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I want a computer that I own

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Re: I want a computer that I own

#661

Post by salawat »

kjrose wrote: post #636
salawat wrote: post #618

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See, the problem there is the "paying" part. What do you, the customer, allegedly willing to pay, get from a search provider? Especially once everyone else piles on? What you get is a simple tool, that then requorements bloats as soon as the rest of the economy notices you're a growing centralized control point. You start getting DMCA pipelines. You start getting hosting amd analytics, and monetization. You get your…

So what do I use if I don't want to use google? Or any other free service that's co opted

For Search, you can deploy a meta search engine or use one someone else has deployed; you still have the mainstream indexes at your disposal that way, but you tend to get less filtered results. You get the truest representation of the rest of the Net via the set up of your own index by writing and cultivating a web crawler. No, I won't suggest it's easy because it isn't. Nor will I suggest any type of paid service, because to be honest, once the rest of the world figures out you've got a successful business model around something they find inconvenient, welcome to legal troubles.

Each and every internet staple started as a bunch of folks doing a project. Keep an eye out for those, or become one of them. Do it for you. Nobody can tell you not to, or hold you to task for doing so. It's only when you start building up enough network effect driven inertia that you start to become that leverage point ripe for the co-opting.

Knowledge asymmetry is big business. The only way to keep people from pulling the wool over your eyes is to build what you need and have a good ole look yourself.

Be warned it isn't for the light of heart, hard-drive, or net link, and your results are only as good as your crawler.

There are also a lot of risks by perniciously going out and connecting with everything under the sun. I'd recommend keeping your forays constrained, or at least on a well insulated network.

Re: I want a computer that I own

#663

Post by Razengan »

Razengan wrote: post #466
Siira wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All those Apple apologists should go and take a look at the world; I live in Iran, and here Iranian apps just use a business profile to install. There are even alternative app stores using device management profiles. And these apologists keep bullshitting that the monopolist walled garden actually keeps people safe. The walls don’t keep out anyone powerful, they just enforce rents.

All the Apple haters keep missing the point for why Apple users prefer “walled gardens”: They are fucking beautiful respites from all the crap outside their walls. Apple has refunded me without question whenever an app tried to scam me, no matter how big people popular it was, whereas apps using third-party payment systems almost never give any refunds.

“big people popular” → big or popular

Re: I want a computer that I own

#664

Post by Razengan »

danogentili wrote: post #493
Razengan wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the Apple haters keep missing the point for why Apple users prefer “walled gardens”: They are fucking beautiful respites from all the crap outside their walls. Apple has refunded me without question whenever an app tried to scam me, no matter how big people popular it was, whereas apps using third-party payment systems almost never give any refunds.

Imagine actually using free and open-source apps from free and open source app stores&operating systems instead of buying an overpriced rehash of open source software.

It’s not overpriced if I’m happily willing to pay that price, your agitation about my wallet notwithstanding.

Re: I want a computer that I own

#665

Post by jsmith45 »

EricE wrote: post #582
jsmith45 wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your definition of complete backup exceeds even the definition the parent is using for IOS. There are some things like downloaded files that don't get backed up to the cloud. (Some of them probably do get backed up via iTunes backups, but even there, I'm quite certain that not quite everything gets backed up. Instead it contains nearly everything that an non-jailbroken user might care about.) Things like the set of a…

local backups (used to be iTunes, now it’s just done from the Finder) do indeed backup everything. And as another commenter pointed out, your application state is also backed up and restored.

#1. Local backups are still itunes based on windows. #2. Stateing everything is still not quite true. The OS is not backed up, since old versions cannot be restored. and unless things have changed since a few versions back, local backups deliberatly omit some data if it can be downloaded on restore. For example, the actually apps just have their names and versions recorded so they can be redownloaded. Which is not really a problem, except in those rare cases where an app has been completely deleted from Apple's servers, which typically only happens for malware or for legal reasons. (I suspect that any apps not in the store at the time of the backup are included in the backup, so hitting this case should be incredibly rare.)

Re: I want a computer that I own

#666

Post by apatters »

lupire wrote: post #656
apatters wrote: post #639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the trick is to start viewing the problem through the lens of anti-trust/pro-competition law. Something like mandating compulsory licensing of DRM technologies so that the DRM manufacturer and Hollywood studios don't get to be kingmakers in the browser or operating systems markets. IANAL but seems to me like laws along the lines of "you can reverse engineer DRM without being arrested" and "the patent holder/w…

How can you mandate that DRM be licensed to clients that can't or won't actually enforce it? That would be mandatory support for copyright violations.

Copyright violations would continue to be illegal. I am not proposing that they be legalized (though copyright law could use several reforms as well). I am proposing that for instance Google ought to be required to license Widevine to anyone who wants to build an implementation for it.

Because Widevine is so widespread and acts as a gatekeeper for content (for example Netflix), if Google doesn't bless your platform with Widevine support you're essentially dead as a consumer media platform.

Google should not have this kind of power because competition is good.

Re: I want a computer that I own

#667

Post by SergeAx »

fxtentacle wrote: post #445
sammorrowdrums wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it is early days but Librem and System76 (and several others like Pine64) are making huge headway in the open hardware space. I know there have been lots of failures in this area but I think we are getting to a threshold point where building on top of these companies acheivements is quite possible. Linux on Mobile and open EC and Coreboot etc. are all making rapid progress at the moment. I would still say we are…

The issue with open hardware is that DRM vendors don't support it. A fully open phone doesn't have hardware DRM keys so you won't get FullHD in Netflix. And now you've lost 90% of the market.

Why don't just fuck Netflix app then? I can pay for subscription and get the content from torrents in any desired quality.

Re: I want a computer that I own

#668

Post by fouuler »

lupire wrote: post #659
fouuler wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Owning my computer is still relatively possible. I can build a computer from parts which I can choose, and have a choice in which operating system to install on them. Where can I find, how can I build a computer---that isn't 13 years old---with open firmware of which one doesn't reasonably suspect that the NSA put a backdoor into it?

Don't worry about NSA. If the NSA finds your computer interesting, they can remotely hack it using one of a 100 zero-days exploits, without ME. And if you are running non-ME system, it's even easier for them to hack you unless you are working with the CounterNSA.

Surely this depends on the system being run and the programs running on it. Are you claiming that a basic installation of OpenBSD is wide open to the NSA? Even if that is true, I would think that fewer vulnerabilities are better than more, and that vulnerabilities that cannot be found because their source is secret are worse than those that can be found.
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