Digital-Citizen

13 ms·

31.
by Digital-Citizen 8y ago
"I don't have stats but I'm incredibly confident that almost no users want hardware switches." How "incredibly confident" can you be about this claim without published stats? I would like hardware switches ala
32.
by Digital-Citizen 8y ago
You're missing the point (as are the moderators, apparently): trust is a factor only when it comes to proprietary software. If you have to "trust Apple" to deal with Apple software, then you've lost any reason to trust t
33.
by Digital-Citizen 8y ago
We don't commonly have figures on that, however the combination of proprietary (non-free, user subjugating) OS and application software plus built-in camera/mic hardware doesn't bode well for one's privacy.
34.
by Digital-Citizen 8y ago
Ugliness is subjective. Where do you get the data to back up the claim that "the number of people [who] want this is ridiculously small"?
35.
by Digital-Citizen 8y ago
You don't need a chip for this. And to their credit Librem laptops have offered such a hardware switch for a while now (perhaps since they began selling laptops) with (as I understand it) no chipset involved. Putting this functionality
36.
by Digital-Citizen 8y ago
You're essentially giving us a tautology -- the claim is true because it's true -- about something non-obvious (based on what you say is an opinion) and not evidence-based. Plus you give us a tangent about what happens to those wh
37.
by Digital-Citizen 8y ago
The wider claim that "Open-source crypto is no better than closed-source crypto" points to a problem with both the philosophy behind the open source development methodology which makes promises which it can't always deliver s
38.
by Digital-Citizen 8y ago
Totally electronic balloting is bad news but not what the article dismisses without evidence. I'm not for electronic tabulation by default nor do I see the need. Optically scanned voter-verifiable paper ballots will involve electronics
39.
by Digital-Citizen 8y ago
I have no problem with doing either (so long as pre-arrangement never becomes mandatory), but that doesn't address fairness for illiterate voters at all. Also, it doesn't really tackle how a voter-verified paper ballot processing
40.
by Digital-Citizen 8y ago
This article contradicts itself in at least one significant way without providing a real explanation for the contradiction. Early on the article claims "Apple tells CNET that it won't delete your movies, either. At least, not ones
41.
by Digital-Citizen 8y ago
That sounds like a far better set of priorities than commonly gets raised in discussions like these. Another benefit of electronic voting systems that mark and/or verify voter-verified paper ballots with the voter is allowing the blind
42.
by Digital-Citizen 8y ago
There isn't a way to vet that software by using it, but there are other problems which are easily solved with software freedom (the freedom to run, inspect, share, and modify published computer software for which complete source code a
43.
by Digital-Citizen 8y ago
According to https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/8912714/Apple-i... "An unpatched security flaw in Apple’s iTunes software allowed intelligence agencies and police to hack into users’ computers
44.
by Digital-Citizen 8y ago
I'd say Brad Kuhn got it right in http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2016/08/13/does-not-kill.html including "[Y]our proprietary software has killed people, both quickly and slowly, and your attack
45.
by Digital-Citizen 8y ago
I think you'll find that those who seek to "use our community as a market but not contributing to it" (as the older essay https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.htm... points out) will
46.
by Digital-Citizen 8y ago
The Unsplash license contains the following: "This license does not include the right to compile photos from Unsplash to replicate a similar or competing service." Therefore use "for commercial and noncommercial purposes&quot
47.
by Digital-Citizen 8y ago
This is also a non-issue as long demonstrated by Debian and GNU when they distributed Firefox and Thunderbird derivatives under different names with different logos. The section of that page under "Modifications" is quite clear on
48.
by Digital-Citizen 8y ago
That's a non-sequitur and not difficult: make the derivative, publish the derivative, and continue to publish the derivative without malware. You'll establish a history people can trust and earn users and search engine rankings in
49.
by Digital-Citizen 8y ago
If what you say is true a more productive approach is to make a derivative of the last known non-malware release of FileZilla with a new name. FileZilla's code respects your software freedom (FileZilla is licensed under the GNU GPL v2,
50.
by Digital-Citizen 8y ago
"Probably refers to"? That you don't know what "secure" refers to is itself a problem. But more problematic is anyone's defense of Google Chrome's architecture while overlooking that that architecture is i
51.
by Digital-Citizen 8y ago
From the article: "But [Firefox] became irrelevant after Google in 2008 released Chrome, a faster, more secure and versatile browser." Google Chrome is proprietary software. There's no way to back up any claim of it being &qu
52.
by Digital-Citizen 8y ago
The real lesson here isn't forum shopping -- moving one's digital work to another singular place is repeating the error of the past: any singular forum invites censorship or an outcome that is indistinguishable from censorship. Th
53.
by Digital-Citizen 8y ago
So Microsoft is highlighting the value of software freedom and the harm of software non-freedom: we're all granted permission to port free software (as Microsoft claims to have done with the Linux kernel, BusyBox, and more) but only Mi
54.
by Digital-Citizen 8y ago
It wasn't necessary (people who weren't going to buy the program still got a copy via file sharing, and as I point out later DRM chiefly hurts those who cooperate with the abuser/publisher). And Steam is not your friend (as i
55.
by Digital-Citizen 8y ago
I take it as sign of failing moderation that the parent comment was moderated down and rendered harder to read by default. It's quite right--music copyright licensing is not foreseeably an issue of life and death. Any music copyright h
56.
by Digital-Citizen 8y ago
The claim misunderstands how software is different from services, so it's really a nonsensical statement. Also both Google and Microsoft distribute nonfree (proprietary, user-subjugating) software and spy on their users activities. The
57.
by Digital-Citizen 8y ago
The X11 license (MIT has used multiple licenses so there is no single "MIT license") does say "The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.&quo
58.
by Digital-Citizen 8y ago
I think that's entirely possible and likely to happen if not with Tesla than with some other proprietor. We've already seen something like this happen with a flight simulator (the proprietor indiscriminately distributed password-r
59.
by Digital-Citizen 8y ago
Indeed, "if you apply General Curtis Le May to a situation and you get havoc, well, that s what you called General LeMay in for" (to use an Eben Moglen quote out of the context in which he said it); if you host a device in your ho
60.
by Digital-Citizen 8y ago
It wouldn't have taken much more time for you to back your point with examples so we'd have some idea of what you're talking about. Please also explain the ideology of how proprietary software is not worth fighting with a pra

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