CCSM in the hands of a non-expert can render the user account unusable within seconds. So no, I don't think it should be installed by default. Yes, there should be safe configuration options somewhere. We'll see in 12.04. What's the problem with the three LibreOffice icons on the default launcher? Delete them if you don't like them. Sheesh, you cry for CCSM in one sentence and then are overwhelmed by adding and removing launcher icons.
I haven't said one word about the Taliban being "good". Of course not. I am not even in favor of prohibition, by Taliban or otherwise, and I think the "war on drugs" is a war the US state leads against its own citizens, which has given "justification" for many unconstitutional practices, and that the US state wants drug production and trafficking to happen in order to be able to lead this "war".
In the late 90s there were several bumper crops of poppies in Afghanistan, and the market was glutted. The Taliban put a huge amount of processed poppy essence in storage for future years. THEN they cooperated in the 'successful drug war', with US support, to weaken their enemies. This was a staged event, because all parties involved KNEW that Mullah Mohammed Omar and his allies had big stores (several years of production) in storage. It was 100% hypocrisy from the start, for all parties.
The Reuters article quoted above has a distorted version of the story, consistent with the 'official story' but not with what actually occurred. It leaves out the bit that the US knew that Mullah Mohammed Omar's allies had vast stores of concentrated poppy to sell after production was suppressed. It leaves out how the USA turned a blind eye when its allies in the region grew and sold heroin, but cracked down hard on groups that were hostile to US interests.
Interesting, but doesn't change that one way or the other, under US rule in Afghanistan opium production was raised to unprecedented levels.
"Keep the drug flow up, keep the police state up.":
During the Taliban rule, Afghanistan saw a bumper opium crop of 4,500 metric tons in 1999. However, in July 2000, Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, collaborating with the United Nations to eradicate heroin production in Afghanistan, declared that growing poppies was un-Islamic, resulting in one of the world's most successful anti-drug campaigns. As a result of this ban, opium poppy cultivation was reduced by 91% from the previous year's estimate of 82,172 hectares. The ban was so effective that Helmand Province, which had accounted for more than half of this area, recorded no poppy cultivation during the 2001 season.
Of course in October 2001 the US and allied forces invaded Afghanistan.
Despite the [2009] decrease, Afghanistan is still the world's leading producer of opium. (...) In 2009, Afghanistan cultivated 123,000 hectares of opium compared to 157,000 hectares in 2008 (...) In 2009, 6,900 tons of opium were produced compared to 7,700 tons in 2008.
Nice $1m straw man you built there. If we talk about reasonable numbers, you base everything on the assumption that the company's funds cannot be distributed in any other way. Of course reality is more complicated than that (RTFA this story is about). Often enough there are parts of the work force who actually warrant $8/h, but the employer pays $5 anyway because they can. Since the introduction of low wage jobs in Germany, we have seen industry after industry and market after market infected by this, and nobody is better off because of it. All it's done is increase income spread and the usual deterioration of standards of living that go with it. (http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_wilkinson.html)
Also if you raise minimum wage you know unemployment is going to increase.
Funny how just today leaked details (in German) suggest that a rather large study, conducted by six different renowned research institutes and initiated by the German ministry of labour, concluded the exact opposite. E.g., looking at the German building industry, which has had a minimum wage since 1997, the study apparently says,
"no significant consequences were detected for employment and competitiveness".
Individual employers and their organizations even frequently lauded the minimum wage because it protects them from "dirty" competition.
This is especially worth mentioning because the conservative-liberal German coalition, which ultimately commissioned the ministry's study, has always been staunchly against minimum wages, while the current opposition (Social Democrats, Greens, The Left) have supported them.
I just bought a decent ThinkPad than runs Linux flawlessly for a friend. Cost a bit over 500 EUR (incl. sales tax). Like all cheap laptops it's a bit on the heavy side though, but won't be lugged around much anyway. I had the same flawless experience with several models of Lenovo ThinkPads.
I run Ubuntu on a MacBook Pro. IMHO no other laptop hardware comes even close in nicenesse, but I hate OS X. Ubuntu works really well on that, except for a few points that may or may not be important for the OP: There is a 15 sec wait on a gray screen when booting, before you get to grub. Something about EFI (and yes I did bless the Linux partition). Battery life will be worse than in OS X. Waking up when opening the lid takes a bit longer. Everything else works really well for me, including multitouch. Of course there is no Apple Care, but I don't think I see the advantage in Apple Care, anyway.
?? It's been working fine on my wife's Sandy Bridge i3 since 3.0 (including the onboard graphics). Actually the stock 2.6.39 released with Natty ran okay on it; I built a 3.0 kernel and ran that which worked better, particularly in conjunction with a recent Mesa and libva. I've since dist-upgraded her to Oneiric and everything still runs fine (still on 3.0, and I gather there are some further improvements planned for 3.1) - but I wouldn't exactly say it was broken before.
You often hear in the software industry that performance optimization is one of the last steps in the software development process.
No you don't, not among sane people. You don't do performance optimization as "one of the last steps" shortly before shipping.
What you hear is that "premature optimization is the root of all evil" (quoting Donald Knuth). What he meant is that you should not bother with complicated performance optimizations when designing the code. Rather, create and implement a good clean design, then test performance and optimize where needed. On the other hand, algorithm choice is one of the biggest performance contributors and initial choices will often be made quite early, so one cannot apply this quote blindly. Read here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Program_optimization
Re:Nice distro but they messed up the desktop
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Ubuntu Turns 7
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· Score: 1
> So for Ubuntu the option was to go with Gnome 3 or do their own desktop shell (which they did with Unity)
They could kept developing and maintaining the old Gnome 2 desktop or make ther own one look more like Gnome 2.
For the first option, see my sibling reply. Where would the resources come from? For the second option, well they didn't want to. It's their project.
Re:Nice distro but they messed up the desktop
on
Ubuntu Turns 7
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· Score: 1
I see, I never used that - didn't work well for me with Gnome 2, either.
Re:Alternatives to Ubuntu
on
Ubuntu Turns 7
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· Score: 1
Shuttleworth didn't leave.
Re:Nice distro but they messed up the desktop
on
Ubuntu Turns 7
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· Score: 1
Mod up parent AC:
"I just wish they'd stop limiting people's choices."
Gotdammitsomuch, how many times does the following have to be said:
CANONICAL IS NOT LIMITING PEOPLE'S CHOICES - THE GNOME DEVELOPERS ARE.
If you want to complain about not being able to use Gnome2 (i.e. "the old interface"), point the blame in the right direction: the Gnome development team who discontinued it.
Unity exists as the new default because Gnome-Shell was (and, IMO, remains) a design train-wreck deemed too crappy to represent Ubuntu.
Slashdot Mirror
What the hell, it's not about "first few letters". Any letters will do, or in most cases even a synonym. And you did notice the application menu gives you all the categories that were there in the menu before. http://www.grabi.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/ubuntu11.10-applications-lens.png
Install CCSM and in the Unity plugin you can change from "left side" to "top left corner" as event trigger (among other stuff)
I do
CCSM in the hands of a non-expert can render the user account unusable within seconds. So no, I don't think it should be installed by default. Yes, there should be safe configuration options somewhere. We'll see in 12.04.
What's the problem with the three LibreOffice icons on the default launcher? Delete them if you don't like them. Sheesh, you cry for CCSM in one sentence and then are overwhelmed by adding and removing launcher icons.
I haven't said one word about the Taliban being "good". Of course not. I am not even in favor of prohibition, by Taliban or otherwise, and I think the "war on drugs" is a war the US state leads against its own citizens, which has given "justification" for many unconstitutional practices, and that the US state wants drug production and trafficking to happen in order to be able to lead this "war".
Does this include the CIA support for Afghan opium production during the Soviet occupation?
In the late 90s there were several bumper crops of poppies in Afghanistan, and the market was glutted. The Taliban put a huge amount of processed poppy essence in storage for future years. THEN they cooperated in the 'successful drug war', with US support, to weaken their enemies. This was a staged event, because all parties involved KNEW that Mullah Mohammed Omar and his allies had big stores (several years of production) in storage. It was 100% hypocrisy from the start, for all parties.
The Reuters article quoted above has a distorted version of the story, consistent with the 'official story' but not with what actually occurred. It leaves out the bit that the US knew that Mullah Mohammed Omar's allies had vast stores of concentrated poppy to sell after production was suppressed. It leaves out how the USA turned a blind eye when its allies in the region grew and sold heroin, but cracked down hard on groups that were hostile to US interests.
Interesting, but doesn't change that one way or the other, under US rule in Afghanistan opium production was raised to unprecedented levels.
"Keep the drug flow up, keep the police state up.":
During the Taliban rule, Afghanistan saw a bumper opium crop of 4,500 metric tons in 1999. However, in July 2000, Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, collaborating with the United Nations to eradicate heroin production in Afghanistan, declared that growing poppies was un-Islamic, resulting in one of the world's most successful anti-drug campaigns. As a result of this ban, opium poppy cultivation was reduced by 91% from the previous year's estimate of 82,172 hectares. The ban was so effective that Helmand Province, which had accounted for more than half of this area, recorded no poppy cultivation during the 2001 season.
-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_production_in_Afghanistan#Rise_of_the_Taliban_.281994.E2.80.932001.29
Of course in October 2001 the US and allied forces invaded Afghanistan.
Despite the [2009] decrease, Afghanistan is still the world's leading producer of opium. (...) In 2009, Afghanistan cultivated 123,000 hectares of opium compared to 157,000 hectares in 2008 (...) In 2009, 6,900 tons of opium were produced compared to 7,700 tons in 2008.
-- http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/09/02/us-afghanistan-drugs-factbox-sb-idUSTRE58144M20090902
And as we are currently seeing, letting everything be handled by the most greedy who float to the top works just dandy as well :)
Nice $1m straw man you built there. If we talk about reasonable numbers, you base everything on the assumption that the company's funds cannot be distributed in any other way. Of course reality is more complicated than that (RTFA this story is about). Often enough there are parts of the work force who actually warrant $8/h, but the employer pays $5 anyway because they can. Since the introduction of low wage jobs in Germany, we have seen industry after industry and market after market infected by this, and nobody is better off because of it. All it's done is increase income spread and the usual deterioration of standards of living that go with it. (http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_wilkinson.html)
I bow before your superior insight.
Also if you raise minimum wage you know unemployment is going to increase.
Funny how just today leaked details (in German) suggest that a rather large study, conducted by six different renowned research institutes and initiated by the German ministry of labour, concluded the exact opposite. E.g., looking at the German building industry, which has had a minimum wage since 1997, the study apparently says,
"no significant consequences were detected for employment and competitiveness".
Individual employers and their organizations even frequently lauded the minimum wage because it protects them from "dirty" competition.
This is especially worth mentioning because the conservative-liberal German coalition, which ultimately commissioned the ministry's study, has always been staunchly against minimum wages, while the current opposition (Social Democrats, Greens, The Left) have supported them.
You had to be eligible for their student program to be able to buy the machine without Windows though.
I just bought a decent ThinkPad than runs Linux flawlessly for a friend. Cost a bit over 500 EUR (incl. sales tax). Like all cheap laptops it's a bit on the heavy side though, but won't be lugged around much anyway. I had the same flawless experience with several models of Lenovo ThinkPads.
You can get paid Ubuntu desktop support just fine from Canonical, and I'm sure Linux laptop builders like System 76 have plans as well.
What OS are you using that doesn't turn off the trackpad while typing?
I run Ubuntu on a MacBook Pro. IMHO no other laptop hardware comes even close in nicenesse, but I hate OS X. Ubuntu works really well on that, except for a few points that may or may not be important for the OP: There is a 15 sec wait on a gray screen when booting, before you get to grub. Something about EFI (and yes I did bless the Linux partition). Battery life will be worse than in OS X. Waking up when opening the lid takes a bit longer.
Everything else works really well for me, including multitouch. Of course there is no Apple Care, but I don't think I see the advantage in Apple Care, anyway.
?? It's been working fine on my wife's Sandy Bridge i3 since 3.0 (including the onboard graphics). Actually the stock 2.6.39 released with Natty ran okay on it; I built a 3.0 kernel and ran that which worked better, particularly in conjunction with a recent Mesa and libva. I've since dist-upgraded her to Oneiric and everything still runs fine (still on 3.0, and I gather there are some further improvements planned for 3.1) - but I wouldn't exactly say it was broken before.
There are serious power usage regressions, making many laptop users suffer. Compare, e.g., https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/834037
Yeah, so choosing the right algorithm is part of design, hence early, but still not premature.
You often hear in the software industry that performance optimization is one of the last steps in the software development process.
No you don't, not among sane people. You don't do performance optimization as "one of the last steps" shortly before shipping.
What you hear is that "premature optimization is the root of all evil" (quoting Donald Knuth). What he meant is that you should not bother with complicated performance optimizations when designing the code. Rather, create and implement a good clean design, then test performance and optimize where needed. On the other hand, algorithm choice is one of the biggest performance contributors and initial choices will often be made quite early, so one cannot apply this quote blindly. Read here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Program_optimization
> So for Ubuntu the option was to go with Gnome 3 or do their own desktop shell (which they did with Unity)
They could kept developing and maintaining the old Gnome 2 desktop or make ther own one look more like Gnome 2.
For the first option, see my sibling reply. Where would the resources come from?
For the second option, well they didn't want to. It's their project.
I see, I never used that - didn't work well for me with Gnome 2, either.
Shuttleworth didn't leave.
Mod up parent AC:
"I just wish they'd stop limiting people's choices."
Gotdammitsomuch, how many times does the following have to be said:
CANONICAL IS NOT LIMITING PEOPLE'S CHOICES - THE GNOME DEVELOPERS ARE.
If you want to complain about not being able to use Gnome2 (i.e. "the old interface"), point the blame in the right direction: the Gnome development team who discontinued it.
Unity exists as the new default because Gnome-Shell was (and, IMO, remains) a design train-wreck deemed too crappy to represent Ubuntu.
Rest assured that Debian won't have the resources to keep Gnome 2 alive, either.