a bit of double sided tape and security camera for the house done.
I would suggest that it's reasonable to bet that other governments if they are allowed to put such a "contact tracing system" into place will eventually decide that the data must be used "for the public good" because... (insert whatever crime/sedition is riding a current wave of hysteria).
Probably something about terrorists or think of the children or rebelling against being imprisoned in your homes en mass or such...
I'm still holding out hope that one of the guilty makes a deal and agrees to fess up to the CEO being behind the whole thing.
It's not enough of a smack down for the evil corporation to loose a few low lying executives.
A CEO being arrested and charged, kind of makes them start thinking there may be personal consequences for their actions.
Samsung may finally start regretting their abusive behaviour towards their customers, but only long after someone else has taken their market share.
If your customer clearly does NOT want to be bothered with ads.
Boasting about how you can find ways to force ads in their faces is probably going to blow up in your face.
The other big loosers are the brands that apparently are told they should pay big money for these "forced" ads.
I'm not sure about others, but if something forces an ad on my phone or computer or anything else, my immediate reaction is anger towards whatever brand is being displayed, which makes me way less likely to buy anything from them.
The specification are quite lackluster for the price.
However if they could see their way clear to ship it without being loaded up with a bunch of uninstallable adware and bloatware and junk from FB, then it might actually be well worth the cost.
I've gotten a bit tired of paying for a Samsung flagship only to have it try to shove junk in my face anytime it can unless I get it all taken out after every major update.
It's more than a bit annoying if you purchase a top of the range Samsung phone and are out like $1200 to $1400 at a minimum, and you still have to put up with that stupid Bixby trying to shove ads in your face if you swipe the wrong way.
But now they just say let's forget the lube all together and not even bother putting in the $10 charger & cable so now you have to go buy it elsewhere or pay like $50 for our "original" one.
If they are not a bit more careful what they are actually going to do is destroy their entire high end range ability as the customers will eventually say why bother paying a premium and get treated this poorly?
This statement:
"Clearly somebody selling physical goods online has to collect delivery information but doesn't need to retain that information once delivery is complete"
Pretty much says you haven't ever been actually involved in selling things online.
If you sell things on line you ABSOLUTELY have to keep the information on who ordered it, where the order came from, where it went to, proof that it was delivered and all that stuff.
Try selling stuff online and not keeping super detailed records of the deliveries and orders for at least 6 months to a year and let me know how it works out for you once it becomes well known you don't keep that information in and the customer initiated fraud starts piling up and you find your bank account being drained by the payment processors....
Amazon should have just been honest and come out and said:
"We like all the other Technocrat overlords decided that if whatever you are saying is not what the current "correct" information according to the government about the whole virus thing, then we will block it."
And if at some time what you were saying happens to be come the now current "correct" information according to the government we'll say oops our bad... naughty algorithm.... and put it back up....
(See YouTube banning videos about how to make cloth masks to protect yourself from virus, right up till when the governments decided that was what everyone should do.)
If Linux Mint could be based on Devuan especially with the Cinnamon interface and their pretty decent set of fairly up to date apps installed & a decent application store and ease of installation, you would pretty much have it.
However Mint took a stand against Snap which I think is a good thing:
https://www.theregister.com/2020/06/02/linux_mint_team_snap/
You can enable it if you want.
As the poster a bit above me also noted.
The part in the article "Unfortunately, Signal doesn't allow group moderators to block individuals from taking screenshots, which would frustrate the process of leaking a conversation to the press." is kind of laughably stupid... What self respecting leaker doesn't have at least one burner phone that can take pictures of the screen on another phone? I mean you do use a separate phone for the leaking stuff to others right?
I would think with a bit of marketing work, they could advertise the stuffing out of them being better because they Don't have the google services as part of it and convince people to do a bunch of grey market importing of them.
Especially if they decided to leave the bootloader unlocked.
So if I understand this right the result of the sanctions is that Huawei has to produce an Android phone Without the google spyware?
Is it possible they also are going to be forced to make the phone without all the Facebook spyware as well?
They can rebrand it as the new privacy aware phone.
You can get about $5 to $10 in Amazon gift cards (or other options for similar value), per month using Bing, or more if you happen to be trying a bit harder.
Too bad their search results aren't quite as good as the top dog.
Still it's good to have at least one other well funded search engine besides Google, just so you know Google doesn't think they own the web completely.
This will probably force the Chinese (and for that matter every other government that would like to have a choice to do what they want and not what the USA says), to seriously and quickly come up with a bottom to top supply chain for their own communications / computing technology, encompassing all the hardware, software, designs and services needed.
So while it will hurt for a bit, there is a good chance China will actually come out ahead in the long run after they throw enough money at it to make their own decent alternatives for a lot of stuff. Perhaps the USA can up the pressure so China won't want to use Microsoft software any more (one could only hope).
Which they can then offer to others who may not wish to be fully under USA control.
The good news for the rest of us is one day we may be able to pick who we want spying on us instead of being stuck with it being google/NSA or Apple/NSA.
I get a little tired of people preaching about how much more work people need to do on "better" or "more random" or "more changed often" passwords when the biggest problem recently is it seems like corporate security is a total afterthought & they are just letting the hackers waltz in and grab all the data and all the password files.
Every week there is some new report of some big company loosing a big bunch of everything... oops...
Or leaving everyone's passwords just in a plain text database.
How about we make the companies pay folks for the time and trouble of going in and resetting all their passwords after they loose them.
Maybe that would help a lot more.
Apple and then Samsung pushed the price for their new flagship phones way above any semblance of reason and now they wonder why suddenly their hugely overpriced phones are not selling?
At $500 it was already expensive, then the push to $750, then the push to $1k then the push to $1250 and so on.
If you had to fork out that much money for a top of the line phone, you are probably going to hang on to it for a long time to get your money's worth.
Also the newer models don't really have all that much more to offer the average user than the previous model.
Sure some fancy marketing features that people don't care about as much.
But having staked out huge prices, I doubt the corporate types want to roll them back, so they will be stuck in a loop of diminishing sales, which they try to make up for by hiking the prices to get the revenue numbers up, which then leads to less sales again and so on.
Or the late Libyan despot.
Gave up all his nuke materials an a PR move president Bush trumpeted loud and long.
In exchange for you know friendship & safety & coming in out of the cold
Right up till his rear end was being bombed by the guys he thought he was on good terms with.
Probably wished he had gone the NK route as the safer course.
So will they try again to pick a new "Ethics advisory board" that only includes people with a specific viewpoint set, and if they accidentally let in some people representing opposing views, will they trash the next board and try again till they get one that all has the same specific viewpoint?
Our new AI overlords might just see that this explains why human input is unreliable, useless and decide to do what they want and who cares what the meat sacks think.
Or you know they could just admit that when you have global travel, sometimes folks from countries that are not considered "first world" countries may have some diseases that they bring with them during travel, much the same as diseases have spread around the world for the past couple thousand years.
Yes actually, you'll find a fairly substantial percentage of the population have dissenting opinions from the current "new speak" definitions of biological based gender terms. So if you want to have a well rounded panel, then you need to include people who represent those opinions and concerns.
Your post seems to show a dislike for a specific group based on nationality and religious preference.
You seem to also forget religious belief systems encompassing a significant portion of the global population such as Christians, Muslims, Orthodox Jews and others often share similar concerns about things even if they don't agree on other matters. In addition the laws in many global countries are different than your preferences.
Then take your other argument about Google itself.... sure it is a global company, right up till it has to abide by global laws or taxes.... then they fall back to "we are a USA company so we only have to follow USA laws we can help pay for"... till once again taxes come due and then suddenly they are a shell company that doesn't actually exist in a place where taxes exist but are instead only exist in some off shore tax haven.
So having a panel member representing other views is probably a good idea, and if you really don't like them it's probably an even better idea to have them as then it will make you think about your own arguments and the basis for them which helps in many ways.
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