Perhaps I didn't get my idea across clearly -- it was late, after all.
If I am not required to converse with people, I will not develop conversational skills. If my immune system is not required to deal with me playing in the mud and getting dirty then it will not be as strong. If I am forced to exist in a closed, controlled environment, I won't have any concept of what's outside it.
People seal themselves in tightly controlled environments all the time, and that's fine because, generally, they've chosen to do so.
When it comes to children and adolescents, I'd far rather let them create their own social environment (with a few adult observers standing by to come in if things really get out of hand) than thrust my own idea of what's good upon them.
My experience at high school was rather like my subsequent experience of the real world. The vast majority are decent people that just want to get on with their lives. It's only the occasional thugs who like to cause trouble. Most people tend to come up with ways to avoid the thugs and carry on with whatever they're doing.
Some people aren't able to control their environment to the extent that they can completely cut out the threat of violence, whether through financial constraints or otherwise. If I'd gone to a school that was devoid of "anti-social dickweeds", I'd be totally unprepared for them when I leave my protective environment.
As I see it, there are lots of violent anti-social types around and it would be better for kids to be prepared for this than not.
All very nice and utopian. I believe, however, that it's beneficial to have some upsets during childhood.
After all, if you don't have to deal with social disasters at school, how on earth do you propose to deal with them later on in life when learning isn't as easy?
I started running Linux on my 486DX2/66 (became a DX4/100) in '97 and my impression of mp3 playback (using mpg123, iirc) was that I had a decidedly better experience under Windows using winamp. Put simply, I had to convince the player to decode to 22KHz mono when running under Linux and I could run stereo 44KHz with winamp.
Still, I suppose it may have been a soundcard (Yamaha opl3-sa3, iirc) and drivers issue?
I can understand the British -- they've been rubbish at consumer internet access for as long as I've been living here (10 years now), but I'd have thought the Austrians would understand the advantages...
One can only hope that the traditional British one-upmanship against the French will prevail and that we'll see affordable high speed access while I'm still young enough to care about it!!
Sometimes I really wish the UK gov't, specifically the comms regulator, would get a bloody clue.
It's pretty damn clear from where I'm sitting that the rest of the world is steaming ahead, while we sit here having our (relatively) piddling, overpriced little internet connections.
Still, it does mean that I get out more, so that's not such a bad thing...
This offering is *not* expensive for this country (the UK)! Pretty much all suppliers offer capped access with limits in the region of 100-150GB/mth (ignoring the "exceptional" ISPs like BT who offer lower caps). Furthermore, this is going to be considered to be a very high speed connection in this country. Just to give you some perspective, I'm on a 1Mbit connection, which is more than most people in this country have.
If someone could come over here and offer high speed, reliable, uncapped broadband internet access to the home for a reasonable price, they would absolutely conquer the market.
I suspect that precisely the same would occur in Australia and New Zealand, where I understand the internet connectivity possibilities are even less impressive.
Of course here in the UK, uncapped DSL is quickly becoming a thing of the past.
I think the "cap" (they don't call it that) at my ISP is in the region of 140GB/month, meaning that were I to use my 1Mbit/256Kbit to anywhere even beginning to approach capacity, I'd be thrown onto my ISPs most contested pipe along with all the other "heavy" users.
On balance, this deal from UK-Online seems highly reasonable. I've read many posts that say that it seems expensive and that the cap is unfair, etc, etc. Well, guys, that's just how internet access is in this country.
I don't wish to offend or attack anyone, but KDE is just too heavy for my taste. I've tried various versions, starting with something pre-1 (on my 486 -- that was painfully slow), through 1.x and finally 3.[013]. It's a fine desktop enviroment, with many useful tools and applications. Just doesn't suit me.
XFCE certainly allows for screen and window edge snapping, but my (very poorly expressed) point was that having separate windows (frames?) is, IMHO, inferior to having a single window that contains subframes.
People will always differ on this though -- I had a similar discussion with someone earlier this month about the benefits of tabbed vs. untabbed browsing.
I think it comes down to the fact that I want as few frames on my screen as possible. Of course, these frames may have subframes, but I don't want every toolbar, picture and webpage to come in its own frame for precisely the same reason that I don't have 6 emacs frames open when I'm hacking around with something -- it clutters up my screen to have more than one, and it's more effort to "put it away".
Having "grown up" with Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro and Illustrator, the idea of having 4 totally separate windows for the toolbars doesn't sit well with me. I realise that their floating palettes are effectively windows, but they're different (smaller title bars, slightly different behaviour).
One thing that might help, if the single window model is impossible, could be if they "snapped" to, say, 2 pixels of the desktop edge (as they do in Photoshop) and remember their positions between sessions. This'd at least let me quickly impose order on my GIMP virtual desktop.
GIMP could be great. I'd use it all the time instead of Photoshop under VMWare (!), if I could get my head around its little annoyances.
I used this for a while. The reason it didn't work for me is that the labels on the taskbar become too small to be useful for me (I don't like to lose more than about 20 pixels to the bar).
Of course, everyone is different, so this probably works for many people!
I notice that tabbed browsing ends up using even more desktop real estate. I've never needed tabbed browsing before, all my windows appear on my Explorer task bar...just like tabs. I suppose tabs would be useful for people whos operating systems don't have a taskbar enabled shell.
This is a valid point. I have a friend who uses Firefox under Windows, but hardly ever uses tabs at all. I can do pretty well without myself too. On the other hand, I couldn't live without tabs on a Mac.
Whereas I, when playing with my toy windows 2000 machine, can't live without tabbed browsing. I have very limited patience with a cluttered taskbar. A typical session, display resolution at 1280x1024, will look something like this:
graphics package (sometimes 2 or 3)
mp3 player
thunderbird
firefox (tabbed, generally visiting more than 4 sites)
up to 2 windows explorer sessions
emacs
winscp
up to 2 putty sessions
In this situation, where I will already have a lot in the taskbar, the last thing I want is to have more than one item for my web browser - the items in the taskbar are already short enough as to be only minimally useful, particularly when the start menu, quick launch bar and system tray (all of which I use) have taken their chunks out of the screen width.
So in response to the grandparent poster, I find that tabbed browsing actually uses considerably less desktop real-estate.
Seems ok to me on my laptop (P-II, 400MHz, 128MB RAM). Of course, that's running in a resource-unintensive window manager/environment (either XFCE of fluxbox, depending on what mood I'm in).
On the other hand, firefox is normally open to a long page in the Java API, there's generally an EMACS visiting several source files and regular java compiles going on, courtesy of ant, so maybe that chews enough resources to match a heavier desktop environment...
Not sure I like the idea of "Clippy the Toothpick"
"Hi, I'm Clippy the Internal Mouth Assistant! It looks like you're pulling something from between your teeth. I have been fitted with a gunk sensor. Would you like me to clean your teeth automatically for you?"
The people responsible for building the AI to monitor the sanity of the AI to monitor the sanity of the AI to monitor the sanity of the AI to monitor the sanity of the AI to monitor the sanity of the AI to monitor the system have been sacked.
Slashdot Mirror
Does this open up new possibilities for compression?
"Linux... UNDER PRESSURE!"
Could be -- we start X from the console here, so my times include X startup.
8.7M interest? Ouch! :-(
Now that's interesting...
I'm going to focus just on startup times.
We have two identical machines in our office, both running Slackware 10.0, one of which uses KDE 3.3 and the other (mine) XFCE 4.2.
From the console, I can be up and running in XFCE in about 3-8 seconds (nvidia splash screen). By contrast, the KDE box takes about 15-20.
A third, slightly slower, machine also runs Slackware 10.0/KDE 3.3 and takes about 20-25 seconds from console to use.
I've not done any checks to see the relative memory footprint of XFCE vs KDE, but it seems to me that XFCE is faster.
But then, I'm biased!
Quite so. It's always seemed to me that schools effectively serve to lock the children up whilst the grownups are busy.
Don't let Mr Blair hear you -- he'll keep you in detention! ;-)
Perhaps I didn't get my idea across clearly -- it was late, after all.
If I am not required to converse with people, I will not develop conversational skills. If my immune system is not required to deal with me playing in the mud and getting dirty then it will not be as strong. If I am forced to exist in a closed, controlled environment, I won't have any concept of what's outside it.
People seal themselves in tightly controlled environments all the time, and that's fine because, generally, they've chosen to do so.
When it comes to children and adolescents, I'd far rather let them create their own social environment (with a few adult observers standing by to come in if things really get out of hand) than thrust my own idea of what's good upon them.
My experience at high school was rather like my subsequent experience of the real world. The vast majority are decent people that just want to get on with their lives. It's only the occasional thugs who like to cause trouble. Most people tend to come up with ways to avoid the thugs and carry on with whatever they're doing.
Some people aren't able to control their environment to the extent that they can completely cut out the threat of violence, whether through financial constraints or otherwise. If I'd gone to a school that was devoid of "anti-social dickweeds", I'd be totally unprepared for them when I leave my protective environment.
As I see it, there are lots of violent anti-social types around and it would be better for kids to be prepared for this than not.
All very nice and utopian. I believe, however, that it's beneficial to have some upsets during childhood.
After all, if you don't have to deal with social disasters at school, how on earth do you propose to deal with them later on in life when learning isn't as easy?
I started running Linux on my 486DX2/66 (became a DX4/100) in '97 and my impression of mp3 playback (using mpg123, iirc) was that I had a decidedly better experience under Windows using winamp. Put simply, I had to convince the player to decode to 22KHz mono when running under Linux and I could run stereo 44KHz with winamp.
Still, I suppose it may have been a soundcard (Yamaha opl3-sa3, iirc) and drivers issue?
If I had points, matey, you'd have 'em...
Haven't read that in ages!!
Anyway, for your reference purposes, the motorcyclists are:
- Grievous Bodily Harm
- Cruelty To Animals
- Things Not Working Properly Even After You've Given Them A Good Thumping (secretly No Alcohol Lager)
- Really Cool People
Cheers!
I can understand the British -- they've been rubbish at consumer internet access for as long as I've been living here (10 years now), but I'd have thought the Austrians would understand the advantages...
One can only hope that the traditional British one-upmanship against the French will prevail and that we'll see affordable high speed access while I'm still young enough to care about it!!
Woof! That must really hurt.
I'm a relatively cheap bugger -- plusnet 1Mb, just under £30, but has a 140GB "soft cap" (after which you get put onto a highly contended pipe).
Bloody regulators here are crap!
Long live the technologically adept European Union, eh? ;)
Eh merde!
Sometimes I really wish the UK gov't, specifically the comms regulator, would get a bloody clue.
It's pretty damn clear from where I'm sitting that the rest of the world is steaming ahead, while we sit here having our (relatively) piddling, overpriced little internet connections.
Still, it does mean that I get out more, so that's not such a bad thing...
My post may seem a bit terse.
This offering is *not* expensive for this country (the UK)! Pretty much all suppliers offer capped access with limits in the region of 100-150GB/mth (ignoring the "exceptional" ISPs like BT who offer lower caps). Furthermore, this is going to be considered to be a very high speed connection in this country. Just to give you some perspective, I'm on a 1Mbit connection, which is more than most people in this country have.
If someone could come over here and offer high speed, reliable, uncapped broadband internet access to the home for a reasonable price, they would absolutely conquer the market.
I suspect that precisely the same would occur in Australia and New Zealand, where I understand the internet connectivity possibilities are even less impressive.
Of course here in the UK, uncapped DSL is quickly becoming a thing of the past.
I think the "cap" (they don't call it that) at my ISP is in the region of 140GB/month, meaning that were I to use my 1Mbit/256Kbit to anywhere even beginning to approach capacity, I'd be thrown onto my ISPs most contested pipe along with all the other "heavy" users.
On balance, this deal from UK-Online seems highly reasonable. I've read many posts that say that it seems expensive and that the cap is unfair, etc, etc. Well, guys, that's just how internet access is in this country.
Broadbrand Britain. Hah!
Or I might not.
I don't wish to offend or attack anyone, but KDE is just too heavy for my taste. I've tried various versions, starting with something pre-1 (on my 486 -- that was painfully slow), through 1.x and finally 3.[013]. It's a fine desktop enviroment, with many useful tools and applications. Just doesn't suit me.
XFCE certainly allows for screen and window edge snapping, but my (very poorly expressed) point was that having separate windows (frames?) is, IMHO, inferior to having a single window that contains subframes.
People will always differ on this though -- I had a similar discussion with someone earlier this month about the benefits of tabbed vs. untabbed browsing.
I think it comes down to the fact that I want as few frames on my screen as possible. Of course, these frames may have subframes, but I don't want every toolbar, picture and webpage to come in its own frame for precisely the same reason that I don't have 6 emacs frames open when I'm hacking around with something -- it clutters up my screen to have more than one, and it's more effort to "put it away".
And for those of us not running KDE?
I'm pretty sure that Gimp 2.0 doesn't behave in this way under XFCE or Fluxbox...
Absolutely, completely agreed.
Having "grown up" with Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro and Illustrator, the idea of having 4 totally separate windows for the toolbars doesn't sit well with me. I realise that their floating palettes are effectively windows, but they're different (smaller title bars, slightly different behaviour).
One thing that might help, if the single window model is impossible, could be if they "snapped" to, say, 2 pixels of the desktop edge (as they do in Photoshop) and remember their positions between sessions. This'd at least let me quickly impose order on my GIMP virtual desktop.
GIMP could be great. I'd use it all the time instead of Photoshop under VMWare (!), if I could get my head around its little annoyances.
This is a good suggestion.
I used this for a while. The reason it didn't work for me is that the labels on the taskbar become too small to be useful for me (I don't like to lose more than about 20 pixels to the bar).
Of course, everyone is different, so this probably works for many people!
Whereas I, when playing with my toy windows 2000 machine, can't live without tabbed browsing. I have very limited patience with a cluttered taskbar. A typical session, display resolution at 1280x1024, will look something like this:
In this situation, where I will already have a lot in the taskbar, the last thing I want is to have more than one item for my web browser - the items in the taskbar are already short enough as to be only minimally useful, particularly when the start menu, quick launch bar and system tray (all of which I use) have taken their chunks out of the screen width.
So in response to the grandparent poster, I find that tabbed browsing actually uses considerably less desktop real-estate.
Superb!
I thank you -- will try it out later this evening.
I absolutely agree.
Firefox runs on my, now old, 128MB/400MHz P-II laptop. It runs nicely while I'm compiling and testing code.
Firefox is one of the major reasons that I still use that laptop for anything other than a webserver.
Please don't slow it down, guys. Browsing with links just isn't the same!
Seems ok to me on my laptop (P-II, 400MHz, 128MB RAM). Of course, that's running in a resource-unintensive window manager/environment (either XFCE of fluxbox, depending on what mood I'm in).
On the other hand, firefox is normally open to a long page in the Java API, there's generally an EMACS visiting several source files and regular java compiles going on, courtesy of ant, so maybe that chews enough resources to match a heavier desktop environment...
Nevertheless, deathly slow it is not.
Not sure I like the idea of "Clippy the Toothpick"
"Hi, I'm Clippy the Internal Mouth Assistant! It looks like you're pulling something from between your teeth. I have been fitted with a gunk sensor. Would you like me to clean your teeth automatically for you?"
Select one: [yes] | [yes]
We would like to apologise for the inconvenience.
The people responsible for building the AI to monitor the sanity of the AI to monitor the sanity of the AI to monitor the sanity of the AI to monitor the sanity of the AI to monitor the sanity of the AI to monitor the system have been sacked.