In the context of this discussion (Linux on the desktop), what we are referring to as Linux is the generally accepted definition of a desktop computer that runs standard Linux programs from standard locations using the standard user-group model. Chrome OS, Tivo, and your other examples don't do that, even though they have a Linux kernel.
The ever-popular car analogy: Installing a Ford engine on your home-built hotrod doesn't mean you have a Ford car now. It just has a Ford engine.
If you don't know how to install Ubuntu on a Windows computer, you don't know how to use and administer Linux.
Uh huh. The last laptop I set up was a Lenovo Ideapad and there was no how no way that I could make the touchpad work. Ultimately the only thing I could do was hand over the unit to the customer and say "hopefully there will be an update someday to make your touchpad work."
The previous Lenovo Ideapad that I set up a couple of months beforehand (that looked exactly the same) had a touchpad that worked perfectly. So unannounced changes under the hood can bite you.
Since you know how to use and administer Linux (ahem) how would you solve that problem? I've only been using Linux for 20+ years, so what would I know?
Chrome OS isn't Linux, and Android isn't Linux either. They're based on Linux but they don't work the same. Chrome's application stack is a web browser; Android has its own way of doing things.
I've been using Linux for over 20 years on everything that I touch and I haven't used Windows since Windows 98 (which I didn't like at all).
I wish I could buy a new laptop or desktop computer off the shelf at Staples or Costco and bring it home and have it boot up into some version of Linux instead of MS Windows.
But I can't, and I have to go through a lot of hoops and now ever play a game of try-to-find-the-bios-settings on any new computer that isn't a custom build.
And most people simply won't do that. I hate doing that and I know how. Most people don't know how do to that so they're even further behind.
Linux on the desktop won't happen until the day that I can buy one at the store and bring it home and start using it immediately.
Yes, that's right. I get "free cable" from the local cable tv company because I do a few odd jobs for them, so even though I don't really watch tv I have the service and all of the channels. They gave me a new digital box a few months ago when the old one decided to quit and the tech had to spend a bit of time figuring out how to get it to output 480p which is all that my monitor can do.
But I really just use it occasionally when the cable company phones me to say "check channel 342 to be sure it's working", so my monitor is both little used and quite adequate for my purposes.
Thirty million pages doesn't seem like much, really. The linux kernel source code is now over 25 million lines, which would be roughly 500,000 pages. So 20% of the entire knowledge of humanity is encompassed by the Linux kernel?
I don't think so. Thirty million pages is at best an exemplar of current knowledge, but nowhere near anything worthy of being called a "backup".
I have a Mastercard and an American Express card. Neither of them cost me anything to have; in fact I make money off of my credit cards because I get between 1% and 2% of the gross amount that I spend over the year using the cards as a refund to my credit card bill once a year.
So it's like getting a small discount off of everything that I can pay for using one of those cards. And since it's stuff that I would be buying anyway (water bill, groceries, freight bills, etc) it's really just free money.
The credit card outfits get a percentage of the sale amount from the merchants so their profit is still there, and of course they always hope that I'll forget to pay their bill sometime so they can charge me interest, but since that never happens, it's just free money for me.
My major (really my only) use for a tablet is for my sheet music. I used to have all kinds of books and paper in stacks and spent all kinds of time digging for something that I wanted to play (and half of the time not finding it). I tried making a database of the pieces and that helped only to the extent that I managed to keep my piles in order (and that never happened either).
A while back I got a Galaxy Tab S2 and it was truly life changing. I use the "Document Viewer" app from F-Droid for my music and my entire library is right there, organized and at my fingertips. And the 9.7" screen is just the right size to be readable.
That's actually not a bad idea. I have a fair-sized collection of photos and photos of paintings that I've picked up here and there and use as a screensaver when I'm not actively using my computer. I have xscreensaver just randomly cycle through the pictures.
It would be nice to add these paintings to my collection if I could download them as a single archive or something.
The government has also agreed to pay a significant portion of the plaintiffs' attorney's fees
What about the rest of it? A significant portion leaves this chap out-of-pocket for doing something that has now been declared to be perfectly legal; at the very least he should be made whole for any costs incurred.
Plus compensation for inconvenience and so forth, but that's a separate issue.
All gas stations are required to have a big emergency button mounted on the wall inside of the building that will immediately cut off the flow of fuel to the gas pumps when pushed.
I think that button is also required to be accessible to the public, i.e not hidden behind the counter.
Push that button and no fuel is dispensed until the system is reset.
If the attendant somehow didn't know about that button, then that's a hazardous situation right there.
I've been programming for over 40 years (shudder..) and have always used C. Never seen a need for C++ for the sort of things that I do.
Perhaps it's because I don't do games and fancy graphics. I do things like counting pulses from water meters and getting coordinates from survey instruments.
You could get some really fancy graphics out of Amigas using C, though.:)
The first line of that article says "Indigenous languages in Canada are dying out at an alarming rate and in desperate need of saving".
My question is why, and what makes it worth spending all of that taxpayer money on?
If someone is interested in an obscure language to want to preserve it and learn it, I see no problem with doing that as an academic exercise. But I honestly don't see why it's suddenly a responsibility for governments to preserve it.
Again, a language is intended to facilitate communication. If nobody's communicating in that language any more then it's obsolete.
Trump breaks the Twitter TOS on a regular basis (inciting violence, etc) and he gets away with it due to a new "public figure" exemption clause that Twitter apparently wrote just for him.
Why wouldn't you use this opportunity to learn or do something new? Do you understand databases? Graphics rendering? Write a routine that creates a pdf file from a a database. Now make it more efficient. And so on.
Pick a subject -- you're sitting in front of a computer that can do lots of things other than just turning you into a zombie.
I have a file named bookmarks.html. I update it with vim as needed.
That file is set as the home page on all of my web browsers.
So all you need is a webserver to keep it on and point your home page to that (if you want it automatically updated to all of your devices), or just copy it across to each device.
I just copy it between devices because my bookmarks don't change very often.
I spend a fair bit of time playing the piano. A midi file or a recording could probably do it better, but the challenge is in the creation and the accomplishment is being able to say "I can finally play that one."
I'll still never be able to play as well as big-name piano players. I know that and don't care since that isn't the point or the objective.
Slashdot Mirror
In the context of this discussion (Linux on the desktop), what we are referring to as Linux is the generally accepted definition of a desktop computer that runs standard Linux programs from standard locations using the standard user-group model. Chrome OS, Tivo, and your other examples don't do that, even though they have a Linux kernel.
The ever-popular car analogy: Installing a Ford engine on your home-built hotrod doesn't mean you have a Ford car now. It just has a Ford engine.
If you don't know how to install Ubuntu on a Windows computer, you don't know how to use and administer Linux.
Uh huh. The last laptop I set up was a Lenovo Ideapad and there was no how no way that I could make the touchpad work. Ultimately the only thing I could do was hand over the unit to the customer and say "hopefully there will be an update someday to make your touchpad work."
The previous Lenovo Ideapad that I set up a couple of months beforehand (that looked exactly the same) had a touchpad that worked perfectly. So unannounced changes under the hood can bite you.
Since you know how to use and administer Linux (ahem) how would you solve that problem? I've only been using Linux for 20+ years, so what would I know?
I could do that. But most people won't and those are the people that we're discussing here.
Chrome OS isn't Linux, and Android isn't Linux either. They're based on Linux but they don't work the same. Chrome's application stack is a web browser; Android has its own way of doing things.
I've been using Linux for over 20 years on everything that I touch and I haven't used Windows since Windows 98 (which I didn't like at all).
I wish I could buy a new laptop or desktop computer off the shelf at Staples or Costco and bring it home and have it boot up into some version of Linux instead of MS Windows.
But I can't, and I have to go through a lot of hoops and now ever play a game of try-to-find-the-bios-settings on any new computer that isn't a custom build.
And most people simply won't do that. I hate doing that and I know how. Most people don't know how do to that so they're even further behind.
Linux on the desktop won't happen until the day that I can buy one at the store and bring it home and start using it immediately.
Yes, that's right. I get "free cable" from the local cable tv company because I do a few odd jobs for them, so even though I don't really watch tv I have the service and all of the channels. They gave me a new digital box a few months ago when the old one decided to quit and the tech had to spend a bit of time figuring out how to get it to output 480p which is all that my monitor can do.
But I really just use it occasionally when the cable company phones me to say "check channel 342 to be sure it's working", so my monitor is both little used and quite adequate for my purposes.
My "tv" is a Commodore 1701 monitor that I got in 1984.
So it's been running for 35 years now.
I have a Samsung S8 phone and every time I get a robocall I add it to the "block this caller" list.
Which is fine as far as it goes; my phone doesn't ring for incoming calls from that exact phone number again.
But (and it's a big but) the incoming blocked call is routed to my voicemail and I get a message left there that I then have to take steps to delete.
It would be a lot more useful if block this call meant block this call and not just don't ring the phone but route it to voicemail instead.
Thirty million pages doesn't seem like much, really. The linux kernel source code is now over 25 million lines, which would be roughly 500,000 pages. So 20% of the entire knowledge of humanity is encompassed by the Linux kernel?
I don't think so. Thirty million pages is at best an exemplar of current knowledge, but nowhere near anything worthy of being called a "backup".
convertlit.com has a program to convert Microsoft Reader format books into other formats.
The name of the executable is.... clit.
I have a Mastercard and an American Express card. Neither of them cost me anything to have; in fact I make money off of my credit cards because I get between 1% and 2% of the gross amount that I spend over the year using the cards as a refund to my credit card bill once a year.
So it's like getting a small discount off of everything that I can pay for using one of those cards. And since it's stuff that I would be buying anyway (water bill, groceries, freight bills, etc) it's really just free money.
The credit card outfits get a percentage of the sale amount from the merchants so their profit is still there, and of course they always hope that I'll forget to pay their bill sometime so they can charge me interest, but since that never happens, it's just free money for me.
That's Reins, guys. That expression originates with what you have to control a horse.
I own a small business and sometimes get calls from customers.
My major (really my only) use for a tablet is for my sheet music. I used to have all kinds of books and paper in stacks and spent all kinds of time digging for something that I wanted to play (and half of the time not finding it). I tried making a database of the pieces and that helped only to the extent that I managed to keep my piles in order (and that never happened either).
A while back I got a Galaxy Tab S2 and it was truly life changing. I use the "Document Viewer" app from F-Droid for my music and my entire library is right there, organized and at my fingertips. And the 9.7" screen is just the right size to be readable.
That's actually not a bad idea. I have a fair-sized collection of photos and photos of paintings that I've picked up here and there and use as a screensaver when I'm not actively using my computer. I have xscreensaver just randomly cycle through the pictures.
It would be nice to add these paintings to my collection if I could download them as a single archive or something.
The government has also agreed to pay a significant portion of the plaintiffs' attorney's fees
What about the rest of it? A significant portion leaves this chap out-of-pocket for doing something that has now been declared to be perfectly legal; at the very least he should be made whole for any costs incurred.
Plus compensation for inconvenience and so forth, but that's a separate issue.
All gas stations are required to have a big emergency button mounted on the wall inside of the building that will immediately cut off the flow of fuel to the gas pumps when pushed.
I think that button is also required to be accessible to the public, i.e not hidden behind the counter.
Push that button and no fuel is dispensed until the system is reset.
If the attendant somehow didn't know about that button, then that's a hazardous situation right there.
I've been programming for over 40 years (shudder..) and have always used C. Never seen a need for C++ for the sort of things that I do.
Perhaps it's because I don't do games and fancy graphics. I do things like counting pulses from water meters and getting coordinates from survey instruments.
You could get some really fancy graphics out of Amigas using C, though. :)
The purpose of a language is to communicate.
If there is nobody left who speaks or writes that language, why is it suddenly important (other than in an abstract way) to preserve it?
The Canadian government is currently spending $90 million (Canadian, about $70 million USD) to preserve endangered aboriginal languages.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/indigen...
The first line of that article says "Indigenous languages in Canada are dying out at an alarming rate and in desperate need of saving".
My question is why, and what makes it worth spending all of that taxpayer money on?
If someone is interested in an obscure language to want to preserve it and learn it, I see no problem with doing that as an academic exercise. But I honestly don't see why it's suddenly a responsibility for governments to preserve it.
Again, a language is intended to facilitate communication. If nobody's communicating in that language any more then it's obsolete.
Why would that get "interesting"?
Trump breaks the Twitter TOS on a regular basis (inciting violence, etc) and he gets away with it due to a new "public figure" exemption clause that Twitter apparently wrote just for him.
$23.50 seems like a pretty insignificant penalty.
I had previously read that the fines were "crippling".
Did someone miss a zero (or several)?
This outfit has an Android tablet physically attached to each bicycle.
I wonder how long one of those is expected to last outside in the wind, rain and diesel exhaust.
Why wouldn't you use this opportunity to learn or do something new? Do you understand databases? Graphics rendering? Write a routine that creates a pdf file from a a database. Now make it more efficient. And so on.
Pick a subject -- you're sitting in front of a computer that can do lots of things other than just turning you into a zombie.
I have a file named bookmarks.html. I update it with vim as needed.
That file is set as the home page on all of my web browsers.
So all you need is a webserver to keep it on and point your home page to that (if you want it automatically updated to all of your devices), or just copy it across to each device.
I just copy it between devices because my bookmarks don't change very often.
Yes.
I spend a fair bit of time playing the piano. A midi file or a recording could probably do it better, but the challenge is in the creation and the accomplishment is being able to say "I can finally play that one."
I'll still never be able to play as well as big-name piano players. I know that and don't care since that isn't the point or the objective.