Re: Hardware respecting your freedom

[Jean Louis]

* Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com> [2020-10-22 05:53]:
> I came to it slightly differently; was studying and our Uni had Sun's
> Ray server with Solaris on it. I soon discovered that it was much
> smoother experience to sitt at home, do the assignmenets on my Pentium
> II with Redhat on, and just sftp them to the Uni server and compile
> everythigg via ssh. Gave me longer mornigns at home, and less wait for
> Emacs to redraw then on Uni's computer if there were more then 5 people
> logged in.

Somewhere 1994, 95, I have used shell account, and tried out all
commands, if Emacs was there probably I used it blocking myself
thereafter and logging off and logging in, same for vi editor and many
others, it was much by trial and error.

> > I think KDE was not really free at the time.
> I used it around 2000, it was free.

KDE was free, Qt was not, at least those I had on CD.

> That would be a general principle, which express a contradiction to
> itself altso it's false -> there are absolute rules.

Those are beyond apprehension like the question of the end of the
universe.

> > For this reason we do not fire people for mistakes. We fire people for
> > crimes. Maybe it is crime to repeat same mistake so many times over
> > and over again when person fully understood instructions and when it
> > is clear what is disallowed to do.
> Hmm, you would better have very good proof that person *really*
> understand instructions, and not just believing he/she understands.

When person confirms, multiple times confirms to have it understood,
that is where I cannot go beyond it. When person repeats in own words
the set of instructions and thereby confirms person understood it,
that is where I cannot go more deeper. Then it happens again. It is in
countries that lack good education and thus general literacy like
Tanzania or Uganda.

And I manage their confirmations and understandings by using Org mode.

> To put it in other words; crime is maybe too heavy word to use in
> that case. But sure, if someone is deliberately not doing the work
> as required, or not capable to do the work, of course they can not
> be trusted to continue that work. But I wouldn't mix word like crime
> in that; crime is action commited against the law; it is probably
> not against the law to sleep at the work; but it may not be
> desired. But I am not a philosopher, so please don't take me too
> seriously.

When person does not follow instructions, company resources get
damaged, stolen, abused, misued, and so on. Crime, according to
Wordnet, can be an evil act not necessarily punishable by law. 

> > I agree on that, and even more than you think based on these
> > writings. 
> That is great; I think people should search more for what the have in
> common, rather then what divides them.

There is some misconception at some friends that when we speak about
free software and endorse some server or company, and maybe do not
endorse some other, that this may not be friendly or that it is not
welcoming.

I find the concept of teaching free software enlightening and
beneficial, I do to others what I would like somebody does to me, to
tell me about the problems (proprietary, subjgation, control over my
computing) and how to solve the problems (free software, liberation
from proprietary, control over computing).

17 years I have used GNU/Linux and some other OSes on extra computers
like OpenBSD, and also GNU/Hurd (somewhere back 2004-2006) without
knowing that those use proprietary blobs. Somewhere 2016 I have
discovered it through promotion of fully free software distributions,
and I felt betrayed for all that time. I had to be informed.

That information is helpful for awareness of a person. And I do not
find it neither dividing, or unwelcoming, quite contrary people
explained to me how to build some free firmware, which WiFi chips to
replace and similar.

In general free software set of principles, warnings, notices,
practical philosophy, this all has to be promoted better, duplicated
better on various lines.

OS distributions are one good line, many people do use GNU/Linux but
do they really get enlightened on what is it that they use? I do not
think so.

Thus teaching free software set of principles, practical guides
related to free software, computing control, subjugation, Javascript,
has immense social impact on many and it also steers corporations to
think about that.

LibreJS is one such example, it made such a good impact on awareness,
including, in my opinion, little less impact on Javascript liberation.

New generations are not even aware that they can turn on Javascript
and I remember well that this option was prominent in every browser
back then, today is not.

Gnome's browser epiphany, in my version on Hyperbola GNU/Linux-libre,
does not have any option to turn the Javascript off. Maybe in newest
options it does, but in my version it does not.

> > And there are those Talos computers, there is Purism notebook, but I
> > think they did not finish fully the liberation, and there are some
> > computers that are crowd funded.
> Indeed, I agree with you. I believe definitely Purism have honest
> intentions and that they are doing what they can, and I don't think
> Intel is spying on you despite the ME; but it is a principle. Given a
> tool there is always someone who will eventually use it. That makes me
> very scary of nuclear weapons.

Intel need not, others may do:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Management_Engine

It is totally unsafe if connected to Internet. Maybe is good to use
free hardware routers with good firewalls and protection.

-- 
Jean Louis