Yep.
As a rule of thumb, (La)TeX is the system of choice if you want to write a paper or a novel, but for banging out a quick agenda or memo with no rigid form, Word (or a Word clone) is far more convenient.
> Some of the gripes listed here really resonate with me, having just moved to an early version of Ubuntu 9.10 on my main testing-stuff laptop; it's frustrating especially that while many seemingly more esoteric things work perfectly, sound now works only in part, and even that partial success took some fiddling.
It's an alpha. What do you expect?
1. Alt
2. SysRQ
3. R E I S U B
4. (optional) cross fingers
You insensitive clod!
FINALLY, a degree of common sense.
This isn't a big corporation's site. It was run by a few guys in their spare time. True, they could have backed up more, and putting the backup server online was incredibly stupid...
but the person who is to blame is the bastard who took both sites out. If you forget to lock your door, and someone uses that opportunity to burgle your house, you were partly responsible, but the police still go after the guy with your money, your valuables, your data, etc.
Either way, I do hope there is some way of rescuing that data—from what I gleam, the partitions had simply disappeared, and if mke2fs (or equivalent) hadn't been run, the data would still, in theory, be intact. It sucks. And the cretin who did this was a complete and utter twatflap.
Leonovo: We sell a twelve-point-one-inch lump of computer, and stuff shit in it. It's what we do.
Well, let's take a look.
They've consistently reported anti-BBC headlines in the past and were largely responsible in bringing up the Sachsgate scandal from a mere bad-taste joke to an issue that led to the resignation of two senior members of the BBC and a suspension of the third.
The problems go deeper than that, however. I point you to Mail Watch, a website which does well to expose the figure massaging, lazy journalism and (at times) utter lies of the Mail's journalists and editors. For example, they recently ran a story about how a 'hacker had infiltrated a Home Office' web site when, in reality, an external site linked to from the Home Office's web site had had its domain registration expire and bought up by speculators, who hosted some dodgy images on there. It also overstates immigration figures, and employs Richard Littlejohn, who is a cunt.
They also pander to their audiences regularly: for example, they have been caught campaigning both for AND against the HPV (cervical cancer) vaccine in different nations.
In short, even though the idea of a 'search engine tax' is laughable, the Daily Mail is in no way deserving of your trust. Q.E.D.
I concur: The argument 'it's not Free' is rather rubbish, because the public doesn't give a shit.
A far better argument is this one: you have no control over your data if the company goes under and you aren't paying them. I refer you to these excellent two web posts by Jason Scott: Fuck the Cloud and Dancing on Magnolia's Grave: Fuck the Cloud II.
Seriously, if you don't use Flickr Pro, don't keep anything on there where you don't have a backup. Et cetera.
Technically, though, they're just a printer and bookseller, aren't they? A traditional publisher is also meant to publicise them and make sure they sell reasonably well (even though the cut for the author is far smaller.)
Things have improved since the old days... although I did recently dig out a mid-90s laptop and install Debian 1.1 on it. It took less than two hours with a stack of floppies and some perseverance with dd on the host machine. I was pleasantly surprised: the TUI was incredibly easy to use for its time.
"I think Michael is like litmus paper - he's always trying to learn." -- Elizabeth Taylor, absurd non-sequitir about Michael Jackson
