Erholt Rhein <erholtr@pobox.com> wrote:

> On Wed, 5 Oct 2022 04:13:59 -0500, VanguardLH wrote:
>
>> You need to take your meds. Your view of what is said is highly skewed.
>
> Look. I get it your butt is hurt that you not only make incredibly stupid
> decisions but that you don't like it when I pointed that out to you.

You are still insulting. Your opinion of my purchase is irrelevant.

> Calm down.

I'm not the one replaying the "work together" and "own it" recordings,
nor have I called you a cheapskate as you claim nor called you dumb,
stupid, an asshole, or having a sore anus. Why you divert the
discussion with insults is usually feminine logic to divert you don't
have an argument, or your lost your argument.

> You don't have to try to say I need to take medications because you think
> that the price you paid for a substandard app instantly makes it better.

You have yet to show CZ is superior to NCI. First you say its better,
but based solely on price, because that's the only remaining argument
you have. You then claim they are equivalent apps, which defeats you
arguments to migrate from NCI to CZ. If equivalent, there is no impetus
to suffer a new learning curve only to achieve the same result.

> Well, in the case of some code, you KNOW that people are looking at it,
> such as Google looking at all the FOSS YouTube variants.

Off topic, but are you talking about alternative YT clients (those
connecting to YT), or alternative free video content delivery services?
I haven't bothered to research the later most likely because the volume
of video content would be so very poor compared to YT. There is Vimeo
as an alternative video source, but I wasn't aware they used FOSS server
programs.

> If Google could find any way to sue the developers of FOSS YouTube
> clients, you can bet your ass that they would. But they can't.

Let's stay on-topic discussing CZ versus NCI.

> That's one advantage of FOSS code. You know the code has been reviewed
> if it gives you free functionality that Google charges people for in
> YouTube.

You say FOSS code has been reviewed but without qualification which
means all FOSS code has been reviewed. I have seen extremely few
independent and published audits of FOSS software.

Please give the URL to someone who has independently audited the source
code for Cellular-Z. Of all the FOSS software you use, list those that
you have, and show who audited which ones.

Sorry, contributors to FOSS do not audit FOSS. Usually they only get
involved in part of the code, and those contributors do not publish an
audit. In fact, they aren't auditing the code at all. Looking at the
code, and helping to code fixes or feature enhancements is NOT auditing
the code.

As an example of one of very few FOSS programs that I know have been
audited is TrueCrypt. See:

https://opencryptoaudit.org/reports/iSec_Final_Open_Crypto_Audit_Project_TrueCrypt_Security_Assessment.pdf
https://opencryptoaudit.org/reports/TrueCrypt_Phase_II_NCC_OCAP_final.pdf

So, where is a published report of someone that has audited CZ's code,
or of one, or more, of its contributors blogging about what they
noticed? Someone looking at code, but never reporting their results, is
of value only to that person, and to no one else.

Most FOSS is started by one, or a couple, persons who do whatever they
like in the code. When they have contributors, the authors review it to
decide whether to add it or not. There is no weekly code review meeting
for multiple authors or contributors to analyze the code nor are the
minutes of that meeting ever published. Best you can do is integrate
yourself into the contributor community, or go through their bug
reports, or analyze the code yourself providing you are expert in every
technology implemented within the code. Code audits often require a
wide range of expertise, and why they are rare.

>> There is no such thing as shameless copying of open source.
>
> I have to point out that you don't seem to own the intellect to
> ascertain even the slightest bit of pertinent detail.
>
> In this case, you completely missed the part where I clearly (and
> repeatedly) said it is better to reward the original developer than to
> reward the one who not only copies the code but who also adds
> advertisements or who charges money for those copies.

There are lots of front ends or variants of FOSS software. There are
many front ends to FFMPEG. Anyone that adds value to FOSS can charge
for their contribution, or for support. An example: Redhat. They
charge for their value-added features, and for support.

Have you ever tried to report a bug to the author of CZ? You know the
"Zhengzhou CengSan Information Technology Co., LTD" facade is responsive
to support requests? I have needed tech support from M2Catalyst on NCI,
and they replied in 2 days. I didn't want the app to stay loaded and
active in the background, and they responded about the exit button.
That's why I suggested you might contact them on why NCI crashes on your
smartphone. However, as with the vast majority of technical support,
you have to buy the product to get support. FOSS is pretty much
whatever you get, you struggle to work out a problem, and hope other
users might help you.

A lot of FOSS gets discarded when users find they have no support, and
the user community cannot resolve an issue, especially since they are
outsiders instead of the dev group or authors that wrote the software.
An example of you asking for support on the CZ app would be why you
don't get maps, but the screenshots for the app show a mapping function.
If the author responds then you know they monitor their e-mail, and
provide support.

FOSS may be free to acquire, but expensive when trying to spend time
figuring out how to use the product, or resolve problems with it. I
don't consider FOSS as truly free if I have to waste time trying to fix
it or find workarounds.

> Since you clearly lack the capacity to comprehend critical detail, I
> suggest you go back and read what I had said about rewarding the
> right developers so that you can re-form your opinions based on what
> I actually said - and not just on the little that you comprehended of
> what I actually said.

No, you're trying to convince me despite equivalant apps that I should
discard what I already have for something unknown with a new learning
curve.

Sorry, but I've yet to see you do your half of the "work together"
suggestion by doing the comparison of functions between CZ and NCI, and
that the NCI app crashes on your phone does not preclude the comparison.
Do the whitepaper comparison that I mentioned. That's more likely a
fault of your smartphone's setup, or perhaps a bug in NCI (that you
could report since there was a new release just a month ago to see if it
has a limitation with your phone's setup). You are the one that is
lacking critical detail, or any detail.

>> You aren't rewarding FOSS authors by using their software.
>
> It's interesting that all you care about is money.

Yeah, keep striving to claim all I'm interested in is money. Okay,
let's see just how critically detailed you can be. How does a FOSS
author get rewarded by you using their software? CZ doesn't ask for
donations. Qualify your "reward FOSS authors" by detailing just HOW
they are getting rewarded.

> There are other ways to reward developers for making a good product,
> such as I did when I recommended their product to others, as just one
> example.

So all those online NCI reviews are also then further rewarding
M2Catalyst, too, for their free version. NCI is getting are more
rewarded than CZ, and for the NCI free version, too.

> Or by publicly recommending their products to others.

Oh yeah, "it's better" is such a commanding persausion. Only to boobs.
You make a lot of noise defending your FOSS choice, but have yet to do
an actual comparison. You don't even delineate the functions in CZ, so
other potential users could do a compare against other apps.
Recommendations that are merely Yes and thumbs-up voting are just an
indicator. If I choose an app, indicators have very limited value. I
don't really care where the crowd goes.

>> Hear that timer go bing? Time for your meds again.
>
> Again, I get it that your butt is hurt that you paid more for less.
> But it's not my fault you paid more for less. Own your decisions.

It's called "tit for tat". You insult a lot, so eventually I'll return
the favor.

> The part I love BEST about open source code is that the big guys who
> have all the lawyers can't shut them down by alluding to what the
> code does.

I have not seen "big guys" suing FOSS authors per se. I have seen FOSS
authors that have violated law or been scared off by letters of intent
from lawyers. As an example, RTMP-e was developed by Adobe who said it
was not to be used as a DRM method, but that's how it got used. As a
result, FOSS authors that all capturing DRM content using RTMP-e has to
move the hosting of their software to outside any country that enforces
DRM. The FOSS authors didn't get sued. They moved outside the country
because they were scared. They weren't going to be a test case in
federal court to incur the legal fees.

On 10/8/22 3:47 PM, VanguardLH wrote:

> Why you divert the
> discussion with insults is usually feminine logic to divert you don't
> have an argument, or your lost your argument.

HEY HEY HEY!

--
Cheers, Bev
Red ship crashes into blue ship - sailors marooned.

On Sat, 8 Oct 2022 17:47:33 -0500, VanguardLH wrote:

>> Well, in the case of some code, you KNOW that people are looking at it,
>> such as Google looking at all the FOSS YouTube variants.
>
> Off topic, but are you talking about alternative YT clients (those
> connecting to YT), or alternative free video content delivery services?
> I haven't bothered to research the later most likely because the volume
> of video content would be so very poor compared to YT. There is Vimeo
> as an alternative video source, but I wasn't aware they used FOSS server
> programs.

As I surmised prior, your rather obvious lack of technical understanding is
hindering your ability to comprehend a word that anyone technical says.

You've already jumped to the insane unsupported crazy conclusion that the
FOSS YouTube clients have a "poor volume" of video content.

I wonder if you realize what you concluded is like saying the volume of
email content for K-mail on the Google servers is "so very poor" compared
to the volume of email content for the BlueMail email client on the Google
servers.

If you're that incapable of understanding what a "client" is for any given
protocol, then we really aren't conversing on the same technical level.

>> That's one advantage of FOSS code. You know the code has been reviewed
>> if it gives you free functionality that Google charges people for in
>> YouTube.
>
> You say FOSS code has been reviewed but without qualification which
> means all FOSS code has been reviewed. I have seen extremely few
> independent and published audits of FOSS software.

I get it you have a stick up your butt about FOSS code not always being
reviewed, which I'm not disagreeing with - but at least it has the chance
of being reviewed - which proprietary code does not.

In the examples I provided, the chance that Google did NOT review the code
is zero. That means you can rest assured the FOSS code (which is just
replacing Google clients) is not breaking any of Google's rules.

> As an example of one of very few FOSS programs that I know have been
> audited is TrueCrypt. See:
>
> https://opencryptoaudit.org/reports/iSec_Final_Open_Crypto_Audit_Project_TrueCrypt_Security_Assessment.pdf
> https://opencryptoaudit.org/reports/TrueCrypt_Phase_II_NCC_OCAP_final.pdf

I use Veracrypt ever since the Truecrypt developers suddenly dropped the
project... which brings up ANOTHER advantage of FOSS code - which is that
others can pick up where the original developer left off.

> I have needed tech support from M2Catalyst on NCI,
> and they replied in 2 days. I didn't want the app to stay loaded and
> active in the background, and they responded about the exit button.

I get it that you are trying to rationalize that you made a dumb decision,
and it's OK for you to make that dumb decision but don't blame me for your
dumb decisions.

If you really needed them to tell you about that exit button, then maybe,
for you and for the less technical people like you, maybe - after all -
it's not so bad of a dumb decision as it would have been for me to make the
same dumb decisions that you made.

Maybe you (and people like you) need that support.
Then that's what you paid for. Support.

> That's why I suggested you might contact them on why NCI crashes on your
> smartphone. However, as with the vast majority of technical support,
> you have to buy the product to get support.

I'm not worried about the NCI crashes as I think I know what it's doing but
it doesn't matter for me to delve deeper into the flaws in the NCI code.

The fact it crashes simply means it's crappy software.
Why would I spend more time on it than that?

The only reason I even spent the time I did on those crashes was to learn
better how to debug crashes in general - but I've been too busy to delve
deeper (yet) into the debug process.

> FOSS is pretty much
> whatever you get, you struggle to work out a problem, and hope other
> users might help you.

Well, let's state the obvious that Cellular-Z doesn't crash, and better
yet, it gives me the data I ask for so what "support" do I need?

To the contrary, your suggested program doesn't even work on my phone.
Your chosen tool needs support that the FOSS tool doesn't even need.

> A lot of FOSS gets discarded when users find they have no support, and
> the user community cannot resolve an issue, especially since they are
> outsiders instead of the dev group or authors that wrote the software.
> An example of you asking for support on the CZ app would be why you
> don't get maps, but the screenshots for the app show a mapping function.

You think that's a fault of the tool?
It's not.
I have Google GMS disabled. CZ can't do the lookup. And that's by design.

> If the author responds then you know they monitor their e-mail, and
> provide support.

I purposefully disabled Google GMS. I expect a lot of software to crash.
It's normal when you disable Google GMS. Think about it before you respond.

> FOSS may be free to acquire, but expensive when trying to spend time
> figuring out how to use the product, or resolve problems with it. I
> don't consider FOSS as truly free if I have to waste time trying to fix
> it or find workarounds.

Given you dislike free open source software, why are you on Android?

> Sorry, but I've yet to see you do your half of the "work together"
> suggestion by doing the comparison of functions between CZ and NCI, and
> that the NCI app crashes on your phone does not preclude the comparison.

What I want from Cellular Z is an accurate assessment of the cellular
signal strength and the tower sector antenna identifying descriptors.

Also what I want is an accurate assessment of nearby towers and their
signal strength.

In addition, I want Wi-Fi signal strength and identifying descriptors.
That's all I want from Cellular-Z and that's what it gives me.

The rest of the functionality is superfluous to me.

If your NCI app does all that, then that part of the functionality is
equivalent and the only practical difference would be that your chosen app
doesn't work on my system (and that's OK as a lot of apps don't work on my
system because I disable many things, including Google GMS).

> Do the whitepaper comparison that I mentioned. That's more likely a
> fault of your smartphone's setup, or perhaps a bug in NCI (that you
> could report since there was a new release just a month ago to see if it
> has a limitation with your phone's setup). You are the one that is
> lacking critical detail, or any detail.

What you don't get is that plenty of apps crash on my system.
Not just NCI. It's OK. I expect them to crash.

THe better written programs don't crash.
And I have hundreds of those installed.

Crashes come with the territory because I've disabled all unnecessary
Google services (just as I do on Windows for many Microsoft services).

People have been disabling running services for decades.
If an app can't handle that gracefully, it's a poorly written app.

> It's called "tit for tat". You insult a lot, so eventually I'll return
> the favor.

You may consider me assessing your lack of technical comprehension an
insult, and I get why you would think that.

But look again at the completely unsupported crazy statement you made above
about how FOSS YouTube clients have a "poor volume" of video content.

Ding dong.
It's a client.

The completely irrational conclusion you jumped to is like saying FTP
client A has a "poorer volume" of FTP sites than FTP client B.

When you say things like you did there you are just proving that you own
not even the slightest amount of basic simple technical acumen.

How am I supposed to talk to you on the same level when you trust your
completely crazy unsupported illogical conclusions that YouTube clients
have a "poor volume" of videos.

You don't even understand the basics of what it means to be a client.

> I have not seen "big guys" suing FOSS authors per se.

Look up YouTube Vanced.

The fact you're unaware of that is yet another indicator that you're
completely clueless about virtually every belief you seem to hold dear.

> There is FOSS where proprietary code has been added. For example,
> Google adds proprietary code to the Chromium web browser. Guess who
> owns Chromium? My understanding is other authors can make a variant of
> Chromium, but cannot include the proprietary code which means some
> features are lost in the variant.

I used Ungoogled Chromium on Windows and Android.
Works for me.

> Both use FFMPEG, but one charges nothing for
> their front end while another does charge for their front end, extra
> features, and proprietary code beyond FFMPEG.

LAME has been around for years.

> No, I'm not enamored with paying for software. If I can get it free,
> and it has everything some payware does (without ads or crippling) and
> satifies my criteria, then I use the free stuff. Seems you are the one
> highly sensitive to whether a product is freeware or payware, especially
> since you like to slam aspersions on my character regarding monetary
> gain by the author. Get over the money aspect, and focus on the
> features which you claim to do.

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