No; they only theme Gnome. Xubuntu and Kubuntu ship with whatever the default theme for XFCE and KDE are generally. Sometimes with a changed wallpaper or something.
Either way, the buttons are part of a theme - they've not hardcoded them into the top-left.
F-spot *is* an adequate replacement for an image manipulation program; since most people don't want an image manipulation program, it makes sense to replace it with something that people *do* want. Like an image management application.
It's still in the repos, it's just not installed by default.
This is basically what I perceive my job (general IT Techy) to be - to keep the computers in a state where they're useful tools, so that everyone else can just get on with their job without having to do any of mine.
Sort-of relevant to the OP, though, we have a hilarious policy here whereby our 'mac operators' (our studio is full of macs) must be able to build a mac themselves, and are then mostly left to their own devices. If they break it beyond repair, they have to find time to rebuild it. I don't know how it works, but it appears to not get too much in the way of getting work done, and for whatever reason the MCSE that heads up the IT department has worked out that macs are not part of our remit...
The thing about complaining about the workstation user I understand fully, I see it as the same as when I was working in a shop and we routinely complained about the customers and how much easier it would be to get work done if they weren't involved.
Over the past year, while I've had my Android handset, I've become a massive user of Google stuff. Google Docs, Maps, Picasa and Mail integrate pretty badly into it, but better than anything else, and so that's what I use from my phone. Since everything's already there, I do the same from a real PC.
I've tried a couple of times, and only really half-arsedly, to change this, but it's not that easy. The bundled non-gmail mail client is atrocious, there's no good Flickr clients and I've not found any real alternative to crippled-google-docs for my G1.
Google might get no money from me using the phone, but they get loads more ad views than they otherwise would when I carry on using what's on my phone on a proper screen.
I can't tell the difference between HL2 in Windows and in WINE on my system. It does require the non-free drivers, but if I'm playing Steam games I'm not likely to be that bothered.
Not the details, perhaps, but the tone of the summary and the bits of the article I read appear to imply this is some new discovery - that companies use tax havens as tax havens.
Or maybe it's just that British business is more tax-averse than those over the pond...
Here, in the UK, it's not people telling funny jokes. It's people pulling practical jokes on other people.
Perhaps this is another of the US/UK differences (or maybe US/everywhere else). All my other (UK-based) news sources took the opportunity for some reasonably clever and subtle jokes but otherwise carried on as normal, Slashdot just spends the day 'telling silly jokes' as you put it. Having an entire site dedicated to neither believable nor particularly funny jokes kinda ruins the idea in my mind, but it's nice to see that someone enjoys it.
What about censorship of political, religious, and controversial viewpoints? This is about Freedom of expression and Freedom of communication more than it is about any single issue.
I don't know. It's still Google turning round to a country and saying "Your laws are wrong". If Google tomorrow decided that actually they were fully in favor of something we see as universally despicable (child porn, say), we'd be all up in arms about Google being immoral and acting counter to the rules of our country, I don't think anyone would be claiming that actually Google are fighting the good fight for internet freedom, and child porn images should be allowed to be distributed freely.
It just depends where you draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable. Google's line is pretty far from Australia's, and far closer to that of most of the rest of the west.
If you really want to be sure you avoid being part of a botnet, then yes, Windows is not one of the choices you have. It cant be secured, its like going down the rapids in a colander while trying to plug the holes with cabbage.
Thing is, though, *everyone* running Windows treats it as holey, exploitable and generally unsafe. So they apply every security mechanism they can, they bother to audit things, and generally treat it as a dangerous thing that needs attention.
Too many Linux/OSX users sit there thinking "I use Unix. I have no need for security software". Especially the ones who were sold the idea on the grounds that 'there are no viruses for this'.
During the latest (or a recent) Windows Update it presents itself, but only if you have no browsers other than IE installed. It also appears to do it pre-update on new (XP) builds since then, too.
Amusingly, it's presented by IE, so you still have to click though the three or four pages of setting your IE8 preferences, and it doesn't replace. I'd understood IE was to be removed, but I wasn't really listening.
On a personal note, I owe you nothing. If you think your content is worth charging for, charge for it. If you provide your content, I will take it, just as I am happy with people taking the fruits of my labour as published on the Internet (and sharing it). Change your business model and try voluntary donations or subscriptions if you want, but don't ask me to be dishonest with your advertisers.
On a personal note from me, I'd far rather all news sites be free to visit, and pay through ad revenue than have to subscribe to every news site I might want to view. Right now, wherever the 'good' news (or whatever) is, I can go and read it. If I had to subscribe to *every* news site in order to get it, I'd be restricted to a pretty limited set of sites. I'd much rather see well-placed and targeted ads than have to actually hand over money.
I honestly don't see the problem with advertising in general. I browse with no ad blocker, and if a site's got daft ads that annoy me, I leave - as I would if anything else about it was crap. If a site doesn't irritate me with its ads and has whatever I was after, I'll stay. I've also, on occasion, clicked through ads for products that interest me.
On slashdot, for example, I've never felt the need to check the 'disable advertising' box, since the ads just don't annoy me, and are occasionally useful.
I gather they're pretty open source in the backend already. They're historically a Solaris house, but a lot of their web presence is Linux, and about half the Perl programmers in London seem to work for the BBC.
it helps to actually have logic behind why you try to compare google to MS. You have provided: 0.
I wouldn't have thought I'd need to provide much to back up a claim that Google's reputation for privacy is bad and getting worse on Slashdot of all places.
Meanwhile, why does google provide better tools? Simple. So you can have better control over your own data. Since when is that a bad thing?
I didn't say the lack of privacy was necessarily a bad thing. I use several Google tools precisely *because* Google knows enough about me to generally show me what I want to see.
I've gotta say, that was my first reaction. I don't see why Google would provide better genuine security provisions, they seem to make a fair bit of money out of people not having privacy.
Google's reputation for privacy is fast approaching Microsoft's for business ethics.
I'm glad I'm not the only person thinking this.
It looks like either a touchscreen display with some bias towards being an on-screen keyboard, or a reprogrammable mini keyboard. Which are each sort of cool, but not really groundbreaking.
This has nothing to do with malicious code in the OS. It's to do with malicious code exploiting crap code in the OS. And all software has *some* crap code in it.
The anti-Microsoft base here has always been strong. I wonder, what pushes somebody to accept a search engine that promotes virus-bearing browser toolbars?
The desire to find what you're looking for. Every so often I decide to change my default search engine and give something else a go. Generally, I find they're not as good as Google.
This might well be at least partly familiarity - I know how to concoct Google-friendly queries better than I know how to play Bing or AltaVista. But it's still a drop in efficiency for no real net benefit. Sure, there's the "I'm not using an evil company" feeling, (which you don't really get from Bing, Yahoo or A-V) but that doesn't really help when ten minutes later you've still not quite got across to the search engine what it is you're after, let alone found anything.
This sounds completely unworkable and even more pointless.
* Computers stack things. The CD drive's above the HDD, say. That's the only two interesting bits, in the same place. * Optiplex motherboards have expanses of nothingness. Unless there's something to be gained from clicking on conductors? * Power supplies, memory and CPUs are huge and mostly uninteresting.
How do state's rights fit in? If I lived in Texas could shoot INTERPOL agents for trespassing? They aren't United State law enforcement officers on official business, so the laws of some states likely are not prepared to grant INTERPOL agents the same protections.
The closest interpol has to 'agents' are admin staff. I see no reason why they'd particularly want to find themselves somewhere that might constitute trespassing.
Any law enforcement work is done by the relevant police force. In a state of the US, I'm guessing that would be the state police force as instructed by your Department of Justice?
Is that the number of people editing, or the number of users?
I'm still a Wikipedia user. I still have a talk page, I think it still gets autoedited by a newsletter or two. I've not logged in in about three years.
There certainly should be some legal issues with it, but from what I gather we've a government completely behind the idea of letting the recording industry police the internet.
You seem to live in a different part of the world from most of the rest of us. Or even on a different planet. Did you miss all that about MS charging PC makers full retail price for Windows unless the maker installed Windows on every PC they made?
No. But I don't see why that would support the idea that a vendor who only ships PCs with Windows on would be expected to refund the full value of a retail box - we know they're paying below the market rate.
In any case, I can fully understand dislike of MS bribing box makers to stick Windows on every box they produce, but I really don't see how this translates to me (or anyone else) being forced to buy a PC with Windows installed on it.
It would be helpful if you could give us some pointers to where bare PCs with mainstream hardware could be bought in the UK.
In the UK, overclockers do some, but don't seem to have a search-by-lack-of-OS option, Ebuyer do, er, two. There're places like http://debianshop.com/ who do ship an OS but it's a free one. And there are some real-life shops who will do it, too (well, they sell hardware and charge on top for the OS, but if you don't want the OS they don't sell you it).
I've not checked the hardware specs, but it's hardly likely to be any more peculiar than Dell's.
The only way I know to get a bare PC is to build it yourself, and that's what I do. MS would like to take a tribute even from the likes of me though - on the assumption that I pirate their crap.
Sure, they'd probably/like/ it, but they've not done anything to me personally to infer that I owe them any money for not having bought any of their software.
Slashdot Mirror
No; they only theme Gnome. Xubuntu and Kubuntu ship with whatever the default theme for XFCE and KDE are generally. Sometimes with a changed wallpaper or something.
Either way, the buttons are part of a theme - they've not hardcoded them into the top-left.
F-spot *is* an adequate replacement for an image manipulation program; since most people don't want an image manipulation program, it makes sense to replace it with something that people *do* want. Like an image management application.
It's still in the repos, it's just not installed by default.
This is basically what I perceive my job (general IT Techy) to be - to keep the computers in a state where they're useful tools, so that everyone else can just get on with their job without having to do any of mine. Sort-of relevant to the OP, though, we have a hilarious policy here whereby our 'mac operators' (our studio is full of macs) must be able to build a mac themselves, and are then mostly left to their own devices. If they break it beyond repair, they have to find time to rebuild it. I don't know how it works, but it appears to not get too much in the way of getting work done, and for whatever reason the MCSE that heads up the IT department has worked out that macs are not part of our remit... The thing about complaining about the workstation user I understand fully, I see it as the same as when I was working in a shop and we routinely complained about the customers and how much easier it would be to get work done if they weren't involved.
Hell yes. We're still buying XP...
More people using Google's other products.
Over the past year, while I've had my Android handset, I've become a massive user of Google stuff. Google Docs, Maps, Picasa and Mail integrate pretty badly into it, but better than anything else, and so that's what I use from my phone. Since everything's already there, I do the same from a real PC.
I've tried a couple of times, and only really half-arsedly, to change this, but it's not that easy. The bundled non-gmail mail client is atrocious, there's no good Flickr clients and I've not found any real alternative to crippled-google-docs for my G1.
Google might get no money from me using the phone, but they get loads more ad views than they otherwise would when I carry on using what's on my phone on a proper screen.
Wants multitasking *really* badly?
I can't tell the difference between HL2 in Windows and in WINE on my system. It does require the non-free drivers, but if I'm playing Steam games I'm not likely to be that bothered.
I thought this was generally common knowledge.
Not the details, perhaps, but the tone of the summary and the bits of the article I read appear to imply this is some new discovery - that companies use tax havens as tax havens.
Or maybe it's just that British business is more tax-averse than those over the pond...
Here, in the UK, it's not people telling funny jokes. It's people pulling practical jokes on other people.
Perhaps this is another of the US/UK differences (or maybe US/everywhere else). All my other (UK-based) news sources took the opportunity for some reasonably clever and subtle jokes but otherwise carried on as normal, Slashdot just spends the day 'telling silly jokes' as you put it. Having an entire site dedicated to neither believable nor particularly funny jokes kinda ruins the idea in my mind, but it's nice to see that someone enjoys it.
I don't know. It's still Google turning round to a country and saying "Your laws are wrong". If Google tomorrow decided that actually they were fully in favor of something we see as universally despicable (child porn, say), we'd be all up in arms about Google being immoral and acting counter to the rules of our country, I don't think anyone would be claiming that actually Google are fighting the good fight for internet freedom, and child porn images should be allowed to be distributed freely. It just depends where you draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable. Google's line is pretty far from Australia's, and far closer to that of most of the rest of the west.
Thing is, though, *everyone* running Windows treats it as holey, exploitable and generally unsafe. So they apply every security mechanism they can, they bother to audit things, and generally treat it as a dangerous thing that needs attention.
Too many Linux/OSX users sit there thinking "I use Unix. I have no need for security software". Especially the ones who were sold the idea on the grounds that 'there are no viruses for this'.
Yeah, I thought that.
This was on Monday that I went through the IE preferences windows to get at the browser choice screen, though, and that was one from an update.
During the latest (or a recent) Windows Update it presents itself, but only if you have no browsers other than IE installed. It also appears to do it pre-update on new (XP) builds since then, too.
Amusingly, it's presented by IE, so you still have to click though the three or four pages of setting your IE8 preferences, and it doesn't replace. I'd understood IE was to be removed, but I wasn't really listening.
On a personal note from me, I'd far rather all news sites be free to visit, and pay through ad revenue than have to subscribe to every news site I might want to view. Right now, wherever the 'good' news (or whatever) is, I can go and read it. If I had to subscribe to *every* news site in order to get it, I'd be restricted to a pretty limited set of sites. I'd much rather see well-placed and targeted ads than have to actually hand over money.
I honestly don't see the problem with advertising in general. I browse with no ad blocker, and if a site's got daft ads that annoy me, I leave - as I would if anything else about it was crap. If a site doesn't irritate me with its ads and has whatever I was after, I'll stay. I've also, on occasion, clicked through ads for products that interest me.
On slashdot, for example, I've never felt the need to check the 'disable advertising' box, since the ads just don't annoy me, and are occasionally useful.
I gather they're pretty open source in the backend already. They're historically a Solaris house, but a lot of their web presence is Linux, and about half the Perl programmers in London seem to work for the BBC.
I wouldn't have thought I'd need to provide much to back up a claim that Google's reputation for privacy is bad and getting worse on Slashdot of all places.
I didn't say the lack of privacy was necessarily a bad thing. I use several Google tools precisely *because* Google knows enough about me to generally show me what I want to see.
I've gotta say, that was my first reaction. I don't see why Google would provide better genuine security provisions, they seem to make a fair bit of money out of people not having privacy.
Google's reputation for privacy is fast approaching Microsoft's for business ethics.
I'm glad I'm not the only person thinking this. It looks like either a touchscreen display with some bias towards being an on-screen keyboard, or a reprogrammable mini keyboard. Which are each sort of cool, but not really groundbreaking.
This has nothing to do with malicious code in the OS. It's to do with malicious code exploiting crap code in the OS. And all software has *some* crap code in it.
The desire to find what you're looking for. Every so often I decide to change my default search engine and give something else a go. Generally, I find they're not as good as Google. This might well be at least partly familiarity - I know how to concoct Google-friendly queries better than I know how to play Bing or AltaVista. But it's still a drop in efficiency for no real net benefit. Sure, there's the "I'm not using an evil company" feeling, (which you don't really get from Bing, Yahoo or A-V) but that doesn't really help when ten minutes later you've still not quite got across to the search engine what it is you're after, let alone found anything.
This sounds completely unworkable and even more pointless.
* Computers stack things. The CD drive's above the HDD, say. That's the only two interesting bits, in the same place.
* Optiplex motherboards have expanses of nothingness. Unless there's something to be gained from clicking on conductors?
* Power supplies, memory and CPUs are huge and mostly uninteresting.
I don't want to see the web browser.
The closest interpol has to 'agents' are admin staff. I see no reason why they'd particularly want to find themselves somewhere that might constitute trespassing.
Any law enforcement work is done by the relevant police force. In a state of the US, I'm guessing that would be the state police force as instructed by your Department of Justice?
Is that the number of people editing, or the number of users? I'm still a Wikipedia user. I still have a talk page, I think it still gets autoedited by a newsletter or two. I've not logged in in about three years.
There certainly should be some legal issues with it, but from what I gather we've a government completely behind the idea of letting the recording industry police the internet.
No. But I don't see why that would support the idea that a vendor who only ships PCs with Windows on would be expected to refund the full value of a retail box - we know they're paying below the market rate. In any case, I can fully understand dislike of MS bribing box makers to stick Windows on every box they produce, but I really don't see how this translates to me (or anyone else) being forced to buy a PC with Windows installed on it.
In the UK, overclockers do some, but don't seem to have a search-by-lack-of-OS option, Ebuyer do, er, two. There're places like http://debianshop.com/ who do ship an OS but it's a free one. And there are some real-life shops who will do it, too (well, they sell hardware and charge on top for the OS, but if you don't want the OS they don't sell you it).
I've not checked the hardware specs, but it's hardly likely to be any more peculiar than Dell's.
Sure, they'd probably /like/ it, but they've not done anything to me personally to infer that I owe them any money for not having bought any of their software.