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User: adnonsense

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  1. Re:Long time Mac user will defect on next purchase on At Apple, Mac Is Getting Far Less Attention - How It Handled the New MacBook Pro Is a Living Proof (bloomberg.com) · · Score: 1

    Almost the same 13" mid-2011 Macbook Pro here, going fine but it will be the last one of its line for me. I'm not tied to the Apple ecosystem - the Macbook is (was) an excellent, well-integrated UNIX-certified laptop, but the next one will run Linux.

  2. Good bye Apple, it was a nice decade on Phil Schiller Says the MacBook Pro Doesn't Need an SD Card Slot (theverge.com) · · Score: 1

    I got my first ever laptop, an iBook (!), about 10 years ago, it was great to have a laptop with a well-integrated UNIX system (for development) with excellent multilingual support while being able to run Skype, edit videos etc. without too much hassle. Not a pro photographer but I take a fair few photos of family and hobbies so the SD card slot sees a lot of use. Ethernet port too. The optical drive is the only thing that's redundant . OS X is a bit meh but as long as I can launch terminals and applications it's OK. Most of my real work I do on my Linux desktop.

    However the 2011 MacBook Pro I'm currently typing this on will be the last one I ever buy. I'm happy to add a bit of extra weight so as not to carry a bag full of expensive loseable dongles around, and no I do not want that fancy thing they're replacing the function key row with. My next laptop will run Linux.

  3. "Activation of org.freedesktop.systemd1 timed out" on Multiple Linux Distributions Affected By Crippling Bug In Systemd (agwa.name) · · Score: 2
    Not sure if it's directly related to this, but since my desktop OS (openSUSE) has adopted systemd I've had a number of amusing incidents like this:

    Failed to start reboot.target: Activation of org.freedesktop.systemd1 timed out
    Failed to open /dev/initctl: No such device or address
    Failed to talk to init daemon.

    requiring a powercycle. Doesn't endear systemd to me in the least.

  4. Tell me about it... I've been using KDE on and off, the 4.x series had almost become as usable as 3.5 was, then my distro of choice (openSUSE) went to 5.x (if you can call it that, something about plasma seems to be involved?) - pile of buggy slow steaming dung trying to pretend my monitor is a mobile phone. Been back on XFCE for a week, some rough edges (getting session switching working took a bit of research) but so far it Just Works.

  5. Re:This is the least of the problems with SO. on Use Code From Stack Overflow? You Must Provide Attribution (stackexchange.com) · · Score: 1

    Yeah, my one and only post there was what I thought was an innocuous question about a certain kind of hardware device (not my speciality, just wanted to get some general pointers which way to go), there was time for one (1) quite helpful answer then a bunch of people with some kind of moderating rights piled in, slapping a closure notice on it along the lines of "question locked because likely to cause controversy". Nice way to say "f**k you, n00b". Nary a friendly word along the lines of "we see this is your first post, here are some guidelines, sorry for the inconvenience". Still, at least a couple of keyboard warriors got their fix of banhammer joy. I guess it's like WP editors - if you got in early and got reputation, youv'e got a pretty free pass, but new accounts have got a huge uphill struggle before getting anywhere, and I can't be assed.

  6. Re:Parking lot on Coast-To-Coast Autonomous Tesla Trips 2-3 Years Out, Says Elon Musk (google.com) · · Score: 3, Insightful

    In pre-digital days I used to carry around a graphite-based stylus for noting the car's location on a carbon-based "tablet" with a nifty non-battery-reliant offline storage solution, though these days I just take a photo with my moble pocket computing device. Saves having to wait for reliable autonomous cars to be developed.

  7. My car has Windows and I love it on Microsoft Teams With Automakers To Put Windows, Office In Cars (microsoft.com) · · Score: 2

    Such a clever idea - panes of glass which keep the weather out while maintaining all-round visibility.

  8. Re:Virtulize it on UK's National Computer Museum Looks For Help Repairing BBC Micros · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Emulators are ten-a-penny, here's one which works in your browser: http://bbc.godbolt.org/ The point of the exhibit is to provide the full tactile 80's microcomputer experience.

  9. Re:Higher Deposits on The Vicious Circle That Is Sending Rents Spiraling Higher · · Score: 1

    Assuming you're talking US$, the only $10,000 - $30,000 deposits you'll find are for really high-end places. 2 months rent is the norm, US$3,000 a month should get you somewhere very nice even in Tokyo. The most I've paid is ca. US$1,500, approximately 30% of net monthly income at the time.

  10. Re:Survival guy on Slashdot Asks: How Prepared Are You For an Earthquake? · · Score: 1

    Personally I'd do that all *before* the disaster happens to avoid the crowds.

  11. Re:No way! on Linux Developers Consider On-Screen QR Codes For Kernel Panics · · Score: 1

    You don't need a cellphone to decode QR code images.

    Just sayin', like.

  12. Re:Fat shaming via text! on UK Council To Send Obese People 'Motivational' Texts Telling Them To Use Stairs · · Score: 1

    The USA seem to be the only major country I know of where you pay to *receive* texts. Everywhere else (i.e. those heathen regions which use metric, including the country mentioned in this article) only pays to send them.

  13. Re:Did you even read the notice? on HP To Charge For Service Packs and Firmware For Out-of-Warranty Customers · · Score: 1

    The change DOES also apply to the usual stuff like HP Proliant DL380 etc.

    Yup, we got the same mail today. We have a bunch of ageing Proliants, and are currently engaged in a procurement round for a new generation of servers (we buy them by the ton, almost). Guess which company just ruled themselves out of the process?

  14. *facial*network.com? on Through a Face Scanner Darkly · · Score: 1

    Sounds like the kind of domain name which would trigger these nanny-state filters some countries are so fond of nowadays. But let's be clear on this - facialnetwork.com is in no way involved with bukkake porn involving minors and there is no record known to myself of any of their senior management being on any form of sex offender registry.

  15. Re:hmm on Apple Macintosh Turns 30 · · Score: 1

    Similar here, at my previous job... except irony of ironies, while even the manager and sales droids were very happy with their Macs, the Photoshoppers were Windows only.

    Meanhile at my current job, where the developer workstations are pretty much all Linux, I am looked down upon because my laptop of choice comes pre-installed with a certified UNIX OS.

    (Posting from my home desktop Linux right now BTW, in case anyone wants to accuse me of being a hipster).

  16. Re:But seriously speaking ... on Searching the Internet For Evidence of Time Travelers · · Score: 1

    > The date was April 11, 2011.

    So you're saying you had this ESP-like experience a whole *month* after the earthquake actually happened?

  17. Re:ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE on Will Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn Stay With MySQL? · · Score: 1

    It's in the works, hopefully for version 9.4.

  18. Re:3, 2, 1 on Red Hat Ditches MySQL, Switches To MariaDB · · Score: 4, Funny

    Nah, Postgres sucks. Doesn't even have a decent REPAIR TABLE command or support for Februaries which have more than 29 days.

  19. Re:Speed is not everything on Sony Launches Internet Service Offering Twice the Speed of Google Fiber · · Score: 1

    Last time I was in Japan, I had a good connection, but the ISP decided to drop every ssh connection above a given traffic. My tunnels kept being broken until I set a speed limit on my side.

    Was that a DSL connection with an ISP-supplied router, or maybe a cable TV ISP? With optical fiber I've never had any problems, SSH sessions stay open for days (and this is without a fixed IP address), and p2p "just works". This is in Tokyo, BTW.

  20. Re:So what on Sony Launches Internet Service Offering Twice the Speed of Google Fiber · · Score: 1

    Sony has been in the ISP fray since 1995.

  21. Re:nothing major on North Korea Declares a State of War · · Score: 1

    In Japan here... no signs of undue angst either.

  22. Blog post from one of the core team members on Security Fix Leads To PostgreSQL Lock Down · · Score: 2

    Do please check out this informative post from Magnus Hagander, one of the PostgreSQL core team members, which clarifies most of the points raised here:

    About security updates and repository "lockdown"

    I have received a lot of questions since the announcement that we are temporarily shutting down the anonymous git mirror and commit messages. And we're also seeing quite a lot of media coverage.

    Let me start by clarifying exactly what we're doing:

    • We are shutting down the mirror from our upstream git to our anonymous mirror
    • This also, indirectly, shuts down the mirror to github
    • We're temporarily placing a hold on all commit messages

    There has been some speculation in that we are going to shut down all list traffic for a few days - that is completely wrong. All other channels in the project will operate just as usual. This of course also includes all developers working on separate git repositories (such as a personal fork on github).

    We are also not shutting down the repositories themselves. They will remain open, with the same content as today (including patches applied between now and Monday), they will just be frozen in time for a few days.

    ...continues...

  23. Re:Question from relational-land on Why My Team Went With DynamoDB Over MongoDB · · Score: 1

    Don't try to actually make sense of the decisions made in the article. I am glad that he summed up all of the reasons why he didn't go with a relational database early in the article, so I didn't have to bother reading the rest. I am an advocate of NoSQL, but this whole article is describing a project that is almost perfect for a relational database.

    Heck yeah, it reminds me of a project I did in 2004 or 2005, which stored over a hundred thousands of articles (some of them more than 64Kb!) with multiple authors, keywords and other fancy schmancy stuff. I've no idea what "a good amount of traffic from a niche group of scientists and researchers means in real terms, but the system I put together was getting something like 40,000 unique vistors a day, running off some not particularly spectacular hardware (this was a time when 1GB was a lot of memory). As there was no NoSQL back then, I had to "make do" with a proper relational database (PostgreSQL), which wasn't exactly a speed demon at the time, but very kindly took care of things like indexes and keeping things in sync (aka "relational integrity") leaving me free to concentrate on optimizing the whole stack. Oh yes, it was only me on the "team". And I managed to bodge a Lucene-based search system into the setup (as PostgreSQL's full-text search was a bit sucky).

    I suppose what with it being 2013 and such, it would be possible to push it into the cloud and squeeze in some JSONy bits as well if necessary

    .

    Kids of today, eh...

  24. I just sneezed into my punch cards on Why My Team Went With DynamoDB Over MongoDB · · Score: 2

    FTFA:

    We weren't thrilled about this, because writing your own indexes can be problematic. Any time we stored a document, we would have to update the index. That's fine, except if anything goes wrong in between those two steps, the index would be wrong. However, the coding wouldnâ(TM)t be too terribly difficult, and so we decided this wouldn't be a showstopper. But just to be sure, we would need to follow best practices, and include code that periodically rebuilds the indexes.

    Hello, I'm a time traveller from 1973 where I've been fondly imagining you folks in the future had written software to solve this kind of problem in a more generic fashion. Back in the past we have some visionary guy by the name of Codd, and in my wilder dreams I sometimes imagine by the year 2000 someone has created some kind of revolutionary database software which is based on his "SEQUEL" ideas and does fancy stuff like maintaining its own indexes.

    Then I wake up and realise it was just a flight of fantasy.

  25. In Soviet Brazil... on In Brazil, Trees To Call For Help If Illegally Felled · · Score: 1

    ... trees illegally fell you?