Earlier today (and/or yesterday), both the GNOME Web site and the KDE Web site published promotional essays, or pointed to them rather.

KDE – Why KDE Rules

I wrote this document to tell everybody why KDE is great, why it’s worth using (great functionality), supporting (great development platform) and hacking (great design) and why you can expect many other awesome features from KDE 4.

GNOME – Vive La Desktop Difference!

If you, dear reader, wrote in asking whether I think you should drive a Mini Cooper or a Hummer, how should I respond? My best bet is to offer no opinion. I know nothing of your preferences or your needs. Either vehicle will get you where you want to go. The difference will be in the experience of getting there. It’s the same deal with KDE and Gnome.

I do not believe this to be a coincidence given some news we have recently heard. KDE’s strengths have been pointed out by no-one other than Linus Torvalds.

Related items:

• KDE and Ease-of-Use
• The User Interfaces of Tomorrow
• KDE Pushed to the Limit
• KDE to Reach Africa
• KDE Versus GNOME

There are bugs that bug the user and bugs that lead to catastrophe. Below lie two examples of critically-buggy applications, which I recently decided are worth listing.

1. Windows 95 – Blue Screen of Death

I still remember, as a most classical example, the days of Windows 95. The operating system failed to cope with unhandled, misunderstood packets that ultimately gave the blue screen and required a reboot in most cases. Sooner or later people got hold of so-called ‘nuking’ software — one among virtually dozens of GUI-based free downloads. That little tool gave its owner the ability to unleash upon others the infamous ‘blue screen of death’.

IP address of the target computer was all one needed. It was easy to determine one’s IP address even when dynamically allocated by a dial-up ISP. Instant messengers (ICQ was new and hot at the time) simplified the process tremendously and tools that interacted with the IM existed as well. This gave your friends and foes the ability to ‘take you down’ whenever they desired.

Sooner or later, anti-nuke software was becoming mandatory. Yet another application to run in the background if you want to survive without rebooting and losing some invaluable work. Not good.

During the holiday, yet another critical flaw with Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 was found. Lessons have not been learned even 10 years later. The promise and efforts to make Windows more modular seem unfruitful.

2. Timely Example: WordPress 2.0 Bugs

I previously said that the release of WordPress would be premature. I said so as soon as rumours emerged. Matt Mullenweg spoke about an undetermined release that precedes Christmas. Boxing Day was the point when things took a gentle dive.

I now write about 40 messages a day in the WordPress support forums, making a voluntary contribution throughout the holidays, as promised. The pace of bug reports is worrisome. That aside, the WordPress Web site was not prepared for the demand either. There was a site migration issue on the very same date as the release and coding bugs emerged all too soon in the forums where they continue to resurface.

WordPress 2.0 was intended to be named after a Jazz musician, as always. ‘Stan Getz‘ was among the top contenders. I believe that WordPress should not be called Getz because it might give a favoured artist of mine a bad name. WordPress 2.0 is more like Milli Vanilli (sarcasm and an overstatement).

Earlier today a version database downgrader for WordPress was released. A few people regret the upgrade, but many are very happy with the new features. Whether the frustration supercedes the benefits is an important question. The answer is yet difficult to deliver and the situation hard to judge.

2005 may have marked a milestone for Open Source software. As previously mentioned, commercial software is truly facing a debacle. Below is are a few key sentences from comprehensive and encouraging article that BusinessWeek have published:

Open-source software isn’t a new phenomenon. It has been winding its way through the tech world for decades, starting with Richard Stallman’s Free Software movement in 1980s. But only in recent years have businesses warmed to the promise of low-cost, openly available software. In fact, open-source programs have become so popular, they now pose a legitimate threat to the established software giants.

Looking back, 2005 will likely be viewed as a turning point… According to a new study by consulting firm Opteros, 87% of organizations are now using open-source software, somewhere.

read on (via Yahoo! News)

“Hurry! Hurry! Lotsa’ work to do, guys!”

I have found the following old page, from which I would like to borrow a snippet.

He’s (Bill Gates) a ferocious workaholic, who regularly puts in 80-hour weeks, and expects his employees to do the same. And although he’s something of a visionary, he’s not a particularly reliable one; he never meets product deadlines, and the goods he so tirelessly promotes are mostly vaporware. God, like Gates, owes his power and success less to the quality of his product than to his ruthless business sense. He’s created a near monopoly by outmuscling the competition. You might not like this universe, just as you might not like Microsoft’s clunky programs; but pragmatically speaking, where else do you have to go?

Related item: Roots of Authority

Why I put my cards on the table and wound up using Google

NTIL about 3 years ago I was using Webcrawler as my text and graphics search engine almost exclusively. Webcrawler offered some nice features, without a doubt. I can clearly recall suggestions for completion or extended/refined searches on the side of existing SERP‘s. This assimilates to Google Suggest, which came about much later. In due time, Webcrawler also harvested results from Google, which made the results rather pleasing.

At present, Webcrawler has an interesting feature, which enables the user to see results from all major search engines (crawlers rather) side-by-side. One can see the top 10 from each on the same page. This is nothing like Dogpile (bad name for a business) that is composing results artificially. Rather than getting a mishmash of results, Webcrawler gives a more comprehensive and impartial view that brings together many search engines into one (overloaded and cluttered) page.

A9 is doing something similar to Webcrawler, but it very Google-centric. The user can see results from the Web, alongside images, videos, and more. Speaking of video search, see my previous post on search results bias.

The disadvantages of the approach are speed and visual clutter. Much of the information on the screen will be discarded. Yet, having plenty of information, both textual and visual, might be helpful sometimes, especially over a quick Internet connection where traffic is expendable.

This one comes from a blog, but it is still worth reading.

The New York Times reported that Google will give AOL preferred placement for AOL’s videos in Google’s video search in Google’s new Google Video search site. In addition, Google will include links to AOL videos on the Google Video home page — and won’t label any of those links advertising, or call the preferred listings advertising, even though they clearly are ads.”

NN runs an article on that well-understood impact of excessive information digestion. This often leads to addiction, which can be treated by clinics these days.

Will all this instantly accessible information make us much smarter, or simply more stressed? When can we break to think, absorb and ponder all this data?

“People are already struggling and feeling like they need to keep up with the variety of information sources they already have,” said David Greenfield, a psychologist who wrote “Virtual Addiction.” “There are upper limits to how much we can manage.”

Related items:

• Treating Online Addicts
• Blog Depression
• RPG Fantasy World
• Internet Addiction