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Comment Re:Tom Flanagan, Hilarious Idiot (Score 1) 579

by coerciblegerm (#34428234) Attached to: Moscow Has Eyes On WikiLeaks, Too

It's a poor joke in poor taste. He's already retracted all that, and even critics of the current Canadian government on the opposite side of the house have said that Flanagan was probably joking. He was stupid for putting it that way, of course, but he wasn't serious.

The thing is, some other people have suggested targeting him "like the Taliban" and are apparently serious.

Oh, so he was joking? No one is laughing. Calling for someone's death over the release of information in a society that supposedly values freedom shouldn't be taken quite so lightly, even if he did try to take back his words.

Comment Re:Microsoft Office (Score 3, Insightful) 510

by coerciblegerm (#34225682) Attached to: Where Do I Go Now That Oracle Owns OpenOffice.org?

If I had points I'd mod you insightful. While the OP doesn't state it, I would assume that MS would be off the table, given that Larry Ellison is trying to be Bill Gates. But, if it's solely an Oracle problem, Office has nothing to do with that.

OP does state it, quite clearly in fact: " Is there some alternative out there that I'm completely overlooking for open source?"

Unless Microsoft recently released the source code to their office suite this option has been pretty clearly disqualified. RTFA.

Comment Re:As a 4th month Mac user (Score 1) 580

by coerciblegerm (#33992908) Attached to: Beware the Garden of Steven
I recently got a Mac, and agree with some of your statements about the platform, but I won't be buying applications in this manner. I'll upgrade to Tiger when the time comes, but I'll always give precedence to physical media on anything that isn't a phone. The thing about entrusting someone to be the gatekeeper is that eventually he will close the gates on you.
News

Submission + - Bad news! Porn film-making suspended. (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by AliasMarlowe
AliasMarlowe writes: Two of America's biggest porn movie studios have suspended all movie making. It's because a male star (un-named) has tested positive for HIV, and now they have the unenviable job of notifying his many recent co-stars. There may be some job openings in these studios, since HIV-infected performers are not at all welcome. The studios are Vivid Entertainment and Wicked Pictures. But nobody will be surprised if they try to blame the financial hit on piracy of some sort.
Patents

Submission + - Twitter’s Patent Strategy: Don’t Bothe (bnet.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: There is no question that Twitter is big in social media, and that makes the company's patent strategy curious. Check US Patent Office records and you see that Twitter has apparently never even filed a patent application. This is not a mistake, but a deliberate strategy that runs counter to advice from most experienced high tech executives and investors. Apparently the the venture capitalists that invested in the company tolerate the approach, and it may be one that works and saves money, at least for smaller companies.

Submission + - A Natural Transition from CID to Reverse Phone Num (google.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Major telephone companies in the United States started offering Type II caller identification systems in 1995. This allowed homeowners to screen calls and decreased the amount of telephony harassment and social hacking. However with cell phones taking a major foothold in household main telephone line usage, caller identification systems are quickly becoming a thing of the past. It is no surprise that this has spawned a large increase in the need for reverse phone number search services over the internet.
Google

Submission + - RIAA, IFPI Wants Google to Remove Pirated Links (cnet.com)

Submitted by suraj.sun
suraj.sun writes: Last month, executives from two music-industry trade groups, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), asked Google if it could provide a means to help them track down pirated material more efficiently. Typically, copyright owners are responsible for finding pirated links and alerting Google, which is required by law to quickly remove the links.

But Google's response raised eyebrows at some of the labels. James Pond, a Google manager, wrote in a letter dated September 20, that Google would be happy to help--for a price, according to a source who had seen letter.

Pond wrote, Google planned to provide three options for third parties to access the API. The first one was designed for third-party services that display Google ads alongside search results. The second was for developers and would include only a very low number of searches. The third was a paid product called Site Search, Pond wrote.

"The only option for the IFPI/RIAA to access our Web search API will be the third option," Pond wrote, according to the source who had seen the letter. "I understand we charge a standard rate of $5 per thousand queries, which is charged to recover our costs in providing this service," Pond wrote.

CNET News: http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-20019411-261.html

Submission + - GNU/Linux is fastest growing OS at Big Companies. (linuxfoundation.org) 1

Submitted by twitter
twitter writes: A survey of 1,900 people at companies with more than 500 employees shows that GNU/Linux is growing faster than other OS at the expense of Windows and Unix. Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols has some insightful commentary on it.

These businesses are moving to Linux far faster than they are to Windows or Unix. ... conventional wisdom is that Unix users are the most likely to switch to Linux. ... it turns out that, by a few percentage points, Windows users at 36.6% are more likely to be heading to Linux than Unix, 31.4% ... 36.4% of businesses reported some Linux desktop use in their company. ... while total cost of ownership (TCO) remains a strong number two, the first reason these days for people to switch to Linux is its perceived technical superiority and features. ... 58.6%, said the recession hadn't played a role.

One thing that SJVN missed is that, "and 66% of users surveyed say that their Linux deployments are brand new (“greenfield”) deployments. This greenfield market share grab is a good indicator of a platform’s future performance." Hurry up, already, I want my GNU!

Comment Debian Testing instead of 10.10 (Score 1) 473

by coerciblegerm (#33852638) Attached to: Ubuntu 10.10, Maverick Meerkat, Now Available

This release contains new improvements, like an update to the Ubuntu One online service (with music streaming), Shotwell instead of F-Spot, the new Unity interface (for netbooks), and an upgrade to just about every piece of existing software.

I currently run Debian Testing. Aside from the music streaming, it sounds to me like my decision to migrate to Debian instead of upgrading to 10.10 was justified. I couldn't care less about default packages (F-Spot vs. Shotwell) and I don't run a netbook. Furthermore, I can pretty much guarantee that almost all of my software is more up-to-date (or, upgraded) than any package in 10.10. Unless you need your hand held to perform the simplest of tasks, I suggest swimming upstream instead of continuing to latch on to a derivative that is functionally identical, new font and wannabe-Mac interface aside.

Comment Re:Too quickly (Score 4, Interesting) 172

by coerciblegerm (#33767860) Attached to: Ubuntu 10.10 Release Candidate Launched

In my opinion they release new versions too quickly. I know there are a lot of differences between versions, but what I'd like is if they slowed it down by a bit. That way, they could release each new version as a dramatically different thing than the previous ones. At this rate, Ubuntu 11.x will be roughly the same as Ubuntu 9.x I don't think it should be like that. Also, someone up-comments (I figure that's how I refer to someone above me in the list) pointed out the horrible mess that the init scripts are. This is absolutely true. Someone find them and mod them up, please.

I completely agree. I've recently made the decision to go upstream and install Debian (testing) on my home system instead of upgrading to 10.10; the last three releases of Ubuntu have proven to be a complete nightmare to upgrade (for me, at least) without a clean install. I rather like the idea of (at least theoretically) never having to re-install my operating system and manually building "deprecated" programs that I prefer to use due to a major distribution upgrade.

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