i.e. this: http://slashdot.org/submission/2192453/humble-bundle-introduces-partial-drm

Shameless plug: http://slashdot.org/submission/2183539/humble-bundle-not-so-trusting-of-people-anymore

Just because Steam will now run officially on linux doesn't mean all the titles existing for windows will magically be available for linux. It only means that developers who had already ported to linux may market it as such. Same thing happened with desura for linux. And you can see how limited the Mac selection on steam is as compared to windows (I'd expect linux to be even less).

The only positive side to this is that, hopefully, companies will have a bit more of an incentive from NOW on to port to linux.

On the other hand, companies that already WERE porting to linux anyway, and in a nice non-DRM manner, will probably opt to do it via steam now instead.

I feel your response is unnecessarily hostile, zealotous, and an "I got you back" clause, when I wasn't particularly attacking anyone, despite your knee-jerk perception. Which ironically is what I was alluding would happen to the author unless she made that closing statement. Therefore, I am working on the assumption you're a vegetarian here, so forgive me for what I'll write below

While I don't mind someone coming to me and saying they're a vegetarian (after all, everyone has their reasons), what I *do* not like is when people adopt the whole militant quasireligious (and wrongful) stance that a) Vegeterianism is healthy, let alone healthi-er, and b) that it is somehow upper-class and noble, and that it should be associated with a certain lifestyle, like incessant jogging and yoga and bowel enemas and the such.

As a doctor I have been exposed to tons of evidence that pure vegetarianism is not healthy at all (evidence, may I add, that I was surprised to find out about, given the media blurb, and that I did not go out of my way particularly to get; I was simply exposed to it by virtue of working in a hospital). Yes, in general a vegetarian on the whole tends to be slightly more involved in their health, so they're healthier by comparison to the general McDonalds eating population, but that only reflects their obsession with a healthy (or at least what they perceive to be healthy) lifestyle. However, any comparison with a healthy non-vegetarian person watching what they eat (including healthy doses of greens and vegetables), and doing ACTUAL research on what is and what isn't good for you, will show that being vegetarian in itself is much less healthy. You have a much less chance of getting necessary protein on board, at least not without exceeding daily calories in fat and carbs, and most of them are likely to come from phytoestrogen-rich protein sources which increases your risk for all sorts of baddies big-time. Throw megalocytic anaemias, erratic insulin profiles, frequent faints and acidaemia into the mix, and you start getting an idea of what I'm talking about.

Even worse, being a vegetarian in our modern trendy society, is seen as a fashion item. A way to look thin and skinny. Especially for girls. So they go and eat nothing but salad, and then go for a jog in the morning (which is the worse thing they can do, especially if they're not getting protein on board - instant muscle-wasting). And, ironically, they seem to prefer this immunocompromised, syncope-prone, weakened body, and its unhealthy, muscle-wasted, skinny-fat, i-can-see-your-skull appearance, because they've worked so hard for it. You can almost tell a vegetarian from the fact their perception of beauty itself seems altered; but obviously it's beyond criticism and anything you do to comment on their body and health provokes an angry reaction (does this remind you of any clinical conditions?)

Moreover, the whole vegetarian culture is just that. A culture. People 'think' it's good because they 'think' it's good. You read the tiniest bit of scientific info and suddenly you realise all the media blurb is made-up and politicised. Then again, you need to dig in deep to find the evidence, because the internet is flooded in junk info about it instead, and unless you spend hours trying to find anything that doesn't say "Vegetarians are awesome and meat eaters are killers", don't expect to find any real info on the effects of vegetarianism.

So, the problem I have isn't with vegetarians. It's with this notion in vegetarian culture that somehow it's holier than anything and needs to be militantly defended against rednecks or somehow amoral people who don't know better. Please.

I like how the researcher feels the need to close off with a "don't antagonise vegetarian groups" political-correctness statement, lest she risks being eaten alive (pun intended).

Won't work outside the lab. As soon as they release it to market and pump it full of DRM and premium-content-ads, they'll get depressed all over again.

If that's what they mean by "withdrawing support", then yes. But I don't think that's what they mean.
From TFA: "Adobe will continue to provide security updates to non-Pepper distributions of Flash Player 11.2 on Linux for five years from its release".
And then, nothing.

As a linux user hearing these news, I'm reluctantly joining hands with Apple in saying "Yeah? Well, screw you adobe. And screw you google. We can do better!"

One of the main reasons friends of mine are reserved about trying linux in the first place, is because they don't understand exactly WHY there are so many different distributions out there. I'd start by answering why that is:

- Show them one or two distributions that are noob friendly enough but do things differently, such as fedora vs ubuntu vs mint, to show what the differences between distributions might be (and more importantly, what the similarities are).

- Then show them that whichever system you end up with, the UI is a component, and not integral to the system. Run mint with KDE / Gnome / XFCE to show this

- Then show them the terminal. Show them there is nothing mysterious about terminal code, this is how all programs are run, at least in the background, and how it can actually save you time. Show them how easy it is to write a simple script.

- Show them that in principle you could be using the terminal all the time in windows in the exact way outlined above, so this isn't some sort of dark linux way of doing things. Except that the default terminal in Windows is shit.

- Now show the more advanced stuff, just as a reference. Give a tour of a source-based system, like Gentoo. Give a tour of a "pure-linux" system like Slackware. Explain why some might prefer it. Show them how they might go about running a non-distro-specific tar.gz binary. Show them how a program might be compiled (i.e. what everybody thinks they'll be doing when they hear the word linux), and that while this used to be the default way of install stuff on linux 10-20 years ago, package management has now solved this problem, and installing things on linux is now a lot easier than any other OS. Explain why going for a more automated system is better for your newbies at this stage, but in the end it's all the same.

- As a point of pride, show them that linux is cutting edge stuff, and how some of the things that are now commonplace in linux have only made their way into mainstream systems relatively recently. Show them synaptic, and how it predated app-stores. Show them multiple desktops and how they predated iPhone/Android sliding desktops. Show them 3D cube / compiz effects, and how it beats all other supposedly flashy systems out there, if that's what you'd want (yet linux users will still opt for the console once getting used to it, because it is that. much. better.)

- Also as a point of pride, show them how open-source can be "as good as, if not better", in general, beyond the 'operating system' side of things. Show them things they may already have come across, such as Firefox, OpenOffice, VLC (make a point of vlc playing an obscure file they'd need to pay codecs for on their precious mac / windows media players - I'd recommend downloading a .webm youtube clip for this), etc. Make the case for Linux as open-source.

- Then explain which distro the company is imposing company-wide and why.

The above could be an introductory session / tour, and in principle shouldn't take more than a couple of hours. Then follow this session up with showing them specifically how stuff gets done in the distro your company has selected for whatever reason.

I can't believe it took them 3 years to copy alwaysinnovating.com 's smartbook technology!
It only took them 2 year to copy the transformer!

Anyway, I hope they rip off their pocket projector next. Alwaysinnovating has stopped selling products independently - I missed my chance to buy :(

Should we fire doctors who refuse to be vaccinated with Tamiflu? ... even though it's now been largely shown to have been an engineered media scare to sell a premature drug for which little clinical evidence existed and for which side-effects and complications are now becoming apparent?

I'm not saying people shouldn't get vaccines. But doctors blindly trusting 'current empirical practice' to the extent they're penalising patients for not 'getting on board' makes me a bit sceptical. At the very least they should be attempting to educate their patients in an intelligent (read: not patronizing) way -- and in the process educating themselves with the updated literature. For the most part, I doubt most doctors have read basic research dealing with the ongoing controversy around many vaccines (no, I'm not referring to the autism scare).

I had a mumps vaccine about a year ago, in the form of MMR (I had the two components already, but it turns out mandatory mumps vaccination wasn't policy in australia in my day, and previous vaccination for other two components isn't a contraindication for the combined vaccine). I developed parotitis shortly afterwards, which is a recognised complication of the mumps component. (So is orchitis, btw, carrying a risk for sterility). I then decided to read some of the literature on mumps. Turns out that, while it's not necessarily condemning of the mumps vaccination, there *are* legitimate concerns about risk of complications vs probability of contracting the disease in the first place, and vs severity or even potential *benefits* of contracting the disease naturally compared to vaccination, etc. I would have had the mumps vaccine anyway (not least because the health check for my new job demanded it). But still, I wish people had flagged, and related these facts to me, at the very least so I could know what I should expect and give proper informed consent to my treatment; rather than go with the whole "WHAT? You want to know more about the vaccine!? Why, I bet you're an ignorant redneck! Go find another doctor!"

As for the people who are too eager and quick to assume the majority of these parents are simply ignorant rednecks who don't give a shit about their children's health, I'd tell you to get out of your self-righteous hole and re-examine the situation. Many spokesmen are either educated people, who have legitimate reasons to be concerned, or people who have been disappointed by the slapdash nature of healthcare services once or twice before and wish to be less passive in their health management. While that doesn't automatically put them in the right, it doesn't mean they should be automatically humiliated, vilified and punished either.

He can buy a few hundred more after this slashvertisment (minus covering the slashdotted server costs, of course)

Every time I hear someone extolling Apple for dropping DRM from iTunes, I remember that scene in that movie that said:
- "I'm the guy who saved your brother's life."
- "Really? How?"
- "I stopped kicking him."