Hmmmm, I would want my dumptruck seats to be comfortable, ergonomic, adjustable and have built-in heat and vibrating massage pads - much like the operator's chair in front of my keyboard.
It's covered in duct-tape and looks like crap but I can comfortably sit in it for a 14-hour coding/fragging/slashdotting session and still feel my bum afterwards*. Who cares what it looks like?
Aesthetics are just the icing on the cake and who eats just icing?
After all, Windows XP ~looks~ pretty.
* I mean in an 'oh, it's still there' kind of way, nothing smutty.
I have to agree for much the same reasons, I can get koqueror customised exactly to my liking but found gnome a bit less flexible.
Something I have been desperate for has been 'real transparency' in konsole and more transparency features for apps in general (I ideally want to watch TV semi-transparently over my entire working desktop).
Having read the feature list this looks tantalisingly close.
The feature plan for 3.4 can be found here
(taken from The Hunger's post)
Re:Installing package without override the kde 3.3
on
KDE 3.4 goes Beta
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· Score: 1
I assume you mean having KDE 3.3 and KDE 3.4 on the same machine and not conflicting.
If you are compiling yourself you should be able to do this, I'm sure the instructions for this will be in the INSTALL notes somewhere.
It ~should~ just be a case of giving configure an option of where the KDE base dirs and libraries should go when compiling and then changing a couple of environment variables ($KDEBASE and $KDELIBS??) before running KDE (you can of course do this from a startup script). Been a while since I ran two versions of KDE on the same machine though so check the notes that come with the source.
The school my kid goes to teaches religeous education. It is always put in terms of 'Christians believe that..', 'Muslims believe that..', 'Athiests don't believe that..' and so on. None of the beliefs described are taught as being absolute Truth despite the teacher being a Christian minister.
Whether science should be taught that way or not ('The scientific community in general currently believes that..') is something I'm not too sure about. Once this honest vaugeness is introduced every religeon and minor scientific faction would be fighting to get their opinion included in the curriculum. However, that disclaimer would add another level of Truth to the presentation of scientific knowledge in schools, the real Truth being that we may think we know something but can never really be 100% sure about anything.
Science is not an exact science, hell, I was taught that an atom was made up of some little balls orbiting another, bigger ball. This load of balls was presented as absolute matter-of-fact despite quantum theory (which suggests this is not really the case) having been pretty much accepted by the scientific community at that time.
Now there are scientists suggesting that the speed of light is not as absolute as once believed.
If everyone; religeons, scientists, politicians et al took the 'we think we know but can never be sure' stance I suspect the world would be a better and more tolerant place. Sure uncertainty is scarey but it's truthful.
I assume nothing of the sort. I simply accept that it is possible and in some areas even likely that a minor purchasing a 12-inch carving knife is not doing so in order to chop carrots. When I was at school none of the dozens of my peers that bought knives (legally at that time) used them for cooking. They carried them as weapons, mainly to be 'cool' although in some cases they ended up using them with 'malicious intent' simply because they were available and carrying them gave them an unreal sense of invincibility. All too often what should have been a shout or a slap ended up as a slash or a stab. The young often do not stop to think about the consequenses of their actions, sometimes with tragic results. Sadly many adults have the same problem.
Having said that, I do sympathise with your views somewhat in this instance and do 'get' your point. Any legislation that curtails freedom should not be undertaken lightly, we should not assume criminal intent without proof and in any case the law does not work - knife crime among minors is and in UK society in general is still on the increase.
However, any civilised state has a duty of care to it's children and as most knife crime carried out by minors is comitted against other minors something had to be done to try and protect innocent (and guilty) kids from potentially fatal tragedy. Lacking the ability to stop-and-search people who are not suspected of comitting a crime* the Police are restricted in what they can do to curtail knife crime and alternate methods needed to be found. (*except in exceptional circumstances, AFAIK, IANAL.)
This law, while ineffective, at least sends the message that it our society considers it unacceptable for minors to purchase what could be potentially lethal weapons. It's more about perception than actual prevention and it's useless without addressing the root causes of violent crime among minors which includes a wide variety of social ills such as alchohol abuse (the purchase of which is also illegal for minors), poverty, greed, poor education, lack of prospects, intolerance, bullying, peer pressure, the glorification of alchohol, violence and weaponry, the growing culture of fear and the general lack of respect both for the self and others.
An age limit of 16 may seem arbitrary, many 15-year olds are sensible and mature but then again many are not. In order to provide clear legislation there must be a distinct definition of a 'child'. Here in the UK it is anyone under the age of 16.
Children do need protection both from themselves, others and the general risks of society and their environment. I could not ~assume~ a four-year-old will drink a bottle of bleach or pour it over his baby brother but that is no excuse for allowing him to play with it. Is that an infringement of a child's freedom to play with bottles of bleach? Of course it is but it's also sensible and neccessary for their safety and the safety of others.
We cannot have perfect laws until we have perfect people. Until we achieve this utopia the law is a balancing act between freedom and safety (or 'security' to put it in current US terms).
Speaking of which, it's worth noting that the United States government (and by association it's people, who voted them into power) now locks people up indefinately (and allegedly tortures them) without trial or proof of guilt so your moral high ground is somewhat shaky and your assertion that people are innocent until proven guilty under US law is inaccurate AFAICT.
So in your world it would be OK for 5-year-old to buy porn, have sex, drive a car and drink Jack Daniels all the while wielding a 12-inch carving knife?
In the real world some discrimination is neccessary to protect the young and vulnerable. Sure, it sucks - but it's neccessary.
I think it more likely this would be to protect the government from it's own citizens rather than an invading horde of foreigners in times of civil unrest.
Re:How many criminals will be buying "smart" guns?
on
Smart Guns are Coming
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· Score: 1
Agreed, but (in theory anyway) it stops smart handguns stolen from the law-abiding being used by the criminals.
In reality, though, I suspect hacking the safety features will become as easy as filing off a serial number is today and the bad guys will just import non-smart guns anyway.
It would, however, stop little Johnny blasting his sister when playing with Pop's carelessly stored 9mm though.
It's worth noting that here in the UK it's mostly criminals that own handguns due to our very strict gun laws but our gun-crime rate and rate of injury/death due to handguns per capita is still a minute fraction of that of the USA. A shooting in the UK is still pretty much front page news.
It seems that in the US people are not only more willing to own handguns but also to use them and this appears to be cultural phenomenon rather than a technical or even legal issue.
My mother (of grandmother age but I'm not budging on the 'no kids' thing) uses Linux (Gentoo with KDE Desktop) with no problems.
OK, so I set it all up for her (the way a vendor would pre-install Windoze) but once set up it runs smoothly and stays configured the way it was when set up. I simplified everything for her as she is not a power-user, removed lots of menu options and extraneous buttons and it's now so much easier for her to find her way around and actually do stuff than it was with Windows.
And that's on a hacked-together PII-300 running Gentoo, if she'd bought a pre-installed state-of-the-art Linux box it would be even smoother.
She has gone from calling me twice a day for tech support to once a fortnight since the switch from Windoze to Linux. I can fix any problem that does occur remotely. So now instead of talking exclusively about Blue Screens of Death, anti-virus software and automated updates we talk about me not providing any grandchildren.
Konqueror 3.1.4-0.9x.1 Red Hat (Using KDE 3.1.4-0.9x.1 Red Hat) Java and Javascript enabled globally.
With smart pop-up blocking switched on I hit the 'with pop-up blocking' test link on the secunia site and got the citibank site in a new window with no pop-ups.
I turned off pop-up blocking and re-ran the test (after reloading the secunia page as advised and using the 'no pop-up blocker' link this time)
Citibank site appeared in a new window but no again no pop-ups appeared.
Closed citibank window, re-loaded secunia page to try again and the 'injected' pop-up appeared when the secunia page reloaded.
So basically the 'untrusted site' popped up a untrusted window, having first asked me to turn off pop-up blocking and turn on Javascript.
It seems to me (at least in my case) that basic, sensible precautions (use a pop-up blocker, don't enable Javascript and check the source URL of all windows with no URL bar) would keep me safe.
I love the first B5 TV movie, which filled in a lot of the blanks and added even more background depth to the main body of the TV shows, tied up some loose ends, provided some origins and fates and shed new light on the main characters and rounded out the TV series very well while still being accessable to new viewers.
Sadly the following three TV movies were pretty weak efforts from either a fan or newcomer's standpoint though; being little more than extended TV shows with very little of the depth and intelligence I expected from B5.
It's going to be tricky to pull off a B5 movie that appeals to newcomers and fans but it's possible, especially if JMS is at the helm and the holywood bland brigade don't interfere too much.
Argumentative, maybe, but you seem to agree with me on the whole..
Thinking and feeling should complement each other. The point of my post is that it appears that the campaign managers are encouraging people to cast their vote primarily based on an emotional reaction instead of applying critical analysis guided by emotion and morals.
The deliberate suppression of either aspect of the balance between the mind and the heart for political ends should be considered a grave threat to any society that values democracy, justice and freedom and should be strongly resisted whenever encountered.
We can't just blame the politicians though; the media also have a lot to answer for in this respect as do it's consumers. Conflict sells.
Call me a cynic but I suspect that all this division, anger and spite is just what (certain) politicians want.
As an outsider it appears to me that US elections are fought and won largely on moral, emotive issues such as abortion, gay marriage, the presidential candidates war record and so on rather than practical issues like healthcare, public services and the economy.
It is far easier to demonise an opposition party and it's supporters in the voters eyes on moral rather than practical grounds. This is especially true of those large sections of the electoret that do not understand the complexities of economic theory, the quagmire of foreign policy or the lofty ideals of social justice but who know a baby-murdering heathen queer or an fascist corporate war-monger when they see one.
It makes it so much easier for the voter to just say "Well, they are just a bunch of [insert ridiculously generalised stereotype here], aren't they." than to fault the opposition on points of policy.
Basically this strategy replaces thinking with feeling in the process of deciding who to vote for.
It is much easier to win peoples hearts than their minds.
By way of example, an article in this weeks New Statesman suggests that millions of Bush voters are, in fact, the very people who suffer the most due to his policies (ie. the poor and powerless) but who are nevertheless won-over by his public position on the emotive moral issues.
"spectators will be abandoning branded clothing very quickly"
Yup, I did years ago. I never buy clothes with any visible company logo on them. Damned if I'll pay over-inflated prices just to advertise the very company that is ripping me off to fund their high-profile sponsorships and saturation marketing.
I prefer games that are both intellectually stimulating and the violent so I can exercise my brain and / or destress with some random violence depending on my mood.
Examples of games that do both well are "Morrowind" and "X2-The Threat", both are pretty non-linear and let you play pretty much however you want to, either cerebrally or violently, much like real life.
Ah well, I was only editing the punchline of the quote to make a point, if I was going to critique the whole thing I would have been as well replacing the whole quote with another..
"Under communism man exploits his fellow man. Under capitalism the roles are reversed."
I don't remember who said it though.
Anyway, it's a mistake to confuse intelligence with education as they are different things. I would not dream of assuming I could judge someone's intelligence from their improper capitalisation and abbreviation of personal pronouns or lack of proper grammar and I could only guess at their 'education background' (sic).:)
You may also want to google for 'Wall Street' and 'Vatican City' while you are surfing - and they are just the examples I can think of off the top of my head.
Before I get flamed for being a conspiricy theorist I would like to make it clear that I don't believe in 'secret government' or anything like that, I just believe that there are powerful, unaccountable and largely anonymous influences guiding those who happen to currently hold power. I do not believe these influences are co-ordinated or even necessarily have common goals but that their combined influence does push the public policy-makers in a certain gerneral direction.
This, to me, is suggested by the way the bands may change but the tunes largely remain the same.
For example; there seems to be a lot of excitement this year in the USA about which rich, middle-aged, white, christian, business-man will be buying (and presumably dropping) smart-bombs for the next four years on behalf of 'their' people. Ditto the UK next year.
If the stupid people are in power, you get Nazism.
If the smart people are in power, you get Communism.
If you can't see who is in power, you get America.
Slashdot Mirror
Hmmmm, I would want my dumptruck seats to be comfortable, ergonomic, adjustable and have built-in heat and vibrating massage pads - much like the operator's chair in front of my keyboard.
It's covered in duct-tape and looks like crap but I can comfortably sit in it for a 14-hour coding/fragging/slashdotting session and still feel my bum afterwards*. Who cares what it looks like?
Aesthetics are just the icing on the cake and who eats just icing?
After all, Windows XP ~looks~ pretty.
* I mean in an 'oh, it's still there' kind of way, nothing smutty.
I have to agree for much the same reasons, I can get koqueror customised exactly to my liking but found gnome a bit less flexible.
Something I have been desperate for has been 'real transparency' in konsole and more transparency features for apps in general (I ideally want to watch TV semi-transparently over my entire working desktop).
Having read the feature list this looks tantalisingly close.
The feature plan for 3.4 can be found here (taken from The Hunger's post)
I assume you mean having KDE 3.3 and KDE 3.4 on the same machine and not conflicting.
If you are compiling yourself you should be able to do this, I'm sure the instructions for this will be in the INSTALL notes somewhere.
It ~should~ just be a case of giving configure an option of where the KDE base dirs and libraries should go when compiling and then changing a couple of environment variables ($KDEBASE and $KDELIBS??) before running KDE (you can of course do this from a startup script). Been a while since I ran two versions of KDE on the same machine though so check the notes that come with the source.
Totally.
The school my kid goes to teaches religeous education. It is always put in terms of 'Christians believe that..', 'Muslims believe that..', 'Athiests don't believe that..' and so on. None of the beliefs described are taught as being absolute Truth despite the teacher being a Christian minister.
Whether science should be taught that way or not ('The scientific community in general currently believes that..') is something I'm not too sure about. Once this honest vaugeness is introduced every religeon and minor scientific faction would be fighting to get their opinion included in the curriculum. However, that disclaimer would add another level of Truth to the presentation of scientific knowledge in schools, the real Truth being that we may think we know something but can never really be 100% sure about anything.
Science is not an exact science, hell, I was taught that an atom was made up of some little balls orbiting another, bigger ball. This load of balls was presented as absolute matter-of-fact despite quantum theory (which suggests this is not really the case) having been pretty much accepted by the scientific community at that time.
Now there are scientists suggesting that the speed of light is not as absolute as once believed.
If everyone; religeons, scientists, politicians et al took the 'we think we know but can never be sure' stance I suspect the world would be a better and more tolerant place. Sure uncertainty is scarey but it's truthful.
I assume nothing of the sort. I simply accept that it is possible and in some areas even likely that a minor purchasing a 12-inch carving knife is not doing so in order to chop carrots. When I was at school none of the dozens of my peers that bought knives (legally at that time) used them for cooking. They carried them as weapons, mainly to be 'cool' although in some cases they ended up using them with 'malicious intent' simply because they were available and carrying them gave them an unreal sense of invincibility. All too often what should have been a shout or a slap ended up as a slash or a stab. The young often do not stop to think about the consequenses of their actions, sometimes with tragic results. Sadly many adults have the same problem.
Having said that, I do sympathise with your views somewhat in this instance and do 'get' your point. Any legislation that curtails freedom should not be undertaken lightly, we should not assume criminal intent without proof and in any case the law does not work - knife crime among minors is and in UK society in general is still on the increase.
However, any civilised state has a duty of care to it's children and as most knife crime carried out by minors is comitted against other minors something had to be done to try and protect innocent (and guilty) kids from potentially fatal tragedy. Lacking the ability to stop-and-search people who are not suspected of comitting a crime* the Police are restricted in what they can do to curtail knife crime and alternate methods needed to be found.
(*except in exceptional circumstances, AFAIK, IANAL.)
This law, while ineffective, at least sends the message that it our society considers it unacceptable for minors to purchase what could be potentially lethal weapons. It's more about perception than actual prevention and it's useless without addressing the root causes of violent crime among minors which includes a wide variety of social ills such as alchohol abuse (the purchase of which is also illegal for minors), poverty, greed, poor education, lack of prospects, intolerance, bullying, peer pressure, the glorification of alchohol, violence and weaponry, the growing culture of fear and the general lack of respect both for the self and others.
An age limit of 16 may seem arbitrary, many 15-year olds are sensible and mature but then again many are not. In order to provide clear legislation there must be a distinct definition of a 'child'. Here in the UK it is anyone under the age of 16.
Children do need protection both from themselves, others and the general risks of society and their environment. I could not ~assume~ a four-year-old will drink a bottle of bleach or pour it over his baby brother but that is no excuse for allowing him to play with it. Is that an infringement of a child's freedom to play with bottles of bleach? Of course it is but it's also sensible and neccessary for their safety and the safety of others.
We cannot have perfect laws until we have perfect people. Until we achieve this utopia the law is a balancing act between freedom and safety (or 'security' to put it in current US terms).
Speaking of which, it's worth noting that the United States government (and by association it's people, who voted them into power) now locks people up indefinately (and allegedly tortures them) without trial or proof of guilt so your moral high ground is somewhat shaky and your assertion that people are innocent until proven guilty under US law is inaccurate AFAICT.
So in your world it would be OK for 5-year-old to buy porn, have sex, drive a car and drink Jack Daniels all the while wielding a 12-inch carving knife?
In the real world some discrimination is neccessary to protect the young and vulnerable. Sure, it sucks - but it's neccessary.
Good point - will the recognition system still work with cold dead fingers?
I think it more likely this would be to protect the government from it's own citizens rather than an invading horde of foreigners in times of civil unrest.
Agreed, but (in theory anyway) it stops smart handguns stolen from the law-abiding being used by the criminals.
In reality, though, I suspect hacking the safety features will become as easy as filing off a serial number is today and the bad guys will just import non-smart guns anyway.
It would, however, stop little Johnny blasting his sister when playing with Pop's carelessly stored 9mm though.
It's worth noting that here in the UK it's mostly criminals that own handguns due to our very strict gun laws but our gun-crime rate and rate of injury/death due to handguns per capita is still a minute fraction of that of the USA.
A shooting in the UK is still pretty much front page news.
It seems that in the US people are not only more willing to own handguns but also to use them and this appears to be cultural phenomenon rather than a technical or even legal issue.
My mother (of grandmother age but I'm not budging on the 'no kids' thing) uses Linux (Gentoo with KDE Desktop) with no problems.
OK, so I set it all up for her (the way a vendor would pre-install Windoze) but once set up it runs smoothly and stays configured the way it was when set up. I simplified everything for her as she is not a power-user, removed lots of menu options and extraneous buttons and it's now so much easier for her to find her way around and actually do stuff than it was with Windows.
And that's on a hacked-together PII-300 running Gentoo, if she'd bought a pre-installed state-of-the-art Linux box it would be even smoother.
She has gone from calling me twice a day for tech support to once a fortnight since the switch from Windoze to Linux. I can fix any problem that does occur remotely. So now instead of talking exclusively about Blue Screens of Death, anti-virus software and automated updates we talk about me not providing any grandchildren.
Konqueror 3.1.4-0.9x.1 Red Hat (Using KDE 3.1.4-0.9x.1 Red Hat) Java and Javascript enabled globally.
With smart pop-up blocking switched on I hit the 'with pop-up blocking' test link on the secunia site and got the citibank site in a new window with no pop-ups.
I turned off pop-up blocking and re-ran the test (after reloading the secunia page as advised and using the 'no pop-up blocker' link this time)
Citibank site appeared in a new window but no again no pop-ups appeared.
Closed citibank window, re-loaded secunia page to try again and the 'injected' pop-up appeared when the secunia page reloaded.
So basically the 'untrusted site' popped up a untrusted window, having first asked me to turn off pop-up blocking and turn on Javascript.
It seems to me (at least in my case) that basic, sensible precautions (use a pop-up blocker, don't enable Javascript and check the source URL of all windows with no URL bar) would keep me safe.
Am I missing something here??
I think a 2-hour B5 movie could work.
I love the first B5 TV movie, which filled in a lot of the blanks and added even more background depth to the main body of the TV shows, tied up some loose ends, provided some origins and fates and shed new light on the main characters and rounded out the TV series very well while still being accessable to new viewers.
Sadly the following three TV movies were pretty weak efforts from either a fan or newcomer's standpoint though; being little more than extended TV shows with very little of the depth and intelligence I expected from B5.
It's going to be tricky to pull off a B5 movie that appeals to newcomers and fans but it's possible, especially if JMS is at the helm and the holywood bland brigade don't interfere too much.
Argumentative, maybe, but you seem to agree with me on the whole..
Thinking and feeling should complement each other. The point of my post is that it appears that the campaign managers are encouraging people to cast their vote primarily based on an emotional reaction instead of applying critical analysis guided by emotion and morals.
The deliberate suppression of either aspect of the balance between the mind and the heart for political ends should be considered a grave threat to any society that values democracy, justice and freedom and should be strongly resisted whenever encountered.
We can't just blame the politicians though; the media also have a lot to answer for in this respect as do it's consumers. Conflict sells.
Call me a cynic but I suspect that all this division, anger and spite is just what (certain) politicians want.
As an outsider it appears to me that US elections are fought and won largely on moral, emotive issues such as abortion, gay marriage, the presidential candidates war record and so on rather than practical issues like healthcare, public services and the economy.
It is far easier to demonise an opposition party and it's supporters in the voters eyes on moral rather than practical grounds. This is especially true of those large sections of the electoret that do not understand the complexities of economic theory, the quagmire of foreign policy or the lofty ideals of social justice but who know a baby-murdering heathen queer or an fascist corporate war-monger when they see one.
It makes it so much easier for the voter to just say "Well, they are just a bunch of [insert ridiculously generalised stereotype here], aren't they." than to fault the opposition on points of policy.
Basically this strategy replaces thinking with feeling in the process of deciding who to vote for.
It is much easier to win peoples hearts than their minds.
By way of example, an article in this weeks New Statesman suggests that millions of Bush voters are, in fact, the very people who suffer the most due to his policies (ie. the poor and powerless) but who are nevertheless won-over by his public position on the emotive moral issues.
Yup, I did years ago. I never buy clothes with any visible company logo on them. Damned if I'll pay over-inflated prices just to advertise the very company that is ripping me off to fund their high-profile sponsorships and saturation marketing.
Fair, balanced and intelligent - bravo.
I prefer games that are both intellectually stimulating and the violent so I can exercise my brain and / or destress with some random violence depending on my mood. Examples of games that do both well are "Morrowind" and "X2-The Threat", both are pretty non-linear and let you play pretty much however you want to, either cerebrally or violently, much like real life.
..just frag the censors.
"Under communism man exploits his fellow man.
Under capitalism the roles are reversed."
I don't remember who said it though.
Anyway, it's a mistake to confuse intelligence with education as they are different things. I would not dream of assuming I could judge someone's intelligence from their improper capitalisation and abbreviation of personal pronouns or lack of proper grammar and I could only guess at their 'education background' (sic). :)
You may also want to google for 'Wall Street' and 'Vatican City' while you are surfing - and they are just the examples I can think of off the top of my head.
Before I get flamed for being a conspiricy theorist I would like to make it clear that I don't believe in 'secret government' or anything like that, I just believe that there are powerful, unaccountable and largely anonymous influences guiding those who happen to currently hold power. I do not believe these influences are co-ordinated or even necessarily have common goals but that their combined influence does push the public policy-makers in a certain gerneral direction.
This, to me, is suggested by the way the bands may change but the tunes largely remain the same.
For example; there seems to be a lot of excitement this year in the USA about which rich, middle-aged, white, christian, business-man will be buying (and presumably dropping) smart-bombs for the next four years on behalf of 'their' people. Ditto the UK next year.
Bribe the cabin girl with chocolate. In my experience girls will do almost anything for 10lb of chocolate.
If the stupid people are in power, you get Nazism.
If the smart people are in power, you get Communism.
If you can't see who is in power, you get America.
FYI 'or' does not have an 'f' in it. :-p
Amsterdam Customs Officer:
Him: "Got any drugs?"
Me : "No."
Him: "Would you like some?"