> "Limited government" is really just code for "a government that cannot protect its ordinary citizens".
THAT is an authoritarian viewpoint, the idea that "limited government" is bad, that government control should *not* be limited. It may be right, it may be wrong, but either way it's the rallying cry of authoritarian regimes.
> Would it make you happy if I replaced
It would make me happy if our discussion led each of us to better understand our own beliefs and better understand the other person's viewpoint. Since you seem to say limited government is a very bad idea, would that mean you strongly support giving politicians *un*limited power, a totalitarian, autocratic, or authoritarian regime?
Which of those three styles of non-limited government would you say you support most, a totalitarian, autocratic, or authoritarian? Perhaps dictatorial?
To put it another way, the United States can of course track where it's own nukes are. Yet, there are 8 American nuclear weapons out there lost somewhere, nobody knows quite where they are. One is probably about 60 miles off the coast pf Japan, we're not sure.
The US should also be able to keep track of North Korean subs. But...
Yes, go government workers have tools which should allow them to keep track of NK subs, with fairly good reliability, if none of them ever get bored and start playing solitaire instead of staring at the screen. We *could* track their subs, more or less. We could also lose track of one.
> Mercers' and Koch Brothers' money will ensure that he gets replaced by someone even more authoritarian.
So you think he'll be replaced by someone who WOULD support a law prohibiting trading services for privacy?
"Authoritarian" means *more* rules, not fewer. This Congressman argued for fewer rules. In this particular case, the argument he made was a stupid one, but anyway it's the opposite of authoritarian. An authoritarian leader is one who seeks to impose more rules and laws. This guy argues that the internet flourished due to relatively few laws, so we shouldn't make laws unless they absolutely necessary. Precisely the opposite of authoritarianism. (And he supported his anarchist / limited government position by making a stupid argument).
That happened several years ago, but as I recall he didn't give me a ticket. The explanation made sense to him when I explained I was a bit distracted knowing he was behind me, so I waited for the light to "change".
On behalf of Republicans everywhere, I'd like to apologize for the fact that our party includes some idiots like this congressman. We're working on replacing these fools.
As someone else mentioned, this guy has been in elected office since the 1960s (longer even than Hill & Billy), and he doesn't seem to have a clue about what's going on in the real world in the 21st century.
As someone else said, often Javascript is the right tool for the job, because the job is manipulating DOM elements in a web browser.
A major new future in Netscape 2.0 was that it had Scheme embedded, for scripting. Ten days before the public beta, it was decided that the Scheme effort couldn't be salvaged - it just wouldn't work. But Netscape's hype had promised embedded scripting. So in ten days Brendan Eich designed, coded, tested, and integrated Javascript. 10 days for all of that means he had about two days to design the language. It shows. Other languages have had years, or at least months, of design. Javascript had about two days. Eich did an amazingly good job, for weekend design project.
Obviously Javascript has matured a bit since then, but its origin as the mother of all all-nighters, the crashiest of all crash projects, still shows in its design, its inconsistent naming of functions, etc.
Once, a cop was behind me and the light ahead was yellow. Not wanting to take a chance, I stopped at the light. I waited at the light and after I went through I got pulled over. I was confused. Why did he pull me over? The cop was very confused - why had I gone right through a red light after apparently noticing him behind me, he asked. What? I didn't do that, I said. I stopped and waited for the light to change. Aha! I waited for the light to *change*. It changed from yellow to red, and I went.
> The only reason systems like Linux were more secure (hard to say if they are overall now**) is they were part of the front line of attacks which meant a lot of the direct network facing stuff had to be patched ASAP
Remember iitially on Windows, any program run by any user was allowed to do anything and everything to the computer. Programs did in fact interact with the system, writing registry entries wherever they felt like, putting files in system directories, etc. You can't just suddenly prevent that out the blue - a large percentage of the existing software would stop working.
So Microsoft had to slowly transition away from that. Which put them behind, because before DOS, UNIX users were ALREADY accustomed to running as a non-root user. Most computer users before Microsoft didn't *have* root access - they had a terminal connected to a mainframe. They were accustomed to the idea that they ran their software within their private space, and the user software didn't need system-level access.
For quite some time, Windows users were essentially running their browsers as root - including Flash and Java. For some years after that, it *appeared* that they were running as some user, but under the hood there was no real security.
Linux comes from that Unix heritage, from the basic assumption that an individual user shouldn't be able to take down the system even if they tried.
It's not *just* a matter of money, but compatibilty was / is a huge issue and also user experience. It took ten years for Microsoft to slowly transition not only users, but all of their legacy software, away from essentially running as "root" (Administrator) all the time. Initially on Windows, any program run by any user was allowed to do anything and everything to the computer. Programs did in fact interact with the system, writing registry entries wherever they felt like, putting files in system directories, etc. You can't just suddenly prevent that out the blue - a large percentage of the existing software would stop working.
So Microsoft had to slowly transition away from that. Which put them behind, because before DOS, UNIX users were ALREADY accustomed to running as a non-root user. Most computer users before Microsoft didn't *have* root access - they had a terminal connected to a mainframe. They were accustomed to the idea that they ran their software within their private space, and the user software didn't need system-level access.
So first Microsoft added user login, which *hid* the icons that would link to other people's files. Any "power user" knew how to navigate to the C drive and then back up to any users' files. Slowly they changed the system to where now Windows 8 and Windows 10 have user security similar to what UNIX had in 1979.
In the meantime, UNIX, and more often these days Linux, have moved on from that security model (discretionary access control) to a newer, more secure model (mandatory access control). Microsoft has played around with adding a bit of DAC-like capability to Windows, but essentially nobody uses it and it's not at all complete and ready for prime time.
> Much of the code was written when these machines were only networked if the company had a Novell network (yeah, yeah, both of you who ran LANMan can pipe down) and security wasn't even on the RADAR.
Indeed. Historically, it was DISK Operating System (DOS) on a PERSONAL Computer (PC) as opposed to the then-traditional NETWORK operating system on a time-sharing computer (which cost over $100,000). The point of DOS, the difference between Microsoft and what was already common place, was that the Microsoft OS was for cheap little computers used by one person, and not connected to a big corporate network. Instead of requiring many MBs of RAM, DOS could run in as little as 16KB pf RAM by getting rid of all the stuff that wasn't needed on a PERSONAL, DISK-based computer - stuff like security, stuff like isolating the files and processes of one user from the rest of the system.
This was a great idea. It worked brilliantly. Then the internet happened. Microsoft had a shit fit. Not only was their entire company based on PCs rather than the client-server model, but they had just spent millions upgrading Object Linking and Embedding (OLE), and named the new version COM. It was really cool - it let you do things like embed a picture in a Word document, or link a sound file from a picture. It was awesome. Then the web showed up with "img src" and "a href". Oh shit!
Microsoft did exactly the right thing, making an OS for personal, home computers, which weren't on a network and therefore any security was unnecessary overhead that they removed. Then the sudden popularity of the web screwed them and they had to play catch-up for 15 years.
There is a little utility called imwheel which will let you set the default mouse scroll speed globally, and also adjust it for different applications. That's likely to be what you would be most happy with since you mentioned you were happy with the speed in some applications and not others.
imwheel actually works by mapping the scroll wheel to an adjustable number of presses of the down arrow key. That introduces a few minor quirks. A more direct method is to set the scroll distance in xorg.conf with a line like this:
Option "VertScrollDelta" "100"
Of course that's for distributions which still use X, such as Red Hat.
For Wayland, you'll use something like: $ xinput list Find the device number of your mouse. Let's assume it's number 9. Then run: xinput set-prop 9 'Evdev Scrolling Distance' 3 1 1
You can put the above command in your.profile file so it is run every time you log in.
As you may know from your research, there are several causes that can result in poor scrolling in Chrome, on every operating system. Did you test in Incognito mode?
"broken and/or generally sucked" isn't nearly specific enough for me to know what you didn't like and what you might like instead. I also have no indication of your use case. Are you primarily doing network and security testing (consider Kali), gaming, music and multimedia production? What I can do is point out three general concepts or guidelines.
Different distributions have a very different balance between cutting edge new features and reliability. For example, nothing goes into Red Hat / CentOS until it has first been proven reliable on Fedora for a couple of years. Fedora has brand new stuff, which may not be as polished and reliable; CentOS has time-tested stuff that works. Fedora has frequent upgrades and doesn't maintain support for old versions. Red Hat / CentOS isn't meant to be upgraded as often, they support old versions much longer. Figure out what you want on that spectrum. That relates to the next guideline.
You said you use Linux servers "all the time". Probably those servers are using a stable distro such as CentOS. If you are very familiar with one distro because it's on all your servers, consider using the distro you already know on your desktop too. Even if you take a couple hours getting all your specific hardware configured just how you like it, avoiding the learning curve of a new distro may be worth it.
Someone who produces music for a living will probably prefer a very different distro or spin than someone who does network penetration testing. Consider looking at spins or distros designed for your specific use-case. Even if your use case isn't that specific, some distros are designed for newbies coming from Windows, and make easy things easy by presenting limited options. Others are designed for more advanced users who want to tinker and set their multiple mouse wheels to trigger different actions depending on context. Android and Chrome OS vs Debian are extreme examples. ChromeOS is super easy and everything just works, correctly. Of course "everything" is basically "the browser". Debian can run my custom-designed PCI-E card much easier than Chrome OS can. Figure out your use case, then research or ask in an appropriate forum.
The corollary to the above is that any answers to "what's the best Linux distribution" are probably wrong, for your needs. Cent OS meets MY needs quite well, but my needs may be totally different from your needs. I don't give a damn about nifty eye candy like translucent windows and window animations. I turn that shit off anyway for better performance and memory usage. Maybe you are an artsy, visual type of person and you love window animations.
> Ideally I'd want to support no form of government censorship at all... but there are to many possibilities for direct and blatant harm to individuals through harassment, threats
That's largely (not completely) taken care of by having a system in which people who commit libel, threats, etc can be punished after a public trial, rather than a censorship system, in which the government blocks information from ever being t posted at all, making those decisions more or less in secret.
Avoiding censorship and instead having public judicial trials for people accused incitement to violence, libel etc isn't perfect, but it's much better than censorship (prior restraint), in my view.
Maybe they should let them expand their service area / tax base. There so much bullshit being spouted for political reasons that it's hard to say. For example, people posting here claim that they have three times as many subscribers as what EFB claims in their official filings. EFB financial statements also show the cost to taxpayers as $330 million, while people here focus exclusively on one particular $111 million grant from taxpayers - ignoring most of the cost. So a good cost/benefit analysis is difficult in the midst of the spin and frankly the bullshit.
Via the Constitution, the states created a federal government and delegated certain powers to the new federal government. In the Constitution, they included redundant clauses for one particular point - the Constitution says that the federal government has only the powers that the states delegated to it, and that all other powers are reserved to the states and the people. (No mention of delegating any powers to cities, which are another creation of the states.) There is nothing *hypocritical* about saying "let's follow the Constitution, and have the federal government do what they Constitution says the federal government can do, and the states do what they do, as written in the Constitution." This particular decision by the state may be unwise, it may be wise, but it's not hypocritical, it's following the plan laid out in the Constitution, which leaves all powers to the states, except the listed powers they delegated to the feds.
> enhance their electrical grid, which in just 3 years saved their customers $130mil down time
Read that back and about it for just two seconds. Chatanooga is 75,000 households. That's over $1,700 of cost to each household that didn't happen, which they are taking credit for not happening. Somebody is telling you that if they hadn't put fiber on the poles, there would have been blackouts so severe that they would cost each household $1,700.
Did families in Chatanooga each suffer $1,700 worth of service interruptions before they strung the fiber? I doubt it.
> The network, control, and autonomous maneuvering technology are mostly in existence.
And available at Best Buy. Hobby drones can be programmed with a mission amd sent to go fly it autonomously. Hobby drones can accept updates in flight. They have "return to home" failure modes. Many of them are based on an opensource software package that does most of what a military drone would need to do, and is modular so new capabilities can be added fairly easily.
One specific federal matching grant was for $112 million (or was it $111 million?). Do you know what a matching grant is? that means the federal tax payers match what the state and local tax payers were forced to pay. I've given you the link to their financial statement before, so it's not like you don't know this.
> EPB actually serves about 200,000 household
As you did before, you intentionally conflate electric service and internet. As of their latest filing, EPB claims 69,201 households and 6,455 businesses. Again, I've already given you links to their audited reports. So either you know you're intentionally lying to everyone here or worse, you're intentionally lying to yourself as well by making sure not to click the links to EPB financial statements.
No, one specific grant of federal tax money was $111 million by itself. Which was matching grant. Then there was the state and local tax money, which paid most of the cost.
> $300 million was the total cost including the amount paid for by Internet, cable, and electricity customers
You think they had customers (paying $4,400 each) BEFORE they built it?
Legislated monopolies, also known as "cable franchises" suck ass.
Does anyone here still believe in "free", that goods and services just magically appear out of thin air? I think just about everyone left on Slashdot is too old for that fairy tale.
Chattanooga EFB took over $300 million from taxpayers. There are 75,000 households in Chatanooga, so the cost is $4,400 per family even if you don't get the service, with an additional monthly charge if you want the service. When you have to pay $4,400 plus $60-$150 per month, that's not free. That's not anywhere near free.
> But do they bear the long-term capital costs that a private firm would for infrastructure?
You hit the nail on the head. They took over $300 million in taxpayer money, to build the network. Now that the $300 million is gone, they don't lose significantly MORE money each month but they haven't paid back the $330 million they took from taxpayers. There are 75,000 households in Chatanooga, so that's $4,400 per family they took. If they returned that $4,400 to each household, plus more, then one could argue that they are profitable.
I got a chuckle from it. It's the kind of silly thing Google would do (though Google would be smart enough to be paid by the company selling the game).
The thing is, a national currency isn't supposed to be funny and cute, it's supposed to be reliable, steady, trustworthy. Other countries hold $4.5 trillion in USD as their "rainy day funds" because they trust the US dollar, they have confidence that the US government isn't going to play games with the currency. This is essentially an interest-free loan to the US of $4.5 trillion - that's enough to pay off all the federal debt from the first 200 years of US history, or almost enough to pay off the federal debt from the last 8 years.
Trillions more US dollars are held in short-term accounts to handle contracts denominated in US dollars because again the people involved trust the US to not play games with the currency.
This cheat code doesn't directly affect the currency in a material way, it's just symbolism, but it's exactly the wrong kind of symbolism, that sends the wrong message for a national currency.
My ex-wife and I planned for divorce, and surprise surprise we got divorced. My wife and I plan for "the two shall become one, till death do you part, for better or worse" and indeed we've worked through tough times and come out stronger.
Partly that's related to having our daughter - a decision that we feel like going our separate ways is no longer possible (we'll always be connected, like it or not), and to the extent it's possible, it's not right - I have no right to take away my daughter's father or mother just because I feel like boning some other chick. I've made a COMMITMENT to my family.
That works for us largely because we look at everything in our marriage, including all conflicts, from the perspective of *we*. If your arm is causing pain, you don't get mad at your arm, you figure out how to heal it. If my foot is giving me trouble, I don't yell at my foot (or cut it off), I care for it. If my wife is giving me trouble, I don't yell at my wife, or divorce my wife, I care for my wife. Probably sometimes you're not sure what to do - perhaps you want to eat cake, but you also want to lose weight. You want to buy a new toy, but you also want to save for a house. You think about these things, basically "discuss them with yourself." We are the same way - sometimes we want this and we want that. We think, discuss, and we decide. We (my wife and I) don't fight and get angry when we have two different viewpoints, anymore that you fight with yourself when you have two perspectives on something.
That's worked for us all the way to even when we've been attracted to someone else. We have a problem, we've been having inappropriate conversations with someone we find attractive. That's dangerous to us, our family. So how do we address this to protect ourselves from our family being torn apart? If she cheated on me, it wouldn't hurt *me*, it would hurt *her*, our daughter, AND me - it would hurt *us*. So we treat inappropriate conversations as a danger that could hurt us.
Having said all that, we are aware that divorce happens, and she's going to finish her degree - after she's more clear about what kind of degree she wants. During the roughest part of our marriage, during a mental health crisis, there was a risk that the person going through the mental health issues might do something crazy, and we took some precautions during that time in case we had to seperate. But generally, you tend to get what you plan for, so we don't plan on divorce.
That's (A) inconvenience four passengers - and compensate them. The airline did that for the first three of four seats needed, I understand. They offered $800 and three people took the offer. They manner in which they handled the fourth passenger was obviously not very good.
Slashdot Mirror
> "Limited government" is really just code for "a government that cannot protect its ordinary citizens".
THAT is an authoritarian viewpoint, the idea that "limited government" is bad, that government control should *not* be limited. It may be right, it may be wrong, but either way it's the rallying cry of authoritarian regimes.
> Would it make you happy if I replaced
It would make me happy if our discussion led each of us to better understand our own beliefs and better understand the other person's viewpoint. Since you seem to say limited government is a very bad idea, would that mean you strongly support giving politicians *un*limited power, a totalitarian, autocratic, or authoritarian regime?
Which of those three styles of non-limited government would you say you support most, a totalitarian, autocratic, or authoritarian? Perhaps dictatorial?
To put it another way, the United States can of course track where it's own nukes are. Yet, there are 8 American nuclear weapons out there lost somewhere, nobody knows quite where they are. One is probably about 60 miles off the coast pf Japan, we're not sure.
The US should also be able to keep track of North Korean subs. But ...
Yes, go government workers have tools which should allow them to keep track of NK subs, with fairly good reliability, if none of them ever get bored and start playing solitaire instead of staring at the screen. We *could* track their subs, more or less. We could also lose track of one.
> Mercers' and Koch Brothers' money will ensure that he gets replaced by someone even more authoritarian.
So you think he'll be replaced by someone who WOULD support a law prohibiting trading services for privacy?
"Authoritarian" means *more* rules, not fewer. This Congressman argued for fewer rules. In this particular case, the argument he made was a stupid one, but anyway it's the opposite of authoritarian. An authoritarian leader is one who seeks to impose more rules and laws. This guy argues that the internet flourished due to relatively few laws, so we shouldn't make laws unless they absolutely necessary. Precisely the opposite of authoritarianism. (And he supported his anarchist / limited government position by making a stupid argument).
That happened several years ago, but as I recall he didn't give me a ticket. The explanation made sense to him when I explained I was a bit distracted knowing he was behind me, so I waited for the light to "change".
On behalf of Republicans everywhere, I'd like to apologize for the fact that our party includes some idiots like this congressman. We're working on replacing these fools.
As someone else mentioned, this guy has been in elected office since the 1960s (longer even than Hill & Billy), and he doesn't seem to have a clue about what's going on in the real world in the 21st century.
As someone else said, often Javascript is the right tool for the job, because the job is manipulating DOM elements in a web browser.
A major new future in Netscape 2.0 was that it had Scheme embedded, for scripting. Ten days before the public beta, it was decided that the Scheme effort couldn't be salvaged - it just wouldn't work. But Netscape's hype had promised embedded scripting. So in ten days Brendan Eich designed, coded, tested, and integrated Javascript. 10 days for all of that means he had about two days to design the language. It shows. Other languages have had years, or at least months, of design. Javascript had about two days. Eich did an amazingly good job, for weekend design project.
Obviously Javascript has matured a bit since then, but its origin as the mother of all all-nighters, the crashiest of all crash projects, still shows in its design, its inconsistent naming of functions, etc.
I've waited for a stop sign to change too.
Once, a cop was behind me and the light ahead was yellow. Not wanting to take a chance, I stopped at the light. I waited at the light and after I went through I got pulled over. I was confused. Why did he pull me over? The cop was very confused - why had I gone right through a red light after apparently noticing him behind me, he asked. What? I didn't do that, I said. I stopped and waited for the light to change. Aha! I waited for the light to *change*. It changed from yellow to red, and I went.
> The only reason systems like Linux were more secure (hard to say if they are overall now**) is they were part of the front line of attacks which meant a lot of the direct network facing stuff had to be patched ASAP
Remember iitially on Windows, any program run by any user was allowed to do anything and everything to the computer. Programs did in fact interact with the system, writing registry entries wherever they felt like, putting files in system directories, etc. You can't just suddenly prevent that out the blue - a large percentage of the existing software would stop working.
So Microsoft had to slowly transition away from that. Which put them behind, because before DOS, UNIX users were ALREADY accustomed to running as a non-root user. Most computer users before Microsoft didn't *have* root access - they had a terminal connected to a mainframe. They were accustomed to the idea that they ran their software within their private space, and the user software didn't need system-level access.
For quite some time, Windows users were essentially running their browsers as root - including Flash and Java. For some years after that, it *appeared* that they were running as some user, but under the hood there was no real security.
Linux comes from that Unix heritage, from the basic assumption that an individual user shouldn't be able to take down the system even if they tried.
It's not *just* a matter of money, but compatibilty was / is a huge issue and also user experience. It took ten years for Microsoft to slowly transition not only users, but all of their legacy software, away from essentially running as "root" (Administrator) all the time. Initially on Windows, any program run by any user was allowed to do anything and everything to the computer. Programs did in fact interact with the system, writing registry entries wherever they felt like, putting files in system directories, etc. You can't just suddenly prevent that out the blue - a large percentage of the existing software would stop working.
So Microsoft had to slowly transition away from that. Which put them behind, because before DOS, UNIX users were ALREADY accustomed to running as a non-root user. Most computer users before Microsoft didn't *have* root access - they had a terminal connected to a mainframe. They were accustomed to the idea that they ran their software within their private space, and the user software didn't need system-level access.
So first Microsoft added user login, which *hid* the icons that would link to other people's files. Any "power user" knew how to navigate to the C drive and then back up to any users' files. Slowly they changed the system to where now Windows 8 and Windows 10 have user security similar to what UNIX had in 1979.
In the meantime, UNIX, and more often these days Linux, have moved on from that security model (discretionary access control) to a newer, more secure model (mandatory access control). Microsoft has played around with adding a bit of DAC-like capability to Windows, but essentially nobody uses it and it's not at all complete and ready for prime time.
> Much of the code was written when these machines were only networked if the company had a Novell network (yeah, yeah, both of you who ran LANMan can pipe down) and security wasn't even on the RADAR.
Indeed. Historically, it was DISK Operating System (DOS) on a PERSONAL Computer (PC) as opposed to the then-traditional NETWORK operating system on a time-sharing computer (which cost over $100,000). The point of DOS, the difference between Microsoft and what was already common place, was that the Microsoft OS was for cheap little computers used by one person, and not connected to a big corporate network. Instead of requiring many MBs of RAM, DOS could run in as little as 16KB pf RAM by getting rid of all the stuff that wasn't needed on a PERSONAL, DISK-based computer - stuff like security, stuff like isolating the files and processes of one user from the rest of the system.
This was a great idea. It worked brilliantly. Then the internet happened. Microsoft had a shit fit. Not only was their entire company based on PCs rather than the client-server model, but they had just spent millions upgrading Object Linking and Embedding (OLE), and named the new version COM. It was really cool - it let you do things like embed a picture in a Word document, or link a sound file from a picture. It was awesome. Then the web showed up with "img src" and "a href". Oh shit!
Microsoft did exactly the right thing, making an OS for personal, home computers, which weren't on a network and therefore any security was unnecessary overhead that they removed. Then the sudden popularity of the web screwed them and they had to play catch-up for 15 years.
There is a little utility called imwheel which will let you set the default mouse scroll speed globally, and also adjust it for different applications. That's likely to be what you would be most happy with since you mentioned you were happy with the speed in some applications and not others.
imwheel actually works by mapping the scroll wheel to an adjustable number of presses of the down arrow key. That introduces a few minor quirks. A more direct method is to set the scroll distance in xorg.conf with a line like this:
Option "VertScrollDelta" "100"
Of course that's for distributions which still use X, such as Red Hat.
For Wayland, you'll use something like:
$ xinput list
Find the device number of your mouse. Let's assume it's number 9. Then run:
xinput set-prop 9 'Evdev Scrolling Distance' 3 1 1
You can put the above command in your .profile file so it is run every time you log in.
As you may know from your research, there are several causes that can result in poor scrolling in Chrome, on every operating system. Did you test in Incognito mode?
"broken and/or generally sucked" isn't nearly specific enough for me to know what you didn't like and what you might like instead. I also have no indication of your use case. Are you primarily doing network and security testing (consider Kali), gaming, music and multimedia production? What I can do is point out three general concepts or guidelines.
Different distributions have a very different balance between cutting edge new features and reliability. For example, nothing goes into Red Hat / CentOS until it has first been proven reliable on Fedora for a couple of years. Fedora has brand new stuff, which may not be as polished and reliable; CentOS has time-tested stuff that works. Fedora has frequent upgrades and doesn't maintain support for old versions. Red Hat / CentOS isn't meant to be upgraded as often, they support old versions much longer. Figure out what you want on that spectrum. That relates to the next guideline.
You said you use Linux servers "all the time". Probably those servers are using a stable distro such as CentOS. If you are very familiar with one distro because it's on all your servers, consider using the distro you already know on your desktop too. Even if you take a couple hours getting all your specific hardware configured just how you like it, avoiding the learning curve of a new distro may be worth it.
Someone who produces music for a living will probably prefer a very different distro or spin than someone who does network penetration testing. Consider looking at spins or distros designed for your specific use-case. Even if your use case isn't that specific, some distros are designed for newbies coming from Windows, and make easy things easy by presenting limited options. Others are designed for more advanced users who want to tinker and set their multiple mouse wheels to trigger different actions depending on context. Android and Chrome OS vs Debian are extreme examples. ChromeOS is super easy and everything just works, correctly. Of course "everything" is basically "the browser". Debian can run my custom-designed PCI-E card much easier than Chrome OS can. Figure out your use case, then research or ask in an appropriate forum.
The corollary to the above is that any answers to "what's the best Linux distribution" are probably wrong, for your needs. Cent OS meets MY needs quite well, but my needs may be totally different from your needs. I don't give a damn about nifty eye candy like translucent windows and window animations. I turn that shit off anyway for better performance and memory usage. Maybe you are an artsy, visual type of person and you love window animations.
> Ideally I'd want to support no form of government censorship at all ... but there are to many possibilities for direct and blatant harm to individuals through harassment, threats
That's largely (not completely) taken care of by having a system in which people who commit libel, threats, etc can be punished after a public trial, rather than a censorship system, in which the government blocks information from ever being t posted at all, making those decisions more or less in secret.
Avoiding censorship and instead having public judicial trials for people accused incitement to violence, libel etc isn't perfect, but it's much better than censorship (prior restraint), in my view.
Maybe they should let them expand their service area / tax base. There so much bullshit being spouted for political reasons that it's hard to say. For example, people posting here claim that they have three times as many subscribers as what EFB claims in their official filings. EFB financial statements also show the cost to taxpayers as $330 million, while people here focus exclusively on one particular $111 million grant from taxpayers - ignoring most of the cost. So a good cost/benefit analysis is difficult in the midst of the spin and frankly the bullshit.
Via the Constitution, the states created a federal government and delegated certain powers to the new federal government. In the Constitution, they included redundant clauses for one particular point - the Constitution says that the federal government has only the powers that the states delegated to it, and that all other powers are reserved to the states and the people. (No mention of delegating any powers to cities, which are another creation of the states.) There is nothing *hypocritical* about saying "let's follow the Constitution, and have the federal government do what they Constitution says the federal government can do, and the states do what they do, as written in the Constitution." This particular decision by the state may be unwise, it may be wise, but it's not hypocritical, it's following the plan laid out in the Constitution, which leaves all powers to the states, except the listed powers they delegated to the feds.
> enhance their electrical grid, which in just 3 years saved their customers $130mil down time
Read that back and about it for just two seconds. Chatanooga is 75,000 households. That's over $1,700 of cost to each household that didn't happen, which they are taking credit for not happening. Somebody is telling you that if they hadn't put fiber on the poles, there would have been blackouts so severe that they would cost each household $1,700.
Did families in Chatanooga each suffer $1,700 worth of service interruptions before they strung the fiber? I doubt it.
> The network, control, and autonomous maneuvering technology are mostly in existence.
And available at Best Buy. Hobby drones can be programmed with a mission amd sent to go fly it autonomously. Hobby drones can accept updates in flight. They have "return to home" failure modes. Many of them are based on an opensource software package that does most of what a military drone would need to do, and is modular so new capabilities can be added fairly easily.
> EPB took a grant for only 112 million
One specific federal matching grant was for $112 million (or was it $111 million?). Do you know what a matching grant is? that means the federal tax payers match what the state and local tax payers were forced to pay. I've given you the link to their financial statement before, so it's not like you don't know this.
> EPB actually serves about 200,000 household
As you did before, you intentionally conflate electric service and internet. As of their latest filing, EPB claims 69,201 households and 6,455 businesses. Again, I've already given you links to their audited reports. So either you know you're intentionally lying to everyone here or worse, you're intentionally lying to yourself as well by making sure not to click the links to EPB financial statements.
No, one specific grant of federal tax money was $111 million by itself. Which was matching grant. Then there was the state and local tax money, which paid most of the cost.
> $300 million was the total cost including the amount paid for by Internet, cable, and electricity customers
You think they had customers (paying $4,400 each) BEFORE they built it?
Legislated monopolies, also known as "cable franchises" suck ass.
Does anyone here still believe in "free", that goods and services just magically appear out of thin air? I think just about everyone left on Slashdot is too old for that fairy tale.
Chattanooga EFB took over $300 million from taxpayers. There are 75,000 households in Chatanooga, so the cost is $4,400 per family even if you don't get the service, with an additional monthly charge if you want the service. When you have to pay $4,400 plus $60-$150 per month, that's not free. That's not anywhere near free.
> But do they bear the long-term capital costs that a private firm would for infrastructure?
You hit the nail on the head. They took over $300 million in taxpayer money, to build the network. Now that the $300 million is gone, they don't lose significantly MORE money each month but they haven't paid back the $330 million they took from taxpayers. There are 75,000 households in Chatanooga, so that's $4,400 per family they took. If they returned that $4,400 to each household, plus more, then one could argue that they are profitable.
I got a chuckle from it. It's the kind of silly thing Google would do (though Google would be smart enough to be paid by the company selling the game).
The thing is, a national currency isn't supposed to be funny and cute, it's supposed to be reliable, steady, trustworthy. Other countries hold $4.5 trillion in USD as their "rainy day funds" because they trust the US dollar, they have confidence that the US government isn't going to play games with the currency. This is essentially an interest-free loan to the US of $4.5 trillion - that's enough to pay off all the federal debt from the first 200 years of US history, or almost enough to pay off the federal debt from the last 8 years.
Trillions more US dollars are held in short-term accounts to handle contracts denominated in US dollars because again the people involved trust the US to not play games with the currency.
This cheat code doesn't directly affect the currency in a material way, it's just symbolism, but it's exactly the wrong kind of symbolism, that sends the wrong message for a national currency.
My ex-wife and I planned for divorce, and surprise surprise we got divorced. My wife and I plan for "the two shall become one, till death do you part, for better or worse" and indeed we've worked through tough times and come out stronger.
Partly that's related to having our daughter - a decision that we feel like going our separate ways is no longer possible (we'll always be connected, like it or not), and to the extent it's possible, it's not right - I have no right to take away my daughter's father or mother just because I feel like boning some other chick. I've made a COMMITMENT to my family.
That works for us largely because we look at everything in our marriage, including all conflicts, from the perspective of *we*. If your arm is causing pain, you don't get mad at your arm, you figure out how to heal it. If my foot is giving me trouble, I don't yell at my foot (or cut it off), I care for it. If my wife is giving me trouble, I don't yell at my wife, or divorce my wife, I care for my wife. Probably sometimes you're not sure what to do - perhaps you want to eat cake, but you also want to lose weight. You want to buy a new toy, but you also want to save for a house. You think about these things, basically "discuss them with yourself." We are the same way - sometimes we want this and we want that. We think, discuss, and we decide. We (my wife and I) don't fight and get angry when we have two different viewpoints, anymore that you fight with yourself when you have two perspectives on something.
That's worked for us all the way to even when we've been attracted to someone else. We have a problem, we've been having inappropriate conversations with someone we find attractive. That's dangerous to us, our family. So how do we address this to protect ourselves from our family being torn apart? If she cheated on me, it wouldn't hurt *me*, it would hurt *her*, our daughter, AND me - it would hurt *us*. So we treat inappropriate conversations as a danger that could hurt us.
Having said all that, we are aware that divorce happens, and she's going to finish her degree - after she's more clear about what kind of degree she wants. During the roughest part of our marriage, during a mental health crisis, there was a risk that the person going through the mental health issues might do something crazy, and we took some precautions during that time in case we had to seperate. But generally, you tend to get what you plan for, so we don't plan on divorce.
That's (A) inconvenience four passengers - and compensate them. The airline did that for the first three of four seats needed, I understand. They offered $800 and three people took the offer. They manner in which they handled the fourth passenger was obviously not very good.