The main thing I recall about AOL and AIM are the hundreds and hundreds of floppies and later on cds that would appear in the mail or in every magazine on the news stand (even completely non computer oriented ones). We used to have contests to find innovative uses for our AOL disk stashes. The floppies made great coffee coasters (they made for a good and free supply of floppies too for the unimaginative, just format and store something REALLY useful on them) :) Later on the CDs made Christmas tree ornaments and they could be melted and warped into a number of interesting and light catching shapes. CD's also made great coffee coasters, even better than the floppies. You mean to tell me that intelligent people used to actually USE the software to communicate? Really? ;)

While it would be a nice feature if your phone company were required to notify you of overages (a smart carrier could make this a real value ad to their plans) and I don't disagree with the concept that the overage charges are way out of line given the amount they charge for your normal usage... Whatever happened to adults being responsible to watch their spending? Is your bank required to notify you when the money in your checking account is getting low or are you expected to stop writing check/using the debit card when you are out of money? With a cell phone you are spending minutes/megs of data/number of texts. Why is that so different? I have to say that as a parent with kids on a family plan I had to flat out laugh at the recent commercials from one of the major carriers... in particular one where the family is pleading for help from the superheros because their daughter "won't stop texting"... now I'm all for finding a better plan with a better price or more features etc... BUT if your kid is texting you into the poor house and "won't stop texting when you tell them to" the solution to that is... ready??? TAKE AWAY THEIR PHONE!!!! GASP! What a radical idea!!! Just my humble opinion!

Where I work this is referred to as the infamous ID-ten-T issue!

This article makes me wonder if any OS is really properly optimized for SSDs. Has there been any analysis as to whether or not windows machines properly optimize the use of solid state disks? Perhaps the problem goes beyond just linux?

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.

The place you describe sounds like the company I work for. A former telecom related company that went through a bankruptcy due to fraud and then was bought out and merged with another big player who shall remain nameless for the purpose of this post.

At any rate I understand your position completely and would recommend to you that you check out guru.com . They post requests for freelance development work and you can post your qualifications as a freelancer there as well. They also help with setting things up to make it more likely you will actually get paid, which is always a good thing when you are doing freelance development. They have varying levels including a free account which is all I have ever needed to use.

Hope this helps, happy hunting.

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

I wonder how this survey counts web applications with a browser front end and a mysql/php backend or applications written in java as well as other software development that is purposely not targeted for any specific platform? It is heartening to see linux gaining share but more and more it is possible to code not for a specific platform but rather to requirements in a platform agnostic manner.