Making porting gog to linux a priority which has by far the smallest market share for computer gaming is the dumbest thing anyone in this thread is saying

Building a bridge across the river is totally stupid, because no one crosses that river to get to where they are going.

Building a house on that hill is dumb, because no one lives there.

Creating that new type of device is a waste of time, because no one has ever bought one like that.

…

You see the point, right? Not that I’m trying to give business advice. I’m just saying that these things aren’t necessarily as stupid as you seem to think.

It really is pretty weird. … and interesting. I don’t necessarily think the existence of filibusters is a bad thing, but it definitely a very weird thing.

Are you suggesting that this particular type of CP should be acceptable? (And suddenly “but I used AI” becomes a popular defence.)

I’ve been using OsmAnd for years, and offline maps has always been one of their main things.

Something bizarre is happening to media organizations that use ‘clicks’ as a core metric.

As someone who has taught many children how to use excel, the new AI features make using it easier but teaching and learning harder. A lot of stuff now happens automagically, and that makes it harder to see the reasons and structures and language of how it is meant to work. So doing basic stuff is now trivially easy, but learning to become competent enough to do more creative and advanced stuff is more difficult.

I don’t think it is reasonable to expect every individual to become a privacy / legal expert. I think people should have reasonable protections and assurances given to them without needing to study the details of everything they do on a case-by-case basis.

We have laws about what food can and cannot be sold - so that individuals don’t have to personally test and monitor every product for safety. Privacy & data could be done like that too.

Thanks for the suggestion. I’ll check out Rnote sometime soon.

(As I said, I do like the writing & drawing features of xournal++; and so I’ve been doing a bit of basic file / folder organising with that already; but it certainly isn’t as easily browseable as OneNote.)

Part of my point is that a lot of everyday rules do break down at large scale. Like, ‘drink water’ is good advice - but a person can still die from drinking too much water. And having a few people go for a walk through a forest is nice, but having a million people go for a walk through a forest is bad. And using a couple of quotes from different sources to write an article for a website is good; but using thousands of quotes in an automated method doesn’t really feel like the same thing any more.

That’s what I’m saying. A person can’t physically read billions of books, or do the statistical work to put them together to create a new piece of work from them. And since a person cannot do that, no law or existing rule currently takes that possibility into account. So I don’t think we can really say that a person is ‘allowed to’ do that. Rather, it’s just an undefined area. A person simply cannot physically do it, and so the rules don’t have to consider it. On the other hand, computer systems can now do it. And so rather than pointing to old laws, we have to decide as a society whether we think that’s something we are ok with.

I don’t know what the ‘best’ answer is, but I do think we should at least stop to think about it carefully; because there are some clear downsides that need to be considered - and probably a lot of effects that aren’t as obvious which should also be considered!

Do you know someone who’s read a billion books and can write a new (trashy) book in 5 mins?

I’m very interested in OneNote alternatives. I’ve been using OneNote for longer than I’ve disliked Microsoft… and I still think it’s a good app. Pretty much the only thing I don’t like about OneNote is the increasingly close integration with Windows accounts. I’d rather my notes were not scanned and uploaded and processed by a US mega-corp…

Anyway, people keep suggesting stuff like Joplin. But that isn’t even vaguely close to OneNote in terms of stylus and inking. For me, inking is the main core feature. And so in terms of alternatives, xournal++ is a closer fit. (xournal++ has essentially no organisational structure for notes; but it is really great for inking.)

What I’d really like is basically the organisational structure of Joplin (or whatever other alternative) + the inking power of xournal++. And ideally being able to import my vast amounts of handwritten OneNote work! – But that last bit is probably too much to ask.

Hmm. I wonder if Aquaman is in the market for some old computers.

It’s like Moore’s law. The number of bytes for a basic app doubles every 2.5 years.

When I was young, we’d get a few different games games on a single 1.4 Mb floppy disk. The games were simpler, sure, but exactly the same games now would be far bigger in bytes.

gTerry Pratchett, I think.

For example, I bought some beer a couple of days ago, and after I paid the guy said “have a good evening and enjoy the beer”; and I said “you too”…

I guess I hadn’t processed the second part quickly enough.

I find this list weird. I guess I’m the kind of person you’re complaining about!

I like having GUI available for standard stuff (eg. dconf editor is great for various desktop settings). And I like file extensions in many cases - eg. I like to be able to tell the difference between a .png and .jpeg just by reading the file name. … And Linux often really does give better performance on older machines compared to Windows.

… So I suppose in your eyes I’m basically an old Windows admin brining bad habits to Linux. I’m just not seeing the downside of these ‘bad habits’.

Well you’re in luck - because Linux has reached the point where you don’t need the terminal for any kind of standard activity. You can easily install and uninstall stuff, and change various desktop UI stuff, and run all sorts of apps - all without ever touching the terminal.

Does Nicole like that movie or something?

The Orange Box 2; featuring Half Life 3, Team Fortress 3, and Portal 3.

You mean the memes about the small misshapen orbs?