1) I mention in the bug report that the bug occurs in Konqueror as well as in Dolphin. Should I post an additional Konqueror screenshot up there?
2) I downloaded and burnt a Suse Live CD of KDE 4 and the bug is still there.
I really don't care about any new features in KDE. It is already fast and packed with enough power to get my work done. All I want is for the KDE team to fix one annoying bug that has been in Konqueror for years. If you use the most compact view available, listing the icons from top to bottom, long filenames are drawn incorrectly, leaving artifacts all over the window. To reproduce the bug, use the small icons (from top to bottom) or list mode of Konqueror or Dolphin, navigate to a folder with lots of files/folders with long names, and scroll to the right. There is no way that I can use a file browser with a bug like this. The fact that the bug happens identically in Konqueror and Dolphin indicates that it may lie in the QT libraries. In any case, it's been listed as a Konqueror bug for years. I'm using Thunar in Xfce for now; Thunar puts more space between icons than I would like in its Compact List view, but at least it renders everything correctly. Once the KDE team decides to get around to fixing this, I'll start using KDE and recommending it to my friends.
Interesting. On my XP laptop, I went to Start > Control Panel > Power Options > Advanced and set "When I close the lid of my portable computer" to "Stand by." When I close my laptop, it enters standby mode, and starts up again when I open it. I was able to resume iTunes in about eight seconds.
The rise of personal computers with multiple processors, each containing multiple cores, will lead to a change in what computers are capable of doing in the not-too-distant future. To summon forth the power locked inside these new processors, software engineers will need to learn about multi-threaded software, and develop a deep understanding of the hardware on which this multi-threaded software runs. This will create a demand for serious, dedicated software engineers, engineers capable of the intellectually difficult task of keeping track of run-time concerns like simultaneous memory access, locked data, etc. As soon as processors with 32 cores hit the market, I am fairly confident that these "Computer Science Has No Future" articles will disappear.
I think that many on Slashdot are stuck on the idea that people must be programmers or hardcore geeks to want to install Linux on the desktop. A friend of mine has shown me that this isn't true. He is what many would describe as a "Windows power user" in the XP days. He knows registry tweaks, how to run msconfig to stop certain applications from starting (as well as other DOS commands), get all the software he needs from BitTorrent (DC++ before that was around), and generally run his own machine and get the maximum horsepower out of it. I would describe his desktop hardware as not top of the line...he's running a 1.6 GHz processor I believe (which was pretty fast back in the day), 512MB of RAM, and an nVidia video card that is maybe 4 years old. By the way, this guy is a Marketing major, and does not program or study engineering of any kind.
About a week after Vista was released, he hit me up on AIM and asked me how to install Linux on his desktop. I was surprised to say the least, because even though he has many Linux-using friends, including myself and my roommate (disclaimer: we are both Computer Science majors), he had always laughed me off when I had told him to try Linux before. I pointed him to the Ubuntu website, and now, two days later, he says that he is happy with Ubuntu and will probably stick with it indefinitely.
Given that I struggled with various Linux distributions for maybe 8 months before I found user-friendly Ubuntu, I was somewhat miffed that he had made the switch entirely within two days. He performed the install on his Dell laptop, and he reported that the wireless worked immediately, as well as suspend/hibernate support. After the second day, when I gave him some instructions on how to install software with apt, he had his laptop hotkeys (volume up/down, mute, web browser etc.) working, all the multimedia players that he would need running, and pretty much everything else he would need.
I asked him the primary reason that he had decided to switch; he replied that Vista had left a bad impression on him. That was it. He is considering upgrading his desktop soon, and he told me that he will definitely ensure that he buys one with Linux pre-installed and configured. As more and more people use Vista, a fraction of them will find it not to their taste and make the switch. Therefore, the demand for these OEM Linux desktops is bound to increase.
Computer science has existed long before computers as you know them. Alan Turing wrote a program to solve a chess game before computers existed. He simulated it while playing his colleague and won.
"WHY they can't simply distribute a mission critical tool like this along with the OS I have no idea."
Hmm...not shipping their OS with a tool mainly used to burn other OSes...why would Microsoft do that? This makes no sense! Someone please explain to me what is going on here??
While I somewhat disagree with your opinion that "Linux is ready for the desktop" (having your package management system break is NOT very user-friendly), I definitely agree with you when you say that Linux is "doing an excellent job" in entering the business desktop scene.
I have a lot of respect for ReactOS and the other free OSes out there, and I don't want to marginalize work that has gone into those systems, but I believe that improving Linux is the right direction. If an average PC user sees several operating systems with mediocre application and hardware support, she is not likely to want to try them out, because Windows offers a better experience than those operating systems. She will be more attracted to a single, powerful OS with lots of support that is easy to install. This is why Ubuntu is gaining popularity. Once I installed it, I fell in love and will probably never go back. Never again do I have to spend time on figuring out how to support my hardware. Everything works. I appreciate this the most because time is valuable to me - I am a college student at a fast-paced university, and I can't afford to spend lots of time on the inner details of my OS. I just want to use my computer.
It's great to see another instance of YouTube being used for constructive purposes. Time and time again, videos like these remind me how the internet is a necessary cornerstone for communication in today's world.
Fedora was the first Linux operating system I ever used. This applies to the majority of my Linux-using friends as well. Perhaps this is because people already know the name of Red Hat, and discover Fedora as a result. In any case, the quality of Fedora is significant because it determines the first impression of Linux on many people. Even though I have switched distributions, it it possible that I may have stopped using Linux if I had come to the conclusion that Fedora was of too poor quality to use on a daily basis.
"ISPs need to be more proactive at disconnecting people who can't keep their computer clean."
I lived in college dorms for two years, ending last year. For both of those years, students were not allowed to connect to the campus network until they had verified that they had installed XP SP2 (if they were running Windows) and run virus checks. Many people discovered they had viruses and were forced to reinstall Windows; many people had to find a CD with SP2 on it because they could not go online to download it; overall, people became aware of the insecurity of Windows because the campus made people clean their systems before connecting. A number of students bought Apple laptops because of this new awareness. It shows how a little security knowledge can go a long way, I guess.
It is important here to draw a distinction between the behavior of Bill Gates and the Microsoft corporation. For all intents and purposes, the two are severed. Steve Ballmer is the figurehead of Microsoft now; he has elected to take responsibility for the direction of the corporation, and we should hold him to that responsibility. At this point, Bill Gates is just a wealthy man, and a wealthy man giving a percentage of his money to charitable causes is not unprecedented.
My point is that I do not believe that Mr. Gates' contribution absolves Microsoft of its unethical business practices, at least since Gates passed executive control of the company to Steve Ballmer. I applaud Bill Gates' contribution, let me make myself clear. It does not, however, give the company an indefinite license to stifle innovation in the software market. While giving to humanitarian causes is a noble gesture, software is important, and will become remain so in the near future.
For example, consider the field of bioinformatics - the application of the computing sciences and biology to solve complex problems in medicine and related fields. It is possible that innovation in software could produce a cure for AIDS, or cancer, or anything else, just as much as a charitable foundation can. In fact, some of Gates' money could be going to fund research in some of these areas. If the Microsoft corporation continues to vigorously fight to maintain its monopoly and forestall non-Microsoft innovation, then Bill Gates and Microsoft are indeed fighting for opposite causes.
Recently we have seen many examples of unethical business behavior from Microsoft Corp. Readers of this website respond like they are surprised.
Microsoft is just another company with an obligation to its shareholders to continually increase profits. The tactics it has used to do so have hardly been ethical, but the company is financially successful. What would you do in an authoritative position in Microsoft? Open Office's document format? Issue a press release to all major PC manufacturers that they are freely allowed to install other operating systems? Of course you wouldn't. You would use your authoritative position to make decisions that maximize profits. Just because none of you would ever enter such a position due to your beliefs does not matter.
What did you expect? Stop sitting around hoping that Microsoft will behave ethically and change its ways. It will not. The only way out is for a competitive (powerful, robust, and cost-effective) alternative to exist. Slashdot enjoys an educated readership. If you want to see this company's market share shrink for the benefit of the computing world, make a contribution of time and effort to Microsoft Windows' most cost-effective competitor. Join the Ubuntu Linux community.
The thought of a law like this scares me. That being said, if a country were to enact such a law, my guess would be that Australia would be the country to do it. Take a look at their Sedition Law.
If a nation does not even guarantee its citizens freedom of speech, asking its legal system to enact just intellectual property laws is definitely a tall order.
Now we are simply seeing arrangements made before anyone sues, the grandest way of avoiding any real legal decision on the issue.
Hmm, this sounds familiar. Novell and Microsoft, anyone?
What is especially interesting about this development is how the corporations in question circumvent not only the entire American judicial branch, but also the executive and legislative branches. M$ has remained largely untouched by the many antitrust lawsuits brought against them, at least here in America. And of course, our big-business friendly government isn't going to touch any of these companies. If the U.S. government raised as much concern over M$'s behavior as the EU has, perhaps we would see some real "checks and balances."
"Open source has made an impact in just about every place imaginable; education, hardware, coke, beer," Seriously. After joining the open source movement, I have encountered more free beer than ever before.
Microsoft is putting more of their weight behind the Zune than most people realize. This device is the reason that the company has heavily integrated DRM into Windows Vista. Microsoft executives have realized that if the portable MP3 player market is large enough to make Apple profitable, then it is definitely worth investing in. The Slashdot community is hyper-sensitive about DRM, and quickly points out how deeply it will be integrated into Windows Vista and the Zune. What really matters, though, is that until this point, it has been successfully implemented such that it does not bother the average user (for example, iTunes).
All of this is about to change. Microsoft is going to make its restrictions apparent to everyone who uses Vista OR the Zune. For example, every time someone receives a song on the Zune wirelessly, and tries to listen to it more than three times, she will realize that 1) this restriction has been built into the unit, and 2) this inclusion was a conscious choice by the company that designed it. The restriction may frustrate her, or it may not, but what matters is that DRM has entered the awareness of the general public.
What many Slashdot readers may not realize is that many of the companies who negotiate DRM contracts have little control not to do so. Most music studios would probably not have approached the iTunes music store if Apple had not assured them that their DRM would keep their profit margins safe. Similarly, while Microsoft is a large company, it cannot force contracts with media studios. It must negotiate just like everyone else. The tradeoff they decided to make was to integrate DRM into Windows Vista (decreasing its value) in exchange for contracts with studios to make it possible to launch the Zune and play music on it (increasing its value).
This decision will significantly affect the world of computing in two related ways:
DRM will irreversibly enter public awareness.
As people become aware of the limitations DRM places on Windows Vista, people will investigate other ways to use computers, strengthening the open source movement.
But those results made for hours of good times on various forums! I can't tell you how many times I found threads where people circled the funniest entries in red, and everyone wondered who would possibly search for gorilla pr0n or Why Their Job is So Bad.
Yeah, I have no life.
"This is the problem with OSS. Everyone wants to get famous for the next big breakthrough and nobody wants to maintain the shit."
Seriously. I submitted several UI bugs to the Xfce bugzilla site recently and none of them were addressed. People want to develop fun new features, but unfortunately that's not all that software is.
Slashdot Mirror
1) I mention in the bug report that the bug occurs in Konqueror as well as in Dolphin. Should I post an additional Konqueror screenshot up there? 2) I downloaded and burnt a Suse Live CD of KDE 4 and the bug is still there.
I really don't care about any new features in KDE. It is already fast and packed with enough power to get my work done. All I want is for the KDE team to fix one annoying bug that has been in Konqueror for years. If you use the most compact view available, listing the icons from top to bottom, long filenames are drawn incorrectly, leaving artifacts all over the window. To reproduce the bug, use the small icons (from top to bottom) or list mode of Konqueror or Dolphin, navigate to a folder with lots of files/folders with long names, and scroll to the right. There is no way that I can use a file browser with a bug like this. The fact that the bug happens identically in Konqueror and Dolphin indicates that it may lie in the QT libraries. In any case, it's been listed as a Konqueror bug for years. I'm using Thunar in Xfce for now; Thunar puts more space between icons than I would like in its Compact List view, but at least it renders everything correctly. Once the KDE team decides to get around to fixing this, I'll start using KDE and recommending it to my friends.
Interesting. On my XP laptop, I went to Start > Control Panel > Power Options > Advanced and set "When I close the lid of my portable computer" to "Stand by." When I close my laptop, it enters standby mode, and starts up again when I open it. I was able to resume iTunes in about eight seconds.
http://xkcd.com/301/
These are some well thought out words. I wish I had some mod points so I could mark your comment as valuable in some way.
The rise of personal computers with multiple processors, each containing multiple cores, will lead to a change in what computers are capable of doing in the not-too-distant future. To summon forth the power locked inside these new processors, software engineers will need to learn about multi-threaded software, and develop a deep understanding of the hardware on which this multi-threaded software runs. This will create a demand for serious, dedicated software engineers, engineers capable of the intellectually difficult task of keeping track of run-time concerns like simultaneous memory access, locked data, etc. As soon as processors with 32 cores hit the market, I am fairly confident that these "Computer Science Has No Future" articles will disappear.
sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop
I found out that I didn't like KDE, but I had only wasted 5-10 minutes of my time, so I didn't really care.
I think that many on Slashdot are stuck on the idea that people must be programmers or hardcore geeks to want to install Linux on the desktop. A friend of mine has shown me that this isn't true. He is what many would describe as a "Windows power user" in the XP days. He knows registry tweaks, how to run msconfig to stop certain applications from starting (as well as other DOS commands), get all the software he needs from BitTorrent (DC++ before that was around), and generally run his own machine and get the maximum horsepower out of it. I would describe his desktop hardware as not top of the line...he's running a 1.6 GHz processor I believe (which was pretty fast back in the day), 512MB of RAM, and an nVidia video card that is maybe 4 years old. By the way, this guy is a Marketing major, and does not program or study engineering of any kind.
About a week after Vista was released, he hit me up on AIM and asked me how to install Linux on his desktop. I was surprised to say the least, because even though he has many Linux-using friends, including myself and my roommate (disclaimer: we are both Computer Science majors), he had always laughed me off when I had told him to try Linux before. I pointed him to the Ubuntu website, and now, two days later, he says that he is happy with Ubuntu and will probably stick with it indefinitely.
Given that I struggled with various Linux distributions for maybe 8 months before I found user-friendly Ubuntu, I was somewhat miffed that he had made the switch entirely within two days. He performed the install on his Dell laptop, and he reported that the wireless worked immediately, as well as suspend/hibernate support. After the second day, when I gave him some instructions on how to install software with apt, he had his laptop hotkeys (volume up/down, mute, web browser etc.) working, all the multimedia players that he would need running, and pretty much everything else he would need.
I asked him the primary reason that he had decided to switch; he replied that Vista had left a bad impression on him. That was it. He is considering upgrading his desktop soon, and he told me that he will definitely ensure that he buys one with Linux pre-installed and configured. As more and more people use Vista, a fraction of them will find it not to their taste and make the switch. Therefore, the demand for these OEM Linux desktops is bound to increase.
"WHY they can't simply distribute a mission critical tool like this along with the OS I have no idea."
Hmm...not shipping their OS with a tool mainly used to burn other OSes...why would Microsoft do that? This makes no sense! Someone please explain to me what is going on here??
While I somewhat disagree with your opinion that "Linux is ready for the desktop" (having your package management system break is NOT very user-friendly), I definitely agree with you when you say that Linux is "doing an excellent job" in entering the business desktop scene.
I have a lot of respect for ReactOS and the other free OSes out there, and I don't want to marginalize work that has gone into those systems, but I believe that improving Linux is the right direction. If an average PC user sees several operating systems with mediocre application and hardware support, she is not likely to want to try them out, because Windows offers a better experience than those operating systems. She will be more attracted to a single, powerful OS with lots of support that is easy to install. This is why Ubuntu is gaining popularity. Once I installed it, I fell in love and will probably never go back. Never again do I have to spend time on figuring out how to support my hardware. Everything works. I appreciate this the most because time is valuable to me - I am a college student at a fast-paced university, and I can't afford to spend lots of time on the inner details of my OS. I just want to use my computer.
It's great to see another instance of YouTube being used for constructive purposes. Time and time again, videos like these remind me how the internet is a necessary cornerstone for communication in today's world.
Fedora was the first Linux operating system I ever used. This applies to the majority of my Linux-using friends as well. Perhaps this is because people already know the name of Red Hat, and discover Fedora as a result. In any case, the quality of Fedora is significant because it determines the first impression of Linux on many people. Even though I have switched distributions, it it possible that I may have stopped using Linux if I had come to the conclusion that Fedora was of too poor quality to use on a daily basis.
"ISPs need to be more proactive at disconnecting people who can't keep their computer clean."
I lived in college dorms for two years, ending last year. For both of those years, students were not allowed to connect to the campus network until they had verified that they had installed XP SP2 (if they were running Windows) and run virus checks. Many people discovered they had viruses and were forced to reinstall Windows; many people had to find a CD with SP2 on it because they could not go online to download it; overall, people became aware of the insecurity of Windows because the campus made people clean their systems before connecting. A number of students bought Apple laptops because of this new awareness. It shows how a little security knowledge can go a long way, I guess.
It is important here to draw a distinction between the behavior of Bill Gates and the Microsoft corporation. For all intents and purposes, the two are severed. Steve Ballmer is the figurehead of Microsoft now; he has elected to take responsibility for the direction of the corporation, and we should hold him to that responsibility. At this point, Bill Gates is just a wealthy man, and a wealthy man giving a percentage of his money to charitable causes is not unprecedented.
My point is that I do not believe that Mr. Gates' contribution absolves Microsoft of its unethical business practices, at least since Gates passed executive control of the company to Steve Ballmer. I applaud Bill Gates' contribution, let me make myself clear. It does not, however, give the company an indefinite license to stifle innovation in the software market. While giving to humanitarian causes is a noble gesture, software is important, and will become remain so in the near future.
For example, consider the field of bioinformatics - the application of the computing sciences and biology to solve complex problems in medicine and related fields. It is possible that innovation in software could produce a cure for AIDS, or cancer, or anything else, just as much as a charitable foundation can. In fact, some of Gates' money could be going to fund research in some of these areas. If the Microsoft corporation continues to vigorously fight to maintain its monopoly and forestall non-Microsoft innovation, then Bill Gates and Microsoft are indeed fighting for opposite causes.
Recently we have seen many examples of unethical business behavior from Microsoft Corp. Readers of this website respond like they are surprised.
Microsoft is just another company with an obligation to its shareholders to continually increase profits. The tactics it has used to do so have hardly been ethical, but the company is financially successful. What would you do in an authoritative position in Microsoft? Open Office's document format? Issue a press release to all major PC manufacturers that they are freely allowed to install other operating systems? Of course you wouldn't. You would use your authoritative position to make decisions that maximize profits. Just because none of you would ever enter such a position due to your beliefs does not matter.
What did you expect? Stop sitting around hoping that Microsoft will behave ethically and change its ways. It will not. The only way out is for a competitive (powerful, robust, and cost-effective) alternative to exist. Slashdot enjoys an educated readership. If you want to see this company's market share shrink for the benefit of the computing world, make a contribution of time and effort to Microsoft Windows' most cost-effective competitor. Join the Ubuntu Linux community.
The thought of a law like this scares me. That being said, if a country were to enact such a law, my guess would be that Australia would be the country to do it. Take a look at their Sedition Law.
If a nation does not even guarantee its citizens freedom of speech, asking its legal system to enact just intellectual property laws is definitely a tall order.
Now we are simply seeing arrangements made before anyone sues, the grandest way of avoiding any real legal decision on the issue.
Hmm, this sounds familiar. Novell and Microsoft, anyone?
What is especially interesting about this development is how the corporations in question circumvent not only the entire American judicial branch, but also the executive and legislative branches. M$ has remained largely untouched by the many antitrust lawsuits brought against them, at least here in America. And of course, our big-business friendly government isn't going to touch any of these companies. If the U.S. government raised as much concern over M$'s behavior as the EU has, perhaps we would see some real "checks and balances."
"Open source has made an impact in just about every place imaginable; education, hardware, coke, beer,"
Seriously. After joining the open source movement, I have encountered more free beer than ever before.
All of this is about to change. Microsoft is going to make its restrictions apparent to everyone who uses Vista OR the Zune. For example, every time someone receives a song on the Zune wirelessly, and tries to listen to it more than three times, she will realize that 1) this restriction has been built into the unit, and 2) this inclusion was a conscious choice by the company that designed it. The restriction may frustrate her, or it may not, but what matters is that DRM has entered the awareness of the general public.
What many Slashdot readers may not realize is that many of the companies who negotiate DRM contracts have little control not to do so. Most music studios would probably not have approached the iTunes music store if Apple had not assured them that their DRM would keep their profit margins safe. Similarly, while Microsoft is a large company, it cannot force contracts with media studios. It must negotiate just like everyone else. The tradeoff they decided to make was to integrate DRM into Windows Vista (decreasing its value) in exchange for contracts with studios to make it possible to launch the Zune and play music on it (increasing its value).
This decision will significantly affect the world of computing in two related ways:
But those results made for hours of good times on various forums! I can't tell you how many times I found threads where people circled the funniest entries in red, and everyone wondered who would possibly search for gorilla pr0n or Why Their Job is So Bad. Yeah, I have no life.
...is that all your Google base are belong to us.
"This is the problem with OSS. Everyone wants to get famous for the next big breakthrough and nobody wants to maintain the shit."
Seriously. I submitted several UI bugs to the Xfce bugzilla site recently and none of them were addressed. People want to develop fun new features, but unfortunately that's not all that software is.