I think I might play with that patch a bit.. I have a multi-monitor config (which is one of the reason I originally wrote my little desktop switcher dealie way back when.. ) and looking at the code (and the authors own admission) I don't know how well this would handle multiple monitors.
I agree it's not a critical feature or anything, it's just one of those things you have been able to do on just about every window manager since the beginning of time. As said in my post, the reason I wanted it is to use my own wallpaper switching app.
I guess a more "down to earth" basic functionality that's missing is the ability to have the same wallpaper displayed on all screens in a multi-monitor configuration. Or the ability to stretch a single wallpaper across multiple screens.
Somewhat off topic, but I have had _terrible_ luck with the classic menu / menu editor. Seriously, I feel I must be doing something wrong because I don't think it's actually impossible to screw up something so simple so badly..
That really is my big complaint with kde4. A lot of simple stuff doesn't work properly or at all. It's way better than when it first came out, but even still I find myself running into problems and thinking "did they even test this thing..".
Also really basic functionality is completely missing and/or insanely complicated by their new approach to everything. A good example is setting the desktop wallpaper. I've yet to find a way to do this from a command line. I have a custom wallpaper app I've used for years. When I started using kde4 I figured "no problem, I'll find out what command you need to run to change the wallpaper, plug it in there, and it'll be a done deal. Hours of google searching later and no luck. The "best" solutions I found involved writing config files, and force-rebooting plasma.. and writing custom desktop plugins to do the switching..
If I started a new job, I'd want the machine they give me to be a new install.. who knows what the previous guy was up to..
I don't think I've ever started a job where they were like.. "Yeah, you can use Bill's old computer. We had to get rid of him cause he was always muttering about how he'll show us all some day..".
Depend on your IT setup, but if an option, just ask your sysadmin to re-image it. Don't discount the obvious and direct route. It's a reasonable request, you have justification, and if you are on good terms with the IT department I'm sure they'll hook you up.
Comes down to audience and how much investment in time said audience is willing to make.
If it is a casual interest article, I'm probably not looking to learn a whole new vocabulary.. I'm looking for enough information to facilitate the value I hope to get out of it. As a trade off for this accessibility, I accept that I'm not getting the full story.
On the other hand if I am reading to learn something, then yeah, give me a quick overview of the jargon and then go nuts. You lose a lot of information trying to explain things with analogies and common phrasing.. and if I'm really trying to get something, I accept that I have to educate myself a little on the language that is to be used.
At the very least, keeping in mind who the audience is and what you are actually trying to drive home is important. When you try to write something to please everyone you usually end up with something that doesn't do the job for anyone.
Depends on the audience that the thing you want to say.
The first two categories are obvious: Complex concept to aimed at people in the field: jargon away Simple concept aimed at general audience: minimal jargon, spell out the stuff you do use
The other two categories are tricky, and in my opinion, in extreme cases, shouldn't be attempted.
Trying to write too much stuff to a differing audience results in something that is mostly useless for both. We see this all the time in software. People try to write up a design spec / user manual / whatever aimed at everyone from the customers to the project manager to the team lead to the coders who will implement it. All those people require very different information for different purposes and operate with a different vocabulary. You end up with something too technical for the customer, to "clean" for the project manager, and too verbose/lacking of details for the coders.
Better approach is to just make seperate documents.. you actually end up saving more time and a lot saner in my opinion.. and you produce something useful (which is always nice).
It's shitty that it happened, but it's awesome that they finally went after someone who has the metric ass-tonne of money and principles to not just pay them their extortion money.
I hope Notch gives it to them good.
I kinda wish there was a way to donate directly to this cause (beyond buying the game / recommending it to others.. which I've already done)..
I have no love for apple and agree the bit about keeping the boxes was pretty nuts.. but I do agree on the packaging bit.
I've bought enough tech that I'm used to the standard level of effort required to get at stuff. I only really notice when it's really bad or better than usual. In the case of the former, it does indeed put me in a bad mood right from the get go.. in the case of the later, I agree that it does get you into a positive frame of mind.
I'm used to clamshell at this point.. but the stuff that's really bad is when they have the product folded through multiple layers of plastic and cardboard.. especially if wires are involved. Logitech seems to love doing this..
Corsair seems to be pretty good when it comes to their higher end PSUs. They include a velcro bag with the cables and the PSU itself is in like a velvet bag dealie (which I don't get.. like they expect me to hold onto it on the off chance I pull out my PSU and need to store it for a while?).. and the whole thing is well protected in a foam shell that just comes apart when you slide it out of the box..
I guess, but the same people who don't firewall at the box level are the same who arn't going to set up their gateway/firewall properly with IPv6.
I don't trust my cheap d-link router, but I like that if I screw up my shorewall config (I'm not cool enough for iptables direct).. traffic probably isn't getting out of my network segment.
This means that if you want you can give machines on the inside the ability to be servers (acccept inbound conections to the machine and port) without the NAT thing of also having to assign each machine an inbound (non-standard) port number.
It also means if you screw up.. your box is open to the net.
NAT acted as a pseudo-firewall because you had to explicitly forward to your box.. rather than the IPv6 approach of having to explicitly block.
Current impact to most of the populations daily life: 0
And that's what it comes down to. People en-masse are reactive, not preventative. You can have all the charts and stats and proof showing that it's _going_ to cause huge headaches for everyone.. but until it actually does, nothing will be done.
We can either spend money and transition to IPv6 or spend more money managing the problem rather than solving it.
Each and every one of you reading this is a customer of service providers and equipment vendors. It's time to use your voice and demand an IPv6 migration strategy that you can plan on.
On my walk in to work, there is this beautiful historic stone fence with cobblestone walk way for about a 2 block stretch... and demanding an IPv6 migration strategy I can plan on from it would likely be a better use of my time...
The article does nail the obvious problem on the head... the fact that IPv6 offers no benefit anyone cares about (we've learned to work with nat and even come to love it) except a solution to a problem that hasn't actually hit yet. Thing is this is the easy part. We all _know_ why IPv6 isn't being adopted. The hard part is how do we change that.. and "call up your ISP" is a really silly answer.
The consistent response I've gotten from her on the topic is that stuff is out there, but the reason it's not wide spread is none of it works as well as the ol` fashioned metal picks. They usually get "some" or even "most" of the stuff off.. but not all.. and then you have to get the rest off yourself with the picks anyway. Also something about serving a double purpose of inspecting the teeth.
Actively prevent, no.. but the allegations seem to be that he outright encouraged..
Whether thats true is not something I can even make a guess at. If it is true than I agree a wrong has been done. How that wrong is defined legally (or whether it is) is again, way over my head..
Thing with SOPA is it got people who had no interest in this stuff thinking about it. I know this because a lot of my non-geek friends were asking me about it. That works once.. maybe twice. All the big name sites that participated in the protest arn't going to do it every time one of these bills comes up, and even if they did, people would very quickly start ignoring it again. SOPA protests were effective because they were unprecedented and it got peoples attention.
Without the kind of mass public "wtf is this about" response, it's just a bunch of geeks yelling at a wall.
As someone with a lot of dental problems.. so much this.
I mean there is a lot of advancements in the dental industry.. composite fillings, implants, etc.. but some stuff is just conspicuously primitive. Maybe there really is no better way than physically scraping the junk off with metal picks.. or maybe it's impractical for whatever reason.
Personally I'd like to see one of these nifty painless numbing methods I've been hearing about as "just around the corner" since I was in high school to actually show up at my dentists office. Metal picks I don't mind.. my dentist trying to directly freeze my brain stem or something with a needle the size of a drinking straw and then STILL feeling it kinda gets on the nerves..
The exact same reasons we read headlines about creating universe eating black holes when the thing started up.. about global pandemics that are going to wipe us all out.. about “Africanized” bees. It gets eyeball time, which is what it’s all about.
“A long held theory has been possibly confirmed”
Vs.
“THE FUTURE IS HERE, LIVE LIKE THE JETSONS IN 5 YEARS!”
One of those is going to sell a _lot_ more toothpaste.
This seems like a really good idea in that a lot of people who really should get tested never will due to the stigma of going to a clinic.
You need really a lot of information about how to read the test, how to use the test properly.
That would to me seem the least of the problem. The whole finding out you (might) have a terminal illness while alone in your bathroom might cause some issues. I know I'd probably be a tad upset.
One thing I do miss about TV (haven't had a cable subscription in a while) was ironically what most of us see as it's weakness... the fact that it's a stream of content you don't control.
Watching "whatever is on" seems like an inferior activity compared to the pick and choose that's now possible.. but I kinda miss being able to flip to the discovery channel or comedy channel and just watch whatever was there.
Of course most of the channels I would do this with in the past have gone to shit. TLC went reality crazy and pretty much straight up switched formats (and eventually dropped the "learning channel" guise.. discovery channel is going that route in a less direct way.. comedy channel may still be good?
Slashdot Mirror
Sweet!
I think I might play with that patch a bit.. I have a multi-monitor config (which is one of the reason I originally wrote my little desktop switcher dealie way back when.. ) and looking at the code (and the authors own admission) I don't know how well this would handle multiple monitors.
I agree it's not a critical feature or anything, it's just one of those things you have been able to do on just about every window manager since the beginning of time. As said in my post, the reason I wanted it is to use my own wallpaper switching app.
I guess a more "down to earth" basic functionality that's missing is the ability to have the same wallpaper displayed on all screens in a multi-monitor configuration. Or the ability to stretch a single wallpaper across multiple screens.
Somewhat off topic, but I have had _terrible_ luck with the classic menu / menu editor. Seriously, I feel I must be doing something wrong because I don't think it's actually impossible to screw up something so simple so badly..
That really is my big complaint with kde4. A lot of simple stuff doesn't work properly or at all. It's way better than when it first came out, but even still I find myself running into problems and thinking "did they even test this thing..".
Also really basic functionality is completely missing and/or insanely complicated by their new approach to everything. A good example is setting the desktop wallpaper. I've yet to find a way to do this from a command line. I have a custom wallpaper app I've used for years. When I started using kde4 I figured "no problem, I'll find out what command you need to run to change the wallpaper, plug it in there, and it'll be a done deal. Hours of google searching later and no luck. The "best" solutions I found involved writing config files, and force-rebooting plasma.. and writing custom desktop plugins to do the switching..
</rant>
.. clean the stuff you know about off first... then put in the request
They are probably going to re-image it anyway for the next person to use the machine..
That too..
If I started a new job, I'd want the machine they give me to be a new install.. who knows what the previous guy was up to..
I don't think I've ever started a job where they were like.. "Yeah, you can use Bill's old computer. We had to get rid of him cause he was always muttering about how he'll show us all some day..".
Depend on your IT setup, but if an option, just ask your sysadmin to re-image it. Don't discount the obvious and direct route. It's a reasonable request, you have justification, and if you are on good terms with the IT department I'm sure they'll hook you up.
Comes down to audience and how much investment in time said audience is willing to make.
If it is a casual interest article, I'm probably not looking to learn a whole new vocabulary.. I'm looking for enough information to facilitate the value I hope to get out of it. As a trade off for this accessibility, I accept that I'm not getting the full story.
On the other hand if I am reading to learn something, then yeah, give me a quick overview of the jargon and then go nuts. You lose a lot of information trying to explain things with analogies and common phrasing .. and if I'm really trying to get something, I accept that I have to educate myself a little on the language that is to be used.
At the very least, keeping in mind who the audience is and what you are actually trying to drive home is important. When you try to write something to please everyone you usually end up with something that doesn't do the job for anyone.
Depends on the audience that the thing you want to say.
The first two categories are obvious:
Complex concept to aimed at people in the field: jargon away
Simple concept aimed at general audience: minimal jargon, spell out the stuff you do use
The other two categories are tricky, and in my opinion, in extreme cases, shouldn't be attempted.
Trying to write too much stuff to a differing audience results in something that is mostly useless for both. We see this all the time in software. People try to write up a design spec / user manual / whatever aimed at everyone from the customers to the project manager to the team lead to the coders who will implement it. All those people require very different information for different purposes and operate with a different vocabulary. You end up with something too technical for the customer, to "clean" for the project manager, and too verbose/lacking of details for the coders.
Better approach is to just make seperate documents.. you actually end up saving more time and a lot saner in my opinion.. and you produce something useful (which is always nice).
It's shitty that it happened, but it's awesome that they finally went after someone who has the metric ass-tonne of money and principles to not just pay them their extortion money.
I hope Notch gives it to them good.
I kinda wish there was a way to donate directly to this cause (beyond buying the game / recommending it to others .. which I've already done)..
I have no love for apple and agree the bit about keeping the boxes was pretty nuts.. but I do agree on the packaging bit.
I've bought enough tech that I'm used to the standard level of effort required to get at stuff. I only really notice when it's really bad or better than usual. In the case of the former, it does indeed put me in a bad mood right from the get go.. in the case of the later, I agree that it does get you into a positive frame of mind.
I'm used to clamshell at this point .. but the stuff that's really bad is when they have the product folded through multiple layers of plastic and cardboard.. especially if wires are involved. Logitech seems to love doing this..
Corsair seems to be pretty good when it comes to their higher end PSUs. They include a velcro bag with the cables and the PSU itself is in like a velvet bag dealie (which I don't get.. like they expect me to hold onto it on the off chance I pull out my PSU and need to store it for a while?) .. and the whole thing is well protected in a foam shell that just comes apart when you slide it out of the box..
You don't need to flood the whole range.. just one...
This is effectively like giving everyone static IPs.. as the prefix will likely be static.
I guess, but the same people who don't firewall at the box level are the same who arn't going to set up their gateway/firewall properly with IPv6.
I don't trust my cheap d-link router, but I like that if I screw up my shorewall config (I'm not cool enough for iptables direct) .. traffic probably isn't getting out of my network segment.
This means that if you want you can give machines on the inside the ability to be servers (acccept inbound conections to the machine and port) without the NAT thing of also having to assign each machine an inbound (non-standard) port number.
It also means if you screw up.. your box is open to the net.
NAT acted as a pseudo-firewall because you had to explicitly forward to your box .. rather than the IPv6 approach of having to explicitly block.
Current impact to most of the populations daily life: 0
And that's what it comes down to. People en-masse are reactive, not preventative. You can have all the charts and stats and proof showing that it's _going_ to cause huge headaches for everyone.. but until it actually does, nothing will be done.
We can either spend money and transition to IPv6 or spend more money managing the problem rather than solving it.
Big time on option 2. That's just reality.
Each and every one of you reading this is a customer of service providers and equipment vendors. It's time to use your voice and demand an IPv6 migration strategy that you can plan on.
On my walk in to work, there is this beautiful historic stone fence with cobblestone walk way for about a 2 block stretch... and demanding an IPv6 migration strategy I can plan on from it would likely be a better use of my time...
The article does nail the obvious problem on the head... the fact that IPv6 offers no benefit anyone cares about (we've learned to work with nat and even come to love it) except a solution to a problem that hasn't actually hit yet. Thing is this is the easy part. We all _know_ why IPv6 isn't being adopted. The hard part is how do we change that.. and "call up your ISP" is a really silly answer.
I generally think of mantis to be a less clunky bugzilla.
The consistent response I've gotten from her on the topic is that stuff is out there, but the reason it's not wide spread is none of it works as well as the ol` fashioned metal picks. They usually get "some" or even "most" of the stuff off.. but not all.. and then you have to get the rest off yourself with the picks anyway. Also something about serving a double purpose of inspecting the teeth.
Actively prevent, no.. but the allegations seem to be that he outright encouraged ..
Whether thats true is not something I can even make a guess at. If it is true than I agree a wrong has been done. How that wrong is defined legally (or whether it is) is again, way over my head..
That's not even it.
Thing with SOPA is it got people who had no interest in this stuff thinking about it. I know this because a lot of my non-geek friends were asking me about it. That works once.. maybe twice. All the big name sites that participated in the protest arn't going to do it every time one of these bills comes up, and even if they did, people would very quickly start ignoring it again. SOPA protests were effective because they were unprecedented and it got peoples attention.
Without the kind of mass public "wtf is this about" response, it's just a bunch of geeks yelling at a wall.
That's the biggest problem I see with this shit.
They can just keep trying, voer and over again, until either by apathy or random chance it gets through.
We can't all mobilize like we did for SOPA every month.. eventually people run out of energy fighting this stuff.. and then it'll pass.
As someone with a lot of dental problems.. so much this.
I mean there is a lot of advancements in the dental industry.. composite fillings, implants, etc.. but some stuff is just conspicuously primitive. Maybe there really is no better way than physically scraping the junk off with metal picks.. or maybe it's impractical for whatever reason.
Personally I'd like to see one of these nifty painless numbing methods I've been hearing about as "just around the corner" since I was in high school to actually show up at my dentists office. Metal picks I don't mind.. my dentist trying to directly freeze my brain stem or something with a needle the size of a drinking straw and then STILL feeling it kinda gets on the nerves..
The exact same reasons we read headlines about creating universe eating black holes when the thing started up.. about global pandemics that are going to wipe us all out.. about “Africanized” bees. It gets eyeball time, which is what it’s all about.
“A long held theory has been possibly confirmed”
Vs.
“THE FUTURE IS HERE, LIVE LIKE THE JETSONS IN 5 YEARS!”
One of those is going to sell a _lot_ more toothpaste.
Damn.. wish I had mod points.. would really like to see this one answered!
This seems like a really good idea in that a lot of people who really should get tested never will due to the stigma of going to a clinic.
You need really a lot of information about how to read the test, how to use the test properly.
That would to me seem the least of the problem. The whole finding out you (might) have a terminal illness while alone in your bathroom might cause some issues. I know I'd probably be a tad upset.
One thing I do miss about TV (haven't had a cable subscription in a while) was ironically what most of us see as it's weakness... the fact that it's a stream of content you don't control.
Watching "whatever is on" seems like an inferior activity compared to the pick and choose that's now possible.. but I kinda miss being able to flip to the discovery channel or comedy channel and just watch whatever was there.
Of course most of the channels I would do this with in the past have gone to shit. TLC went reality crazy and pretty much straight up switched formats (and eventually dropped the "learning channel" guise .. discovery channel is going that route in a less direct way.. comedy channel may still be good?