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Comment Fluxbox - XFCE (Score 1) 205

by Mr. Gus (#60046280) Attached to: Which Linux Desktop Environment is the Best?

Until just recently, I'd been using fluxbox for the past several years. It's fast, light, and just does the minimum things that I really need it to do.

However, two things started bugging me:

1.) Zoom loses window decorations after a while, and the windows aren't even movable with alt-clicking once this happens. Restarting it doesn't fix it, instead, I have to restart the actual window manager.

2.) There's some sort of incompatibility with its window handling and chromium's drag-and-drop. It doesn't always happen, but if there are overlapping windows, but one window is "behind", sometimes it will act as if that window is in front during a drag/drop operation. I don't do a hell of a lot of intentional drag-and-dropping in the first place, but every now and then I mis-click some item (particularly if I'm using a touchpad), and accidentally drag, say, an image by like a pixel. If it knew that it landed two pixels away on the same window, it wouldn't be a problem--it just does nothing. But by interpreting that it's on the chromium window underneath, I get switched to that window with whatever thing I accidentally dragged loaded as the next page. Rare, but super annoying.

Zoom was the main thing, since I need to use it regularly for work, but my read is that it's just not an active enough project to keep up with recent stuff that's cropped up (last release was five years ago). Ended up switching to XFCE, trying the full-on desktop environment life, at least for now. Fine so far, and picked it since it's fairly "raw window manger-ish" as desktop environments go. The one thing I really miss about fluxbox is being able to add arbitrary windows to tabs managed by fluxbox (ie you could have chromium and firefox both in the same "window", switching back and forth via the title bar).

Honestly would probably just go back to fluxbox if the zoom issue was fixed, though I might explore some other raw window managers soon when I have more free time to futz around with trivial stuff.

Comment My Top Three (Score 1) 268

by Mr. Gus (#53824231) Attached to: Slashdot Asks: Your Favorite Podcasts? And Why?

* Astonishing Legends - Basically the "Unsolved Mysteries" of podcasts, and it's amaz... er, astonishing!
* The Eastern Border - Latvian Journalist's perspective on living in the baltic states in the soviet era
* The Dangerous History Podcast - An anarchist/libertarian college history professor's take on various historical events.

I found out about Astonishing Legends when I was reading up on Tamam Shud, and one podcast led to the other, which led to the other...

Astonishing Legends is both great and pretty universal. I think everybody should listen to it. The other two are great too, but probably appeal to more specific audiences. I will say, though, that if you're not particularly libertarian (I'm not), you might still give Dangerous History a chance. It's very good about calling out all the actors in any given event on what they've done, without slipping into a mythological "this was the good guy, this was the bad guy" simplified narrative.

Comment Re:Who are we rooting for today? (Score 5, Insightful) 106

by Mr. Gus (#52289933) Attached to: Judge Blasts Oracle's Attempt To Overturn Pro-Google Jury Verdict

Google doesn't need our sympathy--Oracle needs our antipathy. The people behind Oracles side of the case are sociopaths attempting to do something that will set a precedent that is extremely negative for technological progress in American society. Once set, it could extend beyond the country as part of our continual series of copyright treaties, making Oracle responsible for doing serious damage to human society as a whole. They're monsters who should be locked up.

Nobody seriously should care whether Google has to pay a million or even a billion dollars to some company, but they should care about the dangerous precedent Oracle was trying to set.
Linux

Kernel Dev Tells Linus Torvalds To Stop Using Abusive Language 1501

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the cool-to-hate dept.
darthcamaro writes "The Linux Kernel Development Mailing List can be a hostile place for anyone. Now Intel developer Sarah Sharp is taking a stand and she wants the LKML to become a more civil place. Quoting her first message: 'Seriously, guys? Is this what we need in order to get improve -stable? Linus Torvalds is advocating for physical intimidation and violence. Ingo Molnar and Linus are advocating for verbal abuse. ... Violence, whether it be physical intimidation, verbal threats or verbal abuse is not acceptable. Keep it professional on the mailing lists.'" The entire thread is worth a read, but Linus isn't buying it: "Because if you want me to 'act professional', I can tell you that I'm not interested. I'm sitting in my home office wearing a bathrobe. The same way I'm not going to start wearing ties, I'm *also* not going to buy into the fake politeness, the lying, the office politics and backstabbing, the passive aggressiveness, and the buzzwords. Because THAT is what 'acting professionally' results in: people resort to all kinds of really nasty things because they are forced to act out their normal urges in unnatural ways.' He also offered cookies in exchange for joining the dark side. An earlier reply by Linus further explains why he thinks it is OK to be mean: most of the time, he's only yelling at people who should know better (cultivating a crew of lead developers bound to him by Stockholm Syndrome?).
The Military

United States Begins Flying Stealth Bombers Over South Korea 567

Posted by samzenpus from the nice-day-for-a-flight dept.
skade88 writes "The New York Times is reporting that the United States has started flying B-2 stealth bomber runs over South Korea as a show of force to North Korea. The bombers flew 6,500 miles to bomb a South Korean island with mock explosives. Earlier this month the U.S. Military ran mock B-52 bombing runs over the same South Korean island. The U.S. military says it shows that it can execute precision bombing runs at will with little notice needed. The U.S. also reaffirmed their commitment to protecting its allies in the region. The North Koreans have been making threats to turn South Korea into a sea of fire. North Korea has also made threats claiming they will nuke the United States' mainland."
Censorship

NY Senators Want To Make Free Speech A Privilege 624

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the silence-will-still-be-permitted dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A group of four NY state senators have written a paper suggesting that free speech should be looked upon as a government granted privilege rather than a right. They're specifically concerned about cyberstalking and cyberbullying, and are introducing legislation to make both of those against the law. Among other troubling concepts, they argue that merely 'excluding' someone from a group is a form of cyberbullying."

Comment Another Blizzard 404... (Score 1) 166

by Mr. Gus (#36602996) Attached to: 30 Creative 404 Error Pages

In Silent Hill 2, the main character wanders through a forest into the town of Silent Hill. Once in Silent Hill, if you enter a certain building, you're greeted with the following:

http://media.giantbomb.com/uploads/0/56/258639-sh2_neelybar_hole_super.jpg

If you happen across a 404 on Battle.Net's wow forums, you're greeted with the following:

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/d
Privacy

MIT Tracking Campus Net Connections Since 1999 125

Posted by timothy from the why-assume-otherwise? dept.
An anonymous reader writes "MIT has been monitoring student internet connections for the past decade without telling them. There is no official policy and no student input." The Tech article says, though, that the record keeping is fairly limited in its scope (connection information is collected, but not the data transferred) and duration (three days, for on-campus connections).
The Internet

Data Centers Work To Reduce Water Usage 225

Posted by timothy from the hence-the-local-steam-baths dept.
miller60 writes "As data centers get larger, they are getting thirstier as well. A large server farm can use up to 360,000 gallons of water a day in its cooling systems, a trend that has data center operators looking at ways to reduce their water use and impact on local water utilities. Google says two of its data centers now are "water self-sufficient." The company has built a water treatment plant at its new facility in Belgium, allowing the data center to rely on water from a nearby industrial canal. Microsoft chose San Antonio for a huge data center so it could use the local utility's recycled water ('gray water') service for the 8 million gallons it will use each month."

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