s_s @ s_s @lemmy.one

Posts

1

Comments

401

Joined

2 yr. ago

Chicagoland.

Well, it used to be called the Northwest Territory.

Then we expanded even further west and it became the "old west".

Then the "old west" came to mean the Southwest region pre-statehood.

So then they became the "Midwest".

Ranches were popular in the 80s and 90s when US boomers were buying "forever homes".

For everywhere and everyone else, the foundation and roof are the most expensive part of the building so it makes the most sense to double or triple your square footage between those by building 2 or 3 stories.

When people say Vista was bad, they're not talking about the operating system itself. They're talking about the user experiance and context at the time:

• Most people forget we were all on the cusp of switching from x86 hardware to AMD64. It was a relatively easy transition, but it was a jump that provided some hard hurdles (drivers) everyone had to jump together. Some things were not automatically compatible. You would likely have to throw away some piece of otherwise perfectly functional hardware to upgrade. People didn't like that.
• Also, we were also switching from single core to multiple-core computing. Software had to be written to specifically take advantage of this and often it wasn't. So even if you had the latest and greatest hardware, the performance gains were often disappointing.
• The driver models had to change because Win XP was a security nightmare for most people. Browser security had completely been neglected by Microsoft in favor of pushing their ActiveX controls in IE6 and IE7. The entire security model had to change, but the UAC prompts were absolutely out of control. Still, it really was better than getting wrecked by malware.
• microsoft pushed new file formats with Office 2007 for absolutely hostile reasons and also transitioned to the ribbon interface. These might have been technical improvements, but they were more compatibility hoops people had to jump through that they were frustrated by.
• Apple was thriving. iPods were in everybody's pockets and the first iPhone had launched at exactly the same time and was changing how people thought about computers. Vista was "more of the same" in all the wrong ways. Where was the innovation? Gmail launched in 2004, why couldn't Microsoft make a competing offer?
• Finally all the cool, futuristic features that had been hinted at with Windows Longhorn were cut from Vista. If you were someone who followed those things, Microsoft over-promised and under-delivered.

Ballmer-led Microsoft had mismanaged their core products for years and it all came to a head with Vista. The consumer frustration was palpable and coincided with several architecture and forced UI changes that really made it hard for people to fall in love with Vista. Individually each problem wouldn't have been a deal breaker but swallowing all the required pills at once left a sour taste in people's mouths and had them looking at alternatives. It's no coincidence that macbook and netbook sales rose sharply over the next few years.

To be fair, I wasn't expecting to hear that you were coming into a conversation about contactless payments, using a word like "skimming" and meaning something completely out-of-context.

That's a real doozie, yo.

You meant to reply to me?

"Robert E. Peetapes" is back on the menu, boys.

Skimming works because it attacks 1980s technology.

Contactless is much more secure, given an extra 40 years of defending scams.

Thinking of this as "just another attack vector" is laughably ignorant, really.

People are ignorant by default.

You have to educate them along and let them choose their own path. Sometimes they wonder off the path of ideal development. It's basic statistics.

We should demand that people contend with reality on a factual basis

You can stand at an open door and beg them to walk through it but you can't shove them.

We shouldn't be coddling people who profess beliefs that are demonstrably false, simply because their feelings might get hurt.

Meritocracy is dangerous. You cannot punish people for stunted development, it does no good. You can really only reward them for developing and contributing to the well being of society.

This is psychology 101 level stuff. If you want a society based on science, then use the we science have.

I know this is pedantic, but that's just not right. Amish and Mennonites are generally distinct.

Well, Jakob Ammann, who the Amish are named after, was a member of a Swiss Brethren church (now called Mennonite) who didn't think his Mennonite brethren did enough shunning (a core principle of the Swiss Brethren).

So he formed his own church. Eventually members in his church (surprise!), shunned him over some different differences, as it happens when you join a group with all the cantankerous people. And it continued so on and so forth.

The distinctions might be in practical matters that arise over time--like fabrics used in their dress, use of buttons vs hook fasteners, or use of technology, or use of English vs German, but theologically they're pretty much identical and these differences are just natural things that happen over time.

An Amish church split is really just two groups mass shunning each other. There's no real difference.

And I'm aware it probably doesn't seem like that closer up, because I'm speaking very abstractly. But I can't see how anything you've said disagrees with what I've said.

And, I want to say I do appreciate hearing your experiences. For the record: I have a degree in Bible, did some post-grad study on church history, have some family members who are Mennonite, and grew up pretty close to a large Amish community.

Yeah...wifi.

Good luck!

Correct. Amish are Mennonites who shun other Mennonites. The elders of their church decide for the local congregation what is and isn't appropriate conduct. If you disagree, you are shunned.

If the congregation down the road disagrees, those folks are shunned.

So you get very customized, local, specific lists about what is and isn't allowable.

Really, it looks more extreme, but it's no different than independent baptist churches or churches of christ 'disfellowship'-ing with other congregations over doctrinal minutia.

In all cases you will get a few congregations thinking that only their congregation of 20-50 folks are the only ones in the world who "go to heaven". 😂

So, all Amish might not agree what technologies are worth shunning over, but they all agree that some technologies are worth restricting their members access to, upon penalty of shunning.

Yes absolutely.

Blocks keith@lemm.ee

The command line is great for anyone who wants their computer to do exactly what they --eh--command it to do.

I don’t think how hot humans feel works at all, it’s just arbitrary

Fahrenheit was originally calculated to be 64 even divisions between water freezing temp and human body temp, then 32 more units below freezing.

Then ambient human body temp was recalculated from 96F to 98.6F.

So it's not exactly arbitrary. It's based on powers of 2, based upon an inaccurate measurement.

That's community software!

If you want to stick your fingers in your ears and go "LALALA" we don't care. We're not selling you anything, do what you think is best for you.

If you want to be treated as a consumer (aka milked for money), then go right ahead, we are not here to convince you otherwise.

Whenever you want something better, you know where to look. Some of us will be here to help you along.

Maybe that's true for gnome, but gnome isn't linux just like CUPS isn't an operating system and systemd isn't an operating system (which is based on launchd).

It all has to be packaged together and distributed and unless you're doing all your own packaging (and LfS is an experience, but not really an OS!), you're relying on a distro maintainer to do that for you.

yet

Emacs is my motion graphics compositor of choice on linux.

Don't get me wrong, I think Linux is awesome, but this is the problem. You're never going to get the saturation necessary to bring average consumers over in significant numbers until they have a clear choice.

So, Linux is written by system programmers for system programmers.

The rest of us get to outsource that work by using a premade distribution, where system programmers mostly volunteer their time and efforts to package togther the system they want to use and they distribute it for free. Of course, there is no consensus of what anyone wants to use so there are lots of different distributions.

This isn't a problem and there will never be consensus.

If you need a "clear choice", you can always subscribe to one from Microsoft.