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Even wired don't know what an OS is. Or rather the definition of OS has changed. A strange time when your industry jargon enters the popular lexicon but always slightly twisted.

You can't even call yourself a Troll in the UK now without people thinking you go on Facebook and mock the dead to their nearest and dearest.




Yes, the BBC News at Ten told us that "the website Mumsnet has warned its 1.5 million users that their data may have been hacked as a result of the Heartbleed computer bug. It's the first time the virus has been found on a British website"


I have found the BBC's Technology reporting particularly irksome. Their website is filled with re-hashed press releases. I even re-wrote an article concerning turning urea into electricty for them to show what it could have been like if they had put half an hour's effort into it, naturally I didn't even get a response.


Of course not. They thought that you were taking the piss in a shocking way.

I did once mail a correction to a story about a new EU regulation which had been a high profile item across BBC News. It was quite a fundamental thing, and I got a short mail from a senior editor, thanking me and angrily lamenting that it wasn't a difficult thing for his reporter to check, state of journalists these days, etc etc. The story was changed.

--edit: make a bad pun worse.


What is Tails, if not an operating system?


A distribution of the Linux operating system. It's a Debian distribution with some userspace tools bundled.


This depends. technically linux isn't an OS, just a kernel (hence the whole GNU/linux stuff). But even the GNU + linux isn't really a full OS. I feel calling a distribution an OS is pretty valid (though it is a member of the linux family and based off of debian).

I guess the main thing would be the OS is everything which isn't an application, and Tails is definitely not a single application, though it is specialised.


A distribution of an operating system, is itself, also an operating system.


Eh... it is more correct to call a distribution an OS than to call a kernel an OS; the kernel is only a component.


"No officer, these aren't drugs, they're a distribution of drugs with some userspace fillers bundled."




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