You don't really have to know the ins and outs of "rpm" but a quick "man rpm" will help immediately and of course the web has a huge amount of examples. You can get by with only a few options however like most commands in Linux/Unix there are some more esoteric options that can be very useful on the odd occasion.

Now I suppose we can start discussing the proposed depreciation of "yum" to "dnf" (default in Fedora 22 which is about a year away). Both have man entries although at the moment (Fedora 20) I only use "yum". I have tried "dnf" and it also works.

Well I normally use "ZZ" although I can use :wq or even :wq! if I want to overwrite a read-only file if I own it or am root. Of course there is always the good old :q! when you have stuffed the file so much that you really just want to exit without updating and head down to the pub :-)

We also should talk about HPUX and AIX which are very much alive and well. Looks around and ducks for cover :-)

I think you as the System Admin would notice this and make sure the service is shut-down for debugging purposes or reported to the appropriate people as a failure in their software. This is no different to what was done over 40 years ago.

Err! Win NT6.0 was Microsoft Windows Vista and we know how everyone loved that. Even with NT6.1 (Microsoft Windows 7) you still could get constant reboots and BSODs (first hand experience). Still NT6.2 (MS Win 8) and NT3 (MS Win 8.1) may me stable to you but that GUI IMHO looks like something designed by a 5 year old.

Over 7 years ago I switched to a Linux distro and have never looked back.

You do realise that tape is normally classified as "off-line" backup/storage which normally means that the tapes are taken off-site. If you are talking about a virtual tape machine and your data is still in the cache then recovery could be a few minutes but if the data is not in the cache then you will need to wait till the tapes are brought back on-site and that can take a few hours.

Companies that have massive storage and computing needs cannot and should not be compared to your home PC. I suggest you look at Storage Area Networks (SAN) and the implementation and costs associated with them. Taking Facebook as an example you cannot just shut-down a SAN even it is used as a "near-line" storage device, so using BD as "near-line storage" devices is actually a very practical and economical solution.

You do realise that HDD's can fail so you would need redundancy (ie. more than one) The same can be said for BD but since they are passive disks you don't have to worry about the electronics. Yes you do need a BD reader/writer to read/wite to the BD disks, but that writer/reader can be replaced if faulty without any loss of data. While you can spin down HDD's this is not a good solution for a variety of reasons, one of which is that the disks (remember "redundancy") may not come up properly.

When people discuss things like this you have to be aware that for large amounts of storage we are not talking about simple SSD's that can be found in any PC configuration, you have to look at storage arrays which are not exactly something you can just casually switch off to conserve power, so it makes much more sense to consider using "near-line" media storage devices such as BD/DVD/CD which don't have any electronics associated with them except for the device reader/writer which consumes much less power then a storage array and can easily be replaced without any chance of data loss.

BTW I am well aware that a faulty disk can be read for it's data however if you actually work out the costs involved and there is no guarantee that you can get back all the data then cheap BD disks are a better solution.

If you use a graphics installer for Redhat you are not really using a window manager like KDE, Gnome or even Xfce. Anyway have many users are using RHEL for the desktop? (although you could). As for installers for Documentum, Matlab, Oracle, etc they are specific to the software application and will run under most window managers. Actually you would normally install software like what you just mentioned via client software which could even be on a Microsoft Widows machine.

As for "trying to get people not to use the default GUI" that is the wrong thing to say since if you are the system admin it is very easy to set up particular users to only use a specific Window Manager using "kickstart" (very useful if you want a consistent configuration across all machines). Of course you could do a manual installation as well but that can get very tedious across hundreds of machines.

If you want your documents kept secret there is plenty of encryption software available. The problem you have with any type of secret documentation is not really with the software but the people using the software so to coin an old saying "loose lips sinks ships", and the more eyes on something the more likely it will eventually be leaked.

Anyway what is this got to do with a government or any other organisation using "open" software compared to "closed" software because what you have just said applies equally to both.

Basically the creation and handling of any type of information falls under "Company Policy" and again it makes no difference if the underlying software is "open" or "closed" source. At some stage there needs to be some trust because the more you don't trust the people who are handling information the more likely that information will be leaked.

And therein lies the problem. People are human and under certain circumstances can deliberately or accidentally divulge information that otherwise should remain confidential or even top secret to a particular company or even a government.

Front post on Slashdot right now about how Fark is doing the same thing.

What counts? Would "BIE?" a classic fark comment be banned? It's like they're trying to reinvent themselves while alienating their original demographic (Sound familiar Slashdot?).

Fark was my go-to place for link aggregation as was slashdot for my tech. Then they banned boobies on the main page. Then they had the cluster fuck "You'll get over it" redesign in 2007. After a while it really didn't feel like Fark and I went over to Reddit and every time I go back Fark seems to be pandering to what they think is the Reddit crowd to draw more users back.

Look at the Fark Archives from the week of September 11th: https://web.archive.org/web/20.... A Bin Laden post "bin Laden claims to have nuclear, chemical weapons (*cough* bullshit *cough*)" on the same page as "Miss World 2001 contestants. Chile wins (safe for work)".

Both of them need to go back to their original demographics, be happy with that because driving them away at the expense of your actual regulars won't end well. How's your MySpace profile these days?

Bitcoin could just become the "Gold" currency by which all other currencies are measured. $USD<=>BTC

Why does there have to be 1 currency? Why not have a cryptocurrency that is completely anonymous and fast. You just created WhoreCoin, "the digital currency for ladies of the night". There's already a PotCoin. $DarkwebCoin. PayPal coin fails miserably and the company finally closes.

Design of any system is a tradeoff and is going to have flaws. Why not carve out a usage where the flaws don't matter? Bitcoin is a bit like gold. It was an early currency. It was heavy and hard to move around. All the people rushed to mine it literally or figuratively out of the "nothing". Let the price track like gold.

Then have it as the 'keys to the kingdom'. Pass a law that says the only legal cryptocurrency is Bitcoin and that only bitcoin$USD is legal.

Both sides win. Bitcoin is regulated, taxed, treated like a legitimate currency and then each corner of the dark web can have their own private currency and BTC(Private Currency) exchange boards.

Chicago Board of Trade and Chicago Mercantile Exchange, in an attempt to appeal to get the younger crowed excited in commodities, adds Bitcoin. It becomes another traded item just like pork bellies. (They remake Trading Places with Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd as evil rich adopted brothers. Kevin Hart plays homeless scam artist. Chris Pratt plays a spoon fed Bitcoin analyst.)

Congress passes a bill that authorizes a $1M purchase of bitcoins to act as a pseudo central bank. Congress and old people feel like they've thrown 'plenty of money' at the problem. If you walked up to a random stranger on the street you might be able to sell them one for $5. Put 1 BTC on a printed wallet and walk around a retirement home selling them for $1 a piece after you explain what they are. Plus they'll think they have control over it. "$1M for a bunch of pretend money is plenty.".

Where it'll sit on a shelf then get put in a box and at a garage sale in 5 years someone will put it out for $20 and it'll still be over priced.

Personally it's always a case of "Easier to apologize than get permission".

I don't care if recording the police is illegal, I'd rather have a video of them beating a guy go viral and me doing it "illegally" than nothing. Same goes for Comcast. Fuck all if it's "illegal" in my state. I'll edit my voice and release it anonymously.