This article is related: a list of things youngsters won't be doing this summer (It's a relatively nostalgic look back at England in the 80s/90s). http://www.gazettelive.co.uk/news/nostalgia/summer-holiday-children-not-doing-7508570 Spending endless time in front of a C=64 to play computer games is one of the items. But actually, I can think of worse things than giving your kid a Raspbi and a soldering iron and a project book, and letting him or her get into electronics. Unless he burns the house down of course.

By the way, FIRST POST! Boo ya.

I do! A "¦ man "¦ came "¦ up "¦ to "¦ me "¦ and "¦ asked "¦ me "¦ what "¦ the "¦ time "¦ was "¦ that "¦ was "¦ on "¦ my "¦ watch!

When you write it the way they sing it, it looks kind of stupid, actually.

Needs more JavaScript to really be 2.0. :)

But then only the admins know. It's cool when we as a community all have a sense of who we are and where we are. Like the good old BBS days.

There are probably other ways, but remember zafiro17 is a lowly editor, not a server admin :) And anyway, the honor system is probably more appropriate to a friendly bunch of techies than an invasive HTML trick. I happen to dislike webpages that request my location and refuse to grant it. If I visit Google to look up a question and they want to know my location, I feel like Google can just piss off - since my location doesn't affect either my question or the answer. (unless I'm googling for the closest brewpub or something).

For what it's worth, here is a map, if you aren't sure: http://www.timeanddate.com/time/map/

To those of you reading Pipedot from the international dateline who are conflicted about whether to choose the GMT+12 or GMT-12 option, you'll get no sympathy from me because you are probably living in an island paradise and have too much free time on your hands!

Thought about it, but it seemed so irrelevant compared to the others - not just in its dollar amount, but in what the purchase really entailed. Other purchases/acquisitions seemed to bring in big, new areas to existing corporations. Dice bought itself a dying web forum, a dying collaboration platform, and a now closed-and-out-of-date software information site. A fool and its money are soon parted, I suppose.

Good point: something like "Cowboyneal/crack cocaine ($3M)" might be the right level of sense of humor.

Yay, glad to see another konqueror user. I still use that browser for simple stuff (FreeBSD's manual pages, for example). It gives me trouble with stuff that requires much javascript or other complications.

When I want something to wash over me in the background, NPR on the radio is usually my first choice in America. Good quality programming, interesting interviews, and good reporting. Also: relatively non-obtrusive.

Har, har, since there is no limit on mod points around here, I've just modded them back up. Mod war: go!

I agree that article was probably expressly provocative and vaguely insulting. Inaccurate too, since high - end android phones are often more expensive than Iphones.

45 bids is interesting. I'd love to know how many bidders there were - was it a bidding war between two people or was there serious competition among many?

This might have something to do with it: http://www.reddit.com/r/television/comments/2drrof/american_cable_channels_have_blended_into_an/

I was just in Miami at a friend's place; he's got DishTV with hundreds and hundreds of channels. And we had one hell of a hard time finding a single thing worth watching. Ridiculous.

Fair enough, but that's simply the next step in a path that includes laptops that no longer carry OS disks in lieu of reinstall media or worse, reinstall partitions. Android and is do the same thing - what's the difference or distinction between an iPhone and iOS?

Yeah, I hear you. I know it's hip to talk badly about Blackberry, but I've got a Bold 9900 and the keyboard is pretty darned awesome. Swipe and predictive text and all that stuff are ok, but I actually do better writing/typing on the BB. Wish I could have that keyboard with my Samsung Note 3, which has better apps.

Oh yeah, I'd forgotten that. That makes it easier to give Google the middle finger and put Bodhi on this machine the way I was planning. Hope it boots as fast after the lobotomy ...

Edit: countries/companies

Yeah boy, they're drowning at the moment, that's for darned sure. In this market if you're not fighting to innovate, you're going to be roadkill sooner than later, and buying smaller countries is not an effective, long-term strategy. Right, Sun?

I totally agree. Nice to see a group just having fun, throwing stuff together, and seeing what's useful, what's fun, or what's cool. Compared to stuff like this - which reminds me of when Linux was fun - guys like SUSE and RedHat look old and stuffy. Gotta love an edition named 'cameltoe.'

I'm still on the ropes with this reformat of my Chromebook. On the one hand, this machine does admirably most of what I'd like it to do. On the other hand, it does not do a couple of things I need every day. Weirdly, back in 2000 when it came time to reformat Win98 and put on Linux (SuSE 7.1, if you're curious) I went full steam ahead. This time, the differences in firmware and the whole "developer mode" thing somehow make me a bit more anxious about borking my box. Or maybe I've aged and am now more risk averse.

What will probably tip me over the edge is noticing all the subtle but creepy ways Google "knows me" through my interactions on Youtube, G+, and searching the 'Net. I've got a couple of adverts following me across the WWW right now and it reminds me it might be smart to keep some distance from Google.

That said, its 4 second boot to a usable web browser is pretty awesome.

The poll has been up for five days now. Interesting to see that Windows is indeed in the lead with 21 points, but second place is currently "Console only" with 19 points, far ahead any of the popular Linux desktops: KDE, Gnome, and Unity. Very surprising, to me at least!

I spend a lot of time on Usenet, so I'm as aware as anyone how many jackasses there are on line. But I disagree that Twitter has no responsibility. Code choices affect a site's feel and determine what you can or can't do with it. And that affects how people behave.

There may be no law requiring Twitter to intervene, but good business sense indicates it's in their best interest to keep it a service people like and want to use. No one uses Yahoo messenger anymore, because Yahoo let random spammers contact you and spam you, and people decided to find another way to chat, which - if I recall - Google chat soon provided.

Yeah, I was wondering that too. Here's her profile at the Guardian. Seems to be an outspoken feminist: http://www.theguardian.com/profile/caroline-criado-perez

Seems the bank has proposed a set of new notes in which the Queen would not be present, and CCP opposed the idea. http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/the-womens-blog-with-jane-martinson/2013/jul/04/women-bank-notes-bank-england

Whatever the reason, and whatever her beliefs, she certainly seems to have been attacked pretty viciously.

I'd be willing to go with this standard even if it had lower throughput, at this point. I bitched and moaned about Apple abandoning USB [The Standard!!!] for Lightning, but then when I started using Lightning I realized how much an improvement in life it is when you can insert the plug without having to think about its orientation. So a reversible orientation USB plug is a good thing. I've personally dealt with, loathed, and laughed at the various kludges already listed here in the comments.

For the record, I miss Firewire though - never understood why they killed it when it seemed to work so damned well.

working on three devices, for me by following the link from this article, and it counted my votes, too. Any ideas what it is?

I'm not totally convinced AMD's management knows what it is doing. This sounds like an also - ran strategy. That said, I seem to always root for the underdog, so I hope they make it.

I think I'll have to check them out - I keep hearing how great they are. Should ve put them on the poll. The great thing about linux is that the same apps are available to you no matter which enviro you choose.

The guy's got name recognition, but not much after his recent trip through crazy town. But this sounds like a sure - fire failure. No one is going to rant here about their moron brother in law. Or maybe everyone is. Either way, who gives a shit?What happens after the rant - is there any political organization or will this site help gain social organization? Otherwise this thing is going to fall flat like a cold turd.

Not sure what we need but it's got to be better than the status quo. I read all the privilege needs and usually can't imagine why simple apps need such broad permissions. I hedge my bets by using paid apps rather than free apps than need to advertise. But ultimately reputation as risk and a broad app market vie against network effects and peer pressure. But let's say I love whatsapp for communicating with friends and suddenly that app gets greedy with permissions? If I choose not to allow I'm also choosing not to continue using the app. Rapacious and scumbag developers know this.

Looks like it would be good for low-latency home networking, too. Why not keep those hops local? Sneaker net rules.

seems like the encryption might be a source of overhead or slowdown? maybe not.

This is great. The damage of qt getting bought by Nokia is finally being rectified and the greatest threat of qt languishing while Nokia flounders is being mitigated.

PS - suck it, gtk3 :)

It's way bigger than that. Sun managed the code in a way that made it hard to contribute. LO is not just a forked code base but a management process that facilitates contributions and improvements. OO.o doesn't share those advantages and will soon fall behind.

Thanks for that explanation. I never knew the difference, or that there even IS a difference. 'Cloud' is a marketing word and means nothing.

I once had this happen too. Turns out the other comment wasn't deleted but I needed to adjust the threshold slider down to -1 to see it again.

That's probably my influence and I do prefer KDE to Gnome. If we get some Gnome fanbois to post articles we can duke it out.But my first choice remains Windowmaker!Gnomeheads: the submit button is at the upper right :)

Yeah, power consumption is a big one. My old Pentium III was an energy hog by the standards of what I'm running now, and I'm appalled by the P4 desktop I picked up used: seems like the fan is running almost all the time, trying to keep the thing cool. But I'm definitely on the "keep it until it's no longer useful" train, not the "replace it every year with something newer/shinier" train.

I had a PPC Powermac laptop (the awesome one with the silvery keyboard; one of the best laptop keyboards I've ever used and definitely better than the new chicklet keyboards I hate so much) running from when I bought it in 2003 until I dropped it (smashing it) in 2013. That's old for a laptop, but what the hell - it was working great and did everything I needed to do except show me flash video (which is no loss, let's face it). My PIII laptop lasted from 2000 until 2009 I think.

I don't know about butthurt. Remember Microsoft was "technically" first with tablet computing too, but what they thought a tablet should be was a joke: a thick PIII laptop with a turn-around screen and some shitty software in addition to their usual office suite. Apple blew them out of the water by redefining what a tablet should be, and the market rushed to purchase it. Bill Gates' tablets - aimed for hospital workers, for example - were a lumbering pile of steaming fail by comparison.

I agree I mostly agree with the choices Nadella is making. Microsoft is floundering and needs a serious dose of visionary leadership, plus potentially the sacrificing of some of Microsoft's otherwise sacred cows - in order to stay viable. If they're unwilling to let him take out the axe and start swinging, then they are going to be irrelevant. By some accounts, they're already dangerously close to irrelevant in terms of hearts and minds of consumers. Win8 is horse dung - ask anybody who's used it.

Actually, now that you've posted it here: we all probably are. Thanks, pal.

I see I should have been more specific in the title of the poll "¦

That's awesome. I'm going to start doing that on my portable wireless hotspot. Call it "NSA local POA" or "Pedo Wireless" or something. Does anybody else remember the "Sketchy URL shortener?" Great stuff: http://www.shadyurl.com will turn www.pipedot.org into something like http://www.5z8.info/cockdock.gif_r6b0sn_looksjustlikeyourbank

I think the nature of the engineering is what's at fault - the design of the cell tower model lends itself too easily to this sort of thing, and though I'm not working in the industry, I suspect it would be nearly impossible to fix.

Thanks for the thumbs up! I think once per week is about right - any more would be too much. I'm having fun discovering the new distros, anyway. If I find a little more free time I'll make an effort to install them in VMs to give them a spin first. Darned day job keeps getting in my way!

That's pretty darned impressive!

You might save money by buying a cheapo tablet subsidized by Intel, but what about the battery consumption? ARM chips last so much longer without a recharge. I doubt Intel can match that.

"¦ everybody has two?

Don't forget your average staffer in the House is a recently-graduated person with a masters, and they're paid close to nothing. A lot do it for the experience, or for the cachi© of having worked in Congress. But the pay isn't great, and I'm told a huge number of House Reps are humongous assholes of the most arrogant sort. They are probably finding refuge in Wikipedia.

It does: have a look at the article. The dog is "Taco" and it's Joel's dog - and sort of, the entire office's dog now. If you use Trello, the dog is even part of the interface: whenever a new feature is released, Taco pops up and goes "Roo" to alert you to the news. It's either cute or annoying, depending on if you're a dog lover. In the article, Joel jokes, as Trello gained interest and funding ("got big"), Taco got big too. Cute mutt, anyway.

That guy's name was Konqi. He sort of came to be with the Konqueror web browser, file manager app. It was okay, but somewhat juvenile I suppose. The KDE guys are aging and getting more (cough) mature.