Well...if I uncheck *all* options, it is fast - but I imagine that's because it shows no icons any more. I might as well just stick with that for now...I'm old - it'll take me a while to get used to all the new whiz-bang features anyway.
Maybe I'm just a skeptic, but I doubt anyone wants to be fed by an arse either. If biting it is the solution to make it stop feeding you, you probably won't hesitate.
Seems to work fine for me...you can't set it by entering an actual pixel hight, but you can drag it to whatever height you prefer.
Personally, I will set it to just the right height to get two rows in the system tray. Its nice that the windows in the taskbar will also split into two rows when you have enough of them open.
The ATI chip (xpress 200M) appears to be supported by the open source driver (that's what I've been using anyway). I've tried the proprietary driver, and it's much less stable - I try it every once in a while, but I find I need to ditch it if I want my machine to be stable.
The blank screen on resume might be a KDE thing, but most other issues I'm sure are related to the ATI chip/driver. This is generally consistent with my experience with any version of KDE/Compiz, or any 3D rendering/effects.
I take it you're part of the KDE team? If so, thanks for the attention.
Off the top of my head, sometimes the plasma workspace crashes...but it always comes back within a few seconds.
There's issues with removing entries in the global hotkeys configuration (i.e., I can't remove them) - depending on where you're looking in the configuration settings. So I have a bunch of dead/duplicate listed in System Settings -> General -> Input Actions.
I haven't really been able to get destkop effects working stably, but I think that has more to do with the ATI video drivers. The effects are pretty decent, but if I hibernate, the screen won't display anything on resume. The desktop is still nice looking without the effects.
I use Akregator for RSS feeds - sometimes on startup the tray icon won't display the main window properly, and I have to restart Akregator for it to start working again.
I can't seem to set a hotkey to display the desktop/minimize all windows. I can show the plasma dashboard though, which is close.
That's about it that I can think of. Some programs have crashed here and there, but nothing major enough that I can even remember. I'm currently getting a bunch of updates from the kde-testing repos, so maybe some of these issues are already fixed. Otherwise, I suppose I bear some responsibility to report them if I want them fixed.
I really like the new menu - finding stuff is super easy (just type all or part of a menu item's name or description). I'm not as much of a fan of the run dialog (it's slow to display search results).
I feel your pain...I upgraded to Fedora 10, and got 4.1. It was nice and flashy, but hard to use. Lots of things didn't work (e.g., hotkeys - a big deal for me), and many features were just plain not there. Not to mention I had similar troubles as you.
I tried switching to Gnome, but that was hard to use/configure and ugly (sorry Gnome users...that's just my preference).
So I took a leap of faith, and installed KDE 4.2rc1 from the kde fedora repos - with the small comfort that I could fall back on Gnome if needed. The install went really smooth, and now I have _almost_ what I had with KDE 3.5.
The taskbar/panel/widgets are much improved from previous 4.x versions...the styling is very nice. Hotkeys work. Most of the issues you point out here are mostly dealt with. There are still some bugs here and there, but mostly minor things that don't really get in the way for me.
I think 4.2 is good enough to save me from Gnome...and I anticipate the later releases will be even better.
Thanks to the KDE team for keeping on, despite all the negative feedback. 4.0, and probably even 4.1 should never have been made default on new distros...but then that would go against the open source mantra of 'release early, release often'.
You should maybe watch the video then...growth (in its various forms) has more implications on our future than just economics (i.e., survival). Economics has little purpose if the day comes around that we have no oil or energy left without sufficient alternatives (leaving us with severly limited productivity/mobility), no food to feed billions, and/or no safe climate to live in.
I've minored economics...it's a great subject, but as a predictor of the future, it's no better than a weather forecast...that is, it's only moderately accurate in the short term. What I think economics does best is fill-in blanks to explain past trends and observations (e.g., by allocating fictional/hypothetical values like 'opportunity cost' to explain why people make one choice over another), with the hopes of modelling what might happen in the future.
I wouldn't argue that we shouldn't take indicators into account in our decisions. But lets say this was the last CES, or the tech sector were to 'crumble'. If that happens, something else will take its place - unless we all collectively decide to sit around on our asses moping about the situation.
The lack of unabated growth in everything we do is not necessarily a sign of some impending doom.
Our culture seems to have this mentality that it's a bad thing whenever something isn't consumed more, or more popular this year than the last. But at some point in the long run, if it doesn't stop, things will be far worse. It's okay if fewer people don't go to CES this year...there's still next year. Plus can't people keep up-to-date online? Isn't that what the digital age is all about?
If you need a reality check re. growth, watch this professor's summary of how continuing growth is ultimately going to hurt us (as most of us at least recognize in an arms-length, academic way): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY
The video is 8 parts (sorry) and mostly focused on energy/economy, but it's pretty interesting/eye-opening. Most people already recognize these issues, but mostly at an arms-length, academic level. This video really brings reality of our future into focus.
The last times I remember doing any work of significance, requiring intensive thought, I was either in my home or at my office. Seriously...I we'll be okay if the best innovations don't all take place on a street corner at a busy intersection.
OTOH - what these guys should really be examining is the impact that reading/. has on our brains. Ouch!
I don't think it would count as a sale if a unit is replaced due to RROD - presumably the customer didn't have to buy the second one.
Whether that's included in statements about sales is another question, but I'm pretty sure it shouldn't be. I.e., over a given period, the number produced should be greater than the number of sales by an amount about equal to the total units replaced.
That is true...but generally heat will be produced by the devices that ultimately use electricity. I.e., the energy has to go somewhere eventually - it won't stay in the form of electricity forever.
I suppose if the SSP arrays are positioned between the sun and the earth, then any energy they absorb would be countered by the shadows they cast.
I just figured that if 100 years from now SSP became *the* energy source worldwide, then we might see a gradual impact as more and more energy is beamed down. As long as it's energy that is already being absorbed by the earth one way or another, then it wouldn't really matter. But if there were arrays sending energy from further out - where the sun's rays would otherwise not touch the earth, this would result in extra energy being absorbed by the earth.
This would ultimately have some impact (if it ever really reached a large enough scale). Just like CO2 emissions which were similarly insignificant about 100 years ago.
Does nobody here see where this is going? We're going to create the borg before we ever even figure out how to travel at warp speed...we're so screwed.
So...to combat global climate change, we're going to setup some new approach that draws even *more* energy that would otherwise pass the earth by, and beam it down into the atmosphere.
Am I missing something? No matter what, that energy goes somewhere, and most uses of electricity generate heat...there would have to be some kind of sustainable way of storing the energy in some safe manner. Otherwise, we're basically like the kid with a magnifying glass...except instead of frying an ant, he's burning a hole in his own head.
...when asked whether or not Spore would contain the dreaded SecuROM DRM that contributed to it being the most pirated game of 2008...
Ok...I understand that people get mad about DRM (at least, those who even notice it), etc., etc. But how is this statement any different that the **AAs saying that piracy has contributed to their decline in profits? Everyone gets all pissy about that kind of claim, but here we have the same thing in reverse, and nobody notices the flaw.
I know the whole Spore/SecuROM thing was a big media piece in tech circles, but is there any validity to saying that SecuROM is actually responsible for increased piracy? Could it be that there were just more people that wanted to download/play the game for free? Could it be that the media that hyped up all this DRM vs. piracy about the game that maybe raised people's awareness/interest in pirating the game?
In all reasonableness, sure, there are some who have pirated it because they didn't want the DRM...but I think the game's popularity plus the not-wanting-to-pay factor probably has alot more to do with this than the fact that SecuROM was used. Further, if someone did pay for the game, then cracked the SecuROM functionality because it sucks, then I'm not sure that really counts as piracy, even if it is a violation of the DCMA in the US.
We all know what you say is true...but it's also cool because when you get past the 'hard' part, it really is so much better. Like anything else that requires lots of practice and skill, the payoff is after all the hard work.
I can tell you though, after just upgrading my laptop from Fedora 7 to Fedora 10, farting around trying to deal with some buggy updates, until a day later some less-buggy updates got things going again...the 'Year of Linux' as far as non-geeks are concerned is still a long way off.
Let's clear this up - you and a few others seem to have missed the contextual reference to the movie The Core...at least four/.ers got it right though.:)
Slashdot Mirror
I think I'd just ask if they could immortalize all of my body's cells.
Well...if I uncheck *all* options, it is fast - but I imagine that's because it shows no icons any more. I might as well just stick with that for now...I'm old - it'll take me a while to get used to all the new whiz-bang features anyway.
Maybe I'm just a skeptic, but I doubt anyone wants to be fed by an arse either. If biting it is the solution to make it stop feeding you, you probably won't hesitate.
Holy crap...I'd mod that informative if I could. Thanks for pointing it out.
I've just blindly ignored the wrench...looks like some cool features, but I'm not likely to use the majority of them.
I unchecked most of them...but when it gets to display the icons, there's still a long pause. Oh well.
So don't upgrade?
Seems to work fine for me...you can't set it by entering an actual pixel hight, but you can drag it to whatever height you prefer.
Personally, I will set it to just the right height to get two rows in the system tray. Its nice that the windows in the taskbar will also split into two rows when you have enough of them open.
Microsoft bundles productivity tools with Windows? Is that the calculator, or notepad?
The ATI chip (xpress 200M) appears to be supported by the open source driver (that's what I've been using anyway). I've tried the proprietary driver, and it's much less stable - I try it every once in a while, but I find I need to ditch it if I want my machine to be stable.
The blank screen on resume might be a KDE thing, but most other issues I'm sure are related to the ATI chip/driver. This is generally consistent with my experience with any version of KDE/Compiz, or any 3D rendering/effects.
I take it you're part of the KDE team? If so, thanks for the attention.
Off the top of my head, sometimes the plasma workspace crashes...but it always comes back within a few seconds.
There's issues with removing entries in the global hotkeys configuration (i.e., I can't remove them) - depending on where you're looking in the configuration settings. So I have a bunch of dead/duplicate listed in System Settings -> General -> Input Actions.
I haven't really been able to get destkop effects working stably, but I think that has more to do with the ATI video drivers. The effects are pretty decent, but if I hibernate, the screen won't display anything on resume. The desktop is still nice looking without the effects.
I use Akregator for RSS feeds - sometimes on startup the tray icon won't display the main window properly, and I have to restart Akregator for it to start working again.
I can't seem to set a hotkey to display the desktop/minimize all windows. I can show the plasma dashboard though, which is close.
That's about it that I can think of. Some programs have crashed here and there, but nothing major enough that I can even remember. I'm currently getting a bunch of updates from the kde-testing repos, so maybe some of these issues are already fixed. Otherwise, I suppose I bear some responsibility to report them if I want them fixed.
I really like the new menu - finding stuff is super easy (just type all or part of a menu item's name or description). I'm not as much of a fan of the run dialog (it's slow to display search results).
Serously - why did the above get modded as a troll?
I feel your pain...I upgraded to Fedora 10, and got 4.1. It was nice and flashy, but hard to use. Lots of things didn't work (e.g., hotkeys - a big deal for me), and many features were just plain not there. Not to mention I had similar troubles as you.
I tried switching to Gnome, but that was hard to use/configure and ugly (sorry Gnome users...that's just my preference).
So I took a leap of faith, and installed KDE 4.2rc1 from the kde fedora repos - with the small comfort that I could fall back on Gnome if needed. The install went really smooth, and now I have _almost_ what I had with KDE 3.5.
The taskbar/panel/widgets are much improved from previous 4.x versions...the styling is very nice. Hotkeys work. Most of the issues you point out here are mostly dealt with. There are still some bugs here and there, but mostly minor things that don't really get in the way for me.
I think 4.2 is good enough to save me from Gnome...and I anticipate the later releases will be even better.
Thanks to the KDE team for keeping on, despite all the negative feedback. 4.0, and probably even 4.1 should never have been made default on new distros...but then that would go against the open source mantra of 'release early, release often'.
Could this be the inspiration for the NCBI's logo.
How about instead of wasting perfectly good hardware, boot into a live linux CD, and scrub the disc with...you guessed it: scrub
Or...just dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/hda
If anyone actually has the motivation to try recovering your data after that, you're probably already in some kind of trouble.
You should maybe watch the video then...growth (in its various forms) has more implications on our future than just economics (i.e., survival). Economics has little purpose if the day comes around that we have no oil or energy left without sufficient alternatives (leaving us with severly limited productivity/mobility), no food to feed billions, and/or no safe climate to live in.
I've minored economics...it's a great subject, but as a predictor of the future, it's no better than a weather forecast...that is, it's only moderately accurate in the short term. What I think economics does best is fill-in blanks to explain past trends and observations (e.g., by allocating fictional/hypothetical values like 'opportunity cost' to explain why people make one choice over another), with the hopes of modelling what might happen in the future.
I wouldn't argue that we shouldn't take indicators into account in our decisions. But lets say this was the last CES, or the tech sector were to 'crumble'. If that happens, something else will take its place - unless we all collectively decide to sit around on our asses moping about the situation.
The lack of unabated growth in everything we do is not necessarily a sign of some impending doom.
Our culture seems to have this mentality that it's a bad thing whenever something isn't consumed more, or more popular this year than the last. But at some point in the long run, if it doesn't stop, things will be far worse. It's okay if fewer people don't go to CES this year...there's still next year. Plus can't people keep up-to-date online? Isn't that what the digital age is all about?
If you need a reality check re. growth, watch this professor's summary of how continuing growth is ultimately going to hurt us (as most of us at least recognize in an arms-length, academic way): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY
The video is 8 parts (sorry) and mostly focused on energy/economy, but it's pretty interesting/eye-opening. Most people already recognize these issues, but mostly at an arms-length, academic level. This video really brings reality of our future into focus.
The last times I remember doing any work of significance, requiring intensive thought, I was either in my home or at my office. Seriously...I we'll be okay if the best innovations don't all take place on a street corner at a busy intersection.
OTOH - what these guys should really be examining is the impact that reading /. has on our brains. Ouch!
Fortunately, nobody has to move just yet. Your comment just raised the quality of /. up just enough to keep us going a little longer.
I don't think it would count as a sale if a unit is replaced due to RROD - presumably the customer didn't have to buy the second one.
Whether that's included in statements about sales is another question, but I'm pretty sure it shouldn't be. I.e., over a given period, the number produced should be greater than the number of sales by an amount about equal to the total units replaced.
I doubt the investigators who questioned the guy said to him 'we found a mosquito with your blood in it...care to explain?'.
More likely they would have said 'we have DNA evidence that places you in the car...care to explain?'.
At which point, the guy probably is thinking they've got something indisputable...so he tells/makes up his story.
That is true...but generally heat will be produced by the devices that ultimately use electricity. I.e., the energy has to go somewhere eventually - it won't stay in the form of electricity forever.
I suppose if the SSP arrays are positioned between the sun and the earth, then any energy they absorb would be countered by the shadows they cast.
I just figured that if 100 years from now SSP became *the* energy source worldwide, then we might see a gradual impact as more and more energy is beamed down. As long as it's energy that is already being absorbed by the earth one way or another, then it wouldn't really matter. But if there were arrays sending energy from further out - where the sun's rays would otherwise not touch the earth, this would result in extra energy being absorbed by the earth.
This would ultimately have some impact (if it ever really reached a large enough scale). Just like CO2 emissions which were similarly insignificant about 100 years ago.
Does nobody here see where this is going? We're going to create the borg before we ever even figure out how to travel at warp speed...we're so screwed.
So...to combat global climate change, we're going to setup some new approach that draws even *more* energy that would otherwise pass the earth by, and beam it down into the atmosphere.
Am I missing something? No matter what, that energy goes somewhere, and most uses of electricity generate heat...there would have to be some kind of sustainable way of storing the energy in some safe manner. Otherwise, we're basically like the kid with a magnifying glass...except instead of frying an ant, he's burning a hole in his own head.
...when asked whether or not Spore would contain the dreaded SecuROM DRM that contributed to it being the most pirated game of 2008...
Ok...I understand that people get mad about DRM (at least, those who even notice it), etc., etc. But how is this statement any different that the **AAs saying that piracy has contributed to their decline in profits? Everyone gets all pissy about that kind of claim, but here we have the same thing in reverse, and nobody notices the flaw.
I know the whole Spore/SecuROM thing was a big media piece in tech circles, but is there any validity to saying that SecuROM is actually responsible for increased piracy? Could it be that there were just more people that wanted to download/play the game for free? Could it be that the media that hyped up all this DRM vs. piracy about the game that maybe raised people's awareness/interest in pirating the game?
In all reasonableness, sure, there are some who have pirated it because they didn't want the DRM...but I think the game's popularity plus the not-wanting-to-pay factor probably has alot more to do with this than the fact that SecuROM was used. Further, if someone did pay for the game, then cracked the SecuROM functionality because it sucks, then I'm not sure that really counts as piracy, even if it is a violation of the DCMA in the US.
We all know what you say is true...but it's also cool because when you get past the 'hard' part, it really is so much better. Like anything else that requires lots of practice and skill, the payoff is after all the hard work.
I can tell you though, after just upgrading my laptop from Fedora 7 to Fedora 10, farting around trying to deal with some buggy updates, until a day later some less-buggy updates got things going again...the 'Year of Linux' as far as non-geeks are concerned is still a long way off.
Let's clear this up - you and a few others seem to have missed the contextual reference to the movie The Core...at least four /.ers got it right though. :)