Modern programmes seem to be going the opposite direction. MS Office and Chrome, I'm thinking of you.
Have you had the pleasure of trying to advise a friend or colleague how to do something in one of these programmes? Where once you would have said "click tools, then options, then the general tab...", now we're reduced to such nonsense as "click on the logo orb", and "can you see the circle with what looks like a wrench and a cog in it?".
To be fair, the Unity HUD thing is pretty nifty (the HUD, not the Dash- which is still not nifty). You hit Alt and you get a small text entry box. You type, and it returns every menu item in the programme you're using that matches the words. Surprisingly useful way of not having to deal with the drop-down menus.
A field which grows a good crop of grass can usually grow a good crop of potatoes or cereal too (cereal crops are basically grass). Some exception for very hilly land, perhaps, but cows don't do well in very hilly land anyway. Most fields where cattle graze on grass are left that way specifically for cattle grazing.
I realise that's not 100% true. For one, some fields are left to grow grass as part of crop rotation, and some sites are left grassy for aesthetic reasons (e.g., sheep are allowed to graze around Avebury and Stonehenge monuments, which are never going to be crop fields). So some livestock farming can be efficient (I'd never dream of arguing we should all turn vegetarian (or worse- vegan)). But you can bet your life that most big commercial livestock farmers are mostly using dedicated, fertile land for the job.
From an environmental point of view, it would certainly make a lot of sense if we all reduced our meat consumption somewhat (and would be good for health reasons too). Cutting meat consumption by half would make a huge difference. I say that as a man who had meat for lunch, is about to eat meat for dinner, and would probably have had meat for breakfast given half a chance...
Anyone who says "Global warming? Let's just go Nuclear!" is, unfortunately, failing to address 90% of the issues. Which is why you'll find those concerned about global warming don't restrict themselves to a single solution.
If we replaced every coal, oil and gas fired electrical power station in the world with nuclear (but continued to use petrol/diesel/fuel oil/LPG in cars and other motor vehicles), we would still be in a much better position than we are now, greenhouse gas wise.
I'm all for people ditching petrol for electric, or ditching cars for the bus, but changing behaviours is very difficult. We should still crack on with the (relatively) straight forward bits.
More to the point, why on earth would you want to build a spaceship shaped like the Enterprise? It's not a particularly practical design for a spacecraft. It was picked for the show for exactly 3 reasons: 1) it looks like the ship from Forbidden Planet but with enough visual differences to avoid a lawsuit, 2) it looks cool and science-fictiony, 3) it fits in with all the fictional technology that it is fictionally loaded with (warp nacelles, deflector dish, etc). Assuming none of that stuff exists (and it doesn't), then don't make it that shape.
If what you want is a spaceship with ion engines and a rotating section with faux-gravity for pootling around the solar system, the best shape would not look like the Enterprise. If you must model it on something from fiction, the Discovery from 2001 is probably a better bet; but in reality it'll look much more pragmatically like the stuff we're building now.
Making it look like a prop from Star Trek is nothing but a nerdy wet dream.
To be honest, I'd settle for ".bank.uk" (and your local equivalents). Nominet maintains (or allows) a number of second level domains which have policed registration requirements, so one for recognised banking organisations shouldn't be too hard to manage. Exactly what the criteria would be is debatable, but there are plenty of candidates- only FSA-regulated organisations, only organisations with a banking license, etc.
All duly noted, but I'd prefer not to have to go fishing in the dark for my laptops. How would I have known to contact Dell's sales team to ask for a computer I didn't know was for sale, and which isn't mentioned on their website? How would I even know whether it'd be best to call Dell or HP or Lenovo- they all have equally little on their websites on Ubuntu-loaded computers for sale.
If Dell wants to sell me an Ubuntu-loaded computer, all they need to do is put it on their website and the rest would fall into place. It doesn't even have to be obvious- just a search result with the keyword "linux" or "ubuntu" would do.
The UK has postal voting (very convenient it is too), but it has a lot of fraud allegations levelled against it. No time to type a full explanation right now, but Auntie Beeb can help: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-17857850
The word "mammoth" does not come from any word for "large". It comes from the name "earth horn" in Mansi (so says Wikipedia). The fact that we now use the word "mammoth" to mean "large" is by analogy with the animal. As in "that's one elephant-sized headache I've got today".
Mammoths aren't actually any larger than regular African Elephants (which admittedly is pretty darned large).
Indeed, that is one of the very few things Unity did right. Putting the taskbar on the left side of the screen by default was an eye-opener for me in the post-widescreen world. I know I could have moved the taskbar over there myself at any point...but it just never occurred to me.
Category three- and the one I'm imagining they're aiming for- is Android developers. Android is the top mobile platform by market share, and it plays nice with Linux (being Linux itself at heart). Mobile developers also strike me as the group most likely to care about stylishness and mobility.
Not to mention the fact that, barring an obscene price tag, they can always expect some interest from the hobbyist/enthusiast market, who are always desperate for Linux-ready premium hardware. Not a huge market, obviously, but sales are sales.
That will depend on where you are in the world. They no-longer sell Ubuntu machines in the UK, infuriatingly, and haven't for quite a while. Depending on where the summary writer is from, they may not have realised that Dell still sells Ubuntu boxes in some parts of the world (I certainly didn't).
kubuntu-desktop is always just an apt-get away. Or xubuntu-desktop. Or lubuntu-desktop.
That's the forgotten joy of Ubuntu- even compared with other Linux distros, window managers are fantastically easy. There are so many pre-built ones for the distro which you can guarantee will play nice with all the other default software. It's one of those little benefits which Unity has really managed to focus in my mind...
How the hell is that insightful? I still use 1280x1024 as standard (you insensitive clod). In what way is that "barely usable for browsing"? Games are the only place where I notice a difference, as any game designed with higher resolutions in mind can make individual elements (icons, characters etc.) overly large.
The CEO clearly disagrees with you, seeing as he jeopardised his career, reputation and company by making up a fictional on-paper test that he fictionally passed.
You can't have it both ways on that one (any more than any of the other both-way situations in this thread); either a degree on your CV is important enough to fake and be fired for, or it's worthless and not worth thinking about.
In the UK & US, Linux is alleged to have about a 1% market share traditionally. In the UK & US, Linux machines are generally unavailable to buy preloaded. So I'd say that in the UK & US, something like 1% of Windows machines sold are wiped and set up with Linux.
Without regional numbers from Canonical/etc. about how many they sell in which countries, it's tricky to be any more exact...
Linux does tend to be pretty decent with hardware compatibility these days, but I do agree. When I bought my first netbook, I bought one with Xandros Linux pre-installed. I wiped it straight away for something better (Ubuntu), but I was happy in the knowledge that there was full Linux driver support for all the hardware out of the box. When I bought my second netbook, Linux pre-loaded wasn't an option, so I had to do painstaking research in advance to make sure I was buying something which would play nice with Ubuntu.
Canonical have a fairly decent "Ubuntu certified" system now, but I'd still pay good money to know that the box I'm buying from Dell/HP/Lenovo/box-maker-of-choice will boot from my Live CD without breaking step.
It's also possible that you end up hurting both, or that your sanctions are so porous as to be irrelevant.
Well we can rule out pourousness, as the article is suggesting that it is killing off local businesses.
The sanctions are working as prescribed. The idea of a sanction is to kill of the country's economy, therefore reducing tax revenues, increasing unemployment, and generally making life more miserable for the government. The question isn't whether sanctions work, it's whether they're the right weapon for a given circumstance.
When the US put sanctions on Cuba during the Cold War, the intention was clear- weaken the government, deprive them of money, prevent them from building up their military and influence. A sanction was (in theory) a good idea. Syria is different, because they aren't "our enemy"- they're no threat to us or anyone outside of Syria, so there's no point in trying to reduce their regional influence. Syria, instead, is about crimes against humanity being perpetrated against the local population; and I don't see how sanctions are supposed to fix that.
If I understand Mandriva's business model, they make money by selling their desktop + support contracts to businesses (in the same was as RH, Novell & Canonical).
So my question is, who the hell (in terms of big companies and organisations) would want to take out an expensive contract for a year's support with a company that seems to be scraping money together on a month by month basis? How do you know you're not going to buy a few thousand euro's worth of support, only to find it going into the big bankruptcy black hole a few months later? I must say, it would make me think hard about whether to go with them or one of their rivals.
If you want to do business with big enterprise clients, you need to look like a stable healthy company. I hope they can get back there, but it's a chicken & egg scenario. Need to look healthy to get customers, need to get customers to be healthy...
And for the typical user, Ubuntu is the best distro. Xubuntu is a wonderful distro for older hardware - but not too old.
I mean, outside of fedora, Ubuntu, Xubuntu (maybe Mint) and Slackware, what's the point?
Some people have many different uses for a computer other than just "personal desktop"- which is what Fedora, Ubuntu/Xubuntu & Mint are all for (and Slackware for the hobbyists). Servers, smartphones, supercomputers, embedded devices, penetration testing, media centres just to name a few off the top of my head.
If you want a penetration testing distro, you have a choice of 2 or 3 tops. If you want a media centre distro, there's another 2 or 3. If people can't choose between 2 or 3 options, they should have their computer taken away (or be sold an Apple). The odds of anyone being in the situation where they're trying to decide between Whoppix, Mythbuntu, RHEL and Meego as equal options should be zero to none.
Funnily enough, Virgin Media were already running an opt-in content filter when I first signed up.
I only found this out when trying to watch an episode of some TV show or other on YouTube. It was a normal show from standard TV, but it was behind one of those "log in to view content" messages which YouTube has (I think there might have been some nude scene in that episode). The Virgin filter wouldn't let me view it. Obviously, I promptly figured out where the opt-out was.
If that's the standard the new filter is going to live up to (where an episode of Homeland can't be watched because it has some bare boobies in one scene), the new internet will be a brave new world of suck.
I was exposed to strong language and sexuality by my peers (they were exposed by idiot adults) since age 7. Nothing good came out of it.
You know who you are? You are human waste, a parasite in a need of a good squash. The day scum like you will decorate the lampposts will be one of the happiest days of my life.
Go to Hell, asshole.
And yet I see you overcame it to become a well rounded and reasonable human being.
The PM is basically just trying to rally the right-wingers around him after a disastrous local elections. The Daily Mail (possibly the worst example of right wing press) has been banging their think-of-the-children drum for months, at exactly the same time as they've been giving the PM a kicking. The PM has just come out about 8 points below Labour in a mostly-nationwide vote. 2 + 2 are easy to put together.
Sadly, there's a strong chance it would pass. The Tories will gather round it like crazy moths around a nutty flame, and Labour will be equally worried about upsetting the middle-class middle-Englanders who read the Mail (and "we're pro porn for children" is a difficult argument to make at the best of times). And the Lib Dems have already sold their soul and back-bone wholesale, so don't expect miracles from them.
Slashdot Mirror
Modern programmes seem to be going the opposite direction. MS Office and Chrome, I'm thinking of you.
Have you had the pleasure of trying to advise a friend or colleague how to do something in one of these programmes? Where once you would have said "click tools, then options, then the general tab...", now we're reduced to such nonsense as "click on the logo orb", and "can you see the circle with what looks like a wrench and a cog in it?".
To be fair, the Unity HUD thing is pretty nifty (the HUD, not the Dash- which is still not nifty). You hit Alt and you get a small text entry box. You type, and it returns every menu item in the programme you're using that matches the words. Surprisingly useful way of not having to deal with the drop-down menus.
A field which grows a good crop of grass can usually grow a good crop of potatoes or cereal too (cereal crops are basically grass). Some exception for very hilly land, perhaps, but cows don't do well in very hilly land anyway. Most fields where cattle graze on grass are left that way specifically for cattle grazing.
I realise that's not 100% true. For one, some fields are left to grow grass as part of crop rotation, and some sites are left grassy for aesthetic reasons (e.g., sheep are allowed to graze around Avebury and Stonehenge monuments, which are never going to be crop fields). So some livestock farming can be efficient (I'd never dream of arguing we should all turn vegetarian (or worse- vegan)). But you can bet your life that most big commercial livestock farmers are mostly using dedicated, fertile land for the job.
From an environmental point of view, it would certainly make a lot of sense if we all reduced our meat consumption somewhat (and would be good for health reasons too). Cutting meat consumption by half would make a huge difference. I say that as a man who had meat for lunch, is about to eat meat for dinner, and would probably have had meat for breakfast given half a chance...
Anyone who says "Global warming? Let's just go Nuclear!" is, unfortunately, failing to address 90% of the issues. Which is why you'll find those concerned about global warming don't restrict themselves to a single solution.
If we replaced every coal, oil and gas fired electrical power station in the world with nuclear (but continued to use petrol/diesel/fuel oil/LPG in cars and other motor vehicles), we would still be in a much better position than we are now, greenhouse gas wise.
I'm all for people ditching petrol for electric, or ditching cars for the bus, but changing behaviours is very difficult. We should still crack on with the (relatively) straight forward bits.
More to the point, why on earth would you want to build a spaceship shaped like the Enterprise? It's not a particularly practical design for a spacecraft. It was picked for the show for exactly 3 reasons: 1) it looks like the ship from Forbidden Planet but with enough visual differences to avoid a lawsuit, 2) it looks cool and science-fictiony, 3) it fits in with all the fictional technology that it is fictionally loaded with (warp nacelles, deflector dish, etc). Assuming none of that stuff exists (and it doesn't), then don't make it that shape.
If what you want is a spaceship with ion engines and a rotating section with faux-gravity for pootling around the solar system, the best shape would not look like the Enterprise. If you must model it on something from fiction, the Discovery from 2001 is probably a better bet; but in reality it'll look much more pragmatically like the stuff we're building now.
Making it look like a prop from Star Trek is nothing but a nerdy wet dream.
Oh my god, but what if people accidentally mistype that as .ccc? THEY'RE RIGHT THERE NEXT TO EACH OTHER ON THE KEYBOARD!
To be honest, I'd settle for ".bank.uk" (and your local equivalents). Nominet maintains (or allows) a number of second level domains which have policed registration requirements, so one for recognised banking organisations shouldn't be too hard to manage. Exactly what the criteria would be is debatable, but there are plenty of candidates- only FSA-regulated organisations, only organisations with a banking license, etc.
All duly noted, but I'd prefer not to have to go fishing in the dark for my laptops. How would I have known to contact Dell's sales team to ask for a computer I didn't know was for sale, and which isn't mentioned on their website? How would I even know whether it'd be best to call Dell or HP or Lenovo- they all have equally little on their websites on Ubuntu-loaded computers for sale.
If Dell wants to sell me an Ubuntu-loaded computer, all they need to do is put it on their website and the rest would fall into place. It doesn't even have to be obvious- just a search result with the keyword "linux" or "ubuntu" would do.
The UK has postal voting (very convenient it is too), but it has a lot of fraud allegations levelled against it. No time to type a full explanation right now, but Auntie Beeb can help:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-17857850
OK, I'll play pedant with you.
The word "mammoth" does not come from any word for "large". It comes from the name "earth horn" in Mansi (so says Wikipedia). The fact that we now use the word "mammoth" to mean "large" is by analogy with the animal. As in "that's one elephant-sized headache I've got today".
Mammoths aren't actually any larger than regular African Elephants (which admittedly is pretty darned large).
Indeed, that is one of the very few things Unity did right. Putting the taskbar on the left side of the screen by default was an eye-opener for me in the post-widescreen world. I know I could have moved the taskbar over there myself at any point...but it just never occurred to me.
Category three- and the one I'm imagining they're aiming for- is Android developers. Android is the top mobile platform by market share, and it plays nice with Linux (being Linux itself at heart). Mobile developers also strike me as the group most likely to care about stylishness and mobility.
Not to mention the fact that, barring an obscene price tag, they can always expect some interest from the hobbyist/enthusiast market, who are always desperate for Linux-ready premium hardware. Not a huge market, obviously, but sales are sales.
That will depend on where you are in the world. They no-longer sell Ubuntu machines in the UK, infuriatingly, and haven't for quite a while. Depending on where the summary writer is from, they may not have realised that Dell still sells Ubuntu boxes in some parts of the world (I certainly didn't).
kubuntu-desktop is always just an apt-get away. Or xubuntu-desktop. Or lubuntu-desktop.
That's the forgotten joy of Ubuntu- even compared with other Linux distros, window managers are fantastically easy. There are so many pre-built ones for the distro which you can guarantee will play nice with all the other default software. It's one of those little benefits which Unity has really managed to focus in my mind...
How the hell is that insightful? I still use 1280x1024 as standard (you insensitive clod). In what way is that "barely usable for browsing"? Games are the only place where I notice a difference, as any game designed with higher resolutions in mind can make individual elements (icons, characters etc.) overly large.
The CEO clearly disagrees with you, seeing as he jeopardised his career, reputation and company by making up a fictional on-paper test that he fictionally passed.
You can't have it both ways on that one (any more than any of the other both-way situations in this thread); either a degree on your CV is important enough to fake and be fired for, or it's worthless and not worth thinking about.
In the UK & US, Linux is alleged to have about a 1% market share traditionally. In the UK & US, Linux machines are generally unavailable to buy preloaded. So I'd say that in the UK & US, something like 1% of Windows machines sold are wiped and set up with Linux.
Without regional numbers from Canonical/etc. about how many they sell in which countries, it's tricky to be any more exact...
Linux does tend to be pretty decent with hardware compatibility these days, but I do agree. When I bought my first netbook, I bought one with Xandros Linux pre-installed. I wiped it straight away for something better (Ubuntu), but I was happy in the knowledge that there was full Linux driver support for all the hardware out of the box. When I bought my second netbook, Linux pre-loaded wasn't an option, so I had to do painstaking research in advance to make sure I was buying something which would play nice with Ubuntu.
Canonical have a fairly decent "Ubuntu certified" system now, but I'd still pay good money to know that the box I'm buying from Dell/HP/Lenovo/box-maker-of-choice will boot from my Live CD without breaking step.
It's also possible that you end up hurting both, or that your sanctions are so porous as to be irrelevant.
Well we can rule out pourousness, as the article is suggesting that it is killing off local businesses.
The sanctions are working as prescribed. The idea of a sanction is to kill of the country's economy, therefore reducing tax revenues, increasing unemployment, and generally making life more miserable for the government. The question isn't whether sanctions work, it's whether they're the right weapon for a given circumstance.
When the US put sanctions on Cuba during the Cold War, the intention was clear- weaken the government, deprive them of money, prevent them from building up their military and influence. A sanction was (in theory) a good idea. Syria is different, because they aren't "our enemy"- they're no threat to us or anyone outside of Syria, so there's no point in trying to reduce their regional influence. Syria, instead, is about crimes against humanity being perpetrated against the local population; and I don't see how sanctions are supposed to fix that.
If I understand Mandriva's business model, they make money by selling their desktop + support contracts to businesses (in the same was as RH, Novell & Canonical).
So my question is, who the hell (in terms of big companies and organisations) would want to take out an expensive contract for a year's support with a company that seems to be scraping money together on a month by month basis? How do you know you're not going to buy a few thousand euro's worth of support, only to find it going into the big bankruptcy black hole a few months later? I must say, it would make me think hard about whether to go with them or one of their rivals.
If you want to do business with big enterprise clients, you need to look like a stable healthy company. I hope they can get back there, but it's a chicken & egg scenario. Need to look healthy to get customers, need to get customers to be healthy...
And for the typical user, Ubuntu is the best distro. Xubuntu is a wonderful distro for older hardware - but not too old.
I mean, outside of fedora, Ubuntu, Xubuntu (maybe Mint) and Slackware, what's the point?
Some people have many different uses for a computer other than just "personal desktop"- which is what Fedora, Ubuntu/Xubuntu & Mint are all for (and Slackware for the hobbyists). Servers, smartphones, supercomputers, embedded devices, penetration testing, media centres just to name a few off the top of my head.
If you want a penetration testing distro, you have a choice of 2 or 3 tops. If you want a media centre distro, there's another 2 or 3. If people can't choose between 2 or 3 options, they should have their computer taken away (or be sold an Apple). The odds of anyone being in the situation where they're trying to decide between Whoppix, Mythbuntu, RHEL and Meego as equal options should be zero to none.
Funnily enough, Virgin Media were already running an opt-in content filter when I first signed up.
I only found this out when trying to watch an episode of some TV show or other on YouTube. It was a normal show from standard TV, but it was behind one of those "log in to view content" messages which YouTube has (I think there might have been some nude scene in that episode). The Virgin filter wouldn't let me view it. Obviously, I promptly figured out where the opt-out was.
If that's the standard the new filter is going to live up to (where an episode of Homeland can't be watched because it has some bare boobies in one scene), the new internet will be a brave new world of suck.
I was exposed to strong language and sexuality by my peers (they were exposed by idiot adults) since age 7. Nothing good came out of it.
You know who you are? You are human waste, a parasite in a need of a good squash. The day scum like you will decorate the lampposts will be one of the happiest days of my life.
Go to Hell, asshole.
And yet I see you overcame it to become a well rounded and reasonable human being.
The PM is basically just trying to rally the right-wingers around him after a disastrous local elections. The Daily Mail (possibly the worst example of right wing press) has been banging their think-of-the-children drum for months, at exactly the same time as they've been giving the PM a kicking. The PM has just come out about 8 points below Labour in a mostly-nationwide vote. 2 + 2 are easy to put together.
Sadly, there's a strong chance it would pass. The Tories will gather round it like crazy moths around a nutty flame, and Labour will be equally worried about upsetting the middle-class middle-Englanders who read the Mail (and "we're pro porn for children" is a difficult argument to make at the best of times). And the Lib Dems have already sold their soul and back-bone wholesale, so don't expect miracles from them.
They're a registered UK charity, which means they're subject to fairly strict rules around profit and public benefit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charitable_organisation#United_Kingdom