That reminds me of this post by Brian Krebs. How hard would these things be to set up with some nefarious device that installs a Trojan on any phone that connects? I imagine a well-crafted overlay panel wouldn't be too hard to put on one of these things, or they could come by at night and just install it internally. Sounds too dangerous to me, I think they're going to find this is more trouble than it's worth.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Highly suspect, at least.

Uplay integrates into their games, and it's their DRM/game platform thing. They don't use Steamworks, which is Steam's DRM system, they just make a release on Steam because a lot of people prefer that platform. But it just uses Steam for distribution, their DRM system is still Uplay, which is why you need to log into it.

Well, I am a pirate. And I bought the game, and even all the DLC shit for it: roughly about a $95 purchase after tax. So they're not far off. I just generally use piracy as a means of figuring out which games are or are not worth my money. But with Watch_Dogs, I'd been following it since it was revealed and I've been planning to buy it since about as long.

Also Uplay used to be buggy, but I haven't had any problems with it lately, and I do like their "micro-DLC" system as someone I know called it. You do stuff in the games (mostly just play them to completion, though there are usually one or two challenges you need to complete) and you can unlock stuff. Usually nothing major, I think AC2 had a wallpaper, some costumes, and an interesting DLC mission (that was probably the best reward I've seen from it), Watch_Dogs has an avatar, I think a wallpaper, and some unlockable items/a vehicle. I think Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon had a skin for your profile and some music, but I don't remember. It's a neat system that rewards you for actually playing your games more than just having achievements (which also exist), and I like it enough that I buy Uplay-native games on the Uplay platform instead of Steam because I like to support it and Ubisoft/Uplay haven't sufficiently pissed me off to avoid them.

There was some weirdness with my payment (their system double-charges you before revoking the second charge for whatever reason), but the guy on the phone was friendly enough (hour and a half queue though).

Just a reminder that calls within the US are free through Gmail's voice and video plugin thing (which doesn't work with 64-bit browsers because reasons). I don't even bother with a cell, since I'm already at a computer most of the day anyway.

That's the exact same for me with my face but the exact opposite with my hair. If I wash my face with soap or shampoo, I get acne problems. If I DON'T wash my hair with shampoo, I get all sorts of scalp problems, presumably from the excess of oil. It's worse when it's longer, slightly better when it's shorter.

I think most of us here agree with the EFF's mission, but we don't really know what to do aside from donate to the EFF to help. What would be the most important thing that we can do to help change things for the better?

No, fuck that. Forking is awesome. When the people managing a project, he mentions GNOME, that's a good example, when those people get their heads too far up their asses and no longer serve the interests of the people who actually USE their software, forking lets us take back control by making an entirely new project without their shitty management. Is he really arguing that projects like MATE and Cinnamon are somehow bad things? Because a substantial number of users would disagree, and many developers, too.

Likewise, OpenSSL is a huge mess. The folks at OpenBSD have a track record of doing shit right and making it very secure (some would say to a fault, but this is supposed to be core software used to secure nearly every web server on the internet, I don't think there's such a thing as "too secure"). Their philosophy is perfect for a project like this, and I think their OpenSSL fork, if it ever branches out from being OpenBSD-specific, will probably be a lot better than the original.

Obviously, forking has other uses, as well. Sometimes someone just wants to take the software in a different direction that's outside of the scope of the original project. That's perfectly fine. I don't know if he's implying that's a bad thing, but if he is, fuck that. He's wrong.

I agree with his overall philosophy that GNU/Linux has some good and some bad shit about it. That's to be expected, it's not perfect, and we absolutely do need to acknowledge the suckage. But forking is a good thing, not part of that suckage, and it pisses me off that he would even insinuate that it's a bad thing. Now, the fact that things so often get to the point where forking is necessary, that is most definitely suckage.

Keep in mind Google Voice and Video won't work with 64-bit Pale Moon. Learned this from experience; spent a considerable while trying to figure out why it wouldn't work before I pinpointed that as the problem. I keep a portable 32-bit install handy just for making voice calls in Gmail.