In other words, the KDE team destroyed a perfectly functioning desktop environment to build a better Weatherbug.

This is a perfect summary of may reaction to KDE4. Mod parent up.

KDE4's panel is one of those things that you figure out and then say "WhereTF was the tutorial for this?" That is, after you figure out that you have to manually add it because it's not there by default. You can right-click where it doesn't have any programs or on the edge, and there's a rectangle you can click+hold and drag to change size I think.

I call this the Microsoft Excel Charting experience: where you have to guess where and how (left-click, right-click,click-and-drag) to click to set various parameters. It's frankly exhausting, more like a crappy game of skill than configuration.

KDE3, conversely, gives me a tree view, and somewhere within that tree are all the settings I need. I may take a bit of time looking through the tree to find what want, but no magical clicking is required, and I don't have to guess what an option does: it's clearly labeled.

KDE4 is a massive step backwards; Gnome, which I've always detested because it's not configurable, is preferable to KDE4. I'm really at a loss as to what the KDE4 team was thinking.

KDE 4.1 looks like Gnome, only worse. The default font sizes are HUGE, and the default antialiasing is horrible. The launcher button on the kicker panel, instead of just showing applications, shows a tabbed panel that starts on the "favorites" tab; to actually launch an app, I have to chose the application tab, then get a list in a HUGE font, when menu, instead of cascading, are replaced by sub-panels, and the replacement is made slower by stupid animation.

The kicker panel itself is way too large, probably 50 pixels high.

The desktop isn't a normal desktop, instead there's some pseudo-transparent lozenge in which desktop items are grouped.

When I open "System Settings", I get some multi-applet container like MS-Windows or Gnome, not the tree-view I saw in KDE 3.5. I can't even find most things I want to change (like Window Decorations) or even a menu with an about which would tell me what app I'm running.

Did I screw up the install somehow? Am I still running Gnome (no, can't be, every app starts with "K").

What the hell??? If I wanted Gnome or Vista, I'd run that crap. Why can't KDE be KDE?

Help!

I liked KDE because it was clean and functional. KDE 4.1 is a travesty.

Ok, read this bullshit marketing drivel from KDE, it reads like an MBA's sales pitch:

        However Plasma is more than just this familiar collection of utilities, it is a common framework for creating integrated interfaces. It is flexible enough to provide interfaces for mobile devices, media centres and desktop computers; to support the traditional desktop metaphor as well as well as designs that haven't yet been imagined.

Christ, man, I just want to launch an app, and occasionally glance down at the laucher to see how much battery life I have. I don't want a "framework" that can do everything.

But, says KDE:

        Plasma takes a different approach, engaging the user by creating a dynamic and highly customizable environment.

I don't want to be engaged, I just want to launch an app. I'll probably maximize that app, so the desktop won't even be getting a look.

But, says KDE, you can get rid of the gee-whiz gee-gaws:

        With Plasma, you can let your desktop (and accompanying support elements) act like it always did. You can have a task bar, a background image, shortcuts, etc. If you want to, however, you can use tools provided by Plasma to take your experience further, letting your desktop take shape based on what you want and need.

Oh, ok, that's cool. So can I get rid of the "cashew" control on the desktop?

        Although putting an option to disable the cashew for desktops sounds reasonable, from a coding point of view it would introduce unnecessary complexity and would break the design. What has been suggested is, since the destkop itself (a containment) is handled by plugins, to write a plugin that would draw the desktop without the cashew itself. Currently some work ("blank desktop" plugin) is already present in KDE SVN. With containment type switching expected by KDE 4.2, it is not unreasonable to see alternative desktop types developed by then.

So let me get this straight: Plasma's a revolutionary framework that can do things "that haven't yet been imagined." But it also supports the traditional desktop.

But getting rid on a "cashew" on the desktop is too hard to code, but if you write a trivial plugin that redraws the entire desktop (which isn't so trivial, as it's a yet unready work in progress, and won't even be possible until the next release of KDE) you can get around this unwanted "feature".

Come on, guys, your super framework requires a plugin to be written just to present a blank desktop? And plugins won't work until 4.2? And a boolean "don't show" would break the design? You guys got seduced into major mission creep.

This isn't a desktop environment, it's the dev's toy. Which is great, but don't claim it's ready for end users.

If Cory Doctorow thinks it's great, I can safely ignore it, right?

For the record, I hope your ego isn't *too* bruised because you are quite right that Chomsky and Pinker disagree on a number of things. The major issue that I'm aware of has Pinker saying that more of the human capacity for language is used only for language than what Chomsky says -- which I think is the opposite of what I wrote in my post.

Chomsky either has changed his view on this or has one widely misunderstood view on it, I am not sure which. On the one hand, he has always started with the notion that we should analyse the brain like we analyse the rest of the body -- in terms of "mental organs". General intelligence, says Chomsky, is a vague and useless cover term. Thus, there is a system for vision, a system for language, another for, perhaps, navigation, and so on.

However, it hasn't been clear until recently (at least it seems to me that it hasn't) whether Chomsky just means that that is the way we should look at it to make it approachable, or whether he is making claims about how these systems are structured in the brain. It is often interpreted, at least implicitly, to mean the latter -- that these different mental organs evolved, and operate, independently, and that they don't share mental resources. You can tell when people think it means this because they'll bring up the supposed localization of language in the brain (Broca's area) in support of what they take to be Chomsky's view.

But Chomsky has been discussing this in more detail recently, and it seems to me from what he's been saying that he didn't mean that at all, or at least he doesn't now. Several of his recent publications take up the idea that the inborn mechanisms (claimed to be) necessary for language are in fact very much domain-general, and that in fact we can maybe even narrow it down to one specific capability (recursively nested structures). Pinker has posted a manuscript of his and Jackendoff's on his website arguing that Chomsky is wrong that we can reduce it this far; more of the things that make language work are domain-specific than that (at least that's what the abstract says :-). So, there is still a question of how much is shared between different 'organs' of the mind (and if it's shared it therefore presumably evolved as one thing). But no one, not even Chomsky -- especially not Chomsky -- says it's "nothing" as in the view I mentioned above.

The issue has more implications for 'what kind of models can we use to talk about how language works in the brain' than for 'how do kids learn language' which, as I said, TFA is kind of (but only kind-of-sort-of) related to. Needless to say, however, the answer to each question is strongly dependent on the answer to the other. Pinker has other differences with Chomsky, but their views are usually fairly compatible. But I was wrong to say they were not debating anything.