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Comment Re:Gmail IMAP (Score 4, Insightful) 77

I do this exact same thing and they can pry POP3 from my cold dead hands.

IMAP is for people who want to leave all their email on someone else's mail server and be subject to their tools for searching/archiving/storage.
POP3 is for people who want to have full control of their email. I have more than 25 years of emails stored locally - every email I have ever sent or received. I have no interest in syncing that to some remote server via IMAP. Nor do I want my local storage to be "secondary" where I have to go through extra steps to download them and archive them. POP3 is perfect - download everything, leave it on the server for 30 days just in case.

Comment Don't forget: Windows 10 touted as "last version" (Score 3, Insightful) 39

Don't forget: Microsoft said that Windows 10 is the last version of Windows.

The article is correct though: The real reason is that the horrible parts of Windows 10 were optional before, and they are now required in Windows 11.

Also note that the web in general does this same stuff by default, and nobody cares. People log-in to Chrome using their gmail account, then happily browse an advertising-laden web while Google tracks and sells their every move. They log-in to Pinterest and Facebook and Tiktok and whatever, happily sharing their data. So the market has spoken: Nobody cares enough about the surveillance to actually change their habits.

How long before we login to Slashdot with Gmail credentials? This is like the last site left on the "old web." All 100 of us left. *shakes fist at cloud*

Comment The idea is great, we just don't trust the compani (Score 2) 39

I have always dreamed of being cyber-augmented. A camera and a brain implant, so that I could look at a sign and mentally think "zoom in" and read it from a distance. Or look at some acquaintance and have it display: "Joe Smith, at 37. 2 kids Joey and Kaley. Joey just joined Cub Scouts. Kaley auditioned for the part of Dorothy." That would frieking rooock! Or to listen to a speech and have it pop-up with fact checks.

We have the tech!!!!

But the data stream is owned by assholes!!!

When we imagine this, we don't imagine that the video + your location + the last time you made a bowel movement is streamed to an advertising company who offers this as a free service so that they can beam targeted ads into your brain. That's now how this is supposed to work. Do I like the idea that a computer can warn the school principal that a student brought a gun into school? Yes! But not if that means the camera also tracks the student's every movement and knows who is on their period. That's not cool, and it's not worth it.

Technology futurism isn't evil. But the population at large ceded control of the internet to the least worthy of humanity. We can get to a really cool future only if people flock to systems that are designed around people controlling their own data.

Comment Re:at the judge understands (Score 1) 139

New oil and mining permits were pretty much halted.

This is an often-repeated rumor but the numbers say otherwise. The claim's origin is that Biden made a policy of not granting any new oil drilling licenses on federal land. But that didn't really change anything since there are plenty of wells, and it is difficult to open new wells on undeveloped federal land since it involves building roads, seeking permits, etc. Offshore drilling is generally easier, and we have a glut of offshore drilling wells that are still full.

The number of new licenses issued didn't change significantly between Obama / Trump / Biden. In some periods Biden's numbers were bigger, in some Trump's were bigger. The US isn't desperately looking for new oil and mineral sources. There are so many outstanding oil drilling licenses that have been granted and left unused, and we can already produce more oil than we can refine. Oil prices are really determined by refinery capacity, not new drilling licenses.

Comment Re:And HDCP madness (Score 3, Insightful) 95

I propose a law requiring companies to continue to provide old versions of software. They can remove a feature from the new version, but I can still get the old one. In the past, if Microsoft removed a feature from Word 2005 for example, then one could refuse to upgrade. I could save the installer. Yes, eventually it won't work any longer, and I am not saying they must support every version into perpetuity. But if Netflix removes a feature, I can't download the old version. So they should be barred from putting a barrier in place preventing access or use of it.

Comment Re:yes and this isn't airdrop (Score 1) 15

Wrong.

Not even sure what you're talking about concerning AirPlay. What Google implemented was AirDrop, not AirPlay.

Regardless, I've used Google's Implementation going both to and from my Macbook Pro. It's the real deal. Works beautifully.

That's why you're sitting at a zero score on your post. Do more research next time.

Comment Mobiles aren't desktops (Score 1) 88

I mean if you're going to count mobile, why not count any use frontend use of backend servers as well. After all, slashdot.org is running on Linux, so you're using it now on a desktop or mobile. We don't do this because the argument gets absurd.

Desktop generally counts desktop and laptop type computers and most of them aren't running Linux, they're running WIndows, MacOS, ChromeOS and some kind of Linux (or "Unknown", I suppose). You could count ChromeOS into Linux but that still doesn't beat out Windows or MacOS. Not by a longshot.

Comment Browsers should not launch apps (Score 2) 9

...simply visiting a website can trigger the Podcasts app to open and load...

This is why browsers should not launch apps without first prompting. Steam, Discord, Roblox, GlobalProtect VPN, and BeyondTrust, Office 365/Teams, and gzillions more work this way. You should never click the "[ ] Don't prompt me any more for this application" button. This allows any arbitrary web site to get out of the browser sandbox and chain to security flaws (or even direct features like "subscribe to podcast") that are in the application.

Comment Microsoft said "Windows10 is the last version" (Score 2) 56

”Right now we’re releasing Windows 10, and because Windows 10 is the last version of Windows, we’re all still working on Windows 10.”
Jerry Nixon, Microsoft developer evangelist speaking at the company’s Ignite conference this week.

Why Microsoft is calling Windows 10 ‘the last version of Windows’ May 7th, 2015
Why Microsoft Announced Windows 10 Is 'The Last Version Of Windows' May 8, 2015
Windows 10 will be 'the last version of Windows' from May 11, 2015

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