[PLUG] January speaker?

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

Real baloney isn't that bad.

But the wokiean politically correct variety that is so common now is tasteless pablum.

Seriously, Ben, have you never read anything from the FSF?  Do you even know why Linux exists in the first place?

The entire project is built on idealism and the concepts of rights of ownership.  Linux was never written so you could take some antique PC with a generation 4 core i5 that needs to go into the garbage, and "breathe new life into it"

It wasn't put together so we could all live in harmony, and be politically correct and woke and not call out stupid decisions, and evil perversions of the ideals Linux was built on.

It was written to destroy Microsoft because the computer community of hobby programmers perceived that Bill Gates realized if you control the software you control the industry and if you control the industry you control the users, and was using every dirty trick in the book (not the least was creating an illegal monopoly and putting Netscape out of business) to try to achieve that.

MY generation wrote it and fought that war - and we won.  It took us 20 years but we did it and beat Microsoft.  That's the only reason Microsoft is cooperating, finally, with everyone, it's why NFS client support is in Windows now, it's why windows terminal has a somewhat acceptable vt100 emulation in it now, and ssh is now standard in Windows 11.  But it was a long, 20 year battle.

But it's not a battle that is over, because there's still PLENTY of players in the computer industry who have taken up this dream again.  Gates may be an old broken man today, stained by his sexual misdeeds, dumped in the gutter by his ex-wife, ushered out the door by his company who is too embarrassed to have him seen on the campus anymore, but his dream of control lives on.

It's been taken up by Google, by every SOHO router vendor who uses Linux, by the auto companies denying service documents, and so on.  And they use the same cancel-culture tricks, the same "oooo you just said the Emperor has no clothes, you hurt his feelings so it's YOUR fault not his for being an idiot" to fight to take control away from us.  But this is all Orwellian NewSpeak intended to subtly program people into giving up their power.

The phrase "their firmware" wasn't invented by OpenWRT it was invented by Belkin, Linksys, etc.

It's the younger generation now who is pushing Right to Repair laws, who have taken up the fight.  I merely pointed this out to Russell who well knows how these things work and how these companies subtly fight using these insidious techniques.

If you don't assert your rights they will be taken away.

It's OUR gear, our PC hardware, our Linux software that we, the people, wrote.  It's not the property of the large corps who just want to control us so they can empty our wallets.

Ted

-----Original Message-----
From: PLUG <plug-bounces at lists.pdxlinux.org> On Behalf Of Ben Koenig
Sent: Saturday, December 21, 2024 1:47 PM
To: Portland Linux/Unix Group <plug at lists.pdxlinux.org>
Subject: Re: [PLUG] January speaker?

For the January meeting should we invite Ted to tell us what is REALLY bothering him? I can bring baloney sandwiches :)

-Ben

On Saturday, December 21st, 2024 at 12:34 PM, Russell Senior <russell at personaltelco.net> wrote:

> On Sat, Dec 21, 2024 at 10:13 AM Ted Mittelstaedt 
> tedm at portlandia-it.com wrote:
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: PLUG plug-bounces at lists.pdxlinux.org On Behalf Of Russell 
> > Senior
> > Sent: Thursday, December 19, 2024 4:40 PM
> > To: plug at lists.pdxlinux.org
> > Subject: Re: [PLUG] January speaker?
> > 
> > > In order to get a u-boot prompt on many TP-Link devices you have to type "TPL\n" during the short window u-boot waits before booting from flash.
> > 
> > Haven't seen that one yet, good to know
> > 
> > > Vendors generally don't want end users screwing around with their firmware, so try to be obstructive.
> > 
> > We aren't screwing with "their" firmware. We are screwing with OUR hardware. We own it. They do not. It is particularly egregious when the hardware we own is no longer even under warranty and it's beyond the pale when they aren't even releasing firmware updates for it because they think it's "too old" and it is downright malevolent when there's known security holes that crackers are exploiting and yet they still are not releasing firmware update for their crappy-ass firmware because "the device is too old"
> > 
> > This baloney is something that really upsets me a lot. It is so subtle. You of all people should know better - yet you subconsciously are using the vendor's NewSpeak (thank you Orwell) that seems to imply that they have some sort of right of control and ownership over a device that they do not own.
> > 
> > Assholes!
> > 
> > Ted