Re: @Flocke Kroes - If I wanted high Linux usage figures ...

"Android has nothing to do with Linux"

What !

Re: Fuming

"somehow you think an astronauts "real work......."

I'm amazed that a Vogon doesn't know about working in space, mind they are a right bunch of bureaucrats.

Re: Microsoft's strategy is FAILING

"great idea if you don't mind spending weeks rewriting drivers and other crap to get it to work at all "

You do a lot of that do you ? I don't seem to need to !

Re: Growing market...

I read it as "carved out zilch in tablets"

Re: And yet, and yet ...

"Have you seen how big RTFs can get when you start including pictures?"

Have you seen how big anything can get when you start including pictures? - fixed.

What's different about rtf+pics and Word documents+pics ?

Re: LO instead of MS Office...

"https://bugs.freedesktop.org"

If the document in question is the 38 page one ( in Dutch ?) I find that in LO 3.6 running under OpenSUSE 12.3 -32 bit. the document occupies 24MB more than an empty document on initial loading. Scrolling this increases memory use to ~50MB but then this stabilizes and on further scrolling the memory use varies in the range 30 -50 MB. Scrolling a lot uses ~75% cpu but that's on an old 1.6 GHz Celeron laptop with 1GB memory.

I don't know if this is a 64-bit version issue - I'll try when I'm back home - but I can't reproduce on this laptop.

Re: The FOSS bubble @Chemist

Hello AC - what do you think ?

The Vogon & RICHTO often post as AC judging by their syntax, bad grammar and general ranting - who, indeed, are you ?

Re: The FOSS bubble

AC gives advice - why would anyone listen ?

Re: @cstumpi @Peter Gathercole

" I can't see Chemist ever admitting any problems with his installs."

Of course I had problems - in the early days compiling kernels, graphics adapters always had some sort of issue or other. I'm sure if I needed some exotic hardware now I might well have problems.

But I do a little research, don't install new distros immediately they come out and sometimes need to be patient. (for example when I got a then new Canon 550D, Dave Craw's RAW converter dcraw wouldn't handle it, a week or two later it did). On the other hand some hardware has been easier to install like my 3G dongle, where plenty of people have complained about Windows installation.

BTW "Well, it works fine for me" are usually avoiding the issue"

Which 'issue' - if people are having problems that can be one or more of LOTS of issues - we are not going to be able to sort that out here. All individuals can do in most circumstances is report their experiences - you have mine.

Thanks for being AC by the way it really boosts your credibility !

Re: Ahh BB10 Finally

"nb - did you know Windows Phone is now outselling Blackberry by almost 6:1 in the US? (07% market share versus 4.1%)"

Ah, that would explain this graph then, no wait

http://regmedia.co.uk/2013/04/05/us_smartphone_market_share_os.jpg

Re: "The Lumia 620 has been well-received, and deservedly so"

"Yep - by miles: http://blog.laptopmag.com/windows-phone-sales-see-global-gains-while-blackberry-falters"

The main thing that table seems to show is how badly both Blackberry AND MS are doing

Re: Windows Security Patches + Anti-Virus considered Harmful

"I simply don't believe this"

Believe what you like - I'm a physical scientist and not used to being economical with the truth. I regularly use the command-line for all sorts of jobs but, with the exception of the Android in a VM I haven't used the command-line to INSTALL a distro for years. I have stuck with SUSE however.

You don't have to believe me plenty of other people here have stated exactly the same.

Commercial software is different - it's down to the developers and in any case isn't the same as installing a distro. I've used some extremely expensive protein modeling software that was rather a handful to install and use.

Re: Simple Explanation - MS MURDERED THE NETBOOK

" Linux on laptop sucks"

OpenSUSE works on all laptops I've tried - admittedly only 4 of which the current Lenovo 3000 N100 runs 12.3, Asus 901 runs, at present 11.3. WiFi works fine, sleep, 3G dongle, bluetooth all fine. I didn't select the hardware specifically for Linux other than the 901.

Re: Windows Security Patches + Anti-Virus considered Harmful @Eadon

"http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/19/carna_botnet_ipv4_internet_map/"

You are joking ? How many Linux desktops have telnet activated by default - none I've used since ~~1998

Re: Windows Security Patches + Anti-Virus considered Harmful

"It was about 10 years ago."

Right !

Re: Windows Security Patches + Anti-Virus considered Harmful

"I must just be really unlucky with my choice of machines"

Well I've installed on a dual-core atom ITX, Asus netbook, 5 misc desktops and Lenovo & HP laptops. I've got 3G dongles, USB/serial convertors, Epson scanner/printer, 3 WiFi , laser printer and heaps more all without problems. Maybe the distribution ?

Re: Windows Security Patches + Anti-Virus considered Harmful

"due in part to all the command line pissing about to get it working properly"

Just to clarify - I've installed Linux ~6 times a year since ~2000 without needing to use the command-line. That's almost always SUSE or OpenSUSE. The only exception to this was installing x86 Android to a VM when a bit of tinkering was needed to get the networking going.

Re: Windows Security Patches + Anti-Virus considered Harmful

"due in part to all the command line pissing about to get it working properly"

FUD !

Re: Fuels

Definitely ethanol/water/LOX. As stated above peroxide (+ permanganate) to generate steam for the pumps

Re: What a surprise! Linux is STILL not ready for the desktop!

"sorry, I mean a driver for each linux fragment of 1%"

AFAIK the drivers are the same for all distros and are distributed with the kernel

What a surprise! Linux is STILL not ready for the desktop!

"- and which brand of laptop is that?"

Well mine are a Lenovo 3000 N100 and an Asus 901 and yes everything works every time

Re: I've forgotten how to do the calculations...

@JeffyPooh

AFAIK ( I'm traveling and don't have access to my usual references)

C +2H2 > CH4 is exothermic by ~~75kJ/mol so at NTP it need energy to split. At 1000C it looks as though the equilibrium allows at least some hydrogen and carbon to exist and be separable. There will be some entropic gain going to hydrogen and carbon so that may compensate somewhat.

Re: More Windows Rot

"roughly an order of magnitude more patches to contend with"

Well of course they have, ALL the software is capable of being patched, mostly I might add for improvements not security problems. But this goes on in the background as the distributions are updated. I installed OpenSUSE 12.3 a week ago ( that's about 6GB of software I have installed ) and each day has produced 1-10 updates but they don't cause me any probs. and of course hardly ever require reboots.

Re: I wouldn't mind so much

"I wouldn't mind so much if they were stealing from big faceless corporations rather than innocent members of the public."

I think you actually meant "I wouldn't mind so much if they were stealing from innocent members of the public by causing big faceless corporations to pass on the costs of fraud".

Re: Leccy? No!!

"Is Reuters lying?"

Someone is ! Just because Germany may have produced 50% of it's requirement on one light load day on a sunny day in May does not mean that 50% of German electricity is produced by solar.

Reuters was reporting not understanding. Germany produces most of it's electricity from coal & gas. The most generous estimates of all renewables is ~20%

Compiled by Prof. Bruno Burger, Fraunhofer ISE

August 30, 2012

PV plants produced 19.5 TWh electricity in 2011. This is an increase of 65% compared to 2010. The share of solar energy of the gross power generation was 3.2%. In 2011 PV produced more energy than hydro power for the first time. Wind turbines produced 46.5 TWh in 2011 and increased their production by 23% compared to 2010. The share of wind energy of the gross power generation was 7.6%. Wind energy is the strongest renewable energy source in Germany.

Re: Leccy? No!!

"Germany now produces more than half of it electricity from solar alone "

Nonsense !

"Solar already rivals existing hydro in Germany and solar PV's contribution is increasing dramatically. In 2011 it supplied 3% of total generation in Germany and is expected to reach 4% or more of total generation in 2012."

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2012/10/german-coal-fired-generation-of-electricity-falls-while-renewable-generation-rises

Re: Is there a physicist in the house?

"pretend you have a dish a couple of hundred kilometres across"

That's for angular resolution, but it has a small collecting area so weak signal. The SKA has that and much more AND an actual collecting area of 1 square kilometre.

That's a very rough summary of my knowledge but then I'm a chemist ( Einstein said that the trouble with chemistry was that it was too difficult for chemists"

Re: @Chemist (was: Build one out of)

Well I see what you mean !

By the way has anyone read the book " Pyke : The Unknown Genius" or some similar title

Re: Build one out of

" Build one out of pykrete. " - that's COOL !

Re: Gouging

"Do you honestly think if you told them to feck off .."

They might think you have some backbone, are prepared to be different and adaptable

Re: Sublime

"Disaster Area, a plutonium rock band from the Gagrakacka Mind Zones, are generally held to be not only the loudest rock band in the Galaxy, but in fact the loudest noise of any kind at all. Regular concert goers judge that the best sound balance is usually to be heard from within large concrete bunkers some thirty-seven miles from the stage, whilst the musicians themselves play their instruments by remote control from within a heavily insulated spaceship which stays in orbit around the planet - or more frequently around a completely different planet.

Their songs are on the whole very simple and mostly follow the familiar theme of boy-being meets girl-being beneath a silvery moon, which then explodes for no adequately explored reason.

Many worlds have now banned their act altogether, sometimes for artistic reasons, but most commonly because the band's public address system contravenes local strategic arms limitations treaties.

This has not, however, stopped their earnings from pushing back the boundaries of pure hypermathematics, and their chief research accountant has recently been appointed Professor of Neomathematics at the University of Maximegalon, in recognition of both his General and his Special Theories of Disaster Area Tax Returns, in which he proves that the whole fabric of the space- time continuum is not merely curved, it is in fact totally bent. "

Thanks Douglas

Re: Why sell a cure for baldness when I can sell you a pill that stops your hair falling out as long

"A product that actually cures your condition (so you don't need to keep buying it) is actually a failure "

It must be nice to be so far removed from detailed knowledge of medical conditions to be able comfortably believe that.

There are really only two classes of condition. Acute - usually infections by viruses, bacteria and fungi. Viruses are hard but some short course treatments are available for some. Bacteria and fungi can be tackled by short courses although the nature of the organism or location of the infection can often require longer treatments esp. some fungal infections due to the difficulty of achieving therapeutic levels in, for example nails.

Some cancers can also be treated as acute problems depending on the mechanism being attacked.

Chronic conditions are very common, a product of life-style, genetics and environment. Reversing the disease in these conditions is MUCH less likely. A good example would be osteoarthritis where the damage to the joint may never be reparable. Here the aim of treatment may be to slow down the degeneration and ease pain. Ultimately large joints are best treated by replacements. Other chronic conditions like maturity onset diabetes again can't be simply reversed by drug treatment and in any case may require large scale changes to diet & exercise .

Ultimately many of the diseases may be tackled by vaccinations, gene therapy, stem-cell therapy, antibodies and life-style changes - these are still in many cases unknowns and potentially expensive unknowns.

By the way the current worries about antibiotic resistance are partly the result of the cost research combined with the limited returns due to the short treatment courses. The manufacturing costs of new, effective antibiotics can be enormous. I heard of one where the manufactured cost of the drug - which was enormous due to the length of the synthesis - was itself dwarfed by the cost of getting the lyophilised drug into a sterile sealed glass phial.

Re: Respect for the man, but didn't use his products

"I stayed with SUSE & openSUSE over the years and their default KDE desktops"

Ditto. Only time I used Gnome extensively was at work with RedHat.

Re: This just in

"Interesting as I don' see that at all. I specifically moved the port to get rid of all the stupid login scans in the log..."

Same here. Although I see attempts all the time on standard port I've never seen ANY on my (very non-standard port). Mind of course it's just one of the mitigation measures and I certainly wouldn't rely on it alone.

Re: Give the researcher a medal!

"Most routers I've come across only provide a ssh login on the internal interface."

Eh ?

How would you get in from outside then. I have mine set-up to port forward ssh to an internal server for the purposes of remote access and reverse proxy use. Nothing wrong with ssh as long as it's up-to-date and has sufficient security - the real problem is exposing telnet or web interfaces to the outside by default with weak usernames/passwords

Re: Linux

" 99% of Windows exploits require user interaction, whereas 99% of Linux exploits don't."

HaHaHa!

By the way you've SO missed the point. These are devices configured badly with open telnet ports and bad defaults. The chances ANY of them run Windows seems vanishingly small.

Re: @anons

" they have essentially no commercial competition"

Yes I know the reasons for that. I was trying to point out the consequences not the reason. The fact that most of the world has managed to lock itself into a very unhealthy situation bodes very badly for costs and innovation. Even Trevor is suggesting giving MS even more money ( & power of course) in exchange for a few crumbs, admittedly crumbs he wants.

I don't know what can be done about it in the short term other than the change to mobile devices and a much healthier mix of OSs - I'm just glad that me and mine are completely out of it.

Re: @anons

Your answer, wonderful as it might seem to you, still doesn't address the problem that Microsoft essentially holds the world in a grip of their own deriving. They are out to make as much money as possible of course but they have essentially no commercial competition and up to date they have been able to do much as they like - that's now changing.

By the way you seem awfully familiar , with the same stilted views, right down to the icon. Are you of the prostetnic class really ?

"Imagine if there was no Microsoft"

I'd just settle for several competing vendors so that 'lock-in' didn't happen. Funny how 'everyone' ( by which I actually mean WP supporters) insist that the mobile phone market needs several competing companies

Re: Part of the process

"But can't a 3D printer make a copy of the object to be cast in iron"

Don't see why not - the only complication is scaling the pattern to allow for the shrinkage of different metals in casting. These patterns used to be made in wood and various non-standard rulers were used to get the correct size for the finished product AFAIK

Re: Linux as a desktop is a failure, its time to move on

@the J to the C; The Vogon

I think you'd be better rushing over to some of the other forums where MS is under direct attack !

Re: KDE submenus still don't work

"Never noticed this problem on any of them."

Thanks for reminding me about VNC - I've just opened a session to my dual-core Atom fileserver and even though this can be a little laggy depending on what else is going on the KDE menus are fine.

(For anyone complaining that I have a desktop on a fileserver the machine actually has many functions some of which are better with a GUI)

Re: Linux as a desktop is a failure, its time to move on

"However there is no compelling reason for the average Joe Public to switch "

There is no likelihood 'Joe Public' as you call them will switch anymore than if all PCs came with Linux installed and people had to choose to switch to Windows.

1% market share, whatever that means, is a great percentage when people have to CHOOSE to change.

Given how disparaging you are about Linux I'm amazed you feel the need to bang on about it as though it threatens you in some way.

Re: KDE submenus still don't work

"Ah I see. "Works for me, thus the other poster must be a liar (despite their supplying evidence)""

Not calling anyone a liar, I can only report what I find, no menu problems on 6 different machines with various OpenSUSEs/KDEs. After many years of using KDE I've never seen this problem

How about other KDE users ?

Re: KDE submenus still don't work

""Works for me, thus the other poster must be a liar "

It does work for me, further on reading the bug-reports I can't see what they are talking about.

Click on a menu, menu drops down, slide down to a sub-menu item, sub-menu opens, slide across, ditto if there are any further sub-sub menus. No lag, no problems.

Of course replying to a group of individual ACs isn't the easiest - or are they all one person, and why the need for AC - it's not a confidential topic.Or have you reason to think that you might not get a warm welcome.

Re: Upgraded. Hoping my NVidia card would still work..

"you look at any tutorial (assuming you network card actually works) you'll see the CLI"

Are you sure ? That's a rhetorical question actually as I know that you are not.

Try http://linux.about.com/od/linux101/a/desktop14.htm

Re: Upgraded. Hoping my NVidia card would still work..

"want to share a folder?"

As it happens although I don't normally need Samba being all Linux so use NFS , my wife needed access to the fileserver for her Nexus 7 and Android phone. As the filemanager we'd installed on the Androids needed Samba I set it up on the fileserver. It took a handful of clicks. on the YAST GUI to get it working.