I've never had to coax Linux to recognize a flash drive.
But you must recognize that you are an exception to the rule? I mean, if not my grandma, then certainly my parents (who did not grow up with computers) do regularly use flash drives to transfer/backup files.
Contrast it with me having problems (on SuSe) mounting a drive last week. Yes - it recognized the drive, but "unable to mount". Yes - eventually I got it to work. But if the solution required opening a shell, calling mount command, figuring out where in command line to say "ntfs" and guessing which/dev/sd? matches the actual flash drive, then I say Linux lost already!
Do you really believe that Linux is easier to use?
Look at Obama. He's honest, smart, and completely helpless. He wasted most of his first two years trying to negotiate with people who had no intention of ever working with him.
You are part of the brain-washed masses, my friend. While I will concede your second point, he does appear to negotiate with non-compromising Republicans who will not budge regardless of what is offered. Oh, and I will concede the "smart" part. However, for every issue he cares about there is another issue where he is happy with the outcome, yet pretends to be helpless opposition. (i.e. not putting any, even minimal, effort into opposing it, while officially disagreeing). And for each such issue there is at least one more where he is gladly working with Republicans in a complete turn-around from most un-equivocal promises he had made during election campaign. The latest budget bill is an excellent example, where his only opposition/veto threat came from protecting his (Executive) prerogative to quietly send away "accused terrorists", rather than from defending people's constitutional rights. Please educate yourself on the "smart, honest and helpless" president - you can start by reading Glenn Greenwald at Salon.
I know it's snark but why not - I'll give a guy who delivered 4000 babies a pass for abortion,
Why? How about -- I'll give a guy who saved 4000 people in his lifetime a pass for one murder? No? Anyone is entitled to their opinion - but the strength and justifiable source of their opinion does not let them enforce it for everyone else.
Ok, please don't mark this as a troll.
But a study that compares each of these to Windows would probably be more useful. You can talk about many shortcomings of Windows, but they pretty much have usability figured out, right?
Why does Linux live in a separate world? I know everyone on slashdot claims that their grandma uses [some linux] for years now... but I bet that a usability study between any window manager and Windows (good Windows -- 2000/XP/7) will not go well for Gnome/Unity/KDE. Personally, I work on Linux, but my home/personal machines have always been running Windows.
ACTUALLY Its more like putting a camera on the fence looking at your neigbors yard, and they rip it down, and then asking for it back.
In what way is it so? If you insist on an analogy (without a car), it a lot more like floating a camera over your neighbors yard using a weather balloon. Then the weather balloon explodes/malfunctions/(shot by your neighbor) and your camera falls in your neighbors yard. And then you ask for it back. But you don't even pretend that you are not going to send another dozen balloon-supported cameras into your neighbors yard tomorrow morning...
Or past the first cop who tries this shit on someone with a mirror.
How many action movies have you seen lately? First of all, you would have to draw and pull up your mirror faster than the police fires the laser at you. Did you assume that you would reflect it precisely into the police officer's eyes, like in a comic book? Since you won't, you might as well just close your eyes instead of pulling up a mirror, that will presumably protect you
Now, finally, you are standing there with a mirror in front of you or eyes closed and you will probably get clubbed or arrested (or both) in that curious state.
Past the first person with eye problems (particularly photosensitive people) being blinded permanently....
Oh, I think we have an answer to that.
Police are typically fully shielded from personal responsibility.
A police department has caps on how much you can sue them for (100K, I believe, and hitting that will likely require wrongful death)
What you describe is a downside for protesters, it won't affect the police.
Every study I've heard of shows cell phone conversations while driving to be ball park as dangerous as driving intoxicated. Except of course drunks tend to get hurt less than cell users in an accident.
While I can't argue that cell phone conversation helps your driving, this sounds like bullshit studies to me. Presumably, intoxicated drivers have very high accident ratio. Not everyone, but many. Let's say 1/20 intoxicated drivers end up in an accident.
Now, based on my last 5-10 years of driving, I have seen thousands of people on the phone. A significant fraction of them were holding the phone to their ear. By the way, dismissing hands-free kit is extremely misleading. There is quite a difference between using one hand (especially if you need to signal a turn) and having both hands available. So, coming back to my estimates. Having seen thousands people on the phone driving around me, I should have been in/near several accidents by now. Somehow I wasn't. Maybe all I saw were the exceptional thousand of chatty drivers?
Again, I wouldn't say that phone conversation helps one's driving. It doesn't. But a hands-free kit driver is far better than one holding the phone in their hand, which is in turn better than an intoxicated/impaired driver. We can, of course, argue about the exact degree of difference, but dismissing all three as the same could not be more wrong.
While there are changes in the works, why not allow higher than 5 scores for "We will ask the blah-blah person about top few questions posed by the/. readers"?
That seems like such an obvious step to distill top-X questions. Note that I am only referring to the "we will chose top-X questions to ask someone", not to all/. articles.
Also, remember to draw up a contract forcing your friends not to tag you. I hear that most unsigned people have a fairly comprehensive profile based on information provided by others. Not the same, but still
Let me guess... you answer is get rid of every friend that signed up for facebook (and live in a glorious cave)? Reality has to set in somewhere. I minimize my exposure to facebook by only allowing facebook to run java script when I want to use every once in a few weeks (amazing how many sites pop up, facebook.com was blocked from running java script... Just amazing). But I won't delete my profile just yet.
We already have High Speed Rail, they are called AIRPLANES and can actually go places that a single track cannot. Like Burbank to Oakland, LAX to SFO, Ontario to Sacramento etc etc.,
With all due respect I disagree. I would be willing to spend a little extra money and some extra time (within reason, of course) to take the train over a flight any time!
Let me count the ways...
I don't have to go trough security checks that involve taking off my shoes, my belt and stand in line like cattle
I don't have to opt out of an x-ray machine to be groped by a security guard (they are reasonably professional, but given a choice I'd rather not be patted down)
I can bring some frigging liquids with me if I feel the need to. A whole industry seems to have formed around manufacturing small plastic bottles (only the ones that cost $7 a pop are actually usable, too)
I can bring a suitcase and not pay $25 extra on a train
I can stretch out my legs on a train. Those of use who are at 6'3 or taller have some serious issues with plane seats
I can go to the cafeteria car and get myself some food when I feel like it instead of being fed at regular times like cattle
Train stations tend to be IN the city, within reach of my typical destination (or a short cab ride). Airports tend to be in the middle of nowhere, a $40+ cab ride away from where I'd like to go
I can arrive to the train station 15 minutes before the train departs and get on without trouble
Some of the things are more important than others, but each one of these is the reason I'd gladly chose the train when I can.
The DEA has started keeping a much tighter rein on the active ingredient in his product in order to keep it out of the hands of the aforementioned meth labs
Why, has it just been discovered? Are meth labs on the rise due to Breaking Bad success? Is DEA vying for higher funding? Why don't I ever hear of anyone keeping a looser rein on anything?
He was supposed to pay $1200 for a license to handle this chemical and refused.
Oh, yes, because charging him a license fee is sure to put all worries about possible chemical misuse to rest. It's the unlicensed chemicals that are dangerous. Sounds reasonable to me!
Actually, the other points are probably reasonable, when asking him to report suspicious bulk purchases - he could have just done that...
Netflix has yet to offer video games or adult movies.
Oh, yes, video-game streaming:)
Actually, I am surprised that they do not offer VGs. Blockbuster has been doing it for a while and that must be far more profitable as games tend to linger for a longer time than a movie.
As far as adult movies - that could backfire. As another poster below pointed out -- they have history/suggestions mechanisms and many accounts may be used by more than one person. Even with non-adult offerings, I find that inconvenient.
haha come on, parity?
Has this guy ever been pepper sprayed or beaten up before?
People shouldnt have to endure this to receive justice
With all due respect, I think you miss the point a little bit. Would there be justice? I understand that the culprit has been placed on administrative leave - I am reasonably convinced that he will be reinstated, perhaps with a warning (we'll see). It also doesn't sound like any of his superiors are planning to resign for leadership failure.
Please read the very well written open letter of a young (untenured!) faculty at UC Davis here.
In all the unjustified violence against OWS protesters, I am most shocked that heads aren't rolling, police officers aren't being fired and Mayor Bloomberg hasn't been deposed yet. For every excessive force use that occurred during these peaceful demonstration - how many have been punished by now as a consequence?? (except for those on the receiving end of the excessive force, that is)
By releasing those documents, he put fellow solders and friendly informants in harms way !
Citation needed
Citation needed
Citation needed
This is very important and should have a bearing on the trial. I have seen dozens of examples of the bad government acts that have been exposed. I have not seen a single concrete evidence of someone coming into harm. I am not even claiming that didn't happen, but wouldn't it be easy to point to an example if so many people did find themselves in harm's way?
Since a petition to force government to disclose all extra-terrestrial communications gathered over 5K votes, the serious requests will probably be treated the same way.
That's the part I like best. A good third of the devices are "slated" for a release. Some total vapor-ware, others just late and without dynamically changing specifications. That's a very sad, but a completely separate fate. Hard to compete (or even be compared) with an iPad if you aren't yet released.
I had the same problem with iPod alternatives. An google-found article "Top 5 competitors to iPod touch" had 2 or 3 (yes, you read it right AT LEAST TWO) devices that were not fully spec-ed or yet released to market. But of course since I was looking for something to buy in the present, unreleased devices (that are subject to spec/price adjustment) were hardly of any interest to me. And that's why today I own an iPod touch...
See, I would love to get on that high horse, but not everyone has that option. I assume all of the family that you care about is located close enough that you can drive/ take a train? Or they travel to you? You haven't had to interview at any out of state, across-the-US, location? You also, I take it, haven't had to take a (good) job 2.5 hours flight away from your old location/family/friends?
If only there was a more expensive, non-molesty flight option... but simply not flying is not always on the table.
Despite the alarmist headline, if you read the linked article carefully, you'll see that the only type of recall being considered is at the retail level. That is, retailers and distributors will have to remove the product from the shelves. There is no plan under consideration to go after consumers who have already purchased the cables for personal use. So if you already bought, paid for, and are using a cable, you should be okay to continue doing so.
Oh, Joy! So if I bought an un-licensed cable, I will not be arrested and jailed for it? And I can use it quietly at night when the neighbors are asleep? Or will they occasionally raid people and confiscate it (like with state-legal marijuana)?
I am quite alarmed that a fully functional adapter cable can be pulled and called "illegal". Aren't you alarmed? How can any cable (X to Y) be possibly illegal??
you cannot honestly tell me that Linux hardware support approaches that of Windows
That used to be true, and may be (and probably still is) for brand-new bleeding edge hardware. I wouldn't install Linux on a hardcore game machine, but why would one?
However, I haven't had any driver issued in Linux for years. The Acer Aspire One I bought last year worked flawlessly under kubuntu (it came with Win 7 preinstalled). No problems with its wifi at all, and kubuntu's wifi gave you a lot more info about the connection than Win did.
With all due respect, this is an unhealthy attitude that is common among Linux supporters. You think it's ok to expect the user (i.e., me) to pre-select the Linux flavor I want (since support varies) and _then_ research hardware I buy carefully to make sure that it will work. I think that my computer should just install Linux, like Windows does. And when it doesn't I consider Linux to not yet be ready for wide use.
I see you've never installed Windows. Every Linux distro I've tried (Except Red Hat, and that was back in 1998) was brain-dead simple to install and completely painless, even Mandrake back in 2003.
Try typing in that forty digit key with 1s and ls and 0s and Os. And sit there having to click "yes" or "no" every two minutes for a solid hour -- with a whole lot of reboots. Then installing every application you'll need to do any actual work.
Compare that to installing ANY Linux distro; two screens of choices (only one with many distros), wait 1/2 hour with no babysitting (maybe change the CD) and one reboot, and you have a ready-to-use, functional machine.
No, no, no. I don't know where you got your experiences, but it must be in opposite-land. I have been marked as troll before, but I am not trolling in the least.
Although RedHat is one of the more user friendly, Linux does not install easily and runs into issues that Windows would never have. At the very least you must have had the most amenable hardware ever. I have gone through 3 different flavors of Linux (Ubuntu, Debian and SuSe) and none of them had worked with my wireless card, for example. Apparently wireless USB card is just too much to ask for.... Ubuntu went as far as to recognize is by name, but still couldn't connect (error and disconnect on every attempt). Debian and SuSe simply pretended it didn't exist. Windows, of course, did not have the same problem...
The list goes on. Naturally, everyone's mileage varies -- but you cannot honestly tell me that Linux hardware support approaches that of Windows.
I have talked to someone who ran a groupon promotion and she seemed to know how to handle expired coupons quite well. Ingenious, really. A groupon bought for $X and worth $2X of services reverts to the original paid value of $X after it expires. Seemed like a perfectly fair solution to me.
And by unlimited, they mean unlimited connectivity to up to 5GB per month, just like sprint, their parent company.
That's a little misleading. They did change their plan to 5G instead of unlimited. But once you hit the 5G limit they throttle you rather than cut you off. I am not sure to how much, but you can still use the internet after 5G, so it is half-bad.
For all I know, other providers might be throttling me before I hit 5G (or I could be slowed by other users)
The problem is the $1.5 million fine. That's around 20 years of his salary (at a comfortable $75k/yr).
Not even close. Unless the legal fines are tax-exempt, to pay get $75K/year disposable income he'd have to make 130K-140K. I assume you we also expect him to eat from time to time?
At 75K/year, he'd be lucky to free up 30-40K, assuming he lives at the poverty line for those 45 years... Scratch that, assuming he lives and works for 45 more years.
Slashdot Mirror
But you must recognize that you are an exception to the rule? I mean, if not my grandma, then certainly my parents (who did not grow up with computers) do regularly use flash drives to transfer/backup files. /dev/sd? matches the actual flash drive, then I say Linux lost already!
Contrast it with me having problems (on SuSe) mounting a drive last week. Yes - it recognized the drive, but "unable to mount". Yes - eventually I got it to work. But if the solution required opening a shell, calling mount command, figuring out where in command line to say "ntfs" and guessing which
Do you really believe that Linux is easier to use?
You are part of the brain-washed masses, my friend. While I will concede your second point, he does appear to negotiate with non-compromising Republicans who will not budge regardless of what is offered. Oh, and I will concede the "smart" part.
However, for every issue he cares about there is another issue where he is happy with the outcome, yet pretends to be helpless opposition. (i.e. not putting any, even minimal, effort into opposing it, while officially disagreeing). And for each such issue there is at least one more where he is gladly working with Republicans in a complete turn-around from most un-equivocal promises he had made during election campaign. The latest budget bill is an excellent example, where his only opposition/veto threat came from protecting his (Executive) prerogative to quietly send away "accused terrorists", rather than from defending people's constitutional rights. Please educate yourself on the "smart, honest and helpless" president - you can start by reading Glenn Greenwald at Salon.
Why? How about -- I'll give a guy who saved 4000 people in his lifetime a pass for one murder? No? Anyone is entitled to their opinion - but the strength and justifiable source of their opinion does not let them enforce it for everyone else.
Ok, please don't mark this as a troll. But a study that compares each of these to Windows would probably be more useful. You can talk about many shortcomings of Windows, but they pretty much have usability figured out, right?
Why does Linux live in a separate world? I know everyone on slashdot claims that their grandma uses [some linux] for years now... but I bet that a usability study between any window manager and Windows (good Windows -- 2000/XP/7) will not go well for Gnome/Unity/KDE. Personally, I work on Linux, but my home/personal machines have always been running Windows.
In what way is it so? If you insist on an analogy (without a car), it a lot more like floating a camera over your neighbors yard using a weather balloon. Then the weather balloon explodes/malfunctions/(shot by your neighbor) and your camera falls in your neighbors yard. And then you ask for it back. But you don't even pretend that you are not going to send another dozen balloon-supported cameras into your neighbors yard tomorrow morning...
How many action movies have you seen lately? First of all, you would have to draw and pull up your mirror faster than the police fires the laser at you. Did you assume that you would reflect it precisely into the police officer's eyes, like in a comic book? Since you won't, you might as well just close your eyes instead of pulling up a mirror, that will presumably protect you
Now, finally, you are standing there with a mirror in front of you or eyes closed and you will probably get clubbed or arrested (or both) in that curious state.
Oh, I think we have an answer to that. Police are typically fully shielded from personal responsibility. A police department has caps on how much you can sue them for (100K, I believe, and hitting that will likely require wrongful death)
What you describe is a downside for protesters, it won't affect the police.
While I can't argue that cell phone conversation helps your driving, this sounds like bullshit studies to me. Presumably, intoxicated drivers have very high accident ratio. Not everyone, but many. Let's say 1/20 intoxicated drivers end up in an accident.
Now, based on my last 5-10 years of driving, I have seen thousands of people on the phone. A significant fraction of them were holding the phone to their ear. By the way, dismissing hands-free kit is extremely misleading. There is quite a difference between using one hand (especially if you need to signal a turn) and having both hands available. So, coming back to my estimates. Having seen thousands people on the phone driving around me, I should have been in/near several accidents by now. Somehow I wasn't. Maybe all I saw were the exceptional thousand of chatty drivers?
Again, I wouldn't say that phone conversation helps one's driving. It doesn't. But a hands-free kit driver is far better than one holding the phone in their hand, which is in turn better than an intoxicated/impaired driver. We can, of course, argue about the exact degree of difference, but dismissing all three as the same could not be more wrong.
I guess that's unfair book pricing in action
Although I am unsure what they can do about it. Amazon can increases prices if they want to, can't they?
That seems like such an obvious step to distill top-X questions. Note that I am only referring to the "we will chose top-X questions to ask someone", not to all /. articles.
Also, remember to draw up a contract forcing your friends not to tag you. I hear that most unsigned people have a fairly comprehensive profile based on information provided by others. Not the same, but still
Let me guess... you answer is get rid of every friend that signed up for facebook (and live in a glorious cave)? Reality has to set in somewhere. I minimize my exposure to facebook by only allowing facebook to run java script when I want to use every once in a few weeks (amazing how many sites pop up, facebook.com was blocked from running java script... Just amazing). But I won't delete my profile just yet.
With all due respect I disagree. I would be willing to spend a little extra money and some extra time (within reason, of course) to take the train over a flight any time!
Let me count the ways...
Some of the things are more important than others, but each one of these is the reason I'd gladly chose the train when I can.
Why, has it just been discovered? Are meth labs on the rise due to Breaking Bad success? Is DEA vying for higher funding? Why don't I ever hear of anyone keeping a looser rein on anything?
He was supposed to pay $1200 for a license to handle this chemical and refused.
Oh, yes, because charging him a license fee is sure to put all worries about possible chemical misuse to rest. It's the unlicensed chemicals that are dangerous. Sounds reasonable to me!
Actually, the other points are probably reasonable, when asking him to report suspicious bulk purchases - he could have just done that...
Oh, yes, video-game streaming :)
Actually, I am surprised that they do not offer VGs. Blockbuster has been doing it for a while and that must be far more profitable as games tend to linger for a longer time than a movie.
As far as adult movies - that could backfire. As another poster below pointed out -- they have history/suggestions mechanisms and many accounts may be used by more than one person. Even with non-adult offerings, I find that inconvenient.
Has this guy ever been pepper sprayed or beaten up before?
People shouldnt have to endure this to receive justice
With all due respect, I think you miss the point a little bit. Would there be justice? I understand that the culprit has been placed on administrative leave - I am reasonably convinced that he will be reinstated, perhaps with a warning (we'll see). It also doesn't sound like any of his superiors are planning to resign for leadership failure.
Please read the very well written open letter of a young (untenured!) faculty at UC Davis here.
In all the unjustified violence against OWS protesters, I am most shocked that heads aren't rolling, police officers aren't being fired and Mayor Bloomberg hasn't been deposed yet. For every excessive force use that occurred during these peaceful demonstration - how many have been punished by now as a consequence?? (except for those on the receiving end of the excessive force, that is)
Citation needed
Citation needed
Citation needed
This is very important and should have a bearing on the trial. I have seen dozens of examples of the bad government acts that have been exposed. I have not seen a single concrete evidence of someone coming into harm. I am not even claiming that didn't happen, but wouldn't it be easy to point to an example if so many people did find themselves in harm's way?
Since a petition to force government to disclose all extra-terrestrial communications gathered over 5K votes, the serious requests will probably be treated the same way.
That's the part I like best. A good third of the devices are "slated" for a release. Some total vapor-ware, others just late and without dynamically changing specifications. That's a very sad, but a completely separate fate. Hard to compete (or even be compared) with an iPad if you aren't yet released.
I had the same problem with iPod alternatives. An google-found article "Top 5 competitors to iPod touch" had 2 or 3 (yes, you read it right AT LEAST TWO) devices that were not fully spec-ed or yet released to market. But of course since I was looking for something to buy in the present, unreleased devices (that are subject to spec/price adjustment) were hardly of any interest to me. And that's why today I own an iPod touch...
See, I would love to get on that high horse, but not everyone has that option. I assume all of the family that you care about is located close enough that you can drive/ take a train? Or they travel to you? You haven't had to interview at any out of state, across-the-US, location? You also, I take it, haven't had to take a (good) job 2.5 hours flight away from your old location/family/friends?
If only there was a more expensive, non-molesty flight option... but simply not flying is not always on the table.
Oh, Joy! So if I bought an un-licensed cable, I will not be arrested and jailed for it? And I can use it quietly at night when the neighbors are asleep? Or will they occasionally raid people and confiscate it (like with state-legal marijuana)?
I am quite alarmed that a fully functional adapter cable can be pulled and called "illegal". Aren't you alarmed? How can any cable (X to Y) be possibly illegal??
That used to be true, and may be (and probably still is) for brand-new bleeding edge hardware. I wouldn't install Linux on a hardcore game machine, but why would one?
However, I haven't had any driver issued in Linux for years. The Acer Aspire One I bought last year worked flawlessly under kubuntu (it came with Win 7 preinstalled). No problems with its wifi at all, and kubuntu's wifi gave you a lot more info about the connection than Win did.
With all due respect, this is an unhealthy attitude that is common among Linux supporters. You think it's ok to expect the user (i.e., me) to pre-select the Linux flavor I want (since support varies) and _then_ research hardware I buy carefully to make sure that it will work. I think that my computer should just install Linux, like Windows does. And when it doesn't I consider Linux to not yet be ready for wide use.
No, no, no. I don't know where you got your experiences, but it must be in opposite-land. I have been marked as troll before, but I am not trolling in the least.
Although RedHat is one of the more user friendly, Linux does not install easily and runs into issues that Windows would never have. At the very least you must have had the most amenable hardware ever. I have gone through 3 different flavors of Linux (Ubuntu, Debian and SuSe) and none of them had worked with my wireless card, for example. Apparently wireless USB card is just too much to ask for.... Ubuntu went as far as to recognize is by name, but still couldn't connect (error and disconnect on every attempt). Debian and SuSe simply pretended it didn't exist. Windows, of course, did not have the same problem...
The list goes on. Naturally, everyone's mileage varies -- but you cannot honestly tell me that Linux hardware support approaches that of Windows.
I have talked to someone who ran a groupon promotion and she seemed to know how to handle expired coupons quite well. Ingenious, really. A groupon bought for $X and worth $2X of services reverts to the original paid value of $X after it expires. Seemed like a perfectly fair solution to me.
That's a little misleading. They did change their plan to 5G instead of unlimited. But once you hit the 5G limit they throttle you rather than cut you off. I am not sure to how much, but you can still use the internet after 5G, so it is half-bad.
For all I know, other providers might be throttling me before I hit 5G (or I could be slowed by other users)
So many moderations are no more...
The problem is the $1.5 million fine. That's around 20 years of his salary (at a comfortable $75k/yr).
Not even close. Unless the legal fines are tax-exempt, to pay get $75K/year disposable income he'd have to make 130K-140K. I assume you we also expect him to eat from time to time?
At 75K/year, he'd be lucky to free up 30-40K, assuming he lives at the poverty line for those 45 years... Scratch that, assuming he lives and works for 45 more years.