I think Linux is already at a stage where you can have a core team you implicitly trust directly update a central git repository. Other successful projects (the BSDs, GNU tools etc) follow the same model without too many issues.

I understand that the idea of distributed development is that there is no single authoritative repository, but whether you like it or not, your git repository at kernel.org is the blessed code.

Is there anything stopping you from doing this?

Paul Krugman's latest column addresses this. The main point is that Iceland let the banks default, while Ireland took the banks debts as public debts and guaranteed it. In the end, Iceland has recovered while Ireland's people have to bear the burden due to austerity measures.

'Fed up' is the closest in English which means 'pissed' but can be confused with 'eaten'.

Interesting translation error.

To cancel moderation - ignore

Ken Thompson, who invented Unix, creates an experimental new language with Rob Pike et. al. and Slashdotters try to overdo each other in pissing all over it.

Nice.

Tell you what kids, try learning something for a change. And show some respect.

That is one of the surprising things about FreeBSD console.

You can hit the scroll lock and use the arrow keys to see the boot messages that scrolled away.

It is very intuitive, but as a Linux user, I tried all the possible control keys, before reading the manual and finding this out.

I thought that was very good. From his blog

Maybe you remember Cygnus and other numerous commercial contributors who have contributed significantly to GCC. They would have done that work if GCC was viral. And you know RMS views on Cygnus.

I still have a lot of respect for RMS ideals, his movement has spread an awareness and a framework in which you can discuss freedom of software. But I see the bad side too, and the worst of that is seen in the GPL3 debate and the Lignux debate.

I don't think RMS have GCC non-viral because of this reason. IMO, if he makes GCC more restrictive, he will lose his control because it will surely get replaced. And don't think this cannot happen, the other efforts in C compilers does not get any traction because GCC is good enough and it had a license you can live with.

You can see from the SSH and PF situation what people can do if pushed too hard.

I don't think you got this right, PyQt is already available GPL licensed, and that is not acceptable for Nokia, so they moved to LGPL.

The important thing here is that, if a company wants to promote any infrastructure component, GPL is a horrible license to do that. If you release a library of even a device driver as GPL, you are imposing a very strict condition on your customers, that they have to be GPL too.

This is no way acceptable for most people, and that is why LGPL or BSD licensing is attractive in this situation.

RMS has got it wrong, actuall if RMS had got his way, GLIBC would be GPL and most of the commerical guys would have to get out of developing on Linux.

Some critics regard BBC as a waste of resources in a country where millions lack basic services.

India may be lying in the gutter, but at least they are looking up, and working hard on getting out.

I think you are being unnecessarily cynical here about India. The problem would be the the very good engineers go to higher studies in US and end up setting there. Look at the top tech companies in US and there is no difference between the level of Indian and other engineers. So we lose the best and brightest to US, because US culturally is very immigrant friendly.

Of course there are a some good engineers and very many engineers of lesser capability left here, but due to the magic of offshoring they can live very well at 1/5th the salary of a US engineer.

Okay, a MNC job was the middle class dream (once a government job was the middle class dream). Middle class in India are very insecure and they push their children into schools and then to engineering colleges and medical colleges because of this.

But things are changing, as the first generation who were in the internet boom are now growing older and richer. And that has definitely brought about change in attitude and entrepreneurship.

To be fair you have to add Krugman's response to this accusation:

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/17/and-i-was-on-the-grassy-knoll-too/

Guys, read it again. It wasn't a piece of policy advocacy, it was just economic analysis. What I said was that the only way the Fed could get traction would be if it could inflate a housing bubble. And that's just what happened.

find my_lawn -name kids\* -print0 | xargs -0 rm -rvf

You will thank me one day when some kid creates a file named "\n/\n"

I got an unreadable desktop after the upgrade.

Finally fixed it by changing the anti-aliasing set up in the System Settings/Appearance.

Otherwise looking good....