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Re: Destructive ideology

Tue Dec 11, 2012 10:22 pm

Meadows wrote:
Flatland_Spider wrote:
You mean the installer should ask. There is plenty of dead time in the installer to advertise this "feature".

No, I don't mean that. Not everybody is lifeless enough to sit through installing an OS, but everybody would encounter the prompt from within the OS itself.

It should be at the start of installation, where it is asking you other installation-related questions. The users are (or at least should be) paying attention at this point, since they're making decisions which affect how the system will operate. If you put it in the desktop itself (I assume you mean have it pop up the first time they use the search feature), I think people are more likely to make an arbitrary choice without bothering to understand the implications, since they may not realize it is a "sticky" setting which will persist across sessions.
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Re: Destructive ideology

Tue Dec 11, 2012 11:13 pm

I'm a windows guy mostly, but I agree, ask the questions at the beginning of installs, because usually that's being done by somebody who has some idea how to answer them.

It is confusing to users to get "20 questions" on first-use, or after 30-days. Anytime I install something for a friend, I can answer for them. But once I turn it over to them, then I am out of the picture, and they often don't know what they're getting themselves into when "Norton 360" starts telling them that they must purchase a full year! Aaaaahhhhhhh!!! :evil:

And for the other thing, I find it annoying to have so many Adobe, Java, and Windows updaters constantly popping up and demanding that I "click this", "confirm that", "uncheck this Ask Toolbar or Yahoo Toolbar box". If it's annoying to me, then I know it's bewildering to the non-technical user who's just minding his/her own business watching youtube cat videos or responding to "419 scam" emails! :P
 
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Re: Destructive ideology

Wed Dec 12, 2012 9:44 am

Meadows wrote:
No, I don't mean that. Not everybody is lifeless enough to sit through installing an OS, but everybody would encounter the prompt from within the OS itself.


Setups should be front loaded with all the questions necessary for a working desktop, some of which should be about setting up user accounts. The user should be able to spend a minute or two setting settings and walk away coming back to a fully functional desktop and be able to start working immediately. There shouldn't be any popups asking for the user to make decisions about settings, those should be taken care of at the beginning of the installation, and there shouldn't be programs nagging for updates.

For pre-installed operating systems, there should be a stub installer that takes care of those settings.

Ubuntu installs don't take that long. All you need is a new magazine to flip through.
 
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Re: Destructive ideology

Fri Jan 18, 2013 6:35 pm

Dirge wrote:
Clearly I take my privacy seriously and believe at the very worst a scheme like this should be Opt-in on the users part.


Opt-in would be the best solution.
 
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Re: Destructive ideology

Sun Apr 21, 2013 1:49 pm

Something like this should definitely be opt-in and well documented. The whole point of Linux is you know exactly what you're getting and you have full control over your OS.

As for Stallman, I agree that he's an extremist who does as much harm as good. <MOD EDIT by notfred. R&P content removed, please keep it to the R&P forum>

I'm primarily a Windows guy (though if Win8 is the way of the future that will change the moment Linux does games) but I'm confident that if it weren't for outfits like the FSF making so much noise Windows would have gone the way of we-hate-you Apple years ago and it would really, really suck. In fact, Win8 screwing over the MS community in order to ape iOS probably has something to do with all the compromises that were made to turn Linux into Android.
Last edited by notfred on Sun Apr 21, 2013 4:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: MOD EDIT by notfred. R&P content removed, please keep it to the R&P forum
 
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Re: Destructive ideology

Sun Apr 21, 2013 2:47 pm

RMS is an idealist. And although I agree with him in many points, i tend to temper my views with some reality of things. He wants Free Software and yet when asked for how are developers are going to get paid, he simply says "that is why we have big corporations to sponsor your work otherwise do it for the good of mankind". This doesn't bring food to the table. How are developers paid for their work? Because 10 full-time professional developers in one project do more good than 10,000 weekend volunteers and it is a fact.

I take everything he says with a grain salt. I believe in free software, but i live in reality too. I am grateful that thanks to him we enjoy the four freedoms and that anyone that wants to write free software can do so with the GNU license. We also have to thank him for linux (GNU/Linux). Sadly, i think he isn't given credit for it as much as Linus is.

This all ubuntu thing is just a way to turn the users into a product. And as i like to say, if it is free, then you are the product! Yet i think canonical is within its right, what went wrong was the way they did it, it should have been opt-in as part of the installation.

edit: *If it is free, then you the product*
 
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Re: Destructive ideology

Sun Apr 21, 2013 5:10 pm

.
Last edited by clone on Tue Jan 14, 2014 2:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Destructive ideology

Sun Apr 21, 2013 5:26 pm

Right, the problem with free software development is it's just not sustainable on a large scale. Outfits like Red Hat get away with it only because they sell to corporate bureaucracies that don't really care what things cost, and those bureaucracies rarely if ever do anything open source. My own company is a good example of this, we run RHEL but our products are not only proprietary but also protected by patents. But corporate bureaucracies only account for so much of the market, and while it may take going through a few corporate bureaucracies to get there you ultimately hit consumers who won't pay for stuff they don't have to because the decision is made by them personally rather than a committee prone to groupthink, plus they can't "bake it into the margin" like a company can. What I'm getting at is that FOSS success stories are indirectly supported by non-free software even if they don't like to admit it, and if you take that away the system would slowly bleed out through the end users.

There's defintely places where FOSS works, namely the aforementioned baseline stuff. The problem is in demanding that everything be FOSS, with anything less than that being a blasphemous perversion of software purity. Then it falls apart.
 
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Re: Destructive ideology

Sun Apr 21, 2013 6:40 pm

Ryu Connor wrote:
Joe Brodkin/Arstechnica posits that a significant number of users may well follow Stallman's advice to leave Ubuntu. I hope he's wrong in this case as I don't see a wounded or dead Canonical as a positive outcome for anyone.

It's amazing how rabid fanboys justify spyware when it's from their favorite company.

ridiculous.
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Re: Destructive ideology

Sun Apr 21, 2013 8:10 pm

Meadows wrote:
The correct method should've been the OS asking "Would you like to enable online search? [Cue preferred plug, such as shopping, news, etc.] YES / NOT NOW / DON'T ASK AGAIN, and a blue Windows-inspired help link called "What can online search do for me?"


I was going to say 'whatever, if anyone was really bothered about this they'd google how to opt-out or already be fluent enough with Ubuntu to opt-out without instruction, but I'd bank on a good chunk of people simply seeing this as convenient', however your idea is better.
 
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Re: Destructive ideology

Sun Apr 21, 2013 10:33 pm

danny e. wrote:
Ryu Connor wrote:
Joe Brodkin/Arstechnica posits that a significant number of users may well follow Stallman's advice to leave Ubuntu. I hope he's wrong in this case as I don't see a wounded or dead Canonical as a positive outcome for anyone.

It's amazing how rabid fanboys justify spyware when it's from their favorite company.

ridiculous.

If you think Ryu is a rabid Canonical fanboy you haven't been reading the forums very closely.
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uni-mitation
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Re: Destructive ideology

Sun Apr 21, 2013 11:35 pm

BIF wrote:
I'm a windows guy mostly, but I agree, ask the questions at the beginning of installs, because usually that's being done by somebody who has some idea how to answer them.

It is confusing to users to get "20 questions" on first-use, or after 30-days. Anytime I install something for a friend, I can answer for them. But once I turn it over to them, then I am out of the picture, and they often don't know what they're getting themselves into when "Norton 360" starts telling them that they must purchase a full year! Aaaaahhhhhhh!!! :evil:

And for the other thing, I find it annoying to have so many Adobe, Java, and Windows updaters constantly popping up and demanding that I "click this", "confirm that", "uncheck this Ask Toolbar or Yahoo Toolbar box". If it's annoying to me, then I know it's bewildering to the non-technical user who's just minding his/her own business watching youtube cat videos or responding to "419 scam" emails! :P


I can't resist but I love reading those emails!
 
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Re: Destructive ideology

Mon Apr 22, 2013 1:57 pm

NovusBogus wrote:
Outfits like Red Hat get away with it only because they sell to corporate bureaucracies that don't really care what things cost, and those bureaucracies rarely if ever do anything open source.


Red Hat gets away with selling RHEL because they produce a great product with excellent support.

There are more factors that go into corporate decisions then just cost. Risk management is one of the biggest selling points of going with Red Hat or Canonical, rather then a community supported distro like Debian or Slackware. They indemnify the customer from patent threats against Linux, and they take on the risk of providing stable software and security updates. The corporate bureaucracies you're railing against probably measure uptime in millions of dollars per minute, and they aren't going to swallow several million dollars in SLA fines because some volunteer maintainer messed up a package.

It makes sense to outsource stuff that isn't core to the business, and one of those areas is software. A $40,000 developer costs a business more then $40,000 due to taxes and benefits, and it's never going to be an area of expertise for the business since that's not their core product. It makes more sense to buy a product from a vendor, Red Hat in this case, and save the money that it would cost to hire a developer or two. Even if the business is spending $40,000 on software and hardware that's still cheaper.

[$40,000 is just a number that sounded good. I don't actually know the median salary for a software developer in the US.]
 
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Re: Destructive ideology

Mon Apr 22, 2013 2:25 pm

NovusBogus wrote:
Right, the problem with free software development is it's just not sustainable on a large scale. Outfits like Red Hat get away with it only because they sell to corporate bureaucracies that don't really care what things cost, and those bureaucracies rarely if ever do anything open source. My own company is a good example of this, we run RHEL but our products are not only proprietary but also protected by patents. But corporate bureaucracies only account for so much of the market, and while it may take going through a few corporate bureaucracies to get there you ultimately hit consumers who won't pay for stuff they don't have to because the decision is made by them personally rather than a committee prone to groupthink, plus they can't "bake it into the margin" like a company can. What I'm getting at is that FOSS success stories are indirectly supported by non-free software even if they don't like to admit it, and if you take that away the system would slowly bleed out through the end users.

There's defintely places where FOSS works, namely the aforementioned baseline stuff. The problem is in demanding that everything be FOSS, with anything less than that being a blasphemous perversion of software purity. Then it falls apart.


I will agree with you that forcing all software to be FOSS is wrong. Red Hat on the other hand seems to be doing something right. Something that Canonical is failing to do: to provide good service to their customers. I also like that they are for the abolition of software patents. Yet they have to play the same game as everyone else: amassing software patents to act as deterrent to mutually self destruction. And they provide that protection and the guarantee of rock solid stability in what they sell. And if you can provide your own support, you can spin CentOS which is essentially RHEL. They don't sell you the software, but sell it as a service, the only viable way that FOSS has been sustainable. They are proof-of-concept that it can be done.
 
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Re: Destructive ideology

Mon Apr 22, 2013 2:32 pm

While I do agree this should be opt-in with a huge warning / info popup when enabling it...I haven't been able to stomach Ubuntu since they added Unity.
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Re: Destructive ideology

Mon Apr 22, 2013 2:58 pm

danny e. wrote:
Ryu Connor wrote:
Joe Brodkin/Arstechnica posits that a significant number of users may well follow Stallman's advice to leave Ubuntu. I hope he's wrong in this case as I don't see a wounded or dead Canonical as a positive outcome for anyone.

It's amazing how rabid fanboys justify spyware when it's from their favorite company.

ridiculous.


I don't think the statement is justifying it. But it's really quoting a point of fact. No one whines like Linux users do. A quick experiment would be to go to a LInux forum and make a thread entitled "Alsa vs OSS" or "I hate pulseaudio" . Just stand back and prepare to be amazed. Most people within the Linux community don't understand nor do they credit what Canonical did when it came to rolling Ubuntu. They essentially came to the conclusion that just like other OS's Linux should just work out of the box with minimal work on the behalf of the end user. I have found throughout my years of using Linux that the definition of "broken" or "nonintuitive" seem to differ from distro to distro. So far Ubuntu has gotten most stuff right than wrong when it comes to that.

Back in the day Linux sorry to say wasn't meant for people who had a life or other things to do. It would be a shame and quite a blow to the community as a whole if they went away.

That being said. Canonical should have given the choice either before install or right after it. Before I moved over to Ubuntu-Gnome to get a stock G3 experience what pushed me there was stumbling onto what zeitgeist was recording on the regular Ubuntu iso. It records everything. No I'm not joking, the only thing it doesn't capture is credit card information or payment methods. Everything else is recorded. Now how much of that is sent I don't know, but they sure as hell should pose the question.
Last edited by kc77 on Mon Apr 22, 2013 4:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Destructive ideology

Mon Apr 22, 2013 3:34 pm

Waco wrote:
While I do agree this should be opt-in with a huge warning / info popup when enabling it...I haven't been able to stomach Ubuntu since they added Unity.

Well there's still k/x/lubuntu. At which point, some people may (with some justification) ask why they shouldn't just go with Debian. And the answer is, provided you stick with the Ubuntu LTS versions you get a (relatively) stable pre-packaged distro which (usually) has more current packages than Debian Stable. IMO there's still some value in that.

I'm not a Unity fan either; I have a laptop that uses it, just because it's an older system with hardware specs that probably aren't up to the task of running KDE smoothly.
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Re: Destructive ideology

Mon Apr 22, 2013 4:08 pm

just brew it! wrote:
At which point, some people may (with some justification) ask why they shouldn't just go with Debian.

Because Debian uses vintage versions of everything, at least 5 years old? *rimshot*
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Re: Destructive ideology

Mon Apr 22, 2013 5:48 pm

kc77 wrote:
That being said. Canonical should have given the choice either before install or right after it. Before I moved over to Ubuntu-Gnome to get a stock G3 experience what pushed me there was stumbling onto what zeitgeist was recording on the regular Ubuntu iso. It records everything. No I'm not joking, the only thing it doesn't capture is credit card information or payment methods. Everything else is recorded. Now how much of that is sent I don't know, but they sure as hell should pose the question.

Cool opinion, bro. Got any sources for that bald assertion? I'm seeing that it only logs what apps send it, and only stores its data locally (source). Even the EFF came out publicly in favor of it!
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Re: Destructive ideology

Mon Apr 22, 2013 6:19 pm

morphine wrote:
just brew it! wrote:
At which point, some people may (with some justification) ask why they shouldn't just go with Debian.

Because Debian uses vintage versions of everything, at least 5 years old? *rimshot*

Speaking as a crusty old ("I'm thirty-seven! I'm not old!") sysadmin who has been through several fun episodes, there's a very good reason why the bleeding edge is called that. You can live with "old" versions of software, knowing that they've been through the mill and with good information on the problems you're likely to encounter, or you can install the latest and greatest and hope that nothing breaks.

Me? The three reasons I'll upgrade old-but-working software to newer versions are: (1) functionality that we need; (2) bug fixes that we need (including security patches); and (3) loss of official support. Upgrading for the sake of upgrading is just going to create excessive work and heartache dealing with the problems.

That's in the corporate world, when I'm getting paid to keep systems up and running. At home, sure, absolutely, I'll run the bleeding edge and deal with the pain, because it isn't as important to keep everything stable - especially in virtual machines.

And the great thing about Debian? It gives you the choice. You can run stable if you need stability. You can run testing if you want something a little more "modern". Or you can run unstable if you like to live on the edge (who here remembers the time that Debian unstable managed to break grep?) Your choice, and the options are there for you to choose from.
 
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Re: Destructive ideology

Mon Apr 22, 2013 7:10 pm

grantmeaname wrote:
kc77 wrote:
That being said. Canonical should have given the choice either before install or right after it. Before I moved over to Ubuntu-Gnome to get a stock G3 experience what pushed me there was stumbling onto what zeitgeist was recording on the regular Ubuntu iso. It records everything. No I'm not joking, the only thing it doesn't capture is credit card information or payment methods. Everything else is recorded. Now how much of that is sent I don't know, but they sure as hell should pose the question.

Cool opinion, bro. Got any sources for that bald assertion? I'm seeing that it only logs what apps send it, and only stores its data locally (source). Even the EFF came out publicly in favor of it!


Cool reading comprehension fail bro! Um obviously it's not an opinion if I'm looking at the actual database and telling you what it records. I don't need a web link to tell me if I'm looking at the data.

I said how much of what's there that is actually sent is up for debate, but the fact of the matter is that the regular Ubuntu version logs more information and uploads to Canonical while the Ubuntu-Gnome version (12.10) doesn't have the upload feature and doesn't log nearly as much. Therefore as I said before it's a problem because users who don't disable the privacy feature don't know exactly what table rows are being uploaded from the activity.sqlite file. I could probably figure it out, but I don't see the point. There's an Ubuntu version without that feature entirely so why not just install that version?

But if you feel that I'm blowing smoke. I'll help you find the data.

sudo apt-get install sqlitebrowser

Then go here:
/home/$user/.local/share/zeitgeist


I'm seeing that it only logs what apps send it, and only stores its data locally


BTW what does this mean? Obviously it logs what apps send it and yes the data is stored locally. Why wouldn't it be? The problem isn't that apps send zeitgeist information locally. The problem is that Canonical doesn't say precisely these are the specific rows of data we extract. Therefore I have a problem when a program logs quite a bit of information and a company that doesn't say specifically these are the rows of data that we extract from you.
Last edited by kc77 on Mon Apr 22, 2013 9:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Destructive ideology

Mon Apr 22, 2013 8:16 pm

sjl, I'm very much aware of the initial mindset of Debian, and in theory I agree.

In practice, at least a few years ago, what happened is that "stable" meant that many packages were 3-5 years old. That's not "tested", that's "obsolete". A piece of software can be as thoroughly tested as one wants it to, but if it's too old for the needed features, then it's going to be useless, period.

Perhaps is recent years Debian releases got more frequent and this problem sorted itself out. But I remember around 2004-2006-ish, it was just absolutely terrible.
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Re: Destructive ideology

Wed Apr 24, 2013 8:48 am

kc77 wrote:
That being said. Canonical should have given the choice either before install or right after it. Before I moved over to Ubuntu-Gnome to get a stock G3 experience what pushed me there was stumbling onto what zeitgeist was recording on the regular Ubuntu iso. It records everything. No I'm not joking, the only thing it doesn't capture is credit card information or payment methods. Everything else is recorded. Now how much of that is sent I don't know, but they sure as hell should pose the question.


I said how much of what's there that is actually sent is up for debate, but the fact of the matter is that the regular Ubuntu version logs more information and uploads to Canonical

Again, any support for that bald assertion?

But if you feel that I'm blowing smoke. I'll help you find the data.
sudo apt-get install sqlitebrowser

Then go here:
/home/$user/.local/share/zeitgeist

Maybe I'm looking in the wrong place, or maybe sqlitebrowser only works when you put on a tinfoil hat, but all I'm seeing is a couple totally innocuous things like timestamp, mimetype, program, and the name of the file manipulated. I sure don't see internet passwords, browsing histories, purchase histories, or anything remotely close to 'everything but credit card info'.
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Re: Destructive ideology

Wed Apr 24, 2013 1:56 pm

I think they handled it wrongly. It should have had it's own individual notification calling to the fact of what it is.

Personally I'll never use Ubuntu anyways, so my opinion will probably never count. I use OSX on the desktop 99.9% of the time - with terminals connected to my servers. :)
 
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Re: Destructive ideology

Thu Apr 25, 2013 2:27 pm

sjl wrote:
Me? The three reasons I'll upgrade old-but-working software to newer versions are: (1) functionality that we need; (2) bug fixes that we need (including security patches); and (3) loss of official support. Upgrading for the sake of upgrading is just going to create excessive work and heartache dealing with the problems.

That's in the corporate world, when I'm getting paid to keep systems up and running. At home, sure, absolutely, I'll run the bleeding edge and deal with the pain, because it isn't as important to keep everything stable - especially in virtual machines.

If you're only ever breaking your software layout at home, you're missing some of the most entertaining uses of enterprise technology. My very favorite Debian unstable installs are VMs at work, where I repeatedly break things in new and exciting ways, just so I know how to fix that, and can recognize it if I see it again.
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Re: Destructive ideology

Fri Apr 26, 2013 6:46 pm

grantmeaname wrote:
Again, any support for that bald assertion?

Yeah my data and I'm not giving you that. You don't have to believe me. You can completely believe that what they record is completely innocuous. It's your right to believe what you will.

grantmeaname wrote:
But if you feel that I'm blowing smoke. I'll help you find the data.
sudo apt-get install sqlitebrowser

Then go here:
/home/$user/.local/share/zeitgeist

Maybe I'm looking in the wrong place, or maybe sqlitebrowser only works when you put on a tinfoil hat, but all I'm seeing is a couple totally innocuous things like timestamp, mimetype, program, and the name of the file manipulated. I sure don't see internet passwords, browsing histories, purchase histories, or anything remotely close to 'everything but credit card info'.

On my installation browser history was recorded along with chats I had I think over empathy. If you don't have it ....well OK. Again if you feel that what's there is completely innocuous it's your right to believe what you will. How anyone could think that's it's OK that someone take your data without asking first is beyond me. But apparently you fall into that category.
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Re: Destructive ideology

Fri Apr 26, 2013 6:55 pm

Waco wrote:
I haven't been able to stomach Ubuntu since they added Unity.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gwendal-lebihan-dev/cinnamon-stable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install cinnamon
Last edited by End User on Fri Apr 26, 2013 7:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.
 
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Re: Destructive ideology

Fri Apr 26, 2013 7:20 pm

kc77 wrote:
Yeah my data and I'm not giving you that. You don't have to believe me. You can completely believe that what they record is completely innocuous. It's your right to believe what you will.

If it's standard practice, why has no other Ubuntu user noticed the problem?

How anyone could think that's it's OK that someone take your data without asking first is beyond me. But apparently you fall into that category.

First, zeitgeist is not "someone", its a service that runs on your local machine and nowhere else (except apparently your zeitgeist service, which I'm told exists solely to give Mark Shuttleworth your Neopets account). It is neither sentient nor capable of caring what you do. Second, it doesn't take your data, it records what mime types you opened with what applications at what times. Third, what zeitgeist does for the operating system -- providing a list of recently manipulated files -- is functionality that's been available in Windows since at least XP. It's necessary and useful. So yes, I fall into the category of people who aren't offended by zeitgeist.
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Re: Destructive ideology

Fri Apr 26, 2013 8:02 pm

grantmeaname wrote:
First, zeitgeist is not "someone", its a service that runs on your local machine and nowhere else (except apparently your zeitgeist service, which I'm told exists solely to give Mark Shuttleworth your Neopets account). It is neither sentient nor capable of caring what you do. Second, it doesn't take your data, it records what mime types you opened with what applications at what times. Third, what zeitgeist does for the operating system -- providing a list of recently manipulated files -- is functionality that's been available in Windows since at least XP. It's necessary and useful. So yes, I fall into the category of people who aren't offended by zeitgeist.


and there are pretty comprehensive controls on what it does so you can disable just the bits your uncomfortable with or turn it off completely.
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Re: Destructive ideology

Fri Apr 26, 2013 8:57 pm

It's not hard to see why Richard is upset. At least make it plain in the front what is happening. Still you can see why a lover of, and serious contributor, to *nix would be somewhat upset by the entire dumbing down process.

This is typical:

"Third, what zeitgeist does for the operating system -- providing a list of recently manipulated files -- is functionality that's been available in Windows since at least XP. It's necessary and useful."

No it's in no way necessary although some might find it useful. Given the dogs breakfast that is windose and it's file system, you probably do need some way to keep track of your stuff, given it's arbitrary and certainly unintuitive choices as to what it might do with your files.

Now one of the main points of the *nix file system is that it just deals with the files on the machine and abstracts the drives so they do not intrude. You have control over your files and it's not hard to keep track of them. The first time in a long time I had to go look for a file was because a windose Fuji program decided to put it in the first dated directory, and save all others there too. A little brain dead but hey.

Undatedb on the whole mess found em' for me. Now those are the first files I have lost in ages and it was windose that lost them.

Got banned last time I did something like this, disrespecting windose ... oh noes.
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