Comment Re:Irrational Hate (Score 1) 379
Well, my system's a bit old, so a usb boot won't work. I *do* have a couple of live CDs, but
Well, my system's a bit old, so a usb boot won't work. I *do* have a couple of live CDs, but
OK, unicode still doesn't post. And loading the comments took about 5 minutes. (2 minutes the first time, 5 minutes the second time.) The posting/loading problem is an obvious bug. My suspicion is that the problem with unicode is that they just didn't fix the problem that the old slashdot had...i.e., not handling unicode.
It's a very good thing they've decided to fix some bugs before they roll this out, as it appears to currently be a very early beta. And they're wasting huge amounts of space, but that should be easy to fix, if they are so inclined.
How are they supposed to let the folk who run the site know how upset they are? At least it was under the first post, which is pretty much always a throw-away.
P.S.: I may not be as upset as he is, but I'm not fan of Beta, either. I *am* currently testing it, and it's not really terrible, but that's all I can say in its favor.
P.P.S.: This is just to test how it reacts to unicode:
OK, it looks good before I post it, but it didn't show up in the preview...so now I'll post. (It was largely Greek letters.)
An earlier post by another proponent of OpenRC said that it was still too beta to be adopted, even though he regretted it.
That said, if reports about window managers beginning to rely on systemd are valid, this may have been a foced move. I, personally, see no reason to move from sysvinit, but if KDE starts to perform poorly, because it's assuming that it can depend on systemd to supply some services....well, I'd be unhappy.
Did you intend that to make any sense? If you did, you need to explain a bit more.
When is the last time you hand configured your monitor, putting in desired refresh rate, etc.?
I'm not convinced that this is a good move, but I'm also not convinced it's a bad one. I don't know. It's beyond my area of expertise.
FWIW, I don't understand why the init process needs to be changed. My feeling is pretty much "It ain't broke, so don't fix it.", but there may be valid reasons. Two different groups of people seem to think so.
Personally, I prefer the traditional init system from UnixV...but then I also prefer grub over grub2. I like to be able to edit my scripts easily, and not dig through several files and try to puzzle out the documentation. (In the case of grub2 my puzzling out the documentation hasn't been that successful...I frequently need several attempts to get a change that would have been simplicity itself in grub. OTOH, I've only got one machine that I can use, so any change is difficult. If I make a mistake, I may need to reinstall the whole system. I can't just look up an answer on the internet...because that requires the machine to be working.)
MSWind may not be dead, but the signs are strong that MSWind8 is. IIUC MS is already planning to release MSWind9 fairly soon.
OTOH, I don't closely follow MS decisions. Perhaps they've changed their minds again, and are now planning to stick with it.
Still, it's not just that MSWind7 is good enough. (Is it? I've never used it, and due to the last MS EULA I read I have no intention of using it. But it could be. After all, MSWind95B was better than MSWind98.) But people have been refusing to use MSWind8 in droves. So much so that they quickly rushed out a patch upgrade to 8.1...which apparently solves some of they problems (whatever they were), but not enough to satisfy people. So much so that some manufacturers have started selling MSWind7 again. (That must have taken some smooth talking to get MS to allow it.)
Sorry, but that's a goal, not necessarily an achieved state. E.g., during the 1990's one needed to be careful while configuring ones monitor lest one cause the system to damage it. By the late 1990's there were automated tools to set the parameters, and I can't remember the last time I've seen the warning "Be careful with this setting as you may damage your hardware.", but it's been there in the not-so-distant past. (Would it actually have damaged my monitor? I was never experimental enough to investigate.)
FWIW, I buy from ZAReason. There are other vendors, but for me it's local. I've never had a problem with "You shouldn't have installed that OS!". Of course, it comes with Linux installed, and the other OSes I've installed have just been other versions/distros of Linux. Don't know what they'd say if I installed BSD.
Pogo sells systems with MSWind, Linux, or both installed. To me that's not benefit, besides, they're farther away.
System76 sells laptops with Linux installed.
Why were you dealing with Dell again?
OK, that's one.
IIUC, the DMCA only applies to the person filing the takedown request. Not to someone who directed him to do it.
P.S.: I've also heard of companies stating in court that yes, they knew they didn't have any ownership in the material they were demanding be taken down, and asserting, without penalty, that the court couldn't do anything about it.
IANAL, so there may well be some technicalities that I'm not understanding here. But if the punishment of someone for falsely filing a takedown request rates headlines, you know it almost never happens...and I don't mean the false takedown request.
If this is well intentioned, and well done, then it should apply to all, or almost all, government agencies.
Because it singles out the EPA, I suspect a political agenda, and don't trust it.
What makes you think it's perjury? IIUC the DMCA merely requires that you "have a good faith belief" that you are acting correctly. And a lawyer is entitled to believe his client, however dishonest. Even then, proving that someone didn't believe something is quite a trick. It's comparatively easy to show that they had no reasonable grounds for belief (still quite difficult), but showing that they didn't believe.... I don't think I've ever heard of anyone being prosecuted under that section of the DMCA.
OTOH, IANAL. Perhaps I'm not understanding the situation correctly. But that isn't the way *I'd* bet.
I'm certain that utf-8 posting would have been welcomed wihtout significant objections. If Beta can handle that, they haven't bothered to tell us so.
As far as I know, there is NO advantage to Beta. None. Zilch. Zip. Zero. There are significant disadvantages to it.
So why should anyone be willing to accept it? It decreases the benefit of the site to the end user and doesn't provide any known counterbalancing benefit.
It is not at all clear to me that if the community is forced into using the Beta site, that it will be worth coming back. If most of the better posters leave, then there wouldn't be anything to come back for, even if the software of the site were to become perfect. And there is little to no indication that that is even plausibly in the offing.
I don't have any plans of boycotting Slashdot, but I do have plans of continuing to examine alternatives. And I have an expectation that in the not too distant future one or more of those alternatives will have become more attractive as a place to read and post than Slashdot will be. This isn't because I feel that I will find a place better than Slashdot currently is (well, was a week ago).
P.S.: I find the Beta site to be ugly, as well as having other problems. I've mentioned a few of them in other posts.
FWIW, I still prefer the design that Slashdot had
Those who can, do; those who can't, write. Those who can't write work for the Bell Labs Record.
