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User: symbolset

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  1. Re:I like Unity on Ask Slashdot: Unity/Gnome 3/Win8/iOS — Do We Really Hate All New GUIs? · · Score: 1

    I just started back on Ubuntu, and am using Unity also. I don't hate it but adding ClassicMenuIndicator and the taskbar made me more comfortable. You have to customize anything you work with if you've been at the keyboard for over a year - it's just human nature to become comfortable with familiar tools and toys.

  2. Re:How about you build some cars first? on Tesla To Build a Rapid-Charging Station Between LA and SF · · Score: 1

    Too late for this car maybe. I was thinking something automated like a car wash: you pull into the bay and it unlatches the battery cartridges from below somehow, then lifts in new fresh ones. Weight is not an issue as it's all done by machine. The old ones go to a charging station. Over in seconds and on your way.

    Naturally you wouldn't own the battery in this case - or you could have "battery life points" or something.

  3. Re:How about you build some cars first? on Tesla To Build a Rapid-Charging Station Between LA and SF · · Score: 1

    Maybe more useful would be a "dead battery for fresh" automatic exchange station.

  4. Re:It's backwards on Oxford Professor Taken To Task For Linking Internet Use To Autism · · Score: 1

    I was exaggerating. He tested at 120wpm. It's insanely fast. A shame they don't value that skill as much as they once did.

  5. Re:Buy the department of justice on Music Industry Pushing For BT To Block Pirate Bay · · Score: 1

    Localization is left to the reader.

  6. Re:Bloatware on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Won't Fit On a CD · · Score: 1

    There are "light" distros. Try mini pentoo, or Mint.

  7. Re:Bloatware on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Won't Fit On a CD · · Score: 1

    The standard installation for Windows 7 Pro requires 20GB. With Office, 30GB. Do you see where these things are different?

  8. Re:Bloatware on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Won't Fit On a CD · · Score: 1

    Your other issues are way off, but the Shuttleworth thing: Shuttleworth locked his future needs, and is now playing with the optional bits. Like many of the captains of current industry, if his bet goes bust he's not going to be asking for handouts.

  9. It's backwards on Oxford Professor Taken To Task For Linking Internet Use To Autism · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Near as I can tell it's the aspies causing the games, not the other way around. If the game's not inhumanly complex and impossible for mere mortals to complete it's savaged in the press before it's even launched, and a commercial failure. You have to have perfect recall and reflexes that border on precognition to play some of these games. It's been like this for something like fifteen years. I couldn't beat Zelda on the Nintendo 64 even now.

    Maybe I'm just old and slow. Games aren't my thing. My eight year old son used to laugh at my feeble gaming skills in Unreal Tournament. Now and the he'd let me snipe him just so I'd continue to play. When he got tired of killing me he would just follow me around and if I turned about suddenly, wax me on the spot. He's voting now - not the online poll, gamer ranking kind of voting - he's Of Age. I've got a second grader that regularly slays me on some Wii Mario game, when I'm really trying. Maybe it's just me. I think I'm an above average guy, but what these kids can do - it scares me.

    I was introduced to computers in what's now called "middle school" but back then was called "junior high". Back then a computer was a pretty serious thing, demanding respect and training before you approached it. I was precocious, and got in this game early. Now it's an environmental thing. My youngest was online, playing games at two years old. My first grandson adored Angry Birds on my phone and Android tablet at 18 months. My oldest son, just now 18, types 150 wpm on the crappiest keyboard available - not because he's deliberately trained for that specialty, but because the keyboard is how he's communicated for as long as he's been talking to people. The keyboard is his tongue.

  10. Re:Some suggestions on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Won't Fit On a CD · · Score: 1

    >As for farmville on ubuntu, it works already not found a facebook game that doesn't.

    I didn't know this. Just tried it and it works.

  11. Re:Some suggestions on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Won't Fit On a CD · · Score: 1

    The only thing you can get from these metrics is that "none of these things are uncommon". They're not scientific. For Linux on the desktop though, "not uncommon" is a step up.

  12. Re:Buy the department of justice on Music Industry Pushing For BT To Block Pirate Bay · · Score: 1

    It's not about whether or not your politicians are crooked. It's about finding their preferred flavor of cookie.

  13. Re:Some suggestions on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Won't Fit On a CD · · Score: 1

    The kinds of guerrilla marketing you're referring to--people do that kind of stuff for free, willingly for things they believe in.

    So sell them stickers. Make some money while you further the cause.

    >Shuttleworth... whatever. Stuff changes. It's got to change to be popular, and this might not be the best possible change but it's the best guess. Get over it. Somebody's got to lead, and you won't do.

  14. Buy the department of justice on Music Industry Pushing For BT To Block Pirate Bay · · Score: 2

    Have they considered buying the UK equivalent of department of justice, like RIAA did in the US? That's a well-proven method of greasing the wheels to get what you want, and quite cost-effective. A few millions in political contributions lead to billions in profits.

  15. Bloatware on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Won't Fit On a CD · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The Linux kernel is only a few megabytes. The whole thing fits easily in the L2 or L3 cache of a modern server processor. That's Really Freaking Important for geeks like me who have to build stuff at scale.

    I want to ignore your troll, but I can't. You raise an important issue, even if your motivations are suspect.

    For 20 or 30 years we've had the meme "Intel giveth and Microsoft taketh away." That's shorthand for the fact that Microsoft operating systems grow less performant at the same rate Intel processors grow more performant, and net the progress is zero. It doesn't have to be that way any more.

  16. Some suggestions on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Won't Fit On a CD · · Score: 2

    I was going to respond "get for-pay apps in the Software Center" but then I looked and that's in there now. I just came back from Debian so I didn't know. There needs to be a lot more of these for-pay apps, and they need to not suck. Ubuntu needs commercial apps that make money, and not just a little. They need an "Angry Birds" breakout success story to bait the masses of developers needed to make a successful ecosystem. That's probably the only thing Old Sweaty was ever right about. This isn't going to be a $19.95 app. It's going to be a $1 or free app. And by free I mean "ad supported" - which brings another thing: the Software Center needs to allow ad-supported apps. Yes, I know: they suck. Especially in cases like Angry Birds, where Rovio wouldn't release a sold version on Android for forever because the ad-supported version was raking in far more per install than the for-pay version. But this is the world as it is, not the world as we want it to be, and ad-supported apps and for-pay apps pay developers' mortgages the world 'round.

    When you name your versions after critters official collectible plush toys and figurines in limited editions are a profit center gimme - and they make great spiffs.

    I wanted the taskbar back but I just Googled that and apparently there's something called Tint2 that gave it back to me. Then I wanted the old menu back, and Google gave up classicmenu-indicator. This Unity thing is going to take some getting used to but at least I can now do the things with it now I used to do. I'm all for trying the new stuff, but this was simplified a bit overmuch. I'm sure I'll get over it. I don't know if Google Talk video chat is supported yet - but that's also a needful thing.

    I'm curious as to why if as some others here would say, "nobody uses desktop Linux", there would be about 216,000,000 hits in Google for "Ubuntu". Surely Ubuntu (philosophy) was never that popular. Maybe some marketing money to fight the perception that nobody's using it when in fact a great many are. Or maybe a guerrilla effort involving something like discreet little Ubuntu stickers with just the logo and "Ubuntu.com" that fans could buy for a couple dollars a sheet of 80 1x1" clear waterproof decals we could discreetly affix to things like windows and glass doors, armrests in aircraft and waiting areas, the pages of shared magazines, the lid of a geocache. Kind of like a "Ubuntu fan was here" stamp, but not something that did damage or was hard to remove like the bumper stickers you used to get with RedHat. Wouldn't want to get people in trouble. Thinking about it more, 3x5 cards with 60 1/2" square stickers would be better as they're more pocketable and discreet - but the website has to have a background in a contrasting color if you're doing the transparent thing because functional readability is more important than artistic purity.

    Ubuntu could use a Netflix app, or maybe just an Android VM with the Android Marketplace so I can use all my Android apps in Ubuntu. I could develop Android apps on the darned thing, I don't see why I can't have a Cyanogen for Ubuntu. Then I could have all the same apps on my phone, my Transformer tablet, my PC. That would rock.

    Ubuntu needs an OEM to build and ship a purpose-built line of Ubuntu PCs globally including the US. Dell is doing this in China, but Dell's not going to push this in the first world. It has to be an OEM that isn't beholden to Microsoft so HP, Dell, Asus, Acer, Lenovo, Toshiba and Apple are out. Maybe HTC, ZTE, Samsung, Motorola Mobility or some other company that has publicly credited Android with saving the company would give it a go. Maybe AOC, LG, NEC or Viewsonic also - they want to play in the new PC game but are reluctant to do the no-margin Windows desktop thing. Some of that last bunch are cool because they also make TV's and/or monitors, and a fanless Ubuntu embedded in the monitor or HDTV would totally rock as a thin client as well as a PC. Some of them already have Android tablets. Ubuntu's b

  17. Fuck you on EU Scientists Working On Laser To Rip a Hole In Spacetime · · Score: 1

    As I'm reading this there are are 226 comments on this article. NOT ONE addresses the issues presented, examines the math, argues on the merits. It's all about whim and whimsy, and talking points. Kids, I am dissapoint.

  18. Re:Too Soon on HP Slate 2: Brilliant or Bust? · · Score: 1

    I love my Transformer. Asus did kick off the netbok fad with Linux and convert it to Windows to die. Maybe they've learned from this. Or maybe this is a feint to grab up the Android tablet market and try to convert it to W8 later. I dunno. But I'm going to get me a Transformer Prime before it's too late.

  19. Re:Will not work on HP Slate 2: Brilliant or Bust? · · Score: 1

    Or three years, depending...

  20. Re:outdated? on HP Slate 2: Brilliant or Bust? · · Score: 1

    It's Windows on a tablet. Those things go together like cyanide and peanut butter.

  21. Not the same product on HP Slate 2: Brilliant or Bust? · · Score: 2

    The new one has an even slower processor, is almost twice as thick, and weighs almost twice as much.

  22. Re:Bust on HP Slate 2: Brilliant or Bust? · · Score: 1

    It is actually 0.6% of daily sales this week, having declined from a peak of about 1.8 in February.

  23. Windows 8 on HP Slate 2: Brilliant or Bust? · · Score: 1

    How about we worry about Windows 8 when it's an actual operating system shipping in actual products, or at least a RTM version? We had developer previews of Longhorn for about five years as it was repeatedly refactored, and then they shipped Vista. Right now people who are thinking about buying this thing need to consider what it is now, what it can do now. They don't need to be thinking about stuff that someday might - or might not - happen.

  24. Re:Bust on HP Slate 2: Brilliant or Bust? · · Score: 2

    BTW: the first gen Transformer has Polaris Office standard, and edits Word, Excel and Powerpoint documents just fine. They're selling something like 1.6 million of them this year, which is no iPad but a billion dollars in first year sales for a breakout product isn't exactly a failure either.

  25. Re:More accurately... on PROTECT-IP Makes Its Way To the Floors of Congress · · Score: 1

    As much as I admire them Jefferson and Washington were both 1%'ers who wanted among other things relief from taxes on their businesses.