"disable firing if the gun is pointed at a child or someone holding a child.". This is absurd, what if it's an evil child? or what if someone is holding an evil child to prevent it from escaping and yelling "take the shot before he runs away!!" ? What about dwarves? this wouldn't work against e.g. minime.

Simplistic heuristics will not cut it when you're talking about, literally, a life-and-death decision.

"each circumcision that is not performed costs the U.S. health-care system $313.".

At least they're telling you what's the most you should be willing to pay for this. I don't think that the medical "industry" will see a profit from this.

These neoliberal politicians seem to live in an entirely different country, and Frenk is no exception; no wonder he's now run as far away from Mexico as possible and is now teaching elsewhere, standing, no doubt, on his alleged achievements while being the secretary of public health in Mexico.

As any mexican will tell you, his boasting is far from the truth; while he may have instituted a program that supposedly provides coverage for people not otherwise under any sort of health care plan (i.e. those who are not, as workers, covered by the mexican institute of social security (IMSS), or as government workers, covered by ISSSTE), he did so without increasing health spending significantly (from 2003 to 2005 it only increased 0.2 percent and it has remained constant ever since: http://corta.me/7mz). So how can you cover 50 million more people without increasing spending? very poorly, that's how. Understaffed and underequipped hospitals, lack of medication, soul-sucking bureaucracy and hoops to jump through, I don't think that's anything to boast about; as befits his neoliberal lineage, Frenk instituted these policies for the macroeconomic "bottom line".

IMSS is supposed to provide coverage for workers and their families. However this entails people working on a stable, formally constituted company which has the obligation to cover fees for employee coverage. It's not a privilege, it's a right that companies must provide to their employees. However, since Mexico has had near zero growth in the past two decades or so (and more so since 2000, when the disastrous, conservative PAN party arrived in power), job creation has stagnated, and even receded in some cases. Millions of people have to resort to the "informal economy", since there's no company through which they can have access to IMSS, this popular insurance thing was created to give some semblance of health care coverage to the 50 million poor and underemployed in Mexico. But make no mistake; this is not the glowing achievement that Frenk would have the world believe. It's really the government hastily trying to fulfill, in a half-assed way, their constitutionally mandated obligation for health care (Mexican Constitution, 4th Article). This has been there since 1983, so actually Frenk's implementation means a 20-year lag for the government to fulfill its obligations.

I'd start by reading this (and if possible, having them read it as well):

http://linux.oneandoneis2.org/LNW.htm

Bottom line is, they *have* to want to change. If, as you say, they will latch onto any differences to decry the fact that Linux is not *exactly* like Windows, then, well, you're screwed and may as well not waste your time, because the fact is, Linux *is* different from Windows (the very reason why e.g. I use it).

One thing I've always found funny is that these same people have possibly gone through many changes in Windows and MS Office, always without complaint, because it was fed to them by Microsoft as "the next step". It will probably be the same once they get Windows 8 on a computer; they may think "this is hard to learn" but they will learn it without complaint. But put them in front of Linux and they'll cry foul and refuse to use it because "it's different". This mentality is very hard to beat; I stopped trying a few years ago and just let them writhe in their malware-infected sewers while I continue being able to work on Linux.

When I need to set up a self-hosted project and bug tracker, I normally use Redmine, which is very easy to use. It's written with Ruby on Rails, and so should be relatively easy to get a local SQLite-backed copy running on Mac OS using Rails' built-in mini web server.

This post is overly complicated but some of its information may be useful:

http://www.redmine.org/boards/2/topics/2768

I was actually a KDE 3.x user under Debian. I then tried updating to KDE 4.something and the system became unbearably slow and unusable. At that point it was easier for me to just install Ubuntu with GNOME (which I hadn't used in years), and it was good enough so I stayed there.

Recently I had a chance to use a more-recent KDE desktop and I found it cluttered and confusing. I'm sure that given a couple of days I'd get used to it and not have any problems. But I won't migrate just for the sake of migrating, and I have to say I'm pretty happy with my current (Ubuntu 12.04) desktop, Unity and all (yes, I actually like Unity!).

So that's why I'm not using KDE.

Yes, set LIBOVERLAY_SCROLLBAR=0.

http://www.webupd8.org/2011/04/how-to-disable-overlay-scrollbars-in.html

Hope it helps!

I dislike video. I can read articles at my speed/leisure, skim over them while I'm doing other stuff. Video has a fixed duration, and sucks up my attention for the whole duration.

Maybe I'm just a curmudgeon, but I dislike this tendency of the Internet turning into... TV.

Most people in my organization telecommute, and we mostly use Google+ hangouts (with extras) whenever we need some face time with people elsewhere. It's worked well for us, but it has some limitations and it *is* controlled by a third party. We also use Google's Docs and Calendar tools heavily, so Google hangouts were a natural evolution. This works well in Linux and in both Firefox and Chrome.

That is on a technical level; in reality you are the one who needs to adapt. If you can dictate a solution, the one I propose is not bad. But you may have little choice because it's easier to change *you* than the rest of the organization if need be.

I'm not so sure about this. I enabled the fix as proposed by Phoronix and saw a 15% battery life improvement; I'm now getting almost 5 hours, which is pretty good for this system.But 15% was not "significant" really. So "to regain much of their battery life" seems like an exaggeration in par with the alarmist tone of the articles in Phoronix. Sure, there's a problem, and I certainly appreciate Phoronix's efforts to pinpoint the cause and offer a workaround, but it's certainly not as bad as they've been making it look.

In my experience, the easiest way to get a consistent and stable printing experience is by generating PDF. I have yet to have stability problems if this is done properly. As you're working with Ruby on Rails, using Prawn and Prawnto might be useful. However, if you absolutely positively must NOT use PDF for printing, then this probably won't help you.

" the simplest tools for producing drop-dead gorgeous Websites".

This here is the dangerous part; thinking that the tool makes the designer. Anyone can produce crap with Flash tools, and all it takes is a stroll through the Web to witness first-hand how much damage Flash can do in the wrong hands.

However I agree that the "designer" will have the last word. And, for as long as Flash allows a graphic designer with no knowledge whatsoever of web practices, standards, and a minimum background in actual computing, to build and "just upload" a website, instead of collaborating with someone who knows what he's doing, we'll be doomed to suffer crap like this.

You can whip up a quick GUI with Ruby and WxRuby, and when you're happy with it, create a single executable file with rubyscript2exe. I see two problems: files tend to be large (~10MB) and thus a bit slow to run, but once running they're quite snappy. Ruby is a very easy language and WxRuby is also quite easy to use (not to mention cross-platform but I guess that's not high on your wish list).

From the point of view of a serious organization, I don't think it was such a good choice - a large part of Google's audience are people who just use the computer to work, can barely use it, and any deviation from standard behavior prompts panic and a call to help desk (us!) to ask why the hell did the computer start making noises and playing games by itself, and how we should run there to run an antivirus check and preferably take the computer outside and burn it with a flame thrower lest the nasty virus spread through the network and wreak havoc in the organization.

From the point of view of a geeky videogame addict, I'd say it kicks ass. And people who get too concerned with it should get a life. Or maybe play a game or two :)