Quoting: Mountain Man

Quoting: Purple Library GuyActually, I think there's quite a lot of evidence that it can. Not that government regulation can make people immortal, but it can sure as hell make them die somewhat later on average, whether it's seatbelts, or not allowing poison in our food or water or air, or safety standards at workplaces, or insisting that people stop at the nice red light.

The government might be able to reduce certain types of injuries and deaths through regulation, but overall human death rates do not rise or fall based on government mandates. And in the case of the Chinese cornoavirus, the "cure" -- reducing human socialization through fear; destroying economies; forcing people to stifle themselves with face coverings that have their own associated health risks quite apart from any influenza and don't actually prevent the transmission of illness -- may, in fact, be worse than the disease when all is said and done.

As Benjamin Franklin famously said, "Those who would give up essential liberties for a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

Overall human death rates do in fact rise or fall based on government mandates. For instance, when the USSR fell apart and the Russian government imploded, the death rate rose dramatically, and then fell again after Putin got the house in order.
Not all of those mandates have to do with admonitions and control, mind you--a big part has to do with plumbing and garbage collection, for instance. Not to mention health care. Government provision of public goods is I think usually a bigger deal for death rates than enforcement of regulations, which in turn makes a bigger difference than "law and order".

Meanwhile, if you want to claim that "not wearing a mask" is an essential liberty I don't know what planet you're supposed to be from. And I hate to tell you, but wearing masks does significantly reduce the spread of the disease (and various others, for that matter). At this point there's plenty of studies and they are quite clear. And honest to God, what motive is anyone supposed to have for falsifying this? What possible good is it supposed to do the perfidious Democratic technocrats to fool their opponents and supporters alike into wearing masks?! Perfidious Democratic technocrats fool people for one motive only: Money. And the mask business is small potatoes and nobody has a monopoly.
And health risks? Really?! I think bajillions of Muslim women, skiers and so forth and so on would have noticed by now. Look, it's just a frigging piece of cloth; my wife made one at home, I got a couple at Aritzia, they're not fiendish engines of destruction with weird chemicals sneakily inserted.

Finally, China. China wiped the disease out within their borders. They eliminated it, before any vaccine arrived. They're already back to economic growth and living normally. Because they didn't fuck around.

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Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: Eike

Quoting: tuubiHaving to stay home a lot for a while (and to wear a mask when I don't) are inconveniences, moreso for some, but worth it to me if it prevents a single death. Same goes for people losing jobs or money, as long as their government makes sure nobody ends up in the streets or has to go hungry. As long as you don't kill off a significant portion of the consumer base, businesses will bounce back and so will jobs.

I'd agree though (and it's probably the only point where I agree with them) that losing your job and the like is not named appropriately with "inconveniences". It's just... that it's necessary.

That's fair. For me personally (as an introvert who is married to another introvert and whose income hasn't been affected at all) this hasn't been a huge problem. The worst I've had to do is avoid properly visiting elderly family who depend on me, which sucks. I also had to cancel my summer vacation plans, but that's definitely just an inconvenience.

Of course I sympathize with those who have bigger problems, and there'll be a bunch of financial as well as psychological trauma to solve after this, but some evils are necessary, and better than the alternative.

I do think that if the government is going to say "It is necessary for public health that you stop earning a paycheck/your small business has to stop making money", it also has a responsibility if it is at all fiscally capable of it to do whatever it takes to make sure you don't end up on the street from complying with that order.
The US government in this is much like large sections of the US people--wanting privilege without responsibility.

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Quoting: Dorrit

Quoting: Purple Library GuyIncidentally, I read an article today

Oh! listen to Library Guy, he read an article!

So just to be clear, are you calling me a liar? Or are you just trying to be vaguely disparaging without implying that your comment actually meant anything whatsoever?

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Quoting: Mountain Man

Quoting: Eike

Quoting: Mountain Man"...free until COVID-19 is under control"

Let's be honest, it's not the virus that's out of control, it's our governments.

Yeah, why not making fun of 1.5 million dead people?

I wasn't making fun of anything, just pointing out that the damage being done to us is not because of some virus that's out of control but because of how our governments' have responded. The fact is, someone in the world dies from something every single second of every single day, and government totalitarianism can't stop that.

Actually, I think there's quite a lot of evidence that it can. Not that government regulation can make people immortal, but it can sure as hell make them die somewhat later on average, whether it's seatbelts, or not allowing poison in our food or water or air, or safety standards at workplaces, or insisting that people stop at the nice red light.

Incidentally, I read an article today that talked about some epidemic outbreaks in the post-revolution US, in the late 1700s, including one that was in the capital, and what was done about them with the US Founding Fathers making no criticism. Yeah, full quarantines, evacuations, shut down businesses and churches, the whole nine yards including some measures more draconian than anything that's been done vis-a-vis Covid. Understanding of how to deal with epidemics is not a new thing, nor is it unique to the modern "nanny state" or whatever.

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Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: PhiladelphusWhile Plague Inc is certainly a fun game (and this DLC looks interesting), I now find its claims of being a "realistic simulation" especially ludicrous when nearly the entire population of China can be infected with my new disease before a single person in a single other country catches it. Sure, a lot of diseases aren't as infections as COVID-19, but if upwards of a billion people can catch it in the same country surely someone in a nearby border town's going to pick it up, right?

I bet they figured in that China is (or very much was) a very isolationist country. I mean when I play the game, I choose Madagascar and they are an island, and it still spreads everywhere before that whole island is infected.

Well, yeah, but I think the real world provides not one, but a few pretty solid counterexamples in the present and last couple of decades. It clearly doesn't work that way.

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I remember when Amazon was a fresh new company that was about books. And when Google said "Don't be evil" and could almost be taken seriously. Every corporation with a normal shareholder model that grows past a certain size becomes horrible (and most of the other ones, but it's not quite as inevitable). It's the way our economy is structured.

But I'm fine that some combination of PR and direct self-interest has led them to do this particular form of whatever-washing, because open source has proved itself over many years to be pretty resistant to co-optation; open source things have generally remained publically good even after the big boys notice them and jump in.

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Well, I have to say I enjoyed "Ogling the hand-illustrated graphics" in the teaser. Might be fun.

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Quoting: inckieHere are my wishes for Linux Mint:

1. Support the fantastic work regarding Wine.
2. A true real alternative to Microsoft Office.
3. Better interoperability with Windows environments.
4. Better Cinnamon development experience and documentation.

Of those, 3 and 4 sound more or less reasonable although they're not my priorities and probably aren't the priorities of all that many desktop Linux users. I don't know anything about the current state of the Cinnamon development experience and documentation, but I'm willing to believe it needs some love, and Cinnamon is a Mint schtick, so fair enough.

But 1 and 2 are a terrible idea. Not that those things shouldn't be done, but they shouldn't be done by a Linux distribution. Wine should support the fantastic work regarding Wine, Libreoffice should continue building a "true real alternative to Microsoft Office". Those things aren't Mint's business, and they're big projects. If it used a bunch of resources to try to do them it would not have enough left to keep being a good Linux distribution--and it wouldn't even help much. In the case of item 2, if they did that by trying to create a brand new office suite from scratch it might actually make things worse--they'd end up with a half-assed office suite that, if they really worked at it, might get just far enough to pull some development energy away from Libreoffice and I suppose the K stuff, without actually creating anything worth using. So no, Mint should absolutely not fulfil your wishes 1 or especially 2.

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My distro's repository's still at 0.7; maybe I'll grab the Appimage. Or maybe just Steam so it's with the rest of my games.

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Quoting: dibz

Quoting: NanobangI expect it'll end up being Mint XFCE in the end, though. :)

That's my personal favourite and is what I currently use. Incidentally, and I suspect many people started "touring" just like I did back when Gnome3 first came out coming from a Gnome2 preference at the time, after trying several I ended up with XFCE.

The funny thing is at the time I thought to myself "XFCE is a better Gnome2 then Gnome2 ever was."

That's kind of how I feel about Mate.

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