then does that mean they actively stop (or try to stop) your use of vpns and encryption?

when I was shopping for a clothes washer, I went to sears outlet for some discounted units. what I found is that the salesmen guided me away from samsung models. that was the ONLY model that did not come with a warranty (at all!) - and these were refurbs or reconditioned units. not just customer returns, but checked out and cleaned by the store. all other brands came with the regular warranty even though they were not brand new.

plus, checking out utube videos on sammy washer repairs and the customer service horror stories convinced me that samsung was NOT the brand to buy.

I keep hearing about bad things and samsung. I wonder what's up with that company? their lcd screens almost always use bad caps that will die very shortly (JUST after warranty period!). their smart tv's spy on you (2 articles in 1 week about sammy tv's). the sammy printer I have insists you accept an EULA that says 'we have the right to SEE everything you print on your printer, and if you disagree, you don't get our printer driver installed!'.

sammy is really evil. totally fucking evil. wish people would stop buying that brand. I know, they are everywhere, but they are really fucking evil!

you are wrong; I know of no sysadmins that embrace a new init system; especially this one.

the old ones worked, had some quirks but they WORKED. they were UNDERSTOOD. they were SUPPORTABLE. they had TEXT LOG FILES. and they didn't have DEPENDANCIES on the whole friggin graphical world.

admins tend to admin servers. tell me: what the hell does a graphical set of libs have to do with headless servers, which is still the lion's share of what linux is about (not to mention embedded, more and more) ?

it does not matter what 'appliance users' want or think they want. they could care less; as long as the system runs. but for those of us who have to admin things, change for change sake is a sign of a junior person.

this whole systemd thing is going to be a textbook example of how NOT to shoe-horn things into a finely designed and architected system that has decades of stability and history to it.

linus is a kernel guy. he self-professes he does not 'like' to setup or manage his own linux systems (strange but true; check out some linus YT videos, there was one at debconf where he talks about it). he says he 'sucks at IT'. system startup is more like IT work than kernel work.

my guess is that this is not a 'linus thing' and never will be.

every so often, I try out the various 'desktops' that linux distros offer.

every time, I give up, dislike all the procs running, mem wasted, cpu cycles wasted and all the crap that comes with the desktop. feels like bloat that should not be there, not for a 'simple' linux install.

I always laugh when people look at my display. I use a red/orange color to highlight the active window and grey for the inactive ones. there is no trash icon, no iconbox, no drag/drop. a short menu appears when you click into space (no clients under) and then pick which foreground rxvt opens up (all with black bg's).

I keep things simple. but I've been using this layout for literally over 25 yrs (starting with twm and using mwm for a short while, when motif was still popular).

not having a desktop is great. in all that time, I just have not been limited (at all) in what I can do, and things seem to be fast when I just run a term window, type what I want and it instantly runs.

unix was supposed to be simple. systemd is an abortion and one that most of us do not want.

good to see this protest post with a hand-tweaked system; but the fact is, we should NOT have to flip over backwards to remove a stupid should-not-be-there-anyway daemon and its evil libs.

to write anything more than trivial test apps, you have to be GOOD at the language. and debugging it. and its portability issues (usually).

so, while you are spending^Hwasting time learning a new language, the rest of us are busy making real things with tools that we have spent years mastering.

I can tell a fresher from an vet with this attitude. the fresher wants to do 'cool things' even if it does not really help ship better product, faster. they convince themselves that this new tool or language will do that, but there's huge overhead and risk in it, not to mention - who else is going to support this new stuff? and if you and your team leave??

sign of being junior: wanting to re-invent the wheel.

sign of being senior: using tools you are expert at and not wasting time re-doing things that don't need to be redone.

I agree. it needs the curlies (which WORK great in C and takes up at most 3 chars; 1 for the curlie and 1 for a space before and after. 3 extra bytes for intro and maybe 3 for exit. 6 bytes. big deal. you should 'waste' more space with comments and vertical/horizontal whitespace, just for readability, alone.

it should have been optional. require indentation, fine. but also ALLOW those of us who like seeing an 'open and close' semantic who is explicit (not just implied) would have been the right thing to do.

someday, maybe guido will come to his senses. if/when that happens, a lot of us will breathe a sigh of relief. and then, posted code on blogs, emailed code, etc, will still be runnable without GUESSING what the source was before the formatter destroyed it.

I just recently learned python (learned it from a top python core developer, though, if that counts any).

I like the language. almost all of it. BUT, the lack of curly braces was a huge mistake. indentation is fine. we all agree its needed.

here's where 'whitespace only' indenting messes up. ever see what blogs do when you try to post code? yeah. that. and its a reality, too. you will never be able to guarantee that posted code won't be 'changed' by some web formatter or email formatter!

twice in the last 2 months I've had to extract posted source (from clueless posters) and FIX their code since it did not run OOTB. I had to GUESS where things were supposed to be nested. its not obvious; if it was, you would be able to strip all spaces out and still be able to get the same meaning.

guido just did not think about this issue. its ok, he thought about most things, but I wish he'd man-up and admit that in THIS case, curlies are truly needed. keep the rest of the forced indenting, but ADD an open and close curly so that the meaning is crystal clear, even if mis-posted or mis-indented. plus, you would be able to re-format the source to your local google 2-space standard or the rest-of-world 4-space standard.

oh, and it would not really hurt if you did have static data types. there's huge value in:

int foo (int a, char b, float c);

if you just tell me you are sending a,b,c into a routine, there's a lot that I should know that you're not telling me. it was a shame to lose this. not sure the 'power' you gain is worth the loss of immediate documentation (in the code) by declaring the types of each var and having that var always (for its scope) be that data type.

I'll take the radical view: I'm not so sure we need cops anymore.

they add more problems to society than they 'fix' !

speeding tickets, stealing your money if you have cash on you, claiming you were a 'druggie'.

no knock warrants. shooting the wrong guy. and/or his dog, too.

you don't want to call the cops if you can help it. many times I've had neighbor or noise issues, but I wont' ever call the cops. you risk a lot if you call them. once they come out, they want to come back with -someone-. might even be you. they hate to go home empty, so to speak.

I don't get troubled by criminals. the cops don't catch bad guys anymore, anyway. that would be too much like WORK!

would my life be worse off if all cops disappeared tomorrow? I honestly do not think so, and our collective lives would be more private, more safer and we'd only have a few gangs of hoodlums to worry about instead of a whole country full of them, who wear uniforms and legally carry guns (and now, ride around in tanks).

the cure is worse than the disease. and I'm NOT happy to declare that. but you have to be honest about what our country is really like, now. life would be better without a police force. or, having a police force that really fought the actual crimes and were not on a power-trip to try to fuck every citizen they can.

careful, there!

what you will find - and think that you got a star - is someone who spent their life (up to this point) memorizing stuff. yes, I'm thinking of folks from india (sorry, but its actually true).

and when I get into an interview situation, they ask me to recite algorithms and write code quickly on the board. neither are important to me and neither have been key to my success in my jobs, over the years. coding is NOT a race! I take my time. so what??? is that a crime? I am careful and - honestly - as you get older, you work a bit slower. but more careful (from my experience with older and younger guys).

I can GET the answer. but I rarely carry it with me, upstairs. way too much info to keep up there. at this point, I actively flush OUT useless info that can be looked up quickly.

when I respond 'I'll search for the current best algorithm, read up on it, adapt it, port it and debug it on your system. I can do that, but I won't memorize it and I won't code 'live' in front of you since that's never ever a part of software engineering.'

the older and more experienced ones get that. the younger ones just have ego issues and anything they learned last year in college should be - forever - memorized. that's how they think. they can remember that sort alg from last year. how come you can't remember it from 30 yrs ago?

sheesh. the field is being ruined by young-uns. and they think they really do know it all.

thanks for the WHO reference.

"we are mods, we are mods, we are - we are - we are mods!"

as a bay area resident, I would not be caught dead in a southern state.

even if the house was free.

so, it all depends on what you want out of life. living in the deep south would be torture to someone like me.

yes, I overpay for rent. but I get value from the area I live in and I can relate to the people in my area. I would have nothing at all in common with typical southern attitudes, no matter WHAT they pay or the low cost of living.

good point. I've been hit, countless times, with very specific questions that the interviewer 'knew' everyone should know, but it was clearly his pet area of study. "I know this, how come you don't? sorry, not qualified. next!"

I could turn it around, but I don't. there are a lot of things I know in my decades of being in tech that I'm quite sure the interview guy won't know. "hey, is a 2n2222 a diode, an npn transistor or a metal film resistor?". seems quite simple to me, even as a software guy. really - you don't know this, mr. interviewer? I knew this 30 yrs ago. gee, I guess your company doesn't hire smart people.

works both ways. but of course, during interviews, it never really does work both ways ;(

interviewing is one of the most painful things I have had to do in my life. the people (mostly younger kids) with extreme egos and a strong dislike for people over 30 - makes me want to puke.

sure thing butchie, ole pal:

http://abcnews.go.com/Technolo...

http://www.businessinsider.com...

http://www.discourse.net/2011/...

that set of articles refers to michigan, but a device IS out there and you'd think it would be well known by slashies, at this point.

knowing about calea, its not a big stretch to see how this is yet another 'tool' that was given to cops to allow privacy invasions.

and like networking vendors who MUST give backdoors to products or they will not be allowed to move forward in their business - cell phone vendors MUST allow cops to break into your phone if they have one of these magic keys.

I'm really surprised you have not heard of this before.

best to assume ALL cops are dirty cops. start from there and go downward and you'll be close to reality.

look, they have this thing called a 'blue line' (google it). that makes them all dirty, by collusion. any one who does NOT report bad behavior (think: serpico) is a bad cop. and so, probably 99% of the cops out there are bad, by definition.

thugs with guns. I would trust the mafia (truly, honestly) before I'd trust an american cop.

sad to say this. I don't enjoy feeling this way. but I'm realistic.

don't talk to cops, don't socialize with them, avoid them at all costs. they CAN kill you and they will make up any story they want to save their own asses.

bad scene. hope it gets fixed but I don't have any such false hopes.