Anno domini 2021 Fri, 21 May 18:16:29 +0000 dep via tde-users scripsit:

said Dr. Nikolaus Klepp:

| Oh, I just run /opt/trinity/bin/r14-xdg-update as root on a console when | the message appeares. Then reboot and all is fine.

Ah. Interesting. Thank you. Does this solve the problem permanently, or only until the next reboot?

Permanently across reboots .. well, till the next major TDE update that forces r14-xdg-update to do some special things.

Nik

-- dep

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Anno domini 2021 Fri, 21 May 18:30:05 +0000 dep via tde-users scripsit:

said Dr. Nikolaus Klepp:

| > | Oh, I just run /opt/trinity/bin/r14-xdg-update as root on a console | > | when the message appeares. Then reboot and all is fine. | > | > Ah. Interesting. Thank you. Does this solve the problem permanently, | > or only until the next reboot? | | Permanently across reboots .. well, till the next major TDE update that | forces r14-xdg-update to do some special things. | | Nik

Thanks! I'll give it a shot and if it works I'll join the chorus of those who hope it gets added to the documentation.

Real men don't read docs :)

Nik

-- dep

Pictures: http://www.ipernity.com/doc/depscribe/album Column: https://www.athensnews.com/opinion/columns/the_view_from_mudsock_heights/ ____________________________________________________ tde-users mailing list -- users@trinitydesktop.org To unsubscribe send an email to users-leave@trinitydesktop.org Web mail archive available at https://mail.trinitydesktop.org/mailman3/hyperkitty/list/users@trinitydeskto...

On Friday 21 May 2021 21.03:48 William Morder via tde-users wrote:

Just wondering, though, why anybody (J. Leslie Turriff or others) runs KDE4/5 krap, unless somebody is forcing you to do so - i.e., by torture, blackmail, a loaded weapon pointed at your head ...?

Bill

I use kdenlive quite a lot

Thierry

On Friday 21 May 2021 12:16:05 you wrote:

On 2021-05-21 14:03:48 William Morder via tde-users wrote:

...

Just wondering, though, why anybody (J. Leslie Turriff or others) runs KDE4/5 krap, unless somebody is forcing you to do so - i.e., by torture, blackmail, a loaded weapon pointed at your head ...?

Bill

Maybe you didn't notice, but nobody is developing new applications for KDE3. :-) The KDE4 and Plasma ->desktops<- are crap, but when a new useful KDE application appears, that's what it's written for.

Leslie

openSUSE Leap 15.2 x86_64 Qt: 3.5.0 TDE: R14.0.9 tde-config: 1.0

I did notice, but I haven't yet found any KDE4/5 applications that have been worth it. (I confess, however, that I did run Kubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04x, with KDE3x desktop, until it absolutely would not function any more.)

Regarding KDE4/5 and Plasma, I used them for a while, when I was first trying to get TDE installed, and the only thing that seemed to work for me was a Debian disc with KDE5 desktop already installed.

At least for me, on my machines, KDE4/5 stuff cause too many problems. And anyway, I was only joking; everybody is free to run whatever they want on their own machines. I hear some people still run Windoze.

In the meanwhile, I would join those who remind us that we have a very small team of developers and limited resources; and to my mind, it is a miracle that we are able to run our machines with a desktop as fine as TDE. Other desktops have gone in directions that I don't want to take.

It would be nice to see this problem resolved, but it's pretty trivial, and we have filled the mailing list with at least three or four rounds of discussion on this same question. More comprehensive documentation and explanation of the matter would be nice. (Perhaps get Stefan to transfer his commentary to the appropriate place? so that newbies might benefit?)

Or - it occurs to me - why not just put a note in some prominent place, perhaps here: https://wiki.trinitydesktop.org/Debian_Trinity_Repository_Installation_Instr... Instructions to say that if users should get that error, then please do such-and-such (e.g., follow Nik's method, or whatever). Then maybe we won't have to rehash this same question over and over and over and over. (I do believe that we are now on the third or fourth round.)

Just saying: Isn't it part of the hacker's code not to keep repeating work that has already be done? No useless reduplication? (I mean *hacker* in the original, pure, "good" sense of the term.)

Off-topic discussions don't bother me nearly as much as reading the same question, rehashed over and over again.

:-]

Bill

On 2021-05-21 14:44:03 dep via tde-users wrote:

said J Leslie Turriff: | Maybe you didn't notice, but nobody is developing new applications for | KDE3. :-) The KDE4 and Plasma ->desktops<- are crap, but when a new | useful KDE application appears, that's what it's written for.

I think that this arises from the KDE project's decision to abandon desktop development in favor of writing a video game. It's called "Configure KDE," and it's quite good -- some paths can take hundreds of hours to finish. -- dep

That's the main reason I jumped ship. The KDE folks seem to have forgotten that some of their (former) users use(d) KDE to do actual work.

Leslie -- openSUSE Leap 15.2 x86_64 Qt: 3.5.0 TDE: R14.0.9 tde-config: 1.0

On Friday 21 May 2021 15:41:15 Dr. Nikolaus Klepp wrote:

Anno domini 2021 Fri, 21 May 12:03:48 -0700

William Morder via tde-users scripsit:

...

Real men don't join users groups, and especially don't subscribe to mailing lists. Least of all do they (I mean, we) need your advice. Real men are out there, somewhere in the wilderness, at least in our dreams, wrestling bears and tigers. ;-)

*grin* real men eat there meat raw, have fur and claws and occupy the sweet spot in front of the oven dreaming of real men in the wilderness .... or more meat :)

Either that or more co-operative women. Brings up a war story. The owner of the tv station I was the CE at for nearly 20 years, back in NTSC days, after I retied, flew me to his other properties to put out some technical fires he had, and one of them was KREX in Grand Junction CO, so I spent a couple months there as a visiting fireman, but the Chief he had at the time was chasing a woman in a mountain village 150 miles away, so when I arrived, he took the engineering vehicle and disappeared, leaving my driving the owners pickup. Technically the place was a mess, with video cables double or triple terminated with the usual horrible effects on the video from all the echo's. So I disconnected them and figured if enough people squawked, I could get some more video da's and wire it up correctly. But I was doing 12 hour days as it was, and that never got done. That control room actually fed 4 transmitters and several "relay stations" that pretty well covered the western slopes. To say it was crowded was an understatement

Took me a couple months but I had all 4 stations looking good on the air when I figured I had done as much as I was going to get done on that trip west. But a few months later I was asked to go do it again, and when I arrived, I found all of my fixes had been undone by the other engineer. But he was still on site. I took him back into the room where the KREX transmitter was and came unwrapped. And I explained the term VSWR in very colorfull terms. At one point he looked like he was going to take a swing because I was seriously abusing his family tree. But I eventually ran down. He stood there, silent for perhaps 30 seconds, and finally asked "why the hell wasn't I teaching someplace, not one of his college professors had explained it, in anything like I had just done, now I usderstand it", this from a papered, 4 years of EE schooling graduate. And he is catching hell, litterally, from an 8th grade grammer school graduate. I replied that I didn't know where he had graduated from, but it was obvious to me he should be sueing for a tuition refund at the very least. He wasted those years.

Sometimes the slot machine of life pays off, I went a long ways toward making a broadcast engineer out of him that day. The biggest lesson he learned that day is that he was still teachable.

I am still running into people with a degree who are convinced they learned it all in school and won't put in the effort to learn anything new. Stay away from folks like that, they will drag you down to their level.

You should go to school, not to learn by rote, that will be stale before you get across the stage for a diploma, but to learn how to learn for the rest of your life. Never, ever, let your curiosity go unanswered. Except maybe about gravity, which hasn't made it into the TOE despite 100+ years of trying by some 5 star minds. We don't even know its PV!

Take care and stay well folks.

Cheers, Gene Heskett

On Friday 21 May 2021 19:14:42 J Leslie Turriff wrote:

On 2021-05-21 18:04:29 Gene Heskett via tde-users wrote:

...

You should go to school, not to learn by rote, that will be stale before you get across the stage for a diploma, but to learn how to learn for the rest of your life. Never, ever, let your curiosity go unanswered. Except maybe about gravity, which hasn't made it into the TOE despite 100+ years of trying by some 5 star minds.  We don't even know its PV!

Take care and stay well folks.

Cheers, Gene Heskett

Yeah. Good luck getting today's teachers to teach how to learn instead of how to memorize.

And that is indeed the crux of the matter. Problem solving is not on the agenda, the dregs of it vanished along with teaching phonics back in the 40's. I got the last class on that ever taught in Iowa schools in the 40's. That, and a tested 147 on the Iowa test, I have always said gave me a leg up on those that followed later. In the early 50's as korea was blowing up, I had the draft board move my number up as that was for 2 years, but volunteers were for 4 years, but I made a 98 on the AFQT. Next best in about 135 boys that day was 36. That got me instantly classified 4F, unfit for service because I wouldn't follow orders, they wanted machine gun targets.

I sat for a 1st phone and got it in '62 without cracking a book to cram. Sick of consumer electronics, I switched to broadcast engineering in '64 and never looked back.

I sat for the CET in '72, same story. 4 hours to do the test, gave it back in 45 minutes, 123 out of 125 correct. To say that the CET is a rare item is an understatement, dropping that on HR's desk has got me every job I've ever applied for. Married an old maid school teacher with a degree in music in '89 but she was a bit embasrrased at my lack of a formal diploma, and pushed me to get a GED, so I sat for that in '90. 2 weeks later I hadn't heard, so I made a trip to the P.O., the test givers $dayjob, and asked him about it. He asked in turn why I cared, it was obvious you were just doing it for the exercise weren't you? I had to admit he was right, but I got it a few days later. Now that lady has passed as of last Pearl Harbor Day, COPD. So after 31 years I'm alone again.

Leslie

Cheers, Gene Heskett

On Friday 21 May 2021 18:39:02 J Leslie Turriff wrote:

On 2021-05-21 19:08:36 Gene Heskett via tde-users wrote:

...

And that is indeed the crux of the matter. Problem solving is not on the agenda, the dregs of it vanished along with teaching phonics back in the 40's.

Which is one of the reasons that we see so many foreigners here on work visas. It's always a bit disconcerting to me to see all those foreign names in articles about technology and engineering, but I look at it as the same sort of thing as immigrant farm labour: if the domestic labour force won't/can't do the work, more power to those who will/can.

Leslie

And a sort of "hotel English" is being taught in universities all over the world now; I began to see the influence of the business schools and the STEM disciplines in universities back in the early 1980s, but the agenda was already being set in the 1960s or earlier.

A friend of mine is a professor in a comparatively small Russian university, and she sometimes hits me with questions about usage. When I respond, about half the time she tells me "But that's not what it says in my book!"; and the overall trend is towards a kind of simplified English, suitable for business, but leaving such persons unprepared to interpret old-fashioned English turns of phrase, or to appreciate subtleties of literary usage.

It's not an unimportant question. People are always citing Orwell these days, but they forget that, at the core of his views, he always stressed clear direct expression. Sloppy usage led to sloppy thinking, and sloppy thinking is what got us into the mess that we are into these days.

Also, it's worth noting the parallel in the late Classical world. To all the nations conquered by Alexander the Great, the Greeks brought a simplified version of their language, the Koine (or the common speech), with a view to making civilized Greek-speakers out of the barbarians (non-Greek speakers). Their aim was explicitly to educate the conquered people well enough to make them good servants. And the British did the same in India.

So yeah, I believe that the Humanities still matter; and maybe now, more than ever, we need that side of education even more than the STEM subjects and business.

Here endeth my rant.

Bill

Anno domini 2021 Fri, 21 May 18:14:42 -0500 J Leslie Turriff scripsit:

On 2021-05-21 18:04:29 Gene Heskett via tde-users wrote:

...

You should go to school, not to learn by rote, that will be stale before you get across the stage for a diploma, but to learn how to learn for the rest of your life. Never, ever, let your curiosity go unanswered.   Except maybe about gravity, which hasn't made it into the TOE despite 100+ years of trying by some 5 star minds.  We don't even know its PV!

Take care and stay well folks.

Cheers, Gene Heskett

Yeah. Good luck getting today's teachers to teach how to learn instead of how to memorize.

That's impossible. Checked juniors math books this week: they are full of descriptions what different kinds of hammers are around, but not a single line on what you use a hammer for. Just PITA.

Nik

Leslie

Anno domini 2021 Sun, 23 May 13:46:58 +1000 Steven D'Aprano via tde-users scripsit:

On Sat, May 22, 2021 at 08:05:03AM +0200, Dr. Nikolaus Klepp wrote:

...

Anno domini 2021 Fri, 21 May 18:14:42 -0500 J Leslie Turriff scripsit:

[...]

...

...

Yeah. Good luck getting today's teachers to teach how to learn instead of how to memorize.

That's impossible. Checked juniors math books this week: they are full of descriptions what different kinds of hammers are around, but not a single line on what you use a hammer for. Just PITA.

I teach mathematics, and I'm curious what you mean by this. What year level is Junior studying, what topics?

(Also, in Australia, "PITA" means Pain In The Arse. What do you mean by it?)

In English-speaking countries, it has been traditional for the last 40 or so years to make maths relevant to the kiddies, with lots of real- world topics, examples and questions. Especially in primary school maths, years 1 to 6, but also into secondary school, which is my area.

For example, lots of business maths (interest, annuities, depreciation, loans, etc); applications of trigonometry to navigation; maths applied to practical problems like working out the cost of items using simultaneous equations, etc.

Of course there is still pure mathematics taught with no applications given. In Australia, our senior year (Year 12) of secondary school has four mathematics streams:

• Specialist Maths (pure mathematics, heavy on calculus and advanced algebra, very abstract);

• Maths Methods (mix of pure and applied maths, some calculus);

• Further Maths (practical applied maths: finance, statistics, etc, very light on algebra);

• Foundation Maths (remedial mathematics, heavy on practical applications like cooking, sport, finance, measurement, speed and distances, etc, virtually no algebra).

Most kids do Methods or Further Maths.

What is the situation like in your country?

Once upon a time in the 80s and eary 90s the situation was quite simillar. But then came "Schüssel I" and with it the decline of the education system which is still ongoing. In the days long gone the A level was not centralized, but you were allowed at any university - and the knowledge you gained at school was sufficient to enable you to follow the lectures at university. Then the conservatives started "optimizing" or "reforming" the education system. A level certificate is now centralised (a great "improvement") and prepared by some private company. Additionally there is a regular school certificate. Stuff taught for A level is plain useless at a univerity, so all universities introduced entry exams and "trial" semesters.

But to give you a rel live examples from 5. class (age ~ 15, still 3 years to go for A level): - Pupils are told how prime factorization works. They are not told what to do with it - never. - Comes "Linear equations", 6 months later 2D vectors. They are not told that these 2 things are the same. - Geometry, "2 lines may be parallel or have one intesecting point or none". Then they learn a methode to find "the" line that does not intersect with a given line. They are not told that there are infinite non-intersecting lines, nor are they told the correct way to build a inequality to describe all non-intersecting lines. - Trigonometry: taught sine theorem and cosine theorem, but not a single word that they need 3 independent specifications to define an triangle and why and when to use sin/cosine theorem to get the other 3 specs. - They are never told how to solve a problem by using or combining prior knowledge - this is the absolute nogo for universities. And its quite astouning how the schoolbooks mange to not-teach this vital skill.

To sum it up: Austrian school system is totally broken nowadays. Funny thing is, in the 80s austrian school system was superior to german, now its the other way round - but not because Germany did real improvements, on the contrary, they are just slower with "improving".

Nik

On 2021-05-23 19:05:50 deloptes wrote:

Dr. Nikolaus Klepp wrote:

...

Once upon a time in the 80s and eary 90s the situation was quite simillar. But then came "Schüssel I" and with it the decline of the education system which is still ongoing. In the days long gone the A level was not centralized, but you were allowed at any university - and the knowledge you gained at school was sufficient to enable you to follow the lectures at university. Then the conservatives started "optimizing" or "reforming" the education system. A level certificate is now centralised (a great "improvement") and prepared by some private company. Additionally there is a regular school certificate. Stuff taught for A level is plain useless at a univerity, so all universities introduced entry exams and "trial" semesters.

Come on Nik - do not blame it on the conservatives - the left betrayed the working class - the conservative liberals finished all - they both play hand in hand - it is the same gang, so that you can blame someone left or right. And you need dumb people, so that no one can understand the game.

...

But to give you a rel live examples from 5. class (age ~ 15, still 3 years to go for A level): - Pupils are told how prime factorization works. They are not told what to do with it - never. - Comes "Linear equations", 6 months later 2D vectors. They are not told that these 2 things are the same. - Geometry, "2 lines may be parallel or have one intesecting point or none". Then they learn a methode to find "the" line that does not intersect with a given line. They are not told that there are infinite non-intersecting lines, nor are they told the correct way to build a inequality to describe all non-intersecting lines. - Trigonometry: taught sine theorem and cosine theorem, but not a single word that they need 3 independent specifications to define an triangle and why and when to use sin/cosine theorem to get the other 3 specs. - They are never told how to solve a problem by using or combining prior knowledge - this is the absolute nogo for universities. And its quite astouning how the schoolbooks mange to not-teach this vital skill.

To sum it up: Austrian school system is totally broken nowadays. Funny thing is, in the 80s austrian school system was superior to german, now its the other way round - but not because Germany did real improvements, on the contrary, they are just slower with "improving".

In the 80s the neo liberals on the right and left were just graduating university. They just have brain washed the first generation of teachers. Now they are preparing the third generation of teachers. Germany! it is even worse - it is the same everywhere - down grade, down grade, down grade. At such level that many of my friends teach their children at home (not only in Austria) Believe me - the next generation of teachers will finish us all.

IMO the underlying problem (at least in the US) is the low pay provided in the education industry, which drives out those with good teaching skills. In the school I attended after moving to the US, math was taught by the athletics coach! I also wonder about the abilities of the people who set the curricula standards.

Leslie

On Monday 24 May 2021 01:32:49 am deloptes wrote:

J Leslie Turriff wrote:

...

IMO the underlying problem (at least in the US) is the low pay provided in the education industry, which drives out those with good teaching skills. In the school I attended after moving to the US, math was taught by the athletics coach!  I also wonder about the abilities of the people who set the curricula standards.

Well US ... the movie Idiocracy fits the best. In Austria the teachers are very well payed, but since the 80ies are indoctrinated to the left - especially the humanitarian subjects. The only rational thinking people in this country are technicians and nature science. The pay is not the only issue, although a major one. I agree with you here , but want to add that the whole society is responsible for this shift

In the USA the lack of current education is directly attributable to 3 (4?) major industrialists of approximately 1900*. I read the document they wrote for this about ~20 years ago, so the rest of this is from memory, but should be accurate at a high level**.

Their goal, which was basically achieved 10 to 30 years ago, was to create a class of uneducated people to work in their factories (as the current “grade school” graduate population was too educated to accept low pay and unsafe working conditions and the uneducated immigration population was rapidly declining).

The US public school system was created to accomplish this. AFAIKR pushing religion (“don’t use logic, accept brainwashing as fact”) into the US government was also part of the agenda (adding ‘God’ to money and court oaths, etc.). “Don’t use logic, accept brainwashing as fact” is one of the foundations of US (public) education and can be seen in the continued teaching of Freudian theory in university level Psychology. Marketing (which uses the same principal for buyer manipulation) is probably the easiest place to learn more about how it’s achieved.

There was much more variability in the US school systems (all private) prior to this; as age and grade were not in lock step like today. People (considered full adults btw!) graduated from what we now call “high school” at 9th grade [age ~13-16]. College started afterwards. For those not going to college, ‘grade’ or ‘primary’ school ended at ~6th grade (what the US now calls elementary school). I believe (okay, I don’t remember if this is true) the British system in use today still retains most of what the US system was like (College starting at 16, etc.), as it was what the US system was originally based on.

It was an extremely fascinating, and completely depressing, read. If you want/have children (or grand-kids) in the US it’d be beneficial if you dug it up and read it...

Best, Michael

* I’d give names but I’d most likely give the wrong ones. Two were pretty recognizable, one was obscure by today’s standards. ** At the time is was available on the Internet. If you can’t find it through Goog, try a very large city reference librarian. Also fascinating, dig up a 9th grade graduation test from the late 1800s.

Notes: - I have not read the rest of this thread, sorry if I repeated someone’s discussion. - I exited the US public school system in the 5th grade. It’s a lot easier to see the forest from the outside.

J Leslie Turriff wrote:

This surprises me not at all.  It's the same mentality that kept General Semantics from being taught as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_semantics

it would be sufficient if classical logic were thought at school

- conjunction - disjunction - equivalence - implication

4 operations that most of the people do not understand - especially the implication. this makes it possible to do false conclusions. Also it makes it impossible to dispute over anything. Total mess!

On Thursday 03 June 2021 14:03:32 J Leslie Turriff wrote:

On 2021-06-03 15:24:29 deloptes wrote:

...

J Leslie Turriff wrote:

...

This surprises me not at all.  It's the same mentality that kept General Semantics from being taught as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_semantics

it would be sufficient if classical logic were thought at school

• conjunction
• disjunction
• equivalence
• implication

4 operations that most of the people do not understand - especially the implication. this makes it possible to do false conclusions. Also it makes it impossible to dispute over anything. Total mess!

Yes; but teaching such concepts leads to people becoming able to think for themselves, which is anethema to authoritarians, be they corporate or government. :-) "We will tell you what to think."

The core tenets of General Semantics are also easy to grasp:

• Over-generalizing (labeling) leads to false conclusions (The map is not the territory) What was true in the past is not necessarily true today Generalizations about groups of people doesn't necessarily apply to individual members

• Very few issues are two-valued

Leslie

Might as well contribute my 2 cents' worth to the discussion.

Myself, I get gobsmacked practically every day with various species of ignorance. But since my background is in the Humanities, more or less, that is what I notice the most. And I think it is good to point out this characteristic mark in what most people complain about along these lines (of "what's wrong with the world/education/government/etc.); while the things that most offend my sensibilities are those kinds of blunders, at least I can recognize that there are other kinds of knowledge, other kinds of ignorance, other worlds of experience.

In my reading, I notice errors that would never have found their way into print only 25 years ago. (I don't just mean online reading, or self-published materials, but rather mainstream books and periodicals.) Books from big publishers are now full of semiliterate crap that staggers the imagination.

Little details give a quick glimpse. How often do I read somebody writing about "honing in" [WRONG] on a point, rather than "homing in" [correct]? I used to keep a list of these grievances, until my hard drive crashed, with a view to writing some sort of essay on the sad state of the English language, in its various forms and literatures; and I might still write it, but I need to recover that data, or to start the list again. And I could give hundreds more examples, but readers either know what I mean, or they don't.

I came across an online news article about how history was no longer being offered as a course of study (what they call a "major" in the U.S.) in many universities; that it would soon become available only in elite schools, and that the poor or less privileged would naturally be guided to more current or "practical" fields. The same could be said for nearly any of the Humanities; not only history, but also Classics, as well as the study of any subjects that are not tied to either business or the STEM subjects. Also, the so-called "soft" sciences (sociology, anthropology, archaeology, and so on); now they are disparaged as not so "necessary" as the "hard" sciences (those that emphasize measurement, numbers, quantification, etc.); not that these things are not "valued" in a way, as entertainment, or diversion, or hobbies for the rich or leisure class - but they aren't considered worth the time, effort and expense to teach ordinary folks.

The general population, if they have any interest in these matters, are expected to do it on their own; to teach themselves by haphazard reading and study, which of course makes them especially susceptible to conspiracy theories and other kinds of manipulation. It is worth noting that most of the 9/11 terrorists had engineering degrees. It isn't that they didn't have enough background in science or maths; it is that their minds had not been broadened by education, reading, and the experience of other people's world views.

Don't even get me started about the lack of education in music! It's not that I believe everybody ought to become a musician; only that everybody ought to have some real education in music (i.e., learn to play an instrument or two, learn a little about music theory), because it opens up the mind to other ways of thinking about the world.

The same with travel, and learning foreign languages, the study of history, anthropology, and other paths to open up our experience of the world. There is nothing better to teach us about the relativity of our values and concepts than to be immersed in a culture that is totally different from the one in which we were brought up. None of our assumptions about the world work any more; we have to learn to think about the world differently, because everybody around us lives in that different world of experience.

And as for history, there is a saying, "The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there." (I forget who said/wrote it first, but online sources tell me that it was a novelist by name of L.P. Hartley.) When we immerse ourselves in another person's thoughts and experience of the world, it opens up new possibilities for ourselves, in our own world.

My version of The Rant might make it seem that I discount the value of the hard sciences, and would like to see the Humanities and those soft science better funded. And it is true, I believe that those fields have suffered by an unfair competition against the more "practical" fields. But I would not have people ignorant of science and maths. I watch a lot of science shows on television, so I try to keep up with what's going on in the world. You wouldn't want me working in rocket science, but I pay attention to what the scientists are telling us. You also wouldn't put me in charge of anything that requires advanced mathematics skills; but I would be up for a discussion of mathematical ideas or (especially) paradoxes, such as infinite sets or Godel's theorem.

One of those problems that comes up a lot in the practical application of science and technology is why the problems we set out to solve are often exacerbated by the solutions. Technology was supposed to make life easier for us, but instead we have greater disparity of wealth, homelessness, disenfrancisement and dispossesion, widespread hunger, disease, and so on. Those algorithms that were supposed to eliminate human error end up making decisions to kill humans, or at least to arrest them, based on the data they are fed.

What is that saying? "garbage in, garbage out"? It is not that I don't welcome the science, not that I resist modern technology; but it is only as good as the data that it is fed. If we ask the wrong questions, we keep getting wrong answers; if we set out to solve social problems, but start with assumptions that contain prejudices (hidden even from ourselves), then we end up reinforcing and intensifying the very problems that we want to solve.

The different kind of critical thinking that is taught in the Humanities gives us the tools to consider the humanity of the people themselves. Too often "the people" are regarded as no better than herds of animals; when dealing with government agencies, one cannot fail to detect the attitude of utter contempt for the very persons that they are supposed to be serving.

It is not the fault of any one person, nor of too much or too little emphasis on one field of study over others. (I would remind readers that the British empire was ruled by persons who were steeped in the Classics and ancient history, so the Humanities are not by themselves protection against tyranny.)

What we need is emphasis on more well rounded education, rather than to allow people to live inside their own self-contained bubbles, or to move only within social circles where everybody else's bubble is like our own. Everybody will naturally find their own abiding interests, anyway, regardless whether they are forced to study other subjects; but making everybody more aware of the rest of the world, and how other people experience the world differently from ourselves; to experience a little of their world, to appreciate beauty in another person's culture or way of life. That will give us the opportunity to develop compassion.

And again, it must not be the narrow province of a small group of rich, entitled or elite persons ... whoever they are ..., but ought to be available to everybody. Education ought to be free, and funded by the state; libraries ought to be free, and funded by governments, local and at other levels. Where one cannot get an education, at least libraries offer another way. But now, again, there is talk sometimes of getting rid of libraries altogether (because you can "consume" all that "content" on your computer or other devices); and a lot of the books in my own personal library have come from libraries - books that were discarded from circulation, which I bought up cheap.

The "answer", broadly speaking, is the same as ever. We need more education, and everybody needs it, and needs more of it. Where everybody disagrees is that we each feel, in our own bubbles, or in our own social circles, that it is our own field (or fields) that have suffered.

What we really each believe, secretly, is that the world would be better off if only we ourselves (or somebody like us, only better, or improved) were allowed to run things. And then, you would see, we would put things right!

This is a kind of apocalyptic or magical thinking, in its way (my own special field of study). The believer in these areas looks to overturn the wrong social order; the unjust or ignorant or corrupt will be thrown down, and the righteous or good people (ourselves) will at last be recognized, and assume their rightful places of authority.

The antidote of the Humanities is to broaden our experience: either directly, through travel, immersion in another culture, learning a new language; or indirectly, for example through reading, if they are the kinds of books that make us experience the world from a radically different perspective. The trend of the hard sciences, by contrast, tends to sharpen our focus on discrete points of facts or evidence, but sometimes cannot put together bits that, due to our own blind spots, seem unrelated.

I could write much more, no doubt, though it will probably be more of the same. I would be glad to give more specific details, on request, but I would hope that my general themes are clear enough.

Bill

On Thursday 03 June 2021 15:54:53 Marvin Jones via tde-users wrote:

On Thu, 3 Jun 2021, William Morder via tde-users wrote:

...

Little details give a quick glimpse. How often do I read somebody writing about "honing in" [WRONG] on a point, rather than "homing in" [correct]? I used to keep a list of these grievances, until my hard drive crashed, with a view to writing some sort of essay on the sad state of the English language, in its various forms and literatures; and I might still write it, but I need to recover that data, or to start the list again. And I could give hundreds more examples, but readers either know what I mean, or they don't.

I assume you accumulated all those examples by "pouring over" a lot of material!

Yours in jest, Jonesy

No! not by "pouring over" [WRONG!], but rather by "poring over" [correct] a lot of material.

To pore: to contemplate, to study closely.

yours in jest, as well as seriously, too!

Bill

P.S. I can't help it. I am an insufferable pedant.

Anno domini 2021 Sun, 23 May 19:51:43 -0500 J Leslie Turriff scripsit:

On 2021-05-23 19:05:50 deloptes wrote: [...] IMO the underlying problem (at least in the US) is the low pay provided in the education industry, which drives out those with good teaching skills. In the school I attended after moving to the US, math was taught by the athletics coach! I also wonder about the abilities of the people who set the curricula standards.

Same in Europe. Some "economists" aka "experts" make curricula standards on what they think the industry needs. Needless to say that's not what the industry needs nor what moves society forward.

Nik

Leslie

Dr. Nikolaus Klepp wrote:

That's the problem. When was the last time you came across something really mindblowing? Somhow society has lost it's dreams, only the slavers dream on.

When I read about Perelman solving the Poincare conjecture. Unfortunately there is more attention payed to EU song contest :D and avg. idiot has no idea who Poincare was, who Perelman is and what exactly the conjecture is telling us.

Ok, enough of the rant. We live in interesting times, and to loosly cite William Gibson: maybe the apocapypse is already happening right now, but it's a slow one, and that's the reason for the uncomfort some of you feel. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dlvle5YBv4 )

"Some of you" - this is excluding you? Uncomfort? Not sure if you have children, if you do it is strange you exclude yourself, if you don't ... I would rather not comment.

I woke up in 1998 when I read the story of Nikola Tesla. Shortly after The Matrix came out. Some years ago Idiocracy came out. I am not suppose to write about my feelings because it could lead to misunderstanding and trigger COBRA* :D

_________________________________ *COBRA is like SWAT in Austria

Dr. Nikolaus Klepp wrote:

Ok ... another victim of that darn rabbit hole ... you like a real cobra sticker to put on your car? Just in case, you know ... the friend I got them from told me it is good thing to do so, helps to pass as "one of us" when you are "one of them". He had his stories and in real live he flew Blackhawks - and went down that same rabbithole.

codes are changing and if you miss the code, you could have more trouble. I prefer to keep silent until the time comes to act :) and I hope I'll be ready until then - which is the frustrating part - to get ready.

Anno domini 2021 Fri, 21 May 14:05:07 -0500 J Leslie Turriff scripsit:

On 2021-05-21 13:45:06 Dr. Nikolaus Klepp wrote:

...

Anno domini 2021 Fri, 21 May 18:30:05 +0000

dep via tde-users scripsit:

...

said Dr. Nikolaus Klepp: | > | Oh, I just run /opt/trinity/bin/r14-xdg-update as root on a console | > | when the message appears. Then reboot and all is fine.

Once for each user account, right?

...

...

| > | > Ah. Interesting. Thank you. Does this solve the problem permanently, | > or only until the next reboot? | | Permanently across reboots .. well, till the next major TDE update that | forces r14-xdg-update to do some special things. | | Nik

Thanks! I'll give it a shot and if it works I'll join the chorus of those who hope it gets added to the documentation.

Real men don't read docs :)

Nik

In my years as a mainframe programmer and later administrator, I did indeed encounter quite a number of Real Men who complained that IBM provides "too much documentation". That didn't keep them from coming around periodically to pick my brain. :-) Sadly, I now often find myself complaining of the lack of documentation in the Unix world. I DO understand that the team is small and the tasks large, but having the same problem pop up after each upgrade, with the same group of incoherent 'just do this and all will be well (until next time)' is extremely frustrating.

Agreed. Aparently I don't know why /opt/trinity/bin/r14-xdg-update is not run by the postinstall-script. But then I have to admit I don't know this cute little program is doing at all :)

@docs: I like the way FreeBSD handles these things. Linux is still nice, but there is a new generation of programmers that prefer youtube videos to written documentation. Maybe I'm too old for this, but the last days I was faced with the problem of picking a person for a project that's not afraid of the console - didn't know that reading is martial arts nowadays ;)

Nik

I did find a bit of additional information about the Menu system in the Administrator Guide handbook, and I will be looking at the XDG documentation to see what I can glean there.

Leslie

...

...

-- dep

Pictures: http://www.ipernity.com/doc/depscribe/album Column: https://www.athensnews.com/opinion/columns/the_view_from_mudsock_ heights/ ____________________________________________________ tde-users mailing list -- users@trinitydesktop.org To unsubscribe send an email to users-leave@trinitydesktop.org Web mail archive available at https://mail.trinitydesktop.org/mailman3/hyperkitty/list/users@trinitydes ktop.org

Leslie

On Fri, 21 May 2021 21:26:32 +0200 "Dr. Nikolaus Klepp" office@klepp.biz wrote:

Agreed. Aparently I don't know why /opt/trinity/bin/r14-xdg-update is not run by the postinstall-script. But then I have to admit I don't know this cute little program is doing at all :)

Mostly, it adjusts some environment variables, config file locations, and menu details for better compliance with the XDG specification put out by freedesktop.org . It's a very long and ugly script that as far as I can tell should have no real effect unless you're migrating a profile from KDE3 or a version of TDE more than five years old.

If you're doing a new install, or installing on top of a working TDE less than five years old, I'd assume that any whining it does is a false positive unless you encounter actual breakage.

Personally, my opinion is that test 9 should be modified or retired because it constantly causes trouble by indicating breakage on systems that are clearly not broken.

E. Liddell

On Fri, 21 May 2021 15:37:33 -0500 J Leslie Turriff jlturriff@mail.com wrote:

On 2021-05-21 15:16:33 E. Liddell wrote:

...

On Fri, 21 May 2021 21:26:32 +0200

"Dr. Nikolaus Klepp" office@klepp.biz wrote:

...

Agreed. Aparently I don't know why /opt/trinity/bin/r14-xdg-update is not run by the postinstall-script. But then I have to admit I don't know this cute little program is doing at all :)

Mostly, it adjusts some environment variables, config file locations, and menu details for better compliance with the XDG specification put out by freedesktop.org . It's a very long and ugly script that as far as I can tell should have no real effect unless you're migrating a profile from KDE3 or a version of TDE more than five years old.

If that's so, it (at least test9) needs to be able to determine the previous level of Trinity and skip processing if it was less than two versions old. Maybe during the upgrade, a file containing the FROM level should be written for R14-xdg-update to consult.

A closer look shows three sets of changes that apply to more recent versions. They're labeled as follows:

Rename/remove old link files in Konqueror sidebar network panel. [prior to 2018 05 26]

Rename startkde/exitkde events in /share/config/knotify.eventsrc [prior to 2018 11 01]

Remove Konqueror's icon cache entry for / (issue TDE/tdebase#1) [prior to 2021 03 28]

How important are these things? Depends on the user, I guess. I personally could not care less if there are broken links to things I don't use anyway in the Konqueror sidebar, but I'm sure others do.

In any case, none of those three entries have anything to do with what any of the tests are looking at—they're all testing renaming stuff from really obsolete versions, as far as I can tell, and yes, they should be gated somehow. If I'm reading the script correctly, the needed version information is already available.

E. Liddell

On Saturday 22 May 2021 09:40:33 E. Liddell wrote:

On Fri, 21 May 2021 15:37:33 -0500

J Leslie Turriff jlturriff@mail.com wrote:

...

On 2021-05-21 15:16:33 E. Liddell wrote:

...

On Fri, 21 May 2021 21:26:32 +0200

"Dr. Nikolaus Klepp" office@klepp.biz wrote:

...

Agreed. Aparently I don't know why /opt/trinity/bin/r14-xdg-update is not run by the postinstall-script. But then I have to admit I don't know this cute little program is doing at all :)

Mostly, it adjusts some environment variables, config file locations, and menu details for better compliance with the XDG specification put out by freedesktop.org . It's a very long and ugly script that as far as I can tell should have no real effect unless you're migrating a profile from KDE3 or a version of TDE more than five years old.

If that's so, it (at least test9) needs to be able to determine the previous level of Trinity and skip processing if it was less than two versions old. Maybe during the upgrade, a file containing the FROM level should be written for R14-xdg-update to consult.

A closer look shows three sets of changes that apply to more recent versions. They're labeled as follows:

Rename/remove old link files in Konqueror sidebar network panel. [prior to 2018 05 26]

Rename startkde/exitkde events in /share/config/knotify.eventsrc [prior to 2018 11 01]

Remove Konqueror's icon cache entry for / (issue TDE/tdebase#1) [prior to 2021 03 28]

How important are these things? Depends on the user, I guess. I personally could not care less if there are broken links to things I don't use anyway in the Konqueror sidebar, but I'm sure others do.

In any case, none of those three entries have anything to do with what any of the tests are looking at—they're all testing renaming stuff from really obsolete versions, as far as I can tell, and yes, they should be gated somehow. If I'm reading the script correctly, the needed version information is already available.

E. Liddell

I will echo, and echo again, what some others have said. We all know that we are using a desktop that is still "in development"; it has improved greatly in the ten years or so that I've been a user, however we have a very small development team and limited resources. To myself, it seems a miracle that we can use TDE at all, especially when considering what other DEs are like. (Whenever I am forced to use another desktop, I feel handicapped, like being forced to type with my elbows while blindfolded.)

So this thing, from my point of view, is a trivial bug, and doesn't disrupt my work or daily activities. I only deal with it once, whenever I reinstall my OS. (And even there, it has been more than a year or so, since I last encountered this issue. I thought it was gone for ever.) But then I run my script to overwrite and correct that file; now everything works fine again, and I forget about it. Or maybe Nik's suggestion will work even better?

While I do appreciate Leslie's concern (that this may reflect some deeper issue - sorry if I am misparaphrasing), as a mere user, it does not interfere with my actual life, so it seems very remote and insignificant. I also wonder if there is life on Mars, but my curiosity does not impel me to go there to find out for myself.

Unless one is a developer (or works, or used to work, in some related field), then this discussion is rather pointless; it keeps getting rehashed over and over (the third or fourth round on this same issue). The off-topic discussions are more worthwhile than this repetition and reduplication.

Let's just let the developers do their jobs; I feel sure that they will come up with some kind of resolution, sooner or later. And in the meanwhile, post instructions for a quick fix, somewhere that everybody can find it, such as on the pages for installation instructions.

Bill

said J Leslie Turriff:

| In my years as a mainframe programmer and later administrator, I did | indeed encounter quite a number of Real Men who complained that IBM | provides "too much documentation". That didn't keep them from coming | around periodically to pick my brain. :-) Sadly, I now often find myself | complaining of the lack of documentation in the Unix world. I DO | understand that the team is small and the tasks large, but having the | same problem pop up after each upgrade, with the same group of | incoherent 'just do this and all will be well (until next time)' is | extremely frustrating.

<slight rant> when i was doing the previously mentioned swap from a failing MBR drive to a larger GPT drive, i thought there would be documentation -- instructions -- as to how it can be done. searched and searched. found people crowing how they had done it with dual boot, or with an lvm setup, all mine's-bigger-than-yours stuff, but no simple instructions on how to make the swap without losing data. as a result, what should have taken half a day took almost three. annoying as all get out. then again, the reason i didn't want to do a new install was all the tweaks and fiddling i'd done over the years without bothering to document any of it, so . . . </slight rant> -- dep

Pictures: http://www.ipernity.com/doc/depscribe/album Column: https://www.athensnews.com/opinion/columns/the_view_from_mudsock_heights/

On 2021-05-21 14:57:17 Michael via tde-users wrote:

On Friday 21 May 2021 02:41:32 pm dep via tde-users wrote:

...

said J Leslie Turriff: I DO

| understand that the team is small and the tasks large, but having the | same problem pop up after each upgrade, with the same group of | incoherent 'just do this and all will be well (until next time)' is | extremely frustrating.

<slight rant> when i was doing the previously mentioned swap from a failing MBR drive to a larger GPT drive, i thought there would be documentation -- instructions -- as to how it can be done. searched and searched. found people crowing how they had done it with dual boot, or with an lvm setup, all mine's-bigger-than-yours stuff, but no simple instructions on how to make the swap without losing data. as a result, what should have taken half a day took almost three. annoying as all get out. then again, the reason i didn't want to do a new install was all the tweaks and fiddling i'd done over the years without bothering to document any of it, so . . . </slight rant>

Hi dep,

S'Okay, probably the easiest method is to place /home on a separate partition and then do a 'clean' install while preserving /home. Here’s some (crappy) docs I did on the process.

https://forum.mxlinux.org/viewtopic.php?f=92&t=59308&p=587358#p58869...

Best, Michael

As an IBM mainframer, brought up to always isolate application from system components, I always did this as a matter of course. Before the advent of RAID and terabyte storage volumes, the other reason for doing this was to prevent disk-head thrashing (still pertinent for those of us still using rotating storage). (Ideally, I should have a separate volume for swap, but in that respect I'm cheating by using a partition on my system volume.)

Leslie

On 2021-05-21 14:41:32 dep via tde-users wrote:

said J Leslie Turriff: | In my years as a mainframe programmer and later administrator, I did | indeed encounter quite a number of Real Men who complained that IBM | provides "too much documentation". That didn't keep them from coming | around periodically to pick my brain. :-) Sadly, I now often find myself | complaining of the lack of documentation in the Unix world. I DO | understand that the team is small and the tasks large, but having the | same problem pop up after each upgrade, with the same group of | incoherent 'just do this and all will be well (until next time)' is | extremely frustrating.

<slight rant> when i was doing the previously mentioned swap from a failing MBR drive to a larger GPT drive, i thought there would be documentation -- instructions -- as to how it can be done. searched and searched. found people crowing how they had done it with dual boot, or with an lvm setup, all mine's-bigger-than-yours stuff, but no simple instructions on how to make the swap without losing data. as a result, what should have taken half a day took almost three. annoying as all get out. then again, the reason i didn't want to do a new install was all the tweaks and fiddling i'd done over the years without bothering to document any of it, so . . .

</slight rant>

dep

<g> In my 30 years in there was only one site that I worked at who did more than pay lip-service to application documentation, and that was only because the project was a total replacement and all of the documentation was done before the code was written. The last one I worked at was the worst; the company recruited their application programmers from their application user pool, giving them only minimal OTJ 'training'. All of the programmers who had originally developed the system had retired, and there was no real documentation at all. I worked at sites that ran the gamut from one to the other. I must point out that in contrast to documentation (or lack thereof) of in-house written applications, there was enough documentation of system-level (OS and utilities) software to make some programmers complain that they couldn't find what they needed to look up because there were Too Many manuals. :-)

Leslie -- openSUSE Leap 15.2 x86_64 Qt: 3.5.0 TDE: R14.0.9 tde-config: 1.0

On Friday 21 May 2021 11:45:06 Dr. Nikolaus Klepp wrote:

Anno domini 2021 Fri, 21 May 18:30:05 +0000

dep via tde-users scripsit:

...

said Dr. Nikolaus Klepp: | > | Oh, I just run /opt/trinity/bin/r14-xdg-update as root on a console | > | when the message appeares. Then reboot and all is fine. | > | > Ah. Interesting. Thank you. Does this solve the problem permanently, | > or only until the next reboot? | | Permanently across reboots .. well, till the next major TDE update that | forces r14-xdg-update to do some special things. | | Nik

Thanks! I'll give it a shot and if it works I'll join the chorus of those who hope it gets added to the documentation.

Real men don't read docs :)

Nik

* {Same as previous email, but with slight correction, see below. Sorry about that!}

Real men don't join users groups, and especially don't subscribe to mailing lists. Least of all do they (I mean, we) need your advice. Real men are out there, somewhere in the wilderness, at least in our dreams, wrestling bears and tigers.

;-)

By the way, I {will}* try out your recommendation:

run /opt/trinity/bin/r14-xdg-update as root on a console ... then reboot [slightly edited]

I created a file with the correct lines: applications-tdemenuedit.menu-<corrected>.txt then overwrite the one with the wrong (KDE4/5 krap) lines: applications-tdemenuedit.menu Then reboot. But your suggestion seems easier.

Just wondering, though, why anybody (J. Leslie Turriff or others) runs KDE4/5 krap, unless somebody is forcing you to do so - i.e., by torture, blackmail, a loaded weapon pointed at your head ...?

Bill

On Friday 21 May 2021 14:45:06 Dr. Nikolaus Klepp wrote:

Anno domini 2021 Fri, 21 May 18:30:05 +0000

dep via tde-users scripsit:

...

said Dr. Nikolaus Klepp: | > | Oh, I just run /opt/trinity/bin/r14-xdg-update as root on a | > | console when the message appeares. Then reboot and all is | > | fine. | > | > Ah. Interesting. Thank you. Does this solve the problem | > permanently, or only until the next reboot? | | Permanently across reboots .. well, till the next major TDE update | that forces r14-xdg-update to do some special things. | | Nik

Thanks! I'll give it a shot and if it works I'll join the chorus of those who hope it gets added to the documentation.

Real men don't read docs :)

sush now, Nik, thats supposed to be a secret. :)

Nik

...

-- dep

Pictures: http://www.ipernity.com/doc/depscribe/album Column: https://www.athensnews.com/opinion/columns/the_view_from_mud sock_heights/ ____________________________________________________ tde-users mailing list -- users@trinitydesktop.org To unsubscribe send an email to users-leave@trinitydesktop.org Web mail archive available at https://mail.trinitydesktop.org/mailman3/hyperkitty/list/users@trini tydesktop.org

Cheers, Gene Heskett

said Michele Calgaro via tde-users: | On 2021/05/22 03:25 AM, Dr. Nikolaus Klepp wrote: | >> Ah. Interesting. Thank you. Does this solve the problem permanently, | >> or only until the next reboot? | > | > Permanently across reboots .. well, till the next major TDE update | > that forces r14-xdg-update to do some special things. | > | > Nik | | it will depends on the actual user config. In most cases, it should | solve it nicely. In some other cases, the rename kde- --> tde- would | probably fail and would require manual editing of the menu file.

Also interesting -- I would not be surprised if my configuration contains items from whenever it was that KDE moved to the current way of doing menus. KDE 1.x iirc was purely manual, where you'd add the items yourself. I don't remember when the little applet that populated the menu came out, or when it became automagic on install. But I've been passing menu to menu to menu for close to decades now.

It would be cool -- because the devs have nothing else to do <g> -- if there were a little script or utility that would check the menu against the real world, running checks to see if the executables exist and maybe changing such entries as are a little wonky, as when the kde- tde- conflict occurs, with allowance made when both exist. And maybe putting an asterisk or something next to menu entries that don't actually lead to anything that exists.

In the best of all possible worlds imagined by me, menu editing would include a konqueror-like icon view that allowed much simpler movement of applications from one submenu to another, and so on.

I'm sure there are excellent reasons for it to have evolved in the direction it did. But ideas that won't be implemented cost nothing! -- dep

Pictures: http://www.ipernity.com/doc/depscribe/album Column: https://www.athensnews.com/opinion/columns/the_view_from_mudsock_heights/