Wow, that's a doozy. Fixed, but there's no way or any reason to delete comments, so this will stay. Like a badge of editor shame :)

Believe it or not my best experience was with StarOffice 7 back in 2004 or so. OO.o has been iffy, and LO.o, while better in some ways, remains annoying in ways that matter to me. I love the stylist and navigator, but I sense the project lacks a vision. SO7 was still kind of a techie tool not afraid to expose some of its more complicated functionality. I'm afraid LO and OO.o are too obviously chasing Microsoft's tail. Pasting graphics into a written doc is one pain point: Mac Pages does it so much better and elegantly without having to dick around with "anchors" or having stuff jump all over the page. Just this week I had headaches trying to paste a properly-sized graphic into the header of a LibreOffice doc and I have no idea why.

I've tried a lot of other software: Mellel, Copywrite, Appleworks, Abiword, Softmaker Office (thumbs up on Linux/BSD), WordPerfect 2013, and a few others. I detest MS Word but honestly I found WP to be kind of a mess and missing important functionality. Too bad, because I really wanted to like it and really wanted it to be my alternative to Word on my Windows machine. No dice. Not only did they want like $300 for it but it was annoying and very obviously not-as-good as Word in important ways (can't remember which ones anymore, but I only gave it a week or so of free trial before deciding 'no way.')

I remember WP on DOS fondly, but systems have moved on. Word sucks, but there's practically no escaping it. Unemployment, maybe would help. And before I forget, the Ribbon sucks!

Docbook, Blearch! I happen to like LaTeX, though I accept it's not the tool for everyone (I wrote the Dictator's Handbook using LaTeX and wrote about the process here). But in 2013 I got my first exposure to DocBook and I didn't like it at all. I signed onto the Trojita project to write them some docs using the KDE templates and formats, and though I made it through the project I didn't like it and didn't write any more docs. Maybe KDE's stuff was part of the problem, I don't know - I haven't had experience with anyone else's docbook stuff. But I found it unwieldy, unpleasantly complicated, and kind of plodding. Maybe it's better elsewhere. I also never really found an editor and markup syntax system I liked that well when using it. What's your setup?

The tragedy of gmail is that at first the interface was very good and it's gotten worse with each iteration. Clearly this is the fruit of some Google employee's pet project (what do they call them? 10% projects or something?) and is gaining some attention and traction. In 2006 or so gmail was a pretty straight-forward thing that did everything you were used to doing but better, more cleanly, and more easily.

They've pissed around with the UI ever since then and generally made it into a beast that's less likeable by those who value their email. It might have helped folks that oversubscribed to junk or facebook status updates and didn't know how to create filters to deal with all of it. But to serious emailers the changes were annoyances.

Shout-out, by the way, to Fastmail.com, who does nothing but IMAP and does it right. I don't often use their web interface because I'm a email-client kind of person, but when I do I find it easy to manage and not too "fruity."

Good tips - that's my future strategy, once this one "ages" out. For the moment though, it's working well and I'm happy with it. You're right that backups don't have to be read by anyone other than the receiving system, but it's a nice bonus if you can test the drives' readability on a different machine/system, just to verify the writes are happening and the data is being correctly backed up. I had a database nearly get destroyed because I didn't verify the backups, and when it came time to use them I discovered to my horror they were bad. I won't forget that feeling soon, let me tell you.

Bryan makes some good points about the lack of universal file systems, too. NTFS, UFS, ZFS, HFS+ all have their positives and negatives, but it would be nice if manufacturers and systems-builders took into consideration of the need for something more transversal. FAT as a lowest common denominator is really f*cking low.

Yes, agree - this was very interesting, and I didn't know about any of it. I wonder if this doesn't strengthen the case for increased/additional/future robotic exploration of the type already happening and with some considerable success.

I fear politicians choose projects of this type more for their "splash" and "cool" factor than for their scientific merit, whereas the technical folk might argue for different projects or types of projects. In fact, there might be no obvious need to do manned exploration of Mars at the moment, since our little wheeled machines are exploring them so admirably. This keeps the politicians on their leashes, where they belong, and might help encourage funding of missions like the ones already under way.

n/t

This is interesting to me because not long ago I read the spectacular A History of Modern Computing by Paul Ceruzzi. There's an interesting chapter about the old magnetic core memory that persisted well into the early years of DEC and the minicomputer revolution. This is different, but similar.

Non-physicist here, but I wonder how hard it will be as an engineering challenge to keep all those little magnetic fields isolated and separated, and how resilient it would be to ambient effects? Still, glad to see innovation for the sake of innovation, if only because if we stop trying to stop making progress.

Good tip, thanks for it. I use aldiko (free version) and moon reader, both on Android, and both quite acceptable. I might try this - looks also useful for reading epubs on a Linux desktop (I currently use calibre for that. Calibre was roundly trashed at this previous |. article)

Oops: internet outage + "click submit again" = dupe comment. Sorry!

I had to Google "eloi" and came up with this, courtesy of Wikipedia:

The Eloi are one of the two post-human races in H. G. Wells's 1895 novel The Time Machine.

Nice one. Too bad your graphic didn't embed, though. Having run a forum (gotonicaragua.com) that had bots embedding graphic ads into their spam posts, I can see why it isnt permitted though!

Interesting post here:
http://www.vitavonni.de/blog/201410/2014102101-avoiding-systemd.html

Guy makes a couple of good points. Here are two clips:

Avoiding systemd isn't hard

Don't listen to trolls. They lie.
Debian was and continues to be about choice. Previously, you could configure Debian to use other init systems, and you can continue to do so in the future.
In fact, with wheezy, sysvinit was essential. In the words of trolls, Debian "forced" you to install SysV init!
With jessie, it will become easier to choose the init system, because neither init system is essential now. Instead, there is an essential meta-package "init", which requires you to install one of systemd-sysv | sysvinit-core | upstart. In other words, you have more choice than ever before.
Again: don't listen to trolls.

He goes on to point out, however, that you will get systemd installed if you use the gdm Gnome login manager or any part of the Gnome desktop, so for the moment, not only is systemd optional, but you can avoid it if you also avoid Gnome.

On a server, there shouldn't be any component actually depending on systemd at all. systemd is mostly a GNOME-desktop thing as of now.
As you can see, the trolls are totally blaming the wrong people, for the wrong reasons... and in fact, the trolls make up false claims (as a fact, systemd-shim was updated on Oct 14). Stop listening to trolls, please.
If you find a bug - a package that needlessly depends on systemd, or a good way to remove some dependency e.g. via dynamic linking, please contribute a patch upstream and file a bug. Solve problems at the package/bug level, instead of wasting time doing hate speeches.

I don't have any comment on the facts, since there isn't very much more to say. But I will point out, that is one awesome looking moon! ("That's no moon ...")

I've been paying closer attention to other fields of science recently, and wasn't aware of any of this stuff, so I find it endlessly fascinating. Every generation, I think, is willing to laugh at the false theories that previous generations accepted as fact before eventually finding there was a better explanation, without taking the time to wonder how many of their "facts" will eventually be overturned by future scientists looking for more accurate explanations.

That this stuff is happening - in the USA, at least - despite a culture increasingly hostile to the "educated elite" and whatever other impolite names the likes of Sarah Palin came up with for people who like science - is even more fascinating. Kudos to the boffins!

Jeez, plus one to that, brother. I actually relocated the modem/router to make sure I could get a signal in the bathroom. Living the good life now!

That's exactly the kind of stuff I was hoping to look into. Thanks for the tip.

Saw this on Google Plus, by the way, for what it's worth.

Evilviper, I think you're at risk of treating this as a duopoly, which is not. This isn't an issue of sysV vs. systemd. In fact, from what I'm reading, most people start off their argument by saying "we agree system V init needs to be replaced with something better. But this isn't it." Your criticisms of system v are on the mark, but many people - me included - would argue that systemd solves those problems but gives you a whole bunch of new problems. That uselessd looks pretty interesting, for example. I dunno.

On my desktop systemd is probably not a big issue, and I'd appreciate the faster boot time. On my servers though I want something that resembles system v init scripts. And while I'd like solutions to the weaknesses you describe here accurately, I don't want systemd to be that solution. I think these fork guys are of the same philosophy - they don't want systemd to become an imposed new standard, and to continue looking around while things evolve. Committing to systemd is a big jump it's hard to back out of.

Lastly, when you think about how much work it is to maintain Debian, threatening to fork it is a BIG undertaking: the hardware support, the enormous package repository, etc. That is a huge project and it's the foundation to Ubuntu, which is the foundation to hundreds of other things. What's that Hindu concept of the universe where there are turtles standing on top of monkeys who are on top of alligators ... all the way down to the elephants? This is like changing out the elephants - no simple feat!

As well, there are some ACs who are so interesting I wish they'd benefit from the karma as I mod them up! We've had some good, anonymous stuff here.

I think the general mandate here is science and technology, and not so much of that drama-bait being posted elsewhere, so this is a direct hit. As for Friday Distro, I'm looking around for another good one. Last couple rolls of the dice have all been "Ubuntu but with LXDE and a great theme!" type distros - boring, and not that useful!

That's true for a lot of things. I was just thinking about the quality of external CD/DVD burners. When the things first came out they were pretty solid devices. Then the rush to beat the competition in price leads to skimping on the design and build characteristics, and the later devices are chinsy and flimsy and stop working early.

Maybe the trick is to buy at the beginning of a new product's cycle, while prices are high and build quality is high.

Neither does all this relentless bitching about how the article was submitted. I'm checking the queue history to get a sense of how many articles Nadaou has submitted. I don't see a single one.

It'd be easier to be concerned about how offensive you find this write-up if you'd contribute anything to the site yourself. Instead, you're just flapping your jaw in response to one of very few individuals who has bothered to invest the time and effort to make something of this site.

I'm appalled at how many whiny bitches have decided to make Pipedot their home. You don't like the articles? Here's your money back, every cent of what you paid.

Your non-rhetorical, expertly developed, speculation-free articles are welcome. Submit button is at the top right of your screen. You know what to do.

I think a little genetic mutation would be a good thing these days ... shake up the gene pool, a bit. I live in West Africa as I've mentioned, where malaria is a huge issue, and I've read that malarial mosquitos are currently exerting the single greatest evolutionary force on the human race at the moment, meaning so many people die from malaria that it's almost certainly causing a mutation of some sort that will hopefully work in our advantage.

Seems like the rest of the diseases are back in force and our drugs are using their potency. Back on topic, mutations like this one fascinate me. Who knows what else there is to perceive out there if we could just alter our systems a bit. Or get bitten by a spider, or whatever.

Nice one, evilviper. I wasn't aware of what's going on. I was expecting to read that somehow the combination of wind and lava were combining to exacerbate the lava's destruction however, and that's not the case:

However, there is worry that the flow may start up again, and if it does, locals may be battling natural disasters on two fronts.

That's because tropical storm Ana is still bearing down on Hawaii, and there remains a chance that it can still spin up to hurricane-force winds before making landfall.

"In addition to the high winds, high surf and storm surge may be expected as well as heavy rains and thunder showers. " the HCD reported. "We are asking Hawaii Island residents to monitor your local radio broadcasts for updates and to prepare for possible storm conditions which could begin to affect the Big Island by Friday."

In preparation for this, the US Coast Guard plans to close all Hawaii ports east of Oahu on Friday, and could also close the ports of Honolulu and Nawiliwil over the weekend, according to Hawaii News Now.

So, just dealing with lots of trouble at once - not as big a deal as I thought.

It seems like a reasonable line of inquiry, at any rate. Why invest all that time, effort, and money digging trenches and laying cable when wireless infrastructure can be put up so much more easily? Back in 2000 I had an office whose internet connection was provided by a microwave link across town to the ISP via an antenna on both roofs. Seemed like magic back then - can't imagine that technology hasn't improved scads since then.

Downside: bomb that antenna, and the city is offline. A nice move for any aspiring dictator.

I agree with you actually - the Razor might be convenient in some circumstances, but if you ride one you're going to get an ass-kicking reminiscent of the 4th grade, and for the same reason. Ya look like a dork!

Very interesting article. I remember reading about it earlier, maybe even on this site? Can't remember. I don't know what they were doing up there, but "making the Chinese worry" sounds to me like a load of horse shit. Stress-testing some new technology, at a minimum, I dunno, but there are cheaper ways to make China worry than that.

Considering how badly NASA has been eviscerated (reduced to begging for rides from the Russians, oops) it's good to know there's still some research, experimentation, and scientific progress being made somewhere, even if the initial beneficiary will probably just be the military as usual.

Dang it, I got poodles on both IE and Chrome at work. What an ugly looking dog! What a disappointment!

Not sure how that graphic came about, but hopefully I'm not the only one who noticed that's a Jack Russell Terrier, not a Poodle.

But whatever.

Not even the stylus? Just kidding, but I loved my old Palm Treo, so maybe it's nostalgia. To be fair, you could go down one notch to a Galaxy 5 or even Galaxy 4, saving a couple hundred bucks and getting a phone that fits better in the pocket. I think the 5 is just about perfect in size.

I do miss my old flip phone though, since it fit so well in pants pockets I lost it on more than one occasion. Not enough to give up this gadget though - endless fun, and I'm just getting started.

Happy to keep Pipedot techie. I'm also doing my best to keep all that lefty-righty conspiracy, faux-rage stuff off the site too.

I've got less time these days though, and this site is only going to be as good as its article-submitters, editors, and commentators.

I hear you about the 'big screen.' I too used to laugh at people who had to take their phone out of their pants pockets to sit down. Then I bought a Samsung Note 3 and I love it. It's a bit big on weekends - doesn't fit well in shorts and t-shirts, etc. But during the week it fits right into a suit jacket pocket and does miracles. It's an awesome PDA (remember that word?) that just happens to also have a cellphone chip in it. I make the occasional call with it but mostly it's a tablet that's HDMA enabled, so I can do data stuff from anywhere there's a network connection. I even posted a Pipedot article from this place using it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podor That's pretty far off the beaten track by anyone's standards.

Don't knock it til you try it.

Doesn't seem techie enough.

I used mine for portable writing - never needed or wanted internet (realizing fully I'm not representative of your average gadget user). Just whipped it out on the train/bus and started typing away - loved that thing. Ran for ages on two AA batteries and with a Flash memory card installed, could just save stuff right to the card, export to text, without having to worry about connecting it over RS232 and the like. Good for taking notes in class, too, without having to carry a laptop around.

Good times. Done now though.

Different usage scenarios. The Razor scooter fits next to you on the train/subway and gets you the 10 blocks from the train station to your office without getting your suit/tie all sweaty. You're not supposed to be taking your razor scooter down the highway (and you'd like like a mad fool if you did).

The Honda Metro doesn't go on the train. You take it all the way across town in traffic, at speeds approaching car speeds.

They're not meant to be compared; they are for two totally different things.

IE6 users have been out in the cold for a long time now, and for more reasons than just this. I love old tech as much as the next guy, but browsing with an old browser is asking for trouble, and IE6 is very, very old. (too lazy to look it up, but it's got to be 10 years old at this point, if not more). Hell, even IE8 is considered too old now; Opera for Linux at 12 is considered abandon-ware (sniff sniff), and Konqueror while great for intranet/SFTP and the like, is too unsafe to take on line, it would seem. I know it chokes on some basic CSS, which is a bad sign.

[off topic] happy to meet another Psion 5MX user. It's one of my favorite gadgets, unmatched even now by some modern stuff. I owned two of them, and regret their demise. Wrote this about it back in '06: http://therandymon.com/index.php?/archives/171-The-Psion-5-for-Writers-on-the-Move.html

I was thinking exactly the same thing. If you remember what a wasteland of disorganized crap the alt section of Usenet got to be, I think the geniuses at ICANN, blinded by their own greed, are about to do the same thing to domain names. I plan on registering .sucks as soon as possible so I can go register up slashdot.sucks, putin.sucks, obama.sucks, and the like - not because I care but because important people will pay to have them taken down. Then some other chucklehead can register .sucks.not.really and then suddenly we're halfway to .flonk.flonk.flonk and .usenet.kooks and the like.

Nice work ICANN, you rapacious bastards.

Read the article and find out, AC!

As a non-coder, this is all fascinating to me. I read all the wikipedia pages (thankx Bryan). As a project manager though, it seems to me like different versions of really elementary stuff:
1. Let's talk to the client to make sure we know what we want,
2. making sure the client also knows what that will entail in terms of hours, money, effort.
3. then let's stay in touch as we go in case the goals or demands shift.

After that it's just a matter of: Do you go section by section? Do you start with a prototype and then work outward? Do you finish the first section/module/unit/whatever before starting the next one?

Basic project management, I think. Is there more to it than that?

N/T

For me it's easy - not a gamer. In fact so much so that when I put up this poll I braced for the inevitable volley of complaints that I forgot a category or duplicated a category under two titles, etc. (it happens anyway).

The last game I played seriously was Elite, in like 1985. Also Karateka on my C64. I even skipped the Tetris fad back in the day.

Yes, you've found a distro even lighter weight than SliTaz. Congrats! Looks pretty interesting to me. If others are interested maybe I'll give it a spin for an upcoming Distro Friday. Agree with you SliTaz is a pretty awful name. I poked around to figure out the origin of the name and didn't find an obvious one. Make up your own acronym day? There are many contenders for the 'worst distro name ever' title, I'm afraid.

I'm not sure if your post is intended to offend or you're just not a clear writer. I'll assume the best, in hopes I'm not just feeding an anonymous troll here - of which there are either suddenly more, or the existing ones have suddenly gotten more verbose. Yawn.

Good one! Was sort of thinking that myself. OK grandpa, lemme guess: PDP-11, compuserve, 486, Usenet, get offa my lawn! :)

I think we've worked our way through most of the 'my first' suggestions though, so onto bigger and better.

Maybe - but imagine an internet kiosk that boots from a read-only flash card, and runs from memory. You get a clean system with every boot, and if that gets you a reasonably good-looking desktop and an up-to-date version of Firefox, you've met the needs of 90% of your clients. Imagine a kiosk in a hotel lobby, for example.

Imagine a call center or database entry place where you can re-purpose some dirt-cheap, low-spec hardware. That's useful.

For me, on a more philosophical level, this is also interesting because it shows it can be done. The world would be a different place if developers were forced to be miserly with resources and think carefully about their constraints. Give everyone a new macbook with 5G of RAM and a top-speed hard drive, and you get akonadi/nepomuk (barf).

Oh yeah, forgot Hotmail. Bummer once these polls are launched you can't modify them.

Happy to do so - know anyone who sells AMD Linux boxes? Seems like ZAReason and System76 both sell mostly Intel stuff. (System76 is selling some seriously old-fashioned looking laptops these days, sorry to say. Love it that they run Linux, but you're not going to win any style points sitting behind one. Maybe cover it up with your neckbeard while you sip your tea.)

First console I ever saw played pong, and I have no idea what it was. This must have been like 1979 or so, hooked up to a TV set in America. Any ideas? The first console I ever started really spending scary amounts of time using though was an Atari. Good times. Frogger!

Depending on how things go, the pickup of the future could easily be ... a donkey.

I'm not feeling good about things.