OTOH, more seriously, while snipers in games get irritating, I've never had a problem dealing with them. Lay down some cover fire, create a diversion, etc. Snipers are an obstacle just like any other.
5 is where we start seeing a down turn until after generations.
Huh? 5 was the most awful of them all, and Generations was... meh, not bad. But, 6 was possibly the best, IMHO. I can understand if it's not someone's favorite, but it was a good movie and deserves some recognition, dammit!:)
I've been playing videogames since I was a little kid, and at 25 I still can't get enough of 'em.
A few guilty pleasures over the years include:
Chun Li from Street Fighter (hey, I was really young - no, I didn't play with one hand)
Narc - first game I ever played that was extremely violent and very graphic
Mortal Kombat [1 and 2] - I loved the first two MK games, the gameplay was great for the time, but the guilty pleasure was obviously the finish moves
King of Fighters - bounce bounce:) More hilarious than anything else
GTA - I never bothered with the missions until the third game, but running over people, running from the cops, etc., was friggin great. Once in GTA 1, I killed every single cop in the city(there were a limited number in the first game!). Then I blew up every single car except the Jeep Wrangler. The best fun, though, was setting up a huge ring of blown up vehicles surrounding my guy, and then proceeding to lob explosives into crowds of people and mowing down cops as they struggle to make their way through the wall of rubble.
Quake 1-3 - high-framerate gib flying fun!
Max Payne - silly story and game elements "ripped off" of the Matrix
Several times they pointed to several thousand lines of code and said, "We own that, because IBM contributed it and we think we might own anything IBM has ever touched."
I use a IDE => USB drive enclosure for doing backups, transporting data, etc.
It works flawlessly, using the USB storage module in Linux, with one minor caveat, ie. just be sure to umount the drive before disconnecting it(and wait for the drive to stop crunching - sometimes they crunch for a second or two after a sync, maybe because of the HD's own cache).
Right, but skinning isn't the same as actually using the toolkit to draw the widgets - but I get your point, it still doesn't follow the GNOME HIG. That's why I use Galeon(not 100% HIG, but I don't care, it's still better than Epiphany).
I fully support the integration work. However, the OP was making the claim that GNOME had somehow won because Phoenix, OpenOffice, etc were all becoming GNOME apps, and that Novell, SuSE, RedHat, and IBM had all moved to GNOME. Those things were just factually incorrect.
I understand what you're saying, and I agree. It seems to me that both desktops are "winning."
I also find the interface to be rather buggy and quirky.
----------
How so?
Don't get me wrong, I wasn't saying the interface was bad; it was just quirky when(less so the very last time) I used it. It's been a while, so I don't remember the exact details, but I do remember that it wasn't saving the widths of the folder bar or the email header columns. It also really f*cked up my imap mail - created a bunch of duplicates, and deleted some email. That didn't happen last time I used it, so... But it just pissed me off, because it wasn't marked as unstable at the time. It was like, "hey, we support imap now," and I tried it and was like, "gee, thanks for f*cking up my mail!:P" But I don't hold a grudge, so I tried it again later - heh, one of those days when I was waiting for Evolution to compile(like 3 hours...).
As far as features - like I said, whatever people seem to expect from email clients these days, address book connected to an insecure server, appointment junk, kitchen sinks, taking out the garbage, etc - all the bullshit that Lookout has caused people to expect. Heh, I wasn't agreeing with him, just pointing out what I assumed he meant.
Personally, I use mutt these days, with vim as my pager and editor(you just can't beat that).
-------------
Heh. Thanks to KParts, you can use vim in KMail too:) Its included in 3.2
I've used kvim, and it was unbearably slow. GTK+-2.0-based gvim is *much* faster. I asked on #vim if it was just my system, and it was apparently not... I hope that has improved - other than that, it was looking really nice. BTW, GNOME is getting the same sort of vim component in the near future(it's been working for a while, but was sort of hacked together and non-trivial to setup).
You're right, I hadn't looked at a recent Firebird release. Although, its really not a GTK app.
No, but it's close enough that it looks pretty spiffy on a GNOME desktop.
No, I was correct:)
Ok, you were both correct:P Just because it uses an abstraction layer, doesn't mean it's not "native." It will still be nicely integrated with GNOME, and...
KDE has an NWF implementation that's pretty far along as well.
apparently, on KDE as well:)
Seriously, that's fantastic. All this interoperability work will allow people to decide on a choice of DE(because neither are perfect for everyone, choice is good, IMO) and still bring along some of the major apps!
I just wish people would stop the bickering, it helps neither desktop project.
That is correct, however, GTK/GNOME is catching up - but really, I don't give a f*ck. I don't use a single proprietary app these days. Proprietary vendors can choose whatever toolkit they please and that will suit me just fine.
With the exception of games of course. I've bought a bunch of native Linux games, and it's about a 25/25/50 split between GTK/KDE/Neither. As long as they don't depend on either entire DE, I'm happy.
Kontact?
KMail is a very seriousl mail client, and you provide no evidence to the contrary.
KMail is(er.. was) possibly the worst core KDE application, IMO. I have used it pleny of times, and it always does something unexpected(deleting mail, crashes, etc.). I also find the interface to be rather buggy and quirky. The last version I used was much better, and that was several months ago, so I assume it is pretty stable now.
But what I think the other guy was getting at is that it lacks the huge number of features of most "modern" email clients. Personally, I use mutt these days, with vim as my pager and editor(you just can't beat that).
Ok, real corrections...
"Phoenix and Thunderbird - GTK"
Neither are GTK+ apps
False. Both use many GTK widgets now. Look at the buttons, text entry boxes, etc. Still not GTK menus though...
However, there are a number of excellent GTK apps that use the Mozilla rendering engine - and gecko is without a doubt the absolute best rendering engine around today.
"OpenOffice.org - Now native GTK planned for next release"
No, a GUI-independent framework is planned for next release.
No, he was correct. Ximian has been working with OO.o, and they have implemented GTK for nearly the entire app(using the GUI-independent framework? I don't know... but it is there).
I really wish users of both DEs would STFU sometimes. KDE did this, GNOME did that, bleh - just STFU. Support the interoperability efforts and STFU. Assholes...
Because it can still be a huge hassle, the costs get passed back to consumers anyway(in the loooong run), and as I said, many people make purchases with debit cards these days.
Is that part of your job, being in the plastic industry and all that?
Not sure I understand you... but no, I'm just a programmer.
Actually, I work for a company in the plastic industry, so I already knew all that. But the fact is, a lot of people don't know their rights, and a lot of people use debit cards these days.
And you are posting to this story, why? Noone really seems interested with a non-*nix user's "overly critical" opinions about something as mundane as a file-selector that should have been replaced a long time ago and for one reason or other noone has until now.
What about stability? I haven't seen anyone mention that yet. I'm going on purely empirical evidence collected by myself over the years, but IME, GTK/GNOME has been at least 100% more stable than QT/KDE.
In fact, I switched to GNOME because it was lighter and more stable. Every couple months I install the latest KDE. Generally I'll use it for a couple days and get it setup as best I can for my own needs, but it always falls short. KDE is always just full of so many quirky bugs and apps that crash or are just too bug-riddled to be useful. Eg. the control panel (font settings are extremely quirky - and the cp crashes often), toolbar settings are extremely problematic(drag them around only to have apps crash, or worse, lose a toolbar and be unable to get it back), text alignment is generally very poor(compare to GTK, where text is always properly centered in toolbars and panels, in KDE/QT, text is often placed off-center or aligned to one edge) - I could go on and on about seriously irritating bugs in KDE.
Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to disparage KDE - it is a fantastic DE. I'm just pointing out that there are real reasons that many people like GNOME better, especially more traditional *nix folks.
The grand-parent poster does, however, make some excellent points about some of the technical merits of KDE - like I said, it is a fantastic DE. I'll stick with GNOME for now though.
* improve their security / invest more in security
* go out of business and/or be less competitive.
in either case, the consumer wins
Ummm... No... Not if your(the consumer) credit card number gets stolen, or an expensive package you ordered gets rerouted somewhere else for a thief to pick up.
In such cases, the consumer often does a whole lot of losing before anyone else, usually.
Yeah, I agree. And a laptop has other uses. A laptop often substitutes for a briefcase these days.
Also, once a device exceeds a certain size, it becomes a PITA to carry and accomodations need to be made. A laptop is such a device, and people carry them like briefcases now. A device as described in the article would also be a PITA, but 99.9% of people would have no practical use to justify it.
An iPod is small enough that it can be easily kept on your person without hassle, and performs the #1 function people use such a device for, ie. listening to music. And listening to music can be done while doing other things, unlike video.
You must remember that most of the world is not like America and commuting mostly does not involve driving.
Ahem, why thank you for pointing that out...
A lot of commuting around the world, and here in the cities, consists of walking. Even riding a train or bus for an hour, that device looks like a big pain to lug around. I would also say that public transportation has too many distractions for paying serious attention to a video device. And what are you going to watch for that brief time?
Like I said, there are already video devices that are failures. Watching video on the go is simply impractical.
It may succeed, as far as making instead of losing profits, but the market for this device is very small. It does not fit the market that it appears to have been designed for; it will not be an "iPod killer."
I _really_ don't understand why some people just adore MS hardware. Totally disregarding my personal dislike of MS, I'll explain why I think MS hardware is mostly overrated.
Joysticks. I once bought a MS Sidewinder joystick - it was cool looking and the price was right. Anyway, the first thing I noticed about it was the trim controls were too loose. They would slide a bit when you moved the stick around. The Second thing I noticed was that the center actually moved around a bit. In some games I could increase the dead area, but others were impossible to play.
MS failure #1.
My first MS mouse was an old intellimouse. It was of acceptable quality for the time, but it was awkward and uncomfortable. My second MS mouse was the first MS optical mouse - can't remember the name. It was decent, but had one major flaw. I'm not referring to the overly large MS optical mouse, but the smaller one. It is roughly the same size as a Logitech iFeel. The major flaw, and this is true of the larger ones too, is that the mouse is sort of flattened on the sides, instead of sloping in. This makes the mouse nearly impossible to pick up. This is a very, very poor design decision, as wtf do you do when you slide over the the edge of your mousepad?
Sure, you can adjust your mouse acceleration so that that rarely happens, but it still does. After several hours of mousing with one of those, my hand gets extremely sore. And forget gaming.
I have noticed that MS is moving away from that design, BTW. So for all their ergonimics testing, they didn't actually account for real-world usage.
Another note about MS mice, the larger ones used to have a fatal design flaw - a funny one, IMO - there was nothing holding the wire to the mouse except for the actual contacts! We had a bunch of these, 20 or so, and every single one of them has died after about a year of usage. This was obviously a simple mistake and not a design decision, and newer ones don't have this problem.
Xbox. I own and Xbox, and mine has been fine. However, I know others who own them too, and all of theirs have GSOD problems... None of the retail stores in the area can keep an Xbox demo working for more than a couple months. They seem to die when they're on all the time, as one store owner explained to me. Definately the console most prone to failure - not far behind is the shoddily manufactured PS2 however.
I won't go as far as to say that MS hardware is junk - it is, but comparatively speaking... - just overrated, much like Sony.
Wow, glad to see you really thought about this one before replying...
People _like_ less clutter, therefore they probably won't want to carry around a big bulky device that plays video when all they want is a "walkman."
People listen to music while doing everything: walking to work, riding the subway, riding as a passenger in a car, doing some work-related thing(ie. stuffing envelopes, etc.), etc.. You just don't walk around playing videos...
These devices are doomed to fail. There is simply no reason to carry around a complete portable "media device." Video should be a separate device.
People like to carry around a small device for listening to music on the go. You don't watch videos on the go. If you have a need to bring a portable video player somewhere, these already exist. From what I understand, they don't sell extremely well, due to the limited need.
These devices may be useful to some people, but not many; it's certainly no iPod killer.
All the Pro-SCO arguments I have seen have been modded up immediately, but then after a brief discover phase, it has always been learned that the poster was actually trolling, and is then accordingly modded down.
There have been very few honest arguments for SCO, and the very minor ones have been modded up, and are generally very frivilous in a legal sense.
I read at -1, so I don't miss much. Do you? If not, please do. If you already do, please point out something to back up your claims.
Sorry, what I meant to say was, "Please don't confuse groupthink with being correct"...
In any case, "groupthink" would imply that arguments are dismissed without regard to merit, which I think I have fairly clearly demonstrated is not happening on/. to a large degree.
But you refuse to accept that with regards to SCO, despite all the evidence to the contrary.
The difference between Galileo's writings and an unfashionable idea is that Galileo expressed a TRUE statement. Many unfashionable statements are unfashionable precisely because they are wrong.
You seem to not have read the FA, because he says that things being unfashionable often keeps people from thinking about them without regards to whether they are true or not, which doesn't appear to be what you are responding to. Ie. You don't seem to understand what the article was about.
Whether "fashion" is a good analogy is another topic, but I think it's apt, if understood in the proper context.
Slashdot Mirror
OTOH, more seriously, while snipers in games get irritating, I've never had a problem dealing with them. Lay down some cover fire, create a diversion, etc. Snipers are an obstacle just like any other.
Huh? 5 was the most awful of them all, and Generations was... meh, not bad. But, 6 was possibly the best, IMHO. I can understand if it's not someone's favorite, but it was a good movie and deserves some recognition, dammit! :)
A few guilty pleasures over the years include:
Chun Li from Street Fighter (hey, I was really young - no, I didn't play with one hand)
Narc - first game I ever played that was extremely violent and very graphic
Mortal Kombat [1 and 2] - I loved the first two MK games, the gameplay was great for the time, but the guilty pleasure was obviously the finish moves
King of Fighters - bounce bounce :) More hilarious than anything else
GTA - I never bothered with the missions until the third game, but running over people, running from the cops, etc., was friggin great. Once in GTA 1, I killed every single cop in the city(there were a limited number in the first game!). Then I blew up every single car except the Jeep Wrangler. The best fun, though, was setting up a huge ring of blown up vehicles surrounding my guy, and then proceeding to lob explosives into crowds of people and mowing down cops as they struggle to make their way through the wall of rubble.
Quake 1-3 - high-framerate gib flying fun!
Max Payne - silly story and game elements "ripped off" of the Matrix
And so much more...
Cheers!
I could be delerious, but I think I recall there being a kernel bug sometime during the 2.4 series related to syncing before umount.
You could try running sync before unmounting just to be sure... Or better yet, try upgrading your kernel.
It works flawlessly, using the USB storage module in Linux, with one minor caveat, ie. just be sure to umount the drive before disconnecting it(and wait for the drive to stop crunching - sometimes they crunch for a second or two after a sync, maybe because of the HD's own cache).
You can skin Firebird to look like a KDE app too
Right, but skinning isn't the same as actually using the toolkit to draw the widgets - but I get your point, it still doesn't follow the GNOME HIG. That's why I use Galeon(not 100% HIG, but I don't care, it's still better than Epiphany).
I fully support the integration work. However, the OP was making the claim that GNOME had somehow won because Phoenix, OpenOffice, etc were all becoming GNOME apps, and that Novell, SuSE, RedHat, and IBM had all moved to GNOME. Those things were just factually incorrect.
I understand what you're saying, and I agree. It seems to me that both desktops are "winning."
Cheers!
----------
How so?
Don't get me wrong, I wasn't saying the interface was bad; it was just quirky when(less so the very last time) I used it. It's been a while, so I don't remember the exact details, but I do remember that it wasn't saving the widths of the folder bar or the email header columns. It also really f*cked up my imap mail - created a bunch of duplicates, and deleted some email. That didn't happen last time I used it, so... But it just pissed me off, because it wasn't marked as unstable at the time. It was like, "hey, we support imap now," and I tried it and was like, "gee, thanks for f*cking up my mail! :P" But I don't hold a grudge, so I tried it again later - heh, one of those days when I was waiting for Evolution to compile(like 3 hours...).
As far as features - like I said, whatever people seem to expect from email clients these days, address book connected to an insecure server, appointment junk, kitchen sinks, taking out the garbage, etc - all the bullshit that Lookout has caused people to expect. Heh, I wasn't agreeing with him, just pointing out what I assumed he meant.
Personally, I use mutt these days, with vim as my pager and editor(you just can't beat that). :) Its included in 3.2
-------------
Heh. Thanks to KParts, you can use vim in KMail too
I've used kvim, and it was unbearably slow. GTK+-2.0-based gvim is *much* faster. I asked on #vim if it was just my system, and it was apparently not... I hope that has improved - other than that, it was looking really nice. BTW, GNOME is getting the same sort of vim component in the near future(it's been working for a while, but was sort of hacked together and non-trivial to setup).
You're right, I hadn't looked at a recent Firebird release. Although, its really not a GTK app.
No, but it's close enough that it looks pretty spiffy on a GNOME desktop.
No, I was correct :)
Ok, you were both correct :P Just because it uses an abstraction layer, doesn't mean it's not "native." It will still be nicely integrated with GNOME, and...
KDE has an NWF implementation that's pretty far along as well.
apparently, on KDE as well :)
Seriously, that's fantastic. All this interoperability work will allow people to decide on a choice of DE(because neither are perfect for everyone, choice is good, IMO) and still bring along some of the major apps!
I just wish people would stop the bickering, it helps neither desktop project.
Doh!
That is correct, however, GTK/GNOME is catching up - but really, I don't give a f*ck. I don't use a single proprietary app these days. Proprietary vendors can choose whatever toolkit they please and that will suit me just fine.
With the exception of games of course. I've bought a bunch of native Linux games, and it's about a 25/25/50 split between GTK/KDE/Neither. As long as they don't depend on either entire DE, I'm happy.
Kontact?
KMail is a very seriousl mail client, and you provide no evidence to the contrary.
KMail is(er.. was) possibly the worst core KDE application, IMO. I have used it pleny of times, and it always does something unexpected(deleting mail, crashes, etc.). I also find the interface to be rather buggy and quirky. The last version I used was much better, and that was several months ago, so I assume it is pretty stable now.
But what I think the other guy was getting at is that it lacks the huge number of features of most "modern" email clients. Personally, I use mutt these days, with vim as my pager and editor(you just can't beat that).
Ok, real corrections...
"Phoenix and Thunderbird - GTK"
Neither are GTK+ apps
False. Both use many GTK widgets now. Look at the buttons, text entry boxes, etc. Still not GTK menus though...
However, there are a number of excellent GTK apps that use the Mozilla rendering engine - and gecko is without a doubt the absolute best rendering engine around today.
"OpenOffice.org - Now native GTK planned for next release"
No, a GUI-independent framework is planned for next release.
No, he was correct. Ximian has been working with OO.o, and they have implemented GTK for nearly the entire app(using the GUI-independent framework? I don't know... but it is there).
I really wish users of both DEs would STFU sometimes. KDE did this, GNOME did that, bleh - just STFU. Support the interoperability efforts and STFU. Assholes...
And Galeon... Best. Browser. Ever. Period.
I highly recommend both of them.
There is also Firebird, BTW, which uses native widgets for some things, and while not perfectly integrated, it doesn't stick out like a sore thumb.
Cheers!
The GUI is much improved. I don't use it enough to say whether or not it is good, but it sure suits me much better.
Plus, I rather think Photoshop's GUI is rather cluttered... YMMV I guess.
Because it can still be a huge hassle, the costs get passed back to consumers anyway(in the loooong run), and as I said, many people make purchases with debit cards these days.
Is that part of your job, being in the plastic industry and all that?
Not sure I understand you... but no, I'm just a programmer.
That is to say, Piss Off.
In fact, I switched to GNOME because it was lighter and more stable. Every couple months I install the latest KDE. Generally I'll use it for a couple days and get it setup as best I can for my own needs, but it always falls short. KDE is always just full of so many quirky bugs and apps that crash or are just too bug-riddled to be useful. Eg. the control panel (font settings are extremely quirky - and the cp crashes often), toolbar settings are extremely problematic(drag them around only to have apps crash, or worse, lose a toolbar and be unable to get it back), text alignment is generally very poor(compare to GTK, where text is always properly centered in toolbars and panels, in KDE/QT, text is often placed off-center or aligned to one edge) - I could go on and on about seriously irritating bugs in KDE.
Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to disparage KDE - it is a fantastic DE. I'm just pointing out that there are real reasons that many people like GNOME better, especially more traditional *nix folks.
The grand-parent poster does, however, make some excellent points about some of the technical merits of KDE - like I said, it is a fantastic DE. I'll stick with GNOME for now though.
Cheers!
Ummm... No... Not if your(the consumer) credit card number gets stolen, or an expensive package you ordered gets rerouted somewhere else for a thief to pick up.
In such cases, the consumer often does a whole lot of losing before anyone else, usually.
Also, once a device exceeds a certain size, it becomes a PITA to carry and accomodations need to be made. A laptop is such a device, and people carry them like briefcases now. A device as described in the article would also be a PITA, but 99.9% of people would have no practical use to justify it.
An iPod is small enough that it can be easily kept on your person without hassle, and performs the #1 function people use such a device for, ie. listening to music. And listening to music can be done while doing other things, unlike video.
Ahem, why thank you for pointing that out...
A lot of commuting around the world, and here in the cities, consists of walking. Even riding a train or bus for an hour, that device looks like a big pain to lug around. I would also say that public transportation has too many distractions for paying serious attention to a video device. And what are you going to watch for that brief time?
Like I said, there are already video devices that are failures. Watching video on the go is simply impractical.
It may succeed, as far as making instead of losing profits, but the market for this device is very small. It does not fit the market that it appears to have been designed for; it will not be an "iPod killer."
Joysticks. I once bought a MS Sidewinder joystick - it was cool looking and the price was right. Anyway, the first thing I noticed about it was the trim controls were too loose. They would slide a bit when you moved the stick around. The Second thing I noticed was that the center actually moved around a bit. In some games I could increase the dead area, but others were impossible to play.
MS failure #1.
My first MS mouse was an old intellimouse. It was of acceptable quality for the time, but it was awkward and uncomfortable. My second MS mouse was the first MS optical mouse - can't remember the name. It was decent, but had one major flaw. I'm not referring to the overly large MS optical mouse, but the smaller one. It is roughly the same size as a Logitech iFeel. The major flaw, and this is true of the larger ones too, is that the mouse is sort of flattened on the sides, instead of sloping in. This makes the mouse nearly impossible to pick up. This is a very, very poor design decision, as wtf do you do when you slide over the the edge of your mousepad?
Sure, you can adjust your mouse acceleration so that that rarely happens, but it still does. After several hours of mousing with one of those, my hand gets extremely sore. And forget gaming.
I have noticed that MS is moving away from that design, BTW. So for all their ergonimics testing, they didn't actually account for real-world usage.
Another note about MS mice, the larger ones used to have a fatal design flaw - a funny one, IMO - there was nothing holding the wire to the mouse except for the actual contacts! We had a bunch of these, 20 or so, and every single one of them has died after about a year of usage. This was obviously a simple mistake and not a design decision, and newer ones don't have this problem.
Xbox. I own and Xbox, and mine has been fine. However, I know others who own them too, and all of theirs have GSOD problems... None of the retail stores in the area can keep an Xbox demo working for more than a couple months. They seem to die when they're on all the time, as one store owner explained to me. Definately the console most prone to failure - not far behind is the shoddily manufactured PS2 however.
I won't go as far as to say that MS hardware is junk - it is, but comparatively speaking... - just overrated, much like Sony.
People _like_ less clutter, therefore they probably won't want to carry around a big bulky device that plays video when all they want is a "walkman."
People listen to music while doing everything: walking to work, riding the subway, riding as a passenger in a car, doing some work-related thing(ie. stuffing envelopes, etc.), etc.. You just don't walk around playing videos...
People like to carry around a small device for listening to music on the go. You don't watch videos on the go. If you have a need to bring a portable video player somewhere, these already exist. From what I understand, they don't sell extremely well, due to the limited need.
These devices may be useful to some people, but not many; it's certainly no iPod killer.
Just my 2 cents.
There have been very few honest arguments for SCO, and the very minor ones have been modded up, and are generally very frivilous in a legal sense.
I read at -1, so I don't miss much. Do you? If not, please do. If you already do, please point out something to back up your claims.
In any case, "groupthink" would imply that arguments are dismissed without regard to merit, which I think I have fairly clearly demonstrated is not happening on /. to a large degree.
But you refuse to accept that with regards to SCO, despite all the evidence to the contrary.
You seem to not have read the FA, because he says that things being unfashionable often keeps people from thinking about them without regards to whether they are true or not, which doesn't appear to be what you are responding to. Ie. You don't seem to understand what the article was about.
Whether "fashion" is a good analogy is another topic, but I think it's apt, if understood in the proper context.