Yep, OpenOffice (and Word, etc.) would be a lot better if there were a single button to turn off the 132 different ways in which it can interfere with your work.
e.g. after you think you've deleted the whole list of autocorrect options, and there's still something making it capitalise the "For" in "for(1..10){}"
Putting a CD into a Windows machine pops up a box, one of the options of which "Copy the music to your computer"
Put a USB-key containing the backups of your company's software into a Windows machine, and it goes away for about 2 minutes, scanning every single file on the device, comparing it against known types of multimedia files, and eventually comes back suggesting that you want to play a video.
That's one "feature" Windows would be better without...
Apparently, he only wrote "click here to download plugin" lots of times... very neat handwriting, although I can't see how it could be interpreted as the design for a helicopter
Wikipedia is probably better because of including those things, than not. For example, if a theory or idea is fringe, obviously wrong, or just plain odd, then it can be discussed in enough detail to warn people who might otherwise believe that idea due to lack of facts.
"Free or not, Bugzilla doesn't come close to the commercial bug tracking apps."
Indeed, but probably not in the way that you meant.
Our company has just spent far more than they could afford on a bug-tracking system, and it's actually rather sad to see just how far behind Bugzilla it is.
"in England, [they can] hold me for 14 days without charge under terror laws"
Keep up with the news -- it's 3 months without trial now for people who annoy police officers, and if you don't object to that (nobody can) then it will soon increase.
Fair trials? They're some historical thing, like catholocism and Archery practise...
"this is an interesting development, but should not lead us to stop traditional methods of bomb detection" such as comparing travellers' names to a list of politically inconvenient campaigners
"In US aviation, at least, there are anonymous hotlines to report violations. Calls can trigger an inspection to verify compliance."
How would you find out what those hotlines were? Personally, I'd do an internet search, or look on the CAA/FAA website.
But then I remember the stories of european, US, and UK intelligence services wiretapping internet connections used by foreign companies and their employees, and reporting any commercially-sensitive data to selected domestic companies (including I believe, aircraft manufacturers).
If you were the one who did the "whistleblowing, site:faa.gov" search, two days before an anonymous person called that number, are you still going to believe it's anonymous?
"It makes me wonder why they havent instituted some sort of anti-hijack system that would auto-pilot the plane to a military airport or something. Pilot radios for help, enters a code on the panel, ground does the same... and instantly, all cockpit controls are locked out unless the pilot unlocks them. Autopilot then takes the plane to a "safe" location. Seems like it would be fairly easy. If the system failed, the worst case would likely be a plane full of people landing safely at an airport that they didn't intend to go to."
Better yet, make this system so that you can activate it from the ground if you think a plane is going astray.
Then you (the nefarious joker) can send the anti-hijack command to 30 planes at once, causing them all to collide on the approach to this military airfield...
"I worked for a major engineering firm for a few years, and documents were distributed in PDF format specifically because they were read-only.
If you were reading one of our PDFs, you could be assured that the content was accurate. Even printed versions of the document were (supposed to be) considered suspect."
If I want to assure readers that one of my documents is accurate, I just right-click, PGP, "sign" and type a passphrase. Then if someone wants to check that it hasn't been tampered with, they just double-click on the signature and it comes up green if it's OK, or red if it's been modified.
So that works with any type of document, and also means you only need to store one copy, rather than an editable version and a PDF version.
Admittedly, that's not your point, that being able to edit PDFs would screw your old company's document policy. But how do you know that's not already possible? It's an open format after all, and it sounds like you don't bother with electronic signatures.
"but is it too much to ask for you to either dual boot Windows or have a separate box for your Wintendo?"
Yes, I think it's too much to ask people that they should change their computing environment to suit a game-developer's preferences.
The users you refer to have chosen a Free Software operating system because it matches their philosophy, and their desire for the future of computing. Asking a Linux user to run Windows is like asking an American to join the communist party.
On the developer's side however, Linux is a difficult place to write games. OpenGL doesn't work on most users' installations. Hardware acceleration doesn't work on most users' installations. The environment changes so rapidly that the only programs which can keep up are those distributed as source, or maintained by the Distro.
There are some technical solutions, such as Wine which basically creates a Free Software version of Windows. There are cross-platform gaming engines such as Torque. The people writing their own game engines tend to make them cross-platform, and I imagine that developers who use those ideas will see additional customers, compared to developers using a Windows-only 'solution'.
Oh, and which of the cross-platform games do you consider to be "lesser'? I assume you're referrring to the relative crappiness of Doom3, Tribes, or Quake, compared to the excellent NBA basketball 2003, FIFA 2006, or Tom Clancy's Rainbox Six who were able to concentrate all of their considerable skills on the Windows version?
In fact, if you use "cross platform" to describe stuff which works on consoles and PCs, rather than just Windows, Mac and Linux, then you get all the Nightfire, GTA, Halo type games which again don't seem to be suffering in quality compared to games which run only on a Windows PC.
"The KDE developers are stuck in a catch-22 situation - if KDE resembles Windows in any manner, people flame them for just copying a poor desktop, and if they try and do something new, people flame them for doing things differently to Windows"
They could at least have changed the "desktop colour selector" panel so that it's not as awful as the identical Windows one, or changed the "sound events" configuration window so that it doesn't have the same usability bugs as the identical Windows one...
OK, lots of people will recognise them and feel that they know it. But these things change in every version of Windows anyway, so it's not like people are unused to having their interface change every year.
(e.g. what's with the Windows start menu, and why does every single version of Windows put the icons in a different place? People complain about the K-menu being unfamiliar, but Windows 2003 server has moved the shutdown icon to the middle of the screen, hidden the old start menu in a submenu, tripled the size of all the icons, split it into two columns, and made it appear more slowly. And this is just comparing it to Windows 2000, nevermind the older versions)
I use KDE but not Konquerer, but I would be very interested in hearing what the background for your bombastic statement is? What work exactly is needed?
The obvious difference between KDE and more popular web-browsers is the level of filtering required to reduce some WWW pages to tolerable levels. For example, in Firefox, people turn off animated images, block images by site name, regular expression, or meta-info, block flash with some optional overrides, block IFRAMES, turn off various javascript elements, use the "No page style" to read pages with badly-designed CSS, enforce a minimum font size, have a global CSS file to turn off blinking text, change certain bits of HTML, they add extensions to download websites, do intelligent things with image galleries, lists of downloads, obscured links, etc.
Basically, Konqueror is great for websites that you trust, but the rest of the tools have been developed for Firefox, and KDE will eventually integrate some of the best ones.
I'm very impressed with Konqueror in general though. Being able to rip a CD just by dragging files from the audiocd:/ folder, using FTP and SSH connections as if they were local files, being able to rotate images from the right-click menu and all the rest of the features (most of the good bits seem to come from the ioslaves paradigm or whatever it's called)
"The advanced options shouldn't disappear completely (like GNOME did). Instead, they should be hidden behind an "Advanced options...." button"
That's one of the most annoying features of Windows programs that I wouldn't want to see copied.
I'm sure everyone here has been annoyed at some time by how long it takes to reach those advanced options. "Control panel", select something, "Properties", "Edit", "Advanced", select a tab, press a button, scroll to the bottom of the list, select something, right click, "Properties", "Preferences" and make the change you want.
Grouping options logically, either by related functions, or in workflow-order, makes a lot more sense than grouping them by the intended expertise of the person expected to use that option.
How are the users supposed to know in advance whether the option they're looking for is in "Advanced user options" rather than "Power-user options", "Moderately-awake user options" or even "PHB options"
I agree with you though, that the GNOME approach of removing options is just as bad (although hopefully it forced them to put more intelligence into making the computer choose)
"I don't think that it is a major killer for KDE to be slightly less responsive."
Except that KDE isn't just slightly less responsive.
It's an order of magnitude less responsive. As in, 30 seconds to load KDE compared to 1.5 seconds to load WindowMaker
It's responsive as in, you can start KMail and xchat loading at the same time, and be some way into a conversation in xchat before kmail even displays its window
I've had programs like KMail pause for 10-20 seconds just after moving one or two emails from one folder to another. When editing a mail filters with 8 rules, it can take 10 seconds just to redraw the list. And it's basically just KDE that's so slow; everything else runs normally.
So yeah, while I agree with you that while artwork can be nice (K3B is probably the best example of that), a bit more speed would be most welcome. After all, people will have plenty of spare time to notice/critisize the graphics while they're waiting for Konqueror to load...
Slashdot Mirror
"I think there is a plug in that should scratch just about any itch. Nice."
Eclipse.. the open-source massage chair...
Don't program in Word!
You've never heard of programming books, tutorials, or essays, I take it?
Tools should be versatile. A word processor which assumes you're writing a formal english letter, is not flexible.
Yep, OpenOffice (and Word, etc.) would be a lot better if there were a single button to turn off the 132 different ways in which it can interfere with your work.
e.g. after you think you've deleted the whole list of autocorrect options, and there's still something making it capitalise the "For" in "for(1..10){}"
It didn't try to 'improve your style'
You typed "colour". Would you like me to change it to "color"?
Putting a CD into a Windows machine pops up a box, one of the options of which "Copy the music to your computer"
Put a USB-key containing the backups of your company's software into a Windows machine, and it goes away for about 2 minutes, scanning every single file on the device, comparing it against known types of multimedia files, and eventually comes back suggesting that you want to play a video.
That's one "feature" Windows would be better without...
"Or should we stick to tech here in which case I USE FLASH"
If Flash plays on a filtered web browser with nothing to view it, is it really playing?
"Obviously, an infusion of alien technology must be involved. There is no other explanation."
They were intelligently designed...
"Do you mean true audiophiles, or the clowns who buy power cables for a grand?"
When you copy MP3 files across a network, they often sound better if you replace the capacitors in your NIC with audio-quality ones.
Apparently, he only wrote "click here to download plugin" lots of times... very neat handwriting, although I can't see how it could be interpreted as the design for a helicopter
"The page on Earth doesn't talk about the "Is it flat?" controversy. Loony opinions are absolutely NOT represented on Wikipedia."
Well the articles would be at Flat earth,
Spherical earth, and the Flat Earth Society.
Wikipedia is probably better because of including those things, than not. For example, if a theory or idea is fringe, obviously wrong, or just plain odd, then it can be discussed in enough detail to warn people who might otherwise believe that idea due to lack of facts.
"Free or not, Bugzilla doesn't come close to the commercial bug tracking apps."
Indeed, but probably not in the way that you meant.
Our company has just spent far more than they could afford on a bug-tracking system, and it's actually rather sad to see just how far behind Bugzilla it is.
"in England, [they can] hold me for 14 days without charge under terror laws"
Keep up with the news -- it's 3 months without trial now for people who annoy police officers, and if you don't object to that (nobody can) then it will soon increase.
Fair trials? They're some historical thing, like catholocism and Archery practise...
"this is an interesting development, but should not lead us to stop traditional methods of bomb detection" such as comparing travellers' names to a list of politically inconvenient campaigners
"In US aviation, at least, there are anonymous hotlines to report violations. Calls can trigger an inspection to verify compliance."
How would you find out what those hotlines were? Personally, I'd do an internet search, or look on the CAA/FAA website.
But then I remember the stories of european, US, and UK intelligence services wiretapping internet connections used by foreign companies and their employees, and reporting any commercially-sensitive data to selected domestic companies (including I believe, aircraft manufacturers).
If you were the one who did the "whistleblowing, site:faa.gov" search, two days before an anonymous person called that number, are you still going to believe it's anonymous?
"It makes me wonder why they havent instituted some sort of anti-hijack system that would auto-pilot the plane to a military airport or something. Pilot radios for help, enters a code on the panel, ground does the same... and instantly, all cockpit controls are locked out unless the pilot unlocks them. Autopilot then takes the plane to a "safe" location. Seems like it would be fairly easy. If the system failed, the worst case would likely be a plane full of people landing safely at an airport that they didn't intend to go to."
Better yet, make this system so that you can activate it from the ground if you think a plane is going astray.
Then you (the nefarious joker) can send the anti-hijack command to 30 planes at once, causing them all to collide on the approach to this military airfield...
"The FBI isn't perfect."
So can we have some laws which don't assume that the FBI is perfect?
"I worked for a major engineering firm for a few years, and documents were distributed in PDF format specifically because they were read-only.
If you were reading one of our PDFs, you could be assured that the content was accurate. Even printed versions of the document were (supposed to be) considered suspect."
If I want to assure readers that one of my documents is accurate, I just right-click, PGP, "sign" and type a passphrase. Then if someone wants to check that it hasn't been tampered with, they just double-click on the signature and it comes up green if it's OK, or red if it's been modified.
So that works with any type of document, and also means you only need to store one copy, rather than an editable version and a PDF version.
Admittedly, that's not your point, that being able to edit PDFs would screw your old company's document policy. But how do you know that's not already possible? It's an open format after all, and it sounds like you don't bother with electronic signatures.
"but is it too much to ask for you to either dual boot Windows or have a separate box for your Wintendo?"
Yes, I think it's too much to ask people that they should change their computing environment to suit a game-developer's preferences.
The users you refer to have chosen a Free Software operating system because it matches their philosophy, and their desire for the future of computing. Asking a Linux user to run Windows is like asking an American to join the communist party.
On the developer's side however, Linux is a difficult place to write games. OpenGL doesn't work on most users' installations. Hardware acceleration doesn't work on most users' installations. The environment changes so rapidly that the only programs which can keep up are those distributed as source, or maintained by the Distro.
There are some technical solutions, such as Wine which basically creates a Free Software version of Windows. There are cross-platform gaming engines such as Torque. The people writing their own game engines tend to make them cross-platform, and I imagine that developers who use those ideas will see additional customers, compared to developers using a Windows-only 'solution'.
Oh, and which of the cross-platform games do you consider to be "lesser'? I assume you're referrring to the relative crappiness of Doom3, Tribes, or Quake, compared to the excellent NBA basketball 2003, FIFA 2006, or Tom Clancy's Rainbox Six who were able to concentrate all of their considerable skills on the Windows version?
In fact, if you use "cross platform" to describe stuff which works on consoles and PCs, rather than just Windows, Mac and Linux, then you get all the Nightfire, GTA, Halo type games which again don't seem to be suffering in quality compared to games which run only on a Windows PC.
"While I agree with your sentiment, the article in question is clearly marked as an opinion piece, not news."
To clarify, the phrase "Fox news" at the top of the article typically marks it as an opiniated rant.
"30 seconds to open KDE? You either have: A) A broken install or...B) a 386."
(a) KUbuntu standard installation
(b) PentiumIII 700MHz
Or to put it another way, KDE has a splash screen - someone must have decided that it was slow enough to need one....
"The KDE developers are stuck in a catch-22 situation - if KDE resembles Windows in any manner, people flame them for just copying a poor desktop, and if they try and do something new, people flame them for doing things differently to Windows"
They could at least have changed the "desktop colour selector" panel so that it's not as awful as the identical Windows one, or changed the "sound events" configuration window so that it doesn't have the same usability bugs as the identical Windows one...
OK, lots of people will recognise them and feel that they know it. But these things change in every version of Windows anyway, so it's not like people are unused to having their interface change every year.
(e.g. what's with the Windows start menu, and why does every single version of Windows put the icons in a different place? People complain about the K-menu being unfamiliar, but Windows 2003 server has moved the shutdown icon to the middle of the screen, hidden the old start menu in a submenu, tripled the size of all the icons, split it into two columns, and made it appear more slowly. And this is just comparing it to Windows 2000, nevermind the older versions)
I use KDE but not Konquerer, but I would be very interested in hearing what the background for your bombastic statement is? What work exactly is needed?
The obvious difference between KDE and more popular web-browsers is the level of filtering required to reduce some WWW pages to tolerable levels. For example, in Firefox, people turn off animated images, block images by site name, regular expression, or meta-info, block flash with some optional overrides, block IFRAMES, turn off various javascript elements, use the "No page style" to read pages with badly-designed CSS, enforce a minimum font size, have a global CSS file to turn off blinking text, change certain bits of HTML, they add extensions to download websites, do intelligent things with image galleries, lists of downloads, obscured links, etc.
Basically, Konqueror is great for websites that you trust, but the rest of the tools have been developed for Firefox, and KDE will eventually integrate some of the best ones.
I'm very impressed with Konqueror in general though. Being able to rip a CD just by dragging files from the audiocd:/ folder, using FTP and SSH connections as if they were local files, being able to rotate images from the right-click menu and all the rest of the features (most of the good bits seem to come from the ioslaves paradigm or whatever it's called)
"The advanced options shouldn't disappear completely (like GNOME did). Instead, they should be hidden behind an "Advanced options...." button"
That's one of the most annoying features of Windows programs that I wouldn't want to see copied.
I'm sure everyone here has been annoyed at some time by how long it takes to reach those advanced options. "Control panel", select something, "Properties", "Edit", "Advanced", select a tab, press a button, scroll to the bottom of the list, select something, right click, "Properties", "Preferences" and make the change you want.
Grouping options logically, either by related functions, or in workflow-order, makes a lot more sense than grouping them by the intended expertise of the person expected to use that option.
How are the users supposed to know in advance whether the option they're looking for is in "Advanced user options" rather than "Power-user options", "Moderately-awake user options" or even "PHB options"
I agree with you though, that the GNOME approach of removing options is just as bad (although hopefully it forced them to put more intelligence into making the computer choose)
"I don't think that it is a major killer for KDE to be slightly less responsive."
Except that KDE isn't just slightly less responsive.
It's an order of magnitude less responsive. As in, 30 seconds to load KDE compared to 1.5 seconds to load WindowMaker
It's responsive as in, you can start KMail and xchat loading at the same time, and be some way into a conversation in xchat before kmail even displays its window
I've had programs like KMail pause for 10-20 seconds just after moving one or two emails from one folder to another. When editing a mail filters with 8 rules, it can take 10 seconds just to redraw the list. And it's basically just KDE that's so slow; everything else runs normally.
So yeah, while I agree with you that while artwork can be nice (K3B is probably the best example of that), a bit more speed would be most welcome. After all, people will have plenty of spare time to notice/critisize the graphics while they're waiting for Konqueror to load...
"We get no calls in KY. The only calls we do get are from the police, firefighters, and a few other fund raisers."
Those "police, firefighters, and a few other fund raisers" are an interesting definition of "no calls"...