On Tuesday 15 September 2020 09:08:23 Felmon Davis
wrote:
On Tue, 15 Sep 2020, William Morder via tde-users
wrote:
Better not to give in to conspiracy-theory
thinking here. I believe a
simpler proportion is at work.
The more money, property or power is involved, the greater the degree
of corruption. Who was it that said it? Lord Acton? "Power corrupts.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely."
Corruption creeps in by small degrees. It starts with somebody offering
front-row seats at some special, exclusive event, or just being given
"free money" or other unearned bonuses and perks.
In all this technophobic conspiracy thinking, there is a simpler
principle at work. People who are in business want to know who are
their customers. (It makes more sense in a small business, where we
meet in person.) When we move into situations where the people in
business never actually meet most of their customers, they must find
other ways to get to "know" them. At first, I'm sure, they mean well,
and only want to serve the needs and wants of people who buy or use
their goods and services; but as the company and customer base grows,
and as competition also increases, then comes the need for greater
control.
And now, we the users are not even really exactly "customers" or
"clients", but just use what we get for free; and because it's free, of
course, we are taught that we should not complain or make demands, but
just be grateful.
In the end, we, the customers, users, renters (whatever our situation)
become the least important part; in fact, an obstacle to doing
business. What the business person would prefer, really, is just to
withdraw money directly from our accounts, without any interaction from
ourselves. But this is only because doing business in person is
becoming a rare occasion any more.
Bill
there may be truth in some of this but it seems a bit like
thread-drift - perhaps retraction of apfelstr�del must be considered;
how does this relate to systemd-homed?
it seems systemd-homed brings precisely the benefit which Kate
mentioned is lacking in our usual way of moving 'home'; she wrote:
"I don't understand why this is even needed?! I can already move home
directories without a problem. Been doing it for years. I just make
sure to use the same user on the same distro, same etc. Works
perfectly. Or I save key settings (konq bookmarks, FF bms, etc) it's
so easy after that to just retheme to spec."
I take it with systemd-homed one doesn't get trapped by shifting UIDs
and such. they write (partial quotation),
"Linux assigns UIDs in the order usernames are registered on a
machine. you may get UID 1000 if you are the first user on a laptop
and you could get 1001 on another laptop if you are the second user to
be registered there. This poses a problem if you move a home directory
container from machine A where you're UID 1000 to machine B where you
are 1001. systemd-homed solves this by doing a chown -R on the entire
home directory if there is a conflict. [...]"
I once fell athwart of that! not to mention that 'home' gets encrypted.
why isn't this a net bonus?
f.
I agree, lots of thread drift here. We really ought to start a new thread
once we get into philosophy and politics and stuff.
For me, the jury is still out on homed, at least as a concept. All those
benefits do seem double-plus good and all. What I don't like is systemd,
because it was thrust upon us without consent, over the objections of many
developers themselves, and goes directly against the philosophy of Debian
(too much explanation required here).
Maybe it is a good thing; some seem to think so, but systemd takes control
away from users themselves, in many small ways. I don't like it myself
mainly because my system doesn't run so well with systemd.
And, if I read correctly, you can't get homed without systemd. But homed,
which does sound good in so many ways, will somehow (I suspect) be used to
get people using systemd.
Maybe there is somebody who is already thinking of a systemd-free homed
system? Is it possible?
Again, if you are content with what you have, then it's hard for me to
argue that you [the universal you] ought to be doing something different,
just because, in my opinion, it's better or more secure or whatever. If you
like what you have, and don't want to change, then just keep shining on.
Bill
Hopefully, homed will not be so deeply intertwined into other things that one
cannot simply delete it from the system if one so chooses.
Leslie