>"Republicans Block Latest Attempt At Curbing NSA Power"
Really? But let's see how it did in the House:
R yes: 179 D yes: 124 R no: 51 D no: 70
So in the house, a lot more Republicans voted yes than Democrats. And a lot less Republicans voted no than Democrats. So it seems like if there were a powerful Republication partisanship agenda on this, how does one explain the vote in the House?
In matters such as these (government spying, civil liberties, etc), I have noticed that things are rarely clearly partisan.
A move to multi-process in Firefox can be bad news for anyone using multiuser thin client environments (uncommon but still used). On a shared system, you generally want to have control over which applications can use multiple processes, lest they can go runaway and eat up all cores and resources on a system. Traditional tools such as "nice" don't scale well with single applications that can throw off dozens of threads. As an example- JAVA is *extremely* hostile in a a thin client environment (not just CPU, but RAM too). Just one person starting it can "pause" a 24 core Xeon server for dozens or hundreds of users due to improper assumptions about resource availability.
So I really do hope that Mozilla makes the number of processes allowed ADJUSTABLE in the settings....
> "What 2014 shows most clearly is the power of partisanship in our elections.
Duh. That is why NOTHING is going to change until we have preferential voting, such as instant runoff. Then people can vote their conscience and get new blood into power (independents, libertarians, other parties, etc) without fear of a party opposite of their view being unopposed. Otherwise it is just business as usual.
I *HATE* changing time and pretty much everyone I know hates it too.
It is stupid, outdated, and without merit. It wastes resources and time. It causes scheduling nightmares. It is a serious health problem for many people.
We need to just either stay on summer time or winter time and leave it the hell alone. My vote would be summer time.
>"Is it worse than the data collection recently reported in a test version of Windows?"
Both are infinitely more than what is collected in any of my Linux distros. I find this trend of companies spying on users totally unacceptable (and yes, throw Google in there too).
>"one could argue that the United States is hobbled by an outdated constitution in responding to epidemics. State and local jurisdictions vary tremendously in their public health capabilities."
One could also argue that this is EXACTLY the way it is supposed to be. USA States are SUPPOSED to have control over most of what happens in their area and not be puppets to a huge, inefficient, out-of-touch, expensive, slow, borderline fascist, federal government overloard.
Exactly. And I have to point out to people all the time that it is, in fact, Apple MacOS 10 (ten) not "ecks". It is so stupid and redundant when I hear/see something like "OS X version 10.3"... it is not "Operating system version 10 version 10.3" it is really just MacOS 10.3.
Apple has marketed their stupid version number into something they can not and will never change now. There will probably never be a "MacOS XI" and "MacOS X version 11" makes no sense.
Yeah right, because let's remove SSL that 99.9% of all users REQUIRE (not want or like, but require) and compare that to debugger mode, which is something maybe 0.1% of users care about.
I do not want Tor "integrated" in Firefox. Nor should ANYONE. This is why they make addons and extensions. I am getting tired of them adding more and more to Firefox. The whole POINT of Firefox was to be lean and fast and shed all the "integrated" extras of previous browsers. We don't need it to continue bloating up, taking more space, getting more complicated, and using more resources.
1) Stop adding stuff that can be in an addon instead. 2) Stop trying to turn Firefox into Chrome. 3) Stop removing user settings to allow users to control what they want (like placement of tabs and such). 4) Remove firebug/debugger, whatever you call it and put it in an addon where it belongs.
You can't determine if someone is a "good driver" from a phone. PERIOD. Speed, G-forces, where you are driving, when you are driving, NONE OF THAT determines if you are
1) Leaving reasonable following distance 2) In control 3) Alert and paying attention 4) Using proper signaling 5) Courteous 6) Familiar with the limits of function of the vehicle 7) Defensive/predictive
etc. They seem to think that if you brake hard, accelerate faster than some "typical norm", or corner too hard, you are a bad driver... and that simply is neither true nor fair.
>"Many drugs with abuse potential such as nicotine and opiates, as well as marijuana, pump up the brain's dopamine levels, which can induce feelings of euphoria."
Exactly how does one "abuse" nicotine? What ridiculous grasping to put nicotine into the same sentence as opiates and marijuana when it comes to getting "high". It is also never used for pain killing. You might as well have included caffeine and sugar in the list. It blows the credibility of the article and makes it seem totally desperate.
If wanting to be alert and have good sleep patterns, then you would do well to not use caffeine at all. It is not some miracle, it is like any other drug- it builds dependence and nothing is "free"... the energy you might gain is made up for by energy lost later.
I know this sentiment might not be a popular view (apparently) in the tech crowd, what with coffee, tea, caffeine pills, caffeinated sodas, caffeinated soap and other such nonsense.
My issue is that they were comparing on-line hard drive backup to off-line bluray but with an expensive and fancy robot system. Which is not quite a "fair" comparison. The Bluray drives also have to be connected and use power. The robot uses power. A spun down stand-by hard drive uses only about 0.75 watts! That means you could have half a PETABYTE of ONLINE storage for about the power of a single traditional lightbulb.
At the rate hard drive density keeps going up, it seems optical storage just can't keep up. We have seen this happen with CD, then DVD, and now bluray. Doesn't help that the prices on bluray discs were kept way too high for far too long.
Hard drives are now 4TB for $150! Bluray is still around $1/disc for quality, but each is just 25GB. That means you need 160 discs to equal one hard drive that costs slightly less, writes and reads a hell of a lot faster, and actually takes up considerably less space.
I am not saying hard drives for backups is ideal in all cases, but it certainly is a much more attractive option in many ways.
> "the Blu-ray system doesn't need to be powered when the discs aren't in use, it uses 80% less power than the hard-drive arrangement, cutting overall costs in half."
Say what? When my backup hard drives are not being used, they also use zero power because they are not plugged in. And when they ARE plugged in, they "power down" after a few min of no usage, which I think is like 1% of normal power.
The density of storage for bluray is also not better than hard drives, and the writing is much slower. I also don't see how transport is so much better than laptop hard drives. Bluray MIGHT be cheaper, depending on how you value your criteria... and the discs are more rugged (if that even matters).
My major problem with is with ANY content- ads or not, that has autonomous animation. I can't stand it. Doesn't matter how big or small, I can't "tune out" something moving in my peripheral vision.
I wouldn't mind small and non-animated ads, without timebombs or flyouts or mouseovers, but it seems like those just don't exist anymore. So I feel I am FORCED to browse with Adblock.
>"Here's where the problem lays: It's law enforcement that's pushing so hard for these kill switches. "
Yeah, like I have been warning people for years anytime the topic comes up. Government misuse. Security nightmare when it gets hacked. Etc. They just say I am paranoid or "tin foil" or whatnot.
I guess I can remind them about my warnings over the last decade about the fed and big business spying on USA citizens. I am amazed at how little most people care about privacy/freedom.
Now, let me get back to reading this letter I got from State Farm today explaining how wonderful it will be to save "up to 5%" on my State Farm car insurance if I am willing to plug in a device that constantly tracks my braking, acceleration, turns, speed, distance, and location.
Email is the common denominator in electronic communication. Period. Nothing else can match it when it comes to being well known, compatible with everything, and even its flexibility. Spam sucks, and there are still some issues with the way people USE Email (or incorrectly use it), but it is *the* way business communicates now. I would be crippled at work without Email.
If you want to talk about a dying communications technology, that would be facsimile. Our fax volume is a small fraction of what it once was. Still important to have around, but people go out of their way to avoid it now. We have large scan-to-PDF-EMail copiers all over, making it so much more convenient, too.
I really love my WRT54GL running Toastman Tomato. "It just works"- it is rock solid and does what I want. Sure it is not super fast, but for regular stuff it is fine. I liked it so much I installed dozens of them at work and directed my friends and family to use them also.
I need to knock on wood... not a SINGLE one has failed or had problems. They stay up "forever" without hanging or needed to be reset, even after seeing tons of various devices connected. Plus they were dirt cheap and have real antennas and with real connectors (so I can and do use different antennas for different applications). Just don't use the stock firmware- it is unreliable. It freaks me out that you can still actually buy the ancient things-- they are just that popular.
It is a tall order to find a suitable, more modern replacement. I have been on the lookout but haven't seen anything quite at the same level that could "carry on the torch". Some say Buffalo.
Slashdot Mirror
Shouldn't this article be tagged "MS-Windows"? The download is an .exe file (which is exactly what I expected)
>"Republicans Block Latest Attempt At Curbing NSA Power"
Really? But let's see how it did in the House:
R yes: 179 D yes: 124
R no: 51 D no: 70
So in the house, a lot more Republicans voted yes than Democrats. And a lot less Republicans voted no than Democrats. So it seems like if there were a powerful Republication partisanship agenda on this, how does one explain the vote in the House?
In matters such as these (government spying, civil liberties, etc), I have noticed that things are rarely clearly partisan.
A move to multi-process in Firefox can be bad news for anyone using multiuser thin client environments (uncommon but still used). On a shared system, you generally want to have control over which applications can use multiple processes, lest they can go runaway and eat up all cores and resources on a system. Traditional tools such as "nice" don't scale well with single applications that can throw off dozens of threads. As an example- JAVA is *extremely* hostile in a a thin client environment (not just CPU, but RAM too). Just one person starting it can "pause" a 24 core Xeon server for dozens or hundreds of users due to improper assumptions about resource availability.
So I really do hope that Mozilla makes the number of processes allowed ADJUSTABLE in the settings....
> "What 2014 shows most clearly is the power of partisanship in our elections.
Duh. That is why NOTHING is going to change until we have preferential voting, such as instant runoff. Then people can vote their conscience and get new blood into power (independents, libertarians, other parties, etc) without fear of a party opposite of their view being unopposed. Otherwise it is just business as usual.
http://www.fairvote.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I...
I *HATE* changing time and pretty much everyone I know hates it too.
It is stupid, outdated, and without merit.
It wastes resources and time.
It causes scheduling nightmares.
It is a serious health problem for many people.
We need to just either stay on summer time or winter time and leave it the hell alone. My vote would be summer time.
>"Is it worse than the data collection recently reported in a test version of Windows?"
Both are infinitely more than what is collected in any of my Linux distros. I find this trend of companies spying on users totally unacceptable (and yes, throw Google in there too).
>" It is a slick animation and if you have used OS X [(MacOS 10)], it is similar to the one used to collapse windows back in to the dock."
You mean like the one we have been using in Compiz/Beryl in Linux and then in KDE under Linux for many years?? Yawn.
>"one could argue that the United States is hobbled by an outdated constitution in responding to epidemics. State and local jurisdictions vary tremendously in their public health capabilities."
One could also argue that this is EXACTLY the way it is supposed to be. USA States are SUPPOSED to have control over most of what happens in their area and not be puppets to a huge, inefficient, out-of-touch, expensive, slow, borderline fascist, federal government overloard.
Exactly. And I have to point out to people all the time that it is, in fact, Apple MacOS 10 (ten) not "ecks". It is so stupid and redundant when I hear/see something like "OS X version 10.3"... it is not "Operating system version 10 version 10.3" it is really just MacOS 10.3.
Apple has marketed their stupid version number into something they can not and will never change now. There will probably never be a "MacOS XI" and "MacOS X version 11" makes no sense.
Yeah right, because let's remove SSL that 99.9% of all users REQUIRE (not want or like, but require) and compare that to debugger mode, which is something maybe 0.1% of users care about.
And TOR would be maybe 0.01%?
I think your interpretation needs a lot of work.
I do not want Tor "integrated" in Firefox. Nor should ANYONE. This is why they make addons and extensions. I am getting tired of them adding more and more to Firefox. The whole POINT of Firefox was to be lean and fast and shed all the "integrated" extras of previous browsers. We don't need it to continue bloating up, taking more space, getting more complicated, and using more resources.
1) Stop adding stuff that can be in an addon instead.
2) Stop trying to turn Firefox into Chrome.
3) Stop removing user settings to allow users to control what they want (like placement of tabs and such).
4) Remove firebug/debugger, whatever you call it and put it in an addon where it belongs.
It is just as strong in the non-francophone world.
It pretty much is. Everyone I knew that used Mandriva switched to Mageia, including myself.
http://www.mageia.org/
It is consistently in the top 4 on distrowatch. Mandriva is something like #46 now.
>"in order to offer good driver incentives"
You can't determine if someone is a "good driver" from a phone. PERIOD. Speed, G-forces, where you are driving, when you are driving, NONE OF THAT determines if you are
1) Leaving reasonable following distance
2) In control
3) Alert and paying attention
4) Using proper signaling
5) Courteous
6) Familiar with the limits of function of the vehicle
7) Defensive/predictive
etc. They seem to think that if you brake hard, accelerate faster than some "typical norm", or corner too hard, you are a bad driver... and that simply is neither true nor fair.
Nicotine probably causes less harm to the human body than caffeine or sugar. Perhaps you are thinking about something else?
>"Many drugs with abuse potential such as nicotine and opiates, as well as marijuana, pump up the brain's dopamine levels, which can induce feelings of euphoria."
Exactly how does one "abuse" nicotine? What ridiculous grasping to put nicotine into the same sentence as opiates and marijuana when it comes to getting "high". It is also never used for pain killing. You might as well have included caffeine and sugar in the list. It blows the credibility of the article and makes it seem totally desperate.
If wanting to be alert and have good sleep patterns, then you would do well to not use caffeine at all. It is not some miracle, it is like any other drug- it builds dependence and nothing is "free"... the energy you might gain is made up for by energy lost later.
I know this sentiment might not be a popular view (apparently) in the tech crowd, what with coffee, tea, caffeine pills, caffeinated sodas, caffeinated soap and other such nonsense.
My issue is that they were comparing on-line hard drive backup to off-line bluray but with an expensive and fancy robot system. Which is not quite a "fair" comparison. The Bluray drives also have to be connected and use power. The robot uses power. A spun down stand-by hard drive uses only about 0.75 watts! That means you could have half a PETABYTE of ONLINE storage for about the power of a single traditional lightbulb.
At the rate hard drive density keeps going up, it seems optical storage just can't keep up. We have seen this happen with CD, then DVD, and now bluray. Doesn't help that the prices on bluray discs were kept way too high for far too long.
Hard drives are now 4TB for $150! Bluray is still around $1/disc for quality, but each is just 25GB. That means you need 160 discs to equal one hard drive that costs slightly less, writes and reads a hell of a lot faster, and actually takes up considerably less space.
I am not saying hard drives for backups is ideal in all cases, but it certainly is a much more attractive option in many ways.
>"Their data can be restored more quickly"
Than a hard drive? I think not.
> "the Blu-ray system doesn't need to be powered when the discs aren't in use, it uses 80% less power than the hard-drive arrangement, cutting overall costs in half."
Say what? When my backup hard drives are not being used, they also use zero power because they are not plugged in. And when they ARE plugged in, they "power down" after a few min of no usage, which I think is like 1% of normal power.
The density of storage for bluray is also not better than hard drives, and the writing is much slower. I also don't see how transport is so much better than laptop hard drives. Bluray MIGHT be cheaper, depending on how you value your criteria... and the discs are more rugged (if that even matters).
I couldn't agree with your post more.
My major problem with is with ANY content- ads or not, that has autonomous animation. I can't stand it. Doesn't matter how big or small, I can't "tune out" something moving in my peripheral vision.
I wouldn't mind small and non-animated ads, without timebombs or flyouts or mouseovers, but it seems like those just don't exist anymore. So I feel I am FORCED to browse with Adblock.
>"Here's where the problem lays: It's law enforcement that's pushing so hard for these kill switches. "
Yeah, like I have been warning people for years anytime the topic comes up. Government misuse. Security nightmare when it gets hacked. Etc. They just say I am paranoid or "tin foil" or whatnot.
I guess I can remind them about my warnings over the last decade about the fed and big business spying on USA citizens. I am amazed at how little most people care about privacy/freedom.
Now, let me get back to reading this letter I got from State Farm today explaining how wonderful it will be to save "up to 5%" on my State Farm car insurance if I am willing to plug in a device that constantly tracks my braking, acceleration, turns, speed, distance, and location.
Email is the common denominator in electronic communication. Period. Nothing else can match it when it comes to being well known, compatible with everything, and even its flexibility. Spam sucks, and there are still some issues with the way people USE Email (or incorrectly use it), but it is *the* way business communicates now. I would be crippled at work without Email.
If you want to talk about a dying communications technology, that would be facsimile. Our fax volume is a small fraction of what it once was. Still important to have around, but people go out of their way to avoid it now. We have large scan-to-PDF-EMail copiers all over, making it so much more convenient, too.
If it is browser based, is it really THAT hard to "support"? Just wondering.
BTW- as far as I am aware, no distro includes or supports Chrome, anyway... only Chromium (which is open source).
I really love my WRT54GL running Toastman Tomato. "It just works"- it is rock solid and does what I want. Sure it is not super fast, but for regular stuff it is fine. I liked it so much I installed dozens of them at work and directed my friends and family to use them also.
I need to knock on wood... not a SINGLE one has failed or had problems. They stay up "forever" without hanging or needed to be reset, even after seeing tons of various devices connected. Plus they were dirt cheap and have real antennas and with real connectors (so I can and do use different antennas for different applications). Just don't use the stock firmware- it is unreliable. It freaks me out that you can still actually buy the ancient things-- they are just that popular.
It is a tall order to find a suitable, more modern replacement. I have been on the lookout but haven't seen anything quite at the same level that could "carry on the torch". Some say Buffalo.