Christmas is over. Hopefully everyone had a good time hanging out with friends and family, but it’s almost time to go back to work. It’s time to head back into the world of managing our time and working hard.
Is there anyone better to learn about time and project management than the person who has one of the hardest, and most dangerous jobs; even though he only does it one day a year. Yes, I’m talking about the icon of Christmas, one Mr. Santa Claus.
Via TaskWorld
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The United States of America has given thanks for another year, and that means Black Friday has also been and gone. Yes, you survived it yet again, managing to avoid being crushed under foot by stampeding bargain-hunters. Congratulations, one and all.
Then again, perhaps you avoided this unfortunate fate by staying in and binge-watching television all day instead. There’s only one way to find out… Poll!
To answer this week’s question please scroll down the page until you see the poll staring back at you. But first, we need to look at the results from last week, when we asked, “Do You Still Own a CD Player?”
Out of a total of 395 votes, 42.8% chose Yes, But I Rarely Use It, 26.6% chose Yes, And I Use It Regularly, 12.9% chose Yes, But I Never Use It, 8.6% chose No, I Stream Everything, 4.6% chose No, I’m a Naughty Pirate, 3.5% chose No, I Buy Music Digitally, and 1% chose What Is a CD Player?
These results show that most people do indeed still own a CD player, with a total of 82.3% of people answering in the affirmative. However, the majority of those admit to rarely using it, if indeed ever.
Of those who don’t own a CD player, the majority stream their music through services like Spotify or Apple Music, while others either buy music digitally, or (Shock! Horror!) pirate everything.
We received a lot of great comments, including those from Colonel Angus, Bob Brandt, and Jon Glass. Comment of the Week goes to Marty Monroe, who earns our admiration and affection for this comment:
I still use a radio/CD/cassette almost every day, in addition to the CD player that is hooked up to my hi-fi. When I can, I purchase all my music on vinyl. When I can’t get the vinyl, then it’s a CD. I have never considered streaming music or buying digital downloads. Call me old fashioned by I like to own something physical.
I also regularly listen to cassettes. I have many old radio comedies that I recorded in the 1960s and 70s, many of which are unavailable in any other format. Back then, I spent many an hour tracking programs down, swapping them with like minded people around the world.
A few years ago, a friend gave me all of the surviving Hancock Half Hours as mp3s on CDs, which have all been cleaned up. I listened to one particularly rare episode which contains a number of brief pauses. These correspond exactly with the dropouts on my original cassette recording. So this has come home. Whenever I listen to these old comedies I always drag out the cassette. All that background noise adds to the authenticity of the listening experience.
We chose this comment because it offers an interesting insight from someone of a certain age. Over the last 50 years we have used vinyl, audio cassettes, compact discs, and (most recently) digital downloads.
However, just because a new format emerges doesn’t mean everybody automatically moves on from the older formats. As the resurgence of vinyl in recent years has demonstrated.
Black Friday has happened, with the holiday season now being in full swing. Retailers are desperate for you to buy stuff from them, whether you need it or not. And they kicked things off by cutting prices left, right, and center on Black Friday. And Cyber Monday. Probably.
We want to know whether you managed to nab a bargain over this past weekend. As MakeUseOf is a technology site, we’re only interested in the gadgets you have bought, so hand towels and garden furniture don’t really cut it. Do be sure to leave a comment detailing your purchase though.
Once you have voted in the poll above, please explain in the comments section below why you voted that way. If you got a bargain, what product was it and how much did you pay? If you didn’t get a bargain, how come you missed out? What made you choose to avoid Black Friday?
The more information you can provide with your comment, the more accurate our conclusions can be based on the results. The best comment of the week will win our everlasting admiration and affection. At least until we all meet back here again this time next week with a new question.
Image Credits: Alan Cleaver via Flickr
APT, the Advanced Package Tool from the Debian project, is for managing packages by using a lot of separate tools to accomplish various tasks. In the past, users needed to know multiple command structures like apt-get, apt-cache, apt-config, and many more to utilize the full feature-set of APT.
APT was created originally to solve a lot of package management problems like putting an end to the dependency hell that so many people experienced in the early days of Linux-based operating systems. Unfortunately, APT suffers from a different kind of hell, something I call “Dispersed Documentation Hell” (DDH). The documentation related to APT is scattered in various different tools and in some cases, such as the main apt command, practically impossible to find.
For over a decade, practically all tutorials and guides for installing and removing packages on a Debian/Ubuntu based system have been suggesting apt-get to users. In the past, that was the correct suggestion because “apt” as a command hadn’t existed at the time but due to the Dispersed Documentation Hell a lot of people aren’t aware that now it does exists.
If you wanted to install a package almost all guides will suggest:
sudo apt-get install package
but now instead you can simplify that with
sudo apt install package
Some may argue that “apt” isn’t much different than “apt-get” and that is true but I think the hyphen in the command is what creates a bottleneck for many users due to its awkwardness. Using apt instead will save time and save the amount of keystrokes required to accomplish the same task.
The fundamental problem with the documentation regarding APT is that depending on where you look and how you look, you may or may not find anything at all. If you were to search Google, or DuckDuckGo, for “apt documentation” you’d find one of three types of results:
If you were to throw “linux”, “ubuntu”, or even “debian” into the search query the types of results you’ll receive won’t change. The DDH is so severe that you’ll find documentation from Debian.org marked as Obsolete Documentation before you’ll find anything useful related to the “apt” command, if you ever find it at all.
Man Pages are documentation pages that can be used locally on your system or via online directories. Local entries may or may not be up to date depending on the version of your distro. For example, Ubuntu 15.10 has the latest man page but 14.04 does not by default. However, if you keep your 14.04 version of Ubuntu up to date with service packs then you should have the updated man page. You can check to see if you have the latest version of the man page with the command below.
man apt
On the other hand, if you were to search for the man page online then you will almost always find the old overview man page. If you were to keep digging, though, you may uncover the Ubuntu 15.10 man page which is up to date or instead you may uncover the online 14.04 man page which is out of date.
The list below contains the most useful options available via the apt command and what old commands they simplify.
Most of the recent operating systems based on Debian or Ubuntu have the up to date version of APT that allows for some tasks to be simplified but the Linux Mint team decided that APT should be simplified quite a few years ago. Linux Mint created a python script (started in 2009) to make APT as useful and as simple as possible. I hope that Debian sees the benefit of expanding the functionality of apt so that in the future everyone can benefit from the simplified approach that Mint is taking. The apt command can be so much better than it is right now and hopefully Debian sees this as well and brings apt to its full potential.
Linux Mint decided to make an interesting choice in their script by removing the need to use sudo. For example, if you run “apt install package” it will automatically apply sudo to the front of it during processing so the user doesn’t need to remember if something needs sudo or not, the script will apply it or not accordingly.
The list below contains the most useful additional options available via the Linux Mint apt command and what old commands they simplify. Note: the following list only applies to Linux Mint users at the moment.
The apt command has simplified a lot of tasks with command-line package management on the Linux (Debian-based) desktop and with Linux Mint taking the initiative to improve it further, hopefully it will help the community transition to the new method. The only command that I noticed Linux Mint’s apt script missing thus far is “apt add-repository” to replace the awkward add-apt-repository command, so I wrote a patch to add this feature to the script. I’m pleased to inform you that they have accepted my patch so this feature will be available in a future release of Linux Mint.