I remember the days when a piece of hardware came with the specs:
printers that included pinout diagrams for the interface and a listing of the control codes
modems that included detailed information of all the registers and what they did
heck even joysticks, IIRC, included pinouts
I remember writing little bits of code to control my hardware and it was fun and easy and you only had to deal with the bits you needed to use and ignored the rest. Oh my C64, how I miss you.
While your statements appear to be a little over the top, I have to say I agree.
With rancorous students being tased for being rancorous students and professors being arrested for art projects and US citizens being detained without cause or due process, its really just yet another step down the road to a police state. The really sad thing is that people are only just now noticing that we've gone down the road quite a long way. It's going to take a long time and a lot of really ugly effort to get out of this.
I can't speak to the internal reasons behind windows decision to include that feature (though I have a couple good guesses), but based on the number of people I know who think a backup is when the white lights come on at the back of the car, its a much needed feature. This is what backups are for people. No matter what OS. a proper backup scenario would allow recovery from any problem like this. In the linux world, due to plaintext config files and the modular nature of the system, you can even restore selective parts of the system and get back to a usable state pretty easily.
SO to answer your question about system restore in linux, just keep good backups of/etc, multiple kernels installed, and if you're really worried, or don't understand how to manually tweak your update system to allow rollbacks, then back up/[s]bin, and/usr/[s]bin and you're probably good. Its not that hard.
I agree too. He should have just shown the cop his ID, but he also probably should have stated to the cop in a clear and loud voice something to the effect of "my understanding of the law is that I am not legally required to show you my ID at this time, however, in the interest of expediency, I am complying. I will be contacting your supervisor and the district attorney to confirm my rights under the law and if it is determined that you were not authorized to require me to provide identification I will expect a full apology." or something like that. unfortunately, he'd probably then have to deal with removing the officer's foot from inside his skull, but that's another matter.
I can't believe I'm doing this.
valid reason why someone would refuse to show their receipt because the receipt is your personal property and is not subject to search and seizure without due process. just like any of your other personal property.
its really that simple. I totally agree that it would be totally easier to just show the receipt. But you don't have to, and if you choose not to, that is your choice.
and why this is such a hardship because getting my wallet back out is a royal pain in the ass, finding a specific receipt in that mess is a nightmare, and if they have no *actual reason* to suspect me of shoplifting, then I've got no reason to show them proof otherwise.
If they want to follow me out of the store, announce in a loud voice that they believe I'm shoplifting, announce that they've called the police and will attempt to detain me, then I might think about showing my receipt. Of course, I don't have to show them the contents of *MY BAG* either, though it would probably speed things along and I might do it as a matter of efficiency.
But unless they are actually willing to press charges against me, then I have no need or desire to show them my receipt. In fact, since I'm "innocent until proven guilty" I don't have to show them my receipt ever. Even if they actually press charges and it goes all the way to trial: The prosecution says "he refused to show his receipt". The judge says "do you have any other evidence?" They say "No". And the judge laughs them out of court. I suppose, at any point I could show the receipt just to speed along the process, but unless its taken as evidence and admitted as evidence into the trial I don't have show any person on the planet that receipt because its *mine*.
freedom-robbing the freedom-robbing is simple. This bag of stuff that you just purchased is yours. Now let me look through it and see what you bought. If you won't let me look through *YOUR STUFF* then you can't leave and I'll physically detain you for not letting me look through *YOUR STUFF*. Yeah, so what if I have no evidence of you committing a crime. And in fact, so what if you couldn't possibly have committed a crime because you *HAVEN'T EVEN LEFT THE STORE YET*, I'm still going to detain you, and dig through your personal property. And no, I'm not a law enforcement officer, and no I don't have a warrant, and no I don't have probable cause (and I'm not a cop to begin with).
Does that begin to make sense yet?
How about this. You come to my house, sit in my living room in plain view the whole time, never alone. I give you a gift in a bag. You look at the gift, put it back in the bag. I give you a piece of paper that says -- this item is your legal property. Now we both stand up and walk together to the door. You reach to open the door and I push it back closed. I say, you must let me look in that bag to verify that you haven't stolen anything from me. You may not leave my house until I search this bag that I gave you. If you don't let me search this bag that I gave you, then I will hold you down using whatever force I can to detain you until the police arrive. How do your freedoms feel now? Its exactly the same situation. You are in plain view in CC the whole time. They *give you the bag full of stuff* after you pay. They *give you a document* that says the bag full of stuff is yours and then after watching you the whole time and giving you the bag and proof of ownership, they stop you at the last minute and threaten to detain you. think about it.
I believe it is used to detect tripwires. Silly string sprayed ahead of you will drape over tripwires without being heavy enough to trip them. makes sense to me anyway.
...application that needs access to more than one zone. Take, for instance, a web-based virus scanner... There have been several of these in the comments today in discussions about sandboxes or other methods of restricting apps for security reasons: "what about app bar that needs to do bar and baz? It can't work in this context." How many of these apps are conceived in a world where they're required? The web based virus scanner seems to be one of these. What exactly is the point of a web based virus scanner? Its relying on a potentially compromised machine to reveal things about itself. That's next to useless. I'm sure there are ways to make it more useful, but in the end, its relying on a machine which someone else owns with a potentially corrupted tcp/ip stack.
ISTM that a different security model would remove the need for many of these programs, so its moot to ask "what about app foo".
I know just enough about computer security to know that I know almost nothing, so please enlighten me. Its seems there is a massive industry based on very failed concepts of security that have been kept around and worked around for too long. Many times on slashdot we say that we're not responsible for someone's failed business model. Likewise in this case. If your web-based virus scanner can't work and may even be completely unneeded, that's kinda too bad, isn't it?
That's great example, but I have to note what is probably the key point in your comment -- "mature". I am embarking on a path to become a "mature" undergrad as well (I'm 37) and I'm excited to get to it. But when I was a younger undergrad (18-19 and again at 23) I just didn't have the focus, will, and self-discipline to stay engaged in my classes. I don't think I could have handled the major distractions that come with today's IT infrastructure. I would surely have washed out even quicker than I did.
So there are really two side to the issue. On the one side, there are great technologies such as what you've mentioned, collaborative technologies for writers and researchers, ready availability of computational and compilers and languages for math and CS majors and so forth -- all really great applications of technology in education. On the other, you have kids playing games or IM'ing their buddies while in the back of a lecture hall. Or worse, working on their CS code while sitting in the back of an english lecture;).
Of course, since he's talking about a laser, it's possible he means to have the equipment on the ground (or moon, or earth orbit) and propel a much smaller craft. With sufficiently focused optics, you could propel a small probe the whole way to mars the problem with this is that you have to slow the thing down at the other end. This means either carry energy production with you, or send another set of equipment to your destination in advance of your arrival.
If you put another thruster at the other end of the ship, then you have to spend the rest of the trip unbolting all the tables and chairs from the new ceiling and rebolting them to the new floor. And taking all the sheets off the new bottoms of the mattresses and putting them on the new tops. And reworking all the plumbing so the water comes out of the old drains and somehow runs into the old faucets.
Since you've got to steer the thing at some point anyway, why not use whatever that mechanism is to just flip the thing around, Its way more fun and worse case, you'll have to mop up a few buckets of puke from the vertigo. Well, okay, worst case something breaks and you tumble out of control for eternity, but that's always a possibility whether you flip the thing or not.
It is my opinion, completely unverified and pulled out of my ass, that running a mixed testing/sid system will eventually end up running all sid anyway. The gradual pulling in of various dependencies will ultimately lead to more unintended breakage and the requirement to upgrade more packages, rinse and repeat. Unless you are really doing testing (and willing to file bug reports and willing to pull down dev's tarballs to try etc etc etc) you should not run testing.
... Recently I started using a tiling window manager (Ion - http://modeemi.fi/~tuomov/ion/) and my productivity has gone through the roof! Its a question of which mode works for you. I found myself running through various incarnations of traditional WM using xfce, kde, fluxbox, icewm for a longtime, etc and then stumbled onto wmii. I discovered that what I'd been trying to do with the other WM's was already done with a tiling WM. That is I was trying to increase my screen real-estate by decreasing the size and effect of everything else. I thought for a while that transparency was the key to this and it did help, but wasn't the solution.
So some people like the traditional model and some don't. I don't so I guess compiz is not for me. But as I said before, it really does look great. And I find no fault with someone choosing to use it.
I played around quite a bit with the transparency stuff during my time using it. Its definitely a cool feature and potentially pretty useful in terms of helping with the stacked windows problem of a traditional desktop. No doubt.
But I don't think it really solves the problem of dragging stuff around with a mouse and the other problems with a traditional WM model. This tiling thing with good keyboard control has blown my productivity through the roof... now if I could just get off/.
I'm currently running a dual-head rig with wmii -- that gives me one window in full screen on the left and multiple tiled windows on the right and moving between them is effortless. but that's me;)
Maybe I'm becoming more and more of a luddite... I played with compiz a bit maybe a year ago using XFCE and it was pretty cool, but that's all it was. It didn't actually do anything to improve my computing experience other than look cool. That makes it mostly a waste of electrons, IMO.
But then, I now use wmii almost exclusively, if I'm not just using plain ol' screen.
damn, you be a good poster and go check your links and there goes that frsit psot. oh well...
I don't disagree that this is how it will start, but the tin-foil hat me says that based on the past performance of MS, they will ultimately end up doing both: charging for windows and selling ads for that same installation. It may not be on "purpose", but I believe it will happen.
The reality, as I see it from under my shiny, crinkly dome shaped lid is that *everything* is subject to being plastered with ads and the computer desktop is not exempt. Someone somewhere will eventually pay enough to get their ad on MS's desktop. period.
I also wouldn't put it past MS to "accidently" serve up ads to those who have paid to avoid them. As we all know, these kinds of things happen all the time. And many people have been "trained" to believe that this is just the way computers are. Sometimes they just don't work the way you tell them to... MS has spent decades teaching people that computers sometimes do random things for no reason and that's apparently totally acceptable to most. So why not the same with the ads?
MS will integrate this technology into the OS directly and then "turn it off" from some server, so even those who have the "ad-free" version of Windows will have the adware running on their system, it will just be checking to see whether it should serve up the ads or not. When that server goes down, it will "default" to serving up the ads until MS gets around to repairing it.
because MS as a corporation with shareholders is required to maximize profits. This would include MS doing things like charging people money so that MS can charge other people money too.
The problem with aerosolized cheese is that it gets into the filters and clogs them up and then you have to either climb into the ductwork and replace them or wait for the damn mice to drift over there and chew holes through them. Either way, its a rotten day in the ol' space station when the cheese gets aerosolized.
But, more specifically, you're running Debian Sid, which I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. Ubuntu seems to have done a pretty good job of stabilizing Sid for the everyday user. plugwash already said it, but I've got to reiterate it a little more emphatically. The reality of sid is way better than its reputation. There are some mis-conceptions about testing and sid:
1) sid is a horrible monster that breaks all the time -- this is just not true. Sure, parts of it break from time to time, but for a cutting edge desktop, its great -- lots of current packages that mostly work all the time. You do have to be a little cautious with the upgrades, but it doesn't take much work; a little judicious reading of relevant bug reports is all it really takes to stay fully operational for long periods of time. THe last major sid breakage I remember was about 2 years ago when there was some fubar in the initrd's causing root pivot to fail. But it was fixed in a day and the work-around was posted to d-u within hours, IIRC.
2) testing is a better desktop than sid because its more stable -- this is outright false. Testing is a worse desktop than sid *BECAUSE* its more stable. That means if something breaks, it stays broken for a while. I think the policy is that a package has to sit in sid for 10 days without a change before it can move into testing. That means if a packages slips through sid without a particular problem being noticed (it happens) then it sits in testing until someone files the bug report. Then the fix has to sit in sid for at least 10 days from the time it is uploaded. You can see its very easy to be in a broken situation in testing for quite a while.
The fact is that though sid is subject to breakage, and there is a lot of package churn sometimes, if it does break, it gets fixed pretty quickly. Devs seem to respond pretty quickly to bugs in sid as it stuff they're currently working on. I love running sid and wouldn't do otherwise.
Several times on debian-user we've referred people to the beta of this system because they've got some esoteric hardware that prevents them from installing from CD. An example would be one of those (warning technical crap follows!!) PATA cd-rom thingies hooked up through some SATA backed fake IDE doo-hickey. The result is that after the OS takes over form the bios, it can't see the cd and thus can't mount it to continue the installation. The win32 loader is perfect for this situation as there are no other hoops to jump through.
Sure you could set up PXE/NFS or perform the required incantations to install off a usb key, but why if you don't have to... (other than "because I can" which is a perfectly good justification in my opinion and is the reason I do many things I do...)
From reading the info on the Lifesaver Bottle website, it doesn't look to be anything new except that its got finer filtration. Oh and you can pressurize the bottle to spray water into wounds or squirt the guy in front of you. They've got some sort of membrane to protect the main filter from sand and gravel and turds, but I don't see anything truly innovative here.
And further, based on my experience with water filters in the field, they *NEVER* come close to their stated capacity and in order to clean the things, you need to have clean water (to backflush the filter) thereby requiring you push more water through a rapidly clogging filter. The problem has always been that once you've clogged the thing, you're screwed until you can get access to clean water. I ditched all my filters years ago and went to iodine. They're way smaller and lighter too. If you really object to the taste, bring some kool-aid mix.
I was thinking just this same thing and you said it first. If it was my machine (all linux here;-P) I'd be seriously considering wiping and starting over. Its one of the first rules, isn't it, that if you don't know what caused a change on the system, then assume its been compromised. The longer MS goes without a statement about this, the more and more I'd be looking at this as a security breach. Time to reinstall all those boxes people. If it was a real update, you'd be able to get it again in the future.
There have been several posts about the problems with digital cameras of the stupid variety. I'm replying to you as you started it...
Its all about the camera and spending a little time getting it tweaked. I use a Canon Powershot A80 and its awesome. It resolution is a little behind the times now (4MP) but its got a couple of key features that make it a dream to use.
1. while it comes with a bunch of fully-auto settings, it also has one fully manual and two "custom" settings where you can save the state of the camera. These are the keys.
Here's what I do. I switch to the full manual mode, and then turn-off auto-focus and manually focus it to about 5 meters; then I typically turn off the flash; set the resolution I want, set the ISO I want and a couple other things (white balance, etc). Then I save that setting into one of the custom slots. I use both slots, one for interior shots with a higher ISO and maybe an interior appropriate white balance. If I'm going to shoot where I know I'll need a flash then I set the flash to always on, instead of auto. Then the other slot is set to a very low ISO for daylight shots with the flash off. If I know I'll be shooting action, I'll lower the resolution a bit because then I can get more photos into the camera's memory without waiting for it to dump to the card. On the highest res, I get 3 or 4 shots in a row without waiting. Down at websize, I can get something like 10 or so before it starts dumping. The key is to turn off the "auto" parts of it -- focus and flash mostly, as they take time. Finally I set both slots up for highspeed shooting without preview of the images. I can always throw them away later. So I have a camera that is ready to go at a moments notice, and will shoot almost 3 shots a second and I never have to wait for focus or flash. It just goes. I never miss a shot waiting on the camera, with just a bit of planning ahead.
2. other nice feature of this camera is that it takes standard AA batteries. A bought two sets of rechargeables for it and if those don't get me through the day (never happens) I can always buy AA's anywhere.
So a little research and thought put into a pocket digital can pay off bigtime in terms of satisfaction and usability..02
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I remember the days when a piece of hardware came with the specs:
I remember writing little bits of code to control my hardware and it was fun and easy and you only had to deal with the bits you needed to use and ignored the rest. Oh my C64, how I miss you.
While your statements appear to be a little over the top, I have to say I agree.
With rancorous students being tased for being rancorous students and professors being arrested for art projects and US citizens being detained without cause or due process, its really just yet another step down the road to a police state. The really sad thing is that people are only just now noticing that we've gone down the road quite a long way. It's going to take a long time and a lot of really ugly effort to get out of this.
I'm not trolling, seriously.
/etc, multiple kernels installed, and if you're really worried, or don't understand how to manually tweak your update system to allow rollbacks, then back up /[s]bin, and /usr/[s]bin and you're probably good. Its not that hard.
I can't speak to the internal reasons behind windows decision to include that feature (though I have a couple good guesses), but based on the number of people I know who think a backup is when the white lights come on at the back of the car, its a much needed feature. This is what backups are for people. No matter what OS. a proper backup scenario would allow recovery from any problem like this. In the linux world, due to plaintext config files and the modular nature of the system, you can even restore selective parts of the system and get back to a usable state pretty easily.
SO to answer your question about system restore in linux, just keep good backups of
I agree too. He should have just shown the cop his ID, but he also probably should have stated to the cop in a clear and loud voice something to the effect of "my understanding of the law is that I am not legally required to show you my ID at this time, however, in the interest of expediency, I am complying. I will be contacting your supervisor and the district attorney to confirm my rights under the law and if it is determined that you were not authorized to require me to provide identification I will expect a full apology." or something like that. unfortunately, he'd probably then have to deal with removing the officer's foot from inside his skull, but that's another matter.
its really that simple. I totally agree that it would be totally easier to just show the receipt. But you don't have to, and if you choose not to, that is your choice. and why this is such a hardship because getting my wallet back out is a royal pain in the ass, finding a specific receipt in that mess is a nightmare, and if they have no *actual reason* to suspect me of shoplifting, then I've got no reason to show them proof otherwise.
If they want to follow me out of the store, announce in a loud voice that they believe I'm shoplifting, announce that they've called the police and will attempt to detain me, then I might think about showing my receipt. Of course, I don't have to show them the contents of *MY BAG* either, though it would probably speed things along and I might do it as a matter of efficiency.
But unless they are actually willing to press charges against me, then I have no need or desire to show them my receipt. In fact, since I'm "innocent until proven guilty" I don't have to show them my receipt ever. Even if they actually press charges and it goes all the way to trial: The prosecution says "he refused to show his receipt". The judge says "do you have any other evidence?" They say "No". And the judge laughs them out of court. I suppose, at any point I could show the receipt just to speed along the process, but unless its taken as evidence and admitted as evidence into the trial I don't have show any person on the planet that receipt because its *mine*. freedom-robbing the freedom-robbing is simple. This bag of stuff that you just purchased is yours. Now let me look through it and see what you bought. If you won't let me look through *YOUR STUFF* then you can't leave and I'll physically detain you for not letting me look through *YOUR STUFF*. Yeah, so what if I have no evidence of you committing a crime. And in fact, so what if you couldn't possibly have committed a crime because you *HAVEN'T EVEN LEFT THE STORE YET*, I'm still going to detain you, and dig through your personal property. And no, I'm not a law enforcement officer, and no I don't have a warrant, and no I don't have probable cause (and I'm not a cop to begin with).
Does that begin to make sense yet?
How about this. You come to my house, sit in my living room in plain view the whole time, never alone. I give you a gift in a bag. You look at the gift, put it back in the bag. I give you a piece of paper that says -- this item is your legal property. Now we both stand up and walk together to the door. You reach to open the door and I push it back closed. I say, you must let me look in that bag to verify that you haven't stolen anything from me. You may not leave my house until I search this bag that I gave you. If you don't let me search this bag that I gave you, then I will hold you down using whatever force I can to detain you until the police arrive. How do your freedoms feel now? Its exactly the same situation. You are in plain view in CC the whole time. They *give you the bag full of stuff* after you pay. They *give you a document* that says the bag full of stuff is yours and then after watching you the whole time and giving you the bag and proof of ownership, they stop you at the last minute and threaten to detain you. think about it.
I believe it is used to detect tripwires. Silly string sprayed ahead of you will drape over tripwires without being heavy enough to trip them. makes sense to me anyway.
...application that needs access to more than one zone. Take, for instance, a web-based virus scanner... There have been several of these in the comments today in discussions about sandboxes or other methods of restricting apps for security reasons: "what about app bar that needs to do bar and baz? It can't work in this context." How many of these apps are conceived in a world where they're required? The web based virus scanner seems to be one of these. What exactly is the point of a web based virus scanner? Its relying on a potentially compromised machine to reveal things about itself. That's next to useless. I'm sure there are ways to make it more useful, but in the end, its relying on a machine which someone else owns with a potentially corrupted tcp/ip stack.ISTM that a different security model would remove the need for many of these programs, so its moot to ask "what about app foo".
I know just enough about computer security to know that I know almost nothing, so please enlighten me. Its seems there is a massive industry based on very failed concepts of security that have been kept around and worked around for too long. Many times on slashdot we say that we're not responsible for someone's failed business model. Likewise in this case. If your web-based virus scanner can't work and may even be completely unneeded, that's kinda too bad, isn't it?
That's great example, but I have to note what is probably the key point in your comment -- "mature". I am embarking on a path to become a "mature" undergrad as well (I'm 37) and I'm excited to get to it. But when I was a younger undergrad (18-19 and again at 23) I just didn't have the focus, will, and self-discipline to stay engaged in my classes. I don't think I could have handled the major distractions that come with today's IT infrastructure. I would surely have washed out even quicker than I did.
;).
So there are really two side to the issue. On the one side, there are great technologies such as what you've mentioned, collaborative technologies for writers and researchers, ready availability of computational and compilers and languages for math and CS majors and so forth -- all really great applications of technology in education.
On the other, you have kids playing games or IM'ing their buddies while in the back of a lecture hall. Or worse, working on their CS code while sitting in the back of an english lecture
If you put another thruster at the other end of the ship, then you have to spend the rest of the trip unbolting all the tables and chairs from the new ceiling and rebolting them to the new floor. And taking all the sheets off the new bottoms of the mattresses and putting them on the new tops. And reworking all the plumbing so the water comes out of the old drains and somehow runs into the old faucets.
Since you've got to steer the thing at some point anyway, why not use whatever that mechanism is to just flip the thing around, Its way more fun and worse case, you'll have to mop up a few buckets of puke from the vertigo. Well, okay, worst case something breaks and you tumble out of control for eternity, but that's always a possibility whether you flip the thing or not.
It is my opinion, completely unverified and pulled out of my ass, that running a mixed testing/sid system will eventually end up running all sid anyway. The gradual pulling in of various dependencies will ultimately lead to more unintended breakage and the requirement to upgrade more packages, rinse and repeat. Unless you are really doing testing (and willing to file bug reports and willing to pull down dev's tarballs to try etc etc etc) you should not run testing.
But to each their own...
cron job
/path/to/{daily_show,colbert_report} -ctime +6 -exec rm -f '{}' +
find
be sure to check it first by replacing rm with echo to confirm it gives the output you want.
... Recently I started using a tiling window manager (Ion - http://modeemi.fi/~tuomov/ion/) and my productivity has gone through the roof! Its a question of which mode works for you. I found myself running through various incarnations of traditional WM using xfce, kde, fluxbox, icewm for a longtime, etc and then stumbled onto wmii. I discovered that what I'd been trying to do with the other WM's was already done with a tiling WM. That is I was trying to increase my screen real-estate by decreasing the size and effect of everything else. I thought for a while that transparency was the key to this and it did help, but wasn't the solution.So some people like the traditional model and some don't. I don't so I guess compiz is not for me. But as I said before, it really does look great. And I find no fault with someone choosing to use it.
I played around quite a bit with the transparency stuff during my time using it. Its definitely a cool feature and potentially pretty useful in terms of helping with the stacked windows problem of a traditional desktop. No doubt.
/.
;)
But I don't think it really solves the problem of dragging stuff around with a mouse and the other problems with a traditional WM model. This tiling thing with good keyboard control has blown my productivity through the roof... now if I could just get off
I'm currently running a dual-head rig with wmii -- that gives me one window in full screen on the left and multiple tiled windows on the right and moving between them is effortless. but that's me
Maybe I'm becoming more and more of a luddite... I played with compiz a bit maybe a year ago using XFCE and it was pretty cool, but that's all it was. It didn't actually do anything to improve my computing experience other than look cool. That makes it mostly a waste of electrons, IMO.
But then, I now use wmii almost exclusively, if I'm not just using plain ol' screen.
damn, you be a good poster and go check your links and there goes that frsit psot. oh well...
I don't disagree that this is how it will start, but the tin-foil hat me says that based on the past performance of MS, they will ultimately end up doing both: charging for windows and selling ads for that same installation. It may not be on "purpose", but I believe it will happen.
The reality, as I see it from under my shiny, crinkly dome shaped lid is that *everything* is subject to being plastered with ads and the computer desktop is not exempt. Someone somewhere will eventually pay enough to get their ad on MS's desktop. period.
I also wouldn't put it past MS to "accidently" serve up ads to those who have paid to avoid them. As we all know, these kinds of things happen all the time. And many people have been "trained" to believe that this is just the way computers are. Sometimes they just don't work the way you tell them to... MS has spent decades teaching people that computers sometimes do random things for no reason and that's apparently totally acceptable to most. So why not the same with the ads?
MS will integrate this technology into the OS directly and then "turn it off" from some server, so even those who have the "ad-free" version of Windows will have the adware running on their system, it will just be checking to see whether it should serve up the ads or not. When that server goes down, it will "default" to serving up the ads until MS gets around to repairing it.
I now doff my recyclable metal head covering.
because MS as a corporation with shareholders is required to maximize profits. This would include MS doing things like charging people money so that MS can charge other people money too.
The problem with aerosolized cheese is that it gets into the filters and clogs them up and then you have to either climb into the ductwork and replace them or wait for the damn mice to drift over there and chew holes through them. Either way, its a rotten day in the ol' space station when the cheese gets aerosolized.
1) sid is a horrible monster that breaks all the time -- this is just not true. Sure, parts of it break from time to time, but for a cutting edge desktop, its great -- lots of current packages that mostly work all the time. You do have to be a little cautious with the upgrades, but it doesn't take much work; a little judicious reading of relevant bug reports is all it really takes to stay fully operational for long periods of time. THe last major sid breakage I remember was about 2 years ago when there was some fubar in the initrd's causing root pivot to fail. But it was fixed in a day and the work-around was posted to d-u within hours, IIRC.
2) testing is a better desktop than sid because its more stable -- this is outright false. Testing is a worse desktop than sid *BECAUSE* its more stable. That means if something breaks, it stays broken for a while. I think the policy is that a package has to sit in sid for 10 days without a change before it can move into testing. That means if a packages slips through sid without a particular problem being noticed (it happens) then it sits in testing until someone files the bug report. Then the fix has to sit in sid for at least 10 days from the time it is uploaded. You can see its very easy to be in a broken situation in testing for quite a while.
The fact is that though sid is subject to breakage, and there is a lot of package churn sometimes, if it does break, it gets fixed pretty quickly. Devs seem to respond pretty quickly to bugs in sid as it stuff they're currently working on. I love running sid and wouldn't do otherwise.
Several times on debian-user we've referred people to the beta of this system because they've got some esoteric hardware that prevents them from installing from CD. An example would be one of those (warning technical crap follows!!) PATA cd-rom thingies hooked up through some SATA backed fake IDE doo-hickey. The result is that after the OS takes over form the bios, it can't see the cd and thus can't mount it to continue the installation. The win32 loader is perfect for this situation as there are no other hoops to jump through.
Sure you could set up PXE/NFS or perform the required incantations to install off a usb key, but why if you don't have to... (other than "because I can" which is a perfectly good justification in my opinion and is the reason I do many things I do...)
From reading the info on the Lifesaver Bottle website, it doesn't look to be anything new except that its got finer filtration. Oh and you can pressurize the bottle to spray water into wounds or squirt the guy in front of you. They've got some sort of membrane to protect the main filter from sand and gravel and turds, but I don't see anything truly innovative here.
And further, based on my experience with water filters in the field, they *NEVER* come close to their stated capacity and in order to clean the things, you need to have clean water (to backflush the filter) thereby requiring you push more water through a rapidly clogging filter. The problem has always been that once you've clogged the thing, you're screwed until you can get access to clean water. I ditched all my filters years ago and went to iodine. They're way smaller and lighter too. If you really object to the taste, bring some kool-aid mix.
I was thinking just this same thing and you said it first. If it was my machine (all linux here ;-P) I'd be seriously considering wiping and starting over. Its one of the first rules, isn't it, that if you don't know what caused a change on the system, then assume its been compromised. The longer MS goes without a statement about this, the more and more I'd be looking at this as a security breach. Time to reinstall all those boxes people. If it was a real update, you'd be able to get it again in the future.
serious LOL and cheerios on the keyboard. thanks...
There have been several posts about the problems with digital cameras of the stupid variety. I'm replying to you as you started it...
.02
Its all about the camera and spending a little time getting it tweaked. I use a Canon Powershot A80 and its awesome. It resolution is a little behind the times now (4MP) but its got a couple of key features that make it a dream to use.
1. while it comes with a bunch of fully-auto settings, it also has one fully manual and two "custom" settings where you can save the state of the camera. These are the keys.
Here's what I do. I switch to the full manual mode, and then turn-off auto-focus and manually focus it to about 5 meters; then I typically turn off the flash; set the resolution I want, set the ISO I want and a couple other things (white balance, etc). Then I save that setting into one of the custom slots. I use both slots, one for interior shots with a higher ISO and maybe an interior appropriate white balance. If I'm going to shoot where I know I'll need a flash then I set the flash to always on, instead of auto. Then the other slot is set to a very low ISO for daylight shots with the flash off. If I know I'll be shooting action, I'll lower the resolution a bit because then I can get more photos into the camera's memory without waiting for it to dump to the card. On the highest res, I get 3 or 4 shots in a row without waiting. Down at websize, I can get something like 10 or so before it starts dumping. The key is to turn off the "auto" parts of it -- focus and flash mostly, as they take time. Finally I set both slots up for highspeed shooting without preview of the images. I can always throw them away later. So I have a camera that is ready to go at a moments notice, and will shoot almost 3 shots a second and I never have to wait for focus or flash. It just goes. I never miss a shot waiting on the camera, with just a bit of planning ahead.
2. other nice feature of this camera is that it takes standard AA batteries. A bought two sets of rechargeables for it and if those don't get me through the day (never happens) I can always buy AA's anywhere.
So a little research and thought put into a pocket digital can pay off bigtime in terms of satisfaction and usability.