First is strong and enforceable law that makes it unlawful to violate one's privacy. The second is to prosecute violators directly—that is, employees cannot hide behind corporate walls and allow the corporate entity to take the blame.

Irrespective of what employers demand, employees have a responsibility to obey the law. Risk of individual employees being chucked in the slammer would change corporate culture overnight.

Fining corporations alone is a waste of time, they see such fines as the cost of doing business, losing one's freedom for an individual is another matter altogether. Employees must be frightened of the consequences of violating the law or the practice will continue.

Just a couple of hours in a supervised exam room with only one's own brain for answers.

Surely this is obvious.

For example, I used to use GIMP and became quite expert at it and would often swap between it and Photoshop. That changed when GIMP's developers removed the Fade feature (similar functionality as in Photoshop). The result is that they turned a perfectly functional program into a clunky mess that was ergonomically horrible to use. Using it was now like going from a modern auto gearbox back to a clunky manual.

Their rationale was that fading was better done by layers and such. Technically that's likely so (depending on what one's doing) but for the rest of us who were happy with the Photoshop-like Fade GIMP suddenly became useless.

GIMP's developers are more interested in some strange notion of technical purity than providing good ergonomic software that ordinary users can use. In short, GIMP's just a play toy for them, benefitting the opensource world isn't on their horizon.

Sure, as GIMP's developers they have the right to fuck up their software, what they don't have the right to do is fuck up bona fide users who've spent a large investment in learning the product by essentially making the product unusable.

Keep away from GIMP, as others have said there are much better alternatives now available.

More importantly, as I've mentioned, ReactOS is not stable nor reliable enough to even use as an offline O/S sans the Win 11 dross.

If these stability/compatibility issues were fixed then it'd develop a reputation for being reliable which would lead to further development work.

Unfortunately for everyone except Microsoft this is not the case.

Right, there is a long tradition in it taking centuries to build great cathedrals, Chartres, Notre Dame, etc.

I've little issue with that, however taking so long to build something such as an O/S that it's obsoleted itself many times over before being finished is another matter altogether.

Trouble is there's never been enough interest in ReactOS to get it to the point where it's stable let alone warrant fancy extras. (After three decades of trying to clone the basics and failing is proof enough.)

In short, developers see it as a dead end. Why there's so little interest I've never fully understood, but it's fact.

If it were actually stable and usable as a basic operating system it could be used for lots of offline stuff but it's not—even at this point. If it were useable I'd readily adopt it to use offline (I've tried many times and failed).

Another point, this lack of interest shows up on ReactOS's website; there's so little new news and info the site may as well be dead.

The American War of Independence, French Revolution and English Civil War were acts of terrorism.

Were those acts justified? Not if you're the ones who were initially holding the power.

How I came by them was by accident when I was helping a guy who was a worse (indiscriminate) hoarder than I am move his tooling and machining factory. He hoarded anything technical, especially electronics stuff.

He didn't know what the circuits were but I did. Despite having little interest in either the modules or circuits instinct made me rescue them (it's a fluke they weren't scrapped). Reason: I once recall hundreds of these modules flooding onto the auction market and no one wanting them except for the tubes so I assumed everyone who'd be interested was already in the know.

The circuits (if I recall correctly—the factory move was in 2012) were together in a big folder a bit too big to scan on a quarto/A4 scanner.

Incidentally, there were stacks of old IBM computer racks that IBM historical people had rescued earlier (presumably the modules were from the same computer) but the modules and circuits surfaced later and never ended up with the rest of the hardware.

I'd be very surprised if others don't possess copies of those folders of circuits (computer historical societies etc.) as at one time those modules were so ubiquitous.

Seeing there's interest I'll hone in on them as I sort through the files (I know roughly what room they're in). The moment I find them I'll put them on line.

In the meantime I'd urge you to seek out copies of those circuit folders. IBM documented everything so well, their manuals were masterpieces of documentation in their own right (unlike the terrible situation of today where tech info on products is as scarce as hen's teeth).

Re museum, I'm in Australia so I'll seek out the mob who took the racks and try to mate the modules with the rest of the H/W. Thanks for the offer.

They've been getting in the way and I've been meaning to chuck them away on many an occasion but something inside me has stopped me doing so because of their possible historical value.

Shirriff's blog has reinforced my thinking, they'll just have to clutter up my place for a little longer methinks.

People insist on Windows at work because it's so ubiquitous, when they go home their modus operandi doesn't have to change.

Forcing workers to change OSes against their will only puts one's job on the line (management will side with workers as it's the path of least resistance). QED.

Appealing to reason is a waste of time as no big monopolistic corporation will willingly forfeit money. The only realistic (effective) solution is legislative. I don't see that happening anytime soon in the US but perhaps it's possible in other jurisdictions (more likely now that the US is no longer the flavor of the month with many).

Simply, this shows who's actually in charge of the Country and it's not the Government.

I've never had any pretense at being good enough to entertain people with those works as everyone knows them so well (from professional recordings). Even Mozart's a problem here. For example the Romance in the D Minor Concerto, K.466 looks deceptively simple (at least in parts) but it's anything but after hearing someone like Brendel play it. Everyone knows it so well it's not worth the embarrassment of even trying (except perhaps in secret).

(Mozart has a habit of looking simple until one tries to play it, Bach is none of that—one knows what one's in for at pretty much first glance.)

Still I prefer to use scissors with the left hand and most are right-handed. It's a damn nuisance as the loop handles are the wrong way around/wrong size for a leftie.

As a left-hander, it's very obvious to me. That said—because of the above point—my right hand is much stronger and more adept at playing. In short, I'm right handed when playing the piano.

No sarcastic comments please, I well know more practice and playing those damn Czerny scales ad nauseam would have restored proper balance. :-)

It's only afterwards and as a consequence some highly newsworthy disasters occur such as a child abduction or political sex scandal involving a high profile politician come to light that the lay public will get the message that weak encryption is effectively no encryption.

In the meantime criminals will be early adopters of more sophisticated messaging such as steganography.