Whilst a lot of effort is going into KDE 4.x, the 3.5 line still seems to be worked on.
Actually, they have a point. It has little to do with KDE, but with the Qt 3.x series, which has been discontinued and is basically unmaintained. Noone has stepped up to maintain it, and thus distributors are loath to carry packages that depends on qt 3.5. kdelibs4 (aka kde 3) are still maintained, but in bugfixing mode.
As an agnostic, I am offended by your sig. Agnosticism is not the absence of anything, it's the realization that not everything is knowable. Do you know what happened before the Big Bang or what dark matter is? No? Then why haven't you decided?
Relax, it's a joke. Hey, I'm agnostic (and atheistic), too! The joke, like all good jokes, have a true core, too:) Being indecisive is sometimes a good thing, if and only if we have no evidence or too little evidence to sway our opinion one way or the other. Of course, there is that strange breed of agnosticism that claim to be undecided about things were we have plenty of evidence --- e.g. the existence of the Christian God. Those people are just a bit too funny:D
It's like being wise and brave. You could say that being wise (about picking your fights) is the same as being cowardly in some situations.
Personally, I find these tests very informative. The test tells you a lot about your future employer. If I was given a test like that, the pay I would require would substantially increase:)
Not sure what the employer gets out of them. A feeling of security, perhaps?
I agree that people not knowing how to use a wood oven is a problem, and likewise with ill-adjusted ovens. But other than that, the health authorities in this country, wood is fine for heat. And I think they know what they are talking about.
In my area many people supplement with wood, and except for a few that appears to be using damp wood, or not enough air, you can hardly smell it.
In short, you are barking up the wrong tree:) It's getting people to burn wood properly that is the key, not to make them stop completely. Especially in these days, where we want to cut back on petrochemicals, which is the only alternative around here.
Because people aren't, in general, all that bright. Do you see much evidence that people are moving away from cars & fossil fuel dependency?
Actually... yes. Well, not cars, but fossil fuels, including the fuel used in cars. Not because oil is running out, though, but due to other concerns (environmentally, political and economic reasons, mainly).
I beg to differ.
That myth has been perpetuated "forever", and it's always "10 years into the future". It was 10 years left 10 years ago, and it will be 10 years still in "10-20 years, your lifetime".
If oil prices hadn't been at the low they are, I'd say that the myth is even deliberately upheld by oil companies to increase oil price.
"We will run out of oil soon!" is at best, a grave simplification, and at it's worst, a direct lie.
Google it, and at the very least you will get a more nuanced picture than "10-20" years.
Or read, "The Next Millionaires", and you will get a completely different picture. (Of economics in general, compared to what I was taught in school atleast)
Wikipedia says differently... that the total oil production peak is difficult to estimate exactly, that the "peak" will be hard to spot before after the fact, and that the estimates is more or less unchanged since the 1960's. And as you know, what is written on wikipedia is the truth;)
A not-insignificant number of Americans use wood for heat, and pay for gasoline. I'm sure many more Canadians and Europeans do as well. I know of two households that are on the grid, and still use a wood stove as their primary heat source. I wonder whether this could be made small enough to convince them to get a heat pump and an ethanol-fueled vehicle.
To what point and purpose? I'm all for heat pumps, but what is wrong with using firewood for heat? It's (mostly) carbon neutral, and uses a resource that isn't useful for much else. Well, at least until this "bug" (I presume it's a bacteria) can convert it into fuel.
:) And thanks to science, you are free to do so even if you do partake in the mating dancing. But be careful, because many men grows a desire for children later in life. Including this man.
Noticing a trend between what you have said and your signature I couldn't help but question, "how is Atheism not a religion?"
Well, the signature is a joke. But that's ok, we can discuss Atheism not a religion, too, if you please. A bit off-topic, but hey, it's weekend.
I'm assuming you feel "humans were not designed" because there is zero irrefutable proof and, as such, requires "faith" to think that. However, the counter-argument is that, you have zero irrefutable proof to the contrary, that humans have evolved. In such a case then you must have "faith" that what you have read, studied, pondered, etc. is in fact truth.
No evidence points towards design. A overwhelming amount of evidence points towards evolution. Thus, it takes no more faith from me to assume design is an illusion than it does for me to assume that a dropped beer can will fall towards the ground.
Consider the original question: How is Atheism not a religion? Most people define "religion" as a faith in the unseen. Apply that to your zero-proof theorem that humans are participating in the "great game of evolution" and you have faith in the unseen.
It is hardly "zero-proof". Humans are participating in evolution; we know how this works (genes and friends), we know it has worked for a long time (fossils and such) and we have a good idea why it works (models and such). Anyway, I do not define religion as "faith in the unseen". I mean, having faith in your wife or gravity or plexiglass hardly makes you are religious man! A religion needs some kind of canon, some unreasonable and unfounded assumption (eternal life, e.g.) at the very least. And something akin to priests, who decides in matters of theology or whatever you call it. And a name, or names. That is me, wikipedia's is slightly different, though far closer to mine.
As a side note, I completely agree that agnosticism is the absence of decisiveness.
I consider myself agnostic in the original sense of the word, but those who tries to fence-sit the religious debate I find rather funny.
To the real topic at hand: it doesn't take much to realize that women have a built-in need to have children (not to mention the hardware required). Whether you want to attribute that to culture, religion, science, economics or whatever, the truth is, the need is there. Much the same way men have a need for sexual release. You can try to study things and act all "scientific" about it, but that is the way we, as humans, operate.
Ah, my English might fail me now, but unless "need" means something else than I think it does, women do not *need* children, they *desire* children... like a lot of men do. Same with sex. You need air, you need food, you can even argue you need love, but not children nor sex. Proof: Lots of people go without. E.g., 20% of all women around here never have any children, for various reasons, and they look fine to me.
A good question... my own opinion on the matter is because that's what women are designed to do - procreate, we can backwards rationalize it all we want, but the primary purpose of life is survive and procreate. I think the process is mostly unconscious and instinctive, I've been doing a lot of reading in the cognitive sciences and how they see that most thought is unconscious, most thought is below your awareness... about 98%. So it would not be a surprise that people then backwards rationalize their actions (i.e. I wanted kids for x,y, z). Truth be told people have kids for companionship/economic reasons and (the hope) of old age security I think, that has always been the 'traditional' view imho.
First off, humans were not designed, neither men nor women. So arguments from "purpose", "design" and so forth is rather silly. Of course, an instinct to procreate might very well be advantageous to the woman's genes, and thus be selected in the great game of evolution. Yeah, I know this is probably what you meant, but then write it so.
Anyway, most people but far from all people (not just women, most men too, once they get to be around 30-35) want to have children --- its likely build in by the evolutionary process, as you probably meant to say. For most couples, it is always a matter of "later is better" from an economical and sociological, since wealth tend to accumulate. On the other hand, the chance of getting pregnant and successfully give birth to children declines after 34 or so, so there is a limit in that end, too.
The hope for old age security is, at least in northern Europe, a rather silly reason. It's not like you can count on much more than the occasional visit when you get to be old.
I like the crowd-following thing. Actually, it is probably truer than we like; certainly seeing other people's kids was a great factor in me wanting my own.
Yes, damnit yes! You should know assembly of the chip for your calender program. In *some* languages, like C, you need to know this stuff because thats where errors can happen (buffer overflows, for example).
That is not really true. Only a C-program that does something to cause "undefined" or "implementation-defined" behavior will cause errors due to how the chip is working, except perhaps for longer execution times.
As a programmer, you are expected to know the language (and in some cases this requires knowing more then one), the ins and the outs. You are also expected to know the API you are using. You dont like the API? Tuff. You can always make your own OS (yea..haha), or make a wrapper API.
All this damn "people shouldent have to know" crapy this week is really starting to bug me. Learn something damnit and stop complaining when you dont know something you should. Even a damn school-kid would know this simple lesson!
The real complaint is that requiring people to remember to do stuff the right way every time is inviting disaster, and is rather pointless. Instead, such details should be written a few places and everywhere else just point to those few places. And lo and behold! That is exactly what Gnome and KDE does. As a bonus, should the ext4 people actually be right that their behavior is good and desirable, we only have to fix a few lines of code.
And don't scuff the notion of choosing the best API. In this case, candidates could be e.g. boost::filesystem or Qt for the C++ crowd.
No. What KDE and Gnome does is to overwrite small files, and be surprised when this results in a truncated (0-sized) file for a lot of files. As I gather, what happens is that ext4 immediately truncates the files when they are opened, but delays the writing of the new data for 1-2minutes. That is certainly within the standard, but still a rather broken behavior, that will needlessly break a lot of applications. Had the truncation been delayed till the actual write to disk, everything would have been fine, and the data loss minimal, which is really the best you can hope for in this situation.
No. Writing software properly means calling fsync() if you need a data guarantee.
But neither Gnome nor KDE needs this. What they need is that the file in question is either left in the old state or in the new state. The problem is that ext4 rushes in to complete the truncation, but lazily after 1-2 minutes (!) writes the actual data. That is quite broken, in my opinion. The obvious solution would be to bundle the truncation with the writing out the data.
Pretty sure no one in their right mind would call using fsync() barriers a "huge burden". There are an enormous number of programs out there that do this correctly already.
And then there are some that don't. Those have problems. They're bugs. They need to be fixed. Fixing bugs is not a "huge burden", it's a necessary task.
In KDEs case, it would be as simple as reverting a patch. The fsyncs() were removed because of the bugs associated with it, including killing laptop batteries. Dig through kde-core-devel for the gory details. The code in question is posted elsewhere.
The bug is in ext4, like it was in XFS --- where it was finally fixed. And it looks like ext4 has introduced a hack to sort of fix this problem there, too.
Unix philosophy is to make configuration files user- and script-editable. NOT to create hundreds of files per app making it utterly unmanageable.
Neither Gnome nor KDE creates hundreds of files per application. They create a few, usually one per application. However, when KDE or Gnome starts many applications are started simultaneously, and thus you get the "lots-of-small-files-at-once"-syndrome.
Also note that KDE used to have lots of fsyncs as a workaround to XFS, which had a similar behaviour. But since XFS was allegedly fixed, and since especially laptop owners got hit pretty hard by those fsyncs(), they were removed. Dig through the kde-devel-core mailing list for the gory details.
Looking at the code, I fail to see how it is the applications fault. The code in question is
The only other reasonable approach I can see would be the old create-copy-and-rename trick, which would require a scratch-file.
Perhaps glibc interface could also be blamed for not providing an interface for doing this the right way, whichever this way is. After all, rewriting a file with new contents inplace is fairly common operations, and if it is difficult and error-prone, it shouldn't be every application developers responsibility to get right.
"Diet" is not the same thing as "going on a diet." "Diet" is everything you eat, and it can definitely do more than make you thin. There are many ways of eating that will make you healthier but have no effect on your weight, because there are many very healthy foods that are also high in calories.
Indeed, captain obvious. But diet cannot make you fit, which was the point I was driving at. The heart is a muscle, and it needs a bit of exercise to work well. Or so I'm told, and I admit that I feel better after getting a walk every (work)-day.
Nor can exercise, for that matter, give you the various chemicals your body needs.
Diet can make you thin. Exercise can make you fit. It is quite possible to be thin and unhealthily out of shape -- especially older girls/young women are prone to this condition. That said, you don't need that *much* exercise to get to the point where it isn't killing you anymore... if you can take a flight of stairs at a run without wheezing too much at the top, you're probably ok. As for weight, BMI is very easy if somewhat inaccurate.
Kids (and this ad is aimed at parents of inactive kids) should be a *lot* more active than just twenty minutes a day.
As should everyone else. But given it is an imperfect world, it is still important to tell that 20 minutes a day helps a lot. Other than that, yes, children should be running around playing outside quite a lot. Unfortunately, in a lot of places parents don't dare put the children outside without supervision.
The only problem is that the level of activity needed to improve health is actually very high. Walking for an hour or three won't help at all. Riding a bike at 25km/h won't help. Swinging a wiimote definitely won't help.
To improve your health long term you need to get out and exercise hard for at least an hour a day. That means going for a run, or cycling above 30km/h.
This is not true. Even walking briskly for 20 minutes each day improves your health dramatically. As long as you get your pulse up for a few minutes daily, it helps. A test is to check whether you can comfortably hum or whistle while you exercise. If you can, walk faster/swing that mote more/bike faster.
Of course, if you want big flashy muscles, 20 minutes walking isn't going to cut it, but that is another matter.
Many software packages that are allegedly in C++ could be switched to ANSI C in a single afternoon with s competent programmer, and in fact gcc's quiet compilation of both without error has led to a lot of people writing mostly C when they think they're writing C++.
I don't see that often -- in fact, I can't recall anything larger than a few files that do this. Can you quote any software 2 projects written in C++ but easily convertible to C? I assume that easy does not include "rewrite classes with virtual functions as structs with function pointers".
And anyone who thinks Java, Ruby, or Python have enough power to write themselves has not looked carefully at them.
I think that the usual claim is that the compiler is written in the languages themselves, while the virtual machine is usually written in C or C++. Though, they being Turing complete, you should be able to do it.
And thats exactly the problem. You can run an old Windows release with brand new applications without a problem
Not really. I have too many games that I cannot run anymore, because I do not have a computer that can run windows old enough to run them. Conversely, it is quite typical that games do not support the older windowvariants.
In any case, the problem with old libraries was really mostly in the OS word, where developers kind of assume that people will use fairly new libraries.
Strike the word "barely". It was just plain unusable. I blame KDE4 for that editing error.
I agree that that press release did not convey what the developers and people reading the mailing lists understood: That KDE 4.0 was released to allow wider testing, but especially to allow kdelibs based applications to start porting to KDE 4.0. And really should only be installed alongside 3.5.
Still, the past is past. KDE 4.2 is definitely for nearly everyone, though a few rough areas exists (e.g. 2-screen setup is not completely possible with GUI alone, though at least it acts decently instead of doing weird stuff). And the present-windows-task-switcher was worth the wait (ok, most people hate it, but it fits me like a glove:) )
Slashdot Mirror
Because 3.5 isn't available in many repositories anymore and bugs for 3.5 aren't being fixed because efforts concentrate on kde 4.
Which of the major distros don't carry KDE 3.5 any more?? I use openSUSE and it is most certainly available.
Looking at http://www.kde.org/download/#v3.5 there appear to be binary packages for Fedora, Kubuntu, Mandriva, openSUSE
Whilst a lot of effort is going into KDE 4.x, the 3.5 line still seems to be worked on.
Actually, they have a point. It has little to do with KDE, but with the Qt 3.x series, which has been discontinued and is basically unmaintained. Noone has stepped up to maintain it, and thus distributors are loath to carry packages that depends on qt 3.5. kdelibs4 (aka kde 3) are still maintained, but in bugfixing mode.
The Windows way: Save? Yes / no / cancel.
The Macintosh way: Save? Save / don't save / cancel.
The KDE way (just checked)
Save/Cancel
What is the difference between "don't save" and "cancel", anyway?
Though I actually agree that the "OK/Apply/cancel" for preference dialogs should be different, namely "Save&Close/Save/Cancel".
As an agnostic, I am offended by your sig. Agnosticism is not the absence of anything, it's the realization that not everything is knowable. Do you know what happened before the Big Bang or what dark matter is? No? Then why haven't you decided?
Relax, it's a joke. Hey, I'm agnostic (and atheistic), too! The joke, like all good jokes, have a true core, too :) Being indecisive is sometimes a good thing, if and only if we have no evidence or too little evidence to sway our opinion one way or the other. Of course, there is that strange breed of agnosticism that claim to be undecided about things were we have plenty of evidence --- e.g. the existence of the Christian God. Those people are just a bit too funny :D
It's like being wise and brave. You could say that being wise (about picking your fights) is the same as being cowardly in some situations.
Personally, I find these tests very informative. The test tells you a lot about your future employer. If I was given a test like that, the pay I would require would substantially increase :)
Not sure what the employer gets out of them. A feeling of security, perhaps?
I agree that people not knowing how to use a wood oven is a problem, and likewise with ill-adjusted ovens. But other than that, the health authorities in this country, wood is fine for heat. And I think they know what they are talking about.
In my area many people supplement with wood, and except for a few that appears to be using damp wood, or not enough air, you can hardly smell it.
In short, you are barking up the wrong tree :) It's getting people to burn wood properly that is the key, not to make them stop completely. Especially in these days, where we want to cut back on petrochemicals, which is the only alternative around here.
Because people aren't, in general, all that bright. Do you see much evidence that people are moving away from cars & fossil fuel dependency?
Actually... yes. Well, not cars, but fossil fuels, including the fuel used in cars. Not because oil is running out, though, but due to other concerns (environmentally, political and economic reasons, mainly).
I beg to differ. That myth has been perpetuated "forever", and it's always "10 years into the future". It was 10 years left 10 years ago, and it will be 10 years still in "10-20 years, your lifetime". If oil prices hadn't been at the low they are, I'd say that the myth is even deliberately upheld by oil companies to increase oil price. "We will run out of oil soon!" is at best, a grave simplification, and at it's worst, a direct lie. Google it, and at the very least you will get a more nuanced picture than "10-20" years. Or read, "The Next Millionaires", and you will get a completely different picture. (Of economics in general, compared to what I was taught in school atleast)
Wikipedia says differently... that the total oil production peak is difficult to estimate exactly, that the "peak" will be hard to spot before after the fact, and that the estimates is more or less unchanged since the 1960's. And as you know, what is written on wikipedia is the truth ;)
A not-insignificant number of Americans use wood for heat, and pay for gasoline. I'm sure many more Canadians and Europeans do as well. I know of two households that are on the grid, and still use a wood stove as their primary heat source. I wonder whether this could be made small enough to convince them to get a heat pump and an ethanol-fueled vehicle.
In 1993, 3.1 million homes used wood for heat; the number dropped to 2 million in 2001
To what point and purpose? I'm all for heat pumps, but what is wrong with using firewood for heat? It's (mostly) carbon neutral, and uses a resource that isn't useful for much else. Well, at least until this "bug" (I presume it's a bacteria) can convert it into fuel.
:) And thanks to science, you are free to do so even if you do partake in the mating dancing. But be careful, because many men grows a desire for children later in life. Including this man.
Noticing a trend between what you have said and your signature I couldn't help but question, "how is Atheism not a religion?"
Well, the signature is a joke. But that's ok, we can discuss Atheism not a religion, too, if you please. A bit off-topic, but hey, it's weekend.
I'm assuming you feel "humans were not designed" because there is zero irrefutable proof and, as such, requires "faith" to think that. However, the counter-argument is that, you have zero irrefutable proof to the contrary, that humans have evolved. In such a case then you must have "faith" that what you have read, studied, pondered, etc. is in fact truth.
No evidence points towards design. A overwhelming amount of evidence points towards evolution. Thus, it takes no more faith from me to assume design is an illusion than it does for me to assume that a dropped beer can will fall towards the ground.
Consider the original question: How is Atheism not a religion? Most people define "religion" as a faith in the unseen. Apply that to your zero-proof theorem that humans are participating in the "great game of evolution" and you have faith in the unseen.
It is hardly "zero-proof". Humans are participating in evolution; we know how this works (genes and friends), we know it has worked for a long time (fossils and such) and we have a good idea why it works (models and such). Anyway, I do not define religion as "faith in the unseen". I mean, having faith in your wife or gravity or plexiglass hardly makes you are religious man! A religion needs some kind of canon, some unreasonable and unfounded assumption (eternal life, e.g.) at the very least. And something akin to priests, who decides in matters of theology or whatever you call it. And a name, or names. That is me, wikipedia's is slightly different, though far closer to mine.
As a side note, I completely agree that agnosticism is the absence of decisiveness.
I consider myself agnostic in the original sense of the word, but those who tries to fence-sit the religious debate I find rather funny.
To the real topic at hand: it doesn't take much to realize that women have a built-in need to have children (not to mention the hardware required). Whether you want to attribute that to culture, religion, science, economics or whatever, the truth is, the need is there. Much the same way men have a need for sexual release. You can try to study things and act all "scientific" about it, but that is the way we, as humans, operate.
Ah, my English might fail me now, but unless "need" means something else than I think it does, women do not *need* children, they *desire* children... like a lot of men do. Same with sex. You need air, you need food, you can even argue you need love, but not children nor sex. Proof: Lots of people go without. E.g., 20% of all women around here never have any children, for various reasons, and they look fine to me.
A good question... my own opinion on the matter is because that's what women are designed to do - procreate, we can backwards rationalize it all we want, but the primary purpose of life is survive and procreate. I think the process is mostly unconscious and instinctive, I've been doing a lot of reading in the cognitive sciences and how they see that most thought is unconscious, most thought is below your awareness... about 98%. So it would not be a surprise that people then backwards rationalize their actions (i.e. I wanted kids for x,y, z). Truth be told people have kids for companionship/economic reasons and (the hope) of old age security I think, that has always been the 'traditional' view imho.
First off, humans were not designed, neither men nor women. So arguments from "purpose", "design" and so forth is rather silly. Of course, an instinct to procreate might very well be advantageous to the woman's genes, and thus be selected in the great game of evolution. Yeah, I know this is probably what you meant, but then write it so.
Anyway, most people but far from all people (not just women, most men too, once they get to be around 30-35) want to have children --- its likely build in by the evolutionary process, as you probably meant to say. For most couples, it is always a matter of "later is better" from an economical and sociological, since wealth tend to accumulate. On the other hand, the chance of getting pregnant and successfully give birth to children declines after 34 or so, so there is a limit in that end, too.
The hope for old age security is, at least in northern Europe, a rather silly reason. It's not like you can count on much more than the occasional visit when you get to be old.
I like the crowd-following thing. Actually, it is probably truer than we like; certainly seeing other people's kids was a great factor in me wanting my own.
Yes, damnit yes! You should know assembly of the chip for your calender program. In *some* languages, like C, you need to know this stuff because thats where errors can happen (buffer overflows, for example).
That is not really true. Only a C-program that does something to cause "undefined" or "implementation-defined" behavior will cause errors due to how the chip is working, except perhaps for longer execution times.
As a programmer, you are expected to know the language (and in some cases this requires knowing more then one), the ins and the outs. You are also expected to know the API you are using. You dont like the API? Tuff. You can always make your own OS (yea..haha), or make a wrapper API.
All this damn "people shouldent have to know" crapy this week is really starting to bug me. Learn something damnit and stop complaining when you dont know something you should. Even a damn school-kid would know this simple lesson!
The real complaint is that requiring people to remember to do stuff the right way every time is inviting disaster, and is rather pointless. Instead, such details should be written a few places and everywhere else just point to those few places. And lo and behold! That is exactly what Gnome and KDE does. As a bonus, should the ext4 people actually be right that their behavior is good and desirable, we only have to fix a few lines of code.
And don't scuff the notion of choosing the best API. In this case, candidates could be e.g. boost::filesystem or Qt for the C++ crowd.
No. What KDE and Gnome does is to overwrite small files, and be surprised when this results in a truncated (0-sized) file for a lot of files. As I gather, what happens is that ext4 immediately truncates the files when they are opened, but delays the writing of the new data for 1-2minutes. That is certainly within the standard, but still a rather broken behavior, that will needlessly break a lot of applications. Had the truncation been delayed till the actual write to disk, everything would have been fine, and the data loss minimal, which is really the best you can hope for in this situation.
No. Writing software properly means calling fsync() if you need a data guarantee.
But neither Gnome nor KDE needs this. What they need is that the file in question is either left in the old state or in the new state. The problem is that ext4 rushes in to complete the truncation, but lazily after 1-2 minutes (!) writes the actual data. That is quite broken, in my opinion. The obvious solution would be to bundle the truncation with the writing out the data.
Pretty sure no one in their right mind would call using fsync() barriers a "huge burden". There are an enormous number of programs out there that do this correctly already.
And then there are some that don't. Those have problems. They're bugs. They need to be fixed. Fixing bugs is not a "huge burden", it's a necessary task.
In KDEs case, it would be as simple as reverting a patch. The fsyncs() were removed because of the bugs associated with it, including killing laptop batteries. Dig through kde-core-devel for the gory details. The code in question is posted elsewhere.
The bug is in ext4, like it was in XFS --- where it was finally fixed. And it looks like ext4 has introduced a hack to sort of fix this problem there, too.
Unix philosophy is to make configuration files user- and script-editable. NOT to create hundreds of files per app making it utterly unmanageable.
Neither Gnome nor KDE creates hundreds of files per application. They create a few, usually one per application. However, when KDE or Gnome starts many applications are started simultaneously, and thus you get the "lots-of-small-files-at-once"-syndrome.
Also note that KDE used to have lots of fsyncs as a workaround to XFS, which had a similar behaviour. But since XFS was allegedly fixed, and since especially laptop owners got hit pretty hard by those fsyncs(), they were removed. Dig through the kde-devel-core mailing list for the gory details.
Looking at the code, I fail to see how it is the applications fault. The code in question is
The only other reasonable approach I can see would be the old create-copy-and-rename trick, which would require a scratch-file.
Perhaps glibc interface could also be blamed for not providing an interface for doing this the right way, whichever this way is. After all, rewriting a file with new contents inplace is fairly common operations, and if it is difficult and error-prone, it shouldn't be every application developers responsibility to get right.
I just hope to God it isn't the free version [....]Why don't people read reviews before buying software?
I think you answered your own question, there :P Of course it is the free version, which explains why the reviews wasn't important.
Anyway, how does one "hope to God"? I am not a religious man, but I though the procedure was to pray to God and then hope.
"Diet" is not the same thing as "going on a diet." "Diet" is everything you eat, and it can definitely do more than make you thin. There are many ways of eating that will make you healthier but have no effect on your weight, because there are many very healthy foods that are also high in calories.
Indeed, captain obvious. But diet cannot make you fit, which was the point I was driving at. The heart is a muscle, and it needs a bit of exercise to work well. Or so I'm told, and I admit that I feel better after getting a walk every (work)-day.
Nor can exercise, for that matter, give you the various chemicals your body needs.
Diet can make you thin. Exercise can make you fit. It is quite possible to be thin and unhealthily out of shape -- especially older girls/young women are prone to this condition. That said, you don't need that *much* exercise to get to the point where it isn't killing you anymore... if you can take a flight of stairs at a run without wheezing too much at the top, you're probably ok. As for weight, BMI is very easy if somewhat inaccurate.
Kids (and this ad is aimed at parents of inactive kids) should be a *lot* more active than just twenty minutes a day.
As should everyone else. But given it is an imperfect world, it is still important to tell that 20 minutes a day helps a lot. Other than that, yes, children should be running around playing outside quite a lot. Unfortunately, in a lot of places parents don't dare put the children outside without supervision.
The only problem is that the level of activity needed to improve health is actually very high. Walking for an hour or three won't help at all. Riding a bike at 25km/h won't help. Swinging a wiimote definitely won't help. To improve your health long term you need to get out and exercise hard for at least an hour a day. That means going for a run, or cycling above 30km/h.
This is not true. Even walking briskly for 20 minutes each day improves your health dramatically. As long as you get your pulse up for a few minutes daily, it helps. A test is to check whether you can comfortably hum or whistle while you exercise. If you can, walk faster/swing that mote more/bike faster.
Of course, if you want big flashy muscles, 20 minutes walking isn't going to cut it, but that is another matter.
..and as soon as it's synthesized, it surrenders.
On the contrary, it is quite reactive, like Sodium but much faster. Or so it is hypothesized. Attacks anything on sight would be more like it.
Wow, one pound on the whole Earth? That's pretty much not existent.
Francium is about 20-30g on the whole Earth (or the crust, anyway). My favorite wikipedia quote:
Francium has not yet, as of 2008, been synthesized in amounts large enough to weigh
Many software packages that are allegedly in C++ could be switched to ANSI C in a single afternoon with s competent programmer, and in fact gcc's quiet compilation of both without error has led to a lot of people writing mostly C when they think they're writing C++.
I don't see that often -- in fact, I can't recall anything larger than a few files that do this. Can you quote any software 2 projects written in C++ but easily convertible to C? I assume that easy does not include "rewrite classes with virtual functions as structs with function pointers".
And anyone who thinks Java, Ruby, or Python have enough power to write themselves has not looked carefully at them.
I think that the usual claim is that the compiler is written in the languages themselves, while the virtual machine is usually written in C or C++. Though, they being Turing complete, you should be able to do it.
And thats exactly the problem. You can run an old Windows release with brand new applications without a problem
Not really. I have too many games that I cannot run anymore, because I do not have a computer that can run windows old enough to run them. Conversely, it is quite typical that games do not support the older windowvariants.
In any case, the problem with old libraries was really mostly in the OS word, where developers kind of assume that people will use fairly new libraries.
Strike the word "barely". It was just plain unusable. I blame KDE4 for that editing error.
I agree that that press release did not convey what the developers and people reading the mailing lists understood: That KDE 4.0 was released to allow wider testing, but especially to allow kdelibs based applications to start porting to KDE 4.0. And really should only be installed alongside 3.5.
Still, the past is past. KDE 4.2 is definitely for nearly everyone, though a few rough areas exists (e.g. 2-screen setup is not completely possible with GUI alone, though at least it acts decently instead of doing weird stuff). And the present-windows-task-switcher was worth the wait (ok, most people hate it, but it fits me like a glove :) )