I'm not really sure that that's true. When I looked at the new Gtk documentation, lots of capabilities seemed to have been removed. Possibly they were just moved, but putting the old interface on the new underpinnings may be a bit more difficult than you expect.
OTOH, since I can't install Gkt3 without breaking Gtk2, I'm not going to experiment to see whether or not I'm correct.
Functional for *who*? Not for me. And I not only don't want to fiddle around with extensions, I don't trust Gnome developers to not decide I shouldn't have them. They've definitely said that their existence is temporary.
So I don't think I'll bother trying to fix Gnome3 into something usable. I'd rather do other things. Nearly every alternative desktop is a better choice. (Probably not Blackbox, Ratpoison, or few other similar choices. I think Gnome3 actually manages to better suit my work flow than those, but *nearly* every other choice is better.)
Well, *I* tend to say that Gnome3 *must* be for tablet computers or phones, because, I guess, I assume that it MUST be good for SOMETHING. But I could be wrong. It's possible that it doesn't have ANY justifiable reason for consuming disk space.
Gnome1.X was a bit buggy, but I actually preferred it over Gnome2. Over time Gnome2 developed into something better than Gnome1, but it wasn't quickly. When Gnome1 changed to Gnome2, I switched to KDE2. It was a better choice. KDE3 was better than KDE2, though not drasticly.
KDE4 is barely usable. I'd much prefer Gnome1. But it's still better than Gnome3.
Fortunately there are other choices. Xfce seems a decent choice, if not quite as good as Gnome2. Still, with a bit of development it might well be better. And it's got a couple of horrible examples to tell it what not to do.
OTOH, there are also Mate and Cinnamon. I don't know about Cinnamon, but Mate clearly needs (needed?) a bit of work before it's really ready. But when it is, it may be the best choice.
FWIW, KDE4 still isn't ready. And the problem isn't bugs, it's design issues. Even with KDE4.0 I didn't have a problem with bugs. But the design issues drove me to Gnome2. Well, KDE4 *is* better than Gnome3, but that's faint praise indeed. Neither is as good as any of Xfce, Gnome2, LXDE, or KDE3. Of that group the best is KDE3, with Gnome2 and acceptable second. Xfce and LXDE are really designed for lower powered systems. They are good of their kind, but not ideal for a workstation.
Still, when my distribution stops supporting Gnome2, I'll probably migrate to Xfce. I've run tests, and of the choices that will still be available, that is the best.
KDE4 is less than barely adequate. Saying better than Gnome3 isn't saying much. Mate, as of a month or two ago, isn't ready. Don't know about Cinnamon. Xfce is a bit better than adequate (but I'm currently using Gnome2). And I don't like LXDE, though I can't tell you exactly why. KDE3 was the best desktop that Linux has ever had available. It's a pity that it seems dead. (Pearson is working on Trinity which may resurrect it, but as of the last time I checked it wasn't a viable option...that's awhile ago though.)
That said, these are just my opinions, and reflect my use case. Others can quite rightfully have other opinions. Currently, when an upgrade is forced from Gnome2 it definitely will NOT be to Gnome3. Probably to Xfce, even though it isn't as good as Gnome2.
It wasn't the only thing that caused ME to say goodbye to Apple, but until that occurrence I was willing to buy Apple products for others in the family that wanted them.
(And, as someone else implied, I should say that I have previously come to the same decision about MS. This, however, did not affect others in the household because they were using Apple products.)
FWIW, I still don't actually forbid others to purchase MS or Apple products, I just clearly say that if they do they are on their own for support, as I will refuse to support them.
I had ditched MSWind for the Mac earlier, when MS slipped that same language into their EULA. Apple was a few years slower in being so abusive. These days I don't allow either to be purchased, and won't allow the older systems that are still active to connect to a network.
I've recently started to find that some technical books only have an updated edition for the e-book market. True, you might be able to read them on a tablet, but it's an argument that SOME kind of e-book reader is starting to be a necessity.
Does their EULA still say they have the right to "add, modify, delete, or copy any file any this computer"?
When they slipped that statement into a security update, I said goodbye to Apple, and disconnected the machines I owned from the internet. It's likely to be a few decades yet before I forgive them for that.
Postgresql is very nice, and I like much about it. The main thing I dislike about it appears to be the same for MYSQL, i.e., if I want a project specific database that is stored under a project, and distributed with the project, it doesn't appear possible. I've been told it actually *is* possible, but all I've found is instructions on how to relocate the entire user database. This will not suffice. SQLite will do what I want. Firebird will do what I want. For gods sake even Kirbybase will do what I want. I don't want a global database. I want a project specific one.
Sorry if you feel this is sort of off topic, but considering all the praise being heaped on Postgresql, it feels on topic to me.
That's sort of a true reply, as long as you carefully remember that the "c" of communism is lower case.
Even then it's not really true. GNU attempts to be a meritocracy, though like all human institutions is fails miserably at it's goals. But *SOME* of the top people rise to the top in some projects. It would be fair to mention Linux, Larry Wall, Guido, Matz...I'm sure there are others, but my interest in largely in programming languages.
Note that there isn't more than a pretense of equality. And you can never get away from politics.
Also note that this communism isn't an economic system. Or a government. And it's accompanied by an extreme libertarianism that's close akin to anarchy. Anyone can fork any project at any time for any reason. Convincing people to support the fork is something else. (OTOH, I think Oracle may be convincing people to support SOME fork of MYSQL. And the forks of Java may be gathering steam. [Is the major one Iced Tea?]) Certainly there was an adverse fork of X-Window several years ago, and a bit earlier a fork of gcc became the official one. (I think that was a "friendly fork", but I wasn't close to the action.)
So it's as much anarchy as communism. And neither works well as a coercive system handling sole access to rivalous goods among large numbers of people. (communism can work well in groups up to around 150-200. I doubt it can handle much more. And note that even though it was the first word of the sentence I didn't capitalize communism. This was to avert confusion.)
You're assuming that it's random. There's no reason to believe that.
OTOH, it's also true that we have probably missed detecting most of the similar events, because they were pointed away from us. They may be much more frequent.
That said, I'd be willing to accept that when one occurs, whether it's aimed at us or not is random. The sun is spinning, we are orbiting, and both Mercury and Venus are closer to the sun than we are. So it's quite unlikely to be synchronized to our orbital position.
Then there's the question of how centrally in the focus of the event we are, and how centrally we were at the time of the Carrington event. (I don't know. Perhaps nobody does.) And was that a maximal event, or just an unusually strong one?
Yet again there are signs that the Earth's magnetic fields are getting ready for a reversal. This is preceded by a weakening of the Magnetosphere. So we may currently be more than usually vulnerable to such an event.
Notice a bunch of perhaps-es? Basically, I agree with everyone else. Take reasonable precautions: back up to optical media or flash devices, or both. Keep copies of your backups at secure off-site storage. And figure that if something REALLY bad happens you'll have more important things to worry about than your source code.
What the future holds is the US descending to a second or third class nation. The current corruption of government is both one of the signs and one of a multitude of causes.
To say why the US is descending is beyond me. To observe it in progress is trivial. We are going through a process analogous to what Britain went through when it "lost it's empire". It's unpleasant to experience. It often leads to devastating wars, after which the victor is the new top country. Given modern weaponry, we can hope that that is not the path taken this time. (It isn't always. Sometimes the process is relatively peaceful. That's just not the way to bet when it happens quickly, as it seems to be happening this time.)
From what I've been hearing the "teach to the test" instruction that teachers are receiving these days doesn't leave much time to elaborate on things like essay writing, and it's quite possible that the problem of plagiarism in an academic context never appears before college. I know that many things that I consider basic to education have been officially removed from the curriculum, and that a "teachers court" sends around inspectors to ensure that only the mandated garbage is being taught. Why anyone continues to have a job as a teacher I don't understand.
P.S.: Specific investigation has proven that "teach to the test" is one of the worse ways to educate students. (I originally wrote "worst", but then I started thinking of worse alternatives, so that's probably too strong a statement. OTOH the approach used at Summerhill (don't teach anything until someone asks you) is probably far superior to "teach to the test". But it *does* require a superior teacher with a low number of students to work well.
P.P.S.: I am not, and have not been, employed as a teacher, and it's been decades since I was officially a student. But my mother was a teacher. My wife teaches outside the public school system. And many of my wife's friends are or have been teachers. I do not understand why teachers put up with they job they are coerced into performing, when nearly all of them are well qualified for other jobs. It certainly isn't for the financial rewards. (14 hour days are common, though they are only paid for 8. And during the summer, officially their time off, they are required to take classes in education theory, etc., from a college department of education...surely the most incompetent department on campus, and deadly boring.) Admittedly some of this information may be dated. I know about the requirement for ongoing education primarily from many decades ago, but since my mother retired before the "teach to the test" movement I don't know if the requirements are still in place.
Yes. A great song. But either slander or libel on the name of Lobachevsky. (I'm not sure whether publishing a record counts as slander or libel.)
Lobachevsky may not have been well known, and may not have been well connected to the Western European intelligentsia, but he as an able and innovative mathematician, who is one of the true founders of non-Euclidean geometry.
Well, it does make sense, but only if your serious attack was via a different virus, or via social engineering or some such. I.e., it makes sense, but it's not plausible. Which, of course, would make it a better attack. But if you're going to do this kind of attack, you need to make sure you "fake attack" vector is discovered, while appearing to try to hide. Not all that simple.
Welll...I don't think you're properly considering this in detail (not that it applies to the NSA anyway).
If you use a GPL tool in a project, but don't distribute the tool, then the GPL places NO constraints on you. It only applies if you are distributing SOMEONE ELSE'S GPL CODE. If it's your code, there aren't any constraints. If it's someone else's code, but you aren't distributing it, then there aren't any constraints.
There *does*, however, need to be an emergency override. This doesn't allow you to take control of navigation, but it allows you to get to your destination faster. There also needs to be a severe penalty for using it in a situation that isn't justifiable. This is only practical if cars can talk to each other.
Think of this as analogous to an ambulance. The case I was thinking of is where a woman has gone into labor, but I'm sure that there are other similar justifiable reasons. In this scenario there should be NO driver involvement in routing, steering, speed, or anything similar. In fact even the horn should be under automated control. In fact, ideally I'd say that the front seats should automatically rotate to face the rear.
There probably also needs to be a "super cautious" setting, where the car automatically avoids anything that will cause bumps, but I don't think that one needs any special rules for when you can use it.
They were in trouble before Elop walked in the door. Now I think their position is hopeless.
They could have come out with a phone running Meego, or switched to Android. This would not have been a good move, but they could have survived, and they may not have had any good moves. Now they don't have any options but to pray for help from Microsoft...and Microsoft very rarely answers prayers. (I can't think of even one of their partners that could honestly say MS saved them. The closest I can come is Apple, and they were hardly an MS partner.)
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I'm not really sure that that's true. When I looked at the new Gtk documentation, lots of capabilities seemed to have been removed. Possibly they were just moved, but putting the old interface on the new underpinnings may be a bit more difficult than you expect.
OTOH, since I can't install Gkt3 without breaking Gtk2, I'm not going to experiment to see whether or not I'm correct.
Odd, I have suspected that the designs originated in Redmond. No evidence, of course. Just the results.
Functional for *who*? Not for me. And I not only don't want to fiddle around with extensions, I don't trust Gnome developers to not decide I shouldn't have them. They've definitely said that their existence is temporary.
So I don't think I'll bother trying to fix Gnome3 into something usable. I'd rather do other things. Nearly every alternative desktop is a better choice. (Probably not Blackbox, Ratpoison, or few other similar choices. I think Gnome3 actually manages to better suit my work flow than those, but *nearly* every other choice is better.)
Well, *I* tend to say that Gnome3 *must* be for tablet computers or phones, because, I guess, I assume that it MUST be good for SOMETHING. But I could be wrong. It's possible that it doesn't have ANY justifiable reason for consuming disk space.
Gnome1.X was a bit buggy, but I actually preferred it over Gnome2. Over time Gnome2 developed into something better than Gnome1, but it wasn't quickly. When Gnome1 changed to Gnome2, I switched to KDE2. It was a better choice. KDE3 was better than KDE2, though not drasticly.
KDE4 is barely usable. I'd much prefer Gnome1. But it's still better than Gnome3.
Fortunately there are other choices. Xfce seems a decent choice, if not quite as good as Gnome2. Still, with a bit of development it might well be better. And it's got a couple of horrible examples to tell it what not to do.
OTOH, there are also Mate and Cinnamon. I don't know about Cinnamon, but Mate clearly needs (needed?) a bit of work before it's really ready. But when it is, it may be the best choice.
They "officially" have one. They call it classical mode. But it's not a viable option, and, frankly, I don't trust them to continue to offer it.
FWIW, KDE4 still isn't ready. And the problem isn't bugs, it's design issues. Even with KDE4.0 I didn't have a problem with bugs. But the design issues drove me to Gnome2. Well, KDE4 *is* better than Gnome3, but that's faint praise indeed. Neither is as good as any of Xfce, Gnome2, LXDE, or KDE3. Of that group the best is KDE3, with Gnome2 and acceptable second. Xfce and LXDE are really designed for lower powered systems. They are good of their kind, but not ideal for a workstation.
Still, when my distribution stops supporting Gnome2, I'll probably migrate to Xfce. I've run tests, and of the choices that will still be available, that is the best.
KDE4 is less than barely adequate. Saying better than Gnome3 isn't saying much. Mate, as of a month or two ago, isn't ready. Don't know about Cinnamon. Xfce is a bit better than adequate (but I'm currently using Gnome2). And I don't like LXDE, though I can't tell you exactly why. KDE3 was the best desktop that Linux has ever had available. It's a pity that it seems dead. (Pearson is working on Trinity which may resurrect it, but as of the last time I checked it wasn't a viable option...that's awhile ago though.)
That said, these are just my opinions, and reflect my use case. Others can quite rightfully have other opinions. Currently, when an upgrade is forced from Gnome2 it definitely will NOT be to Gnome3. Probably to Xfce, even though it isn't as good as Gnome2.
It wasn't the only thing that caused ME to say goodbye to Apple, but until that occurrence I was willing to buy Apple products for others in the family that wanted them.
(And, as someone else implied, I should say that I have previously come to the same decision about MS. This, however, did not affect others in the household because they were using Apple products.)
FWIW, I still don't actually forbid others to purchase MS or Apple products, I just clearly say that if they do they are on their own for support, as I will refuse to support them.
I had ditched MSWind for the Mac earlier, when MS slipped that same language into their EULA. Apple was a few years slower in being so abusive. These days I don't allow either to be purchased, and won't allow the older systems that are still active to connect to a network.
I've recently started to find that some technical books only have an updated edition for the e-book market. True, you might be able to read them on a tablet, but it's an argument that SOME kind of e-book reader is starting to be a necessity.
Does their EULA still say they have the right to "add, modify, delete, or copy any file any this computer"?
When they slipped that statement into a security update, I said goodbye to Apple, and disconnected the machines I owned from the internet. It's likely to be a few decades yet before I forgive them for that.
Postgresql is very nice, and I like much about it. The main thing I dislike about it appears to be the same for MYSQL, i.e., if I want a project specific database that is stored under a project, and distributed with the project, it doesn't appear possible. I've been told it actually *is* possible, but all I've found is instructions on how to relocate the entire user database. This will not suffice. SQLite will do what I want. Firebird will do what I want. For gods sake even Kirbybase will do what I want. I don't want a global database. I want a project specific one.
Sorry if you feel this is sort of off topic, but considering all the praise being heaped on Postgresql, it feels on topic to me.
That's sort of a true reply, as long as you carefully remember that the "c" of communism is lower case.
Even then it's not really true. GNU attempts to be a meritocracy, though like all human institutions is fails miserably at it's goals. But *SOME* of the top people rise to the top in some projects. It would be fair to mention Linux, Larry Wall, Guido, Matz...I'm sure there are others, but my interest in largely in programming languages.
Note that there isn't more than a pretense of equality. And you can never get away from politics.
Also note that this communism isn't an economic system. Or a government. And it's accompanied by an extreme libertarianism that's close akin to anarchy. Anyone can fork any project at any time for any reason. Convincing people to support the fork is something else. (OTOH, I think Oracle may be convincing people to support SOME fork of MYSQL. And the forks of Java may be gathering steam. [Is the major one Iced Tea?]) Certainly there was an adverse fork of X-Window several years ago, and a bit earlier a fork of gcc became the official one. (I think that was a "friendly fork", but I wasn't close to the action.)
So it's as much anarchy as communism. And neither works well as a coercive system handling sole access to rivalous goods among large numbers of people. (communism can work well in groups up to around 150-200. I doubt it can handle much more. And note that even though it was the first word of the sentence I didn't capitalize communism. This was to avert confusion.)
OTOH, have you considered punch cards? They are essentially impervious to electrical and magnetic pulses.
You're assuming that it's random. There's no reason to believe that.
OTOH, it's also true that we have probably missed detecting most of the similar events, because they were pointed away from us. They may be much more frequent.
That said, I'd be willing to accept that when one occurs, whether it's aimed at us or not is random. The sun is spinning, we are orbiting, and both Mercury and Venus are closer to the sun than we are. So it's quite unlikely to be synchronized to our orbital position.
Then there's the question of how centrally in the focus of the event we are, and how centrally we were at the time of the Carrington event. (I don't know. Perhaps nobody does.) And was that a maximal event, or just an unusually strong one?
Yet again there are signs that the Earth's magnetic fields are getting ready for a reversal. This is preceded by a weakening of the Magnetosphere. So we may currently be more than usually vulnerable to such an event.
Notice a bunch of perhaps-es? Basically, I agree with everyone else. Take reasonable precautions: back up to optical media or flash devices, or both. Keep copies of your backups at secure off-site storage. And figure that if something REALLY bad happens you'll have more important things to worry about than your source code.
What the future holds is the US descending to a second or third class nation. The current corruption of government is both one of the signs and one of a multitude of causes.
To say why the US is descending is beyond me. To observe it in progress is trivial. We are going through a process analogous to what Britain went through when it "lost it's empire". It's unpleasant to experience. It often leads to devastating wars, after which the victor is the new top country. Given modern weaponry, we can hope that that is not the path taken this time. (It isn't always. Sometimes the process is relatively peaceful. That's just not the way to bet when it happens quickly, as it seems to be happening this time.)
From what I've been hearing the "teach to the test" instruction that teachers are receiving these days doesn't leave much time to elaborate on things like essay writing, and it's quite possible that the problem of plagiarism in an academic context never appears before college. I know that many things that I consider basic to education have been officially removed from the curriculum, and that a "teachers court" sends around inspectors to ensure that only the mandated garbage is being taught. Why anyone continues to have a job as a teacher I don't understand.
P.S.: Specific investigation has proven that "teach to the test" is one of the worse ways to educate students. (I originally wrote "worst", but then I started thinking of worse alternatives, so that's probably too strong a statement. OTOH the approach used at Summerhill (don't teach anything until someone asks you) is probably far superior to "teach to the test". But it *does* require a superior teacher with a low number of students to work well.
P.P.S.: I am not, and have not been, employed as a teacher, and it's been decades since I was officially a student. But my mother was a teacher. My wife teaches outside the public school system. And many of my wife's friends are or have been teachers. I do not understand why teachers put up with they job they are coerced into performing, when nearly all of them are well qualified for other jobs. It certainly isn't for the financial rewards. (14 hour days are common, though they are only paid for 8. And during the summer, officially their time off, they are required to take classes in education theory, etc., from a college department of education...surely the most incompetent department on campus, and deadly boring.) Admittedly some of this information may be dated. I know about the requirement for ongoing education primarily from many decades ago, but since my mother retired before the "teach to the test" movement I don't know if the requirements are still in place.
Yes. A great song. But either slander or libel on the name of Lobachevsky. (I'm not sure whether publishing a record counts as slander or libel.)
Lobachevsky may not have been well known, and may not have been well connected to the Western European intelligentsia, but he as an able and innovative mathematician, who is one of the true founders of non-Euclidean geometry.
Well, it does make sense, but only if your serious attack was via a different virus, or via social engineering or some such. I.e., it makes sense, but it's not plausible. Which, of course, would make it a better attack. But if you're going to do this kind of attack, you need to make sure you "fake attack" vector is discovered, while appearing to try to hide. Not all that simple.
Welll...I don't think you're properly considering this in detail (not that it applies to the NSA anyway).
If you use a GPL tool in a project, but don't distribute the tool, then the GPL places NO constraints on you. It only applies if you are distributing SOMEONE ELSE'S GPL CODE. If it's your code, there aren't any constraints. If it's someone else's code, but you aren't distributing it, then there aren't any constraints.
It might well be GPL, but have you considered that they may well have written it? If you wrote it, you aren't bound by the copyright terms.
(P.S.: I think the feds have exempted themselves from obeying the copyright laws anyway, though I can't remember for sure.)
There *does*, however, need to be an emergency override. This doesn't allow you to take control of navigation, but it allows you to get to your destination faster. There also needs to be a severe penalty for using it in a situation that isn't justifiable. This is only practical if cars can talk to each other.
Think of this as analogous to an ambulance. The case I was thinking of is where a woman has gone into labor, but I'm sure that there are other similar justifiable reasons. In this scenario there should be NO driver involvement in routing, steering, speed, or anything similar. In fact even the horn should be under automated control. In fact, ideally I'd say that the front seats should automatically rotate to face the rear.
There probably also needs to be a "super cautious" setting, where the car automatically avoids anything that will cause bumps, but I don't think that one needs any special rules for when you can use it.
They were in trouble before Elop walked in the door. Now I think their position is hopeless.
They could have come out with a phone running Meego, or switched to Android. This would not have been a good move, but they could have survived, and they may not have had any good moves. Now they don't have any options but to pray for help from Microsoft...and Microsoft very rarely answers prayers. (I can't think of even one of their partners that could honestly say MS saved them. The closest I can come is Apple, and they were hardly an MS partner.)
$1B? Is that another prediction by Florian?