h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Maintenance-free garden?

Nature will upset the plans of anyone who believes that you don't have to work hard to get things to look the way you want. Besides, how do you know whether the woman next door can afford to do any more than she's already doing, or hire someone to do it for her? Not everyone is as rich as you .

"Nature will upset the plans of anyone who believes that you don't have to work hard to get things to look the way you want"

Its the wife's job.........

{about 5/6 year back, the boss of linux offered £10,000 of his own money, to anyone who could get a virus in to linux, no one has done it yet}

Viruses are so last year.

In these days of cyber-terrorism, the most relevant thing is that there are no security vulnerabilities in it. Sadly, that's not the case.

?wheres me tea?

Ask your wife.

WHAT ask the bloody missus.........

Since I'm using Chrome OS, a Linux operating system, these days I can atest that occasional security problems do come up, the worst of them so far the 'textmess' problem, originating with the Google team that also wrote the Google keyboard updates of July 2014, same outfit that earlier generated the missing emails crises of 2004, 2006 and 2008, though during that period they were operating out of Microsoft.

Linux always has had its security problems.

I've got a text on Linux hacks dating to 2008, for example.

I'm currently using three security programs, AVG, Malwarebytes and CM (Clean Master), which cooperate well and have each successfully nailed computer security problems missed by the other two.

The main advantage of Linux is that it lacks some of the programs characteristic of Microsoft Windows developed to protect issues of proprietary interest, often exploited by malware artists to plant undesirable material in a difficult to eradicate form.

Even Canonical (UBUNTU) these days reccomends antivirus and computer security programs as a supplement to their OS.

I'd personally rate AVG like the best and most comprehensive in the field, but even AVG has generated occasional internal problems.

...maintainance free gardens?

Very popular concept in Sun City, CA, where lawns are frequently replaced by plastic mulch buried under a layer of gravel...

...which only simplifies the problems of weeding for weeds coming up from wind born and bird born seed...

Of course, there's always concrete and asphalt pavement, with or without embellishments of ornamental tiling, in which case weeds only come up in the cracks in the pavement.

I get many of my best garden plants by means of collecting from plants coming up in cracks in the pavement.

Collecting hardy parking lot endemics capable of doing that is one of my hobbies.

Even without cracks in the pavement, one will occasionally need to either sweep, hose or blow the pavement clean.

Back in the first half of the 20th century, many people moved out to the deserts West of the Rockies because of respiratory ailments. The air was cleaner and many of those folks suffered from fewer allergies and sinus conditions. Then they started planting lawns and gardens, introducing familiar and troublesome pollen to the air... the dry air, in these Western deserts. Now they have many of the same allergies and respiratory problems they had before with added discomfort from their dry and cracked nasal passages.

its harder to virus linux because it's a password needed for many places, whereas windows - 1 password and your in to all it's workings

Password?

"Joe sent me."

Somewhat relevant: http://xkcd.com/792/

my grand dad met Joe Stalin once........... just thought i'ed chuck a random statement in the thread, just trying to kill it off............

Johnny Cash, working at the time as a USAF intelligence analyst, monitoring Soviet communications, was the first known in the west to hear the news of Joseph Stalin's death.

Surely Stalin was the first to know.

Smudger.

According to legend, Stalin came back to life for a moment after he'd initially died in response to an insult uttered by Nikita Krushchev at Stalin's deathbed.

I've only just heard that we came second in WWII, everybody else got rebuilt - we're just starting

"Surely Stalin was the first to know" [Smudger 879n]

I suggest that you read the statement again:

"Johnny Cash... was the first known *in the west* to hear the news of Joseph Stalin's death."

Russia was not technically a Western country, so Stalin was not "ion the West"

Stalin was as he had his "i on the West"

Stalin was hardly perceptive. The Nazis were almost to the gates of Moscow before Stalin realized how close they were.