thank you fuzzi
you spat out the exact imagey-thingies into wordies that were in my head.

In fact I would go across the board at every company or organization , regardless
Nowadays corps try to lure and catch and keep.
Those smart enough to get away, why they simply get hooked by someone selling or "giving" exactly the antithesis.
Regardless of how benign or malignant they may appear.
it isn't about us, the consumer,
there is no "love",
no "relationship",
any more than how the dealer can lace the product more to be more "necessary" by his junkies.
Today..
It is just a matter of degrees of how evil the "dealer" is.

This trend is not unique to Microsoft, though. Gone are the times when companies at least pretended to care about making things better/easier/more convenient for the customer. Now all they do is make things more convenient for themselves, even if that goes exactly against the customer's interests.

One case for many. My local leisure centre offered a "10 for the price of 9" deal on swimming. You bought a booklet of 10 tickets and paid for 9. Nothing special, quite standard. The booklet was perfect because they did not have to know you, you always knew how many you had left, you could tear a ticket off and give it to someone... in a word, you were in control. A few years ago, they swapped the booklet for a plastic, credit-card style ID. Still the same "10 for 9" deal but... you have to sign up, give them all your details, and when you want to know how many sessions you have still left, you have to come to the reception desk and ask them to read the card for you.

Basically, in a single swipe, they threw away all the customer's convenience to gain a little bit of their own. When I pointed that out to them, they looked at me blankly, completely puzzled as if I speaking Liliputian or something.

Things like that are happening all over the place. Those who do it probably do not even realize that they do it and those who have to put up with it are getting so used to it that they treat it as normal.

yup..
make people have no choice but to incrementally deal with what change
Corps. , Governments, online government sponsored misinformation Trolls, spammers, hackers, and virtually everyone else ...
has figured out how to "play" humanity to the fullest.

we ceased a long time ago to be a "Planet of the Apes"

More like "Planet of the Slowly Boiling Pot full of Frogs"

And that simple book of tickets for the pool issue...doesn't stop there.
that kind of slow acceptance has infiltrated and become pervasive to greater and lesser degrees everywhere...
has allowed hate and divisiveness to flourish,
has allowed violent people to not only become emboldened, but to act, and to feel justified in their acts,
has allowed strongmen to again dominate positions they shouldn't be allowed near,
has begun silencing the right to peaceful protest, or turn it into a violent one if possible,
has begun trying to deny science research and fact,
has begun trying to cow the press to report,
and the list goes on.

This is the result ..and it is not good.

It is the perfect PERFECT set-up.
make things irritating, slightly difficult,
make things so people must wait a little, or deal with just a little more...
In a word of over stimulation, that they increasingly just don't have the energy or stamina to fight against, add a dash of urgency, a sprig of violence, a pinch of hate, a spoonful of anxiety...
stir ...
simmer..
and you have a perfect cycle ..a system built on an increasing need by the individual to keep things as simple as possible in their lives.
And for good reason.

the issue is and isn't as simple as many think.
the interplay of so many more seemingly unrelated issues impact the sub and conscious choices we make,
But one thing for sure...

Definitely playing Devil's advocate here...

The choices in the open playing field aren't really fully thought out nor continued with support often enough. A lot of my favorites have disappeared and/or puttered out before they made a proper impact or improved to the point where I could recommend those things to lesser savvy friends. Where are the real open and widely supported options for all? They are very few and far between... that needs to be fixed before the ranting and raving continues in places like this. Why is the state of affairs as fragmented, unsupported and honestly... unreliable as it is right now? FaceTime replacements like Matrix? I'm still waiting on it to get to where I can say "Hey Mom, use this instead of Apple FaceTime. Here's how..." and the others like Ring are "getting there" but aren't exactly there yet.

Folks want freedom, but what has been shown for the last decade or so has been convenience trumps freedom and/or security. And to me, that's scary. Real damn scary.

But where does this land you with Windows? I'm almost willing to bet that folks that are here definitely only use Windows at their office jobs or for certain software that's probably yet to be replaced in your original choice of OS.

The freedom of choice oftentimes equates to talk and not a lot of continued action and support.

completely agree with you gerbick

You weren't supposed to agree!

Too late ..
Already did...
No "take-backs"

You were too convincing...

"Gerbick ..Maemo Talk D.A. (Devil's Advocate )"
"Watch him tonight at 8 pm Eastern Standard Time ...on... "
"Gerbick and Order"
"[sound effect] DUN-DUN [sound effect]"

Then why don't you just do that? Listen (read carefully)!

I never claimed, that those (theoretical) benefits are always, without fail, realized in practice.

You actually have to turn the theory into practice to benefit from the advantages of open source. It is neither my fault nor the fault of FLOSS, if you lack the skills to do that yourself. At least I showed you a way out of that dilemma.
You would have recognized that, had you listened.

Sure there are some FLOSS zealots out there who won't see that there is a gap between therory and practice that has to be bridged to make the idea work.
But lumping me in with those people using statements that actually contradict my chain of arguments just show that it's you who isn't listening.

I am sorry, sulu, if I misunderstood or, worse, offended you. The way I see it, there were a few pages in this thread filled with:

1. You: "How can you be sure that [something or other] does what it says when no one outside Microsoft can see the code?"
2. Me: "How can you be sure that of any code, including FOSS? I know that someone can inspect FOSS code in theory, but are you sure that someone really does? Always?"
3. You and a handful of others: "The code is open, someone can."
4. Me: "Yes, I know that, but that was not my question. Are you sure that someone always does?"
5. You and a handful of others: goto 3

You can only go around the loop so many times before it gets tedious

But, as I admitted above, I might have misunderstood you, in which case I apologize.

At the end of the day, it is a matter of trust. You implicitly distrust Microsoft and trust FOSS. I say any implicit trust in anything is unjustified and leads to a false sense of security. Did you, personally, check all the code you use? I very much doubt it, regardless of how open it is. Ergo, you cannot trust it any more than any closed source. End of story. That is how I see it and how I approach any code, FOSS or not. Suspicious until proven trustworthy. YMMV.

One might even go a step further and say that, in a way, it is better to use something you know you cannot fully trust, thus being constantly reminded to be vigilant, than to use something you believe you can trust and drop your guard completely. The misguided but dangerously widespread belief that "Linux is immune to viruses" is a very good example.

I've had this experience time and again, too. I think their assumption is that everyone has/is an Apple product, and whoever doesn't have one will get one in the near future anyway because who would ever willingly use an Android device? (I can't even blame them for that sentiment.)



Regarding the 'benefits of open source' discussion, I'll just point to this short article by rms. You (sulu and others) bring practical arguments into a discussion which is purely about ethics. pichlo is right here, In that there is nothing inherently more trustworthy in 'open source' than in 'closed source' software. You place your trust in people, not in code.