Well systemd slightly reminds me SMIT in AIX which I did not love but need to admit it was useful back when I managed AIX. I am old school, started in Ultrix 4 series, so my habits are a hybrid of serious BSD plus some System V. I like to use kill and use some obscure scripts to launch each and every daemon in its own way. However after my initial negative reaction I now must admit that systemd seems to have the potential to bring much needed standardisation to Linux and is successful so far.. Hopefully you turn out to be right and Desktop also got stabilised and standardised, probably with systemd support. Meanwhile I am not holding my breath.
Well incidentally, Ubuntu is the last Linux desktop I use. I had two occasions during which X environment caused serious problems, costing time and money. In one of the events display got frozen to death with no TTY fallback, one of the libraries in the system got corrupted, I somehow could recover the environment, reinstall system over itself etc. Data partitions in that time was healthy, so that event consumed probably two or three work days only. Naturally reinstalling Ubuntu itself does not take that long, but I needed to install several other software to setup my work environment, I needed to check if everything that seems to be OK is really OK...
In another event, after a short freeze and following crash with some desktop related logs in the system, details of which I do not remember, system rebooted properly, but one of the data partitions got corrupted with 100+ GB data on it. Fortunately data was several public databases that I can get from Internet, but as they require local processing as well, not just downloading, it took several weeks, probably more than a month, to get the system synced back to networks again.
So in short, Ubuntu's issue with me is not ability to do something, my servers are all Ubuntu for the last (probably) five years. But the stability issues in the desktop environment. If I "must" to use Linux on desktop, I would choose Ubuntu probably, but preferably I would not use any Linux for a graphic environment after two events I described above.
Problems with SuSe and Mandriva in the past was either more dramatic than those in some cases like sudden reboot and losing several hours of work in Eclipse twice in a day, or just terrible system performance because of background desktop indexer that OS updates keep reinstalling despite all my efforts to remove it from the system in one case.
See, I am a system manager by profession, although I worked in several positions in the past including network management, commercial management of IT and even as a Scrum Master, a few days ago I have realised that my old coworkers still consult me related to system management issues. So while assuming I know one or two things about managemet I do not think a "desktop" should need a system manager's professional experience in order to be kept alive and kicking.
I frankly am not sure about the actual answer. Kernel seems to be potentially more "difficult" and "open to catastrophe" one of the two, to me at the least. However Linux kernel performs incredibly well, it is the most reliable kernel I have worked with, maybe with the exception of BSD kernel. While Torvalds is just one person he manages a very big, distributed, diverse team of serious programmers. So they as a team can produce a software that can hadle lots of various setups, different outside factors and perform brilliantly. I wonder why a similar situation/environment cannot be established on the Desktop front.
In my personal history, using Linux since 1993 or more likely 94, having started with Slackware (yes I am old..) I gave up trying to use Linux in my desktops a long while ago. I can define my professional positions with several different aspects however each and every one of them requires three main features. Any Linux I know of, tried to use as desktop, lacks one or two of them. These are stability, high performance and controllability/configurability.
I am truly sorry to see that the OS running my servers and I rely on deeply, cannot run my desktops.
You, dear AC, seem to be new or very well-bred for our nasty community. Let me explain in generally accepted expression style. Stack Overflow is full of dicks, who does not know what to do with themselves, so they use that site as a last resort. It is unfortunate there are also some extremely knowledgable people there and two sets are slightly overlapping. If I can find any better reference to a question I research about, I skip their site that day for that question, always. In a way I also use that site as a last resort.
Once Frank Herbert had Gurney Halleck to tell Paul Atreides, thus to us as reader: "Mood? What has mood to do with it? You fight when the necessity arises — no matter the mood! Mood's a thing for cattle or making love or playing the baliset. It's not for fighting." Similarly loving a language has nothing to do with its utilisation or benefits, it is for (well not cattle, but) cowboys who love to brag about last huge program they wrote, which contains 1.000 or more lines, even excluding whitespace that is...
Any airgap that does not include airtight doors, xray machines and armed guard is a potential IQ test of staff that determines who has the lowest score amongst them. Even with additional security factors you just hope that MTBF became longer than expected facility life. I had a governmental customer who after refusing to buy our lower cost dedicated and isolated VSAT network for their SCADA, paid for our more expensive Internet over VSAT package for "staff happiness". I am sure their staff was extremely happy with all the porn they can hope to download over a satellite link, in the middle of mountains. Idiocy always wins.
Well this is interesting. I am used to, even expecting and contributing to the environment of snarky comments. However a "moderator", probably a new one with a SJW or libtardy oriented mind downrated my comment which basically says "it is not so as described in TFA". I frankly do not give a levitating sexual intercourse about any negative comment and/or negative moderating action, as such is the natural course of life and usual environment in our professional circumstances in certain professions. OTOH this is the first time ever I have seen a negative reaction why TFA has a letter "F" there...
Let us think about what _this_ says about the changing trends in/. platform in general. Have a nice Sunday...
For whatever reason, my experience is just the opposite of what is described in TFA. For some months I was forced to actively modify my history, shape it somehow in order to get recommendations I used to get with no effort at all. I only recently can stop YouTube algorithm to recommend pirated content and some extremely amateur producers. In a way I am actively trying to get a flow that is described as "bad" here, but which I prefer to view.
I agree that there is(was) a problem with new modifications in recommendation ML routines, but the bias is not as described, in my case, as such I would think twice before saying that developers are explicitly pushing certain materials, but they are pushing material which is not fitting to viewer preferences.
However last two or three weeks, things are getting better. After months of Bollywood recommendations and some strange pop music videos popping up, interestingly both videos and advertisements got meaningful and related to my interests recently. I do not know how much of this is due to manipulations on my history, and how much is due to a new modification in algorithm.
If these snow flakes are that sensitive for perceived insults, I demand all references to "problem" to be removed from OpenJDK. See "problem" translates to my native language as "sknt", which is written as "sikinti" when ASCII used. "Sikinti" in turn can be used in several different contexts those are related to "dick", "fuck" and "fucking".
OTOH I am afraid we can actually find some morons who would take my complaint above seriously and try to "correct" this issue. My apologies in advance for any inconvenience that might cause.
On the principle I agree with your (but not RMS') position with some "but" items...
*) It is possible to install any software on Apple computers, that is written for MacOs. Limitations apply only to phones, which you can bypass with great and increasing difficulty
*) Similarly it is not encouraged to install uncontrolled by Google (or producer) software on android phones, but with several, some very legally supported by producers, methods any software also can be installed in Androids.
*) The point most IT people missing is that phone users mostly do not have any at all technical knowledge for both evaluating the security of and managing installation of 3rd party software.
I personally support limitation of software installation on phones, not a-la Apple but a-la Google, as the unlimited installation options would lead catastrophic results. Both RMS and his minions have never been able to understand most users are (well, sorry but) utter imbeciles regarding software and computer management. You can barely trust them to use an idiot proof UI, that is all. If you remember, one of the most common arguments of team RMS was everybpdy was in need of accessing the source code of their programs. No sir they are not, you cannot trust a user with source code more than you can trust a driver to calibrate and maintain a car engine...
I think what SJWs do not realise is that they are religious bigots, even while not adhering any religion. They believe not just in their righteousness but also evil in anybody even with a slightly different set of ideals.
I made one mistake, and bought one of their first generation trackers. That device was difficult to use and software was terrible in UX department. I dropped it to garbage can, after a while, due to small added value to my life versus lots of time and effort invested in usage.
Then I have repeated mistake, this counts as stupidity, and bought one of later generation devices. That was working better, but difficult to use, software was better but with some inexplicable tendencies etc. So it was a mixed performance product. Later on device started to generate obviously incorrect data, which turned out to be a software problem, that can only be solved by erasing 1+ years worth data from their online only database. The clip on the device, which was problematic to begin with has broken, with no feasible customer service option available etc.
So it is a very nicely designed piece of garbage.
Aside from being an Anonymous Coward, you might be an Anonymous Pretender. Posting here and not knowing Apple does not have the data!!! What are you, aside from an idiot?
AFAIK and IANAL... Charity expences has tax advantages so should be no problem. I have no idea on environmental activities' situation. Blood diamonds, and all other forms of conflict metals and/or materials are legally questionable to begin with, so not buying them can be defined as a responsible business practice. And acting responsibly is not just legal but a requirement and obligation in some jurisdictions...
They are obliged to protect share holders' profit. While it can be argued that open sourcing program will develop some goodwill towards Google, it is not a quantifiable and/or provable action. Also obligation to protect the share holders' rights are in several Civil Law regulations I had encountered with, so I assume it is codified in every "normal" legal system...
It depends how paranoid you are while defining the "home". Last week Ubuntu modified lots of keys in CA. For me this is something critical enough. You are right that repos are not exactly designed to keep track of user actions, in the general sense of "home to be called". But you need to populate them, even if they are air,glass and steel gapped from the Internet. And during that population, you are replacing software packages by new binaries (and source if you like) provided by distribution packager. So that you are maintaining a one direction connection, that can turn into two way whenever a new (if there is not an existing one already) piece of software triggers...
Honestly, which slightly advanced OS and/or platforn does not call home? Maybe some not so good variants of Linux. This post so bad to be a piece of FUD, but close enough... Chinese and cheap, huh. They already are a superpower, your are late by 15-20 years, depending on the industry.
In Y2K, I was forced to switch NetBEUI frames over a TCP/IP network, because some system managers could not be bothered to switch their transport... I believe it was Cisco DLSW that saved our life, because otherwise we would be forced to find Eicon or similar cards in order to connect E1s directly to NetBIOS servers... Those were fun times... Nowadays the oldest components I am using (apart from obvious pen and paper) are my fingers:)
If the block is really worth the CPU time, then you should be in a position that requires it, so do not punch holes in it.
If the block is not that much necessary, remove it and make life easier for yourself, and the users if you care about them...
If there are really two kind of users, one that should have access to the outside and another, that should not, then split your user network, especially assuming that a network that has blocks for outbound connections, probably should have a (preferably two) DMZs that houses servers already in place...
I am sorry to inform you that there is an old Turkish proverb that states "If my aunt had moustache, then she would be my uncle". This was the first thing came to my mind while reading TFA....
Slashdot Mirror
Well systemd slightly reminds me SMIT in AIX which I did not love but need to admit it was useful back when I managed AIX. I am old school, started in Ultrix 4 series, so my habits are a hybrid of serious BSD plus some System V. I like to use kill and use some obscure scripts to launch each and every daemon in its own way. However after my initial negative reaction I now must admit that systemd seems to have the potential to bring much needed standardisation to Linux and is successful so far.. Hopefully you turn out to be right and Desktop also got stabilised and standardised, probably with systemd support. Meanwhile I am not holding my breath.
Well incidentally, Ubuntu is the last Linux desktop I use. I had two occasions during which X environment caused serious problems, costing time and money. In one of the events display got frozen to death with no TTY fallback, one of the libraries in the system got corrupted, I somehow could recover the environment, reinstall system over itself etc. Data partitions in that time was healthy, so that event consumed probably two or three work days only. Naturally reinstalling Ubuntu itself does not take that long, but I needed to install several other software to setup my work environment, I needed to check if everything that seems to be OK is really OK...
In another event, after a short freeze and following crash with some desktop related logs in the system, details of which I do not remember, system rebooted properly, but one of the data partitions got corrupted with 100+ GB data on it. Fortunately data was several public databases that I can get from Internet, but as they require local processing as well, not just downloading, it took several weeks, probably more than a month, to get the system synced back to networks again.
So in short, Ubuntu's issue with me is not ability to do something, my servers are all Ubuntu for the last (probably) five years. But the stability issues in the desktop environment. If I "must" to use Linux on desktop, I would choose Ubuntu probably, but preferably I would not use any Linux for a graphic environment after two events I described above.
Problems with SuSe and Mandriva in the past was either more dramatic than those in some cases like sudden reboot and losing several hours of work in Eclipse twice in a day, or just terrible system performance because of background desktop indexer that OS updates keep reinstalling despite all my efforts to remove it from the system in one case.
See, I am a system manager by profession, although I worked in several positions in the past including network management, commercial management of IT and even as a Scrum Master, a few days ago I have realised that my old coworkers still consult me related to system management issues. So while assuming I know one or two things about managemet I do not think a "desktop" should need a system manager's professional experience in order to be kept alive and kicking.
I frankly am not sure about the actual answer. Kernel seems to be potentially more "difficult" and "open to catastrophe" one of the two, to me at the least. However Linux kernel performs incredibly well, it is the most reliable kernel I have worked with, maybe with the exception of BSD kernel. While Torvalds is just one person he manages a very big, distributed, diverse team of serious programmers. So they as a team can produce a software that can hadle lots of various setups, different outside factors and perform brilliantly. I wonder why a similar situation/environment cannot be established on the Desktop front.
In my personal history, using Linux since 1993 or more likely 94, having started with Slackware (yes I am old..) I gave up trying to use Linux in my desktops a long while ago. I can define my professional positions with several different aspects however each and every one of them requires three main features. Any Linux I know of, tried to use as desktop, lacks one or two of them. These are stability, high performance and controllability/configurability.
I am truly sorry to see that the OS running my servers and I rely on deeply, cannot run my desktops.
You, dear AC, seem to be new or very well-bred for our nasty community. Let me explain in generally accepted expression style.
Stack Overflow is full of dicks, who does not know what to do with themselves, so they use that site as a last resort.
It is unfortunate there are also some extremely knowledgable people there and two sets are slightly overlapping. If I can find any better reference to a question I research about, I skip their site that day for that question, always. In a way I also use that site as a last resort.
Once Frank Herbert had Gurney Halleck to tell Paul Atreides, thus to us as reader:
"Mood? What has mood to do with it? You fight when the necessity arises — no matter the mood! Mood's a thing for cattle or making love or playing the baliset. It's not for fighting."
Similarly loving a language has nothing to do with its utilisation or benefits, it is for (well not cattle, but) cowboys who love to brag about last huge program they wrote, which contains 1.000 or more lines, even excluding whitespace that is...
Any airgap that does not include airtight doors, xray machines and armed guard is a potential IQ test of staff that determines who has the lowest score amongst them. Even with additional security factors you just hope that MTBF became longer than expected facility life.
I had a governmental customer who after refusing to buy our lower cost dedicated and isolated VSAT network for their SCADA, paid for our more expensive Internet over VSAT package for "staff happiness". I am sure their staff was extremely happy with all the porn they can hope to download over a satellite link, in the middle of mountains. Idiocy always wins.
Let us think about what _this_ says about the changing trends in /. platform in general. Have a nice Sunday...
I agree that there is(was) a problem with new modifications in recommendation ML routines, but the bias is not as described, in my case, as such I would think twice before saying that developers are explicitly pushing certain materials, but they are pushing material which is not fitting to viewer preferences.
However last two or three weeks, things are getting better. After months of Bollywood recommendations and some strange pop music videos popping up, interestingly both videos and advertisements got meaningful and related to my interests recently. I do not know how much of this is due to manipulations on my history, and how much is due to a new modification in algorithm.
If these snow flakes are that sensitive for perceived insults, I demand all references to "problem" to be removed from OpenJDK. See "problem" translates to my native language as "sknt", which is written as "sikinti" when ASCII used. "Sikinti" in turn can be used in several different contexts those are related to "dick", "fuck" and "fucking". OTOH I am afraid we can actually find some morons who would take my complaint above seriously and try to "correct" this issue. My apologies in advance for any inconvenience that might cause.
On the principle I agree with your (but not RMS') position with some "but" items... *) It is possible to install any software on Apple computers, that is written for MacOs. Limitations apply only to phones, which you can bypass with great and increasing difficulty *) Similarly it is not encouraged to install uncontrolled by Google (or producer) software on android phones, but with several, some very legally supported by producers, methods any software also can be installed in Androids. *) The point most IT people missing is that phone users mostly do not have any at all technical knowledge for both evaluating the security of and managing installation of 3rd party software. I personally support limitation of software installation on phones, not a-la Apple but a-la Google, as the unlimited installation options would lead catastrophic results. Both RMS and his minions have never been able to understand most users are (well, sorry but) utter imbeciles regarding software and computer management. You can barely trust them to use an idiot proof UI, that is all. If you remember, one of the most common arguments of team RMS was everybpdy was in need of accessing the source code of their programs. No sir they are not, you cannot trust a user with source code more than you can trust a driver to calibrate and maintain a car engine...
A nicer and shorter summary. I guess people are trying to build their identity on ideologies :( It is a pity...
I think what SJWs do not realise is that they are religious bigots, even while not adhering any religion. They believe not just in their righteousness but also evil in anybody even with a slightly different set of ideals.
I made one mistake, and bought one of their first generation trackers. That device was difficult to use and software was terrible in UX department. I dropped it to garbage can, after a while, due to small added value to my life versus lots of time and effort invested in usage. Then I have repeated mistake, this counts as stupidity, and bought one of later generation devices. That was working better, but difficult to use, software was better but with some inexplicable tendencies etc. So it was a mixed performance product. Later on device started to generate obviously incorrect data, which turned out to be a software problem, that can only be solved by erasing 1+ years worth data from their online only database. The clip on the device, which was problematic to begin with has broken, with no feasible customer service option available etc. So it is a very nicely designed piece of garbage.
Aside from being an Anonymous Coward, you might be an Anonymous Pretender. Posting here and not knowing Apple does not have the data!!! What are you, aside from an idiot?
AFAIK and IANAL... Charity expences has tax advantages so should be no problem. I have no idea on environmental activities' situation. Blood diamonds, and all other forms of conflict metals and/or materials are legally questionable to begin with, so not buying them can be defined as a responsible business practice. And acting responsibly is not just legal but a requirement and obligation in some jurisdictions...
They are obliged to protect share holders' profit. While it can be argued that open sourcing program will develop some goodwill towards Google, it is not a quantifiable and/or provable action. Also obligation to protect the share holders' rights are in several Civil Law regulations I had encountered with, so I assume it is codified in every "normal" legal system...
It depends how paranoid you are while defining the "home". Last week Ubuntu modified lots of keys in CA. For me this is something critical enough.
You are right that repos are not exactly designed to keep track of user actions, in the general sense of "home to be called". But you need to populate them, even if they are air,glass and steel gapped from the Internet. And during that population, you are replacing software packages by new binaries (and source if you like) provided by distribution packager. So that you are maintaining a one direction connection, that can turn into two way whenever a new (if there is not an existing one already) piece of software triggers...
And you are dimmest of all then. What do you think you are doing while loading software updates from repositories, using telepathy?
Honestly, which slightly advanced OS and/or platforn does not call home? Maybe some not so good variants of Linux. This post so bad to be a piece of FUD, but close enough... Chinese and cheap, huh. They already are a superpower, your are late by 15-20 years, depending on the industry.
routinely book expensive online travel to other international countries.
Just out of curiosity, how a travel to another county can be not-international??
In Y2K, I was forced to switch NetBEUI frames over a TCP/IP network, because some system managers could not be bothered to switch their transport... I believe it was Cisco DLSW that saved our life, because otherwise we would be forced to find Eicon or similar cards in order to connect E1s directly to NetBIOS servers... Those were fun times... Nowadays the oldest components I am using (apart from obvious pen and paper) are my fingers :)
If the block is not that much necessary, remove it and make life easier for yourself, and the users if you care about them...
If there are really two kind of users, one that should have access to the outside and another, that should not, then split your user network, especially assuming that a network that has blocks for outbound connections, probably should have a (preferably two) DMZs that houses servers already in place...
I was starting to suspect my git account being faulty :) There is nothing over there...
I am sorry to inform you that there is an old Turkish proverb that states "If my aunt had moustache, then she would be my uncle". This was the first thing came to my mind while reading TFA....