Remastered: Escape from the GAMMA wave - the weekly vacay

Science and Technology
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Let’s knock down each money-making monster and round em up one by one with alternatives to the stuff we use.

"Apple’s proprietary chain is a hard one to escape… jk. Android and Windows are goo- wait no Microsoft and Google already own them, the other two money making monsters. Well, simple. Get your Dell computer and a Pine Phone. Set up Linux on both. Now You got Microsoft and apple go boom, but what about google, amazon, and meta? Use Walmart and shop somewhere else, not online. It would be way more helpful with customer service, etc. For WhatsApp/Facebook/Instagram… use Discord for that stuff (although Discord is a corporation, the only people I want rid of is the GAMMA wave.). For Chrome use Firefox, and for Word/Excel/PowerPoint use Libre’s Productivity Suite. For Gmail, use Proton Mail. For Chrome’s search engine(google)… hmmm… hmmmm… use Duckduckgo. For Google Maps, use MapQuest. Use Slack and Eclipse/IntelliJ IDEA instead of Teams and VSCode. For AWS, use Digital Ocean. Now the question is Git… it’s owned by Microsoft… someone give an alternative to that one since I can’t find any. I did research on internet seems to be bitbucket(haven’t tried it soo…)… Also use Roblox instead of Minecraft… There we go. Time to take a deep breath… One warning I should tell you, fellow FOSSer is that these software aren’t as great as the GAMMA wave’s is, but they should be enough for the most part. I used Indie companies like Discord and Mozilla to get through the GAMMA wave. Anyways, itsfoss.com has an article about essential apps and tools to use instead of GAMMA software. Best Linux Software: 37 Essential Linux Apps [2021] "

After analyzing I made tons of errors so I decided to remaster it but list the apps/tech and what they replace.

Nokia phone/Minimalist Phone(any minimalist phone would work tbh because no apple/android) - Kills Apple

Your Linux computer (isn’t this obvious?) - Kills Microsoft

LibreOffice apps - kills Google drive, microsoft onedrive, etc.

Diaspora* - kills Facebook, Messenger, LinkedIn, etc.

Brave/Opera with ProtonMail, Mapquest, and Duckduckgo - kills Google with Chrome, Gmail, Maps, and Search

Use JetBrains IDE’s such as Eclipse instead of VSCode - kills Microsoft

Use something else besides GitHub(I haven’t done research on this case) - kills Microsoft

Try Walmart and Target instead of Amazon, Digital Ocean instead of AWS, Mycroft instead of Echo

Fin.

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@TerminalDweller
Really!!! You remind of the one’s whom thinks this World can be powered from Green Energy!!! Can’t see
this happening on my PC!!!

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there’s a solution to every problem my friend

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@TerminalDweller
Perhaps!!!

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The question is: Will politics allow us to solve this issue? Ofc politically I am right wing authoritarian but most solutions have no way of convincing the leaders such as Putin(a guy who accidentally scr**ed the USSR states)

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We have tackled this before. Git is a program and is FOSS. You are talking about Github. The alternative is Gitlab

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Politics never solves anything
Issues are solved by logic… if they are solvable
Non-solvable issues are addressed by creativity… finding new approaches… shifting the paradigm

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I tried to quote my old response and fix it, based on @Akito ranting about Discord

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I think you can always find a negative way to look at anything. It’s always good to have alternatives.

How many people do Google, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, and Apple employ?

Not that lots of folks don’t work for JetBrains and Mozilla, but every action has an opposite reaction. Not long ago WalMart was the huge gorilla that was killing main street. Now we should go to them instead of Amazon? I tend to use Target most of the time, but WalMart (Sam’s) too.

A guy I used to work for (and not much like really) said he tried to do business with number two. That doesn’t sound like such a bad thing.

Of the GAMMA list the one that gets under my skin the most is Apple. And it isn’t really even their fault, directly. The most annoying thing about Apple is all the fan boys that think anything Apple is magically perfect.

Oh, and we use Bitbucket at work. I like it just fine, but there are lots of third party tools that don’t support them and do support (interface with) GitHub. Also, the way I read it, Microsoft saved GitHub. They needed someone to buy them.

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100% : I use Apple tech, personal MacBook Pro M1 (I had to have a RISC laptop running a NIX / OS - and it was cheaper than some flagship laptops from other vendors), I also have two iPads, a 2017 iPad Pro 12.9" (2nd gen) which I mostly use via sidecar as another monitor on my Macbook pro. And now an iPad Mini (5th gen) which I mostly use as an ebook reader… But - I LOATHE iPhones… Mainly 'cause I’ve always (since 2008ish) used my smartphone as a portable music player and I DETEST the idea of having to use iTunes to get music onto my phone (I just keep files in directories per album - and “Music Folder Play Full” android app does just that - and does FLAC).
Apple’s not the be all and end all… But I don’t mind some of their tech…

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ok any open source alternative to amazon shopping then?

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Hi @daniel.m.tripp,
This is off subject, but with your Apple experience, I thought I would ask.
I have an old i-pod that I would like to add / delete songs from. In Linux I was able to copy the files using Rhythmbox, but all the songs names were coded with strange names.
Do you know of a tool I could use to update an i-pod with out using i-tunes?

Best Regards

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Sorry - I LOATHE iPods and iTunes and iPhones… Despite having 3 iPads (haven’t powered up my iPad 3 for 12-24 months or so - I jailbroke it - and can’t figure out [or be bothered] to unjailbreak it) and currently two MacBooks (and some vintage Mac gear) - I’ve maybe used iTunes twice in my WHOLE life!

One time 'cause I had an iTunes card, and no other money, to buy an album I really wanted… This is what I did :

  1. installed itunes for Windows into a Windows 7 VM
  2. downloaded the songs
  3. converted them to non SHITE format that Apple uses (m4a?)
  4. deleted the iTunes m4a files, copied MP3’s to my main collection.
  5. delete iTunes from the Windows 7 VM.

My portable music playing history :

mid 1990’s Sony discman
2001ish - bought a Hong Kong manufactured mp3 player that used Compact Flash cards (I think it ran Linux - but you couldn’t login to it)
2003ish - got a Sony branded Palm Pilot that took Sony Memory sticks
2006ish - got an O2 Windows CE smartphone (lost it when it fell off my belt clip riding my Harley - the O2 was just a rebranded HTC item anyway)
2008ish - got a HTC Tityn II Windows CE smartphone
2010ish - got a HTC Desire with Android
2011ish - aftre the HTC got stolen, got a Dell Streak 6" handset (or was it 7"? biggest phone at the time anyway)
2012ish - was working for a Telco and got a Samsung Note (1st gen) on a staff plan
2014ish - work supplied me with a new Galaxy Note 3
…
2018ish - was still using that Note 3
2019ish - got a Nokia 4.2 Android One handset
2020ish - got a 2nd hand Galaxy S9+ (which I’m still using) off e-bay

I actually didn’t mind Windows CE as a smartphone …

So - I’m the LAST person you should ever ask about iPhone or iTunes - I LOATHE BOTH! Note also - there’s not even a free way to play FLAC files on iOS (iPhone and iPad) - I can do that simple shit for free, and the music app I use on Android is “Music Player Full” (“Full” because I paid for it - but you can use it for free) - which does what it says. I store ALL my music in :

/Music/$ARTIST/$YYYY-$ALBUM-NAME

So - it’s already in a database - I don’t need some CRAPPY media database to abstract (obfuscate!) my access to my “raw” files…

Another that amazed me - for the first 10 years of the iPhone, I’d see fellow commuters, on the train, listening to music on their iPod while doing other stuff on the iPhone - and it NEVER occurred to them the could do ALL the iPoddy SHITE on their iPhone… Oh well…

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Apple is not primarily about functionality. It’s about “dEsiigN” and about how things look. If an iPod was part of the equipment, they would use it, because it’s the style.

At least, those were times when there was at least an option for poorer people to get into the world of Apple. I knew someone many years ago, who bought an iPod Nano(?) for her daughter, because everyone had some iCrap, but she didn’t want to spend hundreds of bucks on something that might as well be lost at some point anyway, so there was an option to buy the randomising audio player.
I still to this day think that it had forced random playback, just to give listeners the feeling, they should just buy a bigger iPod, if they want more control. There was, to my knowledge, no technical reason to make this thing random.

Things like these made me shake my head about Apple products already very early on, because, for example, if would absolutely annoy the crap out of me, if I had to be forced to listen to random tracks. I never did that, never liked it. I want to listen to my album from A-Z. I don’t want to listen to classical Music for a 20 minutes track and then let the media player change to a Drum & Bass track, without asking me first.

At this point in time, I do not know any standalone and “cool” Apple product, which is just as cheap as the iPod Nano was. If I remember correctly, the cheapest iPhone possible nowadays is at least 3 to 4 times more expensive than the iPod Nano back then.

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I’m 100% the same - I don’t make playlists… I just listen to albums, in the track order the artist intended… I’ve come across music player apps (on Android) that default randomise track order, or IGNORE filesystem filename sort order! WTF?

On the odd occasion I’ve made a playlist, it’s usually my favourite songs from one artist who doesn’t have a hits compilation (and most of my favourite artists are obscure enough to never had had top 40 hits anyway) - and some artistst that do have compilations, they often miss my favourite songs… So I grab the files for my favourite songs, and then use metadata tools to make them appear as a single album in my music player…

I also think it’s a great disservice (and disrespectful) to the artist, who worked with their producer, to determine the final list of tracks and what order. And the likes of Spotify (I REFUSE to use that substandard piece of crap) ignore that information, unless you’re a HUGE fat cash cow for them, like Taylor Swift, who was able to FORCE Spotify to play her songs off her recent album in the actual track order… They couldn’t give a rats arse about some other obscure artist though…

Wasn’t that iPod model you’re talking about the iPod “Shuffle”? Or was the “Nano” the next model (without a display!) after the Shuffle (which also had no display).

My digital music “store of choice” is Bandcamp - which is mostly “alternative” or non-mainstream stuff - they have streaming app - but I don’t use it that way - I download albums in FLAC format… If I can’t find it there, to buy - I’ll hunt down a pirated version - HEY! If you can’t provide product X in my format and outlet of choice, I’ll steal it! But then I also do buy vinyl which is hard to steal from the likes of pir8bay :smiley:

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I know plenty of albums that make the tracks not only fade in and out of each other, but also make it seem like it’s one big track.

There are also albums, which tell a story through the album. One of them for example, explains a day of experiences from waking up until going to sleep, naturally in chronological order.

Oh yeah, that one. The tiny one without a display, that you could clip to your clothing.

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Same here - one that immediately comes to mind for me is Tool’s 2001 album “Lateralus” which has Parabol/Parabola, and they must ABSOLUTELY always be played together, as gapless as possible… There’s another example on Tool’s follow up to Lateralus : 10,000 Days, the songs “Lost Keys (Blame Hoffman”, and “Rosetta Stoned” are telling the same story, about a VERY VERY bad LSD trip that ends up in a hospital…

And yeah - there’s concept albums, many of my favourite bands have mostly concept albums, e.g. The Who’s “Tommy”, or ALL of Fear Factory’s catalog… Pink Floyd… Yes… Mastodon… it’s a staple for Prog rock bands…

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I literally thought of precisely that album, but I forgot to mention it. :laughing:

Tool is absolutely genius.

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