Maybe Microsoft is just resetting the clock back 20-something years to when an earlier DOS-based version of Windows was found to be copying the Mac UI. Apple has already started apeing the iOS interface on its heavier computers, and maybe someone at Microsoft thinks that's a neat idea. Personally, I think it's butt-fucking-ugly, but I'm not part of their market, so I doubt if my opinion counts for much.
Your intemperate ramble misses the point. Sure, there are lots of reasons not to buy this product (and I won't), but if people just lie down and say nothing about this UEFI lockout, you can bet your ass MS will use its leverage to force it on other products later on. Remember that Martin Niemöller quotation...
I am becoming very tired of this often-repeated notion that Ubuntu seems to be synonymous with Linux. It is just one (admittedly currently popular) distro among many, but I have been around for long enough to have seen several such stars wane.
While I'm very happy for anyone who finds that distribution satisfying, my own impression on the several occasions I have been tempted to install it is that I become just as cranky and irritable as I do when stuck with a Windows system. I inevitably end up spitting the dummy after a few hours and going back to a more congenial distribution.
FWIW, I use Arch on my laptop, while my less-frequently used desktop machine gets Slackware. I still really prefer the latter, but enjoy being able to conveniently work with bleeding-edge versions of applications, accepting that that means a risk of things getting broken from time to time. With Slackware, nothing ever breaks (unless I break it), and it is so simple, I never forget my way around it.
...there is no good reason why Samsung should be allowed to sell a phone that looks exactly like the iPhone (which is way more than just "rectangle with rounded corners"
Really? OK, you're right. Samsung should make their phones bright pink. And patent that.
Seriously, though, how different does Samsung's phone need to be to not infringe on a totally and stupidly obvious patent? Maybe shape it like a pretzel?
Will Slashdot now encourage people to boycott LG for suing Samsung, or does LG get a pass for making Android phones?
I now boycott LG because their hardware (and embedded software, where applicable) are total shit. Their products are quite competitive (in Australia, at least) price-wise, which is why I have/had a number of their devices, but no more, thank you.
If wifi internet service is going to cost the airline and/or passengers money, I would much prefer those funds were used to budget for increased legroom in those so-called "seats". I am not tall by current Western standards (5' 7") or even fat, but flying is sufficiently unpleasant for me to avoid it whenever possible.
Hopefully homeland security does not weigh in, some terrorist could communicate with onboard agents of nefarious intent.
Even terrorists need to be entertained, I suppose.
But seriously, though, does it really hurt so much to unplug from the internet for a while (and yes, I am used to long-haul flights, with all-too-common trips between the UK and Australia) and catch up on sleep, listen to music or read a book?
If, as a PAID developer, I submitted a patch that broke user space AND THEN blamed the user space applications and got a beat down I'd wonder wtf am I doing writing software.
That's an interesting question, since Chehab appears to have been with RedHat for well over 4 years (also bearing in mind that RedHat has a prominent profile as an "enterprise" vendor) in a senior role and seems to be pretty well qualified. While it does appear that he fucked up big-time in making over-hasty commits, breaking userspace apps, then attempting to shift the blame, I can't help feeling a bit sorry for him.
Someone with his skills should have seen the red flags and quarantined the broken code before it ever came to this performance. If he was having a bad hair day (and with no real offence intended, Linus should also be used to those), this could just be a salutary reminder that even the best of systems programmers are only human.
Given that the guy is on a RedHat email address, it might be safe to assume he isn't in Linus' employment. However, he probably has a boss of his own who may have his own input to deliver.
Wait, WTF? Ballmer is actually acting like he cares about what's happening inside his company, for once in his life?
Well, we'll never know, because nobody ever sees Microsoft internal correspondence or their source code. Sure, Linus was maybe just slightly rude, but kernel maintenance and development requires sticking to certain standards, and it looks like he had it coming.
Every place I have worked has used MS Word version tracking.
And there you betray your age. The first true word processing package I used (not counting Emacs) was WordPerfect on Data General mini systems, and subsequently on DOS. Workplaces found ways to cope with tracking that might seem cumbersome now, but they worked. I'm sure there are many who would argue that WordPerfect 5.1 is still unsurpassed, and I would be hard pressed to honestly disagree.
Not too many pterodactyls where I worked, but the first computer I used (a Burroughs B3700) back in the '70s got the job done with less than 128K of usable (core) memory. I'm just glad I wasn't paying for the power bill. The computer was bad enough, but it needed a serious air-conditioning system to keep the room temperature from rocketing to 50+ deg. C in just a few minutes...
In a way, the choice of word processor is more or less irrelevant by comparison with the level of trust involved in putting my files in the hands of someone I don't personally know. If anything should happen to files on my own hard drives, I at least only have myself to blame for not having secured or backed them up. But there is always the risk that Google might be compromised, either from the outside or by some rogue sysadmin, and I don't want to even think about trying to claim any redress against Google if they fuck up.
Further, since I live a long way away from urban amenities, I can't count on the availability of a constant internet connection, which could easily put me in a bind if I had my files stored in the so-called "cloud".
So, FWIW, my choice is simple: LibreOffice, since I don't run Windows. There will always be someone who will bitch that the free software suite doesn't have this or that all-important niche feature, but it has pretty much covered everything I need since it was StarOffice - only, of course, infinitely better now.
I used to be a more or less diehard Gnome user from pre-1.0 to 2.x, but deserted when 3.0 came along. KDE is no longer the kluttered, kfugly kthing it used to be, and I've been pretty happy for the last year with KDE (in combination with compiz) on Arch. Currently at 4.9 on this distro, it's as slick as I could ever want.
Agreed. What the courts (not to mention the taxpayers) need is the ability to impose multi-billion dollar fines for wasting their time and resources. That might be an incentive to do something actually innovative for a change, rather than feeding parasitical lawyers.
You must be very young, then. History is replete with cases where distributions have been marketed on a non-free but freely-downloadable basis. So far, it seems the survivors have been either the One-Man Show or those such as Suse and Redhat who offer enterprise versions.
On the other hand, there are dozens of community-based distros out there that have been going for years, such as Debian, Arch (my preference) or Gentoo.
Ubuntu could disappear off the planet tomorrow (yes, I know that's unlikely) but that doesn't mean Linux will just drop dead.
Also, bear in mind that Linux itself is a kernel, and one could argue that by far the biggest distribution of all is Android, and that has all the clout of Google behind it, so is in no danger of dying.
Slashdot Mirror
Classics? That's like the shit with looooooong words and no pictures?
Slashdot. News for... autistic 11-year-olds with a vocabulary of 50 words and the attention span of a flea.
Sigh.
Maybe Microsoft is just resetting the clock back 20-something years to when an earlier DOS-based version of Windows was found to be copying the Mac UI. Apple has already started apeing the iOS interface on its heavier computers, and maybe someone at Microsoft thinks that's a neat idea. Personally, I think it's butt-fucking-ugly, but I'm not part of their market, so I doubt if my opinion counts for much.
Your intemperate ramble misses the point. Sure, there are lots of reasons not to buy this product (and I won't), but if people just lie down and say nothing about this UEFI lockout, you can bet your ass MS will use its leverage to force it on other products later on. Remember that Martin Niemöller quotation...
There's tons of tablets from companies like Samsung that you can run Linux on if you want
All Android devices do run a Linux kernel.
So, no publisher key = no signed non-Microsoft binary = no Linux."
And no sale.
And whose loss is that?
Exactly. Either way, I never want to have to crawl and say "pretty please" to anybody whenever I recompile a kernel.
I am becoming very tired of this often-repeated notion that Ubuntu seems to be synonymous with Linux. It is just one (admittedly currently popular) distro among many, but I have been around for long enough to have seen several such stars wane.
While I'm very happy for anyone who finds that distribution satisfying, my own impression on the several occasions I have been tempted to install it is that I become just as cranky and irritable as I do when stuck with a Windows system. I inevitably end up spitting the dummy after a few hours and going back to a more congenial distribution.
FWIW, I use Arch on my laptop, while my less-frequently used desktop machine gets Slackware. I still really prefer the latter, but enjoy being able to conveniently work with bleeding-edge versions of applications, accepting that that means a risk of things getting broken from time to time. With Slackware, nothing ever breaks (unless I break it), and it is so simple, I never forget my way around it.
Hell that's a company name that only a Korean could love.
And I read somewhere that "Samsung" translates as "Three Star". Go figure.
Really? OK, you're right. Samsung should make their phones bright pink. And patent that.
Seriously, though, how different does Samsung's phone need to be to not infringe on a totally and stupidly obvious patent? Maybe shape it like a pretzel?
Will Slashdot now encourage people to boycott LG for suing Samsung, or does LG get a pass for making Android phones?
I now boycott LG because their hardware (and embedded software, where applicable) are total shit. Their products are quite competitive (in Australia, at least) price-wise, which is why I have/had a number of their devices, but no more, thank you.
Anyway, who says lawyers don't produce anything useful? One can always use hot air to float a balloon, and bullshit is useful for growing vegetables.
If wifi internet service is going to cost the airline and/or passengers money, I would much prefer those funds were used to budget for increased legroom in those so-called "seats". I am not tall by current Western standards (5' 7") or even fat, but flying is sufficiently unpleasant for me to avoid it whenever possible.
Hopefully homeland security does not weigh in, some terrorist could communicate with onboard agents of nefarious intent.
Even terrorists need to be entertained, I suppose.
But seriously, though, does it really hurt so much to unplug from the internet for a while (and yes, I am used to long-haul flights, with all-too-common trips between the UK and Australia) and catch up on sleep, listen to music or read a book?
If, as a PAID developer, I submitted a patch that broke user space AND THEN blamed the user space applications and got a beat down I'd wonder wtf am I doing writing software.
That's an interesting question, since Chehab appears to have been with RedHat for well over 4 years (also bearing in mind that RedHat has a prominent profile as an "enterprise" vendor) in a senior role and seems to be pretty well qualified. While it does appear that he fucked up big-time in making over-hasty commits, breaking userspace apps, then attempting to shift the blame, I can't help feeling a bit sorry for him.
Someone with his skills should have seen the red flags and quarantined the broken code before it ever came to this performance. If he was having a bad hair day (and with no real offence intended, Linus should also be used to those), this could just be a salutary reminder that even the best of systems programmers are only human.
Given that the guy is on a RedHat email address, it might be safe to assume he isn't in Linus' employment. However, he probably has a boss of his own who may have his own input to deliver.
Wait, WTF? Ballmer is actually acting like he cares about what's happening inside his company, for once in his life?
Well, we'll never know, because nobody ever sees Microsoft internal correspondence or their source code. Sure, Linus was maybe just slightly rude, but kernel maintenance and development requires sticking to certain standards, and it looks like he had it coming.
Every place I have worked has used MS Word version tracking.
And there you betray your age. The first true word processing package I used (not counting Emacs) was WordPerfect on Data General mini systems, and subsequently on DOS. Workplaces found ways to cope with tracking that might seem cumbersome now, but they worked. I'm sure there are many who would argue that WordPerfect 5.1 is still unsurpassed, and I would be hard pressed to honestly disagree.
it's packing the desktop (and all of the distribution's tools) into 210MB of disk space that is impressive.
Not really, though, if you have to burn a CD. You're left with a whole bunch of space left unused that could be filled with useful stuff.
Not too many pterodactyls where I worked, but the first computer I used (a Burroughs B3700) back in the '70s got the job done with less than 128K of usable (core) memory. I'm just glad I wasn't paying for the power bill. The computer was bad enough, but it needed a serious air-conditioning system to keep the room temperature from rocketing to 50+ deg. C in just a few minutes...
In a way, the choice of word processor is more or less irrelevant by comparison with the level of trust involved in putting my files in the hands of someone I don't personally know. If anything should happen to files on my own hard drives, I at least only have myself to blame for not having secured or backed them up. But there is always the risk that Google might be compromised, either from the outside or by some rogue sysadmin, and I don't want to even think about trying to claim any redress against Google if they fuck up.
Further, since I live a long way away from urban amenities, I can't count on the availability of a constant internet connection, which could easily put me in a bind if I had my files stored in the so-called "cloud".
So, FWIW, my choice is simple: LibreOffice, since I don't run Windows. There will always be someone who will bitch that the free software suite doesn't have this or that all-important niche feature, but it has pretty much covered everything I need since it was StarOffice - only, of course, infinitely better now.
I used to be a more or less diehard Gnome user from pre-1.0 to 2.x, but deserted when 3.0 came along. KDE is no longer the kluttered, kfugly kthing it used to be, and I've been pretty happy for the last year with KDE (in combination with compiz) on Arch. Currently at 4.9 on this distro, it's as slick as I could ever want.
Agreed. What the courts (not to mention the taxpayers) need is the ability to impose multi-billion dollar fines for wasting their time and resources. That might be an incentive to do something actually innovative for a change, rather than feeding parasitical lawyers.
If you found a 1,800 year old copy of Virgil's Aenid, that would be pretty neat
It sure would. Publius Vergilius Maro (October 15, 70 BC – September 21, 19 BC) would be a candidate for the earliest known time-traveller.
Which OS does this malware run on again?
DOS 3.1.
It does somewhat, yes.
You must be very young, then. History is replete with cases where distributions have been marketed on a non-free but freely-downloadable basis. So far, it seems the survivors have been either the One-Man Show or those such as Suse and Redhat who offer enterprise versions.
On the other hand, there are dozens of community-based distros out there that have been going for years, such as Debian, Arch (my preference) or Gentoo.
Ubuntu could disappear off the planet tomorrow (yes, I know that's unlikely) but that doesn't mean Linux will just drop dead.
Also, bear in mind that Linux itself is a kernel, and one could argue that by far the biggest distribution of all is Android, and that has all the clout of Google behind it, so is in no danger of dying.