Works great using Firefox on my Ubuntu laptop with only integrated graphics too. Although I had to click the NoScript placeholder to allow the WebGL to execute.
It's not "Ubuntu for phones", i.e. a replacement OS. It's "Ubuntu for Android", an addition to Android.[1]
Canonical enables Android phone users to have the benefit of a full desktop, but also keep Android and its apps. If you ask me it's a smart move.
[1] http://www.ubuntu.com/devices/android
I used to think Stallman was an abrasive fanatic but now I think otherwise. The reason he makes me uncomfortable is because he highlights the compromises I have made. I think this is part of the reason why some people react so negatively and emotionally to him. He vocally refuses to use non-free software and this, in my humble opinion at least, makes him a constant reminder of how many of us sacrifice security and freedom (as he defines it) for usability and ease of use.
I used to think he was an abrasive fanatic. Oh wait, I still do. I'm tired of being told my decisions are compromises, and wrong ones at that. I'm tired of being told I owe everything to someone by people who completely ignore history.
Imagine if someone told you "If it weren't for Abraham Lincoln, half the population would still be living in slavery today." You'd laugh in their face.
Because slaves would have magicked out of slavery due to the passage of time? I'm not sure why you would laugh in their face rather than suggest alternative scenarios where other processes might have eliminated slavery if Lincoln hadn't happened.
I'm not smart enough to understand your comment. Are you saying that free software would have inevitably come to exist with or without Stallman? If you are, I'd say the burden of proof is on you.
Um, free software was the way of the world before Bill Gates popularized the selling of the stuff.
Stallman rose to the occasion as the defender of the "old way". He did not "invent" free software, whatever that means. (He did invent the Copyleft license, but there are many other licenses of free software besides Copyleft.)
Might have been better for me to say "a free ecosystem of legally usable source code comparable to the one a large part of the industry depends on today."
Free software in the domain of personal computers, which at the time were still hand assembled and didn't even have a functioning display, was the only way anyone knew how to do it until Bill Gates wanted money for BASIC.
IBM, of course, had been charging money for software for decades prior to that.
Given that someone already wrote something (scratching their own itch, hoped to make money but gave up, altruism), they may decide to jump from low adoption+recognition to potential ubiquity by releasing the software free for others to exploit. On the basis of individual incentive alone, this is inevitable.
>I used to think he was an abrasive fanatic. Oh wait, I still do. I'm tired of being told my decisions are compromises, and wrong ones at that. I'm tired of being told I owe everything to someone by people who completely ignore history.
Being tired of being told something and that something being untrue, are two completely different things.
>Imagine if someone told you "If it weren't for Abraham Lincoln, half the population would still be living in slavery today." You'd laugh in their face.
Only if I was one of those guys that are ignorant about the importance of the particular human subject in history.
I wonder how many Google Glasses wearers will become Life Loggers? I meet them at conferences occasionally. Some people actively avoid them. There's something about standing face to face with someone taking a photo of you every X seconds that people find really unnerving. I certainly do. Real time video is worse and it's very different to CCTV.
How long before Google collects and mines all this video like they did with Google StreetView but in realtime? Combined with the huge advances in facial recognition the privacy implementations are frightening. It reminds me of the scifi film "The Entire History of You". [1]
In the future will people who want to opt out of face recognition and tracking have to wear identifiers*, e.g. QR codes, on their person when talking to Google Glasses users, much like Google's wifi policy? [2]
All the technology you're worried about exists and is widely used. Walk around the streets of New York City. Chances are, you're being photographed by people sharing photos online. My commute involves riding across the Brooklyn Bridge. I'm sure I ended up in 20 separate photographs today, many of which are now on Facebook. Likely with a comment about how I'm an asshole for riding my bicycle in the bicycle lane :) The underlying technology is not going to change once people start wearing cameras. If anything, the sheer volume of photographs being shared will make it less likely that the picture is of you.
As for facial recognition, anyone who can write a few lines of Perl could easily scrape social network profile photos and start matching pictures of people on the Internet to names. It's trivial. And doing this sort of thing manually is popular: search for "human flesh search engine".
Wasn't there some legal ruling about that? I found some discussions [1] about it. The section about CPU vendor string manipulation is very interesting.
This mirrors my experience. I was really surprised with my parents reaction to Ubuntu. They found Unity easier to understand than Windows. It has opened up a whole new world to them. Before they barely touched the PC, now they email relatives on a regular basis and have switched over the using government and banking services online. As an added bonus I now rarely get calls for unpaid tech support.
Speaking just as a normal user with no expertise in data privacy etc, the things which negatively affect my trust in a service are:
- lack of a visible monetisation plan. If I can't see how you'll make money I will assume that'll it be through selling all my data to advertisers.
- A copy/paste Privacy Policy
- Being based in the US (prejudiced maybe, but not without reason). As a European I don't want my data on US servers and subject to ever seemingly weakening data protection laws.
- Not knowing who is behind the company. If I can't see Linkedin profiles, blogs or similar for the founders I will assume it's shady and walk away.
- Responding to questions about privacy with vague meaningless canned statements that don't address the issue.
- Inability to see exactly what the company stores about me. E.g. I can't see what metrics Google has generated from my GMail account to use for targeted advertising
These aren't the views of normal users. You may not be 99% percentile when it comes to privacy awareness, but given your answer, you are among the 95%+ percentile for sure.
normal users don't know or care about monetization plans. they don't know a privacy policy has been copy/pasted. In fact, they won't read it. They won't go far enough to check if the business is in the EU or US. Most normal users of your service aren't in the EU, unless your service is targeting mainly people in the EU. Most people don't care who is behind a company and won't investigate this. Normal users won't look far enough to find canned statements about privacy on your site. Normal users won't try to see what a company stores about them. Normal users don't know or care about metrics or know about targeted advertising.
Imagine the average internet user. By definition 49.9% of all internet users are less aware and less capable than that person. Remember this. It keeps perspective grounded in reality.
YaCy is a fanatic idea. I encourage people to watch the FSCONS video. Unfortunately YaCy will need a lot more momentum, developer interest and people using it to become useful imho.
Same thing with Viber and other apps. Some of friends use their services and now they have my contact information and can build up a shadow profile on me. I consented to none of that. While they may deny that's their intent it doesn't change the fact they have all that data.
