You are 100% correct. We have the option and freedom to do that, and many technically inclined people probably do. You may be one of them.
I believe most people walk into a store or shop online, choose a PC based on price, brand, screen size, storage, or RAM, and use the OS that comes with it. Most of the time, that will be Windows. They may not even know many of the technical details of the PC.
I also agree that, for most people, Windows “works well enough.” That convenience, combined with it being preinstalled, meets their needs.
Oh yes, Bill. I remember the days of punched cards. I wonder how many of us old timers remember the drum card for the key punch machine or the carriage control tape for the impact printers.
Yes, and it is going over board. The other day at a large grocery story chain, I had to install an app on my phone in order to receive the sale price for an item. Burnt me up.
We have the same here with lidl and their app and many times the app say its one price and when you pay at the counter the price is higher very confusing and frustrating
Where I worked we had a database of over 1 million punched cards. The cabinets lined one wall of a large room . Today I have that same research data on a usb stick. It survived transitions to reel tapes, casette tapes, CD’s, and now a memory stick. I am looking into preserving it on Figshare.
Noone preserves scientific data. It just dies with the project, Terribly irresponsible waste.
I think your observation may be only a symptom of a larger, more fundamental problem. When I take note of the many negative effects the free enterprise, two party political system has on so many of us, it makes me wonder if we might all be better off if we could find a way to take money, profit, and even politics as we know it now, out of the equation as much as possible, perhaps a system where everyone can have all of the essentials needed to thrive, and perhaps a bit more for those who choose to work in any capacity for the common good, one where the people directly choose who leads us, but without political parties, one in which anyone who wishes to ‘run’ for an elected office can, provided they can find enough people who will declare their support for them, and where each person can only declare support for one candidate for each office, one where candidates seek office much like we seek employment in the private sector now, with a resume and by telling the public their qualifications and their view for the future, etc., not one where candidates argue shortcomings of their competitors, one where it’s the job of the news media to investigate each candidate’s qualifications/past history/experience, etc.
I’m sorry for rambling; I have no idea what such a system would look like in reality, how we might get there, or if it could even prove to be better for us all in the long run. The one thing I do know is that the system we have now is broken in many ways, and must be repaired or changed, soon.
Yes Ernie, I agree the current system has faults.
One of the bjggest issues is who owns the means of production. … capital needs to be disfributed over more people or smaller entities.
I have spent a lot of time reading about the medieval world. If you leave out the constant warmongering, which was confined to the military class, it was a quiet ordered world with people living in small communities led by one privileged individual who was modrated by both Church and State.
It survived for hundreds of years and was ended by the demographic changes of the industrial revolution.
We cant go back to that, but we can maybe find new ways to choose responsible individuals and put them in power … that is what you are suggesting.
How you limit powers is an important thing to deal with … The Westminster system seems to be the only method we have so far discovered that can keep tyrants in check. Look at the countries that are without it … they are some of the worlds worst trouble spots.
I understand ARCH is not for everyone, people just don’t get ARCH. ARCH is freedom, power, and the bleeding edge of digital exploration. I agree with the concerns about the AUR, but there are a few applications I need that can only be installed from the AUR, but I use it sparingly and really think about what I install. That being said, having used Linux since I got Red Hat on floppies back in the 90’s, I just love it. ARCH is stable and the rolling distro model is fantastic. I also love Catchy and Debian and fedora, they all have their use in my systems, but ARCH gets a special place in my heart.
It would be wonderful if we lived in a perfect world and people could just respect projects the contributors pour their heart and soul into, but that just isn’t the case. The world is a dangerous place, be carful and watch what you install, but don’t let that push you away from the greatest project of the modern age. Linux in all its flavors is the largest collaborative project ever and it is owned by humanity. The idea behind the freedom it provides is worth fighting for and contributing too.
I also like Cachy os very much and Fedora to Debian not so much ,but we are all different and like different things and got different needs and thank god for that .
Yes , pure Arch is fine… it is only AUR we are concerned about.
I use Artix rather than Arch… because I want non-systemd. It is much the same as Arch, but I can have a modern init system.
Yes Linux is a big project if you consider all the distros. Every society is a large human project too, but Linux goes across national barriers. Science is àn international project too, but it does not have the integration of Linux.
Do not neglect BSD. It is important to have something breaking the monopoly. BSD is less user-driven than Linux … more centrally managed if you like to think that way.
Can you explain how a melting pot of individual efforts has been able to be combined into a into a successful working system?
I agree, and that’s the main reason I propose a governmental structure based on that of the United States; one with checks and balances. In the United States, we have the office of the President, our figure-head leader, responsible to manage the services enacted and funded by Congress, the House of Representatives, responsible for managing funding governmental services, the Senate, responsible for enacting laws, and the Supreme Court, responsible for interpreting the Constitution of the United States of America
One element of our Governmental structure that I believe needs addressing is how to limit the level of power the presiding President can assume, and remedies for when those limits are exceeded. Another is the manner in which members of our Supreme Court are chosen. While I have no issue that the Office of the President nominates new or replacement judges, with the U.S. Congress ratifying the President’s choice, I believe that before Congressional ratification of a candidate can be enacted, a National vote should be taken so the voice of the people can be heard.
My earlier post dealt only with how candidates for National offices are elected, and I want to see a system in which every American citizen has an equal voice in that selection. That’s not true for Presidential Elections. In the end, it’s the Electoral College that chooses the winner, and its members are chosen in a two-step process. Before the election each political party chooses a slate of prospective members. When the American people vote for a Presidential candidate, they are actually choosing the slate of electors the candidate’s political party chose, state-by-state, winner-take-all for each state with the exception of Main and Nebraska which have adopted a proportional selection system.
It’s this system that uses an Electoral College to actually elect the President that I object to. I’d much prefer that my vote, and those of every other valid voter actually determines the winner of a Presidential Election. As a result, the overall popular vote doesn’t always coincide with the choice of the Electoral College.
In Australia we dont have an elected leader. The only vote we have is for the candidate who represents us in our local electorate. The winning political party determines who will be leader … party leaders are well known before an election so if you want to vote for a particular leader you vote for the local candidate who represents that leader’s party.
So we are similar to the UK.
When did the US come to deviate from the UK model? It does seem to outsiders that you have an enormous amount of fuss about electing a leader, and we hear little of your election of representatives. That is not a criticism, it is what we perceive from outside.
For the most part, it all came into being in 1776, when our forefathers wrote, then adopted the Constitution of the United States. If interested, here are a few sources I got using AI:
Official Congressional Source: You can read the text and access a regularly updated, annotated guide to Supreme Court interpretations on the Constitution Annotated platform provided by the Library of Congress and Congress.gov.
Dont want to go down too deep into politics but yesterday the french courts decided that a political leader who is guilty of a crime where she must wear an electronic bracelet to control her movements can stand to be elected to PM of france (if voted for).
A former PM was going to prison, then he was not, then he was … Lost track now of where and when.
The mayor in the village next to ours was convicted of a crime and not allowed to live or enter his village, but was re elected as mayor by the people and still cannot enter.
Not even going to think of the resignation of a party leader yesterday who plans to restart for his same place …
“President-elect Donald Trump was sentenced in New York, months after a jury found him guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business documents to cover up an extramarital affair.”
What happened to past president Clinton ?and nixon ?
Did they go the same way …
By the way, i have no political affiliation and have no idea if they are all the same party. Left right centre and not just usa but all countries appear to have the same issues with the elected represented member.
Being an expat myself I dont get a vote.
Lies, damed lies and statistics used to be the phase perhaps it should read political leader.
Paul, Nixon rehabilitated himself to some degree before he died. Clinton has served with distinction in helping to solve diplomatic disputes. He and the other living exPresidents gather occasionally to ridicule Trump and his foolish failures.
As i said before I dont do politics, we only read the papers reporting the bad things never the other side of the coin. Hope I did not offend you or others.