Posts by sisk

Re: lets look at this in another way..

Why buy a $700 Apple device when a $100 android version will do 105% the same?

Fixed that for you.

Honestly. The only thing iPhones can do that Android can't is connect to iTunes and iCloud, neither of which we need because there are other stores and clouds we can use. There are, however, things Android can do that iPhones can't. We can customize our phones for a start. All you can do on iOS is change the wallpaper. We can also do things like install Linux to get access to the full range of Linux ARM software on our phones or install terminal emulators (which, surprisingly, I've found to be very useful).

Yeah, it's geeky as hell, but let's be honest: who but a geek is really going to fully explore the capabilities on any smartphone? Normal people stop at installing apps and browsing the web, regardless of the platform. For those things one smartphone OS is as good as another.

Re: Kerching!

Hopefully they'll still release a Linux version...

That was my first thought too, but barring some pretty major changes we'd still be able to make the Windows version run natively under Linux. And even with some pretty major changes it'd probably still run under Wine.

Re: It's a long way

sharpens knives

Try us, bub.

Bringing knives to a gun fight?

Sorry, couldn't resist.

Re: It's a long way

A war with Canada? Over Snowden, a guy that a lot of people consider a hero for blowing the whistle? I think not, unless Obama's a hell of a lot stupider than I give him credit for.

Go ahead, give all the conspiracy theorists who've been cleaning guns, biding time, and gaining numbers for the last few years a reason to start shooting. They wouldn't win, of course, but the resulting domestic chaos would be an absolute nightmare. We've already had one way-too-close call with those guys at the Bundy ranch. I don't think anyone who understands what almost happens there wants a repeat. If the shooting had started, and they were one itchy trigger finger on either side of the line away from it, it wouldn't have stopped there.

Re: "Antitrust" ... misused as regularly as "Antisemitism".

To be brutally frank, I am surprised to see that there is still no real competition to that - anyone an idea why?

Because word hasn't gotten around outside of the IT community about DuckDuckGo yet.

I'll just point out that we can only see how wide and high the container is. It could well be very deep, therefore giving it more capacity than is readily apparent.

Re: Passwords.....

That's actually along the lines of the method I've been hearing the security experts I respect recommend for years now. I have a password card that I use for my most important stuff. It has a grid with the top row and left column being the alphabet and 0-9 and the rest random characters. I line up the first letter of the site name on the top with the last letter of the site name on the left, count off 15 characters from that point in the grid, and that's my password for that site. I only bother with it for things that would be devastating were my account to be breached, like my bank. I don't actually have to pull it out very often. For any site I visit with any kind of regularity I end up memorizing the password whether I make an effort to or not.

Re: An example to follow

If only other app stores were as selective!

I think the word you're looking for is 'restrictive'. In other app stores, particularly the Play store, the good apps are chosen by the market, as it should be, and float to the top of the search results. Bad apps may get into the store, but they sink to the bottom of the results. That is, in my opinion, a much better way of selecting the best apps than ensuring that the market never gets to see some of the apps.

Re: Department of H and HS is looking for national security threats?

Can we somehow start over?

Yep. It's actually quite easy to do once we get everyone to agree to do it. All we have to do is vote all their corrupt asses out of office over the course of the next few years.

Re: Sub-heads

Landslide or not there's no escape from reality. Even if it's just a hologram.

Re: Interesting times

In science, you can't prove a theory to be true. You can only prove it false.

But you also can't prove a negative, so where does that leave us?

Re: @boltar

No offence, but Python, javascript, ruby and similar scripting languages are training languages. They're the 21st century equivalent of QuickBasic.

Python and Ruby maybe, but JavaScript is THE go to language for client side web site scripting, which makes it very important for both web design and HTML5 based mobile apps. But don't get me wrong: it gets misused a lot these days. It should never see use outside of those two environments, but somehow people have gotten the idea that it's the way to do things.

Re: Choosing a distro is like choosing a car.

Debian's the "I just want it to keep working" option irrespective of whether it's server-room or desktop.

Perhaps if you let it do one of the standard installs it lets you choose from during the installation, but if you do the minimal install and then build up from there (which is how I typically set up Debian) it becomes much more flexible.

Re: You may not want to read this

#4 is my most commonly received answer.

Though to be fair the Linux questions I have long ago left the realm of newbies, wandered through the land of "Oh that's on page 5 of the old version of the manual, but they cut it out of the current one", climbed up the hill of "yeah, ALSA can be a real pain, but here's a little black magic to fix your problem" and now firmly reside on the border of "That's a tricky one. If you ever figure out a solution let me know" and "I've never heard of anyone having that problem before"

And yes, those are all answers I've gotten on various Linux forums over the years. Pretty close to exact words to.

Re: Just my worthless opinion

Eh, most packages released 5 years ago will still work in a modern distro. Probably even a good chunk of the ones released 10 years ago will. You'd probably have to compile something that old against modern libraries, but back you pretty much had to compile anything not coming from your disto's repository anyway.

We no longer equate the GPL with open source. Restrictive licenses don't fit with our view of the world. It's no longer necessary and often outright toxic to a project.

I do have to agree with you on this point. The GPL is, in my opinion, long winded and nearly as restrictive as a proprietary license would be. My license of choice these days is the BSD license when I decide something done in my free time is worth licensing at all (if it's not in my free time I don't own it - pretty standard when someone pays you to code). Really more often my free-time projects end up getting thrown out to the wild with a public domain release. But then they tend to be dinky little things because, who wants to code for 8 hours on someone else's pet project and then come home and code some more on another big project?

Re: Surprised..

I don't think I've ever had enough drinks at any event to tell any random girl, mid conversation, that you've gotten my er...attention. That's just vile. It sounds like the stuff you overhear from spotty 18 year olds at the local Wetherspoons

I disagree with that last bit. Most guys I know had figured out mid-way through junior high that you don't say things like that in the presence of a lady, and a good chunk had abandoned such juvenile topics even in the locker room by the time they were 18. That's more what I'd expect from a 12 or 13 year old.

Re: Take a note from the US

To be fair the Zombie Apocalypse thing was a general disaster prep guide written by a CDC staffer with a sense of humor (and serves as the only publicly accessible proof that such people do, in fact, exist). Seriously, that guide works just as well for a flood, tornado, or earthquake as it does for a zombie apocalypse.

Also resulted in the total collapse of the CDC's public network due to a sudden 10,000ish fold increase in incoming web traffic when it went viral, so it's perhaps not the best idea to emulate.