Slashdot Mirror
Alpha-Blending On KDE
PimpBot writes: "Check this story out on The Dot. The KDE team is getting some pretty sweet alpha-blending going with their latest CVS for KDE 2.1. The story has pretty eye-candy." Most of what is there is already being done within efm, but kde probably has a larger installed user base. Of course this stuff is really only with icons and images, and not fonts, which await the ubercool Xrender extension which does just that (or even cooler, the RGB Decimation for antialiasing text under X on LCD screens). Yum.
Imlib alpha blends the image bits client side and sends the bits back to the server. This is Inefficient As Hell(tm), especially if you're on a remote display. Ever try to run GIMP across a dial-up connection? Putting alpha-blending and anti-aliasing into the protocol allows the hard work to be done server side. That means 1) you don't push image bits over the wire and 2) the server hardware can accelerate it. Also trying running MesaGL vs. hardware-accelerated glx to see the difference.
I can explanate how to administrate your network. You must configurate and segmentate it, so it can computate.
It is quite entertaining to watch the dynamics of the moderation system. Perhaps the above article is insightful, perhaps it is not. This is definitely OT, and should be mod'ed down for precisely this reason and no other.
There is nothing in X which prevents a server from rendering nice, anti-aliased fonts. It's a QOI issue.
Now, if non-PC X server vendors would just get off their butts and add *default* support for it...
I can explanate how to administrate your network. You must configurate and segmentate it, so it can computate.
Oh, don't get me wrong, I agree with you on that point - Corperatism is really nasty. But then again, corperatism is not fully capitalism either.
I like to see capitalism as a system where companies maximize profit by competeting to best server the customer.
Corperatism is a system where capitalism is broken to the point that instead of companies seeing themselves as serving customers, they instead view the customers to be serving the company's needs.
Corperatism is not a far shot from a collectivly run fudalism
- The unexamined life is not worth leading -
A couple months ago, slashdot linked to my site, at this page, from this slashdot article. I actually had a few emails back and forth with Rob (CmdrTaco) in the week before the link, and I asked him to avoid linking until I could get all the images over to a faster vitual hosted site, and I was still putting a lot of work into overhauling the page and writing the latest info (I had just finished a new board design for the player).
Well, the slashdot effect was indeed mighty, and my poor little site served up about 40000 hits, which appears to have been less than 1 in every 5 attempts, perhaps even less, I'll never know.
A couple people posted links to the google cached page, which was actually this older version of the project... not at all the same thing, and certainly not the one that the slashdot article was about.
So based on my real experience, a sample of one, the google cache was not only ineffective, but it did more harm than good. Rob linked to the page right after new content was posted (a common scenario of a news site), and the google cache had an older (totally different) version that led many readers to find material older, but similar enough that they could not tell the difference.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
well i'm sorry sir, considering that our university uses NT 4 on Pentium II 400's I think I should know how well it runs, but thenagain, comparisons are relative... NT on those machines is a lot slower than linux or freebsd running a different desktop on the same machines (which we also have)... if NT runs fast/fine for you on a 486 DX2 so be it, i could hardly get win95 to run on a 486DX2 50mhz machine, it would take almost 5 minutes from startup to when the hard drive stopped grinding, but you should know that there is so much faster systems out there
Huh? Communism (if actually implemented properly), would result in a lower standard of linving for some, in as much as no one gets the mansions, the limosine's and the caviar. Hell, I don't consider that a "higher" standard of living anyway, as I don't fancy any of those things, but that's what would go away. Communism would also increase the standard of living dramatically for those who under capitalism have the bottom end of the stick. All those people who don't have any houses at all to sleep in and no food at all to eat would have a drastic increase in standard of living. It would put people on a more level playing field.
Now, before you all get huffy and puffy about how this couldn't work, I did say that this would be the case if communism were implemented properly, and I will be the first to admit the difficulties involved in that.
Joshua
Terradot
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout!
Phrased differently, open source is capitalism, except the resource that the free market is competing for, and the one the system is trying to maximize, is poeple's time, not money.
Care about freedom?
I'd rather be lucky than good.
Cheers, Joshua
Terradot
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout!
Actually permedia 2 has hardware accelerated 2D alpha blending too, but since it's a pretty old chipset that never really took off anyway, I dont suppose it matters all that much.
Why do all seem communism as such a bad thing? really think, is it just what your culture have learned you? or have you sat down and thought about it? For you that are American I suppose that your "pinkie" scare comes from the Mccarthy period when regular witch-huntes(spelling?) were arranged.
"both suffer in comparison to the Capitalist competition - the products made by Communists were, and are inferior in build and technology, to those made by Capitalists"
Mayhap so, but communism put the first satelite and man in space and produced higly valued scientists. Is products really all that matters?
"both seem to believe that making money is bad, and have successfully indoctrinated many people with the idea - something anyone would see is wrong"
Making money isnt bad at all, it proves you have something special to give your community, but making too much money is bad. Why would you be allowed to earn 20 times the sum of the general worker? Maybe you excel in a skill, but you arent that good. Skilled people should always have a bonus, but it cannot be huge.
"like Communism the idea is fatally flawed"
Why?
because the "smart" people cant buy their expensive whores? they still have a home and tv(computer maybe?).
I agree that the soviet union had a flawed implementation of communism, but the "idea base" is really good.
I know this is the wrong place to say this because all of you are people that are going to be assimilated into the corporate engine of captalism(including me?). But the life of the regular worker would probably get better while the "smart" people would get it just a little bit worse.
We all are brother and sisters and therefore we cannot allow people to collect huge resources that should be more equally distributed amongst the people.
Production and resources is not all that matters.
I suppose this concludes my rabble. Anyone is welcome to continue this discussion by email
chemic@linuxmail.org
Funny, it (KDE2 standard install) runs pretty fast on my old crufty S3 ViRGe DX (4MB) at 1024-16. Zooms on the G200, but quite a bit faster than Gnome on the S3...
--
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
One place I worked at was so cheap that I had NT on a 486 DX2/66 with 64MB RAM. It took 15 minutes to boot up, Word took a couple of minutes to come up, and it was barely usable for anything other than a mainframe session. I think you're talking complete crap somehow.
Also have a look at this.
wow, that's crazy i've got an old p200 myself, but with only 96 megs of ram, but I use Mandrake and KDE runs great on it.
"Weasling out of work is important to learn; it is what separates humans from animals. Except for weasels."
Well if it's difficult for a multi-billion dollar corporation like Microsoft to do anything fresh, I don't feel it reflects too badly on the KDE people to make baby improvements over the windows interface. But somehow deep down I can't help feeling that the desktop metaphor is just a local maximum with respect to what could be done. It just isn't elegant. Example: Why does the desktop metaphor need a "show desktop" feature? Sure it makes it more usable, but surely there's a way to present things so that kind of quirk just isn't possible.
Oh well, so far, it appears not.
Every post CmdrTaco does about KDE is riddled with excuses ("Most of what is there is already being done within efm...", "Of course this stuff is really only with icons and images, and not fonts...").
Well lookie here!.
--
"Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
Luckily this doesn't mean that it can't be innovative. KDE (and Gnome) have many features that Windows doesn't, particularly in the area of customization, and I think those differences will give it a leg up eventually. Unfortunately, in order to get into the homes of the average user, it is going to have to offer them an interface that they can recognize, something that looks like Windows.
I'm copying this AC comment b/c someone felt it was overrated, although it does present a few very valid points, and a legitimate complaint. The following is not my own comment, but deserves to be read. I would reccomend the moderator (or author) who did this reread the moderation guidelines (updated 9.9, whatever that means).
The FAQ does a wonderful job at answering why they don't mirror commercial sites.
But commercial sites tend to have enough bandwidth because they have money.
But who gets slashdotted the worst? Free software projects (yes, those things that give you the right to freely distribute them) and personal webpages on cablemodem, DSL or other limited bandwidth connections. It may take days or weeks to get the OK to mirror a commercial site because of IP restrictions, but is that really indicitive of what smaller websites would do? Did they even try?
-Anonymous Coward
Can KDE perform its alpha blending without instigating a segfault? Only time will tell.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Hi Simon, long time no see. ;-)
... that, or you were running NT3.00 or one of the earlier ones. :)
Given that it took about 30 seconds for the machine to stop thrashing enough (128meg RAM, celeron 400) to bring up this reply page, I suspect we have *very* different views of "ran fine". Well
For the rest of the people in the thread - people do complain about the bloat in KDE. That's the reason I use WindowMaker instead...
Paul
About 3 years ago when I was first exposed to linux, I wondered XFree didn't support anti-aliasing or alpha blending. It seemed like a pretty (easy, logical, neat) thing to implement, but why wasn't it happening? I had experienced games that used this technique, and was quite impressed. Microsoft beat XFree/KDE to the punch in Windows 2000, but did it take that to make the free GUI weenies realize that it was important to implement?
Black holes are where the Matrix raised SIGFPE
Cool...the graphics are in png. Very nice to see someone using that format.
png is to gif, as beta is to vhs
Yes, I was immediately aware of X's monochrome bitmap text representation. However, it does not mean we couldn't change that. There might be some programs that would break with new libraries, but most just rely on the X server to handle everything but the string's contents.
Furthermore, alpha blending is as simple as hacking up your 32-bit display mode so that the unused byte contains the transparency information and is not just ignored by the X server when drawing and clipping windows. Most apps would end up (directly or indirectly) zeroing that byte, which would convey "Totally opaque" so nothing breaks.
We could also define additional flags such that apps without transparency would be optimized and clipping enabled for stuff underneath, etc. Or flags that would specify what kind of blending to use for the window (mix, additive, screen, multiply, etc.). Can you say cool special effects? Think the GIMP's layers all the time.
Black holes are where the Matrix raised SIGFPE
one must give credit to microsoft. Their interfaces are easy to use and make quite a bit of sense. They dont spend millions of dollars in research for nothing. Every car has a steering wheel. They all look basically the same. Why? Because it's a good idea. Just because MS put it in doesnt mean its immediately evil..geez some zealots on here cant see beyond their own ass...
-
"If I'm wrong, and the [MS] guys have managed to make [GDI] jump through a hoop that high, kudos to
them." - George Hoffman, Be Inc.
(Paraphrased, replace MS with E, and GDI with X)
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Cool. Now I can have a desktop with anti-aliased fonts, alpha blended icons, and long uptimes. Who would've thunk it.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
And to get back to it's usefullness factor: The first half dozen #include-statements in a C source file will tell me exactly what this file is all about. Riiiiiight.
Free Manning, jail Obama.
KDE 2.0 is nice, but it needs improved stability much more than it needs improved eye candy.
I look forward to the day when I can use KDE 2.0 as my desktop without frequent bug encounters.
-John
See Steve Gibson's comments at his Web site about this. (Sorry, too lazy to give an exact URL.) He debunks M$ quite effectively (and has some quite nice examples, which I'd love to see on a laptop).
No, he doesn't.
See Ron Feigenblatt's website for a more balanced (and informed) view on this.
And here's what ClearType is from the Microsoft Research team:
Brief overview
IEEE paper on the technology
Paper for the Society for Information Display Symposium
Try reading those. Gibson literally does not know what he's talking about here. For a start, what the Apple II does is NOT sub-pixel rendering. It's not even pixel-color splitting, as all the color splitting occurs in the NTSC signal, not at the phosphor level (you'll see more than one green phosphor per green pixel).
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
OSX doesn't use the BSD kernel, its a mixture of sorts. It uses the Mach micro kernel with a BSD subsystem. So its not actually BSD as it is a hybrid of BSD.
This is false. There's a fundamental flaw in the way Windows software is written that makes it impossible to customize its appearance significantly.
This is false.
You are confusing the window manager (explorer.exe in Windows) with the underlying graphics system. To demonstrate this, I invite you to (1) do a search for windowblinds; (2) customize twm using relative or absolute positioning, as the spirit moves you.
EFM is dead.
No longer. Deceased. Yadda-yadda-yadda. The code is orphaned, is not being maintained, and will not be. Why? It was a playtoy, to figure out what was really needed in E17, and how to best do it.
If you really want debs, try http://people.debian.org/~ljlane/downloads/. Please note, if you can't make it work, there is no recourse! Trying #e on openprojects.net for help will probably only get you yelled at.
.sig: Now legally binding!
Why is it that when Apple uses alpha effects in Mac OS X it's "a waste of CPU power" but when KDE uses alpha effect it's "pretty sweet"?
Which is exactly what /. should do. Simply have an automatic note both on the link and on the mirror saying that this is a mirror created X hours ago and provide a link if people want to try the slashdotted site.
-- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"'
Slashdotted already! Anyone got a mirror?
***
Can anyone get a mirron with some JPG files instead? Thanks.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Out of curiousity, who is the 'we' that is referred to? Is it /guessing/ (a) from context clues. As an opposing view, I would like to say that myself and all of my CS major friends don't care about how the NT kernel or Linux kernel work and really don't care about NDAs. Most of us are pretty exclusive Windows users who have had dedicated Linux machines at some point in time (myself for 3 years straight) but decided to 'move on', for lack of a better term.
a) CS majors
b) Linux users
c) The intersection of CS majors and Linux users?
I'm
Hmm I understood your post until "etc", what is that?
:)
Ok, I don't usually respond to trolls but I'll bite this time...
(a) On a news scale this is up there with 'Word gets new spelling dialog' (b) The pictures aren't very impressive compared with say, OSX
So it is with open source software - the Capitalist option is superior to the Communist one - Windows is greatly superior to KDE/Gnome, and Solaris is better than Linux.
Is it just me or does anyone else find this strangely ironic? You say that OSX and Capitalist solutions are inherently superior to Open Source solutions but OSX is using an open source solution for arguably the most important part of the whole OS... it's kernel (BSD).
Some look at pretty pictures and oogle, others look at the underlying infrastructure and marvel.
G. Washington on Government "it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."
I'm an idiot, otherwise i wouldn't replay to such a flamebait.
both rely on the principle that working together as a community will produce better results than each man for himself
yeah right, if you had anything to do with OSS you would have seen that commonly projects consist of a core team, and the a lot of people that regulary either submit bug reports or evn check in bug fixes.
Ever used CDE? While I think CDE is not all that bad(*duck*) if you compare on the basis of userfriendliness, kde/gnome both win.But then again that's all subjective
Linux has never produced any thing original
How in the world should a kernel produces something? If you mean the Linux, but I would rather say OpenSource Unix community, you are teribbly mistaken.
Just an example : as mentioned EFM.
EFM is in my opinion terribly innovative, the old filemanager concept taken to new heights.
And how much room is thee for innovation in the O/S market? While implementations may vary, concepts are largely similar.
since it free, you can't complain when you find out it isn't very good
yeah, if I pay RHAT a lot of money to support my system I can't complain? You bet I can! Recently looked at a EULA? People like MS and also Sun have succeded in the goal to hold liability from them. The only way a OSS Software Corp. can make money is by providing support for the product, therefore they have to take care of Quality.
Who do I go to if my closed Source product is not maintained properly?
"Mommy, mommy! The garbage man is here!" "Well, tell him we don't want any!" -- Groucho Marx
This is a straw-man argument. You can't immediately label the GNU project as communistic and then start destroying communism.
Free Software was born in America, bastion of capitalism, and is now shared by the world. How many people who support free software support communism?
>both rely on the principle that working together
>as a community will produce better results than
>each man for himself
Free software is intended to bring the community together to do needed work for the common good. I'm not sure what this has to do with communism. Communism is about labor and the government regulation of it to stop exploitation by 19th century Capitalists.
I don't see Stallman ranting about how all projects should fall under his (or anyone's) jurisdiction. Communism is about centralization; free software is about decentralization.
>the products made by Communists were, and are
>inferior in build and technology
That is because communism is a system of government where anyone is guaranteed a job in a factory and forced to work. It promotes laziness because people are given money whether they do a good job or not. I don't see what this has to do with free software.
>Linux companies have fallen through the floor
Linux companies are no different than any other dot-com company. When you play with venture capital, you get burned. What does this have to do with free software?
Before trolling again, you might want to try reading some Marx to figure out if the application of 19th Century Philosophy really applies to the 21st century.
Lucas
--
I guess that's the price of popularity...
I noticed this post on dot.kde.org some time last week, and I still haven't come up with a reason to have my icons overlapping. It's cluttered, even if they can blend.
However, an icon that blends with the background would be cool. AFAIK, this isn't really possible as long as you're using the X root window for the background, though.
I use linux with WindowMaker and Enlightenment, both GUIs function just like I described.
The point I was trying to make is that the start -> shutdown -> log out sequence is hardly intuitive. It's not even logical; a win9x box is the only machine I know of where you push the "start" button to turn it off, and slipping the logoff function under "shut down" just adds a further level of ridiculously confusing cruft.
If you want a thorough explanation of the elements of the windows GUI that suck (and a lot of other apps too), look at the interface hall of shame (not a goatse.cx link, I promise).
If a 90% market share is the best reason you can think of to use windows... BAAAA, you're a sheep. If 90% of people drove a Yugo, I still wouldn't want one.
0 1 - just my two bits
But it seems to me that this 'RGB decimation', although cool, is the exact same thing, but a different approach, to MS ClearType (tm?).
NOt that MS deserves the credit.. but the point is.. isn't this technically a patented MS technology? or is it only the end result that is the same, and the process is quite different.
Umm, MS didn't beat anyone to the punch. 1) MS doesn't have REAL alpha blending (and neither will KDE) like OS X does. In these GUIs, the translucency effect only lasts as long as the object the transparant window is over doesn't change. After that it breaks down. Its nothing that cool, BeOS, QNX, and even E has had it for a long time. 2) X still doesn't support anti-aliasing, and its not an easy thing to implement. X has a major problem in that its designers left the door totally wide open for different GUIs, but decided to keep the rendering protocol hard to extend. As such, it thinks that all fonts are monochrome bitmaps. It took a ton of work to get X to do TrueType, and anti-aliasing, which needs to blend the text with the window underneath will also be a ton of work. Its great that it is so far along now, but I can guarentee it wasn't easy. Its a nifty effect, but it is not easy to implement, (since it changes the rendering model significantly) and everyone except X has had it for a while now.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
(1) Beauty is in the eye of the ugly geek wearing coke bottles for eyeglasses.
(2) KDE 2 is fully themeable.
You know, KDE isnt that big that you cant install it along with X, Gnome, and serveral window managers.
My advice to everyone is: install helix-gnome, install kde, install a window manager, run gdm. The gdm login screen allows you to select whether you want a gnome session, a kde session, or a simple X session. This is the one aspect of the linux desktop that keeps me from rebooting into W2K more often than I normally would. I actually prefer the linux desktop because of it.
Sometimes you feel like kde, sometimes you feel like gnome, sometimes you feel like blackbox. You can have all 3. Looks good on a resume, too.
(Hopefully helix will smarten up and distribute non linux versions of their little gnome.)
Please, feel free to make your own icon sets, themes, and other stylistic contributions to KDE. You can make KDE look exactly like Gnome, Enlightenment, or anything else. It's a volunteer effort and all, including American artists:-) are welcome to contribute.
USERS can decide the look of KDE whenever and whereever they want. KDE2 provides all the tools. The "KDE is ugly" argument no longer holds any water whatsoever. It's as beautiful or as ugly as YOU want it to be!
Samawi
You make a good point, but these screenshots weren't meant to accompany a press release. This functionality was added in the last week and the pictures were generated in the course of discussion between developers. (See this thread.) I doubt if they were intended to be seen by such a large audience.
Must be your personal taste
Macka
You just have an alpha components in addition to Red, Green, Blue components that indicates % transparency. So given two overlapping pixels RGBA-1 and RGBA-2, the new pixel is calculated at:
R = R1 * A1 + R2 * A2
G = G1 * A1 + G2 * A2
B = B1 * A1 + B2 * A2
A = A1 + A2
If you're using floats to show intensity, anything results greater than one equals one, with ints anything greater than 255 is 255.
Some people go the other way where 0 Alpha is opaque, so you'd substitute A with (1 - A).
It's really no big deal, just eats clock cycles.
Trolls throughout history:
Jonathan Swift
Ok, I know I should let this silly thread die, but I'm a sucker for trolls...
That's very much a matter of opionion. Linux is easier for me, I have lots of friends who find MacOS easier. In any case, you haven't established that "ease-of-use" == "success". If that were true then Windows 3.0 would never have made it against MacOS.
Two reasons: 1)for most hackers ease of use for the end user has absolutely nothing to do with success; 2)the folks who do care about ease-of-use haven't been at it very long. Considering how young the products are, they're doing extremely well.
And what do the stock market valuations of Linux "dot-coms" have to do with anything? Most of them had no possible hope of making money to begin with. A few (RedHat & VA for example) do have real business plans and will become profitable companies. But this does nothing to change the fact that well established, profitable companies see value in supporting Linux.
Actually IBM is going full-steam ahead. Linux is a great way for them to compete with Sun. Then there's Dell, Compaq, Intel, and a small herd of embedded companies that I'm not very familiar with. Add to that thousands of much smaller companies with niche products or services that you'll never hear about: ISPs, system integraters, consultants for small offices, vertical market developers. They make money in their markets and contribute a little back to the community as a whole, even if it's just the odd patch or a small network administration tool.
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
Ha ha, talking about X and anti-aliased fonts. I just set up Netscape 6 (god its bloated. My 500MHz 64MB wouldn't run it well, I had to use my 300MHz 128MB comp) and started to browse, and my head already hurts. These are the most god-awful fonts I've ever seen.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
There are lots of false statements in this troll, but the communism analogy is interesting because it looks correct at first glance (most of the others are obviously wrong and don't really need to be addressed).
Looking a little deeper you see the flaw: Communism and Capitalism are about allocating scarce resources. There's only so much "stuff" (T.V.s, houses, whatever). Under Capitalism the people who own the capital get the stuff, under communism everybody gets a little bit of the stuff.
1) Intellectual property is fundamentally different. There's no limit on how many people can possess or use intellectual property, and my use of certain information doesn't hinder anybody else's use of the same information.
2) Certain types of IP are actually _more_ valuable if more people use it. If I can get you to use my wordprocessor, for example, then my copy of the wordprocessor is actually more valuable to me because I can exchange documents with you more easily.
The people who thought up Capitalism and Communism lived in an era where "hard-goods" were the only commodity worth thinking about. Neither of these theories is going to get very far in explaining the economics of software.
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
Whose butt, because I've seen some pretty sweet ones...
PS Does anyone have a mirror of that supposedly pretty eye candy?
Alex Bischoff
---
Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
Furthermore, Linux is bad for humanity because it means people will no longer take Computer Science degrees - there won't be any money in Computing because of all the free software, so software will suffer a brain drain
Good. People who take CS (or any other discipline) degrees because of the money they can make are precisely the sort of people that Computing (or Architecture, or Law) can well do without.
Most software is never distributed. It is written in-house, to be used in-house. None of that is affected by free software (apart from the bottom line of the vast majority of companies).
Computer Science graduates tend to be the least able programmers of all the people I deal with. For every MIT turning out brilliant programmers (none of whom would dream of working at my company) there are a hundred state universities turning out VB monkeys and Delphi parrots.
Is this flamebait? Sure, but it's also true, and my karma is maxed out anyway.
--
--
E_NOSIG
Images HERE and
HERE
Not that great IMHO
no sig.
Those screen shots are very appealing to me. That's why I chose KDE over Gnome, to begin with, and have stuck with it. But it is pointless to argue issues of taste.
Fix the KDE2 bugs, and thanks for the continued evolution
Is it just me, or is X the most horribly outdated POS on the face of the planet? I'm not talking about rendering, protocols, or anything like that. I'm talking about something simple. Hardware. Every other windowing system I have ever used recognizes my RivaTNT. X doesn't. Every other windowing system I've ever used allows me to set my refresh rate, X doesn't. Recently, I switched my monitor from 1024x768 to 1152x864. BeOS, Windows, and QNX made no fuss over it. Set me res, set my refresh rate, and after correcting the image a bit, off I went. X, however, didn't like it. It thought my monitor should only do 1152x864 at 75Hz. Given the fact that this thing runs 1600x1200 at 77Hz, I found this odd. I tried to configure it, but it wouldn't let me set the refresh rate, it asked for something called a "modline." I went to search on the internet about a "modline" and I got back an FAQ filled with math. Lovely. I finally just screwed it, wrote a 100line BeOS program that returned the clock values for my favoriate mode, and used those for the clock line. My question is, why, when every other windowing system in the world has some semblance of common sense, X continues to do stupid stuff like require you to tell it what kind of hardware you have, and what you monitor can do. Good god, even the pre-PnP days weren't this bad!
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
WOOPETY fuggin DOO. How about posting some more interesting stories, oooohh, alpha blending on icons in a kde cvs release! Holy crap my life is complete. Yea, moderate me down, just expressing my opinion. I think there are a lot more interesting submissions that could've been posted.
Your Momma's so fat she makes emacs look like nano!
This is a real problem.
At my university the intended entrance for the CS program has skyrocketed over the past few years, and I believe it's at about 15% of all new students now. Spend about 5 minutes asking around and you may find 1 out of every 15 people are actually there because they love the subject. The rest? Out for a quick buck.
The upside is, the institution at which I attend doesn't play around. We don't mess around with VB or Delphi, first year students get right down to the dirt, fighting with assembler and OO theory.
As a result, the actually number of people who attempt to enter the program after their first year is substantially lower.
But where I go isn't perfect either - because of the large competition, the programmers who spend more time then they should programming rather than studying never make it.
The true geniuses are being tossed aside because their Social Science credits just didn't have high enough GPAs.
Incase you're wondering - I attend Simon Fraser University.
Comments are more than welcome, as these are just my opinions based on what I've observed here.
-Medgur
Umm.. which "Linux desktop" is this and is it actually configured for this? I thought that Linux didn't have a desktop, it was just a kernel or an operating system.
As for clicking anywhere, I can do that on my Windows box as well. Woah.
Macka
Ah, the wonders of Elitism. /should/ anyone care about how the OS works? Why can't it just /work/ like a normal person would expect? Amusingly, I've noticed that most of the technical people I know assume things will break. The non-technical people are generally the opposite. Ignorance is bliss, no?
Why
And to continue on:
* Linux is not being mistaken for "the popular OS" except in a limited sphere of influence.
* If Z was written for the people, then why is excluding them for an arbitrary reason okay? Sounds more like 'Z was written by some people, for themselves and a few others'.
Luckily, there are headers in HTTP that allow the site to specify exactly where and how it wants its pages to be cached, how long they can be held, and whether they ought to be verified every time. (Even then, it's a hell of a lot easier for a site to send 304 Not Modified than it is to send the whole page)
Of course doing that would imply using a full-featured cache, not just an ad-hoc thing.
Well, happily, many people who run for CS just to make tons of money never get past the first year.
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
I have a much better idea. Why not publish such material on Freenet??
Learn from your parents' mistakes: use birth control.
It's even in the FAQ as to why they do not mirror things. But if you want a mirror, look at http://www.flyingbuttmonkeys.com/mirrors/ftp.kde.c om/pub/dot/img/
________________________________________
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
apparently you haven't looked at KDE 2. Even out of the box, KDE 2 is very attractive. Over all, it can be customized anyway you like. I'm getting really tired of everyone bashing KDE everytime there is an article about it on slashdot. It happens to be the most complete and stable desktop/window manager.
zerovoid
Keith Packard's new rendering extensions will hopefully be ready soon. His alpha blending screenshots look much cooler anyways (not to mention the sub-pixel ClearType and font anti-aliasing screenshots.)
*sarcasm*
Can't you see, obviously any software with a feature as vile and putrid as anti-aliasing must be communist. And communism must obviously be bad since it didn't work well for the former Soviet Union.
*end sarcasm*
Anywho, looks like anti-aliasing looks good so far, anything that beautifies a GUI a bit more is a good thing IMHO. My only question (since the link to the story was not reachable when I tried to read it, the pictures were mirrored though, they look good)is "Can AA can be turned off if you run kde on a system where you don't need/want it?
P.S. If you feel like debating economic/political systems as applied to KDE's anti-aliasing further, please don't.
Inheritance is the sincerest form of nepotism.
I must admit the screenshots look good, but I feel that the KDE Team should use more time on getting better performance from KDE 2 than playing around with more eye candy. KDE 2 is slow as you-know-what on my machine, and I don't feel like spending more bucks on hardware just to be able to run a desktop environment with so-so speed.
---Can we fix it? Yes we can!
Yeah, but when you get out of prison you suddenly realize that they weren't so appealing after all...
Ok my karma is maxed out. When do I become Enlightened?
I've never seen CmdrTaco try to be hip, I really don't know what the hell you're talking about.
I like using slang from the 1920s, but that's just me. If some white boy from Michigan wants to say "yum," more power to him.
All right, as a rabid capitalist who uses Linux, I'll bite.
"both rely on the principle that working together as a community will produce better results than each man for himself"
I think any community of people could make this claim! The fatal flaw of communism is idea that the talented *must* sacrifice for the sake of the less talented, or the "common good". It brought everyone down to a least common denominator, and basically to get anything done they had to make exceptions under the table, which led to corruption, etc. This is obviously _NOT_ a good idea, IMO. Note there is no comparable forced sacrifice being made with open source. Any sacrifice being made is freely made.
"Windows is greatly superior to KDE/Gnome, and Solaris is better than Linux"
Superior according to whom? I use OSS because it's value to me is greater than what I paid to get it (the cost of some CDRs). For me, the cost of windows is too high for what I get. Part of the value of OSS to me is the ability to make changes and a greater access to authors. The value of something depends on the valuer.
"both perform poorly financially - Linux stocks have fallen through the floor"
I'm not sure I see the point. Linux companies are trying to make money from the services they provide. If they fail, Linux goes on. Linux does not require commercial support. It was born without it, and can go on without it.
"both are bad for humanity - Communism because it results in a lower standard of living for all, and Linux because it stifles innovation - everything in Linux is *copied* "
Well, again I don't see your point. First, no one is forcing *anyone* to use linux. If humanity doesn't want it, they won't use it. Communism was forced by a minority on the majority. And most of the minority was misled. Second, it is a rare innovation in computers that doesn't use 99.9% of the existing infrastructure and existing, working ideas.
"Linux is bad for humanity because it means people will no longer take Computer Science degrees"
Hmmm, first you argue that OSS doesn't compete, then you argue that it's in danger of wiping out CS jobs! No, it will force companies to develop more vertical, innovative, and high value solutions rather than copy cat, horizontal solutions that lock customers into the company.
"both are increasingly being discredited and look to be all but dead".
Even if this were true, I fail to see how this indicates a "fatal flaw". Linux and OSS does not need a commercial company to "succeed". What part of "free as in beer" escapes you?
"both seem to believe that making money is bad, and have successfully indoctrinated many people with the idea - something anyone would see is wrong"
I'm not sure who you are refering to exactly (except maybe RMS), since Linux as yet, does not think, but there is no contradiction between OSS and capitalism. Nothing about capitalism implies that *everything must* be exchanged for money, only that *everything can be*, as long as both sides agree on the price. What they do have in common is that they are both natural outgrowths of freedom. No one is forcing you to use or contribute to OSS, just as no one is forcing you to use and buy Windows. You make the choice based on what you get from them. For Windows, obviously a large part of the value is that so many other people use it, it automatically has value due to the fact that so many other people use it and send out documents that require windows applications to view them. Some of us have a problem with *that*, but not with making money.
Oh, really!
IBM is operating on the ABM plan: Anything But Microsoft. Almost all IBM apps support the obligatory NT/2000, as well as Sun, Linux (4 distributions and gaining), and AIX. Today at IBM I attended a lecture on Linux and Globalization. Don't kid yourself, IBM isn't dropping Linux anytime soon.
(Especially when it took them ten years to step away from os/2 and they still make fixpacks for that!)
A host is a host from coast to coast, but no one uses a host that's close
It'd be a massive undertaking to provide a link to all the things listed in each story (eg cvs, efm, kde), but for anybody in the computer geek community (alt. os), then they almost all make sense. But, your travels will take you to new places, depending on what your interests are. Read!
This communism - capitalism stuff is really interesting. It regularly pops up in discussions on open source.
We can say:
(1) If communism had had no appeal whatsoever, or if none of their arguments had been even a little valid, it wouldn't have been around for such a long time.
(2) Capitalism is still not workers' paradise and probably will never be. Workers, and the general public tend to prefer capitalism to communism, however. But then again, this does not mean that the potential for conflict between workers and capital asset owners has gone.
(3) Open-source is a way in which power, that had been accumulating in to the hands of software vendors, gets recovered partially and returned to the public. To that extent, it may succeed (to some extent) where communism clearly failed.
Hey that closing phrase was a bit rude.
I didn't say we shouldn't give credit to MS. I'm just saying that I don't believe in following each step MS does. I mean alpha blending now.. that sure isn't the "steering wheel" of the GUI business. I say it's good to give them credit and to copy the nice stuff.. but when one starts copying every little feature it seems more like a technical challenge than a UI improvement.
Not really complaining since I don't even use KDE, just making my point.
Yes, you're point is correct, but..
:)
On this issue, Keith from the X core dev. team has hacked QT libraries which actually shows you EVERYTHING on KDE.
Which means - once this extension will be officially released (probably in XFree 4.0.2) - and TrollTech will add Keith's modifications - then you could use the anti-aliasing fonts - but it won't be worth to lots of people here..
Why? cause only Matrox graphics card got this hardware accelerated. Others (for now) if they want to use it will need to use software rendering - which is VERY slow.
So, Matrox users - smile
Hetz (Heunique)
I completely agree with this.
Surely M$ and Communism display the same elements of extremism.
Go too far to the left, and you end up no different than going too far to the right.
M$ is a dictator and any company that gets in it's way is consumed and shipped off to "Siberia".
OSS displays characteristics of a stable middle-ground. Money can be made from it, but it does not rely on that. There is REAL "freedom to innovate" (that's right... Microsoft does not have sole rights to innovation !), with corporate bean-counters deciding what THEY think the direction should be.
Sounds like a democracy to me. (Or do we need a recount ?)
Not plain wrong, just sligtly wrong direction. The OS community bashes MS Wwndows so hard and then finds itself copying it. Windows also grabbed many ideas from other places. But by supporting alpha blending (and many other things such as integrated web browser) it seems to me that KDE no longer copies form the same sources where MS copied, but rather copies from MS directly. Anyhow I didn't intend to flame .. all my appreciation to KDE as a technical achievement.
I'm obviously still too idealistic, as I'm replying to this troll, but I'm afraid you underestimate my youth. In fact, not only are Mommy & Daddy not paying my way through school, I am actually paying for my son's education (and dreading September 2001 when I have to start paying for my daughter, too). I have a job, in fact I have had several, and yet I stand by what I said in my previous post. I have made a good living writing software for 15 years, and I have yet to fail to ship source code with any binary.
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E_NOSIG
Hmm, by your logic we shouldn't implement a cursor, text, or graphics for that matter. Not implementing features because windows does goes beyond stupidity, there is literally no word for how dumb your suggestion is. BTW, this whole alpha blending hack brings up another point concerning a 'linux' (by 'linux' I mean linux+KDE/GNOME+whatever you put together to make a desktop OS). After 4 years of linux, I switched to windows. Why? Because *no one* will take a leadership role. All the software that comes out utilizes work arounds (like this alpha blending hack) to achieve neat effects. Eventually, some project will have to stand up and begin integrating all the pieces, breaking things if they must. The lack of leadership is why we still don't have anti-aliased fonts in X. If we were to change the rendering mechanism, it'd break everything, so for years half of us have been waiting for aa'd fonts, and the other half has been opposing change because it would 'break something'. Someone needs to get out and break stuff to get some momentum going again!
The best way to accelerate a windows box is at 9.8 meters per second square.
When you consider that nothing about the Windows UI is original, one has to wonder what makes copying a copied interface so wrong.
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
It was at about this point that you should have determined that this was a troll. Maybe the next item after that, but that's pushing it.
Bonus points if you picked it up after "Open source software is, plainly, too open - like Communism". Don't be fooled by the fact that the first few paragraphs were on-topic and fairly reasonable.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Yes, it all looks very nice, but it's not earth shattering is it?
Imlib2 has been able to do the alpha blending thing for ages, it hasn't been used much outside efm, but it's there. Dunno about antialiased fonts yet though.
Maybe the reason nobody knows about it is because it's not actually that usefull. But i'm sure that's missing the point - it looks nice, and that's what's important. Ace.
Pretty funny how you put it like that. People have their Windows machines, and their pet Linux box in the corner. Cool to tinker with, but not much beyond that. Well, I'm practically the opposite of you. Before college, I had Linux on my machine but used Windows most of the time. When I got here, I started using Linux nearly all the time. Now, I too have "moved on" from playing with Linux. I'm now running FreeBSD, Solaris, IRIX, and AIX. In fact, I've been using an SGI Indigo2 as my main desktop since the summer, and I'm looking at Sun for my next machine. I've got my pet Windows box, and that's dual boot.
I dunno, I agree with the car thing. But after spending over a year on my personal self-customized GNOME desktop, using windows for anything other than game-playing is just painful. I will admit, the interface for Win95 was good for it's time. And I think that the Start menu and taskbar were really great ideas. But everything else just leaves me highly unsatisfied. (For example, the idea of actually clicking on windows just to focus them now seems insane. Hurrah sloppy mouse focus!)
Sounds like Linux to me, not there is anything wrong with that, lets just call a spade a spade.
the move from kfm to konqueror in kde 2.0 was pretty painful. There is no reason a filemanager should take 10 seconds to open a fscking directory. Oh...excuse me...URL.
They need to stop this everything and 10 kitchen sinks approach. I thought the whole point of an environment is to make small components that interact? I know..OT, but it's part of the whole friggin' problem.
Explain to me how the openness and freedom afforded by OSS/Free software is a communist ideal? Seriously. This makes no sense at all.
If Free/OpenSource software is the reflection of communist ideals, then what is closed-source software? Lessee:
- A central 'authority' determines what the software I run looks like.
- They also define what the architecture of the software is.
- They further dictate when/where/how their (remember, we don't 'own' closed-source software) is run, and by whom. All covered in the EULA...
- Using patents and trademarks, and a twisted interpretation of copyright, they forclose competition, in the interest of their own well-being (profitability).
- User input in to the process is limited, perfunctury, and superficial in the extreme. Don't like using a particular browser? 'Sorry, you can't remove it. It's that way for your own good.'
- They engage in propaganda campaigns to warn everyone of the evils of doing things differently. (Naked PC's anyone?)
Linux/Free Software, on the other hand, allows me to do whatever I want to the software and redistribute the changes (perhaps at a profit). I am not bound by ideas of propriety (save the few restrictions of the GPL). I do not have answer to anyone if I want to run a copies of the system on each of the dozen or so systems I have @ home. I can give copies away for free if I'd like. It's freedom, not communism.
Where the value of X-Mailer: is the true measure of a man...
And the obligatory $3 crack mention goes right here.
It may look like I'm doing nothing, but I'm actively waiting for my problems to go away.
--Scott Adams
I'm spending a lot of life building GUI's (in Java) and I have some questions about icons and eye-candy:
As hackers, we all know that you can unplug one icon and replace it with another, the type of graphic art is totally unrelated to the quality of the code and the app, and so on, but, the look and feel can have a pretty major effect on the way people take to your software.
In my experience, if people are a little unsure how much they should trust your code, and how much time they should invest in it, 'clean and professional' is more likely to give the right impression than 'cute and well drawn'. Think Nokia mobile phone vs. a Micky Mouse novelty candlestick one. (I'm not saying that the icons are as bad as that - just that that's the sort of distinction I'm trying to make).
I know it's all themed, and you can set the theme to be whatever you want, but I would suggest that the default theme should be much more 'serious'. We all love the penguin, some love the KDE dragon, but would we get more respect if the images were less cuddly - harder? I guess this is why the Playstation 2 looks like it does, and why it's logo is made up of a set of straight lines on a white background. It looks hi-tech and cool.
Someone else (rebelcool) made the point that 'looking like Windows is a good thing because Microsoft have spent a lot of money on research and they know what they're doing'. I kind of agree with that, but there is a better reason: Most people who use a computer understand the Microsoft GUI. It might not be the best on a level playing field, but the playing field isn't level - pretty much everyone is familiar with Microsoft's GUI.
To use the same steering wheel analogy: Every car has a steering wheel because every car has a steering wheel. Thus, steering wheels make the best user-interfaces, simply because they mean that anyone with a driving license can just get in and drive off.
One final point, I'm so used to Unix I find typing on a Windows box feels like I have boxing gloves on. I hate it, I find it frustrating. So I install bash shells and emacs, and do everything I can to make it look like what I'm used to. It's a pain, and I certainly can't do it on a stranger's computer I happen to be using for a bit. I have an enormous amount of empathy for Windows users in a hurry who have to make the switch in the other direction.
really. all that posting stories does is denial of service attack someone's server. the links point to two measly png images. how hard can mirroring that be? it's been said before and it needs to be said again, slashdot editors need to be more considerate and responsible, considering their site's popularity.
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Santa Claus: "Ho ho ho!"
NO CARRIER
Engineering and the Ultimate
Yes, this is offtopic, but too bad. Just don't read below the line if you don't care about this at all...
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OK, The "idea base" behind Communism is good at first glance, but if you think about it, it really isn't that good. One of the things that makes "capitalism" or whatever work is the fact that hard work and talent is paid with rewards. With communism, where the fuck is my incentive to work hard? If I get the same stuff for working just hard enough to get fired as I would get for working my ass off, what the hell would I want to work my ass off for? This begs for the retort that I should be doing something I love and working hard at it because I love it, but many people really hate their jobs, and they only work hard at them to get money. Like it or not, we are a dollar(ruble(sp?) or franc or whatever) driven society, in all nations, and it will stay that way. That is the "fatal flaw" of communism. In general, people won't work hard if they dont get a reward from it. Watch Office Space, hehe. But seriously, it isn't that Americans hate communism because we are afraid or threatened or predjudiced towards it, we dislike it because it has so many flaws, and it goes against what we believe in.
It sounds dirty to say it, but the skilled computer programmer or whatever who works hard and makes huge advances in his or her field actually does deserve more money than the equally hard working and whatnot Joe Welder because Joe Welder, while hard working and probably a great family man who deserves a lot, really isn't making any advances that further mankind or anything like that. Sure, the world would do just fine without Windows 20030023, but they would also do fine with a slightly less properly welded job done by a poor worker. At least more people benefit from the programmer's work, so he deserves more money. It sounds dirty to say all of that, I know, but in actuality that is how things work and I kind of think how they should be. Not probably to quite the extent that they are (you were right by saying that 20x is too much) but they should be more than you think they should be (the benefits, that is). THis is ranting, I am done now.
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Slashdot, Your mom is a lameness filter. Just because I put in 12 '-'s to make a line doesn't mean I am putting in an army of junk characters. You need to fix something with that!
//FIXME: Bad
One is a an easy-to-use operating system, the other is not.
/., remember? You're not supposed to state your opinion, you're supposed to say what they wanna hear...
One is free, one is not. OTOH, considering the rest of your post, the moderators will probably see the words Linux and bad a couple of times and you'll be known as flamebait. This is
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
You ass, I almost fell for that.
***
I always get a chuckle when I read the predominantly Linux using readers of SlashDot badmouth the MacOS and/or Mac Users.. With that said, you may want to take a look at the general Mac OS X user forum at osx.macnn.com. Of particular relevence to this discussion are:
The MacOS isn't perfect, and neither is OS X.. A number of the reader submissions to the "customizing the interface" are questions and/or suggestions regarding turning off transparency, drop shadows, and making the windows rectangular.. These are adjustments that require a bit of work right now, but improve the effective speed of the interface. And you're right in claiming that they're not alterations that Apple is going to promote people making. But a handful of theme construction tools are already being put together, and the effects can be turned off if you want it bad enough..
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Well I was going to write a treatise on communism, but this whole argument falls apart when you realize that Linux and/or OSS is neither a political system nor a political theory.
Even as an analogy, the comparision is pretty weak--my copy of linux is mine, no one can demand a copy of me. Nothing in the GPL says that you *must* make a copy on demand which is what the political system of communism would demand to be done (actually it would also say anybody should be able to use my computer, which is worse). You may be confused about the GPL conditions on redistribution. Read it some time and give it some thought.
which is the case, even M$ uses a community to build its software. they just pay their staff.
* both suffer in comparison to the Capitalist competition - the products made by Communists were, and are inferior in build and technology, to those made by Capitalists. So it is with open source software - the Capitalist option is superior to the Communist one - Windows is greatly superior to KDE/Gnome, and Solaris is better than Linux.
horsedung, the commies were the first to put a man in space and have/had a good reputation of producing darn good scientists and products. i am not a commie so i won't defend them too much.
* both perform poorly financially - Linux stocks have fallen through the floor, just as in Communist countries GDP per capita is typically a fifth of that of a Capitalist country.
who cares about stocks???? we just want free software, which, of course, you can't make a lot of money on, the margins are just no big enough. But that is not the point of the free software movement.
* both are bad for humanity - Communism because it results in a lower standard of living for all, and Linux because it stifles innovation - everything in Linux is *copied* (the basic idea, Unix, was copied, the start menu used by the most popular desktop environments, the file manager, all the software, things like Mesa), and if that means that if it succeeds in killing non-free software there will be no innovation - Linux has never produced any thing original.
exactly the point, you got it. we copy the good stuff since we can, because its _free_ (you are clueless aren't you?), and as far as not succeeding in producing anything innovative, uhm, mail, countless procols, png, pgp, some file systems, several operating systems, uhm... god, u have no idea.
* Furthermore, Linux is bad for humanity because it means people will no longer take Computer Science degrees - there won't be any money in Computing because of all the free software, so software will suffer a brain drain.
Hmm, seems you are wrong on that account too.
* both are increasingly being discredited and look to be all but dead - companies are abandoning Linux development, people are finding out that the quality of Linux is very low - distributions like RedHat and Mandrake are very poorly tested; furthermore, they are finding that the makers of the poor quality software cannot be held to account - since it free, you can't complain when you find out it isn't very good.
beside the point. if something is broken, someone will fix it. almost all _stable_ versions of OSes are as they claim, stable. its just that most people like too have the latest features...
* both seem to believe that making money is bad, and have successfully indoctrinated many people with the idea - something anyone would see is wrong.
making money is good, making commercial software is ok too. making free software is fun. jeez,.. lighten up, have a beer.
I have a cool sig too.
They were heading in the right direction with functionality...but they've totally screwed that up too.
Linux, like most unix OSs, was designed for functionality, not ease of use. Why does the average Joe User continue to complain endlessly that they don't understand or can't use the awesome functional capabilities of Linux when all of the freakin' documentation is installed by default for every distribution I have encounterred in
The average Joe User is lazy and pathetic and should not flock to the popular OS without learning a bit about it before hand. Linux was written by the people, for the people. If you can't make it work for you, then you are plain stupid!
Just my rant...
shouldn't those links be kde.org? This may be your problem. Please check your links before you send them in as a story.... Dave
Personally I would say Microsoft = Corperatism, Open Source = Something that wasn't really described by 19th century philosophers.
/. for a week or two), and we also get motivated people (because most projects are based upon merit - so only motivated individuals need apply & also there IS an opportunity to make money, and lots of it - you just have to be more creative then - lets make 500,000 of this widgit, and sell them!)
Open Source has strong elements of both capitalism and communism.
It's communist in nature, because it creates stuff that is in the end owned by everyone. That is really where it's similarities to communism end.
It's capitalist in nature, because it is VERY competetive (KDE/GNOME, VI/EMACS, BSD/LINUX, PERL/PYTHON), but instead of just competeting for dollars, the people involved are competeting for a more valuable resource - mind share. It is deffinitly also a 'best product wins' scenario - which is strongly capitalistic.
Communism had some efficiency because it was better at allocating resources then some previous models (such as fudalism), but because people had no real incentive to work (other then the mythical good of the whole) it turned out to be way more inefficient then capitalism. Also, since there is by necessity a central authority that determins what is created, and what is consumed - it makes it very hard for things to compete - which also leads to inefficiency, because the bad is not effectivly weeded out.
Capitalism is more efficient then communism in most ways because it forces people to be effective, or be left behind. it also promotes competetion - which weeds out the chaff. On the other hand, capitalism promotes 'trade secrets', and so the state of the art is held back in may ways, because people are not as easily able to 'stand on the shoulders of giants' as they may be in other systems. So far, this has been a small price to pay for capitalism's benefits.
The problem here, is that all these systems are based upon scarce resources. If you instead have resources (like software) that do not lose value as people use them, you are allowed a new paradigm, that was not possible in the 19th century to predict.
Open Source may well be the echos of a new model. One that draws upon the strengths of multiple systems. From Communism, we get the benefit that work does not have to be duplicated many times over (buy in large, it appears that Open Source seems to collapse into 2 major projects, with perhaps a half dozen minor projects that are mostly for experimentation's sake). From Capitalism, we get competetion (Anyone who wants to argure that there is no competetion in open source need just read
It is for these reasons, that I think this argument is moot, because Open Source draws upon the strengths of both the capitalistic and the communistic models.
- The unexamined life is not worth leading -
Logging out: a comparison
MS Intuitive Interface(tm):
*click* "Start"
*click* "Shut Down"
*click* "Close all programs and log in as new user"
*click* OK
Linux:
*click* (anywhere on the desktop, not just a 16x64 box in one corner of the screen)
*click* "log out"
Which makes more sense to you?
0 1 - just my two bits
I use Win2k so I never have to worry about this stuff. Could someone tell me what these terms mean? Just curious...
Au contraire, KDE2 with the default theme and the hi-colour icons looks as crispy as Gnome
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Kiro
I've finally achieved peace in this never ending war of limited mindshare - I've configured my desktop, which includes two monitors, two run Gnome and KDE simultaneously. That's right, I've got KDE running on one monitor, X display *:0.0, and Gnome running on the other *:0.1. This might seem like a huge waste of memory and resources to the casual reader, but this turns out to be the best solution I have found after over a year of flip-flopping between the two desktop environments.
If Only...
If only Gnome had a descent native web browser like konquerer - that kicks ass!
If only konquerer would remember how funking big I want the browser every time I start it up - this is an issue with a dual head setup
If only KDE would support multiple panels that weren't so clunky
If only KDE and Gnome would use the same sound daemon so I could use both at the same time - KDE uses kRTs (or similar), and Gnome uses esd - I have to blame KDE on this one esd is desktop independent
If only Gnome had a decent MUA - KDE had kmail which is passable, and a lot better than the Gnome equivalent
If only KDE didn't think they needed to reinvent every piece of software written for X under the sun - come on, do you really need to write your own screensaver, with both xscreensaver and xlockmore out there?
Why can't you guys just get a long?
In the meantime, I'll run two Desktops on two monitors - at least X support cut and past of text between the two - how's that for interoperability?
XML causes global warming.
Count me in.
>the products made by Communists were, and are inferior in build and technology
Not true on all counts. Soviets were first in space, remember?
Although I really don't see any nation thus far being really communist or socialist, they've all fallen to various pitholes on the way up and failed to reach that goal.
It promotes laziness because people are given money whether they do a good job or not. I don't see what this has to do with free software.
This sounds exactly like what's happening with dot-coms of the world. And you know what, some of them are using free software (scary thought, I admit).
There you go.
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OTTERS RULE.
KDE could need a little beautification, it looks like pigvommit at its present state. Of course, looks aren't everything, try to make something that looks good and is functional all at once.
I don't know about the exact likeness of GPL and communism (should re-evaluate the license text with Marx on hand someday), just that IMHO both are good and dandy.
Not that there's anything wrong with BSD, too.
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OTTERS RULE.
Not to be picky or anything as your thoughts were generally very plausible, but this price we are paying for the benefits of capitalism is not small. Not even bearable.
20th century capitalism and the failed tries at socialism/communism (none succeeded IMHO) are the reasons why the whole world is on its death spirale as of now. So, the ideology behind corporatism needs to get the boot.
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OTTERS RULE.
Nice feature from Win2K.. really must have.. ..really must copy Windows all the time ? Just after FVWM2 most window managers started copying Win95 GUI (sure nothing original but they way it's assembled and they way it generally looks can be granted to the MS R&D).
I still think it's kind of sad that whether it's a design feature or just a looks feature we are still after MS.
bobo
gdk-pixbuf, which is already included in Gnome, and is part of the upcoming Gtk+ 1.4, has done alpha blended pixmaps for quite a while.
--
The world is divided in two categories:
those with a loaded gun and those who dig. You dig.
--
The world is divided in two categories:
those with a loaded gun and those who dig. You dig.
D'oh! You again!
***
Swap the cute little KDE throbber for the ubiquitous "E" and, um.... it looks like Windows. It's pretty, but how is this a Good Thing? KDE and Gnome both handle a lot like Windows Explorer, and no amount of flash, however nifty it looks, is going to change the inherent clunkiness of an Explorer ripoff.
e ady/Bork" at the bottom of my desktop at all times, without ever having to dig for it.
Anyone interested in laying aside prettiness for a bit and actually concentrating on >functionality ? I stick with the MacOS for four very simple core reasons:
1. Global location of File / Edit / View / etc. - whatever app I run, they're all there, they're all in the SAME DAMNED PLACE. Yeah.
2. The Control Strip. You can flame me for being a Mac boy, but this is a biggie. I have the controls for energy saving, battery life, file sharing, my web connection, quicktime, sound, my CDROM drive, and monitor resolution/depth on a quick-access strip that can be hidden with a keystroke. Basic system preferences available in the open without having to dig through *anything*.
3. Pop-up folders. I can keep the folder "Bork", where "Bork" is, for example, "hard drive/devcontent/sites/bigsite/images/processed/r
4. The ability to "hide" an application. NOT minimize it. NOT collapse the window. HIDE the thing so that it's only visible from the Finder menu. Out of sight, out of mind.
Excepting item one, it seems that MacOSX has dropped these critical features... they are perfect functionality enhancements that I have yet to see anywhere else because, apparently, Microsoft didn't rip them off first.
Howzabout some innovation, instead of redoing something someone else has already done?
http://www.ece.uiuc.edu/ece291/mp/mp4/ablit.html should give you a decent idea of what Alpha Blending can do, why you would want to use it, and how you might go about coding it (using MMX even! :)
"You can represent this entire problem as a 3x2 matrix"
And the great thing is that, with each rev. of KDE, we get more of both. ;)
Blatant plug: Get yer Konqi/KDE logo goodies right here - all profits donated to the KDE Project.
One possibility for the legal problems would be to cook up a standard for automatically providing permission for other people to cache a site, similar to how a robots.txt works for spidering. The iffy part would be figuring out what the default behavior would be in the absence of a 'cache.txt'.
Even nicer would be a distributed group of authoritative servers where cached copies could register themselves. Those servers could also serve as authorities to provide hashes of the mirrored files, allowing clients to automagically verify that a given cached copy is legit.
Although I suppose to a degree, such a project would be reinventing freenet. On the other hand, it'd be simpler to implement since you wouldn't be worrying about anonymity issues, as much.
1) Any alpha-blending code out there for us graphical newbies who want to see how it's done? .deb yet?
2) Second, has EFM been released as a
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
Neither the definition, nor my comments said you would be commanded to forfeit the use of your computer or your OS. The fact of the matter is, if someone wants a copy they can get one (read - a good that is common and available to all that need it), and don't argue that not everyone has access to the internet and therefore it's not available to all, since people who don't use or have access to a computer (with a burner if you are an ISO collector as I am) would even want the item.
I was merely providing Webster's definition of communism since there seemed to be some doubt to what the word meant. You are correct, the OS wars are not a political one (well, MS's court case might be), but Linux has a communistic idealogy (again, not that there is anything wrong with that, I like free software as much as anyone). The problem is people relate the word communism with the Evil Empire (USSR), the same way people relate socialism with the Third Reich, but most of the Europe and Canada are functioning quite well with goverments that can only be described as socialistic (which I believe is the best form of goverment anyway).
Am I the only one who thinks that this idea of icons that show the file contents is really stupid? Firstly, If I want to see whats in a file, i'll look at the filename or open it up. Secondly, it looks ugly. KDE has gone beyond the point of useless eye candy that slows your system down to useless ugly crap that slows your system down.
were you expecting to see a sig here? perhaps you'd rather see the inside of an ambulance!
Bababooey to you. "what Win3.11 would have looked like had the Germans designed it". lol.
You made my day. Thx.
Cheers,
--fred
1 reply beneath your current threshold.
*groans*
...there's probably a lot more but I don't want to misrepresent.
Also, do not confuse Linux (the kernel) with GNU's entourage (compiler, libraries, tools, etc.) and XFree. The distributions put these together. Talk to them about packaging innovative windowing systems.
I'm a CS major. A lot of us Linux users are. We hate not knowing how the NT kernel works. We hate paying thousands of dollars and signing non-disclosure agreements just to take a peek. Linux is an attempt to do it all over. And guess what? It's doing a damn good job, considering that it's practically reverse engineering (minus any BSD stuff). Linux==communism? Hardly. Linux is the means to an end. I think the vendors who see it destined for a desktop market, etc. are disillusioned. It's bringing the Unix environment home. How do you think I learned Solaris (Sys V)? Training courses? Innovation? Here's innovation for you: Kernel modules (no reboots!) Proc filesystem Clone syscall interface
Black holes are where the Matrix raised SIGFPE
all the other cards are crap on X. Sure nvidia is faster in GL. But how often do I play quake 3 or sof? And how often would I be annoyed that the crappy nvidia binary driver causes loads of problems that will never be fixed?
:-)
I couldn't watch tv without the nice hardware scaled screen my matrox cards draws. Excellent.
And I play quake3 with full settings (well 16 bit colors) at 1024x768. Good enough for me.
Now this. My advice: Always buy the card the X developers like. Happens to be Matrox MGA
Moritz