Slashback: Stapler, Interface, Gaming

Slashback tonight (read on below) has updates on next-generation aircraft, KDE user-interface improvements and suggestions, a special warning for those obsessed with Milton's stapler from Office Space, SmartFilter's attitude toward SourceForge, and more.

You've got to admit it's getting better all the time. Gentu writes: "In parallel to the KDE 3.1-alpha release today, OSNews published an interesting article discussing a number of User Interface issues found on KDE 3. The article suggests a number of changes, some small, some pretty drastic. Towards the end of the two-part article, the author discusses the 'integration' problem found in today's X11 desktop environments, and how fixing this issue would bring Unix closer to average Joe's desktop."

Yes, you're allowed to have more than one friend. A NuKeFaN writes: "Following the article titled Are you a Friend of GNOME I wanted to point you out that the most used GPL'd software for the Web, PHP-Nuke, also has a similar page/system for their friends. It's a Club (MandrakeClub like) where you can be a member for a little monthly fee and you can get some extra benefits. You can access the Club area to know more about it. This can be, maybe, another example of how to get some money to fund a free software project, the matter is if we, as users, will support those project's developers this way? I think we can."

Wait, the scam was to take just a few pennies from everyone! MrBlue VT writes "In reference to the previous Slashdot article about the red Swingline Staplers, I click on the add to cart button on the Swingline website, and it pops open an ordering window with a 4 staplers added to the shopping cart. Ok, I think it's a little strange, but change the quantity back to 1, and hit continue to checkout. Next thing I know, I'm looking at an order form with all the text boxes filled out with somebody else's personal information. He's from Bellvue, WA apparently (I'm in Virginia). It also has his credit card number and expiration date!

This has to be the worst security I've ever seen in an online shopping site. The company who apparently provides the online shopping service for Swingline appears to be an outfit called SureSource.

I just wanted to let anyone who happened to order from them know about this. Your credit card info could very well be compromised."

Please fasten your belts. hondo77 submitted this follow-up to this article about next-generation aircraft, writing "Boeing says that their blended-wing aircraft will be ready for test flights in 2006. The article also has a picture of a 3% scale model. See, it doesn't look like the B-2 at all."

But thanks anyhow. flonker writes "Smartfilter no longer lists sourceforge.net! Link for those who want to see for themselves."

Great at stealing them, too. MrDingusMcGee writes "After the recent posting about a study suggesting that video games decrease brain activity, I thought it would be interesting to read the results of another study which has shown that video game players score better on a range of attention tasks (mirror here)done by Shawn Green at the University of Rochester Brain and Cognitive Sciences Department, and that this could possibly rate video game players as better drivers. Worth seeing the other side of the argument and having some validation for those hours of gaming."

Comments

Staplers

[Anonymous Coward]

You did order the man 4 staplers, right? And then another 4? And then 4 more, just to be nice?

Re:Staplers

[unicron]

I..I um, I um..I believe you have my credit card.

Re:Staplers

[Jonny Ringo]

He's from Bellvue, WA apparently
which is right next to Redmond, most Microsofties live in Bellvue.
So, I'm just saying its probably justified is all :-)

Re:Staplers

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all, the Swingline website was down this morning. And no, it was not Slashdotted -- it was Wall Street Journaled. (Really, you people amaze me. Any international news website gets more hits in an hour than Slashdot gets in a day. Consequently, the potential for a real news site to DOS a website is incredible. Slashdot is not a big deal to anyone who isn't a Linux-loser FUDdite.) Swingline's bandwidth was hosed and they put up a "we are fixing a technical problem" message for a few hours.

When the site finally came back up, tens of thousands of Office Space fans rushed in, wanting they're very own 'tapler.

Unfortunately, SureSource -- the unprofessional cockgobblers whom Swingline unfortunately chose as their e-commerice parter -- are apparently a bunch of amateurs. Either they were running a blatantly broken web application, or they never did any load testing. Either way, their shopping cart got confused and lost track of which cookies belonged to which sessions. Consequently, when User A tried to add a red Swingline to his shopping cart, he may have been adding it to User B's shopping cart. So, when User B went to check out, he might have seen several more staplers in his shopping cart than he expected to see. User B would then try to go back and delete the extra staplers, but in fact was deleting staplers from User C's cart. And because SureSource stores the user's already-entered personal data in the session, User C might see User B's name, address, phone number, and email address prepopulating the address form when he goes to check out.

That, my friends, is a problem. But the really big fucking problem is that SureSource were storing already-entered credit-card information somewhere in the session, too. There's a chance that anyone who tried to check out saw anyone else's credit card data.

I know this because I, very happy to finally be ordering the stapler after several hours of Swingline's downtime, attempted to fix my shopping cart several times before coming to the conclusion that SureSource are a bunch of fucktards. I was not very happy when, several hours later, I received several warning emails from some kind souls who happened to see my contact information and credit card info. I also received several phone calls.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who emailed or phoned any person whose personal data they saw to warn them. For some of you, those were long distance phone calls. We are very, very grateful.

Swingline heard about the fiasco pretty quick, and pulled the SureSource shopping cart link from their website. They've added a SureSource telephone number that you can call to order instead. Ha! In order for their telephone operators to fuck up as badly as they're "web developers" did, they would have to answer the phone by saying, "Hello, this is SureSource, would you like several people's credit card and billing information free of charge?"

The bottom line is that SureSource are unprofessional scum. I have never seen such maliciously broken software on the Web in years, and I hope that they get their dumb asses shut down by the Better Business Bureau. Hey, guys! If you're a bunch of lightweights, don't take contracts from companies with real volume!

Swingline, I hope, will drop SureSource by the end of the week. You, reader, can expedite that. Please, don't call SureSource and order a 'tapler. Instead, contact Swingline and tell them that you will not purchase a stapler until they find a different e-commerce partner. As it is, Swingline is a party to what is one of the most potentially damaging credit card problems I've seen on the Web. I'm not bullshitting you. The Wall Street Journal has a large userbase, and that link propagated to sites like Slashdot well before the morning was over. Think about how many people have seen that page. Think about how many have ordered. And think about the fact that for every person kindhearted enough to warn his fellow man to watch his credit card statement, there is probably another person evil enough to cut'n'paste the data into a text file. SureSource gave those people my name, billing address, email address, phone number, credit card number, credit card type, and expiration date. If that isn't enough to pull of some heinous identity theft, I don't know what is.

And if you don't boycott Swingline for others' sake, do it for your own sake. If SureSource is unprofessional enough to use untested software on an e-commerce site -- and believe me, that's the kind of shit that QA folks find pretty quick -- then who's to say that their internal credit card databases aren't just as easily compromised?

Even Milton, my friends, didn't need his 'tapler that bad.

Thank you for your time.

Re:Staplers

[Kallahar]

One thing about those big sites is that they rarely link to another site. I can't tell you how many times I've read a CNN story that had ZERO links or domain names. They often will link internally to their own stories, but they try hard to not send people off their site. Slashdot, on the other hand, exists solely on links, with just minor blurbs to get people to go to the site.

But you do bring up many good points :)

Travis

Swingline's site

[CheechBG]

it would appear that they took out the online purchase option, opting instead for phone orders through SureSource. Oh well, I really had no need for a fire-engine red stapler anyway :)

Staplers Now Off-Line

[Myriad]

I just checked the Swingline website and it looks like the on-line order button has been removed and replaced with:

To place an order for the Rio Red Stapler (SKU#: S7074740), Please call SureSource at: 1-800-544-3243.

Re:Staplers Now Off-Line

[Anonymous Coward]

...it looks like the on-line order button has been removed...

But other products still have the order button.

Weird.

And they're slashdotted, too! Poor Swingline.

Re:Staplers Now Off-Line

[douglas jeffries]

it appears they just commented out the html. seems like a quick hack, but who views source anyway?

<!--<a href="#"onClick="javascript:popUp2('http://www.acc o-store.com/cgi-bin/sgic0101.exe?HKW=CO01DIV01+COD IV=0101+QTY=1+UID=1613471026418266609+ITN=S7074740 ')"><img border="0" src="/images/sw/sw-add-to-cart.gif" alt="Buy from SureSource"></a>-->

fax-something-unique-to-8889771577 ?

[cperciva]

Can someone explain where the fax-something-unique-to-8889771577 bit comes in? I can't see any connection to any of the stories.

Re:fax-something-unique-to-8889771577 ?

[peterdaly]

They will hate me for putting this idea into people's minds...but everyone I explain this to gets a kick out of it, so here goes.

1. Take 5 sheets of black construction paper.
2. Scotch tape them into a single 5 sheet long sheet.
3. Place start of "page" into fax machine.
4. Dial the "recipient".
5. Watch sheet start going into the fax machine with glee.
6. Once out the other side, Scotch Tape beginning of "sheet" to end of sheet forming a giant black loop.
7. Giggle like a teenage girl and show your co-workers. Trust me, the showing co-workers step is needed for the full satisfaction. Choose co-workers carefully.
8. You Are Done! Not only that, but the recipient is now out of ink or toner.

Not that I have ever done this...but I know someone who has done this to someone who kept sending them spam faxes.

I hold no responsibility for your actions yada yada...

-Pete
BTW - comment posting is screwed.

Re:fax-something-unique-to-8889771577 ?

[Russ Steffen]

Unless your "victim" has something more sophisticated than a fax machine, like say a PC with a fax modem or a fax server. In that case you're just tying up a phone line.

And, why bother with the construction paper? Just a FAX modem, an all-black TIFF file and some know-how and you can do the same job in a much more reliable way (the tape seams tend to fray and split after 15 or so passses). And, it'll be more impressive to your cow-orkers.

Re:fax-something-unique-to-8889771577 ?

[orthogonal]

But you're not really 133t until you twist the fifth sheet through 180 degrees before attaching it to the first. For best results, fax from 662-487... (MOBIUS).

Re:fax-something-unique-to-8889771577 ?

[evilempireinc]

while it very well might be easier to just use a fax modem, I just don't think it would provide the same level of satisfaction that you would get from watching the black paper loop through the machine over and over again until you are disconnected. It also beats pasting that same black tiff into a document till it 1000 pages long

Re:fax-something-unique-to-8889771577 ?

[istartedi]

You're not looking at both sides of the issue. (groan)

Re:fax-something-unique-to-8889771577 ?

[penguinboy]

The header (CSID) really means nothing, as it can be set by the sender. Only caller ID can be even remotely trusted to be true.

Re:fax-something-unique-to-8889771577 ?

[brad3378]

You Rock!

How's this? (never tried it yet)

In States that charge for pop-can / soda-can deposits, we have automated machines that you stick the cans in for your refund. You stick the can in the machine, it gets crushed, and when you're done a refund receipt gets printed out.

My idea

Cut out the UPC symbol from a refundable bottle/can

Get a long stick and a roll of scotch tape

Tape the UPC on the stick

"Probe" the machine with the stick.

Not sure if it would work.
There might be a mechanism that determines if a can has been crushed.


I hold no responsibility for machines you start probing.

Re:fax-something-unique-to-8889771577 ?

[alfredw]

And, why bother with the construction paper? Just a FAX modem, an all-black TIFF file and some know-how and you can do the same job
in a much more reliable way (the tape seams tend to fray and split after 15 or so passses). And, it'll be more impressive to your cow-orkers.

Nah, I think you lose some of the sheer glee of watching that black loop go around and around and around and around...

It's a truly euphoric experience!

Re:fax-something-unique-to-8889771577 ?

[quantaman]

the tape seams tend to fray and split after 15 or so passses

Ummm... Perhaps you meant to add, "or so they tell me"

Shopping Cart

[jfroot]

These kind of errors are usually caused by the shopping cart using your IP address to identify your session. If you and someone else are both shopping on the site and are going through the same proxy, you will see each others cart.

Re:Shopping Cart

[edrugtrader]

UM. NO.

this was caused by an overloaded server, with poor coding that allowed for race conditions.

no more, no less.

Re:Shopping Cart

[cpeterso]

They might use the same proxy server if they are both AOL users. From what I've heard, AOL has about two dozen proxy servers between their users and the untamed internet. Their user proxy server assignments are dynamic and can even change during a shopping-cart session. This unexpected shifting of IP addresses caused problems for a web app people at my work were developing..

Re:Shopping Cart

[edrugtrader]

ok... so for 'security' reasons, the credit card processing system is seperate from the web server... the cart software requests the user information from the credit card processing system, and gives it somesort of ID... the credit card processing system didn't properly lock out race conditions and sent the info to the wrong requesting cart.

so my reply is simply: bullshit.

Re:Shopping Cart

[leuk_he]

but if i use the link(from a previouse comment) i see somebody elses info.

Somebody did clear the credit card info. too bad.

Re:Shopping Cart

[jdavidb]

Actually, I think these kinds of errors are usually caused by seeing the quoted rates of the contractor you wanted to get to create your ecommerce site and saying, "Can't we get anyone cheaper?" :)

Re:Grand Theft Auto III

[Kenja]

I have never lurked around dark tunnels running from ghosts and eating pills I find on the ground. I have never had the urge to strut up and down the street making Boop Boop noises. I have never felt the need to grab a BFG and go hunting demons. Video games have yet to affect my real life at all (other then reducing the amount of time I spend there). If you don't want your kids to play these games don't let them. Do not turn to society as a whole to police what your kids can do.

Always hated the "About" menu item

[FattMattP]

There's one thing about pretty much every GUI program that I really hate. It's the About menu item. It never tells me about the program. It just tells me who wrote it and what the copyright is. That sort of stuff should be moved into a Credits menu item and the About menu item should devote a few sentences to telling me what the program does.

I ran into this problem a lot when I first started using both GNOME and KDE. I had no idea what half the programs did and there was no clue within the program itself. After a while it became too much of a drag to go find the docs just to read a one paragraph summary of what a given program was. I would hope that in the future developers would start putting a small description of their program within the About menu item.

Re: Always hated the "About" menu item

[Pseudonym]

Personally, I've never understood why exiting a program is a "File" operation, either.

Re:Always hated the "About" menu item

[BeBoxer]

This is a good point, especially in the era of free software. With commercial software, if you are running it you probably know what it does. At least I hope you had some idea before you paid for it. But with free software, you might have hundreds of programs installed that you've never heard of. And since half the GUI apps out there look essentially the same, with some menus, a toolbar on the top, maybe a palatte on the left and some sort of workspace taking up the balance of the window. A short paragraph saying what the program does, and what makes it special would be nice.

Take editors. My system has three apps under the Editor item on my Kmenu: Kate, KEdit, and KWrite. Here's what how they describe themselves:

"KWrite - Leightweight Kate"
"Kate - KDE Advanced Text Editor"
and the winner for least information:
KEdit "A KDE Text Editor"

A few sentences describing what makes each one special or unique would be helpful. I don't want to have to scrub thru all the menu's trying to figure out what differs. Oh well.

Re: Always hated the "About" menu item

[Xerithane]

Wow, that took me back. I used to have a huge issue with this, and have since completely forgotten and accepted it.

Scary thing, complacency is.

Do your civic duty!

[Kredal]

Click here and change the category from "none" to "criminal skills". Don't let your children (or cow-orkers) visit a criminal orgainization!

Re:Do your civic duty!

[VRisaMetaphor]

Damn cow-orkers can visit goatse for all I care! If I ever catch them orking my cows again, I will shoot them, I swear.

Re:Do your civic duty!

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

OK, so I can classify www.microsoft.com, but what category?

Cults/Occult
The cult of Bill is strong in this one my master.
Criminal Skills
Microsoft has stolen more of my time than you will ever believe.
Drugs
Many things from there seem to be designed with the aid of drugs
Entertainment
Ha! IE crashed again and took out my shell, FUNNY!!!!
Extreme
Prices, yes.
Gambling
20-1 Blue Screen of death on next restart...
Hate Speech
Read the opinions on Sun, or Linux, or MacOS, or Java, or...
Humor
"We only do things to help our customers, we like innovating, not squelching competition".. Hilarious
Investing
I Invest too much time in MS crap.
Job Search
Can i find a job that doesn't require Exchange and Outlook on the desktop?
MP3
After the new MS patch erases all of yours, you'll be looking for more.
Mature
I'll grow old before this works
Nude
YIKES! A bunch of large gutted psty faced, large gutted engineers, I'd rather look at goatse.cx
Politics/Religion
Billy has bought a bunch of politicians, and it the cult of MS certainly is a religion.
Self Help
They sure ain't helping ya.
Sports
Monitor chucking? Or shotgun blasts (keeping with the Office Space theme)
Travel
"Calgon, take me away!!!!

No trolls were harmed in the making of this message.

Re:Grand Theft Auto III

[NanoGator]

Heh. I have been playing GTA3 (way too much actually) for the last week. Let me tell you something, I about died laughing when I managed to run over a person with a boat. (That was a sight to see!) Just for giggles, I like to run around and wallop people with a bat. Sometimes, I take the sniper rifle and blow people's heads off for no real reason other than it's fun to watch. Sometimes I instigate car chases with the cops just for the thrill of seeing how many I can take out before they take me out.

So I'm somebody that's more likely to go commit a crime, right? Wrong. GTA 3 is a hell of a lot of fun to play, but let me tell you something: That game taught me that the last thing I want to do is play games with cops.

The thought of ramming a cop car and seeing how far he and his buddies will chase me scares the shit out of me. Why? Because even in a game where my car can put up with a good deal more abuse than my real car can, I can't get away from the cops. The only real chance I have of getting away involves luck. That's it, luck. They will get me.

If anything, I think GTA 3 will reduce hoodlumism. Why? Because the physics in the game are a little different than they are in real life. For example: You can mow down a stoplight and still keep tooling along at 90 mph. In real life, striking a stoplight would end the chase rather suddenly.

Things happen much faster on GTA than they would in real life. Cars acellerate faster, and you can keep the chase going much longer than you possibly could in real life. And geez, there's no way you're going to acquire grenades to lob at people. GTA 3 really spoils reality for people. It's a lot more fun to destroy stuff in GTA 3 than it could possibly be in real life.

Newton's 3rd Law of Studies

[prockcore]

For every study, there is an equal and opposite study.

The obvious answer

[Weasel Boy]

"It frightens me that we allow these sort of games to be played by our youth"

So don't allow your kids to play these kinds of games. Duh. The answer to mature subject matter is attentive parenting, not government curbs on basic rights.

This point is so basic... I don't even know why I'm letting you jerk my chain. You can't be serious. I should just mod "-1 troll" and move on.

Re:The obvious answer

[Sheetrock]

Actually, while that would seem to be the ideal answer, sadly, many stores will happily sell these sorts of games to teenagers without letting parents know. Congress is poised to make this sort of thing a federal crime, which while harsh is an excellent first step towards curbing underage viewing of what I would term 'a pornography of violence'. However, the only long term solution is to follow the more enlightened policies of some European countries and ban this sort of trash outright. Nazi symbolism is outlawed overseas to prevent the most horrible of atrocities from resurfacing in our youth, so why do we permit this promotion of antisocial behavior wrapped in a shiny teen-friendly package?

I honestly don't mean to troll, but am merely providing an alternative opinion that I know won't wash very well here. I never understood why people who ostensibly promote free speech actually just mean free speech that agrees with their thoughts.

Re:The obvious answer

[numark]

First off, I'll say that I respect your view, even if I wholeheartedly disagree with it.

That said, I believe that this problem still can be solved by attentive parenting. Even if a store sells a violent game to a teenager, it seems unlikely that teenager would be able to keep their parents from ever discovering the game.

If parents don't approve of certain games, they can merely randomly observe what their child is playing. They can easily do this by placing the gaming system in a common area, such as a living room or study. If a parent isn't willing to do this to enforce their rules and views, then the problem lies with the parents, not with the store or the video game manufacturer.

Government is not meant to be an end-all and be-all for the "sanitation" of our lives. This especially holds true in America, where we have the fundamental right to make decisions for ourselves and our children with a minimum of governmental interference. If we want freedom of speech for ourselves, we also have to advocate freedom of speech for those who disagree with us and our views. It's that simple.

Quick Browser in KDE 3

[Mad Marlin]

In the KDE UI article, he suggests only letting root browse the / directory, and everyone else only their home directory. Why? Normal users need to browse the main directory tree, and can be limited from areas they shouldn't be with the mode bits. Dropping that ability would just be plain annoying.

Re:Quick Browser in KDE 3

[BeBoxer]

Actually, I don't think that's what he's recommending. He's talking about the desktop context menu, and whether or not it should include a "Quick Browser" item like the KMenu does. He thinks that a normal user should have his home directory available there, and root should have / available there. Both of which seem quite reasonable. Being able to open a new window to any directory with a right click on the desktop is a feature I use a lot in BeOS. It's not unreasonable to reduce clutter by only have ~ there for normal users. They can still get to / thru other means if they need to.

Re:Quick Browser in KDE 3

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

No, no, you've got it all wrong. It says "Browse /." It's an efficiency improvement, so the KDE user can always get to his or her favourite web site within a couple of clicks.

Re:Quick Browser in KDE 3

[bigpat]

Female slashdotters? When did that happen?

Re:Quick Browser in KDE 3

[Mad Marlin]

In the English language, the masculine pronouns may be used in a gender-nonspecific manner when one is unaware of the actual state of affairs.

Re:Quick Browser in KDE 3

[BeBoxer]

Besides that, I don't think that kde should be hard-coding any settings for a particular user anyway.

Well, root is a special case for a lot of things. Many programs need to behave differently depending on whether or not they are running as root. For that matter, they even need to worry about whether they are actually root, or just SUID root (comparing the UID vs. the EUID). Take ping. It has to be SUID so it can open a raw socket to craft the ICMP packets on. But it has to check and see if it's really root running the program to determine if certain options (flood pinging for example) are allowed.

On the other hand, maybe the only special code KDE should put in is a block in kdm which prevents root from logging in. As you stated, it's not an especially good idea.

driving games

[jcsehak]

It's true!

Mushrooms make me drive a lot faster, just like in Mario Kart.

PHP-Nuke Club

[MoThugz]

Other than the club, PHP-Nuke also has a donation link as well as an Amazon wishlist for Mr. Burzi (developer for PHP-Nuke). The club contains priviledged downloads for unreleased (beta and alpha codes) versions of PHP-Nuke. Members also get to download released versions five days earlier than non-members.

Although the club is a good idea, I prefer the donation method... or maybe Mr. Burzi could create some PHP-Nuke merchandise such as mugs, t-shirts or caps and sell them on the site. It's nice to have material things to cherish as mementos for the support you gave.

Re:PHP-Nuke Club

[nathanm]

You seem to know something about PHP-Nuke, so maybe you can you answer this question. What's with this incredibly bold, unsubstantiated claim in the original story:

... the most used GPL'd software for the Web...

First, it would be almost impossible to prove. Second, PHP-Nuke isn't used on any sites I regularly visit, but several of its workalikes are. Finally, although I've checked it out & know what it is, I'd bet 99.9% of web users have never heard of it.

Re:PHP-Nuke Club

[MoThugz]

Yeah, maybe that is too bold a statement to make... but not entirely without basis IMHO. With this statement, I mean that it could possibly be the most used GPL'd software for Web portals.

A quick search on Google for php portal returns PHP-Nuke as the top site.

It also ranks quite high on the result list for GPL Web Portal Software on google.

Suprisingly PHP-Nuke is also listed as the #1 site for Google's result for the search of God :)

Re:PHP-Nuke Club

[nathanm]

That's still not much evidence. Your 2nd link has Post-Nuke as the first result.

The third link is just plain strange! How did it get up there?

Driving...

[thelinuxking]

This article is so true! Even though I don't have my license yet, all that time playing Crazy Taxi will finally pay off!

As found on Google:

[datastew]

Its a fax number for a printer-supplies co. that spammed someone named jeffrey back in Feb. 2002.
The google search

The top google link

Jeffrey's notes on spammers that he has toll-free numbers listed for.

You're right, I still don't see the connection. Maybe timothy is trying for a fax slashdotting.

Re:Grand Theft Auto III

[jcsehak]

I have never lurked around dark tunnels running from ghosts and eating pills I find on the ground.

Yeah, but you're not Robert Downey Jr.

I think I saw this as someone's sig:
"If video games affected real life, we'd all be going around popping pills and listening to repetetive music."

Re:The picking of nits

[Anonymous Coward]

>What's wrong with three Home buttons?

It is redundant, dangerous for a newcomer and overly confusing. A good UI design, would not need more than 1 button/option. Plus, it bloats things up.

But they already do...

[marm]

I would hope that in the future developers would start putting a small description of their program within the About menu item.

Ummm, have you actually used KDE or are you simply pontificating pointlessly?

Open Konqueror. Go to Help->About Konqueror. In the about box that pops up, on the default 'About' tab, it says: 'Web browser, file manager, ...' which sums up pretty well what Konq does.

Similarly, in the same place in KMail: 'The KDE Email client'.

Or in Kate: 'Kate - KDE Advanced Text Editor'.

Or in KSirc: 'KDE Irc Client'.

Or in Konsole: 'X terminal for use with KDE.'

Pretty much every KDE program has exactly this. You get the about dialog for free when you use the KDE framework, and all the developer has to do is fill in a few blanks.

Not to mention, of course, that the app gets a description in the K Menu as well - for instance, KMail's entry looks like:
KMail (Mail Client)

Perhaps GNOME doesn't do these things, I can't tell you (I haven't had GNOME 1.4 installed for about a year and GNOME 2.0 was installed for a total of about an hour whilst I checked it out and decided I didn't like it) but as far as KDE is concerned, you're dead wrong.

Re:But they already do...

[FattMattP]

I am pontificating but not pointlessly. You assume that I'm talking about KDE in particular and therefore missed my point. KDE does now have short descriptions but it didn't when I first started to use it. GNOME didn't have these either. There are still many GUI based programs that are not KDE- or GNOME-based that don't provide a summary of what they do.

Also, something as brief as "KDE Advanced Text Editor" may be enough to describe a text editor but it's still rather skimpy on the details. As another poster pointed out, it would help to have some more detail so that the end user could make a better decision about which program to use.

An example of a better description for Kate:

Kate is a multi document editor, based on a rewritten version of the kwrite editing widget of KDE, offering all the features of that plus a bunch of its own including unicode support, syntax highlighting, and a plugin interface.

While Your're generous

[asv108]

Can you please donate to my charity.

Re:While Your're generous

[Bishop]

The scary part is that if you start spamming your link everywhere you will get donations.

Re:While Your're generous

[jred]

You know, I read Bishop's comment first & I was *still* tempted to give you a dollar...

Re:While Your're generous

[jimbolaya]

You know what? I think I will donate! Let me just grab a credit card number off the Swingline site...

Yeah, no murders ever before video games.

[Blaede]

I wish we could go back to era before Pong came out. No one ever murdered anyone. Drugs, crime, nothing like that ever existed. It was Utopia. Then that dreaded Pong arrived. Damn you, Nolan Bushnell!

Re:Yeah, no murders ever before video games.

[duckpoopy]

Pong is still a gateway game. After Pong I started playing table tennis. Thank god my parents intervened after I experimented with raquetball.

Re:Yeah, no murders ever before video games.

[istartedi]

OK, maybe there is a connection, but you don't cure smallpox by forcing people to get plastic surgery to hide the vesicles.

Smartfilter categories

[doublem]

Uhm... NO categories for most of the web sites I visit. Nothing about technology sites, hardware reviews, computer programming...

I half expected to see Tom's Hardware listed as a porn site.

Re:Smartfilter categories

[sharkey]

I half expected to see Tom's Hardware listed as a porn site.

Ad
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Arrested.

[phriedom]

Umm...not that it is actually important to your point, but unless you are foolish or unlucky, you very rarely get caught by the police in GTA3. You can jack a car right in front of a cop, and he will chase you for about 30 seconds, but then stop if you don't commit any more crimes (like running over pedestrians) along the way. But run over a cop or shoot one, and you better make a quick run to the pay'n'spray to get your car repainted so they cops won't recognize you. The cops seem to get pretty upset about any grenade use too, though molotov cocktails are fine. When you get arrested, you lose some money, your weapons, and your car to bribe your way out. On one mission, a bad cop pays you to kill a stoolie in the witness protection program. All of which I use to illustrate that there are no good guys in GTA3. Its just a game.

So I agree with you, games don't cause social ills. If a parent doesn't want their 13 old playing GTA3, and I wouldn't, then don't let them play. Parents are legally responsible for their 13 year olds.

Re:Grand Theft Auto III

[jheinen]

I guess I find it scary that you learn *any* moral lessons from a game. That you would come to the conclusion that you shouldn't get into a car chase with cops based on the outcome of a game is, well, disturbing. I would hope that you wouldn't engage in criminal activities because such activities are wrong, rather than because a game led you to believe that it's hard to outrun the cops. let me ask you this; if it had been easy to outrun the cops in GTA, would you have had a different opinion on ramming cop cars? God I hope not. Games aren't reality. I always assumed that people who played games realized this intrinsically, and could easily seperate fantasy from reality. Based on your post however, maybe I'm wrong. You seem to be applying information gleaned from a game to real-life situations. Please tell me I'm wrong.

Re:Grand Theft Auto III

[Telecommando]

Yeah!

We need to stop letting our kids play these unrealistic, mind warping games. None of that escapism stuff for us, no sirree.

What we need are REALISTIC games! Games that teach kids a thing or two. Games like these:

"Looking for a Parking Space" Where you drive endlessly around and around the parking lot looking for a space only to have the stores close before you can get there.

Or how about "Traffic Jam"? Sit behind the wheel, inching forward at a snail's pace while watching your engine temperature rise. Will you make it home before the engine overheats? Wheel gripping inaction!

Or you could always play "Road Construction Ahead". Try to pick the correct lane to be in only to have it suddenly come to a halt once you get into it. Grit your teeth as idiots try to squeese in ahead of you. It's frustration for the whole family!

If those sound too exciting for you there's always,

"Balancing Your Checkbook" Spend endless hours trying to read scrawled figures and cryptic bank statements in an attempt to see if there's still enough money left at the end of the month for pizza, or will it be ramen again tonight?

Now those are some happening games, man!

Excuse me, I gotta get coding. I'm gonna be RICH!

Re:Grand Theft Auto III

[macdaddy]

The game isn't to blame. The parents of those 4 13 year olds are to blame. Do you want to prohibit rated R movies too because some damned parent is too lazy to keep tabs on their kids. Why don't we outlaw alcohol and cigarettes because some 16 year old junkie is working behind the counter a your local 7-11 and is selling kids the goods without checking their IDs? Might as well. Oh, and lets outlaw automobiles too because some minor stole a car and drove it into a tree. Might as well. You seem to think that parents aren't responsible for their kids. You're wrong there. That's why they are call "adults". That's why they are called "Mom" and "Dad". They are responsible for their children's actions because they are adults and know better.

I hope you never have children.

Re:KDE UI article on OSNews

[donutz]

A lot of good suggestions indeed, but I certainly hope they don't listen to him when he suggests changing the desktop context menu by moving "Run Command" to a submenu. Don't do that, KDE developers! I've got KDE 3 set up for my dad, and I pruned as many menu items off as I could from the K program menu, and so if i'm sitting at the computer, pulling up the right-click to the desktop context menu then Run Command is a nice fast way to run stuff there isn't a menu option for. Run command is definitely general-purpose enough to keep on the main desktop context menu, not a submenu.

The Red Swingline Stapler...not at that price!

[MsGeek]

$28? No way!

I'll stay with my burgundy Swingline stapler, thank you very much.

Besides, the damn thing does NOT look like the one in "Office Space." It's just...wrong.

Re:Grand Theft Auto III

[NanoGator]

Um yah, thanks for twisting my point around to imply that I don't know right from wrong. I was arguing against the notion that kids will play these games and grow up thinking it's okay to ram Cop cars. I was saying that playing the game has the opposite effect.

I appreciate your attempt to make me look like an idiot. It allowed me to write the one line summary for those people who, like you just did, try to draw exteme conclusions about people. Funny thing is, a little applied logic would have negated your comment. "If he thought it was fun to ram cop cars before GTA3, why isn't he in jail now?" *eyeroll*

Plane problems

[Michael Woodhams]

1) Evacuation - people are on average much further from the edge of the plane. This probably isn't too big an issue - people already often have to go quite a way along the airplane to get to the closest exit.

2) Cargo - the constant cross-section of cylindrical planes means you can have standard size cargo pallets that fit anywhere in the plane. This plane has a much less regular shape. Perhaps they have sufficient volume they can afford to waste some.

3) Engine maintenance. The engines on this plane are very high and hard to access from the ground. This is already the case for the number 2 engines of DC-10, MD-11 and L1011's, so there is prior experience in handling this, but it will add to maintenence cost.

4) Manufacturing cost. In a constant cross-section fusilage, many panels, ribs etc. can be used many times over.

5) Difficulty in adjusting size. You can stretch or (rarely) shrink the length of a cylindrical fusilage fairly easily.

Of course, you can accept quite a few negatives in return for a 30% gain in economy.

Finally, there is the risk of the unexpected - revolutionary designs frequently stumble over unexpected problems that take a while to iron out - e.g. Comet (metal fatigue in presurized airframe), high tail planes like the DC 9 ('deep stall'), A320 (human/computer interface problems).

Re:Plane problems

[Quila]

But the big question is, does it fit in a standard hangar?

viewing source is dangerous to your mental health

[Erris]

I'm just dying at this silly page, where the sure source dopes think people want to steal their "photos and art". Who realy wants to publish pictures of Todd, or the cubes he commands or of their building?!

Have some respect, now, and don't be a pirate for the mighty security firm might come get you. Tee-heee! Oh wait, I'm not a news organization and I don't have their permision to download, or did I because they sent it to me when I requested without asking who I was? Did I violate their silly text telling me that the pictures are " for exclusive use by members of the news media. These items may not be downloaded or reproduced by other individuals or organizations without the express permission of SureSource."? Or did they realy mean that I should, "Please click on the desired image to enlarge & download." Don't forget to check out the purple warehouse here, a DEEEEEEEEEEEP DEVILISH LINK. Please click to enlarge! Please click to Download! Wheeee! Wizards of Web! Untitled Document Creators? What awsome d000ds they are! Function MM_JumpMenu seems to come from Dreamweaver, but I doubt that firm wants to take credit. Note, when making simple static pages use a text editor or something simple like Bluefish. When you want to make complicated Flash stuff, please don't. When you use a big giant flash making editor to design simple static pages, sigh, I give up. It was funny at first but the more I look into it the dumber it gets. I'm embarased for them.

Thanks a ALOT!!!

[Hard_Code]

Thanks you mister smartsy pants. Now us s00per h4x0rs will 0wns your site! Please to tell us where you keep your spare house key! Thanxors!

Re:cant buy the stapler now

[Archfeld]

rendered just fine in my ie6. not that it isn't crap mind you but just pointing out....

Re:Grand Theft Auto III

[NanoGator]

I just wanted to let you know that I appreciate your tactfulness even though it appears I disturbed you. Let me answer your last question first:

"I always assumed that people who played games realized this intrinsically, and could easily seperate fantasy from reality. Based on your post however, maybe I'm wrong. You seem to be applying information gleaned from a game to real-life situations. Please tell me I'm wrong."

Okay: You're wrong. The whole purpose to explaining my thoughts on it like I did was so the parent poster would realize that I know what I'm talking about. Any images of me fantasizing about ramming cop cars or sniping people's heads off you can just flush. As a matter of fact, you have indirectly touched onto why I am against censorship of video games.

I have been exposed to nearly every kind of video gaming experience one can have. I've played Mortal Kombat and all the GTAs and so on, so I know what's really involved there. Based on the reactions of people that claim that video game violence causes violent behaviour, I should be a hoodlum.

But I'm not. I'm 24 years old. I've already started my career. I've worked at the same job for 5 years. I have no criminal record. I've only had 1 speeding ticket in my life, and that was shortly after I got my car heh. Ive never had a parking ticket. Never done drugs. Never punched anybody. I don't even raise my voice. I'm a pretty well rounded person. Hopefuly you can see why it is extremely difficult for me to imagine that exposing children to violent video games results in harmful behaviour changes.

I told my view of GTA 3 so the parent poster would understand that the more realistic video games are, the more likely a child would realize the consequences of what he or she does. I've heard arguments like "When a child plays a game like Quake, he/she learns it's okay and fun to run around and shoot people." In my experience, instead the child learns "Guns kill people."

I think these anti-video-game types are looking at them in entirely the wrong way. In fact, I'm offended that they think kids are stupider than they really are. If you treat a child like they are incapable of making good decions, you're emotionally damaging the kid. I think saying "You're not allowed to play Mortal Kombat because it's too violent" is akin to saying "You're too stupid to know the difference between right and wrong. So I'm going to shelter you from anything that can give you ideas."

I appreciate you asking me before drawing a conclusion about me, though. It seems to be a popular thing here on Slashdot for somebody to listen to what you say and then draw the most absurd, extreme conclusion they can come up with. It's sorta like this: "I love to eat hamburgers.... I can't believe you like to murder innocent animals!"

I guess it's my own fault for not clarifying that I knew before playing the game that ramming cops was wrong. I kinda figured that'd be a default assumption that people'd make, heh. I didn't phrase it very well I suppose. Hopefully you'll understand why I didn't really worry too much about that.

Cheers

P.S. Again, I appreciate you asking before passing judgement. You have no idea how many times I've had people send me insulting messages because they came up with really bizzarre interpretations of my comments. You're a better human being than most I've run across here.

Re:Grand Theft Auto III

[ZxCv]

Why would you want to phantasize about something you would not do in real life, again?

Isn't that the whole point of "phantasizing"? It's really hard to get away with murdering your boss because he went that extra mile in being a jerk, but there's no crime (yet) in sitting down in front of a game of GTA3 or whatever and pretending that you're ripping him limb-from-limb. And if killing a few virtual people is enough to make someone forget about their boss and feel better, isn't that better than them taking out their anger in real life?

Re:KDE UI article on OSNews

[Spy Hunter]

Alt-F2, man, Alt-F2! Run Command has no business on the desktop context menu, because items on context menus should relate directly to their parent object. Context menus shouldn't be a generic drop-box for misc. useful items, because they have a specific context. Running a command line does not directly relate to the context of the desktop, which is a temporary repository for files and/or a place for keeping frequently used icons (though the panel is better for that). If anything, the "Run Command" item should be on the K menu (and I think it can be, optionally). However, simply having a keyboard shortcut for the "run command" window makes lots of sense since you need to use the keyboard anyway once you bring it up.

Re:Grand Theft Auto III

[pyrrho]

yes, it's "better". But you only confirm with your example that the need stems from basic pent up slave-emotion.

I mean, would it be better if such a boss was fired?

When you play a game to expell a little of this sort of energy, the result is that you are then calmed, and thereby made the perfect victim, in real life, for that idiot boss to keep abusing! That's my point.

Construction paper

[mindstrm]

can be a bit thick..
I usually just run a few pages out of the photocopier with the lid open.

Re:Grand Theft Auto III

[jheinen]

"I have no criminal record. I've only had 1 speeding ticket in my life, and that was shortly after I got my car heh. Ive never had a parking ticket. Never done drugs. Never punched anybody. I don't even raise my voice."

Well there you go. You're obviously a serial killer. You fit the profile perfectly. "Gee, he was always such a nice, quiet guy. Didn't bother anybody."

Just kidding of course :)

Re:Grand Theft Auto III

[ZxCv]

Haha, welcome to real life. Sure it would be "better" if the evil boss was just fired, but that's just not how it is in the real life. What are people supposed to do about an evil boss, other than find some peaceful, legal way to vent their anger? You could say the same thing about someone who goes and downs a cup of black coffee after an altercation with the boss in order to calm down. Coffee makes you the perfect victim! Good thing I don't drink coffee...

PHPNuke and GPL Issues

[crisco]

Why contribute to PHPNuke when only a year ago they were considering abandoning the GPL because of petty personal differences.

Why not support PostNuke, a fork of PHPNuke that has a much better attitude toward open source development and security.

Swingline, Credit Cards, security

[pavera]

From reading the site, now that the link to actually purchase online is gone, it does not seem as if this is Swingline's fault as the poster states:

"The company who apparently provides the online shopping service for Swingline appears to be an outfit called SureSource."

Whereas the site clearly states:

" * Please note that you will be purchasing from SureSource, a distributor of Swingline products.
To place an order for the Rio Red Stapler (SKU#: S7074740), Please call SureSource at: 1-800-544-3243."

SureSource is simply a distributor, and as such, Swingline would have about as much control over their e-commerce site as I do over the weather.

Brain Activity

[jeti]

I have to check what exactly was tested.
But if the brain is very active, it only
shows that the person is thinking very
hard.
In other words the easier it is for you
to complete a task, the less active is
your brain.

WinZip? Winamp?

[marm]

...why must all KDE apps have a name starting with a K?

Do you ever see Windows applications that are called 'W-whatever'?

No, but there's plenty of Windows software that has a name containing 'Win'.

For example:

WinZip
Winamp
WinAce
WinRAR
WinDVD
CDRWin
WinDoctor
WinDAC
WinPopUp
WinRoute
WinMX
CygWin

These are just a few off the top of my head, there's plenty more. The Mac has (or had, at least) its fair share too, e.g. MacPaint, MacDraw, MacWrite, MacAMP/Macast.

You see, it's just a way of associating the program with the environment where it runs. The fact that KDE app developers love to associate their apps with KDE via the name suggests to me that they generally think very highly of KDE. Call it 'platform patriotism', if you will. End-users like it because it sounds like the app is specifically designed for the environment and follows the same style guidelines and conventions. Never underestimate the power of a name.

Why do you think WinZip became the dominant zip archiver on Windows? I'm pretty sure it wasn't the first, it doesn't come from the people who invented the zip format, it isn't free like some Windows zip archivers (nasty nagware) and I don't think it has the best user interface either (although that's arguable).

In short, it's just good marketing for an app, and that matters as much to free software authors as it does to commercial developers.

Re:WinZip? Winamp?

[Pxtl]

Not to mention how most MS apps earn an MS prefix when you talk about them.

Re:Ummmm.....

[WebMasterJoe]

I play video games all the time (and I'm pretty damn good at it too) and I've gotten in 3 accidents and gotten 2 speeding tickets. I'm 17.

I think being 17 trumps the video game factor. Who here was a good driver at 17? Granted, most of us weren't as bad as you but I don't think it's the fault of the video games.

How do you still have your license? Seriously - three accidents and you've had your license for less than two years? And what police officer wouldn't have had your license revoked after the second ticket, at only 17? Even after hitting a school bus??

Either you're lying, your parents are wealthy, or your local law enforcement is corrupt/incompetent. But if I was as bad a driver as you, I wouldn't tell anyone about it and I'd spend most of my free time bui

Re:Grand Theft Auto III

[NanoGator]

err I wasn't making a definitive statement, I was showing them that I'm one of the kids that was exposed to the stuff that they're worried will affect kids. My point'd be flat if I never played games.

The difference between your example and mine is that quite a few people have died from cigs, but there's little proof of any video game induced violence.

Here is another line in my post I'd like you to pay careful attention to:

"Hopefuly you can see why it is extremely difficult for me to imagine that exposing children to violent video games results in harmful behaviour changes."

I wasn't using 'one example to disprove a point', I was explaining why I feel the way I do about it.

Re:can crushing

[brad3378]

> This wouldn't work. I remember these at Trader Joes [traderjoes.com] (what a kick ass store) in Brookline, MA (see also Stah Mah-ket and Stop & Shop). You have to close the door in order to activate the scanner. It spins the can (or bottle) around until it's able to read the UPC. So, stick no workie because you have to shut the door. And even if you got the door shut with your stick in there, you'd be screwed and stickless.

We don't have doors on ours here in Michigan, but they probably use some sort of sensor to detect the can. Not sure what type (if any) since aluminum cans are not magnetic.

Re:Grand Theft Auto III

[DrVxD]

> they had a police officer on there describing how he felt while they showed the main character of the game beating on a cop
Did they ask him to comment on the film of cops beating on Rodney King? Or did they manage to draw the distinction between entertainment and real life there?

> It frightens me that we allow these sort of games to be played by our youth
Grand Theft Auto III is clearly marked with an "18" certificate (at least, my copy is). If parents are allowing their kids to play it, then attack the parents - not the game. Or would you rather we banned all "18" cert movies? What else would you like to censor because certain individuals fail to exercise good judgement in raising their children?

> games like this, Postal, and Doom may be all it takes to trigger a mass murderer.
We had mass murders before computers (or TV) were invented. I really don't think we can blame mankind's inhumanity to itself on technology.

> but the fact that there were four thirteen year olds on the show playing the game
See my previous comment re: 18 certificate. The bad judgement is not in the making of the game, it is in allowing it to be viewed by an unsuitable audience. Again, the parents should take some responsibility rather than relying on an electronic babysitter.

> we need to curb our liberties to guard our safety.
No. You need to EXERCISE the liberty to stop your children playing those games which you feel are a negative influence in order to safeguard those liberties. If you place "safety" above liberty, presumably you wouldn't fight a war to preserve your liberty, since fighting a war is inherently unsafe? Wish we'd though of that when Hitler was threatening Europe.

Either the moderation is right, and you are a troll. Or the moderations wrong and you're sadly misguided. I hope for all our sake's that you're a troll.