Comment Re:so (Score 1) 186
Darn noobs get off my lawn!
Comment Re:Groupon needs a staggered approach (Score 1) 611
There already is a simple limit scheme available, but this business owner chose not to use it. Presumably this failure was a combination of lack of due diligence by the business owner and some pressure from Groupon sales staff. Groupon assumes that few businesses will ever offer a deal through them twice, so their strategy seems to be squeezing as many sales out of them as possible, margins and customer quality be damned.
Hopefully stories like this will make more small business owners aware of the risks associated with massive cut-rate promotions through sites like Groupon.
Comment Why deb is better than rpm... (Score 1) 685
I'm not sure that anyone actually nailed the complete reason. I scanned through the response so far but none seem to really cover it.
1. Debian policy -- this is by far the biggest reason, Debian policy is very detailed and packages are required to adhere to it to be in the official repos
2. Debian repository -- it contains nearly all open source software, which combined with 1 makes Debian/Ubuntu based systems much more stable in general
3. deb format -- this is actually more of a toss up but the deb format is still much more flexible than rpm
4. apt -- existed since at least the mid 90s, long before yum was added to replicate the feature on rpm based distros, so not so much a reason now
I might have missed some additional reasons but the above are the biggest. You can still break a Debian/Ubuntu system but that is usually due to using non-official repositories by people who haven't properly made debs, eg some random launchpad ppa, which haven't gone through vetting process via Ubuntu REVU, or lintian, etc.
I've used Debian/been a DD for 13 years, and used Ubuntu/core dev for 7 years. I've used RH/Fedora on and off for 15 years.
Comment Re:Meh (Score 1) 1040
lol, you predate me a bit, I didn't start using Linux until around Feb 1995.
Comment Re:Meh (Score 1) 1040
I don't remember anyone complaining about Windows 95 interface, maybe that it was unstable, but not its interface. Windows 3's interface was so horrible I just used DOS instead.
Your user id is so high were you even born yet when Windows 95 came out?
Comment Re:Battery problem? (Score 1) 315
The best way to be able to tell if the location services bug was likely affecting you is to turn on the display option and see how often it is being polled. For my wife's 4S it appeared to be always on for the time setting location service.
Comment Re:I quit at unity too (Score 1) 798
Microsoft is planning to force the tablet UI on you as well with Windows 8 next year...
Comment Ubuntu Unity and Gnome 3 both suck (Score 1) 798
I've used Linux since 1995, Debian since 1998 and Ubuntu since mid 2004, when the first 4.10 test release came out. Ubuntu Unity and Gnome 3 may be perfectly useful for computer newbies, who have no prior experience with any OS, but they are both very annoying for experienced computer users and unfortunately Windows 8 looks to be more of the same. So I switched to Xubuntu apparently the only decent option left, and I seem to be in good company there with Linus having switched to Xfce as well. I used to work for Canonical but really don't get what they are attempting to do. They kept talking about wanting to jump the chasm but it seems to be more of jumping the shark, losing a lot of their long time users in the process.
If they are attempting to reinvent all the OSes for tablet use, which is the only sane reason for this interface change, they are going to fail badly and lose their desktop and laptop share in the process. Apple's already won the tablet market, with Android trailing far behind, and chasing after it this late in the game is not going to be of much use.
Submission + - US Blackout of El Hierro Volcanic Eruptions in Can (youtube.com)
DarkStarZumaBeach writes: "For US Slashdotters, you may not be aware from TV and newspapers that the El Hierro volcano is active in the Canary Islands. You may also not know that the western end of El Hierro is beginning to fail, and is likely to slip into the Atlantic with perhaps a hundred or more cubic kilometers of rock and debris, generating a mega tsunami. See the recent deformation data plot HERE. For mega tsunami simulation, follow the story URL to a YouTube clip of the simulated La Palma island volcanic landslide tsunami with an update for El Hierro.
If you don't know this, it isn't because the US government is talking about it. The USGS just posted a mea culpa page HERE stating that they are unable to monitor earthquakes in the Canary Islands — even though they have a historic working relationship with Spain's own National Geographic Service — and full access to the Canary Islands seismometer RSS reports HERE. It would seem odd for the USGS to ever fail to report any quake over a magnitude 2 — since that is well within the realm of underground nuclear testing activity. Yet, the USGS failed to report on El Hierro's 3.1 and 4.3 magnitude quakes in the week ending Oct. 14th, 2011.
Meanwhile, the earthquake quiet Eastern Provinces of Canada are planning on participating in the Oct. 20th "The Great Shakeout" public safety exercises — which originated with California. But, the US states on the Atlantic Coast don't even think earthquake awareness is worth spending time and money since protecting the life of citizens isn't as important as raising campaign money from corporate donors who don't want their financial markets to crash when the public realizes they are in great risk from El Hierro.
The Federal government isn't that stupid: It knows enough to preserve itself and coordinate the efforts of survivors: So, FEMA just had the first-ever activation briefing with broadcast engineers on Oct. 13th for the first-ever nation-wide test of the Emergency Alert System slated for Nov. 9th at 2pm; So, on Oct. 10th, Dobbins ARB ran a disaster recovery exercise for the fleet of Airforce Reserve C130s with an exercise premise of an exotic "flu" outbreak — which required airlift recovery of blunt-force trauma patients; So, the US Army Contingency Contracting Infantry Corps are put on mobilization alert without destination orders; And, so, the US chain-of-command is put on "campaign" and "foreign good will" travel so that they can survive a direct tsunami hit on Washington, DC. Meantime, all the troops in Iraq are ordered home by Dec. 31st — just in case the Feds need them to enforce martial law on what's left of the US Atlantic Coast.
Obviously, volcanoes are unpredictable — so alarming the general public is not useful if it crashes financial markets. On the other hand, not planning evacuation routes to safety areas at least 100 miles from the Atlantic Coast will result in huge traffic jams when the usable alert time is just over 5 hours from El Hierro landslide to mega tsunami landing on DC and Florida.
Oh, and by the way, unlike the US Pacific Coast, there is no such thing as an Atlantic Coast Tsunami Warning System.
Meanwhile, as a fellow Slashdotter with IT concerns, it is clear that major US data processing centers will be at risk, since many are built on, or near, flood plains. Worse, land-based telecom and power are likely to be disrupted. The only reliable sources of power will be backup generators and batteries. The only reliable communication system will be shortwave radio and Internet by satellite. For my IT team, for food, we have the staff fridge and the junk food machines. For meds, we have one first aid kit and a portable stretcher. For backups, we have Iron Mountain.
So, when was the last time you inventoried the emergency supplies at your data center? Do you even have waterproof matches and candles?"
If you don't know this, it isn't because the US government is talking about it. The USGS just posted a mea culpa page HERE stating that they are unable to monitor earthquakes in the Canary Islands — even though they have a historic working relationship with Spain's own National Geographic Service — and full access to the Canary Islands seismometer RSS reports HERE. It would seem odd for the USGS to ever fail to report any quake over a magnitude 2 — since that is well within the realm of underground nuclear testing activity. Yet, the USGS failed to report on El Hierro's 3.1 and 4.3 magnitude quakes in the week ending Oct. 14th, 2011.
Meanwhile, the earthquake quiet Eastern Provinces of Canada are planning on participating in the Oct. 20th "The Great Shakeout" public safety exercises — which originated with California. But, the US states on the Atlantic Coast don't even think earthquake awareness is worth spending time and money since protecting the life of citizens isn't as important as raising campaign money from corporate donors who don't want their financial markets to crash when the public realizes they are in great risk from El Hierro.
The Federal government isn't that stupid: It knows enough to preserve itself and coordinate the efforts of survivors: So, FEMA just had the first-ever activation briefing with broadcast engineers on Oct. 13th for the first-ever nation-wide test of the Emergency Alert System slated for Nov. 9th at 2pm; So, on Oct. 10th, Dobbins ARB ran a disaster recovery exercise for the fleet of Airforce Reserve C130s with an exercise premise of an exotic "flu" outbreak — which required airlift recovery of blunt-force trauma patients; So, the US Army Contingency Contracting Infantry Corps are put on mobilization alert without destination orders; And, so, the US chain-of-command is put on "campaign" and "foreign good will" travel so that they can survive a direct tsunami hit on Washington, DC. Meantime, all the troops in Iraq are ordered home by Dec. 31st — just in case the Feds need them to enforce martial law on what's left of the US Atlantic Coast.
Obviously, volcanoes are unpredictable — so alarming the general public is not useful if it crashes financial markets. On the other hand, not planning evacuation routes to safety areas at least 100 miles from the Atlantic Coast will result in huge traffic jams when the usable alert time is just over 5 hours from El Hierro landslide to mega tsunami landing on DC and Florida.
Oh, and by the way, unlike the US Pacific Coast, there is no such thing as an Atlantic Coast Tsunami Warning System.
Meanwhile, as a fellow Slashdotter with IT concerns, it is clear that major US data processing centers will be at risk, since many are built on, or near, flood plains. Worse, land-based telecom and power are likely to be disrupted. The only reliable sources of power will be backup generators and batteries. The only reliable communication system will be shortwave radio and Internet by satellite. For my IT team, for food, we have the staff fridge and the junk food machines. For meds, we have one first aid kit and a portable stretcher. For backups, we have Iron Mountain.
So, when was the last time you inventoried the emergency supplies at your data center? Do you even have waterproof matches and candles?"
Submission + - Google not to release full Android 4.0 source code 3
calc writes: Jean-Baptiste Queru, tech lead of Android at Google has confirmed that the full Android 4.0 source code will not be released.
"Like we did for all Honeycomb release, this is NOT the full source tree for IceCreamSandwich, these are only the GPL parts that are in the SDK (along with a few associated files), and they're not enough to build the whole IceCreamSandwich for a device."
http://groups.google.com/group/android-building/browse_thread/thread/ade6fcd847fbb3fb#
"Like we did for all Honeycomb release, this is NOT the full source tree for IceCreamSandwich, these are only the GPL parts that are in the SDK (along with a few associated files), and they're not enough to build the whole IceCreamSandwich for a device."
http://groups.google.com/group/android-building/browse_thread/thread/ade6fcd847fbb3fb#
Comment Re:Who cares? We have the cloud to save us! (Score 4, Interesting) 203
I have often wondered what the total amount of temporary packet storage in the world's routers is.... How much data can actually be in transit at any given time?
Comment Re:Wait for Top Gear (Score 1) 426
Moreover, why do we need to adopt Highlander Rules here? An electric car is a practical replacement for people whose driving habits don't require a fuel station on every corner. That doesn't work for everyone, and those people shouldn't buy a pure electric car.
However, complaints about the range issue do highlight one of the real problems in selling electric vehicles: discomfort in giving up some capability regardless of how often you actually use that capability. I owned my first car (quite the beater) for two years, and drove it more than 150 miles from home exactly once. Would I have been happy with a vehicle that had a 300 mile range? Sure. (Would I have spent $200k rather than $2k? No, but I would not have spent that much money on a car, even if I never had to refuel it.)
Comment Re:320 miles (Score 1) 426
Because that's what he said?
"The 300-mile range Tesla would suffice for about 90% of my driving. 90%, but not 100%, so I still have to own another vehicle for the remainder."
I'm not sure how else to interpret that statement without stuffing words into the author's mouth.
Comment Re:320 miles (Score 1) 426
I think you mean "Apple management."
Submission + - EPA Bans Asthma Inhalers (msn.com)
bonch writes: The EPA has banned over-the-counter asthma inhalers as part of an agreement with other nations to avoid using chlorofluorocarbons, a substance once used in aerosol sprays. Alternative albuterol inhalers cost almost three times as much as the $20 epinephrine inhalers sold by online retailers.
