751–760 of 764 posts
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If the answer is ‘don’t adopt Cairo for new projects’ there is a problem, since Skia has poor documentation and a not stable api. And so if the answer is always ‘it depends’, you are making my point for me.
In Cairo specific case it is 'don't adopt Cairo for new projects'. Others may have specific reason, why they are still using it (like the Gtk example). Your new project doesn't.
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Because if governments get involved we’ll never be able to solve the problem. I.e. if you take away the rights to privately create and distribute software, the current situation will become permanent.
That's not what I said. I didn't say the government should get involved. I asked why it's ok that that a private company controls and censors us.
If you don’t, you don’t have to use their products.
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Because if governments get involved we’ll never be able to solve the problem. I.e. if you take away the rights to privately create and distribute software, the current situation will become permanent.
We meet again zepto! Nobody wants to take away their right to do so (ok well maybe some do; I'm not one of them). Just that there should be rules we all agree to when we do. We accept this in other venues. Seatbelts. Stoplights. Nutrition labeling on packaging. etc.. No such rules exist for software, which is odd. It does seem to suggest the industry is ripe for regulation. It's always disappointing to me that we onl…
Only a very small set of products have special regulations, generally those which we deem unsafe for consumers unless regulated.
“Seatbelts. Stoplights. Nutrition labeling on packaging. etc.”
A good set of examples. Every one of them is about consumer health and safety. This is consistent with liberal democracy - people should be free to do what they want unless it hurts someone else. That is why all product related regulations are related to safety.
It seems reasonable to assume you are arguing for rules which prevent the installation of unsafe software on computers which are sold to consumers.
Apple would be the most compliant company with such rules, and would benefit greatly.
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What's worse is the number of other posts with the top comments being vociferous defenses of these companies as if they needed these people to defend them or cared one iota for their welfare. It feels like it's Stockholm Syndrome on a mass scale. I worry for Gen Z because they're tiny-mobile-device native. And the only usable tiny mobile devices are walled gardens. They scream outrage when they're not allowed their t…
> I worry for Gen Z because they're tiny-mobile-device native. And the only usable tiny mobile devices are walled gardens. Without the ability to grow up playing with system level software, combined with the software industry's unwillingness to pass on institutional knowledge to younger generations, I fear we are already on a path towards a civilization that loses a lot of the technological capability we currently en…
- Hardware is ridiculously cheap and powerful and widely available
- Inexpensive educational computers such as the BBC micro bit and Raspberry Pi are widely available along with associated educational materials; these devices are easily interfaced to the real world, and can often be programmed at a very low level or high level as desired
- Overall, robotics and real-world computing is cheaper and more accessible than it has ever been
- FPGAs are ridiculously cheap and powerful and allow you to explore processor and digital hardware design
- Nearly every computer, smartphone, or tablet contains a web browser that can be programmed in JavaScript, webasm, and dozens of other languages that compile to JavaScript or webasm; web apps can display 2D, 3D and vector-path graphics, generate sound, and interact with all sorts of input devices
- Nearly every computer, smartphone, or tablet has a Python implementation as well
- Free and open source software is widely available
- Free and open source game engines are widely available
- Games are often moddable and many contain built-in level editors
- Source code of almost any type of software you can imagine, from operating system kernels to compilers and libraries to databases to to web browsers to scientific computing to games and productivity software is widely available
- Billions of people have internet access
- Tons of free and often high-quality educational materials are available from universities, khan academy, and many other sources on youtube, on github, and all over the web
- Many books including textbooks and tutorials are available for free as PDFs or readable on the web
etc.
The materials are out there, but the challenge is empowering people to find and make use of them.
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Linux desktop. I just use what's presented and get on with my work. I don't have a particularly complicated setup, but I found something that works and I've been using it happily enough for over a year having migrated from Windows. I don't know what disputes are being argued over, so I bothers me not in the slightest. Would it help if you just ignored the detail and just worked with what's presented?
If you are happy to just ‘work with what’s presented’, why not buy an Apple device or ChromeOS machine?
I avoid Apple because of the slow descent into vendor / walled garden lock-in, which suits neither my wallet nor personality.
I have a couple of ChromeOS devices for the kids' schooling, but they're unwieldy for my workflow.
You didn't ask, but I moved away from Windows because of increased bloat, telemetry and the dual issue of decreasing control of "services running" alongside noticeable slow-down of performance frustratingly too soon after a fresh install. I've also had two occasions (which is two too many) where Windows decided, upon it's own, to install updates and reboot, losing whatever I had open at the time, no message pre- or post-update just clean login screen next time I went to use the machine. I think they've made that better, and there are options to control the nature of how updates are dealt with, but I've already made the jump.
"what's presented" by Linux may not be perfect, but it's closer to my perfection than the alternatives I've tried (to be clear, this is what works for me, not necessarily anyone else).
I'm so glad I caught onto RMS and Eben Moglen when I did. I saw this coming a long way off, and have spent a lot of my time completely gpl'ing my daily use stack. There are a few rare exceptions (steam being the largest one)... but I'm happy I put in the effort. What we are headed for is a world where a certain subset of people with the technical knowledge have computing freedom, and that vast majority giving up all…
"a world where a certain subset of people with the technical knowledge have computing freedom" Even that is optimistic.
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I'm not. Since the last few iterations of Apple hardware and OS software, I've decided to switch to something else. I'm also advicing all friends and collegues to do the same. There is simply no reason to stay with Apple anymore as a professional. It used to be stability and ease of use, but Windows has since closed that gap, and Linux is a close second (and a must for programming). Most likely that means I'll run a…
I haven't used Windows in long time, but it feels like "the gap" was closed by Apple, by letting their system degrade. The high end 2019 MacBookPro is in many regards less reliable for music production than my old 2012 MacBookAir, which is really, really sad. Unless Apple gets their act together my next music production setup will be Windows-based (or maybe I'll even try Bitwig on Linux).
While there is some merit to this claim, I don't agree with it entirely. In my experience using these systems side-by-side for over 10 years now, it's pretty obvious that Microsoft has stabilized while "stealing" Apple's good parts, and that Apple hasn't really evolved any further than they got in about 2010. In essence, Apple has allowed Microsoft to close the gap, although by about 2005 Apple managed to become so high quality on the computer market, and so ahead of its time (by "stealing" the good parts from Linux) that it's hard for me to say how they could possibly keep that position for long. (I'm not saying that they literally stole things. Obviously they've done a lot of innovation themselves, but there are also some pretty obvious signs of "inspiration" going on too.)
There has for sure been downgrades with Apple too, but not really in regards to pure stability. In my experience most of it started in the 2010's, when Apple decided to turn away from the pro market to focus more on the trend consumer market instead. At first it happened slowly with a few technical changes that put off web designers. However the first major blow was against Final Cut Pro. I guess it turned out well in the end, but in the beginning they stumbled badly and gave away a large market share to Adobe as media pros started fleeing from Apple. Soon after came system changes that made Adobe crash more often (I'm sure it was just a coincidence...), only resulting in customers fleeing from Apple as a whole. Today Apple Mac's are decidedly more of a tightly controlled trend brand than the prosumer brand it used to be. (Kind of like Hasselblad has gone from the photo engineer's brand to an almost purely luxury brand by now.) (Also I really miss the MagSafe lol.)
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In Cairo specific case it is 'don't adopt Cairo for new projects'. Others may have specific reason, why they are still using it (like the Gtk example). Your new project doesn't.
If Cairo is not to be adopted, then Linux doesn’t have a good option right now.
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> You could claim that no one should own technology if they don't understand it intimately, but that is a different kind of logic and argument. It's silly to conflate the two. Can you point out where he made such a claim? Because I don't see it. >But computers are a very specific, highly specialized machinery that the vast parts of the population will never be able to directly understand or fix. Computers are all tha…
> Can you point out where he made such a claim? Because I don't see it. Please see again the phrasing I used. Specifically, the clause using the word “could“.