Recent Comments

These aren't "sexy" projects everybody would want to work on, so I guess it's hard to find a maintainer for "GNU rm" unless you pay.

Bad example, given that GNU rm is part of the GNU project (as part of GNU binutils). As general rule, if something has "GNU" in its name, you'll find it at https://gnu.org.

Optometrists and "chiropractors" are both on that fringe between real medicine and complete and utter bullshit. The chiropractors are really only clinging on by the flimsiest of threads...

Meanwhile real doctors push real prescription drugs that are being campaigned at them by pharmaceutical salespeople. No escape I guess.

I agree that arch shouting down the opposition to systemd when they forced it on the users was not their finest hour. To put it mildly.

As a fellow arch user, let's agree that arch users have the advantage on everybody else here with the AUR. I'm surprised no one in any of the other distros has figured out yet what a massive advantage the concept of the AUR is.

This is purely guesswork, I don't read Debian mailing lists or whatever, but I think you're right in that they might be forced in some way.

Many Linux distributions have depended on RedHat or Ubuntu for a long time. If you look at the "base system" source code including file utilities, kernel, various basic daemons, you will see that someone from RedHat or Ubuntu has worked on it or is maintaining it. These aren't "sexy" projects everybody would want to work on, so I guess it's hard to find a maintainer for "GNU rm" unless you pay.

Now RedHat is bringing their agenda on the table. They aren't going to maintain login(1) anymore, because systemd supercedes it. If you are an anti-systemd Linux distributor, you have to maintain login(1) yourself. Why does an unmaintained piece of code cease to work, you may ask, but it's a completely different idiocy.

Anyway, this is all well and doable until you get to more complicated and ever-changing components like udev. Gentoo people have their own udev fork not because they love to code device managers (I'm guessing), but they either fork it or accept systemd. These guys take the risk of chasing behind the Linux kernel team regarding the changes to the udev interface, but others -understandably- may not. Those who don't will switch to systemd sooner or later..

Other dependencies are small potatoes compared to udev. udev manages all devices including the fixed drives and your PCI cards, most of the other daemons do stupid stuff like counting how many people are working on your computer, raising an alarm to all programs when you insert a USB stick etc. A Linux distributor could get away with a mostly-fake systemd package but not with a fake udevd.

Regarding GNOME, you could run it without any senseless daemons or whatever. I've been doing so in an XFCE system which somehow makes use of GNOME daemons. I killed and -x'ed most gnome daemons and some systemd daemons. It surely complains a lot but it still works.

I think both of these are true. Can we split the difference and call it a big bowl of Flintstones chewables in milk?

Likewise, I'm down to a Linux box and a Blu-ray player, both of which run Netflix just fine. I set up a Roku for some friends of mine, and they love it. I almost bought one because I found the near unlimited free channels intriguing.

Is there a reason beyond that the word conjures images of something brown at the bottom of a toilet bowl?

I generally like going to work. I'd rather be spending time with my kids, but doesn't mean I dislike going into work.

Missing option would be having to wake up early :-)

You can make it simpler by cutting the cord and having absolutely everything go through XBMC or equivalent. I'm down to a DVD player and XBMC/Roku feeding content from the NAS. My wife has some trouble with it, but my six year old has figured it out. :)

I kind of thought it was a big bowl of sugar and coloring with milk, where the nutrients were unintended side products of the manufacturing process? :)

Basically all the things that I could complain about under Windows during the 90's and early 2000's and that made me enjoy and switch to the refreshing Linux. And I am afraid those tendancies would slowly contaminate the BSDs, starting with FreeBSD/PC-BCD.

I wouldn't worry too much about the BSDs. I can't speak for the team, but as a casual observer it sure seems to me the BSD crowd marches to the beat of a different drum. They've chosen the "slow/conservative" way on most occasions (and been pilloried for it!), and in general, chosen not to be on the bleeding edge. Increasingly, I like that. Maybe I'm getting old!

Many vitamin supplements are actually dangerous. Some, like vitamin A for example, are explicitly toxic in the case of overdose. Others are linked with certain cancers over time.

Why does your doctor recommend a multi-vitamin every time he sees you? Maybe because he wants to see you again soon.

If you eat a varied diet, you get enough vitamins. If you notice any symptoms of deficiency, eat more of the foods that contain whatever you are deficient in.

Supplements are a con. They often include dangerous remedies or dangerous chemical additives as binders, colourants or whatever, to give them more pop.

It is unwise to take anything on a daily basis. Maybe your doctor is trying to desensitise you to taking something on a daily basis so that he can progressively addict you to more and more dangerous substances and thus ensure your continued dependence on him and more and more business from you as the side effects of all the things he has you one start to stack up into actual illnesses requiring oh more poisonous chronic medications and more visits to him.

Multi-vitamins, the gateway drug of choice among today's white collared (*ahem* coated) pusher.

Perhaps a better medical insurance scheme would be one where we pay the doctor only so long as we are well.

Beware that wikis are often written (and rewritten) by the people who like to write wikis to tell everyone else the way it is and should be. Don't take it as a policy statement, look to the wording and breakdown of results of the actual vote for that.

As a faithful fan and user for almost as long as it has existed, all I can say is "you know what? fuck GNOME." There are plenty of other great desktops out there and I'm sick of this shit. This has been a number of years in the coming, but they've done it to themselves.

Instead of taking a vitamin pill, eat a bowl of cold cereal. Most of the major brands have all evolved into being essentially a multivitamin served with milk.

My optometrist (that I visited mainly because they where allied with the LASIK operation that I undertook) not only advocated vitamins, but a vitamin monthly subscription called "Juice Plus." On my last appointment, they made this sales pitch so obvious that I thought they would also ask me if I wanted a vacuum cleaner, or maybe some Cutco knives. I'm convinced that this doctor's office doesn't really care about the vitamins, but cares more about getting a monthly monetary "cut" from the pill manufacturer for the referral.

I don't visit that doctor anymore.

Same thinking here. But it may be that they are "forced" into accepting it. For example GNOME 3.8 depends on systemd.
It will be interesting to see if/how long Slackware/Gentoo/etc hold on from the adoption...

The general litigation strategy is: You go after the small ones first. They have less resources to defend themselves, and then you've created a precedent which can be used against the big guys.

Of course it could also be that ATI has some patents they could use to counter-sue.

No, the closest verbal analogue to violence are insults like "Only an idiot would think "¦"

OTOH, a profanity like "what the fuck are you talking about?" is far from being violence.

Violence hurts. Profanity doesn't.

Are we going to have to start a "suck fystemd" movement/boycott?

I'm not quite sure how a smart TV would help here. From the materials I've seen it doesn't have a built in bluray player, so you still need that. And if you want to try and stream it, I think a technophobe would have just as much trouble typing a title with a remote. A receiver's functionality is also not really replaced by a smart TV.

Really, if they stop making apps for the TV and have it be able to orchestrate all the connected devices, I would be much more on board.

You're right, I expected (much) more from Debian. It reads more or less as "we like it, it's popular, so nyeah".

But those extra few seconds (increasingly rare in medicine) are far better spent advising exercise and losing weight, no? Even just "eat more vegetables" has got to be FAR more beneficial than mentioning vitamins, I would guess. Might as well be recommending horoscopes or chiropractic if you're going to waste time talking about vitamins.

I've seen some people get extremely confused when given more than one box under their TV. Try to explain the following¹ to a technophobe without pulling out your hair:

1. First turn on the receiver with the power button on the receiver remote.
2. Select the "Bluray" input button on the receiver remote.
3. Next turn on the TV with the power button on the TV remote.
4. Make sure the TV input source is set to "HDMI 1"
5. Now turn on the Bluray player.
6. Insert your Bluray disc that you want to play.
7. Navigate the Bluray menu using the Bluray remote and find the "Play Movie" button.

¹ In my case, the HT setup was much more complex with 2 projectors (one for inside zone, one for outside zone), 2 receivers (one for inside zone, one for outside zone), 1 HDTV flat screen, 1 computer monitor (mirrored with the TV and inside projector), 2 cable boxes (!), 1 Bluray player, 1 iPhone dock, 1 HTPC (xubuntu), 1 NAS (thankfully headless now)

After such a setup, I'm sure having a single "Android TV" with a single remote that does nearly all of the same functions, but all in one device, would be a welcome change indeed.

Wow, that's pretty incredible. Maybe the snow is going to bring you good luck?

By the way, I'm astonished to see 'the point of it all' in first place. Maybe work sucks after all!

I'd assume they recommend them because cost is negligible, and they won't do any harm either. Maybe you are part of that small subset.

At least, that is the worst part this Monday. Went from 27 Celcius on Sunday to snowing today.

I've found that watching Office Space on a Sunday evening is a poor idea. Nobody wants to go back to work on Monday after watching that movie.

I know they "pivoted" to include sports and other things even more trivial than politics, but I expected a little more... meat on the bones for a 538 article.

Anyway:

1. Yeah this is old news, and

2. "Supercede" is not quite the word you were looking for.

3. Your doctor sucks. :)

I plugged my DESKTOP into my TV via HDMI. I do everything I could ever want on my TV that I did on a PC monitor without restriction of functionality or ability to update software. I will NEVER buy a Smart** TV...EVAR!!!

** Smart TV is not actually smart. It is dumb, lacks security, and software updates are not at your discretion.

This smells like another move to try and make TVs have a short lifespan. Is plugging another box into a HDMI port that difficult?

I modded you up because that's a great link - very informative. I notice though that the argument consists of, for the moment, people talking past each other. That is, I don't see much in Debian's position statement that refutes what the anti-systemd crowd is putting forth as their argument.

Can't wait to see how this plays out. I confess I am for the most part more swayed by the anti-systemd crowd's position, but I like transparency and simplicity in a system, and systemd decreases both.

I did send an email simply asking a checkbox in my settings to turn it off, but it was polite and certainly wasn't threatening.

Besides thanks to Bryan, I discovered that I could add SN in my pipedot feed, so when I feel like reading it, I just go there.

Anyway, I really prefer pipedot waaaaaay more than the two others, it's elegant, nice and the articles have a much better quality.

How much of this early-days graphics stuff was actually nVidia's innovation? Could these patents be struck down on the grounds of Carmack did it first?

Oh, that's not fair. It's just that now the testers pay EA, and they prefer to be called early adopters.

Doubtless EA will release a patch soon.

Dude/sir/madam/etc., they're the closest analogs when we're talking about Internet based interaction. I was (and still am) comparing resorting to violence in an argument in "meatspace" (sorry) versus resorting to profanity in an Internet forum. Only an idiot would think I equated the two in any physical or legal way. You can't physically hit someone upside the head online, and I think everyone's aware of that.

In short, what the fuck are you talking about?

Interesting how more and more distros are adopting it but there is so much negativity and complaining wherever I look. Seems contradictory...

Interesting read of the reasoning for the adoption by debian:
https://wiki.debian.org/Debate/initsystem/systemd

The idea of federation is a good one - don't let the fuss over SoylentNews put you off.
Many of us want a return to the old days of communities being in control of their forums instead of web sites (see the recent discussions on Usenet, and the slashcott)
The hackers answer to this is distributed social networks but these haven't taken off - probably because most require users to install software.
OTOH you could have a distributed discussion system - like Usenet - except accessed through web front ends, provided anyone could set up a website to access it then competition would mean users are still in control.

I switched back to alpine too a few months ago, but that is my MUA, not my distro ;-)

To be fair, there were a lot of negative reactions on this side about the Soylent New thing. I was certainly part of it (although I didn't send any theats/hatemail).

What would be the point of me telling you that if I were running Windows? Nah, I'm on archlinux. I did some research before buying the mouse just to make sure it was supported. I just downloaded some package on the archlinux user repository.

I had not read this analogy before but, although not all characteristics probably match, I think I like it :-)

Yes, that fucking surprised me too. But if you can get around the fucking F word, the rest of the article is really well fucking put together :) I think they've got a pretty dispassionate and technically-well thought out argument.

But that's just my fucking opinion.

You're going to have to make it past my dog, and odds are against you.

I think with the right technology (a gun), a brute force attack against your dog might have a good chance of success ...

The problem cannot have been between keyboard and chair, because iDevices don't have a keyboard.

Maybe it's simply the software analogue to gentrification.

Anyone equating profanity with violence has lost to begin with. Especially if it's a single use in a large amount of text, and contained in the "standardized" phrase usually abbreviated with "WTF" (I wouldn't have had problems to write it out, but I didn't want to do you the favour of declaring me losing just for using that word, even if only as quotation).

Profanity: Using certain words which some people for some irrational reason consider offensive. No real harm done.

Violence: Physically harming someone.

It's directed at these two companies simply because they have competing mobile GPUs: Snapdragon(Adreno), and Exynos. I'd never heard of Exynos, but I think the Snapdragon was gaining ground. The first Nexus 7 had Tegra, while the second had Snapdragon.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualcomm_Snapdragon :

Adreno, the company's proprietary GPU series, integrated into Snapdragon chips (and certain other Qualcomm chips) is Qualcomm's own design, using assets the company acquired from AMD.^[5]

Why are they not going up against AMD/ATI? Surely they have infringed on the GPU patent much more since they have been around longer if the allegations are true.

:)

I did not see it mentioned, but noticed new comment numbers are listed next to the total. That's kind of nice. :)