It's not about special sim cards, it's special numbers.
You can switch the mobile number into 'emergency calls only' which means basically everyone not on the approved list gets kicked off.
This effectively happened anyway.. the network hit capacity, so the only thing that could get through was emergency numbers (since they have priority always and can supercede existing non-emergency calls when congestion is a problem).
If the banking system suffers as a result of what is a comparatively minor disruption (transport out of action for a day) then the effects are multuplied.. businesses go bankcrupt, people lose their jobs, etc.
As it is, today London is back on its feet and is carrying on as if nothing happened. This is as it should be... any other reaction would be to let the terrorists win (they must be *really* pissed off that we couldn't give a crap about them...).
You're driving up the production cost of the solar panels but not of the solar energy itself.
Over time even if the panels cost shitloads to make they'll pay for themselves, by producing energy at far lower running cost than the oil based alternatives (which would continue to increase in price in your doomsday scenario).
OTOH they've been saying oil will run out for decades and they just keep finding more of it... I don't believe them this time either.
The one I have (A1630) is now about 6 months old. I bought it because I though fujitsu had a good reputation.. at the time it was the most expensive 64bit laptop going (paid £1200.. ~$2000) but I wanted something that would last. How wrong I was.
When I bought it the keyboard was loose. Tech support recommended wedging a bit of paper under it (!!) After 2 months I had to replace the DVD/RW as it was utterly useless at burning CDs with a 90%+ failure rate. After 3 months most of the paint had come off the base and the feet had fallen off. After 5 months I had to replace the keyboard completely, and the PSU failed. The PSU for this thing is killer expensive as it's 160W. Now the trackpad has started failing, and I'm not at all sure I can get another one of those. It's also developed a crack in the case - it has never been flat (the A1630 is raised in the middle, which makes it look really strange when you close the lid.. according to fujitsu this is normal) - and the stress of that has eventually cracked the case.
It's not like I've mistreated it... it spends maybe 90% of its time indoors and is very rarely needed onsite.
Tech support's answer is to send it away to them and a repair might be 'about 6 weeks' which is just not acceptable... I use it every day for business. That's when you can get through to someone who understands your accent (FYI the fujitsu call centres *are* all in India).
Meanwhile my old Toshiba has none of these problems and is around 5 years old now.
If they did, it'd be years late, cost millions, and not work.
The last time they tried anything with computers was when they produced a 1000 page report saying that the euro symbol should be on AltGr-e. By the time the report was published everyone was already using AltGr-4 so they'd just thrown a lot of money down the toilet for no reason.
OSX has a perfectly functional/usr/local/bin just like any other Unix.
The only issue I've found is that/etc is a symlink, and the dmg installer will wipe it if you try to put files in there... you need to tell it to put them in/private/etc instead.
For a small company they'd probably get away with it.. one office.
In a larger company they're distributing it between offices and even countries - this *is* distribution, even if only to a limited number of people. Each employee using fordix would have a right under the GPL license to see the code and an equal right to send the OS to someone outside the company.
LGPL is a nice middle ground if you want people to actually use your software... they can add their own value and make money, but changes to your library must be published.
GPL is extremely hard to use as part of a commercial project, as it forces GPL on everything that links to it. That's fine if that's what the author wanted to achieve.. I do remember in my earlier years as a programmer GPLing everything without thinking though and it wouldn't surprise me if that still happened.
When my wife installed a PHP script that just ran 'include' based on input from the URL (open hacking vector, basically) I disabled it and told her to find something less insecure or forget about running the site.
She was *not* happy... but she'd have been even less happy when all her (and my) data was deleted by a hacker.
Tolls Free calling. Ever not have the toll free number translated to the "real" phone number?
Yes. Telephone exchanges are contended.. at busy times they can fill up (it's rare, but it happens). At those times *nobody* can call *anyone* (except emergency calls - the system will terminate active calls to free up space for them, and I believe there's a certain number of reserved circuits that are emergency only).
Ever made a cell phone call and not have the billing recorded while the billing system was being rebooted?
Cell phones are *not* a good example of reliability.. The local cell is regularly known to drop out for several hours at a time (I think it's just faulty), and just last year the entire city lost mobile phone access for a day when someone cut the wrong cable.
OTOH last year also after a fire the entire city lost all telephone lines completely for nearly a week. Lots of businesses that didn't have a backup plan (lots of call centres around here) went bust.
It's surprising it's up as much as it is, really, given the mess that is the modern telecommunications system. Being run by monkeys on short term contracts doesn't help either.
You haven't had to do that since XFree 4 came out a while back.. the X Server queries the monitor for the resolutions it supports, and automatically uses all of those.
Most distro installers add a few more in for good measure, too.
# Intelligent filebrowsing with the finder. I was using list view in Windows Explorer the other day and renamed a file in it. I was shocked to discover it didn't automatically reposition itself in the list based on its new name. Quick and convenient file search is available in a search box in every finder window. You can easily force-quit the Finder without having to worry about OS X crashing.
Not even the most zealous slashdotter would actually defend finder. It's the biggest piece of crap out there... single threaded (do something that takes any time and your desktop is hosed for minutes), and as for youre force-quit comment.. *why should I need to*. If finder was actually stable and didn't keep locking up I wouldn't need to force-quit it (oh, and force-quit does not always work. Sometimes you have to powercycle.. presumably it tries so hard to stop the OS failing it gives up).
Money as a Motivator > Pretty much anything but your life as a Motivator.
Sorry but that just isn't true.
Most people when they have enough money to live comfortably find other motivations (suggesting that money is only a secondary motive, and comfort/survival are the primary ones).. how many people here have quite a higher paying job for less money but a better environment? In that case the equation is evil Boss + Lots of money nice Boss + less money.
I myself quite a job earning double what I am now to work on my favourite opensource project full time.. I've still got enough to live on, just can't buy as much new hardware every month.. big deal.. I'm much happier as a result.
Heck I've known people who have quite *all* paying work to go voluntary for a few years, supported by donations that might or might not happen. They're some of the most motivate people I've ever met, too.
Some of that will be the wide availability of firearms... it's relatively uncommon for even criminals in the UK to have guns (due to the punitive laws covering their possetion - you may get 6 months for robbing a store with a knife.. if you've got a gun on you (or at your home when they search it) - whether you use it or not - you can add 2-5 years to that depending on how pissed off the judge is that day).
That's probably not the whole story either... some cities in the US seem to be awash with gangs regularly shooting each other, which is just unheard of in the UK (at least on that scale... you ocassionaly hear of gangs but if someone gets killed it makes national news for days.. last one I heard of was in January).
alcohol and coffee (well, caffeine) are in fact very addictive.
Cannabis isn't, except in a phychological sense, but the nearly everything that's remotely pleasurable is addictive in that sense... TV, Computers, Slashdot, etc. so that definition of 'addictive' isn't really meanigful.
When companies like TT or IBM GPL (or Digium, MySql, etc.) a product they also refuse to make changes without you assigning copyright to the parent company. This allows them to charge for the product including all the user contributions.. it's an interesting business model.. efectively using the GPL against itself (using it to stop a program being 'free' by tying it to a single company with commercial licensing terms).
You do if it is statically linked. Of course you can decouple the GPL code from your application, but you might take a penalty somewhere (in size, speed, or complexity). Most companies are not going to hassle with that and just pay someone $30,000 to write the widget.
You do if it's dynamically linked too.
The FSF define any piece of code that uses any piece of GPL code as derivative, so to take an extreme example you can't create a DLL of GNU getopt and dynamically link it to a nuclear power control system - the larger program becomes 'derived' from the GPL subroutine and the choice would be to remove the GPL component or GPL the entire system.
There are lots of more mundane examples.. the LGPL is much better and I'm using it more and more now because of this silliness (basically as I write new code I LGPL it and slowly the GPL code is being removed).
Slashdot Mirror
It's not about special sim cards, it's special numbers.
You can switch the mobile number into 'emergency calls only' which means basically everyone not on the approved list gets kicked off.
This effectively happened anyway.. the network hit capacity, so the only thing that could get through was emergency numbers (since they have priority always and can supercede existing non-emergency calls when congestion is a problem).
A robust banking network is *Very* important.
If the banking system suffers as a result of what is a comparatively minor disruption (transport out of action for a day) then the effects are multuplied.. businesses go bankcrupt, people lose their jobs, etc.
As it is, today London is back on its feet and is carrying on as if nothing happened. This is as it should be... any other reaction would be to let the terrorists win (they must be *really* pissed off that we couldn't give a crap about them...).
You're driving up the production cost of the solar panels but not of the solar energy itself.
Over time even if the panels cost shitloads to make they'll pay for themselves, by producing energy at far lower running cost than the oil based alternatives (which would continue to increase in price in your doomsday scenario).
OTOH they've been saying oil will run out for decades and they just keep finding more of it... I don't believe them this time either.
I haven't heard of them rejecting useful knowledge.
Pneumnatic tyres, internal combustion engine, electricity...
I'd never get another fujitsu laptop.
The one I have (A1630) is now about 6 months old. I bought it because I though fujitsu had a good reputation.. at the time it was the most expensive 64bit laptop going (paid £1200.. ~$2000) but I wanted something that would last. How wrong I was.
When I bought it the keyboard was loose. Tech support recommended wedging a bit of paper under it (!!)
After 2 months I had to replace the DVD/RW as it was utterly useless at burning CDs with a 90%+ failure rate.
After 3 months most of the paint had come off the base and the feet had fallen off.
After 5 months I had to replace the keyboard completely, and the PSU failed. The PSU for this thing is killer expensive as it's 160W.
Now the trackpad has started failing, and I'm not at all sure I can get another one of those.
It's also developed a crack in the case - it has never been flat (the A1630 is raised in the middle, which makes it look really strange when you close the lid.. according to fujitsu this is normal) - and the stress of that has eventually cracked the case.
It's not like I've mistreated it... it spends maybe 90% of its time indoors and is very rarely needed onsite.
Tech support's answer is to send it away to them and a repair might be 'about 6 weeks' which is just not acceptable... I use it every day for business. That's when you can get through to someone who understands your accent (FYI the fujitsu call centres *are* all in India).
Meanwhile my old Toshiba has none of these problems and is around 5 years old now.
There's a town in northern italy where a significant number of people are now immune... the immunity is a great chat-up line :)
Evolution in action!
If they did, it'd be years late, cost millions, and not work.
The last time they tried anything with computers was when they produced a 1000 page report saying that the euro symbol should be on AltGr-e. By the time the report was published everyone was already using AltGr-4 so they'd just thrown a lot of money down the toilet for no reason.
Depending on the country, some phone numbers are 8 digits.
Mine is 7...
Why would you install under /sw?
/usr/local/bin just like any other Unix.
/etc is a symlink, and the dmg installer will wipe it if you try to put files in there... you need to tell it to put them in /private/etc instead.
OSX has a perfectly functional
The only issue I've found is that
I'm on 1.33 too.
Last time I installed (a year or so ago) php still didn't work with apache 2, so I couldn't use it.
Legally they'd be on thin ground there.
For a small company they'd probably get away with it.. one office.
In a larger company they're distributing it between offices and even countries - this *is* distribution, even if only to a limited number of people. Each employee using fordix would have a right under the GPL license to see the code and an equal right to send the OS to someone outside the company.
LGPL is a nice middle ground if you want people to actually use your software... they can add their own value and make money, but changes to your library must be published.
GPL is extremely hard to use as part of a commercial project, as it forces GPL on everything that links to it. That's fine if that's what the author wanted to achieve.. I do remember in my earlier years as a programmer GPLing everything without thinking though and it wouldn't surprise me if that still happened.
Kinda depends.
When my wife installed a PHP script that just ran 'include' based on input from the URL (open hacking vector, basically) I disabled it and told her to find something less insecure or forget about running the site.
She was *not* happy... but she'd have been even less happy when all her (and my) data was deleted by a hacker.
Tolls Free calling. Ever not have the toll free number translated to the "real" phone number?
Yes. Telephone exchanges are contended.. at busy times they can fill up (it's rare, but it happens). At those times *nobody* can call *anyone* (except emergency calls - the system will terminate active calls to free up space for them, and I believe there's a certain number of reserved circuits that are emergency only).
Ever made a cell phone call and not have the billing recorded while the billing system was being rebooted?
Cell phones are *not* a good example of reliability.. The local cell is regularly known to drop out for several hours at a time (I think it's just faulty), and just last year the entire city lost mobile phone access for a day when someone cut the wrong cable.
OTOH last year also after a fire the entire city lost all telephone lines completely for nearly a week. Lots of businesses that didn't have a backup plan (lots of call centres around here) went bust.
The telephone system?
You've never worked with a telco have you...
It's surprising it's up as much as it is, really, given the mess that is the modern telecommunications system. Being run by monkeys on short term contracts doesn't help either.
You haven't had to do that since XFree 4 came out a while back.. the X Server queries the monitor for the resolutions it supports, and automatically uses all of those.
Most distro installers add a few more in for good measure, too.
# Intelligent file sharing with permissions; in windows you have to go through hell to get this working.
WTF??
Windows: right-click, 'sharing and security', click on 'share this folder'
OSX: Umm.. well.. it shares your home directory, provided you're not a nonlocal user.. if you are you're hosed.
Anything else means hand-editing smb.conf.
# Intelligent filebrowsing with the finder. I was using list view in Windows Explorer the other day and renamed a file in it. I was shocked to discover it didn't automatically reposition itself in the list based on its new name. Quick and convenient file search is available in a search box in every finder window. You can easily force-quit the Finder without having to worry about OS X crashing.
Not even the most zealous slashdotter would actually defend finder. It's the biggest piece of crap out there... single threaded (do something that takes any time and your desktop is hosed for minutes), and as for youre force-quit comment.. *why should I need to*. If finder was actually stable and didn't keep locking up I wouldn't need to force-quit it (oh, and force-quit does not always work. Sometimes you have to powercycle.. presumably it tries so hard to stop the OS failing it gives up).
Money as a Motivator > Pretty much anything but your life as a Motivator.
Sorry but that just isn't true.
Most people when they have enough money to live comfortably find other motivations (suggesting that money is only a secondary motive, and comfort/survival are the primary ones).. how many people here have quite a higher paying job for less money but a better environment? In that case the equation is evil Boss + Lots of money nice Boss + less money.
I myself quite a job earning double what I am now to work on my favourite opensource project full time.. I've still got enough to live on, just can't buy as much new hardware every month.. big deal.. I'm much happier as a result.
Heck I've known people who have quite *all* paying work to go voluntary for a few years, supported by donations that might or might not happen. They're some of the most motivate people I've ever met, too.
That doesn't make sense.
How can they be Anti EU and also a government propaganda office?
The government are EU president at the moment, and definately aren't anti it..
Oh, and there are EU directives on copyright. This has been widely publicised in many places.
Some of that will be the wide availability of firearms... it's relatively uncommon for even criminals in the UK to have guns (due to the punitive laws covering their possetion - you may get 6 months for robbing a store with a knife.. if you've got a gun on you (or at your home when they search it) - whether you use it or not - you can add 2-5 years to that depending on how pissed off the judge is that day).
That's probably not the whole story either... some cities in the US seem to be awash with gangs regularly shooting each other, which is just unheard of in the UK (at least on that scale... you ocassionaly hear of gangs but if someone gets killed it makes national news for days.. last one I heard of was in January).
alcohol and coffee (well, caffeine) are in fact very addictive.
Cannabis isn't, except in a phychological sense, but the nearly everything that's remotely pleasurable is addictive in that sense... TV, Computers, Slashdot, etc. so that definition of 'addictive' isn't really meanigful.
I depends.. there's a limit.
You can talk about blowing schools up - that's just ranting (although you'll be #1 suspect if anything actually happens).
If you try to persuade other people to blow schools up that's incitement and can easily land you in jail.
When companies like TT or IBM GPL (or Digium, MySql, etc.) a product they also refuse to make changes without you assigning copyright to the parent company. This allows them to charge for the product including all the user contributions.. it's an interesting business model.. efectively using the GPL against itself (using it to stop a program being 'free' by tying it to a single company with commercial licensing terms).
You do if it is statically linked. Of course you can decouple the GPL code from your application, but you might take a penalty somewhere (in size, speed, or complexity). Most companies are not going to hassle with that and just pay someone $30,000 to write the widget.
You do if it's dynamically linked too.
The FSF define any piece of code that uses any piece of GPL code as derivative, so to take an extreme example you can't create a DLL of GNU getopt and dynamically link it to a nuclear power control system - the larger program becomes 'derived' from the GPL subroutine and the choice would be to remove the GPL component or GPL the entire system.
There are lots of more mundane examples.. the LGPL is much better and I'm using it more and more now because of this silliness (basically as I write new code I LGPL it and slowly the GPL code is being removed).