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[TA]

Apple has decided to patent "Being evil fucks", with a method to lock up your computer at the hardware level until you watch an ad.  Using an Apple laptop for car navigation?  Hope you can pull over and watch an ad for Transformers 4 so you don't miss your turn!  Presentation at work?  Haha, we can put that on hold, can't we?

What the application calls the “enforcement routine” entails administering periodic tests, like displaying on top of an ad a pop-up box with a response button that must be pressed within five seconds before disappearing to confirm that the user is paying attention.

These tests “can be made progressively more aggressive if the user has failed a previous test,” the application says. One option makes the response box smaller and smaller, requiring more concentration to find and banish. Or the system can require that the user press varying keyboard combinations, the current date, or the name of the advertiser upon command, again demonstrating “the presence of an attentive user.”

Hey, remember this?  Guess what's one of the cornerstones of the next iPhone OS.  Go on.  Guess.

[Royal☭]

Since TA neglected to tell us where, the iAD (that's what it's called) segment starts at about 10:47 am.  Choice quote:

The average iPhone user spends a little over 30 minutes every day using apps. Now, if we said we wanted to put an ad up every 3 minutes, that would be 10 ads per device per day. We're going to soon have 100 million devices. That's a billion ad opportunities per day in the iPhone and iPod touch community.

Emphasis mine.

[Cthulhu-chan]

So is this where Apple finally shoots themselves in the foot?  Again?

[Mongrel]

If anything is going to finally shatter the illusion that Apple was never the company they claimed they were and are a corporate behemoth in the truest sense of the word, it had damn well better be the fact that they branded their own advertising spam widget and built it right into the OS.

[Royal☭]

Apple has made a brilliant move with the iAd system, convincing its users to sit around and act excited and wax poetic about being sold things and having their use of the phone interrupted.

[TA]

Kind of shoots all that "use the iPad for presentations and work and shit" rhetoric in the dick, doesn't it?  You're doing your architectural demo with iPad visuals and suddenly you get lengthy ads for sneakers, you're fucked.

[Thad]

I don't really see Apple putting ads in its OWN software -- they've already gotten their money from you, after all, and of course it would seriously devalue their slick image.  I think it's more of a way to make more money off the people publishing free apps.

[Brentai]

I've met enough Apple enthusiasts at this point to feel assured that it's not going to affect their decision to continue purchasing Apple products.  Hell, they might just fucking love it.

The entire dev team I work with has iPads.  My immediate supervisor has two.  I have never seen the iPad in use.

[Royal☭]

I guess my only solace about the new iPhone update is that I won't actually be getting it, because my phone is too shitty.

[François]

I finally got sick of living on 140Gb, so I splurged on a new much-needed hard drive. I would never have guessed how wonderful it is to have a terabyte of free space; this is what it must feel like to reach absolute cosmic contentment. (I know, I know, please don't pop my bubble.)

Anyway. I decided to set aside a partition for a backup OS for when my old drive craps out. I'm still on the same Windows install that my computer had when I bought it, so it's bound to fail sooner or later. And I thought, hey, maybe it's time to give that new-fangled Linux thing a try, see what all the kids are babbling about.

Now I know exactly two things about Linux: that it comes in several flavors, and that everyone I've ever heard talk about it sounded like an insufferable zealot. I suppose there's not much I can do about the latter, but I did some basic research on the former and I... still don't know what I should get. This Linux Distribution Chooser matches me with openSUSE. Is that any good? Is there a better place to start? I hear a Live CD is a good option for trying things out, but their download page asks me to choose between GNOME and KDE. I've hit wikipedia but my eyes glaze over about two paragraphs in. Which one is the one that doesn't suck?

(I am being deliberately obtuse here but that's just because I refuse to see my ignorance as anything but a comical boogyman that needs to be squashed with great vengeance and furious anger.)

[TA]

My Linux experience is old and not too relevant anymore, I imagine.  But I've heard really good things about Ubuntu.  Supposed to be fairly straightforward and smooth, abstraction without obfuscation.

Gnome and KDE are both GUI environments, and I'd imagine that look and feel is something you just need to try out.  I'd get the Gnome live CD first and see how that works for you, because I recall liking Gnome more than KDE, but screw around for a while on both and see which layout makes more sense.

[Mongrel]

My Linux experience is old and not too relevant anymore, I imagine.  But I've heard really good things about Ubuntu.  Supposed to be fairly straightforward and smooth, abstraction without obfuscation.

Gnome and KDE are both GUI environments, and I'd imagine that look and feel is something you just need to try out.  I'd get the Gnome live CD first and see how that works for you, because I recall liking Gnome more than KDE, but screw around for a while on both and see which layout makes more sense.

This is pretty much the exact same knowledge as I have, only I hear that Ubuntu has now gone into many many permutations, and that some find the newer version better and some find them worse, so do some extra research prior to choosing one.

[Miss Cat Ears]

Hey I just got the thread title

[SCD]

Currently dab into ubuntu here and there, although I'm also going to look into debian totally softcore. 

Currently on another streak made much more liveable thanks to Chrome being available in linux now! 

[Bal]

If for no other reason, having an ubuntu disc around is great for diagnostic purposes, since it will boot off the CD.

[Thad]

Start with Ubuntu.  New version's out this week.  If you like it, use that; if not, try Kubuntu.  If you don't like either one, you're left with a few options, which basically boil down to:

1. do some serious research and tinkering to get stuff working exactly the way you want (whether it be another distro, another WM, or just a million little customizations);
2. wait 6 months for the next Ubuntu release and repeat.

I'm a Kubuntu guy (but have been meaning to give the default GNOME version another shot), so I'm around if you have any questions.

I've also been through Slackware and Gentoo, which are good places to start if you want to be FUCKING HARDCORE and learn everything from the ground up.  Those are for somebody who wants to invest literally hundreds of hours but learn a lot doing it.  Me, I'm glad I did it that way (because now I know my way around enough to fix shit if it breaks), but see no reason ever to do it again (knowing how to do something doesn't mean you want to do it if you can avoid it -- as I've said elsewhere, I never want to edit Xorg.conf again as long as I fucking live).

[Thad]

Upgraded to Kubuntu 10.04.  No serious problems.  The upgrade DID break keyboard and mouse input partway through, with a prompt onscreen, so I had to restart my computer (soft shutdown from the power button still worked) and resume the install from the command line.

KDE 4's still suffering from the same issues -- mainly launch/quicklaunch menus that don't have basic drag-and-drop functionality or context menus.  (It somehow borked the icon on my Firefox shortcut, among others, and there's no way I can figure out to go in and set the fucking icon on the shortcut.  There is on the desktop, but not on the K menu or quicklaunch.)

ATI drivers still suck.  KDE's plenty zippy if I don't turn on compositing (in fact I think it's faster than the previous version), but slows to a crawl when I do.

And they've taken the blue lines off the titlebars of active windows, so now active windows have gray titlebars again, which is stupid.

[Kayma]

I agree entirely with Thad and the others: if you're just starting out and wanna see what's what, start with Ubuntu. It's the closest any linux flavor has come to "just working".

Never leave home without a Live CD.

[François]

So yeah I tried ubuntu and it is pretty keen. Doesn't seem like I need to know as much as I thought I would, so yeah, okay times all around. It's nice to look at as well, though that's coming from a guy used to an OS that was released nine years ago. :D

Thanks for the recommendation!

[Royal☭]

Lifehacker today provided a link to Getting Started With Ubuntu.  Might check this out when I get home.  Also, the Live CD stuff, is it possible to just set it up to work Ubuntu or whatever off of a flash drive?