Posts by Zolko

Re: Re-Use where possible

"I have one prospective son-in-law..."

so, how does that make his prospects ? Does it earn him points with his prospective father-in-law ? Looks like a nice chap to me.

Re: Red Herring

"I think you underestimate religious fanatics."

like who ? Those that want every president swear on the Bible, those whose national anthem is to sing that some God should save some Queen, or those that think that some God gave them some land 6000 years ago and therefore they can take it away from those who have lived there for generations in the meantime ? You're right, they're all scary, although some killed more people than others in the past 1/2 century.

Re: Width

wait wait wait, can we have +1 level more ?

@Confuciousmobil : "because you can only buy from one place and you know the apps will work

right, that's your choice. Keyword being choice: you have that exact same choice on Android. By default, only the official Google Play Store is allowed, but you can uncheck that option and then install any app you want. You can even uncheck that option temporarily to install an app you trust but that is not proposed by the Google Store - like F-Droid for example - and then re-enable the "security" again. The out-of-walled-garden app is still there.

The outcome of this lawsuit will probably be that Apple will have to implement that choice in its iOS. You could still buy/get all your apps only from the AppStore if you choose so.

Re: JS - just for a change

@Bod : "Let's go back to static pages [...] Back to Web 1.0"

well, if you're using Tor, then it's for privacy reasons, so it is probably a very strange idea to browse with JS enabled AND have multiple tabs opened visiting different and sensitive sites. For example I use a different browser for banking than for regular reading, and I use the banking browser only for that, with JS enabled since they need it.

Re: VAT

Ledswinger : "and the problem here is that a small number of largely American companies ..."

... and a small number of purely European non-countries (Andorra, Luxembourg, Lichtenstein, Monaco, Jersey ...). It's too easy to accuse only the US on this when the tax-evader-in-chief (Luxemburg's ex-primeminister, revealed in LuxLeaks) is the head of Europe. It's like the fox guarding the hen-house.

Re: People called Romanes they go the house?

"And what have they ever done for US?"

the Internet ?

Re: What did people think would happen?

@AC : have to download Chrome and Google Search

I don't use any of them. And no Maps either. I'd be happy to pay more for a Google-free phone, so I very much welcome this decision (if it's for real !!!)

Re: "the system has a more modern and 'flatter' look"

@Dave Bell : Look at how minimise/maximise/close has and hasn't changed.

hum ... dunno ... I removed to minimize buttons, as I use "present windows" instead, and replaced it with a "keep above" which allows me to have a window visible and on top even if typing in another one. Or take "roll-up" and "roll-down" when rolling the mouse in the title-bar, like MacOS-9 did in it's time.

Windows and MacOS don't propose these very useful UI features, only KDE (Kwin) does.

Re: F-Droid

It has to do with the supposed security model of Google Play Store: if it's such an important thing, F-Droid should be banned, and a walled garden be erected around Google Play Store. Which I don't want to happen, I want t decide what to install. If I want to take the risk in installing crap, I want it to be possible.

But that's no excuse to mislabel a "download app" as "get it from GooglePlay"

Re: Or the fourth option...

@ratfox: Google apps are good; they're often the best

no, they are crap. I don't use any Google app (actually, I do use 1 app from them: the calendar, but I use it with external calendars, synced with DavDroid)

- for maps I use OsmAnd+

- for mail I use AquaMail

- as browser I use Opera

- as market I have FDroid (but use GooglePlay also)

- for search I use Qwant (or DuckDuckGo, depends)

- ...

I would take a Google-free Android if I could, and would even be willing to pay for it.

re-keyboard layout

You have to edit the file /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/fr (or de...), change the third- and fourth-level keys to what you want, and you're the king of the keyboard: all the λ, €, á, ó, í, ←→↑↓, ω, Ø, ¿, α, γ, φ, |, ≠, ±, ⋅, ≥, ≤, ß, Σ, δ, Δ ... symbols are yours with Alt-Gr and Shift.

Ah, don't forget the "sudo dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration". You'll need good memory, but if you save that file and re-use it at each new install it'll become quite natural.

Re: the pencil

pencils do write by leaving tiny graphite particles on the paper. And in 0g these particles don't settle, they float around. And graphite is carbon, and carbon is electrically conductive. Thus, according to Murphy, they will go into the worst possible places, short-circuiting whatever is most critical.

Re: 3 <= 2 + 2 <= 5

when rounding to 1 significant figure.

actually, I think this is exactly what's happening. People here use Nvidia cards to do scientific computing, and recently they have reported that the same calculations bring different results. They attribute this to the massively parallel calculations that spread the sub-calculations on the many cores differently each time, such that intermediate results are calculated along different paths, and since these are floating-point calculations the roundings in these intermediate results differ.

They say that, unlike in a real processor, there is no OS so there is no way to tell the processor what and when and how to do: it does it's magic on his own.

Re: "what is the distinction?"

@AC: "Probably because flying a model aircraft is usually far more difficult than flying a drone, ..."

... thus any irresponsible model aircraft builder has crashed and destroyed his model before it could become dangerous. Not so with RTF gyro-stabilized BVR quad-copters, that any half-idiot can buy and make fly in minutes anywhere.

Re: Defending the continent against potential Russian aggression

@Spartacus : "The first annexation in Europe since WWII."

even before Kosovo, there was the "annexation" of East-Germany by West-Germany. Yes, I know, they call it "reunification" but the same can be said about Crimea, that was Russian until after East-Germany was separated from Germany.

Re: What's in it for the user?

@Richard 12 : However, why should the user care about the freedom to modify? Can you explain that to your CEO?

Certainly: to avoid document lock-in. Look at Microsoft Wrod –vs– Open/Libre Office.

Each new version of MS Office had/has a new document format, incompatible with the old one, and readable by no other software. On the other hand, when OpenOffice begun to suck, the code was forked and LibreOffice carried on. All ODT documents are easily readable by all Open/Libre Office variants, and also have many alternatives to switch-to.

Re: GUI Design?

The application should interrogate the OS and use its current theme. [...] What's important is that it actually works and the GUI isn't subverted

That's actually how Kmail works: integrated into the KDE desktop with the Qt theme, and works with ALL standards : IMAP, CardDav, remote ICS, ... only LDAP doesn't work well (or I didn't figure out how to set it up properly)

Kubuntu ?

try KDE Neon (that's the latest LTS Ubuntu with the latest KDE Plasma Build).

Best choice so far, may-be even better than Mint

Re: No KDE = No Mint for me

of course there is a KDE version of Mint. And quite a good one at that.

Re: Whot ?

Your colleagues using OS-X (it's called macOS now btw) will be using the terrible version of Office for Mac which is utter garbage

you're probably right. But that only shows that MS-Office is not compatible with MS-Office. Even worse, we tried to have templates for a project, but with versions from different languages (French, German, English) and it couldn't get the numbering right, because for some versions it was "équation" and for others it was "equation", therefore it didn't get the numbering for equations right. Same for "table" and "tableau" and "Tabelle".

Yes, MS-Office is that stupid. Not to mention when you copy'n-paste between different versions from different languages ! I do it in plain text now and redo the formatting by hand. LaTeX is LOL-ling at me.

Re: Enough!

confirmed he died, probably of renal failure in Tora Bora, in late 2001, a few months after 9/11

link, FoxNews:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/2001/12/26/report-bin-laden-already-dead.html

Published December 26, 2001 Fox News

Usama bin Laden has died a peaceful death due to an untreated lung complication, the Pakistan Observer reported, citing a Taliban leader who allegedly attended the funeral of the Al Qaeda leader.

age of Universe

@ Mark 85 : "Maybe Douglas Adams was right ..."

... and the Universe was not created at age T=0, but, say, at age T=1µs, after the cosmological inflation and when matter has already been formed. Would solve 2 fundamental questions about cosmology: symmetry matter/antimatter, and size of the Universe.

Of course, that would also prove that God exists, which is a dangerous thing to do. And that would raise the question about who created God ... a meta-God ?

Re: After reading this I am still confused.

> Failed to provide copies of the source for the binaries

failed to provide the exact version of the source with all tools at the exact version to build the precise binaries that were shipped. GPL v2

Re: Pointless

@ Oh Homer : you didn't get it, did you ?

The point is not to consolidate the Internet social universe, but to offer an open solution for Internet chat. And one that would be easy to disseminate on a large scale. Which might or might not consolidate the social media chat services as a side-effect. Even if it's easy, many people refuse to joint proprietary data-slurping mega-corp networks.

Re: Farewell Sonos

"It's not like if you don't accept it, we'd be shutting down your device or intentionally bricking it."

Sir Runcible Spoon : "Lying turds. "

same here: if you don't update the software at their notice, the system will still function but with reduced functionality, like, for example, you can't re-scan your music library, meaning you can't listen to new music.

Re: Stand up and be counted!

Lot of long and complex arguments here by AC posters.

yes ... and all with the same visual effects (bold for quotes) and all defending GRsecurity. Strange, isn't it ?

@Ian Michael Gumby

"In fact the US would not issue any sort of warrant or extradition request of Assange while he's in the UK."

very true, they'd probably just grab him on the streets and take him to the US in an anonymous Citation jet taking off during night. Actually, probably not the US, but Saudi Arabia or some other dictatorship with secret prisons.

You seem imply that Assange would get a fair legal case, but all evidence points to the contrary. You did read the newspapers about Guantanamo, extraordinary rendition, secret Citation flights, black prisons run from US bases in some random countries, the plane of the Ecuadorian president downed over Austria because they thought that Snowden was in there, didn't you ? So, very clearly, Assange can fear much more than the UK justice.

Re: It's fascinating that Linux now has the same problem as Windows

So should programming languages be translated from English - "if", "else", "break" etc translated into your local language?

Actually, it has been done, with BASIC, to French: it's horrible, and unreadable. A very good candidate for "bloody Hell, did you really think this will be used ?"