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Ubuntu

Journal Journal: The End of Ubuntu 4

I have just upgraded my machine from Ubuntu 11.04 to 11.10 and everything is broken.

Everything.

It began with Unity. The horror. If there's a way of finding the main menu, I wasn't able to discover it. Menu bars have entirely disappeared from applications, to be replaced with the mac "menu on top" paradigm, a.k.a. one of the main reasons I've never used a Mac since 1994. You can't even log out of the bloody interface, let alone tweak it. Even the fonts are terrible.

It took me about 15 minutes to figure out how to get rid of Unity and replace it with Gnome 3 and I can't say there's really much of a difference in terms of usability. All of my default Gnome 2 desktop settings have been blown out of the water. Completely. My panels and taskbars and lauchers are either deleted or are all over the place. Even if I wanted to change them back, everything is basically uncustomisable as far as I can tell. You can't move objects around in the taskbars. Yes that's right. You can't move objects around in the taskbars.

Is this what a desktop is supposed to feel like?

I feel like my computer window has been turned into a walled garden, like that on an iDink, which I am permitted to carress and fawn over, but have disallowed from making my own in any way. Will I have to download some kind of "App" from the "Ubuntu App Store" to gain back basic functionality? Do I have to dive into arcane settings and ppa just to get back the system which I had and liked only a few hours ago? Do I have to give up and choose Gnome 3, or move to XFCE, or move everything to the shell, or basically waste the next two weeks getting back what I had?

If that's the price of Ubuntu (and it is) then I am leaving.

Ubuntu and Gnome died the moment they allowed the UI designers to take over. The art students, the inveiglers, the smooth talkers, the wild eyed dreamers, the "visionaries", the people who didn't care what they were doing as long as it made them feel talented and superior. These are the people who have designed unusable,confusing systems and interfaces that delete years of carefully customised menus and discourage serious use of computers.

And as for the "boring" people, the programmers, the testers, the package maintainers, the people who listen to the community, those who put real thought and concern for users into their themes and interfaces, the people who don't go to conferences, who communicate with users directly via forum and newsgroup, who sit at their desks working to make distros better, often for no reward at all; what of them? Are they in charge in this brave new work? No. They are cast down and out, by a brigade of bullshitters too busy bopping on their iPods and blogging than in doing useful work.

If you let the wrong people into an organisation or a community, they can destroy it. Ubuntu and Gnome shows that this can happen to distros and open source projects just as easily and quickly as it has happened in the many industrys, countrys, and economies throughout the word. The destroyers will fail upwards, the blazing heat of their incompetence scortching all new pastures dry. The rest of us will be left behind to pick up the pieces and start again. In 5 years time, Ubuntu may be back on the path to being usable again, but I can't wait that long.

I'm thinking of starting off with Mint.

User Journal

Journal Journal: Android for Raspberry Pi 4

More or less every day I visit the Raspberry Pi home page to see if there is any new information on when the allegedly-mostly-working Android 4 will be released, and every day there isn't. As far as I know, Broadcom is the holdup. This does not give me confidence in Broadcom...

User Journal

Journal Journal: Obama and Romney respond to ScienceDebate.org questions - paraphrased

Converting candidate responses from legalese to English, please wait...*

Question 1: Innovation and the Economy:

BO: I plan on dumping at least twice as much money into corporate pocketbooks via the continued fucking-up of the US intellectual property process. Oh, yea, and I plan on hiring a shitload of STEM teachers to prep future patent lawyers, er, "engineers" for this task.

MR: Less taxes and regulation for businesses, more H1B Visas and foreign "trade agreements" that take jobs away from Americans.

Question 2, Climate Change:

BO: Sure, it's a problem, but I've already dumped a shit-ton of your money into the "clean energy" companies my buddies own, as well as attempting to set up a "carbon credit exchange" scam, er, system, that would have funneled even more taxpayer dollars into the hands of my campaign contributors - what the fuck else do you expect me to do about it?

MR: Probably bullshit, but I won't let my disbelief in the concept prevent me from using this as an opportunity to badmouth my opponent and recommend further redistribution of wealth to my also-rich homies!

Furthermore, since China doesn't give a fuck about the environment, I don't think we should either.

Question 3: Research and the Future:

BO: Uh, like I said before - more of the public's money given to corporations so they can privately profit; seriously, what don't you guys get about that?

MR: Agreed, with the caveat of, you guessed it, less regulation for the same corporations. After all, corporations are people, and if you can't trust people with your money...

Question 4: Pandemics and Biosecurity:

BO: ... Pass.

MR: Less taxes and regulation on business... Oh, and more public surveillance. How are we supposed to know who's sick if we're not watching you all 24/7?

Question 5: Education:

BO: Earlier in my administration, I proposed adding 100,000 STEM (science, tech, engineering, and math) teachers... just don't ask how that's going...

MR: Education is a serious issue these days... which is why I recommend busting teachers' unions, defunding public schools in favor of private "charter" schools, and of course, blaming the current abysmal state of education solely on my opponent.

Question 6: Energy:

BO: Hey, I mentioned giving fuck-tons of taxpayer money to my buddies who run "clean energy" companies, right?

MR: I disagree with my opponent; I think we should be giving fuck-tons of taxpayer money to the oil companies my buddies run instead.
Can I getta 'Keystone Pipeline,' anyone?

Question 7: Food:

BO: Food safety was pretty fucked up when I came to office, so I made new rules that changes what qualifies as 'fucked up.'

MR: More government regulation and taxes. Hey, if those agri-business chumps want the same deal I give the oil and pharmaceutical companies, they need to pony up some campaign bucks, ya dig?

Question 8: Water:

BO: My administration has invested millions in fresh water conservation and restoration efforts. Granted, these programs would have existed anyway regardless of who held this office at the time, but hey - I do, so I get to take the credit. Suck it, Bush.

MR: Disband the EPA, less regulation on businesses, privatize the 'fresh water industry'.
What could possibly go wrong?

Question 9: The Internet:

BO: I promise to ensure online freedoms, granted they don't run afoul of all the new intellectual property and civilian surveillance we have/are coming up with.

Ha ha, remember when I told you I was going to veto CISPA? Suckers...

MR: The internet is for businesses to make money off of. Period. End of discussion. If you're somehow, some way preventing businesses from making as much money as possible from the internet, my administration will come down on you like fucking Mjölnir, you filthy fucking anti-capitalist pirates.

Question 10: The Ocean

BO: Funneling money into the Gulf to try and fix the problems caused by the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Also, I'll again take credit for several state-level programs I had nothing to do with.

MR: Government should handle this, never you mind. Seriously, we got this one, and unless you work for the government or the industrial fishery complex, it's really none of your concern. Now fuck off, peasant.

Question 11: Science in Public Policy:

BO: Science is, like, important, so I try to have my decisions guided by science. The decisions I let the media get wind of, anyway. Probably not a whole lot of science to, say, monitoring the communications of every American, so we just do it.

MR: Stupid nigger doesn't even know what 'science' is... If he did, he'd know the Earth is only about 6,000 years old, man rode dinosaurs, and Darwin was a Marxist.

Question 12: Space:

BO: Dude - Under my leadership, NASA put a fucking SUV equipped with some serious instrumentation on MARS. More in the works, stay tuned!

MR: Hey, so long as the military industrial complex and my campaign-funding buddies can make shitloads of money off of it, why not?

Question 13: Critical Natural Resources:

BO: Rare earth minerals are expensive, and the Chinese don't seem to keen on cutting us any deals, so my administration is looking into alternative materials that can be gathered domestically. We're also working on some electronics recycling programs that show real promise - stay tuned, more to come.

MR: Government regulation is the problem, not material scarcity; deregulate the mining companies, and the rare earth minerals will flow from the ground like water from a busted hydrant. Oh, also - Drill, baby, Drill!

Question 14: Vaccination and public health:

BO: Look, a lot of people don't get the proper vaccinations because they're just too damn expensive. So, I (and by I, I mean Congress) passed the Affordable Care Act, which... uh, which... OK, so it doesn't really do anything to get prices down, and in fact will likely increase the price of healthcare due to the compulsory insurance purchasing requirement... can't win 'em all! :3

MR: Less regulation for the pharmaceutical industry, and forced inoculation for the entire populace. Small government, you know?

--- END TRANSCRIPT ---

Businesses

Journal Journal: Rhode Island's "Kingdoms of Amular" 5

There's some ugly drama surrounding the collapse of 38 Studios. That has caused baseball's Curt Schilling to walk away from video games and publicly state that it will end up costing him his fortune. Everyone is in a very bad position right now. 38 Studio's top creditor is the state of Rhode Island. Aside from some stranger assets, there is a partially finished MMO called Project Copernicus as well as the source code and artwork for Kingdoms of Amular. So why doesn't Rhode Island seize this source code and artwork? They could auction it or, better yet, give it to the people who paid for it.

Now we all know this isn't going to happen. The source code will be shelved and it is unlikely it ever contribute to society ever again. The people who coded it have been fired and have moved on to the next thing in their lives while the bankruptcy proceedings play out in the news. But if I fail to repay a loan on a car, repossession services come to take the car. If a studio gets $75 million from a state to make a video game, where are the state's repo men to reclaim the video game?

The current situation is unavoidably bad for everyone involved. Schilling is blaming the governor, developers are moving for the second time in two years, gamers are missing out on the sequel to Amular and money is missing everywhere. But most notably each resident of Rhode Island has paid $75 to the video game industry and will likely never see it returned to their pockets. A coworker who thoroughly enjoys the game said that it's RI's fault for investing in such a fickle and risky industry. Maybe he's right? But the game is reasonably entertaining.

So what could a state do with source code and artwork? The obvious thought would be to auction it off and recoup losses. But what company wants to buy up those assets for more than a pittance compared to the loan? The game didn't sell as well as they thought it would, your developers would have to learn thousands of lines of new code, the artists that could expand the art in the same style are thrown to the wind and there's already a polished title out there. To me, the obvious solution would be to instead package Amular and Copernicus (at least the PC versions) as learning software for high schools and universities in RI. Art students could work on reskinning it, developers could work on just getting it built and Rhode Island would at least be able to show its residents something for which they had paid.

Furthermore if RI really wanted to recoup its losses, they could likely make several million back with a Kickstarter project to open source everything from 38 Studios. The only people who might not like this idea are those in the games industry who claim the MMO and RPG markets are already thoroughly saturated. Perhaps the current publisher and those with distribution contracts of Amular would object. But those executives have already taken the citizens of RI and Curt Schilling for a ride so why should RI care? The only downside would be a massive influx of Amular clones on the PSN, XBLA and PC fronts. But this is an opportunity for gamers, Rhode Islanders and open source in general to expand and set precedence that when a company folds all that hard work and late nights with Mountain Dew and pizza should not be wasted and shelved.

You can tell me that this will never happen -- not with Amular, Copernicus or any of the thousands of titles from failed development studios -- because you're right. It hasn't ever happened and it most likely will not. But Rhode Islanders paid for these titles and the repo men should arrive and bring that back for Rhode Island to decide what to do with it. At least those that have paid for it should be able to decide if what their hard earned money paid for should sit collecting dust or live in immortality.
Printer

Journal Journal: Good large-format inkjet with continuous inking?

I am looking for a large-format inkjet with continuous inking that is suitable for printing poster prints and the like. Ideally it would have both Linux and Windows support, preferably through a standard protocol, but this is not an absolute necessity. What IS a necessity is the ability to install a continuous inking system for making these large prints, and being able to change inks. I am biased towards Epson or Canon but I want good advice, not just biased.

Books

Journal Journal: History books can be fun (but usually aren't and this is a Bad Thing) 2

Most people have read "1066 and all that: a memorable history of England, comprising all the parts you can remember, including 103 good things, 5 bad kings and 2 genuine dates" (one of the longest book titles I have ever encountered) and some may have encountered "The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody", but these are the exceptions and not the rule. What interesting - but accurateish - takes on history have other Slashdotters encountered?

User Journal

Journal Journal: Setting up a Gmail account -- funny things 1

So, I'm making a Gmail account for my in-law's business, and I'm to the part where you have to create a password. Just for a giggle, I entered 'fuckgoogle' into the box - here's where it gets funny:

Password - as soon as I got to the 'l' in the password, the strength meter jumped all the way to the top, but when I entered the final letter, it jumped right back down to the weakest.

Date of Birth - will only let you create an account if the DoB is between 1 and 150 years ago.

OK, so not that funny.
User Journal

Journal Journal: Copyright 2

Copyright is not a natural right, and if it had been instituted in its current form (denial of copying, as opposed to forced copying) two thousand years earlier we'd probably be at least a thousand years behind where we are now.

User Journal

Journal Journal: Another online poker bust.

http://openchannel.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/20/10194014-poker-players-sue-to-get-to-the-bottom-of-online-cheating-scheme

User Journal

Journal Journal: Strategy games that don't cheat? 3

OK, I know AI is hard (no pun intended) but are there any strategy games out there that don't cheat on any but the lowest levels? Haven't tried Civ V yet, but IV is just another case of easy easy easy IMPOSSIBLE to me... I just can't muster the interest to outsmart a computer program written to cheat against me.

User Journal

Journal Journal: Continuous servos? 5

I want some continuous servos. Should I buy or hack? What's good to buy if I just want to do that? Double-BB and metal gear would both be nice.

User Journal

Journal Journal: Anyone know who did UPS' website? 5

I would like them to be informed that they are douchewaffles. Even the whole sign-in/password recovery system feels like something running on a 3270.

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