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Comment by arca_vorago | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if they could quantify the human suffering and death that has happened as their proprietary surveillance operating system has betrayed it's users to totalitarian governments worldwide and just how vital it has been in eroding the constitutional protections of the fourth amendment by essentially backdooring everyone that uses it.

Bill Gates was never a good guy, and I don't really give a Fuck if most of you reading this don't like me saying this because you forgot what the word hacker really means because there are too many businesspeople here pretending to be hackers here instead of the other way around.

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I'm not going to argue that because Bill Gates has done so much good since leaving Microsoft he's a saint, if you don't argue that because of his history with Windows and MS he's the devil - deal?

How about we meet in the middle and agree that in terms of impact and spectrum he is a pretty amazing example of what you can experience in a single life?

As an aside, Microsoft's failure in the mobile world combined with the pervasiveness of both phones and their vector for surveillance suggests that others are far more responsible for the concerns you voice. I do agree with you that when we have one or a few players choking key points the system is rife for abuse, whether that's the device, the network provider or the OS manufacturer.

Well, you can use their OS, which has for years tried to undermine the free and open source communities, but you have to pay for it. And you have to agree for them to spy on you. And you're poor?? That is okay, just give up more of your privacy rights and we already sold all your data, so you will be a good consumer now.

You run Windows. Your mind belongs to us. Your ability to think beyond .NET and C# will soon diminish, and we will give you some mediocre job now based on your mediocre proprietary skills, and your role as a tech worker now be to spread your love for MS to everyone, because if you don't we will stop paying you, and you will have no food and no home. And you will not know how to use anything but Windows.

And you have to agree for them to spy on you. And you're poor?? That is okay, just give up more of your privacy rights and we already sold all your data, so you will be a good consumer now

This is hilarious. What OS do you think Google, Facebook and the NSA run?

Google provided an open source operating system, web browser and built a container solution used by every major cloud provider.

You think that was altruism?

At the end of the day Gates wanted to sell products for money, straight up cash transaction, take it or leave it. Google et al are sly and underhanded, you don’t know the price upfront, they try to turn you into the product...

You mean, like if I were to go buy a laptop pretty much anywhere, and they just include Windows in the laptop price??? I don't see how that is any different. I can go buy an unlocked Android phone at Costco for $199 that has Android 7.1.1. I know that I am paying for the hardware, and the OS is free.

So, you are basically trying to say that proprietary is better because we don't know what the open source version costs? Well, you have the source code... so I guess you may not be willing to look inside, but the other one you don't have the option to even look.

am paying for the hardware, and the OS is free.

It is not free, unless you think Google is made of unpaid volunteers and all its shareholders are charities?

You are Gates’ customer, but you are Google’s inventory

So, if you go here:

https://source.android.com/

Or here:

https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/

Compile it and run it, you are inventory of Google for compiling free source code that you can modify however you want? Where do you get the source code like that to compile for Windows?

1) windows source code is very easy to get, under the shared source license

2) you have no assurance that that’s what running on the handset nor what’s in the firmware or the driver binary blobs

@gaius: Now I'm blocked from responding to you. The only source code I could find for Microsoft, is for debugging, and doesn't give you access to all the source. You have to use a smart card that they send as well.

Here is the license for Android:

https://source.android.com/setup/licenses

Where is the license for Winblows?

You’re not blocked, HN just rate-limits comments :-)

Good to know that my anti-Microsoft messages aren't being entirely censored.

This is so stupid. I’ve used windows exclusively as my home desktop machine and I work with Linux boxes all day at work using a MacBook. You can run windows at home and also know how to use Linux.

What distro of Linux? What kernel version? Do you have graphics acceleration working? Are you running it primarily

No response, just downvotes... I see.

I don't run linux on my desktop. I'm a devops engineer that deploys a hundred or a thousand linux servers at at time.

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