You claim that breeding certain people together will produce "healthier, smarter and stronger" people, yet are offended by other people that think breeding can produce healthier, smarter and stronger people. You are not less racist. You just have a different group that you think is superior. You probably never even noticed that Hitler was not an Aryan.
While you're at it, go have your sarcasm detector checked. In case you fail to find someone to fix it for you in this holiday season, re-read the last paragraph not as a claim but as an additional quip showing how ridiculous genetism is as "scientific" excuse for racism.
In this fox experiment, genes determined both behavior and physical appearance. Intelligence is clearly an element of behavior. We should not shy away from the obvious implications for human evolution.
Humankind would necessarily undergo the same sort of evolutionary changes. We can expect differences in behavior among the different races and ethnic groups. Evolution changed both the color of the skin and the type of behavior. Intelligence is one form of behavior.
The belief that all races and all ethnic groups have identical intelligence and identical levels of violent behavior or passive behavior is simply an assumption -- without proof.
I doubt anybody moderately intelligent would believe that all ethnic groups have "identical intelligence" or "identical levels of violent behavior or passive behavior", considering how not even within the same ethnic group you can find "identical intelligence" or "identical levels of etc", due to the substantial influence of things such as culture, education and personal and communal experience. Differences are indeed easily spotted within the same ethnic group in communities not distant from each other (think "Athens vs Sparta"; north vs south differences can easily be spotted in many countries, or across the border, even though you'd find the same ethnic group in both sides).
Secondly, the experiments show that selecting particular attitudinal aspects results in a secondary selection of particular aesthetic characteristics, but it says nothing about the converse being true too. In other words: if they selected the animals due to some particular (set of) aesthetic characteristics, would they also get a secondary selection on particular attitudinal aspects?
Finally, any form of 'group profiling' serves no actual practical purpose other than stereotyping and fueling discrimination, whose only effect is to render life harder for individuals, giving weight to the stereotyped group characteristics over the actual individual capabilities.
Before asking whether there is an actual correlation between ethnicity (which BTW is a rather fuzzy concept) and behavior, I would ask who is interested in knowing, and most importantlywhy are they interested in knowing.
I consider it rather funny, in a grotesque kind of way, that usually these information is sought after by 'supremacists' looking for a scientific proof of their belief that their group is superior to any other group (either in general, or for some specific objectives or positions, such as world domination or aristogracy). And I find it funny because their "purity" crapola is easily overturned by the simple observation that cross-breeds are most of the times healthier, smarter and stronger.
I too miss Total Commander on Linux. I've heard reports of it working pretty decently under WINE, but I haven't tried it myself.
Krusader is indeed the best candidate to try and get something to the level of TC, but it really needs a lot of work. I really wish I had the time to grab the codebase and start hammering on those rough edges...
OpenCL isn't ALL that close either to CUDA or anything from AMD (CAL, Brook+). The status quo with AMD is that the OpenCL implementation they have is very immature e.g. doesn't support a lot of fairly basic and highly desirable OpenCL "extensions" (actually it didn't support ANY until about 2 days ago, and now they're just beta testing a few of the most rudimentary ones). Additionally there are still lots of issues with missing / unclear documentation, missing features, bugs, development / runtime platform portability issues, et. al. Most significantly, the openCL performance is still a fraction of the performance commonly achievable with Brook+ or CAL in many common scenarios on the AMD platform. This is sometimes / often true for their 58xx series boards, and pervasively so for their older 4xxx series cards (which by architectural limitations as well as by lack of planned OpenCl development toolchain support / optimization will never really perform well with OpenCL).
On the NVIDIA side, CUDA performance and usage flexibility is still typically and substantially higher than is achievable via OpenCL, since obviously CUDA exists to fairly optimally exploit their GPU architectural capabilities whereas OpenCL is a generic GPU-vendor / architecture "neutral" platform that doesn't give as much card specific control as CUDA (or CAL in AMD's case).
I do wonder how much this is because of OpenCL being vendor-neutral and thus 'far' from the underlying architecture, and how much it depends on the quality of the compilers. I suspect that NVIDIA does not have much of an interest in optimizing their OpenCL compiler as much as they do with their CUDA compiler, for the obvious reason that with CUDA they have vendor lock-in and can sell more hardware, whereas with OpenCL there is the (remote) possibility that a better compiler from ATI might lead people to look at the other hardware more.
I think Cuda was first out there, later on OpenCL occurred.
Yes and no. CUDA and CTM/Brook+/FireStream came to live more or less at the same time when NVIDIA and ATI realized that GPGPU (General Purpose computing on the GPU) was getting traction in the scientific computing world (originally implemented using OpenGL and shaders).
OpenCL was essentially an effort (by Apple first and foremost, although obviously with cooperation from both NVIDIA and ATI) to get a standardized interface to SIMD multicore programming. It's actually quite close to low-level CUDA programming, although I'm not sure how close it is to the ATI solution (I've tried going through the ATI docs a couple of time, but their stuff is absolutely abysmal when compared to the NVIDIA docs and SDKs, sadly).
I'm surprised these open source project haven't implemented the open source microblogging standard put forth by status.net (former laconi.ca). Its ability to handle cross-site microblogging is rather interesting and more appropriate for these platforms, IMO.
I can buy a cellphone and an Eee PC and the combined price will still be about half that of an N900 (if not less). What exactly justifies the pricing in the N900?
Nothing, if you don't mind carrying a netbook around anyway, or woult have to do it because the smartphone is not convenient enough. But as you have modified your value comparison in the middle of the argument, your point have become much clearer.
Yeah, your analogy did work in making me realize that pointing out that the difference was just in the presence of the GSM module was a little too implicit to understand WHY the N900 is grossly overpriced.
A better analogy would be: it's like complaining about the fact that a hammer with an embedded screwdriver costs more than three times a (bigger) hammer.
The key point is that the 'added benefit' is not worth the cost. I can buy a cellphone and an Eee PC and the combined price will still be about half that of an N900 (if not less). What exactly justifies the pricing in the N900?
> Much of the load from P2P networks would be immensely reduced if providers started implementing XCAST
Actually much of the load from P2P networks would be immensely reduced if:
1) providers wouldn't get sued for running special P2P Auto caching seeders that detect P2P traffic from their customers and automatically start downloading and then seeding stuff on their networks.
2) The providers can then throttle any P2P traffic to/fro their network from/to the rest of the internet that's not to/from their caching seeders. Their customers wouldn't care because they still get fast connections from the caching seeders.
I think the technology is already there (some/all implemented already), the laws in most countries just don't make it viable;).
P2P software can already rely on the proxying capabilities of the providers (see eMuleXT webcache feature) in a content-agnostic, non-sueable way, but the benefits from this are rather limited in scope (ISP-local, sometimes even ISP+geolocation local). Proper XCAST support from the ISPs and from the clients would be most content could be distributed with an extremely small bandwidth usage, across the whole network.
Think about it: 100 clients request a chunk, you send it once, and it travels as a single chunk for much of its lifetime, getting duplicated in a rather small number of chunks only a specific, limited number of points.
The amount of bandwidth saved by the ISPs themselves would be HUGE.
I might agree with you if ATI/AMD would finally get serious about producing drivers that aren't complete crap. Their hardware is fine, but Linux drivers, as well as OpenGL drivers on Windows just plain suck.
It's not just the video drivers. ATI also has a horrible software stack (SDK, runtime, compiler and documentation) for their Stream GPGPU computing architecture, which is why everybody uses NVIDIA and its excellent CUDA. Generally speaking, ATI has excellent hardware, but such hardware is useless if you don't have a matching software to exploit it.
Exactly. I can buy something like THREE Eeepc 900 for a Nokia N900, and I honestly don't think the extra GSM features justify the higher price in the smaller and more fragile packaging.
No, bandwidth hogs normally use file sharing which is implemented with tcp (i. e. bit torrent).
The problem is tcp distributes bandwidth per connection. Someone using more connection gets a bigger part of the available bandwidth.
Much of the load from P2P networks would be immensely reduced if providers started implementing XCAST. But of course that would mean actually expecting the ISPs investing into infrastructure, so I won't hold my breath.
I was an Opera user for several years, even using the "ad-supported" version of their software, because I really liked it.
Nowadays I run firefox. Opera would need to provide the functionality of the following extensions for me:
ScrapBook: Capture pages locally, add comments and remove DOM objects.
Not sure what you mean by 'capture pages' and 'remove DOM objects', but you can (1) save pages as.mht (2) add personal notes to any webpage and (3) block any content.
Stylish: Change CSS of pages you visit
In Opera you can do this at any particular time by editing the (local cache copy of the) remote CSS or HTML file, or programmatically using UserJS (in fact, this is something Opera does already to fix some b0rked sites that send bogus data to Opera).
TinyMenu: Change the menu bar to a single "Menu" button and move the other control bars so that they occupy only one row in the screen.
This is built in Opera 10.
Tree Style Tab: Present tabs in a vertical tree (on the left of the screen).
You can customize the tab bar placement in Opera too, on any of the 4 sides of the screen.
DelIcioUS: Bookmarks
Like adding the delicious bookamrks page to the Opera panel?
DownThemAll: Mass Downloader/Download Manager.
The 'Links' tab in the Opera panel does that pretty well.
PriceDrop: Track amazon and bestbuy price changes and notify about them.
That's probably missing, but it should be straightforward to make an Opera widget for that.
The issue with Opera is that to get the same functionality of Firefox, it will either need to make use of addons/plugins or it will suffer the same fate as Netscape or other browsers who wanted to do everything.
I disagree. The biggest issue with Opera is that people are not informed about all the stuff it can do. This post is an excellent example of it.
The most obvious answers is yes. Unless opera include everything under the kitchen sink, chances are it is missing something that firefox add-ons has to offer. Of course, it's in opera best interest NOT to include every feature (as many conflict). Not to mention the different ways a feature can be approached.
Missing opera features as far as I'm aware of:
No-script ability to easily change javascript on/off based on site.
Easy menu to control greasemonkey scripts (it has the capabilities but it's barried within a few options) unlike a simple icon.
Compact menu: icon to replace menu saving space
Of course, this is specifically stuff that I find missing since i last did a quick check (opera 9 developing a cross-platform greasemonkey script).
Having a specific feature doesn't mean it presented the way a user might like. Hence why you might see duplicates of the same feature for firefox plugins. Nothing wrong with opera method of no addon but that just means only a subset of people will like opera. I'm sure many firefox users who don't use addons or only use a few (of the more common) could easily switch to opera but that doesn't meant everyone will find the switch pleasant.
The problem is that most people are uninformed and unwilling to be informed, pretty much as it was at the beginning for IE vs Firefox. The point about feature presentation is very interesting. I mentioned in another article that there are quite a few points where some of Opera's feature could improve handling-wise, most notably the UserJS handling (equivalent of GreaseMonkey).
As for the other two you mention specifically:
JavaScript toggling: Put a button on one of the bottom toolbar if you're too lazy to go the F12 way. Still faster than installing noscript if all you want is toggling JS on/off.
Also, the iconized menu is available in Opera 10 too, and in fact it was the default in some of the betas but user complained so you now have to enabled it by deselecting File -> Show Menu Bar.
Noscript,CS Lite, Adblock, menu editing features, scrapbook etc... You *could* block ads and control cookies and javascript but it's not nearly so clean as Firefox's addons allow. To me, Opera reminds me of Gnome. Things can be done but it's not really designed to do the job efficiency.
I agree that the accessibility of some features really needs some work. My biggest complain in that regard is wrt the handling of UserJS files, for which you are essentially on your own.
Simple javascript whitelisting (& temporary whitelisting) from a statusbar button. (NoScript)
I don't know about the former, but JS can be quickly enabled/disabled by pressing F12. You can also associate the toggle to a shortcut of your own preference.
I have. It's on my system right now along with Firefox, Konqueror and Chrome. Addons are the critical component in which these other browsers than Firefox are very much behind. I would ditch Firefox in an instant if Chrome or Opera or Konqueror managed to be as flexible as Firefox but they're not... yet.
Most of the features that are provided by add-ons to Firefox are built-in to Opera. Additionally, Opera allows User JavaScript, and even supports GreaseMonkey script. So... is it just a matter of the principle and theory of flexibility, or are you actually missing some specific function that is provided by add-ons in FF and not provided in Opera?
Despite low usage numbers after more than a decade in existence Opera folks continue to spew out features. Good for them but I still won't touch their product.
I wonder why. It's not open source but it's still gratis and technically superior to anything else I've tried.
Huh, weird. I've found HP notebooks I've used (granted, a small sample size) to be extremely durable and reliable (though I probably wouldn't go near HP's desktops). But this was a couple of years ago, did they just slap the HP label on the lousy Compaq ones?
Maybe the latter. Where does the HP Pavilion line come from? The Hitachi-branded hard disk in my HP Pavilion dv5 failed in less than one year.
I use KDE for that. I have a very clean desktop and clutterless panels, launch my apps with Alt+F2 instead of wading through menus, and do most of my stuff in Konsole. (I also have a 'quix' X start up script that doesn't load KDE and only provides me with some bare essential X tools)
Like you, I was extremely skeptical about KDE4.x, so I sticked to KDE3.5 for quite a while, even after the packages were not available anymore in the Debian unstable repositories. However, I have switched to KDE4 in the early days of September, and I must say that I'm rather satisfied. There are still a few bugs and limitation that bite me from time to time, but they are more than compensated by the plethora of new functionality available. (BTW you can set the number of rows in the task manager in 4.3)
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You claim that breeding certain people together will produce "healthier, smarter and stronger" people, yet are offended by other people that think breeding can produce healthier, smarter and stronger people. You are not less racist. You just have a different group that you think is superior. You probably never even noticed that Hitler was not an Aryan.
While you're at it, go have your sarcasm detector checked. In case you fail to find someone to fix it for you in this holiday season, re-read the last paragraph not as a claim but as an additional quip showing how ridiculous genetism is as "scientific" excuse for racism.
In this fox experiment, genes determined both behavior and physical appearance. Intelligence is clearly an element of behavior. We should not shy away from the obvious implications for human evolution.
Humankind would necessarily undergo the same sort of evolutionary changes. We can expect differences in behavior among the different races and ethnic groups. Evolution changed both the color of the skin and the type of behavior. Intelligence is one form of behavior.
The belief that all races and all ethnic groups have identical intelligence and identical levels of violent behavior or passive behavior is simply an assumption -- without proof.
I doubt anybody moderately intelligent would believe that all ethnic groups have "identical intelligence" or "identical levels of violent behavior or passive behavior", considering how not even within the same ethnic group you can find "identical intelligence" or "identical levels of etc", due to the substantial influence of things such as culture, education and personal and communal experience. Differences are indeed easily spotted within the same ethnic group in communities not distant from each other (think "Athens vs Sparta"; north vs south differences can easily be spotted in many countries, or across the border, even though you'd find the same ethnic group in both sides).
Secondly, the experiments show that selecting particular attitudinal aspects results in a secondary selection of particular aesthetic characteristics, but it says nothing about the converse being true too. In other words: if they selected the animals due to some particular (set of) aesthetic characteristics, would they also get a secondary selection on particular attitudinal aspects?
Finally, any form of 'group profiling' serves no actual practical purpose other than stereotyping and fueling discrimination, whose only effect is to render life harder for individuals, giving weight to the stereotyped group characteristics over the actual individual capabilities.
Before asking whether there is an actual correlation between ethnicity (which BTW is a rather fuzzy concept) and behavior, I would ask who is interested in knowing, and most importantlywhy are they interested in knowing.
I consider it rather funny, in a grotesque kind of way, that usually these information is sought after by 'supremacists' looking for a scientific proof of their belief that their group is superior to any other group (either in general, or for some specific objectives or positions, such as world domination or aristogracy). And I find it funny because their "purity" crapola is easily overturned by the simple observation that cross-breeds are most of the times healthier, smarter and stronger.
Krusader is indeed the best candidate to try and get something to the level of TC, but it really needs a lot of work. I really wish I had the time to grab the codebase and start hammering on those rough edges ...
OpenCL isn't ALL that close either to CUDA or anything from AMD (CAL, Brook+). The status quo with AMD is that the OpenCL implementation they have is very immature e.g. doesn't support a lot of fairly basic and highly desirable OpenCL "extensions" (actually it didn't support ANY until about 2 days ago, and now they're just beta testing a few of the most rudimentary ones). Additionally there are still lots of issues with missing / unclear documentation, missing features, bugs, development / runtime platform portability issues, et. al. Most significantly, the openCL performance is still a fraction of the performance commonly achievable with Brook+ or CAL in many common scenarios on the AMD platform. This is sometimes / often true for their 58xx series boards, and pervasively so for their older 4xxx series cards (which by architectural limitations as well as by lack of planned OpenCl development toolchain support / optimization will never really perform well with OpenCL).
On the NVIDIA side, CUDA performance and usage flexibility is still typically and substantially higher than is achievable via OpenCL, since obviously CUDA exists to fairly optimally exploit their GPU architectural capabilities whereas OpenCL is a generic GPU-vendor / architecture "neutral" platform that doesn't give as much card specific control as CUDA (or CAL in AMD's case).
I do wonder how much this is because of OpenCL being vendor-neutral and thus 'far' from the underlying architecture, and how much it depends on the quality of the compilers. I suspect that NVIDIA does not have much of an interest in optimizing their OpenCL compiler as much as they do with their CUDA compiler, for the obvious reason that with CUDA they have vendor lock-in and can sell more hardware, whereas with OpenCL there is the (remote) possibility that a better compiler from ATI might lead people to look at the other hardware more.
I think Cuda was first out there, later on OpenCL occurred.
Yes and no. CUDA and CTM/Brook+/FireStream came to live more or less at the same time when NVIDIA and ATI realized that GPGPU (General Purpose computing on the GPU) was getting traction in the scientific computing world (originally implemented using OpenGL and shaders).
OpenCL was essentially an effort (by Apple first and foremost, although obviously with cooperation from both NVIDIA and ATI) to get a standardized interface to SIMD multicore programming. It's actually quite close to low-level CUDA programming, although I'm not sure how close it is to the ATI solution (I've tried going through the ATI docs a couple of time, but their stuff is absolutely abysmal when compared to the NVIDIA docs and SDKs, sadly).
I'm surprised these open source project haven't implemented the open source microblogging standard put forth by status.net (former laconi.ca). Its ability to handle cross-site microblogging is rather interesting and more appropriate for these platforms, IMO.
Plants are the most efficient at collecting solar energy.
I'm not sure that's the case, but what plants are, is cheap.
-jcr
Everything is cheap until everybody starts collecting it.
I can buy a cellphone and an Eee PC and the combined price will still be about half that of an N900 (if not less). What exactly justifies the pricing in the N900?
Nothing, if you don't mind carrying a netbook around anyway, or woult have to do it because the smartphone is not convenient enough. But as you have modified your value comparison in the middle of the argument, your point have become much clearer.
Yeah, your analogy did work in making me realize that pointing out that the difference was just in the presence of the GSM module was a little too implicit to understand WHY the N900 is grossly overpriced.
A better analogy would be: it's like complaining about the fact that a hammer with an embedded screwdriver costs more than three times a (bigger) hammer.
The key point is that the 'added benefit' is not worth the cost. I can buy a cellphone and an Eee PC and the combined price will still be about half that of an N900 (if not less). What exactly justifies the pricing in the N900?
> Much of the load from P2P networks would be immensely reduced if providers started implementing XCAST Actually much of the load from P2P networks would be immensely reduced if: 1) providers wouldn't get sued for running special P2P Auto caching seeders that detect P2P traffic from their customers and automatically start downloading and then seeding stuff on their networks. 2) The providers can then throttle any P2P traffic to/fro their network from/to the rest of the internet that's not to/from their caching seeders. Their customers wouldn't care because they still get fast connections from the caching seeders. I think the technology is already there (some/all implemented already), the laws in most countries just don't make it viable ;).
P2P software can already rely on the proxying capabilities of the providers (see eMuleXT webcache feature) in a content-agnostic, non-sueable way, but the benefits from this are rather limited in scope (ISP-local, sometimes even ISP+geolocation local). Proper XCAST support from the ISPs and from the clients would be most content could be distributed with an extremely small bandwidth usage, across the whole network.
Think about it: 100 clients request a chunk, you send it once, and it travels as a single chunk for much of its lifetime, getting duplicated in a rather small number of chunks only a specific, limited number of points.
The amount of bandwidth saved by the ISPs themselves would be HUGE.
I might agree with you if ATI/AMD would finally get serious about producing drivers that aren't complete crap. Their hardware is fine, but Linux drivers, as well as OpenGL drivers on Windows just plain suck.
It's not just the video drivers. ATI also has a horrible software stack (SDK, runtime, compiler and documentation) for their Stream GPGPU computing architecture, which is why everybody uses NVIDIA and its excellent CUDA. Generally speaking, ATI has excellent hardware, but such hardware is useless if you don't have a matching software to exploit it.
No. It's because they cost hundreds of dollars.
Exactly. I can buy something like THREE Eeepc 900 for a Nokia N900, and I honestly don't think the extra GSM features justify the higher price in the smaller and more fragile packaging.
No, bandwidth hogs normally use file sharing which is implemented with tcp (i. e. bit torrent).
The problem is tcp distributes bandwidth per connection. Someone using more connection gets a bigger part of the available bandwidth.
Much of the load from P2P networks would be immensely reduced if providers started implementing XCAST. But of course that would mean actually expecting the ISPs investing into infrastructure, so I won't hold my breath.
I was an Opera user for several years, even using the "ad-supported" version of their software, because I really liked it.
Nowadays I run firefox. Opera would need to provide the functionality of the following extensions for me:
ScrapBook: Capture pages locally, add comments and remove DOM objects.
Not sure what you mean by 'capture pages' and 'remove DOM objects', but you can (1) save pages as .mht (2) add personal notes to any webpage and (3) block any content.
Stylish: Change CSS of pages you visit
In Opera you can do this at any particular time by editing the (local cache copy of the) remote CSS or HTML file, or programmatically using UserJS (in fact, this is something Opera does already to fix some b0rked sites that send bogus data to Opera).
TinyMenu: Change the menu bar to a single "Menu" button and move the other control bars so that they occupy only one row in the screen.
This is built in Opera 10.
Tree Style Tab: Present tabs in a vertical tree (on the left of the screen).
You can customize the tab bar placement in Opera too, on any of the 4 sides of the screen.
DelIcioUS: Bookmarks
Like adding the delicious bookamrks page to the Opera panel?
DownThemAll: Mass Downloader/Download Manager.
The 'Links' tab in the Opera panel does that pretty well.
PriceDrop: Track amazon and bestbuy price changes and notify about them.
That's probably missing, but it should be straightforward to make an Opera widget for that.
The issue with Opera is that to get the same functionality of Firefox, it will either need to make use of addons/plugins or it will suffer the same fate as Netscape or other browsers who wanted to do everything.
I disagree. The biggest issue with Opera is that people are not informed about all the stuff it can do. This post is an excellent example of it.
and 3) DragonFly is an excellent replacement for firebug
The most obvious answers is yes. Unless opera include everything under the kitchen sink, chances are it is missing something that firefox add-ons has to offer. Of course, it's in opera best interest NOT to include every feature (as many conflict). Not to mention the different ways a feature can be approached.
Missing opera features as far as I'm aware of: No-script ability to easily change javascript on/off based on site. Easy menu to control greasemonkey scripts (it has the capabilities but it's barried within a few options) unlike a simple icon. Compact menu: icon to replace menu saving space
Of course, this is specifically stuff that I find missing since i last did a quick check (opera 9 developing a cross-platform greasemonkey script).
Having a specific feature doesn't mean it presented the way a user might like. Hence why you might see duplicates of the same feature for firefox plugins. Nothing wrong with opera method of no addon but that just means only a subset of people will like opera. I'm sure many firefox users who don't use addons or only use a few (of the more common) could easily switch to opera but that doesn't meant everyone will find the switch pleasant.
The problem is that most people are uninformed and unwilling to be informed, pretty much as it was at the beginning for IE vs Firefox. The point about feature presentation is very interesting. I mentioned in another article that there are quite a few points where some of Opera's feature could improve handling-wise, most notably the UserJS handling (equivalent of GreaseMonkey).
As for the other two you mention specifically:
JavaScript toggling: Put a button on one of the bottom toolbar if you're too lazy to go the F12 way. Still faster than installing noscript if all you want is toggling JS on/off.
Also, the iconized menu is available in Opera 10 too, and in fact it was the default in some of the betas but user complained so you now have to enabled it by deselecting File -> Show Menu Bar.
next question
Noscript,CS Lite, Adblock, menu editing features, scrapbook etc... You *could* block ads and control cookies and javascript but it's not nearly so clean as Firefox's addons allow. To me, Opera reminds me of Gnome. Things can be done but it's not really designed to do the job efficiency.
I agree that the accessibility of some features really needs some work. My biggest complain in that regard is wrt the handling of UserJS files, for which you are essentially on your own.
I don't know about the former, but JS can be quickly enabled/disabled by pressing F12. You can also associate the toggle to a shortcut of your own preference.
I have. It's on my system right now along with Firefox, Konqueror and Chrome. Addons are the critical component in which these other browsers than Firefox are very much behind. I would ditch Firefox in an instant if Chrome or Opera or Konqueror managed to be as flexible as Firefox but they're not... yet.
Most of the features that are provided by add-ons to Firefox are built-in to Opera. Additionally, Opera allows User JavaScript, and even supports GreaseMonkey script. So ... is it just a matter of the principle and theory of flexibility, or are you actually missing some specific function that is provided by add-ons in FF and not provided in Opera?
Despite low usage numbers after more than a decade in existence Opera folks continue to spew out features. Good for them but I still won't touch their product.
I wonder why. It's not open source but it's still gratis and technically superior to anything else I've tried.
I'm not aware of ANY welfare state that is in good shape economically.
Sweden and Norway come to mind.
Huh, weird. I've found HP notebooks I've used (granted, a small sample size) to be extremely durable and reliable (though I probably wouldn't go near HP's desktops). But this was a couple of years ago, did they just slap the HP label on the lousy Compaq ones?
Maybe the latter. Where does the HP Pavilion line come from? The Hitachi-branded hard disk in my HP Pavilion dv5 failed in less than one year.
I use KDE for that. I have a very clean desktop and clutterless panels, launch my apps with Alt+F2 instead of wading through menus, and do most of my stuff in Konsole. (I also have a 'quix' X start up script that doesn't load KDE and only provides me with some bare essential X tools)
Like you, I was extremely skeptical about KDE4.x, so I sticked to KDE3.5 for quite a while, even after the packages were not available anymore in the Debian unstable repositories. However, I have switched to KDE4 in the early days of September, and I must say that I'm rather satisfied. There are still a few bugs and limitation that bite me from time to time, but they are more than compensated by the plethora of new functionality available. (BTW you can set the number of rows in the task manager in 4.3)