I'm dumbfounded that people get to ask such simple questions of/. readers. A simple Google search would have turned up many Debian-based solutions, forget about all the *nix ones out there. I used to think this kind of thing was lazy to ask at Ubuntu forums, but it's way worse here. I am seriously thinking about taking this site out of my rss feeds because I keep getting fooled by this crap. If anything, this is just more filler on a slow day for Ubuntu stories...a very cheap maneuver.
There's a Windows phone now? And it has apps too? Plus the data you upload to Microsoft servers can be deleted by them? *And* they put a killswitch in the phone to uninstall apps remotely?
...seriously, this is exactly what everyone else does, following the shitty example that Apple and Amazon set for them. I know you can jailbreak an iPhone and turn off the killswitch with a swipe of the finger, but I doubt anyone cares enough yet to jailbreak a Windows phone. But they will. Whether there are ever enough apps in the Windows Store to make Microsoft have to wipe one from the few phones they sell is another question;)
Build a standalone DVD drive with a USB/Memorycard slot.
When the user pops in a DVD-ROM, the drive copies an image of the disk onto the memory card. When the memory card is popped into a computer, an exact copy of the disk shows up!
Of course this would have problems with copy protected media but for software installs it could be useful. Most importantly it is simple enough that your grandmother could use it.
Unfortunately, the problems with this go beyond just DRM. CDs and DVDs have been around for a long time, during some very turbulent decades in computer history, and have seen all kinds of format changes and shifts in technology. Even cloning an exact copy of a CD or DVD to disk can be difficult, let alone taking a bootable CD/DVD and creating a bootable USB thumb drive from it. On linux distros we have all sorts of tools to deal with this kind of thing, so I guess you could just try to make a slim distro that dealt with most popular use-case scenarios and embed it on a device...however, I would assume such a gadget would be a customer service headache, and I can't imagine it being very profitable.
In other words, ReDigi is bending over backwards to satisfy the RIAA, but of course, it's not enough.
That's because the threat to the RIAA is, and always has been, the dwindling of the music industry's hegemony over sales of recorded audio. If an industry arises that threatens their (still!) ridiculously high prices on iTunes etc., then they're in trouble. They do *not* want a race-to-the-bottom for the price of mp3s. It might also make P2P piracy look much more benign (does anyone care about the crime of stealing pennies?), and it could get that dangerous idea of "sharing" into the heads of the general population...
I actually see that the way Mint is now is how Ubuntu was when it was just beginning to gain in popularity. Give Mint time and eventually they will take the #1 spot from Ubuntu. I only hope that the Mint team doesn't eventually stop listening to users the way Canonical did.
Mint's gain in popularity probably had a lot more to do with the fact that it bundled proprietary software, non-free drivers, etc. by default, since it was basically Ubuntu with different themes in the beginning. Now, I expect them to gain from Ubuntu's shift to Unity and (possibly) every other major distro's commitment to Gnome 3's new interface. So we'll see, but it really doesn't matter much...Debian-based systems are all good and very customizable, it's good to just have such a huge and healthy ecosystem.
I've been slowly switching to Linux Mint on my machines and I've found some pretty annoying bugs with the Gnome version of Mint that I didn't find in Ubuntu or Debian. It seems to me that the Mint devs may have already done too many customizations to the desktop. In some cases, I've moved to LXDE because it's more stable.
So, we'll see how this turns out, but there has to be a healthy community of devs around MGSE to deal with all the problems that will no doubt arise...as Gnome 3 begins to drift further away from the Gnome 2.x codebase, MGSE is gonna need to do more heavy lifting to keep everything working smoothly.
Yes you can do it in Javascript, but the code would be convoluted. Someone may want to create a library for that. It's like writing macros for LaTeX.
Maybe the walls he was talking about was the walls he was talking about refers to the limit of how complex web authoring are allowed to be. At least that's how I see it, but it's easily mitigated by introducing a JS library for it.
I'm not saying it's impossible, but I haven't seen multi-column layout with images spanning columns done in JavaScript. You reach some walls in JavaScript.
Can anybody figure out what he's trying to say there? You wouldn't even need Javascript - you'd do that with some very basic CSS. I don't see the problem he's trying to point out.
*And* you can use JavaScript to alter CSS on-the-fly. So it's a pretty bizarre answer.
Typing this on a 4-year-old System76 now. Great hardware, and it's important to support GNU/Linux vendors.
System76 has an update tool that will install anything specific to their hardware as a.deb package, so you shouldn't have any driver problems as long as you only upgrade your distro when System76 says they support it. For some time now, however, I haven't needed any updates directly from System76, as driver support for all my hardware is now available in the default repos.
I was trying to make a point that Apple was no longer a PC Computer maker and they were a personal device maker. And Apple Computer eventually changed their name to Apple, Inc.to reflect that change in direction.;
While I think you're right, the iPod's success made it central to Apple financially and as a brand, you have to keep in mind that Apple always was, as you put it, a "personal device maker". Apple has always been about selling consumer gadgets, and viewed computing from that perspective. Jobs very, very consciously tried to emulate Sony. Take another look at the iMacs, the NeXT cube, or the Newton with this in mind...Jobs was applying the Walkman/Discman/VCR mindset to the personal computer.
Now, when you start caging in users because of this approach, that's when I have a problem...
I'm not saying a netbook with an obscure OS would sell, but at least all they would have to do is slap some Amiga logos on there and push the product out, rather than resurrect software that is long-dead.
Chrome is not very customizable. Why is this news all of a sudden? Next thing you know, you'll be asking Apple to change something in Safari.
Software freedom isn't all about licenses, this is one of the reasons we have choices like Firefox out there. If you don't like the UI that Google or Apple has wrapped around free software, then there are plenty of alternatives. Or do you really think those companies are more likely to listen than Microsoft just because their products rest upon a F/OSS core?
All of that chest-beating on their site about takedown notices, and when they actually _get_ taken down their co-founder runs off to a foreign country and hides to avoid the consequences, scurrying away from the lights like a cockroach.
Um, those letters on the site make it pretty clear he's a pirate. Pirates pull crazy schemes to avoid jail. Or did you not download Pirates of the Carribean on TPB?;)
Unique names do help in searching for issues relating to a particular release.
Well apparently Shuttleworth considered Perky Penguin. But they coulda come up with a more unique P adjective, and I think it would be easy enough to search for.
Shuttleworth is determined to change much of the Linux desktop infrastructure, if not a lot of what we've taken for granted in Unix systems in general.
Just to clarify, I think some of these changes are positive and long-overdue (Upstart), even if I don't always like the way Ubuntu implements them (PulseAudio). Others, I've *tried* very hard to like, but are just unusable ("Netbook Edition" and its spiritual successor Unity). And then there's the occasional change like this...
And this really bugs me. They are the only Linux distro that uses animal names for their version names, they get to 'P' and they DON'T USE 'PENGUIN'? WTF???
*And* there are penguins in South Africa, so it's not like it goes against their branding.
I love how more and more 'power users' start complaining about Unity and how ubuntu is becoming such a 'mainstream' OS, so they all switch to other distros. You DO know you can easily install a different window manager? Granted, I'm not a fan of Unity and I don't think it should be the Ubuntu default, but I'm not about to switch distros when I can switch to gnome in a minute and be done with it.
The problem with the switch to Unity is not that you can't install a different window manager, it's that you know alternate window managers will never be supported the same way and that showstopper bugs will pile up because much more than Unity is being changed. Shuttleworth is determined to change much of the Linux desktop infrastructure, if not a lot of what we've taken for granted in Unix systems in general. Once the switch to Wayland happens, this will become much more obvious.
Luckily, there are plenty of Ubuntu and Debian derivs out there. I don't like what's going on with Unity or Gnome 3, but I've put Ubuntu on a dozen or so friend, family, and work computers, so it's not exactly a trivial thing to switch everyone over to another Debian-based distro.
That said, Linux Mint's LXDE option is pretty solid for aging desktops and netbooks, and runs ridiculously fast on new hardware. I found out that there are some pretty major tweaks to get it close to the standards of Gnome 2.3, but it's actually less of a hassle to do that than tweak the default Ubuntu setup to do what I want. And, the payoff is much bigger (anyone remember programs launching quickly without having to show you some animation?).
Slashdot Mirror
did you even google your question? http://lmgtfy.com/?q=ubuntu+lockdown maybe this will help you http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=456549 http://users.telenet.be/mydotcom/howto/linuxkiosk/ubuntu01.htm http://library.gnome.org/admin/system-admin-guide/stable/menustructure-13.html.en
I'm dumbfounded that people get to ask such simple questions of /. readers. A simple Google search would have turned up many Debian-based solutions, forget about all the *nix ones out there. I used to think this kind of thing was lazy to ask at Ubuntu forums, but it's way worse here. I am seriously thinking about taking this site out of my rss feeds because I keep getting fooled by this crap. If anything, this is just more filler on a slow day for Ubuntu stories...a very cheap maneuver.
There's a Windows phone now? And it has apps too? Plus the data you upload to Microsoft servers can be deleted by them? *And* they put a killswitch in the phone to uninstall apps remotely?
;)
...seriously, this is exactly what everyone else does, following the shitty example that Apple and Amazon set for them. I know you can jailbreak an iPhone and turn off the killswitch with a swipe of the finger, but I doubt anyone cares enough yet to jailbreak a Windows phone. But they will. Whether there are ever enough apps in the Windows Store to make Microsoft have to wipe one from the few phones they sell is another question
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphosphonate#Adverse_effects
I'd be very curious to hear about the side effects of using these medications in space. Grandma had plenty of difficulty using them here on earth...
This is why I thought Strontium would be the better choice.
Theoretically you can. All physical machines are finite state machines, so you can enumerate all configurations (and hence, all bugs) in finite time.
...but you can't write a *general algorithm* to do that.
Build a standalone DVD drive with a USB/Memorycard slot.
When the user pops in a DVD-ROM, the drive copies an image of the disk onto the memory card. When the memory card is popped into a computer, an exact copy of the disk shows up!
Of course this would have problems with copy protected media but for software installs it could be useful. Most importantly it is simple enough that your grandmother could use it.
Unfortunately, the problems with this go beyond just DRM. CDs and DVDs have been around for a long time, during some very turbulent decades in computer history, and have seen all kinds of format changes and shifts in technology. Even cloning an exact copy of a CD or DVD to disk can be difficult, let alone taking a bootable CD/DVD and creating a bootable USB thumb drive from it. On linux distros we have all sorts of tools to deal with this kind of thing, so I guess you could just try to make a slim distro that dealt with most popular use-case scenarios and embed it on a device...however, I would assume such a gadget would be a customer service headache, and I can't imagine it being very profitable.
In other words, ReDigi is bending over backwards to satisfy the RIAA, but of course, it's not enough.
That's because the threat to the RIAA is, and always has been, the dwindling of the music industry's hegemony over sales of recorded audio. If an industry arises that threatens their (still!) ridiculously high prices on iTunes etc., then they're in trouble. They do *not* want a race-to-the-bottom for the price of mp3s. It might also make P2P piracy look much more benign (does anyone care about the crime of stealing pennies?), and it could get that dangerous idea of "sharing" into the heads of the general population...
No, Mint userbase jumped over 40% because of Canonical's poorly designed UI
Sure, but that's a recent development. Mint was already at the top of DistroWatch, for example, before that.
I actually see that the way Mint is now is how Ubuntu was when it was just beginning to gain in popularity. Give Mint time and eventually they will take the #1 spot from Ubuntu. I only hope that the Mint team doesn't eventually stop listening to users the way Canonical did.
Mint's gain in popularity probably had a lot more to do with the fact that it bundled proprietary software, non-free drivers, etc. by default, since it was basically Ubuntu with different themes in the beginning. Now, I expect them to gain from Ubuntu's shift to Unity and (possibly) every other major distro's commitment to Gnome 3's new interface. So we'll see, but it really doesn't matter much...Debian-based systems are all good and very customizable, it's good to just have such a huge and healthy ecosystem.
I've been slowly switching to Linux Mint on my machines and I've found some pretty annoying bugs with the Gnome version of Mint that I didn't find in Ubuntu or Debian. It seems to me that the Mint devs may have already done too many customizations to the desktop. In some cases, I've moved to LXDE because it's more stable.
So, we'll see how this turns out, but there has to be a healthy community of devs around MGSE to deal with all the problems that will no doubt arise...as Gnome 3 begins to drift further away from the Gnome 2.x codebase, MGSE is gonna need to do more heavy lifting to keep everything working smoothly.
...and a place for paper, pen, filesafe, key.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_9_from_Bell_Labs
...no but srsly, OpenBSD is not actually a giant blowfish out to destroy our cities.
Yes you can do it in Javascript, but the code would be convoluted. Someone may want to create a library for that. It's like writing macros for LaTeX.
Maybe the walls he was talking about was the walls he was talking about refers to the limit of how complex web authoring are allowed to be. At least that's how I see it, but it's easily mitigated by introducing a JS library for it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inner-platform_effect
most people wipe the stock image as soon as they get it home and put a better build on it.
I do this, you do this, most people do not.
I'm not saying it's impossible, but I haven't seen multi-column layout with images spanning columns done in JavaScript. You reach some walls in JavaScript.
Can anybody figure out what he's trying to say there? You wouldn't even need Javascript - you'd do that with some very basic CSS. I don't see the problem he's trying to point out.
*And* you can use JavaScript to alter CSS on-the-fly. So it's a pretty bizarre answer.
Typing this on a 4-year-old System76 now. Great hardware, and it's important to support GNU/Linux vendors.
.deb package, so you shouldn't have any driver problems as long as you only upgrade your distro when System76 says they support it. For some time now, however, I haven't needed any updates directly from System76, as driver support for all my hardware is now available in the default repos.
System76 has an update tool that will install anything specific to their hardware as a
I was trying to make a point that Apple was no longer a PC Computer maker and they were a personal device maker. And Apple Computer eventually changed their name to Apple, Inc.to reflect that change in direction.;
While I think you're right, the iPod's success made it central to Apple financially and as a brand, you have to keep in mind that Apple always was, as you put it, a "personal device maker". Apple has always been about selling consumer gadgets, and viewed computing from that perspective. Jobs very, very consciously tried to emulate Sony. Take another look at the iMacs, the NeXT cube, or the Newton with this in mind...Jobs was applying the Walkman/Discman/VCR mindset to the personal computer.
Now, when you start caging in users because of this approach, that's when I have a problem...
AmigaOS has already been cloned and improved, and the driver support doesn't seem half bad: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AROS
I'm not saying a netbook with an obscure OS would sell, but at least all they would have to do is slap some Amiga logos on there and push the product out, rather than resurrect software that is long-dead.
Chrome is not very customizable. Why is this news all of a sudden? Next thing you know, you'll be asking Apple to change something in Safari.
Software freedom isn't all about licenses, this is one of the reasons we have choices like Firefox out there. If you don't like the UI that Google or Apple has wrapped around free software, then there are plenty of alternatives. Or do you really think those companies are more likely to listen than Microsoft just because their products rest upon a F/OSS core?
All of that chest-beating on their site about takedown notices, and when they actually _get_ taken down their co-founder runs off to a foreign country and hides to avoid the consequences, scurrying away from the lights like a cockroach.
Um, those letters on the site make it pretty clear he's a pirate. Pirates pull crazy schemes to avoid jail. Or did you not download Pirates of the Carribean on TPB? ;)
Unique names do help in searching for issues relating to a particular release.
Well apparently Shuttleworth considered Perky Penguin. But they coulda come up with a more unique P adjective, and I think it would be easy enough to search for.
Shuttleworth is determined to change much of the Linux desktop infrastructure, if not a lot of what we've taken for granted in Unix systems in general.
Just to clarify, I think some of these changes are positive and long-overdue (Upstart), even if I don't always like the way Ubuntu implements them (PulseAudio). Others, I've *tried* very hard to like, but are just unusable ("Netbook Edition" and its spiritual successor Unity). And then there's the occasional change like this...
And this really bugs me. They are the only Linux distro that uses animal names for their version names, they get to 'P' and they DON'T USE 'PENGUIN'? WTF???
*And* there are penguins in South Africa, so it's not like it goes against their branding.
I love how more and more 'power users' start complaining about Unity and how ubuntu is becoming such a 'mainstream' OS, so they all switch to other distros. You DO know you can easily install a different window manager? Granted, I'm not a fan of Unity and I don't think it should be the Ubuntu default, but I'm not about to switch distros when I can switch to gnome in a minute and be done with it.
The problem with the switch to Unity is not that you can't install a different window manager, it's that you know alternate window managers will never be supported the same way and that showstopper bugs will pile up because much more than Unity is being changed. Shuttleworth is determined to change much of the Linux desktop infrastructure, if not a lot of what we've taken for granted in Unix systems in general. Once the switch to Wayland happens, this will become much more obvious.
Luckily, there are plenty of Ubuntu and Debian derivs out there. I don't like what's going on with Unity or Gnome 3, but I've put Ubuntu on a dozen or so friend, family, and work computers, so it's not exactly a trivial thing to switch everyone over to another Debian-based distro.
That said, Linux Mint's LXDE option is pretty solid for aging desktops and netbooks, and runs ridiculously fast on new hardware. I found out that there are some pretty major tweaks to get it close to the standards of Gnome 2.3, but it's actually less of a hassle to do that than tweak the default Ubuntu setup to do what I want. And, the payoff is much bigger (anyone remember programs launching quickly without having to show you some animation?).
I'm waiting for the Gentoo joke, actually.