Allocation of resources to try and ban cryptocurrency (or encryption in general) is probably one of the dumbest things ever conceived, probably even more so than the drug war.
Regulators don’t have to ban cryptocurrency use among citizens, they only have to ban/overtax everyone trying to cash it out or to run a legal business in it, to reduce liquidity to a level when it’s more risky or expensive than regular laundering. Cryptokids may then play their encryption penny as usual.
It's entirely easy to make crypto legally useless for legal transactions. The fellow making you coffee won't take crypto if he can only use it to buy drugs. This doesn't mean it will happen but conflating encryption and crypto is poorly considered because we have a long history of regulating commerce.
>Neither do all the widely deployed Linux flavours, they all have clearly defined EOL policies.
The big difference here you forgot to point out is that you can almost always update to the next Debian (or whatever GNU/Linux distribution you use) Stable release with the hardware you ran on the last one.
You could also get new hardware from whatever vendor you want to since Debian (and any other GNU/Linux distribution) isn't vendor locked to a company that insists on selling you soldered RAM/SSDs and thermal throttling machines.
The Debian team also consistently honors their support cycles, unlike Apple.
>Nor do the BSDs, e.g. OpenBSD has a "current plus previous" policy.
Same thing as the GNU/Linux situation i mentioned above, the operating system is not vendor locked and you can almost always update to the next release with old (in the case of *BSD maybe even ancient) hardware, this is not true for macOS.
>You have to draw a line in the sand somewhere in terms of patching historical versions.
Agreed, you have to draw the line somewhere.
The issue here is that Apple drew the line and then didn't even bother to honor it.
Exactly on point regarding Debian. I've been running Debian stable since 2012 or 2013, and I've only upgraded my hardwear when a motherboard died or when I wanted a new laptop for reasons other than the OS.
>I'm imagining someone in 1990 hearing you say that being able to instantly start watching almost any music video or filmed lecture/talk ever made
Imagine going back and mentioning that this would also be a way for the company (Google) to snoop on your conversations and censor dissenting thougth.
A free way to stream any video sounds nice, but it doesn't once you mention the fact that it actually limits the type of content you are able to enjoy.
We should be trying to build a better infrastructure for FOSS video streaming instead of trying to rationalize shitty business models.
>any conversations that are snooped on are ones you allow to be snooped on by using a free service
I don't think the innocence of the people who don't know the difference between proprietary and free software should be the thing we attack here, specially since the company in question has gone through great efforts before to restrain the spread of the FSF.
That's debatable. Any company that analyses large amounts of data produced by you in the form of posts, likes/dislikes, follows etc are effectively reading your mind.
Allocation of resources to try and ban cryptocurrency (or encryption in general) is probably one of the dumbest things ever conceived, probably even more so than the drug war.