In this case, its pretty simple. For whatever reason, Gnome and KDE both have theme support. If you unify that, suddenly both KDE and Gnome (and consequently, QT and GTK+) applications look the same. This is pretty important, to your general office suite user and web surfer type such as myself.
It also helps that this is one of the easiest things to unify, all things considered; I would think it would be, anyway.
Just to nitpick, I said a word processor shouldn't have a programming language, not an application.
For instance, I fully agree that Excel should have a scripting language, and so should Access. I have used VBA in those applications quite a bit. I just have not been able to justify its inclusion into Word.
I still don't understand the "most people don't have to skills to do something, so lets set the barrier of entry really really high" attitude you are suggesting there.
I can understand it for, say, a processor, because it costs billions just to make one. But a coffee maker? A coil of metal in a can? Come. On.
Let us assume that person A is able to change the power cords on stuff, including coffee makers. He goes to change the power cord on his coffee maker, only to find out its held together by those triangular toy screws. It's an...interesting design decision, made for no good reason.
1. Nice screw up on the analogy on part one. I can take a car to a mechanic for scheduled maintenance (bug fixen), or I can do the oil change myself. I don't, personally, but I'm happy that I don't have to take my Chrysler to a Chrysler dealer in order to do that.
2. A car is a car is a car, whether its a 2002 Viper or a 1985 Ford Tempo. A 1985 Ford Tempo, if you can find one, can probably be purchased for the same as Word. Software is software is software, no matter what the price point.
3. I write Content Management software for a web development company. People need to get into that code all the time. People need to get into the code in Word, or Outlook, or other Office products to fix buffer overflows and other bugs. The fact that I can't but Joe at Redmond can is the point, and the problem.
4. (the coffee maker argument) Point to you, *but* if I heavily modified my cars looks (a fair number of people heavily tweak the settings in Word, turning off things like AutoCorrect), and somebody broke a window, I'd rather not have to make my car look like it did when I first drove it off the lot. Similarly, I'd rather not have to download all my patches again because my mom accidentally deleted some obscure file I didn't know that Word needed.
The point is that anybody who happens to think that "I wish I could change function X in Word, because it isn't powerful enough for me" is in no way allowed to do that. Just because you will never exercise a liberty does not mean that it's okay to take that liberty away. Slippery slope, and all that.
1. Yes they do. That's why Word has patches and service packs applied to it. Word processors shouldn't have a programming language attached to them either, but Word has VBA.
2. Then explain to me why SQL Server, which can cost $5000 per processor, is closed. Stick that on a four processor machine, and you could have bought a nice car instead.
3. Not important to the argument.
I expect that for CAN$100 to $200, I am able to open up a piece of hardware and do whatever I like to it. I can take, say, the aforementioned coffee maker, and replace the power cord if the cat chews on it.
I can do the equivalent with OpenOffice or KWord, if I was sufficiently skilled. I cannot do so with Word, or any proprietary software. If there is a simple problem with the software, which I think I could fix given the source code and half an hour, I can't. I have to wait for Microsoft to do it, which they may never ever do.
Re:Since my ex has our son this New Years'...
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New Years Marathons
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· Score: 1
Trading Spaces? Is this superior to, inferior to, or the same as Changing Rooms?
Quite frankly, any of those shows without Lawrence Llewelyn Bowen wouldn't be worth watching...seeing what that man has done to some people's rooms is awe inspiring (in a WTF kind of way).
Re:Sad, sad commentary
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XBox Released
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· Score: 2, Funny
Lemme turn your argument around a little bit. Hey guys! I'm really excited. My furnace and air conditioner contain a Hitachi H8/3292 microcontroller, which is really a pretty hefty little CPU. I'm gonna hack the thing and run a server on my airconditioner! It keeps me cool in the summer, warm in the winter, it serves mp3s, and is now running Apache! Finally! The dream of running a server can be realized by the masses. w00t!
Let me turn that around a bit.
Hey geys! Check this out! I have an MP3 and web server with the best case cooling on the planet. In fact, it not only cools itself, but the entire room. This is the ultimate solution for all your case cooling needs.
And on the other end of the spectrum, I remember writing a header file for a particularly difficult program in High School CompSci. I added a nice big comment at the top saying I wrote it and everything.
I gave the header to half the class so they could figure out how to solve the problem. Four or five students just included the file. Complete with header.
The funny thing is I didn't find out that half the class got in serious shit for that until a couple years later.:)
So what book would you recommend, because you know the newbie will end up with "Teach Yourself Linux is 24 Hours", which wouldn't help worth a damn if they're trying to configure their ISA PnP sound card.
Granted, the situation is a lot better than it used to be. Back when I was a newbie, the local bookstore didn't *have* any Linux books, and linuxdoc.org was sunsite.unc.edu/ldp/ - oh, and Google wasn't on anybody's radar either. You try finding anything on Infoseek, much less decent Linux documentation.
Besides, with the sheer amount of Linux documentation, it's hard to tell the signal from the noise. What if they're following the two year old Sound-HOWTO (look, the boy can read!), only the aforementioned ISA PnP card won't initialize? What FM would you have me read then? (There is a note buried in the Linux kernel documentation, about three or four levels deep, IIRC. The average newbie isn't going to look there.)
Usually all people need is a nudge in the right direction. Four capital letters isn't going to do that. All that will do is make people think you work at the Gap. Or the post office. Now, you really wouldn't want that, would you?:)
Funny, if I go to #LinuxHelp (or #WindowsHelp, or #MacHelp, or #Commodore64Help, or whatever), I damn well expect to get some help. I expect that to be a place where I can ask some questions, and get some intelligible answers. Otherwise the channel wouldn't be masquerading as a fucking Help channel, would it? I never expected help from #Linux, but #LinuxHelp is another thing altogether.
Which is why it always boggled my mind that the #[OS]Help channels were the worst place to get help on the face of the 'net. If you want to mock newbies, go to #MockTheN00bs already. I mean, come on, how fucking hard is it to type "go to linuxdoc.org and read the HOW-TO"? Really.
I hang out on the ArsTechnica forums a lot, and I do see the same questions bandied about a lot, but at least people there are willing to give you links to threads that already deal with the subject (which is good, because there are times when you just can't find what you're looking for in a search).
I'll say it again - you can't say "RTFM" until you give somebody TFM. If you do, you look like a jackass and a hypocrite. And if you're a jackass and a hypocrite, quite frankly, you are in no position to pretend to be helping people.
Which situation is less likely to piss me, the newbie, off?
Me: [Insert question here]
l33t: RTFM
Me: What manuals? I'm not sure where to start. Point me to some decent manuals and I'll read them.
l33t: *massive arrogant l33t silence*
Or
Me: [Insert question here]
l33t: I think there's a document for that on linuxnewbie.org/a HOWTO for that on linuxdoc.org/a good book for that by O'Reilly that explains how to do that way better than I ever could. Have you read anything like that yet?
Me: No. Didn't know any of them existed. Thanks. *reads*
Telling people to RTFM is no good unless you actually hand them TFM first. How that little fact managed to escape the elitist bastards that run "help" channels (all of them are equally bad) is beyond me.
Methinks you didn't use computers as a kid. My school used Icons (from Unisys, remember them?). A less standard interface is hard to imagine, but I seem to have come out fine.
Yeah, I might not want to subject kids to the terror that is emacs, but I would have no problems plunking one in front of a UNIX machine running KDE (I can't speak to Gnome - I don't use it). If schools are willing to use Windows 3.1, they should be willing to use either major desktop environment. Quite frankly, I'd consider KDE far less "hostile".
Actually, he just bolded the wrong parts, to try to make an argument where there is none. All that says is that the Federal Constitution, Federal Treaties, and Federal Laws trump the State's Constitution and laws.
And since the Freedom of Speech amendment was made to the Federal Constitution, it's not going anywhere.
Quote You:
one suggestion is you may want to buy an old 386 and tear it apart for them so they can see what is under the hood so to speak... kids love to tear things apart:)
Uhh, not unless you're willing to pay for the tetanus (sp?) shot after somebody cuts themselves horribly on the terrible 386 era case. Sicking them on a cheap computer in a modern case is probbly a much better idea. Well, a safer one anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
In this case, its pretty simple. For whatever reason, Gnome and KDE both have theme support. If you unify that, suddenly both KDE and Gnome (and consequently, QT and GTK+) applications look the same. This is pretty important, to your general office suite user and web surfer type such as myself.
It also helps that this is one of the easiest things to unify, all things considered; I would think it would be, anyway.
http://www.kuro5hin.org/?op=displaystory;sid=2002/ 2/17/203032/375
It would have been nice for the person who submitted the article to at least include the link to the article that paragraph came from...
All of the project managers where I work print out most of their e-mail. At least they print out anything of any importance whatsoever.
I do that at times too - its easier to scrawl notes on paper.
....d000000d.....
:)
That is such a cool idea, actually. Finally, the Segway has a killer app.
Redundant, maybe, but off-topic> ?!?!?!?
Just to nitpick, I said a word processor shouldn't have a programming language, not an application.
For instance, I fully agree that Excel should have a scripting language, and so should Access. I have used VBA in those applications quite a bit. I just have not been able to justify its inclusion into Word.
I still don't understand the "most people don't have to skills to do something, so lets set the barrier of entry really really high" attitude you are suggesting there.
I can understand it for, say, a processor, because it costs billions just to make one. But a coffee maker? A coil of metal in a can? Come. On.
Let us assume that person A is able to change the power cords on stuff, including coffee makers. He goes to change the power cord on his coffee maker, only to find out its held together by those triangular toy screws. It's an...interesting design decision, made for no good reason.
1. Nice screw up on the analogy on part one. I can take a car to a mechanic for scheduled maintenance (bug fixen), or I can do the oil change myself. I don't, personally, but I'm happy that I don't have to take my Chrysler to a Chrysler dealer in order to do that.
2. A car is a car is a car, whether its a 2002 Viper or a 1985 Ford Tempo. A 1985 Ford Tempo, if you can find one, can probably be purchased for the same as Word. Software is software is software, no matter what the price point.
3. I write Content Management software for a web development company. People need to get into that code all the time. People need to get into the code in Word, or Outlook, or other Office products to fix buffer overflows and other bugs. The fact that I can't but Joe at Redmond can is the point, and the problem.
4. (the coffee maker argument) Point to you, *but* if I heavily modified my cars looks (a fair number of people heavily tweak the settings in Word, turning off things like AutoCorrect), and somebody broke a window, I'd rather not have to make my car look like it did when I first drove it off the lot. Similarly, I'd rather not have to download all my patches again because my mom accidentally deleted some obscure file I didn't know that Word needed.
The point is that anybody who happens to think that "I wish I could change function X in Word, because it isn't powerful enough for me" is in no way allowed to do that. Just because you will never exercise a liberty does not mean that it's okay to take that liberty away. Slippery slope, and all that.
1. Yes they do. That's why Word has patches and service packs applied to it. Word processors shouldn't have a programming language attached to them either, but Word has VBA.
2. Then explain to me why SQL Server, which can cost $5000 per processor, is closed. Stick that on a four processor machine, and you could have bought a nice car instead.
3. Not important to the argument.
I expect that for CAN$100 to $200, I am able to open up a piece of hardware and do whatever I like to it. I can take, say, the aforementioned coffee maker, and replace the power cord if the cat chews on it.
I can do the equivalent with OpenOffice or KWord, if I was sufficiently skilled. I cannot do so with Word, or any proprietary software. If there is a simple problem with the software, which I think I could fix given the source code and half an hour, I can't. I have to wait for Microsoft to do it, which they may never ever do.
That, my friend, is the point.
AVI = WMA XOR seineewrofsi(-:XViD
Do I win an arrest warrant?
Trading Spaces? Is this superior to, inferior to, or the same as Changing Rooms?
Quite frankly, any of those shows without Lawrence Llewelyn Bowen wouldn't be worth watching...seeing what that man has done to some people's rooms is awe inspiring (in a WTF kind of way).
Lemme turn your argument around a little bit. Hey guys! I'm really excited. My furnace and air conditioner contain a Hitachi H8/3292 microcontroller, which is really a pretty hefty little CPU. I'm gonna hack the thing and run a server on my airconditioner! It keeps me cool in the summer, warm in the winter, it serves mp3s, and is now running Apache! Finally! The dream of running a server can be realized by the masses. w00t!
Let me turn that around a bit.
Hey geys! Check this out! I have an MP3 and web server with the best case cooling on the planet. In fact, it not only cools itself, but the entire room. This is the ultimate solution for all your case cooling needs.
Thanks for playing though. :)
And on the other end of the spectrum, I remember writing a header file for a particularly difficult program in High School CompSci. I added a nice big comment at the top saying I wrote it and everything.
:)
I gave the header to half the class so they could figure out how to solve the problem. Four or five students just included the file. Complete with header.
The funny thing is I didn't find out that half the class got in serious shit for that until a couple years later.
Your friend does know he can get CF for Linux, right?
Now, while he might as well take the time to learn PHP anyway, it's not like Allaire/Macromedia has been ignoring the Linux market.
He had a third AOL control account sitting unused, which recived no e-mail during the coarse of his experiment.
So, yeah, not being on chat *does* seem to help.
So what book would you recommend, because you know the newbie will end up with "Teach Yourself Linux is 24 Hours", which wouldn't help worth a damn if they're trying to configure their ISA PnP sound card.
:)
Granted, the situation is a lot better than it used to be. Back when I was a newbie, the local bookstore didn't *have* any Linux books, and linuxdoc.org was sunsite.unc.edu/ldp/ - oh, and Google wasn't on anybody's radar either. You try finding anything on Infoseek, much less decent Linux documentation.
Besides, with the sheer amount of Linux documentation, it's hard to tell the signal from the noise. What if they're following the two year old Sound-HOWTO (look, the boy can read!), only the aforementioned ISA PnP card won't initialize? What FM would you have me read then? (There is a note buried in the Linux kernel documentation, about three or four levels deep, IIRC. The average newbie isn't going to look there.)
Usually all people need is a nudge in the right direction. Four capital letters isn't going to do that. All that will do is make people think you work at the Gap. Or the post office. Now, you really wouldn't want that, would you?
Funny, if I go to #LinuxHelp (or #WindowsHelp, or #MacHelp, or #Commodore64Help, or whatever), I damn well expect to get some help. I expect that to be a place where I can ask some questions, and get some intelligible answers. Otherwise the channel wouldn't be masquerading as a fucking Help channel, would it? I never expected help from #Linux, but #LinuxHelp is another thing altogether.
Which is why it always boggled my mind that the #[OS]Help channels were the worst place to get help on the face of the 'net. If you want to mock newbies, go to #MockTheN00bs already. I mean, come on, how fucking hard is it to type "go to linuxdoc.org and read the HOW-TO"? Really.
I hang out on the ArsTechnica forums a lot, and I do see the same questions bandied about a lot, but at least people there are willing to give you links to threads that already deal with the subject (which is good, because there are times when you just can't find what you're looking for in a search).
I'll say it again - you can't say "RTFM" until you give somebody TFM. If you do, you look like a jackass and a hypocrite. And if you're a jackass and a hypocrite, quite frankly, you are in no position to pretend to be helping people.
Which situation is less likely to piss me, the newbie, off?
Me: [Insert question here]
l33t: RTFM
Me: What manuals? I'm not sure where to start. Point me to some decent manuals and I'll read them.
l33t: *massive arrogant l33t silence*
Or
Me: [Insert question here]
l33t: I think there's a document for that on linuxnewbie.org/a HOWTO for that on linuxdoc.org/a good book for that by O'Reilly that explains how to do that way better than I ever could. Have you read anything like that yet?
Me: No. Didn't know any of them existed. Thanks. *reads*
Telling people to RTFM is no good unless you actually hand them TFM first. How that little fact managed to escape the elitist bastards that run "help" channels (all of them are equally bad) is beyond me.
Methinks you didn't use computers as a kid. My school used Icons (from Unisys, remember them?). A less standard interface is hard to imagine, but I seem to have come out fine.
Yeah, I might not want to subject kids to the terror that is emacs, but I would have no problems plunking one in front of a UNIX machine running KDE (I can't speak to Gnome - I don't use it). If schools are willing to use Windows 3.1, they should be willing to use either major desktop environment. Quite frankly, I'd consider KDE far less "hostile".
No, deci is 0.1x, while deca is 10x. There for a bel is ten decibels.
But then, since nothing except bels are measured in deci or deca in the real world, I could very well have that backwards.
Actually, he just bolded the wrong parts, to try to make an argument where there is none. All that says is that the Federal Constitution, Federal Treaties, and Federal Laws trump the State's Constitution and laws.
And since the Freedom of Speech amendment was made to the Federal Constitution, it's not going anywhere.
Oooh. Symantic attack. Cute. I really like the way you used the IP addy without the octets. Very clever.
Quote You: :)
one suggestion is you may want to buy an old 386 and tear it apart for them so they can see what is under the hood so to speak... kids love to tear things apart
Uhh, not unless you're willing to pay for the tetanus (sp?) shot after somebody cuts themselves horribly on the terrible 386 era case. Sicking them on a cheap computer in a modern case is probbly a much better idea. Well, a safer one anyway.
Just lurk in the Ars Technica Case and Cooling Fetish forum for a couple days. This comes up regularly there.
I don't know about that. That GNU is not cute and cuddly. But Tux would look cute with some GNU dog tags. :)