Oh, I think this comment of yours is all illustration one needs to evaluate the value of your opinion. But for the record, when one drags a launcher to a folderview, it creates a.desktop link which will launch the program when clicked. It will, however, warn you that an executable is launched the first time and ask for permission.
So bottom line, I don't know what you are doing. The desktop actually behaves exactly like you want it to, in folderview mode. Your "latest and greatest" clearly is from a couple years ago, or a figment of your imagination. Not that KDE doesn't have bugs. Just not those you describe.
Plus, you are full of crap. I just did that: dragged an icon from the menu to the desktop (not the folderview, the desktop) and it created the link. And in fact, there wasn't even a box.
The box thing, I remember from KDE 4.0-4.1. Two years ago. So there you are, insulting people spending countless hours of their lives to give a better desktop to the world, and you can't even fact-check.
This is what you get. A link with a picture. The box depends on the theme.
I don't see why KDE should accommodate your needs rather than mine: yours is a minor esthetic complaint. My work pattern is impossible on any other desktop.
There are no good reason to drag an icon from the start menu to the desktop. Which, BTW, works. If you want a launcher, you want it accessible, thus on the panel. I never understood why windows installers seemed all adamant that I absolutely put their icon on my destop.
The deal is that the folder views of KDE 4 are massively better than the desktop of KDE3 or GNOME2. They make complete sense: the desktop is this very useful scrapbook of files currently worked on. But it makes sense to have them organised in a couple folders, all visible at once. It also makes sense to be able to have some of these folders distant.
For example, I am running calculations that will occasionally write intermediate solution files. Using a folder view, I can see them appearing. I can the manually open them when I want to.
Using nepomuk, I can have one such folder which will display all the files created in my home in the last week.
KDE4 is a truly modern desktop, and although I liked KDE3 a lot, it was only a best-in-class 90s desktop. Clearly, you are living in the 90s, but you may yet come to appreciate the present...
About akonadi: when 4.7 comes out, if you are using kmail/kontact you will be happy: it is really faster than the current non-akonadi-using mailer. If only for IMAP PUSH it would be worth it.
And the integration with nepomuk, I am pleased to say, works! full-text search in attachments is cool. Having the link to the right mail pop-up when doing alt-f2 "some relevant text" is awesome.
- You should not set the frequency manually. This is the job of the OS/the hardware. And they know best.
- KDE respects the locale unless you have specifically told it not to (as in, configured alternate keyboards)
- Login managers do not prevent you from logging on the console: if there is a lockup, reboot and specify the runlevel at the grub/lilo prompt
- The first KDE app will take 20s to start, because it needs to start the configuration cache and the system bus. These apps benefit from integration, but this incurs a cost when run standalone
But yeah, I mean, you are running windowmaker, so why run KDE apps? These apps are great because they are integrated and work well together, in their environment. Of course, there is nothing like Amarok (2, yes, I'm a fan) or K3B or kate, or quite like kontact outside of KDE. But these apps are great because of the integration and the shared features!
But if they did add the padding, some other guy _will_ squeal like a pig that the EVIL KDE DEVELOPERS are stealing his precious pixels... They can't win.
As opposed to this part of the desktop conveniently labelled with the path it links to? See, some of us like to be able to drag stuff to where we want the files to be (no, not the _stupid_ "Download folder"). And some of these locations might be remote! You might be living in the nineties, but some of us have this amazing thing called Internet (not, "the web") and we use it.
During 11 years, the plant spent 63 months of normal operations, mostly at low power; 25 months of outages due to fixing technical problems of the prototype; and 66 months were spent on halt due to political and administrative issues.
Mostly did not operate normally. I recalled not at all, but I was wrong. The plug was however not pulled because it did not work, but because of a political decision, taken after the issues had been fixed, so your argument about the whole idea being bad/not working remains wrong.
Super-phoenix was never put into operation. So much for "shut down". Phoenix, the research project, was successful enough that its successor was built. Politics caused it to never be started.
No, some level of sorting is useful (it is nearly criminal not to sort aluminium, for example). But the reason you sort is probably not because it is useful. You do it because you feel it is right. It is a ritual. Like in many places, where the glass is sorted by colour and then, when picked up, ends up in the same bin anyway. You can only sort to some extent, and the result must be inspected anyway.
Although I don't judge people who think that animals ought not to be harmed by the actions of the assholes who attack lab workers, I do judge members of friendly political movements who shrug their shoulders and mumble something about the cause being right. I don't know that Hitler was such a devout Christian, but he is a cautionary tale of right-wing christian conservatives coopting extremism for their cause... I dislike some truly horrible campaigns by animal right supporters who create a climate such that some feel justified in performing criminal acts -- coopting extremism for their cause.
You think that I dislike the greens because of the oil and gas companies? No, I dislike them because of the way they vote on issues touching ecology. Otherwise, they tend to be a party I rather like. Sad isn't it? Until they start to campaign against gas and for nuclear they will not get my vote. Hell, I might even vote for them if they just shut up about that subject. The biggest risk to us all is climate change. Carbon reduction should be the number 1 goal. If the political compromise you cause to happen is coal/gas/renewable instead of nuclear/renewable, never mind what you wanted, you were on the wrong side of the line, and you played with our collective lives because of political posturing.
And you are extra-guilty for realising how important the problem is, and not bringing about a solution.
By definition, waste is what you do not use, otherwise, it is not waste. Obviously. As for the closure of Super-Phoenix, it was a purely political decision, brought about by the necessity of keeping the ecologists on board the then coalition.
"OMG Nuclear power sucks! we are afraid!! OK says the politician, see, I closed the plant, happy, now? See! he closed the plant, it proves it was dangerous!"
I dislike this world where political expediency is taking the place of reality. This goes as much for Republican policies as with large swaths of the "Green" movement. The world is complicated, everything is a trade-off. Deal with it.
The point is that the difference in the amount of waste is not significant -- not in the sense that it reduces the number of storage location you need. Waste is not really relevant in the discussion of nuclear. Because if waste were relevant, only wind, hydraulic and solar thermal would qualify as clean energies. And they are not enough. One day, we will have fusion power. Fusion, not renewable, is the long-term future.
What comes between now and the first fusion plants, I don't know. I hope lots of nuclear and renewables, but likely lots of coal/gas and some renewables, and big climate problems. And I believe the blame falls squarely on the shoulders of the ecological movement, who is wholly right about the problems, and almost wholly wrong about the solutions.
And the reason they are wrong is that it is a movement with strong Luddite streaks. Fringes matter: the guys saying we should go back to the 17th century are not very many, but they push they whole movement in their direction. They _care_. If you need (to be accepted as a legitimate part of the movement) to take the political stance of no nuclear, and the stance of no fossil fuel, either something has to give, or you need to take the stance of "no energy" -- political messages about trade offs only work if you talk to engineers. If you go for no energy, you have to admit you are in favour of lowering standards of living. Once you have made that step, you make it a virtue. With it comes the notions of "simpler life", "mad scientists playing god".
You start thinking that the solution comes from rituals (sorting your waste is a ritual: very, very useful for aluminium, somewhat for plastics, iron can be sorted automatically -- but in reality, robotic, industrial sorting centres are the solution) and not from knowledge in a broad sense (technology and science, awarenass of the usefulness of your actions), and then you oppose technical solutions on principled grounds. But we live in a very complex, highly technological society.
When people oppose the construction of storage locations for nuclear waste, they _think_ they are opposing the nuclear industry, but in reality, they are also opposing medical and scientific uses. This is sadly not a strawman: most people don't realise what nuclear waste is made off. And they are against it "because". Reducing waste amounts, unless it is by an order of magnitude (not possible, because of the "uncontroversial" usage) is essentially useless.
Only while supplies last. It also depends on the state of the technology. Also, as pretty much no one has found a dumping ground for their "waste", it might well be that it is in fact a losing proposition to try to store the spent fuel, in the long run.
Not so much because of technical problems, but because everywhere is someone's backyard.
No, not all of it, but as long as something can be reused, it is not "waste". It becomes waste only when nothing can be gotten out of it. "Recycling" is not "Reusing". Reading comes before nuclear engineering, so I guess it is back to small school for you?
Also, pet peeve of mine about rabidly anti-nuclear people who are against any and all storage facility for nuclear waste:
- Even if the world decided to shut down all plants tomorrow, long term storage would still be needed (in fact, especially if the world decided to shut down all plants)
- Even if all the waste from plants magically evaporated, there would still remain all of the scientific/medical waste (a very significant fraction of the total). I cannot help but think that people holding a strong opinion both against storage and against nuclear power are brain-damaged. And in the event of them needing it, they should be denied radiotherapy. And X-Rays. I would deny them smoke detectors, but that would not be fair for their neighbours.
Of course, storing anything at the Fukushima site for the long term is idiotic bordering on criminal. This is a separate issue.
The scale is not based on the consequences. Not directly as in "level x means y people died/ z km^2 became unusable". It is more of a statement on how much the plant was damaged/can be repaired/(mis-)operated.
So you could have a accident at the maximum level completely confined in the plant, and a low-level incident killing people (typically because large turbines are dangerous/small radioactive releases can be really badly placed and timed).
Of course there is a moderately strong correlation between the two, in practise.
Seconded. I still remember some guy that ported his MATLAB finite element code to c++. The solving time for his problems went from 24 hours to 8 minutes -- 6 of which were the post-processing/display of the results... That was towards the end of his thesis, so basically he must have wasted countless months of productive work because of that.
MATLAB is never the right tool -- unless you are really incompetent, so you need the hand-holding, and really obtuse, so you can't handle the small differences with Octave. And the "toolbox" excuse is a load of crock: there most certainly is a c or c++ implementation of what you need.
Ahh, this is interesting philosophically: the tools you used historically determine the branch of science you are in. But as we go forward, CS gets estranged from the bare metal, and becomes more abstract.
So you are trying to say in a very convoluted way that the school system is inadequate preparation for university? I don't know of a single school system in the world which is an adequate preparation for university. Some get by by brutally selecting students from an early age -- of course, you get all the brilliant kids who would have made it through in any system, so it works. duh.
But the point remains, the university requirements you describe are in fact correct. And unless the failure rate in the Swedish university system are abnormally high, it might well be that the high school does an okay job at preparation. But then, I also believe that exposure to subjects is valuable in and of itself, never mind that you pass the class. So yes, it might seem unfair that the guy who did so much math, and nothing else, doesn't get to enter the programme, but on the other hand, very narrow interests show him to be inadequate for university.
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Oh, I think this comment of yours is all illustration one needs to evaluate the value of your opinion. But for the record, when one drags a launcher to a folderview, it creates a .desktop link which will launch the program when clicked. It will, however, warn you that an executable is launched the first time and ask for permission.
So bottom line, I don't know what you are doing. The desktop actually behaves exactly like you want it to, in folderview mode. Your "latest and greatest" clearly is from a couple years ago, or a figment of your imagination. Not that KDE doesn't have bugs. Just not those you describe.
Plus, you are full of crap. I just did that: dragged an icon from the menu to the desktop (not the folderview, the desktop) and it created the link. And in fact, there wasn't even a box.
The box thing, I remember from KDE 4.0-4.1. Two years ago. So there you are, insulting people spending countless hours of their lives to give a better desktop to the world, and you can't even fact-check.
This is what you get. A link with a picture. The box depends on the theme.
I don't see why KDE should accommodate your needs rather than mine: yours is a minor esthetic complaint. My work pattern is impossible on any other desktop.
There are no good reason to drag an icon from the start menu to the desktop. Which, BTW, works. If you want a launcher, you want it accessible, thus on the panel. I never understood why windows installers seemed all adamant that I absolutely put their icon on my destop.
The deal is that the folder views of KDE 4 are massively better than the desktop of KDE3 or GNOME2. They make complete sense: the desktop is this very useful scrapbook of files currently worked on. But it makes sense to have them organised in a couple folders, all visible at once. It also makes sense to be able to have some of these folders distant.
For example, I am running calculations that will occasionally write intermediate solution files. Using a folder view, I can see them appearing. I can the manually open them when I want to.
Using nepomuk, I can have one such folder which will display all the files created in my home in the last week.
KDE4 is a truly modern desktop, and although I liked KDE3 a lot, it was only a best-in-class 90s desktop. Clearly, you are living in the 90s, but you may yet come to appreciate the present...
But I like the integration with the lyrics, and wikipedia, and the videos! If I just wanted the music, I would never launch a GUI.
About akonadi: when 4.7 comes out, if you are using kmail/kontact you will be happy: it is really faster than the current non-akonadi-using mailer. If only for IMAP PUSH it would be worth it.
And the integration with nepomuk, I am pleased to say, works! full-text search in attachments is cool. Having the link to the right mail pop-up when doing alt-f2 "some relevant text" is awesome.
On the other hand, the guy is really trying hard to make his life miserable...
- You should not set the frequency manually. This is the job of the OS/the hardware. And they know best.
- KDE respects the locale unless you have specifically told it not to (as in, configured alternate keyboards)
- Login managers do not prevent you from logging on the console: if there is a lockup, reboot and specify the runlevel at the grub/lilo prompt
- The first KDE app will take 20s to start, because it needs to start the configuration cache and the system bus. These apps benefit from integration, but this incurs a cost when run standalone
But yeah, I mean, you are running windowmaker, so why run KDE apps? These apps are great because they are integrated and work well together, in their environment. Of course, there is nothing like Amarok (2, yes, I'm a fan) or K3B or kate, or quite like kontact outside of KDE. But these apps are great because of the integration and the shared features!
But if they did add the padding, some other guy _will_ squeal like a pig that the EVIL KDE DEVELOPERS are stealing his precious pixels... They can't win.
As opposed to this part of the desktop conveniently labelled with the path it links to? See, some of us like to be able to drag stuff to where we want the files to be (no, not the _stupid_ "Download folder"). And some of these locations might be remote! You might be living in the nineties, but some of us have this amazing thing called Internet (not, "the web") and we use it.
No you don't. KDE is sensible: it has a settings menu...
Oh, clearly. And we all hope it is in fact congealed...
Quoting the page:
During 11 years, the plant spent 63 months of normal operations, mostly at low power; 25 months of outages due to fixing technical problems of the prototype; and 66 months were spent on halt due to political and administrative issues.
Mostly did not operate normally. I recalled not at all, but I was wrong. The plug was however not pulled because it did not work, but because of a political decision, taken after the issues had been fixed, so your argument about the whole idea being bad/not working remains wrong.
Super-phoenix was never put into operation. So much for "shut down". Phoenix, the research project, was successful enough that its successor was built. Politics caused it to never be started.
No, some level of sorting is useful (it is nearly criminal not to sort aluminium, for example). But the reason you sort is probably not because it is useful. You do it because you feel it is right. It is a ritual. Like in many places, where the glass is sorted by colour and then, when picked up, ends up in the same bin anyway. You can only sort to some extent, and the result must be inspected anyway.
Although I don't judge people who think that animals ought not to be harmed by the actions of the assholes who attack lab workers, I do judge members of friendly political movements who shrug their shoulders and mumble something about the cause being right. I don't know that Hitler was such a devout Christian, but he is a cautionary tale of right-wing christian conservatives coopting extremism for their cause... I dislike some truly horrible campaigns by animal right supporters who create a climate such that some feel justified in performing criminal acts -- coopting extremism for their cause.
You think that I dislike the greens because of the oil and gas companies? No, I dislike them because of the way they vote on issues touching ecology. Otherwise, they tend to be a party I rather like. Sad isn't it? Until they start to campaign against gas and for nuclear they will not get my vote. Hell, I might even vote for them if they just shut up about that subject. The biggest risk to us all is climate change. Carbon reduction should be the number 1 goal. If the political compromise you cause to happen is coal/gas/renewable instead of nuclear/renewable, never mind what you wanted, you were on the wrong side of the line, and you played with our collective lives because of political posturing.
And you are extra-guilty for realising how important the problem is, and not bringing about a solution.
By definition, waste is what you do not use, otherwise, it is not waste. Obviously. As for the closure of Super-Phoenix, it was a purely political decision, brought about by the necessity of keeping the ecologists on board the then coalition.
"OMG Nuclear power sucks! we are afraid!! OK says the politician, see, I closed the plant, happy, now? See! he closed the plant, it proves it was dangerous!"
I dislike this world where political expediency is taking the place of reality. This goes as much for Republican policies as with large swaths of the "Green" movement. The world is complicated, everything is a trade-off. Deal with it.
The point is that the difference in the amount of waste is not significant -- not in the sense that it reduces the number of storage location you need. Waste is not really relevant in the discussion of nuclear. Because if waste were relevant, only wind, hydraulic and solar thermal would qualify as clean energies. And they are not enough. One day, we will have fusion power. Fusion, not renewable, is the long-term future.
What comes between now and the first fusion plants, I don't know. I hope lots of nuclear and renewables, but likely lots of coal/gas and some renewables, and big climate problems. And I believe the blame falls squarely on the shoulders of the ecological movement, who is wholly right about the problems, and almost wholly wrong about the solutions.
And the reason they are wrong is that it is a movement with strong Luddite streaks. Fringes matter: the guys saying we should go back to the 17th century are not very many, but they push they whole movement in their direction. They _care_. If you need (to be accepted as a legitimate part of the movement) to take the political stance of no nuclear, and the stance of no fossil fuel, either something has to give, or you need to take the stance of "no energy" -- political messages about trade offs only work if you talk to engineers. If you go for no energy, you have to admit you are in favour of lowering standards of living. Once you have made that step, you make it a virtue. With it comes the notions of "simpler life", "mad scientists playing god".
You start thinking that the solution comes from rituals (sorting your waste is a ritual: very, very useful for aluminium, somewhat for plastics, iron can be sorted automatically -- but in reality, robotic, industrial sorting centres are the solution) and not from knowledge in a broad sense (technology and science, awarenass of the usefulness of your actions), and then you oppose technical solutions on principled grounds. But we live in a very complex, highly technological society.
When people oppose the construction of storage locations for nuclear waste, they _think_ they are opposing the nuclear industry, but in reality, they are also opposing medical and scientific uses. This is sadly not a strawman: most people don't realise what nuclear waste is made off. And they are against it "because". Reducing waste amounts, unless it is by an order of magnitude (not possible, because of the "uncontroversial" usage) is essentially useless.
Only while supplies last. It also depends on the state of the technology. Also, as pretty much no one has found a dumping ground for their "waste", it might well be that it is in fact a losing proposition to try to store the spent fuel, in the long run.
Not so much because of technical problems, but because everywhere is someone's backyard.
No, not all of it, but as long as something can be reused, it is not "waste". It becomes waste only when nothing can be gotten out of it. "Recycling" is not "Reusing". Reading comes before nuclear engineering, so I guess it is back to small school for you?
Also, pet peeve of mine about rabidly anti-nuclear people who are against any and all storage facility for nuclear waste:
- Even if the world decided to shut down all plants tomorrow, long term storage would still be needed (in fact, especially if the world decided to shut down all plants)
- Even if all the waste from plants magically evaporated, there would still remain all of the scientific/medical waste (a very significant fraction of the total).
I cannot help but think that people holding a strong opinion both against storage and against nuclear power are brain-damaged. And in the event of them needing it, they should be denied radiotherapy. And X-Rays. I would deny them smoke detectors, but that would not be fair for their neighbours.
Of course, storing anything at the Fukushima site for the long term is idiotic bordering on criminal. This is a separate issue.
The scale is not based on the consequences. Not directly as in "level x means y people died/ z km^2 became unusable". It is more of a statement on how much the plant was damaged/can be repaired/(mis-)operated.
So you could have a accident at the maximum level completely confined in the plant, and a low-level incident killing people (typically because large turbines are dangerous/small radioactive releases can be really badly placed and timed).
Of course there is a moderately strong correlation between the two, in practise.
Except spent fuel can be recycled in a breeder reactor. It is only "waste" if you give up on using it!
Seconded. I still remember some guy that ported his MATLAB finite element code to c++. The solving time for his problems went from 24 hours to 8 minutes -- 6 of which were the post-processing/display of the results... That was towards the end of his thesis, so basically he must have wasted countless months of productive work because of that.
MATLAB is never the right tool -- unless you are really incompetent, so you need the hand-holding, and really obtuse, so you can't handle the small differences with Octave. And the "toolbox" excuse is a load of crock: there most certainly is a c or c++ implementation of what you need.
Fair enough. I still think space-based power would be cooler :)
Ahh, this is interesting philosophically: the tools you used historically determine the branch of science you are in. But as we go forward, CS gets estranged from the bare metal, and becomes more abstract.
So you are trying to say in a very convoluted way that the school system is inadequate preparation for university? I don't know of a single school system in the world which is an adequate preparation for university. Some get by by brutally selecting students from an early age -- of course, you get all the brilliant kids who would have made it through in any system, so it works. duh.
But the point remains, the university requirements you describe are in fact correct. And unless the failure rate in the Swedish university system are abnormally high, it might well be that the high school does an okay job at preparation. But then, I also believe that exposure to subjects is valuable in and of itself, never mind that you pass the class. So yes, it might seem unfair that the guy who did so much math, and nothing else, doesn't get to enter the programme, but on the other hand, very narrow interests show him to be inadequate for university.