Upstart sucks.

Every time I've tried to make new software be controlled by it, I've wound up writing horrendous kludges or (where possible) rewriting the source code to make it more upstart-friendly.

Upstart is to init systems what Unity is to desktops - mostly okay for some stuff, and utter **** for anything else.

Well, "not going to war" could be considered an excellent solution to conflict

Eh, it'd be more impressive if they ATE the jellyfish to power themselves

Ubuntu's been my default when I've needed to get Linux installed & working on a machine with minimal fuss for years.

I hate Unity, it's a dreadful UI. But hey, it's Linux - I install my preferred WM and copy my config files into place, and the UI is perfect again.

I dislike the package manager, but I install synaptic and stop caring.

I hate Upstart. I've never been able to use it for a single piece of software without having to jump through hoops (at best) or rewrite the code (at worst). Like Unity, it strikes me as a product designed with a philosophy of "It works pretty well for most cases, and everything else can get stuffed". But I don't often have to make anything work with it, so I can mostly just ignore it.

There was a time when Ubuntu was a distro I genuinely liked and was happy to recommend. That's no longer the case, and appears to be a common attitude. So they've definitely gone into a decline.

But I still reach for the latest Ubuntu when I need a new Linux box. I just take a few more minutes to work around the warts, whereas once I didn't have to. It's still very good at being an easy-to-install Linux distro that mostly JFW. So long as it keeps that, and doesn't screw up by preventing me from working around the crud, it'll do pretty well.

And hey, maybe eventually they'll get back to doing stuff that people like, instead of avoid.

Since bugs like those crop up anyway, it's probably easier to find & exploit existing bugs than to force somebody to introduce them..

Given all the lies and disregard for the law already demonstrated, it's childish to think that any political solution could be trusted. If Obama said tomorrow "We've reined in the NSA, the law has been changed so they can't spy on you any more" only the most naive people would actually believe their Internet traffic was now private.

A political change to make privacy more important would be nice, but implementing a technical solution to make spying harder is vital. Neither is sufficient on its own, the aim HAS to be to get both.

There can't be any "informal agreement" - not since Snowden. Information that is *legally obliged* to be kept confidential can't just ignore the existence of PRISM.

Sure, the EU can change the law to add an exception for government spying. So long as they can get it passed, which is not an easy task.

The one thing organisations can't do is go on as they were now that they know confidential data isn't confidential.

And the alternative isn't trade isolation, it's a massive investment in technologies like end-to-end encryption to make it impossible for PRISM et al to spy on the data in the first place. Which frankly, I'm all in favour of..

No. There are a lot of things - like medical information - that must be kept confidential, by law.

There's no excuse, no "but terrorists" claims, that get around this: If you've obtained (and, worse, stored) such confidential information, you've broken the law.

It's black and white, and even if the US just shrugs and ignores any verdict, no European organisation will be able to do so: If it's proved that confidential data is being snooped on by the USA, then there's no alternative but to switch to a system that they can't eavesdrop on.

This is something I keep trying to highlight about the whole PRISM thing: It doesn't matter if public opinion is mostly "I have nothing to hide so the NSA doesn't matter", the number of European organisations that are going to have to take action to put their data where it can't be snooped on is going to be *massive*. Whether out of desire for their own privacy, or out of a legal duty to maintain confidentiality, if PRISM doesn't go away, a huge chunk of internet traffic will have no choice but to pull entirely out of the USA. It could even be big enough to require a "second Internet" outside of US control just to get some semblance of privacy back.

Think about it - Governments, health organisations, insurance companies, banks... the number of really big organisations that are legally obliged to keep at least some data confidential is huge. They cannot ignore PRISM, they *have* to keep their data from being spied on.

No it doesn't, because it removes "Innocent until proven guilty" - the US system means you can accuse me of any crime, and the burden of proof is on *me* to prove I'm innocent, instead of on *you* to justify your claim.

When you don't understand how something works, you can't understand the difference between a fix that's easy and effective, and a fix that's very hard and won't be effective.

Example: Somebody who knows nothing about cars can say "Cars keep going above the speed limit. Can you make it so that cars made in future won't go over 70mph?" and be told "Sure, that's not hard, we can do that." They can then say "Cars get used as getaway vehicles in a lot of bank robberies. Can you make it so that cars made in future won't work when used by bank robberies?" and they'll get told "No, that would be impossible, and anything we tried would be either ineffective, prevent legitimate uses, or both."

Most everyone knows enough about cars to understand why you get a different answer to those two questions. But somebody who's completely ignorant doesn't see any difference.

So it goes with the internet. "Can you filter out emails that contain curse words?" gets a "Yes, easy", so the clueless think it should be no different when they ask "Can you filter out web content that has porn in it?"

I've said before and I'll say again: It should be made mandatory that no politician can pass laws on any subject until they've proved a reasonable level of understanding of it.

And if that makes life hard for them, good: It's about time they had to do something to justify their exhorbitantly high pay.

Libel laws in the UK are far saner than the moronic system in the US

In Britain:
Journalist says "X is a deadly space alien!"
X can now sue journalist, and will win unless journalist can prove X's alien-ness.

In USA:
Journalist says "X is a deadly space alien!"
X now needs to prove non-alien-ness before being able to sue journalist.

It's beyond retarded.

Real books are nicer in many ways - you can flip through pages easier, which is helpful with tech. manuals etc. And when I buy a book, it's mine for as long as I want it - no paper-DRM.

An ebook is, however, a very convenient way of carrying lots of books around in one go. And if you get your fiction off somewhere like Project Gutenburg, and your tech books from O'Reilly, you have no DRM to worry about.

I have a Kindle and a Nexus 7. I use both for reading e-books. I never have, and never will, buy an ebook from Amazon, because I won't buy an ebook with DRM. But I have dozens of books that I often want to refer to in a device I can slip in a pocket and (when it's the Kindle) go for a two-week holiday with without needing to worry about recharging.

I'd take a print book over an ebook any day of the week. But I'd not be without the option of an ebook. As I illustrated in a blog post on the topic, the sheer number of books my Kindle allows me to take wherever I go makes it invaluable: http://geekblog.oneandoneis2.org/index.php/2012/07/11/books

Time for me to make a camera-blinding hat, perhaps..?

http://hacknmod.com/hack/blind-cameras-with-an-infrared-led-hat/

No, just wait until 3D-printers go mainstream. Then buy a REALLY BIG one and it'll print out the house for you in one go.

Not really, there wouldn't be much point in voting if the monarch just went ahead and over-ruled the elected politicans.