Your justifications don't work. I'll agree that it isn't theft, but that doesn't mean it isn't a crime.
OTOH, the MPAA & RIAA are so corrupt, and have so corrupted the laws and courts, that I really wouldn't care if you killed them. But please don't use that silly justification of "I was only moving bits around" ever again.
Mmph... I tend to look at a longer term. Say a few centuries (at least back to the 1700's, but that's a short term perspective.)
Taking a bit longer view, traveling musicians happened, but only the wealthy were their audience. Most music, historically, was local people getting together and playing instruments. Often ones that they'd made. This didn't get written up as much, but it was both the mode and the median experience. You hear about exceptions, not about the rule.
N.B.: most of these people weren't "musicians", they were farmers. And they didn't normally have a "fan base". Polka bands were local guys, string quartets were more likely to be professional musicians. (Even then, not necessarily.) The music of the court was usually intentionally distinct from the music of the countryside. I don't think this changed until after the radio or the phonograph. (Though "Hungarian Rhapsody" was an intentional blending of the music of the wealthy with the music of the people.)
If what I've heard is true, the music industry specifically chooses to NOT promote anyone with talent. They don't want artists who are hard to control, and might even hope to start their own studio where they "did things properly".
N.B.: This isn't based of personal judgement. I don't even know what the current popular music sounds like. It's just what I've picked up from various news stories. This, of course, means that it may be no more reliable than the average news story. But when you think about it, it makes sense from an organization's point of view. They don't want there to be any "irreplaceable people".
It may seem weird, but some people want to be musicians. Others want to be writers. Very few can make a living at it. Musicians have even more problems than writers with making a living. And it doesn't matter whether we're talking about performers or composers.
The trick of the Hollywood industry is to create a few stars and reward them exorbitantly. And then to use them as bait for the others. (And exorbitantly doesn't mean as well as the executive is rewarded. But upper management, anyway. And you don't know what parts of their spread the studio owns or decides on. Publicity, you know.)
Recently, however, (do I mean the last 10 years or 20?) the studios have consistently preferred to not promote talented artists. They want people who can easily be replaced if it becomes convenient. This may be a large part of why the arts have so quickly degenerated. It's not the whole story, though. The arts tend to flourish in brief spurts in small areas, and nobody knows why. Why was Kansas city so important? Why Liverpool? Why San Francisco? One can come up with reasons, but the reasons aren't sufficient. All the factors you will list can be present without causing a spurt in the arts. But it doesn't need to crash as badly as it has this time.
Doesn't OpenOffice (and, I presume, LibreOffice, and KCalc, etc.) open xls files without problem? If they included non-working macros or something, I could see the problem. Otherwise...
Seems reasonable. I used Red Hat and close derivatives from 4.x until they killed the Professional Edition. Then I switched to Debian (and close derivatives, like Ubuntu). Usually I stay with Debian testing, but every once in awhile testing throws a fit, so I switch to something else (often Ubuntu) for a week or so.
Well, it's been a long time since I've used them, but I'm pretty sure they used to end with at least one capital. And be in the home directory rather than in/usr/bin. I see that it's still a shell script, though now it says: # This is just a sample implementation of a slightly less primitive # interface than xinit. It looks for user.xinitrc and.xserverrc # files, then system xinitrc and xserverrc files, else lets xinit and it once didn't claim to only be a sample implementation.
I'm gathering that it's a remnant of an older way of doing things, that may eventually just disappear. (I think I last used it back around the time of Red Hat 5.x...definitely in the days of the 2.4 kernel.) I remember it as being customized with many user specific options, though I never set them by hand so I don't remember any details.
OK, I've just checked some old documentation, and there was a/usr/bin/startx command. Perhaps startX invoked it? (I still believe that that was the name of the shell command in the user's home directory.)
It's unreasonable for anybody except a lawyer, and to just about anybody except a lawyer. There are more laws than you could read if you didn't do anything but read laws. And I'm not even requiring understanding. I've seen a specialized collection of state laws covering one aspect of the legal system, and it encompassed two floor to ceiling bookcases, each more than six feet wide (and about 10-12 feet tall). But this covered only the aspect of contract law pertaining to governmental agencies contracting with non-governmental agencies.
UCIA2-b was itself over 2,000 pages long. That's not the version that became federal law regulating trade in some circumstances. The actual one was longer, but I didn't hear how much longer.
Ignorance of the law is a continual state of existence among citizens of the US. What you can reasonably expected to know is something far different. You can be expected to know that it's illegal to murder, cheat, steal, etc. But the details of just what the law is on those cases isn't even understood by attorneys in the field. They always need to do extensive research to prepare for any particular case for which they are hired.
Do you know under what circumstances it is legal to cross the street? Probably you've got about as good an idea as the policeman watching you, but nuanced differently. You know what to avoid so that he probably won't get on your case. He knows what he can get away with giving you a ticket for. Neither of you knows what the law really says, and neither would your lawyer if it came to that. If it came to that, neither would the judge. He would DECIDE what the law meant, guided by what the law said, and by what other judges as decided in similar circumstances. (And he would also decide what counted as similar.)
The law is the kind of program you might get if all programmers were spaghetti coders, and every alpha 0.01 version was released as working code, and only patched much later (if the flaws were excessively apparent). You also need to factor in that a lot of the programmers were employed by different groups to achieve different goals. And that's still an oversimplification. Nobody can understand that mess, and there's no reason anyone should expect them to be able to.
I *think* it probably was improperly installed. On the Debian install when I went to the text screen "which gdm" didn't report anything, and I couldn't find either startX or startKDE. Or anything similar. (I can't remember whether it's supposed to start with a period, and what the capitalization of "KDE" should be in "startKDE".) So I assumed that either X or the logon manager wasn't properly installed. But I just checked, and the startX file isn't there normally anymore. Oh, well. Things do keep changing.
The weird thing is that it happened with two different distros, so my guess is that the package was bad. But if so I'd expect a LOT of people to be reporting problems. (It *was* the Debian testing [post Squeeze], and, apparently, the Ubuntu alpha, but still, that's not the kind of flaw I'd expect to lie hidden.)
Well, "pretty much at the end of the boot process" describes what I experienced. The screen went blank (dark) except for a blinking underline cursor at the upper left. There was no response to the keyboard.
In Ubuntu I didn't think to try using the ctrl-alt-fx keys to fix things. After reinstalling Debian, when the same thing happened, I did. I fixed it with "apt-get -f install gdm", I probably rebooted at that point, but I couldn't say for certain. Just now I got the same screen with ctrl-apt-f7, so quite plausibly it just left me at the wrong screen. Would the same thing have worked in Ubuntu? Don't know. Didn't think to try it. But if I was a newbie that would have really freaked me out. (As it is, I was just testing anyway, so I didn't care a long as my home partition wasn't damaged. [I do have a backup, but using it would be a real nuisance.])
P.S.: Just rebooting wouldn't fix things. I ended up trying that several times before I gave up and re-installed.
OK. That would explain it. I still suspect that my problem was with gdm3. And I still didn't have any way to report it. (And I still *thought* it was in beta...so maybe this guy did too.)
From what I've read, if you want the buttons on the right without fiddling then you need to download and use a different desktop theme. Not a big problem, but annoying.
OTOH, this *is* second had information. No guarantees.
You are too charitable. It's true that they didn't violate the license. Or at least I haven't heard any reasonable claims that they did. And that's about as much as I'll give them.
OTOH, they did create a base of fans. So I guess they must be doing something right. And it's the system I have installed on a portable, because Debian didn't do a good job of managing the power usage. (The battery kept dying.) Ubuntu seems to handle that much better. (But even so the battery seems to live down around 3% full, with the computer plugged in 24X7.)
Still, from what I've heard of Unity, that's NOT on my upgrade path. It's a lousy idea for a general computer. KDE4 is bad, and I'm dubious about Gnome3, but Unity looks like a disaster. Maybe it would be a good fit on netbooks, perhaps, but that's not where I'm at.
I think it's probably someone who had a problem with a system. Certainly I know that after a recent install of Ubuntu Natty (late beta) my system wouldn't boot. I doubt that the problem is widespread. OTOH, I didn't report it, because I had to wipe the OS to get a bootable system. (I went back to Debian, which shortly had a similar problem. I fixed that by installing gdm rather than gdm3, so I suspect it's a gdm3 problem. OTOH, the Debian problem didn't keep me from getting to a text screen. Perhaps I could have done the same thing on Ubuntu, and I just didn't think about it?)
So, yeah, as systems get more complex, they aren't tested as thoroughly. Sorry about that, but it's pretty much inevitable. Especially if you put up large warning signs that say "Don't test this version if you value your data!" around all of your betas. (OTOH, if you don't, then you get flamed when people who don't realize what they're getting into try it out.
I'm not going to be able to convince her on this point. I need to find something that's labeled "no salt added". But the emergency kits contain a lot more useful stuff than just food. But she gets hung up on the salt. (Yeah, we both have high blood pressure, and she grew up with a heart problem. But it's still an unreasonable set of priorities. That aren't going to be changed.)
P.S.: To the other poster: A survivalist isn't someone who prepares for a disaster, it's someone who obsesses about it. Sometimes to the point of saying "If you weren't prepared, then you deserve to die."
Good point about testing it indoors, but that's where you would need to run it, so you'd better have that angle covered. I didn't go there, because: 1) I don't currently live in an apartment, and 2) The idea of storing a barrel of gasoline near my living quarters didn't thrill me.
Propane would definitely be a better answer, but my search didn't turn up any. (I found this quite surprising, and it sounds like I should have found something else. But the rate of fuel consumption was such that I pretty much stopped looking.)
Well, in the "urban emergency" training I took, the item they stressed most highly was triage. Don't try to help someone who might not recover, but might live through it. You risk being sued. Help the people who can make a sufficiently complete recovery. Comfort those who aren't going to make it without professional help. And avoid the in-between. You aren't a medic.
Now extrapolate from that. (I put a more cynical slant on it than the class did, but I don't think I've changed the facts.)
Survivalists appear to me to fall into the "avoid these characters" category. Doesn't mean that it's a bad idea to have food and water, but if there's a real breakdown of water supplies...then what you really need to worry about is fire. You can live a day or two without water, and you'd better expect to need to. Some idiot is going to start a fire to keep warm, and not properly control it. And a proper fire break means cutting down the neighbors trees. He's not likely to allow THAT. Or in built-up areas it might mean demolishing the buildings around you. (OTOH, skyscrapers *are* less inflamable.)
Then there's medications. If you are dependent on medications, you'll have noticed that you can't buy a supply ahead. You're only supposed to order them as they are used.
The lack of ability to respond to emergencies is a structural feature of our society. The society claims the right to protect us, and acts to discourage attempts to not be required. I doubt that any particular person made those decisions. They made essentially random decisions (in a constrained fashion) and the ones that happened to promote social cohesion were retained. Being dependent on society for support is such a factor. (I'm not saying that the wealthy, powerful, or energetic can't overcome these decision. They aren't usually intentional designs, so they don't offend anyone if you go against them. They just create a constant pressure.)
Another thing worthy of note: I live in the SF Bay area. Immediately after the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989 lots of stores sprang up retailing earthquake survival supplies. I think one of them is still in business. In Marin County, a notably wealthy and predominately non-urban area. People are reluctant to prepare for "rare events". Especially in any way that involves continued effort. E.g., my wife worries a great deal about disasters, and in fact was the one who dragged me to the training. But I can't get her to invest in a "Emergency survival kit". She has a list of "things we need to do to prepare for an emergency", but they aren't getting done. The easy way to handle many of the items on the list would be to buy a survival kit. But it's a bit expensive, and she worries that the food contains too much salt. (It's freeze dried, so of course it's a lot salt by weight.)
Then there's storage. Where can you store things that they'll be available in an emergency, and where they won't be stolen before hand? Our lot isn't that big, and access to much of it is likely to be restricted if there's an earthquake. Which leaves areas visible from the street. (Even that's problematical.)
Blankets wouldn't suffice, but with proper insulation heat isn't really a problem. Of course then you need to worry about suffocation. And I don't mean because of pressure. With really good insulation a single candle can warm an entire house...but that means restricting air flow. At some point there's no workable tradeoff that doesn't involve outside sources of power.
That said, you aren't going to get this kind of insulation with blankets and sleeping bags. This involves structural modifications to the dwelling. Which is neither cheap nor possible in a rented living space. And emergency generators seem to run through a lot of fuel in a short period of time...and for the ones I've looked at, the emergency fuel has to be gasoline. So now you need to store barrels of gasoline in your apartment. Whee! And they're noisy, so you can't test it without waking the neighbors. (Sorry, you could test it during the day, and someone would just wonder why you're running a weed whacker in your apartment.)
More seriously, it's possible, it's just totally impractical. And the more you need it, the less practical it is.
Re:Another great Python 3.x series release
on
Python 3.2 Released
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· Score: 1
Why would a fork of Python 2.x be expected to be more compatible with what you want than Python3? If you aren't satisfied by Python2.6 or Python2.7, then you obviously want some different features. And what makes you believe that whoever forks it will want the same features with the same syntax that you do?
For me the primary argument that Python3 is the way to go is unicode. Using unicode strings in Python2.x is a pain. It can be done, and I'm currently doing it, because when I started this project the Python3 version of YAML wasn't working. I eventually rewrote it to not use YAML, because I wanted in intermediate form that was portable across languages. So if I started this over I'd do it in Python3. (But I'm not going to, because it's essentially finished. Currently I'm just tweaking it and adding bug fixes, and the occasional extra feature that seems reasonable to me. Now I'm mainly massaging the data.)
I'm certainly not pleased with everything about Python3, but I wasn't pleased with everything about Python2, either. They're pretty much the same, but I think Python3 is a bit nicer. (OTOH, the Python2 documentation seems a bit better. Or maybe I'm just more used to it.)
Sorry, but there are still lots of libraries that haven't been ported yet, or the ports that exist are unreasonably buggy.
Sorry, if this offends you, but it's the truth.
OTOH, why would you expect them to already have been ported? It's a process. And early versions often have lots of bugs. There's a lot more now than there were six months ago, there'll be more in another six months. And in a year Python3 will be the default environment. (Naturally, all times are rough estimates.)
But I do wish that they included a simple B+Tree system that was Pythonic. Databases are all very well, but frequently I just want to deal with really large tables of data that should be stored in a file, but with random access. Databases aren't a good match. Even BSDDB isn't a good choice. I often want to use an integer key, and BSDDB converts it to a string, which isn't what I want. And I really don't want the overhead of SQL. I want to handle the logic in Python. (I don't even know if it's usually possible in SQL, but it might be a Turing complete language, so it might be possible. Just unreasonable.)
The "io" class is, I think, a good idea. (I'm less certain about it than you are.) But it definitely makes using the language more complicated. Some of this is because the documentation needs more examples of usage, but not entirely. It actually *is* more complicated to use. It's still probably a good idea, and it's a lot better than the mess Java made of *its* IO systems.
The thing is, actual use of features tends to be full of corner cases where the documentation doesn't clearly specify what happens. Or it does, if you properly understand it, but properly understanding it isn't trivial, with lots of reasonable misunderstandings. (This is one reason why points of documentation should be illustrated by code examples.)
OTOH, Python documentation is so voluminous as it is, that I can understand why they didn't want to make it any larger. But the reason isn't good enough. (They do seem to have fixed the index so that references no usually actually go the the term being referenced.)
Right, since I never had a PS3. I was basing my opinion on other reports.
OK, in that case they just acted totally irresponsibly. Possibly criminal charges couldn't be justified. It's still a good reason to never buy anything from the company again, however. Refusing to provide security patches without wantonly downgrading the system isn't acceptable behavior in a system vendor.
I don't care what Dictionary.com say, the only ghostly thing about it is that if you met it you would both drop dead. Others couldn't tell you apart, not by vision, not by touch. I don't know if the legends say anything about smell or taste. But I think it's also supposed to speak with your voice.
Some people must have really thought identical twins were scarey.
I a way it does. In traditional usage a doppelganger was not only identical to you, but if you met your doppelganger, you would both die.
It's a bit of a stretch, but you could say that the light of the laser is "killed" by meeting it's doppelganger, i.e., the opposite of the conditions that gave it birth. (Mind you, I agree that it's quite a stretch.)
Sorry, but they didn't provide any warning before imposing the downgrade. They called it a "security patch" or some such, but they didn't say that it was going to remove the Other OS capability. So, yes, there is a big problem with it. "Bait and Switch" is, I believe, the technical term that I've heard someone who claimed to be a merchant use for it, but I'd use stronger language. Either larceny, grand theft (probably not), or computer trespass. Possibly all three. And thousands of cases in multiple jurisdictions. The only reason it probably isn't grand theft is that the value of the equipment stolen was probably too low. (For me, at least, the entire value of the system would have been the ability to run Linux. Others support other percentages of the cost of the system.)
Note that I'm talking about criminal charges rather than civil. The amount that one could recover in any one instance for a civil suit would not pay to hire the lawyers. This is something that Sony counted on. So let me include conspiracy to commit larceny, etc. And raise the stakes to thousands of felonies.
Isn't it interesting that no DA has chosen to file charges? When there isn't much argument about exactly what they did? But the victims don't have standing to file criminal charges, only a DA or a grand jury (or their equivalents at other levels of government) can do that. And it also occurs to me that this is probably covered by RICO laws. But there's no prosecution.
No, I don't consider that a gangster has a wife and kids to support is a reasonable excuse for how he makes his living.
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Your justifications don't work. I'll agree that it isn't theft, but that doesn't mean it isn't a crime.
OTOH, the MPAA & RIAA are so corrupt, and have so corrupted the laws and courts, that I really wouldn't care if you killed them. But please don't use that silly justification of "I was only moving bits around" ever again.
Mmph...
I tend to look at a longer term. Say a few centuries (at least back to the 1700's, but that's a short term perspective.)
Taking a bit longer view, traveling musicians happened, but only the wealthy were their audience. Most music, historically, was local people getting together and playing instruments. Often ones that they'd made. This didn't get written up as much, but it was both the mode and the median experience. You hear about exceptions, not about the rule.
N.B.: most of these people weren't "musicians", they were farmers. And they didn't normally have a "fan base". Polka bands were local guys, string quartets were more likely to be professional musicians. (Even then, not necessarily.) The music of the court was usually intentionally distinct from the music of the countryside. I don't think this changed until after the radio or the phonograph. (Though "Hungarian Rhapsody" was an intentional blending of the music of the wealthy with the music of the people.)
If what I've heard is true, the music industry specifically chooses to NOT promote anyone with talent. They don't want artists who are hard to control, and might even hope to start their own studio where they "did things properly".
N.B.: This isn't based of personal judgement. I don't even know what the current popular music sounds like. It's just what I've picked up from various news stories. This, of course, means that it may be no more reliable than the average news story. But when you think about it, it makes sense from an organization's point of view. They don't want there to be any "irreplaceable people".
It may seem weird, but some people want to be musicians. Others want to be writers. Very few can make a living at it. Musicians have even more problems than writers with making a living. And it doesn't matter whether we're talking about performers or composers.
The trick of the Hollywood industry is to create a few stars and reward them exorbitantly. And then to use them as bait for the others. (And exorbitantly doesn't mean as well as the executive is rewarded. But upper management, anyway. And you don't know what parts of their spread the studio owns or decides on. Publicity, you know.)
Recently, however, (do I mean the last 10 years or 20?) the studios have consistently preferred to not promote talented artists. They want people who can easily be replaced if it becomes convenient. This may be a large part of why the arts have so quickly degenerated. It's not the whole story, though. The arts tend to flourish in brief spurts in small areas, and nobody knows why. Why was Kansas city so important? Why Liverpool? Why San Francisco? One can come up with reasons, but the reasons aren't sufficient. All the factors you will list can be present without causing a spurt in the arts. But it doesn't need to crash as badly as it has this time.
Doesn't OpenOffice (and, I presume, LibreOffice, and KCalc, etc.) open xls files without problem? If they included non-working macros or something, I could see the problem. Otherwise...
Seems reasonable. I used Red Hat and close derivatives from 4.x until they killed the Professional Edition. Then I switched to Debian (and close derivatives, like Ubuntu). Usually I stay with Debian testing, but every once in awhile testing throws a fit, so I switch to something else (often Ubuntu) for a week or so.
Well, it's been a long time since I've used them, but I'm pretty sure they used to end with at least one capital. And be in the home directory rather than in /usr/bin. I see that it's still a shell script, though now it says: .xinitrc and .xserverrc
# This is just a sample implementation of a slightly less primitive
# interface than xinit. It looks for user
# files, then system xinitrc and xserverrc files, else lets xinit
and it once didn't claim to only be a sample implementation.
I'm gathering that it's a remnant of an older way of doing things, that may eventually just disappear. (I think I last used it back around the time of Red Hat 5.x...definitely in the days of the 2.4 kernel.) I remember it as being customized with many user specific options, though I never set them by hand so I don't remember any details.
OK, I've just checked some old documentation, and there was a /usr/bin/startx command. Perhaps startX invoked it? (I still believe that that was the name of the shell command in the user's home directory.)
It's unreasonable for anybody except a lawyer, and to just about anybody except a lawyer. There are more laws than you could read if you didn't do anything but read laws. And I'm not even requiring understanding. I've seen a specialized collection of state laws covering one aspect of the legal system, and it encompassed two floor to ceiling bookcases, each more than six feet wide (and about 10-12 feet tall). But this covered only the aspect of contract law pertaining to governmental agencies contracting with non-governmental agencies.
UCIA2-b was itself over 2,000 pages long. That's not the version that became federal law regulating trade in some circumstances. The actual one was longer, but I didn't hear how much longer.
Ignorance of the law is a continual state of existence among citizens of the US. What you can reasonably expected to know is something far different. You can be expected to know that it's illegal to murder, cheat, steal, etc. But the details of just what the law is on those cases isn't even understood by attorneys in the field. They always need to do extensive research to prepare for any particular case for which they are hired.
Do you know under what circumstances it is legal to cross the street? Probably you've got about as good an idea as the policeman watching you, but nuanced differently. You know what to avoid so that he probably won't get on your case. He knows what he can get away with giving you a ticket for. Neither of you knows what the law really says, and neither would your lawyer if it came to that. If it came to that, neither would the judge. He would DECIDE what the law meant, guided by what the law said, and by what other judges as decided in similar circumstances. (And he would also decide what counted as similar.)
The law is the kind of program you might get if all programmers were spaghetti coders, and every alpha 0.01 version was released as working code, and only patched much later (if the flaws were excessively apparent). You also need to factor in that a lot of the programmers were employed by different groups to achieve different goals. And that's still an oversimplification. Nobody can understand that mess, and there's no reason anyone should expect them to be able to.
I *think* it probably was improperly installed. On the Debian install when I went to the text screen "which gdm" didn't report anything, and I couldn't find either startX or startKDE. Or anything similar. (I can't remember whether it's supposed to start with a period, and what the capitalization of "KDE" should be in "startKDE".) So I assumed that either X or the logon manager wasn't properly installed. But I just checked, and the startX file isn't there normally anymore. Oh, well. Things do keep changing.
The weird thing is that it happened with two different distros, so my guess is that the package was bad. But if so I'd expect a LOT of people to be reporting problems. (It *was* the Debian testing [post Squeeze], and, apparently, the Ubuntu alpha, but still, that's not the kind of flaw I'd expect to lie hidden.)
Well, "pretty much at the end of the boot process" describes what I experienced. The screen went blank (dark) except for a blinking underline cursor at the upper left. There was no response to the keyboard.
In Ubuntu I didn't think to try using the ctrl-alt-fx keys to fix things. After reinstalling Debian, when the same thing happened, I did. I fixed it with "apt-get -f install gdm", I probably rebooted at that point, but I couldn't say for certain. Just now I got the same screen with ctrl-apt-f7, so quite plausibly it just left me at the wrong screen. Would the same thing have worked in Ubuntu? Don't know. Didn't think to try it. But if I was a newbie that would have really freaked me out. (As it is, I was just testing anyway, so I didn't care a long as my home partition wasn't damaged. [I do have a backup, but using it would be a real nuisance.])
P.S.: Just rebooting wouldn't fix things. I ended up trying that several times before I gave up and re-installed.
OK. That would explain it. I still suspect that my problem was with gdm3. And I still didn't have any way to report it. (And I still *thought* it was in beta...so maybe this guy did too.)
From what I've read, if you want the buttons on the right without fiddling then you need to download and use a different desktop theme. Not a big problem, but annoying.
OTOH, this *is* second had information. No guarantees.
You are too charitable. It's true that they didn't violate the license. Or at least I haven't heard any reasonable claims that they did. And that's about as much as I'll give them.
OTOH, they did create a base of fans. So I guess they must be doing something right. And it's the system I have installed on a portable, because Debian didn't do a good job of managing the power usage. (The battery kept dying.) Ubuntu seems to handle that much better. (But even so the battery seems to live down around 3% full, with the computer plugged in 24X7.)
Still, from what I've heard of Unity, that's NOT on my upgrade path. It's a lousy idea for a general computer. KDE4 is bad, and I'm dubious about Gnome3, but Unity looks like a disaster. Maybe it would be a good fit on netbooks, perhaps, but that's not where I'm at.
I think it's probably someone who had a problem with a system. Certainly I know that after a recent install of Ubuntu Natty (late beta) my system wouldn't boot. I doubt that the problem is widespread. OTOH, I didn't report it, because I had to wipe the OS to get a bootable system. (I went back to Debian, which shortly had a similar problem. I fixed that by installing gdm rather than gdm3, so I suspect it's a gdm3 problem. OTOH, the Debian problem didn't keep me from getting to a text screen. Perhaps I could have done the same thing on Ubuntu, and I just didn't think about it?)
So, yeah, as systems get more complex, they aren't tested as thoroughly. Sorry about that, but it's pretty much inevitable. Especially if you put up large warning signs that say "Don't test this version if you value your data!" around all of your betas. (OTOH, if you don't, then you get flamed when people who don't realize what they're getting into try it out.
I'm not going to be able to convince her on this point. I need to find something that's labeled "no salt added". But the emergency kits contain a lot more useful stuff than just food. But she gets hung up on the salt. (Yeah, we both have high blood pressure, and she grew up with a heart problem. But it's still an unreasonable set of priorities. That aren't going to be changed.)
P.S.: To the other poster:
A survivalist isn't someone who prepares for a disaster, it's someone who obsesses about it. Sometimes to the point of saying "If you weren't prepared, then you deserve to die."
Good point about testing it indoors, but that's where you would need to run it, so you'd better have that angle covered.
I didn't go there, because:
1) I don't currently live in an apartment, and
2) The idea of storing a barrel of gasoline near my living quarters didn't thrill me.
Propane would definitely be a better answer, but my search didn't turn up any. (I found this quite surprising, and it sounds like I should have found something else. But the rate of fuel consumption was such that I pretty much stopped looking.)
Well, in the "urban emergency" training I took, the item they stressed most highly was triage. Don't try to help someone who might not recover, but might live through it. You risk being sued. Help the people who can make a sufficiently complete recovery. Comfort those who aren't going to make it without professional help. And avoid the in-between. You aren't a medic.
Now extrapolate from that. (I put a more cynical slant on it than the class did, but I don't think I've changed the facts.)
Survivalists appear to me to fall into the "avoid these characters" category. Doesn't mean that it's a bad idea to have food and water, but if there's a real breakdown of water supplies...then what you really need to worry about is fire. You can live a day or two without water, and you'd better expect to need to. Some idiot is going to start a fire to keep warm, and not properly control it. And a proper fire break means cutting down the neighbors trees. He's not likely to allow THAT. Or in built-up areas it might mean demolishing the buildings around you. (OTOH, skyscrapers *are* less inflamable.)
Then there's medications. If you are dependent on medications, you'll have noticed that you can't buy a supply ahead. You're only supposed to order them as they are used.
The lack of ability to respond to emergencies is a structural feature of our society. The society claims the right to protect us, and acts to discourage attempts to not be required. I doubt that any particular person made those decisions. They made essentially random decisions (in a constrained fashion) and the ones that happened to promote social cohesion were retained. Being dependent on society for support is such a factor. (I'm not saying that the wealthy, powerful, or energetic can't overcome these decision. They aren't usually intentional designs, so they don't offend anyone if you go against them. They just create a constant pressure.)
Another thing worthy of note: I live in the SF Bay area. Immediately after the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989 lots of stores sprang up retailing earthquake survival supplies. I think one of them is still in business. In Marin County, a notably wealthy and predominately non-urban area. People are reluctant to prepare for "rare events". Especially in any way that involves continued effort. E.g., my wife worries a great deal about disasters, and in fact was the one who dragged me to the training. But I can't get her to invest in a "Emergency survival kit". She has a list of "things we need to do to prepare for an emergency", but they aren't getting done. The easy way to handle many of the items on the list would be to buy a survival kit. But it's a bit expensive, and she worries that the food contains too much salt. (It's freeze dried, so of course it's a lot salt by weight.)
Then there's storage. Where can you store things that they'll be available in an emergency, and where they won't be stolen before hand? Our lot isn't that big, and access to much of it is likely to be restricted if there's an earthquake. Which leaves areas visible from the street. (Even that's problematical.)
Blankets wouldn't suffice, but with proper insulation heat isn't really a problem. Of course then you need to worry about suffocation. And I don't mean because of pressure. With really good insulation a single candle can warm an entire house...but that means restricting air flow. At some point there's no workable tradeoff that doesn't involve outside sources of power.
That said, you aren't going to get this kind of insulation with blankets and sleeping bags. This involves structural modifications to the dwelling. Which is neither cheap nor possible in a rented living space. And emergency generators seem to run through a lot of fuel in a short period of time...and for the ones I've looked at, the emergency fuel has to be gasoline. So now you need to store barrels of gasoline in your apartment. Whee! And they're noisy, so you can't test it without waking the neighbors. (Sorry, you could test it during the day, and someone would just wonder why you're running a weed whacker in your apartment.)
More seriously, it's possible, it's just totally impractical. And the more you need it, the less practical it is.
Why would a fork of Python 2.x be expected to be more compatible with what you want than Python3? If you aren't satisfied by Python2.6 or Python2.7, then you obviously want some different features. And what makes you believe that whoever forks it will want the same features with the same syntax that you do?
For me the primary argument that Python3 is the way to go is unicode. Using unicode strings in Python2.x is a pain. It can be done, and I'm currently doing it, because when I started this project the Python3 version of YAML wasn't working. I eventually rewrote it to not use YAML, because I wanted in intermediate form that was portable across languages. So if I started this over I'd do it in Python3. (But I'm not going to, because it's essentially finished. Currently I'm just tweaking it and adding bug fixes, and the occasional extra feature that seems reasonable to me. Now I'm mainly massaging the data.)
I'm certainly not pleased with everything about Python3, but I wasn't pleased with everything about Python2, either. They're pretty much the same, but I think Python3 is a bit nicer. (OTOH, the Python2 documentation seems a bit better. Or maybe I'm just more used to it.)
Sorry, but there are still lots of libraries that haven't been ported yet, or the ports that exist are unreasonably buggy.
Sorry, if this offends you, but it's the truth.
OTOH, why would you expect them to already have been ported? It's a process. And early versions often have lots of bugs. There's a lot more now than there were six months ago, there'll be more in another six months. And in a year Python3 will be the default environment. (Naturally, all times are rough estimates.)
But I do wish that they included a simple B+Tree system that was Pythonic. Databases are all very well, but frequently I just want to deal with really large tables of data that should be stored in a file, but with random access. Databases aren't a good match. Even BSDDB isn't a good choice. I often want to use an integer key, and BSDDB converts it to a string, which isn't what I want. And I really don't want the overhead of SQL. I want to handle the logic in Python. (I don't even know if it's usually possible in SQL, but it might be a Turing complete language, so it might be possible. Just unreasonable.)
The "io" class is, I think, a good idea. (I'm less certain about it than you are.) But it definitely makes using the language more complicated. Some of this is because the documentation needs more examples of usage, but not entirely. It actually *is* more complicated to use. It's still probably a good idea, and it's a lot better than the mess Java made of *its* IO systems.
The thing is, actual use of features tends to be full of corner cases where the documentation doesn't clearly specify what happens. Or it does, if you properly understand it, but properly understanding it isn't trivial, with lots of reasonable misunderstandings. (This is one reason why points of documentation should be illustrated by code examples.)
OTOH, Python documentation is so voluminous as it is, that I can understand why they didn't want to make it any larger. But the reason isn't good enough. (They do seem to have fixed the index so that references no usually actually go the the term being referenced.)
Right, since I never had a PS3. I was basing my opinion on other reports.
OK, in that case they just acted totally irresponsibly. Possibly criminal charges couldn't be justified. It's still a good reason to never buy anything from the company again, however. Refusing to provide security patches without wantonly downgrading the system isn't acceptable behavior in a system vendor.
I don't care what Dictionary.com say, the only ghostly thing about it is that if you met it you would both drop dead. Others couldn't tell you apart, not by vision, not by touch. I don't know if the legends say anything about smell or taste. But I think it's also supposed to speak with your voice.
Some people must have really thought identical twins were scarey.
I a way it does. In traditional usage a doppelganger was not only identical to you, but if you met your doppelganger, you would both die.
It's a bit of a stretch, but you could say that the light of the laser is "killed" by meeting it's doppelganger, i.e., the opposite of the conditions that gave it birth. (Mind you, I agree that it's quite a stretch.)
Sorry, but they didn't provide any warning before imposing the downgrade. They called it a "security patch" or some such, but they didn't say that it was going to remove the Other OS capability. So, yes, there is a big problem with it. "Bait and Switch" is, I believe, the technical term that I've heard someone who claimed to be a merchant use for it, but I'd use stronger language. Either larceny, grand theft (probably not), or computer trespass. Possibly all three. And thousands of cases in multiple jurisdictions. The only reason it probably isn't grand theft is that the value of the equipment stolen was probably too low. (For me, at least, the entire value of the system would have been the ability to run Linux. Others support other percentages of the cost of the system.)
Note that I'm talking about criminal charges rather than civil. The amount that one could recover in any one instance for a civil suit would not pay to hire the lawyers. This is something that Sony counted on. So let me include conspiracy to commit larceny, etc. And raise the stakes to thousands of felonies.
Isn't it interesting that no DA has chosen to file charges? When there isn't much argument about exactly what they did? But the victims don't have standing to file criminal charges, only a DA or a grand jury (or their equivalents at other levels of government) can do that. And it also occurs to me that this is probably covered by RICO laws. But there's no prosecution.
No, I don't consider that a gangster has a wife and kids to support is a reasonable excuse for how he makes his living.