I'm only half joking when i say MS should buy Start8 and offer it as a free download.

I don't want to stop you from running free software, the FSF wants to stop me from non-free software. This is the fundamental difference. I don't impose my views on you, they want to impose their views on everyone. Their views are fundamentally extremist, mine are not.

Their ideas of a total ban on non-free software would infringe on my views. My way allows for you to run a free-software system while allowing me to run non-free software. They don't want to give me the option of running non-free software. They would rather i have nothing that use proprietary software

You are like the insane anti-abortionists who wants to ban the practice. I am the one who wants to make individuals to have a choice. I don't impose my views on you and would like you not to infringe on my right to do what i like. It's very simple.

The FSF wants to stop me from running non-free software. They can't stop me, but they would like to. They would like it to be impossible to run non-free software. That's the whole point of the FSF. It's why they have a list of kosher distributions, Debian doesn't make the list because it allows for the installation of non-free repositories. They would like to choose for users what is morally acceptable to install.

My stance on software is less restrictive than the FSF, I want to run whatever i want regardless of license. The FSF wants me to run only free software. They by definition have the more restrictive view.

Anyway, arguing with a FSF zealot is like arguing with a religious extremist, they think they are the only ones with a valid view and that everyone is corrupt and blind for not seeing "the truth". You seem to be a sort of FSF apologetic.

Here we go again. The usual FOSS battle between impossible idealism and pragmatism.

If Firefox wants to allow for a plugin that enables DRM, what of it? The users can make their own choice. They're not including it in the browser.

I know it's popular to pay lip service to the FSF but if they had their way we would all be hypocrites. Just posting on /. with all the evil minifed javascript would make us sinners. Of course, the FSF morals don't extend to it having qualms about taking HP, Google and IBM dirty money.

The idea that software needs to free is bullshit, i want to run whatever i want on my system. Don't you? I don't want my morals decided by the FSF.

Their affiliation with any Syrian government is likely nil.

They seem to be an uncontrollable incoherent, loosely affiliated group without any hierarchy who just use the brand as a PR banner. Like Anonymous or Al-Qaeda.

According to Wikipedia Mozilla Corp has 1000+ employees. That's an amazing amount of people for a web browser. Remember, Firefox is the only thing they do that's gained traction.

That's about 950 too much. What the hell are they all doing over there? It just smells like a huge corruption scandal waiting to explode.

More than anything, it's over-management that's made Mozilla an elephant. It can probably explain FirefoxOS as well.

I've only converted home tapes ;)

Homemade VHS quality is not great to begin with, I used a new (old but in the box) VCR and an EasyCap (a clone i think). It worked fine. There was no noticeable degradation of quality. The mpeg was about 20GB for a two hour tape. The software i used was Virtual VCR

To be honest, i think a lot of these best practices are voodoo (it entirely depends on how and when it was recorded), just to jack up the price. As for not wanting to risk a tape on an old player, just test it out on a junk tape first, if it works 10 times in a row, chances are it'll work the 11th time.

Firefox is looking more and more appealing these days. The new Firefox 29 is much more stable than previous versions (and as stable as chrome) and the new UI is nice but needs slight tweaking.

Chrome keeps trying to sign me in to Google services, uses too much memory (as much or more than Firefox), its plugins aren't as established as FF's and they're starting to do strange things to the UI (like implement their own scroll bar).

Each have their pros and cons, Firefox allows you to change network settings specifically for the browser, chrome delegates it to the OS. The way Firefox handles this has recently become very useful to me.

Chrome was much better than Firefox in the early days but things aren't as clear cut now, it's very competitive.

I recommend you let go of your preconceived notions and give Firefox another try. You might find Firefox's set of bugs to be more tolerable than chrome's set of bugs

I suspect Google will eventually use G+ to power Google Now. You could ask your phone for movie recommendations and it will reply with a curated list based on what movies or youtube trailers your G+ friends have seen.

Now that social networks have supplanted personal webpages/blogs and small independent sites are dying from inactivity Google has less and less to crawl. They need G+ to power their mobile search (Google Now) and make their results personal, it might not make money on its own but they can't kill it, it's their long term lifeline - it might completely change over time, but it'll be a gradual evolution not a restart.

Googe+ has a nice communities feature that i like. https://plus.google.com/commun...
People can subscribe to page dedicated to a topic they like and post to the page.

G+ is centered around your interests, not your high-school friends. This data is more valuable to Google.

If you won't post something to G+ with your real name chances are you shouldn't be posting it. It reduces the amount of "keyboard warriors" on the site and increases the value of the data. yes i know there are legitimate reasons for anonymity, but in these situations G+ isn't your best outlet.

The people against Google's single sign in policy are misguided, Google can create a standard sign in form for all their services and make you sign up to each one. Or you can fill out one form and use the services you like. It's the same thing.

With our boorish, straight-from-central-casting "conservative" government planning to cut all spending in the upcoming budget, this comes at a perfect time. Traditionally the CSIRO and the ABC are the ones who get f-ed over first - it's an easy cut as no one cares.

The cynical side of me can't help wondering how much of this is a (likely fruitless) attempt to fight against the likely budget cuts.

The way they're touting it, it feels to good to be true.

A community manager for a company that is discarding it's community. Bacon should polish his resume, he might need it.

The comments (and lack of) aren't surprising, anything out of canonical is just noise. What's more, he's partnered with Bryan Lunduke to create a Linux podcast. A shock-jock broadcaster/writer and unabashed peddler of mediocre (junk, really) software, A man who flirts with open-sourcing his software on-and-off, with the sole purpose of scamming a few more people into giving him money.

You'll need to define what support means.They could provide support by turning your xp install into win7 with a xp boot screen. They won't necessarily provide the kind of support you want

No Linux distro provides decades of support either, you're just upgraded to the latest packages and that might as easily break things in the same way xp to win7 might.

I'm all for extending the life of old machines. I know a lot of people are very happy with XP and don't need a new OS or computer, but there are times when it's just easier to move on and other times when it's better to stick with it.

Any competent admin would have started a migration to win7 a long time ago. Short of industrial use (e.g. a computer that controls machinery) there's little incentive to stick with xp. Patches to the OS are going to be of limited value for industrial applications anyway, as a competent setup would isolate the machines to a very secure private network (if any) and have multiple barriers of defense set up.

> So, boycotting works, you are saying?

It works by shutting people up. You're getting what you want by force, by suppressing the opposition and not overcoming it. The resentment will manifest itself in other forms and makes every victory you have tenuous. Voting is not mob rule it's majority rule, there are clear rules, everyone can get to the table and have a say. You're not letting Eich have his say.

> I like how only gays can support gay marriage.

yes, I'm sure OKCupid would have stood up for you even if the majority of their customers were against it. I'm sure Obama scolded Saudi Arabia during his recent visit in the same way his administration did with Russia. I'm sure neither of those entities are using the gay rights struggle as a pawns in their PR games. You are confusing souless corparations with people.

Metro should show some intelligence in how it open apps.

Ideally, if the user opens a metro app from the Desktop, it should be windowed. If it's opened from the Metro Screen it should be full screen.

Metro is a fine interface for touch devices. It looks good and works well. However it fails miserably when you're trying to use it in conjunction with the desktop. MS should go whole hog and create a Metro only tablet.

A lot of the blame for Win8 can be shouldered on Steven Sinofsky, who by all accounts thought himself as a cross between Steve Jobs and Napoleon. He was given free reign over Win8 due to his perceived success with MS Office (and the ribbon interface).

If you follow the MS news, you'll find constant suggestions that he treated the windows division as his fiefdom (and windows phone as a competitor, refusing even the most basic coordination) and that not only did he refuse to include a start menu in Win8 as a transitional step (up to that point, MS has usually offered a way to go back to the old behavior for at least one windows version) he intentionally introduced architectural changes to make it harder for MS to implement one in the future. You'll notice he was fired shortly after without much remorse by anyone.