When was the last time we had a President that really gave a shit?
Reagan...
Before that? Perhaps FDR...
Note: I liked Reagan's policies, I don't like some of FDRs policies, but that doesn't mean I can't see that he at least cared. I don't think Clinton cares at all.
Now, out of that small handful of people, which one cares about us exactly?
The only person who has a remote chance of caring about us is Trump.
Wait, wait, don't bring out the pitch forks... yea, I know he is a walking ego trip, yes he is a arrogant SOB...
I am well aware of that... but he also has nothing to gain by screwing us at this point. He is now old, very wealthy, and has nothing else to do but take the country in a new direction. He also isn't owned by lobbyists or 30 years of political connections the way Bush and Clinton are.
If Bush or Clinton are elected, exactly nothing will change. If you keep doing what you've always done, you'll keep getting what you've always gotten.
At least Trump will kick over the table and say, "new direction".
Will it turn out well? Hard to say, we won't really know without trying, but at some point we either try something new, or accept the current situation forever.
It was the insurance company that changed your doctor or your plan, not the ACA.
Yes... because of ACA...
The average user does not give a shit if it is Xubuntu, KDE openSUSE, Some basterd Debian version with GNOME or RedHat with Enlightenment.
They do not care. All they care about is pre-install.
Maybe, but the flaw there is that Dell and HP tried twice in the past 10 years to sell machines with Linux on them. The customer uptake rate was low and the return rate was multiple times that of Windows machines.
It sounds nice, right up until someone needs to run a program that is Windows only, then they balk.
Paying $469 for a computer vs. $499 because the cost of Windows is saved doesn't matter to your average consumer if there is even a single program that it can't run.
The example I like to give is TurboTax, it doesn't run on Linux, or even Wine, without a lot of kicking and screaming.
This is unacceptable for a large percentage of the population.
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What I would submit is that if you think there is a market for this, start a computer company and sell machines with Linux preinstalled. If there is demand, you'll do well. If there isn't, you won't.
Isn't capitalism grand?
they are more than enough for my ISP not to collect metadata about my activities, for my work not to have logs of what I do in my iPhone
Fair enough...
So let me ask you an honest question... Why do you care?
Please note, I'm not suggesting you shouldn't care, I'm asking why you do? I suppose for me, I've decided I don't care, it doesn't really make any difference to me.
But if you care, fair enough, I can respect that, I just am curious if there is a specific reason for it.
Yup. 200 billion in cash and most of the industry's profits.
Most of the cell phone and tablet business profits... While Macs make money, by themselves Apple wouldn't be a very interesting company, it is all iOS devices.
The Mac could vanish tomorrow and Apple would still be one of the most valueable companies on Earth. Without the iOS devices, it is just another computer company.
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My point was simply that if ANYTHING was going to give Windows a run for its money, it would be Mac and OS X, not Linux. I didn't say Apple SHOULD do this, I said they COULD do it.
The irony is that the iPad is actually really decently priced, all things considered. For $500 you get a REALLY thin tablet, good triple core CPU, enough RAM to be interesting... a very nice screen, and a very nice OS that is responsive. The one short aspect is storage, which at 16GB is no longer enough, 64GB should be the base these days.
You can get cheaper tablets, but not ones nearly as nice.
The iPhone is massively overpriced, but everyone knows that.
Just what an average user wants. To replace his power supply.
Of course not, but I was replying to someone who wanted to be able to upgrade his computers, so that does apply in his case.
So why are you trying to discredit the very person that changed the whole world of spying "on us?"
Nope, not at all... I'm just pointing out that for all his "revelations", nothing has changed. The NSA is still doing its thing, the public has moved on and largely doesn't care.
Why did he bother if the public largely doesn't care?
I can remember much the same being said about Internet Explorer, which went from well over 90% usage share to more like 20% over the last 10-15 years (with much of the decline happening before mobile became an important factor).
Changing your web browser doesn't change your computer.
You can have 5 web browsers installed side by side, it doesn't break anything else.
Changing your OS isn't the same thing. Installing Chrome or FireFox doesn't break TurboTax.
move Ubuntu in that direction
And change the name, Ubuntu is a stupid name that no one can pronounce and no one knows what it is...
Consider for a minute that you could just assign every man, woman, and child on Earth a
That would give each person 18 quntillion addresses to pick from, and you'd have enough
Yes, I'm aware that some bits are reserved and that it isn't really as clear cut as that. But it doesn't matter...
You can cut huge numbers out and it still becomes a stupid big number.
And every doesn't need 18 quntillion addresses, that too is silly.
The whole space is huge and unless we're complete morons, we're done with IP address space for the rest of human history.
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As a side note, this is similar to 256 bit encryption being enough forever. No computer will ever be powerful enough to brute force it. Unless there is a flaw in the program of course, but you can't try all possible keys in a 256-bit encrypted file. There isn't enough energy in the universe to flip the bits.
Oh, I'm sure there are indeed billions and billions of things that could use their own IP address...
The jump from 32 bit to 128 bit is so large however that it should cover us forever. You could assign an IP address to every atom on the surface of the Earth and have used less than 1% of the IPv6 address space.
Too much choice! Does that ever stop people from buying cars?
Yes, yes it does... I've seen it, people get overwhelmed and either make no decision, or pick the simple decision instead...
Yeah, but Windows isn't free unless you're a member of their beta testing program. Windows 10 is a "free" upgrade, but that means you don't have to pay an additional fee for the update from your current version, not that you don't have to buy Windows to begin with.
True, but you're missing the viewpoint of Joe Consumer.
Windows didn't cost anything, it came with the computer, much like a radio and wheels came with his car.
This is more like a car dealership offering a free upgraded radio or free tires 2 years after you purchase the car. You had to buy the car in the first place, but most people see such offers as "free" since they already bought the car.
If you buy a new car, it also comes with a radio and tires. No, they aren't really free, but the consumer sees them as just part of it. How much the car marker paid for them is not the concern of Joe Consumer.
How much Dell paid for Windows is ALSO not the concern of Joe Consumer.
Frankly, I expect that sooner or later, Windows will become free for home/consumer use, it will have a small licence cost for businesses, and manufactures will have a small "preinstall' cost to put it on new machines.
This would all but remove any incentive from consumers to ever look at anything else.
I don't want any functionality that was present in Windows 7 to be ad-burdened in 10, even if it is just Freecell.
Fair enough, I can respect that. However, I think you've already lost that battle, if you care that much, stay on Windows 7 until 2020, then you have to decide what to do at that point.
Maybe you'll go to Linux, maybe Mac, maybe you already have... but the vast majority of people just don't care.
My wife plays a social media version of Scrabble on her phone with her friends. There are ads on the bottom of the screen, you can pay like $5 to remove them forever. I asked her if she wanted me to do that and she said, "why, I just ignore them, that seems a waste of money".
She is a Jane Consumer, not a techie (she is a doctor by profession). She just wants it to work, how much each part cost, what each part does, etc. she couldn't care less about.
There is a thing called privacy
Sure, but I believe that you think you're more private than you really are.
If anyone really cared about you, all the privacy settings in the world wouldn't amount to anything.
another more specific called VPN or Tor.
Those aren't as private as you think, since you're using a computer that you don't REALLY control, on a connection to an Internet that you DON'T control, all within a county that has a government that is fine to spy on its own citizens, who appear to not care.
All trying to be private does is make you stand out, if a three letter agency cared about you, none of those things will help you when you're sending it all over government sanctioned internet connections. Encryption works, so long as you have no gaps in there, but few people are that good and you only have to mess up once. Plus, if you were of serious interest, they would simply infect your machine directly and bypass the encryption completely.
If they can infect air gaped computers in Iran, you would pose no challenge to them.
Software production is assumed to be a line function, but it is run like a staff function. -- Paul Licker
