Oh -- and I should add that you can Print directly from WebOS on the HP Touchpad (via wireless LAN).
The interesting part about the printing from WebOS is that the GUI allows you to enter in an IP address for the printer, but does not give you the option of choosing the printer driver. However, so far everything I've printed from the Touchpad (which has mainly been driving directions and maps) has printed correctly. So whatever auto-dectection they're doing, it seems to work. This must be part of the reasons why HP wants to continue to use WebOS for their printers and why they've wanted to hold onto that ability in the licensing discussions that had ocurred with prospective purchasers of the WebOS platform.
This isn't exactly what you're looking for, but it's close. I've specifically been looking at solutions for the HP TouchPad for this since I was given one as a gift. I also would greatly prefer Debian over Ubuntu, and would rather have straight Debian rather than a Chroot, but this is as close as I've gotten so far.
Yours is the closest so far, but seriously, nobody has ever written a batch program that takes an mbox file or similar format, pulls all the attachments out as binary, throws them into a folder, and then writes a new mbox file with embedded, links to said files?
It's difficult to "prove a negative" (i.e. "that tool doesn't exist"), but I can say that although I've been an email administrator for several years, I haven't seen something that does it in an automated manner -- but then again, I haven't looked to strip attachments before. Usually mail archiving is meant to store messages intact, so I consider stripping attachments a special case.
Yes, I understand the importance of maintaining a link to those files from the relevant message, but does the binary stuff really have to be encoded, bloated and crammed into one gigantic mbox file in order to do that?
Well, yes, although obviously the emails could be broken up into several mbox files or stored via maildir. The reason attachments are so prevalent is that there's generally no other convenient way to remotely share files. Some geeks are lucky enough to have a server with (scp | ftp | sftp) access, but even then the average layman would much rather getting an email attachment. And lately I've even seen tech pundits online recommending sending email attachments to yourself as a method of having a backup of important documents.
Most of the messages so far have been trying to convince the original poster that the space doesn't matter or ask why they'd ever want to do that.
That's something I generally don't like, because it doesn't actually answer the OP's question. Instead, it changes the question to one that's trivial to answer; i.e. "simple, don't do that."
...
What about a program that converts mbox files into an HTML index by date and/or subject with each message as an HTML page with links to the attached files (relative links, of course)?
Well, no, because the intent the OP had was to reduce the storage size. What you're suggesting could be done though -- yes. But at the same time it seems awfully similar to "webmail", even though it's not exactly the same thing. If it were me it wouldn't be what I'd want, though, because it would also change the interface to getting the email -- a mail client allows you to search through emails by subject, date, author, etc, and so I'd want that same interface to the archived mail.
The Eudora Mail User Agent (i.e. email client) stores attachments in a directory as binaries but yet keeps the text of emails intact. Thus you should be able to import the email into Eudora, then when you export it the attachments should be stripped.
This is also exactly why I don't use Eudora anymore, because attachments get stripped off when exporting the email (or at least that's the way email export or import from/to Eudora worked last I used it).
Now, although this explains one way attachments can be stripped from email, I don't recommend doing that, because it alters the email. Generally I want email intact because otherwise what you're storing might refer to an "attached file", but yet not even knowing what the filename is that the email refers to. Plus it's actually useful to have sent mail attachments intact too, because it means you get to see what version of what file you sent to someone at the time.
There are some other interesting options; the KMail MUA has an option of "delete attachment" when right-clicking on an email attachment, which does delete the attachment but not the reference to it, so you at least know the filename of what used to be attached. I just sent myself a test email and deleted the attachment and then viewed the email raw, but unfortunately Slashdot's filter won't let me send the result. But if you do that yourself and look at it, it should give you an idea how to re-form emails to strip attachments but not the references.
Just FYI: Deutsche Telekom has outright told workers at T-Mobile that if the deal with AT&T fell through that they would seek another buyer to sell T-Mobile to. The impression is that they want to get out of the US market, but remain in the European market.
But you are overlooking the fact that, for Joe Sixpack and Polly Filla, the demise of their Windows box with malware overload (they do not realise that, but it just seems slow and flaky to them) is a wonderful excuse to go out and buy new shiny. The new shiny PC does of course run faster (at first) so they feel fully justified.
You don't seriously think that Joe and Polly would ever want to try to re-install anything themselves, do you?
If you re-read my post you'll see that I had written it from the point of view that a computer technician was working on the owner's machine. I'll admit that it it's implied rather than explicit, though. In my sub-comments I state this more explicitly.
I often take things to my local council rubbish dump ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H recyling centre and while I am there I notice rows of discarded PCs out in the rain and mud that are much newer and probably more powerful than my own - all infected Windows boxen no doubt.
And the politicians tell us to "Re-use, re-cycle"!
Thankfully what I see in (at least in populated areas) is when people throw out their PCs, they leave them at the street. These are usually picked up by other people within a couple of hours, so they're "recycled" that way. I agree with you in that I also see plenty of PCs at the recycling center, so I see that happening too, and that's more sad.:-(
I'm taking all three classes also, and like you I greatly prefer the Database and Machine Learning classes over the AI class.
In DB and ML I can download the videos and watch them locally. I can download the notes, which are available as PDFs (as well as other formats). I can either download the exercises, the software to do the work locally, or can save the web page locally from the completed exercises. This means that for the ML and DB classes, I can easily create a complete local record of my work. [The only exception is the "screenside chat" in the DB class, but I don't think I'll need to refer to that later, so I think that's fine.] The DB and ML classes seem very well thought out and I honestly have nothing but praise for them.
But in the AI class there aren't any notes available, so the way I have to make notes is by making screenshots. That may sound reasonable but it's not as simple as that. In the AI class, both presenters are making video of paper they're writing onto, and constantly waving a pen above the page in the video, making it tricky to find a place the video can be stopped. The videos are embedded YouTube videos, and it takes about 2 seconds for the video to actually stop once the pause button has been pressed, and once it pauses the controls come up and cover up the bottom part of the video. And if the end of the video is reached, the next video starts to play automatically. It's also possible to open each video in it's own separate page and view them on YouTube directly, but then there are too many clicks to get to the next video, so I end up using the embedded version. In short -- it's damn annoying. So I like the material in the AI class, but I don't like the mechanics of what I have to go through for interacting with the website to get it.
In addition, the AI class constantly ambushes the student with questions that have not yet been covered, and then cover the material afterward. Ugh. That's frustrating. That's a teaching method I call "here's what I should have taught you before asking you this question", or if I were less generous, "here's why you're wrong." It's not a good method of teaching, IMHO.
Some of the questions in the DB and ML class can be quite tricky, but they're actually fun to work through, and if you get stuck both classes have a Forum to get help from other students, which the AI class also lacks. The end result is that the DB and ML classes guide you and make a helping hand available, where the AI class asks questions and informs you later, and leaves you on your own.
So while it would sound like these three classes were equal, they're not.;-)
Now -- all that said, my praises go to the four professors of these classes for making them available for free. I'm getting a good bit out of these classes, and it's a lot of stuff that I wouldn't normally get to take because I was an Engineering major rather than a CS major.
Hurrr, well done guys. Now nobody can download the patches.
Right now the ISC website is still responding.
At least some distributions have already incorporated the patches; for instance, for Debian upgrading simply involves doing an 'apt-get update', 'apt-get upgrade'. If updated packages are available, it's generally better to get the packages for Bind9 from the distribution rather than recompiling.
However the "fix" in this case may not entirely fix the problem; the current repair withholds the DNS response and will keep Bind9 from crashing and shutting down, but they're not yet sure that there isn't another possible exploit involved. This means there will likely be a follow-on fix once they understand the actual exploit.
Thanks for your description of your visit to #occupy NYC; that was informative.
I'll jokingly call this reply "temporary, schmemporary".
I had the opportunity of visiting occupy wall st. a couple of weeks ago for a couple of hours.
...
It seems to me that New Yorkers have traded there "eternal liberties" for "termporary safety", and they need to take them back.
The problem with idea of "temporary" is that although there's an implication of return, there's no actual promise of such (and even if there is, such as was made for lands taken from the Indians, these promises are usually empty and not honored), nor any deadline to do so. Plus in order to return back to what was temporarily taken away, there needs to be a full approval process, whereas the "temporary" removal of rights likely only required an easier abbreviated and rushed approval process, and because of "revolving door politics", the people that made the temporary decision aren't going to be the same people that do the reconsideration (if there ever is any).
This is why when there's a choice, it's far better to "do it once, and do it right" rather than "temporary" solutions that may never be fixed. But of course that would require long-range thinking, and that hasn't been popular for a long time now.
I've noticed that NYC has had the subtle guise of supporting them but selectively enforcing the law. Taking away the generators when it was *really* cold outside because they were a "fire hazard" was one of the standout things that comes to mind. I don't think anyone in the NYC government thought it would last as long as it already has and that these simple actions would break them.
Now that they're dismantling the camps, we'll have to wait and see whether or not the city will actually "let them back in" as they've said they will. Personally I doubt it, but the people who are organizing this thing seem to have their heads on straight.
Or if they do, I bet you the NYPD will make changes to the area to make it more inhospitable, and then "let them back in" to a much more highly controlled environment. I'm cynical as you can tell, because the government hasn't shown any kind of response that promotes trust.
Honestly, we haven't seen protests on this scale or for this duration since the Vietnam War. The difference is that we're in the age of social media - a time when any citizen can capture National Guard soldiers shooting at unarmed protestors, or police pepper spraying peaceful (but civilly disobedient) people. The city knows that it's walking a very fine line and if they take a misstep they're going to make things far, far worse for them.
I knew this would happen eventually at NYC - this didn't surprise me at all. What *did* surprise me was closing the airspace to news helicopters and shutting down all but 1 subway line as well as a major bridge. *That* honestly frightens me very much.
Yes, the bridges and subways are "choke points". They shut the bridges down after 9/11 similarly.
The amazing thing - and one of the reasons I'm so very appreciative to be in my mid-20s during the digital age - is that despite all traditional news media being cut out there's citizen journalists on the ground now recording video and streaming it live to the Internet.
I feel a paradoxically equal amount of pride and revulsion at being an American tonight.
There's been an increasing amount of attempt at regulating the internet, there are major internet "choke points" at telecom switching networks, and at ISPs, so I share your concern. I'm hoping the work going on into distributed DNS systems outside of governmental control get completed and grow to be robust and popular, which should help some -- but there isn't a good solution for "last mile" connectivity yet, and that will be the next major concern to try to figure out.
By removing protesters, rather than having talks with them, the government is showing the occupy movement that they don't care. People should be allowed to practice peaceful protest, but it seems like the Occupy movement is being repeatedly shown that the government doesn't have a heart. First they were fenced in on the street. Then they were pepper sprayed. Then when it got cold, the fire department came and took away the generators providing heat. Now they're being forcibly removed from where they were camped.
This is really sad, and I don't think any of these things were the correct response.
This is another reason why I switched over, but I only fully realized why I should have once I started playing around with Linux partitions. It's amazing how quickly you can reinstall when you have / and/home on separate partitions! There are other partitioning schemes one can play around with, but simply keeping a separate/home partition has enabled me to seamlessly swich distros and keep most if not all of my user settings.
Yes, that's all true. Some people even run multiple distros using the same/home partition. Occasionally there are issues with that when packaged software versions don't match, but it seems to work more often than it doesn't.
And if you want to see a neat trick for reinstalling even faster, look at 'dpkg --get-selections > (file)' and 'dpkg --set-selections (file)'. Getting the package selections and storing them as a file allows copying that file to the new installation and quickly setting which packages to install again to get the system right back to where it was.:-) (The only thing I don't like about this is that anything "set" this way is set as 'manually installed' rather than automatically installed to satisfy dependencies, so I have to go through the installed libraries afterward with aptitude and hit the 'M' key on all of the libraries, so that these libraries can be removed when they become orphaned.)
However I've lost count as to how many patches have come out for Windows 7 for "a vulnerability in which an unauthorized remote attacker can break into Windows and take control over it." Whether Seeing those notices but without detailed descriptions doesn't exactly give me a "warm and fuzzy feeling" about the OS. And I don't like having to research these vulnerabilities first, before the patches are installed -- that seems backwards. On Debian I can look at the package changelog.gz file that comes with the package (in/usr/share/doc/[package]/changelog.gz) after it's installed and read a description of how the package was changed, and if it was for a vulnerability there's usually also a CVE reference number to read more about vulnerability if I want to.
Open Windows Update, click on "View update history" and you can then check each one and the link to the KB article explaining it. I suppose what you have to remember is that Windows is primarily a desktop OS for end users who won't understand that information anyway, and making it too easy would probably just lead to confusion. I know that sounds condescending but having worked with end users I have come to appreciate just how much hassle that sort of thing generates. And to be fair Debian doesn't exactly put it front and centre either.
This is good information -- thanks. And yes, I agree with you about Debian in this regard -- although it's good that the information is there, it took me several years to find out about it when I finally started looking into the development side of things, and there's a good chance many users of Debian would never find out about it. The Debian Reference and Debian FAQ mention changelog files, but doesn't specifically mention that references to security vulnerabilities are listed in them. Unfortunately you have to read them for yourself to find that out, and most people never look at them.
That's not bad, although I'm not likely to look there every month (as I don't use Windows very often) -- but still it's a good resource to know about.
Apologies if I misinterpreted your tone, you seemed pretty reasonable but it just bugs me when people start bringing up problems with Windows XP when we are two generations removed and Microsoft have put it on extended life support. Sure, some people still use it, but few other OS vendors still support decade old releases.
I'm trying to give correct information, but I've been dealing with these issues with Windows since Windows 3, so in my mind "Windows" doesn't just mean Windows 7, and talking about XP still seems fair being that it remains commonly in use. [And while we're on the subject of the new versions of Windows, even discussing these issues might violate the End User License Agreement that these new versions come with.:-/] But I"m also not trying to be "a stick in the mud".;-)
However, this seems to be forgotten most of the time, because *nix free software distributions generally don't need reinstallation in the first place.
Neither does Windows 7. I know it is hard to accept after decades of Windows-bashing, but honestly it is very reliable. The only issues that can lead to a re-install are the same ones for every OS - virus infection, bugs and hardware failure. Okay, Windows does get more viruses, but with the sandboxing and tighter permissions in Windows 7 (e.g. needing the root password to make system setting changes) they tend to be limited to the user's rights level and so focus on userland stuff like joining a botnet or showing adverts. That is exactly the same as *nix, and the infection can be cleaned. Bugs... Yeah, there are a few, same as every other OS. Hardware failure is obviously nothing to do with Windows.
I used to use Debian on the desktop and played with MacOS, but since moving to Windows 7 I have not felt the need. I skipped over Vista but did work with it for a few years and it certainly was crap, but don't let that taint your impression of 7 until you have really given it a proper evaluation. I installed a couple of months after it came out and that install is as good as it ever was today.
I've been running Windows 7 (for games, or other things in which there's no good alternative) for about six months or so. It's definitely better than Vista, so I agree with you there -- and I ran Vista for these tasks for about three years. However I've lost count as to how many patches have come out for Windows 7 for "a vulnerability in which an unauthorized remote attacker can break into Windows and take control over it." Whether Seeing those notices but without detailed descriptions doesn't exactly give me a "warm and fuzzy feeling" about the OS. And I don't like having to research these vulnerabilities first, before the patches are installed -- that seems backwards. On Debian I can look at the package changelog.gz file that comes with the package (in/usr/share/doc/[package]/changelog.gz) after it's installed and read a description of how the package was changed, and if it was for a vulnerability there's usually also a CVE reference number to read more about vulnerability if I want to. On Windows systems the vulnerability descriptions have several levels of click-throughs necessary to get into what the vulnerability is really about, and I'm usually not satisfied with the level of detail available. And whether the malware can be cleaned off of Windows 7 or not depends very much on the particular malware. Regardless of whether an infection is on Windows or on *nix, my usual instinct is to install from scratch, because "it's the only way to be sure."
I haven't had any reliability issues with Windows 7 thusfar, but I'm not using it very often right now, so that makes it harder to gauge. But if it is more reliable, I don't have any problem accepting that. I think you've gotten the impression that I'm a "Windows basher", which comes with an implication of exaggeration. I try to openly discuss both the benefits and drawbacks about things as I see them, and I don't think I exaggerate. [Although I'm willing to admit that some of what I previously said might not pertain to every version of Windows.]
I briefly used MacOS X for the purposes of testing Qt code on the Mac, but haven't used them much other than that. Ironically I'm surrounded by Mac hardware at home because my girlfriend and her kids use them, but unfortunately in our experience we find that the Mac hardware breaks down a lot more often than "PCs" do.
I was pretty much completely switched over to Linux, except for one gaming machine until my nephew bought one of those license packs for windows 7. Windows 7 works fine but I lose the fun of trying out the new distributions that come out all of the time.
Yeah, I also have Windows around for gaming purposes. Unfortunately I find that to be a bit of a necessity; besides being a gamer myself I have a group of friends that regularly get together to play multiplayer games (locally when we can, and remotely when we can't), and most of the games we want to play as a group aren't cross-platform. [There are exceptions, such as Armagetron, Spring, AssaultCube, and on rare occasion maybe Tremulus, AlienArena.] But usually we play commercial first-person shooters that can't easily be emulated on Linux. [Lately we've mostly been playing FearCombat.]
The other interesting reason to have a copy of Windows around are for websites or other work that requires "Internet Exploder".;-) I recently did some work via VPN that required IE6 to get the checkpoint VPN to connect, so even IE9 on Win7 wouldn't do, even when set to emulate a previous version of IE -- I had to boot an old copy of Windows 2000 to do the job, because it needed "real" IE6. Ridiculous.
The best thing I can suggest (and this is totally up to you) is that you dual-boot so that you can use Linux for your real work you care about, and continue to use Windows where you can't avoid it. If you've taken up the entire drive with Windows, you can still do this without having to reinstall -- have a look at 'ntfsresize'. Basically the procedure is to boot a Linux LiveCD, use 'ntfsresize' to move any used blocks in the NTFS partition to earlier, then shrink the NTFS partition Windows uses with fdisk to match what you told ntfsresize to do. This operation is slightly scary, so I do suggest you have a backup for peace-of-mind, but I have done it several times and have not run into a problem thus far. After shrinking the partition you're then free to install a Linux distribution if you want to.
I don't think there's any need to feel guilt just because you use Windows; that's fine. What I personally think is most important is that you know HOW to use a free software distribution if you need to or want to -- and you do. This means that you retain your freedom of choice.:-)
I would tend to agree with most of your points. But not with option "D) It's common on Windows machines to have commercial software installed that the end user doesn't have license keys or reinstallation disks for. (...)"
In practice I've never seen this, if the software in question was legitimate version and not pirated.
I didn't outright state this, but what I was really referring to was that most Windows boxes have "unavailable" software on them that the end user wants to keep using. Usually it's along the lines of "a friend installed this for me and I can't reinstall it." The friend that installed it might have had a license key for the software at the time, or in some cases the software is prirated.
Some of this has to do with how human relationship connections are made and unmade. A person that has a good relationship with someone else [be it a friend, a significant other, a family member, etc], they don't need to ask for the license key that the other acquired for the software; however if that relationship later goes sour, you're not going to be getting that license key even if it was legitimately purchased. In that situation it might come across as petty to even ask for the license key, and may spur a bitter argument.
The end result of any of these is essentially the same, which is that the end-user's lack of planning for reinstallation causes a barrier to the computer technician working on the problem, if reinstallation is deemed necessary.
If you've never seen this problem... be glad. Be very glad.;-)
I love lists like this contrasting Linux vs Windows "advantages" and "disadvantages" in Slashdot. They invariably always contain apologetic comments for the "disadvantages" of Linux.
No, Generally speaking, there is *always* some hardware that does not work well after installing a desktop Linux. And most often than not the only way to solve it is to fish around forums (because there is no manufacturer's page where you can download the appropriate driver) to see if by any chance someone else manage to solve the issue.
And I do not care that it is not Linux fault, it is still Linux problem.
Huh. ? I'm confused as to what you're trying to say here. You say "I love (blah)", but it seems you're being sarcastic and mean the opposite. I wish more people would write clearly and actually say what they mean rather than being coy.
I have plenty of hardware that works with Linux "out of the box" without extra effort required. I also have a couple of boxes that I need to know certain extra firmware packages to install, which has to be done after the installation is complete. And I have a couple of other boxes in which I have to remember to disable the Kernel Mode Setting in order to get the video working.
When hardware doesn't work I usually start by doing a "make menuconfig" on the latest stable Linux kernel and press "/" to search for the hardware I'm having an issue with, and look for what driver should be loading for it. If that doesn't help me then I'll start doing web searches for terms to try to find out what might be going on. Often I find the answer via Linux Kernel Mailing List, or from Linux Weekly News, and only occasionally from forums. So it seems like you and I have different experiences as well as different ways of working through these issues.
As for this "still being Linux's problem", from the development side that's true, but I don't think that's what you mean; I think you mean it's an issue of public perception when these issues arise. But I don't understand what you're trying to get at, though, because basically that's stating a truism. It's like saying "When my hardware doesn't work it makes me unhappy, and I blame Linux for that." So... okay -- so what do you suggest?
Actually, I think I've got at least one pretty compelling reason to switch, which has to do with reinstallation. Occasionally Windows needs to be reinstalled due to either infection, registry corruption, or other software/hardware issues. This gets into some really interesting problems, because in order to reinstall Windows, you need:
A) A Windows CD that matches the license key given to the machine. This isn't as simple as it sounds, because license keys are tied to build version, not just the Windows version. So it's not enough to have a copy of "Windows XP Home" if that's what's on the box.:-/ And most people get Windows with their computer, already installed, and are not given reinstall disks to bring the machine back to its original state. So it's common to have to purchase a NEW copy of Windows software in order to "reinstall" it.
B) Device drivers for Windows for the machine, either via downloads from the manufacturer or from a motherboard CD. End-users typically either forget where this CD is, don't know they ever had it, or were never given it in the first place. "What would I need that for?"
C) Backups? "Oh, yeah, that. No, I don't have a rolling backup of the machine. Can't you just back up the files before reinstalling Windows?" Except on Windows machines, the user's files can be all over the place. If the computer technician is lucky maybe the user only used their home directory, but in practice this is often not the case.
D) It's common on Windows machines to have commercial software installed that the end user doesn't have license keys or reinstallation disks for. So the user doesn't want their machine reinstalled unless it's absolutely necessary.
The end result is that it's often a painful, long process to reinstall a Windows box. You need to prepare by downloading the necessary drivers and have them on hand, get a license for the correct version of Windows -- and that's assuming the version of Windows is supported on the hardware -- and then spend hours doing the install and going through multiple reboots to add drivers, and then lots more reboots that come along with doing Windows updates.
Let's contrast this with installing a Linux distribution -- for argument's sake let's say it's Debian Stable, and go down the same list:
A) Assuming a fast internet connection is available, download and burn the latest netinstall.iso. No license key issue.
B) Generally speaking (although there are exceptions), no special drivers are necessary to do the installation. [Brand new hardware may not be fully supported, so there can occasionally be issues with missing disk drive interface drivers or network drivers. These occasional issues can be tricky to work around.]
C) User files go in/home so there's just one directory to look into for what to back up, which speeds up the copy process.
D) Most people only need software within the Debian tree, so even there there's no software disks to find, and no license keys to look for. [The exceptions are for commercial software, but usually the list of this software if there is any at all is small by comparison to most Windows machines.]
The end result is that reinstalling Debian can be finished much faster than for Windows, and without lots of reboots. However, this seems to be forgotten most of the time, because *nix free software distributions generally don't need reinstallation in the first place.
So looking at it that way, there's a major benefit of getting off of Windows, if possible.
From TFA, the small minority of employees asked to return the stocks are executives, not engineers, architects or the creative folk.... Most executives don't deserve what they get paid in USA. Most of them just lunch off of the productivity and manipulate for their personal gain. There's a term for that in the nature. It is called a parasite.
He is doing the right thing. So let's not be quick in judging him. ok ?
I think this is a case where we can make a judgment, because this is an abuse situation. These employees were promised these shares, given them, and now the company wants to renege and take them back, presumably without equally compensating those same employees for their true worth and threatening to fire them if they don't, which makes this situation clearly illegal and would represent false termination if they were to do so, which the company can clearly (and is very likely to be) be sued for.
Also, keep in mind that some managers and other executives came up from engineering or similar fields. I think you're considering managers and executives parasites mainly because you don't understand the work that they do, and how difficult the work is. A good manager (or other executives) is actually a benefit to employees, and is not a parasite. The transition from engineering or a "doer" field to one of management is painful and uses a totally different skill set, to the point that the transition can literally be a life-changing decision. If you want to learn more about it, I recommend this book, which is relatively cheap ($14 new): http://www.amazon.com/Becoming-Manager-Managers-Challenges-Leadership/dp/1591391822
I'm not a manager, nor have I ever been one -- but after taking this class I have a lot more respect for what they do. And I've worked for at least one or two good managers, but unfortunately also many bad ones that didn't care (some of whom should have been sued for the psychological damage they caused employees). So I have understanding (and empathy) for your point of view, but I also know there are a few respectable managers and executives out there, and I'm hoping to be able to work for one again if I can find one. [And I suppose I'm also willing to become one, but only if I find the right people to help mentor me to make sure I don't become one of the "dark side" managers.]
About the selection: I call bullshit since at least a year.
That's very disrespectful.
As for the DB: sure, if the user reactivates the feature, why should he wait for the system to be reindexed? 2 gigs is really small these days.
And the search is much faster than with find, and also uses the content of the files. And it indexes your mails. You may not need it, but it is clearly more powerful than find/locate nonetheless. I, for one, am very happy to use it to find attachment in my tons of emails/files.
2 gigs is small, eh? So yeah, "let them eat cake." If you were trying to help motivate someone else in using KDE4 features, you've just completely failed.
Give credit where credit is due. Pulseaudio was an abomination foisted upon us by Ubuntu, and is therefore more GNOME's fault than KDE's...
Okay -- I'm fine with that.
And since 4.7 nepomuk has actually been working well for me (before that, there had been bouts of it working, but never very reliably)
Last I used it, Nepomuk/Strigi made a > 2 GB Vertuoso database on my Desktop system, and it caused horrible performance lag even for simple tasks. For instance, selecting a list of 100 files in Krusader or Dolphin would generate more than 30 seconds of delay where nothing could be done in-between. And when I finally turned these features off, the 2 GB database was left behind, and there was no option to remove it -- I had to go find it myself manually.
And what benefits do these features bring? I'm capable of using 'find' and I'd prefer that over an indexer running at random times to update a database of files -- especially when there's usually also a 'locate' process that does the same damn thing. Rating files? That only makes sense for music, so it's rarely useful IMHO. Anything else worth having a 2 GB database hanging around for?
Slashdot Mirror
Oh -- and I should add that you can Print directly from WebOS on the HP Touchpad (via wireless LAN).
The interesting part about the printing from WebOS is that the GUI allows you to enter in an IP address for the printer, but does not give you the option of choosing the printer driver. However, so far everything I've printed from the Touchpad (which has mainly been driving directions and maps) has printed correctly. So whatever auto-dectection they're doing, it seems to work. This must be part of the reasons why HP wants to continue to use WebOS for their printers and why they've wanted to hold onto that ability in the licensing discussions that had ocurred with prospective purchasers of the WebOS platform.
I've been looking around for something very similar, and I found that you can run "UbuntuChroot" on the HP TouchPad:
http://www.webos-internals.org/wiki/UbuntuChroot
This isn't exactly what you're looking for, but it's close. I've specifically been looking at solutions for the HP TouchPad for this since I was given one as a gift. I also would greatly prefer Debian over Ubuntu, and would rather have straight Debian rather than a Chroot, but this is as close as I've gotten so far.
Okay, so they picked Gnome3, but what were the other window managers they looked at to make that decision? The Fine Article doesn't seem to say.
I actually took part in the vote.
The choices were:
a) GNOME 3.0
b) GNOME 3.1
c) GNOME 3.2
Wow, really hope this is sarcasm. Because if this is true then the only comparsion is different versions of Gnome, which is not terrbily meaningful.
Okay, so they picked Gnome3, but what were the other window managers they looked at to make that decision? The Fine Article doesn't seem to say.
Good post.
Yours is the closest so far, but seriously, nobody has ever written a batch program that takes an mbox file or similar format, pulls all the attachments out as binary, throws them into a folder, and then writes a new mbox file with embedded, links to said files?
It's difficult to "prove a negative" (i.e. "that tool doesn't exist"), but I can say that although I've been an email administrator for several years, I haven't seen something that does it in an automated manner -- but then again, I haven't looked to strip attachments before. Usually mail archiving is meant to store messages intact, so I consider stripping attachments a special case.
Yes, I understand the importance of maintaining a link to those files from the relevant message, but does the binary stuff really have to be encoded, bloated and crammed into one gigantic mbox file in order to do that?
Well, yes, although obviously the emails could be broken up into several mbox files or stored via maildir. The reason attachments are so prevalent is that there's generally no other convenient way to remotely share files. Some geeks are lucky enough to have a server with (scp | ftp | sftp) access, but even then the average layman would much rather getting an email attachment. And lately I've even seen tech pundits online recommending sending email attachments to yourself as a method of having a backup of important documents.
Most of the messages so far have been trying to convince the original poster that the space doesn't matter or ask why they'd ever want to do that.
That's something I generally don't like, because it doesn't actually answer the OP's question. Instead, it changes the question to one that's trivial to answer; i.e. "simple, don't do that."
...
What about a program that converts mbox files into an HTML index by date and/or subject with each message as an HTML page with links to the attached files (relative links, of course)?
Well, no, because the intent the OP had was to reduce the storage size. What you're suggesting could be done though -- yes. But at the same time it seems awfully similar to "webmail", even though it's not exactly the same thing. If it were me it wouldn't be what I'd want, though, because it would also change the interface to getting the email -- a mail client allows you to search through emails by subject, date, author, etc, and so I'd want that same interface to the archived mail.
The Eudora Mail User Agent (i.e. email client) stores attachments in a directory as binaries but yet keeps the text of emails intact. Thus you should be able to import the email into Eudora, then when you export it the attachments should be stripped.
This is also exactly why I don't use Eudora anymore, because attachments get stripped off when exporting the email (or at least that's the way email export or import from/to Eudora worked last I used it).
Now, although this explains one way attachments can be stripped from email, I don't recommend doing that, because it alters the email. Generally I want email intact because otherwise what you're storing might refer to an "attached file", but yet not even knowing what the filename is that the email refers to. Plus it's actually useful to have sent mail attachments intact too, because it means you get to see what version of what file you sent to someone at the time.
There are some other interesting options; the KMail MUA has an option of "delete attachment" when right-clicking on an email attachment, which does delete the attachment but not the reference to it, so you at least know the filename of what used to be attached. I just sent myself a test email and deleted the attachment and then viewed the email raw, but unfortunately Slashdot's filter won't let me send the result. But if you do that yourself and look at it, it should give you an idea how to re-form emails to strip attachments but not the references.
Just FYI: Deutsche Telekom has outright told workers at T-Mobile that if the deal with AT&T fell through that they would seek another buyer to sell T-Mobile to. The impression is that they want to get out of the US market, but remain in the European market.
Re: "Joe and Polly":
For you and me, indeed.
But you are overlooking the fact that, for Joe Sixpack and Polly Filla, the demise of their Windows box with malware overload (they do not realise that, but it just seems slow and flaky to them) is a wonderful excuse to go out and buy new shiny. The new shiny PC does of course run faster (at first) so they feel fully justified.
You don't seriously think that Joe and Polly would ever want to try to re-install anything themselves, do you?
If you re-read my post you'll see that I had written it from the point of view that a computer technician was working on the owner's machine. I'll admit that it it's implied rather than explicit, though. In my sub-comments I state this more explicitly.
I often take things to my local council rubbish dump ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H recyling centre and while I am there I notice rows of discarded PCs out in the rain and mud that are much newer and probably more powerful than my own - all infected Windows boxen no doubt.
And the politicians tell us to "Re-use, re-cycle"!
Thankfully what I see in (at least in populated areas) is when people throw out their PCs, they leave them at the street. These are usually picked up by other people within a couple of hours, so they're "recycled" that way. I agree with you in that I also see plenty of PCs at the recycling center, so I see that happening too, and that's more sad. :-(
I'm taking all three classes also, and like you I greatly prefer the Database and Machine Learning classes over the AI class.
In DB and ML I can download the videos and watch them locally. I can download the notes, which are available as PDFs (as well as other formats). I can either download the exercises, the software to do the work locally, or can save the web page locally from the completed exercises. This means that for the ML and DB classes, I can easily create a complete local record of my work. [The only exception is the "screenside chat" in the DB class, but I don't think I'll need to refer to that later, so I think that's fine.] The DB and ML classes seem very well thought out and I honestly have nothing but praise for them.
But in the AI class there aren't any notes available, so the way I have to make notes is by making screenshots. That may sound reasonable but it's not as simple as that. In the AI class, both presenters are making video of paper they're writing onto, and constantly waving a pen above the page in the video, making it tricky to find a place the video can be stopped. The videos are embedded YouTube videos, and it takes about 2 seconds for the video to actually stop once the pause button has been pressed, and once it pauses the controls come up and cover up the bottom part of the video. And if the end of the video is reached, the next video starts to play automatically. It's also possible to open each video in it's own separate page and view them on YouTube directly, but then there are too many clicks to get to the next video, so I end up using the embedded version. In short -- it's damn annoying. So I like the material in the AI class, but I don't like the mechanics of what I have to go through for interacting with the website to get it.
In addition, the AI class constantly ambushes the student with questions that have not yet been covered, and then cover the material afterward. Ugh. That's frustrating. That's a teaching method I call "here's what I should have taught you before asking you this question", or if I were less generous, "here's why you're wrong." It's not a good method of teaching, IMHO.
Some of the questions in the DB and ML class can be quite tricky, but they're actually fun to work through, and if you get stuck both classes have a Forum to get help from other students, which the AI class also lacks. The end result is that the DB and ML classes guide you and make a helping hand available, where the AI class asks questions and informs you later, and leaves you on your own.
So while it would sound like these three classes were equal, they're not. ;-)
Now -- all that said, my praises go to the four professors of these classes for making them available for free.
I'm getting a good bit out of these classes, and it's a lot of stuff that I wouldn't normally get to take because I was an Engineering major rather than a CS major.
Hurrr, well done guys. Now nobody can download the patches.
Right now the ISC website is still responding.
At least some distributions have already incorporated the patches; for instance, for Debian upgrading simply involves doing an 'apt-get update', 'apt-get upgrade'.
If updated packages are available, it's generally better to get the packages for Bind9 from the distribution rather than recompiling.
However the "fix" in this case may not entirely fix the problem; the current repair withholds the DNS response and will keep Bind9 from crashing and shutting down, but they're not yet sure that there isn't another possible exploit involved. This means there will likely be a follow-on fix once they understand the actual exploit.
Thanks for your description of your visit to #occupy NYC; that was informative.
I'll jokingly call this reply "temporary, schmemporary".
I had the opportunity of visiting occupy wall st. a couple of weeks ago for a couple of hours.
...
It seems to me that New Yorkers have traded there "eternal liberties" for "termporary safety", and they need to take them back.
The problem with idea of "temporary" is that although there's an implication of return, there's no actual promise of such (and even if there is, such as was made for lands taken from the Indians, these promises are usually empty and not honored), nor any deadline to do so. Plus in order to return back to what was temporarily taken away, there needs to be a full approval process, whereas the "temporary" removal of rights likely only required an easier abbreviated and rushed approval process, and because of "revolving door politics", the people that made the temporary decision aren't going to be the same people that do the reconsideration (if there ever is any).
This is why when there's a choice, it's far better to "do it once, and do it right" rather than "temporary" solutions that may never be fixed. But of course that would require long-range thinking, and that hasn't been popular for a long time now.
because you and me both are nothing more than slaves for those in power and those who make money.
That may indeed be what they want, but increasingly it's being shown that that's not what they're going to get.
I've noticed that NYC has had the subtle guise of supporting them but selectively enforcing the law. Taking away the generators when it was *really* cold outside because they were a "fire hazard" was one of the standout things that comes to mind. I don't think anyone in the NYC government thought it would last as long as it already has and that these simple actions would break them.
Now that they're dismantling the camps, we'll have to wait and see whether or not the city will actually "let them back in" as they've said they will. Personally I doubt it, but the people who are organizing this thing seem to have their heads on straight.
Or if they do, I bet you the NYPD will make changes to the area to make it more inhospitable, and then "let them back in" to a much more highly controlled environment. I'm cynical as you can tell, because the government hasn't shown any kind of response that promotes trust.
Honestly, we haven't seen protests on this scale or for this duration since the Vietnam War. The difference is that we're in the age of social media - a time when any citizen can capture National Guard soldiers shooting at unarmed protestors, or police pepper spraying peaceful (but civilly disobedient) people. The city knows that it's walking a very fine line and if they take a misstep they're going to make things far, far worse for them.
I knew this would happen eventually at NYC - this didn't surprise me at all. What *did* surprise me was closing the airspace to news helicopters and shutting down all but 1 subway line as well as a major bridge. *That* honestly frightens me very much.
Yes, the bridges and subways are "choke points". They shut the bridges down after 9/11 similarly.
The amazing thing - and one of the reasons I'm so very appreciative to be in my mid-20s during the digital age - is that despite all traditional news media being cut out there's citizen journalists on the ground now recording video and streaming it live to the Internet.
I feel a paradoxically equal amount of pride and revulsion at being an American tonight.
There's been an increasing amount of attempt at regulating the internet, there are major internet "choke points" at telecom switching networks, and at ISPs, so I share your concern. I'm hoping the work going on into distributed DNS systems outside of governmental control get completed and grow to be robust and popular, which should help some -- but there isn't a good solution for "last mile" connectivity yet, and that will be the next major concern to try to figure out.
By removing protesters, rather than having talks with them, the government is showing the occupy movement that they don't care. People should be allowed to practice peaceful protest, but it seems like the Occupy movement is being repeatedly shown that the government doesn't have a heart. First they were fenced in on the street. Then they were pepper sprayed. Then when it got cold, the fire department came and took away the generators providing heat. Now they're being forcibly removed from where they were camped.
This is really sad, and I don't think any of these things were the correct response.
This is another reason why I switched over, but I only fully realized why I should have once I started playing around with Linux partitions. It's amazing how quickly you can reinstall when you have / and /home on separate partitions! There are other partitioning schemes one can play around with, but simply keeping a separate /home partition has enabled me to seamlessly swich distros and keep most if not all of my user settings.
Yes, that's all true. Some people even run multiple distros using the same /home partition. Occasionally there are issues with that when packaged software versions don't match, but it seems to work more often than it doesn't.
And if you want to see a neat trick for reinstalling even faster, look at 'dpkg --get-selections > (file)' and 'dpkg --set-selections (file)'. Getting the package selections and storing them as a file allows copying that file to the new installation and quickly setting which packages to install again to get the system right back to where it was. :-) (The only thing I don't like about this is that anything "set" this way is set as 'manually installed' rather than automatically installed to satisfy dependencies, so I have to go through the installed libraries afterward with aptitude and hit the 'M' key on all of the libraries, so that these libraries can be removed when they become orphaned.)
However I've lost count as to how many patches have come out for Windows 7 for "a vulnerability in which an unauthorized remote attacker can break into Windows and take control over it." Whether Seeing those notices but without detailed descriptions doesn't exactly give me a "warm and fuzzy feeling" about the OS. And I don't like having to research these vulnerabilities first, before the patches are installed -- that seems backwards. On Debian I can look at the package changelog.gz file that comes with the package (in /usr/share/doc/[package]/changelog.gz) after it's installed and read a description of how the package was changed, and if it was for a vulnerability there's usually also a CVE reference number to read more about vulnerability if I want to.
Open Windows Update, click on "View update history" and you can then check each one and the link to the KB article explaining it. I suppose what you have to remember is that Windows is primarily a desktop OS for end users who won't understand that information anyway, and making it too easy would probably just lead to confusion. I know that sounds condescending but having worked with end users I have come to appreciate just how much hassle that sort of thing generates. And to be fair Debian doesn't exactly put it front and centre either.
This is good information -- thanks. And yes, I agree with you about Debian in this regard -- although it's good that the information is there, it took me several years to find out about it when I finally started looking into the development side of things, and there's a good chance many users of Debian would never find out about it. The Debian Reference and Debian FAQ mention changelog files, but doesn't specifically mention that references to security vulnerabilities are listed in them. Unfortunately you have to read them for yourself to find that out, and most people never look at them.
You can also get a nice monthly summary with a fair bit of detail here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/bulletin/ms11-nov
That's not bad, although I'm not likely to look there every month (as I don't use Windows very often) -- but still it's a good resource to know about.
Apologies if I misinterpreted your tone, you seemed pretty reasonable but it just bugs me when people start bringing up problems with Windows XP when we are two generations removed and Microsoft have put it on extended life support. Sure, some people still use it, but few other OS vendors still support decade old releases.
I'm trying to give correct information, but I've been dealing with these issues with Windows since Windows 3, so in my mind "Windows" doesn't just mean Windows 7, and talking about XP still seems fair being that it remains commonly in use. [And while we're on the subject of the new versions of Windows, even discussing these issues might violate the End User License Agreement that these new versions come with. :-/] But I"m also not trying to be "a stick in the mud". ;-)
Just need to comment on this section:
However, this seems to be forgotten most of the time, because *nix free software distributions generally don't need reinstallation in the first place.
Neither does Windows 7. I know it is hard to accept after decades of Windows-bashing, but honestly it is very reliable. The only issues that can lead to a re-install are the same ones for every OS - virus infection, bugs and hardware failure. Okay, Windows does get more viruses, but with the sandboxing and tighter permissions in Windows 7 (e.g. needing the root password to make system setting changes) they tend to be limited to the user's rights level and so focus on userland stuff like joining a botnet or showing adverts. That is exactly the same as *nix, and the infection can be cleaned. Bugs... Yeah, there are a few, same as every other OS. Hardware failure is obviously nothing to do with Windows.
I used to use Debian on the desktop and played with MacOS, but since moving to Windows 7 I have not felt the need. I skipped over Vista but did work with it for a few years and it certainly was crap, but don't let that taint your impression of 7 until you have really given it a proper evaluation. I installed a couple of months after it came out and that install is as good as it ever was today.
I've been running Windows 7 (for games, or other things in which there's no good alternative) for about six months or so. It's definitely better than Vista, so I agree with you there -- and I ran Vista for these tasks for about three years. However I've lost count as to how many patches have come out for Windows 7 for "a vulnerability in which an unauthorized remote attacker can break into Windows and take control over it." Whether Seeing those notices but without detailed descriptions doesn't exactly give me a "warm and fuzzy feeling" about the OS. And I don't like having to research these vulnerabilities first, before the patches are installed -- that seems backwards. On Debian I can look at the package changelog.gz file that comes with the package (in /usr/share/doc/[package]/changelog.gz) after it's installed and read a description of how the package was changed, and if it was for a vulnerability there's usually also a CVE reference number to read more about vulnerability if I want to. On Windows systems the vulnerability descriptions have several levels of click-throughs necessary to get into what the vulnerability is really about, and I'm usually not satisfied with the level of detail available. And whether the malware can be cleaned off of Windows 7 or not depends very much on the particular malware. Regardless of whether an infection is on Windows or on *nix, my usual instinct is to install from scratch, because "it's the only way to be sure."
I haven't had any reliability issues with Windows 7 thusfar, but I'm not using it very often right now, so that makes it harder to gauge. But if it is more reliable, I don't have any problem accepting that. I think you've gotten the impression that I'm a "Windows basher", which comes with an implication of exaggeration. I try to openly discuss both the benefits and drawbacks about things as I see them, and I don't think I exaggerate. [Although I'm willing to admit that some of what I previously said might not pertain to every version of Windows.]
I briefly used MacOS X for the purposes of testing Qt code on the Mac, but haven't used them much other than that. Ironically I'm surrounded by Mac hardware at home because my girlfriend and her kids use them, but unfortunately in our experience we find that the Mac hardware breaks down a lot more often than "PCs" do.
You still have options.
I was pretty much completely switched over to Linux, except for one gaming machine until my nephew bought one of those license packs for windows 7. Windows 7 works fine but I lose the fun of trying out the new distributions that come out all of the time.
Yeah, I also have Windows around for gaming purposes. Unfortunately I find that to be a bit of a necessity; besides being a gamer myself I have a group of friends that regularly get together to play multiplayer games (locally when we can, and remotely when we can't), and most of the games we want to play as a group aren't cross-platform. [There are exceptions, such as Armagetron, Spring, AssaultCube, and on rare occasion maybe Tremulus, AlienArena.] But usually we play commercial first-person shooters that can't easily be emulated on Linux. [Lately we've mostly been playing FearCombat.]
The other interesting reason to have a copy of Windows around are for websites or other work that requires "Internet Exploder". ;-) I recently did some work via VPN that required IE6 to get the checkpoint VPN to connect, so even IE9 on Win7 wouldn't do, even when set to emulate a previous version of IE -- I had to boot an old copy of Windows 2000 to do the job, because it needed "real" IE6. Ridiculous.
The best thing I can suggest (and this is totally up to you) is that you dual-boot so that you can use Linux for your real work you care about, and continue to use Windows where you can't avoid it. If you've taken up the entire drive with Windows, you can still do this without having to reinstall -- have a look at 'ntfsresize'. Basically the procedure is to boot a Linux LiveCD, use 'ntfsresize' to move any used blocks in the NTFS partition to earlier, then shrink the NTFS partition Windows uses with fdisk to match what you told ntfsresize to do. This operation is slightly scary, so I do suggest you have a backup for peace-of-mind, but I have done it several times and have not run into a problem thus far. After shrinking the partition you're then free to install a Linux distribution if you want to.
I don't think there's any need to feel guilt just because you use Windows; that's fine. What I personally think is most important is that you know HOW to use a free software distribution if you need to or want to -- and you do. This means that you retain your freedom of choice. :-)
Good response. :-)
I would tend to agree with most of your points. But not with option "D) It's common on Windows machines to have commercial software installed that the end user doesn't have license keys or reinstallation disks for. (...)"
In practice I've never seen this, if the software in question was legitimate version and not pirated.
I didn't outright state this, but what I was really referring to was that most Windows boxes have "unavailable" software on them that the end user wants to keep using. Usually it's along the lines of "a friend installed this for me and I can't reinstall it." The friend that installed it might have had a license key for the software at the time, or in some cases the software is prirated.
Some of this has to do with how human relationship connections are made and unmade. A person that has a good relationship with someone else [be it a friend, a significant other, a family member, etc], they don't need to ask for the license key that the other acquired for the software; however if that relationship later goes sour, you're not going to be getting that license key even if it was legitimately purchased. In that situation it might come across as petty to even ask for the license key, and may spur a bitter argument.
The end result of any of these is essentially the same, which is that the end-user's lack of planning for reinstallation causes a barrier to the computer technician working on the problem, if reinstallation is deemed necessary.
If you've never seen this problem... be glad. Be very glad. ;-)
I love lists like this contrasting Linux vs Windows "advantages" and "disadvantages" in Slashdot. They invariably always contain apologetic comments for the "disadvantages" of Linux.
No, Generally speaking, there is *always* some hardware that does not work well after installing a desktop Linux. And most often than not the only way to solve it is to fish around forums (because there is no manufacturer's page where you can download the appropriate driver) to see if by any chance someone else manage to solve the issue.
And I do not care that it is not Linux fault, it is still Linux problem.
Huh. ? I'm confused as to what you're trying to say here. You say "I love (blah)", but it seems you're being sarcastic and mean the opposite. I wish more people would write clearly and actually say what they mean rather than being coy.
I have plenty of hardware that works with Linux "out of the box" without extra effort required. I also have a couple of boxes that I need to know certain extra firmware packages to install, which has to be done after the installation is complete. And I have a couple of other boxes in which I have to remember to disable the Kernel Mode Setting in order to get the video working.
When hardware doesn't work I usually start by doing a "make menuconfig" on the latest stable Linux kernel and press "/" to search for the hardware I'm having an issue with, and look for what driver should be loading for it. If that doesn't help me then I'll start doing web searches for terms to try to find out what might be going on. Often I find the answer via Linux Kernel Mailing List, or from Linux Weekly News, and only occasionally from forums. So it seems like you and I have different experiences as well as different ways of working through these issues.
As for this "still being Linux's problem", from the development side that's true, but I don't think that's what you mean; I think you mean it's an issue of public perception when these issues arise. But I don't understand what you're trying to get at, though, because basically that's stating a truism. It's like saying "When my hardware doesn't work it makes me unhappy, and I blame Linux for that." So... okay -- so what do you suggest?
All I can say is that you don't seem to have bought a computer in the last 10 years.
I have. And I stopped reading your comment right at that disrespectful statement.
Actually, I think I've got at least one pretty compelling reason to switch, which has to do with reinstallation. Occasionally Windows needs to be reinstalled due to either infection, registry corruption, or other software/hardware issues. This gets into some really interesting problems, because in order to reinstall Windows, you need:
A) A Windows CD that matches the license key given to the machine. This isn't as simple as it sounds, because license keys are tied to build version, not just the Windows version. So it's not enough to have a copy of "Windows XP Home" if that's what's on the box. :-/ And most people get Windows with their computer, already installed, and are not given reinstall disks to bring the machine back to its original state. So it's common to have to purchase a NEW copy of Windows software in order to "reinstall" it.
B) Device drivers for Windows for the machine, either via downloads from the manufacturer or from a motherboard CD. End-users typically either forget where this CD is, don't know they ever had it, or were never given it in the first place. "What would I need that for?"
C) Backups? "Oh, yeah, that. No, I don't have a rolling backup of the machine. Can't you just back up the files before reinstalling Windows?" Except on Windows machines, the user's files can be all over the place. If the computer technician is lucky maybe the user only used their home directory, but in practice this is often not the case.
D) It's common on Windows machines to have commercial software installed that the end user doesn't have license keys or reinstallation disks for. So the user doesn't want their machine reinstalled unless it's absolutely necessary.
The end result is that it's often a painful, long process to reinstall a Windows box. You need to prepare by downloading the necessary drivers and have them on hand, get a license for the correct version of Windows -- and that's assuming the version of Windows is supported on the hardware -- and then spend hours doing the install and going through multiple reboots to add drivers, and then lots more reboots that come along with doing Windows updates.
Let's contrast this with installing a Linux distribution -- for argument's sake let's say it's Debian Stable, and go down the same list: /home so there's just one directory to look into for what to back up, which speeds up the copy process.
A) Assuming a fast internet connection is available, download and burn the latest netinstall.iso. No license key issue.
B) Generally speaking (although there are exceptions), no special drivers are necessary to do the installation. [Brand new hardware may not be fully supported, so there can occasionally be issues with missing disk drive interface drivers or network drivers. These occasional issues can be tricky to work around.]
C) User files go in
D) Most people only need software within the Debian tree, so even there there's no software disks to find, and no license keys to look for. [The exceptions are for commercial software, but usually the list of this software if there is any at all is small by comparison to most Windows machines.]
The end result is that reinstalling Debian can be finished much faster than for Windows, and without lots of reboots.
However, this seems to be forgotten most of the time, because *nix free software distributions generally don't need reinstallation in the first place.
So looking at it that way, there's a major benefit of getting off of Windows, if possible.
This is clearly wrong.
From TFA, the small minority of employees asked to return the stocks are executives, not engineers, architects or the creative folk.... Most executives don't deserve what they get paid in USA. Most of them just lunch off of the productivity and manipulate for their personal gain. There's a term for that in the nature. It is called a parasite.
He is doing the right thing. So let's not be quick in judging him. ok ?
I think this is a case where we can make a judgment, because this is an abuse situation. These employees were promised these shares, given them, and now the company wants to renege and take them back, presumably without equally compensating those same employees for their true worth and threatening to fire them if they don't, which makes this situation clearly illegal and would represent false termination if they were to do so, which the company can clearly (and is very likely to be) be sued for.
Also, keep in mind that some managers and other executives came up from engineering or similar fields. I think you're considering managers and executives parasites mainly because you don't understand the work that they do, and how difficult the work is. A good manager (or other executives) is actually a benefit to employees, and is not a parasite. The transition from engineering or a "doer" field to one of management is painful and uses a totally different skill set, to the point that the transition can literally be a life-changing decision. If you want to learn more about it, I recommend this book, which is relatively cheap ($14 new): http://www.amazon.com/Becoming-Manager-Managers-Challenges-Leadership/dp/1591391822
This was one of two textbooks used for a masters level class in Engineering Management that I recently completed. [The other book was "Ethics 101" http://www.amazon.com/Ethics-101-Every-Leader-Needs/dp/0446578096 which I could also easily recommend.]
I'm not a manager, nor have I ever been one -- but after taking this class I have a lot more respect for what they do. And I've worked for at least one or two good managers, but unfortunately also many bad ones that didn't care (some of whom should have been sued for the psychological damage they caused employees). So I have understanding (and empathy) for your point of view, but I also know there are a few respectable managers and executives out there, and I'm hoping to be able to work for one again if I can find one. [And I suppose I'm also willing to become one, but only if I find the right people to help mentor me to make sure I don't become one of the "dark side" managers.]
About the selection: I call bullshit since at least a year.
That's very disrespectful.
As for the DB: sure, if the user reactivates the feature, why should he wait for the system to be reindexed? 2 gigs is really small these days.
And the search is much faster than with find, and also uses the content of the files. And it indexes your mails. You may not need it, but it is clearly more powerful than find/locate nonetheless. I, for one, am very happy to use it to find attachment in my tons of emails/files.
2 gigs is small, eh? So yeah, "let them eat cake."
If you were trying to help motivate someone else in using KDE4 features, you've just completely failed.
Give credit where credit is due. Pulseaudio was an abomination foisted upon us by Ubuntu, and is therefore more GNOME's fault than KDE's...
Okay -- I'm fine with that.
And since 4.7 nepomuk has actually been working well for me (before that, there had been bouts of it working, but never very reliably)
Last I used it, Nepomuk/Strigi made a > 2 GB Vertuoso database on my Desktop system, and it caused horrible performance lag even for simple tasks. For instance, selecting a list of 100 files in Krusader or Dolphin would generate more than 30 seconds of delay where nothing could be done in-between. And when I finally turned these features off, the 2 GB database was left behind, and there was no option to remove it -- I had to go find it myself manually.
And what benefits do these features bring? I'm capable of using 'find' and I'd prefer that over an indexer running at random times to update a database of files -- especially when there's usually also a 'locate' process that does the same damn thing. Rating files? That only makes sense for music, so it's rarely useful IMHO. Anything else worth having a 2 GB database hanging around for?