Lettuceeatlettuce

As an IT sys-admin, you're largely correct. We are losing the essence more and more of proper sys-admin work.

IT staff are becoming more ecosystem maintainers than actual integrators and solutions experts. Instead of doing deep research on the problem and architecting actual solutions, many sys-admins just send off a quote request to a single external vendor and then call it good.

The research, quoting, planning, implementation, configuration, testing, monitoring, and maintenance are all outsourced. The sys-admins are just left with a simple web dashboard or desktop app that they often don't even understand well, and a support line for when things need to get fixed/upgraded.

It's a glorified help desk position in many cases. I've worked with several 10-15+ year admins that don't even know how to spec out a server, how to architect a basic network topology, how to optimize a SAN or NAS solution, etc.

They go with the default without a second thought. Email = O365 Office apps = MS Office suite Virtualization = VMware/Azure/HyperV Servers = HP/Dell

And because they are used to it, it propagates onward. If you want to break out of that, you have to be intentional every step of the way.

Piracy is a great example of a topic where legality and morality aren't the same.

Those kinds of topics are incredibly valuable teaching moments for children.

I would teach them when they are mature enough. Help them understand why some people think it is wrong, when/why you think it is acceptable, and how to do it safely.

You can teach them the difference between actual theft and copying. Explain how piracy has benefited humanity as a whole, explain why knowledge and cultural experiences shouldn't be gate kept by mega-corps from underprivileged people.

There are so many valuable lessons that you as parents could pass on to your kids through the topic of piracy.

And as every major platform enshitifies and information of all kinds gets locked behind more paywalls, piracy will become a more and more important skill to have.

Please download and archive your favorite channels and videos!

Host them yourself to watch them locally.

Especially do this for educational material, share it wide and far!

We are entering a very dark age of techno-dystopia, we need to fight it with everything we have. Pirate, seed, screen-record, download, archive, share, never give up.

Lol!! Imagine if xD

Could you link/provide a list of coop dev groups? I'd love to help support them.

Agreed.

You're being cringe, mate. The majority of people that use a computer could switch to Linux tomorrow and be totally fine.

I switched my parents to Linux months ago and they haven't noticed the difference. And my parents know as much about computers as I know about quantum physics, just a hair more than jack shit.

So funny how people like you claim to support FOSS but then constantly dump on Linux and FOSS software. You spread FUD about FOSS, you talk about how it's only good for nerds and "cult members."

No, you're not a realist or pragmatist or whatever you might think of yourself. You're a corpo simp who won't support FOSS unless it's perfect in possible every way. Go take a toss and seethe.

Nintendo brass = scumbags. Trash corpo who hates its customers except for milking their money.

It is morally good to pirate all Nintendo products, crack all their hardware, and disparage all their advertising.

Thanks!

Isn't that roughly the overall vision of the Free Software movement? We can all build software that's open and free, as long as that is pushed forward in perpetuity to all subsequent versions/forks.

Your compensation for providing code for free, is that you also get access to all other code for free too. I have paid for lots of FOSS software over the years, or at least donated to their projects and creators/maintainers.

I've actually paid for more FOSS software and services than proprietary software and services overall. Because I want to support the kind of ecosystem I believe should exist.

I favor a pay-what-you-can model personally. Some take for free, some pay a pittance, some pay at cost, and a few pay well over asking price. It's actually the same model that modern free-to-play games use. Most players spend little to no money on the game, just playing for free and keeping everything stock.

But a small amount of players are dolphins and whales, people who happily spend hundreds, in some cases, thousands of dollars on in-game features, items, skins, etc.

That gives me some hope that the model can work, we just need a culture of end users that believe in that sort of thing. That's the kind of pirate ethos I advocate for. Pay for stuff that deserves your money. Pay for things that respect you as a user, respect your privacy, right to repair, right to copy and remix, right to self-host and mod, etc. Those are the kinds of products and services that get my money.

Giant media conglomerates and super-rich entertainers with private yachts and jets, they don't get a cent of my money. I pirate their stuff with the wind at my back, sun on my skin, and a smile on my face.

This is one of the few actually interesting counterpoints to piracy. The rights of the artist for the use of their work is a very nuanced topic. For instance, most people would say that parody and satire are very important forms of expression that ought to be protected. But those often dance the line of "infringement" in the eyes of the courts.

On the other hand, it feels wrong to say that an artist has to accept their work being used for evil purposes, like a group of neo-nazis using an open source font in their propaganda materials, or a group of religious extremists using a musician's backing track in their efforts to convert people.

I lean pretty strongly for the rights of the consumers of art to do with it what they want, but I admit it gives me pause on some of the edge cases. Very complicated issue.

To each their own I guess.

So if you think the book example is fine even reading the whole thing and never paying for it, how is that any different from any other piracy examples? You consumed media that the artist created in its entirety without giving them any compensation.

I agree that physical goods are totally different, but in my magical wizard example, I don't think there is anything wrong with that.

A real life example is if I take a digital scan of a 3D figurine, turn it into a 3D model, and let other people on the web download it and 3D print it.

Did I "steal" anything? Of course not. Nobody is being deprived of anything at all.