>> The article also spends little time discussing one big factor in the increase of running injuries: the surface on which most people run these days. Soft earth is infinitely more forgiving than asphalt
You do realize they were talking about injuries increasing in the past few decades, right?
I don't know what you thought the 1970s were like, but we weren't running around on soft earth. There was just as much asphalt as there is now, so running surface is definitely not a factor in the increase.
Technically true, but still less of an issue than Silverlight. Silverlight is proprietary and owned by the company with a near monopoly on consumer operating systems. Adobe is proprietary but they have no reason to prefer one platform over another (aside from marketshare of course), and so are very unlikely to sabotage other platforms at any point in the future.
On the other hand, it might be very beneficial for Microsoft to sabotage other platforms (and they already are, just by not even offering an _official_ linux player).
>> The generic installer did detect it Why do you think it gave you that messages.
And handle it of course. What's the point of downloading 12MB to then give and error I can't do anything about.
>> If you are such a tech savvy person, how is it you failed to download the proper version of the program, dumbass?
The download link says that it is for Vista. Not Vista 32 bit. So one would expect it to work on Vista 64, but it doesn't. Also, 32bit programs (including Firefox) work just fine on Vista64, so it's weird that IE doesn't work. Since most plugins don't work on 64 bit systems, there is actually a very good reason not to use a 64bit browser.
So I tried downloading this on Vista64, from the main webpage, main download link, and it fails to install with the message "This installation does not support your system architecture (32/64bits)"
You'd think that Microsoft might actually test IE on their own operating systems before releasing it. If the 32bit browser doesn't run on Vista64, then at least be smart enough to autodetect that with a generic installer.
The pollution thing used to be true, but isn't really anymore. The article claims that only a negligible number of motorcycle have cats, which isn't true anymore. I don't know of any new motorcycles that don't. Even small 250cc bikes like the Kawi Ninja have two cats.
That whole article you linked to is pretty silly. Just read about the space issue, where they seem to think that motorcycles would actually make congestion worse. Sure its way better to ride a bicycle, but modern motorcycles are a good less-polluting alterative to cars.
There's other factors in pollution too. Much fewer materials go into motorcycles, and trips are made faster in them, so less time with the engine running (too lazy to find reference for this right now, but you can google it).
So the first time you had a broken part (bad luck, but everything can fail), and the second time.. Not really sure what your problem is there. Sounds like you need to pay more attention when driving and not get into situations where you have to slam on the brakes so hard that any road surface irregularity will cause you to crash into the next car
Either that or the ABS is broken again on the new car. No way should you have to "learn where the trouble spots are on the roads". Something is not right, either the ABS or your driving.
>> This is a terrible crime against society, I agree, and the punishment should be banishment. The system we have for that is called prison, and they should be going there for a very long time.
And that will undo everything, will it? All those kids will be A-OK again?
Don't pretend that prison is an answer here. Same as capital punishment it just "feeds the basest desire of humans for revenge." Let's toss them in prison and throw away the key! Not much different really.
>> While they're there, society should find a way to make sure that such a thing never happens again.
Well the first step should be to abolish commercial prisons, but of course we can't do that because we need them all to house the people we just tossed in there right?
Yeah I think it's kind of confusing that the height grabber thing looks like a button, but actually needs to be dragged. I liked the way it worked in KDE 4.1 better, where you dragged the top edge.
Having trouble finding where I got that info right now.. But basically remove -mthreads from the makespec for your compiler (win32-mingw or something like that). I don't remember if you have to recompile Qt with that or just your own programs.. I think if Qt is already compiled as static you just have to recompile your program. Worked for me. I think there is some limitations, like no exceptions, or no exceptions in threads. Anyway it wasn't a problem for my apps.
Except that in KDE4 you can turn all the effects off (not even sure if they're on by default). And just like KDE3 you can change the style of all the windows and all that to get a minimalist desktop. With plasma you can even go farther than you previously could. I don't even have a panel on my eeepc
>> Except for the fact that you are still programming in C++ which is bloated, monstrosity of a language.
Right.. People who don't know what they're talking about love the word "bloated", whether they're talking about UI, programs, or languages. I've yet to see any real examples of this "bloat".
>> It doesn't seem to promote to well considering the amount of crappy C++ code written with Qt there is floating around.
Such as? Any reason to think that there is a larger percentage of crappy code in C++ than any other language?
>> I really doubt Qt is going to do all of jack and shit to change that.
>> A little fat, maybe. But you can stick them in your application directory.
And you can cut that down if you really need to. My program installers with Qt are about 3.5MBs. With static linking, some stripping down, and UPX compression I can get a standalone Qt binary using the core, gui, xml, and network modules to be 1.7mb
>> 1. Algorithmic improvements will always trump optimizing execution speed.
True. But when the algorithm is correct in both cases, the execution speed starts to matter.
>> 2. Unless there is a hard requirement, development time is more important than raw performance.
Also true. But you are assuming that developing in C# will be faster than developing in something equivalent like C++/Qt. To my knowledge, there is no evidence for this statement, which makes your axiom meaningless for supporting a higher level language like C#/Java/etc.
>> 3. Hardware is cheaper than developers.
Not always, but in general yes. This rests on the same assumption as the previous one.
>> 4. A rich and flexible library is more useful and stable than custom coding for performance.
Also true. And also based on the assumption that the libraries available in something like C++ (Qt again since that's what I have experience with) is any less rich or flexible than the.NET/Java class libraries. That just isn't true in my experience (I'm talking about desktop apps here, not web programming).
>> I have tried Qt. It would be my preferred choice if.NET were not available (I still prefer.NET), except it is completely useless to me because I don't use C++ or Java.
I think it's time to be a little less set in your ways about what language you use.. Really there isn't that much difference in these languages anyway, mostly syntax. You might not care about cross-platform support right now, but maybe you will in the future, and with Qt you'll have it. With.NET you might with mono, but it's certainly not guaranteed and for sure won't be as mature or performant (especially if you use new things like WPF).
Ridiculous. I develop commercial applications using Qt and none of my customers are even aware of it.
Ever heard of Google earth? Do you recall having to install Qt to make it work? Of course not, the libs are in the installer on windows just like everything else.
>> You might not realize but 99% of the world aren't computer programmers
Sure I realize that.
>> and have very few meaningful ways of supporting free software.
Writing documentation, user support, bug triaging, artwork, marketing, testing, constructive feedback, usability reviews, financial support, etc etc. There are lots of meaningful ways to contribute that aren't coding.
>> but at the same time there's this "stuff them" attitude against the users.
I don't think there is a "stuff them" attitude, but there is certainly a low tolerance for people that feel they are entitled to have open source devs be their slaves.
>> You could argue that they should donate if it's so important; however if they're paying money anyway, why not pay for something that already works?
Depends on how much you're paying and how well that thing works. But you are of course absolutely correct. If a user feels they are better served using their money on proprietary software rather than donating to open source, then they should by all means do that. Open source is not about getting stuff for free.
>> then they have no business pushing their software into distros for mass use
Completely different people. One group builds the particular OSS software, and a completely different group puts it on a distro. Can't blame Gnome devs for Ubuntu choosing Gnome as the default desktop. Ubuntu's choice does not make the Gnome devs responsible for those users.
>> Stay as a hobby project and quit wasting everyone's time.
Every user is free to chose their own software. If you think open source is a waste of time, then by all means don't ever use it. The whole point is just to offer another choice.
>> I *need* to have one row that acts as quick launch for programs, and another row that has the buttons of open windows
You do not "need" to have that. You're just set in your ways. It sucks, but software changes and sometimes it changes something that you were using. This is not unique to KDE, it's common to all software, both open source and proprietary.
However, I think quite a lot of your issues are solved in 4.2
>> No proper working tree.
I believe that is there now. But I don't know what you mean by "proper working"
>> and you can't drag anything to it
You can now.
>> The unzip tool (Ark) is a joke (I've never seen it working).
Works now (you're right though, why did they release something that just plain doesn't work?)
All your issues with the file management is now solved (only file names are targets, not the whole column).
Not sure about your kate problems. Hope they get fixed for you!
So? If those people depend on open source software, they should understand that they might have to actually contribute to make it work for them.
Just because there are more people using open source doesn't mean the developers of the code have to give a damn about those users. There is no obligation in open source. If you're not paying you can't expect anyone to care about your wishes or needs.
Some people can't take that and will be happier paying a commercial company for proprietary code and that's fine. But don't spout off about open source volunteer developers needing to respect their users. Respect is earned, and most of the time the devs work hard to meet users' needs, but there is no obligation there at all.
>> We cannot afford to be using users as our QA department.
I've got news for you, that's the only reason open source software is successful. If there are no users to act as the "QA department" then the software will just be buggy. What do you expect, the devs, most of whom are volunteers, will spend ages doing boring QA work? If you want that done, you have to pay them to do it.
You can't have your cake and eat it too. Either you can pay a proprietary software company for software, and then have the right to complain about quality issues, or you can get the open source version for free, but you might have to contribute to make it work for you.
Open source will never be for freeloaders that expect to get something for free and be able to yell at others to fix it.
Another very useful post. What exactly are you trying to accomplish? "it's still horrible" isn't going to fix it. Be specific when you're bitching, people! That ain't gonna fix it either, but at least your post wouldn't be a complete waste of space.
Slashdot Mirror
>> The article also spends little time discussing one big factor in the increase of running injuries: the surface on which most people run these days. Soft earth is infinitely more forgiving than asphalt
You do realize they were talking about injuries increasing in the past few decades, right?
I don't know what you thought the 1970s were like, but we weren't running around on soft earth. There was just as much asphalt as there is now, so running surface is definitely not a factor in the increase.
>> Flash is no less proprietary.
Technically true, but still less of an issue than Silverlight. Silverlight is proprietary and owned by the company with a near monopoly on consumer operating systems. Adobe is proprietary but they have no reason to prefer one platform over another (aside from marketshare of course), and so are very unlikely to sabotage other platforms at any point in the future.
On the other hand, it might be very beneficial for Microsoft to sabotage other platforms (and they already are, just by not even offering an _official_ linux player).
>> The generic installer did detect it Why do you think it gave you that messages.
And handle it of course. What's the point of downloading 12MB to then give and error I can't do anything about.
>> If you are such a tech savvy person, how is it you failed to download the proper version of the program, dumbass?
The download link says that it is for Vista. Not Vista 32 bit. So one would expect it to work on Vista 64, but it doesn't.
Also, 32bit programs (including Firefox) work just fine on Vista64, so it's weird that IE doesn't work. Since most plugins don't work on 64 bit systems, there is actually a very good reason not to use a 64bit browser.
So I tried downloading this on Vista64, from the main webpage, main download link, and it fails to install with the message "This installation does not support your system architecture (32/64bits)"
You'd think that Microsoft might actually test IE on their own operating systems before releasing it.
If the 32bit browser doesn't run on Vista64, then at least be smart enough to autodetect that with a generic installer.
The pollution thing used to be true, but isn't really anymore.
The article claims that only a negligible number of motorcycle have cats, which isn't true anymore. I don't know of any new motorcycles that don't. Even small 250cc bikes like the Kawi Ninja have two cats.
That whole article you linked to is pretty silly. Just read about the space issue, where they seem to think that motorcycles would actually make congestion worse. Sure its way better to ride a bicycle, but modern motorcycles are a good less-polluting alterative to cars.
There's other factors in pollution too. Much fewer materials go into motorcycles, and trips are made faster in them, so less time with the engine running (too lazy to find reference for this right now, but you can google it).
So the first time you had a broken part (bad luck, but everything can fail), and the second time.. Not really sure what your problem is there. Sounds like you need to pay more attention when driving and not get into situations where you have to slam on the brakes so hard that any road surface irregularity will cause you to crash into the next car
Either that or the ABS is broken again on the new car. No way should you have to "learn where the trouble spots are on the roads". Something is not right, either the ABS or your driving.
>> This is a terrible crime against society, I agree, and the punishment should be banishment. The system we have for that is called prison, and they should be going there for a very long time.
And that will undo everything, will it? All those kids will be A-OK again?
Don't pretend that prison is an answer here. Same as capital punishment it just "feeds the basest desire of humans for revenge." Let's toss them in prison and throw away the key! Not much different really.
>> While they're there, society should find a way to make sure that such a thing never happens again.
Well the first step should be to abolish commercial prisons, but of course we can't do that because we need them all to house the people we just tossed in there right?
Yeah I think it's kind of confusing that the height grabber thing looks like a button, but actually needs to be dragged. I liked the way it worked in KDE 4.1 better, where you dragged the top edge.
Having trouble finding where I got that info right now.. But basically remove -mthreads from the makespec for your compiler (win32-mingw or something like that). I don't remember if you have to recompile Qt with that or just your own programs.. I think if Qt is already compiled as static you just have to recompile your program. Worked for me. I think there is some limitations, like no exceptions, or no exceptions in threads. Anyway it wasn't a problem for my apps.
PyQt then if you use python. Works well for me, but I actually don't see a whole lot of advantages of using Python over C++ with Qt. http://www.riverbankcomputing.co.uk/software/pyqt/download
Not saying that you should switch to Qt, just pointing out the options.
Here's how I just did it (Debian KDE 4.2)
Click the cashew (funny yellow thing) in the bottom right of your panel. If it's not there, right click the task bar, unlock widgets.
Now mouse over the button that says height.. Drag it up to change the panel height.
Then click more settings and click autohide. Click the cashew again to hide the settings options. Works here.
Except that in KDE4 you can turn all the effects off (not even sure if they're on by default). And just like KDE3 you can change the style of all the windows and all that to get a minimalist desktop. With plasma you can even go farther than you previously could. I don't even have a panel on my eeepc
>> Except for the fact that you are still programming in C++ which is bloated, monstrosity of a language.
Right.. People who don't know what they're talking about love the word "bloated", whether they're talking about UI, programs, or languages. I've yet to see any real examples of this "bloat".
>> It doesn't seem to promote to well considering the amount of crappy C++ code written with Qt there is floating around.
Such as? Any reason to think that there is a larger percentage of crappy code in C++ than any other language?
>> I really doubt Qt is going to do all of jack and shit to change that.
There I agree with you. Qt is not for webapps.
>> A little fat, maybe. But you can stick them in your application directory.
And you can cut that down if you really need to. My program installers with Qt are about 3.5MBs. With static linking, some stripping down, and UPX compression I can get a standalone Qt binary using the core, gui, xml, and network modules to be 1.7mb
>> Just compile statically, and you won't have to bundle anything. OK, you'll probably need to include the mingw10.dll
You can even remove that dependency if you modify your makespec (search the qtcentre.org forums).
>> And libmysql.dll if your app accesses a MySQL database, like mine does.
That can also be loaded statically. The docs have info about how to statically load plugins like the MySQL libs or image codecs.
It's perfectly possible to make Qt apps that are standalone exes. It's not that hard. No reason to run screaming.
>> Then you are a fool.
And you are too quick to jump to conclusions.
>> 1. Algorithmic improvements will always trump optimizing execution speed.
True. But when the algorithm is correct in both cases, the execution speed starts to matter.
>> 2. Unless there is a hard requirement, development time is more important than raw performance.
Also true. But you are assuming that developing in C# will be faster than developing in something equivalent like C++/Qt. To my knowledge, there is no evidence for this statement, which makes your axiom meaningless for supporting a higher level language like C#/Java/etc.
>> 3. Hardware is cheaper than developers.
Not always, but in general yes. This rests on the same assumption as the previous one.
>> 4. A rich and flexible library is more useful and stable than custom coding for performance.
Also true. And also based on the assumption that the libraries available in something like C++ (Qt again since that's what I have experience with) is any less rich or flexible than the .NET/Java class libraries. That just isn't true in my experience (I'm talking about desktop apps here, not web programming).
>> I have tried Qt. It would be my preferred choice if .NET were not available (I still prefer .NET), except it is completely useless to me because I don't use C++ or Java.
I think it's time to be a little less set in your ways about what language you use.. Really there isn't that much difference in these languages anyway, mostly syntax. You might not care about cross-platform support right now, but maybe you will in the future, and with Qt you'll have it. With .NET you might with mono, but it's certainly not guaranteed and for sure won't be as mature or performant (especially if you use new things like WPF).
Ridiculous. I develop commercial applications using Qt and none of my customers are even aware of it.
Ever heard of Google earth? Do you recall having to install Qt to make it work? Of course not, the libs are in the installer on windows just like everything else.
>> You might not realize but 99% of the world aren't computer programmers
Sure I realize that.
>> and have very few meaningful ways of supporting free software.
Writing documentation, user support, bug triaging, artwork, marketing, testing, constructive feedback, usability reviews, financial support, etc etc. There are lots of meaningful ways to contribute that aren't coding.
>> but at the same time there's this "stuff them" attitude against the users.
I don't think there is a "stuff them" attitude, but there is certainly a low tolerance for people that feel they are entitled to have open source devs be their slaves.
>> You could argue that they should donate if it's so important; however if they're paying money anyway, why not pay for something that already works?
Depends on how much you're paying and how well that thing works. But you are of course absolutely correct. If a user feels they are better served using their money on proprietary software rather than donating to open source, then they should by all means do that. Open source is not about getting stuff for free.
>> then they have no business pushing their software into distros for mass use
Completely different people. One group builds the particular OSS software, and a completely different group puts it on a distro. Can't blame Gnome devs for Ubuntu choosing Gnome as the default desktop. Ubuntu's choice does not make the Gnome devs responsible for those users.
>> Stay as a hobby project and quit wasting everyone's time.
Every user is free to chose their own software. If you think open source is a waste of time, then by all means don't ever use it. The whole point is just to offer another choice.
>> I *need* to have one row that acts as quick launch for programs, and another row that has the buttons of open windows
You do not "need" to have that. You're just set in your ways. It sucks, but software changes and sometimes it changes something that you were using. This is not unique to KDE, it's common to all software, both open source and proprietary.
However, I think quite a lot of your issues are solved in 4.2
>> No proper working tree.
I believe that is there now. But I don't know what you mean by "proper working"
>> and you can't drag anything to it
You can now.
>> The unzip tool (Ark) is a joke (I've never seen it working).
Works now (you're right though, why did they release something that just plain doesn't work?)
All your issues with the file management is now solved (only file names are targets, not the whole column).
Not sure about your kate problems. Hope they get fixed for you!
>> It has grown up, and people now depend on it.
So? If those people depend on open source software, they should understand that they might have to actually contribute to make it work for them.
Just because there are more people using open source doesn't mean the developers of the code have to give a damn about those users. There is no obligation in open source. If you're not paying you can't expect anyone to care about your wishes or needs.
Some people can't take that and will be happier paying a commercial company for proprietary code and that's fine. But don't spout off about open source volunteer developers needing to respect their users. Respect is earned, and most of the time the devs work hard to meet users' needs, but there is no obligation there at all.
>> We cannot afford to be using users as our QA department.
I've got news for you, that's the only reason open source software is successful. If there are no users to act as the "QA department" then the software will just be buggy. What do you expect, the devs, most of whom are volunteers, will spend ages doing boring QA work? If you want that done, you have to pay them to do it.
You can't have your cake and eat it too. Either you can pay a proprietary software company for software, and then have the right to complain about quality issues, or you can get the open source version for free, but you might have to contribute to make it work for you.
Open source will never be for freeloaders that expect to get something for free and be able to yell at others to fix it.
Another very useful post. What exactly are you trying to accomplish? "it's still horrible" isn't going to fix it. Be specific when you're bitching, people! That ain't gonna fix it either, but at least your post wouldn't be a complete waste of space.
No problem here. It just depends on how your distro packages it. I can easily install just the kde apps I want in debian.
Ah, imperial MPG. I was talking about US MPG. In US MPG, the bluemotion does 73.5.
Same thing with FF though, slashdot's preview system is just horrendously slow.