Ok, these are the same people that wanted to make an artificial island so that they could have their own country--see link attached to article. Well, according to that same page, they've abandoned that project. Now, one could argue that they changed their plans because of this "Singularity" business. More likely, they didn't get the funds. Let's do a little match, shall we? If you can't raise enough dough to make an island, what makes you think you can raise enough dough to build a spaceship ark? And given the recent "success" of Armadillo Aerospace, I'd be a little hesitant to fund a private space program, especially with live people on board.
One thing I hope that they will do is have better integrated menus for GNOME and KDE programs. I ran KDE in Debian and always hated that by default, there was a "Debian" submenu for non-KDE programs. Ditto under GNOME. Programs ought to be grouped by task, not by desktop. :Peter
Well, I don't know what the hold-up for Mozilla is (someone else can jump in), but in the case of KDE3, the only reason that it isn't in unstable now is because of the GCC3.2 transition. One the transition is complete, it's ready to go in. (Of course, there are debs maintained now by the official packagers, they just can't be called official packages because they're not in unstable. But they work just fine.) As for XFree, the big hold-up was testing and patching it to be compatible with all the other platforms. As I understand it, XFree develops pretty much exclusively for x86, and then lets the Debian folk port/patch is over to Alpha, Sparc, PPC, etc.
You also forget that Debian is not a company, but a community. In other words, you cannot dictate what will be done; people will do whatever interests them. It works, it's just that at this point with so many transitions and changes going on, the process has slowed down. Want to sped it up? Fork over some $$$ to a developer. Simple as that. :Peter
You do realize that the color schemes in KDE are completely independent of the styles? Pick a style and window decoration theme based on the shapes that you like, and then change the colors to whatever dark mood you feel like. :Peter
If KDE league was never actually tied to KDE, what exactly do their share in common besides the name, or is it just the name?
I've not heard of the league before. From the article it seems they were something like a KDE publicity group that never did a lot of what they said they would?
My interpretation of events are as follows: back in 2000, several companies got together and formed the GNOME Foundation in order to promote GNOME. Tensions were still running a little high back in those days between the GNOME and KDE camps, and a knee-jerk reaction was to create the KDE League. And that is pretty much the end of the story. Besides the little Google incident, the KDE League pretty well disappeared off the face of the net. In my opinion, KDE doesn't really need a foundation or league or whatever to promote it; it does a fine job of promoting itself just by putting out good stuff. And that seems to be the opinion of most people within KDE, given the amount of attention that has been paid to the KDE League since. :Peter
Sure; ask them why they put letters in envelopes instead of sending postcards. Of course, they will probably say, "Because you can't send multiple pages of a letter as a postcard!" But this question is just to get them to start thinking. Then you ask, "Would you approve of a law that mandated that all letters be sent in some easy-to-examine fashion?" (Say in the interest of national security or something like that.) If they are smart, they will realize that they send a lot of stuff by post that they would not want others, no matter how good their intentions may be, to see. I.E., credit card numbers, bank statements, etc. Then apply that to email. If they are still dense, sniff their internet connection (with their permission, of course) for several days, then send them a copy of every email and non-encrypted transaction they made on line. Then ask, "How could the information I gathered about you be used to invade your privacy, steal your identity, etc.?" :Peter
Ok, the GNOME link collapsed long before I got a chance to look at any of the discussion points, but I have looked at the screenshots. Besides the fact that RH has done a good job of making both G and K look boring and uninteresting (although the Keramic window border still manages to look good, despite their best efforts), I don't see what the problem is.
Actually, I would like to see more visual and functional integration of the two. If I could just find a non-Aqua theme that is similar for both KDE and GNOME, I would be truly delighted. While the discontinuity of having two separate themes doesn't bother me much, the neat freak in me wishes for something more...complementary.
To merge the topic of Blender with that of another recent subject, has anyone started a fund for creating Free fonts to eliminate Free software's dependence upon Microsoft's fonts? From the discussion that has already occured, it seems as though the only sane and reasonable way to get high-quality, consistant fonts is to scrap some money together and pay a professional to do so.
People, if a _rendering_ program, that is probably used by a relatively small amount of people, can reach 90% of its goal in four weeks, what can we do about raising funds for fonts, which everyone has an interest in? What we need now is for someone or some organization well-respected within the community to speak up and say, "The pot is open! Come chip in!" :Peter
Two books stand out: "Python: Essential Reference" (2nd edition) for the ins-and-outs of all of Python's built-ins and most of the major modules, and "Python Visual Quick Start Guide," which is sort of like a Python cookbook of the basics, if you're new to it all. These two books have taken care of all my needs. :Peter
Can't help you with the KDE3 bindings (except to tell you to Read The Fine Example Code:) but there is an excellent PyQT book out by Boudewijn Rempt, who is quite active on the PyQT and PyKDE lists. The entire book is online, so you can preview it first. He also ported all the code in his book to PyQT 3.1 which can be had here. :Peter
The "report card" seems to be missing an important aspect: namely, grades! There's nothing here that indicates how "friendly" a company or laptop is toward Linux. This looks more like an attempt to boost page views; or maybe stress-test the server?:) :Peter
Citizen Management Agent (CMA) allows you to automate workers and specialists in cities.
Sound support has been added.
The new "isotrident" tileset has been made the default. The "hires" and "engels" tilesets have been taken out of the distribution but can be downloaded from the web page.
New city dialog in the gtk client.
Windows version of the client. It has improved connection
dialog and supports loading and saving from the client.
GTK 2.0 version of the client.
The client will try to suggest names for your cities that
correspond with what they mean.
Improved players dialog shows sortable and colored information,
including the players' flags.
Server no longer takes the --server command line option,
instead you can use the --info option to set the metaserver
announcement text to whatever you like. The -a option when given
to the client skips the connection dialog entirely.
A "wall" server command added which gives message to all players.
A new flexible timeout set through "timeoutinc" server option.
Leftover research bulbs will carry over to next advance.
Trade routes are more effective.
Units attacking ships in cities double their firepower, while
defenders get only 1 firepower.
Helicopters defending against air units get 50% penalty, and
have their firepower reduced to 1 against fighter units.
You can build city walls even though you have Great Wall wonder.
The Communism government's food cost in default ruleset has
been changed to 1, while it has been changed to 2 for the Civ2
ruleset.
Stealth fighter and bomber now really are stealthy, and are
partially invisible just like subs. Also, stealth bombers have
increased their attack strength from 14 to 18.
Civ2 ruleset now has Fundamentalism.
Improved modpack abilities: The caravan ability has been split.
New ways to calculate technology costs. Better documentation.
Rulesets can specify starting techs. You can have more than one
bonus tech. Split settler abilities. Buildings ruleset syntax
has been significantly extended, but effects do not work yet.
Server option "tinyisles" allow 1x1 size islands and
"separatepoles" allow continents connected to the poles
"citymindist" specify minimum distance between cities, while
"notradesize" and "fulltradesize" regulate the trade generated
by smaller cities.
You can turn on angry citizens with "angrycitizens" option.
Fortresses may give you extended vision. See watchtower options.
If you lose your palace, you get a new one for free in a
randomly chosen city. This behaviour can be turned off with the
server option "savepalace".
Rulesets are now loaded from inside the server through the
"rulesetdir" command.
The limit on the number of nations that can be included with
Freeciv has been removed.
The format of the isometric tileset spec-files has changed.
The map and ai code has been cleaned up significantly.
Translations improved. Added better support for plural forms.
Several bugs squished and a lot of work done under the hood.
For an overview of the remaining bugs please visit doc/BUGS.
They are cute, ooze personality, are very friendly and "talkative," and what other animal is so closely associated with science? The only problem is that they are prodigious poop producers, so get a cage that is easy to clean. Also, get a short hair, as they are easier to care for (no grooming and less shedding).
I agree about the hedgehog, though. Someday I'll get one... :Peter
So I'm curious: what would be the characters for "Linux"? I checked out the web site for RedFlag Linux, but as far as I can tell, all references to "Linux" are in latin letters. Although now I know how "Red Flag" looks like in GB.:)
I can't guarantee this for every distro, but I've always been able to use the "right flying window" key (found on just about every American 104-key keyboard these days) as the compose key, right out of the box, so to speak.
It's just a matter of looking up the sequence and typing it in. For instance,
[right windows key] + ['] + [e] = é
[right windows key] + [,] + [c] = ç
Note that it is not necessary to hold down the buttons; one at a time will do.
...are unfortunately very high. Allow me to snip the IMDB summary:
Upon arrival at the space station orbiting an ocean world called Solaris a psychologist discovers that the commander of an expedition to the planet has died mysteriously. Other strange events soon start happening as well, such as the appearance of old acquaintances of the crew, including some who are dead.
Now, I realize that the IMDB is not official, nor is the wording of the summary official, but I think the wording perfectly captures the level of detail that Hollywood is going to achieve with this remake. Odd planet! Mystery! Death! Romance! Killer CGI! Blah. It's like a chocolate bar left in the sun--it's chocolate, so it could have been good once, but now its just an oozing mess that should be dumped in the garbage.
Yes, I am being overly pessimistic, but since when has Hollywood let me down? The last decent hard science-fiction movie was Gattacca, and not everyone agrees on that. (Please note I make a distinction between science-fiction and sci-fi.) And George Clooney? Mr. I-Can't-Act-My-Way-Out-Of-A-Paper-Bag? Sorry, folks, nothing to see here.
Except that with Free/Open Source software, you are being paid: you are being paid with fantastic programs that would be impossible for any one individual or company to replicate. Releasing software Free is the appropriate expression of gratitude to the community.
The greatest lie of our market-based system is that time equals money, in all circumstances. (Please note the qualifier.) We should not become so obsessed with money that our activities are dictated by it. :Peter
This should probably really be called Netscape 5.1.
I suspect AOL's marketing department is responsible for this. One, for those with long memories, Netscape 6.0 wasn't such a smashing browser, being based upon an older cycle of Mozilla. So there's one reason to bump the number. And, let us not forget, IE is still "only" at version 6, and as any dim-whit can tell you, a higher number is better; ergo, Netscape must be better since it is at version 7! :Peter
It's probably too soon for him to have made a comment; all the same, a little Googling turned up some insightful stuff: apparently, Zimmerman dissed GPG. But that was a couple of years ago. I wonder what he thinks of it now, considering that GPG is about the only PGP replacement worth considering.
I could be mistaken, but I think that GPG plays just fine with NAI's plug-ins. And as for frontends, I don't think you have looked hard enough. Also, Kmail has effortless integration with GPG, and I hear that Evolution does too, although I've heard that there were a couple of bugs in it. Perhaps they've been fixed by now.
Look at the pictures; it's intended (Torvalds' mother only knows why) for two-handed use. The right side has a knob/button that acts as the pointer, while the left side has two knob/buttons that act as the mouse buttons. Although it weighs only 1.8 pounds, I wouldn't want to use it in two-handed mode for long, and this layout seems like it would be hopelessly impractical unless you also carried along a USB mouse.
On the plus side, it looks like it would be fairly easy to defenstrate, except for the modem, which is almost certainly a winmodem.
I've been looking at the Japanese site, trying to find out how much it costs in Japan. I'm fairly certain that it would be cheaper there. Any takers?
I read the story this morning, but I'm too lazy to verify your claim (after all, this is Slashdot, where one is expected to make knee-jerk reactions). Therefore, I will accept that it is true, although now it seems another poster claimed you are wrong. Doesn't matter. My point is that with MS beating the drum, saying "If your licenses aren't 100% squeaky-clean, we'll sic men with shotguns on you, you low-life pirate!" Many cases of "piracy" in business is simply an inattention to the site license...in other words, a violated licensing agreement. QED, Pot...kettle...black.
And yes, if that Peruvian senator is for real, not only would I like him as a US senator (hmm--need to check the Constitution on how long he needs to be a citizen first), but I would actually support his campaign.
Slashdot Mirror
Ok, these are the same people that wanted to make an artificial island so that they could have their own country--see link attached to article. Well, according to that same page, they've abandoned that project. Now, one could argue that they changed their plans because of this "Singularity" business. More likely, they didn't get the funds. Let's do a little match, shall we? If you can't raise enough dough to make an island, what makes you think you can raise enough dough to build a spaceship ark? And given the recent "success" of Armadillo Aerospace, I'd be a little hesitant to fund a private space program, especially with live people on board.
One thing I hope that they will do is have better integrated menus for GNOME and KDE programs. I ran KDE in Debian and always hated that by default, there was a "Debian" submenu for non-KDE programs. Ditto under GNOME. Programs ought to be grouped by task, not by desktop.
:Peter
Well, I don't know what the hold-up for Mozilla is (someone else can jump in), but in the case of KDE3, the only reason that it isn't in unstable now is because of the GCC3.2 transition. One the transition is complete, it's ready to go in. (Of course, there are debs maintained now by the official packagers, they just can't be called official packages because they're not in unstable. But they work just fine.) As for XFree, the big hold-up was testing and patching it to be compatible with all the other platforms. As I understand it, XFree develops pretty much exclusively for x86, and then lets the Debian folk port/patch is over to Alpha, Sparc, PPC, etc.
:Peter
You also forget that Debian is not a company, but a community. In other words, you cannot dictate what will be done; people will do whatever interests them. It works, it's just that at this point with so many transitions and changes going on, the process has slowed down. Want to sped it up? Fork over some $$$ to a developer. Simple as that.
You do realize that the color schemes in KDE are completely independent of the styles? Pick a style and window decoration theme based on the shapes that you like, and then change the colors to whatever dark mood you feel like.
:Peter
My interpretation of events are as follows: back in 2000, several companies got together and formed the GNOME Foundation in order to promote GNOME. Tensions were still running a little high back in those days between the GNOME and KDE camps, and a knee-jerk reaction was to create the KDE League. And that is pretty much the end of the story. Besides the little Google incident, the KDE League pretty well disappeared off the face of the net. In my opinion, KDE doesn't really need a foundation or league or whatever to promote it; it does a fine job of promoting itself just by putting out good stuff. And that seems to be the opinion of most people within KDE, given the amount of attention that has been paid to the KDE League since.
Rather than comment myself, why not hear what Andreas Pour said today?
Sure; ask them why they put letters in envelopes instead of sending postcards. Of course, they will probably say, "Because you can't send multiple pages of a letter as a postcard!" But this question is just to get them to start thinking. Then you ask, "Would you approve of a law that mandated that all letters be sent in some easy-to-examine fashion?" (Say in the interest of national security or something like that.) If they are smart, they will realize that they send a lot of stuff by post that they would not want others, no matter how good their intentions may be, to see. I.E., credit card numbers, bank statements, etc. Then apply that to email. If they are still dense, sniff their internet connection (with their permission, of course) for several days, then send them a copy of every email and non-encrypted transaction they made on line. Then ask, "How could the information I gathered about you be used to invade your privacy, steal your identity, etc.?"
:Peter
Ok, the GNOME link collapsed long before I got a chance to look at any of the discussion points, but I have looked at the screenshots. Besides the fact that RH has done a good job of making both G and K look boring and uninteresting (although the Keramic window border still manages to look good, despite their best efforts), I don't see what the problem is.
:Peter
Actually, I would like to see more visual and functional integration of the two. If I could just find a non-Aqua theme that is similar for both KDE and GNOME, I would be truly delighted. While the discontinuity of having two separate themes doesn't bother me much, the neat freak in me wishes for something more...complementary.
To merge the topic of Blender with that of another recent subject, has anyone started a fund for creating Free fonts to eliminate Free software's dependence upon Microsoft's fonts? From the discussion that has already occured, it seems as though the only sane and reasonable way to get high-quality, consistant fonts is to scrap some money together and pay a professional to do so.
:Peter
People, if a _rendering_ program, that is probably used by a relatively small amount of people, can reach 90% of its goal in four weeks, what can we do about raising funds for fonts, which everyone has an interest in? What we need now is for someone or some organization well-respected within the community to speak up and say, "The pot is open! Come chip in!"
Two books stand out: "Python: Essential Reference" (2nd edition) for the ins-and-outs of all of Python's built-ins and most of the major modules, and "Python Visual Quick Start Guide," which is sort of like a Python cookbook of the basics, if you're new to it all. These two books have taken care of all my needs.
:Peter
Can't help you with the KDE3 bindings (except to tell you to Read The Fine Example Code :) but there is an excellent PyQT book out by Boudewijn Rempt, who is quite active on the PyQT and PyKDE lists. The entire book is online, so you can preview it first. He also ported all the code in his book to PyQT 3.1 which can be had here.
:Peter
The "report card" seems to be missing an important aspect: namely, grades! There's nothing here that indicates how "friendly" a company or laptop is toward Linux. This looks more like an attempt to boost page views; or maybe stress-test the server? :)
:Peter
dialog and supports loading and saving from the client.
correspond with what they mean.
including the players' flags.
instead you can use the --info option to set the metaserver
announcement text to whatever you like. The -a option when given
to the client skips the connection dialog entirely.
defenders get only 1 firepower.
have their firepower reduced to 1 against fighter units.
been changed to 1, while it has been changed to 2 for the Civ2
ruleset.
partially invisible just like subs. Also, stealth bombers have
increased their attack strength from 14 to 18.
New ways to calculate technology costs. Better documentation.
Rulesets can specify starting techs. You can have more than one
bonus tech. Split settler abilities. Buildings ruleset syntax
has been significantly extended, but effects do not work yet.
"separatepoles" allow continents connected to the poles
"notradesize" and "fulltradesize" regulate the trade generated
by smaller cities.
randomly chosen city. This behaviour can be turned off with the
server option "savepalace".
"rulesetdir" command.
Freeciv has been removed.
They are cute, ooze personality, are very friendly and "talkative," and what other animal is so closely associated with science? The only problem is that they are prodigious poop producers, so get a cage that is easy to clean. Also, get a short hair, as they are easier to care for (no grooming and less shedding).
:Peter
I agree about the hedgehog, though. Someday I'll get one...
So I'm curious: what would be the characters for "Linux"? I checked out the web site for RedFlag Linux, but as far as I can tell, all references to "Linux" are in latin letters. Although now I know how "Red Flag" looks like in GB. :)
:Peter
I can't guarantee this for every distro, but I've always been able to use the "right flying window" key (found on just about every American 104-key keyboard these days) as the compose key, right out of the box, so to speak.
It's just a matter of looking up the sequence and typing it in. For instance,
[right windows key] + ['] + [e] = é
[right windows key] + [,] + [c] = ç
Note that it is not necessary to hold down the buttons; one at a time will do.
:Peter
Now, I realize that the IMDB is not official, nor is the wording of the summary official, but I think the wording perfectly captures the level of detail that Hollywood is going to achieve with this remake. Odd planet! Mystery! Death! Romance! Killer CGI! Blah. It's like a chocolate bar left in the sun--it's chocolate, so it could have been good once, but now its just an oozing mess that should be dumped in the garbage.
Yes, I am being overly pessimistic, but since when has Hollywood let me down? The last decent hard science-fiction movie was Gattacca, and not everyone agrees on that. (Please note I make a distinction between science-fiction and sci-fi.) And George Clooney? Mr. I-Can't-Act-My-Way-Out-Of-A-Paper-Bag? Sorry, folks, nothing to see here.
:Peter
Except that with Free/Open Source software, you are being paid: you are being paid with fantastic programs that would be impossible for any one individual or company to replicate. Releasing software Free is the appropriate expression of gratitude to the community.
:Peter
The greatest lie of our market-based system is that time equals money, in all circumstances. (Please note the qualifier.) We should not become so obsessed with money that our activities are dictated by it.
Slaughterhouse Five, beyond a doubt.
:Peter
It's probably too soon for him to have made a comment; all the same, a little Googling turned up some insightful stuff: apparently, Zimmerman dissed GPG. But that was a couple of years ago. I wonder what he thinks of it now, considering that GPG is about the only PGP replacement worth considering.
:Peter
I could be mistaken, but I think that GPG plays just fine with NAI's plug-ins. And as for frontends, I don't think you have looked hard enough. Also, Kmail has effortless integration with GPG, and I hear that Evolution does too, although I've heard that there were a couple of bugs in it. Perhaps they've been fixed by now.
:Peter
Look at the pictures; it's intended (Torvalds' mother only knows why) for two-handed use. The right side has a knob/button that acts as the pointer, while the left side has two knob/buttons that act as the mouse buttons. Although it weighs only 1.8 pounds, I wouldn't want to use it in two-handed mode for long, and this layout seems like it would be hopelessly impractical unless you also carried along a USB mouse.
On the plus side, it looks like it would be fairly easy to defenstrate, except for the modem, which is almost certainly a winmodem.
I've been looking at the Japanese site, trying to find out how much it costs in Japan. I'm fairly certain that it would be cheaper there. Any takers?
:Peter
I read the story this morning, but I'm too lazy to verify your claim (after all, this is Slashdot, where one is expected to make knee-jerk reactions). Therefore, I will accept that it is true, although now it seems another poster claimed you are wrong. Doesn't matter. My point is that with MS beating the drum, saying "If your licenses aren't 100% squeaky-clean, we'll sic men with shotguns on you, you low-life pirate!" Many cases of "piracy" in business is simply an inattention to the site license...in other words, a violated licensing agreement. QED, Pot...kettle...black.
And yes, if that Peruvian senator is for real, not only would I like him as a US senator (hmm--need to check the Constitution on how long he needs to be a citizen first), but I would actually support his campaign.
:Peter