In 9.04, Ubuntu (well, Linux in general) began transitioning over to some newer features involving graphics such as DRM (direct rendering mode) and mode setting. This has caused a number of breaks with some drivers, particularly with Nvidia's cards. Nvidia has been very slow in dealing with this. I have personally filed 2 bug reports to nvidia and have heard nothing back.
In the meantime, if the bug is what I think it is, your best bet to prevent freezing is to turn off visual effects (essentially, compiz). That seems to be the most common trigger.
Lastly, we would still welcome bug reports on this issue because we want to know which graphics cards are effected by this.
Ok, so you did mean Lucid. And I will agree with you that there have been some issues with wireless in Karmic and Jaunty. Now, my point is that Lucid is in beta2 mode right now. Last month, it was in beta1 mode. The month before that, it was in alpha mode. Is it really fair to compare wireless connectivity for a alpha/beta version of *any* OS to a finalized, released version of any other OS?
You do realize that oftentimes for development purposes, things will be broken in alpha and beta modes?
Exactly, using Synaptic regularly prevents many of the issues with the Software Center. I suspect that as being the reason why the problems slipped by in testing because of the habits of the testers.
Actually, I hate to admit it, but there is a lot of truth to the statement. In Karmic, Canonical introduced the "Software Center" which was meant to be the user friendly version of Synaptic. It was workable, but it wasn't correctly integrated with apt, so it couldn't perform the first request for package lists (had to do it from Synaptic first...). There were some other issues that made it not user friendly.
Then for the alpha version of Lucid, they completely broke the Software Center in more ways than I can count. However, I can say that in the beta2, the Software Center is significantly better than it used to be.
Lucid? Surely you are talking about Jaunty or maybe Karmic? Lucid is still in Beta and a lot of things were purposely broken in the alpha and beta versions in order to integrate new components in a piecemeal fashion.
Why limit this to open source? It would be great if the users could update every program easily and painlessly, at least the ones that use this new system.
I'm Busted. It isn't really restricted to Open Source... but that's my mission. Commercial apps will be able to play just fine in this ecosystem.
Heh, good luck with convincing other Windows developers that commerical apps can be delivered by a package manager. I have lost count the number of times that FUD about apt and yum has surfaced here on slashdot. If you can get this to work with third-parties, this might make apt and yum more appealing to commerical vendors in the Linux world.
As a Linux zealot who has to administer a few Windows machines, you have my full blessings! Good Luck!
While the guy is very much an elitist, the article is rather selective in its quoting.
But it can't happen in a modern democracy. This is one of the problems. What's the alternative to democracy? There isn't one. But even the best democracies agree that when a major war approaches, democracy must be put on hold for the time being. I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while.
He isn't calling for the "hold on democracy", he is saying that because the bickering over what to do about climate change has no end in sight, that people won't do anything about it until it is too late. By then, drastic measures will be needed. Unfortunately, there is plenty of precedence for this course of action.
Actually, Ubuntu is planning to just make sure that the proper prefixes are used. So, KiB == 1024 bytes, KB == 1000 bytes. I would imagine that Ubuntu would display the base 10 units by default and could easily be changed to base 2 units if desired. So, this plan is actually better than what Apple did.
Climate scientists have been repeated humbled by...
Citation needed. My experience tells me scientists know they are absolutely, certainly, definitely right... this time.
Maybe there is a bit of selection bias here. The "scientists" you hear about are the more vocal, self-assured people. Also, unless you are reading the scientific journals directly, you are most likely seeing the "scientists" that have the spare time to go get interviewed.
Also, it isn't a ratings grabber to have someone say "I am pretty sure that we have begun to understand how this might work". Any scientist that claims to really, fully understand something is forgetting the basic foundations of science.
The "climate change" folks seeking to cool the earth should be wary - nature may respond with far more cooling than they'd bargained for!
The "climate change" folks are not the ones seeking to cool the Earth. It is the "climate change" cookoos that are seeking to cool the Earth. These people are in the same category as the weather modification people. The real scientists are busy trying to figure out what is gonna happen and how to adapt.
History has shown again and again that scientists understand far less about the complexity of natural systems than they think they do.
You are absolutely right that these geoengineering ideas are probably the worst things we could possibly do to our planet. However, let me be clear, the scientists that study the global climate and climate change, by far, also knows this is a bad idea. Climate scientists have been repeated humbled by the complexity and delicacy of the natural system. It is the engineers with the hubris to believe that they can engineer nature on the global scale.
This got modded insightful?
The reason why wikipedia could never be built using.NET is not technical. Of course one could have used.NET to build a wiki-like system. The reason why wikipedia would never have used.NET is because of their stance on using 100% FOSS from the bottom up. Wikipedia would never touch.NET with a 10 foot pole due to all of the legal questions around it.
I agree that people are not viewing the 2003 situation in the right context. The number of people broken down by ethnicity per zip code has been available for a long time, and so the Census Bureau did not "hand over" any special, private data to anybody. However, the use of the 1940s data is completely unacceptable.
That being said, I wonder if we are not getting the full picture here. What sort of actions has the Census Bureau taken since the 1940s to prevent such things from happening again?
Thus, breaking the law is widely viewed as "evil" (widely being defined as a majority of the population)
Yes, breaking the law is bad, but who broke the law here? If you are referring to YouTube knowing that there was unauthorized content on their servers, then no law was broken by YouTube, only by the uploaders, as stipulated in the DMCA (I can't believe I am actually defending that piece of legislation...).
If you are referring to the one YouTube employee who was uploading unauthorized content, then it was the individual who was "evil" in that case. So long as the company takes active steps to stop that person from doing it any further (and possibly even as far as to punish them somehow), I just don't see how the *company* is being evil.
I agree. I really want to hear what palegray sees as evidence of a "company doing whatever it wants." It looks a lot more like a "what is it that this site is doing right that we can learn from, or are we still on the better path?" kind of email. The "steal it" comment reads more like "let's take over this site". It also appears that the statement in context had multiple meanings because the replier said "steal the movies?" and was told "haha, ya, or something," which indicates to me that the person wasn't primarily thinking about stealing content.
Lastly, the end of the email exchange reads like the guys wanted to foster the community-driven portion of the website more than the professional content anyway. Also, keep in mind that DMCA is in effect at that time (2005), and therefore, they were not liable for unauthorized content on their website so long as they take down the content upon notification. Acknowledging that some people are submitting unauthorized content is hardly damning evidence since there is still no crimee being committed.
The design effort has been aided by project sponsor Intel, who brought immense computing power to bear on the lift problem. Before Intel's intervention, the design team had worked through 11 different 'architectures' in 18 months. The latest modelling work run on Intel's network investigated 55 configurations in eight weeks [CC]. By playing with the position and shape of key elements of the car's rear end, the design team found the best way to manage the shockwave passing around and under the vehicle as it goes supersonic.
For some family members where I have suggested very basic security steps like disabling automatic logins
I think you are missing this documents point. Automatic logins do NOT invcrease the vulnarability significantly. According to the document, it decreases the security as users abandon security alltogether for a very real reason:
This particular family member was starting college and was going to live in a dorm. Automatic logins for those whose computers are easily accessible to others is a bad idea.
How about telling them, for instance, to use firefox, use really strong passwords for each site and store it in firefox, using a single, strong, master password? The passwords would be encrypted then.
That was one of the suggestions.
And about the software update: The updating mechanism is allright for windows update. But it has become impossible for Joe Average to handle all the updates for all the other programs, even if he only installs the basic programs. You get a new install every few days. Flash, Acrobat, Apple (itunes, quicktime, bonjour), Java, Firefox or whatever you use, the mail program,... you get the point.
I was not talking about those programs, I was talking about turning on automatic updates for all MS products. This is not turned on by default (at least when I last checked for Vista).
I have already realized that it is next to impossible to expect most users to keep the rest of their software up to date, and I wasn't going to ask them to do so. I was trying to have them use some non-invasive, useful settings that probably should be the defaults, but are not.
Try to make them work as a normal user instead of working as an administrator. This tightens security and - assuming they are using windows - together with UAC is actually quite manageable since windows 7 came out.
That was the other suggestion I had for them. I did manage to get one family member to follow this, but mostly because I set up their computer.
KISS. Make security easy for your folks. Only that works. The document is right.
I never said that the document was wrong. I am merely pointing out that some users have a defeatist attitude towards securing their computers. I am really curious as to how that attitude developed. Is it Hollywood's fault? Is it the fault of the news media? Maybe it is the level of fear that we instill in order to try and convince our family to secure themselves? I do not know, but it does exist.
For some family members where I have suggested very basic security steps like disabling automatic logins, turning automatic updates on for everything (not just Windows), and a few other usual steps, they have asked "what for? The hackers are gonna get in anyway!"
It has become so ingrained in them that hackers are everywhere and that they are so talented that it is futile to resist. Quite honestly, I can't understand this mentality, but it does exist.
No, they are not covered by insurance if you were born with hearing loss or if you develop hearing loss due to old age. The only chance for them to be covered is if the cause of hearing loss was from a disease or an accident.
I know this for a fact because my parents tried to get my hearing aids covered by insurance while I was growing up. And we had Blue Cross/Blue Shield, which is generally considered to be a very good insurance.
Actually, the internet of the old used to be extremely accessible to deaf and hard-of-hearing people. However, the advent of YouTube, podcasts and other multimedia services has caused an exciting and new part of the internet to be inaccessible to these people. This technology -- if it works -- will help bring the internet back to deaf and hard-of-hearing people.
I do. It is rather nice and works great with the sunrise (sunset?) background that was available. Along with the translucent boxes that are used for UNR, it looks very inviting and reassuring.
Slashdot Mirror
In 9.04, Ubuntu (well, Linux in general) began transitioning over to some newer features involving graphics such as DRM (direct rendering mode) and mode setting. This has caused a number of breaks with some drivers, particularly with Nvidia's cards. Nvidia has been very slow in dealing with this. I have personally filed 2 bug reports to nvidia and have heard nothing back. In the meantime, if the bug is what I think it is, your best bet to prevent freezing is to turn off visual effects (essentially, compiz). That seems to be the most common trigger. Lastly, we would still welcome bug reports on this issue because we want to know which graphics cards are effected by this.
Use Python
You: "It is a control button..."
You: "... and it is very important."
You: "You just shut off the internet for the entire east coast."
Ok, so you did mean Lucid. And I will agree with you that there have been some issues with wireless in Karmic and Jaunty. Now, my point is that Lucid is in beta2 mode right now. Last month, it was in beta1 mode. The month before that, it was in alpha mode. Is it really fair to compare wireless connectivity for a alpha/beta version of *any* OS to a finalized, released version of any other OS? You do realize that oftentimes for development purposes, things will be broken in alpha and beta modes?
Exactly, using Synaptic regularly prevents many of the issues with the Software Center. I suspect that as being the reason why the problems slipped by in testing because of the habits of the testers.
Actually, I hate to admit it, but there is a lot of truth to the statement. In Karmic, Canonical introduced the "Software Center" which was meant to be the user friendly version of Synaptic. It was workable, but it wasn't correctly integrated with apt, so it couldn't perform the first request for package lists (had to do it from Synaptic first...). There were some other issues that made it not user friendly.
Then for the alpha version of Lucid, they completely broke the Software Center in more ways than I can count. However, I can say that in the beta2, the Software Center is significantly better than it used to be.
Wireless support is better in Win7 than in Lucid.
Lucid? Surely you are talking about Jaunty or maybe Karmic? Lucid is still in Beta and a lot of things were purposely broken in the alpha and beta versions in order to integrate new components in a piecemeal fashion.
Why limit this to open source? It would be great if the users could update every program easily and painlessly, at least the ones that use this new system.
I'm Busted. It isn't really restricted to Open Source... but that's my mission. Commercial apps will be able to play just fine in this ecosystem.
Heh, good luck with convincing other Windows developers that commerical apps can be delivered by a package manager. I have lost count the number of times that FUD about apt and yum has surfaced here on slashdot. If you can get this to work with third-parties, this might make apt and yum more appealing to commerical vendors in the Linux world.
As a Linux zealot who has to administer a few Windows machines, you have my full blessings! Good Luck!
But it can't happen in a modern democracy. This is one of the problems. What's the alternative to democracy? There isn't one. But even the best democracies agree that when a major war approaches, democracy must be put on hold for the time being. I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while.
He isn't calling for the "hold on democracy", he is saying that because the bickering over what to do about climate change has no end in sight, that people won't do anything about it until it is too late. By then, drastic measures will be needed. Unfortunately, there is plenty of precedence for this course of action.
You must be a lot of fun at parties, carrying around copies of Battlefield Earth and The Profit just to torture your friends with...
Actually, Ubuntu is planning to just make sure that the proper prefixes are used. So, KiB == 1024 bytes, KB == 1000 bytes. I would imagine that Ubuntu would display the base 10 units by default and could easily be changed to base 2 units if desired. So, this plan is actually better than what Apple did.
Climate scientists have been repeated humbled by...
Citation needed. My experience tells me scientists know they are absolutely, certainly, definitely right... this time.
Maybe there is a bit of selection bias here. The "scientists" you hear about are the more vocal, self-assured people. Also, unless you are reading the scientific journals directly, you are most likely seeing the "scientists" that have the spare time to go get interviewed.
Also, it isn't a ratings grabber to have someone say "I am pretty sure that we have begun to understand how this might work". Any scientist that claims to really, fully understand something is forgetting the basic foundations of science.
The "climate change" folks seeking to cool the earth should be wary - nature may respond with far more cooling than they'd bargained for!
The "climate change" folks are not the ones seeking to cool the Earth. It is the "climate change" cookoos that are seeking to cool the Earth. These people are in the same category as the weather modification people. The real scientists are busy trying to figure out what is gonna happen and how to adapt.
History has shown again and again that scientists understand far less about the complexity of natural systems than they think they do.
You are absolutely right that these geoengineering ideas are probably the worst things we could possibly do to our planet. However, let me be clear, the scientists that study the global climate and climate change, by far, also knows this is a bad idea. Climate scientists have been repeated humbled by the complexity and delicacy of the natural system. It is the engineers with the hubris to believe that they can engineer nature on the global scale.
This got modded insightful? The reason why wikipedia could never be built using .NET is not technical. Of course one could have used .NET to build a wiki-like system. The reason why wikipedia would never have used .NET is because of their stance on using 100% FOSS from the bottom up. Wikipedia would never touch .NET with a 10 foot pole due to all of the legal questions around it.
I agree that people are not viewing the 2003 situation in the right context. The number of people broken down by ethnicity per zip code has been available for a long time, and so the Census Bureau did not "hand over" any special, private data to anybody. However, the use of the 1940s data is completely unacceptable. That being said, I wonder if we are not getting the full picture here. What sort of actions has the Census Bureau taken since the 1940s to prevent such things from happening again?
Thus, breaking the law is widely viewed as "evil" (widely being defined as a majority of the population)
Yes, breaking the law is bad, but who broke the law here? If you are referring to YouTube knowing that there was unauthorized content on their servers, then no law was broken by YouTube, only by the uploaders, as stipulated in the DMCA (I can't believe I am actually defending that piece of legislation...).
If you are referring to the one YouTube employee who was uploading unauthorized content, then it was the individual who was "evil" in that case. So long as the company takes active steps to stop that person from doing it any further (and possibly even as far as to punish them somehow), I just don't see how the *company* is being evil.
I agree. I really want to hear what palegray sees as evidence of a "company doing whatever it wants." It looks a lot more like a "what is it that this site is doing right that we can learn from, or are we still on the better path?" kind of email. The "steal it" comment reads more like "let's take over this site". It also appears that the statement in context had multiple meanings because the replier said "steal the movies?" and was told "haha, ya, or something," which indicates to me that the person wasn't primarily thinking about stealing content.
Lastly, the end of the email exchange reads like the guys wanted to foster the community-driven portion of the website more than the professional content anyway. Also, keep in mind that DMCA is in effect at that time (2005), and therefore, they were not liable for unauthorized content on their website so long as they take down the content upon notification. Acknowledging that some people are submitting unauthorized content is hardly damning evidence since there is still no crimee being committed.
To believe otherwise is simply ridiculous, or to say you think we've been witness to one of the most epic due diligence failures in history.
What about choosing Sarah Palin to be McCain's VP running mate?
*ducks*
The design effort has been aided by project sponsor Intel, who brought immense computing power to bear on the lift problem. Before Intel's intervention, the design team had worked through 11 different 'architectures' in 18 months. The latest modelling work run on Intel's network investigated 55 configurations in eight weeks [CC]. By playing with the position and shape of key elements of the car's rear end, the design team found the best way to manage the shockwave passing around and under the vehicle as it goes supersonic.
Why didn't they just consult Sir Mix-A-Lot?
For some family members where I have suggested very basic security steps like disabling automatic logins
I think you are missing this documents point. Automatic logins do NOT invcrease the vulnarability significantly. According to the document, it decreases the security as users abandon security alltogether for a very real reason:
This particular family member was starting college and was going to live in a dorm. Automatic logins for those whose computers are easily accessible to others is a bad idea.
How about telling them, for instance, to use firefox, use really strong passwords for each site and store it in firefox, using a single, strong, master password? The passwords would be encrypted then.
That was one of the suggestions.
And about the software update: The updating mechanism is allright for windows update. But it has become impossible for Joe Average to handle all the updates for all the other programs, even if he only installs the basic programs. You get a new install every few days. Flash, Acrobat, Apple (itunes, quicktime, bonjour), Java, Firefox or whatever you use, the mail program,... you get the point.
I was not talking about those programs, I was talking about turning on automatic updates for all MS products. This is not turned on by default (at least when I last checked for Vista).
I have already realized that it is next to impossible to expect most users to keep the rest of their software up to date, and I wasn't going to ask them to do so. I was trying to have them use some non-invasive, useful settings that probably should be the defaults, but are not.
Try to make them work as a normal user instead of working as an administrator. This tightens security and - assuming they are using windows - together with UAC is actually quite manageable since windows 7 came out.
That was the other suggestion I had for them. I did manage to get one family member to follow this, but mostly because I set up their computer.
KISS. Make security easy for your folks. Only that works. The document is right.
I never said that the document was wrong. I am merely pointing out that some users have a defeatist attitude towards securing their computers. I am really curious as to how that attitude developed. Is it Hollywood's fault? Is it the fault of the news media? Maybe it is the level of fear that we instill in order to try and convince our family to secure themselves? I do not know, but it does exist.
For some family members where I have suggested very basic security steps like disabling automatic logins, turning automatic updates on for everything (not just Windows), and a few other usual steps, they have asked "what for? The hackers are gonna get in anyway!"
It has become so ingrained in them that hackers are everywhere and that they are so talented that it is futile to resist. Quite honestly, I can't understand this mentality, but it does exist.
No, they are not covered by insurance if you were born with hearing loss or if you develop hearing loss due to old age. The only chance for them to be covered is if the cause of hearing loss was from a disease or an accident.
I know this for a fact because my parents tried to get my hearing aids covered by insurance while I was growing up. And we had Blue Cross/Blue Shield, which is generally considered to be a very good insurance.
Actually, the internet of the old used to be extremely accessible to deaf and hard-of-hearing people. However, the advent of YouTube, podcasts and other multimedia services has caused an exciting and new part of the internet to be inaccessible to these people. This technology -- if it works -- will help bring the internet back to deaf and hard-of-hearing people.
I do. It is rather nice and works great with the sunrise (sunset?) background that was available. Along with the translucent boxes that are used for UNR, it looks very inviting and reassuring.