Sorry.. did you read the interview? It was plainly stated that Silverstein (a) reads Slashdot (and therefore could have found said question himself) and (b) chose the questions himself.
To rephrase it was not submitted to him, he chose it.
Again: not submitted, chosen
Wow, I wonder sometimes if the average Slashdot reader can write but not read.
More importantly, I find it annoying when people assume that every supporter of linux is mindlessly anti-Microsoft, just because of the joe-average mindless Microsoft hater. Another time I find this particularly annoying is in "desktop wars", where KDE or GNOME users brag about one feature that they are so proud of and that they don't think exists in the other desktop (and it does). When a flame war breaks out between GNOME and KDE users, there will invariably be more than one user from each "side" that does this, every time. Even more annoying (sorry about the rant here, also somewhat OT....) is when people write articles that have this kind of stupidity, and those articles always incite the greatest, and most useless, flame wars.
In any case, I wish people would think before they talk:)
I guess this is another example of Microsoft's "embrace, extend" culture... they've changed the way the round() function should work.
Ahem,.. no. There are other languages that do this (PHP is the first thing that comes to mind), its called "banker's rounding" and, as the first poster implied, it is for statistical reasons.
Where's the bill to allow hacking against antitrust violators?
Now that's just misguided reasoning. Where's the bill to allow hacking by antitrust violators? They're all big, friendly corporations, and I'm sure someone has a website they don't like.
I can tell you that no serious music (tech) lover will take this seriously.
Though I am not too knowledgeable in the particulars of audio/music tech, I gather from your comments and others that this board is not geared towards people who actually know anything about sound, but rather those overabundant people who believe to their core they know everything about it, and don't..... I happen to know one or two. Blaargggh
Of course, since we're talking about the future, while you might know what you're solving, you can never be 100% sure you know what problems you'll cause.
But you could always make a neural net to tell you what problems you'll cause:)
Didn't Mandrake ship with KDE 2.2.2, saying that KDE 3 was too unstable?
Which is because they released 8.2 before KDE 3 came out (I'm pretty sure).
And if Mandrake thought it was unstable, do you really want to use it?
Ignoring the obvious pot-shot, it wouldn't have made sense for Mandrake to release a distribution with a version of KDE that would have been from CVS (because, like I said, KDE wasn't ready at the time). Unless you like it when distributers include unfinished software?
No, such as being the only player.... In a GPL software realm, companies have to provide quality and service. Since everyone has the code, it's the service, the support, and the treatment of the customer that tend to matter. Companies have to truly make the customer happy. In the Microsoft software "ecosystem", companies have to be Microsoft.
I agree You know it's April Fools when: 90%+ of the Slashdot stories are posted by CmdrTaco, who doesn't know when to shut up. Maybe he doesn't realize why the other editors aren't getting in on his l337 fooling action.
Sometimes it seems like this site is run by a two-year-old with a lollipop.
Not that I have any right to complain, as I am not a subscriber:)
Subliminal messages are clearly NOT built into Windows XP. On a completely unrelated note, Microsoft is great. Buy only Microsoft products. Give *ALL* of your money to Microsoft.
Exactly! I've said it before, and I'll say it again: with a name like Teoma (or that other one.... Visivimo or whatever), nothing is going to topple Google. The name Teoma is just another product of today's pattern of "Let's choose exotic, foreign-sounding words so people will think we're *kewl*, man!". Maybe these people should try: "Let's choose normal words so people remember our name." At least that way, people won't be asking "Do you remember the name of that thingy that tried to surpass Google?" by this time next year.
I believe that the original poster was referring to the "bloat" of file sizes. When comparing.doc and.rtf to StarOffice's format, I find that SO's.sxw format is much smaller (it appears to be a zip file w/ XML data in it). For example, I have typed up a simple document that was 7k in SO and 15k in Word (that's more than double the size!).
I agree entirely, and this is exactly why I made this post. I have been reading slashdot and the dot (ie dot.kde.org) for quite awhile, and I have seen many such posts, especially when people are talking about their favourite WM or DE (including non-linux ones like MacOS and Windows). People say "I like xxx, yyy sucks ass". This pisses me off so much that I almost respond to such drivel, before remembering that most people who write that crap aren't open to an in-depth look at features or rational reasons, they just want their l337 h4x0r OS, and windoze be damned, man! Personally, I use linux for features, and for apps, for freedom (as in choice), and for flexibility (among other reasons). I can respect MS as a marketing behemoth, but I generally tend away from their products.
Hmmmm.... here's my answer to a few of your points, plus my own reasons for preferring KDE over Windows:
* Why do we care about themes? People like things to look how they want. If you come from mac, make it look like a mac (right down to windowbar button positions), if you come from windows, do the same. If you want your own look, do it!
* I would say it doesn't get confusing after 4. I believe KDE offers the ability to name your desktops, and again, this is choice -- maybe some find it confusing, but others do not.
* Personally, if all way implemented properly (as it is in newer qt3/kde3 apps), Unix-style cut/paste is more effiecient. I can highlight something and press the middle button to paste it somewhere -- easy mouse actions. Or, I can use ctrl-c/ctrl-v.
* Granted, Explorer windows do this -- however, my entire session (licq, noatun, kmail (minimized), konsole, konqueror, gimp (on another desktop), anything else I happen to have open) will appear in the correct spot on logout/login. Windows will *not* do that without create "Startup" shortcuts for each app, and even then it will not recognize whne I close something then logout/login.
*ummm.... I don't know why. Bookmarks is bookmarks, mostly.
*It seems that MS copies most features from other places (KDE incl. perhaps), though KDE also copies from other things.
Anyway, here are features I like in KDE (most of these are available in other WMs):
*window snapping ("magnetic borders", whatever). I don't see this in windows
*right-click/middle-click for horizontal and vertical window maximizing (again, not in windows).
*middleclicking on titlebar to activate and lower window, rightclicking to remain in place, and similar mouse actions (slightly different when clicking on the body of the window). In other words, I can move windows up/down more efficiently, and have the active window not be on top. Quite useful.
*The ability to make _any_ window always-on-top.
*Smart JS/JS popup/Java/Cookie policies so I don't have to worry about sites that what to bombard me with stuff I don't want. (I think IE6 _finally_ has some of this, last I heard)
*Smart searches in the Konqy toolbar (eg "gg:google search terms"). Even better, you can define your own, and have different parameters make up specific parts of the search URL. I think IE has something similar to this now, though.
Please note, lets not start a "who-got-it-first" war, it's pointless. I know other opensource things that have had these features first, and I know that windows also has some of these features. However, for me, when I go into Windows I feel crippled: The features I have listed above I use on a regular basis, and those that windows does not have became painfully obvious when I use it.
Last time I checked, Kazaa does this, but not well. It doesn't seem to be very intelligent about choosing what connections are good (and therefore should be given more of the file to download after they finish a currently-assigned chunk) and what connections are bad (and therefore should be dropped, not let to continue at 0.01K/sec!).
[ On a side note, GetRight allowed for more control over where to download from (and did allow multiple sources, last time I used it -- about a year+ ago). It fact, I used GetRight to download linux ISOs from multiple sources at once:). ]
Anyway, does this system offer *better* multi-connection filesharing (ie, more intelligent?), or does it keep slow connections, and fail to recognize that a fast connection just finished and should be given more of the file to download?
There are some things in there that even IE doesn't have.
I have noticed that most "alternative" browsers (Opera, Konqueror, Mozilla, Galeon) have many extra features that IE doesn't (or didn't, back around IE5) have, such as tabbed browsing, advanced cookie/javascript/window.open() policies, etc, etc. For me, it's always been that way, and I couldn't go back to using IE simply because things I take for granted in any browser just aren't there.
Darth: [waving his hand] I'm not the Sith Lord you're looking for. Guard 1: This isn't the Sith Lord we're looking for Guard 2: Move along.... move along......
I think the lesson would be more to do with static linking. If all of these suddenly-vulnerable apps had dynamically linked to zlib, the "overstandardization" would have been an asset in fixing such bugs - one library used by many programs patched for its own set of bugs, instead of many libs/implementations used by many programs patched seperately for their sets of bugs.
Except, if I'm not mistaken, on AMD systems where system bus speed = 133MHz, and since PCI bus = system bus/2, PCI bus = 66MHz, right? This was my reasoning, though I could very easily be wrong.
Another thing I recently noticed which jumped out at me from my kernel messages during boot: the kernel was assuming a 33Mhz system bus speed for PIO. This was fixed by passing "idebus=66" as a kernel boot parameter. See ide.txt in the kernel documentation sources for more info.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry.. did you read the interview? It was plainly stated that Silverstein (a) reads Slashdot (and therefore could have found said question himself) and (b) chose the questions himself.
To rephrase it was not submitted to him, he chose it.
Again: not submitted, chosen
Wow, I wonder sometimes if the average Slashdot reader can write but not read.
Now, organize this information into a RDBMS model that adheres to all five normal forms
I agree completely
:)
More importantly, I find it annoying when people assume that every supporter of linux is mindlessly anti-Microsoft, just because of the joe-average mindless Microsoft hater. Another time I find this particularly annoying is in "desktop wars", where KDE or GNOME users brag about one feature that they are so proud of and that they don't think exists in the other desktop (and it does). When a flame war breaks out between GNOME and KDE users, there will invariably be more than one user from each "side" that does this, every time. Even more annoying (sorry about the rant here, also somewhat OT....) is when people write articles that have this kind of stupidity, and those articles always incite the greatest, and most useless, flame wars.
In any case, I wish people would think before they talk
Ahem,.. no. There are other languages that do this (PHP is the first thing that comes to mind), its called "banker's rounding" and, as the first poster implied, it is for statistical reasons.
Now that's just misguided reasoning. Where's the bill to allow hacking by antitrust violators? They're all big, friendly corporations, and I'm sure someone has a website they don't like.
Isn't that the "Pearl Jam Effect"? :)
After the conference?
Though I am not too knowledgeable in the particulars of audio/music tech, I gather from your comments and others that this board is not geared towards people who actually know anything about sound, but rather those overabundant people who believe to their core they know everything about it, and don't..... I happen to know one or two. Blaargggh
But you could always make a neural net to tell you what problems you'll cause
Which is because they released 8.2 before KDE 3 came out (I'm pretty sure).
Ignoring the obvious pot-shot, it wouldn't have made sense for Mandrake to release a distribution with a version of KDE that would have been from CVS (because, like I said, KDE wasn't ready at the time). Unless you like it when distributers include unfinished software?
No, such as being the only player.... In a GPL software realm, companies have to provide quality and service. Since everyone has the code, it's the service, the support, and the treatment of the customer that tend to matter. Companies have to truly make the customer happy. In the Microsoft software "ecosystem", companies have to be Microsoft.
I agree
:)
You know it's April Fools when:
90%+ of the Slashdot stories are posted by CmdrTaco, who doesn't know when to shut up.
Maybe he doesn't realize why the other editors aren't getting in on his l337 fooling action.
Sometimes it seems like this site is run by a two-year-old with a lollipop.
Not that I have any right to complain, as I am not a subscriber
Wait, what you meant to say is:
Subliminal messages are clearly NOT built into Windows XP. On a completely unrelated note, Microsoft is great. Buy only Microsoft products. Give *ALL* of your money to Microsoft.
Exactly! I've said it before, and I'll say it again: with a name like Teoma (or that other one.... Visivimo or whatever), nothing is going to topple Google. The name Teoma is just another product of today's pattern of "Let's choose exotic, foreign-sounding words so people will think we're *kewl*, man!". Maybe these people should try: "Let's choose normal words so people remember our name." At least that way, people won't be asking "Do you remember the name of that thingy that tried to surpass Google?" by this time next year.
I believe that the original poster was referring to the "bloat" of file sizes. When comparing .doc and .rtf to StarOffice's format, I find that SO's .sxw format is much smaller (it appears to be a zip file w/ XML data in it). For example, I have typed up a simple document that was 7k in SO and 15k in Word (that's more than double the size!).
I agree entirely, and this is exactly why I made this post. I have been reading slashdot and the dot (ie dot.kde.org) for quite awhile, and I have seen many such posts, especially when people are talking about their favourite WM or DE (including non-linux ones like MacOS and Windows). People say "I like xxx, yyy sucks ass". This pisses me off so much that I almost respond to such drivel, before remembering that most people who write that crap aren't open to an in-depth look at features or rational reasons, they just want their l337 h4x0r OS, and windoze be damned, man! Personally, I use linux for features, and for apps, for freedom (as in choice), and for flexibility (among other reasons). I can respect MS as a marketing behemoth, but I generally tend away from their products.
Hmmmm.... here's my answer to a few of your points, plus my own reasons for preferring KDE over Windows:
* Why do we care about themes? People like things to look how they want. If you come from mac, make it look like a mac (right down to windowbar button positions), if you come from windows, do the same. If you want your own look, do it!
* I would say it doesn't get confusing after 4. I believe KDE offers the ability to name your desktops, and again, this is choice -- maybe some find it confusing, but others do not.
* Personally, if all way implemented properly (as it is in newer qt3/kde3 apps), Unix-style cut/paste is more effiecient. I can highlight something and press the middle button to paste it somewhere -- easy mouse actions. Or, I can use ctrl-c/ctrl-v.
* Granted, Explorer windows do this -- however, my entire session (licq, noatun, kmail (minimized), konsole, konqueror, gimp (on another desktop), anything else I happen to have open) will appear in the correct spot on logout/login. Windows will *not* do that without create "Startup" shortcuts for each app, and even then it will not recognize whne I close something then logout/login.
*ummm.... I don't know why. Bookmarks is bookmarks, mostly.
*It seems that MS copies most features from other places (KDE incl. perhaps), though KDE also copies from other things.
Anyway, here are features I like in KDE (most of these are available in other WMs):
*window snapping ("magnetic borders", whatever). I don't see this in windows
*right-click/middle-click for horizontal and vertical window maximizing (again, not in windows).
*middleclicking on titlebar to activate and lower window, rightclicking to remain in place, and similar mouse actions (slightly different when clicking on the body of the window). In other words, I can move windows up/down more efficiently, and have the active window not be on top. Quite useful.
*The ability to make _any_ window always-on-top.
*Smart JS/JS popup/Java/Cookie policies so I don't have to worry about sites that what to bombard me with stuff I don't want. (I think IE6 _finally_ has some of this, last I heard)
*Smart searches in the Konqy toolbar (eg "gg:google search terms"). Even better, you can define your own, and have different parameters make up specific parts of the search URL. I think IE has something similar to this now, though.
Please note, lets not start a "who-got-it-first" war, it's pointless. I know other opensource things that have had these features first, and I know that windows also has some of these features. However, for me, when I go into Windows I feel crippled: The features I have listed above I use on a regular basis, and those that windows does not have became painfully obvious when I use it.
Last time I checked, Kazaa does this, but not well. It doesn't seem to be very intelligent about choosing what connections are good (and therefore should be given more of the file to download after they finish a currently-assigned chunk) and what connections are bad (and therefore should be dropped, not let to continue at 0.01K/sec!).
[ On a side note, GetRight allowed for more control over where to download from (and did allow multiple sources, last time I used it -- about a year+ ago). It fact, I used GetRight to download linux ISOs from multiple sources at once :). ]
Anyway, does this system offer *better* multi-connection filesharing (ie, more intelligent?), or does it keep slow connections, and fail to recognize that a fast connection just finished and should be given more of the file to download?
I glue them to my wall
Currently about 300 cds on my wall
Looks nice
I have noticed that most "alternative" browsers (Opera, Konqueror, Mozilla, Galeon) have many extra features that IE doesn't (or didn't, back around IE5) have, such as tabbed browsing, advanced cookie/javascript/window.open() policies, etc, etc. For me, it's always been that way, and I couldn't go back to using IE simply because things I take for granted in any browser just aren't there.
Jeeez........ do I have to spell it out?
Darth: [waving his hand] I'm not the Sith Lord you're looking for.
Guard 1: This isn't the Sith Lord we're looking for
Guard 2: Move along.... move along......
I think the lesson would be more to do with static linking. If all of these suddenly-vulnerable apps had dynamically linked to zlib, the "overstandardization" would have been an asset in fixing such bugs - one library used by many programs patched for its own set of bugs, instead of many libs/implementations used by many programs patched seperately for their sets of bugs.
Except, if I'm not mistaken, on AMD systems where system bus speed = 133MHz, and since PCI bus = system bus/2, PCI bus = 66MHz, right? This was my reasoning, though I could very easily be wrong.
Another thing I recently noticed which jumped out at me from my kernel messages during boot: the kernel was assuming a 33Mhz system bus speed for PIO. This was fixed by passing "idebus=66" as a kernel boot parameter. See ide.txt in the kernel documentation sources for more info.
Easier solution........ the old "highlight and read".
Works for most sites with poot colour schemes.