It is, I guess, also similar to Canonical's Expanded Security Maintenance (ESM), now part of what they call Ubuntu Pro. It is available for free for a limited number of personal installations, though, and there are competing services to supply EOL'ed Ubuntu versions with security updates, too (without Canonical too obviously trying to intervene in one way or another, by the way).

The elephant in the room, though, and sometimes my impression is that it must be an invisible elephant in the room as no one likes to talk about it, is the fact that major distro version upgrades are such a PITA, regardless whether it's a FLOSS or commercial distro, Debian- or RHEL-based. Even RH speaks of a 'migration'...

"An economic solution will work" - yeah, of course. Because 'economic solutions' are known so well to work in favor of the planet, the environment and feeding the world population.

In a just world, people might need no money to begin with ;-)

... gives one of the best examples we've had in a long time how someone can become a world-dangerous individual by money and its ideology plus the irresponsibility that usually goes with it.

As if money and technology, when let loose without any kind of societal control, couldn't do anything but "make everything we care about better".

Maybe if money is everything we care about.

The sorry state the planet and its inhabitants are in, despite all the technological and civilisational advances, except only for a small group of profiteers, two and a half centuries after the start of the Industrial Revolution, is all the proof anyone should need.

Funny, by the way, that he accuses those who call for caution and reason, of all people, to be the ones driven by money...

I have no idea what you did there, but I was using the application since StarWriter 2, following up to the last complete StarOffice version which was 5.2, and on my systems it always performed really well, and these never had exceptionally much RAM or CPU power, either. It was my only office suite back then, I never used anything else, and I was really happy with it. That said, I wasn't using Linux back then, it was on OS/2, but I don't think that could have made such a difference; I'd rather think OS/2 was more resource hungry than Linux.

StarOffice 5.x had some quirks, but most could be configured away, and it wasn't more memory hungry (or even just slower) than the successor OpenOffice, either, which used much of the same code. It also wasn't a Java application any more than OpenOffice/LibreOffice is*, and it wasn't any more 'monolithic', either. The difference was purely visual, it just used a common multiple document interface for all of its document types, not senselessly duplicating menus and function buttons and other controls for each document, thereby cluttering the screen more than necessary. Also, StarOffice 5.x included a calendar and a full-featured e-mail and usenet client. When everyone was exepcting that they might make all of that, including mail and calendar, just a little bit more Microsoft compatible in one of the next versions, so that it could actually become a drop-in replacement for Office and Outlook, the company was sold to Sun where it was cut down to the sorry remains that became OpenOffice 6. To do justice to Sun, if I remember correctly, some parts of StarOffice 5.x would have been more difficult to keep than others because they were licensed from others by StarDivision, the original company, and couldn't be made open source.

* Just before StarDivision disappeared and StarOffice was replaced by OpenOffice, there actually was a pure Java *version* of StarOffice, and it was a brilliant piece of Software, with two parts which optionally could be installed on two different machines and distribute load between both (client/server). It never was publicly available, but I've seen it in use once back then, and it looked great and seemed to work great, too. It was actually in commercial use at a big German internet services provider/web hoster as an early predecessor of what now is the LibreOffice-based 'Collabora'.

As the commenters on TFA are reporting, it would seem that for office stuff everyone uses browser based apps nowadays..., mostly Microsoft 365 or Google Docs, even if their base system is Linux. One open source alternative would, of course, be the LibreOffice based 'Collabora', a version of which is an option of every NextCloud installation.

Personally I still like the classic office suite, although I never really liked the StarOffice mutilation that started out as OpenOffice and later forked into LibreOffice. I specifically have my nags with LibreOffice which at some point began to introduce usability deteriorations just to mimick Microsoft Office's misbehaviors, some without even the option to be switched off in the settings. (Which is one of the reasons why I more and more use Softmaker Office even though it isn't open source...)

It's much easier than that. Actual cameras aren't necessary at all. In their offices, employees have to expect some superior entering in person any time of day. And some managements firmly believe that only that can assure that their wage slaves actually do work. It's pathetic, but that has been how dependent employment worked in capitalism ever since, and, plus that they'll *add* more and more sophisticated surveillance tech at their leisure as soon as it becomes available, that's how it will continue to be.

On Windows, I use 7zip, and any password protected zip file I ever opened with 7zip opened without even asking for a password. Only when actually trying to unzip it (or something in it), it asked for a password.

Yes, there are still reasons for DSLRs, and I suspect that Pentax will fill that niche for a long time. But not all reasons you mention are real reasons. "SLRs are more rugged"? No, they are not. They have more points of failure. The mirror, obviously, and the latest and greatest mirrorless cameras even do away with the mechanical shutter. "Battery life", yes, indeed. And the "viewfinder" used to be a reason when EVFs weren't as good as they now are with regard to resolution, frame rate and true-to-life colors. With a current EVF, someone looking into it who doesn't know about different kinds of viewfinders wouldn't even suspect it was not an optical one. Their image is better now than what you see on an OVF screen, especially in low light. I agree that some might still want the 'direct' optical connection, but it isn't necessarily better, except for some peeple who have visual problems with EVFs that give them headaches.

Thanks. Embarrassed that I still mix that up sometimes.

As far as I can see, Canon, Nikon and Pentax (Ricoh) still sell DSLRs, and while Nikon and Canon might stop any other day, it looks like Pentax has found their niche there. Even though mirrorless has become the better technology for most purposes, there still are valid reasons for preferring a DSLR.

For all we know, he might be an AI.

Burglars appear to be stealing goods you have in your home. Reddit users spotted the fact last week, noticing that the latest burglary in their town caused the theft of several valuable items from an unsuspecting person's flat. A burglars' spokesman tells The Verge they're investigating the reports.

Being one of a small group of excellent writers which make today's SF matter, among which I'd see at least John Scalzi and Charles Stross, too, Doctorow perhaps might be the one of them whose critique of society and economy is the most pronounced, the most spot-on and the most relevent for the present... Can't wait to read this.