JS/CSS/DOM are terrible technologies for producing heavy weight applications. JS is a slow prototyping language, CSS can't even vertically center without hacks, and DOM works fine for documents but is terribly slow for trying to make responsive interactive applications. I don't see this changing until (P)NaCl or some other tech comes along with a nice UI toolkit that's designed for applications and not documents.
Ten years ago, my company had a policy to use PGP and Symantec PGP software installed on all computers. Even the engineers had issues and failed to use it regularly. I remember having to logmein to machine in China to try to figure out why they couldn't read an email with our designs. This is why PGP never took off.
Until the tools take 5 min to setup. And encryption/decryption is as easy as clicking a checkbox in your mail client, PGP will never take off. Things like the public key directory have to handled transparently to the user.
It's too bad Mozilla dropped support for Thunderbird. Tight integration with GnuPG + cloud public keys could have made mainstream PGP a reality.
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In the 3 years I worked in China, I have visited literally hundreds of factories. Not only that, we actually used Foxconn to produce some of our products. Of all the factories I saw, Foxconn by far had the best work conditions. From boiling lead solder to paintiing in enclosed rooms, I saw some appalling conditions pretty much at every factory EXCEPT Foxconn. If you really care about this issue apple is the last place you should look. Don't buy anything made in China.
Nitro and foxit now display JavaScript. You can disable it in options. Unless you want to use old versions, your best bet is sumantraPDF.
Simple. In our organization, Sumatrapdf is the only allowed PDF reader. Users could request nitro or foxit but a sysadmin would disable JavaScript on install. Never once had a malicious PDF infect our organization. Little more work to not give users admin rights to their machines. But time and time again, users prove they are too incompent to safely manage their own machines.
Back in the day, all my servers ran NetBSD, but I have gradually migrated to Linux for hardware compatibility. AMD is going to have to write chipset and GRFX drivers for Sony. I hope the licensing terms will let them release them. I would love to run BSD on my AMD laptop. Considering AMD's past Linux support, this is probably just wishful thinking.
"Technically it's not hard to design a phone that can switch off the GSM transmitter, and use VoIP for calls." Android and iOS have had the ability to turn on wifi in airplane mode for years. Don't want to phone use.google services, install CM without the google apps.
All this speculation about Intelligenct has me wondering why they didn't test mice to see if there were any noticable changes.
During the year I lived in China, I ran into several people whose only means of free and open Internet access was through Tor. While everyone I met only used it for Facebook and Youtube, if there ever is a democratic revolution in Iran or China, Tor will be there to help to make it possible.
If you want to help people in China, Iran, and possibility Japan, where Tor is being blocked, you can run a obfsproxy bridge to circumvent the block. There is currently a shortage of these bridges,
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/04/tor-calls-for-help-as-its-supply-of-bridges-falters/
so every little bit helps now. The quickest and easiest way is to setup your free Amazon EC2 account with the Instructions at the Tor Cloud Project page
https://cloud.torproject.org/
Or for a general Linux setup, [detailed instructions can be found at:
https://www.torproject.org/projects/obfsproxy-debian-instructions.html.en
NOTE: A bridge is NOT the same as an exit node. If you are just running a bridge, you are only helping people join the Tor network and are only routing a small amount of internal encrypted tor traffic, so there is no risk of getting into trouble with the authorities.
Yes, Enlightenment is one of the best Desktops for Linux. If it only had the more developer support, it would be my desktop of choice. If just one Linux DE had the polish of a OS X or Win7, I wouldn't care. Until then, I see this fork as just diluting an already over stretched pool of developers.
By consistency I meant disign consistency. I was thinking of annoyances like the app menu bars in Unity.
I've been using Linux since Slackware in 98 and CDE on Solaris before that. I hate to admit that for past 4 years, my primary OS has been win7 and OS X to do my much of my work on Linux servers. why? I need a Desktop Envirment with a consistent UI that's free of bugs.
A classic example of this is back in '08 I switched to a 16:9 monitor. Well thanks to a 6 year old bug in gnome #86382 this rendered gnome unusable for me.
Unfortunately this was also about the time KDE 4 was released. After giving a dozen other DEs a shot, I joined the the dark side.
To this day that 11 year old gnome bug remains unpatched. In an Apple or MS OS this kind of major usability issue would never make it out if Alpha never mind a "stable" release.
In the early days of Linux when It was for hackers by hackers this was acceptable and expected. They want to add cool features not fix bugs. Fine.
But now there's some serious money in Linux. Between Redhat and Ubuntu How the Linux Desktop can remain in such a sorry state. And I fail to see how another fork will make this situation any better.
Sorry for any grammar errors/typos, this message was written on my phone in topically useless all hands meeting.
So you are saying that cocaine is addictive the same way sex is addictive? You are an idiot. Stop spreading war on drug FUD.
I don't know if I would be classified as an addict, but I used blow on the every weekend and occasionally to get by at work for about 5 years. I moved cities after a nasty breakup and had to go cold turkey on both. I missed the sex more than the coke. The war on drugs is a sham.
Moving from NYC to Shanghai cured my taste for blow. First month here kinda sucked but not s bad as getting my skull open and having lasers pointed at my neocortex.
Genetic engineering and laser is not how we end this problem. End the "war on Drugs," end the "war on Terror". Use the trillions saved to educate people and provide rehab. Our economy would be stronger, schools better, streets safer, and Mexico could get regain control from the vicious drug cartels.
But does it run Linux?
NO!
https://github.com/mate-desktop/mate-panel/issues/42
https://github.com/mate-desktop/mate-panel/issues/43
https://github.com/mate-desktop/mate-panel/issues/58
Mostly stemming from this 10+ year old GNOME bug
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=86382
I was an early widescreen Linux adopter and these bugs drove me nuts. Now Unity is optimized for widescreen monitors. KDE and XFCE also work fairly well w/ vertical task bars.
Finally,a knowledgeable post. Executives won't be bothered to use burner laptops or fresh installs, never-mind bootable CD Linux install. Any IT admin would be fired for trying such a stunt. As someone who's HD crashed while traveling in Vienam and was forced to use a bootable linux CD for a few days, it was a MISERABLE experience. Anytime you do anything in the OS, you have to wait seconds for the system to respond. No businessman traveling to Asia would put up with that.
Fully encrypted laptop and if you're really extremely concerned with security, give them a system "upgrade" after their trip. That's the only reasonable solution to this real threat.
Lend money to a bad debtor and he will hate you.
