The question that was asked was "Which is better, KDE or Gnome?" Well, gee whiz. That's like asking "Which is better, Coke or Pepsi?" They both will provide you with a ton of sugar and a bit of a caffeine hit, the rest has to do with the particular tastes of the consumer.
Admittedly, the answer could be better than, "You jackass..." but it is important to note that there is no reasonable answer to the user's question short of "Try 'em both and see which you like."
As an aside, I never, ever, ever recommend Linux to someone who does not enjoy tinkering with computers. To do so is completely irresponsible. I use it myself, but I'm a tinkerer. The way people around here insist on evangelizing Linux, you'd think they enjoy questions like, "Ok, I just installed linux, now how do I open my Quicken? I've gotta pay some bills today." And before you look, Quicken doesn't run for shit under wine. "Oh, you use Linux now. You have to learn gnucash. But don't worry. It runs just fine on an ancient version of gnome. Good luck!" Puh-leeze.
Someone googling on a particular error message who finds your question is not going to give two craps if the answer was provided by the original asker or someone else. That person just needs the answer, and you've just saved that person from having to ask.
Definitely, definitely, answer your own question if you can.
The main reason I chose MySQL is that I have apps that only work with MySQL (such as MythTV). Why should I run two db servers?
But the second reson I chose MySQL is that it has true incremental backups with snapshot+binary logs, and it's dead easy to use. I looked at the docs in postgres on the subject, and found it to be extremely rough around the edges.
I'm surprised the Postgres team has not fixed this yet. They finally got around to making a non-blocking vacuum. You would think that functional incremental backups would be on the list as well. Pretty basic as far as db requirements go.
That is clearly documented in the manual for setting up postgres.
:q! is clearly documented in the vi manual as well, but I still say it's unintuitive.
Again, nobody said it was difficult. Just unintuitive.
And for the record, the worst problem with Postgres is that transaction IDs can wraparound, causing massive data loss if you don't vacuum frequently enough. Massive data loss, medium data loss, and even minute data loss should never happen with an RDBMS. It is currently 2006. When I put data in the database, I expect it to just be there. And always be there. Until I delete it. Always.
But unintuitive? Yes. And of course, Goulet said the process was not "intuitive". Nobody ever said it was difficult.
Think of it like exiting vi. It is not difficult to type:q! but it is hardly intuitive. Same with enabling TCP/IP connections in postgres. If it were a one-liner in postgres.conf, then fine. But also pg_hba.conf? What the fuck does pg_hba mean? I don't know what hba stands for. How do I know to go looking there? I don't, because it's unintuitive.
I'm curious why you think that Arabic is harder to learn than Japanese. It's certainly harder than, say, Spanish, but the things I've heard about Japanese make it seem borderline impossible. The Arabic alphabet has only 28 letters, it's grammar really doesn't have any more "features" than, say, French or German.
What makes you think that Arabic is difficult? I think it is difficult to read because they string the letters together... but I'd certainly not put learning to read that on the level with learning Kanji.:)
You have to admit that the companies themselves are making it as difficult as possible to spot phishing. For instance, look at the Citibank valid list of URLs:
web.da-us.citibank.com
www.citi.com
www.citibank.com
www.myciti.com
www.citibankonline.com
www.citibank.com/us/cards
www.accountonline.com
www.citicards.com
www.thankyouredemptions.com
www.studentloan.com
studentloan.citibank.com
citibusinessonline.di-us.citibank.com
citibusinessonline.com
citibusiness.com
www.citimortgage.com
www2.citimortgage.com
www.smithbarney.com
www.benefitaccess.com
Well, excuse me if I can't keep all your fscking domains straight, Citibank! How am I supposed to spot a phishing attack when you have 18 URLs on your list of valid ones? I think you could do a lot to help folks spot phishing emails if you would restrict yourself to your citibank.com domain. Then folks could remember, "You want citibank? Go to citibank.com."
You have to admit that the banks themselves are making it as difficult as possible to spot phishing. For instance, look at the Citibank valid list of URLs:
web.da-us.citibank.com
www.citi.com
www.citibank.com
www.myciti.com
www.citibankonline.com
www.citibank.com/us/cards
www.accountonline.com
www.citicards.com
www.thankyouredemptions.com
www.studentloan.com
studentloan.citibank.com
citibusinessonline.di-us.citibank.com
citibusinessonline.com
citibusiness.com
www.citimortgage.com
www2.citimortgage.com
www.smithbarney.com
www.benefitaccess.com
Well, excuse me if I can't keep all your fscking domains straight, Citibank! How am I supposed to spot a phishing attack when you have 18 URLs on your list of valid ones? I think you could do a lot to help folks spot phishing emails if you would restrict yourself to your citibank.com domain. Then folks could remember, "You want citibank? Go to citibank.com."
Whenever I want to visit my bank or credit card company's website, I do not type in the URL directly. How am I supposed to know if citibank's website is citibank.com or citibank.net or citi.com or citigroup.net or whatever. Is American Express americanexpress.com or amex.com or ameriprise.info or something else? How about Federal Express? Is it federalexpress.com or federal-express.net or fedex.tv? Who knows?
Also, what if I'm trying to type a long website like bankofamerica.com? How do I know I won't make a typo? And was it really supposed to be bofa.com?
My preferred way to find the correct website for a company is to google that company, make sure google doesn't complain that I spelled it wrong, and pick the first result. That always gets me to the right place.
Typing in a URL is too error-prone for my taste. You might accept that your housemate is more clever than you...;)
I think you're right about salt, that it would work as well. However, we're talking about an emergency situation here. I think it's better to tell people "put baking soda on the fire" rather than "put baking soda, or salt, or $foo, or..." and count on someone to make a good decision in a panic. Was I supposed to put on salt or sugar? Baking soda or baking powder? Or was it cream of tartar, altogether? Remember, you've got to act swiftly, and the wrong decision could easily make things much worse in a hurry.
That's why I like to tell my tenants simple things to remember. "Here's the fire extinguisher. Pull the pin, point the hose at the base of the flames, then squeeze. If the fire is still going and the extinguisher ain't, then get the hell out and call 911 from the neighbor's or a cellphone. My landlord's insurance policy doesn't cover your belongings, so get yourself renter's insurance. It's cheap."
Thanks for the response. I had never heard of type K extinguishers, and it took a fair amount of googling to find out anything about it. Apparently, this "K" designation has only existed since 1998, and extinguishers of that type are rare.
Personally, I'm not going to rush out and purchase one. I'm happy with my A/B/Cs for the following reason: I am not a firefighter, I do not extinguish fires on a daily, monthly, or even yearly basis, therefore, I do not want to create a situation where there is a fire in my home, and I have to try to select the proper extinguisher in a panic.
If something's on fire, the last thing I want to have to do is say, "Oh, the garbage can is on fire. Better go find my class A extinguisher... wherever I put that one." Or "Oh, gee whiz, my cooking oil caught on fire. Better go find my class B (or K) extinguisher... wherever I put that one." Or, "Yowsers! This is an electrical fire. I better go find my class C extinguisher... wherever I put that one."
See where I'm going with this one? I like A/B/C for its point, yank, and shoot operation. If there is a fire, I don't trust myself to correctly ascertain the type of fire, determine which is the correct extinguisher, locate it, and then use it before my house gets torched. I want to just "shoot the base of the red stuff with the fire extingusiher thingy", run like a scared rabbit, and let the professionals handle the situation from there.
Thanks again for letting me know about the class K. Always good to learn about new(ish) things.
Do not, under any circumstances, put any powder in your kitchen on a grease fire, except for baking soda. Double especially do not fucking put flour on any fire.
You dumb fuck. You could get somebody killed.
If you have a kitchen fire, some good things to try are:
Putting a lid on the pot and turning off the heat (if it's small)
When I buy office equipment, I want to know if it will perform the required functions at a given price. However, employees are not office equipment. I am an employer, and I want to know more about my potential employees. Anyone can put on a good show for an hour-long interview. How do I know if an employee is going to create a legal liability for me? Creating a hostile work environment? Misrepresenting the company ("Well, I'm an employee of XYZ and I say that..." Guess what, you're not authorized to speak for my company, bozo)? Difficult to get along with? Possesses poor judgment?
I'm never going to get it right 100% of the time, but more information is better than less.
I own three businesses (2 LLCs and one S-corp) and do business in 4 states. I pay $1500 to get a CPA to do my taxes for me and that is a fucking bargain. He saves me at least that much in taxes, anyhow, because he knows how to structure my books and finances to minimize taxes legally. That's what 20+ years of experience does for you.
Until turbotax is smart enough to file 3 federal and 4 state returns for me, without any mistakes, and legally minimizing my taxes, I'll be using a CPA, thank you very much. And there is no way in hell I could do my returns by hand. I have neither the time nor the expertise to do what he does.
Once you quit being a W-2 slave, you'll realize that your CPA is one of the most valuable members of your team.
This is a common misconception about US health care. Here are some facts for you to ponder:
If a woman in active labor enters a hospital, her baby is getting delivered without regard to money or insurance. Did you think we kick women in labor to the curb if she doesn't carry an American Express card?
Most hospitals are required to treat anyone in an emergency situation without regard to money or insurance. If you walk into one of these US hospitals bleeding out your eyes, you will get treatment. Did you think that we kick people bleeding out there eyes to the curb?
We have this program for poor people called Medicaid. It provides medical care for those who cannot afford it.
We also have a program called SSI which gives disabled people money each month to live off of.
Before you tell me that these programs don't work, let me tell you that I own apartment buildings and there are plenty of pregnant women (few of them are actually married...) with low income living in my apartments having plenty of babies. They have incredible numbers of babies. And they aren't having them in the parking lot. They're having them in hospitals with real doctors and nurses and things of that nature.
Your grim picture of people in the US with no access to health care is totally inaccurate. Perhaps you watch too much TV.
You obviously care very deeply about this issue. I don't blame you. If I were Canadian, I'd be pissed about the wait times as well.
I'm sure I could go through every doctor's waitlist in every hospital in every city in every province and do a real study of the issue. Frankly, I don't care enough about the subject to do that.
My point is this, and only this: in Canada, you have to go on a waitlist for medical treatment. In the US, we have no such thing as a waitlist, and consider having to be on a waitlist for treatment to be shocking and inhumane. Hell, my dog doesn't even have to go on a waitlist for medical procedures, and she's just a goddamn dog. These are people we're talking about here.
If you're more interested in this issue, feel free to google for some articles and/or research on the subject. For instance, I found an article about illegal private hospitals in Canada. Here's a quote from the article:
But a Supreme Court ruling last June -- it found that a Quebec provincial ban on private health insurance was unconstitutional when patients were suffering and even dying on waiting lists -- appears to have become a turning point for the entire country.
"The prohibition on obtaining private health insurance is not constitutional where the public system fails to deliver reasonable services," the court ruled.
While I don't give enough of a fuck about your lousy healthcare system to research it myself, I'm guessing the supreme court researched the issue when it said that your public health system "fails to deliver reasonable services".
This isn't some sensationalized media report. It's the opinion of the Supreme Court of Canada that your healthcare system "fails to deliver resonable services." The sooner you admit you have a problem, the sooner you can go about solving it.
Feel free to research the issue. It's happening in your own backyard.
Heh. That's just great. They've already got you convinced that a knee replacement surgery is "elective". Here in the US, if you destroy your knee, the surgery is surely not elective, and you surely are not going to wait 1-2 years for it.
'm also not going to bother pointing out the fact that you picked DUNCAN. One of the smallest, tiniest towns on Vancouver island,
I picked a hospital at random. I couldn't possibly care less about the city of Duncan. If you asked me tomorrow, I guarantee I wouldn't remember what I clicked on. I just gave a click and that's what I saw.
Please take your Americana "only we can do it right" mindset somewhere else, you're not wanted here.
I have received medical care in Belgium, Hungary, Thailand, and America. Of those, I liked Thailand's system the best. They have a two-tier system: public and private. Anyone can obtain a level of care in the public system, but for folks who are inclined, for whatever reason, to pay for their own care, they can use the private system. I chose the private system because they treat you like a king there. And the private system is quite affordable--most procedures cost a few hundred dollars. They have many efficiencies built into the system, such as: prescription medications can be prescribed free of charge by a pharmacist, eliminating the need for a doctor's visit (and the inherent wait times, costs to the system, etc.) for basic prescriptions.
And yes, Chalouli (the decision that stated wait times were too long in Quebec about 6 months ago), that doctor, as much as he intends well, is an arrogant ad impatiet ass.
I've found your characterization of "Chalouli", whatever the fuck that is, to be typical of most Canadians, yourself included.
Anyhow, waitlists are a big problem in Canada. For instance, from the British Columbia Ministry of Health website (I picked BC because that's what google gave me first), let's say I want to have Knee Replacement Surgery. At this point, I'm needing a new knee, so I can't frickin' walk, and I'm in a metric shitload of pain (I'm told in Canada they use the metric system). So, picking a random hospital, I see that the wait time is currently 58 weeks with one surgeon and 99.1 weeks with the other surgeon. The third doctor does not perform knee replacement surgery, it seems.
Do you really feel that waiting between 1-2 years for essential surgery is acceptable? That kind of shit would never fly in the US. We do not sit around here for 1-2 years with busted knees. We get them fixed.
Maybe that's the cause of your dizzy spells. The knowledge that if you were to have a health problem in Canada, you will be unable to obtain prompt treatment at any price. Well, I shouldn't say "at any price". You can always seek treatment down here in America. Growing up in Minnesota, I knew of many wealthy Canadians who obtained heart surgery in the US because they did not want to die in Canada on some waitlist.
I can't believe you fail to see the problem here. In the US, we don't have waitlists. We just call the hospital and make an appointment. We look at your waitlists (with waits measured in years) up in Canada with sheer horror that you would tolerate such a system. The last place on earth I'd want to fall ill is Canada.
Well, I don't watch Dateline, but I do read posts on this very forum of folks in Canada who can't get basic medical diagnostic care, let alone medical care. People routinely post personal accounts of wait times of 6 months to a year in order to get an MRI. And I'm not referring to posts like: "Well, I saw on TV that it's tough to get an MRI." I'm talking about people posting things like: "I personally waited for months while in severe pain just to get an MRI."
In the states, I can schedule an MRI for the same day. Why does it take 6-12 months in Canada? My guess is your family dog Rufus gets better medical care than you do.
No one person can possibly represent the interests of 250-300 million people. Your sweeping generalizations about all Americans make you sound idiotic.
If Americans were truly dissatisfied with President Bush's leadership, the election wouldn't have been a close one.
You can go on and on about this or that and how maybe the Ohio results were "fishy", but like I said before, if Americans were truly fed up with President Bush, the results in Ohio wouldn't have mattered.
Slashdot Mirror
Admittedly, the answer could be better than, "You jackass..." but it is important to note that there is no reasonable answer to the user's question short of "Try 'em both and see which you like."
As an aside, I never, ever, ever recommend Linux to someone who does not enjoy tinkering with computers. To do so is completely irresponsible. I use it myself, but I'm a tinkerer. The way people around here insist on evangelizing Linux, you'd think they enjoy questions like, "Ok, I just installed linux, now how do I open my Quicken? I've gotta pay some bills today." And before you look, Quicken doesn't run for shit under wine. "Oh, you use Linux now. You have to learn gnucash. But don't worry. It runs just fine on an ancient version of gnome. Good luck!" Puh-leeze.
Definitely, definitely, answer your own question if you can.
But the second reson I chose MySQL is that it has true incremental backups with snapshot+binary logs, and it's dead easy to use. I looked at the docs in postgres on the subject, and found it to be extremely rough around the edges.
I'm surprised the Postgres team has not fixed this yet. They finally got around to making a non-blocking vacuum. You would think that functional incremental backups would be on the list as well. Pretty basic as far as db requirements go.
It was a fucking rhetorical question, anyway.
Again, nobody said it was difficult. Just unintuitive.
And for the record, the worst problem with Postgres is that transaction IDs can wraparound, causing massive data loss if you don't vacuum frequently enough. Massive data loss, medium data loss, and even minute data loss should never happen with an RDBMS. It is currently 2006. When I put data in the database, I expect it to just be there. And always be there. Until I delete it. Always.
Think of it like exiting vi. It is not difficult to type :q! but it is hardly intuitive. Same with enabling TCP/IP connections in postgres. If it were a one-liner in postgres.conf, then fine. But also pg_hba.conf? What the fuck does pg_hba mean? I don't know what hba stands for. How do I know to go looking there? I don't, because it's unintuitive.
What makes you think that Arabic is difficult? I think it is difficult to read because they string the letters together... but I'd certainly not put learning to read that on the level with learning Kanji. :)
Well, excuse me if I can't keep all your fscking domains straight, Citibank! How am I supposed to spot a phishing attack when you have 18 URLs on your list of valid ones? I think you could do a lot to help folks spot phishing emails if you would restrict yourself to your citibank.com domain. Then folks could remember, "You want citibank? Go to citibank.com."
Well, excuse me if I can't keep all your fscking domains straight, Citibank! How am I supposed to spot a phishing attack when you have 18 URLs on your list of valid ones? I think you could do a lot to help folks spot phishing emails if you would restrict yourself to your citibank.com domain. Then folks could remember, "You want citibank? Go to citibank.com."
Also, what if I'm trying to type a long website like bankofamerica.com? How do I know I won't make a typo? And was it really supposed to be bofa.com?
My preferred way to find the correct website for a company is to google that company, make sure google doesn't complain that I spelled it wrong, and pick the first result. That always gets me to the right place.
Typing in a URL is too error-prone for my taste. You might accept that your housemate is more clever than you... ;)
That's why I like to tell my tenants simple things to remember. "Here's the fire extinguisher. Pull the pin, point the hose at the base of the flames, then squeeze. If the fire is still going and the extinguisher ain't, then get the hell out and call 911 from the neighbor's or a cellphone. My landlord's insurance policy doesn't cover your belongings, so get yourself renter's insurance. It's cheap."
Personally, I'm not going to rush out and purchase one. I'm happy with my A/B/Cs for the following reason: I am not a firefighter, I do not extinguish fires on a daily, monthly, or even yearly basis, therefore, I do not want to create a situation where there is a fire in my home, and I have to try to select the proper extinguisher in a panic.
If something's on fire, the last thing I want to have to do is say, "Oh, the garbage can is on fire. Better go find my class A extinguisher... wherever I put that one." Or "Oh, gee whiz, my cooking oil caught on fire. Better go find my class B (or K) extinguisher... wherever I put that one." Or, "Yowsers! This is an electrical fire. I better go find my class C extinguisher... wherever I put that one."
See where I'm going with this one? I like A/B/C for its point, yank, and shoot operation. If there is a fire, I don't trust myself to correctly ascertain the type of fire, determine which is the correct extinguisher, locate it, and then use it before my house gets torched. I want to just "shoot the base of the red stuff with the fire extingusiher thingy", run like a scared rabbit, and let the professionals handle the situation from there.
Thanks again for letting me know about the class K. Always good to learn about new(ish) things.
You dumb fuck. You could get somebody killed.
If you have a kitchen fire, some good things to try are:
I'm never going to get it right 100% of the time, but more information is better than less.
Until turbotax is smart enough to file 3 federal and 4 state returns for me, without any mistakes, and legally minimizing my taxes, I'll be using a CPA, thank you very much. And there is no way in hell I could do my returns by hand. I have neither the time nor the expertise to do what he does.
Once you quit being a W-2 slave, you'll realize that your CPA is one of the most valuable members of your team.
- If a woman in active labor enters a hospital, her baby is getting delivered without regard to money or insurance. Did you think we kick women in labor to the curb if she doesn't carry an American Express card?
- Most hospitals are required to treat anyone in an emergency situation without regard to money or insurance. If you walk into one of these US hospitals bleeding out your eyes, you will get treatment. Did you think that we kick people bleeding out there eyes to the curb?
- We have this program for poor people called Medicaid. It provides medical care for those who cannot afford it.
- We also have a program called SSI which gives disabled people money each month to live off of.
Before you tell me that these programs don't work, let me tell you that I own apartment buildings and there are plenty of pregnant women (few of them are actually married...) with low income living in my apartments having plenty of babies. They have incredible numbers of babies. And they aren't having them in the parking lot. They're having them in hospitals with real doctors and nurses and things of that nature.Your grim picture of people in the US with no access to health care is totally inaccurate. Perhaps you watch too much TV.
I'm sure I could go through every doctor's waitlist in every hospital in every city in every province and do a real study of the issue. Frankly, I don't care enough about the subject to do that.
My point is this, and only this: in Canada, you have to go on a waitlist for medical treatment. In the US, we have no such thing as a waitlist, and consider having to be on a waitlist for treatment to be shocking and inhumane. Hell, my dog doesn't even have to go on a waitlist for medical procedures, and she's just a goddamn dog. These are people we're talking about here.
If you're more interested in this issue, feel free to google for some articles and/or research on the subject. For instance, I found an article about illegal private hospitals in Canada. Here's a quote from the article:
While I don't give enough of a fuck about your lousy healthcare system to research it myself, I'm guessing the supreme court researched the issue when it said that your public health system "fails to deliver reasonable services".This isn't some sensationalized media report. It's the opinion of the Supreme Court of Canada that your healthcare system "fails to deliver resonable services." The sooner you admit you have a problem, the sooner you can go about solving it.
Feel free to research the issue. It's happening in your own backyard.
Anyhow, waitlists are a big problem in Canada. For instance, from the British Columbia Ministry of Health website (I picked BC because that's what google gave me first), let's say I want to have Knee Replacement Surgery. At this point, I'm needing a new knee, so I can't frickin' walk, and I'm in a metric shitload of pain (I'm told in Canada they use the metric system). So, picking a random hospital, I see that the wait time is currently 58 weeks with one surgeon and 99.1 weeks with the other surgeon. The third doctor does not perform knee replacement surgery, it seems.
Do you really feel that waiting between 1-2 years for essential surgery is acceptable? That kind of shit would never fly in the US. We do not sit around here for 1-2 years with busted knees. We get them fixed.
Maybe that's the cause of your dizzy spells. The knowledge that if you were to have a health problem in Canada, you will be unable to obtain prompt treatment at any price. Well, I shouldn't say "at any price". You can always seek treatment down here in America. Growing up in Minnesota, I knew of many wealthy Canadians who obtained heart surgery in the US because they did not want to die in Canada on some waitlist.
I can't believe you fail to see the problem here. In the US, we don't have waitlists. We just call the hospital and make an appointment. We look at your waitlists (with waits measured in years) up in Canada with sheer horror that you would tolerate such a system. The last place on earth I'd want to fall ill is Canada.
In the states, I can schedule an MRI for the same day. Why does it take 6-12 months in Canada? My guess is your family dog Rufus gets better medical care than you do.
No one person can possibly represent the interests of 250-300 million people. Your sweeping generalizations about all Americans make you sound idiotic.
You can go on and on about this or that and how maybe the Ohio results were "fishy", but like I said before, if Americans were truly fed up with President Bush, the results in Ohio wouldn't have mattered.