Posts by Lotaresco

Re: I have to say that I am enjoying this thread.

"Any serious server admin does not use a GUI."

I'm sorry but that's the sort of thing that people who have never, ever in their lives administered a server in an Enterprise environment say. It's extremely common, and for good reason, to administer large numbers of servers via a GUI. Enterprise class storage is largely managed via a GUI and SDN relies on GUIs to make sense of what is going on. At the most basic level large enterprise networks are administered via Citrix clients because that's a good way to ensure that administration roles are separated and accountable.

Re: I keep hoping

"You did try more than one before disparaging the entire Linux ecosystem, didn't you?"

Well, you seem to have cornered the market in "patronising", although it does seem a little misplaced.

Let me see, I've used Slackware, Suse, RHEL, Knoppix, Ubuntu, CentOS, Mint, Kali, Android, Elementary that I can recall. Probably others also. I don't have any objection to driving Linux via a shell, it's fine like that. The attempts at GUIs however seem to prove that designing a good, consistent, efficient GUI is very, very hard to do. If it wasn't there would be a Linux GUI that would be infinitely superior to Windows/MacOS and yet there isn't one.

Elementary was touted as having the "best desktop experience of any Linux distro" and yet it's pretty poor. Yes you can arrange windows for a screen shot and make it look a bit like MacOS. However that breaks as soon as you try to use it. You want to select half a dozen files and trash them? Oh, hard luck as soon as you click on a file it opens and there's no recycle/trash can to drag them to. Simple, basic functionality that's not there.

So, since you're apparently very knowledgeable about desktops in Linux, which desktop supports rubber band selection of files, spring-loaded folders, metadata tags in the GUI, a trash can, drag and drop between applications, a clipboard that supports all the common data types, continuous and discontinuous selections, symbolic links to remote shares? These aren't high-falutin' requirements these are features that Windows and MacOS support not just now, but supported years ago.

Re: Those were the days

"Bring a 10.6.8 desktop out for Linux and you're on to a winner."

I'd settle for a Windows 98 or a MacOS 7 interface, not that they were good, but so far I haven't encountered a Linux desktop that comes up to that low standard. Rubber banding to select icons, icons that don't look as if they were created using mummy's makeup scrawled on a napkin, consistency of keystrokes and actions across applications, drag and drop and clipboard sharing between apps, even some basic understanding of how people use a GUI would be a start.

Re: I keep hoping

" if you don't like it then you are free to change the code so it does work for you."

Which is a silly answer. Yes I can, but I shouldn't have to. Why create a broken interface then expect the user to fix it? As long is the object is to have a hobbyist OS which requires constant tinkering then fine. If that's what you (and others) want Linux to be then fine. But you're missing the point of Elementary OS which was to build a Linux for people who wanted a good interface and couldn't be arsed to tinker with source code.

BTW, making a snipe from behind an AC does make you look like a troll.

Re: Wrong ingredients

"Please don't spread this myth. Good food doesn't have to be expensive. Italian cuisine generally regarding to be one of the best in the world is based on the concept of "cucina povera"."

I have lived in Italy since 2000, in one of the best food producing regions of Italy. I'm not spreading myths. You seem to be responding to something in your head, not something that I said.

Yes, "poor cooking" exists and it consists of making the most of little and using ingredients that other people won't touch. It's not exactly "cheap" as it has come to be defined across at the very least the English speaking world. Either you put lots of time and energy (literally in terms of fuel) into the cooking. Or you use a good, expensive, ingredient and spin it out. Much of our local "cucina povera" is food gathered from the land. For this you need to (a) spend a lot of time looking for it, (b) Own the land or be willing to steal from someone else's land (c) have a laboriously acquired knowledge and (d) have an element of luck since some of these things will kill you if either improperly prepared or mistaken for something harmless.

In the real world, people pay someone else to do the cultivation and selection and buy in a shop. Hence bumping up the price.

Cheap food is all around, there's a reason that it is cheap. It's either adulterated (see the many olive oil scandals[1], horsemeat in ready meals etc) or it's produced using low quality ingredients (for example a lot of "food" sold in the UK is based on starch, sugar, fat and flavouring in variable proportions. My wife and I refer to the fact that the British diet contains a lot of "custard" with, for example, pasta sauce being a watery custard made with vinegar and tomato puree for flavouring, to be poured over a "pasta" that contains soya flour, rice flour and potato starch.

There's a reason that people are seriously overweight this century - easy availability of cheap, empty calories. Even "cucina povera" looks expensive compared to that.

[1] I produce about a tonne of olive oil a year. I can sell every drop to the local co-operative at the rock bottom price of 7 euros a litre. Because we grow specialist varieties I can sell single variety oils at 12 euros a litre to the up-market oil mill around the corner from the farm. Supposedly olive oil from the same region is sold in UK discount supermarkets at £2.99 a litre. Think about it how can that happen?

"Unless TerraVia thinks it's ethical to perform those tests on the CUSTOMERS, and leave it IN?"

My guess is that TerraVia doesn't give a hoot about ethics and just wants to sell as much of their pond slime as possible.

Re: Remind me...

"Why?"

Because people are stupid. There are significant numbers of people who want to be ill, because it apparently makes them feel "special" and "cared for". So if they are not "lucky" enough to be genuinely ill they will manufacture an illness that requires them to spend a fortune on "health food". There's an entire industry based on providing appropriate levels of woo for these needy individuals. Very little of the "gluten free", "lactose free" etc "food" is consumed by people who have a genuine medical condition.

Just think if anyone is daft enough to buy a tiny bottle of water or sugar pills in the belief that these will do anything other than line the pockets of a quack doctor then they are daft enough to consume soya flour etc.

One of the things that made me laugh was "almond milk". I grow almonds and I know that it takes a lot of almonds to make even a pint of almond milk. Given how much they cost to produce that would make a pint of almond milk cost at least £30, possibly £50. So how do they sell it at about 2-3 times the price of a pint of milk? That's easy, most of it isn't almonds they pad it out with all sort of things like barley, cornflour etc. All the things that a lot of these anaemic health victims will tell you they can't eat but "Almond milk is like, you know, really good for me." <sigh>

And then there's "Organic" food... grrrrrrrrrrrrr,

"I'm massively allergic to Aspartame (It can hospitalise me, believe it or not, even in small amounts)"

Whereas I have no doubt that you suffer adverse health consequences from consuming aspartame, I'm sceptical that you are allergic to aspartame. This is because aspartame is a small molecule, a dipeptide, and the immune system is most unlikely to have an immune response to such a small molecule (which is fairly instantly digested to phenylalanine and aspartic acid when consumed.) It may be that you are using "allergic" in the sense of "makes me ill" rather than in its strict sense of "causes an immune reaction". This could be tested easily by performing a skin test.

Most of the rubbish talked about aspartame on the "woo" websites is drivel written by the likes of "The Awful Poo Lady." Treat anything written about aspartame by "naturopaths" and "holistic allergy experts" with a giant dose of salt.

Aspartame causes a real problem for people who cannot metabolise phenylalanine. I'm hoping that you have been checked for phenylketonuria (PKU), because if you have that you have bigger problems than just aspartame intolerance.

Re: Wrong ingredients

"It also predicted that such a population would be unsustainable without extreme rationing. This is evidently not the case."

Extreme rationing is already in place. Food is rationed by the use of electronic and paper tokens that can be exchanged for food. Those lowest in the social order get fewer tokens and thus either have to eat less or eat lower quality food.

Harrison's other prediction that intensive food production would create dustbowls and lead to wholesale extermination of life in the oceans is also coming true.

Re: Wrong ingredients

" it looks like Harry nailed it."

Two authors of that era nailed it, Harry Harrison and John Brunner. The latter's "Stand on Zanzibar" is still a good and relevant read and it deserves its position in the SF Masterworks collection, not least for the invention of Hipcrime and for correctly predicting current world population and the social problems (terrorism, mass shootings, suicide bombings, kitchen sink biowar) that would be associated with too many people jammed into too little space.

Re: Vne of 25 kts at landing approach height? Really?

"not sure why they can't just Catch it. A good heli pilot could snag it out of the air."

Here's a clue. There's a photo of Aquila on the runway here. Notice how big it is. It has a 42 metre (141ft) wingspan and weighs 400kg (882lbs) Good luck with trying to catch that. If you manage it your next trick can be to catch a charging bull of the same weight, moving at the same speed.

Hmm, new entrant for El Reg's Vulture Central Weights and Measures Soviet improbable units, the dexter Bull (400kg) or dB as it will be known.

Re: Vne of 25 kts at landing approach height? Really?

"If flying military drones has told me something it is that the drones suffer plenty of Gs at landing and while doing manouvers..."

But flying military drones didn't teach you that an endurance drone rarely lands, never, ever performs high-G manoeuvres and is designed to stay on-station at 60-70,000 ft where flight conditions are rarely turbulent for months at a time.

Re: expected some damage during normal landings.

"Why would anyone design any type of aircraft unable to land without damage?"

When the aircraft is designed not to land for very long periods of time? If the Aquila is on-station for months at a time then landing gear is just superfluous weight. The damage is likely to be to the props and to easily replaceable components unless something goes badly wrong as it did this time.

"I was amazed that FB had resources for that kind of science and engineering."

They got the resources by buying a company started by a team of engineers from Farnborough (the former Royal Aircraft Establishment) who had already built a record breaking solar powered UAV.

Re: Terms not disclosed

There's very little difference between privately owned and 100% owned by the Swiss government in the eyes of the Swiss government. leak information about a private Swiss company and the state will call you a spy and try to bang you up for 20 years, as Stanley Adams found out.

This is probably why we won't ever know what the terms of the purchase of Clearswift were.

Re: Talking of daily mail

"Just today, the paper apologised and paid up after being taken to court for making up lies about a muslim family."

The Daily Hate has a lot to apologise for, only apologises for a tiny fraction of the lies told in the paper and appears to have no shame whatsoever.

They have libelled:

George Cluny's in-laws

The RSPCA

Dr. Joel Hayward

Mary Honeyball MEP

David Milliband

Stefanie Powers

In fact the list of stories the Daily Hate has had to apologise for is endless. The one thing that links all the stories is that they are completely fabricated. Oddly there's one story that the Daily Heil has never felt a need to apologise for. "Hurrah for the Blackshirts!"

There's the Daily Mail "Timeline of Shame" which still captures only the surface of the lies and hate spread by this rag.

Re: So which antivirus is the best for Android

"Root it first. They getting rid of stuff becomes essy"

"Easy" or "messy"? I'm going with "messy" because a rooted, malware infested phone is going to be that, messy.

Re: legitimate/illegitimate

"How about just using simpler words to start with?"

Even that can go horribly wrong. I know an electrician who was lucky to escape with his eyesight and nothing worse than bad sunburn after a miscommunication. He locked off an electrical panel to allow him to work on some HV (and high current) equipment. Power leads disconnected but naked and dangling a little too close to each other. But no problem because he had everything locked off. This was in the days before electricians had personal locks and locks tended to be keyed alike.

Someone called out to him "Can I turn the power on?" and he shouted back some simple words "I'm working above you. DO NOT TURN THE POWER ON." Sadly all the other guy heard was "... TURN THE POWER ON." The arc copper-plated his face and specs and gave him sunburn on the face and hands.