Re: Great show.
In the video they explicitly state that dogfighting is not the goal, but a learning environment.
40 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Jul 2015
Liam correctly points out a lot of inconsistencies in KDE. I had to check on those and yes, definitely there. I just got so used to my daily workflow and it never bothered me.
Only time I left KDE was between 4.0 and 4.9, a period best forgotten. In that time I kept trying other environments but none felt as good as old KDE. I went back and by then it was good again. Going to KDE5 was annoying. I don't like change. After ten years with v 5 I'm now on autopilot and seeing that KDE6 will not force a big change in the way things work is great news for me.
You have a point, and I used to put up with ads for that very reason. On my favorite sites I would click on the ads as a way of supporting them. I ran without ad blocker, just relying on flashblock to stop autoplay audio and video, which I can not stand.
Things changed. Ads got more and more intrusive, loud and obnoxious, covering the content I wanted to access. The worst ones have flashing, moving boxes saying "your computer has been infected, call Microsoft support..".
The same mechanisms used to serve ads are also used to infect your computer with malware.
So I gave up, installed security extensions and subscribed to my favorite news outlets. Surfing is now quiet and enjoyable. The computer does not stop responding and kick all cooling fans to max when I go to read my news feeds. Saves electricity too.
I guess we do have a two-tier Internet, where you can either put up with the hassle, or buy yourself a better experience. Capitalism indeed.
Not petty. It makes sense. For the user. My panel (taskbar) went to the left edge as soon as I got a 16:9 display.
For Microsoft it makes sense to force you to keep it horizontally so they can use those pixels for their ads, their Bing search, their Copilot, and whatever comes next.
I've seen this mentality develop on a smaller scale. In martial arts, some go beyond the traditional and fun self defense training. They add more and more weapons and outlandish scenarios. Open and concealed guns and knives, weapons stashed around the house. Expensive security systems and surveillance cameras. One friend will not go to the bathroom unarmed.
The more they prepare, the more afraid they get. Everywhere they look, they see people threatening their privileged status and power. The more you have, the more you stand to lose. No wonder these multi-billionaires become paranoid.
Blaming the user is an easy cop-out. Decades ago, the US Major Airlines* learned that just using "pilot error" as an excuse did nothing to prevent accidents. After years of study and using training and safeguards they finally managed to achieve zero fatal accidents. The last crash was in 2001.
*smaller operators are not at that level yet.
> needs hundreds of megs of KDE libraries
Another example of "irrational hatred". In return for a few hundred megs of disk space you get a lot of functionality. Those libraries do much more than just handle PDFs.
For best results, KDE apps should be enjoyed using a KDE centric distro. That way all the pieces can work together, adding up to more than the sum of its parts.
My new computer with W11 came with Microsoft 365, Outlook, Kindle, Spotify, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Xbox, Movies & TV, and Skype. Then the Bing bar appeared on the desktop, and later Bing search forced itself onto the taskbar. The notification area keeps showing me "recommendations". I find the widget panel distracting and annoying, and then there is the ever-changing, in your face Edge browser.
End users are not "Valued Customers". The dominant OS vendors consider them just consumers that must accept whatever they are given. Gone are the days when these OS's were there to run whatever applications the users chose to run. Now they are backdoors into users' lives, spying devices and advertising channels. Expect further intrusion into your private lives if you keep using these products.
A web app only runs when you are using it. My DDG browser clears all data upon exit or after 30 minutes of inactivity. Native apps run in the background, constantly monitoring you. Whenever I need a ride sharing app, I install it, get the ride, and then delete it. If I leave it installed, it keeps spamming me with messages in the notification area.
I'm confident Microsoft will unofficially allow people to upgrade from 10 to 11 even if the hardware does not meet official specs. Just like the one year "free upgrade to W10" that still works years after it officially ended. They would not want to push people to the free alternatives.
Today we take package managers with dependency resolution for granted. In the early 2000's, not so much. After struggling for days to get an application working on RH 5.1, chasing down one .rpm file after the other, I decided to try Debian. "apt-get install packagename" did it in seconds. I was sold, and I've been using Debian ever since.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
We have LO installed on about a hundred Windows computers. It covers everything that 99% of our users need. Not only does it save a lot of money, but frees us from having to manage a lot of licenses.
As for the remaining 1%, one subscription to O365 on the boss's computer keeps him happy. Except when the credit card expires and it stops working.
My single experience with OneNote was when importing some files from a practice we bought. In the folder was a OneNote file that looked like it had an inventory list. I figured I'd give it a try. When launching the program it demanded I sign in with a Microsoft account. I still have an old throwaway hotmail account so I used that. Imagine my dismay when I discovered it changed my local user to an online Microsoft account. Only way to undo that seems to be creating another administrator account and use it to remove the unwanted one.
As for the file I wanted to view: "OneNote can not open this file because it was created by an older version of the program".
I built a fanless machine back in the P4 days. When the fans were gone, the hard drive noise became obnoxious. Replaced the hard drive with a CF card. Then I could hear a crackling electrical noise which turned out to come from the network card!
In the end it did better with one big, slow turning fan that cooled the whole thing. The steady fan noise was better than the intermittent chatter of the other components.