I've had people who hold masters degrees in engineering who complained that if they were paid more, they would actually have less take-home pay because of being "bumped up to a higher tax bracket". That's not how tax brackets work in the USA.
It's not how tax brackets work, but it's how some tax deductions work. For instance, if I recall correctly, passive losses: your income goes $1 above a certain threshold and you lose 100% of the deduction. So you do end up with less "take home" pay. (Actually the deduction is deferred to a later year, but it may end up offsetting capital gains taxed at a much lower rate.)
I guess, not being much of a gamer, I don't care much about gaming on Linux. I realize that many others do care, and their concerns are valid; I just don't share them.
Linux helps me get stuff done. I don't need Steam OS for that.
"Keep backups" is certainly a solution if done diligently. Of course, it's stating the obvious to say that this is often not the case.
As to suggestion 2 and the response, I realize zillions of small businesses run Windows. We could get into a long discussion about whether they have to do so (my thought is that it's truly necessary only sometimes) but yes, they do, so they better learn good security practices. That's the real solution.
Another once-great company descends deeper into the mire. As if their overpriced under-delivering consulting services weren't bad enough, now they are grubbing money with patents.
I hear you, and I understand this argument*. But it harbors the logic that says universities exist to play football, which is used as a means of helping to subsidize their secondary purpose, which is to be institutions of higher academic learning.
* It applies to some, not all, universities. Locally the University of Hawai`i pays the football coach a healthy multiple of the UH President's salary, and the sports program drowns in red ink; this year home games at Aloha Stadium played to a majority of empty seats.
By putting substantial effort into it, I've been able to get almost completely away from Windows (haven't booted my Win 8.1 partition in at least a month).
At one time, when Wine wasn't very good and some things that I had to have, like decent OCR, weren't functional on Linux, I was stuck. But things have evolved and so have my adaptivity skills.
I realize I'm not making a good general case here. Of course, if you're an average user and most of what you do is on the Web or involves typical office suite work, Linux will work for you just about out of the box. If you have specialized needs, I contend that Linux can often be made to work for you, although sometimes that won't be true. (Gamers have the biggest problem, I suppose; people that require a specialized vertical such as maybe medical imaging software and others.)
But to come the point, with all the Microsoft nonsense I keep reading about (and trying very hard to stay clear of), there's a lot of incentive. Microsoft seems to be getting more and more aggressive and not even caring enough to conceal it. There's a lot of reason to try to get away from their lock-in.
Will Microsoft eventually self-destruct? To some extent IBM, which in its day was every bit as aggressive, did. But I'm not willing to put up with another decade of suffering.
For LibreOffice, I actually find it best and easiest to download the latest release from the LO home site, and install manually, which is very easy. I do this because the distro repositories lag significantly, and I prefer to have the latest version.
So, it's not "a right mess" or "an epileptic seizure" or anything like that. It's a deliberate choice. Linux is about choices. Linux allows choices. If you're content to be a few releases back, you can use the repositories and it's a bit simpler. Up to you. If you really hate the command line, you don't have to go there.
Oh, forgot to mention, installing it took all of maybe two minutes and about three commands: tar xvfz L*z; cd L*z/DEBS; dpkg -i *.deb. Done. Wow, that was hard.
I just installed LO 5.1 on my Linux Mint system. It (LO 5.1) is both highly functional and beautiful in appearance (my opinion). I look forward to using this new, open source, free (as in free beer and free of spyware) software.
Social isolation for Linux geeks is a stereotype which, like most stereotypes, don't apply universally, and in this case (Linux users) I suspect don't apply even to the majority.
I deal with it just fine, as do most people who care to run Linux.
I pay nothing for Linux. I pay nothing for LibreOffice. I don't complain about having to do a little work, which has the side benefit of allowing me complete control and choice over what I have on my system.
If you want it all done for you, more like if you want it all done to you, stay with Microsoft.
if Hawaii was still its own country, you'd have your own 1%ers
That was certainly the historical case, and going back into pre-Western-contact days, the ruling class (ali`i) were so elite that if a commoner even looked at them the commoner was subject to death.
Having said that, though, the situation, like everything here in Hawai`i, is complex. Certainly bad things happened back in 1893; it's hard to study the history and think otherwise. But that was a long time ago. What's right? I don't really have the right to be the judge of that.
However, most of the protesters overlook the fact that their ancestors were astronomers and skilled in things like celestial navigation. The ancestors might very well have supported something like the TMT. The ali`i seemed to believe in progress (a little known fact is that Honolulu was, in the days of the Kingdom, an early and enthusiastic adopter of the telephone, under the direction of King David Kalakaua).
Last spring I happened to be on the University of Hawai`i Manoa campus (the main campus, in Honolulu). There was a large group of TMT protesters spread along Dole Street. Granted, they were all very polite and behaved very well, which is a credit to their movement. But was it their movement? I stopped and listened to some of them talking; a number of them were speaking `olelo Hawai`i (the Hawaiian language). Very cool. But they really didn't know what was going on. I overheard them saying that they (at least many of them) were taking part because their UH Hawaiian Studies instructors told them they had to be there.
Ubuntu is worse, actually. Not only does it send searches, but each individual library or package can phone home to a different developer with different information collected about your system. When something crashes, the crash dump is automatically provided to the developer. This even occurs with browsers like Firefox, which can reveal what you were doing with the browser at the time of the crash. There are packages in GNOME and KDE that exist for the sole purpose of reporting back private data when a crash occurs. It's a bad situation on Linux, and unlike Windows, virtually none of the software contains a privacy policy. The GPL sure won't protect against things like this. There's also more incentive for Linux software to monetize user activity because, unlike Windows, there generally isn't a revenue stream from people purchasing the software. It's actually worse on Linux.
You need to provide details. I know there have been some issues with Ubuntu phoning home, but when you say individual libraries can phone home, do they? Which ones?
Crash dump automatically provided to developer? An example, please?
Packages that exist to report back private date? Which ones?
If you can't provide backup, you're just spewing FUD. Do you work for Microsoft?
What you say about safe spaces and trigger warnings is entirely sensible, but I think you're using the terms in a sensible way, which is not what I see and read about on campuses.
What I see about "trigger warnings" is an extremely low threshold. Anything that might be remotely offensive even to someone who's looking to be offended is either out or requires a warning. (This seems closely related to micro-aggressions, which I still fail to fully comprehend. Apparently, showing an interest in someone's culture is a micro-aggression. And so is not showing an interest.)
"Safe spaces" seem to be spaces free from evil white males (or the like), not spaces for private discussion of private matters, as you suggest (and which makes sense). This in turn seems related to "feeling safe on campus" which means not just physical safety (freedom from crime, which again makes sense) but "safe" from the slightest perceived offense, or the aforementioned "microaggressions."
question chipschap: did the touchpad and the screen brightness keys work out of the box on Linux Mint?
Touchpad worked out of the box, although I did some fiddling with sensitivity, etc. (and I disable it when in full-screen Emacs). Screen brightness key did not work, still does not work, but I have a little tray applet that serves the purpose. In any case I keep the brightness at 20% which is more than good enough for indoor environments.
I also did an amount of power optimization.
Yes, Linux requires some fiddling, I don't deny it, but the results are worth it for me.
I have this unit, and I get (Linux Mint 17.2) typically 5-6 hours with mixed workload. Interestingly, if I bring up full-screen Emacs and use only that (no Chrome in the background etc.) --- I get 10 hours, using the wifi for w3m and gnus, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
I've had people who hold masters degrees in engineering who complained that if they were paid more, they would actually have less take-home pay because of being "bumped up to a higher tax bracket". That's not how tax brackets work in the USA.
It's not how tax brackets work, but it's how some tax deductions work. For instance, if I recall correctly, passive losses: your income goes $1 above a certain threshold and you lose 100% of the deduction. So you do end up with less "take home" pay. (Actually the deduction is deferred to a later year, but it may end up offsetting capital gains taxed at a much lower rate.)
I guess, not being much of a gamer, I don't care much about gaming on Linux. I realize that many others do care, and their concerns are valid; I just don't share them.
Linux helps me get stuff done. I don't need Steam OS for that.
"Linux usage on Steam continues to fall"
--Despite Valve's push, less than 1 percent of Steam gamers use Linux or SteamOS.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/3040719/linux/linux-usage-on-steam-continues-to-fall.html
I shall repeat this message several times in the coming days.
... because?
"Keep backups" is certainly a solution if done diligently. Of course, it's stating the obvious to say that this is often not the case.
As to suggestion 2 and the response, I realize zillions of small businesses run Windows. We could get into a long discussion about whether they have to do so (my thought is that it's truly necessary only sometimes) but yes, they do, so they better learn good security practices. That's the real solution.
Another once-great company descends deeper into the mire. As if their overpriced under-delivering consulting services weren't bad enough, now they are grubbing money with patents.
I hear you, and I understand this argument*. But it harbors the logic that says universities exist to play football, which is used as a means of helping to subsidize their secondary purpose, which is to be institutions of higher academic learning.
* It applies to some, not all, universities. Locally the University of Hawai`i pays the football coach a healthy multiple of the UH President's salary, and the sports program drowns in red ink; this year home games at Aloha Stadium played to a majority of empty seats.
A university president makes little compared to a university football coach. The absurdity is incredible.
Aircarft are indeed becoming more and more corwded.
By putting substantial effort into it, I've been able to get almost completely away from Windows (haven't booted my Win 8.1 partition in at least a month).
At one time, when Wine wasn't very good and some things that I had to have, like decent OCR, weren't functional on Linux, I was stuck. But things have evolved and so have my adaptivity skills.
I realize I'm not making a good general case here. Of course, if you're an average user and most of what you do is on the Web or involves typical office suite work, Linux will work for you just about out of the box. If you have specialized needs, I contend that Linux can often be made to work for you, although sometimes that won't be true. (Gamers have the biggest problem, I suppose; people that require a specialized vertical such as maybe medical imaging software and others.)
But to come the point, with all the Microsoft nonsense I keep reading about (and trying very hard to stay clear of), there's a lot of incentive. Microsoft seems to be getting more and more aggressive and not even caring enough to conceal it. There's a lot of reason to try to get away from their lock-in.
Will Microsoft eventually self-destruct? To some extent IBM, which in its day was every bit as aggressive, did. But I'm not willing to put up with another decade of suffering.
If this would have been a vulnerability in MSVCRT, it would be concealed as long as possible, and who knows when it would be fixed?
However as this is a Linux vulnerability, it was openly discussed and it was fixed at once.
There, FTFY.
For LibreOffice, I actually find it best and easiest to download the latest release from the LO home site, and install manually, which is very easy. I do this because the distro repositories lag significantly, and I prefer to have the latest version.
So, it's not "a right mess" or "an epileptic seizure" or anything like that. It's a deliberate choice. Linux is about choices. Linux allows choices. If you're content to be a few releases back, you can use the repositories and it's a bit simpler. Up to you. If you really hate the command line, you don't have to go there.
When are white holes going to be discovered? :-)
Racist!
Oh, forgot to mention, installing it took all of maybe two minutes and about three commands: tar xvfz L*z; cd L*z/DEBS; dpkg -i *.deb. Done. Wow, that was hard.
I just installed LO 5.1 on my Linux Mint system. It (LO 5.1) is both highly functional and beautiful in appearance (my opinion). I look forward to using this new, open source, free (as in free beer and free of spyware) software.
Social isolation for Linux geeks is a stereotype which, like most stereotypes, don't apply universally, and in this case (Linux users) I suspect don't apply even to the majority.
Nice try, but you get a fail on this one.
I deal with it just fine, as do most people who care to run Linux.
I pay nothing for Linux. I pay nothing for LibreOffice. I don't complain about having to do a little work, which has the side benefit of allowing me complete control and choice over what I have on my system.
If you want it all done for you, more like if you want it all done to you, stay with Microsoft.
Yippee! Macrons work now. Thanks for the encoding fix, new owners!
Now if only there would be a way to render the `okina correctly, in a way that would display reliably on most browsers!
if Hawaii was still its own country, you'd have your own 1%ers
That was certainly the historical case, and going back into pre-Western-contact days, the ruling class (ali`i) were so elite that if a commoner even looked at them the commoner was subject to death.
Having said that, though, the situation, like everything here in Hawai`i, is complex. Certainly bad things happened back in 1893; it's hard to study the history and think otherwise. But that was a long time ago. What's right? I don't really have the right to be the judge of that.
However, most of the protesters overlook the fact that their ancestors were astronomers and skilled in things like celestial navigation. The ancestors might very well have supported something like the TMT. The ali`i seemed to believe in progress (a little known fact is that Honolulu was, in the days of the Kingdom, an early and enthusiastic adopter of the telephone, under the direction of King David Kalakaua).
Last spring I happened to be on the University of Hawai`i Manoa campus (the main campus, in Honolulu). There was a large group of TMT protesters spread along Dole Street. Granted, they were all very polite and behaved very well, which is a credit to their movement. But was it their movement? I stopped and listened to some of them talking; a number of them were speaking `olelo Hawai`i (the Hawaiian language). Very cool. But they really didn't know what was going on. I overheard them saying that they (at least many of them) were taking part because their UH Hawaiian Studies instructors told them they had to be there.
Essentially I posted the same type of FUD about Ubuntu that was posted in the story about Microsoft. The trolling is well deserved.
You need help, but I could care less if you get it.
Ubuntu is worse, actually. Not only does it send searches, but each individual library or package can phone home to a different developer with different information collected about your system. When something crashes, the crash dump is automatically provided to the developer. This even occurs with browsers like Firefox, which can reveal what you were doing with the browser at the time of the crash. There are packages in GNOME and KDE that exist for the sole purpose of reporting back private data when a crash occurs. It's a bad situation on Linux, and unlike Windows, virtually none of the software contains a privacy policy. The GPL sure won't protect against things like this. There's also more incentive for Linux software to monetize user activity because, unlike Windows, there generally isn't a revenue stream from people purchasing the software. It's actually worse on Linux.
You need to provide details. I know there have been some issues with Ubuntu phoning home, but when you say individual libraries can phone home, do they? Which ones?
Crash dump automatically provided to developer? An example, please?
Packages that exist to report back private date? Which ones?
If you can't provide backup, you're just spewing FUD. Do you work for Microsoft?
What you say about safe spaces and trigger warnings is entirely sensible, but I think you're using the terms in a sensible way, which is not what I see and read about on campuses.
What I see about "trigger warnings" is an extremely low threshold. Anything that might be remotely offensive even to someone who's looking to be offended is either out or requires a warning. (This seems closely related to micro-aggressions, which I still fail to fully comprehend. Apparently, showing an interest in someone's culture is a micro-aggression. And so is not showing an interest.)
"Safe spaces" seem to be spaces free from evil white males (or the like), not spaces for private discussion of private matters, as you suggest (and which makes sense). This in turn seems related to "feeling safe on campus" which means not just physical safety (freedom from crime, which again makes sense) but "safe" from the slightest perceived offense, or the aforementioned "microaggressions."
the apparently-growing group of people whose profession appears to be 'being offended'
I call this the "LTBO" crowd (looking to be offended).
They will need to turn over a new leaf.
question chipschap: did the touchpad and the screen brightness keys work out of the box on Linux Mint?
Touchpad worked out of the box, although I did some fiddling with sensitivity, etc. (and I disable it when in full-screen Emacs). Screen brightness key did not work, still does not work, but I have a little tray applet that serves the purpose. In any case I keep the brightness at 20% which is more than good enough for indoor environments.
I also did an amount of power optimization.
Yes, Linux requires some fiddling, I don't deny it, but the results are worth it for me.
I have this unit, and I get (Linux Mint 17.2) typically 5-6 hours with mixed workload. Interestingly, if I bring up full-screen Emacs and use only that (no Chrome in the background etc.) --- I get 10 hours, using the wifi for w3m and gnus, etc.