I quit Linux development 10 years ago and I never looked back. You get your life back. Hell perhaps you even *get* a life. Linux can be fun but it can also seriously bad for your health, wealth and fun factor.
Good for you. The only problem is that what you said could equally apply to excessive eating, drinking, smoking and even gaming to name a few. The word "excessive" Linux development would be more appropriate since just Linux development is not necessarily a life or social threatening thing unless you take it to extremes in which case you appear to have realised you had a work problem and changed.
Never, ever, switch to a Fedora release until it has been out for at least 6 weeks.
That is a bit a of a blanket statement which would not really apply to most Fedora users since developers would have been testing the Alpha and Release Candidates so the final release would be the same one you are going to get for the lifetime of the particular distribution discounting updates of course. I actually did an update on both my machines on the day and I have not had any issues. In fact I would go as far as to say that the final release of Fedora 18 is the best to date although the installer may cause a few people to think WTF however after a cup of coffee (or whatever poison you drink) it does make sense and actually works well.
Despite its warts, I'll take Fedora 18 for $0 over Windows 8 any day.
When I purchased my machines the first thing I did was to blow away the Microsoft offerings and i have not looked back.
It seems like whenever I wipe and re-upgrade a distro I end up having to take weeks to make it work the way I want it to. Although, I have to say I like it better than Windows 8...
It took me about 3 hours to do a fresh install of Fedora 18 over my original Fedora 17 before I was fully operational again however i do set-up my file-systems such that I only need to reformat the operating system parts not my data. I do actually backup all my data on a regular basis however because I am careful with my file-system layout there is never a need for me to do a recovery. Of course I do my homework prior to doing an upgrade which is no different to what I do when planning any upgrade to any machine be it a Linux or Unix OS.
I concur that. I switched to Debian after the fiasco of RH7 and never looked back.
You do know that RH 7 came out in 2000 and was discontinued after RH 9 in 2003 for Redhat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) version 2. The latest release of RHEL is version 6 which will be supported for 13 years. Go to the Redhat site, they don't hide anything if you don't believe me.
Personally I don't really like the Debian distributions and prefer the Fedora/Redhat ones since I have never had many problems with Fedora Core 7 and have updated regularly all the way to Fedora 18 which IMHO is actually the best distribution to date although I would say that the new installer is a little bit cosmetically challenged, however it does what it is supposed to do and it does it well. I do think Alan Cox's statement saying that the new installer is unusable is totally wrong, although I do agree it is different.
For me to go from Fedora 17 to Fedora 18 I always do a fresh install of the OS which in this case took me about 45 minutes, then it took me an additional 30 minutes to install all software i use and potentially use. Then it took me about an hour to do the updates on over 1700 packages and during that time I actually did other things such as watching a video and surfing the web on the machine I was updating.
When you update an OS, are you required to update all applications at the same time? If not, then your comment is a non sequitur.
Updating a Linux distribution normally will update all packages associated with that distribution, however this can be controlled with an update server which is surprisingly easy for a System Administrator to set-up and administer. Third party applications have to be updated separately which is the same for any OS (Microsoft Windows included).
The time to update a Linux distribution is dependent on the network so it may take a little as a few minutes to possibly an hour. While you are waiting for the update to complete you can continue to use the Linux machine and you only need to reboot if you install a new kernel with outages for a desktop/laptop being approx 1 to 2 minutes and approx 5 to 20 minutes for a server. Of course an outage can be scheduled for a more convenient time.
If you don't trust the provider to keep your data intact, don't use that provider.
Yes that goes without saying, however you still must say it especially if you are consulting with a customer who is considering cloud storage. A bit like talking about backups. it is amazing this critical service is sometime a low priority with some companies.
If you need more storage, pay for it. The cost is not prohibitive - 100GB or so for under US$10/mo is pretty easy to find.
Yes $10 a month is not that expensive for 100GB however if you consider TB's of data (not that difficult if you consider movies etc) and then cost starts to climb and for a home user that $100/month is starting to get expensive.
If $10/month prices you out of the market, there are better things to worry about than encrypting files and storing them in the cloud.
For companies a professional backup system is much more practical than "Cloud Storage" although this could have a stating cost of a few thousand dollars going up over millions of dollars depending on the backup requirements of the company. For a home user it is actually cheaper to use portable disk drives as your backup service however once problem with that is the fact your data will normally reside in you home unless you have an arrangement to off-site them to a trusted friend or neighbour.
It must be noted that when I am talking about backups in my reply are not really what can be considered "backups". Basically they are actually making a mirrored copy of the appropriate data such as using the rsync command from the file-system or directory structure you want to duplicate and maintain to the target file-system where you wish to have your data mirrored. The target file-system can be on the so-called cloud or a storage device.
Aside from technically literate consumers who might actually care whether their phone is powered by IOS, Symbian, Windows, or Android, would most consumers be able to meaningfully discriminate between these phone operating systems?
I think the best way of answering this is to look at the Android graphical interface and compare it to the iPhone GUI and while not identical there is significant similarly for customers to move from one to the other with very little extra learning so basically the human interfaces are functionally similar with nicely designed and separated icons which are labelled underneath with a comfortably readable font. When you look at the Microsoft interface which is "tile based" you see different sized tile icons with very little space (effectively a black line a few pixels wide) between them and the labelling is internal to each tile.
When a customer looks at purchasing a smart-phone I would be fairly comfortable in saying that they are going to prefer the iPhone and Android interfaces over the Microsoft interface however the saying Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder" is valid and some would prefer the Microsoft tile interface over the externally labelled icons of the other smart phones.
From a personal perspective I think an icon that is well separated and has the labelling underneath is much more human readable in that it can be recognisable at a glance compared to a variable sized tile which needs to have its meaning read within the tile so much greater care has to be made in designing the tile so as not to obscure the tile labelling. Of course there will be people who disagree with me but externally labelled well separated icons on GUI's have been around for well over 30 years (years before Microsoft Windows) now and I have never heard of anyone complaining about them although I have heard of people complaining about too many icons on their desktop especially when talking about Microsoft Windows.
Yes. Just because it takes 90 hours to complete a dragon quest game doesn't mean there's anything complex about it. There's nothing about dragon quest that even comes close to Pool of Radiance or Baldur's Gate.
I actually found Dragon Quest much more enjoyable to play than Baldur's Gate. Even though Baldur's Gate was much more involved I actually found it boring after a while. The same can be said for games like "Oblivion" which came out for both PC and console. Still most RPG's consist of the main quest, side quests and hopefully character development as well as story line which is what I like in roll play game playing. Having said that both games have merit and none are casual games. A casual game IMO is a game with very little depth to it and you can play for 5 to 15 minutes at a time without any loss of continuity. This is not to say that a casual game is inferior to a hard core game since a game is only played by a person that is interested in playing that type of game.
Consoles depend on the casual gamer, mobile and console gaming now occupy the same market.
The choice of a game depends on the person playing the game. I personally prefer "Action Adventure" and RPG's and IMHO a console is excellent for this although if I am traveling to or from work by train or bus a game of "Angry Birds" on my mobile makes the traveling time much more enjoyable.
Mobile gaming is mainly hand-held which is completely different to console or even PC gaming that normally display to much larger screens with the console screen (ie. HD TV to 1080p) normally being the larger. When comparing consoles to PC's IMHO the PC always wins performance wise since it is up-gradable compared to a console, however the console's "ease of use" and it's targeted inbuilt ability to connect to a TV (mainly HD for best viewing) makes the console the preferred gaming machine for casual to hard core gamers. I am well aware that PC's can connect to the HDMI port of a HD TV (I have one that can do this) however consoles are purpose built to do this.
Comparing games is dependent on the person and what environment that person wants to play the game in. The most general purpose gaming environment is access to the TV since it is the most social and comfortable and this is the area the console excels at. PC's on the other hand are sociable if they are online and they are excellent for fast paced (ie. FPS) and more involving games such as SIMS however the line between PC and console gaming has blurred considerably. Hand held gaming with it's small screen and limited on-line capability is less sociable although like I have said before what type of gaming machine people prefer depends on the person and the games they like.
Right, blaming a physical object for a _mental_ problem is the "problem".
A mentally ill person without a gun is pretty harmless, one with a gun on the other side not so much.
A mentally ill person with any type of weapon can be dangerous. Yes guns make killing very easy if you can get one, however it is very easy to pick up a weapon such as a knife, lump of wood, or even a rock which can kill as well and would be the preferred weapon of a mentally ill person were the preferred weapon of a criminal or gang member would be a gun.
Is there a solution to gun related crime? This is not an easy question to answer since so many factors come into play with some simple while others much more complex, however as long as humans exist on this planet there will always be people who will try to kill other people.
The problems encountered with spacefiight to even a close planet such as Mars are considerable. The first is solar radiation which is considerable and can lead to cell destruction with out the proper protection (sun screen won't cut it). The second is the length of time it takes to get to Mars from our planet. Thirdly you have to contend with weightlessness or micro gravity for the trip and then when you get to Mars you you only have one sixth gravity which is definitely not good for the human physiology over a long term. Fourthly you have to bring along your own oxygen since there is little if any on the planet.
Actually none of the issues are insurmountable however given current spaceflight technology it is going to be very hazardous for anyone traveling to Mars. Faster propulsion systems and radiation shields would cut down the risk considerably.
BTW, title mentions Brushfires, summary says Bushfires; which is correct?
Actually both are correct, however in Austrlia we normally refer to areas that are not cultivated or in a city or town as The Bush hence the term "Bushfire" is used to refer to fires in those area. We also have the term Grass-fire which is rather obvious however this can be quite dangerous as well,
Back-burning is a fairly common way of reducing the bush-fire threat and is actually carried out in most Australian cities especially in the cooler months. The problem you have is that Australia is huge (a little smaller then the continental USA) with a population of approximately 22 million compared to the USA's 312 million. Normally when a bush fire starts and is in a remote place it can be very difficult get enough firefighters into the area. It is not feasible to back-burn bush-land unless you have a considerable amount of man-power and resources especially water which may be in short supply.
Having drone aircraft for bush-file spotting is actually a very good cost effective idea especially if you can fly a fire-fighting team into the area before the fire gets out of control. Unfortunately even as I write we have record temperatures (approx 40 to 44 degrees C) and strong winds and many bush fires that have started today are in difficult to get to areas and almost impossible to put out.
Fedora is all well and good if you want to play with the bleeding edge
Well, yes, that's what it's for, isn't it?
If you get the Release Candidates yes, however the final release normally is quite stable and IMHO every bit as good and reliable as the other distros. In fact I actually use Fedora as my primary OS (all others are virtualized) professionally.
I normally don't recommend an upgrade when going from one major release to another (ie, 16 to 17 to 18) but a fresh install which actually is quicker to do if you separate your personal data from the operating system and note down any necessary configurations that will be required. Backups are obviously essential but this applies to all OS's (not just Linux) upgrades and installs.
The PS3 has been the top selling console in the world for over two years since the Wii started to rapidly fade in popularity.
Console gamers obviously are doing the exact opposite of what you are suggesting.
Basically the Xbox360 is outselling the PS3 in the USA by almost a 2 to 1 ratio however when you take the rest of the world into account you are correct if you say "On average the PS3 has been the top selling console at least for the last year".
I hear you. I just found my old GB Pocket and a bunch of games from 1997 earlier today. Had to clean it out a bit (tri-wings suck btw), but after throwing in some fresh batteries the thing turned on and ran like a champ. Sadly there's about a 0% chance my PS3 will do that in 10 years. I'm already on the SECOND one because the first bit the dust TWICE (fixed it the first time with a new part off ebay, 100% bricked the second time).
I guess you must have some bad luck with your PS3's. I have the original PS3 FAT (still works) and my two son's have the later PS3's. All PS3's can play PS1 game disks (1994 to 2005) which effectively means games that can be 18 years old. I rarely play PS1 games since the graphics on most of them look very grainy on my 55" HD TV, however many PS2 games (you need the original FAT PS3 for this) do look quite nice on my TV. Sill I normally play PS3 games so backwards compatibility is not such a big deal now for me.
A shame since I often find myself going back and playing older games from 10+ years ago.
Many times the companies who made them are long since gone.
I guess "Retro Gaming" is going to be redefined as playing last years Madden or CoD.
You do realize that all PS3's will play PS1 game disks which are well over 10 years old, although to be honest given the size of modern HD TV's the graphics leave allot to be desired. Still there are some PS1 games which are still good and the graphics is such that it is still presentable on large HD TV screens. I suppose if you are really into "retro" gaming then the old NES, SNES, Master System, Megadrive etc can be played on a PC preferably with a fairly small screen or a window.
As far as the patent goes I would be very surprised if that was ever implemented unless all all the major gaming companies came to the party and I cannot see Microsoft or Nintendo doing that because if something like that was implemented by one company and the others did not follow suit then most people would desert the platform that it got implemented on. What companies are trying to do today is "digital downloads" which can actually lock the software to a particular account and in the majority of cases the machine.
What happened to the day of nice big data sheet books from Intel, Motorola, RCA, National, et al? I remember how dog eared my copies of TTL and CMOS logic were.
Well you can do a search and in many cases download the searchable PDF files or baring that purchase the PDF or even the "gasp" physical books.:)
... bullshit. 10,000 pages a year? Even if you count every page of every book and all the toilet paper I wipe my arse with it would be a fraction of that.
I'm all for saving paper, but this kind of exaggeration isn't very helpful. It's like the old one about plastic bags having an average lifetime of less than three minutes, which seems to ignore the fact that most people use them as bin liners.
Go to some large corporate offices and 10,000 pages per month is not unusual, in fact that kind of usage is tiny. lets do the maths. Some office environments would go through 20 reams of paper a month in printers and photo copiers and since a ream of paper is 500 pages then you get 10,000 pages. Now lets multiple that by 12 months and you get 120,000 pages a year. I won't deny that some smaller offices may only use say 2 to 5 reams of paper a month but even taking say 2 reams a month that would translate into 12,000 pages a year.
The bottom line is that the article is grossly underestimating how much offices are using in paper. In some large corporate offices it is not unusual to see 50 to 100 reams of paper consumed per month and 100 reams translates to 600,000 pages per year. Yes you can call "bullshit" to that but why don't you go down to your local council and ask how many reams of paper they would consume in a month for printing and photo copying, I am sure the answer would surprise you.
Personally I am all for saving paper as well and over the last two years at home I have only printed less than 50 pages and I only print when there is a legal requirement to do so, however in the corporate environment most printer and photo copier users don't really care.
BTW In the Sydney Australia where I live all stores provide free plastic bags which as you have said are great for putting garbage in. In Canberra (our capitol) you have to pay for plastic bags so it is not unusual to see people purchasing garbage bin liners and garbage bags so in reality plastic bag land fill pretty much remains the same.
It's usually cheaper to replace the whole printer than it is the ink cartridge.
For home usage if you have a cheap printer yes, however in the corporate world where it is not unusual for a $10,000 plus laser printer to print 10's of thousands of paper a month it is more cost effective to replace the consumables which would be toner cartridges rather than inks.
The ink jet printer I have at home cost me about $130.00 (fully claimable as a taxation deduction for me) and to fully replace the cartridges (5 in all) would cost about $60.00 if I purchased the the recommended inks, however if I refill or use generic compatible inks I can get away with $10 to $20. Basically I mainly use my printer as a scanner which actually wastes ink every time I start it although even so I don't scan that often now.
Since the 1960's on-wards there was always talk about the so called paperless office. Unfortunately it never happened and in fact many companies have increased their paper usage year on year.
The problem of increasing paper usage is many-fold and there are many interested parties that would like this trend to continue. Just to name a few they are 1) The forestry industries 2) Printer producers and 3) the "value added" industries that provide compatible inks and cartridges. Couple this with printer user attitude of printing information that in reality does not need to be printed and you are going to wast lots of paper. It must be noted that there is also a valid requirement for printing some documents (especially in the legal profession) however even this may not be necessary since paper long term storage may not be as long as many people think especially if the papers are not stored properly.
As for citing the above try "paper usage statistics" in Google and you get 222,000,000 hits. In addition try "paper long term storage" in Google and you get almost 50,000,000 hits. It appears everyone knows about the problem but there is a a lot of intransigence about doing something about it.
I wish my boss would show the same concern for the quality of our software, and scream at the programmers that break it every day.
Presumably the programmers working for your boss are paid. Why anyone would put up with this shit when Linus isn't paying is beyond me.
Maybe the programmers are getting paid (Redhat and IBM have representation here), then again some may do it out of interest and challenge without getting paid. However if you as a professional programmer (or professional anything) stuff up you are asking for criticism (hopefully constructive) from your peers and rightly so. It remains to be seen if the person who stuffed up take this criticism to heart and learn from it or just go into a sulk and leave.
What makes the issue a problem is the fact that the bug slipped past quality control which because of the nature of the product (ie the Linux kernel) surely must have something like this in place.
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I quit Linux development 10 years ago and I never looked back. You get your life back. Hell perhaps you even *get* a life. Linux can be fun but it can also seriously bad for your health, wealth and fun factor.
Good for you. The only problem is that what you said could equally apply to excessive eating, drinking, smoking and even gaming to name a few. The word "excessive" Linux development would be more appropriate since just Linux development is not necessarily a life or social threatening thing unless you take it to extremes in which case you appear to have realised you had a work problem and changed.
When people talk about Fedora Core they are normally talking about FC 1 through 6. From Release 7 on the name is Fedora not "Fedora Core" see here .
Never, ever, switch to a Fedora release until it has been out for at least 6 weeks.
That is a bit a of a blanket statement which would not really apply to most Fedora users since developers would have been testing the Alpha and Release Candidates so the final release would be the same one you are going to get for the lifetime of the particular distribution discounting updates of course. I actually did an update on both my machines on the day and I have not had any issues. In fact I would go as far as to say that the final release of Fedora 18 is the best to date although the installer may cause a few people to think WTF however after a cup of coffee (or whatever poison you drink) it does make sense and actually works well.
Despite its warts, I'll take Fedora 18 for $0 over Windows 8 any day.
When I purchased my machines the first thing I did was to blow away the Microsoft offerings and i have not looked back.
We're using F18 here on all our desktop machines; there have been zero issues.
I have two machines and everything I use including wireless works perfectly and I do use allot of things.
The installer was a "WTF? Oh, got it." inconvenience the first time around.
My sentiments exactly. Personally the new installer is IMO cosmetically challenged but it does work and it works well.
It seems like whenever I wipe and re-upgrade a distro I end up having to take weeks to make it work the way I want it to. Although, I have to say I like it better than Windows 8...
It took me about 3 hours to do a fresh install of Fedora 18 over my original Fedora 17 before I was fully operational again however i do set-up my file-systems such that I only need to reformat the operating system parts not my data. I do actually backup all my data on a regular basis however because I am careful with my file-system layout there is never a need for me to do a recovery. Of course I do my homework prior to doing an upgrade which is no different to what I do when planning any upgrade to any machine be it a Linux or Unix OS.
I concur that. I switched to Debian after the fiasco of RH7 and never looked back.
You do know that RH 7 came out in 2000 and was discontinued after RH 9 in 2003 for Redhat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) version 2. The latest release of RHEL is version 6 which will be supported for 13 years. Go to the Redhat site, they don't hide anything if you don't believe me.
Personally I don't really like the Debian distributions and prefer the Fedora/Redhat ones since I have never had many problems with Fedora Core 7 and have updated regularly all the way to Fedora 18 which IMHO is actually the best distribution to date although I would say that the new installer is a little bit cosmetically challenged, however it does what it is supposed to do and it does it well. I do think Alan Cox's statement saying that the new installer is unusable is totally wrong, although I do agree it is different.
For me to go from Fedora 17 to Fedora 18 I always do a fresh install of the OS which in this case took me about 45 minutes, then it took me an additional 30 minutes to install all software i use and potentially use. Then it took me about an hour to do the updates on over 1700 packages and during that time I actually did other things such as watching a video and surfing the web on the machine I was updating.
When you update an OS, are you required to update all applications at the same time? If not, then your comment is a non sequitur.
Updating a Linux distribution normally will update all packages associated with that distribution, however this can be controlled with an update server which is surprisingly easy for a System Administrator to set-up and administer. Third party applications have to be updated separately which is the same for any OS (Microsoft Windows included).
The time to update a Linux distribution is dependent on the network so it may take a little as a few minutes to possibly an hour. While you are waiting for the update to complete you can continue to use the Linux machine and you only need to reboot if you install a new kernel with outages for a desktop/laptop being approx 1 to 2 minutes and approx 5 to 20 minutes for a server. Of course an outage can be scheduled for a more convenient time.
If you don't trust the provider to keep your data intact, don't use that provider.
Yes that goes without saying, however you still must say it especially if you are consulting with a customer who is considering cloud storage. A bit like talking about backups. it is amazing this critical service is sometime a low priority with some companies.
If you need more storage, pay for it. The cost is not prohibitive - 100GB or so for under US$10/mo is pretty easy to find.
Yes $10 a month is not that expensive for 100GB however if you consider TB's of data (not that difficult if you consider movies etc) and then cost starts to climb and for a home user that $100/month is starting to get expensive.
If $10/month prices you out of the market, there are better things to worry about than encrypting files and storing them in the cloud.
For companies a professional backup system is much more practical than "Cloud Storage" although this could have a stating cost of a few thousand dollars going up over millions of dollars depending on the backup requirements of the company. For a home user it is actually cheaper to use portable disk drives as your backup service however once problem with that is the fact your data will normally reside in you home unless you have an arrangement to off-site them to a trusted friend or neighbour.
It must be noted that when I am talking about backups in my reply are not really what can be considered "backups". Basically they are actually making a mirrored copy of the appropriate data such as using the rsync command from the file-system or directory structure you want to duplicate and maintain to the target file-system where you wish to have your data mirrored. The target file-system can be on the so-called cloud or a storage device.
Aside from technically literate consumers who might actually care whether their phone is powered by IOS, Symbian, Windows, or Android, would most consumers be able to meaningfully discriminate between these phone operating systems?
I think the best way of answering this is to look at the Android graphical interface and compare it to the iPhone GUI and while not identical there is significant similarly for customers to move from one to the other with very little extra learning so basically the human interfaces are functionally similar with nicely designed and separated icons which are labelled underneath with a comfortably readable font. When you look at the Microsoft interface which is "tile based" you see different sized tile icons with very little space (effectively a black line a few pixels wide) between them and the labelling is internal to each tile.
When a customer looks at purchasing a smart-phone I would be fairly comfortable in saying that they are going to prefer the iPhone and Android interfaces over the Microsoft interface however the saying Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder" is valid and some would prefer the Microsoft tile interface over the externally labelled icons of the other smart phones.
From a personal perspective I think an icon that is well separated and has the labelling underneath is much more human readable in that it can be recognisable at a glance compared to a variable sized tile which needs to have its meaning read within the tile so much greater care has to be made in designing the tile so as not to obscure the tile labelling. Of course there will be people who disagree with me but externally labelled well separated icons on GUI's have been around for well over 30 years (years before Microsoft Windows) now and I have never heard of anyone complaining about them although I have heard of people complaining about too many icons on their desktop especially when talking about Microsoft Windows.
Dragon Quest is a casual game series? Get real.
Yes. Just because it takes 90 hours to complete a dragon quest game doesn't mean there's anything complex about it. There's nothing about dragon quest that even comes close to Pool of Radiance or Baldur's Gate.
I actually found Dragon Quest much more enjoyable to play than Baldur's Gate. Even though Baldur's Gate was much more involved I actually found it boring after a while. The same can be said for games like "Oblivion" which came out for both PC and console. Still most RPG's consist of the main quest, side quests and hopefully character development as well as story line which is what I like in roll play game playing. Having said that both games have merit and none are casual games. A casual game IMO is a game with very little depth to it and you can play for 5 to 15 minutes at a time without any loss of continuity. This is not to say that a casual game is inferior to a hard core game since a game is only played by a person that is interested in playing that type of game.
Consoles depend on the casual gamer, mobile and console gaming now occupy the same market.
The choice of a game depends on the person playing the game. I personally prefer "Action Adventure" and RPG's and IMHO a console is excellent for this although if I am traveling to or from work by train or bus a game of "Angry Birds" on my mobile makes the traveling time much more enjoyable.
Mobile gaming is mainly hand-held which is completely different to console or even PC gaming that normally display to much larger screens with the console screen (ie. HD TV to 1080p) normally being the larger. When comparing consoles to PC's IMHO the PC always wins performance wise since it is up-gradable compared to a console, however the console's "ease of use" and it's targeted inbuilt ability to connect to a TV (mainly HD for best viewing) makes the console the preferred gaming machine for casual to hard core gamers. I am well aware that PC's can connect to the HDMI port of a HD TV (I have one that can do this) however consoles are purpose built to do this.
Comparing games is dependent on the person and what environment that person wants to play the game in. The most general purpose gaming environment is access to the TV since it is the most social and comfortable and this is the area the console excels at. PC's on the other hand are sociable if they are online and they are excellent for fast paced (ie. FPS) and more involving games such as SIMS however the line between PC and console gaming has blurred considerably. Hand held gaming with it's small screen and limited on-line capability is less sociable although like I have said before what type of gaming machine people prefer depends on the person and the games they like.
Right, blaming a physical object for a _mental_ problem is the "problem".
A mentally ill person without a gun is pretty harmless, one with a gun on the other side not so much.
A mentally ill person with any type of weapon can be dangerous. Yes guns make killing very easy if you can get one, however it is very easy to pick up a weapon such as a knife, lump of wood, or even a rock which can kill as well and would be the preferred weapon of a mentally ill person were the preferred weapon of a criminal or gang member would be a gun.
Is there a solution to gun related crime? This is not an easy question to answer since so many factors come into play with some simple while others much more complex, however as long as humans exist on this planet there will always be people who will try to kill other people.
The problems encountered with spacefiight to even a close planet such as Mars are considerable. The first is solar radiation which is considerable and can lead to cell destruction with out the proper protection (sun screen won't cut it). The second is the length of time it takes to get to Mars from our planet. Thirdly you have to contend with weightlessness or micro gravity for the trip and then when you get to Mars you you only have one sixth gravity which is definitely not good for the human physiology over a long term. Fourthly you have to bring along your own oxygen since there is little if any on the planet.
Actually none of the issues are insurmountable however given current spaceflight technology it is going to be very hazardous for anyone traveling to Mars. Faster propulsion systems and radiation shields would cut down the risk considerably.
BTW, title mentions Brushfires, summary says Bushfires; which is correct?
Actually both are correct, however in Austrlia we normally refer to areas that are not cultivated or in a city or town as The Bush hence the term "Bushfire" is used to refer to fires in those area. We also have the term Grass-fire which is rather obvious however this can be quite dangerous as well,
Back-burning is a fairly common way of reducing the bush-fire threat and is actually carried out in most Australian cities especially in the cooler months. The problem you have is that Australia is huge (a little smaller then the continental USA) with a population of approximately 22 million compared to the USA's 312 million. Normally when a bush fire starts and is in a remote place it can be very difficult get enough firefighters into the area. It is not feasible to back-burn bush-land unless you have a considerable amount of man-power and resources especially water which may be in short supply.
Having drone aircraft for bush-file spotting is actually a very good cost effective idea especially if you can fly a fire-fighting team into the area before the fire gets out of control. Unfortunately even as I write we have record temperatures (approx 40 to 44 degrees C) and strong winds and many bush fires that have started today are in difficult to get to areas and almost impossible to put out.
Fedora is all well and good if you want to play with the bleeding edge
Well, yes, that's what it's for, isn't it?
If you get the Release Candidates yes, however the final release normally is quite stable and IMHO every bit as good and reliable as the other distros. In fact I actually use Fedora as my primary OS (all others are virtualized) professionally.
I normally don't recommend an upgrade when going from one major release to another (ie, 16 to 17 to 18) but a fresh install which actually is quicker to do if you separate your personal data from the operating system and note down any necessary configurations that will be required. Backups are obviously essential but this applies to all OS's (not just Linux) upgrades and installs.
The PS3 has been the top selling console in the world for over two years since the Wii started to rapidly fade in popularity.
Console gamers obviously are doing the exact opposite of what you are suggesting.
Basically the Xbox360 is outselling the PS3 in the USA by almost a 2 to 1 ratio however when you take the rest of the world into account you are correct if you say "On average the PS3 has been the top selling console at least for the last year".
I hear you. I just found my old GB Pocket and a bunch of games from 1997 earlier today. Had to clean it out a bit (tri-wings suck btw), but after throwing in some fresh batteries the thing turned on and ran like a champ. Sadly there's about a 0% chance my PS3 will do that in 10 years. I'm already on the SECOND one because the first bit the dust TWICE (fixed it the first time with a new part off ebay, 100% bricked the second time).
I guess you must have some bad luck with your PS3's. I have the original PS3 FAT (still works) and my two son's have the later PS3's. All PS3's can play PS1 game disks (1994 to 2005) which effectively means games that can be 18 years old. I rarely play PS1 games since the graphics on most of them look very grainy on my 55" HD TV, however many PS2 games (you need the original FAT PS3 for this) do look quite nice on my TV. Sill I normally play PS3 games so backwards compatibility is not such a big deal now for me.
A shame since I often find myself going back and playing older games from 10+ years ago. Many times the companies who made them are long since gone.
I guess "Retro Gaming" is going to be redefined as playing last years Madden or CoD.
You do realize that all PS3's will play PS1 game disks which are well over 10 years old, although to be honest given the size of modern HD TV's the graphics leave allot to be desired. Still there are some PS1 games which are still good and the graphics is such that it is still presentable on large HD TV screens. I suppose if you are really into "retro" gaming then the old NES, SNES, Master System, Megadrive etc can be played on a PC preferably with a fairly small screen or a window.
As far as the patent goes I would be very surprised if that was ever implemented unless all all the major gaming companies came to the party and I cannot see Microsoft or Nintendo doing that because if something like that was implemented by one company and the others did not follow suit then most people would desert the platform that it got implemented on. What companies are trying to do today is "digital downloads" which can actually lock the software to a particular account and in the majority of cases the machine.
What happened to the day of nice big data sheet books from Intel, Motorola, RCA, National, et al? I remember how dog eared my copies of TTL and CMOS logic were.
Well you can do a search and in many cases download the searchable PDF files or baring that purchase the PDF or even the "gasp" physical books. :)
... bullshit. 10,000 pages a year? Even if you count every page of every book and all the toilet paper I wipe my arse with it would be a fraction of that.
I'm all for saving paper, but this kind of exaggeration isn't very helpful. It's like the old one about plastic bags having an average lifetime of less than three minutes, which seems to ignore the fact that most people use them as bin liners.
Go to some large corporate offices and 10,000 pages per month is not unusual, in fact that kind of usage is tiny. lets do the maths. Some office environments would go through 20 reams of paper a month in printers and photo copiers and since a ream of paper is 500 pages then you get 10,000 pages. Now lets multiple that by 12 months and you get 120,000 pages a year. I won't deny that some smaller offices may only use say 2 to 5 reams of paper a month but even taking say 2 reams a month that would translate into 12,000 pages a year.
The bottom line is that the article is grossly underestimating how much offices are using in paper. In some large corporate offices it is not unusual to see 50 to 100 reams of paper consumed per month and 100 reams translates to 600,000 pages per year. Yes you can call "bullshit" to that but why don't you go down to your local council and ask how many reams of paper they would consume in a month for printing and photo copying, I am sure the answer would surprise you.
Personally I am all for saving paper as well and over the last two years at home I have only printed less than 50 pages and I only print when there is a legal requirement to do so, however in the corporate environment most printer and photo copier users don't really care.
BTW In the Sydney Australia where I live all stores provide free plastic bags which as you have said are great for putting garbage in. In Canberra (our capitol) you have to pay for plastic bags so it is not unusual to see people purchasing garbage bin liners and garbage bags so in reality plastic bag land fill pretty much remains the same.
It's usually cheaper to replace the whole printer than it is the ink cartridge.
For home usage if you have a cheap printer yes, however in the corporate world where it is not unusual for a $10,000 plus laser printer to print 10's of thousands of paper a month it is more cost effective to replace the consumables which would be toner cartridges rather than inks.
The ink jet printer I have at home cost me about $130.00 (fully claimable as a taxation deduction for me) and to fully replace the cartridges (5 in all) would cost about $60.00 if I purchased the the recommended inks, however if I refill or use generic compatible inks I can get away with $10 to $20. Basically I mainly use my printer as a scanner which actually wastes ink every time I start it although even so I don't scan that often now.
Since the 1960's on-wards there was always talk about the so called paperless office. Unfortunately it never happened and in fact many companies have increased their paper usage year on year.
The problem of increasing paper usage is many-fold and there are many interested parties that would like this trend to continue. Just to name a few they are 1) The forestry industries 2) Printer producers and 3) the "value added" industries that provide compatible inks and cartridges. Couple this with printer user attitude of printing information that in reality does not need to be printed and you are going to wast lots of paper. It must be noted that there is also a valid requirement for printing some documents (especially in the legal profession) however even this may not be necessary since paper long term storage may not be as long as many people think especially if the papers are not stored properly.
As for citing the above try "paper usage statistics" in Google and you get 222,000,000 hits. In addition try "paper long term storage" in Google and you get almost 50,000,000 hits. It appears everyone knows about the problem but there is a a lot of intransigence about doing something about it.
then they can use ubuntu
Why?
I wish my boss would show the same concern for the quality of our software, and scream at the programmers that break it every day.
Presumably the programmers working for your boss are paid. Why anyone would put up with this shit when Linus isn't paying is beyond me.
Maybe the programmers are getting paid (Redhat and IBM have representation here), then again some may do it out of interest and challenge without getting paid. However if you as a professional programmer (or professional anything) stuff up you are asking for criticism (hopefully constructive) from your peers and rightly so. It remains to be seen if the person who stuffed up take this criticism to heart and learn from it or just go into a sulk and leave.
What makes the issue a problem is the fact that the bug slipped past quality control which because of the nature of the product (ie the Linux kernel) surely must have something like this in place.