It sounds like you are sane (even if plagued by hallucinations), but your friend is not so lucky. My ex-wife has problems, too, recognizing when her objective and subjective realities are diverging, and then blames the entire world for turning on her. What's more, she refuses to accept that she has any problem whatsoever, and will therefore not address it. She takes no medication.
That said, the question is whether your friend is essentially functional, or whether her paranoia interferes with her life and could cause harm to her or to others around her. It may be heart-breaking to see her struggling, and frustrating to see no result from your attempts to help, but if the extent of her issue is "crazy but harmless" then that is something to be thankful for, at least. If the results of her paranoia are more serious than that, then more help from professionals may be called for.
As to the issue of "batshit crazy people" being able to purchase guns, that simply comes down to this: An undeniable record of some sort of psychiatric issue makes for a safe and simple reason to deny the purchase ("there's the record, and here's the check box, any questions?"), but a judgment call made by someone who is not professionally qualified to evaluate psychiatric fitness, that's opening a big can of worms.
In any case, good luck to you and good luck to your friend, as well. I hope that reason will prevail for her.
Would copyright law apply to unreleased (and potentially unknown) materials? What if someone stamped their copyright notice on those stolen materials? How would Sony prove ownership and (exclusive) distribution rights? And would the simple assertion ("it's ours") be enough to support a take-down notice? Could anyone take down anything merely by making such a claim?
Make it illegal for lobbyists to buy the lawmakers, no matter by what means they try. Only then is there a chance that the lawmakers return to serving the people and the nation, rather than the control freaks and corporations.
And then, when it is noticed that your online activities diverge significantly from the norm, they may have cause to investigate you as a potential terrorist because, you know, why else but for nefarious reasons would you want to hide your activities from the good people who are trying to keep us all safe?
Re:So how's the Windows version coming along?
on
KDE 4.8 Released
·
· Score: 2
Fisher Price UI of XP
I always called it the Toys-R-Us UI, but it comes down to the same thing. I am not alone!:)
(I think I like Fisher Price UI better, actually).
I'm no expert on the topic, but I think it's more likely that the law makers (Congress and the House of Representatives) are so deep in the pockets of industry, not the judges (who only interpret the law). Yes, corrupt judges probably exist, but it's far more effective for industry to "buy" the law makers: Once a law is passed, it can be held unconstitutional or the executive branch can choose to ignore and not enforce it, but it is still a law that can be brought into play if it suits someone who paid for the law to be passed.
My solution? If contributions of any type (money, services, time, and goods) and to any number of elected/electable officials could not exceed a paltry sum (like $100 or the equivalent) during a fairly long period (like 12 months) it would be far more difficult for powerful special interests to buy themselves the laws they want. No more lobbyists, no more "war chests" on the campaign trail, no more of this insidious bribery...
I think that anyone who is so intellectually impoverished that they cannot or will not relearn menus really ought not be using a computer
I beg to differ: Computers are tools, and when these tools do the job we need them to do, and in a way that satisfies/pleases us, then turning the world upside down is not just counter productive, but unnecessary, and will meet with push back or even rejection. Change for the sake of change seems to be the rage these days, perhaps because "different" is often mistaken as a synonym for "improvement."
A real improvement would either be so obviously better that everybody will realize it at first sight, even if it's dramatically different; or it would offer the improvement above and beyond the existing functionality without throwing existing users for a loop.
I would hope that the typed menus under discussion are of the latter type, not the former.
From the sound of it, this is more like Blender's menus, but hooked into every application: You can navigate the menu as you always have, or you can also type the name of the command, instead. If you don't know where in a large menu structure it is, but you remember (part of) the name, that may be faster, especially for software where your fingers are already on the keyboard (e.g. text editor, word processor, spread sheet, etc.) Probably not so useful for GIMP or Audacity.
But so long as the existing navigation paradigm is not damaged or even taken away, I'm okay with it as a quiet addition.
I have much greater issues with commands and menu entries completely vanishing from sight depending on context (gmail, firefox,... grumble, spit) but that's opening a completely different can of worms.
Don't cheer too quickly. They're probably going to resurrect SOPA under another name in a few months, but attach it to a big and critical military spending bill. Thus it will pass into law, because nobody wants to vote against it, and be accused of playing into the hands of terrorists.
is LO more actively maintained, faster/more efficient, or have imrpoved features over OO now? Is it worth changing over or upgrading?
Yes, yes, yes, yes, and again yes to all of your questions!
LibreOffice has not only merged countless improvements that OO.o cannot merge (because of license issues), but has cleaned up a lot of code, removed dead code, fixed known problems, improved work flow, removed limitations, improved compatibility with other software, upgraded to ODF 1.2, and made the program better in countless respects. They're also providing explicit release schedules for major and minor versions (e.g. 3.5.0 is due Feb 8, and 3.5.1 is due in the first week of March, then 3.5.2 is due in the first week of April, etc.), and are properly open about the coming features, the road map, funding, etc.
Sure, you can certainly get plenty of mileage out of existing installations of OO.o today, but if you have no compelling reason to stay with OO.o you should definitely consider upgrading to LibreOffice. I'd wager that you'll be very glad to have done it.
Bottom line, OO.o is dead and gone in all but name. I really don't see much point in continuing to spend energy on OO.o these days.
instead of either of these packages chasing MS Office 2003, I'd like to see something like what Firefox (and now Chrome) did to the browser product space, but for office productivity suites
The core difference between browsing the web and working with documents is the persistence of data and how predictable (consistent) your data is presented. Nobody in their right mind expects web pages to look the same, regardless whether you use Opera, Firefox, Chrome, MSIE, or Lynx. But when it comes to documents, people get upset if a word wraps earlier in one product than another, their carefully crafted one page document suddenly overflows by two words onto a second line, their embedded images aren't properly aligned, etc. Sometimes these are legitimate concerns, sometimes it's just a matter of mismatched expectations, but overall it's a different ball game.
So if you want to play in the office/document playground, you can't afford to alienate too many people before you start stepping out of line, and improving on the old and trusted formula that so many people take for granted.
The spyware can probably check the virtualized machine's "hardware" and report the fact that the environment has been virtualized. This might give rise to suspicions.
Next is chess, where pawns are sent to the front lines to die, and knights, rooks, and bishops(!) gang up to assault a queen and threaten a sovereign. End this travesty now!
You need to have something to show for, regardless what you decide to do specifically. A degree from a decent school says that you've got a certain minimum education in lieu of actual experience. With increasing experience (and successful projects under your belt) it matters less and less whether you have a degree or not.
That said, if you want to do web design, then build a bunch of demo sites that show off what all you can do, in other words build yourself a portfolio that will not go away. Demonstrate style, variety, and quality. You'll have to demonstrate, too, that you listen to your clients, so you should have your demo sites answer a hypothetical client's specific needs. Be able to talk to potential clients about these needs and your approach/solution, thereby demonstrating that you're not a one-site-fits-all kind of designer.
And finally, you need to ensure that your name goes around. Recommendations (word of mouth) is what you need to generate, and lots of it.
If "they" have made it too difficult to be responsible about the cable releases, then do what they obviously want from you: Spend no more time and effort, and release the cables in raw form, instead.
O rly? And whose fault was it that the old format was buggy? Was it perchance the the same organisation which is releasing the new format? So why exactly should we believe that the new one is "better"?
Perhaps because people can learn from their mistakes, and put new insights to good use?
What the fuck has happened to all the western governments and what do they think they'll be able to achieve with increasingly draconian police state style laws?
Those governments are flailing helplessly against a rising wave of discontent, so much seems obvious to me. They're like those parents whose baby won't stop crying, and they slap the child or beat it, or even kill it in frustration. It's heinous and despicable, but there's no clearer sign of incompetence, IMO.
The underlying cause of the failing economies, crumbling public infrastructure, and diminishing quality of education and health care may be found in the fact that we're outsourcing all of our manufacturing and the skills that go along with it, leaving behind only consumers of that which we once researched, designed, and knew how to build, but are too cheap to invest in, maintain, and make ourselves. You can't run a country on "buy, buy, buy" if you've got nothing substantially equivalent that you can "sell, sell, sell." You can get away with it for a while, but eventually the imbalance will cause loss in revenue, less repairs, less investment, and rising discontent. Keep that up long enough, then add a catalyst event, and you can watch the whole thing go up in flames. Suppressing the discontented is merely the equivalent of tightening the bolts on the pressure cooker when it's leaking steam, rather than reducing the flame under it.
How to fix this mess? In the short term, I don't think the situation can be fixed, it requires long-term planning, and probably the reversal of some economic policies that used to look like a good idea, but ended up supporting the decay. It also requires that the people at the top stop filling their own pockets and those of their big corporate friends, and actually put the nation and their people first.
But who, in this fast, hard age has time for idealism, who would eschew the quick buck for a lonely, short, and thankless job, that nobody understands, and nobody would support or vote for? No, it's easier to keep this racket going for another few years, grab the cash with both hands, and make a stash. Aprés moi, la déluge?
nVidia announced a new driver (I think just this past June 2011) that addressed issues of a similar sort that I experienced under Linux with KDE4 and desktop effects enabled: Mysterious freezes, starting at a few seconds and working their way up to 30 to 45 seconds if I was patient enough. This was with the 270.41.06 driver.
I cannot say whether the issues are related, but but given that they affect KDE4 but not GNOME, I suspect that there could be specific ways in which both OS/X and KDE4, but not GNOME, interact with the driver to trigger the bug.
In any case, two possible solutions to look into are (1) upgrade the driver, or (2) disable desktop effects.
Actually it makes perfect sense if you do not wish to support the mindset of proprietary software, and the dependencies and liabilities that such an association creates (and not just for yourself, either!) Obviously there is a price to be paid for refusing to run with wolves, hence the posted question: Is there a way to accomplish what needs to be done using only FLOSS (Free/Libre/Open Source Software)?
Slashdot Mirror
It sounds like you are sane (even if plagued by hallucinations), but your friend is not so lucky. My ex-wife has problems, too, recognizing when her objective and subjective realities are diverging, and then blames the entire world for turning on her. What's more, she refuses to accept that she has any problem whatsoever, and will therefore not address it. She takes no medication.
That said, the question is whether your friend is essentially functional, or whether her paranoia interferes with her life and could cause harm to her or to others around her. It may be heart-breaking to see her struggling, and frustrating to see no result from your attempts to help, but if the extent of her issue is "crazy but harmless" then that is something to be thankful for, at least. If the results of her paranoia are more serious than that, then more help from professionals may be called for.
As to the issue of "batshit crazy people" being able to purchase guns, that simply comes down to this: An undeniable record of some sort of psychiatric issue makes for a safe and simple reason to deny the purchase ("there's the record, and here's the check box, any questions?"), but a judgment call made by someone who is not professionally qualified to evaluate psychiatric fitness, that's opening a big can of worms.
In any case, good luck to you and good luck to your friend, as well. I hope that reason will prevail for her.
Being stupid is not a choice, at least not for the TSA; just look at their middle initial.
Maybe it was unreleased (and nobody bothered to make a torrent out of it) because it was actually awful?
Would copyright law apply to unreleased (and potentially unknown) materials? What if someone stamped their copyright notice on those stolen materials? How would Sony prove ownership and (exclusive) distribution rights? And would the simple assertion ("it's ours") be enough to support a take-down notice? Could anyone take down anything merely by making such a claim?
Make it illegal for lobbyists to buy the lawmakers, no matter by what means they try. Only then is there a chance that the lawmakers return to serving the people and the nation, rather than the control freaks and corporations.
And then, when it is noticed that your online activities diverge significantly from the norm, they may have cause to investigate you as a potential terrorist because, you know, why else but for nefarious reasons would you want to hide your activities from the good people who are trying to keep us all safe?
I always called it the Toys-R-Us UI, but it comes down to the same thing. I am not alone! :)
(I think I like Fisher Price UI better, actually).
I'm no expert on the topic, but I think it's more likely that the law makers (Congress and the House of Representatives) are so deep in the pockets of industry, not the judges (who only interpret the law). Yes, corrupt judges probably exist, but it's far more effective for industry to "buy" the law makers: Once a law is passed, it can be held unconstitutional or the executive branch can choose to ignore and not enforce it, but it is still a law that can be brought into play if it suits someone who paid for the law to be passed.
My solution? If contributions of any type (money, services, time, and goods) and to any number of elected/electable officials could not exceed a paltry sum (like $100 or the equivalent) during a fairly long period (like 12 months) it would be far more difficult for powerful special interests to buy themselves the laws they want. No more lobbyists, no more "war chests" on the campaign trail, no more of this insidious bribery...
I beg to differ: Computers are tools, and when these tools do the job we need them to do, and in a way that satisfies/pleases us, then turning the world upside down is not just counter productive, but unnecessary, and will meet with push back or even rejection. Change for the sake of change seems to be the rage these days, perhaps because "different" is often mistaken as a synonym for "improvement."
A real improvement would either be so obviously better that everybody will realize it at first sight, even if it's dramatically different; or it would offer the improvement above and beyond the existing functionality without throwing existing users for a loop.
I would hope that the typed menus under discussion are of the latter type, not the former.
From the sound of it, this is more like Blender's menus, but hooked into every application: You can navigate the menu as you always have, or you can also type the name of the command, instead. If you don't know where in a large menu structure it is, but you remember (part of) the name, that may be faster, especially for software where your fingers are already on the keyboard (e.g. text editor, word processor, spread sheet, etc.) Probably not so useful for GIMP or Audacity.
But so long as the existing navigation paradigm is not damaged or even taken away, I'm okay with it as a quiet addition.
I have much greater issues with commands and menu entries completely vanishing from sight depending on context (gmail, firefox, ... grumble, spit) but that's opening a completely different can of worms.
Nice, that's John Brunner's "The Sheep Look Up" in a slightly different vein! Good book, too, read it!
Don't cheer too quickly. They're probably going to resurrect SOPA under another name in a few months, but attach it to a big and critical military spending bill. Thus it will pass into law, because nobody wants to vote against it, and be accused of playing into the hands of terrorists.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, and again yes to all of your questions!
LibreOffice has not only merged countless improvements that OO.o cannot merge (because of license issues), but has cleaned up a lot of code, removed dead code, fixed known problems, improved work flow, removed limitations, improved compatibility with other software, upgraded to ODF 1.2, and made the program better in countless respects. They're also providing explicit release schedules for major and minor versions (e.g. 3.5.0 is due Feb 8, and 3.5.1 is due in the first week of March, then 3.5.2 is due in the first week of April, etc.), and are properly open about the coming features, the road map, funding, etc.
Sure, you can certainly get plenty of mileage out of existing installations of OO.o today, but if you have no compelling reason to stay with OO.o you should definitely consider upgrading to LibreOffice. I'd wager that you'll be very glad to have done it.
Bottom line, OO.o is dead and gone in all but name. I really don't see much point in continuing to spend energy on OO.o these days.
The core difference between browsing the web and working with documents is the persistence of data and how predictable (consistent) your data is presented. Nobody in their right mind expects web pages to look the same, regardless whether you use Opera, Firefox, Chrome, MSIE, or Lynx. But when it comes to documents, people get upset if a word wraps earlier in one product than another, their carefully crafted one page document suddenly overflows by two words onto a second line, their embedded images aren't properly aligned, etc. Sometimes these are legitimate concerns, sometimes it's just a matter of mismatched expectations, but overall it's a different ball game.
So if you want to play in the office/document playground, you can't afford to alienate too many people before you start stepping out of line, and improving on the old and trusted formula that so many people take for granted.
Moxie was also one of the Hobbits in National Lampoon's "Bored of the Rings", a LotR spoof, and was named after the soda, AFAIK.
The spyware can probably check the virtualized machine's "hardware" and report the fact that the environment has been virtualized. This might give rise to suspicions.
Next is chess, where pawns are sent to the front lines to die, and knights, rooks, and bishops(!) gang up to assault a queen and threaten a sovereign. End this travesty now!
You need to have something to show for, regardless what you decide to do specifically. A degree from a decent school says that you've got a certain minimum education in lieu of actual experience. With increasing experience (and successful projects under your belt) it matters less and less whether you have a degree or not.
That said, if you want to do web design, then build a bunch of demo sites that show off what all you can do, in other words build yourself a portfolio that will not go away. Demonstrate style, variety, and quality. You'll have to demonstrate, too, that you listen to your clients, so you should have your demo sites answer a hypothetical client's specific needs. Be able to talk to potential clients about these needs and your approach/solution, thereby demonstrating that you're not a one-site-fits-all kind of designer.
And finally, you need to ensure that your name goes around. Recommendations (word of mouth) is what you need to generate, and lots of it.
If "they" have made it too difficult to be responsible about the cable releases, then do what they obviously want from you: Spend no more time and effort, and release the cables in raw form, instead.
Perhaps because people can learn from their mistakes, and put new insights to good use?
Naaah!
... with both hands tied behind the person's back. Blindfolded.
Next up: Bot nets start downloading illegal content. Hilarity ensues.
What the fuck has happened to all the western governments and what do they think they'll be able to achieve with increasingly draconian police state style laws?
Those governments are flailing helplessly against a rising wave of discontent, so much seems obvious to me. They're like those parents whose baby won't stop crying, and they slap the child or beat it, or even kill it in frustration. It's heinous and despicable, but there's no clearer sign of incompetence, IMO.
The underlying cause of the failing economies, crumbling public infrastructure, and diminishing quality of education and health care may be found in the fact that we're outsourcing all of our manufacturing and the skills that go along with it, leaving behind only consumers of that which we once researched, designed, and knew how to build, but are too cheap to invest in, maintain, and make ourselves. You can't run a country on "buy, buy, buy" if you've got nothing substantially equivalent that you can "sell, sell, sell." You can get away with it for a while, but eventually the imbalance will cause loss in revenue, less repairs, less investment, and rising discontent. Keep that up long enough, then add a catalyst event, and you can watch the whole thing go up in flames. Suppressing the discontented is merely the equivalent of tightening the bolts on the pressure cooker when it's leaking steam, rather than reducing the flame under it.
How to fix this mess? In the short term, I don't think the situation can be fixed, it requires long-term planning, and probably the reversal of some economic policies that used to look like a good idea, but ended up supporting the decay. It also requires that the people at the top stop filling their own pockets and those of their big corporate friends, and actually put the nation and their people first.
But who, in this fast, hard age has time for idealism, who would eschew the quick buck for a lonely, short, and thankless job, that nobody understands, and nobody would support or vote for? No, it's easier to keep this racket going for another few years, grab the cash with both hands, and make a stash. Aprés moi, la déluge?
nVidia announced a new driver (I think just this past June 2011) that addressed issues of a similar sort that I experienced under Linux with KDE4 and desktop effects enabled: Mysterious freezes, starting at a few seconds and working their way up to 30 to 45 seconds if I was patient enough. This was with the 270.41.06 driver.
I cannot say whether the issues are related, but but given that they affect KDE4 but not GNOME, I suspect that there could be specific ways in which both OS/X and KDE4, but not GNOME, interact with the driver to trigger the bug.
In any case, two possible solutions to look into are (1) upgrade the driver, or (2) disable desktop effects.
Indeed, "yes", otherwise 'Them' wouldn't have felt the need to ask, right?
Actually it makes perfect sense if you do not wish to support the mindset of proprietary software, and the dependencies and liabilities that such an association creates (and not just for yourself, either!) Obviously there is a price to be paid for refusing to run with wolves, hence the posted question: Is there a way to accomplish what needs to be done using only FLOSS (Free/Libre/Open Source Software)?