Posts by emullinsabq

Re: Why bite the bullet?

I've heard this before, that MS wants out of the OS business. I'll believe that when they stop giving discounts for offering only windows. ie, when I can go buy various brand computers without an OS for cheaper than with windows.

Re: "but the availability of the source code means that anyone can."

None of the assumptions you cite are actually made by the quote you referenced.

Re: Window of Opportunity?

I recommend upgrading. YMMV, but as of version 4, I have been able to scrub 3 wine versions from my system. I now use wine-stable 4 for all but one program that still requires wine-staging. To top it off, several irritants disappeared with v4.

Re: How does it compare

As others have noted, it's in the article. Or is it? All it says is compared with FF running uBlock Origin. That doesn't mean much because it depends on filter lists and configuration.

I run with various additional lists, mostly the annoyance ones. But I also have 3rd party Javascript and 3rd party frames blocked unless needed. So who knows if that's remotely like what was tested? Probably not as it isn't the default, yet very effective at blocking unwanted junk.

Re: Why bother?

There is a reason FF has several forks. The FF devs stopped listening to users long ago, instead mostly copying Chrome. I recommend trying some of those forks instead-- it will save you aggravation.

Another reason is that jumping between FF/Chrome when one ticks you off gets you the same basic issue of a two party political system where choice is often just illusion.

Re: Go for it, Google!

I'm finally down to two browsers. Chromium is one, but not the main one. It's mostly for convenience as Palemoon does what I want, does it well, and is never in my face with change(knock on wood). Go down this path, Google, and 'apt remove chromium' gets me down to one browser in a hurry.

Re: Kiss FF goodbye.

No, some, maybe many WILL care. Just in insufficient numbers to do something

Supply and demand in action.

Is $2.50 a year too much for Firefox and other Mozilla software? It would seem so, given...many (like the Reg) don't even bother trying a subscription model.

Supply and demand again.

Content creators think their stuff is worth more than it is, that is the fundamental problem.

Then you have Mozilla who have been fscking up FF for the last several years because they can't be bothered to listen to users. You want users to cough up for a browser? I don't know if it's even possible, but I assure you it is impossible in a competitive area like browsers when you constantly ignore users.

You have to actually get something for your donation besides feels, you know. What I have gotten is a collection of browsers because FF went to crap. At this point I have no plans to even have it installed again. MS can sorta get away with this behavior because they aren't in a severely competitive situation, though slowly, consumers are bypassing the Wintel stranglehold with phones, and it gets moreso every year. You treat users like crap, and they want to leave. How long it takes depends largely on how competitive the field is.

Re: Still Not Getting It

Windows Vista/7 UI theme is wonderful, it still looks fresh and yes transparency works fine there.

For you it works fine. For me it is exhausting, and that is why I hate transparency in any form. The thing is the stuff underneath is noise that my brain works to filter out constantly. I don't know any way to avoid it. I'm glad for people who don't have this problem, but I sit in front of an UI all day every day, and it is absolutely horrible to have transparent stuff. What works best for me is the windows 2000 ui. or classic in XP or Win7. Ofc, it isn't my problem these days as I don't even use Windows anymore, and I have full control of the UI now.

The fact is that the MAJORITY is being forcefully silenced, and you can clearly see that with Brexit.

I wouldn't say forcefully silenced. But yeah, ignored by the media. When the media becomes self serving as it is now, it ignores the issues that matter to a wide range of different people. Without an outlet, those issues only get "discovered" after a vote.

All this censorship and banning is antithetical to to a healthy society. Luckily, the internet treats censorship as infection and just routes around it.

Re: MS is not the one to worry here

Every one of those Win7 machines is a sale they haven't made.

Whose fault is that? You have to sell what people want if you want to make money. For some reason, they are afraid to demand anything of MS. Why? What difference does it make if MS charges you more for licenses nobody wants? I'm sure Newegg would tell you Win10 is unhealthy for its business. So quit asking "how high" when MS says jump.

This is why there is still innovation in phones. People want off the wintel train. Neither MS nor Intel seem interested in giving people what they want, thus other markets are forming. You can spray perfume on a pile of dung. Some people will not notice it for what it is, but two things happen: 1) nothing. the underlying problem remains unaddressed, 2) people quit paying attention to your freshly sprayed wares because they now know your MO.

Re: As soon as Windows 7 support finishes

After reading the Windows 10 EULA, there was no way I was going to run it.

Other reasons too, but yeah. This.

I'm a little surprised though. I figured by now a fair number of people would have sued any company/agency/entity that uses a Win10 box to store their sensitive data. Given that EULA, it's essentially a security breach to accept it.

playground thinking

then what is the point?

Being from the US, I don't know who this guy is and don't really care. But if the problem is nobody is listening to you, the solution isn't a new platform.

More likely, he rarely says anything worth listening to.

Anyone who can fix that with an app wins the internet.

Re: Detecting Fake News is hard

No it's easy to detect real news.

If you read a small paragraph and it leaves you feeling informed, but bored, it is real.

If you read a story and aren't clapping or screaming, it is real.

If the story doesn't have phone footage*, it might be real

If the story isn't primarily about what someone wrote on twitter, it might be real.

If the article can be summarized in two sentences, but the article is 3 pages of what people think, it is fake.

* This might require clarification. I don't mean to suggest that poor phone footage is inherently false, but rather that if that is the basis of the story, it probably isn't news at all. eg. someone records a fight in a mall, and someone actually thought that was newsworthy, because omg, shitty video.

Re: clueless

"When I visit a new (never visited before) site then essentially everything blocked - allow site HTML, CSS but little else, I then choose to enable stuff (or, if site will not even let me see content without enabling masses of JS I go away and find a different site with the info I was after)."

It is too bad the masses don't adopt this approach.

Re: As Long As We're On The Topic

That will just result in reams of garbage content that get search priority.

You need a system that rewards good content. Let those who make junk die gracefully. IMO, the way to do that right now is donations / crowdfunding.

If you need me to turn off ublock (or adblock) or enable javascript (1), I don't care about your site, plain and simple.

*(1) I'm not 100% free of JS as I make heavy use of google translate. working on that atm.

Re: What has UGC got to do with streaming?

"...but the (very small amount of) music I stream from YouTube is to check out something..."

I have huge problems with DRM, however I do think it would be interesting to have perfect DRM. I suspect the effect on sales will be to clobber them, not enhance them. If you must pay to check something out, a fraction are going to bother. Also, if you can easily get pirated content, it doesn't concern you that much the quality. But if DRM ever got potent enough, those making the content would soon realize what they make isn't worth paying for because, ofc, very few will do so.

I think the long term effects of perfect DRM will be disastrous to content creators. If people aren't checking out your stuff, you have already lost.

This all seems rather like a paywall, and we all know how well that works.

Re: ****ing BBC are the worst ....

"Bring back news on paper. Nothing beats the haptics of dead trees!"

I haven't taken the paper in over a decade, but I had a chance to look at this week's Sunday edition where I live. Suffice it to say that paper news isn't what it used to be. They have decided to follow suit with advertising at the expense of user experience too. It really is horrid-- articles have ads in the text, the text is less about informing and more about what people feel about xxx. Save your money.

Maybe this isn't true everywhere, but in my city (ABQ as I'm sure you guessed), we are down to one paper. It is thinner, more ads, worse content, and more expensive than every previous year.

Kobayashi Maru

"Here's the key.

>Clickety<

This is garbage."

If you securely erase hard drives with the last pass being random, apparently you get to sit in the clink for decades if someone claims that drive is encrypted.

Or alternatively, you purposely filled a drive with random garbage as a form of pollution. [at least this method you can probably send them the algorithm used] But ofc, the point is to let them deal with pollution, not you sitting in a cell somewhere. Oh well.

The ideal scenario being when some expert claims to have decrypted your garbage and found tons of incriminating stuff, and you submit to the judge a 4 line program that produces the file. This is what I pictured when devising the garbage production, but sadly it seems if you are apparently guilty without evidence, that this awesome scenario that exposes deep corruption, isn't likely to occur.

Re: Finally!

(regarding Vivaldi)

Hm. I checked it out just now. Went to their website, clicked Terms first, and the first thing that I didn't filter was something to the effect: we can change these conditions any time.

At which point, I stopped reading and closed the tab.

Re: Paint has its uses

"Wait until they try to replace Notepad!"

If MS is intent on converting decades old core OS functionality into "free" stuff you now download from the windows store, I have to ask why Edge and IE aren't among them.

I bet most people would be pleased at that move.

Re: five-year-old silicon obsolete?

"The only reason i might upgrade a motherboard/processor now is to reduce the power consumption for the same tasks, if that is possible."

Exactly my situation. I long for a fanless quad ARM device that is comparable to my 10yo core2quad. I have no need for more oomph, what I want is something with no moving parts, has near-zero energy costs, and fits on the back of my monitor. It would be nice, but not required, if it also had some chip level opcodes to give me a zippy dosbox. At that point I have zero use for MS, AMD, Nvidia, and especially Intel.

Re: and recovering kit that's obsolete, that is, unsupported by the manufacturer anyhow

"I don't trust a random bunch of hippies scattered all over the planet to "fix" my OS."

YOU don't have to. I won't step on your freedom/choice, you don't step on mine. Deal?