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The Antisocial Laptop

scattered-thoughts.net

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Re: The Antisocial Laptop

#11

Post by AdmiralAsshat »

kgwxd wrote: post #9
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #3

Seems like a feature to me. Worried about the NSA or other nefarious forces tapping your mic or webcam? Worry not! This mainstream, off-the-shelf laptop will terminate its internet connection the moment someone tries to access its webcam! If that hasn't stopped it, the laptop will dutifully reset itself. Purism ain't got nothin' on this.

No built-in cameras or mics would be an excellent feature, even for phones. I would have already pre-orded the Librem 5, for the same price, if Purism had offered that.

How would you make phonecalls on the Librem 5 without a mic?

Re: The Antisocial Laptop

#12

Post by Isamu »

hammock wrote: post #10

I was wondering if this would be about how having your laptop open in a meeting is bad form on a few different levels (distracting, signaling, body language)

Depends on the workplace, and specific behavior.

At my current workplace it is perfectly fine to bring in your laptop and continue work in a meeting. The context is that this is an engineering organization and everybody is cranking on their laptops all day and we expect work to get finished. In a meeting you are expected to pay some attention though, and contribute. It would be rude if a high-level executive were running the meeting though.

It is rude if you are completely engrossed in your laptop when somebody is speaking to you directly. One fellow (now gone) would sometimes ask a question to me and then become engrossed in his laptop when I replied. That was rude, but rare. And it is just basic listening skills.

At my previous workplace we generally didn't allow open laptops in meetings, and that made more sense as there were more meetings with other non-engineering groups that didn't have the same work culture.

Re: The Antisocial Laptop

#13

Post by Crespyl »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #11
kgwxd wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No built-in cameras or mics would be an excellent feature, even for phones. I would have already pre-orded the Librem 5, for the same price, if Purism had offered that.

How would you make phonecalls on the Librem 5 without a mic?

Attach a microphone with USB or Bluetooth, and then turn off or detach it when done. Same for a webcam.

Re: The Antisocial Laptop

#14

Post by hammock »

Isamu wrote: post #12
hammock wrote: post #10

I was wondering if this would be about how having your laptop open in a meeting is bad form on a few different levels (distracting, signaling, body language)

Depends on the workplace, and specific behavior. At my current workplace it is perfectly fine to bring in your laptop and continue work in a meeting. The context is that this is an engineering organization and everybody is cranking on their laptops all day and we expect work to get finished. In a meeting you are expected to pay some attention though, and contribute. It would be rude if a high-level executive were run…

If you wouldn't act that way with a high-level executive why act that way with your coworkers- do you respect them less?

It's as easy as saying "Do you mind if I take notes on my laptop while you answer your question" if you really have to.

Re: The Antisocial Laptop

#16

Post by Isamu »

hammock wrote: post #14
Isamu wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on the workplace, and specific behavior. At my current workplace it is perfectly fine to bring in your laptop and continue work in a meeting. The context is that this is an engineering organization and everybody is cranking on their laptops all day and we expect work to get finished. In a meeting you are expected to pay some attention though, and contribute. It would be rude if a high-level executive were run…

If you wouldn't act that way with a high-level executive why act that way with your coworkers- do you respect them less? It's as easy as saying "Do you mind if I take notes on my laptop while you answer your question" if you really have to.

Again, depends on the workplace. And the meeting context.

I walked into a meeting today and said “some people think it is disrespectful to have your laptop open during a meeting” and everyone laughed. And it was a diverse group, men and women, a wide age range, from different parts of the world. People are professional, respectful and notably productive in that meeting. With laptops.

Regarding a high-level executive, it’s just that those kinds of meetings are not engineering meetings.

Re: The Antisocial Laptop

#17

Post by magduf »

kgwxd wrote: post #9
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #3

Seems like a feature to me. Worried about the NSA or other nefarious forces tapping your mic or webcam? Worry not! This mainstream, off-the-shelf laptop will terminate its internet connection the moment someone tries to access its webcam! If that hasn't stopped it, the laptop will dutifully reset itself. Purism ain't got nothin' on this.

No built-in cameras or mics would be an excellent feature, even for phones. I would have already pre-orded the Librem 5, for the same price, if Purism had offered that.

Cameras and mics are useful for videoconferencing calls. Attaching a mic and cam via USB can be done, but that's extra crap you have to haul around in your luggage; it's much more space-efficient to have it built into your laptop.

The answer is really simple, and I'm disappointed that I seem to be the only one who can think of this: why not just have a mechanical toggle switch that turns off these devices? (No, don't let it be a software switch, it needs to actually disconnect the devices from the computer; it can do this with transistor switches but the devices still need to be off the computer's internal USB bus, and there must be no way for software on the computer to reactivate them secretly.)

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