The main reason they don't want to talk about it is because they keep wanting every end user to believe that "the cloud" is some sort of mythical thing. That it will always be there to have their data and that they should pay their monthly subs to have that privilege.

Of course in reality we IT professionals know that "the cloud" is nothing new and not even remotely secure. Local data is always better than remote data and we have the tools to make that a very secure platform for end users. However that is just a one time cost and well...we can't have that now can we Win10?

As someone who has worked in F&B, that is Food and Beverage for those of you who have never been a part of the Hospitality industry, I've thought about robots in the workplace for a long time. And by a long time I mean going back to when I was reading sci-fi by Harry Harrison who wrote about such places that were purely staffed by robots.

Knowing the nuances of F&B I honestly question that any of the robots that we have these days could replace a human worker. That is just because you see a "robot" that is able to flip some burgers is doing it's thing over and over and over but can it go to the back of the shop to get the frozen burgers out of the freezer? Can it clean up the burger that fell on the ground (oh it will happen) and is starting to stink? Can it do any of the other jobs that it has not been designed for?

There likely will be a point, very likely in my lifetime, that we have robots that are sophisticated enough to replace low level workers. That time is not yet. For right now my burgers are going to be made by humans and personally, downvotes incoming, I'd like them to be paid well.

Desktops are not dead of course but they are not locked down yet. Until the final assimilation of Win10 takes place of course. Would you like to update now or...now?

So right now the profit motive drives around mobile devices that are nice and locked down for the masses. So you WILL learn to love "apps" vs programs or games. You WILL learn to love not having control over your data. You WILL learn to, what's that? You are going to switch to a FOSS? Well er...want a job? We need tech savvy people.

Years ago when I finally went away from my phone/PDA, this was before large tablets were mainstream so I had an basic phone/n810 at the time, setup I found what you described to be the case. Market was a bit different of course and so I went with an entry level Blackberry.

Time went on and as that Blackberry got older, along with the whole platform being crushed by Android/iOS, I wanted to upgrade. I went to my carrier and at 1st was going to again go with a Blackberry but was told that to upgrade to a newer model I would also have to upgrade my plan. And the reason for the plan upgrade was I "needed more data." But the kicker was that I was not getting anything that would use any more data. Doing anything really internet related on the oldschool Blackberry phones that had physical keyboards and tiny screens was always a last resort.

So I started shopping and found also that really the contract less plans mostly were the better value in terms of TCO even with the drawbacks of a lesser network, having to buy your own phone outright, and less options when buying said phone. What was driving this market I had to ask myself.

Now I've not done any deep analysis but it seems that the carriers have captured the market in two ways. Keeping TCO higher by putting the phone cost into plans thus spreading out the cost for people. But the real thing is the upgrade treadmill. The very nature of smartphones makes them highly susceptible to wear and tear, if not outright fatal damage, aging electronics/batteries, and of course planned obsolescence.

There is a market for people who don't need the latest phone, if a smartphone at all, but it is not big to begin with and nobody is marketing to it. It is much more profitable to keep the people who would shift over to a cheaper TCO for their own needs in the upgrade treadmill market.

> Well slashdot has always been a nicer 4chan.

I'm guessing you mean that in the sense of what 4chan represents as an internet culture not literally. Given that /. was launched in 1997 and 4chan in 2003.

But I do agree with your underlying point as all online forums face similar issues. And this is even bigger than a online issue rather an issue with human nature. I personally think that keeping AC around is a good thing because it gives the opportunity for people who would otherwise not want to be able to speak out that option. It is a form of speech that is chilled without it and we then all lose.

So what I have learned to do, and mind you it is not easy, is try to just sift though the much and take what gems you can find. Much like RL.

uBlock actually seems to be coded a bit better. I've noticed that with it installed on my desktop, in Firefox, my browsing is snappier. And for sure on my mobile device using uBlock, Firefox mobile on an Android, it is much better than Adblock.

I personally did not like the idea of the white-list and the philosophy behind it. However that did not stop me from using Adblock and just toggling the white-list off. But since uBlock is faster I've switched to it. Finally some options when it comes to picking apps/add-ons is always good too.

If you have the room for a PC then we, the collective we as in every geek that is here on Slashdot, can build you a really really nice PC.

I mean that you say you are using your console because it is faster than your PC. I just cringed reading that.

So...we need to get you a good PC. Then we can talk. Because until then I really did not see much past that. And you seem like a person that wants a good PC. Yeah, we can do that.

I've been using ABP for years now on my machines and those I admin for friends/family/clients. It was, as we all know, a good solution for a number for reasons: Using less bandwidth, limiting infection vectors, and of course removing annoying ads.

However I've recently switched to UBlock because it simply runs better...and it does not have any sort of "acceptable whitelisting". Now I actually still pretty much trust ABP as I'd used it a fair amount since they have allowed what they deemed as acceptable ads. Not only could you opt-out (Yes you were auto opted-in however.) but some times when I did forget to opt-out I did not see anything egregious.

None the less with an alternative out there that is faster I think it is a good thing to give it support. As I've said about this topic before, I'll use my hosts file again if need be to block ads. I'll personally update it if that is what it comes to. The tears of ad execs do nothing but bring me joy as they rationalize why they have a right to my bandwidth and all of the other data they want to collect.

And you do that via a VM. Running Win10 day to day when you could just be keeping it sandboxed in a VM to stay ahead is just silly.

Lets hope they do fix that because I find that issue rather irksome as well.

However, and I wrote up a pretty scathing post when the news of ownership change hit, I doubt we will ever see any corporate PR person be that blunt. Yeah of course it is about the money but the thing is if there is no money to run something then it will go fully away.

So what they have to do is find a way to make such a site/system/et all profitable (or at the very least not losing a ton of money) to have it exist at all. And as I said in my post they have to find a way to do that ethically.

The major problem for them is for every company that tries to go down the ethical road there are 10, 100, 1000 others that are more than willing to do things in unethical ways. So I don't envy their task. But that also does not mean that we should let our guard down. So yeah, we both have to walk a tightrope here.

That sounds about right, thanks!

Part of what I view what has happened with Slashdot, and it is not alone, is that forums are everywhere today. And not just forums but all sorts of different takes on the genre.

I'm going to say some pretty obvious things but back when I 1st discovered the site there was no Facebook or some means of having a forum type discussion on every website. (I honestly don't remember when I 1st made this login but it was a long time ago now. Rob still had links to his favorite sites as part of the content.) So having not only having a forum that was dedicated to "News for Nerds" that also incorporated a system that tried, oh how it has tried over the years, to self moderate the comments was a pretty unique thing.

And while /. still is somewhat unique in its moderation system there are so many options for people these days who want to express their viewpoint that it is tough to point to anything that /. might have as a strong draw. I say that also with the idea in mind that so many people prefer to live in their own echo chamber such that they are not often look for an educated discussion, rather just a way to be a part of their flavor of groupthink. (And /. has been guilty of that as well of course.)

I don't envy you the challenge of keeping /. relevant and something that will not just be a money sink. It would take way more thought than I wish to do here this late at night. (I was hoping that this post would come earlier when the news broke on the web but cest la vie.) However I will say that I will be keeping a close eye on what the direction of the overall site. Especially things like G+ trying to force me to disclose personal information or any thing like that. The very moment I get a bad vibe from the site or the direction I think that it is going I'll add slashdot.org localhost to my hosts file and that will be that.

Not trying to come across as combative but I felt the need to say as there has been a strong push by many corporations to monetize every part of their IP/data/etc. And I'm not looking for some promise of how exactly you will make /. something other than a money sink. That is for you to figure out...ethically.

I'm here too as well. The Force Awakens is a very safe movie but given that Disney has to recoup the 4 billion for the rights to the franchise alone, never mind the cost of making the high end movies, they had to go safe. So not only did they have to think about the health of the overall franchise but the ROI as well.

It was a fun movie that has flaws but so did the originals as well. And that is a good start after the prequels and I believe they deserve some leeway in what they had to do with this movie. Further once they release the next one that will be the time when breaking out the torches and pitchforks will be valid if they mess it up badly.

Yes actually. I currently use FF, IE, and Chrome. FF for my primary browser, IE for my 2nd monitor media browser (YouTube/Twitch/etc), and Chrome as my backup browser that has no extensions installed in case I need to look at something and it is not working in my NoScript/AdBlock browsers.

Now am I a fan of what FF has done for some time now, not at all. In fact my FF is modded via extensions and the config files to resemble something usable to me. If for whatever reason I lost all of that I likely would just ditch it and look elsewhere for a main browser rather than go though all the hassle of re-configuring it all back to a usable state. (I honestly don't even remember all the changes I've had to make over the years.)

I also still, and I could be wrong about this, think that FF's extension pool is the most robust. However as I said I could be fully wrong about that because my IE's AdBlock works just fine and I know I could do even more with it and or Chrome. So if FF's extension's waver at any point I'll likely join one of the many who will switch away for good.

I agree. Jar Jar was bad but not the real problem. The whole midichlorians, the way Qui-Gon Jinn acts, and of course all the nonsense with messing with the previous episodes is what the issue is.