Not that the opinion of Al Gore matters significantly, but if you take a look at the images of his new acquisition, it's quite clear the "ocean view" is a far cry from "down at the beach". Given that Gore is 63, at best he can hope to live maybe another 50 years. That's about half a meter of projected sea level rise. I'm sure he will be safe.

But you should wonder who made this subtle shift from "ocean view" to "beach front" and why they made it in this context.

I admit that comment was mostly tongue-in-cheek, although I should also point out that Al Gore popularized the notion of a drastic increase in sea levels. Montecito is about 180 feet ASL, so given actual measurements, it's doubtful he'd have to worry for another few thousand years.

I'm not so much concerned in this post about the "evil, dark forces" behind renaming the location of his property as much as the humor I see in the proponents of extreme global climate change, hence why Al Gore was a good target to pick on (and I do know what you're getting at with regards to "this context," and no I don't agree--that's being far too conspiratorial for my taste).

Boiling oceans? Really? What a ridiculous strawman.

Not my words. It's an example of some of the extreme point of views I've seen espoused here on Slashdot. Don't believe me? Google it.

This is an idiot's point. I say that because only an idiot would believe that radically fast climate change is automatically going to be accommodated quickly in the biosphere.

If you've already established that I'm an idiot, there's no point continuing this discussion, is there? No wonder you posted as an AC. :)

Given your gross error in reporting global mean temperature trends, I highly doubt your claims about what climate scientists say with respect to weather patterns.

That 5% number was pulled from here which dates back to 2005, so that's likely old enough to not warrant consideration.

Either way, your post seems unreasonably venomous and not at all interested in reasonable discourse, which is unfortunately just as dangerous as the extreme views of some anti-AGW posters here. More importantly, you resorted to insults halfway through--clearly a sign of someone who is too emotionally involved in a debate and not worth further consideration.

Have a nice day. :)

But I don't expect to change your mind because you already dismissed my opinion is worthless as stated above. I just thought I'd call you out on your BS.

Based on what I've read in responses to both comments I've left here and those you've left, those who dislike KDE for whatever reason have generally either already made up their minds or they have exceptionally bizarre use cases that encompass exceedingly ancient hardware or don't fully understand the scope of the problem they're describing and ignore any alternative solutions. One example that comes to mind involved a post complaining about KDE's IM client; while I admit I don't use it because it seems lacking for my needs, such a complaint seems to go against the spirit of FOSS (and reasonable-mindedness). I use Pidgin rather than any environment-specific IM client, and I find it to be a good general purpose solution that works in *nix and Windows equally well. But again, I can only assume that actual solutions aren't at all interesting to these people--they simply want to voice their complaints. Not that there's anything wrong with complaining about something in particular, but it does seem to reach a level where one wonders if the line of reasonableness has been crossed and the realm of outright pettiness has been entered.

I think what bothers me most about the responses I've seen that have accumulated in the days since this article ran is that there are a vocal minority here on Slashdot that are willing to argue with others about something as subjective as tastes and preferences. If someone is incapable of understanding that someone else might actually like something they don't, then there's no point in entertaining any form of discussion. After all, one of the responses I received when I stated "I like KDE 4.7" was a rather terse and most decidedly pointless "Good for you?"

That should tell you everything you need to know about the caliber of person who happens to be disagreeing with us.

most idiots don't see a problem with "ATM Machine", so i'm not surprised there are idiots that don't see a problem with "GMO Rice"
enjoy your organism fried chicken for dinner. maybe have some organism corn on the side.

There's actually a term for that.

Though, I do think you're being somewhat unfair, and probably intentionally so. It seems useful to classify precisely what type of organism we're talking about. Would you prefer if someone were to state, instead, "Would you like some GMO?"

I'm joking, of course. You'd probably prefer if they simply dropped the O and stated "Would you like some GM rice?" This option would make the most linguistic sense and is much more descriptive.

That said, I would disagree that it's necessarily the same thing as RAS, simply because the exact contents of the acronym are not being repeated in some form (unless you had Genetically Modified Organism Rice and asked if anyone was interested in GMOR rice). It does sound awkward, and even a little redundant, but it's nowhere near as bad as "ATM machine" or "FOSS software." And again, I would argue that it's somewhat helpful: By stating GMO rice, it should be reasonable to understand without much fuss that the rice is genetically modified, and that the organism in question is, well, rice. Arguing over that is almost as absurd as arguing over precisely what shade of blue the sky happens to be on any given day.

In other words: I do think you're splitting hairs unnecessarily. :)

This. One time a skunk sprayed underneath the cabin my family was staying in. It was in the middle of the night, and woke all of us up. We searched the whole place, afraid an appliance was burning out or something It was an awful chemical plastic burning smell that was nothing like the "skunky" whiff you get passing one on the road.

Exactly. Onions, garlic, plastic, rubber--basically anything noxious you can think of left on the stove to burn. It's completely alien to you the first time you smell it, and for most people it's the most unpleasant experience you'll ever have.

Thanks to a local vet, I did discover that neither tomato juice nor vinegar are effective at neutralizing the spray. Instead, I was told that the best solution is equal parts baking soda, water, and hydrogen peroxide with a dash of dish soap (optionally diluted with more water if required). It works wonders, and when I had a cat get skunked (he mistook it for a raccoon and was inside a fully enclosed but meshed-in porch with the skunk outside--and since he's always loved scaring the raccoons half to death by slamming down on a bench... you can see where this is going). On exterior structures, a solution with mostly dish soap seems to work reasonably well since skunk spray is oil-based.

My dog got sprayed once, directly in the face, and he ran into the house and we had to give him a bath for hours.
The smell was just a stronger version of what you normally smell when a skunk has sprayed "somewhere" nearby.
It wasn't horrendous at all (I've posted already that I find it pleasant and peppery). Just more of the same.

Interesting. I wonder if you might be lacking (or have extra?) receptors that detect the rancid part of the smell or bind to a different part of the oil? It might be worth researching if any of your immediate relatives also find it similarly pleasant.

As an aside, owls are one of the skunk's main predators. They can't smell the spray, because they lack receptors for it.

Gee, I make a single (okay, a couple) posts praising KDE, and every single clown who has an axe to grind with the project feels that they need to speak up about their bizarre edge cases all while attempting to poke holes in my "argument" when my points were essentially (and I'll simplify this so you can follow more easily):

1) I like KDE 4 better than alternatives, because it meshes well with my use cases and my tastes and preferences. This is entirely subjective and debating this is about as stupid as debating which colors in the spectrum are superior.

2) KDE 4 works well on comparable hardware to what Windows 7 does. I'm qualifying that because I know there are people like you out there who would probably try to run it on ancient hardware, and the best way to offer a decent starting point is to point out a reasonable comparison.

I'm pleased that you've found LXDE to work well for your particular case. That's fantastic. I don't use it because it's too minimalistic for my taste. Again, this is subjective. It does work exceedingly well with old hardware; in fact, you'll probably find that with older hardware, you have no other choice but to use something like LXDE. I don't think the KDE project misrepresents themselves as being a superior choice for antiquated hardware.

other OSes like Windows 7 likely won't work well on very old hardware either.

In what way is that relevant? The laptop of which I spoke came with original XP (pre SP1), which ran OK on it, but sucked in so many ways (starting with the applications). I can't imagine running Win7 on it; probably more like staggering or slithering than running, actually.

Look at the blockquote. Now, look at the parts of your comment I've emphasized. Here's a hint: You've answered your own question. The reason for comparing KDE to Windows 7 is precisely because hardware that works well under Windows 7 is likely to work well in KDE. If you weren't able to extract that from what I wrote, then I'm afraid there's not much else I can do to explain it to you.

Your response to me in this thread twice is somewhat interesting.

My points have been that 1) it's personal preference (which you agreed with me on) and 2) KDE 4 has improved. So you imply you don't agree with me, agree with me in one response, and then you continue to seem intent on arguing what, exactly?

I thought about as much. Your responses to other posters resort to ad hominem attacks, name calling, and straw men. I suspect you're perhaps a little too emotionally involved in this debate, even though most of the people (like myself) don't really care a great deal.

Yes, I prefer KDE. It works great for me. You don't like it: That's fantastic! It's great that we have different tastes and preferences, which you have agreed to here. Yet twice you've replied to me with relatively negative responses that are mostly meaningless. To think that I was going to write a reply to the comment I cited in that link (#37924856) praising you for agreeing with my sentiment until I realized that your motives were simply to attack myself and others.

It's a shame.

Here's what you said:

KDE 4.7 is up to par with what?

Here's what I actually said.

Early KDE 4 releases weren't up to par, but 4.7 is very, very well done.

I did not say that KDE 4.7 is up to par completely with 3.x's later releases, but I did state that it's "very, very well done." While I appreciate your efforts at putting words into my mouth, I'm somewhat disappointed that you had to twist my words to do so. Not that I'm surprised; this is Slashdot, after all.

1) I will concede that KDE 4 is not as feature complete as it should be.
2) I have stated before that I prefer KDE over Gnome, and prefer KDE in general.

But perhaps the most important thing is this:

And I could cite you the bug database all day, giving you an example of bugs that make features really uncomfortable to use. I am subscribed to at least a dozen bugs, all that affect my productivity, while in KDE 3.5 I had little or no issues.

You would be willing to spend the time citing a bug database (yes, I know this is tongue-in-cheek) but not at all interested in offering patches/bugs to the KDE project?

Here's the other side of the coin:

- I have issues with network shares.

I don't. They work fine for me.

- I have issues with instant messaging (granted, some of them existed with 3.5, but the fixes were commited right before the KDE 4 fiasco started)

I've never used Kopete, nor do I use a lot of KDE software. I've always used Pidgin. It works fine for my particular case, because I also use it under Windows. Having the same instant messenger across multiple OSes (Arch, Ubuntu, Windows) is of more utility to me than using whatever is "best integrated" with the environment.

- I have issues with the text editors

I don't. Kate works fine for me, and I tend to use Eclipse quite regularly otherwise.

- I have issues with using KDE over SSH

Not part of my use case.

- I have issues with performance (maybe I should upgrade my ancient quad-core PC with 8 GB RAM)

Never had issues with it on a Core 2 Duo with 6 gigs of RAM, and I don't have issues with it on my current system, either. Both had fairly recent video cards, though. Plus, you can turn off the eye candy with a shortcut.

Either way, what this suggests to me is that most problems with KDE are largely subjective and the topic of edge-cases that I've never personally encountered. Yes, these are issues that should be fixed, but you know what they say... patches welcome. :)

Okay, I'll bite. Let's take this article as a fine example of his work:

Allow me to illustrate by turning the argument around in an equally cynical way, with an equally inflammatory rhetorical flourish:

People who make their living in the Linux ecosystem are demanding that Microsoft disable a key security feature planned for Windows 8 so that malware authors can continue to infect those PCs and drive their owners to alternate operating systems.

Oh, wait. Now that I think about it, thatâ(TM)s actually pretty close to the truth.

Bott takes a provocative approach by claiming to "turn the argument around" using "equally inflammatory rhetorical flourish"--then implicitly claims it's "close to the truth." In other words, he's essentially linking malware authors with people who are attempting to drive users toward alternative OSes like Linux. Is it a joke? Maybe, but his last statement leaves one wondering if he really does believe it.

He claims that UEFI will magically prevent rootkits from working simply because the BIOS will then be able to detect mangled files. I'm not sure Bott fully understands the purpose of a rootkit, but if one were well designed, UEFI will achieve nothing toward this goal. Indeed, unless UEFI contained signatures for all Windows system files, I'm quite certain that it would be fairly easy for an interested party to circumvent. After all, the objective of a rootkit is to hide the rootkit from examination, and running one under UEFI would simply require hooking into the OS at points that the UEFI does not check. But no, Bott seems to espouse this technology as magical!

Let's not stop there.

In this article, Bott's original post immediately presumes that the reports of MSE incorrectly flagging Chrome as malware were the fault of the users downloading compromised versions or installing on a compromised Windows install. It seems that it never occurred to him that it could have been a false positive in MSE until after it was confirmed with MS.

Now, before you tell me that I'm nitpicking, consider this: False positives are not at all unheard of with antivirus software. Avira, Avast, AVG, et al, have been known to flag valid, clean software as potentially dangerous, and most sensible people installing something from a known-good source that claims the source file is not compromised will immediately assume it's a false positive and submit it to the AV company. While Bott did the correct thing in submitting it, he dismissed it as the fault of users simply because he couldn't recreate the problem. Ah yes, not a chance that MS could do anything wrong...

Oh, and then there's this wonderful masterpiece in which Bott proudly declares Microsoft's victory. While this may be true--Linux on the desktop is unlikely to become a reality--you have to dig a bit to find that he concedes, quote, "On the server side, of course, Microsoft continues to acknowledge that Unix and Linux are strong competitors." You can tell he was salivating over the prospect, though, never mind that Android is, essentially, Linux under the hood.

And what about his article The Hidden Costs of Running Windows on a Mac? Not only does he go out of his way to point out that you have to buy licenses (hint to you, Mr Bott: you're still buying OEM Windows licenses when you buy a Dell), but he points out possible performance issues and the likes. Honestly, I think this is a true shill piece; if someone has decided that they want to run Windows on their Mac, they're probably rather well aware of the additional software cost--they aren't going to care. As far as performance goes? He ran WinSAT. He didn't bother testing with real benchmarks against comparable hardware. Instead, he trusted numbers generated by a single tool. The "Windows Experience Index" says it's slower, so it must be true! Sorry, but I think I'd trust hardware gurus who do this for a living rather than some tool who knows how to run a single, well, tool that ships with the OS and spits out some mostly meaningless numbers.

I could go on, but remember: This is just a small subset of his work. There are more ludicrous examples from many months ago that I've not found, because they're often drowned out by his market "analysis." You may not think he's a shill, but I find the objectivity of his work gravely questionable and have since nicknamed him "Microsoft Bott."

His hobbies are trolling and shilling for Microsoft.

I agree. I've long stopped reading anything of his simply because it's just regurgitated press releases from Redmond.

...and stop posting irrelevant stories like this on the front page. KDE 4.0 was horrible, yes, but it's not like KDE 4 development was halted. The latest release is 4.7 and it's much more stable and feature rich than 3.5 ever was.

The problem is that Slashdot, like most other communities, tends to hold onto widely accepted opinions even if they aren't currently true (or correct). Like you, I agree: Early KDE 4 releases weren't up to par, but 4.7 is very, very well done. But, because there's this preconceived notion that anything KDE 4 is terrible, the myth is perpetuated ad infinitum.

Of course, there's also the group that wants to run it on 6+ year old hardware, even though there's 1) plenty of light weight projects that will work on old hardware and 2) other OSes like Windows 7 likely won't work well on very old hardware either.

Because not all change is good?

KDE 4.7 is actually quite nice.

China has the ability to remove their restrictions on exports, pulling the bottom out of the price for these elements and putting these companies out of business again.

You do realize that this is why the rare earth mining operations in the US were shut down in the first place: Because of subsidized Chinese exports undercutting the industry. They destroyed the rare earth industry in the US, Canada, and Australia once before. One would hope that we wouldn't let them do it again, but I have little faith in our leadership.

I think the point of the conversation was that the rice (living, not yet harvested) is a GMO, so you're essentially splitting hairs.

I would, however, recommend avoiding the organic section of the grocery store. Organic goods by definition cannot contain GMO products, and most of the ones I've seen state rather clearly that they're not made with "GMO ingredients;" ingredients which, of course, are "harvested and processed" and is labeling that would probably drive you mad.

I see no problem with it, because it conveys information that should be implicitly understood without resorting to arguing over exceedingly minor details.