Posts by Jim 59

Risk vs benefit

Would we rather give up all privacy and have no terrorist attacks, or put up with a few attacks and keep all of our encryption ?

I would compare it to roads. About 8 people will die today on UK roads, as they do every day. The harsh truth is that we put up with this because it is outweighed by the huge benefit of roads. We do a lot to minimize the carnage, but we don't ban cars. Sorry if that comes across callous, but I am getting to a point here.

If terrorists kill up to (say) 20 citizens in the UK every year, are we happy to put up with that to maintain freedom ? Many people might say "yes". How about 100 ? Or 1000 ? Is anybody going to stick their neck out and name a number ? If a certain disease killed 100 people in the UK a year, would we be as worried, or is that different ?

Re: Support is impossible

Well said Dave Horn and have an upvote. It is strange though, when you look at, how many operating systems have been blighted in recent years by the imposition of an unpopular UI/menu system.

Perhaps the desktop UI problem was solved many years ago, and developers ought to apply their talents to real 2015 challenges like storage, backup, security, networking, rather than trying to fix the menu system - something that was essentially fixed in 1995.

It is ironic that Apple, who actually invented the smartphone, is the only PC manufacturer who does *not* try to make their desktop look like a big smartphone. KDE, Gnome3, Unity, Win8: please take note...

Re: They arent a serious party..

And I suppose you think 60% of voters in Clacton are racists/homopho[b]es/whatever?

The truth is that many people do think this. The solution is to have open and free debate, but words like "racist", "loony" and "homophobe" have been used to quickly shut down discussion whenever it arises, and every time that happens, it moves us all backwards.

Whoa! That vulture can bite! Respect.

But it would be nice if you could acknowledge corrections publicly.

Re: Why install when it's going to be obsolete in a few months?

sneering opensource hipster nasal voice ...etc.

Wow. All the guy did was misunderstand the relationship between RHEL and Fedora. A merry Christmas you too!

Re: Why install when it's going to be obsolete in a few months?

Fedora isn't a production distro, it is the community based test/release distro for Red Hat. It is deliberately packed the most up-to-date (and least stable) features and software. Features that are successful in Fedora 21 might get into Red Hat in a couple of years. Nobody is running production landscapes on Fedora. This is all explained better over at the Fedora project itself.

Re: No to gnome, no to systemd

@DrXym I think your response shows the attitude problem extant in the Systemd project. They don't listen.

Re: No to gnome, no to systemd

systemd seems to attract some pretty shrill complaints but I fail to see the issue with it.

Perhaps an analogy is in order. Suppose you bought a house, and your solicitor did the conveyancing. You would be pleased in your new home. Then suppose you had a baby, and, instead of a doctor or midwife turning up, that same solicitor phones up and insists on doing the pre-natal care and delivering the baby. He isn't qualified yet but says he has just started a medicine degree. Later on, your car goes in for a service, and there is no qualified mechanic, just that annoying solicitor again. Afterwards, you notice he has welded the bonnet shut so you can't see what is under there any more. You are very annoyed so go for a pint, who do you think is standing behind the bar...

People do different jobs for a reason. Computer programs do different jobs for a reason. Unix/Linux has been designed this way.

Re: No to gnome, no to systemd

Ugh. Windowsesque.

Re: Thank God for the NSA's Internet surveillance program

@amanfrommars1 - thank you for that crisp summary, you mad bot.

@the bot wrangler - come on man, it was better before. 1 sentence per paragraph ? It sounds like Russel Brand now.

Re: 1930s

F*** yeah, we've come a long way baby.

Well, here's how far 6 year old children have come in Britain, anyway:

1830's - 6 year olds down mines, operating trap doors etc.

1930's - 6 years olds in school, poor ones without shoes.

2030s - ?

Agree, visited links need to be more contrasty

as above.

Love it, well done

This is indeed the biggest scandal since the great variable-width rumpus of '05 or whenever it was. Saw it this morning, nice surprise, think it looks nice. I like the old blue headlines being changed to black. And the header being shrunk and a bit less "Daily Sport" too. And it's quick. Not so keen on the pop-up pictures at the top but what the hell, why not. Consider making the font for the main headline a touch smaller, given we all have big screens now.

It is quite surprising that such a nice job was done by an "in-house team". Oh, and about that...

In addition, "Redesign v2" is coming in 2015 and is likely to involve an agency that can guide us through-

NO! Your own team clearly knows what it is doing.

@PCS Probably, but you never hear about 27 year old Windows bugs, do you? Even though Windows has been around that long. Could it have something to do with the fact that Windows being closed source, and researchers having no access to the source code ?

Re: Lame excuse

"X's biggest problem stems from the era it existed in." - this would be true for Windows as well, wouldn't it?

No. Windows NT was born well into the internet era ('93), was conceived as a full multi-processing system, and failed to implement any serious multi-user security. X started in '84, when the Internet largely consisted of students sending emails and the odd bulletin board.

Re: Bloat and crapulence overload

I agree some sites are needlessly obese and can only blame themselves for slow performance. But they are the bottleneck, not your download speed. It's streaming video which is the real baddy.

Personally I don't like streaming. The name "streaming" makes you think it is some super fast, slick technology, but it just means watching something in-place, and taking all the drawbacks that come with that, one of which is inefficient, peaky use of your download capacity (and the supplier's servers). The BBC et al have a "broadcast" mindset, when a torrent/time shifting approach would be better.

Re: Unknown source of kernel lock-ups?

Oh right, I forgot. Buggy crap is acceptable if it's free. Carry on.

You can have it for free or pay for it from MS, your choice.