Seriously. You have stock in Nokia or something? Because nobody fucking cares about your "updated" memo. And if they do, they should stop caring and get out more often.

-B

needs a cloud-based storage service

You want to put classified data on someone else's servers? You're putting a HUGE amount of trust in the laziest/least ethical/most incompetent sysadmin that company hires. Why in hell would you think you "need" cloud-based anything?

-B

There are as many kinds of ugly as there are opinions and ideas.

-B

I use pine (well, alpine) daily. I'm typing this with an IBM Model M keyboard made in 1988, hooked up to an old, re-purposed Dell with parts from all sorts of sources. I don't keep a lot of xterms open, but I do love xfce's tabbed Terminal Emulator app. I still use things like job control and screen, even though I could have 100 ssh sessions going if I wanted to. When I need to make some quick-and-dirty HTML, I probably use tables more often than not. I still look at usenet. I write (gasp!) perl scripts from time to time.

So why use all those "old" things? Because they work. Why not switch to something new, or stop using screen when I can hit shift+ctrl+t and get a new session? Because there's no compelling reason not to use screen. It still works. Sure, you don't see things like rlogin, rsh and (maybe) ftp anymore, because those things no longer work sufficiently well. Why don't I bother with things like a "semantic desktop" that can sync all manner of social media and such right there in my WM? There's no compelling reason to do so. I just don't have a need for any of that. Why not carry a tablet around? Because a laptop is far mroe flexible for my needs. It still works for me, and that's my primary concern.

But the bottom line is this: If it's ugly and it works, it's not ugly. Keep your eyes out for new stuff, but just keep using what both appeals to and works for you.

-B

A guy in his 60's with only a couple past jobs and 3 years recent unemployment doesn't look like a really great resume. It looks like he got laid off, and refused to look at any job that wasn't up to his level or out of his comfort zone for a few years, and then finally after a while got a (completely useless) A+ cert. It looks like he's desperate for some relevance. I haven't seen his resume, obviously, but it would give me pause -- even if I didn't know he was older. The "many false starts" deal is worrisome too. Though it's entirely likely I'm reading too much into a few sentences.

Either way, I know a lot of folks from way back when (I'm in my mid-40's) thought that longevity at a place meant something, but it's deadly. You tend to get really good at only those things which were used at that company -- and that includes the culture as well as the tech. It's not an age question, either. If the submitter had moved around every 4-5 years (or even twice) during that last 16 he'd be 100% more employable. As it is he just sort of looks like an "empire builder" with deep but narrow experience who was forced out.

That said, I'd network the shit out of myself, call old vendors/suppliers/contacts/co-workers/whatever and try consulting or freelancing. There's got to be someone in or outside his old company that needs a hand somewhere.

-B

I wouldn't join a union because I've worked with unions before. I've seen how effective their members are 10 minutes before one of their mandatory breaks, or when you ask them a favor that might not be strictly inline with what's on their "job card", or when you ask them to give you a hand with something and it might mean staying a little later than usual.

They actually did try to unionize the IT folks at a place I worked at once. They wanted to lump us all in with the admin clerks and secretaries, and if the union vote passed you got no say in whether you wanted to be part of it or not. So it was basically a money grab. They'd remove 3% of your paycheck and give you the same "benefits" as someone earning 1/3 as much as you. Of course, you could get your money back, as long as you sent them a certified letter every month asking for it back. And then three months later they'd send you what they took from you -- without interest, of course. Yeah, no thanks.

If I need to negotiate my working conditions, pay, etc with management, then I'll do so. I need no help from a pack of thieves like union organizers. Sure, my employer can fire me for pretty much any reason, but I can also vote with my feet.

-B

Instead, two days later, he noticed that Googleâ(TM)s cryptographic key had suddenly changed to 2,048 bits. And he got a lot of sudden hits to his web site from Google IP addresses.

So, googlers: How'd misc react to this? I can see all sorts of spoofing fun going on...

-B

No need to, you can turn it off anyway, in Privacy settings.

Users should have to turn that sort of half-baked, privacy-leaking shit on, not off.

-B

You do not know the meaning of the word ad (or your sense of distance is seriously wrong).

I (jokingly) mis-paraphrased Muhammad Saeed ("There are no tanks in Baghdad!") al-Sahhaf, and you think I am in support of the ads in Ubuntu?!

-B

This is not about enabling us to find the best answer to what we ask but rather push referral ads down our throats.

"There are no ads. They're not even within 100 miles of Ubuntu. They are not in any place. They hold no place in Ubuntu. This is an illusion ... the online trolls are trying to sell to the others an illusion. We will crush any ads in Ubuntu. Faltering forces of monetization cannot just enter a distro of 26 million lines of code and lay besiege to the home lens! The haters are the ones who will find themselves under siege. Therefore, in reality whatever these miserable trolls have been saying, they were talking about their own ads! Now even the Red Hat has ads..."

- Canoncial Ali, September 2012

This. Like Enry, I've been using linux since pre-1.0. Unlike him, I've lost my desire to constantly upgrade versions.

I started on 0.95. Came on 13 floppies. :-) Configuring X was not something I'd like to repeat.

I've also lost my will to upgrade constantly. Look how many people still use Windows XP; Its UI hasn't changed in over 10 years. Why should the Linux desktop have to change every other year? I don't care about social desktop experiences and all that nonsense. I just need my DE to run a few apps and not actively try to annoy me. I'm not going to run it on a mobile device, I'm stretching it across two 24" monitors. I don't need a database running in the background. I want to be able to start apps intuitively, and run them separately. I want to be able to configure it easily.

And then you declare the basic desktop DONE for 3 years or so, and work on apps. Maintain the desktop in terms of bug fixes, and internal reworks and anything else you need to do, but religiously keep interfaces static for 3-10 years. And instead of going all 2nd system on the interface, work on other things.

I think the main problem is that people (especially "volunteers") want to work on the new and shiny stuff. They want to put in new features, because they can, not because they should. There's an urge to make a new something instead of make an old something improve. That's why the newest versions of both KDE and GNOME are terrible. They went mucking around because they could, and never asked themselves if they should. Maybe they are afraid people will stop using your somewhat older-looking but very stable and well-liked DE if you don't constantly add crap to it?

-B

For some reason, you spelled "Xfce" as "KDE"...

-B

Seriously: a 10" tablet for work is a joke. Even one 24" 1920x1200 monitor is a chore sometimes.

-B

It's probably a Kubuntu fault.

I did a little reading and came to that conclusion as well. On the plus side, Xfce's tabbed term app isn't too bad. By default, Terminal wants you to use ctrl + Page Up/Page Down to move between tabs, which I find not intuitive in the least. So I remapped it. But it renders fonts much better than Konsole I thought. Disclaimer: the first thing i do to a fresh kde install is to disable nepomuk

Yeah, that didn't last long. I mean, a mysql install is necessary?! Just to run my DE? No thanks. Take that semantic whatever and just let me use the damn machine without pulling in social media that, or web this.

-B

The haters, they just keep hating. When was the last time you used these apps?

Been using KDE for years and years because I detest GNOME (though I say this and also happen to be wearing a Ximian shwag t-shirt, so go figure). Got a new machine at work a few months back, threw Kubuntu 11.10 on it. Woof.

This machine isn't a speed daemon but within 10-14 days all 10GB of RAM were used. Switching to another window resulted in 5-10 seconds of swapping and HDD light activity. And I'm only running a web browser, an IDE, a mail client, and Konsole. I could partially mitigate the issue by closing everything and logging out, but that would only reclaim a bit of memory. Rebooting was the only solution, and only then it just bought another few weeks until I had to shut down again.

Wiped it, installed Xubuntu and there's no reason for me not to use Xfce since I've been up for months now without an issue.

I'm not a "hater", but I don't know that I'll be a KDE user again. All I need is a workstation desktop environment. Not a tablet thing, not a phone thing, no "social media" tie-ins, just a stable, usable, reasonably svelte DE. Xfce has so far fit the bill perfectly.

-B