PabloSexcrowbar

Firebird Suite? More like FIREbird…oh.

I mean, it is.

I don’t think that’s a standard inclusion, because it’s not there on my fairly standard Debian install.

I disagree. Being able to slap the windows key and type the name of the program I’m looking for is one of my favorite features of both Gnome and KDE and I wish Windows worked similarly.

I feel like there was definitely a golden age for printers, because when I was a kid we had an Epson Stylus Color 800 that was literally Satan crammed into a shitty beige box, but my HP LaserJet from like 2012 is still going strong.

I suspect that your visual objection may be similar to mine, but over the past several years of being subjected to electron trash, using apps written in Qt kind of reminds me now of a simpler time. Nostalgia is a powerful drug, isn’t it?

That all being said, I do find myself preferring the look of GTK apps lately, in spite of the rather controversial direction their design has taken.

This is my hope. There are so many cross-platform GUI toolkits out there that are orders of magnitude more efficient than electron and nobody uses them. It’s not like GTK and Qt are difficult to learn. In fact, I find them easier to wrap my head around than a lot of the JS nonsense out there.

It costs more to implement the hardware necessary to lock them behind a paywall in the first place, though. And I’m not bullying you by telling you that the comparison you’re making between cars and stadiums is, in fact, utterly nonsensical. I’m not borrowing space in a stationary building for a set amount of time. I’m purchasing a product that already had the feature in the first place. If it’s already there, it’s already adding to the cost of the vehicle, and there is no additional cost to the manufacturer whether they use it or not. I’ve given you multiple examples of how this logic would look in other industries where there are actual parallels, but for some reason you keep coming back to the unbelievably fallacious idea that buying a car is somehow akin to renting a seat at a sports game. They are not the same, in case I wasn’t being clear enough.

The cost to install the hardware has already been paid. Fine. What extra monthly effort is required on the part of the manufacturer to ensure the continued functionality of the seat heater? The answer is NONE. Therefore, what right does the manufacturer have to demand a monthly payment for people to use the hardware which is, again, already fucking installed in the car they just spent $60,000+ on? It doesn’t require server time. You’re not hiring a dude to come out and warm up your seat with his butt every time you activate it. I repeat there is no continued cost to the manufacturer, therefore they have no justification for charging a monthly fee, and the only reason the price goes up is the extra hardware cost from installing the system that charges the monthly fee.

I’m done with this conversation. Please seek help.

Whether they’re expecting it or not, the hardware is there and there is no additional technical intervention necessary from the manufacturer necessary for it to function. A monthly fee for a button to turn on my seat warmers is idiotic. Your bizarre infatuation with comparing cars to stadiums is also as frustrating as it is nonsensical.

But it is being used for train

-ing AI models.

It’s absolutely nothing like that, my dude. There’s no extra service being provided. The product has been manufactured and purchased. It’d be like buying a drill only to find out that you have to pay a fee to use the drill bits you already own, or buying a block of wood and being told that you have to pay the seller money to use the tools you already own to make it into whatever you’re building.

My uncle loves to tell a story from his youth about when he was driving his VW bug up in Maine back in the 70s. As he was winding through the woods on a back road, he struck and killed a rather large buck, which is honestly a fairly impressive feat for a 1970-something VW bug. As he’s standing there assessing the (thankfully minimal) damage to his car, a game warden pulls up and informs him that, in Maine, if you kill an animal while hunting, you’re legally required to haul carcass home with you under threat of jail time.

And so began his several-hour task of cramming a 6-point buck into the back seat of a 1970-something VW bug. As far as I remember, he was successful, too.

The best (worst) example I’ve seen in recent memory has been seat warmers. BMW and other manufacturers tried forcing a subscription on people just to use the seat warmers that are (1) already present in the car, (2) already wired up with buttons in place, and (3) cause no additional outlay of effort on the part of the manufacturer once they’re installed. There’s no valid reason to charge a subscription for something like that beyond straight greed.