You can get your fix if you check out the distro's web page, which states Technically ConnochaetOS follows the KISS principle (which means no systemd, for example). It is build on top of the GNU/linux distributions Slackware and Salix OS.

I'm curious, but leery. Slackware takes some learning, and this appears to be a one-person distro, which is hard to pull off effectively. I'm willing to give it a try though - I agree we need a replacement for init, but definitely am adverse to systemd (and the team pushing it).

So, how the hell do you pronounce this moustachioed distribution?

LOVE the name "hyperkitty." It works on so many levels. I look forward to reading hyperkitty archives using "mutt." Just because life is awesome.

They are a business, after all. The days of people creating software because it's fun and useful aren't gone, but they've taken an arrow in the leg since the world of apps on mobile devices. Developers are trying to carve out niches that lead to big profits (a lot of them are, anyway), and this one smells of money.

I just noticed a direct copy-paste of what was submitted to this pipe, in the comments of an unrelated article on slashdot about XP support. Had i known that, I would have potentially shitcanned this article, as it took one hell of a lot of work to bang into the shape of a coherent article.

Mailman was getting a bit long in the tooth and some of these improvements look compelling, like the web front-ends that give easy access to archives and such. There's a lot to be said for mailing lists as communication vehicles. They have all the benefits of Usenet with more finegrained controls and the ability of each user to choose the mail reader s/he likes best, etc. There's also a decent sense of community on mailing lists - all a good thing. Glad to see Mailman is keeping it fresh. I'll be interested in checking this out.

What ever happened to mayordomo, by the way? Remember when people talked about being on LISTSERVs? That word has gone the way of Telnet and FTP - gone to all but the crustiest of greybeards and server admins.

That would be just fine with me. Currently there are too many Ubuntu derivatives, in my opinion. Time for a little more diversity in the ecosystem.

Do any exist? I can't think of a single automobile on the market that doesn't come with enough chips, sensors, and electronics to choke a donkey.

It's expensive economically but interesting technically. If it leads to interest the market may open up and prices will come down as a result.

And your power distribution systems, and your nuclear power SC ADA systems, and your traffic lights and ... and ... and ...

Good times.

Interesting conversation going on in parallel, on Reddit, that seems like a germane response to my own post: http://www.reddit.com/r/Music/comments/33hben/does_anyone_else_feel_that_music_streaming/

There is almost certainly a different in the "FM" experience between European and American listeners, too. The EU has more aggressive regulators that have kept the market more competitive. Most of the FM stations got bought out by ClearChannel, which has a lot to do with the awful homogeneity of the FM spectrum in the USA. The same shit, from coast to coast. It's enough to make you slit your wrists. Ipod + Bluetooth connection to my car's sound system is the best thing ever invented, and it's commercial free. (On the other hand, I don't get exposed to new music. I rely on recommendations from itunes for that).

Never eaten one and don't plan to, but I love the expression "gateway bug."

I'm probably one of the last shortwave fans out there. Not the only one, obviously, but we are certainly a dying breed. And I've lived the last decade in the poorer parts of Africa, where you'd think shortwave and similar would still be big hits. Nope. Not only is there precious little on the shortwave bands anymore (except for some Chinese and way too many evangelists) but even poor Africans aren't listening to it.

What Africans ARE listening to is FM on their feature phones or smartphones. As a shortwave fan, this is hugely disappointing to me.

I've been on the mailing list of the DRM group for ages now - unfortunate acronym, it actually stands for Digital Radio Mondiale and I wish they'd change it. And it's been really interesting to watch them progress. Dig Radio replaces your radio with what's basically a small computer that processes the digital signal at relatively low expense. This was unheard of a decade ago when all we had were Pentium IIs, but modern systems on a chip make it possible and not that expensive, either computationally or economically. Dig Radio promises the propogation qualities of shortwave with the audio quality of FM. That's really huge, when you think about it.

By the way, I think this has implications for democratic promotion and the like. Despite jamming wars, it was possible at one time to beam a broadcast into a nation, where people could essentially listen to it without being tracked. TCP/IP as we all no know too well doesn't offer that same anonymity.

Will this new tech get coopted by the likes of ClearChannel and their buddies? Maybe, but Dig Radio offers huge promise, I think. The BBC and some other stations are experimenting with it; this move by the Scandinavians is promising. Maybe teh USA will wise up and give it a try too (maybe not).

At any rate, this is good news.

You've got to imagine a troop of 10 year old kids going down to the computer lab. Your school can now have a lab that consists of nothing but HDMI monitors. Each kid gets a stick from the teacher, and they do whatever they do using web services available through ChromeOS (which is basically just a bit more complex than a Chrome browser and a tiny bit of desktop).

From the point of the school, the maintenance and systems admin burden of running a computer lab this way is hugely more efficient and inexpensive than a lab full of, say, Win10 desktops that need basically full-time administration. This hardware might put a dent in the futures of projects like Edubuntu, which reconfigs desktop hardware into thin clients. That's unfortunate. But it will have a powerful impact on schools that will stop buying Windows desktops, and that in turn will affect how many kids coming out of schools thinking that "computer = windows."

As for keyboard quality you are absolutely right - these guys aren't focused on hardware quality. My HP Chromebook has a chiclet keyboard, and I'm not a fan of it (it's no worse than any other modern HP laptop though). If you want a good keyboard, buy a Chromebox and stick whatever USB you like into it - even a Model M! For me, despite the ubiquity of laptops, this is the advantage of a 'desktop computer' no matter which OS it happens to be running: the peripherals I want/need/love, from trackballs to fancy ergo keyboards etc.

It's been done quite a bit. Google 'Raspberry Pi Commodore 64 internal" and you'll come up with a huge list of guys who have gutted old C64s and replaced the computing parts with a Raspberry Pi on which they run emulator software, usually. There's also a guy on Etsy who created his own custom keyboard controller, and now sells refurbished C64s, Sinclairs, and other retro computers you can now use as a fully-functioning USB external keyboard. I'm sorely tempted by these - love the idea of a C64 on my desk connected to a real computer elsewhere.

This is way better than a CSS hack. How do you say "suck it, slashdot" in esperanto?

IE is mandatory at work, which means that (A) a lots of good sites/tools are totally unusable on the corporate machine (trello.com is one of them. Love Trello and need it at work), and (B) I am stuck with its absolutely awful UI choices. We're using 9 or 10 (can't be arsed to look it up) and it's clear that was a version that was desperately chasing the sleekness of Chrome, but with a development team of not-awfully talented individuals. It really is terrible to use. Simple things like showing bookmarks are not easy, and it has huge rendering errors. I'm glad they are giving up on it - it's the software equivalent of 'design by committee.'

I still post there once in a while, but that's because my sig gives some publicity to |., Soylent, and Usenet's comp.misc. You don't have to avoid /. like the plague you know, it's a good thing to help the rest of the world learn about the alternatives and eventually win them over.

Eat carrots, use an illuminated keyboard, don't spend quite so much time 'beating the bishop' and sit closer to the goddamned monitor :)

Not sure what all the anger is about. Pipedot was readable before, generally (certainly more readable than Soylent, anyway with its tiny little buttons). Just experimented in Chrome and the Zoom feature not only scales up the text but when it reaches a certain size, the 'responsive' feature of the CSS kicks in and the sidebar gets shunted off to the bottom, like it should.

I for one am impressed.

Way to go Slashdot: you are a year too late.

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/15/03/06/021240/robocops-being-used-as-traffic-police-in-democratic-republic-of-congo

What I meant by that sentence is, "I feel like others have rooted my phone from the moment I first use it." The fact that Android is so closely tied into Google, has that miserable app permissions system that allow devs to simply ask for one more permission each round until they rule the world mwah ha ha ha, and is probably phoning home more than you know, kind of freaks me out.

Android is not consumer-focused, it's enterprise focused. And those enterprises need your data, your ad-watching-eyeballs, and your credit card to stay in business. Fuck that, I just want pocket computing.

Glad I had a chance to edit the summary and make sure everyone recognizes the intro was a tongue-in-cheek slam at some other DE. Seriously, the new XFCE looks great, and I love the idea you can configure Alt-Tab to do things other than the traditional way - I like the vertical list of full title apps (there was another DE that did it this way but I can't remember which anymore). At this point in the evolution of desktop environments, we don't need radical changes in metaphor, just refinements in usability and convenience. That seems to be exactly what the XFCE team is doing.

Check out the language in their press release, too. It's clear they're making a huge effort to listen to their users and find out where the pain points are: it's a radical concept in software development (listening to the users and applying fixes as relevant). I wish others did it too.

Looks like a good looking desktop experience. I'm looking forward to checking it out - might even encourage me to give LXDE a rest for a while (until LXQT comes out, anyway). At this point, I'd say XFCE is leading the race in traditional desktop environment usability, and it's not clear to me what "extra" you get by installing something like a full-on Gnome3 or Unity install. For all that extra storage and all the additional memory required, it's not clear to me what you gain by way of usability or convenience. This is what was forgotten like a year ago. More is not better, dorkwad developers!

Please fill out this field.

No worries Lenovo, I accept your apology. But I will also never again consider one of your machines. I need to trust my hardware manufacturer, and now thanks to your ass-hattedness, I no longer trust you.

Whichever dumbass middle manager thought this would be a great revenue earner for you should be made to fall on his own sword and then fed to a pool of sharks. The trust of your clients is worth more than a little ad money. How could you all have been so stupid?

Anyway, enjoy irrelevance. Your brand is tarnished. Maybe you and Sony should get together and have a party? You're made for each other - you both screwed the pooch in the same way.

taking a post that comes in this format and turning it into an article is too much work. No one wants a ton of hyperlinks. Tell me why I should care about this release. Until then, I don't care.

I used to be a big fan of the physical keyboard, certainly when I'm in hunt-and-peck mode on my Android (Note 3). But I felt less rabid about the subject when I installed Swype. Swype and its competitors do a great job of helping you get words entered in an efficient and generally painless manner. I don't miss the hardware keyboard so much anymore.

That said, when I have to do some really serious typing, I saddle up a Bluetooth keyboard before getting started. Touchscreen keyboards are only good up to a limit, I think.

I'd be happy for a double screen though, so the on-screen keyboard didn't obscure so much of what I was looking at while typing (not so much a problem on the Note 3 but a bit worse on smaller devices). I'd also love that double screen to fold like those awesome old clamshell phones where all the delicate bits were protected on the inside in your pocket. Tired of having to worry about screen scratches, or worse, taking a lovely, sleek device and armoring it with the non-sleek options out there that are really required to prevent your device from taking a beating.

As the Missus just shattered the glass on her iphone (a hand-me-down iphone 3, so not that hard or expensive to get fixed), I fully support stronger glass screen technologies. She's not even sure what happened, but it looks like her iphone got hit by a sniper packing high caliber ammo. Dropped the keys on it from high altitude or something? Considering how expensive this technology is, these gadgets are frighteningly easy to damage/destroy.

They may have made this offer sporadically. I went through the system and checked my settings (and took advantage of the moment to de-authorize a couple of old apps that had wanted permissions).

In general, this was a useful thing, and I felt glad they had set up a convenient way to do this - kudos to Google for beating Microsoft and the bunch to the game. But I'm still leery of it all - traveled to an obscure place in December and then found an obscure video on Youtube about that place. Guess which video showed up in my Google Plus feed this week because someone else had commented on it? Not cool. Don't want my social stuff and my video watching to get linked, but thanks to Google they are indelibly linked. That makes me want to use Youtube.

Also on my Google Plus feed was a post about another, less obscure place I visited on the same trip. That might just be coincidence, but I do NOT like feeling like I'm on the receiving end of an algorithm determining which videos and information should be passed into the interior of my little data bubble. Don't like feeling like I'm being managed.

I think they'd like you to believe this was a technical mistake, like "oops, we shouldn't have activated that API." Rather, it was probably and more likely a strategic/management mistake, as in, "oops, didn't think customers would hate this as vehemently as they did - retreat! We'll ass-rape them some other way!"

I like Samsung hardware, but I can guarantee you I won't be going near a camera-and-microphone enabled smart TV with anything other than a baseball bat and a flamethrower. Who invents this crap up and tries to foist them on the consumer? In the name of "convenience," sure.

I like my TVs dumb, thank you very much. They shouldn't do anything other than display the image some other device sent to them. And then they should bugger off.

Believe it or not, I considered the Typematrix, and I liked the idea of the skins you can throw over the top to access different keyboard layouts (I use Dvorak about 70% of the time). I was impressed by the grid layout - once you get used to it, it's hard to go back). But I was turned off by a bad review by Xah Lee, who I trust when it comes to keyboard stuff. (He's the ergo emacs guy, and he seems to do nothing other than bitch about emacs and review keyboards). I'd still like to try a Typematrix, just out of curiosity. I'm told the build quality has gotten way better. Everything else about that keyboard is pretty darned cool.

Customer service works in mysterious ways - there are lots of ways to piss of your customers, but if you're creative (and your accountants and lawyers are willing to let slip the purse strings a bit) there are just as many ways to make your customers happy, too.

Well done, blizzard.

You'd get spam, but hell, that's why there are editors. An interesting idea.

That's a nice looking keyboard. Got to confess I'm tempted by some of those gamer keyboards that light up in green or red. I'm not a gamer, but those things are really well made. As for fancy mice, I moved to Trackballs almost as soon as I started using computers, and have never gone back: http://therandymon.com/index.php?/archives/250-Trackball-Nirvana.html

Well said. I still love this site too, and it's very highly usable. Got to say though, submitting stories is a bit of work. That level of effort seemed reasonable ten years ago, but in the age of smart phones and Facebook/Google Plus, etc., it's a bit much - particularly when you're not guaranteed to get much of a robust story going after all that work. That's vaguely discouraging.

I hate to suggest it, because I know it involves a ton of work. But it could be a killer: Pipedot needs an app. Not a "Pipedot on your cellphone" thing, a mechanism that allows Pipedot to show up on your Share menu and submit stories that way. One of the great things about Android is the share menu - makes it easy to go from one medium to the next. If I'm reading my RSS reader and something looks great, I hit the little dotted-triangle, and tons of sharing mechanisms come up, from Twitter to G+ to even Usenet (using the NewsReader app for Android). If Pipedot were on there, I'd be submitting multiple stories per day. Instead I have to wait until I'm at a computer, type it in, format the URL, etc.

So, knowing full well this means a new project, registering on Google Play, and probably lots of other annoyances, coding and making available a little app that allows me to send a story straight from my newsreader to Pipedot would take care of the content problem, which might easily take care of the 'number of people in the community' challenge. I'm not a coder, so I can't help there, but I am willing to contribute in other ways. Imagine the ease of submitting to G+ but with the comment and karma system of |. Match made in heaven?

Otherwise, happy birthday Pipedot!

In another culture, there's a similar expression: "with hunger, the bread is never too hard." Same idea, but a bit more difficult to twist into the ridiculous thread that ensued from this comment.

Wonder what the world and history will say about the bittorrent protocol someday though. What a wonderful thing, and yet it's so easy to vilify the protocol as a vehicle for piracy, which isn't exactly fair.

Sadly, it may not have been a mobocracy intentionally trying to gum up the works. It may have simply been a run-of-the-mill bureaucracy incapable of producing any other result.

Maybe this article was like a honeypot for A/C trolls, who have vowed to wage war on each other.

Oh, the other distro he ran was dyne:bolic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyne:bolic)

I've been hanging out on the Devuan IRC channel (irc.freenode.net #devuan or #debianfork).

Here's the guy behind Devuan - seems talented/committed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaromil
Here's a suggested/submitted logo that didn't seem that popular when discussed. It's a start, anyway: http://k30.kn3.net/2/1/A/4/F/A/3BD.jpg (seems a bit too metal/cryptic for my tastes).

I always think that when I see that now ubiquitous WWW ad: "this one secret tip reduces belly fat." Never clicked on it because it's obviously a scam/ad campaign of some sort, but I half-expect to click on it only to find the secret is: "Eat less and get some exercise, fatass!"

Result: |. got all the diacriticals but refused the smiley face at the end. Awright, no smileys here then.
Heart:
Note:
Rook:

I think we had similar discussions about Ubuntu, back in the day: Is it /Ū/BŪN/TŪ/ or /Ə/bƏn/tū/ or what?

Face it: this was nothing more than a pretext to test |.'s Unicode support.

To be fair, not malicious, the amount of excitement isn't unlike when a bunch of us left Slashdot. Yeah, maybe our new project sinks and maybe it swims. But at least it's invigorating to be DOING something about a problem instead of just sucking it up in silence.

I wish them luck, if only to see what they come up with - I think they'll essentially create a product with values/choices like FreeBSD but based on Linux. That's a good thing - people choose Debian for stability. There's enough discontent out there that it's possible to get this machine rolling.

Wow, I never knew that either. A better lesson for 'why not to do business with/name things after people you love' has never existed.

I were him, after the divorce I would've renamed it "Dorkian" or "Dumbian" as a reminder.

I think it works. Anyone who's ever ordered Sechuan chicken will know how to say it. The V in the middle is clearly a reference to SysV. It's short, simple, and I'm imagining a logo like dV, which would work.

There are far worse names out there - just search this site for Friday Distros.

Oh hell no! "Other" is where all the juicy goodness comes out. The regular poll options are just a conversation starter, just something to whet your appetite ...

My work machine consists of a laptop with external monitor. I use the laptop screen as-is but have the monitor (1600xsomething) turned vertically, so I can see an entire page of a Word doc at a time. I keep Outlook on the small screen, and write on the vertical one - bliss (except for the fact I'm at work).

Running 1400x900 at home, which is big enough for me. I actually don't like monitors that are too big. 1400x900 is fine on my desktop, and I think I'd still be fine at 1200x768 (or whatever) on my 12" laptop, back when I was rocking a Pentium III.

This is better submitted as a comment to the other article, not as a new article. Also, I'm tired of this subject.