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.
218 posts • joined 10 Nov 2010
"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.
@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.
@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.
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.
"In general turnover taxes are a really bad idea"
That's a little short on proof: why is it a bad idea ? It's easier to check, and makes high-volume/low-margin commerce - such as Amazon and HFT - less profitable. That's actually what economics Nobel price (1) winner James Tobin proposed. So you had better come with very good arguments why this is a bad thing.
VAT has an almost identical effect to a sales tax
yes, and that is, by definition, a tax on turnover: the consumer pays the tax on the quantity he buys. It's a buyers-side turnover tax. So that's a good idea then ?
(1) yes, I know
@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.
@Hstubbe : "Multi-monitor support also sucks for both kde and gnome."
I don't know about gnome (haven't used it for 10 years) but Kwin (KDE Plasma 5.12) is clearly one of the best window/display managers. I have multiple screens, at work, at home, in conferences, HDMI, DisplayPort, DVI, and it all just works. I never need to reboot, uptimes are in weeks.
What needs do you have that Kwin doesn't do ?
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"
@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.
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.
@Jonathan 27: "my notebook has a power/charge LED and a 5 LED charge indicator on the side."
I have the regular XP-13 (with a traditional hinge) and I hadn't noticed, nice, thank-you.
"The power button is also fairly large."
...and has a light. As the CAPS-lock button.
@Tom 64 : "Great laptop, but also has a very difficult-to-open hinge."
mine doesn't even have any notch, I must insert my nails between the 2 shells: did nobody test that bloody laptop ? How are we supposed to open it ?
Apart from that, very nice laptop. Excellent Linux support, works out-of-the box with the latest Ubuntu LTS. Even the camera. Battery use is average, and curiously the suspend state is quite power-hungry.
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.
I've been thinking about this ScreenPad thingy for ages. I don't like touchpads, a mouse feels much more natural, therefore when beeing at my desk the touchpad is unused. The only thing is how to efficiently switch modes (TouchPad -vs- ScreenPad)
I don't think it's supposed to be working as a screen, rather as an adaptive secondary keyboard. ExcelExcelSomething like the MagicBar in new MacBooks, but better. When necessary, it can display a NumPad (in a spreadsheet for example), sliders or toolboxes (in Photoshop). If it where combined with a pen input it could be even more interesting.
I did build an LFS system some time ago. It's a shame they include so much optional stuff with the core system now (Gperf, GDBM, Man-DB...), but exclude the basics (Xorg).
Also, the ALSF should have a config file where the user can specify what to install, instead of installing everything that's in the book. I did try to write my own ALFS, and it did work, but BOY! it was as much effort to make it happen as to build it by hand.
Using KDE Neon now, will try Devuan next as ASCII-rc has finally happened.
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.
it's already game over and no amount of regulation can fix it. Google ...
these monopolies could – and should – be broken into pieces. And it's easy to do: rule by the DNS. So no, it's pretty much not game over, as soon as some technically knowledgeable person gets into power he (or she) imposes the default DNS on every broadband connection and Google, Facebook & Co. are cut off from 99% of their userbase. The 1% who would know how to change/bypass the default DNS use other search engines already.
@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.
@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.
"Lets face it if ever theres a proper shooting war then all these carriers, and the planes still on the deck, will be on the bottom of the sea within about an hour."
"If it gets to that point the airfields will be smoldering holes in the ground and the cities will be ashes"
well, no, think of tactical nukes: they can take out an aircraft carrier, even a big one, and infest everything in a radius of 100km around it, but if it's on open see no land will be harmed. So yes, indeed, in case of a true war, the aircraft carriers are going to be the first targets of (Russian) U-boats (*). Therefore, it's easy to conclude that aircraft carriers are only there to bully countries that can't shoot back.
(*) EDIT: and there's nothing to do about it.
@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.
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)
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.
Alan Bourke : the software they need mostly doesn't exist on Linux and LibreOffice
here lies the point: they wanted to migrate everything at once: change OS and software. Had they first switched office suite, from MS-Office to LibreOffice, but sill on windows, and then switched OS once they had become OS-agnostic, it would have been much easier.
MS have done a good job of reducing the appeal of their Office, but it is so much faster, smoother and easier to use than the Libre equivalent
you must be kidding: MS-Office is unstable as hell, my colleagues (on OS-X) complain about it all the time. I only use it when absolutely necessary, and write all my stuff in LibreOffice and export to PDF. Or LaTeX when I need to write a long and beautiful article: after all these years, the output of MS-Office is still shite compared to the venerable LaTeX. Mind-you, it's not any better in LibreOffice, but LO is sooooo much more stable.
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.
No proof he was killed.
The contention that he is alive...
there is a logical hole in your argument: he could have been dead since a very long time. There were no more videos of Bin Laden since years, only some bad audio recording identified by the CIA as proof that he was still alive. The same CIA who dumped a corps no-one could identify because it was shot into the head during the fight. The same CIA who made a DNA test in less than 24 hours in Afghanistan, when it took the NY police 1 week to confirm it was the sperm of the IMF's director on the carpet.
The USA needed him alive because that served their war on terror very well. But when the new bad guy became Kadhafi and Assad, and the new good guys were the Al Nusra front, who are affiliates of Al Quaida, tracking Bin Laden and helping Al Nusra was too difficult to explain, and even dumbsters would have seen the contradiction.
@ 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 ?
@ Warm Braw : "I'm confused too. In the UK ..."
yes, but he plays in German courts. From what I read, he attacks a company for GPL violation, asking a small fee for his technical expertise in helping sorting out the fuss, but signing a contract and an NDA in the process, which then may become a contract violation and not a copyright violation if other GPL infringing code appears within that company.
Say: he finds a company having 100 products containing his code, said company providing the Linux kernel source code but not the exact version of every tool to build it. He attacks that company for 1 GPL violation, proposes to fix the source code as a contractor, and the contract says that he shall receive that amount for every GPL violation. He knows that there are 99 other products, but the company thinks that it will be fixed in 1 go. This is extortion, pure and simple.
@ 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.
"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.
That's why I use another browser for banking. My main browser is Firefox with Ghostery, blocking all trackers, and my banking browser is something else, with 1% market-share, where they can track me all they want there is nothing to see since I don't use it for anything else. And then there is my Tor-browser for when I really want to be on the safe side.
I don't say that NSA can't see me, but I'm making their life more difficult.
"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.
Uber's use of the tool to evade police detection should be considered a criminal act
why is there even a doubt about this ? Identifying legal prosecutors and then feeding them false information to evade inspection cannot be seen as anything else than illegal in any jurisdiction. Except Luxembourg, may-be.
systemd
-free Devuan Linux hits RC2
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 ?"