Seriously, this is the kind of thing that is only news to Outlook users who have never seen a decent email program in their lives. MS is way behind the times on this issue, some of these clients have had threading for over 2 years now.
XSettings and the Desktop Color Scheme specs only refers to things like mouse curosr movement, drag and drop timeouts, and color schemes, trivial things of that nature. None of the more advanced types of configuration, like positions of panels, menu types, etc, are included in there.
All it is is a standard spec for controlling how happs behave in a fundamental fashion.
KDE and Gnome are so different and have such totally different config architectures (GConf vs. KConfig ) that you'll never be able to manage both with one single spec, unless either one desktop ditches their system and adopts the other (not going to happen ), or someone makes a huge monolithic app that can do both ( would be hideous ).
Imagine your 60 year old mom is going to purchase a robot to help her around the house, with vaccuming, doing dishes, helping her carry stuff, etc. Is she going to want:
1. A nice white robot that looks moderately human like, and she can name "Larry" or some nonsense
2. A 4 legged ant-like thing with octopus arms everywhere that looks like it came out of a 50's horror flick.
Rule #0, while *essential*. is impossible to implement. Even try talking to two people on the street about that is "harmful to humanity" and you'll get totally disparate answers.
Unless you replace "harmful" with "the extinction of" it won't work. And even *if* you go that far, what if the robot calculates that environmental pollution will cause the extinction of humanity in 100 years? Will the robot then go on a destructive and murderous rampage destroying anyone and anything causing pollution?
Asimov's laws, while noble, are not as black and white to implement as they seem at first glance...
Sure, and with this increased tracking speed it is now more difficult to aquire targets *EVERYWHERE* on the screen but the screen edge, thus markedly decreasing the usability of the whole OS.
I seriously think that soon, as 19" monitors start becoming standard, this whole "screen edge is ideal for targets" thing will be re-thought. At 1600x1200, with any kind of reasonable tracking speed it just takes too damn long.
Aside from the fact that I don't even believe the statement that you could click your preferences button any faster than I could click settings. My brain can read 5 words much faster than you can move your hand 2 inches.
Did you even read this guys comment? He is talking about APPLICATIONS, not the OS.
With Linux, FreeBSD, etc, everything is open, and all I really need to do to change my system into a 64 bit version is re-build it (which is a joke with Gentoo:O). I can run one command on Friday, let the machine sit, and have a 64 bit version of every application on my system by Monday at the latest.
Now try going down to Best Buy and picking up a 64 bit version of Microsoft Office or Macromedia Dreamweaver. You'll be sorely out of luck. As will be the case with *many* of your favorite apps once 64 bit windows comes out... you'll be forced to either run them in 32 bit emulation mode, or pay for a new verison which may not exist for months, if it is even created at all.
Well if you like the "Always on top" Mac style bar you can turn that on in KDE, and all your applications menus are at the top of the screen like in Mac OS.
Personally though I *HATE* this whole scheme, and so do many others (especially people used to Windows), because no matter what Fritz's law implies it just simply *does* take longer to have to dart your mouse all the way up the screen just to hit a menu. Especially with modern screens getting larger and larger, the distance you have to move your mouse is rapidly overriding the "inifinite target size" factor of having the menu at the screen edge.
Regardless, you *can* enable this so you don't really have much of a valid complaint here.
No that is not how these things work. AFAIK they're magnetic induction, not radio frequencies.
People have a fundamental misunderstanding of these devices. There's no radio waves to tap into in the first place
Even if they were using RFID, they'd be so low wattage (think about it, thes things have ZERO ambient power, they only use the power on the sending wave to send their signal) that youd need a 15 foot satelite dish to pick up a signal from across the street. And that's assuming you had a stationary target to aim it at!
RFID is nowhear near as insecure as the paranoid fools on slashdot make it out to be. It is simply not powerful enough to trace you with.
Aside from the fact that you'd likely need to enter a PIN on the phone to even activate the device.
It would be easy for examaple, to have the phone require a PIN to decrypt a key stored in the phone, which stores your CC number. After you enter the PIN, you have 30 seconds to swipe the phone before it expires the PIN.
What about security? Until more information about how the protocol works, how security is maintained, and exactly how one can control what information is broadcasted is released, can we really trust this technology with our personal information? And this doesn't even begin to cover eavesdropping. (My tinfoil hat may be disrupting my thinking here)
From the description, this thing works just like Esso Speedpass dongles, in that, the thing needs to be within around 2 cm ( 1 inch ) for it to trigger and transmit the needed data.
The only way anyone could eavesdrop on or steal your CC number using this system is if he has his hands in your pants. And if some unknown guy has his hands down your pants, you've got much bigger problems than your credit info.
Assuming it's also tied to a PIN you enter on your phone, it's also much more secure than the old swipe, where the waitress/retailer has full access to your card #, expiry date, and name.
It's something I've always hated about Windows: there are always a whole ton of items in the context menu when I only ever use two or three items. Right-clicking in IE right now reveals 16 items, some of which are actually WORSE than useless: Set as Background, for instance, which kills my current background with whatever I'm right-clicking on. Pretty easy to accidentally hit it when I'm trying to save an image...
For one, the menu is now quite short since it is divided up into task-oriented sub menus where appropriate. For another, the situation you described would never happen in KDE because the usability guidelines specifically specify that destructive actions in context menus have to be below non-destructive actions and seperated, so "Save" would never be beside "Set Background"
Do you think she put those applications into the menu HERSELF? If not, how did they get there? She said she just installed the Fedora RPMs. Regardless of whether or not the included apps are strictly a part of KDE or not, they were there in what she had to work with, and a stupidly bloated menu was the result.
This is ludicrous. You can't blame KDE for the menu layout that Fedora comes up with.
If you install KDE by itself from source, it doesn't put any non-kde applications into the menu by default. You have to run the app import generator and approve the layout yourself. If you don't like the way the K Menu is sorted out contact the Fedora team.
In KDE as well you go to the *exact same* place to edit an applications preferences, under settings. There are never, ever any preferences anywhere else. You also get the *exact same* style of settings dialog in all core KDE applications.
KDE is very very consistant from application to application, much more so than Gnome or Windows. True it is not always consistant with Windows or Gnome, but it really has no desire to be since both these GUI environments also have their own flaws.
...And I don't mean horrible for KDE, I mean it is horribly done and poorly researched.
For the mistakes under "The KDE Solution":
- KDialog and Service Menus have been in KDE since 3.0, they are nowhere near a new feature. KRDC for connecting to windows machines has been around for a long time as well, since 3.1.
Under "The KDE Problem"
- She says "Konqueror's context menu is a mess, why would I want to zip a web page or use Cervicia with it, is beyond me". She obviously does not grasp that KDE is totally network transparent, and that indeed all these options can be used with any media on any device. There is no need to restrict their ability while browsing a web site (in fact who is to say that you wouldnt* ever want to, say, right click on a.doc link and zip and email it?)
- She then goes on about how the KDE menu is too bloated, and posts a screenshot as an example. However, in the screenshot, which contains 32 applications, only 7 are KDE applications! You can't claim the KDE menu is too blated because of all the other junk on the system.
- She then advocates putting all the "Configure" options under one menu entry under "Edit" instead of "Settings". Not onnly would this violate the KDE Style Guide which has been agreed upon by usability experts, it just seems foolish. In no OS does "Edit" imply "Settings". Edit is for Editing the active document.
Namely this is one of the poorer reviews I have read on OSNews, and that is saying ALOT since they are normally quite bad.
A while ago the city (like every other major organization on the planet) upgraded its networks and in the process laid a lot of fibre that has been dark for ages. They finally sat up and said "hey why don't we USE this!"
And the city will be using the network as well, as it says in the article. They will have VPNs over it that will let people like water meter reads operate wirelessly and whatnot. It will probably SAVE taxpayer money.
My hometown of Fredericton, New Brunswick with it's population of ~81,000 is getting much of the city blanketed with WiFi as well (first city in Canada). And ours is FREE for everyone, which isn't at all true for the city in the article.
Much of the downtown is already being covered. Next year even they're covering the major malls and other areas.
When asked, the local ISPs rightly said it probably won't cut into their revenues, because with the amount of people on the free network you'll never get high downstream / upstream speeds, but it'll be great for surfing the web or checking your email on the go from your PDA, nearly anywhere in the city.
I ditched my landline 6 months ago and haven't looked back. I get tons of free features I didnt get with my landline ( like caller id, etc ), no solicitations at all (isn't this even illegal?), and I can take my phone with my where ever I go (or leave it at home if I don't want to be disturbed).
And to boot, its all about 10 bucks cheaper / month than the landline was ( 300 anytime minutes + unlimited evening and weekend + unlimited long distance - who uses more than 300 minutes during the weekdays? You're probably at work and using the company phone).
Seriously I don't know why people bother with landlines. The solicitations alone were enough to drive me away.
Well if those estimets are correct then you'd be in the black in under one fiscal year, from then on in you'd be laughing all the way to the bank.
Any manager who saw those figures and decided to NOT go with VOIP is either a moron, in bed with the telco, or there's some other costs you're not including (support, support personell for the VOIP hardware, etc).
S3TC is not the only code. Most liekly the drivers are littered with stuff that is either licensed, or trade secret stuff like how NVidia does its UDM.
You do realize that hardware specifications can, and likely are, also covered by patents owned by either Nvidia, another company, or jointly?
I am 100% in favour of Open Source, but I am also 100% in favour of ENCOURAGING companies that TRY to support it.
Open Source People don't seem to understand the concept of compromise and that Rome wasn't built in a day. Alienating hardware companies with your ideological rants is just going to discourage them and turn them off of the idea of supporting Linux altogether, and then you'll be stuck with no specs AND no drivers.
Companies like NVidia provide binary-only modules because they have to. Their code contains stuff that is patented and licensed from other companies, and they *cannot* legally release that code.
For example, NVidia's linux drivers contain S3TC tecxture compression algorithms, which is patented and licenssed. It is not theirs.
They CANNOT open source these drivers, nor could Linux developers create an implementation of them without being sued by the company who owns the rights.
And people just don' t seem to get this and it really really pisses me off. NVidia is just trying to do The Right Thing (tm), releasing Linux drivers at a LOSS nonetheless ( you think they make enough on Linux-owner sales of their cards ot cover these programmers salaries? I doubt it. ), and all the community does is flame them. No wonder hardware companies are so hesitant to support Linux in any shape or form.
I also need to throw this in to close... I don't know what people's problems with these drivers are. I have been using them since version 1043 (3+ years), and I have *NEVER* had a problem that wasn't fixed by reading the FAQ. And their feature and 3D support totally blows away any of the open source drivers (ATIs always lag 1-2 years behind the release of a card, and they still don't have all the features of the windows ones like FSAA and anisotropic filtering, while NVidia has had them for years).
Companies like NVidia provide binary-only modules because they have to. Their code contains stuff that is patented and licensed from other companies, and they *cannot* legally release that code.
For example, NVidia's linux drivers contain S3TC tecxture compression algorithms, which is patented and licenssed. It is not theirs.
They CANNOT open source these drivers, nor could Linux developers create an implementation of them without being sued by the company who owns the rights.
And people just don' t seem to get this and it really really pisses me off. NVidia is just trying to do The Right Thing (tm), releasing Linux drivers at a LOSS nonetheless ( you think they make enough on Linux-owner sales of their cards ot cover these programmers salaries? I doubt it. ), and all the community does is flame them. No wonder hardware companies are so hesitant to support Linux in any shape or form.
I also need to throw this in to close... I don't know what people's problems with these drivers are. I have been using them since version 1043, and I have *NEVER* had a problem that wasnt fixed by reading the FAQ. And their feature and 3D support totally blows away any of the open source drivers (ATIs always lag 1-2 years behind the release of a card, and they still don't have all the features of the windows ones).
Slashdot Mirror
Mozilla Thunderbird already does this.
KMail already does this.
Evolution already does this.
Opera already does this.
Mutt already does this.
Seriously, this is the kind of thing that is only news to Outlook users who have never seen a decent email program in their lives. MS is way behind the times on this issue, some of these clients have had threading for over 2 years now.
Umm, you mean like this one?
Or this one?
Or this one?
Just because MS has been dragging it's feet for years doesn't mean other people have.
XSettings and the Desktop Color Scheme specs only refers to things like mouse curosr movement, drag and drop timeouts, and color schemes, trivial things of that nature. None of the more advanced types of configuration, like positions of panels, menu types, etc, are included in there.
All it is is a standard spec for controlling how happs behave in a fundamental fashion.
KDE and Gnome are so different and have such totally different config architectures (GConf vs. KConfig ) that you'll never be able to manage both with one single spec, unless either one desktop ditches their system and adopts the other (not going to happen ), or someone makes a huge monolithic app that can do both ( would be hideous ).
iTunes has a simmilar restriction. My question is WHY?
If you can burn the files to a CD just *once*, you can rip them later, or copy thw CD wholesale, thus circumventing all protections.
Imagine your 60 year old mom is going to purchase a robot to help her around the house, with vaccuming, doing dishes, helping her carry stuff, etc. Is she going to want:
1. A nice white robot that looks moderately human like, and she can name "Larry" or some nonsense
2. A 4 legged ant-like thing with octopus arms everywhere that looks like it came out of a 50's horror flick.
Rule #0, while *essential*. is impossible to implement. Even try talking to two people on the street about that is "harmful to humanity" and you'll get totally disparate answers.
Unless you replace "harmful" with "the extinction of" it won't work. And even *if* you go that far, what if the robot calculates that environmental pollution will cause the extinction of humanity in 100 years? Will the robot then go on a destructive and murderous rampage destroying anyone and anything causing pollution?
Asimov's laws, while noble, are not as black and white to implement as they seem at first glance...
Sure, and with this increased tracking speed it is now more difficult to aquire targets *EVERYWHERE* on the screen but the screen edge, thus markedly decreasing the usability of the whole OS.
I seriously think that soon, as 19" monitors start becoming standard, this whole "screen edge is ideal for targets" thing will be re-thought. At 1600x1200, with any kind of reasonable tracking speed it just takes too damn long.
Aside from the fact that I don't even believe the statement that you could click your preferences button any faster than I could click settings.
My brain can read 5 words much faster than you can move your hand 2 inches.
Did you even read this guys comment? He is talking about APPLICATIONS, not the OS.
:O). I can run one command on Friday, let the machine sit, and have a 64 bit version of every application on my system by Monday at the latest.
With Linux, FreeBSD, etc, everything is open, and all I really need to do to change my system into a 64 bit version is re-build it (which is a joke with Gentoo
Now try going down to Best Buy and picking up a 64 bit version of Microsoft Office or Macromedia Dreamweaver. You'll be sorely out of luck. As will be the case with *many* of your favorite apps once 64 bit windows comes out... you'll be forced to either run them in 32 bit emulation mode, or pay for a new verison which may not exist for months, if it is even created at all.
Well if you like the "Always on top" Mac style bar you can turn that on in KDE, and all your applications menus are at the top of the screen like in Mac OS.
Personally though I *HATE* this whole scheme, and so do many others (especially people used to Windows), because no matter what Fritz's law implies it just simply *does* take longer to have to dart your mouse all the way up the screen just to hit a menu. Especially with modern screens getting larger and larger, the distance you have to move your mouse is rapidly overriding the "inifinite target size" factor of having the menu at the screen edge.
Regardless, you *can* enable this so you don't really have much of a valid complaint here.
No that is not how these things work. AFAIK they're magnetic induction, not radio frequencies.
People have a fundamental misunderstanding of these devices. There's no radio waves to tap into in the first place
Even if they were using RFID, they'd be so low wattage (think about it, thes things have ZERO ambient power, they only use the power on the sending wave to send their signal) that youd need a 15 foot satelite dish to pick up a signal from across the street. And that's assuming you had a stationary target to aim it at!
RFID is nowhear near as insecure as the paranoid fools on slashdot make it out to be. It is simply not powerful enough to trace you with.
Aside from the fact that you'd likely need to enter a PIN on the phone to even activate the device.
Possibly the need to enter a PIN on the keypad.
It would be easy for examaple, to have the phone require a PIN to decrypt a key stored in the phone, which stores your CC number. After you enter the PIN, you have 30 seconds to swipe the phone before it expires the PIN.
From the description, this thing works just like Esso Speedpass dongles, in that, the thing needs to be within around 2 cm ( 1 inch ) for it to trigger and transmit the needed data.
The only way anyone could eavesdrop on or steal your CC number using this system is if he has his hands in your pants. And if some unknown guy has his hands down your pants, you've got much bigger problems than your credit info.
Assuming it's also tied to a PIN you enter on your phone, it's also much more secure than the old swipe, where the waitress/retailer has full access to your card #, expiry date, and name.
It's something I've always hated about Windows: there are always a whole ton of items in the context menu when I only ever use two or three items. Right-clicking in IE right now reveals 16 items, some of which are actually WORSE than useless: Set as Background, for instance, which kills my current background with whatever I'm right-clicking on. Pretty easy to accidentally hit it when I'm trying to save an image...
For one, the menu is now quite short since it is divided up into task-oriented sub menus where appropriate. For another, the situation you described would never happen in KDE because the usability guidelines specifically specify that destructive actions in context menus have to be below non-destructive actions and seperated, so "Save" would never be beside "Set Background"
Do you think she put those applications into the menu HERSELF? If not, how did they get there? She said she just installed the Fedora RPMs. Regardless of whether or not the included apps are strictly a part of KDE or not, they were there in what she had to work with, and a stupidly bloated menu was the result.
This is ludicrous. You can't blame KDE for the menu layout that Fedora comes up with. If you install KDE by itself from source, it doesn't put any non-kde applications into the menu by default. You have to run the app import generator and approve the layout yourself. If you don't like the way the K Menu is sorted out contact the Fedora team.
In KDE as well you go to the *exact same* place to edit an applications preferences, under settings. There are never, ever any preferences anywhere else. You also get the *exact same* style of settings dialog in all core KDE applications.
s /k de/style/menus/settings.html
KDE is very very consistant from application to application, much more so than Gnome or Windows. True it is not always consistant with Windows or Gnome, but it really has no desire to be since both these GUI environments also have their own flaws.
http://developer.kde.org/documentation/standard
...And I don't mean horrible for KDE, I mean it is horribly done and poorly researched.
.doc link and zip and email it?)
For the mistakes under "The KDE Solution":
- KDialog and Service Menus have been in KDE since 3.0, they are nowhere near a new feature. KRDC for connecting to windows machines has been around for a long time as well, since 3.1.
Under "The KDE Problem"
- She says "Konqueror's context menu is a mess, why would I want to zip a web page or use Cervicia with it, is beyond me". She obviously does not grasp that KDE is totally network transparent, and that indeed all these options can be used with any media on any device. There is no need to restrict their ability while browsing a web site (in fact who is to say that you wouldnt* ever want to, say, right click on a
- She then goes on about how the KDE menu is too bloated, and posts a screenshot as an example. However, in the screenshot, which contains 32 applications, only 7 are KDE applications! You can't claim the KDE menu is too blated because of all the other junk on the system.
- She then advocates putting all the "Configure" options under one menu entry under "Edit" instead of "Settings". Not onnly would this violate the KDE Style Guide which has been agreed upon by usability experts, it just seems foolish. In no OS does "Edit" imply "Settings". Edit is for Editing the active document.
Namely this is one of the poorer reviews I have read on OSNews, and that is saying ALOT since they are normally quite bad.
Do you know how to read? Apparantly not. Read my post. Overall it will likely SAVE MONEY.
There are no ads. Its free as in "free".
A while ago the city (like every other major organization on the planet) upgraded its networks and in the process laid a lot of fibre that has been dark for ages. They finally sat up and said "hey why don't we USE this!"
And the city will be using the network as well, as it says in the article. They will have VPNs over it that will let people like water meter reads operate wirelessly and whatnot. It will probably SAVE taxpayer money.
It's called "progress". Stop being so damn anal.
Much of the downtown is already being covered. Next year even they're covering the major malls and other areas.
When asked, the local ISPs rightly said it probably won't cut into their revenues, because with the amount of people on the free network you'll never get high downstream / upstream speeds, but it'll be great for surfing the web or checking your email on the go from your PDA, nearly anywhere in the city.
http://www.unb.ca/bruns/0304/12/news/wireless.html
Get a phone with GPS. These are readily available and hook into the 911 system such that the position is automatically known to personell.
g et shtm/article691.htm
These have been available for a long time now. And according to this article all Sprint phones have this capability.
http://www.compukiss.com/populartopics/tech_gad
I ditched my landline 6 months ago and haven't looked back. I get tons of free features I didnt get with my landline ( like caller id, etc ), no solicitations at all (isn't this even illegal?), and I can take my phone with my where ever I go (or leave it at home if I don't want to be disturbed).
And to boot, its all about 10 bucks cheaper / month than the landline was ( 300 anytime minutes + unlimited evening and weekend + unlimited long distance - who uses more than 300 minutes during the weekdays? You're probably at work and using the company phone).
Seriously I don't know why people bother with landlines. The solicitations alone were enough to drive me away.
Well if those estimets are correct then you'd be in the black in under one fiscal year, from then on in you'd be laughing all the way to the bank.
Any manager who saw those figures and decided to NOT go with VOIP is either a moron, in bed with the telco, or there's some other costs you're not including (support, support personell for the VOIP hardware, etc).
S3TC is not the only code. Most liekly the drivers are littered with stuff that is either licensed, or trade secret stuff like how NVidia does its UDM.
You do realize that hardware specifications can, and likely are, also covered by patents owned by either Nvidia, another company, or jointly?
I am 100% in favour of Open Source, but I am also 100% in favour of ENCOURAGING companies that TRY to support it.
Open Source People don't seem to understand the concept of compromise and that Rome wasn't built in a day. Alienating hardware companies with your ideological rants is just going to discourage them and turn them off of the idea of supporting Linux altogether, and then you'll be stuck with no specs AND no drivers.
Companies like NVidia provide binary-only modules because they have to. Their code contains stuff that is patented and licensed from other companies, and they *cannot* legally release that code.
For example, NVidia's linux drivers contain S3TC tecxture compression algorithms, which is patented and licenssed. It is not theirs.
They CANNOT open source these drivers, nor could Linux developers create an implementation of them without being sued by the company who owns the rights.
And people just don' t seem to get this and it really really pisses me off. NVidia is just trying to do The Right Thing (tm), releasing Linux drivers at a LOSS nonetheless ( you think they make enough on Linux-owner sales of their cards ot cover these programmers salaries? I doubt it. ), and all the community does is flame them. No wonder hardware companies are so hesitant to support Linux in any shape or form.
I also need to throw this in to close... I don't know what people's problems with these drivers are. I have been using them since version 1043 (3+ years), and I have *NEVER* had a problem that wasn't fixed by reading the FAQ. And their feature and 3D support totally blows away any of the open source drivers (ATIs always lag 1-2 years behind the release of a card, and they still don't have all the features of the windows ones like FSAA and anisotropic filtering, while NVidia has had them for years).
Companies like NVidia provide binary-only modules because they have to. Their code contains stuff that is patented and licensed from other companies, and they *cannot* legally release that code.
For example, NVidia's linux drivers contain S3TC tecxture compression algorithms, which is patented and licenssed. It is not theirs.
They CANNOT open source these drivers, nor could Linux developers create an implementation of them without being sued by the company who owns the rights.
And people just don' t seem to get this and it really really pisses me off. NVidia is just trying to do The Right Thing (tm), releasing Linux drivers at a LOSS nonetheless ( you think they make enough on Linux-owner sales of their cards ot cover these programmers salaries? I doubt it. ), and all the community does is flame them. No wonder hardware companies are so hesitant to support Linux in any shape or form.
I also need to throw this in to close... I don't know what people's problems with these drivers are. I have been using them since version 1043, and I have *NEVER* had a problem that wasnt fixed by reading the FAQ. And their feature and 3D support totally blows away any of the open source drivers (ATIs always lag 1-2 years behind the release of a card, and they still don't have all the features of the windows ones).