4 ms·

As someone who has used Windows only minimally in the last 20 years (mainly for CAD and 3D) I do not understand why people need Governments to "protect" them ag

As someone who has used Windows only minimally in the last 20 years (mainly for CAD and 3D) I do not understand why people need Governments to "protect" them against abuse while they continue using the abusing system. In the past it took a lot of work to use alternatives. Today it is so easy.

jojobas 2y ago
Because we hired the government to do it. In a large domain of things windows is still a monopoly.
InDubioProRubio 2y ago
Because the government is the people. Its a democracy.
zelphirkalt 2y ago
Easy, as long as you are not forced to use this spyware on the job. Or some specific proprietary file format or specific things that alternative tools do not yet have. Easy, as long as you are a technical user, who is willing to invest time in learning alternative tools and also willing to sometimes sacrifice some time to get appropriate results using alternative software than the mainstream Windows tools. A lot is possible using other OS and alternative tooling, but it takes commitment and possibly time to learn. Many people are not willing to relearn tools of their professions or even for their hobbies. It really takes an open minded and willing person to listen to their engineering friend and give other tools chances and time and potentially even make a jump to a command line mindset. Most people, compared to software developers and engineers, are almost computer illiterates. They are happy, when the thing turns on and looks as it always looks and they see some familiar icon for a web browser. Probably never before has the need for educating people about computers and what they can do with them been so huge. The resulting incentives from not educating people about such have terrible results for our whole industry/profession.
- 999900000999 2y ago
  To be fair. Linux tends to cause strange issues if you get unlucky. Within the last year I've had to just try a different distro since Ubuntu didn't support my hardware. On a different PC I'm on Mint now. Years upon years ago I gave someone a PC with Ubuntu installed. A week later he just asked how do I install League of Legends. The simple answer is install Windows. 90% of people don't want you to "educate" them about why struggling with the Linux CLI is a better use of their time than whatever else they had planned.
somenameforme 2y ago
I, and most on this site, are like in the top 0.001% of people technically. And I would not immediately know how to install Linux. I'd assume it'd involve researching an appropriate distro, download an image of said distro, find some software to 'burn' that image onto a USB, and then get into the bios, boot from the USB and everything else from there should be relatively smooth sailing, but to call this "so easy" for the other 99.999% of people is ridiculous. Even more so when Microsoft has been pushing hard for boot locking hardware stuff which I have no idea the implications of, besides I expect it will coincidentally make moving away from Windows even more tedious. Back in the day when we still had a government that enforced anti-compete laws against mega corporations, Microsoft was found guilty, and nearly broken up, over simply including Internet Explorer by default. If we still had any government willing to crack down on anti-competitive behavior, I think the entire tech world would be in a far better place. The EU is ostensibly trying, but I suspect even that will largely just come down to companies accepting moderate sized fines every once in a while as business expense in the EU.

jojobas 2y ago

Because we hired the government to do it. In a large domain of things windows is still a monopoly.

InDubioProRubio 2y ago

Because the government is the people. Its a democracy.

zelphirkalt 2y ago

Easy, as long as you are not forced to use this spyware on the job. Or some specific proprietary file format or specific things that alternative tools do not yet have. Easy, as long as you are a technical user, who is willing to invest time in learning alternative tools and also willing to sometimes sacrifice some time to get appropriate results using alternative software than the mainstream Windows tools. A lot is possible using other OS and alternative tooling, but it takes commitment and possibly time to learn. Many people are not willing to relearn tools of their professions or even for their hobbies. It really takes an open minded and willing person to listen to their engineering friend and give other tools chances and time and potentially even make a jump to a command line mindset. Most people, compared to software developers and engineers, are almost computer illiterates. They are happy, when the thing turns on and looks as it always looks and they see some familiar icon for a web browser. Probably never before has the need for educating people about computers and what they can do with them been so huge. The resulting incentives from not educating people about such have terrible results for our whole industry/profession.

999900000999 2y ago
To be fair. Linux tends to cause strange issues if you get unlucky. Within the last year I've had to just try a different distro since Ubuntu didn't support my hardware. On a different PC I'm on Mint now. Years upon years ago I gave someone a PC with Ubuntu installed. A week later he just asked how do I install League of Legends. The simple answer is install Windows. 90% of people don't want you to "educate" them about why struggling with the Linux CLI is a better use of their time than whatever else they had planned.

somenameforme 2y ago

I, and most on this site, are like in the top 0.001% of people technically. And I would not immediately know how to install Linux. I'd assume it'd involve researching an appropriate distro, download an image of said distro, find some software to 'burn' that image onto a USB, and then get into the bios, boot from the USB and everything else from there should be relatively smooth sailing, but to call this "so easy" for the other 99.999% of people is ridiculous. Even more so when Microsoft has been pushing hard for boot locking hardware stuff which I have no idea the implications of, besides I expect it will coincidentally make moving away from Windows even more tedious. Back in the day when we still had a government that enforced anti-compete laws against mega corporations, Microsoft was found guilty, and nearly broken up, over simply including Internet Explorer by default. If we still had any government willing to crack down on anti-competitive behavior, I think the entire tech world would be in a far better place. The EU is ostensibly trying, but I suspect even that will largely just come down to companies accepting moderate sized fines every once in a while as business expense in the EU.