er just a minute - what the hell is "European Russia"? Surely you don't mean Ukraine, Latvia, and other former Soviet states? Not a particularly popular terminology for that region:)
You could also say that the empire shifted it's capital to Konstantinopolis, which was a central trade hub and easily defendable. Meanwhile the city of Rome became increasingly irrelevant and was lost to germanic tribes in 410 and 472AD. It was captured back by the Roman Empire, which later in medieval times the Pope (previously one of bishops of orthodox christian church)and his western vassals began to call Byzantine or Greek empire due to propaganda reasons. Interestingly it was the Pope who ruled the city of Rome after the Empire finally lost it to Lombards in 751 AD.
The empire that was centered in Konstantinopolis was ruled by emperors in direct succession to the ancient Roman emperors and the name of the state remained Imperium Romanum until it's very end in 1461 (fall of Trebizond). Their neighbors called them Romans as well (Rom, in turkish and so forth). Greek had been de facto language of the eastern part of the Roman empire during its whole existence so it's not suprising that use of latin lessened in administrative tasks during the centuries as the western parts of the empire were lost. This ofcourse gave good fuel to papal propaganda of "Greek empire".
It wasn't the barbarians, but the Crusaders who by sacking Constantinople during the 4th Crusade, dealt the Roman Empire the blow from which it never recovered. Constantinople finally fell to Turks in 1453.
I have no problem (on Ubuntu 10.04) playing HOMM3 (1999), Rune (2000), Doom 3 (2004), Cold War (2006), Gorky 17 (2007), H-Craft Championship (2007), Penumbra (2007), Prey (2008) etc. They are all native games or ports who keep running despite the fact they're the exact same copy released many years ago.
Just for heads up, Amnesia: The Dark Descent (by the creators of Penumbra series) was released just few weeks ago.
IMHO it's quite useless to try to point bad guys.
What can you expect from a country that has suffered at least three foreign invasions (English, Soviet and now US/Nato)and continuous warring in last 100 years?
Anyone that brings stability is welcomed by local in such situation and that's exactly where groups such as taliban get their power.
Which is why I'll probably get hate for asking this, but it is something I have just never understood about Linux: What is up with the rushing new versions out the door?
Ubuntu != Linux
You are absolutely right when it comes to Ubuntu though. They seem to be more interested in grabbing all the new features in the linux world rather than improving existing stuff for better stability.
Seven pot from Trinidad & Tobago is also worth trying. It has the greatest taste with about the same heat levels as the hyped Bih Jolokia/Bhut Jolokia/Naga Morich.
Ones I've grown here at home have - when measured by my pain receptors - been clearly hotter than Nagas from the grocery store. Your mileage may vary as the growing conditions have considerable impact on pungency. IIRC when Indians were evaluating Bih Jolokias (probably for the reason stated in the topic) it was noted that the ones harvested from drier areas rated only half as high SHUs as ones collected from more humid sites.
I'm not saying that Bih Jolokia is no good. It is. I actually use it as powder to spice my food almost every day (to be honest simply because I havent got enough Seven pot), but there are also other delicious and ridicilously hot chillies.
Squeeze? What about Squiggy? I thought "Lenny" was supposed to segue into using Laverne & Shirley names, which would allow further migration into Happy Days, Mork & Mindy and other entertainment favorites of the 1970s.
Debian, on the other hand... well, it kind of sucks. Someone made the mistake of installing it on one of their home boxes, and... well, lets just say it feels OLD.
No shit Sherlock! Debian 'stable' is supposed to be stable. Its intention is to have well tested software, which means that it will never be bleeding edge. Good choice for servers and those occasions where you need the most stable linux platform.
If you need something for home desktop, then how about using 'testing' and fetching whatever bleeding edge apps you want from 'unstable' and 'experimental'? You can pick and choose from several versions of all software. Gnome 2.24.2-1 is too old? How about OO.org 3.0.1 or GIMP 2.6.4-1?
I've always thought that Debian was a great Distro. Stable, lots of packages that can be installed, and lots of resources on the web.
Ubuntu (based on Debian) ties it all together with a nice, easy to use installer and GUI. Great choice for desktops, but I'd stick to Debian for servers.
Ubuntu doesn't tie it all together. It loses some main advantages of Debian including pretty through testing of packages (unstable->testing->stable). In Ubuntu if there's a major software bug originating from upstream it will rarely get fixed until you update to new release version.
I remember Ubuntu 7.10 having a bug in kernel which rendered lot of HP laptops - including my friend's - near useless. (cpu usage being constantly near 90% due to polling interrupts) Ubuntu didn't give an option to upgrade to newer kernel version or downgrade to older one of which neither would have had this bug that was affecting thousands of users. Because it was LTS release their guidelines prohibited switching to the next kernel version. There was two ways for user to get a working computer. One was disabling another one of Turion x2 cpus and other would have been compiling another version of the kernel. If it was my laptop I would have just switched to another, less problematic distro.
Also I've found upgrading from relase to another flaky at best on more customized installs. With Debian one can use 'testing' or 'unstable' and upgrades happen in gradual fashion whenever newer packages come available. You never have to take that rather uncertain jump from old release to new one.
Ubuntu has it's pros and cons. What it gains in being ready to use with thoughtfully selected, preconfigured features and having many things automatized it loses in stability and ease of maintenance. Also it's update cycle is very different from that in Debian.
I'll stick with Debian on desktops too. Ubuntu is something I recommend for most friends and relatives, but not without reservations.
Cruise missiles launched from near the Iraq/Iran border would work just as well and can carry warheads of at least 225kt.
Or a special ops mission armed with ADMs would work too.
Reminds me of the movie Threads. Never released in the US "Docu-drama" where shooting strategic nuclear missiles at Iran escalates into full scale nuclear war.
Ask yourself, if I have 4 GB of RAM, and 500 MB worth of applications running, effectively having 3.5 GB for disk caching. How useful is it to swap out that extra 0.5 GB worth of kernel/programs for even more disk caching? Is 4 GB of disk cache so much more valuable than 3.5 GB? I highly doubt it, so to prevent stupid memory managers from swapping out my favourite programs which I left running for a reason, I just turn off swap.
Or you could just adjust kernel's tendency to swap using/proc/sys/vm/swappiness (values range from 0 to 100). Default that most of the distros use is 60, which is probably too high for most desktop user's liking. Oftentimes you can prevent unnecessary swapping and thus increase responsiveness by setting swappiness to something like 0 or 10.
echo 0 >/proc/sys/vm/swappiness to try it out until the next boot and add it to/etc/sysctl.conf (vm.swappiness = 0) if you wish to make it permanent.
One reason against reducing swappiness is that when stuff gets rarely swapped out you will have more RAM used by it. But hey, what's that RAM for anyway?
Do any desktops really need a fb, or is it only so that there can be pretty pictures during boot, before [xkg]dm starts?
Sometimes I like to use my ultraportable without launching X.
High resolution fb is far from useless as you can fit more lines of text into the screen.
Also it's nice to be able to run videos with framebuffer output driver.
Author seems to be concerned in reproducing the workflow he has with Aperture or just looks for some general purpose all-in-one program for converting his raws.
Maybe that's why the article has no mention of UFRaw, which works standalone or as a plugin for the GIMP. It uses the superb dcraw as it's backend and reproduces camera white balance settings for my Olympus E-510 ORF files better than other raw conversion tools out there. It works fine for me as I use raw editors/converters only for adjusting exposure and white balance and then do the most of actual image manipulation in the GIMP.(right tool for the right job, eh?)
Photography is one area where Linux has many tools. So far I've tried LightZone (very slow and bloated), Rawstudio (promising, but has no clue of my camera white balance and is still somewhat buggy) and RawTherapee. Now all that I (and many others) still want is 16-bit per channel colors support in GIMP. I know about Cinepaint, but I would miss all the other things that GIMP can offer.
It's about population size and the culture of that historical population, religious people outbreed secular people at a much higher rate, therefore they 'win' by cultural imperialism through breeding.
On the other hand, it's worth noting that some people have been frustrated by Debian's release schedule.
I've never got my head around why these people don't just use testing/unstable branches. Do they not understand how Debian development cycle works, or is it something else? In my experience the 'testing' branch is relatively stable, that is to say, more stable than the software included in most desktop distros out there.
To me Debian is actually 3 distros together. One can either pick 'stable' for mission critical systems, servers and such. 'Testing' for desktop or have any combination of 'testing'/'unstable' if one prefers bleeding edge software and can handle an occasional bug.(in which case one has a possibility to roll back to earlier version of the package in question)
Above all, Debian is versatile. For someone fairly experienced in Linux it's often easier to manage than say, Ubuntu, but both have their advantages. I generally recommend Ubuntu for people with no previous linux exposure. In Ubuntu the installation is breeze and provides well balanced set of installed software packages, while Debian would be the choice when the user already knows what combination of software he/she wants to end up with.
Sometimes a little truth is better than no truth. You think a state-run search engine would be better for China than a filtered independent one?
I can't believe such comments are modded Insightful.
That's a really slippery slope to go. For Chinese people it must look (rightly so) that Google and Yahoo are accepting censorship practices of their goverment. It makes censorship normal, something to expect, instead of something one should oppose. If there was no one bandwagoning their goverment in this censorship issue, pressure would be much harder on their goverment to stop it. Actually it goes down to individual level. As long as there is people taking part in this kind of shit "for greater good" or "lesser evil" it will go on and on as these people are the opressors.
PS. I'd guess that Chinese public is just as much limited in seeing the truth with filtered Google or local search engine. But that's beside the point.
Google has no choice but to cripple its product in order to maximize profits.
...And they help oppressive government to break human rights. Where is the line drawn, I might ask? As long as it's profitable, is it lawful for US based corporation to help in say torturing and murdering human beings?
Slashdot Mirror
No, he doesn't mean that.
Didn't they tell you at school that Ural moutains are considered to be the dividing line between Europe and Asia?
http://wwp.greenwichmeantime.com/time-zone/russia/europe.htm
So Sweden, Finland and Norway aren't part of Europe? :)
Or what about European Russia.
Whoever made that map is in serious need of some geography lessons.
You could also say that the empire shifted it's capital to Konstantinopolis, which was a central trade hub and easily defendable. Meanwhile the city of Rome became increasingly irrelevant and was lost to germanic tribes in 410 and 472AD. It was captured back by the Roman Empire, which later in medieval times the Pope (previously one of bishops of orthodox christian church)and his western vassals began to call Byzantine or Greek empire due to propaganda reasons. Interestingly it was the Pope who ruled the city of Rome after the Empire finally lost it to Lombards in 751 AD.
The empire that was centered in Konstantinopolis was ruled by emperors in direct succession to the ancient Roman emperors and the name of the state remained Imperium Romanum until it's very end in 1461 (fall of Trebizond). Their neighbors called them Romans as well (Rom, in turkish and so forth). Greek had been de facto language of the eastern part of the Roman empire during its whole existence so it's not suprising that use of latin lessened in administrative tasks during the centuries as the western parts of the empire were lost. This ofcourse gave good fuel to papal propaganda of "Greek empire".
It wasn't the barbarians, but the Crusaders who by sacking Constantinople during the 4th Crusade, dealt the Roman Empire the blow from which it never recovered. Constantinople finally fell to Turks in 1453.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_empire
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Crusade
When it comes to Greek civilization and culture, it's still alive and kicking. So don't call it dead yet.
Just for heads up, Amnesia: The Dark Descent (by the creators of Penumbra series) was released just few weeks ago.
IMHO it's quite useless to try to point bad guys. What can you expect from a country that has suffered at least three foreign invasions (English, Soviet and now US/Nato)and continuous warring in last 100 years? Anyone that brings stability is welcomed by local in such situation and that's exactly where groups such as taliban get their power.
Fraunhofer
Which is why I'll probably get hate for asking this, but it is something I have just never understood about Linux: What is up with the rushing new versions out the door?
Ubuntu != Linux
You are absolutely right when it comes to Ubuntu though. They seem to be more interested in grabbing all the new features in the linux world rather than improving existing stuff for better stability.
And yes, both sides can be relaxed and merrily joking about stuff minutes before they blow away the civilians
FTFU ;)
Seven pot from Trinidad & Tobago is also worth trying. It has the greatest taste with about the same heat levels as the hyped Bih Jolokia/Bhut Jolokia/Naga Morich.
Ones I've grown here at home have - when measured by my pain receptors - been clearly hotter than Nagas from the grocery store. Your mileage may vary as the growing conditions have considerable impact on pungency. IIRC when Indians were evaluating Bih Jolokias (probably for the reason stated in the topic) it was noted that the ones harvested from drier areas rated only half as high SHUs as ones collected from more humid sites.
I'm not saying that Bih Jolokia is no good. It is. I actually use it as powder to spice my food almost every day (to be honest simply because I havent got enough Seven pot), but there are also other delicious and ridicilously hot chillies.
I don't think I'd even know Firefox had it been called Dulltuna or Slowduck.
I'm already waiting for Debian Fonzie. :)
No shit Sherlock! Debian 'stable' is supposed to be stable. Its intention is to have well tested software, which means that it will never be bleeding edge. Good choice for servers and those occasions where you need the most stable linux platform.
If you need something for home desktop, then how about using 'testing' and fetching whatever bleeding edge apps you want from 'unstable' and 'experimental'? You can pick and choose from several versions of all software. Gnome 2.24.2-1 is too old? How about OO.org 3.0.1 or GIMP 2.6.4-1?
Pick the right tool for the job, eh?
Ubuntu doesn't tie it all together. It loses some main advantages of Debian including pretty through testing of packages (unstable->testing->stable). In Ubuntu if there's a major software bug originating from upstream it will rarely get fixed until you update to new release version.
I remember Ubuntu 7.10 having a bug in kernel which rendered lot of HP laptops - including my friend's - near useless. (cpu usage being constantly near 90% due to polling interrupts) Ubuntu didn't give an option to upgrade to newer kernel version or downgrade to older one of which neither would have had this bug that was affecting thousands of users. Because it was LTS release their guidelines prohibited switching to the next kernel version. There was two ways for user to get a working computer. One was disabling another one of Turion x2 cpus and other would have been compiling another version of the kernel. If it was my laptop I would have just switched to another, less problematic distro.
Also I've found upgrading from relase to another flaky at best on more customized installs. With Debian one can use 'testing' or 'unstable' and upgrades happen in gradual fashion whenever newer packages come available. You never have to take that rather uncertain jump from old release to new one.
Ubuntu has it's pros and cons. What it gains in being ready to use with thoughtfully selected, preconfigured features and having many things automatized it loses in stability and ease of maintenance. Also it's update cycle is very different from that in Debian. I'll stick with Debian on desktops too. Ubuntu is something I recommend for most friends and relatives, but not without reservations.
umm...sorry, in above posting I meant to say tactical nukes.
Reminds me of the movie Threads. Never released in the US "Docu-drama" where shooting strategic nuclear missiles at Iran escalates into full scale nuclear war.
A must see.
[blockquote]They don't do mondain and they don't do what's been done before.[/blockquote] So in other words; They screw virgins - not wizards.
Or you could just adjust kernel's tendency to swap using /proc/sys/vm/swappiness (values range from 0 to 100). Default that most of the distros use is 60, which is probably too high for most desktop user's liking. Oftentimes you can prevent unnecessary swapping and thus increase responsiveness by setting swappiness to something like 0 or 10.
/proc/sys/vm/swappiness to try it out until the next boot and add it to /etc/sysctl.conf (vm.swappiness = 0) if you wish to make it permanent.
echo 0 >
One reason against reducing swappiness is that when stuff gets rarely swapped out you will have more RAM used by it. But hey, what's that RAM for anyway?
Crows using cars to crack nuts
Sometimes I like to use my ultraportable without launching X.
High resolution fb is far from useless as you can fit more lines of text into the screen.
Also it's nice to be able to run videos with framebuffer output driver.
Author seems to be concerned in reproducing the workflow he has with Aperture or just looks for some general purpose all-in-one program for converting his raws.
Maybe that's why the article has no mention of UFRaw, which works standalone or as a plugin for the GIMP. It uses the superb dcraw as it's backend and reproduces camera white balance settings for my Olympus E-510 ORF files better than other raw conversion tools out there. It works fine for me as I use raw editors/converters only for adjusting exposure and white balance and then do the most of actual image manipulation in the GIMP.(right tool for the right job, eh?)
Photography is one area where Linux has many tools. So far I've tried LightZone (very slow and bloated), Rawstudio (promising, but has no clue of my camera white balance and is still somewhat buggy) and RawTherapee. Now all that I (and many others) still want is 16-bit per channel colors support in GIMP. I know about Cinepaint, but I would miss all the other things that GIMP can offer.
Evolution at work.
And then there's XiTi Monitor: http://www.xitimonitor.com/en-us/browsers-barometer/firefox-march-2008/index-1-2-3-127.html
To me Debian is actually 3 distros together. One can either pick 'stable' for mission critical systems, servers and such. 'Testing' for desktop or have any combination of 'testing'/'unstable' if one prefers bleeding edge software and can handle an occasional bug
Above all, Debian is versatile. For someone fairly experienced in Linux it's often easier to manage than say, Ubuntu, but both have their advantages. I generally recommend Ubuntu for people with no previous linux exposure. In Ubuntu the installation is breeze and provides well balanced set of installed software packages, while Debian would be the choice when the user already knows what combination of software he/she wants to end up with.
That's a really slippery slope to go. For Chinese people it must look (rightly so) that Google and Yahoo are accepting censorship practices of their goverment. It makes censorship normal, something to expect, instead of something one should oppose. If there was no one bandwagoning their goverment in this censorship issue, pressure would be much harder on their goverment to stop it. Actually it goes down to individual level. As long as there is people taking part in this kind of shit "for greater good" or "lesser evil" it will go on and on as these people are the opressors.
PS. I'd guess that Chinese public is just as much limited in seeing the truth with filtered Google or local search engine. But that's beside the point.
There is always a choice.