Thanks for clarifying the misleading title. You rock.
I happen to be quite partial to birds since my childhood. If you give a bird, even the low-intelligence ones (such as straight-beaked paserine songbirds), something to do that is not sitting in an empty cage for all of its life, you will discover that "bird brained" is a completely false expression.
However I keep seeing people that refuse to admit that birds are something other than flying poop factories, or "little music boxes" that sit on their cage until they die. Despite proof of the contrary. A very intelligent bird, which happens to be my favorite, the European Magpie, is absolutely hated around. But not because they eat crops from farmers...because they outsmart farmers using traps and stuff against them. Human beings of low intelligence will immediately respond with violence. "How could a stupid bird win over ME!?" And yet we are speaking of a bird with the intelligence of a little kid, which is self-aware, can solve situations on its own, and even use tools like we'd do. And now that more people knows about avian intelligence...misleading titles like this come up. I came up with the conclusion that mankind absolutely despises birds. Who knows, perhaps it's envy for their free flight, or it's genetic memory from when large avians (theoretically) predated on early hominids.
I was skeptic at first, and I used tree style tabs as well (combined with bartab to prevent all tabs from loading at startup, but it's now a default function!), and I grew used to it, it's like workspaces. I hear you on the tab loss and it happened to me as well, but it hasn't failed since then for me, so from my experience I recommend you give it another try. (If not, tree style tabs still are a stylish choice).
Oh my, self replying because I actually tried Aurora (7) and it's actually...good. It's fairly stable so far, (although never got a firefox crash before except in Minefield(4.0a) so...), it preserved all my Panorama setup alright (100+ tabs), most addons are labeled incompatible but still work (including ImgLikeOpera, the addon I can't go without), memory usage is down 100mb from my average (it was around 350mb all the time before this), and it starts up quite fast compared to 5. Some stuff feels snappier as well. Definitely a step in the right direction...
That still leaves 6 as the most unexciting release ever. 7 is what should be shipping as 6 even if it takes one extra month or two. (let's ignore how silly the versioning is and just focus on features here)
I know versions 7 and 8 are being actively developed...what about version 6? I never hear anything about that. All changes seem to go to either 7 or 8...I am a bit confused about version 6, indeed. I am tempted to skip it entirely since it doesn't seem to have anything worth it. And we will have to wait for version 7 with the "5.1" that is 6. That will be infuriating for those with versionitis like myself.
I'd like to think more people thinks like you. Our freedoms would be stepped on a bit less often. Unfortunately hitting such a guy will end with you in trouble, being whistle-blowers, they will probably try to sue.
A lot of things are shaped as known trends in the US. It goes from TV to pop culture to business plans, and I have been seeing those since I was a kid, specially in IT where the latest coding trend is the latest coding trend...in the US.
And, anyway, SGAE's "message" against piracy is about protecting culture. But who is buying that? With the spokesmen they have, it's obvious they are there for the money. Also they are the people that made storage media much more expensive with their digital canon, making production more expensive for amateurs out of their "protection". Indie stuff is culture too. And we are not protected, at all.
This kind of behavior is well-known, and the SGAE and all its branches are known to be leeches by several villages/small cities, they have even disrupted weddings in order to charge people for copyright violation... Spain loves to imitate the US, but generally half-asses it, so it's not surprising for a RIAA-wannabe to be such a walking disaster.
However, despite everyone knowing they are leeches, they still have free action to do as they please. This will have little effect on their activities on the long run.
Ugh, self-replying because I forgot to explain why. The more people accepts working for free, more workplaces will take advantage of it. Just don't accept such jobs until they realize no one works for free.
My feelings exactly. The SNES time had the best RPGs, and I practically abandoned the genre (in favor of roguelikes) due to the current offerings beyond PSX's time. Sure, modern RPGs have charm, but I miss console JRPGs, emphasis on the J, where many games attempted to do new things in terms of upgrading items and characters. PC RPGs (not MMOs) have always been "make your dude, explore the world", ever since the times of Ultima/Might and Magic, and they draw their appeal from customization and such. Modern games such as Oblivion still follow that formula. (this is the reason I moved to roguelikes, since I enjoy the explorative feel of M&M games, Alternatively, we have plot-based occidental RPGs that kind of follow the old JRPG theme but with less "pop" plotlines.
Yeah, there's a lot of vitriol against JRPGs, their pop characters and their simplistic plots. But Pokemon is still a best-seller and it embodies JRPGs from those eras (specially black and white with the simplistic N plot). Millions sold on release day. For me, JRPGs were all about unusual game systems, like combos in Phantasy Star IV and Chrono Trigger, Materia in FFVII, early customization like Breath of Fire 2 (where your choice of "custom town" influenced gameplay significantly, specially the item combiner), elemental rock-paper-scissors, the bizarre HP=power mechanics of Paladin's Quest (Lennus), and incredibly amusing games like Illusion of Time and Terranigma (my favorite RPG ever, with that strange narrative full of monologue and a sense of fairly convincing gloom).
Nepomuk/Strigi/Akonadi: Not saying that they must work on what I want. But you can see that even from KDE advocates, reception is lukewarm, and it's still not too useful. For most people, perhaps until Zeitgeist integration lands, it's not really changing much of anything. File tags are cool though.
Kate: Well, I just verified that indeed, recent Kate updates in planet are referring to 4.8, so my bad.
Release notes: I am in no position to extend release notes. For starters, I am not a KDE developer, nor I am fully knowledgeable of what's going on in the KDE world. You are a community, and every community has someone willing to do such jobs (aren't the commit digests just a volunteer reading the commit logs until finding something juicy?). Just find the right person.
Haters: Some haters can be proven wrong. Not all the vocal ones are trolls, some have legit reasoning to their complaints. It's like in "browser wars" posts, where people flails on Firefox's memory consumption. The moment Mozilla finally heard them, bugs were filed, and they are finally removing leaks even if at a slow pace. (Please note that while this sounds like fantasy, there are records of it both in Slashdot and in Planet Mozilla, check it out if you don't believe me)
Liking KDE: I also like KDE, and that's why I am critical of it when I think it deserves criticism. I might not be right, because after all, I am a nobody speaking on the internets. I'd really enjoy seeing it succeed, attract more developers that will make more good apps, and be able to recommend it to everyone instead of Gnome or XFCE.
KDE is neither a fisher-price desktop nor it's overwhelming in options as people say. But people keeps getting that impression even after 4.0 was a thing of the past. Maybe something is wrong in the way KDE is presented to the general public, which is preventing people from really trying it out. Give it some thought, and try to work with the community to figure it out.
Hm, excuse me for going offtopic, but something in your post bothers me... You say you "didn't learn to like it until your early 20s". Why do you have to "learn to like alcohol" if you don't like it at first? Peer pressure?
It is my DE of choice indeed, although I use few of the included apps. While I love the system management and the window manager/plasma are tremendously good for me, the apps are extremely lackluster. Moving away to design tablet-y interfaces while those apps are still an eyesore is beyond me.
Also the latest updates (considering the amount of time between each) have been quite...lackluster, not fixing certain "little and rare but crippling" bugs and not improving upon things that started somewhere between 4.0 and 4.5 . Brainstorm also seems to lose importance as version numbers rise.
Also, I don't care about Marble, and I don't think improvements to it should be "release notes". (that's another thing, try to find changelogs that aren't either extremely simple or extremely detailed...). Kate also has significant improvements this update, but no one but Kate developers mention them at all. Kate is much more of a real tool than Marble. Who is writing the release notes?
So yeah, less effort on Nepomuk/Strigi (that everyone but the main devs seem to hate, at least I haven't read or heard anything positive not coming from a KDE dev) and interfaces for toys and more visible, non-refactoring work so people can stop saying KDE sucks every time. I might not agree but the fact that public opinion didn't change in the slightest must mean something.
Seems there is people using it on real mobile devices (and netbooks), but I'd rather have a good desktop environment than yet another project parasitized by the mobile trends. I hate seeing so many signs of the desktop being abandoned in favor of mobile toys. (Let's face it, most of the mobile stuff out there is a toy you can only do so much with...unlike a real computer).
You can only go so far as a script-kiddie. The fact that you might or not might not like them isn't enough to call them script kiddies. Try if you can get that far only with premade tools without being caught one hour after. You don't need to be ideologically/socially sound or "correct" to write software, nor you need to be extremely competent.
Didn't one of lulzsec's previous shanenigans include a few.gov mails in porn site accounts? Yes, worry, they probably paid that porn with public funds. Well maybe not, but it'd be quite the scandal if it happened.
I like the fast release stuff. What I don't like are the version numbers, but they will get bored of it eventually. Other than addon concerns (which, lucky me, no one broke this release) and the senselessness of removing non-major releases, we get updates more often. I like that.
Am I the only one who just wants a browser? Sure, I like stuff like javascript games (I am a game dev so the topic inherently catches my attention) and some webapps, but I am certainly not willing to give my browser that much importance. For me the centerpiece of the OS is the file manager and the tools to do my tasks. I don't want to have to depend on just a browser or webapps that don't have local code to run from your physical computer. We know the cloud is not 100% reliable (sure, it's not 100% unreliable either, but until there's no choice but to use it, I want to use that choice).
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks for clarifying the misleading title. You rock.
I happen to be quite partial to birds since my childhood. If you give a bird, even the low-intelligence ones (such as straight-beaked paserine songbirds), something to do that is not sitting in an empty cage for all of its life, you will discover that "bird brained" is a completely false expression.
However I keep seeing people that refuse to admit that birds are something other than flying poop factories, or "little music boxes" that sit on their cage until they die. Despite proof of the contrary.
A very intelligent bird, which happens to be my favorite, the European Magpie, is absolutely hated around. But not because they eat crops from farmers...because they outsmart farmers using traps and stuff against them.
Human beings of low intelligence will immediately respond with violence. "How could a stupid bird win over ME!?"
And yet we are speaking of a bird with the intelligence of a little kid, which is self-aware, can solve situations on its own, and even use tools like we'd do.
And now that more people knows about avian intelligence...misleading titles like this come up.
I came up with the conclusion that mankind absolutely despises birds. Who knows, perhaps it's envy for their free flight, or it's genetic memory from when large avians (theoretically) predated on early hominids.
I was skeptic at first, and I used tree style tabs as well (combined with bartab to prevent all tabs from loading at startup, but it's now a default function!), and I grew used to it, it's like workspaces.
I hear you on the tab loss and it happened to me as well, but it hasn't failed since then for me, so from my experience I recommend you give it another try. (If not, tree style tabs still are a stylish choice).
I think Apple is just trolling the world at this point...
Oh my, self replying because I actually tried Aurora (7) and it's actually...good. It's fairly stable so far, (although never got a firefox crash before except in Minefield(4.0a) so...), it preserved all my Panorama setup alright (100+ tabs), most addons are labeled incompatible but still work (including ImgLikeOpera, the addon I can't go without), memory usage is down 100mb from my average (it was around 350mb all the time before this), and it starts up quite fast compared to 5. Some stuff feels snappier as well. Definitely a step in the right direction...
That still leaves 6 as the most unexciting release ever. 7 is what should be shipping as 6 even if it takes one extra month or two. (let's ignore how silly the versioning is and just focus on features here)
I know versions 7 and 8 are being actively developed...what about version 6? I never hear anything about that. All changes seem to go to either 7 or 8...I am a bit confused about version 6, indeed. I am tempted to skip it entirely since it doesn't seem to have anything worth it. And we will have to wait for version 7 with the "5.1" that is 6. That will be infuriating for those with versionitis like myself.
Internet, is that you?
Why don't you return my calls? D:
I absolutely disagree with his post, but in his defense, he is also Spanish (judging from the name) and just happens to disagree with the statement.
Damn I wish I could give you a +5 informative automatically...
I'd like to think more people thinks like you. Our freedoms would be stepped on a bit less often.
Unfortunately hitting such a guy will end with you in trouble, being whistle-blowers, they will probably try to sue.
Yeah I happen to live there.
A lot of things are shaped as known trends in the US. It goes from TV to pop culture to business plans, and I have been seeing those since I was a kid, specially in IT where the latest coding trend is the latest coding trend...in the US.
And, anyway, SGAE's "message" against piracy is about protecting culture. But who is buying that? With the spokesmen they have, it's obvious they are there for the money.
Also they are the people that made storage media much more expensive with their digital canon, making production more expensive for amateurs out of their "protection". Indie stuff is culture too. And we are not protected, at all.
This kind of behavior is well-known, and the SGAE and all its branches are known to be leeches by several villages/small cities, they have even disrupted weddings in order to charge people for copyright violation...
Spain loves to imitate the US, but generally half-asses it, so it's not surprising for a RIAA-wannabe to be such a walking disaster.
However, despite everyone knowing they are leeches, they still have free action to do as they please. This will have little effect on their activities on the long run.
Ugh, self-replying because I forgot to explain why.
The more people accepts working for free, more workplaces will take advantage of it. Just don't accept such jobs until they realize no one works for free.
This just happens everywhere, in any country I know, and it will keep happening, that's it. Just don't take those non-jobs.
Reap what ye sow.
My feelings exactly. The SNES time had the best RPGs, and I practically abandoned the genre (in favor of roguelikes) due to the current offerings beyond PSX's time.
Sure, modern RPGs have charm, but I miss console JRPGs, emphasis on the J, where many games attempted to do new things in terms of upgrading items and characters.
PC RPGs (not MMOs) have always been "make your dude, explore the world", ever since the times of Ultima/Might and Magic, and they draw their appeal from customization and such. Modern games such as Oblivion still follow that formula. (this is the reason I moved to roguelikes, since I enjoy the explorative feel of M&M games,
Alternatively, we have plot-based occidental RPGs that kind of follow the old JRPG theme but with less "pop" plotlines.
Yeah, there's a lot of vitriol against JRPGs, their pop characters and their simplistic plots. But Pokemon is still a best-seller and it embodies JRPGs from those eras (specially black and white with the simplistic N plot). Millions sold on release day.
For me, JRPGs were all about unusual game systems, like combos in Phantasy Star IV and Chrono Trigger, Materia in FFVII, early customization like Breath of Fire 2 (where your choice of "custom town" influenced gameplay significantly, specially the item combiner), elemental rock-paper-scissors, the bizarre HP=power mechanics of Paladin's Quest (Lennus), and incredibly amusing games like Illusion of Time and Terranigma (my favorite RPG ever, with that strange narrative full of monologue and a sense of fairly convincing gloom).
Nepomuk/Strigi/Akonadi: Not saying that they must work on what I want. But you can see that even from KDE advocates, reception is lukewarm, and it's still not too useful. For most people, perhaps until Zeitgeist integration lands, it's not really changing much of anything. File tags are cool though.
Kate: Well, I just verified that indeed, recent Kate updates in planet are referring to 4.8, so my bad.
Release notes: I am in no position to extend release notes. For starters, I am not a KDE developer, nor I am fully knowledgeable of what's going on in the KDE world. You are a community, and every community has someone willing to do such jobs (aren't the commit digests just a volunteer reading the commit logs until finding something juicy?). Just find the right person.
Haters: Some haters can be proven wrong. Not all the vocal ones are trolls, some have legit reasoning to their complaints. It's like in "browser wars" posts, where people flails on Firefox's memory consumption. The moment Mozilla finally heard them, bugs were filed, and they are finally removing leaks even if at a slow pace. (Please note that while this sounds like fantasy, there are records of it both in Slashdot and in Planet Mozilla, check it out if you don't believe me)
Liking KDE: I also like KDE, and that's why I am critical of it when I think it deserves criticism. I might not be right, because after all, I am a nobody speaking on the internets. I'd really enjoy seeing it succeed, attract more developers that will make more good apps, and be able to recommend it to everyone instead of Gnome or XFCE.
KDE is neither a fisher-price desktop nor it's overwhelming in options as people say. But people keeps getting that impression even after 4.0 was a thing of the past. Maybe something is wrong in the way KDE is presented to the general public, which is preventing people from really trying it out. Give it some thought, and try to work with the community to figure it out.
Hm, excuse me for going offtopic, but something in your post bothers me...
You say you "didn't learn to like it until your early 20s". Why do you have to "learn to like alcohol" if you don't like it at first? Peer pressure?
For me the ultimate file manager in KDE is Krusader. Give it a go if you like two-pane approaches.
It is my DE of choice indeed, although I use few of the included apps. While I love the system management and the window manager/plasma are tremendously good for me, the apps are extremely lackluster. Moving away to design tablet-y interfaces while those apps are still an eyesore is beyond me.
Also the latest updates (considering the amount of time between each) have been quite...lackluster, not fixing certain "little and rare but crippling" bugs and not improving upon things that started somewhere between 4.0 and 4.5 . Brainstorm also seems to lose importance as version numbers rise.
Also, I don't care about Marble, and I don't think improvements to it should be "release notes". (that's another thing, try to find changelogs that aren't either extremely simple or extremely detailed...). Kate also has significant improvements this update, but no one but Kate developers mention them at all. Kate is much more of a real tool than Marble. Who is writing the release notes?
So yeah, less effort on Nepomuk/Strigi (that everyone but the main devs seem to hate, at least I haven't read or heard anything positive not coming from a KDE dev) and interfaces for toys and more visible, non-refactoring work so people can stop saying KDE sucks every time.
I might not agree but the fact that public opinion didn't change in the slightest must mean something.
Seems there is people using it on real mobile devices (and netbooks), but I'd rather have a good desktop environment than yet another project parasitized by the mobile trends.
I hate seeing so many signs of the desktop being abandoned in favor of mobile toys. (Let's face it, most of the mobile stuff out there is a toy you can only do so much with...unlike a real computer).
You can only go so far as a script-kiddie. The fact that you might or not might not like them isn't enough to call them script kiddies. Try if you can get that far only with premade tools without being caught one hour after.
You don't need to be ideologically/socially sound or "correct" to write software, nor you need to be extremely competent.
Didn't one of lulzsec's previous shanenigans include a few .gov mails in porn site accounts?
Yes, worry, they probably paid that porn with public funds.
Well maybe not, but it'd be quite the scandal if it happened.
Birds have been proven to be able to see magnetic fields by default, is this the same thing as birds?
I like the fast release stuff. What I don't like are the version numbers, but they will get bored of it eventually.
Other than addon concerns (which, lucky me, no one broke this release) and the senselessness of removing non-major releases, we get updates more often. I like that.
Am I the only one who just wants a browser?
Sure, I like stuff like javascript games (I am a game dev so the topic inherently catches my attention) and some webapps, but I am certainly not willing to give my browser that much importance.
For me the centerpiece of the OS is the file manager and the tools to do my tasks. I don't want to have to depend on just a browser or webapps that don't have local code to run from your physical computer. We know the cloud is not 100% reliable (sure, it's not 100% unreliable either, but until there's no choice but to use it, I want to use that choice).