Posts by ThatOne 4209 publicly visible posts • joined 9 Oct 2017
Which part of "purely voluntary, optional and not to be taken serious" did you miss?... Why would anyone prevent absentminded/terminally impatient users just accepting the complete tracking package, just because at some point they bothered setting a purely decorative feature?
Poor DNT was doomed from the start, being voluntary it is as efficient as a "Please do not break in" on your house.
> What is so hard about: [knowing lots of things]
Nonsense. You work in support, you're paid to know those tools. A doctor of medicine has spent enough time learning other tools and stuff you probably only have a very vague idea about. Said MD doesn't want to know "how twisted pair networking cable reduces electromagnetic interference", much like you probably don't know much about thyroid hormone activation (despite it being more important for your health than networking cables).
Sorry, how is that better (for the average computer user) than just "install your OS of choice - get work done with it"?
What I'm saying is, a computer is supposed to help me do my work. The more hoops I have to jump through, the less able I am to do my actual work, the one I'm paid for. The more I have to fool around with gatekeepers, and the guards of gatekeepers, and the watchdogs of said guards, the less useful a computer becomes for real work. It's just increased entropy.
Of course if you are paid to mess about with all that stuff your perspective might be different, but it still isn't anything productive. Definitely not for the 99% of the population for whom using a computer is not an aim in itself.
> I don't understand why the modern UI is considered better than the old fashioned one.
Because newer = better. Has always been. It doesn't matter if it's actually working or not, the simple fact it is newer means it has to be better. Whole industries are living on that (clothing for instance).
> what possible justification is there for building-in such capabilities?
Collecting precious "telemetry"? I mean, what was the rationale for everything else they did lately? Think of Recall©™, that's another feature which isn't really of any use, it might even be dangerous for the sucker client. But Microsoft decided they can make money from that, and that's the only justification it requires.
They are utterly shameless, and given this has no negative effects on their bottom line, they will keep increasing the spying while progressively dropping any pretense of decency.
> Depends if they think they can get away with it.
Exactly. They will try it, if only because it's the cheapest choice. And if the EU (eventually) starts complaining, they will claim they are misunderstood and everything was for the users' benefit (and "somebody think of the children", too), and thus try to stall for as long as possible. After all managers never plan beyond 2-3 financial quarters.
> The important detail would be how much damage could be expected if that much low-level nuclear waste was released
Reality check: 99.9% of the time the important detail would be "will it affect me somehow (directly or through lawsuits)"? If not, it's somebody else's problem, i.e. unimportant.
I don't say that's right, I just say that's how it usually works. Money talks, and when money talks, everything else shuts up.
> a Copilot+ AI PC is a requirement for this [...] a Microsoft account, rather than a local one, will also be needed.
Not a problem: Soon all PCs will be AI PCs, simply because of their bigger better margin, and as far as I have heard the latest version of Win11 don't allow local accounts anymore: It's either a Microsoft account or nothing at all.
Meaning, nothing will stand between you and your new Recall™ bliss...
> I'm afraid Microshaft is going to have a bad day come October 25 2025...
Nah, they managed to get rid of WinXP after all, and that one was really well entrenched. WIn11 with AI sauce will just follow the same OP, simply being the only choice once you need to buy a new computer. It will take some time, but unfortunately it's inevitable.
(As for leaving Microsoft, those who were mentally capable of doing so have already done it since Win8 (I'm one of those). Most people still remaining with Windows are unable to leave, for one reason or another, like corporate management or lack of computer know-how.)
> Because the way LLMs are trained is using real data
Sure, but firstly not your data, and secondly in this specific case I don't see why they would need to train the fake granny bot with any real bank account data. Its task is to prattle on, not to handle financial transactions.
NCSA Mosaic -> Netscape -> Firefox: The natural progression I'm sure a vast majority here has gone through.
Of course I've tried other browsers (like Opera) out of curiosity, but I never saw a reason to change. Maybe because unlike many, I was never convinced by the propaganda that Netscape/Firefox are fundamentally bad and evil and that using them deposits soot in my CPU and destroys my Karma (or whatever other nonsense), and that only the shining Chrome guarantees the pure browsing bliss I deserve.
> the worry's about Chrome taking over the internet
I'm afraid it's too late: A decade ago most people believed "Google=Internet", later they settled for "Google+Twitter+Facebook=Internet" (not sure if that was much better).
My point is, controlling content (through search) and the means to deliver ads, Google currently owns the Internet. There are some minor contenders, just there to avoid too obvious a monopoly.
> [Chrome 1 was] "superior in so many ways and, initially anyway, appealing so deeply to web developers"
BS! At first Chrome was inferior, but it used stealth tactics to take over peoples' computers* and replace their default browser, so it eventually became the majority browser. And of course developers flock behind majorities.
* for those too young to have seen it: At that time you had to regularly download security patches for major software like Acrobat and Flash. Every time you installed such a patch, unless you clicked on a barely visible link while whistling "The Star-Spangled Banner" in reverse, it also silently installed Chrome, copied your bookmarks to it, and made it your new default browser. Again and again, with every patch. Given Chrome wasn't really branded, most people didn't notice, and those who did assumed the change was normal. This way Chrome rose from 0% to 60% market share in a year. Nothing to do with quality.
> trying to desperately pretend it was anything but that
It sounds indeed like that. Because (AFAIK) most of the time Arecibo was used as just another passive radio telescope, so most of the time there was no "unique powerful electromagnetic radiation environment", not any more than at the George Washington bridge. Besides we would had noticed by now if strong radar radiation destroys metals...
Why did it fail despite a safety factor above two? Much likely because of potential initial building defects, and the lack of maintenance: The tropical environment is very aggressive.
> Exactly. This is ridiculous. Open-sources licenses are free for everyone.
This is really basic greed and rabid opportunism.
Isn't it in the best interest of companies using open source projects to make sure those are well staffed, and their developers can focus entirely on improving whatever they are doing? What will happen to a company building its business on some FOSS project if that project is abandoned due to the maintainer(s) having a hard time to make ends meet? Won't they be forced to shell out lots of money to save what can be saved, assuming they aren't forced to quit too?
Yes, yes, cows give milk away for free, who said you're obliged to feed them? Milk is "free for everyone"...
> The main issue it's a bugger to read.
That too. It's a highly specialized encoding system, fine-tuned over many millions of years for one and only task. It's a bugger to do anything else with it. Even Nature realized it, and when it needed something to store/process information with, it choose a different system.
I do have an i7 laptop, not an especially light one (around 3 kg), and when I actually use all that processing power (there is a reason I bought an i7), it gets scalding hot. The battery automatically shuts down to avoid catching fire, and stuff like that.
Tiny compact laptops with beefy CPUs are like putting a 800 hp engine in a Smart Fortwo: An exercise in futility and an accident waiting to happen.
> You know how many times I had to buy again a DVD movie in just one year?
Nonsense, this is a case of YMMV, and I wonder what you do to your disks. You know how many times I had to buy again a DVD movie in just one year? Never ever. Not even in 10 years. All my DVDs (and I have over 200) are still perfectly working. Go figure.
Sorry but you seem to be alone in this: My Firefox didn't ask that either, so I would assume you have a special, individual problem.
Besides why would a Firefox upgrade change the behavior of Thunderbird? AFAIK they are separate programs, aren't they?
It probably isn't anything nefarious (they wouldn't ask politely, would they), but it likely has nothing to do with the Firefox update itself, especially since the security fix is the only item in the changelog (no new features).
> can't the system be set up to intercept all DNS traffic regardless of the destination IP?
I assume this would be just a Sunday morning project for professional network administrators, but for normal people this is definitely a bridge too far, and there are about a thousand normal people to each network administrator.
> Only way I could see that working
Er, no. They will actually make program-length ads, where the whole plot is about/around specific products. Or whole series where people using a specific product are always more beautiful, successful and happy...
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