It may save hours for you--but shouldn't the interface be irrelevant unless you're computer illiterature (your words, not mine). Personally, I get terribly frustrated when I'm trying to paste over something and end up accidentally clearing my clipboard buffer in oldschool X. I prefer windows/mac style (I have mice button bound to copy/paste actually--doesn't work NEARLY as well in X because of the issue I just cited).
It's a matter of saved keystrokes. The advantage is clear; one is a faster process than another. If I want to copy, paste into another window, and return to first window using using X buffer:
1. Highlight 2. Middle-click
is all that's needed for cut and paste. I don't even have to select Windows because focus follows my mouse. But using Windows/Mac, I have to:
1. Highlight 2. Ctrl-C 3. Click in destination window 4. Ctrl-V 5. Click in source window
That's more than double the number of steps.
That's what I'm getting at in the entire post. I don't do this "for fun". Preferences are not simply to give you warm fuzzies, they're to make you more efficient. In the case of X, to make you MUCH more efficient, if you know how to use them.
If I get an image out of my camera and then out the door thirty minutes before someone else, that's ten minutes earlier that an editor has had my image and that much greater chance that I will make a living with it as opposed to someone else.
In an ideal world that last clause (as opposed to someone else) wouldn't matter and we could all do our jobs to the best of our ability all the time. But the way the world is structured right now, if you want to work it helps to be the best, and in many cases that also means the fastest and/or most productive.
A computer is a tool, not a home, it's not a fashion statement. OS X gets this right. Trivial time-wasters like themes--while they may keep you from getting bored--really don't have much practical value.
That's bull. Mac OS X only helps "just getting work done" if you're functionally computer illiterate.
I'm a creative pro (supposedly Mac's main market) and yet I do all my photo processing (which is extensive) in Linux.
Why? Becuse it's about 100x faster in Linux due to the degree that I have been able to optimize my workflow:
1) Focus-follows-mouse, always shunned by non-Unix systems and now even by Unix systems (OS X, GNOME) saves endless point-and-click strokes (find titlebar, click to focus) when you have dozens of image windows open. Each one of these is a savings of several seconds. If you're performing hundreds or thousands of manipulations on a single task in multiple windows, that adds up to hours saved, not just minutes, on focus policy alone.
2) Fast cut/paste. Here again, the reviled behavior of X (highlight with left button, move to another window that focuses automatically, middle click where you want it to paste) saves incredible amounts of time versus the OS X or Windows behaviors (highlight with left button, hit CTRL-C, click on titlebar of destination window, click where you want to place cursor for paste, hit CTRL-V). The combination of focus-follows-mouse and keystroke-free copy/paste here again saves hours, not just minutes, when performing reptitious tasks.
3) Floating windows are my call. Once again I can keep GIMP tool windows, layer/channel dialogs, a kcalc, my conferencing window and others on top at my discretion, rather than always having to hunt down and raise some windows (by clicking on a taskbar or a dock) that I know I will need over and over again or being stuck with others on top that I don't want there and that just take up screen real estate. And when I am done with them, I can release them from forceed raise behavior.
4) Ability to turn of automatic raise when windows receive a click (done by combining focus follows mouse + titlebar-raise-only). I can have one window partially obscuring another and be working (inputting) in the "lower" (partially obscured) window while referring to one or more upper windows that partially obscure it. No need to "raise this one, look, raise that one, work, raise this one, look some more, raise that one, work some more, oh hell, just make a hardcopy, hmm, where shall we set the hardcopy..."
6) Scriptability/rapid application development. Yes, the dreaded command line shell. Many of my most intense post-production tasks (i.e. laying out posters with their captions, borders, copyright notices, anti-aliasing, interpolating to proper sizes, etc.) are database driven and processed through command line tools like ImageMagick. This allows me to do things like "makeposter 20x16 img_2525.crw" and in a single pass have the image automatically fetched from archive, converted from Canon raw, edited, captioned, matted, etc. according to a list of edits and captions I've saved ahead of time for images in my database, then sent to post-production (i.e. output). Don't tell me that there is a "makeposter" command in Mac OS X that will automatically query my database of images and perform these tasks for me, or that Apple will be willing to write me one.
[Perhaps AppleScript is capable of this stuff, perhaps not... I don't know AppleScript. But I will happily refuse to buy arguements that as well as my system works for me, I should switch to Mac OS X simply because AppleScript just "gets it right" or is "just more elegant" as scripting languages go. You'll have to give me real benefits, not techno-spiritual ones.]
7) The X-factor. I take pictures and I write prose. Those are the things I do for a living. I have other things that I do as hobbies (i.e. the/. stuff, volunteering to run some free community network centers/labs
They can either enforce their copyright, assuming that the kernel contains SCO code improperly, and stop Linux distribution, or they can sit back and do nothing. Collecting money is not a legal option.
Silly boy!
You speak almost as though the law is not utterly secondary to transient corporate interests. If I didn't know you better, I'd almost say you're one of chose crackpots who thinks laws were written for some reason other than corporate profits!
Only a private citizen may be charged with extortion. When a corporation is doing the same, it's an example proving that competition in a free market is working for the good of us all.
Or, as the luminaries of the New World Order say, May God Bless Corporate Democracy.
SCO isn't doing anything wrong as far as the marketplace mavens are concerned. A bit cheeky perhaps (they're not nearly big enough to deserve this much power), but I imagine there are a lot of coporate types admiring the chutzpah and pulling for the "little guy" SCO to pull off the big-time capers that sizable corporations generally live by.
Hopefully they'll get more than they bargained for with Linux. The Linux community are rather like surprisingly well-armed guerillas who have shocked the world by standing against the New Economy. Thanks to a unique kind of solidarity and the GPL, more than any other group fighting the corporate threat I think Linux users have a fighting chance to avoid being placed under unwanted Wall Street leadership.
Re:What does DVD-RAM do that DVD-RW doesn't?
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DVD Burner Round-up
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Yes, the DVD-RAM can be used like a hard/floppy/MO disk (i.e. save files to it or load files from it just as you would to a hard drive, without special software), while the DVD+/-RW must be written all at once, like a CD-R(W), unless you purchase or use special:random-burn" software. At least, this is my understanding, having never used a DVD+/-RW.
I'm sure if I'm wrong someone will mod me down.:-)
DVD-RAM is not dead, it's just not meant to be a replacement for CD-R(W).
DVD-RAM is meant to be, and is an excellent replacement for MO (magneto-optical). For long-term archive with numerous volumes, you don't want uncovered ROM media, you want protected random-access media, which is what DVD-RAM gives you.
9.4GB random access in a nice MO-style cover with sliding door. It's very rugged comared to DVD+/-RW or CD-R(w); the DVD-RAMs on their own can be tossed about and thrown here and there without damaging the disc, and each one also comes with a secondary protective plastic case (just like MO discs did) into which the primary disk casing slides.
I used MO for years to archive my work (writing and photography). It, too, was not a "mainstream" format like CD-R(W) but also didn't suffer from the same vulnerability to fingerprints, dust, cheap media, blah, blah, blah. And when DVD-RAM came along, I jumped on it and I'm using it now. I mount the discs and use them like a hard drive in Linux. I have a whole stack of 9.4GB DVD-RAM discs sitting right next to me and I wouldn't trade them or the reader for the same in DVD+/-RW because that technology doesn't suit my intended use to the same extent.
Yes, I realize that the.Xdefaults file contains the local X resource database.
When I log into kde and do "xrdb -all -edit myfile.txt" it saves all of the.Xdefaults-style information created by KDE to the file. Then, when I log into WindowMaker and do "xrdb myfile.txt" it loads all of that information from KDE and applies it, just as if it were in an.Xdefaults file.
Unfortunately, it doesn't help. It works on all other applications that KDE normally affects (including old X apps like xv and Athena-based apps), but it doesn't work on OpenOffice.
So when KDE controls the OpenOffice colors, it must be doing so via an avenue other than the X resource database (i.e..Xdefaults-style values).
Like I said, i also tried.gtkrc files which control GTK's appearance and while they work well on my GTK/GTK2 apps, they also don't affect OpenOffice.
But no matter what else it is (and Java it is not, at least not in the "run it in a JVM" sense), OpenOffice is an X application. And KDE does somehow set the OpenOffice colors when you are in KDE.
I simply want to know how KDE does it so that I can do the same thing using X tools, without having to worry about KDE.
Yes, when that box is checked, KDE sets applications using a number of techniques:
1) krdb and the X resources I mentioned(this helps the legacy X, athena, and Motif applications)
2).gtkrc files I mentioned (this helps the current GTK/GTK2/GNOME applications)
3) ???
It is obviously 3 that I am missing, because I have tried methods 1) and 2) and have even tried using the exact settings that KDE uses in those cases, and while it works for all other applications (i.e. in WindowMaker, my desktop colors fully match across multiple apps), it doesn't yet work for OpenOffice.:-(
I didn't mean to necessarily suggest that you were arguing for pure capitalism. I simply get tired of seeing that phrase around our New World Order these days... "If we had pure capitalism, things might be better..." Bah. That's like saying "If we had a climate control knob in the UN, things might be better." 1) I'm not sure they would be and 2) Let's deal in what is necessarily real in capitalism, not in what is unachievable.
Excluding the unachievable, as it is practiced, capitalism is an evil, not a boon. Whether it is a necessary evil or not is the subject of some debate. I myself think that it is not. But now we're on to an entirely different subject.
While we're on the subject of StarOffice/OpenOffice, I'm going to post a question about it here because Slashdotters are more likely to be able to anwer than those kids over at the OO forums.
OpenOffice is able to inherit and use the toolkit/widget colors that I select in Linux/KDE. i.e. if my widgets are all brown in other apps, they are also brown in OpenOffice. However, when I am using WindowMaker or another simple managed environment rather than KDE, OpenOffice comes up in Windows NT gray and I can't seem to change that.
I've done an "xrdb -all -edit myrsrcs.txt" from within KDE to grab all the krdb stuff and then an "xrdb myrsrcs.txt" from within WindowMaker, but that didn't help. All of my GTK/GTK2 apps look the way I want them to at this point because my.gtkrc and.gtkrc-2.0 files and relateds are all configured correctly for my color preferences... but OO doesn't seem to see these either (I haven't checked to see if OO is a GTK app at all).
I even tried "kfmclient file:/opt/OpenOffice.org/progrms/swriter" to see if I could get the KDE colors into OO that way without actually having to be logged in to KDE, but it didn't help.
Does anyone know how to change the widget colors in OpenOffice without having to simply log into KDE or GNOME?
P.S. final hint: using the Tools menu is not the right answer, it contains color options for a great many things, but the menu and toolbar widgets are not among them.
And yet another complaint of mine is that laws like this fly in the face of pure capitalism (not something that I'm necessarily for). Market forces should be deciding the fate of the music industry, not Congress.
I see this argument a lot, and I am finally so annoyed by it that I have to comment.
This argument supposes that "the market" could somehow exist in a vacuum, out of the reach of any social or political infrastructure. No governing body, no leaders, no law enforcement, no causes, just a giant orgy of bargaining and trading politiely and without upsetting anyone or getting upset yourself, all day, every day, for life.
The truth is that in all of human history there have been no large societies with a complete lack of leadership or a complete lack of social covenant. Where there are leaders, there are leveraged attempts to gain favor and leveraged gambits for an increase in or maintenance of influence. In a capitalist society, this leverage is cash. And where there are leaders, there are laws.
To pretend that in some mystical "pure capitalist" society we could have a free flow of money and have it in the absence of:
* Laws that speak of commerce (Supposedly the most engaged-in activity!) * Political infrastructure of any kind * Social infrastructure of any kind
is just silly. There will always be laws because there will always be grievances and there will always be people of influence or even simple prestige or education who in the end will be allowed to adjudicate for these grievances and whose opinions will be respected and remembered.
There will always be social movements which move the habits of the general body of traders in one direction or another based on concepts which have little ultimately to do with commerce or money, but which end up affecting trade in very large ways. These movements will inevitably produce their own leaders as well.
And so long as these things do exist, influence will be sought so as to affect these adjudications and these forces and influence will be used when available to push and pull at these opinions and influence will be used heavily by those who already have it to try and cement it, because certainly it will be needed again at some point in the future.
In capitalism, that influence is cash and the result is corruption. So long as you have capitalism and any form of social or political structure at all, you can't avoid this simple equation.
Pure capitalism, without laws, restrictions, or influence peddling? a fairy tale.
I think many liberals in the US are simply not convinced that the war has been won. A battle, yes. Saddam is indeed out of power. But the war?
Is America better-regarded on the Arab street for having toppled the regime? (I have a feeling many Americans would be surprised by the answer.)
Is Iraq better off today than when Saddam was in power? Today, mind you, without electricity, water, fuel or a police force that can guarantee the safety of daughters and sisters?
Is America's military better off today, being stuck in a very sticky situation as they seem to be, while every day the Arab media cries "occupier" in shrill tones across the middle east, further cementing the viewpoint that sees America and Israel as conjoined twins?
Assuming that Bush was right about everything so far -- that Iraq had so-called weapons of mass destruction, that Saddam and his sons are dead, that the WMDs have gone to Syria or Iran and that Al Qaeda was linked to the Iraqi government (and I have my doubts about all of this), is America's population safer today now that none have been found? (Bush-ian conclusions: Hmmm, no weapons found yet... obviously they are in Syria and Iran... but Saddam and his sons are dead... so who is holding these WMDs in Syria or Iran? Well, Iraq was linked to Al Qaeda...)
It's obvious that the US has a lot of military might and has beaten up the Iraqi government and infrastructure. But does this really translate into a justifiable claim of "we won the war" on the part of Americans?
Which war?
The much-touted war on terrorism? Certainly not.
The PR war against international hatred of America? Not bloody likely.
The war against Iraq? Oh that's right, America was there to "liberate" Iraq (well, once the WMDs disappeared), not to wage war on it.
I suppose America won the war against Saddam Hussein and a few of his spoiled sons. Congratulations.
Many calculations in computing are done in base 16 because it's convenient (each circuit is either on or off, two possibilities; 16 is 2 to the 4th power, while 10 is not an even power of two).
In base 16 notation, the digits usually are:
0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, a, b, c, d, e, f
So, 15 in decimal (base 10, what you're used to) is f in hexadecimal (base 16, more convenient for computing due to on/off nature of electricity, since 16 is an even power of 2).
And just as 9 + 1 = 10 (reach the highest digit? carry the one and begin with a zero again in the next column) f + 1 = 10 (reach the highest digit, carry the one and begin with a zero again in the next column).
Other basic hex math for example:
9 + 1 = a
9 + 2 = b
f0 + 1 = f1
ff + 1 = 100
a + 1 = b
b + 2 = d
And so on.
The 0x is a holdover from C programming, prefixing a value in c by 0x indicates that it is a hexidecimal (base 16) number and not a decimal (base 10) number.
Communism wasn't "defeated" at all. You are apparently referring to the economic collapse of an isolationist/expansionist USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics). Communism in USSR was the goal, but it was never achieved. In fact, communism explicitly forbids, as a central tenet, the isolationist notions for which Stalin and the state which followed him are so well-known.
Today one can see well-functioning examples of socialist policy across western Europe, most notably in the Scandinavian countries, who have very high standards of living, unemployment numbers that are similar to the US (whose numbers are actually cooked by ignoring homeless, migrants, etc.), virtually nonexistent poverty and much higher levels of consumer and worker satisfaction than the US and Canada.
The US right wing just likes to claim that socialism/communism are "dead" and the powers on the right realize that the US populace is too politically unsophisticated (i.e. Look at the numbers on how many Americans don't even know who their vice president is! Look at the numbers on how many Americans believe that Iraq is responsible for September 11th!) to know any better, not to mention that it scores very well with American-style jingoism, which is wont to buy any argument, no matter how ridiculous, which paints America as "The Greatest [Country|Nation|Power|Economy|People|Place|System] on Earth" without any particular regard to the status or the policies of the US government or state of the US economy at a given time.
When you call the president a facist, you've pretty much trashed not just the country, not just its leaders, but everything the country is about.
This very statement, your statement, supports the assertion that the US government has shifted toward fascism. From all appearances, it seems that in the current hyper-nationalist environment in the US, "Our Great Leader" and "Our Great Homeland" [1] are no longer seen as separate or separable...
Does this at all sound eerily familiar to anyone?
Be very careful with this type of rhetoric and be very careful when treading near this type of equivalency, it is very dangerous for any society in the long run.
[1] Before anyone complains about the use of the word "homeland" here, note that the US government does now prominently use this term itself, i.e. "Department of Homeland Security" which no doubt in more sane years would have been called the "Department of Internal Security" to match the "Internal Revenue Service", "Department of the Interior", etc.
There is a patched, compiled and lilo'ed 2.4.20 waiting, prepared in case this runtime fix crashed the kernel. It didn't, so we're still 2.4.18 and next time we reboot we'll be at 2.4.20.
In the meantime, the box is behind two layers of NAT and handles only internal requests which internact with a database server hosting a several-hundred gigabyte database. The lab is generally full and users use the http server on this machine to access the database server, then print and/or save their results in small personal (not login/shell, purely storage) areas.
All stable kernel series take a while to sort themselves out. Stable series doesn't mean bug-free, it means working toward such as a matter of priority instead of actively adding new bells, whistles and capabilities. Don't install and run 2.6.0 (or 2.4.0 for that matter), give it some time to stabilize. No kernel since 1.2.x has been particularly stable early on.
As for the eventual stability of 2.4.x, I have an SMP file/print/Web/DHCP/DNS server running in one of the labs that I volunteer to run that has been running 2.4.18 since it was released sometime in late February 2002... it has only had one reboot, to replace a UPS whose battery went dead. It runs 24/7 and has crashed/frozen exactly zero times. Average load is generally above 2-3 during open hours.
I've worked for some major e-commerce sites (unfortunately I can't name them), but they're top-10 outfits. On the inside of these businesses, there are huge mechanisms in place specifically to deal with credit card fraud. Romania was the number one when I was involved -- basically every transaction that could be connected in any way to Romania was assumed bad -- but Hungary was on the list as well.
The incredible volume of credit card and other kinds of fraud occurring in this handful of countries basically created a kind of sour taste in these businesses' mouths. Pretty much the only two trusted non-US sites were the UK and Canada.
A person with a capacity for violence might play a computer game such as Counter-Strike and go out on a CS-inspired killing spree. Did CS cause the violence? No. But without CS, perhaps they'd just go out on a baseball bat killing spree if they only happen to play sports games.
Or an Eminem-inspired killing spree if they listen to rap music.
Or an Ozzy-inspired killing spree if they listen to heavy metal.
Or a movie-inspired killing spree if they like the Terminator.
Or a TV-inspired killing spree if the like the Sopranos.
Or a William Golding inspired killing spree if they like literature.
Ad infinitum.
So what you've said, in essence, is that violent people don't need any particular excuse to be violent, nearly anything can be a problem.
How, then, do we "lessen the link?"
Remove the SS from history books? Prohibit rugby, boxing, hockey and American football? Start putting "for entertainment purposes only" disclaimers at the beginning of CNN broadcasts?
The way to solve violence problems like these is not to try to find triggers; if there was no reservoir of tension beneath the surface, "triggers" would not exist. With these reservoirs of violence beneath the surface, triggers almost can't be avoided.
We need to look at causes in society that actually affect peoples lives in real ways -- jobs, conflicts between identity and environment, prospects for future successes/relationships, isolation/depression, moral or authority figures (religion, parents, lack thereof or overtly polemical nature thereof), etc. -- not the entertainment they choose after having been affected by such things.
People in tech marketing keep telling us that consumers "just want things to work" and don't want to have to be bothered by jargon or technical details when making buying decisions. I think this is a bad idea.
The problem is that once they figure that consumers will buy without specs, manufacturers stop putting them on the box, or making them available on the Web site, and so on. That way they can cut corners or do proprietary things without anyone ever knowing. It soon becomes damn hard to see what standards a particular device supports, and thus what decision to make when buying it.
Think about car buying:
Car salesman: This is our latest! Isn't she beautiful?
Customer: How many horsepower? Displacement? Is it turbocharged?
Car salesman: She's got the most power in her class. Drives really nice.
Customer: Do you have any specs?
Car salesman: It doesn't matter, all power is not created equal. Just test-drive her and you'll realize, she's got the most power in her class.
Customer: Anti-lock breaks? Air bags?
Car salesman: I think so, but it doesn't matter, she handles so well you'll never need them anyway.
Customer: But are they there?
Car salesman: If the Toyota model has them, I'm sure she does as well. We're generally a step ahead of Toyota in these things.
Customer: How many cylinders? Four? Five? Six? Eight?
Car salesman: Um, the engine is perfectly sized for the car's body. And as I said, most power in her class. Don't worry about it, just give it a test drive.
Customer: How about the interior? From here it's hard to tell. Can I feel it?
Car salesman: (opening door) Actually, I think it's leather.
Customer: No, it's obviously not leather, I can tell just by feeling it. What kind of vinyl is it, though?
Car salesman: Well, whatever it is, I'm sure it's the best. She's a beautiful car and anything less just wouldn't suit her. Ready to take a test drive?
I admit that there are one or two car buyers these days who are satisfied with such a conversation, but (at least where I'm from) nearly everyone goes to independent sources of information before buying a car -- auto guides, the World Wide Web, etc. -- to get answers to these questions.
It's all part of being an informed consumer in a world in which business would prefer to screw you hard for all you're worth, given a chance. Naturally most consumers these days aren't comfortable with tech jargon, but in another generation, everyone will be fine with it; it will be a part of life. TV is just getting to that point... the older generation still has no idea about such things, but current adults can hook up coax cable, auto-scan for channels, run picture-in-picture, know what a "projection" TV is versus a tube, know that they want stero rather than mono, and so on.
I would prefer to see laws that require detailed, scientific specs to be printed on boxes and to be available from salesmen and manufacturers upon request. If some people want to ignore them, fine, let them, but at least then there is some measure of protection for people who are willing to try to get a reasonable deal in this world of ours. Why instead are we hell-bent on hiding all relevant information from the consumer, so that companies can sell you a "milk farm" for a few million, then deliver a small aging female goat to your doorstep?
I mean, half of the computer boxes and shop salesmen out there are already useless, providing misinformation to uneducated computer users and no viable information at all information to ededucated ones. Making this problem worse or hiding it altogether beneath a glowing sheen of ignorance may make a few of the more lazy consumers happier, but is that ethically okay if they're getting screwed the entire time by inferior products?
I'm sure some Slashdot braniac will say hey, if the consumer is happy being taken, then let them be taken! Fine. Is it okay to lynch someone and steal their wallet, if I can get them to be in favor of it? I'm sure a few shots of Brandy here and there and I can make quite a few bob...
I'm a pro who uses GIMP for 85% of my workflow. I realize that GIMP doesn't have the output flexibility that some proprietary packages have. However, for processing/editing, GIMP is far superior to PS6 IMHO and I have a whole bunch of processes coded up using Script-Fu that toss layers and masks, effects and optical corrections (wideangle, chromatic aberration, etc.) around like nobody's business.
I use GIMP from beginning to the 85% point on a project, then as I begin to need to think about output or outsourcing to a lab (specifically, color management and sizing tasks), that's when I load into PS6 or (more rarely) PhotoPaint. But for the rest I use GIMP and I and my clients are happy with the work.
A couple of colleagues have wondered about GIMP and I've helped them to install it. They then sit down, go "doh...!?" for about ten minutes, click half-heartedly a few times and proclaim it an abject failure because it doesn't have precisely the same user interface as PS6.
Just because you can't figure out how to use a piece of software doesn't mean that no-one can.
Re:Great, another GTK appearance option (long).
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Menu Shadows in GTK2
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Actually, this is what I have always done in the past! But in Red Hat 9.0 some GTK2 apps ignored the KDE colors no matter which GTK/GTK2 theme I was using.
That's what led to this problem. Specifically, the fact that the new Ximian Evolution's menus wouldn't abandon the current GTK theme colors no matter what I did. While many of my other GTK apps (and indeed the rest of Evolution) used the correct colors that I set in KDE, the menus of Evolution continued to be rendered in the current GTK theme's native colors no matter what I did. I had a nice reddish Evolution window (set from KDE control panel), and I would click File and get a blue and grey bluecurve popup menu. I could change the appearance of the menu to other GTK theme appearances, but I just wanted the @#$%^ menus to match the color of the rest of the application.
This is why I figured I needed a "native" GTK color configuration app... I assumed that it would "get" the bits that the KDE control center had missed.
It all came down to defining a whole bunch of style{} classes and then widget_class declarations in.gtkrc, if I remember correctly. I hope I don't have to do it again because I'll probably have to grok it all again.:-(
Another poster said that you can't easily configure colors in GTK because GTK wants to do things "just right" to begin with. Well, blue and grey are not "just right" for me!
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It may save hours for you--but shouldn't the interface be irrelevant unless you're computer illiterature (your words, not mine). Personally, I get terribly frustrated when I'm trying to paste over something and end up accidentally clearing my clipboard buffer in oldschool X. I prefer windows/mac style (I have mice button bound to copy/paste actually--doesn't work NEARLY as well in X because of the issue I just cited).
It's a matter of saved keystrokes. The advantage is clear; one is a faster process than another. If I want to copy, paste into another window, and return to first window using using X buffer:
1. Highlight
2. Middle-click
is all that's needed for cut and paste. I don't even have to select Windows because focus follows my mouse. But using Windows/Mac, I have to:
1. Highlight
2. Ctrl-C
3. Click in destination window
4. Ctrl-V
5. Click in source window
That's more than double the number of steps.
That's what I'm getting at in the entire post. I don't do this "for fun". Preferences are not simply to give you warm fuzzies, they're to make you more efficient. In the case of X, to make you MUCH more efficient, if you know how to use them.
If I get an image out of my camera and then out the door thirty minutes before someone else, that's ten minutes earlier that an editor has had my image and that much greater chance that I will make a living with it as opposed to someone else.
In an ideal world that last clause (as opposed to someone else) wouldn't matter and we could all do our jobs to the best of our ability all the time. But the way the world is structured right now, if you want to work it helps to be the best, and in many cases that also means the fastest and/or most productive.
A computer is a tool, not a home, it's not a fashion statement. OS X gets this right. Trivial time-wasters like themes--while they may keep you from getting bored--really don't have much practical value.
/. stuff, volunteering to run some free community network centers/labs
That's bull. Mac OS X only helps "just getting work done" if you're functionally computer illiterate.
I'm a creative pro (supposedly Mac's main market) and yet I do all my photo processing (which is extensive) in Linux.
Why? Becuse it's about 100x faster in Linux due to the degree that I have been able to optimize my workflow:
1) Focus-follows-mouse, always shunned by non-Unix systems and now even by Unix systems (OS X, GNOME) saves endless point-and-click strokes (find titlebar, click to focus) when you have dozens of image windows open. Each one of these is a savings of several seconds. If you're performing hundreds or thousands of manipulations on a single task in multiple windows, that adds up to hours saved, not just minutes, on focus policy alone.
2) Fast cut/paste. Here again, the reviled behavior of X (highlight with left button, move to another window that focuses automatically, middle click where you want it to paste) saves incredible amounts of time versus the OS X or Windows behaviors (highlight with left button, hit CTRL-C, click on titlebar of destination window, click where you want to place cursor for paste, hit CTRL-V). The combination of focus-follows-mouse and keystroke-free copy/paste here again saves hours, not just minutes, when performing reptitious tasks.
3) Floating windows are my call. Once again I can keep GIMP tool windows, layer/channel dialogs, a kcalc, my conferencing window and others on top at my discretion, rather than always having to hunt down and raise some windows (by clicking on a taskbar or a dock) that I know I will need over and over again or being stuck with others on top that I don't want there and that just take up screen real estate. And when I am done with them, I can release them from forceed raise behavior.
4) Ability to turn of automatic raise when windows receive a click (done by combining focus follows mouse + titlebar-raise-only). I can have one window partially obscuring another and be working (inputting) in the "lower" (partially obscured) window while referring to one or more upper windows that partially obscure it. No need to "raise this one, look, raise that one, work, raise this one, look some more, raise that one, work some more, oh hell, just make a hardcopy, hmm, where shall we set the hardcopy..."
6) Scriptability/rapid application development. Yes, the dreaded command line shell. Many of my most intense post-production tasks (i.e. laying out posters with their captions, borders, copyright notices, anti-aliasing, interpolating to proper sizes, etc.) are database driven and processed through command line tools like ImageMagick. This allows me to do things like "makeposter 20x16 img_2525.crw" and in a single pass have the image automatically fetched from archive, converted from Canon raw, edited, captioned, matted, etc. according to a list of edits and captions I've saved ahead of time for images in my database, then sent to post-production (i.e. output). Don't tell me that there is a "makeposter" command in Mac OS X that will automatically query my database of images and perform these tasks for me, or that Apple will be willing to write me one.
[Perhaps AppleScript is capable of this stuff, perhaps not... I don't know AppleScript. But I will happily refuse to buy arguements that as well as my system works for me, I should switch to Mac OS X simply because AppleScript just "gets it right" or is "just more elegant" as scripting languages go. You'll have to give me real benefits, not techno-spiritual ones.]
7) The X-factor. I take pictures and I write prose. Those are the things I do for a living. I have other things that I do as hobbies (i.e. the
They can either enforce their copyright, assuming that the kernel contains SCO code improperly, and stop Linux distribution, or they can sit back and do nothing. Collecting money is not a legal option.
Silly boy!
You speak almost as though the law is not utterly secondary to transient corporate interests. If I didn't know you better, I'd almost say you're one of chose crackpots who thinks laws were written for some reason other than corporate profits!
Only a private citizen may be charged with extortion. When a corporation is doing the same, it's an example proving that competition in a free market is working for the good of us all.
s /extortion/negligence/o rtion/bribery/i on/endangerment/t ortion/tax evasion/
Given a large enough corporation,
s/extortion/theft/
s/extortion/manslaughter/
s/extortion/fraud/
s/ext
s/extortion/conspiracy/
s/extort
s/extortion/racketeering/
s/ex
Or, as the luminaries of the New World Order say, May God Bless Corporate Democracy.
SCO isn't doing anything wrong as far as the marketplace mavens are concerned. A bit cheeky perhaps (they're not nearly big enough to deserve this much power), but I imagine there are a lot of coporate types admiring the chutzpah and pulling for the "little guy" SCO to pull off the big-time capers that sizable corporations generally live by.
Hopefully they'll get more than they bargained for with Linux. The Linux community are rather like surprisingly well-armed guerillas who have shocked the world by standing against the New Economy. Thanks to a unique kind of solidarity and the GPL, more than any other group fighting the corporate threat I think Linux users have a fighting chance to avoid being placed under unwanted Wall Street leadership.
Yes, the DVD-RAM can be used like a hard/floppy/MO disk (i.e. save files to it or load files from it just as you would to a hard drive, without special software), while the DVD+/-RW must be written all at once, like a CD-R(W), unless you purchase or use special :random-burn" software. At least, this is my understanding, having never used a DVD+/-RW.
:-)
I'm sure if I'm wrong someone will mod me down.
DVD-RAM is not dead, it's just not meant to be a replacement for CD-R(W).
DVD-RAM is meant to be, and is an excellent replacement for MO (magneto-optical). For long-term archive with numerous volumes, you don't want uncovered ROM media, you want protected random-access media, which is what DVD-RAM gives you.
9.4GB random access in a nice MO-style cover with sliding door. It's very rugged comared to DVD+/-RW or CD-R(w); the DVD-RAMs on their own can be tossed about and thrown here and there without damaging the disc, and each one also comes with a secondary protective plastic case (just like MO discs did) into which the primary disk casing slides.
I used MO for years to archive my work (writing and photography). It, too, was not a "mainstream" format like CD-R(W) but also didn't suffer from the same vulnerability to fingerprints, dust, cheap media, blah, blah, blah. And when DVD-RAM came along, I jumped on it and I'm using it now. I mount the discs and use them like a hard drive in Linux. I have a whole stack of 9.4GB DVD-RAM discs sitting right next to me and I wouldn't trade them or the reader for the same in DVD+/-RW because that technology doesn't suit my intended use to the same extent.
But the point is: KDE does.
When in KDE, OpenOffice takes on the colors of the KDE environment. But outside KDE, in other Linux/X environments, this does not occur.
I am seeking to understand the mechanism that KDE uses so that I can recreate the effect myself!
Yes, I realize that the .Xdefaults file contains the local X resource database.
.Xdefaults-style information created by KDE to the file. Then, when I log into WindowMaker and do "xrdb myfile.txt" it loads all of that information from KDE and applies it, just as if it were in an .Xdefaults file.
.Xdefaults-style values).
.gtkrc files which control GTK's appearance and while they work well on my GTK/GTK2 apps, they also don't affect OpenOffice.
When I log into kde and do "xrdb -all -edit myfile.txt" it saves all of the
Unfortunately, it doesn't help. It works on all other applications that KDE normally affects (including old X apps like xv and Athena-based apps), but it doesn't work on OpenOffice.
So when KDE controls the OpenOffice colors, it must be doing so via an avenue other than the X resource database (i.e.
Like I said, i also tried
But no matter what else it is (and Java it is not, at least not in the "run it in a JVM" sense), OpenOffice is an X application. And KDE does somehow set the OpenOffice colors when you are in KDE.
I simply want to know how KDE does it so that I can do the same thing using X tools, without having to worry about KDE.
Yes, when that box is checked, KDE sets applications using a number of techniques:
.gtkrc files I mentioned (this helps the current GTK/GTK2/GNOME applications)
:-(
1) krdb and the X resources I mentioned(this helps the legacy X, athena, and Motif applications)
2)
3) ???
It is obviously 3 that I am missing, because I have tried methods 1) and 2) and have even tried using the exact settings that KDE uses in those cases, and while it works for all other applications (i.e. in WindowMaker, my desktop colors fully match across multiple apps), it doesn't yet work for OpenOffice.
But thanks for the input.
I didn't mean to necessarily suggest that you were arguing for pure capitalism. I simply get tired of seeing that phrase around our New World Order these days... "If we had pure capitalism, things might be better..." Bah. That's like saying "If we had a climate control knob in the UN, things might be better." 1) I'm not sure they would be and 2) Let's deal in what is necessarily real in capitalism, not in what is unachievable.
Excluding the unachievable, as it is practiced, capitalism is an evil, not a boon. Whether it is a necessary evil or not is the subject of some debate. I myself think that it is not. But now we're on to an entirely different subject.
While we're on the subject of StarOffice/OpenOffice, I'm going to post a question about it here because Slashdotters are more likely to be able to anwer than those kids over at the OO forums.
.gtkrc and .gtkrc-2.0 files and relateds are all configured correctly for my color preferences... but OO doesn't seem to see these either (I haven't checked to see if OO is a GTK app at all).
OpenOffice is able to inherit and use the toolkit/widget colors that I select in Linux/KDE. i.e. if my widgets are all brown in other apps, they are also brown in OpenOffice. However, when I am using WindowMaker or another simple managed environment rather than KDE, OpenOffice comes up in Windows NT gray and I can't seem to change that.
I've done an "xrdb -all -edit myrsrcs.txt" from within KDE to grab all the krdb stuff and then an "xrdb myrsrcs.txt" from within WindowMaker, but that didn't help. All of my GTK/GTK2 apps look the way I want them to at this point because my
I even tried "kfmclient file:/opt/OpenOffice.org/progrms/swriter" to see if I could get the KDE colors into OO that way without actually having to be logged in to KDE, but it didn't help.
Does anyone know how to change the widget colors in OpenOffice without having to simply log into KDE or GNOME?
P.S. final hint: using the Tools menu is not the right answer, it contains color options for a great many things, but the menu and toolbar widgets are not among them.
And yet another complaint of mine is that laws like this fly in the face of pure capitalism (not something that I'm necessarily for). Market forces should be deciding the fate of the music industry, not Congress.
I see this argument a lot, and I am finally so annoyed by it that I have to comment.
This argument supposes that "the market" could somehow exist in a vacuum, out of the reach of any social or political infrastructure. No governing body, no leaders, no law enforcement, no causes, just a giant orgy of bargaining and trading politiely and without upsetting anyone or getting upset yourself, all day, every day, for life.
The truth is that in all of human history there have been no large societies with a complete lack of leadership or a complete lack of social covenant. Where there are leaders, there are leveraged attempts to gain favor and leveraged gambits for an increase in or maintenance of influence. In a capitalist society, this leverage is cash. And where there are leaders, there are laws.
To pretend that in some mystical "pure capitalist" society we could have a free flow of money and have it in the absence of:
* Laws that speak of commerce (Supposedly the most engaged-in activity!)
* Political infrastructure of any kind
* Social infrastructure of any kind
is just silly. There will always be laws because there will always be grievances and there will always be people of influence or even simple prestige or education who in the end will be allowed to adjudicate for these grievances and whose opinions will be respected and remembered.
There will always be social movements which move the habits of the general body of traders in one direction or another based on concepts which have little ultimately to do with commerce or money, but which end up affecting trade in very large ways. These movements will inevitably produce their own leaders as well.
And so long as these things do exist, influence will be sought so as to affect these adjudications and these forces and influence will be used when available to push and pull at these opinions and influence will be used heavily by those who already have it to try and cement it, because certainly it will be needed again at some point in the future.
In capitalism, that influence is cash and the result is corruption. So long as you have capitalism and any form of social or political structure at all, you can't avoid this simple equation.
Pure capitalism, without laws, restrictions, or influence peddling? a fairy tale.
Are you so sure you won the war?
I think many liberals in the US are simply not convinced that the war has been won. A battle, yes. Saddam is indeed out of power. But the war?
Is America better-regarded on the Arab street for having toppled the regime? (I have a feeling many Americans would be surprised by the answer.)
Is Iraq better off today than when Saddam was in power? Today, mind you, without electricity, water, fuel or a police force that can guarantee the safety of daughters and sisters?
Is America's military better off today, being stuck in a very sticky situation as they seem to be, while every day the Arab media cries "occupier" in shrill tones across the middle east, further cementing the viewpoint that sees America and Israel as conjoined twins?
Assuming that Bush was right about everything so far -- that Iraq had so-called weapons of mass destruction, that Saddam and his sons are dead, that the WMDs have gone to Syria or Iran and that Al Qaeda was linked to the Iraqi government (and I have my doubts about all of this), is America's population safer today now that none have been found? (Bush-ian conclusions: Hmmm, no weapons found yet... obviously they are in Syria and Iran... but Saddam and his sons are dead... so who is holding these WMDs in Syria or Iran? Well, Iraq was linked to Al Qaeda...)
It's obvious that the US has a lot of military might and has beaten up the Iraqi government and infrastructure. But does this really translate into a justifiable claim of "we won the war" on the part of Americans?
Which war?
The much-touted war on terrorism? Certainly not.
The PR war against international hatred of America? Not bloody likely.
The war against Iraq? Oh that's right, America was there to "liberate" Iraq (well, once the WMDs disappeared), not to wage war on it.
I suppose America won the war against Saddam Hussein and a few of his spoiled sons. Congratulations.
Many calculations in computing are done in base 16 because it's convenient (each circuit is either on or off, two possibilities; 16 is 2 to the 4th power, while 10 is not an even power of two).
In base 16 notation, the digits usually are:
0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, a, b, c, d, e, f
So, 15 in decimal (base 10, what you're used to) is f in hexadecimal (base 16, more convenient for computing due to on/off nature of electricity, since 16 is an even power of 2).
And just as 9 + 1 = 10 (reach the highest digit? carry the one and begin with a zero again in the next column) f + 1 = 10 (reach the highest digit, carry the one and begin with a zero again in the next column).
Other basic hex math for example:
9 + 1 = a
9 + 2 = b
f0 + 1 = f1
ff + 1 = 100
a + 1 = b
b + 2 = d
And so on.
The 0x is a holdover from C programming, prefixing a value in c by 0x indicates that it is a hexidecimal (base 16) number and not a decimal (base 10) number.
Communism wasn't "defeated" at all. You are apparently referring to the economic collapse of an isolationist/expansionist USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics). Communism in USSR was the goal, but it was never achieved. In fact, communism explicitly forbids, as a central tenet, the isolationist notions for which Stalin and the state which followed him are so well-known.
] on Earth" without any particular regard to the status or the policies of the US government or state of the US economy at a given time.
Today one can see well-functioning examples of socialist policy across western Europe, most notably in the Scandinavian countries, who have very high standards of living, unemployment numbers that are similar to the US (whose numbers are actually cooked by ignoring homeless, migrants, etc.), virtually nonexistent poverty and much higher levels of consumer and worker satisfaction than the US and Canada.
The US right wing just likes to claim that socialism/communism are "dead" and the powers on the right realize that the US populace is too politically unsophisticated (i.e. Look at the numbers on how many Americans don't even know who their vice president is! Look at the numbers on how many Americans believe that Iraq is responsible for September 11th!) to know any better, not to mention that it scores very well with American-style jingoism, which is wont to buy any argument, no matter how ridiculous, which paints America as "The Greatest [Country|Nation|Power|Economy|People|Place|System
When you call the president a facist, you've pretty much trashed not just the country, not just its leaders, but everything the country is about.
This very statement, your statement, supports the assertion that the US government has shifted toward fascism. From all appearances, it seems that in the current hyper-nationalist environment in the US, "Our Great Leader" and "Our Great Homeland" [1] are no longer seen as separate or separable...
Does this at all sound eerily familiar to anyone?
Be very careful with this type of rhetoric and be very careful when treading near this type of equivalency, it is very dangerous for any society in the long run.
[1] Before anyone complains about the use of the word "homeland" here, note that the US government does now prominently use this term itself, i.e. "Department of Homeland Security" which no doubt in more sane years would have been called the "Department of Internal Security" to match the "Internal Revenue Service", "Department of the Interior", etc.
There is a patched, compiled and lilo'ed 2.4.20 waiting, prepared in case this runtime fix crashed the kernel. It didn't, so we're still 2.4.18 and next time we reboot we'll be at 2.4.20.
In the meantime, the box is behind two layers of NAT and handles only internal requests which internact with a database server hosting a several-hundred gigabyte database. The lab is generally full and users use the http server on this machine to access the database server, then print and/or save their results in small personal (not login/shell, purely storage) areas.
All stable kernel series take a while to sort themselves out. Stable series doesn't mean bug-free, it means working toward such as a matter of priority instead of actively adding new bells, whistles and capabilities. Don't install and run 2.6.0 (or 2.4.0 for that matter), give it some time to stabilize. No kernel since 1.2.x has been particularly stable early on.
As for the eventual stability of 2.4.x, I have an SMP file/print/Web/DHCP/DNS server running in one of the labs that I volunteer to run that has been running 2.4.18 since it was released sometime in late February 2002... it has only had one reboot, to replace a UPS whose battery went dead. It runs 24/7 and has crashed/frozen exactly zero times. Average load is generally above 2-3 during open hours.
That's not bad for a "work in progress" kernel!
I've worked for some major e-commerce sites (unfortunately I can't name them), but they're top-10 outfits. On the inside of these businesses, there are huge mechanisms in place specifically to deal with credit card fraud. Romania was the number one when I was involved -- basically every transaction that could be connected in any way to Romania was assumed bad -- but Hungary was on the list as well.
The incredible volume of credit card and other kinds of fraud occurring in this handful of countries basically created a kind of sour taste in these businesses' mouths. Pretty much the only two trusted non-US sites were the UK and Canada.
A person with a capacity for violence might play a computer game such as Counter-Strike and go out on a CS-inspired killing spree. Did CS cause the violence? No. But without CS, perhaps they'd just go out on a baseball bat killing spree if they only happen to play sports games.
Or an Eminem-inspired killing spree if they listen to rap music.
Or an Ozzy-inspired killing spree if they listen to heavy metal.
Or a movie-inspired killing spree if they like the Terminator.
Or a TV-inspired killing spree if the like the Sopranos.
Or a William Golding inspired killing spree if they like literature.
Ad infinitum.
So what you've said, in essence, is that violent people don't need any particular excuse to be violent, nearly anything can be a problem.
How, then, do we "lessen the link?"
Remove the SS from history books? Prohibit rugby, boxing, hockey and American football? Start putting "for entertainment purposes only" disclaimers at the beginning of CNN broadcasts?
The way to solve violence problems like these is not to try to find triggers; if there was no reservoir of tension beneath the surface, "triggers" would not exist. With these reservoirs of violence beneath the surface, triggers almost can't be avoided.
We need to look at causes in society that actually affect peoples lives in real ways -- jobs, conflicts between identity and environment, prospects for future successes/relationships, isolation/depression, moral or authority figures (religion, parents, lack thereof or overtly polemical nature thereof), etc. -- not the entertainment they choose after having been affected by such things.
People in tech marketing keep telling us that consumers "just want things to work" and don't want to have to be bothered by jargon or technical details when making buying decisions. I think this is a bad idea.
The problem is that once they figure that consumers will buy without specs, manufacturers stop putting them on the box, or making them available on the Web site, and so on. That way they can cut corners or do proprietary things without anyone ever knowing. It soon becomes damn hard to see what standards a particular device supports, and thus what decision to make when buying it.
Think about car buying:
Car salesman: This is our latest! Isn't she beautiful?
Customer: How many horsepower? Displacement? Is it turbocharged?
Car salesman: She's got the most power in her class. Drives really nice.
Customer: Do you have any specs?
Car salesman: It doesn't matter, all power is not created equal. Just test-drive her and you'll realize, she's got the most power in her class.
Customer: Anti-lock breaks? Air bags?
Car salesman: I think so, but it doesn't matter, she handles so well you'll never need them anyway.
Customer: But are they there?
Car salesman: If the Toyota model has them, I'm sure she does as well. We're generally a step ahead of Toyota in these things.
Customer: How many cylinders? Four? Five? Six? Eight?
Car salesman: Um, the engine is perfectly sized for the car's body. And as I said, most power in her class. Don't worry about it, just give it a test drive.
Customer: How about the interior? From here it's hard to tell. Can I feel it?
Car salesman: (opening door) Actually, I think it's leather.
Customer: No, it's obviously not leather, I can tell just by feeling it. What kind of vinyl is it, though?
Car salesman: Well, whatever it is, I'm sure it's the best. She's a beautiful car and anything less just wouldn't suit her. Ready to take a test drive?
I admit that there are one or two car buyers these days who are satisfied with such a conversation, but (at least where I'm from) nearly everyone goes to independent sources of information before buying a car -- auto guides, the World Wide Web, etc. -- to get answers to these questions.
It's all part of being an informed consumer in a world in which business would prefer to screw you hard for all you're worth, given a chance. Naturally most consumers these days aren't comfortable with tech jargon, but in another generation, everyone will be fine with it; it will be a part of life. TV is just getting to that point... the older generation still has no idea about such things, but current adults can hook up coax cable, auto-scan for channels, run picture-in-picture, know what a "projection" TV is versus a tube, know that they want stero rather than mono, and so on.
I would prefer to see laws that require detailed, scientific specs to be printed on boxes and to be available from salesmen and manufacturers upon request. If some people want to ignore them, fine, let them, but at least then there is some measure of protection for people who are willing to try to get a reasonable deal in this world of ours. Why instead are we hell-bent on hiding all relevant information from the consumer, so that companies can sell you a "milk farm" for a few million, then deliver a small aging female goat to your doorstep?
I mean, half of the computer boxes and shop salesmen out there are already useless, providing misinformation to uneducated computer users and no viable information at all information to ededucated ones. Making this problem worse or hiding it altogether beneath a glowing sheen of ignorance may make a few of the more lazy consumers happier, but is that ethically okay if they're getting screwed the entire time by inferior products?
I'm sure some Slashdot braniac will say hey, if the consumer is happy being taken, then let them be taken! Fine. Is it okay to lynch someone and steal their wallet, if I can get them to be in favor of it? I'm sure a few shots of Brandy here and there and I can make quite a few bob...
I'm a pro who uses GIMP for 85% of my workflow. I realize that GIMP doesn't have the output flexibility that some proprietary packages have. However, for processing/editing, GIMP is far superior to PS6 IMHO and I have a whole bunch of processes coded up using Script-Fu that toss layers and masks, effects and optical corrections (wideangle, chromatic aberration, etc.) around like nobody's business.
I use GIMP from beginning to the 85% point on a project, then as I begin to need to think about output or outsourcing to a lab (specifically, color management and sizing tasks), that's when I load into PS6 or (more rarely) PhotoPaint. But for the rest I use GIMP and I and my clients are happy with the work.
A couple of colleagues have wondered about GIMP and I've helped them to install it. They then sit down, go "doh...!?" for about ten minutes, click half-heartedly a few times and proclaim it an abject failure because it doesn't have precisely the same user interface as PS6.
Just because you can't figure out how to use a piece of software doesn't mean that no-one can.
Actually, this is what I have always done in the past! But in Red Hat 9.0 some GTK2 apps ignored the KDE colors no matter which GTK/GTK2 theme I was using.
.gtkrc, if I remember correctly. I hope I don't have to do it again because I'll probably have to grok it all again. :-(
That's what led to this problem. Specifically, the fact that the new Ximian Evolution's menus wouldn't abandon the current GTK theme colors no matter what I did. While many of my other GTK apps (and indeed the rest of Evolution) used the correct colors that I set in KDE, the menus of Evolution continued to be rendered in the current GTK theme's native colors no matter what I did. I had a nice reddish Evolution window (set from KDE control panel), and I would click File and get a blue and grey bluecurve popup menu. I could change the appearance of the menu to other GTK theme appearances, but I just wanted the @#$%^ menus to match the color of the rest of the application.
This is why I figured I needed a "native" GTK color configuration app... I assumed that it would "get" the bits that the KDE control center had missed.
It all came down to defining a whole bunch of style{} classes and then widget_class declarations in
Another poster said that you can't easily configure colors in GTK because GTK wants to do things "just right" to begin with. Well, blue and grey are not "just right" for me!
How about "-1, In Bad Taste" or "-1, Uninformed"?
Sheesh.