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Comment It's more than that (Score 5, Insightful) 158

Positive people are dangerous. Because they assume everything is going to be fine, they fail to plan for things to go wrong, and then after you're stuck cleaning up the mess they caused, they sweep it all under the rug and act like everything went smoothly - so not only do you get no recognition for your heroic efforts to fix everything, but they're fully confident in their ability to handle the next situation just as well as the last.

But nobody wants to listen to the pessimists, because they're so negative.

Comment Re:Packages can't be removed? (Score 1) 126

No, because renaming it has the same effects on existing systems. The installed package "ownCloud" is no longer there (by that name) so future usage of apt-get can still break.

I'm less familiar with Ubuntu specifically but have extensive Debian experience, so can't comment on the Ubuntu policy, but I suspect Ubuntu views this more as removing a package is them breaking package management on existing systems, vs leaving it as is would still be breaking the system due to the vulnerabilities but not Ubuntu's fault (which I still find arguable, but again it's also just my guess)

Debian stable will also out right refuse to break apt by removing a package, however Debian has a large security patch repo plus a huge backports repo and community - which typically spends their own time back porting patches for newer app versions from the original developers back to older versions the devs stopped patching.

Many years ago at least Ubuntu still did not have the infrastructure for this nor dedicated any man power to the task. Sounds like that is still at least partially the case there.

This is also why ownCloud distributes their stuff in their own repo, which is the best way to go about it (so props to ownCloud there)
That way it is completely up to them how "stable" they want their software to be viewed.
They can either force people to upgrade to a new major version, breaking all existing installs until configs can be updated - or they can try to be stable and backport patches - or anything in between.

It's just mind boggling some dip decided that despite the fact ownCloud has their own maintained packages and even a repo for them, that it would at all be necessary to claim "now i'm the package maintainer!" and put it in Ubuntus repo...

Was this Ubuntus direct doing?
In Debian only the core system is packaged by their own team. 3rd party stuff however anyone can step up and decide to be the package maintainer, compiling from src to debian standards and releasing debs. But it's usually easier to see who to point the finger at in that case.

Comment Re:WTF? (Score 2) 308

Then there's another Jihadist who attacked two police officers in NYC with an axe: ... But these two aren't reported as heavily because they didn't use a gun, and the liberal media are against guns.

No, they're not related because they're not related.

This "jihadist" thing is just a hook for a certain slice of the crazies to hang their hat on. We will always have crazies doing antisocial things. Ordinarily they would be called "crimes by crazy people." But as soon as a crazy says "jihad", it's "terrorism" so the government needs to further infringe on liberties.

Just say no to "jihad" as a serious thing - it's popularized to speed along your enslavement. There may be a few actual jihadis operating in the Middle East, but going nuts on some cops with a hatchet is not jihad, it's assault.

Comment Re:I can't stand coupons (Score 4, Interesting) 163

that only exist to give housewives/househusbands something to do with their time

Definitely not - they're there to get people to make decisions that they otherwise wouldn't make, usually bad ones.

People love to get something for nothing. "$1 off a "premium" bag of wavy potato chips! Hell yeah!" No matter that the generic wavy potato chips are still fifty cents less and taste the same - it's a DEAL!

Kohls is famous for marking up their goods by 300% and then having a 30% off sale. The lines are out the door for "the savings". JC Penney tried to do away with that scheme and nearly went bankrupt. They went back to it this year and are returning to profitability.

If you don't have a concrete estimate of value for what you're purchasing, you can get wildly abused by the marketeers. That value will be subjective, but you better darn well know what it is if you don't want to get taken. I buy clothes at Kohls, but unless I'm desperate I limit myself to the 70% off clearance rack. That's where I find my valuation meets their prices. YMMV.

Comment Re:Computer Missues Act 1990 (Score 4, Insightful) 572

Except they're only doing this to their USB VID/PID - which IS THEIRS.

No. They're doing it to property that other people own. Just because that property advertises a fraudulent USB ID does not transfer ownership of that property to FTDI. They are intentionally breaking other peoples' property and even crowing about it.

FTDI is taking an end-justifies-the means stance, and implementing a vigilante approach. It's drinking the imaginary property Kool-Aid that gets people drunk on ideas like this, and they seem to lose all judgment.

"If I want to deprive you of your watch, I shall certainly have to fight for it; if I want to buy your watch, I shall have to pay you for it; and if I want a gift, I shall have to plead for it; and, according to the means I employ, the watch is stolen property, my own property, or a donation. Thus we see three different results from three different means. Will you still say that means do not matter?" - MK Gandhi

Comment UNIX certification (Score 1, Offtopic) 13

The article makes a big deal of Mac OS X's UNIX certification. Although it didn't hurt, the certification really had nothing to do with the rise in popularity of the Mac. Using open source code certainly allowed Apple to take advantage of (and then build upon) the cool stuff we've enjoyed on Linux for years, but what broke Microsoft's stranglehold on the consumer mindset was really the iPod, and later the iPhone. That's what made people think that buying a Mac might be a viable alternative to Windows. Of course once they made the switch, users were able to see that the technology really works, but without the iPod, most people would never have considered the Mac as an option.

There were other factors at work too:

  • Poor support for Vista when it launched made people desperate for an alternative
  • The rising popularity of Firefox made web developers stop building sites that only worked in IE on Windows

Comment Re:The Cult Leader will solve the problem! (Score 1) 124

There's a rapid diagnostic test that is developed and can be at West African airport departure gates in less than three months if the FDA gets out of the way. I know, it's only nutters like the NPR health sciences correspondent going on about this - was Dr. Paul also saying crazy things like the government is making the situation worse? Instead, they should totally go ahead and implement a travel ban so people sneak into the country with ebola instead of coming through the airports.

Meanwhile nobody in the US is infected with ebola and cattle are still far more dangerous, right? Wait - fear, fear, fear! Give us power and ... fear! Talk about cult leaders.

Comment Re:It's all about the data prouction rate (Score 1) 170

An awful lot of work is still done in Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel. No need to embed a 5 GB video just because you have the space.

*noob voice enable*

Well no, I take a screenshot of the video, which is then embedded unscalable in an excel file, which I paste into a word document, which I then send in a mime encoded email to the entire company directory.
I mean, this is the internet after all, it's not like some form of file transfer protocol exists or anything!

Comment Re:I delete things when I'm done using them (Score 4, Interesting) 170

I delete things when I'm done using them

1) Many of my things I either desire to use for many years to come (a video download I paid for), or am required to keep to cover my ass (taxes, logs, most data at work due to policies, etc)

2a) The cost of more storage space is almost always less than the cost of the time to clean up files that could be deleted. In the context of work this does depend heavily on exactly who made the data and their rate of pay / work load - but I've noted the higher up execs and managers tend to be the worst hoarders as well as of course the highest rates of pay. Most of the lower techs on the shop floor don't even have access above read-only to the network storage here, though that is far from universal everywhere.

2b) Yes there are other people whos time is not as expensive, but no one other than the datas owner/creator can know 100% what needs to stay vs what can go (and sometimes even the owner/creator chooses wrong.)

3) After deleting/archiving data, the chances of you needing it in the future are typically higher to much higher than the chances you are really done with it.

4) For the small number of times you really are done with it (like, totally and fur sure), the amount of data that gets deleted is generally such a small percentage of the whole that, while still a good thing to do, doesn't really help much with the problem at hand - freeing up a lot of space for future needs.

I never run out of disk space.

You either have too much free storage space, not enough data, or possibly both :P

Comment Re: Only for root users (Score 1) 114

If it's in-house software then it can be fixed - no excuses. If people don't fix problems they know about and can fix then they get what they deserve.

Show me somebody who has a huge investment into a physical machine controlled by some proprietary software where the vendor has gone out of business and there's no source available and then I'll have a bit of sympathy, but even then put it on a VM on its own VLAN - these are not extremely difficult problems.

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