You lot are the biggest bunch of whingers I have ever seen. This is about the fifth article I have seen on this same thread and you are all still crying like babies 'cos you are no longer getting paid 100 times the world average.
What really annoys me is how you say stuff like, we need to ensure that America remains the wealthiest country for the good of the world! How the fuck do you come to that conclusion?
You've all been living in a bubble for a long time, and now the bubble is starting to burst. The fact is, when you consume a quarter of the worlds energy, natural resources, and workers, that must be maintained by force or trickery. Or do you really suppose that was just because America was inherently superior.
Local workers continue to become less important to the elite. The elite don't care about you, and they only ever paid your inflated wages begrudgingly. When the opportunity arose to replace you, they did.
THE BIGGER PICTURE: What is really going on here? Well the majority of the worlds inhabitants live in poverty. And, if you are rich, it's advantageous to keep them that way. How much do you pay for a jar of coffee or a bag of sugar, and how much did the farmer receive for that? Would you pay more so that others can be paid fairly for there hard work, or would you continue to consume even more crap you don't need and have them so poor that they can only afford one simple meal of rice a day -- if they are lucky?
Think about it? Is it possible that you have been responsible for the premature deaths of many people through mal-nutrition so that you could consume that little bit more? If you answer no then you need to educate yourself to what is really going on in the world.
Now the elite are squeezing some of the local inhabitants out since they are no longer necesarry to their continued wealth. Can you despise them for that? Remember before you answer, having you unemployed means they get to consume that little bit more -- another car anyone? Can you really begrudge them that.
If you can you're a hippocrite. I suggest you take this pertinent advice "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." -- and ignorance will not cut it -- you have the Internet, so educate yourself.
I don't think you have understood what this is about. With SELinux the user's privilidges are not passed to the program, and by default program's have no rights at all.
Anyway, if you believe what are you saying, then why don't you go login to Redhat or Gentoo's boxes where they have public root access and see if you can do something bad.
It is true that to get the most out of SELinux program's will need to be written specially for it -- simple provable program's with very limited rights, and big buggy programs with no rights at all -- but an SELinux system will already be leauges in front of anything else we have at the moment.
I have never even used SELinux, but unlike many here, have at least taken the time to read up on it. Here is the little I have understood:
SELinux, if set up properly, is secure, and completely bypasses the inferior UNIX security model. You could say:
* Windows is insecure * Linux is less insecure * SELinux is almost secure
IN SELinux there is no root account, or at least it has no privilidges -- user's don't have privilidges in this system. So, you can give root to anyone and they won't be able to do a thing. Gentoo have a machine with public root access for just this purpose.
The difference is that each program is banned from doing anything by default. Reading a file, using the network, whatever... The packagers must explicitly assign each program access to what it minimally needs to do it's job.
So Bind (fairly insecure) might be given read access to it's config file, write access to it's cache directory, and port access only for the ports that it needs to listen on. If you then exploit bind it doesn't buy you very much. You can change the cache files, and answer DNS queries, but you can't even change Bind's own configuration, let alone anything else.
You may have the right as an administrator (nothing to do with root) to run bind, but the programs you run do not inherit your privilidges.
As a user, the privilidges that you have depend solely on the roles that you belong to. That's why root is useless, it is a user not a role.
Although there are many security patches for Linux, SELinux seems to me the only truly sound approach to security out there at the moment. If you combined it with hardening solutions designed to minimise the chance of exploits (binary sandboxes) you would end up with a system that is very difficult to exploit in the first place, and once you do manage it it buys you almost nothing anyway.
Although SELinux is built into Linux 2.6, it must be turned on and manually configured before it is useful. This is currently being done for Fedora, Gentoo, Debian, and other serious Linuxes. I believe this will make Linux the most secure general purpose operating system available. Then we really can lord it over the Windows users.
This looks so nice! Is there any way to make it available to others?
I am still downloading KDE 3.2 packages (third day, have modem!) so I don't know if the Theme Manager is improved. The 3.1 version doesn't store a lot of things which are critical to the overall look like the widget set, font settings, icon settings, or other miscelaneous configuration options.
I have niether the time nor the design flair to do something like this, so I'd really like to see KDE ship with lots of quality meta-themes like yours, rather than the rubbish that came with 3.1. Here's hoping!
Okay, so it's a Gtk app -- the fundamental Gtk app -- and not a Gnome app, but it still looks more at home on a Gnome system, for the time being at least.
Apart from Mozilla, IE/Wine and The Gimp 2.0 I use a 100% KDE system, and Gnome sticks out the most; more than Mozilla and IE even!
I am biased towards KDE so I am not the best person to ask. Then again, I used to be biased towards Gnome, and almost everyone is biased anyway, so here goes.
KDE Pros: 1. KDE is far easier to use for home users with no commercial technical support. Things like sharing a folder on your network, sharing your desktop, accessing your peripherals, etc are easy to do -- in Gnome they need setting up by an admin but are simple after that. 2. KDE has better enterprise management tools (Kiosk Mode) allowing multiple machines to be configured from a central location. 3. KDE has much better development tools and is easier to develop programs for. 4. KDE is far more complete and mature. 5. KDE is far more configurable and allows you to set it up exactly how you like it.
Gnome Pros: 1. Gnome is simpler on the eyes and less cluttered, making it easier to use for newbies in the areas where the Gnome environemnt is present. 2. Gnome has a *much* better image editing program, and slighly better Office suite. 3. Gnome is all about simplicity and straight forwardness, and it shows.
That basically sums it up for me. The remaining question is style/look. Gnome used to look *much* better han KDE, and felt more sophisticated and less like a toy. Nowadays whether you prefer the look of KDE or Gnome is definitely a more personal thing. They both look good to some people and not others.
KDE is more cartoony, and Gnome tries to be more slick. On the other hand, Gnome looks more old fashioned, and slighly DIY-ish, whereas KDE looks more professional, although still cartoony.
In any case, it changes everythime a better theme comes along. IMO, KDE has recently leapfrogged Gnome with the Plastik/Crystal SVG combination. Gnome will probably soon take back it's crown though. We'll see.
That would be because that is not what I said. What I said was:
GPL better protects free IP (than LGPL)
Proprietary better protects proprietary IP (than LGPL)
The LGPL is a middle ground. Adding your free IP to an LGPL product does not give you the same guarantees of continued freedom as does GPL (look at Wine), and building your proprietary IP around LGPL is not as safe (at least perceptively) as building that IP on top of software available under a proprietary license.
Personally, I would hapilly build a proprietary product around LGPL (and many OSS savy companies do), but traditonal companies almost always feel safer with a proprietary license.
I was merely making a comeback at Gnome supporters that say their single licensed LGPL product is necesarilly better than a tri licensed product like Qt. The one advantage that Gtk does have in this respect is that it allows proprietary software to be built without making any return contribution (either code or money) to the people that made the software available in the first place. And, IMO, this is not such a great 'advantage' in the first place, at least not for those who did contribute.
Stop crying and stop using KDE apps. There you are. Is baby okay now?
> I don't want my apps behave or look like KDE. If I did I'd be using KDE.
Well. It must be your lucky day! This work is *only* for KDE users who want better integrated non KDE apps. There has been a ton of recent integration announcements for KDE users, but none yet for Gnome people, so you may be safe yet.
I really don't understand this 'licensing issue' thing. I could say the same about GTK, where they are using the 'Lesser' GPL: if only the GTK people had taken an interest in the licenses, perhaps we wouldn't be in the mess we are in today.
In my world GPL protects free IP better than LGPL, and proprietary better protects proprietary IP than LGPL. Can you, or any other of your mindset, please explain why LGPL is a better freesoftware license than GPL, and why LGPL is better for proprietary vendors than a 'proprietary' license?
As for why I choose KDE, it is because it is, IMO, more powerful, easier to use, better integrated, more professional looking, and required no understanding of UNIX while I was still transitioning.
Overall I prefer the KDE apps, but regularly use two big Gnome apps: Gimp and sodipodi. I used to use Evolution too because it may me feel at home when I first switched from Windows, but I now far prefer KMail, and would use Kontact if I needed the groupware stuff.
I think Gnome is pretty cool, and I will definitely give it a serious try when it has matured a little more. The Gnome people always talk about it being easier to use, but that is only true in theory. It just isn't insulated well enough from UNIX yet, and requires you to know things like where your home directory is, or where devices might be found, and how you mount and unmount them, how to configure windows file sharing, etc.
The problem with the idea about not re-creating a window manager is that it requires that your primary window manager is up to the job. I believe WinXP and Linux do a fairly good job by nesting the Gimp's task buttons, but a Gimp toolbox still isn't an app/task, and IMO doesn't merit a task button.
I use The Gimp and originally found it both confusing and unintuitive. 1.3/2.0 is far superior: having the menu available all the time allows me to think "I am going to apply this effect to this image", whereas I couldn't do that with 1.2, and having the toolbars dock together is just plain easier.
But, if it were not for the virtual desktops available in Linux I think the Gimp interface would drive me mad. Like you, I need to be able to wall of the app for it to make sense for me, and with Linux I can do that satisfactorily. The advantage here is that I might be able to tolerate an IM client on the same desktop, and that is actually very handy.
I've been using the 1.3 series for about half a year now, and find that it is completely stable already (for what I do with it!), so I have no doubt that the final will be.
Also, the interface is so much better; I never felt at home with The Gimp 1.2, but love 1.3/2.0. It is not just the toolbars and the GTK2 look though, as some people have been saying, but the dialogs in general are so much more intuitive, and there is now a real-time preview when setting JPEG/GIF compression levels, which was something that really put me off before.
The Gimp 2 is now definitely comparable to Photoshop from an ease of use perspective. Suck it and see.
As regards KDE integration, I think it is less important with 2.0 (again, try using it!), but will probably happen to some extent even if there is no Kimp. Native KDE widgets, print, and save dialogs are all in the process of being made available for Gtk2 applications. That will be enough for me.
You are a either a troll, or you are serious, but have never done a blind A-B on Ogg, WMA, RealAudio, AAC, MP3, MusePak, etc and haven't heard from anyone that has. Let me inform you of my own experience.
About a year ago I decided to encode my entire CD collection (yes, a bit late to the game!) to my computer. I didn't know which codec to use and heard different things from different people, so I set up my own blind test. I encoded with each of the above codecs at five different quality settings (where this was possible) on some sample material, taking care to get the bit-rates very close to each other for fairness, and then un-encoded them all to wav again, so there could be no doubts.
Then I wrote a script to play every wav file in a given folder (one per bitrate/song part) in a random order, but recording it in a log. This is what I found:
Ogg Vorbis was the best at very-low, low, and medium bitrates, and was equal with MusePak at high bitrates. MusePak was the best at very-high bitrates (~185K), although the difference was marginal.
AAC was very good (second best) at all but very-low bitrates, but sounded a little lifeless (the sheen was removed). BTW: Worked very well with cinematic effects where had a greater clarity - the slight lifenesses that I perceived for musical material.
RealAudio was the second best at very-low bitrates, and had a beautiful, signature, analogue valve sound to it. Highly coloured, but very pleasing to listen to.
WMA pretended to be very good, but used trickery to do it (equalisation and compression), and the result was often painful on the ears (scratchy), and never melodius. This might actually be good with cheap equipment, though I didn't test this.
MP3 was the worst of the bunch. It is actually a very good codec provided that you give it enough bits; it only lost out in each round because it was noticeably inferior to the competition, but is really very good if you give it a bitrate handicap (~70K).
The result of this is that I encoded my entire CD collection with Ogg, but would also strongly reccomend MusePak (very-high bitrates), AAC (cinematic), RealAudio (Internet radio - for the cosy feeling), and MP3 (compatibility, with very high quality if you spend enough bits).
What about mailing lists, automated password mailouts (used by places like slashdot when registering or users have lost passwords)?
The system would be based on a whitelist. You could add/remove people to the whitelist by sending a signed email, by using a secure web page, or one day, having a custom app (possibly integrated into your browser's context menu for email links, like 'Add this email to my friends list').
The authorisation process is just another way to get on the whitelist.
Then there is also the fact that the spam will bounce (most often) to a non valid adress, or one which actually exists but is not of the spammers.
Not my problem. They should get a proper spam prevention system like this one;-).
and re the kid not being free; I had a couple of spare hours so I wrote a small app which simulates mass mailouts, and the addresses mta would send back an authentication (another email which you reply with the word in the email as the subject), with a well designed app, I could do (on average) 12 a minute, and a know tonnes of kids (not necisarily of _legal_ age to work, who's parents and who themselves would be happy to work for $5 an hour (AUD). All my app did was with every incoming mail (an auth email) it would automaticaly display it in a 2 pain window with the bottom being the message body, and the top being the reply. When that window closed (sending) another would be behind it for authentication etc) As the questions would be simple, they would take less time to write the answers than copying the text.
Okay, spamers would definitely go that far to keep their racket working, so lets look at the figures and see how viable this would be for them:
Assuming 12 image tests per minute, and 5$ (AUD) is realistic, then that would allow them to do 720 mails an hour, costing the spammer 1.44 cents per mail.
Now, assuming that they achieve a 0.00036% sucess rate (yes, 3.6 hits per million -- see link), then the cost per sale to the spammer will be $4000 (AUD). Now considering this particular spammer was making only $10 (US) on a sale, that means a huge net loss.
And finaly, one point I did not make: I think that authing people would be the death of email - people like the fact they can click the send button and go onto the next email - if they have to undertake some form of authentication then they will just not bother.
Yes, that's the downside. Admitidley, you only have to do it for people you've never spoken to before, but it's still a pain. But spam is already a huge pain, and it keeps getting worse. But your point is well taken.
There all just ideas, and they could probably be improved. For example, GPG has the idea of chains of trust. If a trusts b, and b trusts c, then a trusts c. Given that we are all connected to each other by only 7 levels of indirection, then a complementary whitelist based on chains of trust might mean that it is almost never necesarry to do the authentication once you become trusted by enough people. An idea like that can never be taken seriously by itself because it has no teeth when somebody is not implicitly truested, but can become useful when there is a system like this one to back it up.
KDE is extremely expensive to develop for, unless you intend to produce GPL software.
This is only true if you value your time at zero. Every company I have ever worked for has paid me to be there; I had assumed that was normally the case. Gtk does have real value for small ISVs, but is a not a win for the majority of comapnies. Here's why:
1. Qt can be had under a proprietary license which many companies feel safer with. 2. Qt is far more productive to develop with, and pays for itself in short order. 3. Qt is a strong multi-platform toolkit, and many large companies will want to transition to Linux slowly, not all in one go. 4. Qt comes with quality, professional support from the company that builds it. 5. Qt has already been used by a huge number of large, well known companies, and businesses tend to have a herd mentality.
There are shards of truth to a lot you say, but in totality it just shows that you are another person engaged in a war to kill KDE, armed to the teeth with FUD, and bad intention.
Niether toolkit/desktop needs to die, or be exterminated. But, better integration must occur for users, and for businesses who will require that there products work regardless of were they may be deployed.
I find it always funny that KDE supporters list re-use of existing libraries as a big minus point in Gnome, as if it is a bad point to re-use and adopt none-Gnoome supporting libraries,
Actually both communities are correct in their approach -- both are refreshingly pragmatic.
If you have a toolkit available to you as good as Qt, which makes re-use *very* simple, then you may very well realise that it would be easier to re-write existing functionality for that framework, rather than having to create a new framework yourself.
On the other hand, if you had no such library in the first place, you would see that it would be easier to re-use the myriad of existing software, and develop/grow a library that explicitly enables that.
Both approaches are equally valid given the differing starting positions of their projects.
I find the KDE community extremely vicious against everything not KDE,...
No, niether the KDE or Gnome communities are vicious, it's just the fringe lunatics that pretend to represent these communities that talks all this crap. And they mostly do it here on Slashdot.
If you do some development, or just subscribe to the lists, you'll see exactly what I mean. Lot's of nice people just having fun developing quality code. Hurrah for Gnome and KDE!
Working copy & paste/drag & drop is definitely important, but I don't know about the component thing.
The other important things are that all apps should use the native print/file dialog, and all apps should have access to the virtual filesystems within that environment.
Everything required for solid integration between these two (awesome) environments is well under way (from the KDE side at least -- I don't hang about the Gnome forums).
I too very much hope that everyone will learn to get along when this work is finished. Both environments are clearly important since they have so many loyal fans, and integrating would just reduce what is obviously a useful choice. Few zealots at all will admit that it would be nice to have Gnome/Gtk apps work perfectly in KDE, or KDE/Qt apps work perfectly in Gnome. This work will achieve that through a number of intiatives, and we will all benefit in true OSS style. Thankyou Gnome and KDE!
As for Mozilla and OOo, they are both being Gnomified (and possibly KDEified), and so even KDE users will benefit once Gnome apps work better in KDE.
The second you do that, the writters of mass mailers will set their systems up to use OCR to sus out the key.
This technique is widely employed already, and does work, although there is an arms race going on requiring better and better image distorters.
Then there is also the fact that with the reduction in automated spam, companies will probably start hireing kids for a couple of dollars an hour to send emails for them...
That's fine. Then email would no longer be a free advertising medium for spammers. If they are relying on 1 in 10,000 mails (0.01%) to generate a sale, then it will no longer be a financially viable medium for them.
and the fact that SMTP servers used by spammers are usually run by the spammers themselves (so as to allow mucking up of the headers etc).
This idea does not require buy in at the level.
Then there is also another problem - of POP, IMAP and SMTP, only SMTP is standard. Should you modify SMTP's protocol you are guaranteed it's uptake will be almost as slow as the uptake of IMAP over POP. IMAP is a technicaly better protocol, POP is simple and easy and widely used. POP and IMAP have nothing to do with the sending however, so as long as you have a client and server which can deal with the prefered protocol you are fine, however SMTP and NSMTP (New Send Mail Transfer Protocol) will most likely be totaly incompatable - so SMTP would be able to talk to SMTP enabled servers, and NSMTP to NSMTP enabled servers, but should someone send using SMTP to an NSMTP enabled server, well you get the picture.
Yes I get the picture... you have misunderstood the level that this would work at. Sending an email to someone, and having that email bounced back with a human verification test does not require any changes to SMTP, or any other protocol for that matter.
Yes I had exactly the same idea about a year ago, and posted it on slashdot about a month back as AC (before I became Findus Krispy). I also said (ahem!) that filtering would never work, including bayesian spam filtering (even though I knew nothing about it), and I since think I was talking completely out of my arse.
But I still think the idea has legs. My idea is this:
Your SMTP receiver has a whitelist which you can add/remove people from. This could be done by sending a signed email or by using a secure web page. This means that mailing lists and such like can get through.
Any email from a someone not on the whitelist will be held in quarantine, and will not be released until the recipient has prooved that they are human in some way.
It is true that there is currently an arms race under way to create tools that can circumvent these measures, but I think that race is winnable. Although it is easy for a human to create a test that only a human can solve, it is not so easy for a computer to do the same. The images with distorted letters are a good example; the computer needs to distort the picture significantly to make it unsolvable, but can never be sure that they have not gone too far, making it impossible for humans too.
Well I think there's some merit to this idea. Because of the nature of the problem, the only workable solution will be a technical one, and this is a technical solution.
If the amount of time required to do the work is set at the right level, so as not to inconvenience real users, then it could be a win.
The problems with it are:
1. it adds a round trip for each email.
2. if it was done at the SMTP level than it
would be the ISP that got lumbered.
3. spammers already use large zombie nets
because of the bandwisth they require, and so
have access to large computational resources.
4. it limits what spammers can achieve, but does
not stop them completely
5. it requires a roll-out of new technology
Still a good idea though, and mail encryption/authentication was also solved using a solution that requires a decent computational balance to be found (if your key is too large it becomes inconvenient to encrypt and sign your mails).
Well done!
Slashdot Mirror
You lot are the biggest bunch of whingers I have ever seen. This is about the fifth article I have seen on this same thread and you are all still crying like babies 'cos you are no longer getting paid 100 times the world average.
What really annoys me is how you say stuff like, we need to ensure that America remains the wealthiest country for the good of the world! How the fuck do you come to that conclusion?
You've all been living in a bubble for a long time, and now the bubble is starting to burst. The fact is, when you consume a quarter of the worlds energy, natural resources, and workers, that must be maintained by force or trickery. Or do you really suppose that was just because America was inherently superior.
Local workers continue to become less important to the elite. The elite don't care about you, and they only ever paid your inflated wages begrudgingly. When the opportunity arose to replace you, they did.
THE BIGGER PICTURE:
What is really going on here? Well the majority of the worlds inhabitants live in poverty. And, if you are rich, it's advantageous to keep them that way. How much do you pay for a jar of coffee or a bag of sugar, and how much did the farmer receive for that? Would you pay more so that others can be paid fairly for there hard work, or would you continue to consume even more crap you don't need and have them so poor that they can only afford one simple meal of rice a day -- if they are lucky?
Think about it? Is it possible that you have been responsible for the premature deaths of many people through mal-nutrition so that you could consume that little bit more? If you answer no then you need to educate yourself to what is really going on in the world.
Now the elite are squeezing some of the local inhabitants out since they are no longer necesarry to their continued wealth. Can you despise them for that? Remember before you answer, having you unemployed means they get to consume that little bit more -- another car anyone? Can you really begrudge them that.
If you can you're a hippocrite. I suggest you take this pertinent advice "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." -- and ignorance will not cut it -- you have the Internet, so educate yourself.
I don't think you have understood what this is about. With SELinux the user's privilidges are not passed to the program, and by default program's have no rights at all. Anyway, if you believe what are you saying, then why don't you go login to Redhat or Gentoo's boxes where they have public root access and see if you can do something bad. It is true that to get the most out of SELinux program's will need to be written specially for it -- simple provable program's with very limited rights, and big buggy programs with no rights at all -- but an SELinux system will already be leauges in front of anything else we have at the moment.
I have never even used SELinux, but unlike many here, have at least taken the time to read up on it. Here is the little I have understood:
SELinux, if set up properly, is secure, and completely bypasses the inferior UNIX security model. You could say:
* Windows is insecure
* Linux is less insecure
* SELinux is almost secure
IN SELinux there is no root account, or at least it has no privilidges -- user's don't have privilidges in this system. So, you can give root to anyone and they won't be able to do a thing. Gentoo have a machine with public root access for just this purpose.
The difference is that each program is banned from doing anything by default. Reading a file, using the network, whatever... The packagers must explicitly assign each program access to what it minimally needs to do it's job.
So Bind (fairly insecure) might be given read access to it's config file, write access to it's cache directory, and port access only for the ports that it needs to listen on. If you then exploit bind it doesn't buy you very much. You can change the cache files, and answer DNS queries, but you can't even change Bind's own configuration, let alone anything else.
You may have the right as an administrator (nothing to do with root) to run bind, but the programs you run do not inherit your privilidges.
As a user, the privilidges that you have depend solely on the roles that you belong to. That's why root is useless, it is a user not a role.
Although there are many security patches for Linux, SELinux seems to me the only truly sound approach to security out there at the moment. If you combined it with hardening solutions designed to minimise the chance of exploits (binary sandboxes) you would end up with a system that is very difficult to exploit in the first place, and once you do manage it it buys you almost nothing anyway.
Although SELinux is built into Linux 2.6, it must be turned on and manually configured before it is useful. This is currently being done for Fedora, Gentoo, Debian, and other serious Linuxes. I believe this will make Linux the most secure general purpose operating system available. Then we really can lord it over the Windows users.
Thanks. Will get straight to it when the download finishes.
This looks so nice! Is there any way to make it available to others?
I am still downloading KDE 3.2 packages (third day, have modem!) so I don't know if the Theme Manager is improved. The 3.1 version doesn't store a lot of things which are critical to the overall look like the widget set, font settings, icon settings, or other miscelaneous configuration options.
I have niether the time nor the design flair to do something like this, so I'd really like to see KDE ship with lots of quality meta-themes like yours, rather than the rubbish that came with 3.1. Here's hoping!
Yes I'm afraid so!
Okay, so it's a Gtk app -- the fundamental Gtk app -- and not a Gnome app, but it still looks more at home on a Gnome system, for the time being at least.
Apart from Mozilla, IE/Wine and The Gimp 2.0 I use a 100% KDE system, and Gnome sticks out the most; more than Mozilla and IE even!
I am biased towards KDE so I am not the best person to ask. Then again, I used to be biased towards Gnome, and almost everyone is biased anyway, so here goes.
KDE Pros:
1. KDE is far easier to use for home users with no commercial technical support. Things like sharing a folder on your network, sharing your desktop, accessing your peripherals, etc are easy to do -- in Gnome they need setting up by an admin but are simple after that.
2. KDE has better enterprise management tools (Kiosk Mode) allowing multiple machines to be configured from a central location.
3. KDE has much better development tools and is easier to develop programs for.
4. KDE is far more complete and mature.
5. KDE is far more configurable and allows you to set it up exactly how you like it.
Gnome Pros:
1. Gnome is simpler on the eyes and less cluttered, making it easier to use for newbies in the areas where the Gnome environemnt is present.
2. Gnome has a *much* better image editing program, and slighly better Office suite.
3. Gnome is all about simplicity and straight forwardness, and it shows.
That basically sums it up for me. The remaining question is style/look. Gnome used to look *much* better han KDE, and felt more sophisticated and less like a toy. Nowadays whether you prefer the look of KDE or Gnome is definitely a more personal thing. They both look good to some people and not others.
KDE is more cartoony, and Gnome tries to be more slick. On the other hand, Gnome looks more old fashioned, and slighly DIY-ish, whereas KDE looks more professional, although still cartoony.
In any case, it changes everythime a better theme comes along. IMO, KDE has recently leapfrogged Gnome with the Plastik/Crystal SVG combination. Gnome will probably soon take back it's crown though. We'll see.
> I really don't understand that logic.
That would be because that is not what I said. What I said was:
GPL better protects free IP (than LGPL)
Proprietary better protects proprietary IP (than LGPL)
The LGPL is a middle ground. Adding your free IP to an LGPL product does not give you the same guarantees of continued freedom as does GPL (look at Wine), and building your proprietary IP around LGPL is not as safe (at least perceptively) as building that IP on top of software available under a proprietary license.
Personally, I would hapilly build a proprietary product around LGPL (and many OSS savy companies do), but traditonal companies almost always feel safer with a proprietary license.
I was merely making a comeback at Gnome supporters that say their single licensed LGPL product is necesarilly better than a tri licensed product like Qt. The one advantage that Gtk does have in this respect is that it allows proprietary software to be built without making any return contribution (either code or money) to the people that made the software available in the first place. And, IMO, this is not such a great 'advantage' in the first place, at least not for those who did contribute.
Stop crying and stop using KDE apps. There you are. Is baby okay now?
> I don't want my apps behave or look like KDE. If I did I'd be using KDE.
Well. It must be your lucky day! This work is *only* for KDE users who want better integrated non KDE apps. There has been a ton of recent integration announcements for KDE users, but none yet for Gnome people, so you may be safe yet.
I really don't understand this 'licensing issue' thing. I could say the same about GTK, where they are using the 'Lesser' GPL: if only the GTK people had taken an interest in the licenses, perhaps we wouldn't be in the mess we are in today.
In my world GPL protects free IP better than LGPL, and proprietary better protects proprietary IP than LGPL. Can you, or any other of your mindset, please explain why LGPL is a better freesoftware license than GPL, and why LGPL is better for proprietary vendors than a 'proprietary' license?
As for why I choose KDE, it is because it is, IMO, more powerful, easier to use, better integrated, more professional looking, and required no understanding of UNIX while I was still transitioning.
Overall I prefer the KDE apps, but regularly use two big Gnome apps: Gimp and sodipodi. I used to use Evolution too because it may me feel at home when I first switched from Windows, but I now far prefer KMail, and would use Kontact if I needed the groupware stuff.
I think Gnome is pretty cool, and I will definitely give it a serious try when it has matured a little more. The Gnome people always talk about it being easier to use, but that is only true in theory. It just isn't insulated well enough from UNIX yet, and requires you to know things like where your home directory is, or where devices might be found, and how you mount and unmount them, how to configure windows file sharing, etc.
Good point, and very well made.
The problem with the idea about not re-creating a window manager is that it requires that your primary window manager is up to the job. I believe WinXP and Linux do a fairly good job by nesting the Gimp's task buttons, but a Gimp toolbox still isn't an app/task, and IMO doesn't merit a task button.
I use The Gimp and originally found it both confusing and unintuitive. 1.3/2.0 is far superior: having the menu available all the time allows me to think "I am going to apply this effect to this image", whereas I couldn't do that with 1.2, and having the toolbars dock together is just plain easier.
But, if it were not for the virtual desktops available in Linux I think the Gimp interface would drive me mad. Like you, I need to be able to wall of the app for it to make sense for me, and with Linux I can do that satisfactorily. The advantage here is that I might be able to tolerate an IM client on the same desktop, and that is actually very handy.
I've been using the 1.3 series for about half a year now, and find that it is completely stable already (for what I do with it!), so I have no doubt that the final will be.
Also, the interface is so much better; I never felt at home with The Gimp 1.2, but love 1.3/2.0. It is not just the toolbars and the GTK2 look though, as some people have been saying, but the dialogs in general are so much more intuitive, and there is now a real-time preview when setting JPEG/GIF compression levels, which was something that really put me off before.
The Gimp 2 is now definitely comparable to Photoshop from an ease of use perspective. Suck it and see.
As regards KDE integration, I think it is less important with 2.0 (again, try using it!), but will probably happen to some extent even if there is no Kimp. Native KDE widgets, print, and save dialogs are all in the process of being made available for Gtk2 applications. That will be enough for me.
You are a either a troll, or you are serious, but have never done a blind A-B on Ogg, WMA, RealAudio, AAC, MP3, MusePak, etc and haven't heard from anyone that has. Let me inform you of my own experience.
About a year ago I decided to encode my entire CD collection (yes, a bit late to the game!) to my computer. I didn't know which codec to use and heard different things from different people, so I set up my own blind test. I encoded with each of the above codecs at five different quality settings (where this was possible) on some sample material, taking care to get the bit-rates very close to each other for fairness, and then un-encoded them all to wav again, so there could be no doubts.
Then I wrote a script to play every wav file in a given folder (one per bitrate/song part) in a random order, but recording it in a log. This is what I found:
Ogg Vorbis was the best at very-low, low, and medium bitrates, and was equal with MusePak at high bitrates. MusePak was the best at very-high bitrates (~185K), although the difference was marginal.
AAC was very good (second best) at all but very-low bitrates, but sounded a little lifeless (the sheen was removed). BTW: Worked very well with cinematic effects where had a greater clarity - the slight lifenesses that I perceived for musical material.
RealAudio was the second best at very-low bitrates, and had a beautiful, signature, analogue valve sound to it. Highly coloured, but very pleasing to listen to.
WMA pretended to be very good, but used trickery to do it (equalisation and compression), and the result was often painful on the ears (scratchy), and never melodius. This might actually be good with cheap equipment, though I didn't test this.
MP3 was the worst of the bunch. It is actually a very good codec provided that you give it enough bits; it only lost out in each round because it was noticeably inferior to the competition, but is really very good if you give it a bitrate handicap (~70K).
The result of this is that I encoded my entire CD collection with Ogg, but would also strongly reccomend MusePak (very-high bitrates), AAC (cinematic), RealAudio (Internet radio - for the cosy feeling), and MP3 (compatibility, with very high quality if you spend enough bits).
-- Make of that what you will.
I take it this test would be automated?
yes.
What about mailing lists, automated password mailouts (used by places like slashdot when registering or users have lost passwords)?
The system would be based on a whitelist. You could add/remove people to the whitelist by sending a signed email, by using a secure web page, or one day, having a custom app (possibly integrated into your browser's context menu for email links, like 'Add this email to my friends list').
The authorisation process is just another way to get on the whitelist.
Then there is also the fact that the spam will bounce (most often) to a non valid adress, or one which actually exists but is not of the spammers.
Not my problem. They should get a proper spam prevention system like this one
and re the kid not being free; I had a couple of spare hours so I wrote a small app which simulates mass mailouts, and the addresses mta would send back an authentication (another email which you reply with the word in the email as the subject), with a well designed app, I could do (on average) 12 a minute, and a know tonnes of kids (not necisarily of _legal_ age to work, who's parents and who themselves would be happy to work for $5 an hour (AUD). All my app did was with every incoming mail (an auth email) it would automaticaly display it in a 2 pain window with the bottom being the message body, and the top being the reply. When that window closed (sending) another would be behind it for authentication etc) As the questions would be simple, they would take less time to write the answers than copying the text.
Okay, spamers would definitely go that far to keep their racket working, so lets look at the figures and see how viable this would be for them:
Assuming 12 image tests per minute, and 5$ (AUD) is realistic, then that would allow them to do 720 mails an hour, costing the spammer 1.44 cents per mail.
Now, assuming that they achieve a 0.00036% sucess rate (yes, 3.6 hits per million -- see link), then the cost per sale to the spammer will be $4000 (AUD). Now considering this particular spammer was making only $10 (US) on a sale, that means a huge net loss.
And finaly, one point I did not make: I think that authing people would be the death of email - people like the fact they can click the send button and go onto the next email - if they have to undertake some form of authentication then they will just not bother.
Yes, that's the downside. Admitidley, you only have to do it for people you've never spoken to before, but it's still a pain. But spam is already a huge pain, and it keeps getting worse. But your point is well taken.
There all just ideas, and they could probably be improved. For example, GPG has the idea of chains of trust. If a trusts b, and b trusts c, then a trusts c. Given that we are all connected to each other by only 7 levels of indirection, then a complementary whitelist based on chains of trust might mean that it is almost never necesarry to do the authentication once you become trusted by enough people. An idea like that can never be taken seriously by itself because it has no teeth when somebody is not implicitly truested, but can become useful when there is a system like this one to back it up.
Any more ideas/criticism are most welcome.
KDE is extremely expensive to develop for, unless you intend to produce GPL software.
This is only true if you value your time at zero. Every company I have ever worked for has paid me to be there; I had assumed that was normally the case. Gtk does have real value for small ISVs, but is a not a win for the majority of comapnies. Here's why:
1. Qt can be had under a proprietary license which many companies feel safer with.
2. Qt is far more productive to develop with, and pays for itself in short order.
3. Qt is a strong multi-platform toolkit, and many large companies will want to transition to Linux slowly, not all in one go.
4. Qt comes with quality, professional support from the company that builds it.
5. Qt has already been used by a huge number of large, well known companies, and businesses tend to have a herd mentality.
There are shards of truth to a lot you say, but in totality it just shows that you are another person engaged in a war to kill KDE, armed to the teeth with FUD, and bad intention.
Niether toolkit/desktop needs to die, or be exterminated. But, better integration must occur for users, and for businesses who will require that there products work regardless of were they may be deployed.
Peace.
Actually both communities are correct in their approach -- both are refreshingly pragmatic.
If you have a toolkit available to you as good as Qt, which makes re-use *very* simple, then you may very well realise that it would be easier to re-write existing functionality for that framework, rather than having to create a new framework yourself.
On the other hand, if you had no such library in the first place, you would see that it would be easier to re-use the myriad of existing software, and develop/grow a library that explicitly enables that.
Both approaches are equally valid given the differing starting positions of their projects.
No, niether the KDE or Gnome communities are vicious, it's just the fringe lunatics that pretend to represent these communities that talks all this crap. And they mostly do it here on Slashdot.
If you do some development, or just subscribe to the lists, you'll see exactly what I mean. Lot's of nice people just having fun developing quality code. Hurrah for Gnome and KDE!
Working copy & paste/drag & drop is definitely important, but I don't know about the component thing.
The other important things are that all apps should use the native print/file dialog, and all apps should have access to the virtual filesystems within that environment.
Everything required for solid integration between these two (awesome) environments is well under way (from the KDE side at least -- I don't hang about the Gnome forums).
I too very much hope that everyone will learn to get along when this work is finished. Both environments are clearly important since they have so many loyal fans, and integrating would just reduce what is obviously a useful choice. Few zealots at all will admit that it would be nice to have Gnome/Gtk apps work perfectly in KDE, or KDE/Qt apps work perfectly in Gnome. This work will achieve that through a number of intiatives, and we will all benefit in true OSS style. Thankyou Gnome and KDE!
As for Mozilla and OOo, they are both being Gnomified (and possibly KDEified), and so even KDE users will benefit once Gnome apps work better in KDE.
This technique is widely employed already, and does work, although there is an arms race going on requiring better and better image distorters.
That's fine. Then email would no longer be a free advertising medium for spammers. If they are relying on 1 in 10,000 mails (0.01%) to generate a sale, then it will no longer be a financially viable medium for them.
This idea does not require buy in at the level.
Yes I get the picture
Yes I had exactly the same idea about a year ago, and posted it on slashdot about a month back as AC (before I became Findus Krispy). I also said (ahem!) that filtering would never work, including bayesian spam filtering (even though I knew nothing about it), and I since think I was talking completely out of my arse.
But I still think the idea has legs. My idea is this:
Your SMTP receiver has a whitelist which you can add/remove people from. This could be done by sending a signed email or by using a secure web page. This means that mailing lists and such like can get through.
Any email from a someone not on the whitelist will be held in quarantine, and will not be released until the recipient has prooved that they are human in some way.
It is true that there is currently an arms race under way to create tools that can circumvent these measures, but I think that race is winnable. Although it is easy for a human to create a test that only a human can solve, it is not so easy for a computer to do the same. The images with distorted letters are a good example; the computer needs to distort the picture significantly to make it unsolvable, but can never be sure that they have not gone too far, making it impossible for humans too.
Well I think there's some merit to this idea. Because of the nature of the problem, the only workable solution will be a technical one, and this is a technical solution. If the amount of time required to do the work is set at the right level, so as not to inconvenience real users, then it could be a win. The problems with it are: 1. it adds a round trip for each email. 2. if it was done at the SMTP level than it would be the ISP that got lumbered. 3. spammers already use large zombie nets because of the bandwisth they require, and so have access to large computational resources. 4. it limits what spammers can achieve, but does not stop them completely 5. it requires a roll-out of new technology Still a good idea though, and mail encryption/authentication was also solved using a solution that requires a decent computational balance to be found (if your key is too large it becomes inconvenient to encrypt and sign your mails). Well done!