Posts by Jon Cutting

Firefox 3.5 patch coming soon as Mozilla cranks up downloads

png?

3.5 has decided to "improve" the display of some png files to the point where they have changed colour. Hoping a fix for this is included......

Microsoft cries netbook victory against Linux

Linux?

Was this really a comparison of Windows and Linux? I use Ubuntu and if asked to choose between some mangled version of Xandros (or some other incomplete and difficult_to_customise Linux distribution) and Ubuntu I'd stick with the latter. Looking around the net seems even Linux lovers were looking to load up their fave distro on their netbooks.

So it isn't really much of a surprise that buyers, when asked to choose between a full version of one familiar operating system and a heavily customised and unfamiliar 'lite' version of another bought the way they did.

Microsoft may be crowing, but let's face it, netbook users running XP have Linux to thank for the knockdown price that their Windows licence cost them.

Ubuntu 8.10 - All Hail new Network Manager

The choice is yours..

There is no xorg.conf by default, but if you want one, you can have one. I use one to enable various touchpad tweaks - although one of the developers reckons these will be available in a GUI by 9.04.

Ubuntu documentation in shreds

Re. Demonstrates the problem with open source

".....that people will only reliably commit and work hard when they're getting paid."

People seem to me to work the hardest when they're enjoying what they're doing. I wouldn't claim to be a world authority on the subject but I've come across many disinterested and uncommitted people who were working at tickover and being paid at the time.

American auto dealer offers free handguns

@Eric

"When I travel to the city, my gun is like my American Express card...I don't leave home without it!"

Is a society in which citizens feel the need to leave the house tooled up a healthy one?

Broadband bumpkins overtake city surfers

Re: rural people often rich blah blah

"It costs more to live in the countryside (have you seen the price of petrol?), therefore it should come as no surprise that a higher percentage of rural people have broadband, because there is a higher percentage of rich people."

If logic is in the large drawing room with the crackling fire, then you are still down at the gatehouse. Simply because it is more expensive to live in a rural area does not mean the inhabitants of rural counties are richer. They may simply have less disposable income.

Billy Bragg: Why should songwriters starve so others get rich?

The times they are a-changing

I certainly have some sympathy for the artists here, although hearing pop stars talk about giving up the fucking day job that they fucking hate doesn't augment the sentiment.

The artists are paying the price for the incredible inertia and short-sightedness with which the music industry met the internet. Instead of embracing this new age, the industry resisted until it couldn't hold back the tidal wave any longer. Even now, instead of treating the music buying public (who for years were shamelessly milked for as much as was possible) as generally decent folk who will feel an obligation to pay a reasonable price for music they like, the record companies still seem to be clinging to a model in which the (now tech savvy) listener will pay over the odds for digitally crippled drek. And alienating many of their target audience with fatuous litigation against those with very little ability to pay.

No it doesn't make it right to download music for free, but this model is broken, and it's time for a new one that works.

Only Ubuntu left standing, as Flash vuln fells Vista in Pwn2Own hacking contest

@ Biased hacking

"Call me a cynic, but I'd imagine that the people hacking would *want* the open source version to win"

I can think of other more fitting monikers. This argument is pretty lame IMHO. Firstly it assumes the hackers were largely open source admirers, it then moves forward to suggesting that their individual love was stronger than the lure of a $20,000 prize, and finishes by believing that each trusted the others to altruistically not hack the open source box either. The same open source box that has all the code available for the world to inspect for months in advance.

Dell moves 40,000 Ubuntu PCs

@Hummm

"When they make an OS that has standard applications that are easy to install, an intuitive GUI for doing configuration, better hardware support, more common-sense everything it might be desktop-friendly.

As it is desktop Linux will never work - they should go back to the drawing board and write a desktop OS from scratch."

I'm not studying computing, I'm a builder, but I have installed and configured Ubuntu on 5 systems to date, one of them a laptop (which was indeed something of a dog but I learnt a massive amount in the process). I've only really had problems with 2 Canon scanners and a Canon printer, and the printer actually works now with the latest release (7.10).

I would have seriously considered a Dell laptop but the price was no better than the Windows alternative, and the spec was pretty basic. Not to mention the fact that you have to be a St Bernard to sniff out the relevant page on their website.