61–70 of 668 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Income shouldn't be a barrier to having technology that you own completely, a concept that until recently was common.
Technology you don't own is cheaper because the provider can sell your data. I suppose it's a "good thing" there exists tech the poor can afford.
> Except for a handful of very over-priced models that I can't afford to buy. This statement here made me pause for a bit. He wants a computer with specific features, but doesn't want pay for the models that offer those features because they are too expensive? Everyone wants to have their cake and eat it too, but unfortunately, reality has constraints.
> Except for a handful of very over-priced models that I can't afford to buy, our computers are increasingly designed to be little more than advertising platforms and vehicles for maximizing the cloud revenues of their true owners Huh? You can buy a very cheap used ThinkPad for <$200 and run GNU/Linux on it. In fact, I don’t see any mention of Linux in this article.
> Except for a handful of very over-priced models that I can't afford to buy. This statement here made me pause for a bit. He wants a computer with specific features, but doesn't want pay for the models that offer those features because they are too expensive? Everyone wants to have their cake and eat it too, but unfortunately, reality has constraints.
Income shouldn't be a barrier to having technology that you own completely, a concept that until recently was common.
So, yeah, ideally everyone should own what they buy, if they want so - and they should be aware what exactly they buy and what are the gotchas. But... how? I believe this "caveat emptor" informational disparity is a multimillenia-old issue.
(Fine print, obviously, doesn't work - because human nature.)
There are approaches that can deliver large portions of this; run an open source linux distribution, running open source browser with open source tracker blocking software. You can run this on an inexpensive system and wipe out all external communication except what you specifically want. This is obviously unrealistic for most people. You can toggle off automatic feedback & updates in a modern OS and you can install…
If anyone is interested in an extremely secure linux distro: https://tails.boum.org/
Tails always starts from the same clean state and everything you do disappears automatically when you shut down Tails.
Ie, nothing persists, which means you loose everything each time.
OpenBSD is also an extremely secure operating system. But also not terribly practical as a long term desktop environment.
Plus it doesn't solve issues with underlying hardware trusts.
> Except for a handful of very over-priced models that I can't afford to buy. This statement here made me pause for a bit. He wants a computer with specific features, but doesn't want pay for the models that offer those features because they are too expensive? Everyone wants to have their cake and eat it too, but unfortunately, reality has constraints.
> He wants a computer with specific features, but doesn't want pay for the models that offer those features because they are too expensive? Correct. He wants a computer with less complexity and less spying "features", and the market is failing hard at that. > reality has constraints No, these are entirely artificial restrictions. Companies invested very significant efforts to implement DRM, management engine, AMT, al…
> Except for a handful of very over-priced models that I can't afford to buy. This statement here made me pause for a bit. He wants a computer with specific features, but doesn't want pay for the models that offer those features because they are too expensive? Everyone wants to have their cake and eat it too, but unfortunately, reality has constraints.
Income shouldn't be a barrier to having technology that you own completely, a concept that until recently was common.
> Perhaps I am looking for something like the x286 DOS computer I had in the early 1990's You can do an almost fully GPL compliant Linux desktop by building it yourself today. I can already see people thinking "but what about the closed source binary blobs? my video card? my network interfaces?" But even your 12 MHz 286 or 386SX/20 had closed source AMI or Phoenix BIOS firmware on it. The motherboard manufacturer in…
Good security is about minimising the attack surface and risk, not reaching some ideal pie-in-the-sky complete and total trust.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I get the feeling you could be tempted to say more about that. Please elaborate?
I guess they mean the freedom (or lack thereof) of the software license that comes with your OS, ie. 'you should be able to hit the software with a metaphorical hammer', which technically isn't possible with the Windows 10 license.