Evaluate the Expression

/*below you can find references to why I'm writing this..sorta

http://www.forbes.com/2008/06/18/college-majors-lucrative-lead-cx_kb_0618majors_slide_2.html?thisSpeed=30000

http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos267.htm
http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos042.htm

//other important includes

#include < string >

using namespace std;
string main ()
{
string differences = blah.get_text_from_site( http://www.eng.buffalo.edu/compscie_vs_compeng.php );

if (computer_scientist == computer_software_engineer)
{
cout << "they are the same that article is lying";
}
else
{
cout << differences;
}

return your_thoughts_in_binary_please;
}


/* No, this won't compile....the reason being it's not really code. I just did it this way because it's a good way to express yourself. Try it, next time you write a letter to your close friend do it in lisp or MIPS and they will understand you more clearly and yes it's very late I am an insomniac. */


//comming soon: my "article" on the road to becoming a kde contriubutor/developer (things you should expect/do)

Developer's Ethical Responsibilities

What responsibilities do developers have to the consumers of their software. That is a question I have been pondering lately. I'll use myspace as an example. This is a "social networking site" where people put up lots of information about themselves that is then basically available to anyone who happens to stumble upon it (Ok so the developers put an option for private accounts but still). This website has been in a bit of controversy in the past over the way that some of their users where using it to "abuse" other users. On the one hand, the site in so far as we know, was designed to allow people to connect with each other. However at this point it's original intent is being subverterd and it's now potentially posing a risk for it's users.

Well what does that have to do with developers? Well obviously they had to build the site and it was they who made it possible for example for you to search for other people using advanced searching criteria. Without the developers there is no website. On the other hand it is the users who put up all that information about themselves and allow others to view and comment on it.

So what my question really boils down to is this, do developers have the responsibility to consider the possible malevolent uses of their projects? Or is something like myspace really just a tool and misuse of it is really the fault of the users and not the developers. Furthermore, as members of a community, if the developers realize that this misuse is taking place what is their responsibility to the community with regards to their handiwork. This is probably a more "innocent" example but it still holds. This is really just something I like to think about as I think it poses an interesting dileema and ofcourse we can explore other types of software not just social networking, the latter is just an easy target.

I don't really know what the correct "answer" is or if there can even be one but I'd be interested in hearing people's opinions on this. I think this is an important question going forward with KDE as the desktop is seemingly becoming more and more intertwined with the internet. Thus it seems looking at these kinds of "ethics" questions is a sensible thing to do.


In other news, finals are comming, after which I will have more time; so I plan to go back to the orignial intent of this blog, which is to follow my "journey" into kde contribution. I'll try to keep this blog more "code" based as opposed to random musings such as these since I find those blogs more interesting to read anyways. I've been really interested in C# support in qt/kde so I may have a look at that in my next post.

Building KDE Svn

I am thinking of going ahead and switching to kde svn . Up till now I've only compiled the parts that I felt I needed. So I'm a bit "green" in this aspect.

My option now seem to be:
1. switch to a distro that has kde-svn packages.
2. Build it myself.

1. Pros: I don't have to recompile all the time etc.
Cons: For a lot of those distros I would be forced to use svn as my default which would not always be ideal this early on.


2. The pros and cons are just the inverse of the first option.


My preference right now is option 2 as it is less limiting. However I worry about compile times.
How long does it take you to compile a basic kde svn setup?

Right now I have a 2gb ram Core2Duo 1.66ghz anyone with a similar setup?

Any advice? Anyone know a good distro that might circumvent all this?

Temporary-Post-Used-For-Style-Detection-Title-225966169

Temporary-Post-Used-For-Style-Detection-Content-225966169

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Crazy Drivers

I remember four years ago, getting a wireless card to work took an act of congress. So bad an experience was it for me to get my drivers to work, that when I set out to buy my laptop I took drivers into account. I even opted for an Intel video card as opposed to the more powerful nvidia one due to the available OSS drivers (all but demolishing my gaming experience). I did a pretty good job with my selection and all but one thing worked out of box on nearly every distribution, my wireless card. Yep, I totally overlooked that it was a broadcom card, thinking all I needed was firmware. So why is it then that 2 years later my wireless driver keeps dropping the connection on jaunty? My windows partition does not have this problem at all (errm... which I keep for the sole purpose of testing kde on windows of course!).

Speaking of crazy drivers, the other day some fool with a car started turning INTO me. Yes, as in we are driving side by side, and they had no room in front of them to pass me, so they started turning INTO me. It took me 3 seconds of pure shock before I slowed down, let them pass and began furiously pressing the horn. By that time half of his car was in my lane.

So people, fix your driving. Broadcom, fix your drivers to WORK PROPERLY on Linux, because you see like that foolish driver almost turned my car into a paper weight, your drivers are turning your product into a paper weight. All that effort planing and designing your chipsets and all of it is WORTHLESS if it doesn't hold a connection. How about, if I worked at the power station near your factories, and told you that if you didn't use production models designed by my friends, I couldn't guarantee full support. Then when you used your own models because presumably you found them better. I decided that I would cut your power ever 45 minutes, for 1 minute. Then when you complained about me hurting your productivity and ruining your products I told you just where I thought you should put your "ruined product". Of course you could then move your factory, but it would cost you quite a bit wouldn't it? See my point?

Having said that, does anyone know of a cheap wireless card for a laptop, that would "just work" and work well on Linux? I have a dell inspiron 640m (same as e1405).

While looking for a major I found a potential bug

Yes, I am looking for a college major. Right now I'm pre-pharmacy. I have applied, and now what I am going to study next year hangs in the balance. Since I hate leaving things up to chance (even though it's been proven that regardless of how much I plan, things happen a certain way in-spite of my best efforts). So I am choosing a major besides pre-pharmacy. I said all that to say, if you have any idea of an interesting College majors that also would help me get a job please offer the information.

Yes, I know, a shameless attempt to get non-kde adivce on a kde related blog, but here is what I am "actually" blogging to discuss.

Everyone type the following in your konsole while in an empty directory.

svn co svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde/trunk/KDE/kdelibs/kdeui/tests/krichtexteditor/

Now enter the directory krichtexteditor and type

mkdir build
cd build/
cmake ../
make

Now run that application

./krichtexteditor

Now use that to open a file with bullets or an ordered list (and this may even work with any rich test at all). In fact I have added below a list you can copy in there. Make sure there are misspelled words in the document.

• adadad
• asd
• adsdfas
• adsfdaf
• adaafa

Now that you have your document with misspelled words and a list of some sort. It's time for the exciting part! Right click to get the context menu and Click Check Spelling.

When the spell check dialog comes up click cancel. If all worked as it did for me, you should now notice that the bulleted list has been removed. YAY! Actually this seems to be an issue in other things I've used with this as well. I haven't checked around into this, but I just wanted to make sure that I wasn't hallucinating.

UPDATE:
Sadly, I wasn't hallucinating, and so here is the bug report. For those of you who have encountered this issue, you can follow it there. I'm going to try and see later this week if I can do something about this.

UPDATE2:
I forgot to post the bug report link.
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=188523

Hello KDE

Well, this isn't exactly, my first post, it's my third. The two before this adequately explain what I set out to do when I made the decision to contribute to kde. This is more background, nontechnical information.

Since I started using Linux with Fedora Core 4 & Ubuntu Breezy, I have been looking for a way to contribute. Since then I embarked on a mission to explore numerous distros, to get the feel for not only the software but the communities as well. My goal was to find a place I felt I could really contribute. However I didn't really settle anywhere and all I got out if it is a really bad habit of distro hopping. (Though I mostly stick to Fedora, Ubuntu/Debian, and Arch). Then I started looking into KDE 4 (at the time I was a gnome user). I watched the keynote speech on KDE4's frameworks and advancements, and I was hooked, because I truly saw potential in these new software frameworks. It was well integrated, and it was well thought out. On top of all that the DE looked slick and professional. Between Qt and KDE libs I saw endless possibilities. So I switched DE's and began looking for ways to contribute. I outlined some of those in earlier posts but I'll put a quick run through here. (DISCLAIMER: the above wasn't a jab at gnome, I still thinks it's a nice DE and keep track of it, I just prefer kde over gnome).

1. Development: I want to help with actual coding. Though I am new to KDE, Qt, and C++, so I hope those of you out there will help make my a better programmer. To some extent I have already embarked on this mission. Recently I submitted a patch to Stephen Kelly (who has been a great help) that added and auto decimal list feature to Kjots. It was my first code contribution to a FOSS project and I am still very proud of it, and I hope those of you out there will test it in svn.

2. Documentation: I am very big on this. I know it can be tedious even hard to write good documentation, but with all the new frameworks (not to mention improved language support) with kde 4 I think we can do better on the documentation end. I really hope to get started on this end sometime soon. (For those of you who are part of the "inner circle" for developer documentation in kde, please let me know where much of the discussion takes place etc.

3. Any other way I can really (with time considerations of course).

One thing I have to say is that KDE's community is one of the most friendly open minded communities I've seen in FOSS. If you are considering helping out with kde, there are tons of different ways to do so, whether it be code, art work, documentation or anything else you can think of. If you would like to ask any question regarding this, please feel free to ask me I'd be more than happy to help.

I look forward to working with all of you in the future. Here's to happy KDE 4.3 release.