seems to get eaten up by slow response and flakiness for users, network issues, web server issues, browser issues, and security issues.
All of which are every bit as problematic for standalone apps -- except browser issues, and you can always mandate that everyone install Firefox.
the quality of browser-based apps seems to be worse than the already pretty dismal quality of enterprise desktop apps.
Meh. Correlation, causation, etc...
I'll argue that it's still possible to build a good browser-based app on a similar budget as a good desktop app. On top of which, you get portability, the back button / a tabbed UI, easier maintainability (patch everyone at once), and thin-client goodness (your computer's down? Borrow a friend's), all pretty much for free.
The only technical advantages of a desktop app are performance (browser-based CAD is pretty primitive) and the ability to work offline. The former isn't usually needed -- premature optimization is the root of all evil, and unless you're really talking about CAD, the browser should be fast enough. And the latter is neatly solved with Google Gears, or possibly Adobe Air.
Because they shouldn't have to spend much time -- design it properly, and it should just work on any browser that does a good job with standard HTML.
And because if you do test on all browsers, you'll end up with a more robust app -- not just against those versions, but against future versions. For example, if you only developed for Firefox and IE, you might easily be relying on a bug common to Firefox and IE.
Largest isn't necessarily best. Google, in particular, uses browser detection and sends completely different script depending on browser.
A very basic first rule is, if it's possible to do so, either detect features, or gracefully degrade -- don't detect whole browsers, as you might then be thrown off by something as simple as Iceweasel vs Firefox.
It's also entirely possible that they've found (and are using) features which aren't standard across all browsers. However, nonstandard stuff is the exception, not the rule, especially when you're using a Javascript library to abstract it a bit.
Main reason I prefer Ditz is that it's written in Ruby. And as I've already needed to extend it, I can say with some confidence that this actually matters. Not that Python is bad, I just prefer Ruby, and I'm a language snob.
Also, a quick glance at the BE webpage:
Supported version control backends: Arch, Bazaar, GIT, Mercurial, RCS
Ditz just uses plain Yaml. It is completely VCS-agnostic. You can add hooks to auto-add/commit, to make life easier -- these are trivial, only a few lines of code to implement. But they aren't required at all.
Perhaps BE is like this, but the mention of specific VCS backends makes me suspect it's not.
Not necessarily Slashdot specifically, but you'll find it here as often as elsewhere -- people spouting all sorts of opinions with no basis in fact. Occasionally, you'll find that not only do they not have any actual statistics or facts to back up their position, nor does their opponent, but in fact, no one does.
That would probably be an interesting place to start your research.
Can't think of anything right now, though. I suppose you could start with my post, here -- am I completely full of shit, or are there interesting research projects hidden in Slashdot comments?
Probably the biggest irritation for me wasn't figuring out which bugs depend on which -- I'd always have some I know I have to work on. Bugs blocking anything critical get bumped up in priority, so I, as a programmer, don't have to think too hard.
So, sure, a dependency system would be great. Trac-style linking is essential, anyway, for humans to refer to one commit or another.
But, what's been interesting me lately are things like Ditz, which stores issues as yaml files which can be easily managed through version control. Combine with a distributed VCS like Git, and you have a system where the exact change which resolves the issue can also close it in the tracker. Thus, it's easy to find exactly which bugs are outstanding for any given build.
Huh?? So how come all these FOSS programs read MP3s without a worry?
One of:
- You already clicked through the license warning that downloaded the plugin which enables the functionality. Amarok does this when you first try to play an MP3.
- You purchased a legitimate plugin, directly or indirectly. Ubuntu on Dell comes preloaded with the Fluendo codecs.
- You installed something like Medibuntu. Just about everything supported, all with FOSS, but not even close to legal in the US. Some other countries don't honor US patents, though, so it's provided for people in those countries -- but the download mirrors, wherever they actually are, certainly don't restrict US connections.
- You installed it on an OS where you already have the codecs in some standard form, and the software just used that.
However, it presents problems when you actually want to build something both open and legitimate. For example, say you want to build an iPhone killer. You can legally port Linux, and Firefox, and everything else. But as soon as you want to play MP3s, you'll have to pay a license, and incorporate that proprietary plugin into your app -- raising the price of your device, and making it that much more closed.
The situation is similar for DVDs, by the way. Even assuming no patents -- and I believe mpeg2 is patented -- the DMCA makes the process of playing a DVD with FOSS illegal. The best you can do and stay legal is to pay $60 or $70 for the Fluendo codecs, which includes DVD playback, IIRC.
No really, abundant evidence of ongoing innovation in the presence of the patent system proves my point - people aren't trying to build better mousetraps.
First: The drives are likely optimized for FAT32. I would not be surprised if they contained very specific optimizations based on knowledge of the internal FAT datastructures.
Second: JFFS2 requires that you actually be able to access the flash device, not some mass storage layer on top of it. And isn't there something newer anyway?
No matter how much RAM you give Windows, it will still page. It's to the point where people make ramdisks to put pagefiles on.
Not that I should talk... I have 1 gig of swap on Linux, and I'm thinking I could use more. Why? Because I have 4 gigs of RAM, and if I'm actually using even half of that, I can't hibernate.
The best I can give you is hear-say -- I know someone who worked at our community radio station, and they did listening tests. MP3 is definitely the worst of current-gen codecs -- mostly because it's not a current-gen codec, it's a last-gen codec that people can't seem to let go.
So, Vorbis definitely sounds better, at the same bitrate.
I can't speak to CPU. At the time it was developed, it used a lot of CPU -- the name "ogg" came from the brute-force techniques that were used, which pushed that 486 hardware to the limit.
Did I mention, 486 hardware?
Oh, by the way: You're thinking Vorbis, not Ogg. Ogg is a container format. You could just as easily put an mp3 stream in there, or put a vorbis stream in an mkv.
And the donation was not just Ogg, but also Vorbis, Theora (video), and others.
I would say, if ogg became as successful as png, I'd be happy. Right now, png is successful enough that I can use it in a website, and every browser will support it. Even if plenty of people still use gif, or even jpeg inappropriately (for images that compress well). And then you have the brand-new applications -- HD-DVD seemed to prefer PNG images for the menus.
Why do we care that the MP3 has patents and all that? What does it do?
Makes it impossible to support them directly in any open source software, for one thing -- Firefox included.
Yes, you can write a generic API, then write third party plugins that supply them, and distribute those plugins in countries which don't honor US patents, and download them illegally in the US. But then you will have no legal download of Firefox for the Windows users who just want to download it and play.
Also, I was developing a music website. It was not an ideological one, or at least, not software-wise -- though I fought it, we eventually ended up going to an all-Flash widget to play the songs. But we would have had to pay outrageous fees to re-encode all the music in MP3, and we'd suddenly have to think about licensing, whereas with other codecs, we can just fire up as many EC2 instances as we want.
Also, MP3 sound quality sucks compared to just about everything else. Since the average customer still thinks in terms of "mp3 player", moving to wma or aac is just as big a leap for them, so why not vorbis or flac instead?
Web site operators need to be able to embed OGG video and audio clips, knowing that it will "just work" on Mozilla, and that IE it's only a couple of clicks away.
Kind of like how it is right now.
If it's successful enough, then Microsoft might replace the plugin with built-in functionality.
Like with PNG... but I wonder what made them do that?
They really want Silverlight to take over.
That might address why IE's web standards support sucks so much. I doubt IE will ever natively support things like the HTML5 video or audio tags.
But, I don't see the direct connection with ogg. There isn't even a direct connection between ogg and png -- ogg is a container format, which supports all kinds of formats, free or otherwise -- you're probably thinking of vorbis and theora.
Or maybe other companies could license this engine.
That relies on the good grace of whoever invented it. Look at the way Apple has locked down the App Store -- I don't really trust them to be reasonable, here. Nor do I implicitly trust any inventor to be reasonable.
Conceivable, you could even have small engine motor shops, that would invest on designing innovative engines, only to license them to big manufacturing companies.
We already have trade secret laws and NDAs. Why aren't these enough?
I bet if you looked equally hard, you'd find example where the competing companies developed more effective and more efficient workarounds.
Point is, with no patent system, people will still always be trying to build the better mousetrap, the more effective and more efficient workarounds. Just look at open source -- there's nothing really stopping people from just picking GNOME or KDE, but instead, they compete, each always trying to develop more effective systems than the other.
All the patent system does is remove choice -- and sometimes, the choice it removes is really the best choice.
And again, I would point to this paper which I can't remember -- the steam engine would have been invented one way or another. It's not as if you couldn't sell it, even if others are reproducing it. If you're thinking of the little guy who gets ripped off by a corporation, make sure you make them sign an agreement ahead of time -- but if you're that corporation, being first to market will give you a lot of advantage.
Either way, it's something that's worth thinking about seriously -- how can we be sure the research will be done? How can you protect an investment without a patent? Because the world will be better off if we can answer those questions.
If a doctor told me that he was giving me a drug that would help me in 15 years but could not tell me what it would do to me next week--I would not take it.
The planet is a lot bigger, and this change happens a lot slower, than in your body. If your doctor couldn't tell you what would happen every minute of the day until tomorrow, only the overall effect by tomorrow, would you still take it?
Of course you would. Unless you're told outright that it might kill you in the next two minutes -- we know that things will change within certain parameters, over a certain length of time.
Another example would be a sedative. Your doctor probably couldn't tell you, moment by moment, how you will feel after taking it. If you take it and then see something particularly funny, you might laugh hard enough to feel quite awake, before relaxing and feeling sleepy. All he can tell you is that, eventually, it will put you to sleep -- and even then, that's only a "probably", as it's still technically possible you could stay awake, or that it could have the opposite effect -- I know people who claim caffeine makes them sleepy, for instance.
Please post a link to the bug report that you filed so that I can help triage it. Thanks.
I suppose, being unemployed now, I have less of an excuse not to file bug reports.
But understand, so much was broken in 4.0 and 4.1 that reporting bugs could be a full-time job. I realize this might be unique to my hardware, or to my setup -- but it was one thing, after another, after another. It's not an exaggeration to say daily WTF, here. Today's WTF is, why can't kde3 apps connect to the kde4 kdewallet? Kubuntu seems to have "solved" this problem by castrating kdewallet support right out of kde3 apps -- which is really frustrating, for things like networkmanager.
I mean, the API is, what, a hash table? How hard can it be? It's not like we're trying to embed a whole browser plugin...
Another WTF: At some point, I had a USB sound device plugged in. Solid chose to inform me -- in a gigantic message, which covers up the entire system tray, and can't be closed except by waiting a few seconds -- and on every single boot -- that it couldn't initialize this device which I had plugged in for one evening. I had to manually open the config file and remove the entries for that card -- but I would like that card to work, if I plug it in again.
Another: My soundcard, at one point, lacked a "master" volume control in ALSA. Now it has one. Despite this, I still cannot get the volume keys to work. The closest I got was volume keys working for the PCM control (not Master), yet the display was of the Master control, so the display was broken, and it would control the volume of the video, but not the rest of the system -- one beep from the system could be deafening.
Another: No bluetooth support in Kubuntu. I know it's Kubuntu's fault -- but there you go, how do I determine who's fault it is?
Another: The font spacing/size in Konsole changed, with no way I could find of changing it back.
Another: Can't flatten out the clock. I want it to display the date and time on the same line, and stretch out, so I can make the panel even smaller.
Another: When typing in alt+f2, pressing enter launches whatever the cursor was on at that point, rather than finishing the search first. This means that if I type too fast, even if I know there is only one possible completion for something (example: kons should launch konsole, whereas konq should launch konqueror), I might get konqueror instead of konsole, or vice versa, simply because it took the results for a search on "kon" before I typed the last character. Only workaround is to pause for a second or so after typing, to make sure it gets the right one, or type the full name each time.
I can do this all day.
I did occasionally track down some of them and found they'd been reported. Not all of that matters -- I realize Amarok is a separate project, but the problem now is, the old version is depricated, and the new version isn't done. (I know it's released. It's not done.) So bugs against the old version will be marked "wontfix", for that reason -- meaning there is, for the moment, no working version of Amarok, for some of the things I want to do.
Slashdot Mirror
seems to get eaten up by slow response and flakiness for users, network issues, web server issues, browser issues, and security issues.
All of which are every bit as problematic for standalone apps -- except browser issues, and you can always mandate that everyone install Firefox.
the quality of browser-based apps seems to be worse than the already pretty dismal quality of enterprise desktop apps.
Meh. Correlation, causation, etc...
I'll argue that it's still possible to build a good browser-based app on a similar budget as a good desktop app. On top of which, you get portability, the back button / a tabbed UI, easier maintainability (patch everyone at once), and thin-client goodness (your computer's down? Borrow a friend's), all pretty much for free.
The only technical advantages of a desktop app are performance (browser-based CAD is pretty primitive) and the ability to work offline. The former isn't usually needed -- premature optimization is the root of all evil, and unless you're really talking about CAD, the browser should be fast enough. And the latter is neatly solved with Google Gears, or possibly Adobe Air.
Because they shouldn't have to spend much time -- design it properly, and it should just work on any browser that does a good job with standard HTML.
And because if you do test on all browsers, you'll end up with a more robust app -- not just against those versions, but against future versions. For example, if you only developed for Firefox and IE, you might easily be relying on a bug common to Firefox and IE.
Largest isn't necessarily best. Google, in particular, uses browser detection and sends completely different script depending on browser.
A very basic first rule is, if it's possible to do so, either detect features, or gracefully degrade -- don't detect whole browsers, as you might then be thrown off by something as simple as Iceweasel vs Firefox.
It's also entirely possible that they've found (and are using) features which aren't standard across all browsers. However, nonstandard stuff is the exception, not the rule, especially when you're using a Javascript library to abstract it a bit.
Main reason I prefer Ditz is that it's written in Ruby. And as I've already needed to extend it, I can say with some confidence that this actually matters. Not that Python is bad, I just prefer Ruby, and I'm a language snob.
Also, a quick glance at the BE webpage:
Supported version control backends: Arch, Bazaar, GIT, Mercurial, RCS
Ditz just uses plain Yaml. It is completely VCS-agnostic. You can add hooks to auto-add/commit, to make life easier -- these are trivial, only a few lines of code to implement. But they aren't required at all.
Perhaps BE is like this, but the mention of specific VCS backends makes me suspect it's not.
Not necessarily Slashdot specifically, but you'll find it here as often as elsewhere -- people spouting all sorts of opinions with no basis in fact. Occasionally, you'll find that not only do they not have any actual statistics or facts to back up their position, nor does their opponent, but in fact, no one does.
That would probably be an interesting place to start your research.
Can't think of anything right now, though. I suppose you could start with my post, here -- am I completely full of shit, or are there interesting research projects hidden in Slashdot comments?
Probably the biggest irritation for me wasn't figuring out which bugs depend on which -- I'd always have some I know I have to work on. Bugs blocking anything critical get bumped up in priority, so I, as a programmer, don't have to think too hard.
So, sure, a dependency system would be great. Trac-style linking is essential, anyway, for humans to refer to one commit or another.
But, what's been interesting me lately are things like Ditz, which stores issues as yaml files which can be easily managed through version control. Combine with a distributed VCS like Git, and you have a system where the exact change which resolves the issue can also close it in the tracker. Thus, it's easy to find exactly which bugs are outstanding for any given build.
Huh?? So how come all these FOSS programs read MP3s without a worry?
One of:
- You already clicked through the license warning that downloaded the plugin which enables the functionality. Amarok does this when you first try to play an MP3.
- You purchased a legitimate plugin, directly or indirectly. Ubuntu on Dell comes preloaded with the Fluendo codecs.
- You installed something like Medibuntu. Just about everything supported, all with FOSS, but not even close to legal in the US. Some other countries don't honor US patents, though, so it's provided for people in those countries -- but the download mirrors, wherever they actually are, certainly don't restrict US connections.
- You installed it on an OS where you already have the codecs in some standard form, and the software just used that.
However, it presents problems when you actually want to build something both open and legitimate. For example, say you want to build an iPhone killer. You can legally port Linux, and Firefox, and everything else. But as soon as you want to play MP3s, you'll have to pay a license, and incorporate that proprietary plugin into your app -- raising the price of your device, and making it that much more closed.
The situation is similar for DVDs, by the way. Even assuming no patents -- and I believe mpeg2 is patented -- the DMCA makes the process of playing a DVD with FOSS illegal. The best you can do and stay legal is to pay $60 or $70 for the Fluendo codecs, which includes DVD playback, IIRC.
No really, abundant evidence of ongoing innovation in the presence of the patent system proves my point - people aren't trying to build better mousetraps.
I didn't say that. Try reading my post again.
First: The drives are likely optimized for FAT32. I would not be surprised if they contained very specific optimizations based on knowledge of the internal FAT datastructures.
Second: JFFS2 requires that you actually be able to access the flash device, not some mass storage layer on top of it. And isn't there something newer anyway?
But likely not due to disk. If I remember, that was a heavily CPU-bound process.
So, what is it now? Random Assortment of Independent Datastores?
No matter how much RAM you give Windows, it will still page. It's to the point where people make ramdisks to put pagefiles on.
Not that I should talk... I have 1 gig of swap on Linux, and I'm thinking I could use more. Why? Because I have 4 gigs of RAM, and if I'm actually using even half of that, I can't hibernate.
The best I can give you is hear-say -- I know someone who worked at our community radio station, and they did listening tests. MP3 is definitely the worst of current-gen codecs -- mostly because it's not a current-gen codec, it's a last-gen codec that people can't seem to let go.
So, Vorbis definitely sounds better, at the same bitrate.
I can't speak to CPU. At the time it was developed, it used a lot of CPU -- the name "ogg" came from the brute-force techniques that were used, which pushed that 486 hardware to the limit.
Did I mention, 486 hardware?
Oh, by the way: You're thinking Vorbis, not Ogg. Ogg is a container format. You could just as easily put an mp3 stream in there, or put a vorbis stream in an mkv.
And the donation was not just Ogg, but also Vorbis, Theora (video), and others.
I would say, if ogg became as successful as png, I'd be happy. Right now, png is successful enough that I can use it in a website, and every browser will support it. Even if plenty of people still use gif, or even jpeg inappropriately (for images that compress well). And then you have the brand-new applications -- HD-DVD seemed to prefer PNG images for the menus.
Why do we care that the MP3 has patents and all that? What does it do?
Makes it impossible to support them directly in any open source software, for one thing -- Firefox included.
Yes, you can write a generic API, then write third party plugins that supply them, and distribute those plugins in countries which don't honor US patents, and download them illegally in the US. But then you will have no legal download of Firefox for the Windows users who just want to download it and play.
Also, I was developing a music website. It was not an ideological one, or at least, not software-wise -- though I fought it, we eventually ended up going to an all-Flash widget to play the songs. But we would have had to pay outrageous fees to re-encode all the music in MP3, and we'd suddenly have to think about licensing, whereas with other codecs, we can just fire up as many EC2 instances as we want.
Also, MP3 sound quality sucks compared to just about everything else. Since the average customer still thinks in terms of "mp3 player", moving to wma or aac is just as big a leap for them, so why not vorbis or flac instead?
Web site operators need to be able to embed OGG video and audio clips, knowing that it will "just work" on Mozilla, and that IE it's only a couple of clicks away.
Kind of like how it is right now.
If it's successful enough, then Microsoft might replace the plugin with built-in functionality.
Like with PNG... but I wonder what made them do that?
They really want Silverlight to take over.
That might address why IE's web standards support sucks so much. I doubt IE will ever natively support things like the HTML5 video or audio tags.
But, I don't see the direct connection with ogg. There isn't even a direct connection between ogg and png -- ogg is a container format, which supports all kinds of formats, free or otherwise -- you're probably thinking of vorbis and theora.
And this is different from (for example) the GPL, how?
Because a license means I have to rewrite it from scratch if I don't like the GPL.
A patent means even if I do rewrite it from scratch, it's illegal because it does the same thing, and close enough to the same way.
Apple is the one that spent a cock load of time and money developing the hardware and software designs to make this work after all!
And they have gained a cock load of reward for it, all without the aid of a patent. The iPhone got where it is, without the need for any patents.
Why should they be able to continue to monopolize the market, and/or collect a free check, for the next 20 years because of this?
In the browser, sure. But where can I provide a downloadable Javascript app?
What if I want to write my own?
However, the purpose of the patent system is for the greater good, not for making money.
And the purpose of the capitalist system is, at least theoretically, that it brings greater good, not so that we can have a few wealthy people.
Or maybe other companies could license this engine.
That relies on the good grace of whoever invented it. Look at the way Apple has locked down the App Store -- I don't really trust them to be reasonable, here. Nor do I implicitly trust any inventor to be reasonable.
Conceivable, you could even have small engine motor shops, that would invest on designing innovative engines, only to license them to big manufacturing companies.
We already have trade secret laws and NDAs. Why aren't these enough?
I bet if you looked equally hard, you'd find example where the competing companies developed more effective and more efficient workarounds.
Point is, with no patent system, people will still always be trying to build the better mousetrap, the more effective and more efficient workarounds. Just look at open source -- there's nothing really stopping people from just picking GNOME or KDE, but instead, they compete, each always trying to develop more effective systems than the other.
All the patent system does is remove choice -- and sometimes, the choice it removes is really the best choice.
their sole motivation for doing that research is that they can sell their findings to engine manufacturers using the patent system as protection.
Why not sell their findings to engine manufacturers using trade secret laws and NDAs as protection?
I would say, yes.
And again, I would point to this paper which I can't remember -- the steam engine would have been invented one way or another. It's not as if you couldn't sell it, even if others are reproducing it. If you're thinking of the little guy who gets ripped off by a corporation, make sure you make them sign an agreement ahead of time -- but if you're that corporation, being first to market will give you a lot of advantage.
Either way, it's something that's worth thinking about seriously -- how can we be sure the research will be done? How can you protect an investment without a patent? Because the world will be better off if we can answer those questions.
If a doctor told me that he was giving me a drug that would help me in 15 years but could not tell me what it would do to me next week--I would not take it.
The planet is a lot bigger, and this change happens a lot slower, than in your body. If your doctor couldn't tell you what would happen every minute of the day until tomorrow, only the overall effect by tomorrow, would you still take it?
Of course you would. Unless you're told outright that it might kill you in the next two minutes -- we know that things will change within certain parameters, over a certain length of time.
Another example would be a sedative. Your doctor probably couldn't tell you, moment by moment, how you will feel after taking it. If you take it and then see something particularly funny, you might laugh hard enough to feel quite awake, before relaxing and feeling sleepy. All he can tell you is that, eventually, it will put you to sleep -- and even then, that's only a "probably", as it's still technically possible you could stay awake, or that it could have the opposite effect -- I know people who claim caffeine makes them sleepy, for instance.
Volcano's and Asteroids have put *way* more heat out than the atomic explosions we humans have set off.
Only because we've had relative peace between atomic-capable nations. We have more than enough firepower to sterilize the planet, several times.
Please post a link to the bug report that you filed so that I can help triage it. Thanks.
I suppose, being unemployed now, I have less of an excuse not to file bug reports.
But understand, so much was broken in 4.0 and 4.1 that reporting bugs could be a full-time job. I realize this might be unique to my hardware, or to my setup -- but it was one thing, after another, after another. It's not an exaggeration to say daily WTF, here. Today's WTF is, why can't kde3 apps connect to the kde4 kdewallet? Kubuntu seems to have "solved" this problem by castrating kdewallet support right out of kde3 apps -- which is really frustrating, for things like networkmanager.
I mean, the API is, what, a hash table? How hard can it be? It's not like we're trying to embed a whole browser plugin...
Another WTF: At some point, I had a USB sound device plugged in. Solid chose to inform me -- in a gigantic message, which covers up the entire system tray, and can't be closed except by waiting a few seconds -- and on every single boot -- that it couldn't initialize this device which I had plugged in for one evening. I had to manually open the config file and remove the entries for that card -- but I would like that card to work, if I plug it in again.
Another: My soundcard, at one point, lacked a "master" volume control in ALSA. Now it has one. Despite this, I still cannot get the volume keys to work. The closest I got was volume keys working for the PCM control (not Master), yet the display was of the Master control, so the display was broken, and it would control the volume of the video, but not the rest of the system -- one beep from the system could be deafening.
Another: No bluetooth support in Kubuntu. I know it's Kubuntu's fault -- but there you go, how do I determine who's fault it is?
Another: The font spacing/size in Konsole changed, with no way I could find of changing it back.
Another: Can't flatten out the clock. I want it to display the date and time on the same line, and stretch out, so I can make the panel even smaller.
Another: When typing in alt+f2, pressing enter launches whatever the cursor was on at that point, rather than finishing the search first. This means that if I type too fast, even if I know there is only one possible completion for something (example: kons should launch konsole, whereas konq should launch konqueror), I might get konqueror instead of konsole, or vice versa, simply because it took the results for a search on "kon" before I typed the last character. Only workaround is to pause for a second or so after typing, to make sure it gets the right one, or type the full name each time.
I can do this all day.
I did occasionally track down some of them and found they'd been reported. Not all of that matters -- I realize Amarok is a separate project, but the problem now is, the old version is depricated, and the new version isn't done. (I know it's released. It's not done.) So bugs against the old version will be marked "wontfix", for that reason -- meaning there is, for the moment, no working version of Amarok, for some of the things I want to do.