Re:Alternatives to Ubuntu - Mint
on
Ubuntu Turns 7
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· Score: 1
I'm looking at Mint, but I like apt. I tried Debian, but video drivers are a mess, and the sudoers is just a neeedless PITA on a single-user use of a Linux.
Please, someone pick up the torch for Ubuntu seems to have dropped it.
Mint was built from Ubuntu, and uses apt (and su). In fact, they even use many of the Ubuntu repositories. I migrated from Ubuntu to Mint recently, switched desktops to LXDE, and am loving it.
This is like MS offering a converter for Windows applications to run on Linux. I'm fine with that, although I don't get what sense Adobe sees in that help to kill off one of their cash cows.
It won't kill of their cash cow. The point is that you would theoretically be able to code your site in Flash, then convert it to HTML5 to make an "iphone version" available. This would presumably help keep sites already heavily invested in Flash from outright jumping ship to HTML5.
When I am forced to give my zip at a terminal, I ALWAYS hit random numbers. My card has never been refused.
Mine was, just the other day. After I put my real ZIP code in, the transaction went through. It could be that the first number I put in was an invalid ZIP code entirely. I'll have to test that next time... before I start shopping for a new place to buy gas.
The industry can still get people for public uses. But chasing down individuals is hopeless. Except for those few lives messed up, it's amusing watching them try. Google surely understands this, so perhaps asking for money is their way of disingenuously saying no. The cartels should stop making such stupid demands. As it is, Google is being squeezed. If they outright refuse, they get sued. So they have to tread carefully, and give the cartels something reasonable that forces them to realize that they're asking the impossible. This is something the cartels won't be able to do much with, and they will have a hard time blaming Google for not being more cooperative. It would be better if we could stop pussyfooting around, and just laugh the cartels off.
Tread carefully indeed. The record industry might just go to Congress (or whatever lawmaking body presides over your country) and demand laws forcing Google (or, probably, "all search engines") to "freely comply", now that Google has come right out and stated publicly that it's within their technical prowess to do this. Alternatively they could take Google to court as a "willing accomplice" since they refuse to freely comply, although it would probably be more expensive and time-consuming than going for legislation. This could backfire on Google.
If you are keen on that kind of thing, you can always just pretend that a new version is released every three years in April, and the rest of them in between are kinda betas.
While this seems like an option, they still have to rush a Long Term Support (LTS) release out the door six months after the previous release, just like the "in-between" releases. I've been a happy Ubuntu user since Warty (4.10 - 10/2004), and haven't found the LTS'es any more stable than the other releases.
The only possible upside to this argument is that it may become more stable later in its support life; but I suspect the Ubuntu community (including Canonical) is more preoccupied with getting the next release out to put extra work into stabilizing the current LTS.
While I love having access to the Latest, Greatest and Most Shiny, I wouldn't have a problem with Ubuntu moving to a 9 month or even a yearly release schedule and spending a little extra time stabilizing and polishing.
"Giant lego penises": while it seems like a foregone conclusion that this will eventually happen, I played pretty extensively in the beta for over two months and never saw anything offensive. The areas where you can free build are human-checked before they are open to the general public. Chat is limited to a pre-defined dictionary list. Every name you type in for either yourself or your pets is human-checked for offensiveness or trademark violation before it is approved. Hopefully I'm not overstepping the bounds of their NDA by saying all this - my point is that I had no qualms about letting my 7-year-old play unattended. And that's saying a lot for an MMO.
That's pretty much a dealkiller for me, and gives Samsung an uphill climb if they expect to compete with the iPad, which has a good low end price, an OS designed for a tablet, and an established ecosystem.
I've climbed in this area myself many times with family and friends. We'd drive up from Massachusetts and make a day trip of climbing Washington via the Cog Railway Camp --> Ammonoosuc Ravine --> Lake of the Clouds Hut --> Crawford Path to the Mount Washington summit. We always went in August, with a logged hiking plan, food & water, basic medical supplies, and rain coats. Only had to use the raincoat once - the (painful) 50+ mph horizontal rain forced us to turn around at the Lake of the Clouds hut and head home.
You wouldn't start seeing the crucifixes marking the sites people died at scattered about until you got onto Crawford Path above the treeline (the first time I saw this was on a foggy day, and it really freaked me out).
There's a big sign at the cog railway base camp that reads (more or less): "WARNING: do not attempt this climb unless you are in top physical condition and have adequate food, water and clothing. Many have died of exposure above the timberline." But we'd still run into bozos climbing alone... in shorts... with no pack... inebriated. And this was before the age of cell phones. I can't image people are more careful now that they can presumably call for help from anywhere on the hill.
The weather in the presidential range is *really* unpredictable. The county it's in (Coos County) comes from a Native American word meaning "twisted", describing the weather patterns in the range and in nearby Crawford Notch. One time we drove up the auto road, I encountered a snow squall at the summit - in early June.
We have an HD TiVo, and a cable card. Charter recently informed us that without a cable box, we'd start losing the ability to view an increasing number of channels unless they installed a tuning adapter card. To make a long story short, they installed the card, and we now have to reboot every few days, we get error messages galore from the TiVo box about the adapter card, channels drop out and return randomly, etc.
I'd be tempted to buy (or build) a media box, and drop the cable part of my cable/internet service, but my wife informed me that would be grounds for divorce (she absolutely LOVES the TiVo).
Even performing live may not be profitable for artists. I just learned that Lilith Fair canceled 1/3rd of its summer schedule due to lack of ticket sales. AND apparently it's not the only concert calling t quits. This summer has been lousy.
This isn't surprising. Between Ticketmaster, promoters, sponsors, concert hall "renovation fees", parking fees, etc ad nauseum, and the fact that we're in a recession, most bands large enough to tour have been priced right out of the largest target market for concerts - teens and young adults. If the Lilith Fair, which usually has many popular acts, can't fill a third of their venues, I can't imagine solo acts are doing well on tour either.
...And what if I find a way in WoW to steal someone's virtual horse, which Blizzard themselves sold to that person for $25 of US currency? Is it still worth $25? Who owns it - Blizzard, the buyer... or me?"
You didn't say what kind of gaming he's obsessed with. How about using the editing tools to create his own castle in Oblivion? Does he or she play WoW? Get him a book on coding WoW add-ons using LUA. How about sh'mups? Simple level design using a decent FPS engine. There are also some simple front ends you can use to put together a simple Xbox 360/PC game using Visual Studio Express and XNA creators club. It may or may not lead them in the direction of programming, but level design is a multi-disciplinary skill that could lead to study in other creative areas like industrial or 3D design, scripting, etc.
In short, give him some tools that work with his interests, and let his interests dictate what direction he wants to go in.
1. The Andromeda galaxy 2. The Orion Nebula (second "star" in the sword) 3. The beehive cluster in the center of Cancer
Check one of the free open-source astronomy programs like KStars and look for deep sky objects below a certain magnitude (4.0 maybe). There aren't a ton of them, but even a few are enough to capture a child's interest.
You could also see if you could put aside a night to look for a meteor shower, if it's the right time of year for one of the bigger ones (Perseids, Geminids, etc). You can look for the ISS as it passes through your area. There's a lot of great stuff to find the night sky besides the closer planets and craters of the Moon (though those are fun too).
I went in the opposite direction. I was taking a C++ course, which required us to use Visual Studio and submit our VS source files. I was more interested in learning how to code C/C++ under linux. Since these were console apps, I wrote them using vi and g++ under linux, creating makefiles for them as I went along. I could pretty much drag and drop the code into VS, compile it, and hand it in. My teacher even gave me extra credit for handing in the g++ makefiles!
Yes, with Mass Effect 2, BioShock 2, Starcraft 2, Diablo 3, and the next Final Fantasy coming out, what will we ever play? You are are over-reacting. Tons of great games are coming out that are not bejeweled. I don't see the proportion of crap games to good games changing much.
While they're probably all good, every single one of your examples listed is a sequel. Market-driven development indeed....
This is exactly what I mean. You're thinking simply that because you are paying extra for subsidizing piracy, you somehow get the permission to pirate whatever. That is NOT the case.
While it's true this isn't the case in a legal sense, it's a lot harder for media companies to take the moral high ground of "copying music is stealing", when people are forced to pay a premium to them when they buy recordable media regardless of how they use it. My music collection consists at this point of music I've bought, and freely available CC-licensed MP3's... but if I was paying a levy on my recordable media I'd lose any moral compunctions I might have regarding the copying for licensed music.
Don't worry; Britney is unlikely to ever see a penny of it, at least in the US. Blank CD's can be sold as "music CD's" (with the levy applied) or "computer CD's" (with no levy). Since they're exactly the same media, no one buys (or for that matter sells) "music CD's", so no one collects the levy on them. Even if they did, I strongly suspect that most of the money would go to the large RIAA-backed corporations and the artists wouldn't get the money anyway, since artists only see only 0.07-0.10 USD of an iTunes song sale.
In other countries like Canada which actually have an actual CD levy, the levy can account for 90% of the price of a stack of recordable CD-R's, and IIRC they're looking at imposing a similar levy on SD cards, and possibly MP3 players. I looked online and couldn't find out what percentage of that money lands in the hands of the artists, but I suspect it's small.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm looking at Mint, but I like apt.
I tried Debian, but video drivers are a mess, and the sudoers is just a neeedless PITA on a single-user use of a Linux.
Please, someone pick up the torch for Ubuntu seems to have dropped it.
Mint was built from Ubuntu, and uses apt (and su). In fact, they even use many of the Ubuntu repositories. I migrated from Ubuntu to Mint recently, switched desktops to LXDE, and am loving it.
Thanks for weighing in.
Before I type "sudo do-release-upgrade", any word on how well kubuntu works ?
I'm running it on my Asus EEE 900A. Did an in-place upgrade from 10.10. No problems. Typinng on it right now.
This is like MS offering a converter for Windows applications to run on Linux. I'm fine with that, although I don't get what sense Adobe sees in that help to kill off one of their cash cows.
It won't kill of their cash cow. The point is that you would theoretically be able to code your site in Flash, then convert it to HTML5 to make an "iphone version" available. This would presumably help keep sites already heavily invested in Flash from outright jumping ship to HTML5.
When I am forced to give my zip at a terminal, I ALWAYS hit random numbers. My card has never been refused.
Mine was, just the other day. After I put my real ZIP code in, the transaction went through. It could be that the first number I put in was an invalid ZIP code entirely. I'll have to test that next time ... before I start shopping for a new place to buy gas.
It was Norman Spinrad actually.
Norman Spinrad's Little Heroes, to be exact. Great book - I'd link to it on Amazon but it's only available from third-party sellers.
The industry can still get people for public uses. But chasing down individuals is hopeless. Except for those few lives messed up, it's amusing watching them try. Google surely understands this, so perhaps asking for money is their way of disingenuously saying no. The cartels should stop making such stupid demands. As it is, Google is being squeezed. If they outright refuse, they get sued. So they have to tread carefully, and give the cartels something reasonable that forces them to realize that they're asking the impossible. This is something the cartels won't be able to do much with, and they will have a hard time blaming Google for not being more cooperative. It would be better if we could stop pussyfooting around, and just laugh the cartels off.
Tread carefully indeed. The record industry might just go to Congress (or whatever lawmaking body presides over your country) and demand laws forcing Google (or, probably, "all search engines") to "freely comply", now that Google has come right out and stated publicly that it's within their technical prowess to do this. Alternatively they could take Google to court as a "willing accomplice" since they refuse to freely comply, although it would probably be more expensive and time-consuming than going for legislation. This could backfire on Google.
Seconded. Happy Birthday FSF!
No, not Linux.
This is just a cover story. For beyond the giant penguins resides the Plateau of Leng, the long-forgotten city of the Elder Things.
Beware! BEWARE!!!
The best part about this is that someone modded you informative. I'm scared now...
If you are keen on that kind of thing, you can always just pretend that a new version is released every three years in April, and the rest of them in between are kinda betas.
While this seems like an option, they still have to rush a Long Term Support (LTS) release out the door six months after the previous release, just like the "in-between" releases. I've been a happy Ubuntu user since Warty (4.10 - 10/2004), and haven't found the LTS'es any more stable than the other releases.
The only possible upside to this argument is that it may become more stable later in its support life; but I suspect the Ubuntu community (including Canonical) is more preoccupied with getting the next release out to put extra work into stabilizing the current LTS.
While I love having access to the Latest, Greatest and Most Shiny, I wouldn't have a problem with Ubuntu moving to a 9 month or even a yearly release schedule and spending a little extra time stabilizing and polishing.
"Giant lego penises": while it seems like a foregone conclusion that this will eventually happen, I played pretty extensively in the beta for over two months and never saw anything offensive. The areas where you can free build are human-checked before they are open to the general public. Chat is limited to a pre-defined dictionary list. Every name you type in for either yourself or your pets is human-checked for offensiveness or trademark violation before it is approved. Hopefully I'm not overstepping the bounds of their NDA by saying all this - my point is that I had no qualms about letting my 7-year-old play unattended. And that's saying a lot for an MMO.
According to Engadget they removed the telephony app from the US version of this (it's still in the European version):
http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/16/samsung-galaxy-tab-loses-voice-capabilities-in-the-us/
That's pretty much a dealkiller for me, and gives Samsung an uphill climb if they expect to compete with the iPad, which has a good low end price, an OS designed for a tablet, and an established ecosystem.
Congratulations - a Do-It-Yourself Two and a Half Minute Googlewhack!
I've climbed in this area myself many times with family and friends. We'd drive up from Massachusetts and make a day trip of climbing Washington via the Cog Railway Camp --> Ammonoosuc Ravine --> Lake of the Clouds Hut --> Crawford Path to the Mount Washington summit. We always went in August, with a logged hiking plan, food & water, basic medical supplies, and rain coats. Only had to use the raincoat once - the (painful) 50+ mph horizontal rain forced us to turn around at the Lake of the Clouds hut and head home.
You wouldn't start seeing the crucifixes marking the sites people died at scattered about until you got onto Crawford Path above the treeline (the first time I saw this was on a foggy day, and it really freaked me out).
There's a big sign at the cog railway base camp that reads (more or less): "WARNING: do not attempt this climb unless you are in top physical condition and have adequate food, water and clothing. Many have died of exposure above the timberline." But we'd still run into bozos climbing alone ... in shorts ... with no pack ... inebriated. And this was before the age of cell phones. I can't image people are more careful now that they can presumably call for help from anywhere on the hill.
The weather in the presidential range is *really* unpredictable. The county it's in (Coos County) comes from a Native American word meaning "twisted", describing the weather patterns in the range and in nearby Crawford Notch. One time we drove up the auto road, I encountered a snow squall at the summit - in early June.
We have an HD TiVo, and a cable card. Charter recently informed us that without a cable box, we'd start losing the ability to view an increasing number of channels unless they installed a tuning adapter card. To make a long story short, they installed the card, and we now have to reboot every few days, we get error messages galore from the TiVo box about the adapter card, channels drop out and return randomly, etc.
I'd be tempted to buy (or build) a media box, and drop the cable part of my cable/internet service, but my wife informed me that would be grounds for divorce (she absolutely LOVES the TiVo).
Cool - I'm going to have to burn some time on this after work. Thanks for the reference!
Sigh, went to mod this Insightful, but got Redundant instead, so removing the moderation.
Sent from my N800, which also runs Linux.
Even performing live may not be profitable for artists. I just learned that Lilith Fair canceled 1/3rd of its summer schedule due to lack of ticket sales. AND apparently it's not the only concert calling t quits. This summer has been lousy.
This isn't surprising. Between Ticketmaster, promoters, sponsors, concert hall "renovation fees", parking fees, etc ad nauseum, and the fact that we're in a recession, most bands large enough to tour have been priced right out of the largest target market for concerts - teens and young adults. If the Lilith Fair, which usually has many popular acts, can't fill a third of their venues, I can't imagine solo acts are doing well on tour either.
...And what if I find a way in WoW to steal someone's virtual horse, which Blizzard themselves sold to that person for $25 of US currency? Is it still worth $25? Who owns it - Blizzard, the buyer ... or me?"
You didn't say what kind of gaming he's obsessed with. How about using the editing tools to create his own castle in Oblivion? Does he or she play WoW? Get him a book on coding WoW add-ons using LUA. How about sh'mups? Simple level design using a decent FPS engine. There are also some simple front ends you can use to put together a simple Xbox 360/PC game using Visual Studio Express and XNA creators club. It may or may not lead them in the direction of programming, but level design is a multi-disciplinary skill that could lead to study in other creative areas like industrial or 3D design, scripting, etc.
In short, give him some tools that work with his interests, and let his interests dictate what direction he wants to go in.
A few I can think of off the top of my head:
1. The Andromeda galaxy
2. The Orion Nebula (second "star" in the sword)
3. The beehive cluster in the center of Cancer
Check one of the free open-source astronomy programs like KStars and look for deep sky objects below a certain magnitude (4.0 maybe). There aren't a ton of them, but even a few are enough to capture a child's interest.
You could also see if you could put aside a night to look for a meteor shower, if it's the right time of year for one of the bigger ones (Perseids, Geminids, etc). You can look for the ISS as it passes through your area. There's a lot of great stuff to find the night sky besides the closer planets and craters of the Moon (though those are fun too).
I went in the opposite direction. I was taking a C++ course, which required us to use Visual Studio and submit our VS source files. I was more interested in learning how to code C/C++ under linux. Since these were console apps, I wrote them using vi and g++ under linux, creating makefiles for them as I went along. I could pretty much drag and drop the code into VS, compile it, and hand it in. My teacher even gave me extra credit for handing in the g++ makefiles!
Yes, with Mass Effect 2, BioShock 2, Starcraft 2, Diablo 3, and the next Final Fantasy coming out, what will we ever play? You are are over-reacting. Tons of great games are coming out that are not bejeweled. I don't see the proportion of crap games to good games changing much.
While they're probably all good, every single one of your examples listed is a sequel. Market-driven development indeed....
This is exactly what I mean. You're thinking simply that because you are paying extra for subsidizing piracy, you somehow get the permission to pirate whatever. That is NOT the case.
While it's true this isn't the case in a legal sense, it's a lot harder for media companies to take the moral high ground of "copying music is stealing", when people are forced to pay a premium to them when they buy recordable media regardless of how they use it. My music collection consists at this point of music I've bought, and freely available CC-licensed MP3's ... but if I was paying a levy on my recordable media I'd lose any moral compunctions I might have regarding the copying for licensed music.
Don't worry; Britney is unlikely to ever see a penny of it, at least in the US. Blank CD's can be sold as "music CD's" (with the levy applied) or "computer CD's" (with no levy). Since they're exactly the same media, no one buys (or for that matter sells) "music CD's", so no one collects the levy on them. Even if they did, I strongly suspect that most of the money would go to the large RIAA-backed corporations and the artists wouldn't get the money anyway, since artists only see only 0.07-0.10 USD of an iTunes song sale.
In other countries like Canada which actually have an actual CD levy, the levy can account for 90% of the price of a stack of recordable CD-R's, and IIRC they're looking at imposing a similar levy on SD cards, and possibly MP3 players. I looked online and couldn't find out what percentage of that money lands in the hands of the artists, but I suspect it's small.