11% of Americans don’t use the internet

Post by pixkpr » Tue, Jul 24, 2018, 12:50 AM UTC

cm2187 wrote: post #53

simmons wrote: post #12

My Dad is in his early 70's and has never used the Internet. In fact, he never even had a cellphone until this year when I bought him a flip-phone and convinced him to accept it. I think he's plenty capable of learning such technology, he just doesn't see any compelling reason. And I think that's a perfectly reasonable choice -- I'm certainly not going to tell a senior citizen what they need to be happy. He is starti…

What is interesting is that it seems to have more to do with age than intellectual capacity. I know very smart 60yo+ doctors with a lifetime of scientific achievements, who understands concepts way more complicated than the IP protocol or a browser, and who just refuse to learn it. They might learn just how to use it but have no curiosity on how it works.

Post by mmirate » Tue, Jul 24, 2018, 12:53 AM UTC

xyzzy123 wrote: post #127

mmirate wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ecliptic Curve cryptography. In-tree driver modules for last year's 10Gb Ethernet cards. Python 2.7, let alone 3. Official support for kernel 4.x. I've barely been in the industry for 90 days and I've already had to deal with the lack of the above in RHEL6. (Indirectly, mind you; but I believe that the transition between RHEL6 and CentOS6 is negligible for the current topic.)

Hardware appliances would generally be one place none of these things matter - you know if your gray box ships with a 10gbe card or not, customer doesn’t care about userland versions, etc. That said, I also hate working on RHEL 6.

Post by mr_toad » Tue, Jul 24, 2018, 12:54 AM UTC

cm2187 wrote: post #53

simmons wrote: post #12

My Dad is in his early 70's and has never used the Internet. In fact, he never even had a cellphone until this year when I bought him a flip-phone and convinced him to accept it. I think he's plenty capable of learning such technology, he just doesn't see any compelling reason. And I think that's a perfectly reasonable choice -- I'm certainly not going to tell a senior citizen what they need to be happy. He is starti…

What is interesting is that it seems to have more to do with age than intellectual capacity. I know very smart 60yo+ doctors with a lifetime of scientific achievements, who understands concepts way more complicated than the IP protocol or a browser, and who just refuse to learn it. They might learn just how to use it but have no curiosity on how it works.

Post by zxcmx » Tue, Jul 24, 2018, 12:59 AM UTC

Godel_unicode wrote: post #149

xyzzy123 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hardware appliances would generally be one place none of these things matter - you know if your gray box ships with a 10gbe card or not, customer doesn’t care about userland versions, etc. That said, I also hate working on RHEL 6.

What's better than a relatively impenetrable appliance? One that manifestly doesn't care about security and therefore uses an old kernel and vulnerable userland. If they use an old unsupported OS, what other vulnerable libraries are hiding inside?

Post by null000 » Tue, Jul 24, 2018, 1:08 AM UTC

pixelmonkey wrote: post #55

This is a shockingly small number. For comparison, Pew reports that 24% of Americans have not read a single book, in whole or in part, in 2017. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/03/23/who-doesnt-r...