Posts by JohnFen

> I'm not quite sure why there is this massive hype to get rid of the OS

It's because Microsoft really, really, really wants you to be using Win 10.

Re: one would think

> a 2004 settlement MS gave them $20 Million, they transferred the Lindows trademark to Microsoft, and changed their name to Linspire.

According to the US Patent Office trademark search engine, Lindows and Linspire are dead marks.

Re: one would think

It's the other way around -- systemd is bringing the Microsoft Way into Linux.

Re: Bothered

> I bet a for-profit corporation could do the job at LOWER COST TO THE END USER than a non-profit one, simply because they have budgets and investors and bottom lines and need for revenue.

Nonprofits have those things as well.

Re: CORRUPTION!

> Is your conscience clean?

This presumes that they have a conscience in the first place.

> Splinternet - local webs for local people

As one who runs just such a thing myself, I'm also aware that there are numerous other such "local internets".

Re: What's this obsession with headphone jacks of late ?

Headphone jacks are incredibly useful. I consider one essential, mostly because I have yet to see bluetooth earbuds that sound good, can go at least a full day without recharging, and don't drop out on me every so often.

I've never had a headphone socket (or USB, for that matter) fail on me, but I confess that I appear to be charmed or something -- I also seem to be the only person who can use a phone for more than a couple of years without cracking the screen, despite not using a case.

Re: Surely we're not at war yet?

"Adversary" != "enemy".

Re: Agggghhhh!

And if you are an American who doesn't happen to be on board with Trump, you're still an adversary as far as much of the government is concerned. Maybe not a foreign one, but I don't think that's an important distinction to them.

Re: CheckMate

Checkpeople is not in China. It's in the US.

Re: late capitalists

"Treating the lives of everything as being equally important would be absurd."

I don't think that asserting that we should not torture animals counts as treating animals as equally important to people.

Re: late capitalists

I agree, but sometimes I use the term anyway for clarity.

For instance, when a company is trafficking in personal data belonging to the general public, calling the the general public "customers" is incorrect -- those people are not the customers of the company. Saying "general public" would work, but is a bit clumsy, and everyone understand that "consumer" is a synonym for that.

Re: late capitalists

"Sure - companies keep at their abuse. But consumers keep buying their wares."

With a lot of companies, including most companies that make money by exploiting personal data (such as CheckPeople), consumers are not their customers in the first place. You and I have no market leverage over their behavior at all.

" Day-in, day-out, people and algorithms work to remove non-responsive target audiences from who they advertise to."

They do a really terrible job of it, though, considering that they expend a great deal of time and effort to continue to target people who are actively and energetically trying to evade them. That's a ton of wasted money right there.

Re: We see that you're using an ad blocker

"You people are illegally accessing peoples websites by blocking their ad-revenue content of those sites that the content creators depend on ?"

There's nothing illegal about doing that.

> AND THEY ARE THE BAD GUYS?

Yes.

> At the moment the internet is basicaly free,

In my view, the ad-driven portion of the web is incredibly expensive.

> if you privacy freaks get your way no one will be able to afford to host servers , let alone do anything on them , and everything will be a pay-for-it model.

This is certainly false, as evidenced by the still large number of websites that don't carry ads (or carry ads that aren't from the spying marketing companies), don't track you, and don't charge money.

> Just view a goddam personalised advert ffs.

I have no problem with seeings ads. I have a problem with being spied on.

Re: Two conflated things

"compare that to seeing adverts about things you're interested in , that dont halt what iyou're doing"

Meh. I'll take the ad system that doesn't require spying on me over the alternative any day of the week.

Re: Two conflated things

"The value of an untargeted ad to an Advertiser is an order of magnitude less than a targeted one."

True, which is why we really need to find a way to kill tracking across the board. If targeted ads are impossible, then the untargeted ones will rise in value because that sort will be the only way.

"As it stands now numerous sites are being slowly strangled by the increasing privacy restrictions. But El Reg's readership won't hear of that nonsense, until you wake up one day and realise that you get what you PAY for."

Oh, I think most people here are well aware of it. I can't speak for the readership in general of course, but my perspective is that I don't actually care about the fate of sites that depend on abusing their users to make a profit.

Re: I wish I could keep javascript disabled for every website

This is why I use NoScript to do this. By default, I don't allow any website to run any JS at all. If a website is important to me and won't function without JS, I can selectively allow it. However, the site has to be pretty important. If it's not, and it doesn't function without JS, then I just don't use that website.

Re: Privacy is dying

As the old saying goes: find the amount of oppression that people will tolerate, and you've found the amount of oppression that they suffer under.

Re: effects on lab test animals and not on humans,

"his walking doesn't save a single gnat."

Not to mention that when you walk, you are almost certainly killing insects and such by trodding on them.

Re: Mixing freedom and money - or obligation

> Personally I just give my stuff away - I got the value out of it by using it myself, and simply ensuring no one else can take my own stuff from me or prevent me from using it, claiming it's their IP. seems like a worthwhile setup.

Me too.

I basically stopped using OSS licenses years ago, for a whole lot of reasons. Now, my software falls into one of three categories, licensing-wise. Most software I write is released into the public domain outright. Some software I release with a license that is generally along the lines of OSS licenses, but is of my own devising. I also release a small amount of software under a closed-source license (although source is always available to customers).

Re: What does vaccination have to do with software licencing?

I agree. I'm extremely pro-vaccination and consider it a societal duty. But I would never accept a license like this, because I think this sort of thing has no place in software licenses.

Re: "And this is absolutely normal"

> Would you like any good you buy come attached with a string of requirements - which do not have anything to do with the good itself, but only try to assert some kind of principle?

They already effectively do. When you buy something, you are not just buying the product itself, you are also funding the principles of the company that you're buying from, and that includes quite a lot of things that are unrelated to the product itself.

> This could lead to a balkanization of the software landscape (and next who knows what) that can only make it far worse.

The software landscape is already very balkanized anyway.

Re: I'll be staying with 4G

I see no reason to think that there are any health issues with 5G.

Re: One question remains unanswered.

That's nice to know. I gave up on SO last year for reasons that are unrelated to this mess, but their weird, passive-aggressive not-really-an-apology statement about this reinforces that I made the right decision.

Perhaps this new effort will be better.