I liked Xmarks because I like running different Linux distros off of live media. Most of them included Firefox as the default web browser. Adding Xmarks was a quick, easy, and reliable way to get your bookmarks into Firefox. I also have a bunch of Linux distros installed on my hard drive and Xmarks was a good way to synchronize bookmarks between them. So I'll miss it when it's gone.
As someone else mentioned, Xmarks wasn't the same after Firefox switched to the "WebExtensions" API. For example, among other things, the new version would bother you via popup to put in your username and password multiple times during a Firefox session, even though it was set to remember them. It would sometimes list all your bookmarks twice after a synchronization. And it wouldn't delete bookmarks that you told it to delete.
So I'm not surprised LastPass is discontinuing Xmarks; it didn't seem like it was putting much effort into it lately anyway. For now, I'm using Firefox's sync, but I'll be looking for an extension with more features.
First you should ask yourself why there is a whole separate distribution just to support a different desktop.
Because Xubuntu users want to have only the Xfce desktop, without having to install the Unity desktop first, which, if you're never going to use it, means you're just wasting hard disk space.
We have had a recent lesson in this fallacy in the case of Mint. Mint is also a copy of Ubuntu and it exists primarily as a platform for the Cinnamon desktop. But because they were slow to handle security problems, Mint was hacked and code compromised. I don't trust Mint to this day. So I suggest starting with a secure and solid Ubuntu base and just perfect your desktop on that distro.
What an odd point of view. Linux Mint got hacked through Wordpress running on its web site. They weren't "slow to handle security problems"; they dealt with it as soon as they found out about it, which was almost immediately. And If you had checked the MD5 checksum of the hacked ISO, you would have seen that there was a problem with it.
As its leader, Clement Lefebvre, wrote in response to a comment on his blog, "...we’ll probably also contract a security firm to look into the bottom of this for us, we’re software developers not intrusion experts."
Take your idea to its logical extreme, and we would just have one Linux distro with a number of different desktop environments. Nobody wants that, except you, maybe.
...from the earth before it's all over, as long as it has the potential of making a profit.
If the Keystone XL pipeline isn't approved by this president, just wait a few years for energy prices to get higher and fossil fuels to be more scarce. It'll eventually happen.
It seems pretty obvious (to me, anyway; I'm a home user rather than an IT worker) that in Windows 8, Microsoft wanted to try to appeal to both tablet users with Metro, and to desktop users with the traditional desktop, all in one release. So they bolted a tablet interface to a desktop interface. It's sort of an odd combination, especially if you're new to Metro. Since the OS boots into Metro, it also seems pretty obvious that Microsoft's design choices wouldn't please business users or home users with large, non-touchscreen monitors who aren't interested in their computers looking like a tablet.
As part of its marketing campaign for IE 11, Microsoft's made Windows 8.1 Pro Preview virtual machine images available, so it's easy to try it out for yourself. The Start button takes you back to the Metro start screen, unless you right-click on it, in which case it brings up a context menu allowing you access to some of the more technical aspects of the OS (i.e. control panel; power shell; etc.).
I haven't played with it enough yet to find the setting that allows you to boot straight into the desktop rather than Metro, but even so, it's just one click to go to the desktop. But what they really to make desktop users happy is a Start menu button application launcher, and if you want that, AFAIK, you still have to install a 3rd-party utility.
Exactly. My first reaction was, "Why is Megan Garber so ugly?" This article's title seemed to be designed to push people's buttons.
Honestly, has it ever occurred to you that Wikipedia was ugly? Did you ever go to Wikipedia because of the way it looked? And did you ever think someone would get paid for a magazine article about her opinion of how ugly Wikipedia is?
I'm no expert in the history of OLPC, but everything I read about them seemed to indicate that they were all about giving these devices to needy children. I never saw anything written about how, exactly, these devices were supposed to make these childrens' lives better, once they got them. It just seemed to be assumed that, once kids had these computers, their school experience would somehow change for the better.
It would seem to me that a lot more time and money was spent getting these devices in the hands of needy kids than was spent on plans to use them to actually achieve positive change.
Hey, I'm corny and socially awkward, too! Where the hell is my venture capital firm?
Seriously, I think Mitt's unpopular because he's one heck of a flip-flopper who says quite a lot of mendacious things, not because of the way he looks or acts.
At least that's true for liberals. I suspect that, with conservative voters, he's probably unpopular because he's just not conservative enough.
The new UI looks like an attempt to emulate Unity
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Mandriva 2011 Out
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On cursory inspection, Mandriva's new UI uses a GTK+ style, an icon theme based on Elementary, a full-screen launcher similar to Unity's Dash, and a modified version of Dolphin with no menu bar (and no way to enable it). I haven't kept up with why Rosa Labs (page in Russian) has taken over Mandriva UI development, but they have made their mark.
Is the full-screen icon picker, as in gnome-shell, Unity, and now "Simple Welcome" in Mandriva the wave of the future, or just a passing fad? (Personally, I prefer menus.)
Having read the Ars Technica story, I'm disturbed and maybe even a little frightened by the DOJ's actions against Mr. Adekeye. They're determined to take away his freedom and his money while acting as the muscle for Cisco's legal department.
This, along with other recent ridiculous cases, like the trumped-up charges against Aaron Swartz, have left me wondering, what can a US citizen do to change this situation?
What interests me is the bias of the TechCrunch article, which is along the lines of "powerful attorneys general bully a beleaguered business because it makes them look good." WTF? Why is it assumed that Topix is unfairly under attack from the government, and the attorneys general are only doing what they're doing in order to bolster their careers?
The articles didn't give me a lot to go on, and I've never heard of Topix before, so I have to generalize. Lots of forums are moderated in one way or another, but this is the first time I've heard of one that turned "express moderation" into a profit center. But the point is, I don't start out assuming businesses are the "good guys" and the attorneys general are the "bad guys". My assumption would be that if 33 attorneys general are trying to get a company to change its behavior, they're doing it because they must have gotten quite a few complaints, not because they're attention whores. Businesses generally aren't looking out for my interests; they're looking to make money. I'll take the attorneys general over businesses any day, even if that causes butthurt for CEOs like Chris Tolles.
A balanced review will attempt to present things from both sides, whether the observer believes the facts to be balanced or not, the purpose being to allow readers/viewers to make objective (or subjective - that's their call) judgments of their own. Such a review needs to be objective in itself, but that doesn't mean that objectivity denotes balance.
You don't "allow" anyone to make a correct judgment by presenting things from both sides. Just because you present both sides of an issue doesn't mean you've got your facts correct, it just means you're reporting "he said vs. she said," even if what "he said" is demonstrably false. The media does this all the time. You allow people to make a correct judgment first and foremost by researching and presenting the facts correctly.
I have no idea whether the things the author of the Vista/DRM article wrote are true. For that, I hope to get clarification from other/. posters! It's obvious the author thinks what Microsoft is doing is bad for consumers and bad for Microsoft. It's also obvious he's using loaded words (aka "spin"). But his argument either falls on its face or stands based on whether his facts are right, not whether he publishes a "balanced" view.
It'd be a bit easier to, if the code it ran, as well as the OS it ran on, was open-source, but even so, any computer made to record votes is suspect.
The comparison of a voting computer to an ATM is interesting. ATMs made withdrawing and depositing money without a human bank teller present ubiquitous. But when you use one, you authenticate yourself to the machine, first by having a bank card, and second by inputting a PIN. Your picture is taken. The machines have tamper alarms. The results of using an ATM are instantly verifiable, if you withdraw cash, or almost instantly, if you deposit money, by checking your balance online. With a voting computer, on the other hand, you don't authenticate yourself to the machine (do you really want a "national ID card"? I don't); there's usually no one watching what you're doing while you vote; and there's no way to verify the results (AFAIK, you usually don't get a receipt -- and even if you did, how do you know someone hasn't hacked the machine?). I don't know if these things have tamper alarms, but haven't heard that they do.
In short, there's no reason to throw a high-tech solution at a problem like how to record votes, when existing low(er)-tech solutions do the job just as well, and are less prone to tampering.
Fortunately, my state does vote-by-mail. If any state that's decided to use computerized voting machines has an initiative petition process, I'd encourage the citizens of that state to write a petition to ban their use.
The statistic is true that at least 1 in 5 children are solicited in the US by total strangers on the internet.
I've seen that on billboards in my town. Do "1 in 5 children" have Internet (or AOL) access? Of the ones that do regularly use the Internet, do "1 in 5" use instant messaging or chatroom software? If not, how, exactly, do they get "solicited"? Or does that phrase mean, "Of the children who use the Internet, and who also go in chatrooms, 1 in 5 have been solicited"? And how the hell would you know? Pass out a certain number of surveys to third-graders, then extrapolate?
Sounds bogus to me. And if not bogus, totally without context.
Exactly. A couple years ago, my brother, who had Win2K, who was on dialup, and wasn't running a firewall, somehow ended up with the Sasser worm on his computer.
It didn't matter that he's the kind of guy who's got cookies and scripting disabled in his browser, who never downloads warez or music, who's always careful of the software he puts on his computer, etc. In fact, about all he uses his dialup connection for is email. But that was enough.
These days, you need to install a software firewall -- one that can block both incoming and outgoing connections -- before you connect to the Internet.
Another point: With each new version of Windows, Microsoft implements more Un*x-like security features. (They have to be "turned on," though. Most people still log in with Administrator rights, which defeats the purpose.) Also, Windows XP SP2 even includes a half-assed firewall. But in Windows 98, your entire filesystem is open to anyone who hacks in.
Point is, using an older version of Windows is probably going to make you more vulnerable, not less.
I'm in the middle of watching the Firefly episodes (on DVD), and many of them (especially War Stories, where Wash and Mal get tortured) have been painful to watch. There seems to be a major injury to Mal or Jayne or another crew member in just about every episode, but they get patched up and there's no lingering effect. Is 27th-century medicine really that good?
The other odd thing about both the TV series and the movie is that they never kill the bad guy. Maybe that's so they could do another show with them, but still...you just know a guy like Niska (the torturer from the TV series) is going to regain his strength and cause more problems in the future. Just shoot him, for God's sake!
My theory about why Wash and Book got killed in the movie is simply that neither actor was prepared to do a sequel. (Maybe someone more in the know could comment on that...) Maybe their deaths would have bothered me more had I seen the TV series before the movie. Still, it's Whedon's show.
The writing for both the movie and the TV series is uniformly good, the dialogue is witty, and the action, often intense. The movie seemed like an extended TV episode, which is not a put-down of the movie but high praise for the TV series. Good stuff.
Is this a shortage of law enforcement or law enforcement being too busy doing "other things"?
It's more about business deals usually being a matter of civil law, not criminal law. Law enforcement doesn't get involved in civil matters; not that certain things aren't illegal, it's that it's up to you to sue in civil court. Unless Mr. Bad Businessman actually defrauds people, say, by taking their money and not shipping them anything, law enforcement's not going to get involved.
It complicates things even more when it's interstate commerce. And, there's most likely a monetory threshold below which the feds (probably) aren't going to take action. Someone mentioned $5,000 earlier.
Windows should come with some type of programing tool.
You've never heard of Windows Script Host, VBScript, and JScript, which come bundled with Windows? OK, they're scripting languages rather than full-fledged programming languages, but you can do a lot with them. (They were made as a more powerful replacement for batch files, not just for use within web pages.)
The downsides, of course, are that a) they only work with Windows (naturally); and b) they're a security risk.
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I liked Xmarks because I like running different Linux distros off of live media. Most of them included Firefox as the default web browser. Adding Xmarks was a quick, easy, and reliable way to get your bookmarks into Firefox. I also have a bunch of Linux distros installed on my hard drive and Xmarks was a good way to synchronize bookmarks between them. So I'll miss it when it's gone.
As someone else mentioned, Xmarks wasn't the same after Firefox switched to the "WebExtensions" API. For example, among other things, the new version would bother you via popup to put in your username and password multiple times during a Firefox session, even though it was set to remember them. It would sometimes list all your bookmarks twice after a synchronization. And it wouldn't delete bookmarks that you told it to delete.
So I'm not surprised LastPass is discontinuing Xmarks; it didn't seem like it was putting much effort into it lately anyway. For now, I'm using Firefox's sync, but I'll be looking for an extension with more features.
Guns are tools made to kill. BitTorrent isn't.
What a stupid question.
Because Xubuntu users want to have only the Xfce desktop, without having to install the Unity desktop first, which, if you're never going to use it, means you're just wasting hard disk space.
What an odd point of view. Linux Mint got hacked through Wordpress running on its web site. They weren't "slow to handle security problems"; they dealt with it as soon as they found out about it, which was almost immediately. And If you had checked the MD5 checksum of the hacked ISO, you would have seen that there was a problem with it.
As its leader, Clement Lefebvre, wrote in response to a comment on his blog, "...we’ll probably also contract a security firm to look into the bottom of this for us, we’re software developers not intrusion experts."
Take your idea to its logical extreme, and we would just have one Linux distro with a number of different desktop environments. Nobody wants that, except you, maybe.
...from the earth before it's all over, as long as it has the potential of making a profit.
If the Keystone XL pipeline isn't approved by this president, just wait a few years for energy prices to get higher and fossil fuels to be more scarce. It'll eventually happen.
It seems pretty obvious (to me, anyway; I'm a home user rather than an IT worker) that in Windows 8, Microsoft wanted to try to appeal to both tablet users with Metro, and to desktop users with the traditional desktop, all in one release. So they bolted a tablet interface to a desktop interface. It's sort of an odd combination, especially if you're new to Metro. Since the OS boots into Metro, it also seems pretty obvious that Microsoft's design choices wouldn't please business users or home users with large, non-touchscreen monitors who aren't interested in their computers looking like a tablet.
As part of its marketing campaign for IE 11, Microsoft's made Windows 8.1 Pro Preview virtual machine images available, so it's easy to try it out for yourself. The Start button takes you back to the Metro start screen, unless you right-click on it, in which case it brings up a context menu allowing you access to some of the more technical aspects of the OS (i.e. control panel; power shell; etc.).
I haven't played with it enough yet to find the setting that allows you to boot straight into the desktop rather than Metro, but even so, it's just one click to go to the desktop. But what they really to make desktop users happy is a Start menu button application launcher, and if you want that, AFAIK, you still have to install a 3rd-party utility.
I'd rather have articles written by experts in their respective fields rather than written by geeks. "Geek" != "Expert".
Exactly. My first reaction was, "Why is Megan Garber so ugly?" This article's title seemed to be designed to push people's buttons.
Honestly, has it ever occurred to you that Wikipedia was ugly? Did you ever go to Wikipedia because of the way it looked? And did you ever think someone would get paid for a magazine article about her opinion of how ugly Wikipedia is?
You can, obviously, keep trolling your own "news" blog by publishing bullshit like this:
But you'll have one less reader, in short order.
"Brains Optimized for Browsing" can only mean one thing: zombies optimized for browsing.
(Talk about a case of "soft inheritance"...)
As you imply, "The Internet" didn't get John Derbyshire fired. John Derbyshire's racist views got John Derbyshire fired.
I'm no expert in the history of OLPC, but everything I read about them seemed to indicate that they were all about giving these devices to needy children. I never saw anything written about how, exactly, these devices were supposed to make these childrens' lives better, once they got them. It just seemed to be assumed that, once kids had these computers, their school experience would somehow change for the better.
It would seem to me that a lot more time and money was spent getting these devices in the hands of needy kids than was spent on plans to use them to actually achieve positive change.
Hey, I'm corny and socially awkward, too! Where the hell is my venture capital firm?
Seriously, I think Mitt's unpopular because he's one heck of a flip-flopper who says quite a lot of mendacious things, not because of the way he looks or acts.
At least that's true for liberals. I suspect that, with conservative voters, he's probably unpopular because he's just not conservative enough.
On cursory inspection, Mandriva's new UI uses a GTK+ style, an icon theme based on Elementary, a full-screen launcher similar to Unity's Dash, and a modified version of Dolphin with no menu bar (and no way to enable it). I haven't kept up with why Rosa Labs (page in Russian) has taken over Mandriva UI development, but they have made their mark.
Is the full-screen icon picker, as in gnome-shell, Unity, and now "Simple Welcome" in Mandriva the wave of the future, or just a passing fad? (Personally, I prefer menus.)
Having read the Ars Technica story, I'm disturbed and maybe even a little frightened by the DOJ's actions against Mr. Adekeye. They're determined to take away his freedom and his money while acting as the muscle for Cisco's legal department.
This, along with other recent ridiculous cases, like the trumped-up charges against Aaron Swartz, have left me wondering, what can a US citizen do to change this situation?
It's a theory that's been contested. One citation: NYT Magazine article, What Happened to Air France Flight 447?, page 4. Look for the discussion of the pitot probes.
What interests me is the bias of the TechCrunch article, which is along the lines of "powerful attorneys general bully a beleaguered business because it makes them look good." WTF? Why is it assumed that Topix is unfairly under attack from the government, and the attorneys general are only doing what they're doing in order to bolster their careers?
The articles didn't give me a lot to go on, and I've never heard of Topix before, so I have to generalize. Lots of forums are moderated in one way or another, but this is the first time I've heard of one that turned "express moderation" into a profit center. But the point is, I don't start out assuming businesses are the "good guys" and the attorneys general are the "bad guys". My assumption would be that if 33 attorneys general are trying to get a company to change its behavior, they're doing it because they must have gotten quite a few complaints, not because they're attention whores. Businesses generally aren't looking out for my interests; they're looking to make money. I'll take the attorneys general over businesses any day, even if that causes butthurt for CEOs like Chris Tolles.
You don't "allow" anyone to make a correct judgment by presenting things from both sides. Just because you present both sides of an issue doesn't mean you've got your facts correct, it just means you're reporting "he said vs. she said," even if what "he said" is demonstrably false. The media does this all the time. You allow people to make a correct judgment first and foremost by researching and presenting the facts correctly.
I have no idea whether the things the author of the Vista/DRM article wrote are true. For that, I hope to get clarification from other /. posters! It's obvious the author thinks what Microsoft is doing is bad for consumers and bad for Microsoft. It's also obvious he's using loaded words (aka "spin"). But his argument either falls on its face or stands based on whether his facts are right, not whether he publishes a "balanced" view.
I have the problem of sleeping at random times, too, and I run Debian Sid.
But I've never been locked up. How long were you in jail?
It'd be a bit easier to, if the code it ran, as well as the OS it ran on, was open-source, but even so, any computer made to record votes is suspect.
The comparison of a voting computer to an ATM is interesting. ATMs made withdrawing and depositing money without a human bank teller present ubiquitous. But when you use one, you authenticate yourself to the machine, first by having a bank card, and second by inputting a PIN. Your picture is taken. The machines have tamper alarms. The results of using an ATM are instantly verifiable, if you withdraw cash, or almost instantly, if you deposit money, by checking your balance online. With a voting computer, on the other hand, you don't authenticate yourself to the machine (do you really want a "national ID card"? I don't); there's usually no one watching what you're doing while you vote; and there's no way to verify the results (AFAIK, you usually don't get a receipt -- and even if you did, how do you know someone hasn't hacked the machine?). I don't know if these things have tamper alarms, but haven't heard that they do.
In short, there's no reason to throw a high-tech solution at a problem like how to record votes, when existing low(er)-tech solutions do the job just as well, and are less prone to tampering.
Fortunately, my state does vote-by-mail. If any state that's decided to use computerized voting machines has an initiative petition process, I'd encourage the citizens of that state to write a petition to ban their use.
Aha!
(OK, close.)
I've seen that on billboards in my town. Do "1 in 5 children" have Internet (or AOL) access? Of the ones that do regularly use the Internet, do "1 in 5" use instant messaging or chatroom software? If not, how, exactly, do they get "solicited"? Or does that phrase mean, "Of the children who use the Internet, and who also go in chatrooms, 1 in 5 have been solicited"? And how the hell would you know? Pass out a certain number of surveys to third-graders, then extrapolate?
Sounds bogus to me. And if not bogus, totally without context.
It didn't matter that he's the kind of guy who's got cookies and scripting disabled in his browser, who never downloads warez or music, who's always careful of the software he puts on his computer, etc. In fact, about all he uses his dialup connection for is email. But that was enough.
These days, you need to install a software firewall -- one that can block both incoming and outgoing connections -- before you connect to the Internet.
Another point: With each new version of Windows, Microsoft implements more Un*x-like security features. (They have to be "turned on," though. Most people still log in with Administrator rights, which defeats the purpose.) Also, Windows XP SP2 even includes a half-assed firewall. But in Windows 98, your entire filesystem is open to anyone who hacks in.
Point is, using an older version of Windows is probably going to make you more vulnerable, not less.
The other odd thing about both the TV series and the movie is that they never kill the bad guy. Maybe that's so they could do another show with them, but still...you just know a guy like Niska (the torturer from the TV series) is going to regain his strength and cause more problems in the future. Just shoot him, for God's sake!
My theory about why Wash and Book got killed in the movie is simply that neither actor was prepared to do a sequel. (Maybe someone more in the know could comment on that...) Maybe their deaths would have bothered me more had I seen the TV series before the movie. Still, it's Whedon's show.
The writing for both the movie and the TV series is uniformly good, the dialogue is witty, and the action, often intense. The movie seemed like an extended TV episode, which is not a put-down of the movie but high praise for the TV series. Good stuff.
It's more about business deals usually being a matter of civil law, not criminal law. Law enforcement doesn't get involved in civil matters; not that certain things aren't illegal, it's that it's up to you to sue in civil court. Unless Mr. Bad Businessman actually defrauds people, say, by taking their money and not shipping them anything, law enforcement's not going to get involved.
It complicates things even more when it's interstate commerce. And, there's most likely a monetory threshold below which the feds (probably) aren't going to take action. Someone mentioned $5,000 earlier.
You've never heard of Windows Script Host, VBScript, and JScript, which come bundled with Windows? OK, they're scripting languages rather than full-fledged programming languages, but you can do a lot with them. (They were made as a more powerful replacement for batch files, not just for use within web pages.)
The downsides, of course, are that a) they only work with Windows (naturally); and b) they're a security risk.