They certainly are cracking down on prepaid phone SIMs, where the owner of the phone isn't identified. Apparently Belgium and Luxembourg were the only EU countries left which still had them, but they are phasing them out quicker (now!) than was planned. Apparently, there were just too many shenanigans done with them.
I'm less sure about prepaid credit cards, we've got one of those in the household, but I didn't hear anything yet about them being phased out. They were offered as one means to limit losses in case of fraud (e.g. online payments where details would get out; this actually makes sense), and customers are identified in this case. Also, such transfers go by clearing services, so I should think these can easily be tracked (on court order at least, if not by espionage).
Are there such prepaid credit (well, actually debit I guess) cards where users are not identified?
With only Ghostery active in Firefox, I can't access bild.de.
It seems that the FF version I got here at work doesn't have the option to block JavaScript anymore, so can't test there how the site behaves.
Using w3m in cygwin though, I get all the (text) contents (aww, no boobies, probably the only reason one might want to visit bild.de in the first place).
So I guess their adblocker-detection is based on JavaScript.
For bild.de, I definitely don't consider it a loss, but I do hope certain other news sites don't follow the same road.
Btw, NZZ (Neue Zürcher Zeitung) similarly (using JavaScript) will block if you view more than 20 articles inside a month or so.
* indeed, a biggie. It needed new infrastructure, as does the A380 now * contender against the C-5 Galaxy for a military transport, against which it lost * developed with money from the military, but nooo, never got subsidies (as is always held against Airbus) * ultimately sank its first customer, Pan Am, as they never really recovered from the costs of introducing that airplane
I did fly it between Europe and the East Coast, early 90ies - not the kind of flight you want to have in Economy Class, when you're 1.90m tall.
Now, I usually only see cargo versions, heavily used by the local cargo airline (happens to be launch customer for the last few -F versions). They do seem to be quite happy with it, as they have been using successive versions exclusively for quite a while. The only exception I'm aware of were a few tests with an AN-124, the logistics side not being up to their standards.
Just yesterday, I showed videos of Nasa's Shuttle carrier, with Shuttle and F-18 escorts to my 5-year old son, who was quite impressed that this was for real.
Around 1994 (yes, I guess I'm getting old) I had already seen friends at university fiddling with rather large stacks of 3.5" floppies, downloading Linux from some large FTP mirrors, while I was happily using the solid OS/2 Warp 3 (after TOS on Atari, then DOS, Win 2-3 on PC). When stumbling upon a computer magazine's offer, ca. 1995, with a couple of CDs containing Slackware, I tried that. Back then, we had to fiddle with modelines to get X11 working, no ISDN support yet, dialing in needed chat scripts, etc. I was pretty much non-impressed with what I saw, not yet having recognized the value of UNIX or FOSS, and quickly went back to Warp, also trying those other OSs from Redmond. Not that far further on, I got to know SuSE Linux, can't even remember which version it was, and got hooked for good - many things worked better out of the box, less fiddling required, and it became my standard desktop not only for private use, but also for my first job. A few years later I switched to Debian, with a much superior updating system, then to KUbuntu for the desktop, keeping Debian on the server end... and now, owing to systemd, thinking about moving on. Ian, thanks for a very nice distro that has provided me with all sorts of resources for private and professional use.
Interesting. Here in Luxembourg city (over in ol' Europe), the land register actually also has data on the constructions, and has now for a short while added a feature on their online maps displaying whether it would be worthwhile to install PV on the rooftops - they go as far as displaying which parts of the roof would be of most interest in that context. Of course, they can only give general guidelines, to be confirmed by an expert. With my own house being at the north end of a row, only my back/front roof parts would be of medium utility, so it wouldn't be worth the investment overall.
I guess it will be a while before we see that kind of conference with devuan.
Otherwise: thanks a lot to Debian for an environment that has been a joy to work with for a long time. My personal server is still running Debian, but I for one most probably won't be joining the systemd bandwagon.
I work for an ISP. You're wrong on almost every point.
Most infrastructure repair costs are for what we jokingly call the "Backhoe disconnect" We're talking upwards of 90% of our repair costs are construction related. And before you say it, no, they don't pay us back for it. It's almost always the city that cuts the cable, they can't afford to pay us, and if we tried to make them they'd issue a press release the next day stating "We're laying off 1 police officer and 2 kindergarten teachers to pay off your Nazi ISP, sorry" and we'd be driven out of town with pitchforks.
Over here in Europe, such costs would have to be paid by the company (same for municipality, state, whoever) that's doing the works - or rather, their liability insurance. Such insurance is not an option here. Problem solved.
I distinctly remember Tom's rootboot, which came on a single 1.44 floppy. I used it often to fix "sick" systems, it came with a number of useful tools. So, it is certainly feasible to strip a Linux system down quite far. Ah, here it is: http://www.toms.net/rb/
Sure, lots of shops carry at least certain models. But: Linux versions are often crippled as compared to XP versions (like the 904 vs 901). None of them will provide the keyboard I need. Even if they did, they wouldn't ship to my country.
God knows I tried - something like every single shop in the region, an reknowned webshops all over incl. overseas.
If you want to try the exercise: find an EEEPC with swiss keyboard, with Linux, and get it shipped to a small country like Luxembourg. *not* easy at all
And I'll be happy for a direct email address to Asus sales, I'd love to tell them just how screwed up their distribution channels are.
At least where I'm living (in western europe), there's no way to get one of the decent hardware versions (i.e. models 901, 1000) in the Linux version.
In fact, I've just this morning ordered a couple XP versions, fully intending to not even boot those but to immediately replace them by my favourite Linux version. So, Asus will have sold a couple of XP licenses, but they won't ever get used - how many more like me are there? I don't even know if there's a chance to get my money back on the licenses.
I'm even happily shelling out Euros to at least get the kind of keyboard that's standard in this country instead of the foreign ones offered locally.
Asus, your sales model sucks! Unfortunately, the alternatives aren't any more palatable.
I wonder if that screen is one of those awful "glare" screens. Anyway, does anyone have specs on the brightness of that screen? Other netbooks do not have sufficient brightness for use under a bright sky. This picture seems to show it's surface is mirroring:-(
Thankfully the pictures do show an RJ45 interface, specs published a while back on a german site made me believe there would be only WLAN included.
If the keyboard is usable and that screen is halfway decent, it just might be my choice of netbook (currently, over the EEE PC 1000).
Having a look at both the winner and the second using Firefox on Linux,
the winner is definitely better looking than the second - the winner
respects my font settings, while with the second many parts of the page
are simply unreadably small. For that reason alone, there is simply no
contest between the two.
Hi Sam, if you or tridge are still around Luxembourg, and want to kill some
time, some of us LiLux'ers would love to offer you a beer or something.
For contact data, just check the LUGs website on www.linux.lu. Anyway, thanks for the fight in
court!
My brother got that box without really knowing anything about computers, and it was me that got going into computer science thanks to it. That start was quite tedious though, no input from anyone but that excellent book that came with it - in english at that, which I then didn't know yet (nothing like that sort of motivation to learn a new language). Also, it came without disk drive (unsurprisingly, for that time), but even without a tape drive - so yes, whenever I wanted to play around, I had to type in the program first! The box is still alive btw, every few years I drag it to the TV and try whether it still works.
Well if you had the slightest idea about Luxembourg, you'd
know it's not only a very small country, but also one which
has about half of it's workforce come into the country across
the borders every day. If you added those people into the
calculation, per-capita consumption would be much much lower.
The same goes for tobacco and alcohol btw. And yes, those
foreigners do buy their stuff in Luxembourg, since it's much
cheaper there than in their own countries, due to lower taxes.
Sorry, but wrong! RMS argues against proprietary
software, but he can perfectly well live with
commercial (free as in speech) software. That's
also why he says:
This is why we say that free software is a matter of freedom, not price.
I agree with RMS that sometimes, it's
necessary to use exact wording. This is one of
those times.
C'mon guys, with everybody here raving about Free
Software, you should know that the opposite of
Free Software is not commercial software, but
proprietary software!
There's commercial free software around, and
there's free (as in beer) and open (as in source
available) proprietary software around.
You'd think they'd know that the opposite of
free software is not commercial software, but
proprietary software. Even free software may be
commercial. For the typical/. troll, I'd not be
surprised, but for these actual developers, this
is an astounding mistake.
If that's their argument, don't bother - we the luxembourgish people (ok, the IT knowledgeable ones anyway) will gladly accept that "upsetting" of our government, if it rids us of software patents.
The different lux. parties are all +- against software patents anyway, at least representatives in the parliament are. The government unfortunately always has had a rather ambiguous position.
A simple test for starters would be low on
manpower: just check that no more votes were
cast than there were voters in that office.
This has happened before, check the archives for
the comp.risks newsgroup (I recall someplace
where 17k votes were cast for some 3k voters).
Why IBM had to speak out in the first place is
the little storm generated by Munich putting
their migration to GNU/Linux on ice.
On one hand, they promote Linux, on the other
hand, they are one of the forces pushing for
software patents in Europe, which endangers FOSS
in general.
Over here in ol' Europe, many people are not
exactly happy about all the pro-swpat lobbying,
so that's a point where IBM is trying to calm
people - none too successfully, I'd say.
If you're European - do lobby your MEPs *against*
software patents. Thank you.
Whatever it's qualities may be, this PlanMaker
thingie is non-free (as in speech and as in
beer). This makes it very much uninteresting
for quite some people. If there's a decent
alternative that's free (hint: there are,
several), then that's the way to go IMHO.
I guess that would be Mr. Linux floppy driver,
the vice-president of LiLux. Hi Alain;-)
I do know for a fact that there's more than one guy in Luxembourg who hacks the kernel, or at least kernel modules, just no idea why they don't appear in the credits file.
Slashdot Mirror
They certainly are cracking down on prepaid phone SIMs, where the owner of the phone isn't identified. Apparently Belgium and Luxembourg were the only EU countries left which still had them, but they are phasing them out quicker (now!) than was planned. Apparently, there were just too many shenanigans done with them.
I'm less sure about prepaid credit cards, we've got one of those in the household, but I didn't hear anything yet about them being phased out. They were offered as one means to limit losses in case of fraud (e.g. online payments where details would get out; this actually makes sense), and customers are identified in this case. Also, such transfers go by clearing services, so I should think these can easily be tracked (on court order at least, if not by espionage).
Are there such prepaid credit (well, actually debit I guess) cards where users are not identified?
With only Ghostery active in Firefox, I can't access bild.de.
It seems that the FF version I got here at work doesn't have the option to block JavaScript anymore, so can't test there how the site behaves.
Using w3m in cygwin though, I get all the (text) contents (aww, no boobies, probably the only reason one might want to visit bild.de in the first place).
So I guess their adblocker-detection is based on JavaScript.
For bild.de, I definitely don't consider it a loss, but I do hope certain other news sites don't follow the same road.
Btw, NZZ (Neue Zürcher Zeitung) similarly (using JavaScript) will block if you view more than 20 articles inside a month or so.
Some thoughts regarding the 747:
* indeed, a biggie. It needed new infrastructure, as does the A380 now
* contender against the C-5 Galaxy for a military transport, against which it lost
* developed with money from the military, but nooo, never got subsidies (as is always held against Airbus)
* ultimately sank its first customer, Pan Am, as they never really recovered from the costs of introducing that airplane
I did fly it between Europe and the East Coast, early 90ies - not the kind of flight you want to have in Economy Class, when you're 1.90m tall.
Now, I usually only see cargo versions, heavily used by the local cargo airline (happens to be launch customer for the last few -F versions). They do seem to be quite happy with it, as they have been using successive versions exclusively for quite a while. The only exception I'm aware of were a few tests with an AN-124, the logistics side not being up to their standards.
Just yesterday, I showed videos of Nasa's Shuttle carrier, with Shuttle and F-18 escorts to my 5-year old son, who was quite impressed that this was for real.
Around 1994 (yes, I guess I'm getting old) I had already seen friends at university fiddling with rather large stacks of 3.5" floppies, downloading Linux from some large FTP mirrors, while I was happily using the solid OS/2 Warp 3 (after TOS on Atari, then DOS, Win 2-3 on PC).
When stumbling upon a computer magazine's offer, ca. 1995, with a couple of CDs containing Slackware, I tried that. Back then, we had to fiddle with modelines to get X11 working, no ISDN support yet, dialing in needed chat scripts, etc. I was pretty much non-impressed with what I saw, not yet having recognized the value of UNIX or FOSS, and quickly went back to Warp, also trying those other OSs from Redmond.
Not that far further on, I got to know SuSE Linux, can't even remember which version it was, and got hooked for good - many things worked better out of the box, less fiddling required, and it became my standard desktop not only for private use, but also for my first job.
A few years later I switched to Debian, with a much superior updating system, then to KUbuntu for the desktop, keeping Debian on the server end... and now, owing to systemd, thinking about moving on.
Ian, thanks for a very nice distro that has provided me with all sorts of resources for private and professional use.
Interesting. Here in Luxembourg city (over in ol' Europe), the land register actually also has data on the constructions, and has now for a short while added a feature on their online maps displaying whether it would be worthwhile to install PV on the rooftops - they go as far as displaying which parts of the roof would be of most interest in that context. Of course, they can only give general guidelines, to be confirmed by an expert.
With my own house being at the north end of a row, only my back/front roof parts would be of medium utility, so it wouldn't be worth the investment overall.
Add systemd rants here, if you must.
Yes, systemd is there in the schedule:
https://summit.debconf.org/debconf15/meeting/304/systemd-how-we-survived-jessie-and-how-we-will-break-stretch/
https://summit.debconf.org/debconf15/meeting/305/your-systemd-tool-box-dissecting-and-debugging-boot-and-services/
I guess it will be a while before we see that kind of conference with devuan.
Otherwise: thanks a lot to Debian for an environment that has been a joy
to work with for a long time. My personal server is still running Debian, but
I for one most probably won't be joining the systemd bandwagon.
I work for an ISP. You're wrong on almost every point.
Most infrastructure repair costs are for what we jokingly call the "Backhoe disconnect"
We're talking upwards of 90% of our repair costs are construction related. And before you say it, no, they don't pay us back for it. It's almost always the city that cuts the cable, they can't afford to pay us, and if we tried to make them they'd issue a press release the next day stating "We're laying off 1 police officer and 2 kindergarten teachers to pay off your Nazi ISP, sorry" and we'd be driven out of town with pitchforks.
Over here in Europe, such costs would have to be paid by the company (same for municipality, state, whoever) that's doing the works - or rather, their liability insurance. Such insurance is not an option here. Problem solved.
I distinctly remember Tom's rootboot, which came on a single 1.44 floppy. I used it often to fix "sick" systems, it came with a number of useful tools. So, it is certainly feasible to strip a Linux system down quite far. Ah, here it is: http://www.toms.net/rb/
Sure, lots of shops carry at least certain models. But: Linux versions are often crippled as compared to XP versions (like the 904 vs 901). None of them will provide the keyboard I need. Even if they did, they wouldn't ship to my country.
God knows I tried - something like every single shop in the region, an reknowned webshops all over incl. overseas.
If you want to try the exercise: find an EEEPC with swiss keyboard, with Linux, and get it shipped to a small country like Luxembourg. *not* easy at all
And I'll be happy for a direct email address to Asus sales, I'd love to tell them just how screwed up their distribution channels are.
I take issue with this bit:
why would 70% of eeePC sales be XP models?
At least where I'm living (in western europe), there's no way to get one of the decent hardware versions (i.e. models 901, 1000) in the Linux version.
In fact, I've just this morning ordered a couple XP versions, fully intending to not even boot those but to immediately replace them by my favourite Linux version. So, Asus will have sold a couple of XP licenses, but they won't ever get used - how many more like me are there? I don't even know if there's a chance to get my money back on the licenses.
I'm even happily shelling out Euros to at least get the kind of keyboard that's standard in this country instead of the foreign ones offered locally.
Asus, your sales model sucks! Unfortunately, the alternatives aren't any more palatable.
8.9" WSVGA TL 1024x600 (WLED) screen
I wonder if that screen is one of those awful "glare" screens. Anyway, does anyone have specs on the brightness of that screen? Other netbooks do not have sufficient brightness for use under a bright sky. This picture seems to show it's surface is mirroring :-(
Thankfully the pictures do show an RJ45 interface, specs published a while back on a german site made me believe there would be only WLAN included.
If the keyboard is usable and that screen is halfway decent, it just might be my choice of netbook (currently, over the EEE PC 1000).
I'd rather have one of these - if only I had the cash!
http://www.lightningcarcompany.com/
Having a look at both the winner and the second using Firefox on Linux, the winner is definitely better looking than the second - the winner respects my font settings, while with the second many parts of the page are simply unreadably small. For that reason alone, there is simply no contest between the two.
Hi Sam, if you or tridge are still around Luxembourg, and want to kill some time, some of us LiLux'ers would love to offer you a beer or something. For contact data, just check the LUGs website on www.linux.lu. Anyway, thanks for the fight in court!
My brother got that box without really knowing anything
about computers, and it was me that got going into
computer science thanks to it.
That start was quite tedious though, no input from anyone
but that excellent book that came with it - in english at
that, which I then didn't know yet (nothing like that sort
of motivation to learn a new language).
Also, it came without disk drive (unsurprisingly, for that
time), but even without a tape drive - so yes, whenever I
wanted to play around, I had to type in the program first!
The box is still alive btw, every few years I drag it to the
TV and try whether it still works.
Tell that to Luxembourg.
Well if you had the slightest idea about Luxembourg, you'd know it's not only a very small country, but also one which has about half of it's workforce come into the country across the borders every day. If you added those people into the calculation, per-capita consumption would be much much lower. The same goes for tobacco and alcohol btw. And yes, those foreigners do buy their stuff in Luxembourg, since it's much cheaper there than in their own countries, due to lower taxes.
Disclaimer: Yes, I'm from Luxembourg
Can Open Source and Commercial Software Coexist?
According to RMS, no.
Sorry, but wrong! RMS argues against proprietary software, but he can perfectly well live with commercial (free as in speech) software. That's also why he says:
This is why we say that free software is a matter of freedom, not price.
I agree with RMS that sometimes, it's necessary to use exact wording. This is one of those times.
C'mon guys, with everybody here raving about Free Software, you should know that the opposite of Free Software is not commercial software, but proprietary software!
There's commercial free software around, and there's free (as in beer) and open (as in source available) proprietary software around.
far from being a replacement for commercialware
You'd think they'd know that the opposite of free software is not commercial software, but proprietary software . Even free software may be commercial. For the typical /. troll, I'd not be
surprised, but for these actual developers, this
is an astounding mistake.
If you skip commercials, most of the movie/tv show people already consider you a pirate.
Maybe so, but where did they get my signature that I'd agree to watch their shows only along with all the crap around?
Their wishful thinking doesn't make it reality.
Oooo! Let's not upset the Luxemburgians!
If that's their argument, don't bother - we the luxembourgish people (ok, the IT knowledgeable ones anyway) will gladly accept that "upsetting" of our government, if it rids us of software patents.
The different lux. parties are all +- against software patents anyway, at least representatives in the parliament are. The government unfortunately always has had a rather ambiguous position.
A simple test for starters would be low on manpower: just check that no more votes were cast than there were voters in that office. This has happened before, check the archives for the comp.risks newsgroup (I recall someplace where 17k votes were cast for some 3k voters).
Why IBM had to speak out in the first place is the little storm generated by Munich putting their migration to GNU/Linux on ice.
On one hand, they promote Linux, on the other hand, they are one of the forces pushing for software patents in Europe, which endangers FOSS in general.
Over here in ol' Europe, many people are not exactly happy about all the pro-swpat lobbying, so that's a point where IBM is trying to calm people - none too successfully, I'd say.
If you're European - do lobby your MEPs *against* software patents. Thank you.
Whatever it's qualities may be, this PlanMaker thingie is non-free (as in speech and as in beer). This makes it very much uninteresting for quite some people. If there's a decent alternative that's free (hint: there are, several), then that's the way to go IMHO.
I guess that would be Mr. Linux floppy driver, the vice-president of LiLux. Hi Alain ;-)
I do know for a fact that there's more than one guy in Luxembourg who hacks the kernel, or at least kernel modules, just no idea why they don't appear in the credits file.