I wonder if Apple will go this direction in the future..
Windows 10 users are being banned from torrent sites
281–290 of 358 posts
Re: Windows 10 users are being banned from torrent sites
#282Earlier quoted context omitted.
Inkscape and Illustrator is unfair. My work has stopped buying Illustrator licenses and no one even noticed because Inkscape does what we need.
Inkscape is nice and I use it all the time, but I am not a designer so it works for me just fine (I suspect is the same case in your office). On the other hand, my sister is a designer, and there are so many missing features on Inkscape that prevent her to use it in her profession life. The comparison seems unfair, but it is the closest thing to an alternative for Illustrator in the software free world.
I find that many programmers find Inkscape or Gimp more than enough for their graphic needs, but it's really hard to come across a designer that would agree. Nobody likes to pay and pirate software; if designers found Gimp really up to the task, they would be rushing to use it and drop the Adobe monthly fee. The fact that this mass migration is not happening and has never happened in the past 10 years should tell us more than our own understanding of graphic tools would let us deduce.
Re: Windows 10 users are being banned from torrent sites
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
> we're stuck with a proprietary system that is totally unnecessary I think you are being a bit biased on this one. There are a lot of applications that the "free" alternative is just not good enough in comparison with the propetary one. Just to name a few: Gimp and Photoshop Inkscape and Illustrator Maya/3DStudio and Blender I would even add Office and LibreOffice but the later is actually good enough for a good chu…
"good enough for a good chunk of people" completely describes Gimp, Inkscape, and Blender, all of which are absolutely powerful and capable of (and actually used for) the highest level professional results. That there are features and quality from the well-funded proprietary tools that are lacking in the free/open ones is undeniable. But the examples you chose are ones where if we had to use the free/open ones, we wo…
> "good enough for a good chunk of people" completely describes Gimp, Inkscape, and Blender
I said that keeping in mind professional use. There are some people who can effectly replace Office with LibreOffice at work and the number is significant.
However, when you try to do the same with a designer then Gimp, Inkscape and Blender falls behind, so yeah... A dev could do a minor manipulation on an image using Gimp, but don't ask a designer to produce a print-ready poster using it.
Re: Windows 10 users are being banned from torrent sites
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've deactivated all reporting and services that call back home (at least which I was aware of). In addition I've installed glasswire to check the network activities. So far I can assure you: Compared to my Android phone Windows 10 is absolutely mute. There're no noticeable differences compared to Windows 7. You seem to be more driven by your hatred towards Microsoft than by real privacy concerns.
Deactivating the services that call home doesn't stop Windows 10 from calling home. You can only completely disable "telemetry" if you have Windows 10 Enterprise Edition and even then I'm not entirely sure it does completely shut down. And anyway, even getting to this meant manually ticking out dozens of boxes in several settings windows and installing a packet sniffer to check your own computer for unwanted connecti…
The good thing is that those 95% are often willing to pay for services like virus removal and the like, so maybe Microsoft has created a new industry for surveillance removal!
Re: Windows 10 users are being banned from torrent sites
#285Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hatred for Microsoft? I have none. I do hate the fact that we have an absolutely free operating system that works just fine but thanks to Bill Gates 90s shenanigans and aggressive and illegal market and business tactics we're stuck with a proprietary system that is totally unnecessary and as it continues that system becomes more and more invasive. And that system is a black box that you can't trust. Google started en…
Nothing about Linux on the desktop "works fine". It's horrible. UI seems to be one area that benefits--almost demands --a central planning authority. I'm reminded of Supported Features [1]. There is some great open source software out there. But I'm struggling to think of great open source software with a good UI. Not that I'm saying Windows is good mind you. My personal preference would be OSX, which you can view as…
You're talking about a subjective experience as if it's something that can be objectively measured. I find it the other way around. I've used Macs since the 80's, but lately I hardly touch them, in part because I think the desktop experience is so much worse than GNOME, KDE, Unity, or even XFCE.
GNOME 3 in perticular is the best arranged desktop in my opinion because the way it separates the desktop and application launcher/switcher/search into two distinct modes and makes context switching so easy with just a key press, a click, or a hot corner. Everything is always in the same place and easy to access with little cognitive overhead. Whereas using the Mac application bar is really messy, trying to follow flyout menus that go off at odd angles, etc., and that's far from the only reason I dislike the UI. GNOME follows the way my mind works. I'm either using the applications I want or switching between them, and unifying everything in these categories makes so much sense, I'm surprised everyone doesn't follow the model.
That's entirely my opinion, and I tend to be biased and think the only reason people complain about the desktop experience is because it's not whatever they're used to, but the only thing I know for sure is that there's no one way to arrange a desktop that appeals to everyone.
Re: Windows 10 users are being banned from torrent sites
#286Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hatred for Microsoft? I have none. I do hate the fact that we have an absolutely free operating system that works just fine but thanks to Bill Gates 90s shenanigans and aggressive and illegal market and business tactics we're stuck with a proprietary system that is totally unnecessary and as it continues that system becomes more and more invasive. And that system is a black box that you can't trust. Google started en…
> Hatred for Microsoft? I have none. When you post "M$" in a reply I automatically mark you as rabidly anti-Microsoft and usually stop reading. I'm not a fan of Microsoft, but childish acts such as those have no place in a rational discussion.
Also, MICROS~1 is much funnier.
Re: Windows 10 users are being banned from torrent sites
#287Earlier quoted context omitted.
Basically M$ adoption of this strategy is the death knell for any semblance of privacy on the PC. I think if anything it would be users accepting this strategy by installing the new OS that would be the death knell for privacy on the PC. So far, it doesn't seem clear that this will happen, though. The reaction from business is predictably hesitant anyway. Some of the concerns about Windows 10 won't apply so much with…
I think Win 10 is the death knell for Windows. SMEs won't touch it because of the privacy concerns. Corporates who have access to the full privacy features in the enterprise version are still suspicious of it. Its main USP for the general public is that it's not as bad as Win 8 - which hardly seems like a win at all. I'm happy to use Linux for some applications, but realistically I think most Windows users who are sw…
I'm genuinely a little worried for Microsoft's future at this point. I've said before that I thought they would recover from Vista and 8 because XP and 7 were solid, but I wasn't sure they'd be able to recover from two turkeys in a row. If 10 turns out to be that second turkey, commercially speaking, I don't see how they come back unless the board have the stones to replace Nadella, the top man they themselves appointed surely expecting just this sort of corporate strategy.
I haven't seen enough to make a firm prediction yet, but I do think if MS can't get a handle on these update and privacy issues very soon and they increasingly become the story instead of any of the new features, the writing may be on the wall. Microsoft seem to have attracted some overall positive reviews at launch for Win10 in the general press and non-geek PC sites/magazines, but a lot of that positive early coverage is getting drowned out by concerns about reliability, privacy, and whether the relatively few big new features (Cortana, Edge, DirectX 12) are actually worth much anyway (with, respectively, questionable effectiveness, lack of plug-ins, and few if any games available that take advantage of it any time soon, among other challenges). "It's not as bad as Win8" is not a pitch that is going to support sales for the next several years, particularly when so many of their business customers are still on 7 anyway and have nearly 5 more years before they're going to run into end-of-support issues and be forced to act one way or another.
Microsoft seem to be throwing everything into cloud and services and mobile-friendly software and new devices, at the expense of solid server/desktop/laptop software that until recently has generally just worked and aside from the occasional blip stayed just working for a long time. Which of these areas has historically yielded Microsoft's more successful offerings, and which has had a string of disappointing results? Exactly.
Re: Windows 10 users are being banned from torrent sites
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hatred for Microsoft? I have none. I do hate the fact that we have an absolutely free operating system that works just fine but thanks to Bill Gates 90s shenanigans and aggressive and illegal market and business tactics we're stuck with a proprietary system that is totally unnecessary and as it continues that system becomes more and more invasive. And that system is a black box that you can't trust. Google started en…
> Hatred for Microsoft? I have none. When you post "M$" in a reply I automatically mark you as rabidly anti-Microsoft and usually stop reading. I'm not a fan of Microsoft, but childish acts such as those have no place in a rational discussion.
Okay stop reading. Your response smells of fanboyism, blind faith, and ad-hominem attacks which are rather childish in themselves. I got my point across and it seems the vast readership is behind me.
Re: Windows 10 users are being banned from torrent sites
#289Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hatred for Microsoft? I have none. I do hate the fact that we have an absolutely free operating system that works just fine but thanks to Bill Gates 90s shenanigans and aggressive and illegal market and business tactics we're stuck with a proprietary system that is totally unnecessary and as it continues that system becomes more and more invasive. And that system is a black box that you can't trust. Google started en…
> we're stuck with a proprietary system that is totally unnecessary I think you are being a bit biased on this one. There are a lot of applications that the "free" alternative is just not good enough in comparison with the propetary one. Just to name a few: Gimp and Photoshop Inkscape and Illustrator Maya/3DStudio and Blender I would even add Office and LibreOffice but the later is actually good enough for a good chu…
Gimp is fairly good, but still a few years behind Photoshop (realized this hard truth during a recent work).
On the other hand, Maya is available on Linux !
Edit: typos
Re: Windows 10 users are being banned from torrent sites
#290I wonder if Apple will go this direction in the future..
Not a chance. They're trying to position themselves as the security and privacy focused player in the industry.