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The boiling frog of digital freedom

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Re: The boiling frog of digital freedom

#381

Post by verisimi »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #322
verisimi wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not feeling off. You simply don't understand that basic morality means that you cannot force others to do what you think is right for them to do. You want to find a way to get others to do what you want. This is immoral - you do not want others to have or exercise their freewill. And you want to use other people to force your opinions via police, legal system, etc on others. Put simply you think anarchy is a p…

Nah. I want to rule the world of course. But I would far rather setup a system of democracy to rule the world with everyone else than let some other bugger be king instead of me. And I believe in actual government - government that builds roads to deliver food on, government that agrees ways to make researchers to discover medicines and hospitals and nurses to inject them, and governments that force companies to labe…

> I want government run on empirical data with justice and equality at its heart.

You're asking for technocracy, and this is what is lined up already - you might wonder whether you are being engineered. All those cameras, smart phones, smart meters, legislation, facial recognition, etc - this is to allow micro-management at the most granular level. It's all quite far from freedom indeed, which is where this conversation started. The global governance structure is already fascistic (corporation and the state work together). I'm not a fan of the forced tyranny that's in store for us - once we've got it, I suspect you'll change your mind too.

Re: The boiling frog of digital freedom

#382

Post by b112 »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #359
b112 wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never claimed copyright law is uniform in all jurisdictions worldwide, nor was that implied. What on earth are you even talking about? Regardless, you can invalidate anything. EG, one can make a claim "Hey, that manufacturing process is my trade secret!", and that claim can most certainly be invalided. It can also be validated.

> What on earth are you even talking about? This: > Trade secrets are valid, until they no longer are. Copyright (in many jurisdictions) require no validation either, they're merely valid upon creation. Some types of copyright requires approval via some organized entity in many jurisdictions, that is easily discoverable via a quick Google search by any passing reader. The prior comment appears like a deflection from…

Michael, my simple point was that copyright, like trade secrets, requires no validation in some jurisdictions by default. For some reason you view this as a distraction, instead, it was merely illustrative.

In terms of validation, I have no idea why you think one cannot invalidate someone claiming to have a trade secret. You can literally invalidate anything, someone is trying to assert as valid.

A bottle blonde could claim that is their original hair colour, and one could invalidate that claim too.

You seem stuck on an internal definition of 'validate'. Your internal definition seems wrong.

Re: The boiling frog of digital freedom

#383

Post by Macha »

TuringNYC wrote: post #372
Macha wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the big Windows 10 S problems is back in Windows 11, though. 1. You buy a device with Windows 11 2. The out of box experience demands you add a Microsoft account to proceed past it. There are workarounds for this, but mostly they are getting shut down. 3. You can't even get into the UEFI to install another OS without signing up to a MS account, because the UEFI is accessed via an OS level advanced startup opti…

>> One of the big Windows 10 S problems is back in Windows 11, though. >> 1. You buy a device with Windows 11 I realize i'm techy an have techy friends, but I dont know anyone who has purchased a Windows machine in a decade. No one in my household, none of my friends, no office i've been at since 2017. The only interaction I have with windows is an old laptop used for MS Visio, which immediately dual-boots to Ubuntu…

You're missing two things:

1. You're in a tech bubble. For a counter anecdote, the only Macs I encounter are those provided by my US employers in the technology sector. The US is particularly high in Mac market share, California more so, and the bay area may be the one Mac OS majority desktop/laptop share region on the planet.

2. Windows laptops don't get replaced that often. I know it's hard to believe from a tech/heavy user perspective, where it may feel like a 4 year old Windows laptop is so outdated and you need to replace it, especially if it was not one of the models that rival the Mac in price, but for the average user a Windows machine reached the point of being good enough for their uses in the Windows 7 era. This is because their uses (a) are not that strenuous (typing up office documents, posting on social media) and (b) unexciting, so they don't feel the need to upgrade the way they might with their smartphones. Notably, these users are also _not_ going to computing conferences to be spotted by you, or bringing their laptops to coffee shops (they have smartphones for that), etc.

Note that despite that, Windows still has the majority of new sales in the US, steady for the last 3 years at 55% to Mac's 30%, and the decline in the years prior to that were mostly driven by iPads and Chromebooks, not Macs - the big jump in Mac market share in 2019 seems to be iPads being merged into the mac category, as iOS's share in this space disappears at the same time: https://www.statista.com/statistics/272667/market-share-held...

Re: The boiling frog of digital freedom

#384

Post by landemva »

attah_ wrote: post #27
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #3

This rather heavily begs the question what do we mean by "freedom"? We don't mean anonymity. Acting in secret is not freedom - acting openly and not being persecuted or prosecuted is freedom. The solution is what it is in real offline life. A regulated legal framework that allows most and limits little, a open dynamic culture that accepts diversity and constant change. If we are worried that digital freedom will be t…

To expand on your idea to compare with the "real offline life"... While anonymity should not need to be a top-priority goal in and of itself, you also don't see people running around with their id-cards taped to their foreheads for easy access.

I see plenty of people enthusiastically volunteering for the TSA facial recognition roll-out. People seem to love easy access government surveillance.

Re: The boiling frog of digital freedom

#385

Post by landemva »

mildmotive wrote: post #6

And it will keep getting worse as long as the majority of the population lack proper core values to oppose it.

I wonder if you travel by plane, and if you voluntarily consent to the full body scans in European and USA airports? Or do you oppose it by opting out?

Re: The boiling frog of digital freedom

#386

Post by dvdkon »

TuringNYC wrote: post #372
Macha wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the big Windows 10 S problems is back in Windows 11, though. 1. You buy a device with Windows 11 2. The out of box experience demands you add a Microsoft account to proceed past it. There are workarounds for this, but mostly they are getting shut down. 3. You can't even get into the UEFI to install another OS without signing up to a MS account, because the UEFI is accessed via an OS level advanced startup opti…

>> One of the big Windows 10 S problems is back in Windows 11, though. >> 1. You buy a device with Windows 11 I realize i'm techy an have techy friends, but I dont know anyone who has purchased a Windows machine in a decade. No one in my household, none of my friends, no office i've been at since 2017. The only interaction I have with windows is an old laptop used for MS Visio, which immediately dual-boots to Ubuntu…

That's 30% among all devices, the percentage among desktops/laptops is much higher.

You are living in a bubble. I don't know how large it is, but especially in non-web, non-multimedia offices, Windows is the default. Most serious CAD software is Windows-only, some outliers also support macOS. That old ugly accounting software the company uses only runs on Windows and nobody bats an eye.

Re: The boiling frog of digital freedom

#387

Post by [deleted] »

tstrimple wrote: post #330
amelius wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's all about milking and rent-seeking: greed. And greed starts to become an issue when managers think they need a raise. But to be fair, if you're not an engineer is there much else you can take pride in other than driving up profits by whatever means?

It’s weird how people in tech think they are superior to their less-technical colleagues. Everyone outside of software development is a moron and the entire world would be better if programmers ran everything with no oversight. Somehow only engineers are moral and everyone else is purely motivated by profit. But engineers are above that! It’s so ridiculous.

[deleted]

Re: The boiling frog of digital freedom

#388

Post by amelius »

sanderjd wrote: post #361
Frost1x wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In theory, markets should regulate and competitors should be able to rise and provide products over never ending services and be successful. That doesn't seem to happen though. Is it because service designs expose real business costs of continued investment in R&D sort of deal, is it because such reliable products are bad for business (you provide something so good, reliable, and cheap you kill your own revenue strea…

I mean ... the market has spoken on this. It just isn't something that enough people value enough for it to have a positive return on investment. Like pretty much everyone else here, I think that sucks, but I also struggle to begrudge the preferences of people who just don't care about this. So the question is just, is this a market failure in the sense that the market outcome is undesirable to society such that ther…

If companies released just the hardware without the services, then we could have open source jumping in to provide those services, and things would be cheaper.

Unless of course you want to argue that without financial incentive nobody would ever do such a thing, and open source is a fairy tale that can't really exist ...

Re: The boiling frog of digital freedom

#389

Post by rocho »

Daril wrote: post #328

There is hope: - 20 years ago it was impossible to buy a PC, especially a laptop, without MS Windows : today there are several suppliers: System76, LaptopWithLinux, TuxedoComputers, to name but a few. - It is only in the last few years (less than 10) that Linux is perfectly usable on the desktop, so I don't care what decision MS will take for Windows, it is irrelevant if you have other options. For office suites we h…

The options might exist, but that doesn't mean that they are viable/usable. I agree with many of your points, but regarding document processing, LibreOffice really does not compare with any of the best alternatives (Google Documents, Office Word). It lacks options, if the options exists they are hidden in obscure menus, it doesn't display many things correctly (at least on my Linux computer), etc. For document processing, I'm still stuck on Google Docs, which is quite a sad state of affairs.

Re: The boiling frog of digital freedom

#390

Post by Wowfunhappy »

Macha wrote: post #383
TuringNYC wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> One of the big Windows 10 S problems is back in Windows 11, though. >> 1. You buy a device with Windows 11 I realize i'm techy an have techy friends, but I dont know anyone who has purchased a Windows machine in a decade. No one in my household, none of my friends, no office i've been at since 2017. The only interaction I have with windows is an old laptop used for MS Visio, which immediately dual-boots to Ubuntu…

You're missing two things: 1. You're in a tech bubble. For a counter anecdote, the only Macs I encounter are those provided by my US employers in the technology sector. The US is particularly high in Mac market share, California more so, and the bay area may be the one Mac OS majority desktop/laptop share region on the planet. 2. Windows laptops don't get replaced that often. I know it's hard to believe from a tech/h…

I can't read the source without an account, but 55% + 30% = 85%. Is the last 15% Chromebooks? (I guess there's also traditional desktop Linux but I can't imagine that's more than 2% at most.)
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