Ironically, systemd is quite well suited for system designers creating embedded products, or those where there's effectively no "middle layer" between the naive "true end user" and the original builder/vendor -- a locked down iOS or an OS X system where the terminal-level control isn't needed.

The folks most objecting to systemd are in the server space -- true OS system admins who design and integrate the architecture, and are responsible for keeping things up and running.

Yeah, systemd+busybox might be perfect for the next OpenWRT embedded IoS device -- but it's not what I'll want on the next massive Dell server I'm responsible for at work.

No systemd ;)

Seriously, though. Although I can't see myself switching wholesale back to BSD, and the long term *nix-esque commodity (non-specialized) ecosystem will revolve around Linux for the foreseeable future, there are enough people frustrated by the OS vendor directions that it's good to have a backup.

Think of BSD as a third party, to keep the primary two enterprise Linux vendors in check should they decide to ignore their constitu^H^H^H^H^H^H^H users too much.

Ban people with an opposing point of view? Google deciding intentionally what's "true" and "not true"? Only people with approved viewpoints get a chance to place ideas out there?

Perhaps he author might want to take some time to Google "epistemically closure," followed a little later for some basic overviews of the history of mankind.

I can't say this is fair. Was RH's support level going down? They were doing fine with init processes that were composed of shell scripts too.

From what I've heard, there's serious debate *within* RH about systemd as well; not everyone's been on-board with it internally.

I think a lot of this can be blamed squarely on Fedora leadership... Over the course of about 3 years between Fedora 14 and Fedora 19, it feels like all the sysadmins looking product stability in the project got replaced with developers looking for new/shiny problems to solve with some new Big Idea. Hence systemd, RPM spec file churn, UsrTmpfs, and other monstrosities.

Obligatory https://xkcd.com/435/

Without knowing more about their definition of "addicted" we can't be sure, but introspection is socially accepted for things like "being offended" and whatnot, so I see no reason not to take their concern at face value.

No, they're not redundant. R/M+ are intended for adults, and children with parental consent. NC-17/AO are intended for adults only and not children, even with parental consent. It's not legally enforceable in most jurisdictions, but bowing to public pressure most mainstream cinemas will enforce as a matter of corporate policy the relevant age restrictions. In the US, "NC-17" was specifically created to allow it to be used for movies that warranted the restriction but weren't "pornography" in the sense associated with the previous rating, "X".

The main reason more "mainstream" movies don't come out as NC-17 is simple... They're likely to make more money the more people are easily able to see them. Frankly, this is why a fair number of movies try to end up as a strong PG-13 instead of an R rating -- bigger audience, and less worry for the parents about having to decide whether they really want their kid seeing the film before they accompany them.

Ironically, it goes the other way for 'G' films. Especially nowadays (morals and community standards change over time, naturally), there are plenty of films that could and would be rated 'G', but unless you're making an animated feature it's considered something that will keep the audiences away (what teen wants to see something G rated?). Often studios and producers will put some sort of slightly-unnecessary smack or violence, or a mild curse, or something exceedingly brief *just* to nudge a film up into the PG category, so it brings in more revenue.

Goes both ways.

I have a 5 digit ID and there's no way I'd be able to manage my social connections without Facebook.

LinkedIn is slightly less mandatory, but has served as a great source of job offers and industry reach-outs.

To be fair, though I'm an elder Slashdotter, I also stayed involved with "undergrad life" at a university for over 10 years, which means I adapted to the incoming generations' usage of social networking as it was happening. Perhaps that made me more prone to integrating it into my lifestyle.

Just armageddon (not the literal one, natch) through cyber means?

This reminds me of the 90's when people would prefix things with "e-" without a unified definition of the monkier. "E-mail", "E-file", etc...

If I had to guess, I'd imagine a "cyber-armageddon" as some sort of problem directly affecting logical electronic infrastructure. Imagine simultaneously wiping out all copies of DNS records everywhere (including hosts files) through some mysterious malware, blowing up a bunch of datacenters, and a Sony Pictures-like virus that hits Google and wipes out all code backups. That might be a "cyber-armageddon."

That would suck, and would cause quite a bit of culture shock (and, of course, would be a catastrophic economic event), but it would not be the End of the World.

On the other hand, an EMP attack against the United States which disables/blows most non-hardened electronic equipment and causes a quickly-cascading North American power system collapse everywhere all at once would be a *true* (figurative) armageddon. That's really what I think of when dealing with continuity of government plans and "dire threats". American society would find a way to survive without the Internet (although true, unprepared Millennials might suffer debillitating levels of shock). American society would probably *not* find a way to survive after a few months of a power and communications outage, however, at least in its current geopolitical form -- and especially if a power vaccum formed internationally. (Think "Revolution" without the hand-wavey, future-science gobbledygook.)

It doesn't take very many bytes to make one. And your hard drive is communicating over a bus. You'd be surprised what types of communication protocols are recognized over various internal data paths... How do you think those old Ethernet-over-SCSI adapters worked?

We didn't tolerate it back then, I'm not sure why we should be more accepting of the strategy now. Systemd as a replacement for upstart that boots faster due to parallelism is fine; systemd as the amorphous blob it's become, with fingers in all sorts of projects and feature creep like I've never seen in the Free Software mode, should be shunned just on principle alone.

Embrace and Extend is a deceitful strategy for insecure companies, and for insecure twits. The systemd of today would NEVER have been accepted, if proposed as such, and Poettering damn well knew it. Hence the slow boil.

No thanks.

and it was awesome.

Seriously, we don't need "everyone to become coders", which just happens to be exactly what ego-inflated, self-important Bay Area brogrammers exactly want to hear. We need easier tools to help people automate whatever the hell it is that they're already doing, without "coders" being involved. The theory comes afterwards.

IMO Apple really did understand the importance of this, once, and we had Stacks that solved all sorts of real world problems, built by people with basically no programming experience. I'd hoped when Jobs came back this mentality would return, but it never looked to have happened, what with the focus on application consumption only once the app-store consumer revolution really took off... Where's my HyperCard (+ HyperTalk/AppleScript) environment for the iPad?

then you probably shouldn't have root to begin with. Try a CPanel/Plesk/Webmin interface that configures this for you, and a virtual hosting provider that spits out pre-packaged images you can connect up, and simply accept that you're using *that*, but "powered by LAMP" of some type.

Alternative: Virtual hosting configuration is *not* that hard any more, even if you're just editing text files.

Pithy Alternative: Don't ask a sysadmin to hold the hands of a brogrammer unless we're getting paid (well) for it.

I had a discussion (over Instagram, >. ) on whether the making-available of this video was correct or incorrect, and what American response would be appropriate. I didn't understand her point of view until I realized she was 5 when 9/11 happened and didn't understand the visceral reaction to the live images of the towers being hit and falling.

Sometimes you need to see evil clearly to decide to act.

More to the point, Fox News Channel isn't some struggling webzine that's about ready to go under unless they get click revenue from Google Adwords up. Profit/loss and cost weigh into the big picture, of course, but they don't need to scramble for clicks.

There's no real need to presume that financial considerations outweighed the editorial decision-making process they stated that they went through before deciding to post it.

Sometimes it's hilarious listening to those demanding changes in Federal, national standards in the US, who've clearly never travelled outside the coasts and/or packed, urban dorm living...

Being able to stream 18 videos at once is nice. But you got along perfectly well beforehand. Broadband is about reliable, reasonable hardline (except for certain buildout locations where LTE is being petitioned as a replacement) information communication... It's NOT intended as the tail wagging the dog on Millennial cord-cutting.