Re: [Trisquel-users] Family Buying Me Cellphone Without My Consent
> Arguments are a useful tool to settle disputes Arguments that are charged with anger? Uh, no. Any household that involves this on a regular basis is dysfunctional.
Re: [Trisquel-users] raptor talos will make a lower priced mainboard, if you buy 10000
That's because you have a preference for power. I have a preference for low price and low energy usage. That's fine; we have different preferences. The problem with comparing EOMA68-based computers to your hacked Macbook, however, is that your hacked Macbook isn't new. No more of those will ever be made. So for those who can't get their hands on one, that just isn't a solution. The Libre Tea computer card, however, is. Raptor's POWER-based systems are, too, but the problem is most people can't afford what it costs. They can, however, afford the much cheaper EOMA68-based computers.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Is Paypal compatible with software freedom?
> Many people are not going to buy if there is no purchase protection. Not going to buy from merchants they don't trust. No one on the face of the planet is concerned that Walmart is going to take their money and run off, and if that did happen, they would just sue them. The same goes for Amazon, Best Buy. PayPal's purchase protection is only necessary for people who you can't hold accountable either because you can't identify them or because they operate in some country that makes it impossible. If a hub for buying from random others wants, Ebay for example, it's very simple to just arrange to have the e-cash sent to them and then route that through their own system which does have purchase protection (in the case of ebay, that would incidentally be PayPal). The only ones you need to trust are those who run the service. > If I buy in a shop, I get to investigate the item I want to buy before I pay. To an extent. A lot of packaging can't be opened up, and some things you just can't check. If you use cash at Walmart to buy a toaster, and it turns out that the toaster is faulty and stops working 5 minutes after you plug it in, your only recourse is policies that either Walmart or the manufacturer has in place to make up for that incident. So you have to trust either Walmart or the manufacturer.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Is Paypal compatible with software freedom?
On a side note, I found your misuse of commas throughout this post to be such an extent that it made a lot of the post difficult to read. It's much easier to read a sentence which is missing a comma that it should have than it is to read a sentence which has commas where it shouldn't.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Family Buying Me Cellphone Without My Consent
> Simply saying sitting on it and shielding your loved ones from your feelings is unhealthy. You didn't say to be upfront about existing emotions. You said to get angry. As in, you're not angry now, but you should make yourself angry. That is something you should never do.
Re: [Trisquel-users] raptor talos will make a lower priced mainboard, if you buy 10000
> There will be a place for both EOMA and the POWER9. I agree completely. I just don't think POWER9's success is going to be by a mass-production crowdfunding campaign aimed primarily at the libre software community. I think Raptor needs to also give a lot of attention to some larger niches that POWER9 is or can be strong in. I don't know whether or not they're doing this, but if they are, then they're going about this perfectly. If I may summarize, I think EOMA68's success has to be from the bottom up, whereas Raptor's success has to be from the top down, just because of their price points. I think this is great, though, because that's twice the chance of succeeding (since due to their massive differences in price point and power they aren't really competing with each other).
Re: [Trisquel-users] raptor talos will make a lower priced mainboard, if you buy 10000
> When will arm cpus be as fast as x86 notebooks and when will such arm cpus be libre software capable? EOMA68 isn't supposed to use the same amount of power as x86; high-power applications are supposed to be dealt with by a separate EOMA standard which allows for more energy usage and heat, because these are the actual limiting factors, not what architecture is being used. But if rather than comparing to the most recent high-end x86 CPUs, you compare to older but still usable or lower-end x86 CPUs, then yeah, tons of ARM CPUs exist that are as fast or even faster. You do remember that many Chromebooks use ARM CPUs, right? At least one of them which is fairly recent can even run a 100% libre software stack, and incidentally, the SoC used in that Chromebook is the one lkcl is looking at for the next EOMA68 card.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Is Paypal compatible with software freedom?
> My experience in europe is, the shop on the internet requires you to tell name and address. That has nothing whatsoever to do with payment method. Just because a shop makes that their policy doesn't mean it has to be that way. > Even among well known shops in europe, I would rather not display that level of trust. So, I take it you never use a credit card, and especially never a debit card, right? You insist on paying only in cash, and only after receiving goods. That is the only behavior which is consistent with what you are saying here. If so, I can tell you right now that almost everyone I know is perfectly willing to entrust their credit card information to Walmart, and those who think they aren't actually are; that's necessary because of the way credit cards work. Credit cards and debit cards are both far more popular than cash in the store I work at. Besides this, I must say that there's a fantastic irony here. You refuse to trust even well-known, major stores to not scam you, and yet you put your trust in a different company (PayPal) to act as a middle-man and provide "purchase protection". This makes no sense whatsoever. > You say, you can get paypal's purchase protection without having a paypal account? PayPal's purchase protection is not protecting you from Ebay. It's protecting you from sellers that are using Ebay. PayPal can't protect you from Ebay because Ebay owns PayPal. So it makes no difference if Ebay just offers you that exact same protection directly rather than routing it through PayPal. So, since you have to trust Ebay anyway, all you have to do is send e-cash to Ebay and let them handle everything else. If you need a refund, they can just send e-cash back to you.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Quantum kicks ass
I wish Mozilla had done a release that supported both types of add-ons so that the add-on transition could be smoother. But oh well, what's done is done.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Quantum kicks ass
Really? So version 48 supports both? In that case, I wonder what took all the add-on developers so long to convert their extensions over. When my browser got updated, there were no add-ons that could turn JavaScript off. Now there are two that I'm aware of, and both are completely inadequate because they don't cause noscript tags to show up (NoScript is one of the two). So now, I'm stick with toggling JavaScript in about:config, because that's literally the only possible way to toggle JavaScript (and the irony of this is that the fact that the old NoScript could effectively work as a JavaScript toggle was one of the justifications for removing the "JavaScript" checkbox in the options menu). Hopefully add-ons will catch up eventually. As it is, the only incentives I have to use Firefox instead of another libre browser (like Midori) are WebKit security issues and the fact that I've already got all my bookmarks and saved passwords in Firefox. * Firefox (with Greasemonkey) is the only browser I've used where user scripts work without other JavaScript enabled. I'm not sure why.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Is Paypal compatible with software freedom?
> I have not said, I refuse to tell name and address to seller. I wasn't talking about that, I was talking about the fact that the whole way credit cards and debit cards work revolves around trust of whoever you're buying from. You do understand how it works, right? You give your credit card information to someone. You have to trust that they are going to perform the transaction they say they will, and do nothing else with that information. That's why when you see a shady website online asking for your credit card information, you don't give it to them. Yeah, there are laws to protect you. But there are equally good laws to protect you if you're using cash. So if you're OK with the trust required to use credit cards, it's logically inconsistent to not be OK with the trust required to use cash or e-cash. Heck, the latter two easily involve less trust, because the worst that can happen isn't identity theft, it's just a criminal not sending you the goods you paid for. > Can you provide some documentation? I do not know of this option. Could you please stop jumbling together ideas and hypotheticals with present reality? I never said that Ebay supports this. I said they easily could. That's up to them. The same goes for other stores. Heck, it could even be made into a feature of PayPal. This is a constant theme in this thread from you. So let me spell this out: "Purchase protection". has. NOTHING. to do with GNU Taler. If you want to buy this service from someone, they can accept and route any payment method they want to support. Yes, that includes GNU Taler. It also includes credit cards, debit cards, Bitcoin, cash, bottle caps... any payment method they want to support. It's not just a secondary issue, it's completely irrelevant to GNU Taler.
Re: [Trisquel-users] QupZilla-libre?
No, the version of Qupzilla in the repo is still the version that uses QtWebKit; this is true even of Ubuntu 16.04. The engine switch was more recent. It's definitely insecure, though, because QtWebKit is insecure. Are we sure that there is actually proprietary software in this, though? I know that it's a common meme to say that Chromium is not entirely libre, but no one ever backs this claim up with evidence (by pointing to examples of non-libre files).
Re: [Trisquel-users] Quantum kicks ass
The noscript tag isn't "served" based on what the server thinks, it's a browser behavior to cause content within those tags to be visible. The problem is that the extensions in question don't actually disable JavaScript, so Firefox's un-hiding of these elements is not triggered. In the previous version of NoScript, it was (as long as you had that enabled in the add-on preferences). For me it's not just annoying, it's completely unworkable. One of the forums I frequent has a silly JavaScript-based "rich text" post editor and a fallback basic one inside a noscript tag. If I have the new NoScript enabled, I cannot post at all on that forum (unless I whitelist that site and allow its JavaScript to run).
Re: [Trisquel-users] raptor talos will make a lower priced mainboard, if you buy 10000
> I have a lenovo t400. That's not a low-end computer. That's mid-range at least. Low-end, e.g. budget computers in 2008 would have used Celeron processors, which at that time likely would have been single-core. They would also only have 2-4 GiB of RAM, and around a 100 GiB hard drive. The kinds of laptops you should be looking at are the $300-$400 budget laptops (sometimes as little as $200) found at Walmart and other similar stores. Those also include Chromebooks. I already told you that the SoC being used for the next computer card (yes, the Rockchip one) is actually used in a fairly recent Chromebook, the C201 (released sometime in 2015, afaict). In fact, this Chromebook is still easy to find new, so you could easily buy one, install Debian or Parabola on it, and see how well it works. So, yes. EOMA68 will meet the speed needs of many people. That's what matters, not how they compare to the laptop you personally use. EOMA standards will cover this market. POWER will cover the higher-end markets you are clearly a fan of. They are separate and have almost no audience in common with each other, so they are not competing. This just doubles our chance of success at manufacturing libre software friendly computers. > Because arm software is not libre software, lkcl can only get it by software error, reverse engineering or leaks. No, this is not true. Please do not make claims about things you know nothing about.
Re: [Trisquel-users] raptor talos will make a lower priced mainboard, if you buy 10000
Funny you should mention that. Apparently someone is working on a GuixSD port for the A20 computer card. :) I'm excited for that, GuixSD seems like a really cool system.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Noscript installation
That's not an answer to the question. NoScript recently got (hastily) re-written to use WebExtensions, since that's the only API Firefox supports now. I assume the WebExtensions API NoScript now uses just isn't compatible with versions of Firefox prior to 56; LibreJS had the same problem. So you'll have to get the old version of NoScript: https://secure.informaction.com/download/releases/noscript-5.1.7.xpi
Re: [Trisquel-users] How does one respond to this statement?
> Without software patents or without adequately protecting them, the incentives of firms to innovate and invest would be undermined No, this is completely backwards. Incentives to invest and innovate in software are undermined by software patents, because they make it ridiculously risky to do so. I think anyone who would make this sort of argument is either completely clueless about how software development works or what software patents are, or is actively attempting to bolster patent trolls by spreading FUD. I can't think of any other alternative.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Is Paypal compatible with software freedom?
> Nor does my post say. In my post I claim a gnutaler payment system with no purchase protection is That's your problem. You're conflating e-cash with payment services. They are not the same. You physically cannot have "purchase protection" with e-cash. It's impossible. I'm not going to continue arguing with a brick wall at this point. If you want to reject GNU Taler because you don't understand what it is, go right ahead and keep using credit cards and PayPal. No one is stopping you.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Any libre + uncensored 18+ tubes or forums?
I've never seen anything of the sort, but most forums work without JavaScript, so whatever you're thinking of should be perfectly fine.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Any libre + uncensored 18+ tubes or forums?
> servers are also needed to be libre Why? They're not your computers, so you can't (and don't deserve to) control them anyway.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Any libre + uncensored 18+ tubes or forums?
What security do you really need for a porn site? Anyway, almost all Web servers do use libre security software, e.g. OpenSSL. Making sure the code they're running on their computers is properly audited and secure is their responsibility, not yours.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Any libre + uncensored 18+ tubes or forums?
I don't have time for this. You need to brush up on your English. You're not anywhere near proficient enough to engage in this kind of discussion.
Re: [Trisquel-users] FSF adds PureOS to list of endorsed GNU/Linux distributions
Cool. Not one I'll likely be using personally, but it's nice to have another option. I forget, is this based on Sid, testing, or stable? I seem to recall it being the testing branch, but I'm not entirely sure (the website doesn't say).
Re: [Trisquel-users] FSF adds PureOS to list of endorsed GNU/Linux distributions
I don't think any other GNU distro is currently seeking endorsement.
Re: [Trisquel-users] FSF adds PureOS to list of endorsed GNU/Linux distributions
Just a note: I don't like Purism either (I think I've made that clear enough), but it's possible to denounce one activity while being in favor of another. There's nothing wrong with PureOS as an OS as long as it's entirely libre, which has been verified to be the case.
Re: [Trisquel-users] FSF adds PureOS to list of endorsed GNU/Linux distributions
> I worry that Purism may have paid for their status on that list based on what I have seen from them over the years. That would only be possible if the FSF is corrupt. I don't see any reason to believe that.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Ctrl+alt+del equivalent?
You can change the keyboard shortcuts under "Keyboard" in the system settings. Perhaps that would be a good idea. Though personally, I just open System Monitor from the menu and do what I need. It's usually sufficient. I don't even know those commands MB suggested.
Re: [Trisquel-users] How to add and remove applications etc from the start menu?
Trisquel Mini is an entirely different desktop environment, so yeah, that's why. The way you change the menus is different too, and the easiest way involves installing an additional program... I don't remember the name of that program, I'll look it up later. Honestly, though, I'd recommend using stock Trisquel. You probably don't need to use LXDE; GNOME Flashback (what standard Trisquel 7 uses) is sufficiently lightweight for pretty much any computer in use today.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Ctrl+alt+del equivalent?
Since you're actually on LXDE (not on GNOME as everyone, myself included, has assumed), it's actually called "Task Manager" (more properly LXTask), not "System Monitor". It's not included with Trisquel Mini by default; get it by installing the "lxtask" package from Synaptic. A quick search shows that keys can be configured with the program "xbindkeys". I haven't tried it, but I've verified that it can be installed with Synaptic. Lucky I happen to have a virtual machine with Trisquel Mini on it. :)
Re: [Trisquel-users] Ctrl+alt+del equivalent?
Hm... it looks like xbindkeys is more complicated than I thought. Probably not a good choice, then. Apparently it requires manually editing a config file, which isn't helpful since you can just do that for Openbox anyway. Here's what you really want: https://github.com/nsf/obkey There's no Trisquel package, but it seems to be libre, and it's just Python so source code installation shouldn't be a problem. So download this: https://github.com/nsf/obkey/archive/v1.0.tar.gz Extract to your Downloads folder. Then open a LXTerminal, and enter the following commands: cd ~/Downloads/obkey-1.0 sudo python setup.py install After you do this, you should be able to run obkey by typing the "obkey" command either in a terminal or in the Run prompt. That should give you a reasonable graphical interface to adjust Openbox's keyboard shortcuts in. Let me know how it goes and if you run into any difficulties! :)
Re: [Trisquel-users] Ctrl+alt+del equivalent?
Actually something of note: you can get "regular" Trisquel without reinstalling by installing the "trisquel" and "trisquel-recommended" packages. Do note, though, that doing this will cause both GNOME and LXDE stuff to be in your menus, which might be slightly confusing before you get used to it and remember which ones go where.
[Trisquel-users] Resolution stuck at 640x480
Yes, you read that right. Just today, I offered to upgrade my mom's computer, which had been running Trisquel 6, to Trisquel 7. The installation went smoothly, but there's one serious problem: The resolution is stuck, not at 1024x768 or something like that, but at 640x480. Insane. This resolution isn't even really usable, so many things just don't fit into such a tiny display size. The monitor is actually capable of 1280x1024, but I'd be happy just getting her back to 1024x768. Just to make sure this doesn't fix it, I upgrated Linux with the linux-generic-lts-xenial package. That didn't help. So then I tried to search for "ubuntu 640x480" to see if someone has experienced this with Ubuntu 14.04, and they have. The only problem is that the proposed "solution" is to install a proprietary driver. That's no good. For reference, my mom's computer is some sort of custom-built computer (bought second-hand) containing an Intel Pentium 4, with an integrated ATI graphics controller (this is from back before Intel had its own integrated graphics controllers). The ATI graphics controller has always caused problems, but this is the first time I've seen it cause the resolution to be forced so low. Can anyone help me find a solution to get her computer's resolution back to something reasonable? I don't have physical access to the computer, so I'll need to tell her exactly what to do; because of this, I'd like to just tell her what command(s) to type into the terminal. The solution doesn't have to work for all users because this is effectively a single-user machine (she's the only one who uses it).
Re: [Trisquel-users] Resolution stuck at 640x480
Yeah, the big shock to me was that the resolution it fell back to was so small. So what would be the easiest way to replace the Trisquel 7 kernel with an older one (e.g. the Trisquel 6 kernel)? I seem to remember you had something somewhere, right?
Re: [Trisquel-users] Resolution stuck at 640x480
Honestly, "kicking the can down the road" is perfectly fine in this case, because I'm going to give her an EOMA68 computer setup to replace it whenever it becomes available. I'd even be fine with using a version of Linux that can't be updated or hasn't been updated in a while. I know that there are vulnerability concerns, but I think she would be better off with that than being stuck at such a tiny resolution.
Re: [Trisquel-users] FSF adds PureOS to list of endorsed GNU/Linux distributions
I agree with Magic Banana's post 100%. You're using weasel words to spread FUD about systemd. That's not constructive.
Re: [Trisquel-users] FSF adds PureOS to list of endorsed GNU/Linux distributions
> I just want to ask if you know of ANYONE, who has completely audited systemd in its entirety at all. To my knowledge, there has never been a single person who has audited the entirety of Linux. It just doesn't work that way. With a large project like Linux or systemd, everyone works on a particular part (or particular parts) they are interested in. If you think that's a problem, then by all means, trove through the entire systemd codebase and check all of it. While you're at it, do the same for Linux. No one is stopping you, because it's libre. > OR if anyone has successfully forked systemd for any reason. I don't think anyone has ever wanted to. All the systemd haters hate it because it's systemd, not for actual technical reasons. It's just another form of identity politics nonsense. But if someone wanted to, of course they could do so. All of systemd is under GPLv3+, a libre license. > Although, this is the fault of the distributions forcing systemd more than systemd devs themselves. Nobody is "forcing" anything. You don't have to use Debian, or if you're currently using an old version of Debian and don't like the update that's coming, you don't have to upgrade. What you're actually talking about is having a default program installed to do a job and not going to lengths to make sure that other possible programs can be used. So by that logic, Linux (the kernel) is being "forced" onto the users of almost every GNU/Linux distro. Many distros don't even offer an option for kernels other than Linux. The only ones I can think of right now that do are Debian and Arch. Regarding init systems, the current setup with systemd on Debian is exactly the same as its previous setup with SysV-init, or Guix's setup with GNU Shepherd, or Ubuntu 14.04's setup with Upstart, just to name a few. No distro goes to lengths to give options for different init systems in a particular distro because that's not a productive thing to do. > try and remove all systemd components from a debian install. I doubt you will succeed without a lot of irritations, and some sort of guide. If so many programs depend on systemd (which, I might add, has nothing to do with the actions of either Debian or the systemd developers), then perhaps it was right for Debian to switch to systemd by default. > This of course includes libsystemd0. Why are you opposed to such a tiny library being installed on your system? It's not even the init system systemd provides, just an API for everything in systemd other software might want to use. Not having it installed means that any program with even optional interfaces to systemd has to be rejected, and that's a lot of useful software.
Re: [Trisquel-users] FSF adds PureOS to list of endorsed GNU/Linux distributions
You do realize the post numbers can change, right? And that mailing list users don't even see post numbers at all?
Re: [Trisquel-users] Should Aferro GPL replace plain GPL?
Some people simply thought the AGPL's extra term went too far for a copyleft license. Philosophical, not technical. You can use AGPL for everything just fine.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Should Aferro GPL replace plain GPL?
http://gplv3.fsf.org/comments/gplv3-draft-2.html
Re: [Trisquel-users] Writing my ‘common distros’ for us in 2018
I think the FSF can maintain that list just fine as-is. They would never use this modification. Just a few problems: You're using the word "edition" wrongly. Debian doesn't use Linux-libre. There is no such thing as "Linux-nonfree". "An" is only used when the following word begins with a vowel. "An libre" and "an no-systemd" are incorrect usages. "Dsnt" is not a word. I thought it was a typo at first, but you did it twice. The word is "doesn't". "block contrib or nonfree against mirrors" makes no sense. I don't even know what you mean by that. You don't understand what Debian's "contrib" section is for. It's for any otherwise libre program that depends on something from "non-free". "clueless against freedom" makes no sense. Ubuntu does not have any backdoors. The Ubuntu Amazon ads are old news and no longer occurring. GNU DFSG does not call for any kind of censorship. "integrates nonfree against libre" makes no sense. "the most of most games" is ungrammatical. "Every" is used singularly, not plurally. Arch's problems have nothing to do with its package manager, pacman. ReactOS can run libre programs just fine. The problem is it promotes the use of proprietary software.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Writing my ‘common distros’ for us in 2018
> If there are things "(being) made of nonsense" or "not (being) made of sense", then I am sadly unsure which prepositions are proper. I don't have time to tell you how to write properly. You need to find a tutor who is fluent in both Cantonese (your native language) and English. I'm only trying to make you see how bad your English is and how much you're misunderstanding because of it. > I clearly understand what are problematic in the Debian's "contrib" pools, but you should be unclear what my "nonfree integrations" are, and yes this of course includes the nonfree deps which we all dislike them. I'm not convinced you understand, because it's a simple issue that you are making sound complex. > "pacman" actually stands for Arch itself and its all nonfree forks That's not something you're supposed to do. Only Arch users know what pacman is. It's not even named after Arch; it's named based on the fact that it's a package manager. > Ubuntu's Amazon backdoors are sure to be old news and are no longer triggered, but no people are sure if Ubuntu no longer uses any other backdoors. Everything in this sentence is wrong. You don't understand what a backdoor is, don't understand what it means to "trigger" malware, and don't understand the libre software defense against malware. > "Linux-nonfree" is just to emphasize the nonfree Linux kernel is nonfree. It improperly suggests that Linux is generally speaking nonfree. It is not. What you are actually talking about is mainline Linux. > DFSG surely doesn't censor but isn't mentioned in my preview docs. Sorry, my mistake. I meant GNU FSDG. But the presence of the word "GNU" (which is highly disjointed; DFSG has nothing whatsoever to do with GNU) should have alerted you to the fact that it was a typo. > Any minor mistakes thanks feeding back to me. No, these are not minor mistakes. These are major mistakes, which are causing what you are writing to be confusing and causing you yourself to misunderstand the issues. You need a lot of English tutoring.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Writing my ‘common distros’ for us in 2018
I'm aware of this; I just didn't explain it properly. Both usages I was referring to should have been "a", not "an". "hour" and "honor" both start with vowel sounds.
Re: [Trisquel-users] RMS, the free software community and cognitive dissonance
Having a PayPal button as a secondary option for supporting them doesn't require cognitive dissonance. They support ways of supporting them that don't require proprietary software use, too. The proprietary bootloader doesn't require cognitive dissonance because using proprietary software makes you a victim, not a perpetrator. In any case, we make do with what we have. You can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good (the good being reducing the amount of proprietary software on a fully proprietary system).
Re: [Trisquel-users] RMS, the free software community and cognitive dissonance
RMS just tries to be an example of the most ideal possibility. As for Debian and Ubuntu, RMS did say that Debian was close to recommendable before Ututo was recognized as 100% libre, but there's no need for that now because GNU FSDG distros are better (in the FSF's opinion).
Re: [Trisquel-users] Writing my ‘common distros’ for us in 2018
> that's never my own fault if my English skills are bad, instead those bad educational systems are liable to this. How is your activism in Cantonese going?
Re: [Trisquel-users] How to spread computing freedom?
I think people are better off using Microsoft Office than Google Docs. And what are you going to tell them? "I don't recommend this Web service, but use it anyway, here, I'll teach you how to use it"? I don't think it makes sense.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Writing my ‘common distros’ for us in 2018
Whatever languages you're fluent in. All I know for sure is that English is not one of them.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Writing my ‘common distros’ for us in 2018
I'm talking to someone who is (or at least was) convinced that his English is great. Someone who believes they have great proficiency already is never going to get better. Also, learning English is not easy. Not only is the entire way English grammar works mostly alien to Asian languages (considering they developed separately in isolation from each other for thousands of years), English also inherits a whole lot of random stuff from Latin-based languages, which is yet another branch. I don't agree that negative feedback is detrimental to a really difficult learning experience like this, and one major reason is my own personal experience learning Japanese. When you underestimate the difficulty of a language so much that you think you've almost mastered it, you never fix your glaring inadequacies. My Japanese was atrocious last year. It was only when someone had the guts to show me just how atrocious it was that I started to get better. I also don't think it is necessary for everyone to know English to be an asset to the libre software movement, or any other cause. If he chooses to abandon the English language entirely and focus on his own native language, that's much better than wasting his and others' time using broken English. This is a global movement and needs speakers from all languages.
Re: [Trisquel-users] How to spread computing freedom?
It's not about what "does the most harm". It's about consistency in your principles. To recommend something, and then turn around and say that that thing you recommended is unethical, is hypocrisy. Hypocrisy never helps any cause. And what good do you hope to bring about, really? Saving them a bit of money? That's a secondary issue, and it's a secondary issue that would have made them more likely to use LibreOffice if you hadn't steered them toward Google Docs.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Writing my ‘common distros’ for us in 2018
> When I was a teen I was mostly used to be tutored based on the Cambridge and Oxford dictionaries, both web interface and physical ones. A dictionary cannot tutor you. Dictionaries are tools. Tutors are people who teach you. These are not interchangeable.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Writing my ‘common distros’ for us in 2018
No, that's not true. British English and American English are the same language. The spelling differences have nothing to do whatsoever with other languages. They were caused by spelling standard differences a couple hundred years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_spelling_differences
Re: [Trisquel-users] GPS navigator with free software
If you have a device that can run Replicant with GPS, that would do the trick; you could use OsmAnd~, ZANavi, or Navit (all found in the F-Droid repo). But I don't think any Replicant-supporting phones support GPS with libre software, so that's partly just theoretical. A device with GNU/Linux like the Pyra should theoretically be fine, too, if you add GPS to it somehow. In that case I suppose you would use Navit.
Re: [Trisquel-users] RMS, the free software community and cognitive dissonance
> Nobody loads a file into a game in the way they commonly load files into > spreadsheets, word processors, and other similar programs for which work is > typically done. Games do load files, but I suppose you mean that you never transfer files for use with non-identical software, and therefore compatibility of the files they read and/or write with other similar programs is not an issue. I'd just like to point out that all of these kinds of programs are typically the same way: - Calculator applications - Clock/alarm applications - File managers - Terminal emulators - Device firmware - Device drivers I don't think compatibility, in any sense, is a particularly helpful criterion to look at when determining how good or bad a program being proprietary is.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Writing my ‘common distros’ for us in 2018
So, you're just saying that's where your vocabulary comes from? That's immaterial. All dictionaries contain roughly the same entries, the only difference is spelling and a few new or uncommon words. The point is that you need more tutoring. You're not even close to done learning English. You can't just make up your own contractions. "dntv" is not a contraction used by anybody. The words you're looking for are "didn't have".
Re: [Trisquel-users] Writing my ‘common distros’ for us in 2018
If you're not interested in learning English properly, then don't do activist work that requires skills in English. There is plenty of good you can do with Cantonese, like just spreading the basic idea of libre software through Cantonese. Or you could take up programming; no one cares how good a programmer's English is. That's only a couple of the many, many possible things you could do.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Is Tor really that bad?
You don't even need cryptocurrency or e-cash to pay anonymously. You can go to any store that sells gift cards, buy a MasterCard or VISA gift card with cash, and use that to pay. It just costs a bit more.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Comodo antivirus for Linux
That's a proprietary program. I suggest you don't use it. If you want an antivirus program, that's ClamAV. Look for "ClamTK"; it's in the repo and acts as a graphical frontend for ClamAV. But I should note that antivirus on GNU/Linux is not for your own protection; it's for the protection of Windows users. All viruses that currently exist for GNU/Linux are non-malicious proof-of-concept viruses, mostly because the techniques are ineffective.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Comodo antivirus for Linux
> 1. When you go to a restaurant, do you consider every dish for which you are not given the recipe + the right to modify and redistribute it a "maybe poison"? That's not quite the same thing. When you're given food at a restaurant, you're not given a recipe that you're not allowed to change; you're just given the result of a recipe. Visiting a restaurant (or eating processed food) is more like SaaSS than proprietary software. Proprietary software is like if they give you a recipe, but in a form that you can't read; you have to insert the recipe into some sort of complicated machine that makes the food for you, using processes that are nothing like the ones you would use to prepare food. > How do you know 6*8=48? Math is purely a human invention; it's just that this human invention is useful for understanding quantities. 6*8=48 because that's the rules of math: add eight to itself six times. With that rule, you get 48. It's the same with every number, and no, you don't have to verify them all. You can verify for yourself that the rules and methods yield consistent results, and that's one of the things math classes are supposed to teach. It's actually kind of lamentable that when faced with the hard stuff, we resort to calculators without even teaching students about the manual methods.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Comodo antivirus for Linux
I gave you a detailed explanation as to why it's different, and your only response is a variant of "no it's not"? Why do you even bother responding if you're not going to actually refute my reasoning? > In any case - you didn't even look at the essence of the questions which is the whole point. Yes, I did. You're just looking for excuses to dismiss my arguments. I know what you're getting at. You're trying to prove that libre software ideals are impractical, and you're drawing false comparisons to food and math as a part of this. That's why I showed that these comparisons are nonsense. If you're complaining that I didn't respond to everything in your long post, it's because I have very little spare time and I don't think your other points are worth the investment of time and effort needed to respond to them.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Comodo antivirus for Linux
> The questions weren't even put to you specifically No, they were put to someone who was joking and specifically told you so. That's why I didn't feel the need to refute every single thing you said. Just those two because they stood out to me. Look, if you aren't willing to argue the point, then this conversation is worthless. > 'maybe malware' which really means 'it is most certainly malware' "Maybe" does not mean "most certainly". https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/maybe https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/certainly
Re: [Trisquel-users] Comodo antivirus for Linux
> The questions were a reply to Magic Banana who wasn't. Fair enough, I was mistaken on this point, then. I apologize. > So to you a conversation is worthy only if it is an argument? https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/argument https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/argue These are the relevant definitions for "argument" the way I am using the word: * the act or process of arguing, reasoning, or discussing * a coherent series of reasons, statements, or facts intended to support or establish a point of view * a reason given for or against a matter under discussion And the relevant definitions for "argue", the way I am using the word: * to give reasons for or against something * to give evidence of * to consider the pros and cons of * to prove or try to prove by giving reasons So with that in mind, I suspect that you are instead using the word "argument" to mean "an angry quarrel or disagreement", which is not what is happening here, and then conflating that definition (which I am not referring to when I use the words "argue" and "argument") with my use of the words. I assume this is unintentional. I have long grown weary of people who do this. It seems to be a common feature of young people these days to just immediately conflate the entire idea of argumentation with negativity and use this fallacy as an excuse to both refuse to argue anything, and demand for someone who is willing to argue to stop doing so. This is a destructive attitude, albeit one I assume is borne of ignorance rather than malice. So with that all in mind, when we're talking about a topic that two people disagree about, then, yes, a conversation which does not include argumentation is worthless. If neither of us is presenting arguments for our respective positions, we are not going to get any better of an understanding of each other's positions, much less be convinced to change our minds. > And intelligence means reading between the lines. Look at the overall attitude, don't just isolate a single word and analyze it separately. You talk about context, but you yourself are ignoring the much larger context that the "maybe malware" description comes straight from RMS's talks, where he doesn't imply "potential malware" to mean "definitely malware" and typically even specifically clarifies that it doesn't mean the latter. Instead you're inventing your own interpretation out of thin air, directly contradicting the literal interpretation of what was said. "Reading between the lines" is not an excuse for building up strawmen.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Comodo antivirus for Linux
> Lard is poison. I know this is off-topic, but I would dispute that. Do some research on the history of the lipid hypothesis, which is what you're referring to; there's really not any evidence behind the idea. It's more likely excess sugar consumption and, to a lesser extent, other excess carbohydrate consumption, which can be blamed for health problems that fat has been blamed for. This is a decent starting point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1RXvBveht0
Re: [Trisquel-users] Comodo antivirus for Linux
... Touche.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Trisquel 7 operating system and Windows based viruses
> once I download Trisquel 7 on my notebook, should I copy all my files once again on the Trisquel 7 Documents folder? That's fine. Any viruses there won't work on GNU/Linux, but if you're concerned about what might happen to Windows users, you can scan with ClamAV (the ClamTK package, found in Add/Remove Applications, gives you a nice graphical interface for this). > I currently use LibreOffice 5.4, which is compatible either for Windows 7 and for Trisquel 7; once I use Trisquel 7 as > only operating system, do I have to install LibreOffice 5.4 once again? Windows and GNU/Linux are not binary-compatible, so each system has to have its own software installed on it. You can't run a program compiled for Windows on GNU/Linux. In the case of LibreOffice, though, Trisquel already comes with that by default, and of course it can read and write the same document files (since it's the same program). Remember that any new software should be installed through the software repository, and this is easily your greatest protection on a system like Trisquel from malware. Trojan horses can't get in because the only place you're downloading software from has been put together and verified by a trusted party. If you need something and can't find it in the repo (Add/Remove Applications), come ask on the forum; there are a lot of knowledgeable users here who can help. :)
Re: [Trisquel-users] What's wrong with DOCX?
In my experience, OOXML files don't work well on LibreOffice, probably because of those things MB mentioned. Everything always seems to render differently between MS Office and LibreOffice. I actually remember the whole controversy back when I was in school. My dad was a vocal critic of OOXML and its standardization. One thing I recall is that Microsoft Office at that time had no support at all for ODF, and wanting their office suite to be "standard" without adding support for the already standard ODF seemed to be a major motivation for pushing through OOXML as a redundant standard. It was only years later that they finally added ODF support as an add-on for... Microsoft Office 2010? I think that was it. Microsoft Office supports ODF now, so that's good. It also means there's no longer any reason whatsoever to use either the proprietary MS formats, or OOXML. h.264, on the other hand, is unfortunately more widely supported than WebM, and even has a lot of hardware-level support whereas WebM doesn't (meaning a lot of GPUs can help render h.264 video more smoothly). So unfortunately, it seems there's going to be a reason to use MP4 for years to come. Maybe VP9 can get as much as or more traction than h.265. One can hope.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Trisquel 7 operating system and Windows based viruses
All package manager frontends, including Add/Remove Applications, show whether or not any given program is installed. Even if you use the command-line to request the installation of a program you already have installed, it will see that it's already installed and tell you that. So no worries. :)
Re: [Trisquel-users] Trisquel 7 operating system and Windows based viruses
> BTW I don't know whether Synaptic itself is installed by default. It is. Its entry is under "System Settings".
Re: [Trisquel-users] Trisquel 7 operating system and Windows based viruses
That device also is locked down by DRM, so no. You would be best off not using Kindle e-books and getting paper books instead, or e-books in a libre, non-DRM-encumbered format (e.g. ePub) if possible. Defective By Design has a rather lengthy list here: https://www.defectivebydesign.org/guide/ebooks
Re: [Trisquel-users] What's wrong with DOCX?
> I am not sure that it will amount to much, because it is a "lip service" by Microsoft, never meant to work properly in large/professional scale. I meant that the fact that they support the standard means you can safely ignore OOXML as a "standard" and just use ODF. I don't know if it renders properly (I haven't used Microsoft Office since I left school), but if it doesn't, you can tell anyone who complains about it that the file is fine and they can see it properly just by installing LibreOffice. It's nowhere near the problem that it used to be and at this point, I'm actually more concerned about Google Docs than Microsoft Office.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Lightweight Browser
The question that comes to mind for me is, "lightweight" in what sense? I don't think anyone who requests a "lightweight" browser really understands what they're asking for. Here are a few possibilities I can think of: 1. Low memory footprint (e.g. because your computer only has 1GB of RAM) 2. Low download size (e.g. because you're running your OS on an SD card) 3. Faster performance 4. Simple interface (as opposed to a highly stylized one) Midori happens to be #1, #2, and #4, in comparison to Firefox. Pale Moon is just #4 compared to Firefox. Firefox (and Abrowser) is #3 compared to both of these other browsers. Any browser can get #3 just by turning JavaScript off. And of course, the masters of all of these are the command-line browsers, like lynx and elinks, and out of graphical browsers, NetSurf easily wins all of these categories.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Lightweight Browser
Exactly. I don't think a lot of people understand that increased RAM and hard disk consumption is often done intentionally to improve performance. The only way reducing RAM consumption will ever help performance is if you're using so much RAM that it's going into swap, and very few people have so little RAM that that's going to happen.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Lightweight Browser
No, if you're not swapping, there's no performance loss. There is zero benefit to having RAM free that you're not using. If you're only ever using 2 GB of RAM out of 16 GB, those other 14 GB are doing absolutely nothing for you.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Lightweight Browser
> Starting a new program requires free memory. Yes, but if you pay more attention to the context of what I was saying, that would be included under the umbrella of "use". There's a difference between using 2GB right now and using 2GB ever. The point is that if you can spare RAM, ideally, you should be using all of it. In a perfect world, the programs you're running would use every byte of RAM available and then release it to new programs as they launch. We of course don't live in a perfect world, so some inefficiency (i.e. leaving RAM unused) is inevitable. Thankfully, Linux makes use of that RAM for disk caching while it waits to allocate it to a program, so it's not a total loss. In any case, that's the point: if you can afford RAM use (and yes, you can afford to have a program use hundreds of MB if you have 4, 8, or even 16 GB total), then it is always beneficial. > If you constantly allocate and deallocate huge amounts of memory this is an overhead. That's not what I would do. In fact that sounds like what I would expect someone to do to be more "efficient" with their RAM use. > Consider also memory fragmentation RAM doesn't "fragment" in any meaningful way. It's random-access. I assume you're referring to disk fragmentation, which occurs on hard drives; it matters there because hard drives are not random-access, and having related files in completely different physical locations or, worse, having one file split into multiple physical locations means it takes longer to read. But this hasn't really been an problem in years. > When someone says "It is possible to use RAM inefficiently" you present a counter argument with an example of efficient use and by that you are trying to abolish the actual irrevocable fact that inefficient RAM usage is possible. MB was responding to the last sentence in that post. He was disputing your claim that "caching in RAM is not a performance benefit per se". > The thread is about lightweight browsers. So far I see zero posts answering the OP's question or being helpful in any way. This little deviation came about from me questioning what "lightweight" even means. That's actually important. I don't think most people who ask for "lightweight" really understands what that they're looking for. In particular, if you're really after speed, then "lightweight" is the opposite of what you really want. Re-branded versions of Firefox (like Abrowser) are probably the fastest libre browsers out there. On the other hand, if you need very low RAM use because you're using an OpenPandora, your best choices are things like NetSurf, Links, and Arora. If you just like a traditional interface, I'd suggest Midori or SeaMonkey, and if you're almost out of hard drive space, maybe just stick to a text-based browser. So you see, it's a relevant question to ask before giving a browser recommendation.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Lightweight Browser
> your expectations of efficiency are contrary to the basic programming principle: that a program should use only as much memory as it actually needs for completing the task and that memory usage should be optimized. That is only a "basic programming principle" if RAM is scarce. RAM is not scarce in modern computers. Since we're talking about Web browsers, let's look at those as an example: I looked up benchmarks for Web browsers, and Google Chrome on GNU/Linux seems to use the most RAM out of all the major browsers at around 1.5GB. That amount is no problem if you have 4, 8, 16 GB of RAM. And modern computers do have that much RAM, or even more than that. It's not 1999 anymore. > efficiency in programming is the art of optimizing resource usage, not of wasting resources. Using RAM that isn't being used for anything else is not "wasting resources". What is wasting resources is spending CPU time (which uses an actual resource, electricity) redundantly to save RAM that you don't need to save. > RAM's speed is not infinite and RAM access is sequential. RAM is random-access, not "sequential". It's kind of in its name. As for speed, yeah, of course it takes time, but not that much. Recalculating redundantly almost always takes longer. Here, I'll prove it: https://pastebin.com/3tZ59K6m https://pastebin.com/qZsu0651 The first one uses variables. The second one recalculates everything only based on the original three variables, i.e. avoids unnecessary RAM use. I get about 13.5 seconds with the one that uses RAM freely, and about 19 seconds (much slower) with the one that recalculates everything redundantly. > The Linux kernel can be tuned to work in direction of keeping more memory free (swapping more aggressively) or to keep cache in RAM for longer. Controls for swapping don't "keep more memory free". Swapping only occurs if your RAM is past full, therefore requiring the use of the disk. Which is always much slower than using RAM, hence why if you're swapping, you need to cut down your RAM use. > but that doesn't mean that programs should simply occupy lots or all because there is plenty of it and/or because RAM is faster than HDD. They should use all the RAM they have a use for. I never said that programs should throw meaningless data into RAM just for laughs. > Being random access has nothing to do with fragmentation. But it does have to do with the consequences of fragmentation. Fragmented RAM is not going to make a meaningful difference to access speed in real terms. A fragmented disk is going to cause problems because you can only access one physical location at a time. > It is more time consuming to manage scattered memory blocks and thousand of pointers than reading a whole block at once. I think "thousands" is a bit of a stretch, to say the least. Most of the time you're allocating RAM, it's such a tiny, tiny fraction of how much RAM is available. Let's say you malloc for an array of 10,000 64-bit integers. That's 640,000 bits = 80,000 bytes = 80 KB. That's a tiny, tiny fraction of the multiple gigabytes of RAM typically available, and most of the time you're not using arrays that huge. But how about you prove that running a program on a system using most of its RAM (but without swapping) is slower than on a system using only half its RAM? It would be a lot more convincing than a bunch of ifs, buts, and maybes. > So back to what lightweight means: Usually that implies low resource usage, not exhausting every single bit of the system (which creates a heavy weight for the system). That's not a clarification. It's too vague to have any meaning.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Lightweight Browser
> Python is an interpreted language and you don't know how the interpreter handles the data internally. https://github.com/python/cpython
Re: [Trisquel-users] Lightweight Browser
DFSG is not 100% compatible with GNU FSDG. That said, the reason for the assertion that WebEngine is non-free is that it's based on Chromium. I have never seen anyone actually evidence the claim that Chromium is proprietary.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Lightweight Browser
heyjoe's insistence that "scarce" just means "finite" is nothing more than a linguistic distraction to avoid admitting that no one ever said RAM was infinite. MB has already clarified what he means by "scarce". I use the same exact definition. If you or heyjoe want to use "scarce" to mean "finite", fine, but you can't then interpret what we are saying using a definition we are not using.
Re: [Trisquel-users] How will libreboot deal with Meltdown and Spectre?
I agree with this 100%. There are so so so many bad things that are stopped by just not running code you can't trust on your computer.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Is it ethical to use github?
God, ADFENO, you really have a knack for resurrecting month-old threads. I disagree with the FSF on this. I never enable JavaScript when accessing GitHub, and I get zero problems. In fact, it's one of the best no-JavaScript designs I've ever seen. And the whole C2 thing... that page they link to is just telling you that GitHub complies with a U.S. law and gives a brief summary of what that entails. Plus, it only applies to the Enterprise service. I'd also like to note any two Git repositories can be merged. They don't have to both be from GitHub. In fact I never tell people who want to contribute to my projects to use Savannah; I tell them to host a copy in whatever Git host they prefer, make their changes, and send me a link. It's really trivial for me to do: git remote add example https://example.com/foo.git git pull example master You can even use "git request-pull" to make it even easier for whoever needs to merge the changes.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Is there a perfect method to guard our communication?
"Perfect" is impossible. If it's possible for one person to understand something, it's possible for anyone as long as they have the right knowledge. But practically speaking, no one is going to crack good encryption; the time it would take (without e.g. social engineering) is a period of time greater than anyone's lifetime. Of course, you do have to guard the key against third parties. To do that, you should only ever store the key in a system running software you trust. For maximum security, you would make that machine never connect to any network, but in practice you don't need to go that far if you're using only libre software and installing all security updates. As for what cryptography to use, software developers have already generally speaking taken care of that. For the Web, turn off JavaScript and use HTTPS. Use Tor Browser to add anonymity; change the security setting to maximum for full protection. For email, use GnuPG with the largest supported key size; there's a guide for Thunderbird (via Enigmail) here: https://emailselfdefense.fsf.org/en/ And for encrypted instant messaging, Kontalk is probably the easiest choice, though there's also XMPP with OTR (a little tougher since not all XMPP clients support OTR).
Re: [Trisquel-users] Is there a perfect method to guard our communication?
privacytools.io seems fine, but I don't recommend prism-break as a reference. It's all over the place and blacklists Trisquel because it's based on Ubuntu, which just tells me they don't understand how this stuff works.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Is there a perfect method to guard our communication?
Most of the recommendations on prism-break are fine, so if you find it helpful, go for it. I just don't think it's a helpful reference in general. It's too unfocused.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Is there a perfect method to guard our communication?
へぇ～。 But "Jap" is generally seen as a slur. You probably don't want to refer to yourself as that. It would be like me referring to myself as a 外人, I guess. ところで、私は女です。
Re: [Trisquel-users] Is there a perfect method to guard our communication?
I suggest you assume good faith from all posters; it's very possible for something you are interpreting as anger is something different entirely, given your skill level at English that I can see. And at the same token, don't worry about angering people. You'll be fine as long as you don't launch straight-up personal attacks.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Is there a perfect method to guard our communication?
> Does that means that even if I get a libreboot PC, the PC still has a potential for be installed the backdoors? Not physical backdoors, via traffic. And even the free softwares are complex and bloated, probably full of bugs? It just means that no software is perfect, and no hardware is perfect, so mistakes are bound to happen occasionally. We're only human, after all. :) You don't need to take this as a sign of worry. The protection you can get is still quite good. > I don't know well why you shill minifree and Ms.Rowe and why now. I don't like gossip. Hence I don't have interest in gossip mostly. I basically do not trust things which I see. You're right that it's an advertisement, but it's an advertisement with a reasonable purpose: they sell freedom-respecting computers. So in the present moment, they're one of the best options. It's also an unpaid advertisement, though that's a minor point. If you'd rather have a less biased source, that would be the FSF's resource: https://fsf.org/ryf
Re: [Trisquel-users] Is there a perfect method to guard our communication?
No worries. Your English is way better than my Japanese, at any rate.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Is there a perfect method to guard our communication?
> But I also thought that a lady who learns Japanese is rare. Because Japanese men are not popular with ladies of the world. It looks that Japanese ladies are popular in the world. I don't think many people Japanese because they're attracted to Japanese girls. xD The number one reason is probably Japanese cartoons, and the number two reason is probably romanticism of Japanese culture. My reason was a bit more mundane: I just wanted to learn a language with a different writing system because I thought that would be cool, and then loved Japanese class to the point where I just refuse to go away from Japanese study. Plus, I still think Japanese is a great language.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Is there a perfect method to guard our communication?
It's a reference to the possibility of a government agent opening the package and tampering with the hardware to install a bug on it. Not very likely, but this has been done before when the state has wanted to target an important person.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Is there a perfect method to guard our communication?
It's not just Microsoft. I saw an ad about a month ago advertising this feature for Apple devices.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Is there a perfect method to guard our communication?
> But all these doesn't explain his correspondents' security weaknesses, namely PGP on Windows. Edward Snowden has *got to* know better than to fall into that. Snowden used Tails, not Windows. This was also what he had the journalists he talked to use.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Is there a perfect method to guard our communication?
> You seem to ignore the most common scenario (which I already explained but again:) host A is perfectly clean/libre system communicating with host B which is PRISM'ed (= all communication is tapped). Now consider that hosts like A are very few and hosts like B are almost all other computers and (currently) all mobile phones. So this "much better" is really wishful thinking. And you're showing destructively pessimistic thinking. What you don't seem to understand is: 1. You're not communicating with only a single other party; and 2. Any time both nodes are safe, the conversation is safe. Your attitude is "everyone else is doing things in a bad way, so what's the point?" Well, the point is that if you're doing the right things (encrypting, self-hosting, not sharing with the NSA, etc), that's one more person doing so, and it increases the chances of any two people's communication being uncompromised. It's like the flu vaccine; just because it doesn't affect you personally that much (flu vaccines are often ineffective), that doesn't mean you should abandon it (flu vaccines save millions of lives if everyone gets them). That's the ecological impact Magic Banana has been talking about for this entire time. You don't live in a vacuum. > As long as there are infected hosts in the whole network, capable of spying on others, the whole network is unhealthy. Great. So let's just abandon everything because what we can do isn't perfect. How inspiring you are. Just give up on everything. Why even bother trying to stop pollution? Just throw your smoke into the atmosphere, screw it! Take a look at history, dude. Do you know how horrendous pollution used to be? Smog used to be such a major problem in cities that you couldn't even see your own feet some days. So rather than throwing up our hands and saying the atmosphere is hopelessly polluted, we took measures to reduce the pollution. We still have smog today, so should we go back to unregulated smoke production, just throw it all into the atmosphere like they did in the 1800s? No! Just because the atmosphere is "unhealthy" doesn't mean we take action to make it even worse.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Is there a perfect method to guard our communication?
しんぱいしないでください。いつも何も言わなくてもいいです。それから、他人は話を続けてもいいですね。何もスレを始めた人のせいではありません。ボスではないのですね。 There's no need to announce that you're not continuing. You can respond or not respond to messages as you wish; you don't gain any obligations simply because you started a thread. Please be at ease and don't worry about what others are doing. :)
Re: [Trisquel-users] trisquel-users mailing list mirrored to news.gmane.org newsfeed
Erm, why? What does use of a mailing list have to do with Usenet? Actually, I don't even get why you want to go back to using Usenet in the first place. I've never been exposed to newsgroups outside of archives like Google Groups, so I don't know personally what it's like, but I am not aware of any technical advantages it has over mailing lists.
Re: [Trisquel-users] trisquel-users mailing list mirrored to news.gmane.org newsfeed
> just subscribe to the newsgroup above and you will have these instant benefits I downloaded the Pan Newsreader and put that address you mentioned in. It does nothing whatsoever. It says that "Getting group list from 'nntp://news.gmane.org/gmane.linux.distributions.gnu-linux-libre'" is a queued task. It also says I have "no connections" I've never used Usenet. By the time I was old enough to understand how to use the Internet, the Web had completely superseded Usenet already in practice. But if I'm understanding what's going on correctly, that task is queued because I have no connections, because my ISP (like most ISPs) does not offer Usenet as a service. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Free software foundations problems
It's already been explained to you that Google learns nothing about you from this behavior. They know that your IP address is running a Web browser. Big whoop. I think the benefit of protecting people from malicious websites, scamming, phishing, etc is much more important than not letting Google know that you're running a Web browser, the same as practically everyone else on the planet. It's like worrying that the gas company knows you're running the stove.
Re: [Trisquel-users] trisquel-users mailing list mirrored to news.gmane.org newsfeed
> I think you should configure an account just like when you would set up an email account. In your newsreader there should be a way to configure accounts. Just create a new account and point it to news.gmane.org and you should be gtg. Why would I want to do that? The only advantages you've sold are that you're saving a miniscule amount of bandwidth not pulling a few kilobytes of text, if even that. And you're telling me that I need to create a special account for that, and still use an email account anyway? I'd be more convinced by an Amish person telling me to switch to a horse and buggy for gas savings.
Re: [Trisquel-users] trisquel-users mailing list mirrored to news.gmane.org newsfeed
> You need to configure your email server address, port, and so forth in your mail reader in order to use email, don't you? No, IceDove figures that out automatically. > A newsgroup is not like a www site that you can casually point your newsreader to. So, you're saying it takes more effort to use this newsgroup? That is, it's less convenient? So then, why would I want to use it? > Not a "special" account Yes, a special account, because I don't use Usenet. No one uses Usenet. We're not in the 1990s anymore. > go through loops in order to use a mailing list What are you talking about? Everyone already has an email account, and subscribing usually just involves typing your email address into a box, getting an email, and then replying to that email or something like that. > I think this might have something to do with inherent human attitude against change - resistance to new and unknown. Usenet newsgroups are not "new". Mailing lists are newer AFAICT.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Free software foundations problems
LOL, dude, just a couple comments down from the one you linked, MB points out that you could disable GA instantly and your only response was, "what I put on my website is not your business". You're so full of shit. You have nothing against using Google Analytics to track your visitors whatsoever. > You should also put Snowden, Assange, Wikileaks, EFF, The Tor project and many others on your wall of shame as they use Twitter And the FSF, by your standard: https://mobile.twitter.com/fsf https://www.fsf.org/twitter But this is a bullshit standard, and you know it. Using Twitter isn't even remotely comparable to actively tracking your website's visitors.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Free software foundations problems
> No. It is like letting the gas company know where your stove is, exactly when you are using it, what you are cooking and allowing the gas company to control whether you are worth receiving that gas for the particular meal you are cooking or not. You're so full of shit. All Google knows by your downloading that data is that you're using a Web browser that supports a safe browsing feature. It tells them nothing about what websites you're visiting, or even whether you're visiting websites at all. Your browser could just be sitting there doing nothing for all they know. > You are simply buying what they are selling you I have NEVER read ANY promotional material about safe browsing from Google. EVER. But I have seen countless malicious websites that attempt phishing, or trick the user into installing malware, or just do so automatically through JavaScript. I don't need to be sold on the idea of someone auditing websites for such things and then offering a dataset for any Web browser to check. > But this "protection" tool is a method for censoring. If a non-malicious website is listed as unsafe, it doesn't mean the website is "blocked". It's up to the browser at that point what to do, and the browser typically gives a very strong warning, but gives the user the ability to override it. If the browser does block sites entirely, maybe you shouldn't use that browser. But that's not a strike against Safe Browsing; that's a strike against a forcible implementation of Safe Browsing.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Free software foundations problems
Ah, a quote mine. Classy. (See, I can do sarcasm too.)
