Usually we don't discuss these things until they appear on the Bad Astronomy blog.

> When I built my house, I was frustrated with my previous 1960's house that had 2 receptacles per
> room. I said, hell with it, code says 6 feet, I'll make it 4. Note that thinking CORRECTLY, that would
> have made it 8 feet between outlets.

1960's! Oh the luxury!

My house was built to the 90s codes...that is... 1890s. Original lighting in the house was gas lamp. A friend of mine, was at his grandmother's house up the road and was messing with an old gas lamp fixture and found....it was still connected to live gas!

With horse hair plaster walls, and a house that was built before electricity, I am just happy everything was converted to 3 prongs and breakers...and that the vast majority (if not quite all) of the old cloth covered wire is gone. (though, I did personally kill one of the few remaining circuits recently, not even sure what it went to, but after it was off for a year from the breaker and nobody complained, I cut it out of the box and capped off the old run with glee)

I'm sick of the names, actually, but at least it's "Mageia 3" and not some totally new name, like everybody else seems to be doing. I guess it's hip and cool to give names like Ubuntu does, but I don't care enough to remember the names - if you're going to call it "dumbass dingo," fine, but tell me what version you're actually talking about or it's nonsense.

I used Mandrake way back when, but right now I use Ubuntu - although I used straight Debian, too, for a while. I'm just wondering "Why Mageia," and I don't see on their website any reasons why they forked or why I should try or support Mageia over anything else.

You aren't wrong, and neither is the symptom very new. I seem to remember the more originally original Mandrake begging for donations to keep it afloat back in 2001. Maybe I'm blind or stupid, but if they can keep dying for that long, there must be a workable business model in that.

If this Mageia thingy is a descendant of Mandriva, which was a descendant of Mandrake, then you would presumably be using rpm anyway, so there should be plenty of common ground.

I tried out a few rpm-based distros back in the '90s, and while they usually functioned pretty much OK, I preferred (and still do) the simple Slackware "YAFIYGI" (You Asked For It, You Got It) approach with its simple *.t?z packaging.

The core packages just give you a world to stand on while you use the One True Package System for everything else (mostly):
$ ./configure --prefix=/usr/local && make && sudo make install"

Police try to frame MCaffe, he escapes.

Proof? Because the competing narrative - police very reasonably includes McAfee in the list of suspects, and he's a paranoid nut from all the bath salts he's been doing, and possibly guilty, so he escapes - is actually simpler. It doesn't require us to assume corruption, government conspiracies, unknown assailants, or any other factoids we don't already know; it fits right in with all known facts.

Next best thing - burn down his house.

As opposed to simply seizing it as a criminal asset and selling it to the highest bidder, therefore depriving McAfee of it and lining their pockets?

I failed to see why this does not greatly support his narrative of what happened. He's not even there to burn it down himself...

Because houses occasionally catch fire even without any intervention from anyone, and even if they didn't, the murder victim presumably had friends who are not likely to like Mr. McAfee very much.

I mean, lets say a corrupt government was after you. Why do you think it unlikely they would burn down your house after you crossed them?

Even if any hypothethical corruption in Belizean government had anything to do with it being after McAfee, as opposed to simply doing its job and trying to round up a murder suspect, why would they destroy their own property?

I'd have thought that, with a name like that, anti-zombie techniques would be more effective. Let's be careful with which type of undead we are killing here!

There are more than 5000 secret patents in the US today. See Invention Secrecy Act.

They all have crappy battery life. It may start at 8 hours, but after a year it'll be down to 1 hour.

Most of my friends have viable home laptops with no remaining battery of which to speak. And these were solid industrial models. Does that mean the whole thing should be thrown out and replaced?

tell them "both" and then angrily call demanding a refund for whichever one they failed to do.

It's not really valid since it costs nothing to provide and landlines are still regulated monopolies.

Gotta love the old bakelite phones. If someone breaks in, you can bash him over the head with the phone confident that it will still work so you can call the cops to collect the body.

If by 'here' you mean the U.S., you should know that there is a 'special' lower minimum wage paid to waitstaff based on the argument that tips will make up the difference. If nobody tips, they will certainly not be able to pay the rent.

Clearly COBOL will never die. As I recall, the civilization of Battelstar Galactica had an entire religion devoted to the "Lords of COBOL." Not just the colonists, but I'm pretty sure I saw in one of the deleted scenes an older-model Cylon Raider trailing punch cards from a hull breach.