Authored by: IMANAL_TOO on Wednesday, February 06 2013 @ 12:46 AM EST |
In September last year I was force fed a Mac by my boss. After using it daily I
thought I'd report on how it works for me. The Mac itself is not easier than
Windows 7 or Debian Linux but it is necessarily not harder either. It is on par
when it comes usage, and actually better than Windows 8 for a non-touch screen
laptop.
What has hit me hard, however, are the latest Java issues, where I guess Oracle
is to blame.
Still, I would rank Mac third here for several reasons. Linux wins because of
the amount of software I like, and that it is open source. Windows 7 comes next
because of the games available (Steam might change this). And Mac comes third,
because it is not as bad as I thought it would be. As a distant fourth I
nominate Windows 8 as it doesn't cut it on any of the 27" monitors I use.
---
______
IMANAL
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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, February 06 2013 @ 03:13 AM EST |
A landmark federal court decision that states
workplaces are
obliged to accommodate reasonable childcare-
related requests from their
employees signals significant
changes ahead for the country's employment law
landscape,
lawyers said.
The decision handed down by Justice Leonard
Mandamin
explicitly states that requests for childcare accommodations
stem
from genuine need and are not simply the product of
lifestyle
choices.
Mandamin's ruling was made in the context of parents
grappling
with irregular shift work, but experts suggest the
ruling could pave the way
for much more broad based
discussion on the role family life plays in the
workplace.
Michelle McQuigge, The Tyee
---
no luck finding the federal court
decision, but here's the
Canadian Human Rights Tribunal decision from
2010
http://decisia.lexum.com/site/chrt-
tcdp/decisions/en/item/6537/index.do [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: feldegast on Wednesday, February 06 2013 @ 08:56 AM EST |
because the US government doesn't wanna..... http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/461687407/kickstarter-
open-source-
death-star
p.s. note the date at the end--- IANAL
My posts are ©2004-2013 and released under the Creative Commons License
Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0
P.J. has permission for commercial use. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, February 06 2013 @ 09:52 AM EST |
The Case Against Patents
Just got upped one notch with the publication of this study
http://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257jep.27.1.3
It's a very strong paper. Well done.
Ric[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, February 06 2013 @ 09:59 AM EST |
XKCD
Enjoy.
Waynehtt
p://madhatter.ca [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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- XKCD - Bridge - Authored by: Imaginos1892 on Wednesday, February 06 2013 @ 12:51 PM EST
- XKCD - Bridge - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, February 06 2013 @ 02:43 PM EST
- XKCD - Bridge - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, February 07 2013 @ 10:00 PM EST
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Authored by: ws on Wednesday, February 06 2013 @ 11:11 AM EST |
Huffpo is reporting on a story about abolishing patents, as it has negative
economic value:
Patent Reform, System Should Be Abolished, Fed Economists
Say
Original paper is here[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: hardmath on Wednesday, February 06 2013 @ 11:38 AM EST |
No clickie, just my own experience to report.
I recently updated the
free ZoneAlarm firewall on my
venerable XP laptop, which resulted in memory
dumps just a
few seconds into any rebooted session. Okay, reported my
experience to the manufacturer (Check Point) and used a
system save point to
recover.
But I noticed that much like Oracle's Java, ZoneAlarm now
tries to
bundle in what I'll call (out of respect for the
community norms here) adware.
Indeed it appears the free
install of ZoneAlarm's firewall+antivirus is blocked
unless
you agree to turn over your home page and search engine
preference (in
IE) to them!!
Most ironically is that Lavasoft with Ad-aware is going down
this same path, bundling (oh, what is the word I want to
use) "adware" with
the adware blocking utility.
Currently I'm using on my wife's Win7 laptop no
firewall
(except the Windows firewall, which seems a very minimal
implementation), no Java, and ClamWin antivirus.
Seems like the wheel needs
to be reinvented.
--- Recursion is the opprobrium of the mathists. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: TiddlyPom on Wednesday, February 06 2013 @ 12:33 PM EST |
I have an Acer C7 Chromebook which I have upgraded (240GB SSD and 8GB RAM) and installed (Chr)ubuntu on. It is a fantastic little
laptop - a great demonstration of how good Ubuntu is (especially to other
commuters on the train who ask me all about it) and can be dual booted between
Chrome OS and Ubuntu (although via GRUB2 would be nice).
If this could
be sold - even with the original 2GB RAM and 320GB hard disk but with Ubuntu preloaded and at a
similar price to the ChromeBook version it would be a best seller I'm sure!
Please, please do this Asus! You could sell LOTS of these laptops with Ubuntu
on them. Everyone who has seen this little box likes Chrome OS but thinks that
Ubuntu is VASTLY better! A 'blessed' kernel giving 10-20 second boot to desktop
from OFF (via CoreBoot) would be
fantastic.
This is a real opportunity ... don't blow
it!
--- Support Software Freedom - use GPL licenced software like
Linux and LibreOffice instead of proprietary software like Microsoft
Windows/Office or Apple OS/X [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: artp on Wednesday, February 06 2013 @ 05:45 PM EST |
An
article on the
New York Times entitled "Most Facebook Users Have Taken a
Break From the Site, Survey Finds" says that Facebook is
leaking users. Don't
know if this is normal leakage or
catastrophic leakage. But with a billion
users, who is going
to notice a few thousands drifting away? 600,000,000 users
drifting away is another matter entirely.
A new survey by the
Pew Research Center‘s
Internet and American Life Project, conducted in
December,
found that 61 percent of current Facebook users admitted
that they
had voluntarily taken breaks from the site, for as
many as several weeks at a
time. --- Userfriendly on WGA server outage:
When you're chained to an oar you don't think you should go down when the galley
sinks ? [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, February 07 2013 @ 12:36 AM EST |
"It looks like form over substance," said one of the judges on the
three-judge panel. "It seems like an attempt that's too cute by half to get
around Silvers."
Another judge noted that Stevens could take back any of the rights at any time,
meaning any "transfer" of copyright wasn't very meaningful. Righthaven
couldn't really have licensed the copyrights or published the articles it had
the rights to, since Stevens Media could have reclaimed those rights at any
time.
While one can't be 100 percent sure of the result of a case based on judges'
comments, the questions in this case were very critical of Righthaven.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/02/remember-righthaven-on-appeal-copyrig
ht-troll-looks-just-as-bad/[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, February 07 2013 @ 05:17 AM EST |
Open
Source Ecology is a network of farmers, engineers, and supporters that for
the last two years has been creating the Global Village
Construction Set, an open source, low-cost, high performance technological
platform that allows for the easy, DIY fabrication of the 50 different
Industrial Machines that it takes to build a sustainable civilization with
modern comforts. The GVCS lowers the barriers to entry into farming
a>, build
ing, and manufactur
ing and can be seen
as a life-size lego-like set of modular tools that can create entire economies, whether in rural Missouri, where the project was founded,
in urban redevelopment, or in the developing world. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, February 07 2013 @ 05:24 AM EST |
"The movie industry has no rights to the profits made by the owner of
Usenet-indexing website Newzbin2 by infringing on copyrights, the England and
Wales High Court of Justice, Chancery Division, has ruled". link [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, February 07 2013 @ 05:36 AM EST |
I love 'Lowering the Bar', it's on my daily list. I think he missed one
minor
implication with this one though.
Lowering the
Bar
The problem is that the Reagan and Bush 1 White Houses dealt
with Al
Queda. Under the terms of the
memo...
Waynehttp://madhatter.ca
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Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, February 07 2013 @ 08:06 AM EST |
Rick Falkvinge has reported that the European Court of Human Rights has
ruled that File Sharing convictions are a human rights breach.
Falkvinge.net
I haven't read
the actual ruling, and I'm unfamiliar with the EU system, so
all I've got to go
on right now is Rick's post. Comments
anyone?
Waynehttp://madhatter.ca [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: OpenSourceFTW on Thursday, February 07 2013 @ 10:13 AM EST |
http://channelnomics.com/2013/02/06/judge-sides-wi-fi-patent-troll-cisco/
<
br>
Sigh.
Batten down your wireless hatching, there be a storm
brewing...[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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- Lay in popcorn? - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, February 07 2013 @ 12:21 PM EST
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Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, February 07 2013 @ 03:23 PM EST |
This was posted on the 'Rachel Does Stuff' YouTube Channel. You
remember
Rachel. She did that absolutely hilarious (or horrifying
depending upon your
point of view) Ray Bradbury tribute music video.
This is an Internet
Explorer ad parody. It's a bit too young for me, the early
seventies were more
my time, but still funny.
I'm a
Child of the Ninties
Waynehttp://madhatter.ca
PS:
I totally get his not talking to her. I too was that shy :)
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Authored by: Gringo_ on Thursday, February 07 2013 @ 05:27 PM EST |
Humankind’s common ancestor with other
mammals may have been a
roughly rat-sized animal that
weighed no more than a half a pound, had a long
furry tail
and lived on insects.
A picture is
included, but it is difficult to see the
family
resemblance.
But as researchers reported, the animal had several
anatomical characteristics for live births that anticipated
all placental
mammals and led to some 5,400 living species,
from shrews to elephants, bats to
whales, cats to dogs and,
not least, humans. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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