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User: dAzED1

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  1. I'll explain it this way... on Ask Slashdot: Can You Say Something Nice About Systemd? · · Score: 2, Interesting

    (stay with me here...) Once upon a time there was a community. In the community were lots of different opinions - Slackware, Redhat, Debian, the weird *BSD folk - we all worked together, despite being of different religions. We'd yell at each other, and to an outsider we'd look as though we hated each other, but we were yelling at each other at the same bar while buying each other drinks. We yelled at each other because that's just what we liked to do. We had a certain set of rules that we all followed - and those rules were our real religion. We contributed code upstream. We filed bug reports. We did code review. We contributed. We Kept It Simple, Stupid. RMS was one of our major prophets - maybe even a god (though, we often started rolling our eyes and heading home for the night if he showed up at the bar to drink with us). We laughed at people who would declare, year after year, that this would be the Year of The Linux Desktop.

    Then, along came two things - Ubuntu, and modern capitalism/culture/media/whatever - a mindset where there should be no plan, just go go go new feature new feature new feature go go go (I'm looking at you Agile, facebook, google...). Suddenly, the highest and best praise your project can get became whether it was "disruptive."

    The *NIX/FOSS community would not have been a place for this to take hold, were it not for Ubuntu. Ubuntu decided they would break all our paradigms - they'd refuse to contribute patches upstream, they'd take simple processes that worked well and left tremendous power in the user's hands, and replace them with very broken messes of stuff. (In contrast to what we had...) they'd make an experience that mostly worked for complete novices - to be distinguished from most other distros that rarely worried much if even their initial installer failed because meh, you should know enough to know how to fix it yourself. They'd ignore religious ideals like only using OSS. And last but most certainly not least, they replaced init.d.

    Problem is, when a lot of new people started in on the scene via Ubuntu (and the like), the established distros decided that they had always wanted their distro to be the desktop featured in The Year of the Linux Desktop, and realized they were losing overall "market" share (@#$%@ for those nitwits thinking of people as a "market," when we had been a "community" for ages), even though the number of users of each of the major distros was still increasing. So they looked around at what Ubuntu was doing to become popular, and tried to decide what to adopt from it. Unfortunately, this new crop of people included the likes of Lennart Poettering, who would have ideas such as this one, regarding systemd. Instead of seeing diversity and differences as good things, those of his ilk decided to destroy (yes, a harsh word...but it's pretty much accurate) the FOSS community. An entire set of ideals just...disappeared. No longer are simple things kept simple, no longer is "Do one thing and do it well" followed, no longer do we try to let open inter-connectivity organically solve problems of integration (instead, we just birth a giant Rock Biter to mow our laws).

    Systemd came from a new set of ideals where solving problems that don't exist is great, so long as the big bad Establishment is taken out. I actually saw it as a bit of agism - where youth expected to be peers to those who had been around for ages, and when they weren't immediately accepted as experts they just co-opted the entire environment and left us old farts without any toys anymore. Oh wait...you wanted something good about systemd. Um, well, my laptop now boots 0.5 seconds faster than it otherwise would have, even if I no longer know why and can no longer really do anything about it. That's good, right?

  2. Re:Meaningful Competition? on 20 More Cities Want To Join the Fight Against Big Telecom's Broadband Monopolies · · Score: 2

    the discussion is about internet access, not cable tv. That they run on the same lines by the same companies is not part of the conversation - there are countries that were decades behind us in getting internet access, and are now (seemingly) decades ahead of us. Those countries have found that providing broadband access to nearly everyone dramatically improved the economies there. Yet here, we still have people who can only get 128k (or maybe slightly better) from DSL. I have a client that has a location (which I'm currently sitting in) where ~300 people use a 3mb connection. They're constantly losing calls, have problems with web conferences, etc - dramatically hurts their productivity. There just isn't decent access available in this area - and it's in a relatively nice area of Houston, a relatively modern metro in the US. This isn't the 90s, we can get speed not measured in kbps or single-digit mbps now...we should be looking at gig, like they've had for years elsewhere.

  3. form over function? on More Eye Candy Coming To Windows 10 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Given the type of IT consulting I do, I have to stay comfortable with Windows - I've been trying out Win10 on my fairly new high-end gaming laptop, installed on a SDD, and have been amazed at how often a seemingly menial task can lag - or even hang up the entire UI. For instance, I started up IE a bit ago - while using a blank default/home page - and it froze up the entire desktop for a few seconds (even briefly sputtering the audio of a movie I had playing in another window). Seems to me like they have more to work on than animations - maybe they should focus on usability for a bit first.

  4. Re:Maybe 40k on Is the Tesla Model 3 Actually Going To Cost $50,000? · · Score: 1

    I've got solar. I don't imagine that those who are in areas where they burn dirty coal and dead babies for energy are big markets for Tesla. California accounted for 36% of Tesla sales in 2013 - and hey, what do you know, not only does California have a growing percentage from renewable, but there's incentives for installing solar in California too. Oh and even in most of the metro areas in Texas, you can choose to pay extra to get renewable for your portion added to the grid. So....yeah.

  5. Re:Perspective on Say Goodbye To That Unwanted U2 Album · · Score: 1

    This is the line (whole post, really) to which you were responding:

    And I wish people would stop using the word "universally" when we even haven't reached another solar system yet.

    pray tell, how is that not obviously a witty comment, in response to the complaint about using "slavery" versus "sweatshop?" The response was clearly meant to show that arguing over the word used to describe the conditions is silly. Mayhaps you should calm down, have a glass of wine, and re-read the thread. You may find things about which you are still infuriated, and some of that may well be righteous anger that I share with you, but this particularline shouldn't be a thorn in your side.

    seriously.

  6. Re:Perspective on Say Goodbye To That Unwanted U2 Album · · Score: 1

    how was "left the planet" as a response to UNIVERSally not enough of a clue for you?

  7. Re:Perspective on Say Goodbye To That Unwanted U2 Album · · Score: 1

    PersonA said he wished people would stop calling sweatshops slavery, but said good conditions is a "universal" human right. PersonB said he wished people would stop saying "universal" when we haven't left the planet yet - meaning, instead of "universal" he thinks the word "planetal" or such should be used, since there aren't any humans outside of Earth's atmosphere for the word "universal" to be used. IE, he was makign a witty joke. So, in that sense...no, not "seriously" - instead, jokingly. (blah blah something about if you have to explain the joke it wasn't funny blah blah)

  8. Re:We call this propaganda. on Sci-Fi Authors and Scientists Predict an Optimistic Future · · Score: 2

    you're really going to use their UID against them? Seriously? I mean fark, this is isn't even my first account here (dated by the mixed case, which was popular at the time). Does that mean everything I say is wise, reflexively?

  9. Re:Who has the market share? on Windows XP Falls Below 25% Market Share, Windows 8 Drops Slightly · · Score: 1

    "fully fledged UNIX" - no, it's not. If the idea of what UNIX even meant was ever successfully codified, OSX wouldn't come anywhere close.

  10. Re:Who has the market share? on Windows XP Falls Below 25% Market Share, Windows 8 Drops Slightly · · Score: 1

    Uh, what? Windows NT came out in 1994. Windows 3.0 (first usable Windows) came out in 1990, 3.1 came out in 1992. Any "kid" that was using windows in 1990 to play games, wasn't making business decisions by 1994. Further, absolutely every single major game in that era still used DOS. One had to set up a boot disk that did blah whatever with extended memory and driver loading, and then viola - "Masters of Magic," "Doom," Dungeon Keeper," "X-COM" etc - all the super cool games of back then - all ran in DOS, not Windows. Your theory is fail.

  11. Re:Who has the market share? on Windows XP Falls Below 25% Market Share, Windows 8 Drops Slightly · · Score: 2

    funny, those problems all existed prior to, and during, the skyrocketing usage of Linux. Maybe, for fark's sake, it isn't meant to be the same experience as Windows.

  12. Re:Who has the market share? on Windows XP Falls Below 25% Market Share, Windows 8 Drops Slightly · · Score: 1

    so your suggestion is for hundreds of people to volunteer substantial amounts of time, to make it easier for commercial entities to make money? Funny how people in IT are "libertarians" until it comes to such subjects... No. Linux was better off without systemd, where a solution with no problem farked up everything permanently. It's better off making the substantial changes which would be necessary for fast gaming too. For fark's sake, while it lost the core principle of simplicity, it is still a bloody unix...get a mac or a windows box (or a console...) if you want to game.

  13. Re:This is the problem with having a two party sys on Rand Paul and Silicon Valley's Shifting Political Climate · · Score: 1

    "Someone who supports conservative economic policy but liberal social policies"

  14. Re:Is this news? on Insurance Claims Reveal Hidden Electronic Damage From Geomagnetic Storms · · Score: 0

    solar flares != geomagnetic storm. solar flares /cause/ geomagnetic storms, but the storms can persist past the incident of the flare. At least, according to my understanding...

  15. throw some light on the issue? on Insurance Claims Reveal Hidden Electronic Damage From Geomagnetic Storms · · Score: 1

    Isn't that what caused the problem in the first place, someone (in this case, the sun) throwing some light (in this case, a solar flare) on the subject (in this case, Earth's magnetic field)? Fighting fire with fire only goes so far, people...

  16. Re:Are you a creepy guy who wants to video tape pp on Ask Slashdot: Should I Get Google Glass? · · Score: 1

    I was online in 1994 (heck, I owned/operated an ISP...) and I'd prefer it over the internet of today. There was tremendous practical value at that time - especially for research/academics.

  17. Re:Advice? give up. on Ask Slashdot: Anti-Camera Device For Use In a Small Bus? · · Score: 2

    I don't know why you're the only poster that seems to understand why the subby wants this. He's basically trying to get slashdot to crowd-think for him, to solve a technical "problem" - allowing them to charge $10 each for crappy pictures instead of letting passengers take their own damn pictures. Just drive the damn limo and stop being a dick. If people want the photo service, offer it - but don't break their cameras just to force them to buy your pictures. And I hope the passengers of the limo are all made very well aware of the presence of your cameras is well - else you're in for some serious issues.

  18. Re:why not the new thing? on Ubuntu To Switch To systemd · · Score: 1

    You're right, it's just easy. As for the preview - when forced to do it every time, it can become something one ignores. All this yammering about "beta" and I'm still pining for the previous version of slashdot :P

  19. Re:why not the new thing? on Ubuntu To Switch To systemd · · Score: 1

    oh boo, slashdot dropped the pre tag? Dorks. "As mentioned, the central responsibility of an init system is to bring up userspace. And a good init system does that fast." = that was a quote from that original post about systemd

  20. why not the new thing? on Ubuntu To Switch To systemd · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There's this new thing called "init.d" which makes things really simple - you can start a system up and step through things, and though the boot takes 5 seconds instead of 1 second, that isn't really a problem.

    Once I read the original post about systemd, and all the other let's-invent-a-problem-to-fix nonsense surrounding init.d, I literally hung up my hat and stopped being a syseng. I was a unix guy starting in 93, so it was probably time anyway, but it was the straw that broke my back, as it were.As mentioned, the central responsibility of an init system is to bring up userspace. And a good init system does that fast. I especially "loved" this line: As mentioned, the central responsibility of an init system is to bring up userspace. And a good init system does that fast. No. A good init system does it reliably, with no drama and no politics. A good init system allows one to easily determine the state of a system, and doesn't assume things like GUIs and such. A good unix init system does all this with commands which can be piped and parsed easily with grep and awk - two things the original post about systemd actually complains about. The idea that a unix person would complain about grep and awk was so mind-boggling to me that...well, I just hung up the hat. You did all this nonsense, just to save a few seconds? Because what, the only thing linux is used for, is laptops? Meh.

  21. Re:Pipe-dream Utopia on Star Trek Economics · · Score: 2

    How about, whatever income allows you to have enough in savings/retirement such that you can have a $70k lifestyle during said retirement, yet still retire before you're too old to enjoy the retirement? Which is to say, if you want more than $70k/y, maybe it's so that later on you can have $70k/y without working, and are then free to pursue creative goals while your mind still works. You know, the sort of works you'd be free to pursue at age 18 in a post-scarcity world.

  22. Re:Pipe-dream Utopia on Star Trek Economics · · Score: 1

    "no one would need to work, yes, but more importantly, no one would *want* to"

    Such a boring argument. Are you not aware there are already people who do precisely that? Volunteerism, the OSS community, people who make a very deliberate decision to work a more altruistic job at 1/10th the pay, turning down full-paying jobs (yes yes, they get paid...only because we don't have a society where food/shelter/energy are given away). It's the core argument to capitalism - that without money to encourage productivity, no one would work - and it ignores the fact that for all but a very brief blip in the history of our species, that is precisely what happened - people worked without being paid money. They worked as a community, to accomplish collective goals.

  23. Re:Better ideas anyone? on Confessions Of an Ex-TSA Agent: Secrets Of the I.O. Room · · Score: 1

    seemed like he was building to insanity. A guard on every flight is already being done, and isn't far-fetched. But sure, does get a bit crazy at the end ;)

  24. Re:Better ideas anyone? on Confessions Of an Ex-TSA Agent: Secrets Of the I.O. Room · · Score: 1

    uhh...a hole to the outside, suddenly depressurizing the plane while at 30k feet, would be a really, really bad thing. What we should "try" is metal detectors and dogs - you know, the stuff we were using /before/ all this, and which worked substantially better.

  25. Re:and the TSA exists because... on Confessions Of an Ex-TSA Agent: Secrets Of the I.O. Room · · Score: 1

    so you want me to quit my job for 3 months? I already scaled back flying as much as possible, riding my harley for any trip under 400 miles (regardless the time of year, or the weather). Yes, I could get another job...guess what though - someone else would take my place, and still be flying.