Comment Does this mean ... (Score 1) 294
... it's hard to be red, too?
Comment The system worked ... (Score 2, Insightful) 500
... pretty well before they introduced that pesky telegraph.
Comment And I'm sure ... (Score 1) 264
... enforcement will become a priority as soon as they finish rounding up all the perps for spitting on the sidewalk.
Comment So, then ... (Score 1) 209
... presumably, this leaves us to deduce that in the database server room we would find the racks of ruin.
Comment The Beneficent Parasite (Score 1) 90
Buy the public consciousness with a few baubles while continuing to drain away the vitality of the economy. They have learned much from the masters at the B & MGF.
Comment The Inevitability of Mediocrity (Score 2) 208
The mad dash toward the "one interface to rule them all" has given us nothing but a deepening dive into a universally cumbersome user interface. While few people converse with the same tone and measure with which they write, UI designers seem oblivious to the nuances that make a platform what it is.
Will developing an OS help Gnome get a handle on this problem? Or will the OS become a distraction, like Mono appears to have been?
Comment A simple suggestion (Score 1) 597
It is high time that any entity placing a non-valid takedown request be barred from further such requests for a minimum of three years. Or 30 years, whichever comes last.
Comment Those who were there (Score 2) 286
I don't think many of us who were around at the time gave much credence to the idea that DOS was derivative of CP/M 86. Had it been, it would have been a better OS.
Comment Abandonment (Score 1) 665
The abandonment of Thunderbird, in particular, as well as the wholesale discarding of plugins, is a major peeve.
Comment It is high time ... (Score 2) 197
... that any lawyer seeking payment through deceptive tactics be disbarred and imprisoned. Period.
Comment Is it wrong ... (Score 1) 228
... to imagine the vendor should provide voice and chat services and allow the customer to choose?
Comment What we need ... (Score 1) 255
... is a 12-step program for these folks, (all puns intended).
Submission + - Siri Under Fire: Taiwan University Sues Apple (reuters.com)
Rambo Tribble writes: "Reuters is reporting that Taiwan's National Cheng Kung University has filed a suit against Apple claiming patent infringement by the Siri voice-recognition software. At issue are two patents dating to 2007 and 2010. Does Apple now face a "live by the sword, die by a thousand cuts" scenario?"
Comment Practically speaking ... (Score 1) 547
... most Win 7 machines have a restore partition. Simply boot into it and restore your machine to its original install state. Technically, all the bits won't be scrubbed from the drive, but unless you work at the NSA, it is unlikely anyone will recover your data.
I would suggest that, in the future, you keep your personal computing off your work machine, both for security and ethical reasons.
Comment Much rests with you (Score 1) 448
The configuration of the systems will be the most important factor in easing the transition. No distribution will come fully configured to meet the use cases of individual users or a task-specific group of users. I'd recommend Linux Mint KDE for the greater depth of configurability that KDE offers and the relatively finished state of configuration offered by Mint in the initial installation. Alternatively, Kubuntu will give the same basis with more of a blank slate to start. I'd suggest looking at UCK to produce a preconfigured master, specific to your situation.
I'd stress that this is an upgrade and that some adjustment will be necessary. If you buy a new car, you need to learn a new layout for the gauges and controls; improved software requires some of the same accommodations. Underline the benefits that will accrue to the users from committing to such a course.
So, you will need to 1) Configure the systems, yourself, to ease the transition, 2) Sell the benefits of the transition to get user buy-in, and 3) Educate your users to empower them with the new functionality the will enjoy.
