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That statement has been pretty widely discredited by now.
(note: first link includes NSFW illustration)

I wrote a rant on this topic a little while ago. Admittedly I sacrificed a little rigorousness for impact but the basic figures are, as far as I'm aware, pretty correct.

I think the OP raises a very important question; if both rising AND falling temperatures are taken as signs of global warming / climate change (and thus taken to mean "carbon emissions must stop") then it's not a falsifiable theory and as such, is scientifically pointless.

It is difficult to battle this problem when so many others don't seem to understand or care about it, but I say: Fight the good fight! I disagree with your use of the term "data mining", though. "Data mining" is a sophisticated statistical analysis of data (see, for instance: http://matlabdatamining.blogspot.com/), whereas what I think you're talking about is "data snooping" or "data theft".

I like newspaper topics from ~100 years ago. Sex education, violence in schools... nothing changes, at least in the papers.

And that's just the malicious spam! It doesn't count the dozens of helpful, well-meaning, altruistic spams I get every day from good people who care about whether I have enough hair, or I'm paying too much for prescription drugs, or my wife is completely satisfied. Bless all their hearts!

Oh, did you mean del.icio.us spam? No, I didn't think so.

Please stop spreading FUD about Adobe blocking HTML5.

Read the full story about what really happened here:
http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2010/02/adobe_is_sabotaging_html5.html

It was about Larry Masinter, Adobe's representative at W3C proposing that progress of HTML5 in W3C could be faster if the subsections on graphics and metadata could (if not now, then eventually) be moved to separate subgroups focused on those topics.

Read more at Larry Masinter's blog.
http://masinter.blogspot.com

A steam engine does useful work, the Aeolipile didn't, and was never used for anything beyond "Ooos and Ahhhs".

Here's your Citation -

The aeolipile Hero described is considered to be the first recorded steam engine or reaction steam turbine.[4]
 
In recognition of the Aeolipile's contribution to steam engineering, the U.S. Navy chose a semblance of the Aeolipile for the Boiler Technician rating badge.
 
It is not known whether the aeolipile was put to practical use as an 'engine' in ancient times. Hero's drawing shows a stand-alone device, and was presumably intended as a temple 'wonder', like many of the other devices described in Pneumatica. [3]
 
Vitruvius, on the other hand, mentions use of the aeolipile for demonstrating the physical properties of the weather. He describes the aeolipile as
"...a scientific invention [to] discover a divine truth lurking in the laws of the heavens.[5]"

Heron's wind-up cart, was clockwork, not a robot.

Here's Your Citation

The editors at New Scientist have constructed a replica of what is believed to be the earliest known programmable robot.
 
In about 60 AD, a Greek engineer called Hero constructed a three-wheeled cart that could carry a group of automata to the front of a stage where they would perform for an audience. Power came from a falling weight that pulled on string wrapped round the cart's drive axle, and Sharkey reckons this string-based control mechanism is exactly equivalent to a modern programming language.
 
By the way, Noel Sharkey is a computer scientist at the University of Sheffield, UK, who recently discovered that one of Leonardo da Vinci's robotic creations was based on Hero's designs.

The Antikythera mechanism was a glorified lookup table. It was not general purpose, and could not "reprogramed." The Jacquard loom is the generally accepted as the earliest programmable machine.

AGAIN Your Citation -

The Antikythera mechanism is an ancient mechanical calculator (also described as the first known mechanical computer)[1][2] designed to calculate astronomical positions.

But hey, I also bet you believe that Archimedes "Heat Ray" was a laser.

Seems like you're the one with the problem here as EVERY word I used was sourced in my original post.

We owe our entire civilization to the Greeks. Without their advanced understanding of the sciences and mathematics, which stood unquestioned for nearly 2000 years, we would not even be having this conversation right now and you sir would be living in a small thatch hut instead of your parents basement.

NOW GET OFF MY LAWN!

Of course, humans cannot think of everything, but with the right software model and the right tools, we will be able to. For the same reason that we use tools to perform complex calculations flawlessly, calculations that we use to have an extremely hard time doing reliably manually. We don't have the right software model in which to construct rock-solid applications because we are not thinking outside the box. We are addicted to our way of doing things.

I defend the hypothesis that the two major crises that afflict the computer industry (unreliability and low productivity) are due to our having adopted the Turing Machine as the de facto computing model in the last century. The thread concept (algorithm) is fundamentally flawed and the use of multithreading in multicore processors exacerbates the productivity and reliability problems by at least an order of magnitude. The only way to solve the crisis is to switch to a non-threaded, non-algorithmic, syncrhonous (deterministic), reactive and implicitly parallel model.

The big surprise in all this is that the solution to the crisis is not rocket science. It is based on a simple parallelizing concept that has been in use for decades. We already use it to simulate parallelism in video games, simulations and cellular automata. Use two buffers; while processing buffer A, fill buffer B with all the objects to be processed during next cycle. When buffer A is done, swap buffers and repeat the cycle. Two buffers are used to prevent racing conditions and ensure robust timing. No threads, no fuss and the resulting code is deterministic. We just need to take the concept down to the instruction level within the processor itself and adopt a synchronous reactive software model. It's not rocket science.

Folks, the days of Turing, Babbage and Lady Ada are soon coming to an end. It's time to wake up and abandon the flawed ideas of the baby-boomer generation and forge a new future. The boomers were wildly successful but this is a new age, the age of massive parallelism and super complex programs. The boomers need to retire and pass the baton to a new generation of computists. Sorry but that's the way I see it.

gad_zuki! makes a good point: Is the open Web capable of delivering an experience analogous to the Flash animations and games seen at, say, Newgrounds?

Yes. See DHTML Lemmings. It was written six years ago. WebGL is also on the horizon:

http://hacks.mozilla.org/2009/09/webgl-for-firefox/
http://hacks.mozilla.org/2009/09/three-more-webgl-demos/
http://hacks.mozilla.org/2009/10/webgl-in-the-wild/
http://hacks.mozilla.org/2009/12/webgl-goes-mobile/
http://hacks.mozilla.org/2009/12/webgl-draft-released-today/

And here's WebGL combined with Theora video to create a 360 degree interactive video:

http://bjartr.blogspot.com/2010/01/long-delayed-webglu-update-some-360.html

if they have access to facebook why not just call the police?

It's perfectly understandable that you would ask such a question. To find the answer you would have to do something incredibly difficult and unusual, such as RTFA.

But I'll help you out. Here's the relevant part of TFA:

In the first few hours that followed the earthquake, mobile service was completely disrupted. It was almost impossible to place a call, due to the combination of the damages on the cellular networks and the spike in phone calls. However, on some networks, SMS service was still available. People stuck under rubbles started texting to their friends and family (in Haiti and abroad) to tell them they were still alive and needed help. In Haiti, on a population of 8 million, there were about 4 million mobile phone subscribers. Those friends and family, not knowing what to do, started posting these SOS messages on their social networks, mainly on Facebook.

In a disaster, the phone system can be overwhelmed. The bandwidth and resources the phone system needs to make a voice call are huge compared with the bandwidth and resources needed for a simple SMS text message. A 160-character text message, plus its envelope, should be under 2 kilobits for the whole message. A GSM voice connection uses at least 6.5 kilobits per second, every second.

Also, there are a limited number of conversations possible at one time for each cell tower. In terms of how many people can use a tower at a time, SMS messages are a huge win: an SMS message doesn't tie up a chunk of the tower for seconds.

At my job, we had a Red Cross disaster training session, and the person from the Red Cross told us to expect that cell phone voice service is very likely to not be available in a disaster, but text messages are likely to still work. That was the first time I actually got interested in text messages.

I think, very seriously, that emergency services (police, fire department, etc.) should be set up to receive text messages, precisely to handle the mass-disaster scenario.

Also, in the USA, mobile phones are now required to send GPS location data when the user calls an emergency number (911). I'd like to see a similar feature for texts: when you text to 911, the phone attaches GPS location data to the text message.

steveha

Well, you claimed (spanish link) that Yum used more resources and APT was better organized. In devices with lower resources, APT+DPKG seems better. Also, newer DPKG versions include some nice improvements that help a lot the developer (specially those that have to add patches to a third party package), and that improve size and decompression times by using LZMA.

The fact that RPM was chosen seems more a political one (LSB and Linux Foundation) than a technical one. Despite that, I don't think it will be a problem. RPM is not bad and can easily be improved.

Protests are largely useless here, 200,000 (unsure on the number, but a very significant number) people protested Australia getting involved in the Afghanistan/Iraq wars and we still went. I doubt 200,000 Australians even know the Rudd Government wants to filter their Internets.

The EFA is working on this issue. I'd urge all Australian's to sign the petition they will be tabling to the Senate.

Reporters Without Borders condemning mandatory internet censorship.

Google.au's views on their plan.

Many people and organisations are speaking out against this stupid idea, but the Rudd Government is actively ignoring them.

If I had some shop skills, I'd be making an "official seal of approval", with the flag and the leading politicians behind this and some nice big government-approved tits on it.

Ironically, the only porn "seal of approval" I've seen online has been the pedobear one. Maybe a parody of that would be amusingly appropriate.

Garner's Modern American Usage admits that it's a great solution to a problem of sexist language...

The problem of sexist language is a problem of public misunderstanding and not of an actual institutional bias. I am linking this blog post because it contains a lengthy quotation from a noteworthy historian's defense for the continued use of masculine language in the generic case. The opening follows.

The reasons in favor of prolonging that usage are four: etymology, convenience, the unsuspected incompleteness of "man and woman," and literary tradition.

To begin with the last, it is unwise to give up a long established practice, familiar to all, without reviewing the purpose it has served. In Genesis we read: "And God created man, male and female." Plainly, in 1611 and long before, man meant human being. For centuries zoologists have spoken of the species Man; "Man inhabits all the climatic zones." Logicians have said "Man is mortal," and philosophers have boasted of "Man's unconquerable mind." The poet Webster writes: "And man does flourish but his time." In all these uses man cannot possibly mean male only. The coupling of woman to those statements would add nothing and sound absurd. The word man has, like many others, two related meanings, which the context makes clear.

Interested parties should follow the link for a few more paragraphs of strong, sensible defense; particularly interested readers should pick up the book that contains it as it is a wonderful tour of Western civilization from 1500 to the present.

Be safer by using open-source. FileVault is a proprietary tool from a big and famous manufacturer. This means that you can be sure that there is a built-in backdoor for government bodies to use.

On the other side...

There are known problems with EncFS, as it only support basic POSIX operations (no locking, extended attributes, etc...). This works well for simple file storage or multiplatform applications, like MacPorts, Firefox, Thunderbird, etc..., but encrypting your whole homedir is known not to work.

So what is your priority? avoid file corruption or avoid the NSA?

Billions and billions of dollars.

It's not as good as it sounds.

http://tywkiwdbi.blogspot.com/2009/01/billion-dollar-raise-dilbert.html

You can export almost everything from Google services

Outsourcing was not a problem in the 80s because Silicon Valley could do it cheaper that everybody else in those days. And the reason that they could do it cheaper is because they were riding on the crest of a revolutionary wave that they started. Lately, the has begun to dissipate and SV's superior technology can no longer give it an edge because it doesn't exist anymore. As I wrote elsewhere, SV needs a new revolution because that's what it feeds on. So, what's the next big thing? Massively parallel machines that are cheap and super easy to program. That's what. SV needs to be the first to come out with a solution to the parallel programming crisis and the first to exploit it. Otherwise, they're doomed. Ghost Valley will be their new name, a real bummer.

How to Solve the Parallel Programming Crisis

...better and richer than before. Silicon Valley was born from a revolution that was fueled by fast and cheap semiconductors. Revolution is also what sustained the Valley. Now this first computer revolution is winding down (you can't f*ck with Moore's law and walk away to brag about it), Silicon Valley needs to prepare for the next big one. If the next big revolution does not come soon, Silicon Valley will indeed die because that's what it feeds on. So what's the next big thing? Super fast and massively parallel computers that are cheap and super easy to develop applications for. If Silicon Valley can crack this puppy, it will be downhill again for another ten to fiifteen years.

But nobody knows how to make parallel programming easy, you say. Well, that's where you're wrong. The solution has been staring us in the face for years but the baby boomer generation who gave us the first revolution and who still control the industry, don't want to hear it. Too bad. Crash and burn is what Silicon Valley will do if they don't replace the old guard with better and more agile brains.

How to Solve the Parallel Programming Crisis

> Preferences, Advanced, Shortcuts?

Please, show me how to open a new tab in the background with ctrl-click, like Firefox/Chrome/Safari/IE8. I have tried and it's been a bit difficult so far.

> What's wrong with the middle mouse button?

Laptops don't have a middle mouse button unless you buy an add-on.

> Opera used Shift for that purpose before other browsers even had tabs

Do you mean shift-click? That opens a new tab and gives it focus. I'm looking for opening a new tab in the background, which is currently bound to ctrl-shift-click. And of course the biggest oddity is that you can not change this binding easily.

...judging by the age of the author.

But we needn't go all the way to Germany for this kind of behavior.

Best-selling author P.C. Cast and her daughter Kristen may also engage in this sort of behavior.

So that's two best-selling "teen authors." Wonder whether they'll make it when they're no longer able to capitalize on how much they "stand out."

George W. Bush was born in Connecticut. Although he went to elementary school in Texas, his high-school years were spent in Massachusetts. He then went to study in Yale and, interestingly, had a slightly better GPA, than John Kerry — his opponent during 2004 elections, who kept his academic record hidden, while his followers mocked Bush's.

You mean like when Arnold did it, last year?
http://strydehax.blogspot.com/2009/10/wheres-arnold.html

Cop: "Sir, did you see or hear anything about a killing last night?"

Citizen: "No, I don't even have a gun."

Cop: "Ha! We didn't tell you it was a shooting, that proves you were in on it!"

That actually happened, though I'm paraphrasing.

http://disgustedbeyondbelief.blogspot.com/2008/07/dont-talk-to-cops.html

the reason i said, "personally speaking" is because I was refering to a general industry perspective, not necessarily a Microsoft view.

This is an excellent blog post about victims:

http://fraudwar.blogspot.com/2008/10/how-using-pirated-software-turns-people.html

Having actually replaced proprietary systems with open source alternatives, I can tell you none of the expense talking points that usually get thrown around by people invested in Microsoft products have ever materialized.

Really? Tell that to the city of Munich who, 7 *YEARS* ago began the process of converting 11,000 PC's to Linux, and 7 *YEARS* later, and at a budget that is blown up to 2x the Microsoft bid, they still have less than 20% of computers running Linux, and at the current rate won't have it done until 2020.

http://limuxwatch.blogspot.com/

"never materialize" my rear end.

For anyone interested in the constitutionality of the RIAA's statutory damages theory I suggest reading our revised amicus curiae brief filed in SONY v. Tenenbaum, and -- if you wish to go further -- reading the 3 law review articles cited in the brief.

Thanks for that link. If I may address a few points...

1) My previous post notes that "the arguments that statutory damages are out of proportion with actual damages ignore most of the damages, specifically the infringement of the right to distribute. It's like saying that sending someone to jail for 5 years for speeding is grossly excessive, and neglect to mention their DUI and hit and run."
You mention this in your brief on page 6:

They seek statutory damages of from $750 to $150,000 as to each MP3 file, without regard to whether what they have proved, as to that file, is mere “downloading” -- i.e. violation of the reproduction right -- or “distribution”, i.e. violation of the distribution right.
...In the case of a “distribution” -- i.e. defendant's having acted as a “distributor” and having actually disseminated actual copies to the public, by a sale or other transfer of ownership, or by a license, lease, or lending -- the actual damages would no doubt be greater than 35 cents, and the subject of further proof.

You explicitly note that actual damages would be higher, but suggest that they be the subject of further proof. Statutory damages under 17 USC 504 do not require proof of actual damages. Rather, the plaintiff merely has to show infringement and opt for statutory damages, and the defendant may show proof of actual damages to mitigate the statutory damages. Neither Tenenbaum nor Thomas ever showed proof of actual damages.

2) Continuing in the same paragraph:

Suffice it to say, however, that in 40,000 cases and counting, these plaintiffs have never been able to find or prove any such “distribution”.2
So while there exists a purely theoretical possibility that plaintiffs will be able to prove that Joel Tenenbaum was some sort of “distributor” of MP3 files, if all they ever prove is downloading, then they are seeking multiples of more than 2,100 to 425,000, which would clearly be unconstitutional under any standard.

This is not true. In the Thomas-Rasset case, the MediaSentry evidence showed distribution, and was not excluded (whether it should have been is a different question). In the Tenenbaum case, he admitted distribution under oath. Thus, in both cases, plaintiffs explicitly proved distribution:

"Mr. Tenenbaum, on the stand now, are you now admitting liability for downloading and distributing all 30 sound recordings that are at issue and listed on Exhibits 55 and 56 of the exhibits?" Answer: "Yes."

So, returning to your earlier point, the actual damages for infringement of the distribution right are "no doubt" greater than 35 cents.

Your remaining arguments address the disparity between the 35 cents damages and the $750-$150k per work statutory damages. However, as shown above, you admit that actual damages for infringement of distribution rights are greater. How much greater? Michael Jackson purchased the distribution rights to 200 Beatles songs for $47 million. $235,000 per work is significantly higher than the statute allows, but let's consider that an upper limit for a fair market value. Statutory damages in the range of half actual damages certainly don't seem out of line under Gore or State Farm.

The demand for gasoline is pretty price inelastic. Maybe europe could tax it to the point that people would give it up, but if the US did that, the country's economy would completely dry up.

• From iMarketNews.com, "EIA's revised outlook is for global liquid fuels consumption to grow by 1.2 million bbl/d in 2010 and 1.6 million bbl/d in 2011 after showing annual declines in 2008 and 2009".
• From "New York Times", Prices and gasoline demand, "Given time, however, higher prices could lead to a repeat of the 70s-80s experience, when the US auto fleet became a lot more fuel efficient."
• From The Economist, "Small cars, big question
  Can Americans learn to love small cars? The industry's future depends on it
• Cross-Price Elasticity of Demand VIII
  "For Christy LaBadie, a sophomore at Northampton Community College, the 30-minute drive from her home to the Bethlehem, Pa., campus has become a financial hardship now that gasoline prices have soared to more than $4 a gallon. So this semester she decided to take an online course to save herself the trip--and the money...." "Many institutions say their online summer enrollments have jumped significantly, compared with last summer's, and that fuel prices are a key factor in the increase. The Tennessee Board of Regents, for instance, reports that summer enrollment in online courses is up 29 percent this summer over last year."

That was quick, if I spend more tyme I can find more. Unfortunately I keep getting interrupted, even by my brother-in-law who's a Certified Financial Planner and keeps calling me. Still want to say if not believe "The demand for gasoline is pretty price inelastic"? Quite simply when gas prices go high people buy less gas.

Falcon

For anyone interested in the constitutionality of the RIAA's statutory damages theory I suggest reading our revised amicus curiae brief filed in SONY v. Tenenbaum, and -- if you wish to go further -- reading the 3 law review articles cited in the brief.

The MAXIMUM actual damages for an unauthorized download of any of these mp3 files is AT MOST about 35 cents.

1. Wholesale price=70 cents
2. Expenses=35 cents.
3. ???????????
4. Profit!!!!!!!!!! [35 cents]

(That's assuming every single unauthorized download = a lost sale, which is obviously not the case. See, e.g. USA v. Dove.

It was previously an option that defaulted to 'off'. Now Google have switched the default to 'On'. So https is now enabled for all GMail users who haven't expressly made a choice about the level of security they wish to apply to the protocol. Details here: Gmail Blog post

Probably sooner than we think... Blogger Viswa Sadhaka said... It is tempting to say that if there are sensors developed to mimic human sensory organs, then the human language looses its importance. That means human language is taken over by the machine sensor readings and human reason is taken over by the Artificial Intelligence :( That’s when human beings fight with machines for existence :) Coool ;) April 11, 2008 11:46 AM https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=1090535361904819819&postID=92299667582408004&pli=1 Blog for a cause: http://viswasadhaka.blogspot.com/

To receive what? Analog TV is dead in the US. If you're still watching OTA broadcasts, spend an hour on a weekend to make one of these. It works much better for DTV than rabbit ears. I found the reflector to be unnecessary.

My advice is to focus mostly on the sky rather than the telescope. You don't want to have "telescope class".

Invite students to bring binoculars. Find and identify all the constellations you can. They're not just for astrology, they're a great way to orient yourself to the sky.
Plus they're interesting and historical and you can see them with the naked eye. If you have 2 nights, find a planet on the first night and note it's position. On your next night out you can note how it "wandered". "Planet" being greek for "wanderer". Be sure to check out the Big Dipper. One it's stars is an optical binary as well as a telescopic binary. There's a nice little story to be told about ancient people using it to test eyesight. It's a great thing to look at with the naked eye, binoculars, and then the telescope, showing how each tool works relative to the other. Since most of the kids won't have telescopes at home, these are great lessons in how neat astronomy is with just your eyes and/or binoculars. They don't need a telescope to be interested.

If you or somebody in your class has an iphone there are great astronomy apps. StarMap and Distant Suns are both very good and offer free versions that work great in the field.

Also, blankets and tarps are a good thing to bring along. Looking at the sky with the naked eye or binoculars is much more enjoyable lying on one's back. Craning necks is a good way to lose interest fast.

Have Fun!!

[sigh]

I'll try to walk you through this.

You were in a discussion with someone else about PayPal. Remember?

(Note: The actual content of your discussion is irrelevant. Please stop asking me to "support my position" in that discussion, as I never took one. Now, to continue...)

You cited a Wikipedia article to support your position. I simply pointed out that you shouldn't do that, and explained why. You apparently still can't grasp, even after repeated attempts to point this out to you, that a document that anyone can alter at will is unsuitable for citations. It may support your position right now, but in 5 minutes somebody else may have changed that article so that it no longer supports your position. That's how wiki's work. They change frequently, sometimes radically. That article may support your position right now but will it tomorrow? Do I need to actually go in and edit the article you cited so that you see it happen yourself? I can make it say anything I want it to say. That alone should make it crystal clear that Wikipedia is not an authoritative reference and should not be used as one. Heck, Wikipedia's own page on citations cautions against using it as anything more than a broad overview or to find leads to actual authoritative references. (Or, at least it did the last time I looked at it. Who knows what it says now? Wiki's change.)

You actually want me to give you a citation asserting that Wikipedia is unsuitable for citations? Ok, fine. Here you go: http://secondlanguage.blogspot.com/2008/12/dont-cite-wikipedia.html

Anyway, I'm done beating the dead horse for you. Go ahead and cite Wikipedia all you want. Just don't expect anyone to take you seriously when you do it, or think that it gives your position any validity.

http://discount-jewelry-rings.blogspot.com/ http://discount-occasion-gifts.blogspot.com/

http://discount-jewelry-rings.blogspot.com/ http://discount-occasion-gifts.blogspot.com/

The distros where fooled into thinking KDE4.0 was ready for production... pleeese. I guess they don't do much test then, because it was obvious to anyone that had actually tried to use it that it wasn't ready. To think this gets modded insightful makes my head hurts... it is literally unbelievable. For those unable to grasp how ridicule that sounds, I'll suggest them to simply refer to the sources instead of constantly trying to reinvent history. I've followed PlanetKDE (http://planetkde.org) and The Dot (http://dot.kde.org/) since I discovered them years ago. It was never suggested that KDE4.0 was meant to be massively dropped on users. Unfortunate the Planet's concept of "old" articles extends no further than last week, otherwise I'd just point you to the time where that DIDN'T happen. You'll have to digg the individual blogs yourself to verify it with your own eyes (here's one blog to get you started though: http://aseigo.blogspot.com/, you can see all posts down to 2004). That's plainly a lie, probably based on a greatly exaggerated 4.0 release note that didn't warned all those coming to www.kde.org hell was about to break loose... But hey, I'm sure that omission caused those 5 people compiling KDE4.0 from sources (everybody else got it from their distro) to be caught off guard... It's easy to say in retrospective that labeling a developers and EARLY ENTHUSIASTS release '4.0' was a mistake. I used to agree with that, then read about the why it was needed (like the need to provide a stable (and believable, as in "the project is committed to it") platform to signal third parties to start porting applications). Bottom line, if your not going to make an effort to grasp the situation and provide us with an informed opinion, maybe you should simple refrain from providing one altogether. BTW, simply pointing out bugs in KMail does not add any weight to your argument either (no matter how severe they are) unless you provide some proof of this deceit scheme you speak of. It does not follow from the mere existence of bugs a conscious decision to lie about the state of the software. Have you actually read about the state of KMail or the any of the other PIM apps anywhere? I guess not, otherwise you'd known they are in the process of being ported to Akonadi and hence not deemed stable by their developers.

The current progress of Linux hybrid graphics.

There has been a lot of progress in this area the past few weeks. Wonder if this will let NVIDIA switch gpu's without restarting X.

I used to love KDE. I turned a lot of other people onto it.

After 4.0, 4.1, 4.2... After what they did to Amarok... After the pathetic state of the last several Kubuntu releases... The question is, should we even bother to look at this release? Or are they still digging their hole deeper?

Yes, I am aware of the fascinating debate about who is responsible for these disasters. From 10,000 feet above it, it looks like the KDE leadership went to the dogs after v3. But I don't know, and what's more, I just don't care. The point is, the KDE brand is ruined right now. I know I am not alone in thinking this. Remember Linus? This Linus?

He switched to Gnome too. I held out a lot longer before I gave up. I loved KDE3 so much. And I really hated Gnome. Look at Mono for fuck's sake. But you know what? The KDE team beat all that loyalty out of me, crash by crash, regression by regression, blog post by blog post.

And you know what else? Somewhere a long the way they cleaned Gnome up, sanded down the worst rough edges, made it launch fast, and look pretty. It works. My Mom could use it. Unlike KDE4+, last time I looked. Which was months ago, because it was so bad I didn't even want to look anymore.

If I were the "KDE Team," I would lay very low, clean house, and labor until I had something amazing - something that would wow people again. Something original. Something worthy of their legacy.

Is this that release?

Or is it just another bandaid on the broken mess I've been watching unfold?

Good Agile, Bad Agile by Steve Yegge at Google is an excellent article on the pros and (mostly) cons of Agile development.

Personally my single biggest problem with Agile is that it specifically de-emphases code ownership (mental ownership, not economic). In my experience as a developer, the only way you get people to go the extra mile on a project (working nights, weekends, whenever and whatever it takes) is when they feel like that code is theirs.

The other big problem I have is that whenever I see someone talking about Agile development it always feels like they're trying to sell me Amway products. It has the same, almost proselytizing tone that a Born-Again preacher takes when they're holding out the money-jar.

Oracle streams - a form of SQL-level replication.

Sounds like a subset of functionality is coming in PostgreSQL 9.0, which supports streaming replication in addition to transactional and log shipping.

High-performance compression that in many cases is faster than non-compression. You can encrypt it, too.

Here you can see Greenplum's commercial PostgreSQL offering which is 10x-20x faster than stock PostgreSQL. A large portion of its performance boost comes from its support of high performance and effective compression as well as parallelism. I strongly suspect its faster than Oracle in many use cases.

It's great you have B-tree indexes - Oracle also offers bitmap and there are cases where they are really useful. It's nice that you offer hash partitioning (if you do), but Oracle can partition on a half-dozen different things. Etc.

PostgreSQL has had bitmap indexes for a while now. Not to mention you can actually create your own index types too. PostgreSQL is very extensible. That's one of the reasons why PostGIS is so capable. And please note they just announced a major new release.

Let's also not forget PostgreSQL, like Oracle, supports function indexes, which are in of themselves extremely powerful.

Online redefinition (change your tables, views, etc. and have Oracle store everything up until you snap everything over at once - great for reducing downtimes).

PostgreSQL can do this too for most everything. There are some exceptions but by in large, PostgreSQL has this covered.

PostgreSQL is one of the few databases which supports transactional DDL and has done so for a very long time. So for example, you can create types populate and even create indexes within a single transactional boundary. Which means you can actually do all this within the confines of a TPC transaction, which can wait a long time (logging implications and caveats here). Then when ready you can commit the TPC transaction and *BLAM*, you new table, fully populated, with deferred index creation, is now online. That's just one example of what can be done with PostgreSQL.

Query analysis is enormously better than open software (explain plans, etc.)

PostgreSQL has very good query analysis features. Its query plans are also excellent and typically does so without the many hints Oracle often requires. Having said that, IMO, PostgreSQL query plans are only exceeded by that of Oracle's and even then PostgeSQL genetic planner offers capabilities to niche projects unavailable in even Oracle.

Virtual Private Databases

Hotly debated on PostgreSQL mailing lists. PostgreSQL offers this capability today via its schema and security models. They just don't call it VPDs.

PL/SQL, Java, etc. native to the DB

PostgreSQL blows Oracle and every other database out of the water when it comes to native PL language support. What's you're flavor? PL/pgSQL? Perl? Python? Tcl? Java? C? Lua? And I think I many be forgetting a couple.

No bones about it, Oracle is more feature rich. It is true Oracle still addresses many high end solutions where stock PostgreSQL does not yet compete. Just the same, many commercial PostgreSQL offerings are starting to compete in arenas which were previously Oracle only domains. Furthermore, stock PostgreSQL continues to egress further and further into extremely large databases and warehousing solutions. Additionally, once you step outside of high end databases, for the vast majority of people, PostgreSQL is a very competitive solution to Oracle and in many cases, unofficially faster.

It sounds like you need to take a hard second look at PostgreSQL because based on my of your comments, it sounds like you're somewhat out of touch with the current capabilities and features provided by PostgreSQL.

from his blog

everybody: my dad got himself a N900, so there's one in the family. Don't worry about it, there's room for more than one Linux phone.

I like the Nexus One, maybe I'd like the N900 too. But I certainly don't like cellphones enough to have two.

Someone posted a link to his actual blog post below: http://torvalds-family.blogspot.com/2010/02/happy-camper.html

taken from it:

I got the original G1 phone from google when it came out, and I hardly ever used it. Why? I generally hate phones - they are irritating and disturb you as you work or read or whatever - and a cellphone to me is just an opportunity to be irritated wherever you are. Which is not a good thing.

At the same time I love the concept of having a phone that runs Linux, and I've had a number of them over the years (in addition to the G1, I had one of the early China-only Motorola Linux phones) etc. But my hatred of phones ends up resulting in me not really ever using them. The G1, for example, ended up being mostly used for playing Galaga and Solitaire on long flights, since I had almost no reason to carry it with me except when traveling.

Geeks like efficiency.

Sakura wine combines flowers and alcohol.

Linus appears to have less hysterical take on the Android Linux fork [blogspot.com] than most people

Very smart your argument! I also wait Android Linux Fork hear in Brazil!

This ought to be a new Slashdot meme.

everybody: my dad got himself a N900, so there's one in the family. Don't worry about it, there's room for more than one Linux phone.
I like the Nexus One, maybe I'd like the N900 too. But I certainly don't like cellphones enough to have two.

Linus appears to have less hysterical take on the Android Linux fork than most people:

I don't worry about out-of-tree development for odd devices too much. I wish we could merge android, but I also accept it likely being a few years away. We had similar out-of-tree issues with the SGI extreme scalability stuff, and it took quite a while before the standard kernel merged all of that.

here