Given that it's April now, you need to know what day in April to determine whether it's 33 or 34 years old. Your result may be correct, but your reasoning is spurious...
I've tried the Janitor out. It mostly uninstalls packages that are either not being used by anything, or that are no longer officially supported (it asks for confirmation on everything, so if you still use them you can choose to keep them). It also lets you delete various backups of things that you might not need (such as old kernel backups that were being saved in case a kernel upgrade doesn't work), and suggests various settings changes that might help (for me it suggested updating the access times on files only when it changed the relative timings of access and modify, but I chose not to do that because I don't like my access times to lie). One problem, though, is that some of its changes make other changes possible, and it doesn't notice in advance; so you may have to run it several times to get rid of all unused packages (because it won't get rid of packages used by unused packages the first time round). Also, the progress bar seems to go up far too fast; it continues processing for ages after the progress bar reaches 100%, and acts like it's hung (it hasn't, you just have to wait a lot...).
I deliberately bought low-end computers; as a programmer, I needed to make sure what I wrote ran on other people's computers, and if everyone else has a higher-end computer than you then what runs for you is likely to run for them.
After a while I was burned by finding out that not all modern computers were capable of switching down to 640x480 resolution, and that old Windows APIs kept being deprecated and not working properly. (If you try to load a MIDI file in Windows XP using the recommended method in Windows 98, for instance, the entire system will lock up for about 30 seconds for no apparent reason, although it'll work eventually.)
I learnt the value of portability and abstracting the system-specific bits the hard way. (Incidentally, I switched to Linux two years ago; it's been much nicer to me as a programmer, the POSIX API has remained pretty stable for years and is likely to stay backwards-compatible for ages, whereas the switch from 16-bit to 32-bit Windows was really quite jarring.)
I'm using New Wave, which is a kind of dark grey and comes with Jaunty. It's pretty good. (On the other hand, I liked the old brown Human theme too...)
Well, tar vs. cpio used to be a pretty big argument (not quite as big as emacs vs. vi, but almost); on the other hand, that one did come to a result. (cpio is hardly used nowadays except to unpackage RPMs by hand.)
I'm having the same beeping bug, and I did report it (just now): https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/363532. Unfortunately, I don't have much of an idea of what's going on; clarifying it with information would certainly be helpful...
I have JS enabled, but am blocking certain things via noscript. I get the no-JS error; apparently just enabling JS on slashdot.org isn't enough to be able to metamod. As a result, if they're making me jump through so many hoops to help them out, I just won't bother.
Incidentally, even more sillily, the metamoderation reminder only appears if you have JavaScript off...
You can upgrade ext3 to ext4 in place, although you need to take the system temporarily offline to resize the inodes if you want the result to end up completely as if you were using ext4 all along. You do it simply by mounting an ext3 filesystem as ext4; then ext3 representation is used for all the files that you haven't changed, and ext4 for newly created files since you changed the mount type.
It's faster, works on a wider range of hardware, and has more features. (The ability to update it remotely over a network, if that's enabled, looks very useful for companies that try to manage a large number of computers.)
Nah, everyone's posting in this article to get the achievement, so nobody can mod it. (And this isn't an attempt at achievement whoring, I posted here earlier I think.)
Edit | Preferences | Content in Firefox 3 allows you to disable JavaScript, Java, and images; Tools | Add-ons | Plugins allow you to disable plugins such as Flash, Java (two ways to disable that, it seems), and audio playback. I'm not sure about the OpenOffice equivalents, though.
How exactly are you going to remove the ad-handling code from Firefox? It's not as if there's special code in Firefox just to display ads...
As for NoScript and FlashBlock, people use them because they offer better functionality than just disabling the features in the browser itself (which is possible); the idea's to have control over what scripts run and flash is shown, rather than just blanket-disabling everything. (For instance, I block JavaScript on most sites, but not Wikipedia or Slashdot, or a few others.)
You can pay to jump the queue. Also, the 30 minute time is for if you want rendering on some really obscure browsers; the more easily available browsers, like Firefox and IE, generally render pretty quickly, and if you turn off all the obscure ones you'll get shorter queue times. Still, Browsershots is best for a final check that your page works in really obscure browsers, as opposed to other alternatives which you'd use during development.
Slashdot doesn't support Unicode, so the e-acture came out mojibake-style. (As for why Slashdot doesn't support Unicode in 2009, see if you can think up a decent explanation, I can't...) It's not the grandparent's fault.
You'd be surprised how much specialist engineering software is available for Linux nowadays. (In an EULA I was reading just the other day (although not on my computer), for instance, it had specific terms for the Crossover Office code that was bundled with it so it would run on Linux.)
The Windows driver would likely mess up your computer, anyway. I've seen several Windows computers messed up due to badly written ununinstallable printer drivers. Not sure if that's better than the typical Linux happening of not working at all, though; but with such printers, getting them working is often not what you want.
Admittedly, I often do start a text editor via Alt-F2 gedit [return]. Means I don't have to leave the keyboard to go to the mouse, doesn't require going through the menus, and you can do gksudo gedit to escalate it to root if you need to for some reason (although I prefer using sudoedit at a terminal for that sort of thing).
It's a case of giving the money back and then hoping nobody prosecutes, as far as I can tell; not malicious, but still highly dubious and probably illegal. There will likely be a real scandal the first time they can't track down someone they've defrauded to give the money back...
Slashdot Mirror
Given that it's April now, you need to know what day in April to determine whether it's 33 or 34 years old. Your result may be correct, but your reasoning is spurious...
I've tried the Janitor out. It mostly uninstalls packages that are either not being used by anything, or that are no longer officially supported (it asks for confirmation on everything, so if you still use them you can choose to keep them). It also lets you delete various backups of things that you might not need (such as old kernel backups that were being saved in case a kernel upgrade doesn't work), and suggests various settings changes that might help (for me it suggested updating the access times on files only when it changed the relative timings of access and modify, but I chose not to do that because I don't like my access times to lie). One problem, though, is that some of its changes make other changes possible, and it doesn't notice in advance; so you may have to run it several times to get rid of all unused packages (because it won't get rid of packages used by unused packages the first time round). Also, the progress bar seems to go up far too fast; it continues processing for ages after the progress bar reaches 100%, and acts like it's hung (it hasn't, you just have to wait a lot...).
I deliberately bought low-end computers; as a programmer, I needed to make sure what I wrote ran on other people's computers, and if everyone else has a higher-end computer than you then what runs for you is likely to run for them.
After a while I was burned by finding out that not all modern computers were capable of switching down to 640x480 resolution, and that old Windows APIs kept being deprecated and not working properly. (If you try to load a MIDI file in Windows XP using the recommended method in Windows 98, for instance, the entire system will lock up for about 30 seconds for no apparent reason, although it'll work eventually.)
I learnt the value of portability and abstracting the system-specific bits the hard way. (Incidentally, I switched to Linux two years ago; it's been much nicer to me as a programmer, the POSIX API has remained pretty stable for years and is likely to stay backwards-compatible for ages, whereas the switch from 16-bit to 32-bit Windows was really quite jarring.)
I'm using New Wave, which is a kind of dark grey and comes with Jaunty. It's pretty good. (On the other hand, I liked the old brown Human theme too...)
I think you mean "participle".
Debian -> Ubuntu
I don't think this counts as a fork at all. Ubuntu is still very much reliant on upstream changes, whereas a true fork wouldn't be.
So ... does that mean emacs or vi[m] won?
Well, tar vs. cpio used to be a pretty big argument (not quite as big as emacs vs. vi, but almost); on the other hand, that one did come to a result. (cpio is hardly used nowadays except to unpackage RPMs by hand.)
I'm having the same beeping bug, and I did report it (just now): https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/363532. Unfortunately, I don't have much of an idea of what's going on; clarifying it with information would certainly be helpful...
I have JS enabled, but am blocking certain things via noscript. I get the no-JS error; apparently just enabling JS on slashdot.org isn't enough to be able to metamod. As a result, if they're making me jump through so many hoops to help them out, I just won't bother.
Incidentally, even more sillily, the metamoderation reminder only appears if you have JavaScript off...
Oh, I don't know. SCO's lawyers could give them a run for their money...
You can upgrade ext3 to ext4 in place, although you need to take the system temporarily offline to resize the inodes if you want the result to end up completely as if you were using ext4 all along. You do it simply by mounting an ext3 filesystem as ext4; then ext3 representation is used for all the files that you haven't changed, and ext4 for newly created files since you changed the mount type.
It's faster, works on a wider range of hardware, and has more features. (The ability to update it remotely over a network, if that's enabled, looks very useful for companies that try to manage a large number of computers.)
Nah, I make my timezone claims in UTC. It must have been someone else who claimed that.
Why is a story being posted on April 2 when the URL of TFA says it's an April 1 story?
Nah, everyone's posting in this article to get the achievement, so nobody can mod it. (And this isn't an attempt at achievement whoring, I posted here earlier I think.)
The system tracks whether you're reading or not for moderation, I think. People can't moderate if they either visit Slashdot too much, or not enough.
Edit | Preferences | Content in Firefox 3 allows you to disable JavaScript, Java, and images; Tools | Add-ons | Plugins allow you to disable plugins such as Flash, Java (two ways to disable that, it seems), and audio playback. I'm not sure about the OpenOffice equivalents, though.
How exactly are you going to remove the ad-handling code from Firefox? It's not as if there's special code in Firefox just to display ads...
As for NoScript and FlashBlock, people use them because they offer better functionality than just disabling the features in the browser itself (which is possible); the idea's to have control over what scripts run and flash is shown, rather than just blanket-disabling everything. (For instance, I block JavaScript on most sites, but not Wikipedia or Slashdot, or a few others.)
You can pay to jump the queue. Also, the 30 minute time is for if you want rendering on some really obscure browsers; the more easily available browsers, like Firefox and IE, generally render pretty quickly, and if you turn off all the obscure ones you'll get shorter queue times. Still, Browsershots is best for a final check that your page works in really obscure browsers, as opposed to other alternatives which you'd use during development.
Slashdot doesn't support Unicode, so the e-acture came out mojibake-style. (As for why Slashdot doesn't support Unicode in 2009, see if you can think up a decent explanation, I can't...) It's not the grandparent's fault.
You'd be surprised how much specialist engineering software is available for Linux nowadays. (In an EULA I was reading just the other day (although not on my computer), for instance, it had specific terms for the Crossover Office code that was bundled with it so it would run on Linux.)
The Windows driver would likely mess up your computer, anyway. I've seen several Windows computers messed up due to badly written ununinstallable printer drivers. Not sure if that's better than the typical Linux happening of not working at all, though; but with such printers, getting them working is often not what you want.
Admittedly, I often do start a text editor via Alt-F2 gedit [return]. Means I don't have to leave the keyboard to go to the mouse, doesn't require going through the menus, and you can do gksudo gedit to escalate it to root if you need to for some reason (although I prefer using sudoedit at a terminal for that sort of thing).
Yours redirects to mine. So my link wasn't wrong, but neither is yours.
It's a case of giving the money back and then hoping nobody prosecutes, as far as I can tell; not malicious, but still highly dubious and probably illegal. There will likely be a real scandal the first time they can't track down someone they've defrauded to give the money back...