I heard all of the great press, so I downloaded Mint 11, which was okay, and Mint 12, which is so horribly bad I fed the DVD to my paper shredder.
I had no great problems with 12. It worked.
Too bad the Mint team needed to spend all that time re-inventing the things that were stripped out of Gnome3 rather than improving the distro. But they largely succeeded.
I DO want a dock, (depending on what you call a dock). Taskbar, TaskManager type of thing, Quick Launch bar, etc: OK, almost essential.
KDE Activities: a stunning failure rammed thru by a pigheaded minority to meet a need that did not exist,replacing perfectly good alternatives, and in the process, alienated the vast majority of the KDE user base to the extent that latest releases pretty well banishes it to invisibility.
But I'm not sure KDE Activities qualify as a DOCK.
Gnome 3 has nasty visual artifacts on Ubuntu 11.10 with my notebook's ATI chip.
I appreciate all Shuttleworth has done for the Linux community, but he's really got to take quality more seriously if he wants to win me back to Ubuntu.
Linux Mint seems to work great with Gnome3 and their own Shell extensions. They used it mostly to restore the missing bits that Gnome3 lost. I found it very stable am quite pleased with it. Its no KDE in terms of richness of functionality and flexibility, but its pretty sweet.
I'm starting to like this LinuxMint distro more and more, especially for casual use.
Without people running around with meters, there is no way to know if they draw too much. So basically if the circuit breaker does not trip you can use as much as you want. Get in a row with a bunch of laptops and you can just about draw any wattage.
The power requirements alone must be enormous. Most buildings are simply not wired to handle an inrush of 12000 monitors, and the computers they are hooked to.
It must have required totally separate power structures and a totally separate power feed separate from the building mains. This wasn't held at a typical office building, but rather in an empty-shell type of auditorium.
Check out the air quality in picture 2 vs picture 3.
The free market just kicked in. The drug companies are now playing meet or beat. Translation: competition works. What's wrong with that?
The problem existed PRIOR to the patent expiring, where artificially high prices existed. Go tinker with that set of rules if you dare, but don' blame the free market just because prices come down the minute the market actually becomes free.
When the doctor does not specifically state Dispense As Written, or specifies a chemical name instead of a brand name, pharmacists can legally substitute generics at the patients request. Pharmacies do not always carry every single drug.
Most Docs will not limit prescriptions to a brand name unless there is a medical reason for doing so.
Pfizer is employing unprecedented tactics to hold onto as many Lipitor prescriptions as it can with an aggressive marketing plan and forging deals with insurers, pharmacy benefit managers and patients to meet or beat the price of its generic replacements
As long as the Meet or Beat tactic is used I fail to see the problem. If a pharmacy can get a better price on the original Lipitor, make a profit and still beat the generic price fine by me.
Even if the pharmacy has to sign an exclusivity agreement and not carry the generic but still gets to beat the price, fine.
Not every pharmacy carries every drug, and doctors often allow substitutions,. generic or otherwise. In fact they are encouraged to NOT prescribe brand name drugs. Some states limit this specifically for patients under state programs.
Most drugs that have widely accepted generic equivalences are no longer routinely prescribed with the stipulation of Dispense As Written (DAW), because it raises a red flags with insurance companies and is often a financial burden on patients.
Further, many species, large and small. have been wiped out (or brought under some level of control) without any measurable ill effect at all. Passenger Pigeons, for example. Squab is not on the menu in very many restaurants anymore, but no environmental disasters attributable to the pigeon's absence have resulted.
I doubt mosquitoes compete that much with one-another. They don't prey on each other or contend for food. So simply removing one or two of the more objectionable species won't have that much effect on mosquitoes in the wild.
Further, I don't see flying mosquitoes as a critical source of bird food. Birds are not all that selective and will happily grab a fly or midge if mosquitoes are rare. The food value of a mosquito has got to be very small, not really enough to justify the energy expended on capturing any given insect on the wing.
Having thousands flightless females sitting within a birds-neck-reach on foliage near ponds might actually reduce the efforts required of insect eaters, bring them to those areas, and provide more sources of blood for the flightless female mosquitoes.
Humans would think the population of mosquitoes was reduced, while at the same time birds might find it merely more concentrated.
Other than feasting on warm blooded animals, there is probably no other significant niche that mosquito fill that could not be filled by other insects, so even if some mosquito species are more or less suppressed (eradicated seems un-likely), there are a dozen other insects that will fill the bellies of the the mosquito eaters.
Further, since it is (allegedly) only the female mosquitoes that seek blood, simply reducing the flying ability of females may give the perception that mosquito are reduced without actually killing them off as a species. There are plenty of ground animals that these mosquitoes can bite to obtain the blood they need.
Be careful what you wish for. There was an article - google it - regarding the number of bats killed by wind turbines and the direct cost increase to farmers who had to increase their pesticide usage in response.
Sorry, but that is totally false myth perpetrated by anti-wind power crowd. Modern wind turbines do not kill birds or bats in any great numbers. Ask any farmer who walks around under the turbines on his land. Ask Google.
Not only did they slap Facebook [on the back] for privacy violations, but also Google
They're getting another two years to put things in order before the first audit, then they get to do a half-year-screw-everyone, half-year-clean-up-the-mess between year-long audits.
Further: The settlement is soft on Facebook; there are no fines or criminal penalties.
So in addition to getting away Scott free, they have two years to clean up their act, by which time the opt-ins will be in place but so disguised and muted that users will fall into the same trap.
Facebook users don't care about privacy, the whole point of Facebook is and always has been a meat market method of self promotion. Facebook knows this and will simply make it so limiting to do anything except opt-in that most users will simply check the Opt-In-to-Everything box.
I suspect the OP meant coding gulag, where you won't own anything you develop, essentially a code sweatshop.
Good luck getting off that boat for the promised visits to the US if the US authorities decide they don't like the activities going on out there, or simply become suspicious of the place being uses a an industrial espionage platform with all the trips back and forth to "conferences" etc.
Just because its 12 miles off shore doesn't put it outside of the US Economic Exclusion Zone, which covers far more than fisheries and oil production these days.
Then there is the maintenance issue. A boat is a hole in the water into which you throw money. A big boat is a big hole. It has to be maintained, generators must run, bilges must be pumped. Laundry, kitchens, telecoms. Its expensive. A captain and crew must be onboard 24/7 in case of the emergency, storms, or whatever.
Since the developers are cooped up on board 24/7 you would be occasionally entertained, exercised as well. I can't see this being a fun place to work. The possibility of abuse, is high, and who do you appeal to? How do you get paid?
It's also worth noting that you're talking about nuclear weapons. It can be used to make "dirty" bombs, however.
There are far more readily available sources than dredging up something 6-9 kilometers under the sea. Anyone with the resources to reach something that deep could make a dirty bomb without all the drama of launching a deep sea mission to do so.
One wonders what this guy had in mind as his best case scenario in this endeavor. How did he think this was going to turn out, and in what world does he get to keep the job and his freedom and the money?
http://www.open-mesh.com/ The single band series is.11G mesh, $60 for a router and another $20 for the outdoor enclosure.
Mesh is great in urban environments where property rights restrict you from crossing roads and other people's land. But mesh really makes very little sense in this environment. Its a fairly obscure technology, and getting it fixed and keeping it running may be problematic when the campsite geek's RV pulls out for the season.
Look, they have power to all of these router anyway. Why not STRING the cable or use WIFI over Powerline to feed the routers?
You don' have to trench it in more than 4 inches deep, and you only need to go that deep to keep people from tripping on it. You can hand trench when you get near your pipes and power runs.
I wish the slashdot crowd would stop bashing the lawyers whenever a story about patents, trademarks, copyright, etc is published. How are the corporate lawyers to blame for this? If the legal system makes it possible for commercial actors to compete using patent lawsuits, the other actors are bound to do the same in self defence. It's economically rational.
Right, because lawyers never push the envelope.
There is no law that can't be stretched just a little. Then a little more. Its impossible to write a law so comprehensive that no one can find a way to weasel more out of than was intended.
Instead of finding the line, and backing away from it, lawyers see their job as finding the line and stepping over it just a tiny bit. Then a tiny bit more. Soon its Katy bar the door, with a whole body of court decisions to back them up.
Inventions are the result of needs. Needs are the result of the current economic and technological landscape.
So, at any given moment, most of the world's inventors are experiencing the same set of needs at the same time, and hence tend to produce the same inventions at the same time.
The race to the patent office is common, with people winning by sometimes very narrow margins.
But there are also OTHER legal requirements beyond just being first, not the least of which is non-obviousness. See also KSR vs TeleFlex.
The mere fact that there are multiple solutions appearing nearly simultaneously suggests that the application is OBVIOUS, just as using bricks to build an outhouse.
Then what the hell is this entire story all about? Did you even read the title, let alone the summary?
Some of you people watch way too much TV.
Now go back and read both the summary and the linked article, and try to remember that every local sheriff or municipal police station, doesn't have the option of calling the cia, especially when they're in Britain.
Slashdot Mirror
I heard all of the great press, so I downloaded Mint 11, which was okay, and Mint 12, which is so horribly bad I fed the DVD to my paper shredder.
I had no great problems with 12. It worked.
Too bad the Mint team needed to spend all that time re-inventing the things that were stripped out of Gnome3 rather than improving the distro. But they largely succeeded.
Maybe You do not want a dock.
I DO want a dock, (depending on what you call a dock).
Taskbar, TaskManager type of thing, Quick Launch bar, etc: OK, almost essential.
KDE Activities: a stunning failure rammed thru by a pigheaded minority to meet a need that did not exist,replacing perfectly good alternatives, and in the process, alienated the vast majority of the KDE user base to the extent that latest releases pretty well banishes it to invisibility.
But I'm not sure KDE Activities qualify as a DOCK.
Gnome 3 has nasty visual artifacts on Ubuntu 11.10 with my notebook's ATI chip.
I appreciate all Shuttleworth has done for the Linux community, but he's really got to take quality more seriously if he wants to win me back to Ubuntu.
Linux Mint seems to work great with Gnome3 and their own Shell extensions. They used it mostly to restore the missing bits that Gnome3 lost. I found it very stable am quite pleased with it. Its no KDE in terms of richness of functionality and flexibility, but its pretty sweet.
I'm starting to like this LinuxMint distro more and more, especially for casual use.
Without people running around with meters, there is no way to know if they draw too much.
So basically if the circuit breaker does not trip you can use as much as you want.
Get in a row with a bunch of laptops and you can just about draw any wattage.
Posting a rule is a far cry from rationing.
Been there, done that. 5volts too.
I've run computers complete from batteries.
Its not a problem.
So if you had a point, its totally obscure.
Check out picture 2, and compare to picture 3.
The air in My Mom's basement never looks that bad.
The power requirements alone must be enormous. Most buildings are simply not wired to handle an inrush of 12000 monitors, and the computers they are hooked to.
It must have required totally separate power structures and a totally separate power feed separate from the building mains. This wasn't held at a typical office building, but rather in an empty-shell type of auditorium.
Check out the air quality in picture 2 vs picture 3.
The free market just kicked in. The drug companies are now playing meet or beat. Translation: competition works.
What's wrong with that?
The problem existed PRIOR to the patent expiring, where artificially high prices existed.
Go tinker with that set of rules if you dare, but don' blame the free market just because prices
come down the minute the market actually becomes free.
When the doctor does not specifically state Dispense As Written, or specifies a chemical name instead of a brand name, pharmacists can legally substitute generics at the patients request. Pharmacies do not always carry every single drug.
Most Docs will not limit prescriptions to a brand name unless there is a medical reason for doing so.
Quoting the Summary:
Pfizer is employing unprecedented tactics to hold onto as many Lipitor prescriptions as it can with an aggressive marketing plan and forging deals with insurers, pharmacy benefit managers and patients to meet or beat the price of its generic replacements
As long as the Meet or Beat tactic is used I fail to see the problem. If a pharmacy can get a better price on the original Lipitor, make a profit and still beat the generic price fine by me.
Even if the pharmacy has to sign an exclusivity agreement and not carry the generic but still gets to beat the price, fine.
Not every pharmacy carries every drug, and doctors often allow substitutions,. generic or otherwise. In fact they are encouraged to NOT prescribe brand name drugs. Some states limit this specifically for patients under state programs.
Most drugs that have widely accepted generic equivalences are no longer routinely prescribed with the stipulation of Dispense As Written (DAW), because it raises a red flags with insurance companies and is often a financial burden on patients.
Exactly.
Further, many species, large and small. have been wiped out (or brought under some level of control) without any measurable ill effect at all. Passenger Pigeons, for example. Squab is not on the menu in very many restaurants anymore, but no environmental disasters attributable to the pigeon's absence have resulted.
I doubt mosquitoes compete that much with one-another. They don't prey on each other or contend for food. So simply removing one or two of the more objectionable species won't have that much effect on mosquitoes in the wild.
Further, I don't see flying mosquitoes as a critical source of bird food. Birds are not all that selective and will happily grab a fly or midge if mosquitoes are rare. The food value of a mosquito has got to be very small, not really enough to justify the energy expended on capturing any given insect on the wing.
Having thousands flightless females sitting within a birds-neck-reach on foliage near ponds might actually reduce the efforts required of insect eaters, bring them to those areas, and provide more sources of blood for the flightless female mosquitoes.
Humans would think the population of mosquitoes was reduced, while at the same time birds might find it merely more concentrated.
Other than feasting on warm blooded animals, there is probably no other significant niche that mosquito fill that could not be filled by other insects, so even if some mosquito species are more or less suppressed (eradicated seems un-likely), there are a dozen other insects that will fill the bellies of the the mosquito eaters.
Further, since it is (allegedly) only the female mosquitoes that seek blood, simply reducing the flying ability of females may give the perception that mosquito are reduced without actually killing them off as a species. There are plenty of ground animals that these mosquitoes can bite to obtain the blood they need.
Be careful what you wish for. There was an article - google it - regarding the number of bats killed by wind turbines and the direct cost increase to farmers who had to increase their pesticide usage in response.
Sorry, but that is totally false myth perpetrated by anti-wind power crowd. Modern wind turbines do not kill birds or bats in any great numbers. Ask any farmer who walks around under the turbines on his land. Ask Google.
Why would you need a rectifier bridge on DC at all?
Not only did they slap Facebook [on the back] for privacy violations, but also Google
They're getting another two years to put things in order before the first audit, then they get to do a half-year-screw-everyone, half-year-clean-up-the-mess between year-long audits.
Further: The settlement is soft on Facebook; there are no fines or criminal penalties.
So in addition to getting away Scott free, they have two years to clean up their act, by which time the opt-ins will be in place but so disguised and muted that users will fall into the same trap.
Facebook users don't care about privacy, the whole point of Facebook is and always has been a meat market method of self promotion. Facebook knows this and will simply make it so limiting to do anything except opt-in that most users will simply check the Opt-In-to-Everything box.
I suspect the OP meant coding gulag, where you won't own anything you develop, essentially a code sweatshop.
Good luck getting off that boat for the promised visits to the US if the US authorities decide they don't like the
activities going on out there, or simply become suspicious of the place being uses a an industrial espionage platform
with all the trips back and forth to "conferences" etc.
Just because its 12 miles off shore doesn't put it outside of the US Economic Exclusion Zone, which covers far more than fisheries and oil production these days.
Then there is the maintenance issue. A boat is a hole in the water into which you throw money. A big boat is a big hole.
It has to be maintained, generators must run, bilges must be pumped. Laundry, kitchens, telecoms. Its expensive.
A captain and crew must be onboard 24/7 in case of the emergency, storms, or whatever.
Since the developers are cooped up on board 24/7 you would be occasionally entertained, exercised as well. I can't see this being
a fun place to work. The possibility of abuse, is high, and who do you appeal to? How do you get paid?
It's also worth noting that you're talking about nuclear weapons. It can be used to make "dirty" bombs, however.
There are far more readily available sources than dredging up something 6-9 kilometers under the sea.
Anyone with the resources to reach something that deep could make a dirty bomb without all the drama of launching a deep sea mission to do so.
One wonders what this guy had in mind as his best case scenario in this endeavor.
How did he think this was going to turn out, and in what world does he get to keep the job and his freedom and the money?
http://www.open-mesh.com/ .11G mesh, $60 for a router and another $20 for the outdoor enclosure.
The single band series is
Mesh is great in urban environments where property rights restrict you from crossing roads and other people's land.
But mesh really makes very little sense in this environment. Its a fairly obscure technology, and getting it fixed and keeping it running may be problematic when the campsite geek's RV pulls out for the season.
Look, they have power to all of these router anyway. Why not STRING the cable or use WIFI over Powerline to feed the routers?
Putting in ground-burial cat5e is not that hard and poses no risk to the existing utilities. Its about $300 for a thousand foot roll. Two guys and a rented Mini Trencher can probably install all the cable runs in one day.
You don' have to trench it in more than 4 inches deep, and you only need to go that deep to keep people from tripping on it. You can hand trench when you get near your pipes and power runs.
An RV is a pothole in the road, into which you throw money.
I wish the slashdot crowd would stop bashing the lawyers whenever a story about patents, trademarks, copyright, etc is published. How are the corporate lawyers to blame for this? If the legal system makes it possible for commercial actors to compete using patent lawsuits, the other actors are bound to do the same in self defence. It's economically rational.
Right, because lawyers never push the envelope.
There is no law that can't be stretched just a little. Then a little more.
Its impossible to write a law so comprehensive that no one can find a way to weasel more out of than was intended.
Instead of finding the line, and backing away from it, lawyers see their job as finding the line and stepping over it just a tiny bit.
Then a tiny bit more. Soon its Katy bar the door, with a whole body of court decisions to back them up.
Inventions are the result of needs. Needs are the result of the current economic and technological landscape.
So, at any given moment, most of the world's inventors are experiencing the same set of needs at the same time, and hence tend to produce the same inventions at the same time.
The race to the patent office is common, with people winning by sometimes very narrow margins.
But there are also OTHER legal requirements beyond just being first, not the least of which is non-obviousness. See also KSR vs TeleFlex.
The mere fact that there are multiple solutions appearing nearly simultaneously suggests that the application is OBVIOUS, just as using bricks to build an outhouse.
Actually I was thinking the opposite might happen.
The court might just line them up and bitch slap the whole lot of them.
If a whole bunch of people come up with the same invention at roughly the same time it becomes the perfect definition of TRIVIAL AND OBVIOUS.
Once you have bricks generally available in the market place, you can't patent the brick outhouse.
So it's easy then?
Then what the hell is this entire story all about? Did you even read the title, let alone the summary?
Some of you people watch way too much TV.
Now go back and read both the summary and the linked article, and try to remember that every local sheriff or municipal police station, doesn't have the option of calling the cia, especially when they're in Britain.