1x51: Bad Voltage Live in Germany 2015

Well, that’s not very nice, is it. :slight_smile:

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I wouldn’t take the stance of the gentlemen at the event (no laws), I think punishment makes sense in a number of instances. Theft, abuse, violence, fraud, etc. However, I do not see laws themselves as an effective means to curb occurrences of crime. I’d argue in, at least some instances, laws have the opposite effect (IE alcohol prohibition in the US). Is it a binary choice one way or the other? I doubt it.

I’d like to see a more scientific/technical approach. Apply solution, assess outcome, improvement or not? If not, devise and apply different solution. What works best after various tests should win out.

I’d agree on drugs, criminalizing drugs seems like a very wrong approach and counter productive.

The poverty level, at least in the US, seems to be on the rise in more urban areas especially. To a large degree I’m pretty disenchanted. Here in the US most of the political talk centers around war and various US meddling around the globe.

There are many who live in poverty and would not consider stealing. They make the choice not to. Those who do steal make the choice to do so. An ancient proverb speaks about one not being despised for stealing because he is hungry, but will still have to face the consequences. It is more of a moral issue than a technical one.

Read up, I’d already done it :wink:

I think yours is better though

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I think that is key, catching the criminals. If there’s little to no risk of getting caught then the severity of the punishment is irrelevant.

The problem with cyber-crime is they are often perpetrated across borders. So apprehending the perpetrators and bringing them to justice becomes much more complicated. Sometimes impossible. Either because of the political relationship between the two countries involved, or the resources available to law enforcement in either country.

Brought a damned tear to my eye. This shit is practically poetry.

I dunno. I thought it was sweet. :smile:

Well I only just got around to watching the video. I really disagree with Stuart’s point at the end, he’s repeatedly made this point over the years and there is certainly some truth in it. However I’ve spent a good amount of time on various linux related subreddits and even on the toxic heart of /r/linuxmasterrace, when people legitimately need help, most people pull their heads in and actually give the correct, reasonable advice. I’m not sure exactly what forum Stuart frequents that manages to trump the toxicity of some of these subreddits, however perhaps he should start avoiding them.

I completely agree with Jeremy’s point about how the grass is always greener. Step away from your comfort zone for a short while and I’m pretty sure you will quickly regret leaving, we’re certainly far from a perfect community but to suggest we are a bad one isn’t true.

Part of Stuart’s point was about how distros don’t work together enough. Part of what I like about the Linux distro way of doing things is the natural selection, each man for himself sort of thing we have going on. Distros die, communities die, projects die. Often these things die because of another community, distro or project. However they died because they were beaten, not because of mallicious intent. Our desktops may have many problems, however sitting on our laurels not innovating secure in our dominance over our competitors, has never been one of them.

I’m not for a moment disputing that you can get decent advice. The issue is this:

Native well meaning new person: I’m thinking of using Ubuntu, and it made me wonder what 2+2 was; can anyone give me the answer to that question?

It's 4.
Why are you using Ubuntu? You suck
Use Mint!
4.
The answer is 4.
Canonical destroy free software.
Yeah Ubuntu 4 lyf! Don't listen to haters!
Answering your question: 4.
4.
Don't understand why anyone uses Linux, it's not ready for real users
If you want to understand how to add numbers, you must install Arch.
It's 4.
5

I think this might be where our difference lies. I think (and please correct me if I’m wrong) that you’d look at that list of responses and say: you see? The question got answered correctly six times! Anyone can look at that list and get the answer! But I look at that list and think: this scares people away, a list of responses like that. So they never join the community and never learn how to distill answers from this sort of thread, or how to ignore the irrelevant. Obviously you can characterise my view as how I just want a line of nodding Stepford robots who’ll say “well done, use Ubuntu, join us” in creepy monotones, and I can characterise your view as how everyone needs to enjoy being repeatedly shit on by abusive respondents and that’s basically a core open source skill. But I’d hope we’re above such. :slight_smile:

I understand your point I just think the problem isn’t as big as you think, or perhaps its worse some places than others, I’m not sure. I just came back to this forum from this reddit thread for example:

I’m sure once this gets enough responses, there will eventually be the worthless replies you mention. However even on this subreddit, which basically advertises itself as the worst our community gets, it’s not as bad as you seem to think it is.

What about this one? I’m sure eventually (if the thread maintained activity) someone will arrive and state it is in every way inferior to Arch, however no one yet has. It really is a few bad apples, a very few.

Perhaps a thread with more responses?

This should be the ideal place for the comments you mention, a fairly old thread about upgrading to the latest edition of the “hated” Ubuntu. Lets have a look. One guy who mentions the release date of Fedora 23… and thats it…

I’m sure my luck won’t hold forever going through these threads but for what is basically the cesspit of the linux community to be this restrained does put weight to my point that the issue is not as rampant as you seem to think.
I think perhaps you percieve it as larger due to aligning with Ubuntu, which is the main target for abuse in the Linux ecosystem at the moment.

So, the answer is: use something even less popular and then there won’t be a problem? Something in the open source community gets popular and you ought to step away from it to avoid abuse? This is what I’m talking about, entirely…

Ubuntu isn’t getting abuse because it’s popular. Ubuntu is getting abuse because it earned its position as the premier Linux distribution through solid hard work, however now it still retains that position in the minds of many while it’s high quality has slipped.

There are so many stories of people having bad experiences lately because of Ubuntu, not because of Linux, just because of the Ubuntu distribution. For example I set up Ubuntu for my uncle not two months ago. Every time the computer would start up, there would be an Apport error saying something or another had gone wrong, until I had to disable Apport entirely for him just to get it to shut up. He is also suffers from diabetes and has lost a large amount of his sight, so accessibility and particularly font scaling was something I needed to set up for him. Expanding the font wouldn’t expand the titlebar of the window so at the font I selected the text was cut in half, as were the menu options. There was also a printer/scanner issue, I needed to actually google around to get his printer/scanner to work properly.

I switched him over to Mint, primarily because of its more Windows style layout as it was clear he was having difficulty adjusting to the menu controls on the left etc. There was no error when he starts the computer, the accessibility tools work beautifully, the printer worked out of the box etc etc.

Ubuntu wasn’t the best choice for him. However Ubuntu has become the one and only experience so many people have of Linux, which was fine when Ubuntu was honestly the undisputed best Linux around. However a lot of people think it’s not actually the best experience for a new user right now, particularly due to its bugginess. Hell even Jono “ubuntu community manager” Bacon, admitted Ubuntu has gotten pretty buggy lately.

Personally I lost most of my faith in Ubuntu with this bug:
http://news.softpedia.com/news/An-Old-Ubuntu-Bug-Lets-Malicious-Users-Gain-Sudo-Access-479625.shtml
There was a guy on reddit who’s username was about this bug, he had submitted this severe bug to the Ubuntu security team and they refused to fix it for some inane reason while every other distribution scrambled to put together a patch. I’m sure every distribution has made similar mistakes however I don’t think the market leader has the luxuary of such mistakes. If they want to be the best, they have to be the best. The reddit thread by the guy:

There’s also the issue of Unity 8, we’ve been stuck waiting for Unity 8 for a long time now and there’s certainly a sentiment that the majority of Ubuntu’s effort is going towards that new platform, not on making each of the Unity 7 releases the best releases possib.e. While it may be brilliant when it comes out, it doesn’t matter until it does come out. Canonical has stuck with this same insistance of “not this next release, but the one after” for what, 3 years now? more? Every release is a pre Unity 8 filler bugfix release, that somehow adds more bugs than it fixes. It doesn’t feel like Canonical is giving their current Ubuntu releases their best effort, simply because their development resources are focused on this next generation that we’re still all waiting for. Perhaps I’m wrong about that, however it’s certainly the feeling a lot of people seem to have towards Ubuntu right now.

There are also lots of subjective elements. Ubuntu has struck out on its own towards its own vision quite strongly. Personally I applaud that, I think Linux distributions need to be more varied than just what package format they use. However plenty of people take issue with the Unity desktop on a personal subjective level and don’t think a Unity desktop should represent the face of the Linux desktop. This was a lot less of an issue back when we just had GNOME 2 and KDE, its a problem caused by the much broader choice we now have. Lets not forget your own words from back in 2005 or something “fuck a bunch of KDE, everyone should just use GNOME, push the efforts of the community in one direction”. I hope you changed your opinion since then but you must see why some people take this mentality.

Well that was a lot longer than I thought it would be, perhaps you disagree with these points however I hope you can see the complaints about Ubuntu are not purely the baseless spite towards the market leader. Canonical don’t owe us anything, however basically everyone joining this community comes through the Ubuntu front door, when Ubuntu doesn’t offer them the best experience and the shortcomings of Ubuntu are seen as the shortcomings of “Linux”, lots of people get upset.

There are decent counterpoints I’ll admit, like all the stupidity about the Amazon integration, anyone who ever refused to recommend Ubuntu based on that is a moron. I never said there was no issue of baseless hostility, just that I disagreed that it was as prevelant as you seem to think nor that it was the primary threat to open source.

When it comes to what I think the primary threat to open source is, I think there are two things.

Firstly it’s actually having a selling point. Windows isn’t a POS anymore. Viruses are a much less notable threat + Linux has taken a couple of security knocks lately. Windows is cheaper than ever. Things like a decent CLI and virtual desktops are actually being implemented in Windows. If Linux couldn’t overcome the inertia in the time of Vista how can we get marketshare now?

Secondly is about the whole definition of “threat to open source”. I think we forget we’ve actually won most of the “fights” open source is involved in, just not the one most of us care about - the desktop. With the “death” of the PC I think we should be more worried that our battlefield actually survives let alone who wins the fight. Because of this I think we should work on the things that are furthest from the capabilities of a cloud or a mobile to ensure the PC actually maintains relevence. That’s why I think we should ally somewhat with Microsoft, for they seem to be up shit creek without a paddle with regards to getting out of the PC business and have no choice but to fight to keep their market and thus themselves alive.

Did he get his payoff?

Can anyone 'member what their Beer was called ?

Nice girls; nice beer.