Considering Stallman probably feels he needs a bit of forgiveness right now, Microsoft has the best chance of receiving it from him too.

Google is quite annoying. I use an Android phone and intentionally never activated Google assistant on purpose. Somehow it found a way to activate. So I turned it off again. If you press the main circular button too long it can activate. Once on it stays open unless you manually turn it off. I once went into my google history and found hundreds of snippets of my life just randomly uploaded from accidental presses of the button during normal use of the phone.

And I'm not even going to get into the trouble you can get into in one relationship when Google decides to reveal stuff from your cloud from a previous relationship which you had completely forgotten even exists (you're not always expecting to have photos from 6 phones ago suddenly pop up when you scroll through your holiday snaps for example).

It's caused me more distress than benefit.

The excellent thing about mealworms is they're supposed to be able to feed on polystyrene. A vertical farm of these could solve a second problem as a useful recycler of waste that traditionally only goes to the landfill and is seen as a real problem.

Well here it is raining and yesterday it was not.

Have you ever wondered how long it would take to record so much data that to read it would take the same amount of energy as it would take to boil all the water in the world's oceans?

Thankfully we have ZFS but how much data do they really intend to store? It is cheaper to just put everyone in prison and give them a free iphone. As long as tasty meals are provided there shouldn't be many complaints. I shotgun top bunk.

Please revert to the terminology of trashed. This is in relation to bug that was found in the social media freedom index. Testing so far reports it temporarily fixes the problem. Stay tuned for further updates.

My computer is too old to even run windows 8, which even if I did, would leave me stuck in its menu and lost. I began using Linux 2005 when I found myself with a broken XP install and unable to fix it. I am very dumb but through using Netscape Navigator on windows 95, which I used until 2003 when I finally could buy a new computer in pieces over 6 months, I had found mozilla and was vaguely aware of open source. I dabbled in a bit of HTML and PHP which were easy though I never became a programmer and wouldn't be able to do any of that wizardry now. I then found firefox and around all its hype was mention of red hats and mandrakes.

I still didn't have a CD burner and stuck on a 56k modem connection I tried downloading linux installs that were said to be installable from floppy disks but they didn't even boot. Using a download manager later I was determined to download mandrake. I spent 3 months doing this. I ended up taking my computer in a wheel barrow over to a friends house where we LANed together so he could burn this thing on to CD, but all his CD-Rs were corrupt so I went home still using windows XP.

Following this I spent a lot of time saving up for a CD burner. I'd built the computer myself with no expertise, just figuring it was like lego, and I'd pulled apart the odd box and stuck ram from machine into another so what could go wrong? I only earned $100 per week working part time in a fast food joint and since my mother thought I spent too much time on the computer (making '99 style websites I thought were really cool and would lead me into a career of web development) she wouldn't help me in any way.

I then got a free coupon through some website for Linspire. I thought since it's worth $50 this must be a better Linux than all those free ones that were just like DOS (well to be completely honest I didn't know what to expect, I'd never seen a screenshot of linux just all this crazy command line documentation, I still thought it was going to be like DOS which to me meant it would have some fun games from my childhood). I can't remember how or when but somehow I had this CD burned and ready when my computer broke. I still didn't have anything faster than 56k dialup.

At the time there had been way to get free dial up but that had ended and by now I was paying for my own dialup it cost a whopping $20 per month of the $400 I earned.

When I booted Linspire I was pleasantly surprised by the installer, it was gui and easier than installing windows 2000 and XP. I'd remembered the upgrades of windows 3.1 to windows 95 my (extended) family had done with what seemed like 31 disks and the nightmares this had been for them. Linspire to me on first impression seemed like the most advanced system I had ever used. This linux thing was indeed really cool and I had heard of it being more stable.

I probably reinstalled Linspire 2-3 times in the first month of using it. I kept breaking its CNR trying to use apt and quickly found out it wasn't the best Linux. My younger brother had found out you could order free CD's from Ubuntu and told me they were coming. Linspire had KDE and compare to windows XP it was pretty easy to use, it even did some things better. I did find the whole installing software thing a bit difficult to get my head around and the filesystem in / looked pretty daunting.

after no more than two months I had switched to Ubuntu 5.10. I'd remembered those mandrake 10.1 cds and installed that first but it didn't connect to its repositories, because it was too old an install but I didn't know that. I had thought highly of mandrake before that, it had a good brand and reputation as far as I could tell. The lack of repository in mandrake meant I used Ubuntu. My first impression of Gnome was that it looked stupid compared to KDE but as I began using it I really found it useful. within 6 months of using it, when I tried KDE again I found I didn't like KDE as much and by now something about KDE's theme annoyed me, like the shape and size of its icons and clocks in the panel all being different. The brown of Ubuntu didn't bother me.

I still thought they were both good and really useful, these gnome vs KDE wars the gurus were constantly fighting just seemed strange in fact quickly these gurus began to appear like bunch of retarded idiots.

I found apt very simple to use. wget, while I only used it occasionally, seemed revolutionary, I wondered why didn't windows have this. I lost complete faith in windows. It was a horrible OS and that guy Steve Balmer was such an obnoxious person I began to hate the company. Suddenly I found myself joining the cult of Linux - in my mind.

I began to try convince everyone I knew to use Linux, even my grandmother. I would have converted up to 10-15 people over a year or two period perhaps more with my online evangelism. Apart from my brother and about 2 friends no one uses it any more. They all fell in love with iphones and macs and a couple decided to keep using windows, mostly the gamers, most of whom were unconvertable from the beginning.

Still something about getting Compiz working with the whole process of XGL or AIGLX or whatever it was on ATI card back then was exhilarating. I was a script kiddie guru, copy and pasting huge chunks of command line code to make my windows wobble. It was better than the hackers in movies, I understood more of what was going on than the average politician or movie director does on subjects they make some pretty important decisions about, but I still didn't know anything.

I did try Fedora for a week in about 2007, it was no different than Ubuntu, but it was annoying to get stuff that was simple on ubuntu to work and the people in their forums were horrible. A whole bunch of aspergers twits. Do you know how horrible forum searches are, especially when the reason you're trying to use a forum is to talk to someone, I wouldn't use your forum if I'd figured out how to google it.

So I kept using Ubuntu, despite referring to it as GNU/Linux mostly. And as I grew older I found myself needing to do less and less in Ubuntu. It worked better every release. Too much better. That whole script kiddie nature of Linux had disappeared. I was bored, it wasn't a toy any more. Not to mention that by now I was working 60 hours per week. I couldn't be bothered so it was great but also a few years ago I realised pretty much the only thing I use in Ubuntu is the web browser.

Unity was partially responsible for this. I dislike it, but still use it. I tried gnome 3 for a while and thought it was much better but for some reason just didn't install it again on my next upgrade. I couldn't be bothered, I wanted to try unity again but I couldn't easily run them both on Ubuntu at the same time, beside, if you had two de's installed on the same partition it was always a messy install. I don't like that Ubuntu started making gnome 3 harder to choose - even if there is Ubuntu gnome now.

The unity dash is horrible I only use the side menu. which I can't move around. I haven't gone and tried mate even though my favourite DE would be a toss up between gnome 2 and 3, I don't even install the latest Ubuntu anymore, LTS is good enough. I used to think using Debian stable was ridiculous, so outdated, but now if they could provide decent video drivers, which hopefully steamOS will bring to Linux, if we're lucky, I would probably use debian stable, though that whole IceWeasel BS was a bit too much for me, even though I think the GPL is my preferred licence. It just seems to make sense to me but I'm not making this stuff, you can licence it whatever way you want, I personally would just hate to be in the situation where I was locked out of my own code if it was closed up like BSD, MIT etc all seem to allow.

I don't like spending much on technology -I've been putting up with broken and old computers all my life, can never game because of stupid issues and quite frankly would rather enjoy the outdoors for free than give some greedy fucking billionaire my money. If Ubuntu could sell me a decent desktop, phone combo with their convergence, I'd spend up to a months salary on it, which is $3200 for me. But it would have to be high end, last more than 5 years and perfect. Ubuntu isn't prefect yet and it will take a long time now with MIR and Unity 8 to become perfect.

In the 10 years I have been using Linux I have donated to the FSF, Gnome and EFF (heaps through humble bundles, if the bundle didn't support EFF I didn't buy it, I gave about 50% to the EFF and the rest to the app developers usually). I feel like I donated to one or two other projects, but they're slipping my mind now.

Projects I would consider donating to include GIMP and Libre Office because I like and use them. But these are also the two massive apps I kind of wish had been well more advanced in this time. Me giving them $50 wouldn't have changed a thing, one of the distros had to own them and pledge to make them amazing. Though Libre office is much better than it was as open office already I think

Blender is amazing too. I like their open movies, even if the voice acting isn't fantastic. It's a real shame they can't do a feature length every year. That would get me donating heaps, mainly out of spite, because I hate the movie industry more than I hate Microsoft. In fact Bill Gates is a pretty good guy these days and sataya nadella has definitely transformed the company. It will be a while before I trust them, but they're nearing that point where when I come to purchase my next computer/phone/tablet in a few years (it will take that long because that's all I can afford to spend on this junk, seriously Dell you suck, I won't buy from you again, even if you do claim to sell Ubuntu in some countries, you don't in mine and your hardware is substandard).

But yeah, as you can see I'm an average joe who uses desktop linux, the desktop is disappearing from everyday home use. Linux is on heaps of tablets and phones in the form of android, even if its bastardised and google is no longer not evil.

2016 will be the year of Linux on the Desktop. But I'll probably begin to hate Ubuntu once I spend money on it and have to think "You're telling me 10% of my yearly income is worth this hunk of junk."

I am the Elijah to the messiah of the cult the Year of Desktop Linux. Do not crucify the saviour for the singularity will be thy judgement. The eye of Google watches and knows all. lol.

My next post will be on how excited I am about lol looking like a tie fighter and jar jar binks being a sith lord.

I don't think bitcoin is the best example to use for technology in a presidential debate. It isn't used by enough people. It does represent a way that something existed that there wasn't a law for and the fact that a presidential debate isn't the place to discuss these kinds of matters highlights the real issue: Representative democracy.

Now this is what the presidential debate should really be focused on, aside from all the other populist agendas on show, how do we use technology to create and electoral process for both national economies and the globalized world that is fair, secure and MORE EFFICIENT.

I'm a bit of a Luddite when it comes to technology despite reading slashdot several times per day, I don't have the time or the energy these days to go exploring every interesting new thing the way I did when I was a teenager and had a few hours free time per week at the expense of my parents. I've been using Linux all my adult life and have become used to being isolated from many newest and greatest new things, and subsequently became used to viewing the mainstream from a different perspective in other ways - essentially I am aware that politically I am a minority. This means the current electoral systems don't really give a result I see as valid, both in the sense of counting my input but really in even discussing the matters I think are important.

Social media allows us to form groups and follow topics and even hierarchies within these. The reality is that this is where most of the topics you want discussed about technology will occur. Only once a group is powerful enough (by numbers), or credible enough (has proven they are experts on the matter) will they be able to effect change. What needs to be taken out of all political systems is the ability to influence change with money. Democracy as I understand it was about giving equal say to equal people. The use of money in a political system is a clear statement that you are not equal, as an individual.

Bitcoin seeks to take the power away from governments using the very thing that has corrupted the political system, however this is also one of the very reasons it is unlikely you will ever see bitcoin discussed based on merit - if it is discussed it will be based on fear or as a weapon to dominate some other sovereign market.

It would be nice to have a system where daily several simple questions about current events, economics and technology for example were delivered to you to vote on in a form of unofficial direct democracy and truly representative detailed analysis of these subjects were discussed by the various departments/ministries in a detailed manner months before the election as the very first step towards the campaign trails. Instead of campaigns based on political spin it would anchor the politicians to the people and force them to discuss topics that mattered and allow the people to search for data and ask relevant questions that interested them along the way.

Modern democracy acknowledges our different views but technology has not yet delivered us a way to deliver it more effectively or even sort our views before delivering the vote. In reality an election should be a 3 hour multi choice exam. Some of it should be sections you have because you opted in due to interest, some of it should be sections you're qualified to answer and if you want you can abstain or just pick a proxy to vote on your behalf. This is what political parties are proxies with a predefined set of views. There are not just two views. Stating there are just to views on the myriad of topics that concern a government and its people is ridiculous. It is not efficient and it proves that in reality democracy is just one vote away from dictatorship, you are merely voting in the puppet leader, or assessing their performance, not actually having a say.

Further reason why esoteric technology discussions have nothing to do with politics.

And I haven't even begun to discuss the difficulty of legislating for things that do not yet exist.

The war of the machines has begun. It really is the year of the Linux Desktop.

The Linus Torvald's you know and love is but a figurehead puppet used by the open source conglomerates as clean shaven media representative. This man was born without birth certificates as part of a Middle Eastern slave harem and is commonly known as the Lunix Colonel.

The real Linus Torvald's has not left his mothers basement for 25 years. Nor has he shaved in this time. In March 1994 the Kernel was released as version 1.0.0 to celebrate Torvald's beard reaching 1 foot in length. 2 years later, largely due to a healthy diet of lutefisk they celebrated the milestone of 2 feet.

Unfortunately due to interference by corporate actors such as the Soviet conspiracy, Red Hat, the numbers became stagnated and no longer accurately reflected the true length of Torvald's beard. He was forced to trim.

This event caused Torvald's great sadness and resulted in him spiralling out of control into deep depression like parts of Mark Shuttleworth's Challenger spacecraft. He stopped showering for several years and this corresponding time period contained the greatest number of bugs in both the Linux kernel, and his beard.

The depression and lack of hygiene was contagious and spread to Open Source Wizard Richard Stallman who became known for his podiatric-auto-canibillia and was more likely to be associated with sores and sauce than source. The rival HURD kernel will never be completed as Stallman has forgotten how to program.

Torvald's mean while continued coding until his fingers bled, pushing code into his git under pseudonyms of various nerds around the world who paid the open source conglomerate to keep the sole Linux Mainframe online.

In 2011 Torvald's was able to wrestle control back over his versioning system and matched the released to the length of his beard for the 3rd time. This greatly improved the kernel and led to the development of some of the key technology of the 21st century: System D.

Seeing that his kernel was getting bigger, Torvald's began researching peer to peer Bitcoin block chains and Tor network services as a way to revolutionise the kernel for the first time since Al Gore invented the internet. System D was to use the one true linux mainframes hard drive to store pictures of Torvalds Penis, the system D version numbers were to reflect it's size at any time in some of the first research into Quantum computing versioning. After Jarrod from subway the initial angel investor due to seeing how this technology could be useful for his own interests, Google joined the project with the creation of it's D-wave computer - The first self contained and self replicating System D computer.

This caused a further rift between Stallman and Torvald's, as Linus had turned his operating system into a more advanced version of HERDs naming system. Many gnus were killed in the great battle of recursion.

In 2013 Torvald's beard had grown to a staggering 4 feet, as long as Eric S Raymonds was tall. This also marked the first time that Linux and System-D were the same thing as at the time Torvald's penis was 4 feet long.

Torvald's beard is currently approaching 4.3 feet long. He last had a shower this morning when he nearly got an erection and it is currently free from bugs.

So you pay tax so that an entity that represents you can purchase what belongs to you off someone else? Sounds like a Ponzi scheme would be a better investment to be honest.

Incidents like these serve to remind me the tools are in the criminals hands. Just like software "hacking" and botnets, robotics will no doubt see increasingly sophisticated applications in circumventing security. Maximum security jails are probably going to have to become more and more advanced, equipped with loads more sensors and probably far more enclosed. Weird little machines in the walls of buildings snooping and cutting away like mice infestations don't seem to me like an absurd possibility. At least exterminators are going to have a hi-tech skill tree to diverge into in the future, unlike some occupations.

When there are no jobs, provided we can feed everyone, we essentially have communism. The worker becomes the artist and the commodity is culture. The billionaires of the world would prefer the people to become their cattle however. Marked with their brands. No doubt we'll have a massive population crash before then, we are still just bacteria in the Petri dish that is the earth. And like the wild horse, I am slowly being broken down into complete apathy.

Rulers who seek to rule and make rules, are the worst kind. They proselytize their perspective as if they are somehow more important than the rest of us. Their feudal corruption manifesting deep into the core of their condition. War mongers intent on murder, worse than the backyard serial killer. All for lust and greed.

The benevolent, omnipotent, omniscient judge would surely destroy us all - for own sake. Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust, it all means nothing. Who gives a fuck what happens? We all die some day. We are no more important in the grand universe than the atoms that make it.

Nihilism for the win.

If it's 10x stronger and gets the job done, it solves the problem. Next job is for the quantity surveyor to figure out at which point having 2 or even 10 steel beams is more expensive than shelling out for this premium technology (Or to put it another way, figure out when this technology is cost effective.) If it's using less material, it's likely to be more sustainable too. Did you want them to invent a new element? lol.