Posts by John Crisp

Spaniards get that cinking feeling

It's a bugger with my surname of Crisp..... :-)

They also have a hard time with my son named Rory...

Having lived in rural Spain and done my best at learning Spanish (and yes, they are SO forgiving because you try) I do understand why English is so popular. You just don't need so many words for basic simple communication.

I go. You go. He/she/it goes. We go. They go. We go.

So 'go', or 'goes'. And we know what they mean if they get it wrong.

Yo voy, tu vas, el/ella/usted va, nosotros vamos, vostotros vais, ellos/ustedes van.

Effectively 6 different words for one verb.

Past... I went etc. One word in English. Pretty well 6 again in Spanish.

Yes, I now understand just how damn complicated advanced English is. But as a simple communicaton medium it is very effective.

Stranded Brussels airport passengers told to check Facebook

Yeah, great but if like most you don't use roaming data due to the extorionate charges it isn't much use.

Like the emails that airlines send you with a phone number to make free calls when you are delayed. No data, no mail, no friggin use whatsoever.

As much use as a chocolate tea pot. Or an ashtray on the back of your motorbike.

City of birth? Why password questions are a terrible idea

"Using SMS and another email address is more secure" said Google.

"Quite honestly your fathers middle name is pretty worthless to us. We much rather you gave us relevant and useful info...."

Hold on to your hats people, the MoD's found the cloud

I assume they will be using ODF standards by default as per goverment policy and not proprietary ones....

Is that the flapping of pigs wings that I hear, or perhaps hell freezing over ?

Wonder which civil servants will be enjoying the fruits of this one.....

Doom is BOOM! BOOM! BACK!

3D monster maze, ZX81.... when you turned round and saw him behind you.....

Ah those were the days.....

My first paying IT job was fixing a friends IPX network so they could play network Duke :-)

You've come a long way, Inkscape: Open-source Illustrator sneaks up

We (in Promotional Merchandise) dumped Adobe around the time of CS, and at the time we were way ahead of most our trade suppliers who barely used software at all.

Like so many packages you have to think about what you really need, and 99.99999% of the time Inkscape could do what we required. The other .00001% or so we worked around

Things I missed

Pantones palettes....

Opening ai files easily

Easy text manipulation on curves etc

We also made life easier for ourselves by adopting vector based EPS as a standard file format and enforced that with clients. If it was bitmap (jpgs in Word !!!!) then change it or pay for someone to convert it.

These days we accept EPS or PDF.

Yes Illustrator was a lovely piece of kit, with a great UI. But was it worth that much more?

With no competition, of course. But with Inkscape there, absolutely not.

HORDES OF CLING-ONS menace UK.gov IT estate as special WinXP support ends

Bugger

said David Cameron.

I thought we could blame Labour for the Balls up.

Now they're both gone.... :-)

Microsoft to offer special Surface 3 for schools

As an employer I just wish the kids could a) read and write properly b) be able to perform basic maths accurately.

Quote frankly most of them are fit for fuck all, let alone employment.

Oh sure, they can do fancy powerpoints. They can 'do Word' allegedly, but usually can't.

They are brought up on a diet of toys and apps , usually taught by people who haven't any more knowledge themselves and who have no real clue about what is required in the workplace, let alone any software outside of the M$ stable. Blind leading the blind and all hooked on the M$ mindset.

They don't actually have a clue what they are doing with a computer, or what can be really achieved with one.

Tablets are a complete waste of money and only there to make the school look good and suck up to the equally badly educated parents. Oh, and the teachers all want one for free.....

Glad my brother, head of IT at a local seconday school with 1500 kids, was brave enough to tell the head and parents to shove it.

Reckoned he has saved a fortune in costs... no broken screens or devices left at home....

Quite honestly I am better off teaching new employees myself than having to retrain them.

Even worse I am trying to find a young person to train as a office IT assistant.

So you want a job in IT. So what experience have you got ?

'Oh lots. I have my IT GCSE and used computers at home and school for years.'

Waiting for stock response....

'I can do Word. And that other thing with the boxes and numbers....'

Can they code ? 'I can do Word'

Know how to build a website ? 'I think I did it in Word once'

Any idea what perl or php are ? 'Things you type in Word ?'

If/Then ? 'If I go to the pub then my frag average drops'

Ever heard of Linux ? 'Is that an app you run on a tablet ? Or something special on FuckBook ?'

What's a terminal ? 'Something you get cash from ?'

What does Ctrl+C do ? 'Secret code on my game box to tell my mate he is a c*nt' for missing a frag'

What happens when you pull that cable out of the back of the computer and plug it into another socket on the wall ? 'I got detention'

So actually you did nothing at school beyond fancy video presentations and messing about and spent all your time at home on an xbox or PS something ?

'But I got Grade C..... That's a pass isn't it ?'

I give up.

Torvalds' temptress comes of age: Xfce 4.12 hits the streets

Just wish Thunar had split screen that was dropped from Nautilus. I hate multiple panes and/or tabs. Might as well use Gmoan. Yuck.

I use Nemo, the Minted Nautilus fork, but it is a pain in the tentacles to try and get rid of Thunar and make Nemo the default file manager, despite making it the default in settings. So much for 'choice'.

C'est la vie....

No, the Linux leap second bug WON'T crash the web

Oh how boring. Clearly one second isn't enough to bring out the shills :-)

Can't you make it more disasterous ?

UNIX greybeards threaten Debian fork over systemd plan

Re: Fork systemd or stick a fork in it just get it out of here

Ah but at least it reboots quickly with systemd... Allegedly ;-)

Turn OFF your phone or WE'LL ALL DI... live? Europe OKs mobes, tabs non-stop on flights

Yup, used data on Emirates A380 to and from NZ last Xmas.

Quite handy.

Made sure the phone was silent so as not to annoy my fellow travellers.....

Certainly think voice should be banned. Screaming kids are bad enough....

THE DEATH OF ECONOMICS: Aircraft design vs flat-lining financial models

The question of infinite/finite resources misses the point the author was making.

After the crash, as a non economist, I decided to look at why the politicians to a man stood there and banged on about 'growth'. IMHO the author sums it up nicely and sums up my own thoughts nicely. It is a bitter truth, and none of us want to feel we are stupid, but we have been royally mugged off.

Growth is there to fund politicians spending more than is earned. Banks and companies to more profits. Etc.

Its not for the benefit of ordinary people.

The current system doesn't work, and never will, and the people who control it have no vested interest or benefit from changing it.

So on it will go, ad nauseum, ad infinitum.

And we are the fools they use they use and abuse.

I dread to think of the life for my children and granchildren.

BOFH: We CAN do that with a Raspberry Pi, but think of the BODIES

Users.... ROFTWIC

Rolling on The Floor Wrapped In Carpet.

Class.

Chromebooks to break out of US schools: Netbook 2.0 comeback not just for children

Re: Cheap Windows PCs with Bing

@Frank N Stein "And this is all with Windows computers. Give them something different, such as "Chrome" and they most certainly will have difficulty with "change"."

Sorry but in my own experience of users moving OSs I disagree.

They only ask a few questions. "Where is the internet. How do I get my mail." And possibly "How do I open my documents" and "How do I print''.

Most now use, or have had experience with, either touch phones or tablets with either Android or iOS and it doesn't phase them like it used too. People are generally better at adapting than sometimes they are given credit for (of course there are exceptions that brighten ones day !). Yes, Microsoft would love people to believe their way is the only way, (and then they go and copy everyone else....)

The reality is it's never been easier to change OS, and that is great for the user as it is something they shouldn't have to worry about.

UK government officially adopts Open Document Format

Missed point

Great news. I too argued for it on the cabinet site but thought it would be in vain.

Now M$ will finally have to produce software that is good enough to justify the price tag.

I might consider paying for it IF it produced documents in the correct format AND was better than its competitors (Ribbon... yuck)

Oh, and if it worked on all my Linux machines.....

NHS delivers swift kick to Microsoft's wallet over fee demands

In my experience changing desktops and user interface is not a big issue. It's made to sound much worse than it really is. Microsoft does nothing much better on the desktop than anything else these days.

People have adapted quickly enough to say tablets or mobiles.

The problems are always the apps. Stuff like IE only applications or other proprietary apps. The government should be looking at apps/data that are generally accessible from any OS and remove the dependency on any specific desktop. Who knows what might be running on the desktop in 10 years (if indeed we still run desktops). Yes I am sure there will still be a need for some specific stuff and that cannot de discounted entiterely

Yes I love my linux but its not the be all and end all. The focus should not be on the OS but open standards. What you use to access that data should be largely irrelevant.

It might take time and money now, but will certainly save it in the long run.

'Cortana-gate' ruins Satya Nadella's Microsoft honeymoon

Think its going to be a long time before talking to your brick becomes 'de rigeur'.

For me I think its a blessing. It's bad enough with people hollering to each other on their toys - naturally not being able to hear the other end is easily cured by shouting louder. And I really don't need to hear the ins and outs of your personal life. I have enough crap in my own thanks.

The only thing I do hear people say to their phone when NOT on a call is stuff like 'why the f*ck doesn't the battery last longer you piece of sh*t' and 'bugger, no f*cking signal'

Once cortana et al can answer these mystifying questions they may catch on.....

Spanish struggle to control spelling of 'WhatsApp'

Re: Why translate?

Most Spanish letters are pronounced as per their alphabet, and usually only have that one sound.

W is pronounced (roughly) 'ubay doblay'

I can't do it very well, but love getting my son to say www quickly...

A 'Wh' doesn't really occur, (AFAIAAW) so for a Spaniard to pronounce it as written using their method it would be similar to 'whiskey' as above using 'gui'

Where I live, as with many things they have inherited from the internet, they adopt the english pronunciation.

Gender is a pain in the butt for us English speakers who are unaccustomed to it. I'm always getting my 'la' and 'el' mixed up. I also badly miss 'it' which they don't really have.

Ah well. The suns shining and the beer is cold. What do I care :-) Salut !

Ofcom to BT Openreach: From now on, you'd better kill 70% of gremlins within 2 days

OpenReach are a bunch of incompetent idiots. The engineers and their immediate bosses are ok (usually) but above that are rows of bean counting drones.

They get away with it because they don't have to face the fury of their customers.

This ruling means they will focus even more on the urban centres to keep up the percentages and ignore more rural (time consuming) ones.

Had this row with BT a short while ago. I pay the same as a townie. I accept I might not get the same speed but do expect I don't get bounced down the queue 'due to lack of resources' i.e. read 'bugger you, I can fix 10 jobs in town in the time it takes to fix you'.

After 2 missed appointments ('if there is no one at the premises we may charge you'. 'So what will you pay ME if you no show....? Ah. Bugger all. That's fair then').

I screamed and screamed and screamed at BT, and despite being told no one could make it that morning due to the inevitable excuses, I told them if I was chair of BT I'd get it fixed immediately. 'Give me solutions, not excuses'. An engineer arrived 2 hours later and the first question was 'how did you manage that ?'

'Perseverance'....

OpenReach should be entirely independent, and CONTACTABLE by users. Until it is they will never change.

The current system is a clusterfuck of epics proportions.

Redmond is patching Windows 8 but NOT Windows 7, say security bods

Re: Same old...

@AC

I'm not sure I exactly said any of that did I ? I certainly never said M$ are always wrong regardless.

Indeed the report could be false and a load of tripe. Does that mean no one can comment ?

I said that if a company contracts to support something for a given period of time, I have reasonable expectation of them doing so, no matter what the product or who the company is. There is reasonable expectation to fix anything they find is wrong PDQ.

That's part of what you pay for.

In which case, in this instance, and if it is found to be true, then they should be given a kick up the butt.

I would have no expectation that they should support XP now. It 'ran out of warranty' for want a better word. Yes it may still work well. But they no longer offer to support or maintain it, unless you take out the extortionate 'extended' warranty (where have we heard that before ?). Like pretty well any other product you buy - few give genuine 'lifetime' guarantees.

IMHO there are too many large companies who ignore and ride roughshod over basic consumer rights and more concerned at flogging you something new than maintaining something they sold you 6 months ago. Shareholder and profits are king and I was only commenting that I think it is great to see other companies keeping the large ones on their toes. (if indeed that is what they are doing)

Yes, if companies thought they were going to get sued for not releasing 100% secure code, they quite possibly wouldn't produce any. However they don't offer to do that, and I don't believe that anyone reasonably expects them to be able to do so. I also don't believe making profit is a bad thing at all - it keeps a roof over my head. However, you just can't ignore an agreement because you changed your mind, brought out a new toy and now can't be bothered and it costs to much to do.

With unsupported Open Source expectations are different - that you use it without warranty - and there are the usually liberal warnings plastered about the fact. I didn't say that a Linux developer could never be sued. But it's a lot harder to do so when there is no consideration/contract and no offer of warranty.

You pays your money (or not).......

Same old...

Funny old thing expectation.

If I contracted to buy Windows (or anything else from anyone else) I'd expect them to fix everything that was broken PDQ. No excuses. Your new car has dodgy brakes ???

But I guess they leave that peach out of the contract. They are a commercial company who have sufficient market share and cash to not have to worry about pandering to users. And in reality the people who really matter are the shareholders. As a user you are as much the product as the software.

So I gave up on that idea. I use linux everywhere. It probably has as many holes as the paid for offerings. Maybe more. But it makes no promises. I understand that, and live with the consequences of my choice.

I also don't have to worry that the license police will catch me using something, even if it isn't fit for purpose. Dodgy brakes sir ? You're nicked mate.

As a M$ user you should have the right to demand quality and proper support as with any paid for product (that's what the Sales of Goods Act was designed for), and hey should be called to account for any failures. Good on the people who search them out and keep them on their toes.

Unless you use a paid for/supported distro you have paid your money (or not) and taken your chances.

Personally I prefer a reasonably honest approach, even if it has its flaws :-)

I can live with that, and don't feel cheated.

Britain'll look like rural Albania without fracking – House of Lords report

It matters not how much is down there. It will still run out. Not if, just when.

Estimates of reserves are one thing. Getting it out is another entirely.

Ultimately we're just putting off the ugly facts none of us want to face or pay for. NIMLs. Not in my lifetimers. Or SEPs....

And when its gone, who clears up ? In the North Sea I believe us tax payers are shelling out big time on rig decommissiong after the 'owners' were a tad careless, hoovered up the oil, and strangely went bust. Or were so poor they need massive subsidies and tax relief to do it.

Hmmmmm. Where did all that cash go ?

And as pointed out above by our NA cousins, there are other costs as well. Buy water is a good plan :-)

I believe I read some while ago it costs about 1 barrel of oil in energy for every 5 extracted in the Gulf, compared to 3 for 5 with shale. Not sure if that is right but certainly energy will still have a higher cost than we've used too.

Either way, burning stuff and chucking the remains in the air can't be that good, whatever you use for the fire. (Having lived 45 years next door to a nuclear station I'd rather those in the short term)

Ah well. Guess it keeps people warm and happy and that buys votes.

Sage's 63-year-old CEO says au revoir: 'Life's all about choices'

Ah so that explains their extortionate fees. Had to save up for his pension.

One of the most satisfying days of my life was to get rid of their mutton dressed as lamb sat on top of a yonks old database they couldn't be bothered to update.

HM Treasury: Look at our SME-friendly contracts ... that we just gave to a multinational

Very nice lunch than you Mr Yakilotso

Politicians come, politicians go....

Facebook: Need help click-farming? Check out our NEWSWIRE

Oh great.

So I leave FB due the mountain of complete and utter retarded garbage, and now the latest video of some moggy setting light to its own farts and hair and going Woof! or some pre pubescent having a bad experience with an ingrowing pube will be syndicated and making global headlines.

Makes me feel old when I remember those halcyon days when the brats, plebs, and morons were either in bed, prison, or asylum. It may have been frustratingly slow. But it wasn't plain frustrating.

Oh I just love this internet of things :-)

Your files held hostage by CryptoDefense? Don't pay up! The decryption key is on your hard drive

Where are the Microsoft shills and fanbois when you need them ?

So now not only do I enjoy running exclusively non windows, but I have great reason to ban EVERYTHING Windows off my networks :-)

SACRILEGE! Hitchhiker's Guide game's back ... and it TWEETS at you

"I'm stuck on the bridge of The Heart Of Gold. AGAIN."

Apply first rules.... Find your towl. Don't Panic ???

Microsoft gets with the times, builds two-factor authentication into Office 365

I'm fed up with being asked for my number. More data mining, and spyware on your phone. It's private.

I've had online accounts for junkmail (why on earth would you leave your data with them ?) for donkeys years and never been hacked - a half decent password helps I guess. Providers should enforce much stricter passwords for starters.

Ironically a friend enabled 2FA and due to a flaw in hotmail/outlook they are now permanently locked out, despite comprehensive proof the account is theirs.

So good luck to all you early adopters :-)

Judge: Google owes patent troll a 1.36% cut of AdWords' BEELLIONS

The rich

Just get richer.

Another couple of Caribbean Islands bought up by the the execs of investment firms bankrolling patent trolls. Ok, so the Chocolate Factory got rapped - good news. Who pays ? The customer = us

Did it make the world a better place ?

I'm not against patents per se, but the current system is madness and really just a nice way for lawyers to earn enough to compete with the investment firms income :-)

Round and round we go.

DNS poisoning slams web traffic from millions in China into the wrong hole

NSA morning meeting

Damn, damn, damn. Back to the drawing board boys....

Look! GNOME 3.10 (with Fedora 20). Did we mention GNOME 3.10?

The reason I dumped unity. Sorry but I'm too old to do full screen. I run multiple windows on multiple monitors. I want a CHOICE.

When will the smartarses stop foisting their ideas on me ? Are they just trying to justify their payscale ?

Fine, give me an option. And let me make up my OWN mind. If I don't want choice I'll buy W$n.

Long live XFCE.....

Watch out, MARTIANS: 1.3 tonne INDIAN ROBOT is on its way

I'd ask the 7000 odd Indians who starved to death today what they thought....

Or should we ask the ones who will die tomorrow ?

As Stalin said. One death is a tragedy. A thousand is just a statistic. We know what goverment deal in.

RM CEO: We didn't even try to sell PC biz before killing it

RIM. Ridiculously overpriced crap. There is profit and there is extortion. They practised the latter on schools where the buyers frequently usually don't have sufficient expertise to know what they are doing.

Hence they now buy tablets which go completely against the grain of current goverment policy to stop teaching 'Word' (god I hate that expression - M$ driven marketing) and start teaching programming again.

Have argued this with my brother who is IT head at local comprehensive with about 2,000 students, but he's been sold the dream and has insufficient technical knowledge to know better.... he had nothing to do with IT til 6 years ago and 'fell' into the job by accident.

Thin clients and servers are the best way to go in many situations as pointed out above... the kids are evil with kit. Give them something they don't want to steal and is cheap to repair or replace.

Why buy expensive Apple kit ? Cos the Teachers want one, and it looks good with parents. It's about social climbing, not education.

Expert chat: The end of Windows XP and IE6

It's all about the 'apps' Luke

Not the OS.

I migrated our small business to Linux at the start of this year, and it was the best thing I ever did quite frankly. None of the users are 'young' and I expected a degree of resistance from dyed in the wool MS users. The reality ? Barely had a problem with Linux. Much less than I ever had with Windows (and we were on XP).

The trick was the apps. I got them to use programs that would be the same on both systems for a while before the change - Firefox/Thunderbird/LibreOffice etc

The ONLY program that we couldn't change was Sage, so we dumped it - the reality was (in hindsight) that one program alone cost us a fortune in time and energy, and money. It really was awful, along with the support. I just felt like an udder being constantly milked. I guess we could have VM'd it - but dumping it was way more satisfying. The best chat with Sage I ever had :-)

Admittedly the big companies have the luxury of leaning on their suppliers for change which small ones don't. But there is an answer for most things if you throw away your prejudices and take a little time to look. And if it doesn't break, you don't need much support.......

Hardware has not been a problem as we were using slightly older machines. Just check everything before you go - fail to prepare, prepare to fail. Anything suspect (very little) was dumped for something that worked.

Desktop Linux has come a long way. it still isn't perfect, but then what is ? Maybe with more users, there would be more pressure to resolve some things which are still annoying. However, I spend far less time sorting out OS issues, and more time on actual work.

Ironically, just recently it took me an hour to find and fix something on a friends Windows 8 system which would have taken me 5 minutes in XP, purely because I couldn't find what I needed when I needed it. I found the learning curve is much bigger than it was going to Linux.

I also just ran a test on a friends laptop. An typically 'underpowed' Windows 7 spec, it took 2m 50 secs to boot to a desktop with Firefox and Skype open and on the ragged edge of swapping itself to death. Xubuntu took 50 seconds to do the same with plenty to spare. I was gobsmacked to be honest. I've recently been converting a lot of older XP machines, used in the main by older than average users (a lot of pensioners). My phone has not been burning with support queries.

The reality is that Linux ISN'T that hard either to learn, or maintain. Certainly no harder than 'learning' Windows, and is not something to be scared of. It has its pros and cons like any system. I just feel a lot of the MS people here put Linux down without really having tried it properly. Maybe it isn't for you. But at least now you have to upgrade from XP, forget the scaremongering and give it a decent trial.

And for the record, I was a long time believer in MS. I just woke up one day and smelled some coffee :-)

New online banking Trojan empties users' wallets, videos privates

Neither young nor poor, I'm happily in the minority :-)

Time to get on with something constructive.

LinkedIn looks at bank account, thinks: We'll raise one Instagram*

Way had enough of people recomending you for ridiculous things.

Apparently I am now a guru in all things IT, half of which I haven't even heard of.........

The whole recommendation system is worthless. And so is LinkedIn.

Facebook killing off Sponsored Results in search pages

" Personally I always felt that the sun being able to call itself a newspaper was the

depressing thing..along with McDonald's being able to call itself a restaurant"

And windows an operating system....

:)

Microsoft licence cops kick in TWICE as many customers' doors as rivals

Roll on year end

31.12.12 My last Windows box (which IS licenced) goes out of the door. Hallelujah !

No more worrying about licences. No more bills from Bill & his muckers. No more completely obscure undocumented crashes. No more support.m$.com No more 350Mb of drivers, 340mb of which is the 'help and consumables support program' (née spyware)

Nope, Linux ain't Windows and you need a few skills and a bit of patience. It might not run everything out of the box. What you can't, you can usually emulate if need be. Some stuff you can even do with out, if you are honest... My nice little Canon scanner had to go. Very nice. But Windoze only driver. No great loss though. There are plenty more out there.

Nope, it ain't nirvana. It's just another OS. Yes it has problems & bugs. Show me an OS that hasn't ???

I was worried about moving, but it was worth every cent, and with a little careful planning it was easy - get staff using open oource stuff like Firefox/Thunderbird etc on Windows beforehand eases the transition.

Best of all was the satisfaction from getting out from under the straightjacket of M$. AWESOME !!!!!

And having seen a friend just get her new shiny WIn 8 Laptop blitzed by duff drivers today, and wasting a day of work plus losing shed loads of stuff, I'm glad we are gone.

A Linux server OS that's had 11 years to improve

It's great and I love it.........

I've been using it since late v4 and it has been great. OK, it's not necessarily the cutting edge. v8 will help with more contemporary versions of things like PHP. I run a few v8 betas and they have been very stable indeed.

Yes, templates & modifying things take a bit of getting your head round if you really need to (and if like me you aren't an expert unlike 'us screwdriver-and-soldering-iron folks'). Anyone with an ounce of commonsense and a modicum of education will suss it in no time.

Disabling services is a doddle once you know how (or as suggested, use a contrib if you don't)

and is something like (if I remember correctly)

db configuration setprop (whatever service) status disabled; signal-event console-save

Is that so hard compared to some arcane things I have come across elsewhere ? I don't have to worry about manually hacking a config file to enable or disable a service - all that's taken care of in the background, as it should be. I just want it on or off.

Yes, some services are 'running' to start with, thought I'm not sure 'everything' is correct, but the default settings are pretty conservative - e.g local access only. Apache is needed to run the web managerment interface. Is that so unusual if you run say webmin ?????? Mail is enabled so that the system can send admin notices in the first instance. Is that unusual too ? Samba ? How else are we going to share files on a file server ?

Security ? Only one of the servers I have installed ever got hacked and that was because the owner, against my better advice, insisted on changing to a nonsense root password. He learned his lesson.

The rest have been fault free. They sit in a corner and do what they are meant to do. Just work. For months on end, without trouble - the longest was over a year, and only went down because they moved offices.

I run all sorts of stuff on mine - vTiger, eGroupware, PHPlist. LimeSurvery, and lord knows what else over time. Yes, I have long argued that to be a competitor to SBS it needs shared Calendaring, but then no one in the FOSS world can ever seem to make up their mind as to a standard for such things.......... an easy replacement for Outlook/Exchange is a must, in the Linux world in general. It's been the sticking point in me trying to get people to move away from Windows. They'll give up their Windows, but not their Outlook. Funny really.

Having tried a few other linux 'server' versions (and having had to try & figure out the mess that is WIN SBS), one thing I have always been concerned about is whether the system is secure with the things I DO enable. I'm no SAMBA, SMTP or Apache expert. At least with this, it takes away a lot of that pain.

A great distro, and I won't be changing, hopefully for a very long time.

Spanish bar invites customer abuse

Life's a bitch.............

Like most things colloquial & slang, it doesn't translate directly. Google / Babelfish choke on this.

"Oye, cabrón, ponme una puta cerveza o te corto los putos huevos, gilipollas de la puta mierda."

Roughly

" Hey bastard, give a bitch of a beer or I'll cut off your balls off, you dickhead of a bitch shit"

Amazing what your kids learn first at school :-)

Things is in Valenciano, the local language, puta is a very common term - the sort of thing you greet your mates with, whereas in Castellano (Spanish) it's a bit more offensive - I nearly saw a Valencian killed here in my village because he used the term 'puta madre' - your mothers a bitch.

Quite funny that having lived here for 18 months and thinking I know nothing of the language despite studying all that time, I read this and instantly fell about laughing.

Gave me a nice 'glowy' feeling !

One thing is for sure, and that is that the Spanish swear a lot more than I had believed possible.

And the word 'conyo' (not 100% sure of the spelling but that's how it sounds) is in everyday parlance for both men AND women.

US retailers start pushing $20 Ubuntu

Rising to the bait...........

In my experience most average computer users wouldn't know an ISO file if it fell on them from 40,000 feet. This is aimed at average users, not experienced ones.

I don't see what's wrong with lobbing a few on the shelves. 20 bucks is nothing in the scheme of things, especially if you are rich enough to shop in PC World ;-)

If it encourages a few extra users, then what's the harm - unless you say that if they have problems installing etc, they may well never try it again and slate it to all & sundry. At least it gives users some choice.

Adrian, I wonder how stable 8.04 would be in say 5 years time and after 3 major services packs, 40 million patches, hacks, fiddles et al ???? Maybe nearly as stable as XP I guess....

IE7. Don't make me laugh......

And don't get me started on Windows & system security. Most people I know using Vista just turn off the warnings (it's usually the first question they ask, and perfectly possible in linux as well, if you really feel the need and can read), and there you are, back to square one - administrative user, full rights and no security. And they are the ones least likely to know a scam from a slap in the face with a wet fish. Why can't they write software for Windows that runs in user space and doesn't require full admin rights ? Or am I being completely stupid ?

And no, I'm not a fully licenced linux druid - I use MS on the desktop for work most days because some software I have to run won't easily run under linux. I don't think Linux is quite the full ticket yet for desktop mainly due to lack of some main stream applications. But I can't wait for the day that it is, so at least I have some choice.