Given not everyone will know the repo had been moved and the domain is now registered to new owners, the most sensible approach in this case would have been to post an emergency update through the official Debian repositories, such that if the Debian-Multimedia.org is present, it is automatically removed from any source.list files and replaced with deb-multimedia.org. No harm, no foul.
Indeed, and I wish some Windows 8 proponents understood this as well. Some of us have tried W8, looked at it based on its merits (both usability as well as performance, among other factors) and have decided that Windows 7 is ultimately a better fit. It's nothing to do with an unwillingness to change - it's about not just moving to the next version without some sort of validation that overall it's worth the extra expense and effort.
To be honest, the Cloud does have some (and I stress, some) legitimate benefits for even the little guy. My wife uses Dropbox and saves her assignments and current tasks in said Dropbox. She doesn't backup much, and it tends to be up to me to remember to image her machine every so often. Should her hard drive fail, files are accidentally deleted, or her most important data is otherwise no longer available and recoverable locally, Dropbox will ensure it can be easily recovered on the net. Apart from allowing the ability to use your files anywhere seamlessly with a network connection, the Cloud in this case can be leveraged as something of a temporary backup for a small amount of content.
So long as you retain all data on your own hardware and only use the Cloud for easy remote access and in specific situations a temporary backup of recent data, then it works well.
BUT...
Don't be a fucking idiot like Paul Thurrott and willingly give up ALL your data to the cloud:
do you think microsoft would have ever offered linux guests on azure if there wasn't a demand for it and they couldn't make a tonne of money?
No, but I don't see what that's got to do with anything. Obviously there's a market for it so Microsoft addresses said market.
I never said Linux isn't successful. Sure it is... in the areas where its strengths are most paramount. But this whole topic is all about user-facing installs (so desktops/laptops), not the backend. This is where Linux continues to struggle, and for good reason a lot of the time.
I used to be enthusiastic about Linux, believe me. But then I grew up, lost patience at things continually lacking in polish and thought that just worked well in Windows, and gave up. Most people follow the same path because it's not worth the stress.
Yeah yeah yeah, heard this all before. Microsoft has more money than God and their fingers in so many pies it's ridiculous. They aren't going anywhere. If they DO crumble at some point, then I'll move to the next best thing. But that will probably be Apple rather than Linux due to such a bad history of poor-quality Linux distros and been fed lies continuous by an overzealous fan-base.
Generally yes. However, I can just about guarantee that the gamers who have enough skill to make an appreciable impact impact on a study like this are NOT going to be the same group of games who can suitably balance sports and other physical activity with said gaming activity.
No references/evidence to provide, only experience here sorry.
While teenagers with aspergers like to snicker when someone says an apparently tautological phrase such as "PIN number", this wording helps clarify that we're talking about a Personal Identification Number, and not People In Need or Progressive Inflammatory Neuropathy.
You don't NEED clarification though - it's all in the context of where the acronym is used. If someone requests that you "please remember your PIN for future access", clearly it's not going to be about remembering your Progressive Inflammatory Neuropathy.
But we do want, insist actually, on root access for devices we own. If you can't log in as root, you don't own the device. Just give me the option to turn on root access using my Apple ID. Closing holes that allow for unauthorized privilege elevation is a good thing. Disallowing authorized use of the full functionality of a device is a bad thing.
So I don't think it's completely fair to blame the American people for their ignorance when they are being kept that way on purpose.
You know this, I know this, most of Slashdot and the wider tech society knows this. So evidently is is possible for people in a society to know that the Government is manipulative and untrustworthy. It's not even that hard really - just being cautious about what you're told and having an eye towards critical thinking is enough. Or is that asking for too much apparently?
The American people are no different from anyone else in the world, not really anyway. In fact they still have greater freedoms for finding information on the net from unrestricted channels than say, people in Iran or China. All it takes in the end is to give a damn, and if more people gave a damn, I dunno, maybe things would turn out better.
The first thing they could do though is fucking stop taking sides in politics, as if they're barracking for some sports team. This isn't a game.
Dude, stop reminding me about my experiences with Linux. It's taken over a decade before I've finally started to recover from the constant Windows -> Linux -> Windows cycle and distro hopping. The wounds are still healing damnit!
Well, I don't want to sound like an apologist for Windows
I've been following your little conversation and don't worry, you're not being an apologist. I'd have done the same thing to be honest. It's very grating at times to hear Linux users say "Windows can't do that!" and know that, well actually, it can, and often in an easier/more approachable way. If I go and slag Linux for some perceived deficiency, you can guarantee a million defenders will come around and explain how you're wrong. Doing things in the opposite direction shouldn't be discouraged - it ensures we're getting facts clear and in the open.
Nothing would please the worst of the worst Linux fanboys in knowing that Windows can't do something that Linux can. In my experience it can do everything and more, just differently (shit, with so many people using Windows of COURSE there's going to be a way to get Windows to address every possible usage scenario), and nothing pleases me more than to put such people in their place at times.:)
Sounds like moving the goalposts to me. Linux didn't take any measurable share of desktop/laptop OS usage, but hey, it's flying high on mobiles! Oh... but people still use desktops/laptops in the vast majority of situations to do their work, and in many cases their play. That's going to remain the case for a while yet, which is where Windows will remain supreme.
Linux might run the world, but for the majority of my work and a lot of my entertainment, it's in front of a computer. And goodness knows I'd hate it to be running Linux with the state of distros these days.
I've decided that the being who tell others to "grow up" are people who haven't learnt that the purpose of life is to enjoy it (since once you're dead, that's it), and if gaming provides enough satisfaction for someone, then who the fuck are you to tell them otherwise?
Slashdot, don't just up-vote a comment just because it's anti-Microsoft. Even the reddit mods have come to the conclusion that it was all one big troll:
And that's fine. As you say, each to their own. I wish more people understood that what works for one person won't necessarily work for another, and hence operating system flamewars serve no purpose but to rile up the blood.
I can do 100% of what I need and want to do in Windows, whereas that number reduces to about 80-90% in Linux. It's the edge cases which reduces things in Linux; it's not just games that I use Windows for - it's also the fact that I know it has commercial support for top-tier software that I want to use. It's not just games - whether it's MS Office or Photoshop or that niche app you use to do something for a hobby or work, Windows will have what you want. Linux will either have an alternative that does close to what you want (but not everything, and hence is a downgrade), or it won't have it at all, necessitating either giving up using that software and the resulting features, or trying to use WINE (which has regressions on every second version) or virtualization (in which case, I'd rather just use Windows and deal with maintaining one operating system instead of two).
I used to really, really want to move to Linux, but I could never justify it because I'd end up with less functionality. I'm surrounded by some very smart engineers at work who, after talking with them, I learnt that they all use Windows at home for their primary (non-server) machines because frankly, they have had their own problems with Linux which do not offset issues in Windows.
It's a shame to some, but Windows just doesn't really suck as much as some might wish it did.
What makes Cerberus better than Prey? Someone else commented concern for a closed-source tool, whereas Prey is completely open source AFAIK. They both seem to do the same thing, just one has better marketing apparently.
If you want to do business in a country, you have to follow the laws. Sounds like the Saudi authorities gave clear and fair warning that the service would be blocked if the capability for monitoring was not implemented, and yet Viber chose to disregard the warning. So they were blocked.
Having said that, I do NOT agree with these laws, clearly (because I'm on Slashdot). I'm also not one to just give a pass to any country's immoral laws because "that's just how they do things". The law sucks... but it's also clear what the law is in most countries and if you don't agree to do business and follow it, well, no surprises what will happen.
Not that it really matters too much. "Viber would be restored soon" translates to "we'll implement the monitoring requirements the Saudi's want, because fuck it, we like money and would rather kick up a fuss on the BBC than actually stick to our position and pull out of a hostile country."
Why on earth is this modded "Insightful"? Since 2.8, The GIMP's UI has been markedly improved. Seems like pandering to me.
2.8 did introduce the rather stupid idea of not being able to save in a standard file format like.JPG,.GIF or.PNG using the Save option, and instead required using Export (Save is now reserved for GIMP's native file format, to save things like layer data). I understand their reasoning for doing so, but the reasoning is very much understood by geeks and engineers - not by end users who expect Save to actually allow saving in different formats. A common issue with a lot of open source software written by geeks, for geeks.
Having said that, on the whole I think 2.8 was a vast improvement (heck, single-window mode was enough to actually get me to use the product on a semi-regular basis). A lot of people though still believe the UI is rubbish because, well, it has been for so long, after a while people tend to just give up and stop expecting anything to change. Even if it does, you can't blame them for not having bothered to try it again.
Vista did have some rather annoying issue though. Perhaps my biggest annoyance was that that it had a re-occurring problem with forgetting custom folder settings for a particular folder, and sometimes applying those custom folder settings to a completely different folder. Just Google "vista forgetting folder settings" and you'll see what I mean. Supposedly the problem was finally resolved in SP2, but by then I had moved to Windows 7 which didn't have the issue.
Vista was perhaps a necessary OS to act as a stepping stone between XP and 7, but it had too many initial problems (both resource wise and bugs like the one I mentioned) such that its reputation was ruined even after a couple of service packs seemed to fix most things. Windows 8 might be another necessary stepping stone towards a more refined version of Windows that everyone can enjoy, but Microsoft can't keep pissing people off for ever.
3) Forcing use of GPT partitioning, which many Linux distros don't handle yet
GPT has been around for a few years now. Any modern Linux distro who can't handle it is obsolete. The only issues related to the use of GPT in Linux is if you're using tools like fdisk, which doesn't work with GPT. parted on the other hand does, along with grub past version 0.96 (and of course GRUB 2).
Slashdot Mirror
Given not everyone will know the repo had been moved and the domain is now registered to new owners, the most sensible approach in this case would have been to post an emergency update through the official Debian repositories, such that if the Debian-Multimedia.org is present, it is automatically removed from any source.list files and replaced with deb-multimedia.org. No harm, no foul.
Indeed, and I wish some Windows 8 proponents understood this as well. Some of us have tried W8, looked at it based on its merits (both usability as well as performance, among other factors) and have decided that Windows 7 is ultimately a better fit. It's nothing to do with an unwillingness to change - it's about not just moving to the next version without some sort of validation that overall it's worth the extra expense and effort.
To be honest, the Cloud does have some (and I stress, some) legitimate benefits for even the little guy. My wife uses Dropbox and saves her assignments and current tasks in said Dropbox. She doesn't backup much, and it tends to be up to me to remember to image her machine every so often. Should her hard drive fail, files are accidentally deleted, or her most important data is otherwise no longer available and recoverable locally, Dropbox will ensure it can be easily recovered on the net. Apart from allowing the ability to use your files anywhere seamlessly with a network connection, the Cloud in this case can be leveraged as something of a temporary backup for a small amount of content.
So long as you retain all data on your own hardware and only use the Cloud for easy remote access and in specific situations a temporary backup of recent data, then it works well.
BUT...
Don't be a fucking idiot like Paul Thurrott and willingly give up ALL your data to the cloud:
http://winsupersite.com/cloud/zero-data-hardest-part-saying-goodbye
No, but I don't see what that's got to do with anything. Obviously there's a market for it so Microsoft addresses said market.
I never said Linux isn't successful. Sure it is... in the areas where its strengths are most paramount. But this whole topic is all about user-facing installs (so desktops/laptops), not the backend. This is where Linux continues to struggle, and for good reason a lot of the time.
I used to be enthusiastic about Linux, believe me. But then I grew up, lost patience at things continually lacking in polish and thought that just worked well in Windows, and gave up. Most people follow the same path because it's not worth the stress.
Yeah yeah yeah, heard this all before. Microsoft has more money than God and their fingers in so many pies it's ridiculous. They aren't going anywhere. If they DO crumble at some point, then I'll move to the next best thing. But that will probably be Apple rather than Linux due to such a bad history of poor-quality Linux distros and been fed lies continuous by an overzealous fan-base.
You will fail.
Generally yes. However, I can just about guarantee that the gamers who have enough skill to make an appreciable impact impact on a study like this are NOT going to be the same group of games who can suitably balance sports and other physical activity with said gaming activity.
No references/evidence to provide, only experience here sorry.
You don't NEED clarification though - it's all in the context of where the acronym is used. If someone requests that you "please remember your PIN for future access", clearly it's not going to be about remembering your Progressive Inflammatory Neuropathy.
But we do want, insist actually, on root access for devices we own. If you can't log in as root, you don't own the device. Just give me the option to turn on root access using my Apple ID. Closing holes that allow for unauthorized privilege elevation is a good thing. Disallowing authorized use of the full functionality of a device is a bad thing.
You know this, I know this, most of Slashdot and the wider tech society knows this. So evidently is is possible for people in a society to know that the Government is manipulative and untrustworthy. It's not even that hard really - just being cautious about what you're told and having an eye towards critical thinking is enough. Or is that asking for too much apparently?
The American people are no different from anyone else in the world, not really anyway. In fact they still have greater freedoms for finding information on the net from unrestricted channels than say, people in Iran or China. All it takes in the end is to give a damn, and if more people gave a damn, I dunno, maybe things would turn out better.
The first thing they could do though is fucking stop taking sides in politics, as if they're barracking for some sports team. This isn't a game.
Dude, stop reminding me about my experiences with Linux. It's taken over a decade before I've finally started to recover from the constant Windows -> Linux -> Windows cycle and distro hopping. The wounds are still healing damnit!
No. But it is a reason for not using Linux (as in, he can't do in Linux what he already can do in Windows), and that's what this whole topic is about.
I've been following your little conversation and don't worry, you're not being an apologist. I'd have done the same thing to be honest. It's very grating at times to hear Linux users say "Windows can't do that!" and know that, well actually, it can, and often in an easier/more approachable way. If I go and slag Linux for some perceived deficiency, you can guarantee a million defenders will come around and explain how you're wrong. Doing things in the opposite direction shouldn't be discouraged - it ensures we're getting facts clear and in the open.
Nothing would please the worst of the worst Linux fanboys in knowing that Windows can't do something that Linux can. In my experience it can do everything and more, just differently (shit, with so many people using Windows of COURSE there's going to be a way to get Windows to address every possible usage scenario), and nothing pleases me more than to put such people in their place at times. :)
Sounds like moving the goalposts to me. Linux didn't take any measurable share of desktop/laptop OS usage, but hey, it's flying high on mobiles! Oh... but people still use desktops/laptops in the vast majority of situations to do their work, and in many cases their play. That's going to remain the case for a while yet, which is where Windows will remain supreme.
Linux might run the world, but for the majority of my work and a lot of my entertainment, it's in front of a computer. And goodness knows I'd hate it to be running Linux with the state of distros these days.
I've decided that the being who tell others to "grow up" are people who haven't learnt that the purpose of life is to enjoy it (since once you're dead, that's it), and if gaming provides enough satisfaction for someone, then who the fuck are you to tell them otherwise?
Slashdot, don't just up-vote a comment just because it's anti-Microsoft. Even the reddit mods have come to the conclusion that it was all one big troll:
http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/1fyjgr/regarding_xbox_one_and_allegations_of_voterigging/
Fucking hell /.'s, you're supposed to be smarter and more critical of things than the general public.
And that's fine. As you say, each to their own. I wish more people understood that what works for one person won't necessarily work for another, and hence operating system flamewars serve no purpose but to rile up the blood.
Bravo, I wish more people understood this and that this really does have benefits.
I can do 100% of what I need and want to do in Windows, whereas that number reduces to about 80-90% in Linux. It's the edge cases which reduces things in Linux; it's not just games that I use Windows for - it's also the fact that I know it has commercial support for top-tier software that I want to use. It's not just games - whether it's MS Office or Photoshop or that niche app you use to do something for a hobby or work, Windows will have what you want. Linux will either have an alternative that does close to what you want (but not everything, and hence is a downgrade), or it won't have it at all, necessitating either giving up using that software and the resulting features, or trying to use WINE (which has regressions on every second version) or virtualization (in which case, I'd rather just use Windows and deal with maintaining one operating system instead of two).
I used to really, really want to move to Linux, but I could never justify it because I'd end up with less functionality. I'm surrounded by some very smart engineers at work who, after talking with them, I learnt that they all use Windows at home for their primary (non-server) machines because frankly, they have had their own problems with Linux which do not offset issues in Windows.
It's a shame to some, but Windows just doesn't really suck as much as some might wish it did.
What makes Cerberus better than Prey? Someone else commented concern for a closed-source tool, whereas Prey is completely open source AFAIK. They both seem to do the same thing, just one has better marketing apparently.
If you want to do business in a country, you have to follow the laws. Sounds like the Saudi authorities gave clear and fair warning that the service would be blocked if the capability for monitoring was not implemented, and yet Viber chose to disregard the warning. So they were blocked.
Having said that, I do NOT agree with these laws, clearly (because I'm on Slashdot). I'm also not one to just give a pass to any country's immoral laws because "that's just how they do things". The law sucks... but it's also clear what the law is in most countries and if you don't agree to do business and follow it, well, no surprises what will happen.
Not that it really matters too much. "Viber would be restored soon" translates to "we'll implement the monitoring requirements the Saudi's want, because fuck it, we like money and would rather kick up a fuss on the BBC than actually stick to our position and pull out of a hostile country."
I now feel absurdly bad for never thinking to do that.
2.8 did introduce the rather stupid idea of not being able to save in a standard file format like .JPG, .GIF or .PNG using the Save option, and instead required using Export (Save is now reserved for GIMP's native file format, to save things like layer data). I understand their reasoning for doing so, but the reasoning is very much understood by geeks and engineers - not by end users who expect Save to actually allow saving in different formats. A common issue with a lot of open source software written by geeks, for geeks.
Having said that, on the whole I think 2.8 was a vast improvement (heck, single-window mode was enough to actually get me to use the product on a semi-regular basis). A lot of people though still believe the UI is rubbish because, well, it has been for so long, after a while people tend to just give up and stop expecting anything to change. Even if it does, you can't blame them for not having bothered to try it again.
Vista did have some rather annoying issue though. Perhaps my biggest annoyance was that that it had a re-occurring problem with forgetting custom folder settings for a particular folder, and sometimes applying those custom folder settings to a completely different folder. Just Google "vista forgetting folder settings" and you'll see what I mean. Supposedly the problem was finally resolved in SP2, but by then I had moved to Windows 7 which didn't have the issue.
Vista was perhaps a necessary OS to act as a stepping stone between XP and 7, but it had too many initial problems (both resource wise and bugs like the one I mentioned) such that its reputation was ruined even after a couple of service packs seemed to fix most things. Windows 8 might be another necessary stepping stone towards a more refined version of Windows that everyone can enjoy, but Microsoft can't keep pissing people off for ever.
GPT has been around for a few years now. Any modern Linux distro who can't handle it is obsolete. The only issues related to the use of GPT in Linux is if you're using tools like fdisk, which doesn't work with GPT. parted on the other hand does, along with grub past version 0.96 (and of course GRUB 2).
... tomorrow it's Iron Man suits.
The future looks bright! And also a bit shiny.