The initial doubts and skepticism I experienced when using 4.0 are completely gone. This is, frankly, what 4.0 should have been. The question now is whether users who were burned by the inadequacies of the 4.0 release will give KDE 4 a second chance.
KDE 4.1 was released as a RC recently and will soon be released. While it will be a very usable and stable desktop environment ready to be used almost everywhere most users with NVIDIA cards will not be pleased: their proprietary driver spoil the fun.
You often hear that proprietary kernel modules are a problem only for RMS zealots. (I do believe that RMS has a lot of good points and I’m rather prefering the term Free Software over Open Source). But proprietary modules are not only a theoretical problem, but also cause practical problems.
Like not being able to fix a problem or implement a feature in such a module. As this is the case now with nvidia proprietary kernel module causing problems with the current KDE 4.1.
Things to enjoy:
Error and warning parser that will annotate faulty lines, a great indexer and content assistant, spell checking (that’s actually useful), gdb integration, doxygen assistant, Bugzilla integration (sadly not working with KDE Bugzilla), IRC integration (needs communication framework), Subversion support (needs subclipse/subversive), code formatting and a whole lot more.
“then you win” is an initiative aiming to release a series of documentaries that focus on international development issues under a spectrum of CC licenses. The documentaries are produced by Loin de l’Œil, a voluntary association in France, and will be released under Yooook, an open content platform project under development run by Camille Harang. You can read more about the project here.
An Eco-Storm production-Exposing government tactics in reaction to environmental protests. Tactics shown in the film include arresting journalists and environmental protesters, Espionage, news manipulation and legal threats.
Melting Point looks at the escalating battle between direct action protest groups and those they accuse of failing to act on climate change.
Creative Commons held our first TechSummit at Google last month. This event included an update and overview of Creative Commons technologies, panels featuring other leaders in open digital rights technologies, and a look at the future, including the role of digital copyright registries. If you are curious of who all the speakers were you can still find the list on the TechSummit informational page. Many presenters’ slides are also available from that page.
They even created videos and uploaded to them to youtube.
Introduction to ccREL
Digital copyright registry technology landscape, challenges, opportunities
Developers of digital copyright registries and similar animals
Copyright 2.0″ technologies and digital copyright registries: what next?
Exceptions are difficult to handle. Java Exceptions aren’t different. Elliotte Rusty Harold tries to remove the confusion.
Perhaps the continuing confusion over the difference between checked and runtime exceptions in Java is because we haven’t named them properly. Mosts texts and teachers, including myself, have traditionally focused on how and when you handle the exceptions (compile time or runtime) rather than on what causes each. I propose a modification, not in code, but in terminology and teaching. Specifically I think we should should start calling checked exceptions “external exceptions” and runtime exceptions “internal exceptions”.
After some examples and explanations he concludes
If the exception is caused by problems internal to the program, it’s a runtime exception. If it’s caused by problems external to the program, it’s a checked exception.
Back-room dealings in the European Parliament have resulted in a “three strikes” rule being included in a new telecoms bill — the rule would force ISPs to kick people who’ve been thrice accused of copyright infringement off the Internet.
If this bill passes, then Europeans’ access to the network that delivers freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, access to medicine, family, civic engagement, banking, government services, and the whole sweep of human online endeavor would last only so long as they avoided three unsubstantiated accusations of downloading music or video or software without permission.
Worse still, the bill is set to be voted upon on July 7 — that’s this Monday.
The Open Rights Group has instructions for contacting your MEP. If you live in the EU and you care about your future as a citizen of the information society, call right away and make sure your MEP knows that this matters to you.
Join the action and contact you Member of the European Parliament and tell them about the dangers of the new bill!
Stefon's Blog 