Mozilla can be compiled without a lot of frills. For example, on Gentoo, there are Mozilla flags as follows:
mozcalendar : Enable mozilla calendar extension, http://mozilla.org/projects/calendar/ moznoirc : Disable building of mozilla's IRC client moznomail : Disable building mozilla's mail client moznocompose : Disable building of mozilla's web page composer moznomail : Disable building mozilla's mail client mozxmlterm : Enable mozilla's XML-based command-line terminal
There may be some I missed. In other words, you can install Mozilla with just the browser. However, you have to compile it for yourself if you want that.
A 64-bit solution will last us for about 43 times as long as the universe has been around (by current estimates).
A 128-bit solution will last for 7.88e20 times the age of the universe.
There's a good chance we won't be around by the time the former fails, and it wouldn't be terribly surprising if the universe has ended (whatever that means) by the time the latter fails.
Actually, there are problems with the grammar in that sentence.
Lots of discussion going on about 'folksonomies' -- bottom-up taxonomies that people create on their own -- as used in Del.icio.us and Flickr:
The above isn't a full clause, it's just a phrase. However, arguably, it should be a whole clause to be correct. It would be better to say, "There is lots of discussion...." To my ear, it seems like there's a word missing.
Adam Mathes has a thesis on Folksonomies; IFTF's Future Now makes a point about problems with folksonomies: no synonym control ( "mac" and "macintosh" on Del.icio.us); no hierarchy and content types; and only simple one-word tags.
The first two items in that list are clauses, which are correctly separated by semi-colons. The last two are merely phrases, which should be separated by commas. Further, it is poor style to make a list consisting of dissimilar elements, like clauses and phrases in this case.
While wifi support may be a problem, the major offender in the graphics card market is ATI. nVidia puts out excellent drivers for its cards, and Intel and Matrox have released the specifications for most of their cards (as I recall), so the open source drivers should be fine.
Today, if you want to use Linux and have high performance 3d, you can't use ATI, but the whole of the graphics card market is not the same way.
Also, "desktop ready" is a difficult term to define. For many people, Linux is desktop ready, because many people don't care about 3d performance. And if they bought a computer with Linux like they do with Windows, the retailers would have no trouble creating machines that work with Linux. The population that builds a computer from scratch out of components, and would have to do research about which parts work with Linux is quite small compared to the overall computer-using population.
I'm 22, and none of my friends have a problem with Nintendo being more 'kiddy' than the other consoles. In fact, we end up playing Nintendo games far more often than any other system.
Then again, we aren't exactly members of the unwashed masses. We grew up gaming, unlike the large majority of modern 'gamers' who've only started playing video games now that it's somehow popular. We actually care if a game is fun, not just if it has enough explosions. I'm not surprised most of the American market doesn't agree.
In other words: Apparently, every person over the age of 21 that you work with is an idiot when it comes to video games.
Because every old fool doesn't have commit rights to the Firefox CVS repository. You have to submit patches somehow, and they have to be reviewed and accepted by some team of trusted developers.
It's the same with the Linux kernel. If you want to get patches in the main branch, you need to send them to the mailing list, where they'll be tested by people and eventually added if they're worthy. They don't get in the main branch without going through someone trusted, or at least as trusted as any proprietary code-jockey would be.
If you've got a computer capable of running a 3D accelerated memory hog, then you've got one capable of running a 3D accelerated memory hog and KDE. It's not a very noticable performance hit.
Now, if you're trying to run Doom 3 on three-year-old hardware, the case might be different, but if you've got something up to snuff, you shouldn't have much of a problem running almost anything. When I'm in KDE on my machine, I typically have a memory usage of around 200 MB, even after days, with several programs loaded up. Can Doom 3 really not handle itself with 800 MB of ram (assuming about a gig of ram is standard on a gaming machine these days)?
If you want a lightweight window manager, use XFCE or Fluxbox or something. However, don't listen to people who tell you that on a 3.5 GHz machine with a gigabyte of memory you need to use Ratpoison because anything else uses too much memory. Use whatever you like to look at. You bought a giant machine; you don't need to treat it like a pentium 90.
What does your experience---failing two out of 64 people for incompetence, and having a class with an overall C average---have to do with what your post's parent was talking about---a class where 100% of the students receive an F?
Are you implying, for example, that all 25 students in a graduate course entitled 'Unix Security Holes' were either incompetent or didn't even make an effort at completing the course? Are you implying that in most cases where an entire class fails---with an F, not a C---that it is because every student either slacked off or was incompetent? I won't rule out that possibility, but I think it's very unlikely that in any given class, there isn't anyone who isn't both intelligent and hard-working enough to at least get a D in the class. Do you have reason to believe otherwise?
KDE Control Center -> Peripherals -> Display -> Screen size
* the whole permissions thing, it helps you to not screw up, but is bothersome and tiring, I'm not into bondage, is waaay too restrictive for home use.
What's your issue, exactly? Ubuntu, for example, sets things up so that you just have to type your password to do things like install software, just as a check that you know you're doing something dangerous. This is, incidentally, what OSX does, which is commonly regarded as the pinnacle of ease-of-use.
Or if you want to be like typical windows, you could run as root the whole time.
* games, I'm not much of a gamer but I like to relax sometimes by blowing virtual stuff/people
If all you're into is blowing stuff up, there are lots of FPSs out for Linux. It's really in other genres that Linux is sorely lacking.
* along this area,the kmixer is nightmarish too many sliders.
You can turn most sliders off, although I agree, it could use better defaults. Apparently ALSA handles things in this area differently than OSS did, and mixer developers haven't adapted yet.
* where are the settings for my monitors res, Vert/horiz frecuencies, I mean where to get'em, there's a need for a [EASY] X config
What distribution are you using that doesn't automatically configure X for you? SuSE, for example, will even automatically load and configure the nVidia proprietary drivers for you, from what I hear. This and your comment about lack of dynamic resizing suggests that you haven't really tried this in a while.
* X has been a pain always ever... it always takes hours to do something that I can in windows in seconds
Like what?
* being able to write in NTFS partitions
If you're not using Windows, why are you using NTFS? Also, it's possible to use LUFS with Captive NTFS to load the Windows NTFS drivers and have write support for NTFS. Do some googling on it.
* this fstab/mtab is difficult hdb6 blah blah blah argh just mount!!!
Why are you editing them manually? In most distributions you'd just select your partition layout in some graphical wizard, if at all, and in ones where you don't, it's because they're designed for people who should know that sort of stuff.
If you're talking about CDs and DVDs and USB hard drives and such, then Gnome volume manager with HAL and DBUS makes great strides in this area (pop in a CD, and an icon appears on your desktop), and KDE is slated to provide some support in this area in 3.4.
* kpackage almost always tells me that something went wrong but it installed things
Is kpackage officially supported by the distribution you're using? If you just install random packages, you'll probably have problems, because that's not the way software installation systems on Linux are designed. If you use your distribution's package management system, you shouldn't have problems most of the time.
* half of the time I'm wondering where's an app/bin/sbin/usr ???
Why does this matter? All that needs to happen is that something pops into your Gnome/KDE menu. It doesn't matter where it's installed to. If you choose to use something that doesn't autogenerate menus for you, like fluxbox, then that's your choice, for which you have to accept the consequences.
There are a few I didn't answer, because they're more or less true and I can't counter them. However, some of your points are a bit invalid.
I have different experiences. All of my friends, and pretty much everyone I'm aware of at my university uses AIM, and we're all 22 or under.
I haven't met anyone who uses ICQ in years, although I hear it's more popular outside of the US.
I can't comment on the growing MSN population though. I always forget to ask that when I lure children into my van with promises of free candy and ice cream.
Yeah, and modding them up on Slashdot will surely get the attention of the Gimp developers.
I assure you, the Gimp developers have heard these issues. They've even been discussed in the bug database (where actual discussion with the developers goes on, unlike here, where people just whine without consequence). Just because the developers don't agree with people who think they should clone Photoshop's interface, or change the name to something else, doesn't mean they haven't heard and listened. It just means that in the developers' opinion, that segment of the (potential) users is wrong.
Believe it or not, there are plenty of people who have learned to use The Gimp with its current interface, and don't want a kludgy window-in-window interface to placate people who can't get past the fact that The Gimp isn't Photoshop. In fact, this group is, quite likely, larger than the group who absolutely can't use it if it doesn't look exactly like Photoshop. That's why The Gimp's interface hasn't changed yet. It's not because you guys haven't yelled loud or long enough.
Being the loudest complainer might often work in politics, but it doesn't work everywhere.
Right. Maybe if a minority of users complain even louder, the developers, who don't agree with them, will decide to go their way.
Or maybe it's time for the people who are complaining to go implement it themselves, or pay someone to do so. That will actually get change done in your favor, even though it's even more boring than pontificating about boring arguments.
I can guarantee you that no matter how often or how loudly you complain on Slashdot about The Gimp's interface, it will not magically transform itself into a window-in-window Photoshop look alike.
And after all the complaining that's been done, I can guarantee you that the developers know people's positions on The Gimp's interface. But maybe they don't agree that they should just clone Photoshop. Maybe they're trying to find something better. Or maybe they just plain like it the way it is now, and it's their software, and they can develop it as they wish.
In the open source world, it's quite often put-up-or-shut-up. However, many people are quite content to do neither.
Most people who are unsatisfied with The Gimp's interface say that the correct interface is Photoshop's. Well, Photoshop originated on the Mac, so it's original, and, presumably, intended interface is more like the interface The Gimp has than the Windows interface of Photoshop.
The Windows interface of Photoshop is, primarily, an attempt to get some of the features of the Mac (Upper-left screen menu, top screen toolbar, etc) that can't be had in a similar GUI on Windows. The only way to get those UI elements on Windows is to wrap all your smaller windows in one big window. But that's not the best way to do it.
I don't have a problem with fixing UI problems with the Gimp. What I have a problem with is using the same UI kludge as Photoshop uses on Windows when there are better solutions out there. But people would rather the Gimp developers clone the Photoshop interface because they can't be bothered to consider that an alternative to their favorite program might be good.
As for installers, well, several flavors of Linux have excellent package managers. Anyone who claims that 'installers suck' on Linux either hasn't tried a modern Linux distribution, or is so ingrained in the Windows way of installing software that they can't look past it to see that Linux package managers are in fact, frequently better than anything on Windows, and possibly on the Mac as well. They are good.
There are several great Linux package managers, and there are lots of people who really do like The Gimp's interface, even more than Photoshop or anything else. So don't claim I'm trying to use other weaknesses as scapegoats. In some cases these aren't problems at all, except with the people who can't break their old habits to see something that is, in fact, good.
Re:Konqueror: the file and internet browser
on
KDE 3.3.2 Released
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· Score: 2, Insightful
No. Konqueror is just the shell. khtml supports HTML rendering, cookies, Java applets, CSS and so on. When you use Konqueror as a web browser, it's just a wrapper with a toolbar around khtml. Similarly, when you're browsing your local disk, Konqueror is just a shell for the KDE file browsing part (kfmclient?).
In fact, if and whenever the Gecko kpart gets approved for inclusion into the standard KDE distribution, it's quite likely that you'll be able to compile KDE without khtml at all. Then you'll have Gecko embedded in Konqueror for browsing. It may even be possible to compile KDE without khtml now, although I can't guarantee it.
When you load up Konqueror, pretty much all the functionality it has is a menu, toolbars, tabs, and split panes. Then, if you load a web site, it loads up khtml. If you open your local filesystem, it loads up that kpart. If you open a pdf, it can open up an embedded pdf viewer part and display it. Any file that can be viewed in a kpart can be viewed embedded in Konqueror. It is modular like Kontact. Konqueror did it first.
The fact that you and many other people don't even realize that Konqueror is modular like it is speaks a lot to how well it's done. Konqueror's just a bunch of parts that fit together, but it provides you with a pretty seamless experience like a monolithic program would. It's quite an accomplishment.
The fact that in every single story even remotely related to The Gimp, there is always at least one comment by some dude who's freaking out about the name of The Gimp, and a whole slew of posts about how The Gimp's interface is dog shit compared to the all hallowed Photoshop (ignoring the fact that The Gimp looks closer to Mac Photoshop than Windows Photoshop does, yet no one complains about Mac Photoshop's interface). And they're always modded insightful and interesting, instead of '-1: We've heard this 10,000 times already and you really have nothing new to say on the subject,' like they should be.
While quantum entanglement does exist, and entangled particles can be separated from one another by an arbitrary distance, it is unlikely to cause the effects you describe.
First, maintaining entangled particles is rather difficult in practice. Entanglement happens when the properties of two particles are interrelated, although the specific values are not. For example, the decay of a radioactive atom might release two photons with correlated polarizations, though you don't know which way each photon is polarized. You can then perform certain operations to change the photon's polarization, and those changes will be reflected in the entangled photon's polarization, and when you measure the polarization of one, the other's is guaranteed to correspond, based on how they were emitted.
However, once you measure the polarization, and know both values, the two photons are no longer entangled and any changes to one's polarization will no longer affect the other. There are also any number of other operations that will cause the particles to no longer be entangled with one another, such as giving a new, known value to the entangled property. For instance, if you have two particles whose spin is correlated (say they're both equal), and take one and cause it to have spin +1/2, that doesn't necessarily cause the other particle to have spin +1/2. You need to do things like changing +1/2 to -1/2, and vice versa, which don't collapse the uncertainty of the system.
The actual class of operations that preserves entanglement is relatively limited compared to the total number of operations possible (I believe the ones that can preserve entanglement are unitary reversible operators, or some such, which are of specific interest to quantum computing, which makes lots of use of entanglement).
In other words, the probability that two particles at either end of your fingernail would be entangled is pretty small, let alone in two separate human beings. There are two many other particles to bump into, and that tends to destroy entanglement.
Furthermore, I'd add that even in the quantum teleportation case, where correlated states change instantaneously, to decipher the instantaneously transferred state requires that the people communicating transmit information to one another that must be sent at the speed of light or less. It works like this:
Alice creates entangled particles A, B, and sends B to Bob.
Alice performs appropriate transformations on A to encode information
Alice measures A, and sends the measurement to Bob via normal channels
Bob measures B and uses the measurement of A to decode B's measure into the information in step 2.
So even though information is theoretically transferred faster than light, that information cannot be deciphered without sending other information slower than/at the speed of light, so in practice you cannot transmit data faster than the speed of light would allow.
I realize my explanations may have been confusing, but unfortunately I struggle with some of the concepts myself, so it's difficult for me to explain them. However, if you learn a little more about quantum mechanics, I think it'll become clear that a lot of the ideas in your post aren't really possible (at least, as far as our current understanding of quantum mechanics goes).
So entertainment had by trolling on Slashdot is less entertaining than reading about a game you can't play? How about replying to said troll, or replying to the person who replied to the troll, and so on?
Besides, you played right into the troll's hands by getting angry and replying. He's probably rubbing one off to your post right now.
Flame stickers and cold cathodes, along with a plexiglass case window featuring a biohazard symbol will work wonders for you in the application speedup arena.
I agree that both KHTML and Gecko should continue to be developed. However, your entire post overlooked the fact that it might be nice to have both around.
When Gmail first came out, it flat out wouldn't work with KHTML. In such a situation, it would be nice to be able to switch Konqueror to use a Gecko part temporarily. The only other solution is to have Mozilla or Firefox installed separately, and no matter how much you theme them, they still won't fit into a KDE desktop as well as Konqueror will. Bonus points if I can have only the Gecko part installed without needing to install the the associated full-fledged applications (which would also benefit Gnome people who want to use Epiphany without having Mozilla around; this decoupling was supposed to happen, but I guess that project stalled).
So what's the problem with having both a Gecko and a KHTML part around and using one or the other as the situation demands. That way I can actually get things done while I'm waiting for a bug in one or the other to be fixed.
OSS may be more mature, and an easier API to develop for, but that doesn't negate my point.
OSS is not free software anymore. There's an older version in the kernel, but if you want any current support, you have to pay for it. It can't be community developed.
The 'Linux community' has produced an audio framework capable of whatever the original poster wants. ALSA can do surround sound. ALSA is community developed, and presumably what will be used in the future.
The original poster wanted to know why Doom 3 didn't come with surround sound. Well, it's not because it's not possible on Linux. The framework is there. But id used OSS at first (perhaps for valid reasons), and apparently they couldn't do surround sound in OSS.
You can't blame 'The Community' if they produce a working system with the required features, and then the game developer decides to use something else without the features.
As for your troll mod, I think it was undeserved. My guess is that the mods are punishing you for calling ALSA the "newest whiizbang-thingy." After all, it has been around for three or four years now, and is quite clearly the direction that Linux audio is going in.
:) I don't disagree with you. It just pisses me off to read "Gimp should look like Photoshop" comments in every Gimp story, when they really mean "Gimp should look like Windows Photoshop." The Gimp does look like Photoshop on the platform which frequently touts its Photoshop prowess.
Now, granted, The Gimp could probably use some interface tweaks, but there are tons of people who think making a big window and filling it with smaller windows is the holy grail of photo-editing UI design. Really, that's mostly a poor man's (Windows user's?) way of getting consistently placed menu and tool bars, which are better handled on the Mac, and to some degree, Linux (KDE can have consistently placed menus). Making your application manage its own virtual windows is not the right way to do it.
Anyhow, I don't disagree with you. I just get annoyed by people who cream all over the Photoshop interface, while forgetting that on the Mac, where Photoshop originated, The Gimp looks more like Photoshop than their version of Photoshop does. What they're really asking for is for Adobe's 'hacks' to circumvent the way the Windows UI works to be reimplemented for the Gimp, rather than designing the underlying UI system to provide the appropriate features in the right way. That may be impossible on Windows, but on Linux, it's almost certainly better to do things The Right Way, and like it or not, Gimp on Windows is more of an afterthought than the main focus.
Slashdot Mirror
There may be some I missed. In other words, you can install Mozilla with just the browser. However, you have to compile it for yourself if you want that.
A 64-bit solution will last us for about 43 times as long as the universe has been around (by current estimates).
A 128-bit solution will last for 7.88e20 times the age of the universe.
There's a good chance we won't be around by the time the former fails, and it wouldn't be terribly surprising if the universe has ended (whatever that means) by the time the latter fails.
Actually, there are problems with the grammar in that sentence.
...." To my ear, it seems like there's a word missing.
Lots of discussion going on about 'folksonomies' -- bottom-up taxonomies that people create on their own -- as used in Del.icio.us and Flickr:
The above isn't a full clause, it's just a phrase. However, arguably, it should be a whole clause to be correct. It would be better to say, "There is lots of discussion
Adam Mathes has a thesis on Folksonomies; IFTF's Future Now makes a point about problems with folksonomies: no synonym control ( "mac" and "macintosh" on Del.icio.us); no hierarchy and content types; and only simple one-word tags.
The first two items in that list are clauses, which are correctly separated by semi-colons. The last two are merely phrases, which should be separated by commas. Further, it is poor style to make a list consisting of dissimilar elements, like clauses and phrases in this case.
While wifi support may be a problem, the major offender in the graphics card market is ATI. nVidia puts out excellent drivers for its cards, and Intel and Matrox have released the specifications for most of their cards (as I recall), so the open source drivers should be fine.
Today, if you want to use Linux and have high performance 3d, you can't use ATI, but the whole of the graphics card market is not the same way.
Also, "desktop ready" is a difficult term to define. For many people, Linux is desktop ready, because many people don't care about 3d performance. And if they bought a computer with Linux like they do with Windows, the retailers would have no trouble creating machines that work with Linux. The population that builds a computer from scratch out of components, and would have to do research about which parts work with Linux is quite small compared to the overall computer-using population.
I don't think you understand the definition of "soccer mom". It's not synonymous with "woman".
Do you really mean that a "very large number of MMORPG players" are middle-aged, trendy, suburban mothers?
I'm 22, and none of my friends have a problem with Nintendo being more 'kiddy' than the other consoles. In fact, we end up playing Nintendo games far more often than any other system.
Then again, we aren't exactly members of the unwashed masses. We grew up gaming, unlike the large majority of modern 'gamers' who've only started playing video games now that it's somehow popular. We actually care if a game is fun, not just if it has enough explosions. I'm not surprised most of the American market doesn't agree.
In other words: Apparently, every person over the age of 21 that you work with is an idiot when it comes to video games.
Because every old fool doesn't have commit rights to the Firefox CVS repository. You have to submit patches somehow, and they have to be reviewed and accepted by some team of trusted developers.
It's the same with the Linux kernel. If you want to get patches in the main branch, you need to send them to the mailing list, where they'll be tested by people and eventually added if they're worthy. They don't get in the main branch without going through someone trusted, or at least as trusted as any proprietary code-jockey would be.
If you've got a computer capable of running a 3D accelerated memory hog, then you've got one capable of running a 3D accelerated memory hog and KDE. It's not a very noticable performance hit.
Now, if you're trying to run Doom 3 on three-year-old hardware, the case might be different, but if you've got something up to snuff, you shouldn't have much of a problem running almost anything. When I'm in KDE on my machine, I typically have a memory usage of around 200 MB, even after days, with several programs loaded up. Can Doom 3 really not handle itself with 800 MB of ram (assuming about a gig of ram is standard on a gaming machine these days)?
If you want a lightweight window manager, use XFCE or Fluxbox or something. However, don't listen to people who tell you that on a 3.5 GHz machine with a gigabyte of memory you need to use Ratpoison because anything else uses too much memory. Use whatever you like to look at. You bought a giant machine; you don't need to treat it like a pentium 90.
What does your experience---failing two out of 64 people for incompetence, and having a class with an overall C average---have to do with what your post's parent was talking about---a class where 100% of the students receive an F?
Are you implying, for example, that all 25 students in a graduate course entitled 'Unix Security Holes' were either incompetent or didn't even make an effort at completing the course? Are you implying that in most cases where an entire class fails---with an F, not a C---that it is because every student either slacked off or was incompetent? I won't rule out that possibility, but I think it's very unlikely that in any given class, there isn't anyone who isn't both intelligent and hard-working enough to at least get a D in the class. Do you have reason to believe otherwise?
* easy way to change X res
/bin /sbin /usr ???
KDE Control Center -> Peripherals -> Display -> Screen size
* the whole permissions thing, it helps you to not screw up, but is bothersome and tiring, I'm not into bondage, is waaay too restrictive for home use.
What's your issue, exactly? Ubuntu, for example, sets things up so that you just have to type your password to do things like install software, just as a check that you know you're doing something dangerous. This is, incidentally, what OSX does, which is commonly regarded as the pinnacle of ease-of-use.
Or if you want to be like typical windows, you could run as root the whole time.
* games, I'm not much of a gamer but I like to relax sometimes by blowing virtual stuff/people
If all you're into is blowing stuff up, there are lots of FPSs out for Linux. It's really in other genres that Linux is sorely lacking.
* along this area,the kmixer is nightmarish too many sliders.
You can turn most sliders off, although I agree, it could use better defaults. Apparently ALSA handles things in this area differently than OSS did, and mixer developers haven't adapted yet.
* where are the settings for my monitors res, Vert/horiz frecuencies, I mean where to get'em, there's a need for a [EASY] X config
What distribution are you using that doesn't automatically configure X for you? SuSE, for example, will even automatically load and configure the nVidia proprietary drivers for you, from what I hear. This and your comment about lack of dynamic resizing suggests that you haven't really tried this in a while.
* X has been a pain always ever... it always takes hours to do something that I can in windows in seconds
Like what?
* being able to write in NTFS partitions
If you're not using Windows, why are you using NTFS? Also, it's possible to use LUFS with Captive NTFS to load the Windows NTFS drivers and have write support for NTFS. Do some googling on it.
* this fstab/mtab is difficult hdb6 blah blah blah argh just mount!!!
Why are you editing them manually? In most distributions you'd just select your partition layout in some graphical wizard, if at all, and in ones where you don't, it's because they're designed for people who should know that sort of stuff.
If you're talking about CDs and DVDs and USB hard drives and such, then Gnome volume manager with HAL and DBUS makes great strides in this area (pop in a CD, and an icon appears on your desktop), and KDE is slated to provide some support in this area in 3.4.
* kpackage almost always tells me that something went wrong but it installed things
Is kpackage officially supported by the distribution you're using? If you just install random packages, you'll probably have problems, because that's not the way software installation systems on Linux are designed. If you use your distribution's package management system, you shouldn't have problems most of the time.
* half of the time I'm wondering where's an app
Why does this matter? All that needs to happen is that something pops into your Gnome/KDE menu. It doesn't matter where it's installed to. If you choose to use something that doesn't autogenerate menus for you, like fluxbox, then that's your choice, for which you have to accept the consequences.
There are a few I didn't answer, because they're more or less true and I can't counter them. However, some of your points are a bit invalid.
I have different experiences. All of my friends, and pretty much everyone I'm aware of at my university uses AIM, and we're all 22 or under.
I haven't met anyone who uses ICQ in years, although I hear it's more popular outside of the US.
I can't comment on the growing MSN population though. I always forget to ask that when I lure children into my van with promises of free candy and ice cream.
Yeah, and modding them up on Slashdot will surely get the attention of the Gimp developers.
I assure you, the Gimp developers have heard these issues. They've even been discussed in the bug database (where actual discussion with the developers goes on, unlike here, where people just whine without consequence). Just because the developers don't agree with people who think they should clone Photoshop's interface, or change the name to something else, doesn't mean they haven't heard and listened. It just means that in the developers' opinion, that segment of the (potential) users is wrong.
Believe it or not, there are plenty of people who have learned to use The Gimp with its current interface, and don't want a kludgy window-in-window interface to placate people who can't get past the fact that The Gimp isn't Photoshop. In fact, this group is, quite likely, larger than the group who absolutely can't use it if it doesn't look exactly like Photoshop. That's why The Gimp's interface hasn't changed yet. It's not because you guys haven't yelled loud or long enough.
Being the loudest complainer might often work in politics, but it doesn't work everywhere.
Right. Maybe if a minority of users complain even louder, the developers, who don't agree with them, will decide to go their way.
Or maybe it's time for the people who are complaining to go implement it themselves, or pay someone to do so. That will actually get change done in your favor, even though it's even more boring than pontificating about boring arguments.
I can guarantee you that no matter how often or how loudly you complain on Slashdot about The Gimp's interface, it will not magically transform itself into a window-in-window Photoshop look alike.
And after all the complaining that's been done, I can guarantee you that the developers know people's positions on The Gimp's interface. But maybe they don't agree that they should just clone Photoshop. Maybe they're trying to find something better. Or maybe they just plain like it the way it is now, and it's their software, and they can develop it as they wish.
In the open source world, it's quite often put-up-or-shut-up. However, many people are quite content to do neither.
No, sorry.
Most people who are unsatisfied with The Gimp's interface say that the correct interface is Photoshop's. Well, Photoshop originated on the Mac, so it's original, and, presumably, intended interface is more like the interface The Gimp has than the Windows interface of Photoshop.
The Windows interface of Photoshop is, primarily, an attempt to get some of the features of the Mac (Upper-left screen menu, top screen toolbar, etc) that can't be had in a similar GUI on Windows. The only way to get those UI elements on Windows is to wrap all your smaller windows in one big window. But that's not the best way to do it.
I don't have a problem with fixing UI problems with the Gimp. What I have a problem with is using the same UI kludge as Photoshop uses on Windows when there are better solutions out there. But people would rather the Gimp developers clone the Photoshop interface because they can't be bothered to consider that an alternative to their favorite program might be good.
As for installers, well, several flavors of Linux have excellent package managers. Anyone who claims that 'installers suck' on Linux either hasn't tried a modern Linux distribution, or is so ingrained in the Windows way of installing software that they can't look past it to see that Linux package managers are in fact, frequently better than anything on Windows, and possibly on the Mac as well. They are good.
There are several great Linux package managers, and there are lots of people who really do like The Gimp's interface, even more than Photoshop or anything else. So don't claim I'm trying to use other weaknesses as scapegoats. In some cases these aren't problems at all, except with the people who can't break their old habits to see something that is, in fact, good.
No. Konqueror is just the shell. khtml supports HTML rendering, cookies, Java applets, CSS and so on. When you use Konqueror as a web browser, it's just a wrapper with a toolbar around khtml. Similarly, when you're browsing your local disk, Konqueror is just a shell for the KDE file browsing part (kfmclient?).
In fact, if and whenever the Gecko kpart gets approved for inclusion into the standard KDE distribution, it's quite likely that you'll be able to compile KDE without khtml at all. Then you'll have Gecko embedded in Konqueror for browsing. It may even be possible to compile KDE without khtml now, although I can't guarantee it.
When you load up Konqueror, pretty much all the functionality it has is a menu, toolbars, tabs, and split panes. Then, if you load a web site, it loads up khtml. If you open your local filesystem, it loads up that kpart. If you open a pdf, it can open up an embedded pdf viewer part and display it. Any file that can be viewed in a kpart can be viewed embedded in Konqueror. It is modular like Kontact. Konqueror did it first.
The fact that you and many other people don't even realize that Konqueror is modular like it is speaks a lot to how well it's done. Konqueror's just a bunch of parts that fit together, but it provides you with a pretty seamless experience like a monolithic program would. It's quite an accomplishment.
You know what else is retarded?
The fact that in every single story even remotely related to The Gimp, there is always at least one comment by some dude who's freaking out about the name of The Gimp, and a whole slew of posts about how The Gimp's interface is dog shit compared to the all hallowed Photoshop (ignoring the fact that The Gimp looks closer to Mac Photoshop than Windows Photoshop does, yet no one complains about Mac Photoshop's interface). And they're always modded insightful and interesting, instead of '-1: We've heard this 10,000 times already and you really have nothing new to say on the subject,' like they should be.
First, maintaining entangled particles is rather difficult in practice. Entanglement happens when the properties of two particles are interrelated, although the specific values are not. For example, the decay of a radioactive atom might release two photons with correlated polarizations, though you don't know which way each photon is polarized. You can then perform certain operations to change the photon's polarization, and those changes will be reflected in the entangled photon's polarization, and when you measure the polarization of one, the other's is guaranteed to correspond, based on how they were emitted.
However, once you measure the polarization, and know both values, the two photons are no longer entangled and any changes to one's polarization will no longer affect the other. There are also any number of other operations that will cause the particles to no longer be entangled with one another, such as giving a new, known value to the entangled property. For instance, if you have two particles whose spin is correlated (say they're both equal), and take one and cause it to have spin +1/2, that doesn't necessarily cause the other particle to have spin +1/2. You need to do things like changing +1/2 to -1/2, and vice versa, which don't collapse the uncertainty of the system.
The actual class of operations that preserves entanglement is relatively limited compared to the total number of operations possible (I believe the ones that can preserve entanglement are unitary reversible operators, or some such, which are of specific interest to quantum computing, which makes lots of use of entanglement).
In other words, the probability that two particles at either end of your fingernail would be entangled is pretty small, let alone in two separate human beings. There are two many other particles to bump into, and that tends to destroy entanglement.
Furthermore, I'd add that even in the quantum teleportation case, where correlated states change instantaneously, to decipher the instantaneously transferred state requires that the people communicating transmit information to one another that must be sent at the speed of light or less. It works like this:
So even though information is theoretically transferred faster than light, that information cannot be deciphered without sending other information slower than/at the speed of light, so in practice you cannot transmit data faster than the speed of light would allow.
I realize my explanations may have been confusing, but unfortunately I struggle with some of the concepts myself, so it's difficult for me to explain them. However, if you learn a little more about quantum mechanics, I think it'll become clear that a lot of the ideas in your post aren't really possible (at least, as far as our current understanding of quantum mechanics goes).
So entertainment had by trolling on Slashdot is less entertaining than reading about a game you can't play? How about replying to said troll, or replying to the person who replied to the troll, and so on?
Besides, you played right into the troll's hands by getting angry and replying. He's probably rubbing one off to your post right now.
Flame stickers and cold cathodes, along with a plexiglass case window featuring a biohazard symbol will work wonders for you in the application speedup arena.
I agree that both KHTML and Gecko should continue to be developed. However, your entire post overlooked the fact that it might be nice to have both around.
When Gmail first came out, it flat out wouldn't work with KHTML. In such a situation, it would be nice to be able to switch Konqueror to use a Gecko part temporarily. The only other solution is to have Mozilla or Firefox installed separately, and no matter how much you theme them, they still won't fit into a KDE desktop as well as Konqueror will. Bonus points if I can have only the Gecko part installed without needing to install the the associated full-fledged applications (which would also benefit Gnome people who want to use Epiphany without having Mozilla around; this decoupling was supposed to happen, but I guess that project stalled).
So what's the problem with having both a Gecko and a KHTML part around and using one or the other as the situation demands. That way I can actually get things done while I'm waiting for a bug in one or the other to be fixed.
OSS may be more mature, and an easier API to develop for, but that doesn't negate my point.
OSS is not free software anymore. There's an older version in the kernel, but if you want any current support, you have to pay for it. It can't be community developed.
The 'Linux community' has produced an audio framework capable of whatever the original poster wants. ALSA can do surround sound. ALSA is community developed, and presumably what will be used in the future.
The original poster wanted to know why Doom 3 didn't come with surround sound. Well, it's not because it's not possible on Linux. The framework is there. But id used OSS at first (perhaps for valid reasons), and apparently they couldn't do surround sound in OSS.
You can't blame 'The Community' if they produce a working system with the required features, and then the game developer decides to use something else without the features.
As for your troll mod, I think it was undeserved. My guess is that the mods are punishing you for calling ALSA the "newest whiizbang-thingy." After all, it has been around for three or four years now, and is quite clearly the direction that Linux audio is going in.
:) I don't disagree with you. It just pisses me off to read "Gimp should look like Photoshop" comments in every Gimp story, when they really mean "Gimp should look like Windows Photoshop." The Gimp does look like Photoshop on the platform which frequently touts its Photoshop prowess.
Now, granted, The Gimp could probably use some interface tweaks, but there are tons of people who think making a big window and filling it with smaller windows is the holy grail of photo-editing UI design. Really, that's mostly a poor man's (Windows user's?) way of getting consistently placed menu and tool bars, which are better handled on the Mac, and to some degree, Linux (KDE can have consistently placed menus). Making your application manage its own virtual windows is not the right way to do it.
Anyhow, I don't disagree with you. I just get annoyed by people who cream all over the Photoshop interface, while forgetting that on the Mac, where Photoshop originated, The Gimp looks more like Photoshop than their version of Photoshop does. What they're really asking for is for Adobe's 'hacks' to circumvent the way the Windows UI works to be reimplemented for the Gimp, rather than designing the underlying UI system to provide the appropriate features in the right way. That may be impossible on Windows, but on Linux, it's almost certainly better to do things The Right Way, and like it or not, Gimp on Windows is more of an afterthought than the main focus.
Maybe we could give it an interface like Photoshop Oh, wait; it already does look like that.
It's good, but it could really use a few more lens flares.
I disagree. Clearly, this is what d12 looks like