Speak for yourself. If you're incapable of distinguishing between acting and lying (false statement about reality vs. an adult version of children playing "pretend"), or between a human acting and a muppet/animation (hint: facial expressions, shifts in posture, minor physical tics or movements, subtle details of all kinds), that's your personal deficit, not a factual statement as to actors' capabilities. Likewise, your rejection of modern celebrities doesn't extend to the rest of the population; if anything, celebrities of all types are given more attention than in the past, as evidenced by the personal tabloid-esque info being covered by mainstream news rather than shows like Entertainment Tonight. Your belief that your personal feelings are shared by everyone else is a great enough sign of narcissism that you're in no position to throw stones in that department...
FYI and FWIW, I can't tell the difference between good & crappy acting, I haven't really been into TV/movies in 20 years, and was never into media celebrities...so nope, I'm not arguing because you offended my sensibilities.
Nonsense. I read on my Nook Touch while listening to high-energy music for the 30-45 min I'm on a cardio machine so the time just flies by, then I put it away and use the various weight machines. I'm motivated to actually show up twice a week by the chance to focus completely & without interruption on reading & then thinking about a book, and the feeling of mental peace I often have for the rest of the evening. If had to rely on fitness classes or outdoor sports instead, I'd exercise once or twice a season at best.
Even though Apple has made a fortune leading the public to believe otherwise, Jobs didn't design or make the changes to Apple's products himself; engineers like Wozniak, Hertzfeld and Ive did. (He has patents on record, but they're not for any of Apple's actual products.) Likewise, *his* choices were what almost destroyed Apple, and would have if John Sculley hadn't worked hard to limit the damage he could do. (Some good articles: Showdown at Apple, this Forbes article. The "Father of the Macintosh," Andy Hertzfeld, also wrote an article on the events leading up to it.)
Jobs' genius was actually in presenting items to their best effect and persuading people — intuitively knowing just what to say, how to say it, what appearance or impression to give, how to use his charisma, and so forth. That's why it was his original job with Wozniak: one Steve created the product, the other found buyers & investors. Apple, which had little left to lose by the mid-90s, thus hired Jobs so he could play the role of the long-lost genius behind Apple who had returned to "save" it, somebody that they could use as the face of the company for the public to latch onto.
Apple isn't innovating any less than before: they were already bouncing between phone & tablet prior to Jobs' death. It just seems to be doing more poorly now because — well, much as "Dumbo" was led to believe he could fly due to a magic feather and that he'd fail without it, Apple led its iDevice-era fans to believe that Jobs exerted some magical force on the company that produced near-miraculous tech, and that it will fail without him. You're just now seeing the company from the outside perspective of people that were never affected by Apple's/Jobs' tactics — very much like the Apple II-era/Woz fans (including me) came to in the early 1990s.
FWIW I don't have anything in particular against Jobs, but it drives me batty when a company or individual is given a great deal of credit for other peoples' work. Give him credit for his incredible talent at persuasion & salesmanship, and for the role that trait played in directing the industry — but let the unsung engineers, artistic designers, etc. behind the actual products have their due as well.
Or it was. The devs retired KDE 3.5's code with 3.5.13 — everything after that is a brand-new DE that is designed to look/act similar to KDE/TDE 3.5. I wouldn't care, except I noticed that some things no longer work properly, some other things are no longer present, and from what I could tell, dropped HAL in favor of udev+systemd.
Two problems with that theory... 1) Character limits aren't an issue on the vast majority of the web, and the exceptions (like/. signatures) often don't allow emoji. 2) Emoji sent via SMS are usually sent on their own, like the equivalent of responding to "see you later" with *kiss.*
My elementary school used the old form up through at least the late 1980s, but there was no pretense of it teaching us anything. It was blatant, boring busywork: if we finished the in-class assignment for a subject well before time was up, then we were to go do SRAs while the teacher worked with the other kids.
My mother tried that when the time-out type approaches failed; it still didn't work. She was frustrated by then, so the next time I bit her, she bit me right back and made damn sure it pinched! When I started crying, she said, "biting hurts, doesn't it?" I never bit anyone again -- it wasn't until I physically experienced what I'd been doing to others that I had the empathy to fully grasp why I shouldn't bite.
What we call "empathy" is actually more a matter of a person having had similar enough experience to know "intuitively" what someone else is feeling; that's why people show a stunning lack of empathy when it comes to others that are very different from them. (As a firsthand example, few neurotypicals genuinely empathize with autistics when told certain things cause us pain or distress that have never bothered them.) Little kids are referred to as "sociopaths" because they lack the life experience needed to have that "intuitive" empathy, and most then slowly improve from that point onward as their pool of shared experiences grows.
That's a fine attitude if you're either very young, haven't found a good match, or simply have good old fashioned "issues" like commitment-phobia. It doesn't work so well if -- like the vast majority of people out there -- the person grows to dislike the drama of new/failing relationships and starts to desire the emotional stability of having a partner that is publicly committed to making the relationship work long-term.
I'm sorry that you were in anemotionally draining marriage (or that somebody you're close to has been) but that doesn't mean that's what most successful marriages are like. If things are "going strong" now, that's because you/they are with someone that they're far more compatible with, not because they've avoided committing to somebody. Your belief is essentially no different from some people's belief that they'd excel on one subject's exam because they were wearing their week-old red underwear and (all else being equal) perform poorly on a different subject's test because they were wearing a regular freshly-laundered pair.
Pretty sure there aren't many people who agree with you that 85 degrees is nice cool walking weather
Anyone and everyone that has walked in much hotter temperatures, surely would.
Where I'm at, we have very low humidity compared to the rest of the country and regularly have several days during summer where temps are in the 90-100 range... The mid-70s are considered just about perfect, though, and 85 *is* considered hot. (FWIW people here are in good shape.)
I knew something looked buggered about that image, but I couldn't figure out what -- I was too distracted by frustration at the equally user-hostile oversimplified flat outline icons.
What's worse is that it's so awful without even including the planned window decorations, which someone on the team posted to OpenDesktop in April. Imagining the two put together...not pleasant.
I use KDE in large part because it separates the window element/widget design (checkboxes, etc.) from the colors, and lets me control what color everything is -- the defaults that KDE, Xfce, etc. all pick tend to be so low-color & high/low-contrast that they give me headaches. I also generally prefer KDE because of the little useful touches like the easily-added/programmed extra context menu actions in the file manager, integration of KDE-Look, and things like that.
Good point on both parts. I think that it might be a good idea to initially point people at comp.misc, as newbies or haven't been there in ages might need the extra nudge/security of a defined destination. From there, I'd be very surprised if people didn't start looking around and joining other groups once they felt settled-in.
Looks like it can't happen too soon, either -- I've started intermittently seeing a classic/beta hybrid for the comment textbox when I reply to people, so either the team is now mangling Classic Mode or things are becoming unstable.
Repeating my comment (slightly edited) now that you're logged in: Well, I'm seeing Slashdotters say back on Usenet, and it's definitely alive again (I started hanging out there again 3 days ago). With Slashdot admin censoring posts/sigs about any form of protest, and boycott week coming, it'd be a good idea to have somewhere to meet while people feel motivated to bother going there, rather than wait for a full website to be built. (IÂhad suggested talk.general.specific in my earlier comment, but turns out there's still people meeting there...damn.)
Also, I found the Slashcode repository earlier thanks to someone pointing to the old FAQ -- here's the page for the last version, dated 2006. If someone with the knowledge/ability gets it going on a site, I think more than enough Slashdotters would contribute to pay the bills if needed.
Adding: What the fuck?! Between the comment IÂleft 10 minutes ago and now, the comment-posting box changed to look like a screwy hybrid of Classic & Beta (complete with the text box being 1/4 normal size), and as far as IÂcan tell, I'm still in Classic mode! What the hell, are they screwing with Classic now, too?
Adding #2: OK, some of my spaces are now inexplicably coming up as garbage characters as if I used Unicode... IÂgive up, this *really* makes no sense!
Well, I'm seeing Slashdotters say they're returning to Usenet, and it's definitely alive again (I started hanging out there again 3 days ago). With Slashdot admin censoring posts/sigs about any form of protest, and boycott week coming, it'd be a good idea to have somewhere pre-made to meet while everyone's still bothering, rather than wait for a full website to be built. Looking at the different group names, I think that "talk.general.specific" describes Slashdot quite well.;)
Also, I found the Slashcode repository earlier thanks to someone pointing to the old FAQ -- here's the page for the last version, dated 2006. If someone with the knowledge/ability gets it going on a site, I think more than enough Slashdotters would contribute to pay the bills.
I don't know how many links are still good, but there seems to be a good list of news clients at the Open Directory. If you're in Windows, FWIW, the readers I've liked the most are Xnews and Forte Agent.
I figure that if we can all pick a particular group, it will be a good place to coordinate/discuss any protests (Slashdot is deleting posts/sigs that even suggest anything) and hang out during the boycott at the very least.
Thanks for recommending somewhere for free access -- I'm putting that in my sig. I started using my ISP's Supernews connection again about 3 days ago, but I've had no luck at finding decent server options to recommend to others.
Any idea which newsgroup(s) might be a good Slashdot replacement?
They also censored all signatures that slammed Beta, mentioned a boycott or encouraged a protest. That level of manual censorship tells me that they have no intention of making any real changes and hope to placate users into sticking around.
Thanks to ElectricTurtle's new signature, at least now I know there's a "Slashcott" next week. I might not wait until then... While it's their website and their right, Ifind censorship of this particular variety near-intolerable.
...how can a development team release a Beta that was pre-Alpha at best with quality? Were they drunk?
If they've been drunk for that many months, they have even bigger problems than/. beta...and that's pretty hard to do.;)
Just make it work. That's it. Have all the same features and the *exact* same ability to write comments, especially the line spacing and markups. The beta was absolutely horrible to get anything done that classic did without a problem. It's an unmitigated disaster.
Exactly. The beat is effectively the website equivalent of Windows 8 and Gnome 3 -- a complete overhaul that makes the 'brand' unrecognizable, wrecks usability, wastes screen space, and gobbles up resources to chase after the pseudo-touch-oriented design fad.
I feel the same way you do regarding ISPs, except maybe a bit more extreme, as I don't want to use the phone *or* cable companies. Ifind it worth the speed sacrifice of sticking with 6Mbps/768k to have an old-school ISP that allows servers (even on port 25), includes Usenet access, doesn't cap data or speed-throttle, and so forth.
KDE made the same traditional desktop demand more resources, making it unusable.
Only if the computer's beyond ancient. My laptop's 10 years old (2GHz Centrino, 1GB of RAM) yet it easily handles KDE 4.8 with blur & transparency effects as my everyday desktop, and I usually have 2-3 hefty programs active like Firefox, OpenOffice or GIMP, plus several smaller ones like QMMP, Kopete, Knote, or SpiderOak.
If your computer is becoming "unusable" due to KDE 4, then I'd suggest you visit eBay and buy a cheap used laptop. (I paid $40 for the above-mentioned laptop 2.5 years ago.)
I agree with most of what you said, but KDE 4 doesn'tbreak the desktop metaphor. The initial releases did, either due to being unfinished or experimental, and the developers thankfully restored the traditional 'classic' desktop a bit at a time after that, with the non-classic variants as options we can choose.
Here's a quick screenshot of my desktop, showing files I've clustered together, folders (Icould move them, but haven't felt a need yet), a trash can Ican drag them into — and to add to your description, windows layered on top of each other like physical items (with shadows to strengthen the impression), and the ability to show what's inside a folder right there on the desktop.
Better yet, KDE's default is classic *and* can be easily customized until it's not classic, either through the activities' alternative UI setups or just manual customizations. For anyone not familiar with it, here's a quick screenshot Itook of my desktop, which seems about as classic as any out there: http://i.imgbox.com/nf78u5eB.j...
All Ican figure is that either the author either believes that it's not classic if we can customize a GUI to the point that it's no longer "classic" looking, or is judging it based on the first few releases when it wasn't fully functional as a 'classic' desktop yet.
My 11-year-old primary laptop drive has ~65,000 hours of power-on time & no errors, according to SMART tools (smartctl) -- it's a Hitachi Travelstar 80GN, model IC25N060ATMR04-0. Definitely the longest-lasting drive I've owned, and certainly backs the claims that Hitachi is the most reliable.
If you're in the Bay Area, then you had more choices than just the big two, but you have to do your homework via web searches &asking on forums like DSLReports, rather than rely on ads to know about them. Just to name the most well-known ones that I know are available all over the Bay: Sonic.net & DSLExtreme both have DSL and Fusion (if you're not too far from the central office), plus Sonic.net has fiber in a couple of cities now.
Regarding DSL, you can also have shitty speeds because of how old your neighborhood is. Even with nice new wiring inside my house, we max out at 6mbit -- we're a fairly large distance from the phone company's central office, plus the neighborhood's all-underground wiring is over 40 fucking years old. My father lives only a few miles away, but the neighborhood is only around 15 years old and is much closer to the central office, so they get 12mbit instead.
The real reason fiber isn't deployed, of course, is that people are still willing to shell out the money for the shitty overpriced service they have. The only way things are going to change is if people learn about and start switching to other providers with at least nicer pricing.
Slashdot Mirror
Speak for yourself. If you're incapable of distinguishing between acting and lying (false statement about reality vs. an adult version of children playing "pretend"), or between a human acting and a muppet/animation (hint: facial expressions, shifts in posture, minor physical tics or movements, subtle details of all kinds), that's your personal deficit, not a factual statement as to actors' capabilities. Likewise, your rejection of modern celebrities doesn't extend to the rest of the population; if anything, celebrities of all types are given more attention than in the past, as evidenced by the personal tabloid-esque info being covered by mainstream news rather than shows like Entertainment Tonight. Your belief that your personal feelings are shared by everyone else is a great enough sign of narcissism that you're in no position to throw stones in that department...
FYI and FWIW, I can't tell the difference between good & crappy acting, I haven't really been into TV/movies in 20 years, and was never into media celebrities...so nope, I'm not arguing because you offended my sensibilities.
Nonsense. I read on my Nook Touch while listening to high-energy music for the 30-45 min I'm on a cardio machine so the time just flies by, then I put it away and use the various weight machines. I'm motivated to actually show up twice a week by the chance to focus completely & without interruption on reading & then thinking about a book, and the feeling of mental peace I often have for the rest of the evening. If had to rely on fitness classes or outdoor sports instead, I'd exercise once or twice a season at best.
Even though Apple has made a fortune leading the public to believe otherwise, Jobs didn't design or make the changes to Apple's products himself; engineers like Wozniak, Hertzfeld and Ive did. (He has patents on record, but they're not for any of Apple's actual products.) Likewise, *his* choices were what almost destroyed Apple, and would have if John Sculley hadn't worked hard to limit the damage he could do. (Some good articles: Showdown at Apple, this Forbes article. The "Father of the Macintosh," Andy Hertzfeld, also wrote an article on the events leading up to it.)
Jobs' genius was actually in presenting items to their best effect and persuading people — intuitively knowing just what to say, how to say it, what appearance or impression to give, how to use his charisma, and so forth. That's why it was his original job with Wozniak: one Steve created the product, the other found buyers & investors. Apple, which had little left to lose by the mid-90s, thus hired Jobs so he could play the role of the long-lost genius behind Apple who had returned to "save" it, somebody that they could use as the face of the company for the public to latch onto.
Apple isn't innovating any less than before: they were already bouncing between phone & tablet prior to Jobs' death. It just seems to be doing more poorly now because — well, much as "Dumbo" was led to believe he could fly due to a magic feather and that he'd fail without it, Apple led its iDevice-era fans to believe that Jobs exerted some magical force on the company that produced near-miraculous tech, and that it will fail without him. You're just now seeing the company from the outside perspective of people that were never affected by Apple's/Jobs' tactics — very much like the Apple II-era/Woz fans (including me) came to in the early 1990s.
FWIW I don't have anything in particular against Jobs, but it drives me batty when a company or individual is given a great deal of credit for other peoples' work. Give him credit for his incredible talent at persuasion & salesmanship, and for the role that trait played in directing the industry — but let the unsung engineers, artistic designers, etc. behind the actual products have their due as well.
Or it was. The devs retired KDE 3.5's code with 3.5.13 — everything after that is a brand-new DE that is designed to look/act similar to KDE/TDE 3.5. I wouldn't care, except I noticed that some things no longer work properly, some other things are no longer present, and from what I could tell, dropped HAL in favor of udev+systemd.
Two problems with that theory... /. signatures) often don't allow emoji.
1) Character limits aren't an issue on the vast majority of the web, and the exceptions (like
2) Emoji sent via SMS are usually sent on their own, like the equivalent of responding to "see you later" with *kiss.*
SRA 2.0 - boredom 'on a computer'.
My elementary school used the old form up through at least the late 1980s, but there was no pretense of it teaching us anything. It was blatant, boring busywork: if we finished the in-class assignment for a subject well before time was up, then we were to go do SRAs while the teacher worked with the other kids.
My mother tried that when the time-out type approaches failed; it still didn't work. She was frustrated by then, so the next time I bit her, she bit me right back and made damn sure it pinched! When I started crying, she said, "biting hurts, doesn't it?" I never bit anyone again -- it wasn't until I physically experienced what I'd been doing to others that I had the empathy to fully grasp why I shouldn't bite.
What we call "empathy" is actually more a matter of a person having had similar enough experience to know "intuitively" what someone else is feeling; that's why people show a stunning lack of empathy when it comes to others that are very different from them. (As a firsthand example, few neurotypicals genuinely empathize with autistics when told certain things cause us pain or distress that have never bothered them.) Little kids are referred to as "sociopaths" because they lack the life experience needed to have that "intuitive" empathy, and most then slowly improve from that point onward as their pool of shared experiences grows.
DemCare Obamacare .. ObamaPhone BidenPhones
You mean Early 90s NeoCon Care and Reagan/GW Bush Phones — Obama can't rightly take the credit (or blame) for either program.
That's a fine attitude if you're either very young, haven't found a good match, or simply have good old fashioned "issues" like commitment-phobia. It doesn't work so well if -- like the vast majority of people out there -- the person grows to dislike the drama of new/failing relationships and starts to desire the emotional stability of having a partner that is publicly committed to making the relationship work long-term.
I'm sorry that you were in anemotionally draining marriage (or that somebody you're close to has been) but that doesn't mean that's what most successful marriages are like. If things are "going strong" now, that's because you/they are with someone that they're far more compatible with, not because they've avoided committing to somebody. Your belief is essentially no different from some people's belief that they'd excel on one subject's exam because they were wearing their week-old red underwear and (all else being equal) perform poorly on a different subject's test because they were wearing a regular freshly-laundered pair.
Anyone and everyone that has walked in much hotter temperatures, surely would.
Where I'm at, we have very low humidity compared to the rest of the country and regularly have several days during summer where temps are in the 90-100 range... The mid-70s are considered just about perfect, though, and 85 *is* considered hot. (FWIW people here are in good shape.)
I knew something looked buggered about that image, but I couldn't figure out what -- I was too distracted by frustration at the equally user-hostile oversimplified flat outline icons.
What's worse is that it's so awful without even including the planned window decorations, which someone on the team posted to OpenDesktop in April. Imagining the two put together...not pleasant.
I use KDE in large part because it separates the window element/widget design (checkboxes, etc.) from the colors, and lets me control what color everything is -- the defaults that KDE, Xfce, etc. all pick tend to be so low-color & high/low-contrast that they give me headaches. I also generally prefer KDE because of the little useful touches like the easily-added/programmed extra context menu actions in the file manager, integration of KDE-Look, and things like that.
Good point on both parts. I think that it might be a good idea to initially point people at comp.misc, as newbies or haven't been there in ages might need the extra nudge/security of a defined destination. From there, I'd be very surprised if people didn't start looking around and joining other groups once they felt settled-in.
Looks like it can't happen too soon, either -- I've started intermittently seeing a classic/beta hybrid for the comment textbox when I reply to people, so either the team is now mangling Classic Mode or things are becoming unstable.
Repeating my comment (slightly edited) now that you're logged in:
Well, I'm seeing Slashdotters say back on Usenet, and it's definitely alive again (I started hanging out there again 3 days ago). With Slashdot admin censoring posts/sigs about any form of protest, and boycott week coming, it'd be a good idea to have somewhere to meet while people feel motivated to bother going there, rather than wait for a full website to be built. (IÂhad suggested talk.general.specific in my earlier comment, but turns out there's still people meeting there...damn.)
Also, I found the Slashcode repository earlier thanks to someone pointing to the old FAQ -- here's the page for the last version, dated 2006. If someone with the knowledge/ability gets it going on a site, I think more than enough Slashdotters would contribute to pay the bills if needed.
Adding: What the fuck?! Between the comment IÂleft 10 minutes ago and now, the comment-posting box changed to look like a screwy hybrid of Classic & Beta (complete with the text box being 1/4 normal size), and as far as IÂcan tell, I'm still in Classic mode! What the hell, are they screwing with Classic now, too?
Adding #2: OK, some of my spaces are now inexplicably coming up as garbage characters as if I used Unicode... IÂgive up, this *really* makes no sense!
Well, I'm seeing Slashdotters say they're returning to Usenet, and it's definitely alive again (I started hanging out there again 3 days ago). With Slashdot admin censoring posts/sigs about any form of protest, and boycott week coming, it'd be a good idea to have somewhere pre-made to meet while everyone's still bothering, rather than wait for a full website to be built. Looking at the different group names, I think that "talk.general.specific" describes Slashdot quite well. ;)
Also, I found the Slashcode repository earlier thanks to someone pointing to the old FAQ -- here's the page for the last version, dated 2006. If someone with the knowledge/ability gets it going on a site, I think more than enough Slashdotters would contribute to pay the bills.
I don't know how many links are still good, but there seems to be a good list of news clients at the Open Directory. If you're in Windows, FWIW, the readers I've liked the most are Xnews and Forte Agent.
I figure that if we can all pick a particular group, it will be a good place to coordinate/discuss any protests (Slashdot is deleting posts/sigs that even suggest anything) and hang out during the boycott at the very least.
Thanks for recommending somewhere for free access -- I'm putting that in my sig. I started using my ISP's Supernews connection again about 3 days ago, but I've had no luck at finding decent server options to recommend to others.
Any idea which newsgroup(s) might be a good Slashdot replacement?
They also censored all signatures that slammed Beta, mentioned a boycott or encouraged a protest. That level of manual censorship tells me that they have no intention of making any real changes and hope to placate users into sticking around.
Thanks to ElectricTurtle's new signature, at least now I know there's a "Slashcott" next week. I might not wait until then... While it's their website and their right, Ifind censorship of this particular variety near-intolerable.
...how can a development team release a Beta that was pre-Alpha at best with quality? Were they drunk?
If they've been drunk for that many months, they have even bigger problems than /. beta...and that's pretty hard to do. ;)
Just make it work. That's it. Have all the same features and the *exact* same ability to write comments, especially the line spacing and markups. The beta was absolutely horrible to get anything done that classic did without a problem. It's an unmitigated disaster.
Exactly. The beat is effectively the website equivalent of Windows 8 and Gnome 3 -- a complete overhaul that makes the 'brand' unrecognizable, wrecks usability, wastes screen space, and gobbles up resources to chase after the pseudo-touch-oriented design fad.
The users at DSLReports Forum or your ISP's subforum there should know. (If not, staff in my ISP's subforum will.) If U-verse is the brand name for AT&T's digital package, it might be useful to read the answer my ISP's COOgave when somebody asked recently whether we can get DSLthrough a third-party ISP when our area is upgraded to U-verse.
I feel the same way you do regarding ISPs, except maybe a bit more extreme, as I don't want to use the phone *or* cable companies. Ifind it worth the speed sacrifice of sticking with 6Mbps/768k to have an old-school ISP that allows servers (even on port 25), includes Usenet access, doesn't cap data or speed-throttle, and so forth.
KDE made the same traditional desktop demand more resources, making it unusable.
Only if the computer's beyond ancient. My laptop's 10 years old (2GHz Centrino, 1GB of RAM) yet it easily handles KDE 4.8 with blur & transparency effects as my everyday desktop, and I usually have 2-3 hefty programs active like Firefox, OpenOffice or GIMP, plus several smaller ones like QMMP, Kopete, Knote, or SpiderOak.
If your computer is becoming "unusable" due to KDE 4, then I'd suggest you visit eBay and buy a cheap used laptop. (I paid $40 for the above-mentioned laptop 2.5 years ago.)
I agree with most of what you said, but KDE 4 doesn'tbreak the desktop metaphor. The initial releases did, either due to being unfinished or experimental, and the developers thankfully restored the traditional 'classic' desktop a bit at a time after that, with the non-classic variants as options we can choose.
Here's a quick screenshot of my desktop, showing files I've clustered together, folders (Icould move them, but haven't felt a need yet), a trash can Ican drag them into — and to add to your description, windows layered on top of each other like physical items (with shadows to strengthen the impression), and the ability to show what's inside a folder right there on the desktop.
Better yet, KDE's default is classic *and* can be easily customized until it's not classic, either through the activities' alternative UI setups or just manual customizations. For anyone not familiar with it, here's a quick screenshot Itook of my desktop, which seems about as classic as any out there:
http://i.imgbox.com/nf78u5eB.j...
All Ican figure is that either the author either believes that it's not classic if we can customize a GUI to the point that it's no longer "classic" looking, or is judging it based on the first few releases when it wasn't fully functional as a 'classic' desktop yet.
My 11-year-old primary laptop drive has ~65,000 hours of power-on time & no errors, according to SMART tools (smartctl) -- it's a Hitachi Travelstar 80GN, model IC25N060ATMR04-0. Definitely the longest-lasting drive I've owned, and certainly backs the claims that Hitachi is the most reliable.
If you're in the Bay Area, then you had more choices than just the big two, but you have to do your homework via web searches &asking on forums like DSLReports, rather than rely on ads to know about them. Just to name the most well-known ones that I know are available all over the Bay: Sonic.net & DSLExtreme both have DSL and Fusion (if you're not too far from the central office), plus Sonic.net has fiber in a couple of cities now.
Regarding DSL, you can also have shitty speeds because of how old your neighborhood is. Even with nice new wiring inside my house, we max out at 6mbit -- we're a fairly large distance from the phone company's central office, plus the neighborhood's all-underground wiring is over 40 fucking years old. My father lives only a few miles away, but the neighborhood is only around 15 years old and is much closer to the central office, so they get 12mbit instead.
The real reason fiber isn't deployed, of course, is that people are still willing to shell out the money for the shitty overpriced service they have. The only way things are going to change is if people learn about and start switching to other providers with at least nicer pricing.