... that something is wrong with Kansas ?
These hyper-red and hyper-blue states both have issues with people. The former set of control freaks try to make you a religion borg while the latter set of control freaks try their hand making you a state-uber-alles borg.
You should build on your expected success in getting DX to be cross platform and convince Microsoft to release cross platform versions of Microsoft Office, Visual *, etc.
(not) waiting with baited breath.
... someone else using their marketing strategy (known in the real world as "sell overpriced junk by making it look exclusive, knowing that when the idiot finds out that he bought a white elephant, he will become a rabid apple fan to avoid looking like an idiot to his friends").
PDF is a standard format that Adobe dominates with Acrobat. It's the favorite way for offices to send around read only documents that will have no chance of problems. Unless you send it to someone with Linux, in which case something funny can happen. Not so much in reading it, but if they do indeed want to make changes anyway. The SW for editing and managing PDF docs isn't so reliable on Linux, and not at all widely available. It's probably easy for IBM to fix that problem, because PDF availability for Linux isn't so bad, just needs some more "formalizing". Getting a brand name, but still open source, edition from IBM with support and training will help.
I take it that you have never heard of xournal. I have used it for years, and have never lacked any feature I wanted.
The real problem that needs engineering is Flash. GNU's Gnash player for SWF is all some Linux distros, like for PowerPC, have for playing YouTube and all the other Flash web content. More and more Flash is used for commercial sites, especially as Flash starts to run on mobile phones. But Gnash barely works, and often doesn't work with YouTube. IBM could really level the playing field by making enough contributions to Gnash that it "just works", even as Flash evolves and other players have to keep up with it. It takes a place like IBM to do that to Adobe's dominance without Adobe either winning or even killing the competitor. Gnash is also pretty close, so IBM's investment in it would be the finishing touches that make all the difference in corporate IT strategy decisions.
You can download adobe's flash player for linux, you know. Ubuntu even packages it in its repos.
okular saves its annotations based on the filename in your ~/.kde (or ~/.kde4) directory in XML files.
Very poor design choice IMO. I often take my work home, and if I want to transfer my annotations, I would rather deal with one.xoj file that lives in the same directory as the PDF I am annotating rather than hunt for it in some obscure . folder. Copying the.kde/4 folder over is obviously not an option.
Finally, users are likely to miss Amarok 2.0 (at the time of this writing it's not yet completed) and a KDE 4 version of KnetworkManager.
KDE marks a triumphant return to full usability with the 4.1 release. I've read that some KDE 3 features still need to be ported to KDE 4, yet I'm hard pressed to think of anything missing, except for a way of hiding the panel.
You do not have amarok and knetworkmanager and this fellow is "hard pressed to think of anything missing". Is he high or something ?
I have used KDE for almost 10 years now. Tried Gnome many times, but always go back to KDE. In looks there is no comparison, gnome is and always has been plug ugly.
Until KDE 4, KDE was superior in functionality as well. However, KDE4 suffered from multiple problems :
1. It was never meant for everyday users. For instance, a lot of indispensible KDE applets/widgets never made it on release date and some of the simplest tasks (plugging in a USB key) became needlessly complicated. It became good at obfuscating the essential and hyping the beautiful. It should never have been released - or perhaps released as KDE4-CODE which targeted developers alone. I understand that the open source development process depends on people trying out new software and reporting bugs, but this was too big a leap.
2. The developers paid too much attention to the looks of the interface and not much to the interface itself. I have used windows 95/98/NT/2000/XP over the years as well OSX in its many reincarnations, but KDE was always a relief to return to. With KDE4, that is no longer true.
I am not dissing the ideas behind KDE4. Perhaps many of them are overdue improvements if linux is to make it to the average desktop user (an outcome in which I haven't the slightest interest), but it was released too early. It gave an impression of being pre-alphaware and has ruined many people's opinion of the project.
Hopefully 4.1 will win people like me over and give us a compelling reason to upgrade from KDE 3.5.7.
I respect Colin Powell. I would have voted for him had he run in 2000. But that is no excuse. With his experience, as a military man and as the NSA, he should have known better.
Don't blame yourself. My brother voted for the moron in 2000. Stayed home in 2004. He is leaning towards voting Obama. I was too (have been a Republican leaning independent most of my life), until Obama voted for the FISA bill. I am now trying to convince him to leave his ballot blank and vote only downticket, depending on the candidates.
You know, I still don't get the huge deal with the telecom immunity.
Not trying to channel William Shatner on one of his priceline ads here, but we just lost the only way to find out how, when, why, where our executive branch decided to violate one of the two most important rights in the Bill of Rights, and all you say is this ???
Just try thinking of it from the company's point of view. The government orders them to hand over records.
I think that "we were just following orders" has pretty much been blown apart as a valid criminal defense, starting with the Nuremberg trials about 60 years ago. Again, not trying to add to the successes of Godwin's law, but there you have it.
Personally, I'm pretty irked at Obama about this, but it's not going to change how I vote. Looking at the bigger picture, Obama's got a whole lot more going for him than against.
Quite right. He still has 9 amendments going for him even if he just killed one. He can kill a few more and still come out ahead.
That is like hoping that your daughter retains her virginity after a night-long orgy with the local lads. If you want to find the real reason why politicians like Obama feel strong enough to do a massive "screw you" to their supporters, look in the mirror.
He lost my vote yesterday. Sorry, I do not forgive such fundamental lapses of judgment. Its the reason Hillary could not get my vote. Its also the reason why Obama will not get my vote.
And that is why the Lesser Evil always feels emboldened to become Slightly Greater Evil. No price to pay for the incremental enhancements of evilness thanks to dumb/forgiving/blind voters.
Its a dark day alright, made darker by your sig, which still supports Obama. This is why these politicians do these kind of things, they know there is no payback.
I have never admired a politician in my life (get a life !). I have admired statesmen, but they then need to be dead 50 years or more.
I was going to vote for Obama for President this fall. Politically, I am an independent who has voted Republican a few times and Democrat fewer times. Mostly, I stay home (voting third party is meaningless in the system we have). I also think that we need to start repairing the Constitutional enforcement ASAP. Enough damage has been done over the past 40 years (when was the last time Congress declared war ?).
Here he comes along, this fellow trained in constitutional law, and I say, ok, maybe I will give him a chance. Voted for him in the New Hampshire primary. Was happy when he finally put the Clinton machine to bed and started the campaign. I do not buy for a moment that he has been tacking to the center. He has long been a supporter of faith based initiative (his career as a community organizer was nothing but a faith based initiative). I have concerns about separation of religion and state, but with sensible safeguards like hiring constraints etc., those issues can be dealt with. His position on guns has changed but it does not matter either way for me. The second amendment is safe and since I do not own a handgun, I admit I do not follow this issue very closely.
However, the fourth amendment is perhaps the second most amendment (after the first amendment) in our country. It (used to) places restrictions on unreasonable search and seizure by the government. It has become more and more toothless and yesterday, it was effectively carved out of the constitution by legislators who had no legal right to do so (changing the constitution in such fundamental ways requires a constitutional amendment - but who has the time these days for the people to actually express their opinion - like Gonzalez is supposed to have said about something related, this is so "quaint"). In the modern world (just look at the farce playing out in Europe with the countries bold enough to reject a constitution disguised as a treaty), laws do not matter as much. They can always be incrementally extinguished.
Who is responsible for all of this ? WE ARE. Why ? Let me know how many Senators (and House members) who voted to gut our Constitution again get re-elected in fall.
As to Obama, well, he just lost my vote yesterday. It does not matter whether he collects enough focus group flack to apologize for it at some point in time or says his vote was wrong, I am done with him. I know his vote would not have made that much of a difference (though the moral statement would have been massive), but he had the opportunity to act on his conscience yesterday. He did not. I will not be doing the same in November. My ballot on the question of the President, will be blank. Down ticket, it will depend on what my representatives did in Congress.
And Mr. Barack Constitutional Law Obama, it does not appear that you were paying attention in class. Grant of retroactive immunity is unconstitutional in itself :
Article I section 9: "No bill of attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed". It just remains to be seen whether the Supreme Court will educate the Congress on the matter. Given recent history, I am not overly optimistic.
... about those among us with money and taste to enjoy the aesthetic side of life without the wisdom of appreciating anything really technical.
Such people are easy to rip off. I love macs, eh, would love macs as a seller of macs. The daily spectacle of well-educated but obviously not extraordinarily gifted upstairs parting with extraordinary sums of money to procude tastefully painted and covered pieces of everyday junk, would be rewarding to my wallet and to my not too well honed sense of misanthropy.
There are obviously technically challenged people among the population who cannot abide Microsoft's many deficiencies, chiefly among them the arty set, for whom Macs really are meant. So all allusions above do not apply to them.
Reminds me of a grad school classmate who gave up his Debian box to run some mixed Matlab and Fortran-coded simulations on a Mac. The compilers were either outdated (think fink on gfortran/g95) or expensive and they produced code that ran at times one-third as fast. Matlab was as slow as molasses. Initially, he went about trying to show himself off (or more correctly, his shiny new Mac), but as reality set in, he sheepishly admitted having sold it one fine day on craigslist for a good price. A new Dell box, about 60% of the price of the Mac, running Ubuntu, replaced it. Since then, we have been singularly blessed to rib him endlessly about his former conversion to the finer side of life.
Slashdot Mirror
... that something is wrong with Kansas ?
These hyper-red and hyper-blue states both have issues with people. The former set of control freaks try to make you a religion borg while the latter set of control freaks try their hand making you a state-uber-alles borg.
You should build on your expected success in getting DX to be cross platform and convince Microsoft to release cross platform versions of Microsoft Office, Visual *, etc.
(not) waiting with baited breath.
... someone else using their marketing strategy (known in the real world as "sell overpriced junk by making it look exclusive, knowing that when the idiot finds out that he bought a white elephant, he will become a rabid apple fan to avoid looking like an idiot to his friends").
PDF is a standard format that Adobe dominates with Acrobat. It's the favorite way for offices to send around read only documents that will have no chance of problems. Unless you send it to someone with Linux, in which case something funny can happen. Not so much in reading it, but if they do indeed want to make changes anyway. The SW for editing and managing PDF docs isn't so reliable on Linux, and not at all widely available. It's probably easy for IBM to fix that problem, because PDF availability for Linux isn't so bad, just needs some more "formalizing". Getting a brand name, but still open source, edition from IBM with support and training will help.
I take it that you have never heard of xournal. I have used it for years, and have never lacked any feature I wanted.
The real problem that needs engineering is Flash. GNU's Gnash player for SWF is all some Linux distros, like for PowerPC, have for playing YouTube and all the other Flash web content. More and more Flash is used for commercial sites, especially as Flash starts to run on mobile phones. But Gnash barely works, and often doesn't work with YouTube. IBM could really level the playing field by making enough contributions to Gnash that it "just works", even as Flash evolves and other players have to keep up with it. It takes a place like IBM to do that to Adobe's dominance without Adobe either winning or even killing the competitor. Gnash is also pretty close, so IBM's investment in it would be the finishing touches that make all the difference in corporate IT strategy decisions.
You can download adobe's flash player for linux, you know. Ubuntu even packages it in its repos.
Once they take the OS online, no prizes for guessing what is next.
okular saves its annotations based on the filename in your ~/.kde (or ~/.kde4) directory in XML files.
Very poor design choice IMO. I often take my work home, and if I want to transfer my annotations, I would rather deal with one .xoj file that lives in the same directory as the PDF I am annotating rather than hunt for it in some obscure . folder. Copying the .kde/4 folder over is obviously not an option.
Finally, users are likely to miss Amarok 2.0 (at the time of this writing it's not yet completed) and a KDE 4 version of KnetworkManager.
KDE marks a triumphant return to full usability with the 4.1 release. I've read that some KDE 3 features still need to be ported to KDE 4, yet I'm hard pressed to think of anything missing, except for a way of hiding the panel.
You do not have amarok and knetworkmanager and this fellow is "hard pressed to think of anything missing". Is he high or something ?
Even Congress would not saddle a $150,000 fine on a person for sharing a $0.99 song.
You mean until the members of Congress had lunch with their bribers, ahem, lobbyists ?
As a person who uses annotation heavily (I use xournal), I have never figured out a way to *save* the annotations one makes in okular.
I have used KDE for almost 10 years now. Tried Gnome many times, but always go back to KDE. In looks there is no comparison, gnome is and always has been plug ugly.
Until KDE 4, KDE was superior in functionality as well. However, KDE4 suffered from multiple problems :
1. It was never meant for everyday users. For instance, a lot of indispensible KDE applets/widgets never made it on release date and some of the simplest tasks (plugging in a USB key) became needlessly complicated. It became good at obfuscating the essential and hyping the beautiful. It should never have been released - or perhaps released as KDE4-CODE which targeted developers alone. I understand that the open source development process depends on people trying out new software and reporting bugs, but this was too big a leap.
2. The developers paid too much attention to the looks of the interface and not much to the interface itself. I have used windows 95/98/NT/2000/XP over the years as well OSX in its many reincarnations, but KDE was always a relief to return to. With KDE4, that is no longer true.
I am not dissing the ideas behind KDE4. Perhaps many of them are overdue improvements if linux is to make it to the average desktop user (an outcome in which I haven't the slightest interest), but it was released too early. It gave an impression of being pre-alphaware and has ruined many people's opinion of the project.
Hopefully 4.1 will win people like me over and give us a compelling reason to upgrade from KDE 3.5.7.
I respect Colin Powell. I would have voted for him had he run in 2000. But that is no excuse. With his experience, as a military man and as the NSA, he should have known better.
Don't blame yourself. My brother voted for the moron in 2000. Stayed home in 2004. He is leaning towards voting Obama. I was too (have been a Republican leaning independent most of my life), until Obama voted for the FISA bill. I am now trying to convince him to leave his ballot blank and vote only downticket, depending on the candidates.
You know, I still don't get the huge deal with the telecom immunity.
Not trying to channel William Shatner on one of his priceline ads here, but we just lost the only way to find out how, when, why, where our executive branch decided to violate one of the two most important rights in the Bill of Rights, and all you say is this ???
Just try thinking of it from the company's point of view. The government orders them to hand over records.
I think that "we were just following orders" has pretty much been blown apart as a valid criminal defense, starting with the Nuremberg trials about 60 years ago. Again, not trying to add to the successes of Godwin's law, but there you have it.
I would just like to remind you that Obama at his worst is still better than McCain at his best.
You mean he will gut the constitution in 8 years instead of 4 for McCain. Gee, I guess we should all be thankful for such a man (not).
Now, I understand why some of you feel differently about the current bill, and I'm happy to take my lumps on this side and elsewhere.
I read the whole thing. The only lump he will get from me is in November, when he does not get my vote. I took off my Obama decals last night.
Personally, I'm pretty irked at Obama about this, but it's not going to change how I vote. Looking at the bigger picture, Obama's got a whole lot more going for him than against.
Quite right. He still has 9 amendments going for him even if he just killed one. He can kill a few more and still come out ahead.
"Maybe he will still be" ??
That is like hoping that your daughter retains her virginity after a night-long orgy with the local lads. If you want to find the real reason why politicians like Obama feel strong enough to do a massive "screw you" to their supporters, look in the mirror.
He lost my vote yesterday. Sorry, I do not forgive such fundamental lapses of judgment. Its the reason Hillary could not get my vote. Its also the reason why Obama will not get my vote.
And that is why the Lesser Evil always feels emboldened to become Slightly Greater Evil. No price to pay for the incremental enhancements of evilness thanks to dumb/forgiving/blind voters.
So, if someone gives you a sandwich with lettuce, onions, celery and potassium cyanide, you eat it ?
Its a dark day alright, made darker by your sig, which still supports Obama. This is why these politicians do these kind of things, they know there is no payback.
I have never admired a politician in my life (get a life !). I have admired statesmen, but they then need to be dead 50 years or more.
I was going to vote for Obama for President this fall. Politically, I am an independent who has voted Republican a few times and Democrat fewer times. Mostly, I stay home (voting third party is meaningless in the system we have). I also think that we need to start repairing the Constitutional enforcement ASAP. Enough damage has been done over the past 40 years (when was the last time Congress declared war ?).
Here he comes along, this fellow trained in constitutional law, and I say, ok, maybe I will give him a chance. Voted for him in the New Hampshire primary. Was happy when he finally put the Clinton machine to bed and started the campaign. I do not buy for a moment that he has been tacking to the center. He has long been a supporter of faith based initiative (his career as a community organizer was nothing but a faith based initiative). I have concerns about separation of religion and state, but with sensible safeguards like hiring constraints etc., those issues can be dealt with. His position on guns has changed but it does not matter either way for me. The second amendment is safe and since I do not own a handgun, I admit I do not follow this issue very closely.
However, the fourth amendment is perhaps the second most amendment (after the first amendment) in our country. It (used to) places restrictions on unreasonable search and seizure by the government. It has become more and more toothless and yesterday, it was effectively carved out of the constitution by legislators who had no legal right to do so (changing the constitution in such fundamental ways requires a constitutional amendment - but who has the time these days for the people to actually express their opinion - like Gonzalez is supposed to have said about something related, this is so "quaint"). In the modern world (just look at the farce playing out in Europe with the countries bold enough to reject a constitution disguised as a treaty), laws do not matter as much. They can always be incrementally extinguished.
Who is responsible for all of this ? WE ARE. Why ? Let me know how many Senators (and House members) who voted to gut our Constitution again get re-elected in fall.
As to Obama, well, he just lost my vote yesterday. It does not matter whether he collects enough focus group flack to apologize for it at some point in time or says his vote was wrong, I am done with him. I know his vote would not have made that much of a difference (though the moral statement would have been massive), but he had the opportunity to act on his conscience yesterday. He did not. I will not be doing the same in November. My ballot on the question of the President, will be blank. Down ticket, it will depend on what my representatives did in Congress.
And Mr. Barack Constitutional Law Obama, it does not appear that you were paying attention in class. Grant of retroactive immunity is unconstitutional in itself :
Article I section 9: "No bill of attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed". It just remains to be seen whether the Supreme Court will educate the Congress on the matter. Given recent history, I am not overly optimistic.
It shouldn't. Find out how many Democrat Senators who voted yea get re-elected.
Theory of the lesser of two evils at your service.
... the house needed any further advantages to ensure that it always won.
... about those among us with money and taste to enjoy the aesthetic side of life without the wisdom of appreciating anything really technical.
Such people are easy to rip off. I love macs, eh, would love macs as a seller of macs. The daily spectacle of well-educated but obviously not extraordinarily gifted upstairs parting with extraordinary sums of money to procude tastefully painted and covered pieces of everyday junk, would be rewarding to my wallet and to my not too well honed sense of misanthropy.
There are obviously technically challenged people among the population who cannot abide Microsoft's many deficiencies, chiefly among them the arty set, for whom Macs really are meant. So all allusions above do not apply to them.
Reminds me of a grad school classmate who gave up his Debian box to run some mixed Matlab and Fortran-coded simulations on a Mac. The compilers were either outdated (think fink on gfortran/g95) or expensive and they produced code that ran at times one-third as fast. Matlab was as slow as molasses. Initially, he went about trying to show himself off (or more correctly, his shiny new Mac), but as reality set in, he sheepishly admitted having sold it one fine day on craigslist for a good price. A new Dell box, about 60% of the price of the Mac, running Ubuntu, replaced it. Since then, we have been singularly blessed to rib him endlessly about his former conversion to the finer side of life.
A fool and his money are soon parted.
As long as those plug-ins are yours, its fine.