> Who cares whether a Unix is certified? Linux is the big daddy of the server rhythm these days

Linux has a huge installed base, absolutely. Most of my work throughout my career has been on Linux. We also know that GNU stands for Gnu's Not Unix. Linux is popular, and it's explicitly Not Unix. There is no guarantee your Unix software or integrations will continue to work on any particular version of any particular Linux distribution, as they try out a third init system in as many years.

So who cares about certified Unix? Two groups of people. People who have enterprise production systems running Unix software that MATTERS care. If you're running a payroll system for 10,000 employees and a glitch means missing a pay day, or perhaps ending up with the decimal point in the wrong place on everyone's pay check, certification of the whole stack is good. You can, at a cost, show that the software uses only official Unix apis, and will therefore run on any certified Unix. Similarly , regulators and such like certified components for similar reasons.

The second group is represented by alot of the systemd comments. Certified Unix means you have certain guarantees about how things (still) behave. You won't have important stuff changed out from under you, if you interface with the system as a Unix system, not as a Brand X version y.z system. Apple CAN'T fuck certain things up in the next version, systemd style, without losing their certification. That can be attractive to a lot of people.

The claim was that "advanced users" don't use Macs.
To reply "I use a Mac" would be pointless and not advance the discussion in any way, because it wouldn't tell you whether "advanced users" ever use Macs.

What does move the discussion forward is to show that some advanced users do in fact use Macs, so a relevant post must establish two things:
a) I'm an advanced user
b) I use a Mac

Point a is made quickly, and in an easily verifiable way, by mentioning where you can find my name on your system.

If you want ununlimited choices, where you can do anything from anywhere, any time, that's called CLI. I open a bash prompt and I can do millions of things in one step, without opening any new windows, navigating to any other location, etc. Unlimited choices. I do most of my work at the command line because that's what I like as well.

The entire point of a GUI is to present the user with the most relevant and common choices for the current task at hand, in an easy-to-use way, so they don't have to KNOW all of the choices available, they can SEE the choices available at the present time.

If you want to memorize arbitrary key strokes to get things done quickly, that's precisely what the command line IS. A GUI is the alternative, for people who want to visibly SEE the choices, not LEARN them.

Learning hundreds of arbitrary keystrokes and using them in a gui is like using a motorcycle to move furniture- precisely the wrong tool for the purpose you wish to achieve.

The ones who are truly intellectually bankrupted, aka 'The sheeples ', believe in every single thing the authority tells them

Baaaaaaaaah ....

There is a thing known as "Forgot" and then there is an entirely different thing known as 'conveniently forgetting'

They might be able to fool the joe sixpacks with the 'oh we forgot to enable that channel' but it ain't gonna be an easy sale on us geeks

In insensitive clod Russia, Fourth of July Tofurkey eats you?

What has MIT got to do with this?

I spent some time, a lot of it, in the South and Midwest. Kansas and Illinois had some of the best BBQs but I have to give the Pulled Pork Award to either Georgia, Alabama, or Florida. I also lived in North Carolina. Somewhere between GA and NC the secret to BBQ has been lost. Somewhere it became something you could do in your oven or, almost worse in some ways, something you did on top of a disposable open-top grill. Also, it is done in a half hour... *sighs* Louisiana does a good BBQ but they seem inclined to put anything edible on the table. I love me a good BBQ.

Over a summer a few friends and I built two pits plus a shed to house the BBQ equipment and a second Kegerator. It gets pulled out every year on the last weekend of July (our balanced month of Summer's Maniac Middle). We put buried power down to it so the two puts have rotating variable spits. The standard fare is a large smoked turkey, a pig, and a half of a cow. I got a turkey fryer but I have only fried two of them so far, it was not as well liked as I was hoping. I am thinking of smoking a goose and frying another turkey this year. Then again, maybe getting a second (or even a third) smoker is a good idea and I can smoke a turkey and, if the second is large enough, I can smoke two birds and a couple of smaller birds as well. I am thinking a turkey, goose, and a couple of partridge would be nice. I found a recipe for 'honey brined smoked turkey' online and I would like to try it. It reads like it would be very tasty.

I do not drink anymore but I am not the jackass ex-drunk. I have a keg in the Kegerator on the deck, some in my fridge even, and will be picking up another few kegs for the festivities at the end of the month. I do not make beer or wine any more which is, honestly, no real loss as I have never made anything exceptional. Anyhow, I mentioned that so that I could also mention that we are thinking about making a fold-out "bar" to be manned from inside the shed itself. The shed was built with this future in mind so it was built with quite a bit of extra space.

What we are trying to figure out, some sketches have been done, is how to take the "bar" and fold it up for transportation to and from the house. I do not want to leave the alcohol down there as it would be tempting some folks. I generally trust all the people that come here and would know about the bar but I do not trust the people that they may tell about it. There is likely to be a decent investment in booze going on and, frankly, I also do not want to be encouraging anyone who may have control issues. The current, most universal, idea is to make a cover that has 8" deep foam attached to it and is cut to the reverse lines of the shelving. This can then just be put on the front, latched down, and carried back to the house. The expected total number of bottles varies between 25 and 40 count estimates so this would be easily carried by two people. I am, of course, open to suggestions but I am a bit late to the thread to expect much in the way of responses.

Anyhow, this year is the first year that it is going to be a multi-day event. I have encouraged people to come and stay the weekend. Normally a lot of them tent and the house that was here when I built my house is still completely functional so there is no problem there. I have already set up with a company to provide two additional outside toilets and rented sound equipment. We have done a live band before and then left the equipment up for open mic performances. It was not as good as we had hoped. So if anyone has any ideas, specifically about a collapsible bar or any geeky things (I am putting a wireless AP/repeater in when it arrives), then I am all ears/eyeballs.

Hell, it is from July 31st to August 2nd and anyone willing to go north and east of Rangeley is more than welcome. It would be kind of awesome to have a /.er or 100 show up. Emails go to uninvolved (at) outlook (dot) com. It is an open invitation though I do not anticipate any /.ers coming. There is plenty of room and level ground for camping and room to bed about 20 people comfortably in the old house. My house is, unfortunately, not available for guests. The old house was a hunting camp so it is set to house a number of folks. Children are encouraged and there are many activities that they can use to busy themselves. Toddlers and younger may not be a good idea as there will be fireworks on Saturday night and many other loud noises. Something can be arranged if they are a requirement. I can always hire a few teenage girls from in town to babysit during the day.

Then consider those compute cycles could have been used for Folding@Home and actually helping humanity.

Ending large-scale war and dictatorships will be the most amazing thing to happen for humanity in the past six thousand years.

Yeah, folding proteins is also important.

Greece: "Hey Russia, I'm broke. Can you help me out with some money? I'll be your best friend!"
Russia: "Um, okay." (beat) "Hey, China, I'm broke. Can you help me out with some money? I'll be your best friend!"
China: "Um, okay." (beat) "Wait, uh oh......"

We had that, it was called 'Windows for Workgroups'

Well, it was a UNIX UI. But close enough.

Oh, and as for leaving the EU: you may end up unpleasantly surprised. There's only one treaty that governed Greece's accession to the EU and Eurozone, not too. You can't be "half in violation" of a treaty and kicked out of "half of it". If you start printing your own parallel currency, you're in violation of the treaty, and you're out of both the EU and the Eurozone.

Now, of course, Brussels could legislate a new mutually agreed upon exception for you. But do you really think they want to?

I'm not from Macedonia, although I know people there. Both of your sides need to read up on your history. Macedon was located between the traditional Greek city-states and the Thracian tribes (and others like the Illyrians), and had a culture and language closer to that of the Greeks but with strong Thracian and Illyrian influence (for example, they used both Greek, Thracian, and Illyrian names). The ancient Macedonians sought recognition as "Greek" from their southern neighbors, as Greece was the heart of wealth and culture; by contrast, the ancient Greeks debated heavily among themselves whether Macedonians were actually Greeks or not and many were not willing to accept them. The issue was only settled they were conquered by Philip (obviously not wanting to say that they had been conquered by barbarians ;) ) The Macedonian leaders' habits of adopting the cultures of the countries that they conquered made it a relatively moot point anyway. Macedon was near present day Thessalonica. The country of Macedonia's claim to the history of Philip and Alexander is pretty weak; they did not extend their empire particularly far up the Vardar / Axios (at the time, Illyria), and where they did they stayed near the river. However, future rulers of Macedonia did. By the time of the Roman conquest, what was Macedonia had become modern Macedonia plus modern Albania and the northern half of Greece. This become the Roman province of Macedonia, which existed for hundreds of years. Classical Greece remained its own separate entity under Roman control, Achaia.

Let's repeat: Modern Macedonia was the center of the Roman province of Macedonia for hundreds of years. Yes, they have a right to the name.

During the Byzantine times, a series of waves of Slavic invaders (the most powerful being a later wave, the Bulgars) moved into the area, overrunning not just today's Macedonia, but the entire interior of Greece. Their control of these areas lasted hundreds of years and they interbred with the local populations. Greek speakers retained control of the coasts, and eventually re-expanded back into the interior; the populations there were subsequently re-Helenized.

The area that is modern day Macedonia was subsequently traded off between one empire and the next all the way up to the modern period. Greece, after gaining its independence from the Ottomans (again, initially only in the southern portion of of what is modern Greece - the part that was traditional, pre-Macedonian-era Greece), progressively took over Ottoman lands to the north and northeast in the 1800s, expanding into the area formerly occupied by the city-state of Macedon, and even the areas once occupied by the Thracians. These areas were steadily Helenized, especially in the 1920s with the influx of large numbers of Anatolian Greek refugees - 270 thousand in Thessaloniki alone.

The basic summary of it is: there are no ancient Macedonians anymore, and nobody has a "pure" claim on the name. But both sides have ancient Macedonian "breeding". Neither speak the ancient Macedonian language (even the ancient Macedonians stopped speaking their language by the 3th century BC), although Greek is certainly closer. Both Greek Macedonia and the Republic of Macedonia are located in the heart of areas called Macedonia for centuries - Greek Macedonia being the heart of the original Macedonian empire, and the Republic of Macedonia being the heart of the later kingdom and the Roman province of Macedonia. So yes, you have every right to criticize the Republic of Macedonia's cooption of Alexander and Philip. But you're in the wrong when you try to act like they have no claim to the name.

So you're proud to be paying taxes spent in the wrong way? Congratulations on being part of the problem.

Why do your parents let you use the internets without supervision?