So, I'm back af­ter a 9-­day trip to the beach... re­laxed, strong, hap­py... and TV-­less since it seems to have burned some­thing in­side when I turned it on yes­ter­day.

Oh, well, who needs it any­way.

And next week I'm see­ing Kill Bill Vol. 2!

I am a Taranti­no fan, and it has so far scored 100% at the tomatome­ter (www.rot­ten­toma­toes.­com), so it seems to be good!

On a pro­fes­sion­al lev­el, I just nabbed enough sup­port con­tracts to do what I want to do this year.

A rea­son­able fixed in­come is some­thing I haven't had in a cou­ple of years, it has been up­-and-­down, great months and bad month­s, with a rather nice av­er­age, but...

I need­ed a fixed in­come this year be­cause I in­tend to save a cou­ple thou­sand dol­lars for sep­tem­ber.

Why? Be­cause I am go­ing to meet a fel­low KDE de­vel­op­er, the one that's clos­est go­ing east from Buenos Aires...

In a whim, I checked out kde­bind­ings/d­cop­python from KDE's CVS.

I see the READ­ME: dcopy­thon is bro­ken

Then I said to my­self: maybe I can fix it. And you know what? It seems to be not bro­ken! :-)

At least for sim­ple da­ta type­s, that is.

dcop­python lets your python pro­gram be­come a DCOP serv­er or clien­t.

A DCOP serv­er is ca­pa­ble of be­ing con­trolled by KDE's kd­cop, and is a very sim­ple way to make your ap­pli­ca­tion ex­ter­nal­ly script­able.

A DCOP client is some­thing that con­tacts a DCOP server, so that means you can con­trol and script KDE ap­pli­ca­tions (or oth­er DCOP server­s) from python script­s.

The neat­est thing here is that this stuff does­n't re­quire Qt!

I in­tend to use it to make some of my apps ex­ter­nal­ly script­able with­out PyKDE.

Good ar­ti­cle at IBM De­vel­op­er­work­s.

How­ev­er, I would use dcop "kon­q*" in­stead of dcop kon­q*, or else stuff may fail :-)

I am read­ing com­ments about ars tech­ni­ca's KDE 3.2 re­view in /., os­news, etc.

Here's the stupid ar­gu­ment I men­tioned in the ti­tle: "G­NOME is bet­ter than KDE be­cause GNOME does X and KDE does Y" [1]

That ar­gu­ment is ab­so­lute­ly stupid un­less you can show in­con­tro­versible proof that X is bet­ter than Y. And for 99% of the in­stances of the ar­gu­men­t, you can't. And even in that case, you are iso­lat­ing one fea­ture or de­ci­sion in a very com­plex sys­tem.

Is "yes/No" but­ton or­der­ing bet­ter? Maybe. Maybe not. I know "No/Yes" di­alogs piss me of­f, but that does­n't mean one is ab­so­lute­ly bet­ter.

And be­sides, sup­pose KDE de­cid­ed to do all things like GNOME. Min­i­mal­is­tic UI, GCon­f-ed­i­tor for any­thing more ad­vanced than chang­ing the date.

Then what's the point? Why would an­oth­er bland, bor­ing UI be use­ful at al­l? [2]

There's a say­ing: "Taste is in va­ri­ety".

In an old­er ver­sion of this, I said foot­notes were bro­ken. They aren't, as you can see :-)

Warn­ing: flam­able.

It seems Ilan has found a fea­ture some de­vel­op­er wrote, called ref­er­ers log, and thus this blog.

Well, Ilan, I will make sure to fol­low this link so you no­tice this re­ply :-)

Since you in­tend to re­in­force your der­mal struc­ture through ex­po­si­tion to high tem­per­a­tures, let me be the first to as­sist you.

I am ful­ly aware of ev­ery­one's right to crit­i­cis­m. In fac­t, I ful­ly en­dorse it.

I al­so en­dorse my right to tell any crit­ic that his crit­i­cism has the val­ue of ma­nure. Call it meta­crit­i­cis­m.

And yes, a 10000 LOC piece of code is worth more than your lame patch. Want to ver­i­fy it? Check mar­ket val­ue of both things. You'll be amazed.

In oth­er is­sues,

• It's re­al­­ly a bad thing to use quotes on things that are not quot­ed, as you did. If you want to show em­pha­­sis, use cur­­sive or bold, not quotes.

• I am hap­py to chal­lenge your no­­tion­s, in­­stead of chal­leng­ing mine, be­­cause I think your no­­tions are stupid. want de­­tail­s?

Your no­tions are stupid be­cause:

• You make the point in a con­de­s­cend­ing man­n­er. What is that garbage about "bet­ter qual­i­­ty user­s"? if not con­de­s­cen­­sion you would hate on a de­vel­op­er? At least the de­vel­op­ers are pro­vid­ing val­ue. You aren't.

• Your project is tain­t­ed by para­noia. Noone is out to get you. Not even I am. I just don't suf­fer fools glad­­ly.

• TANSTAAFL. You get so called free soft­­ware, but you still pay for it. You don't want to pay the price, don't use it. The price, Ilan, is that you have no con­trol over it, be­­cause you did­n't pay for its de­vel­op­­men­t.

  Oh, you may say, I am get­t­ing in­­­volved. I re­leased Di­rec­­to­ry Free KDE! No, if you had got­ten in­­­volved, KDE would have those di­rec­­to­ry re­f­er­ences re­­moved, not your patch that noone will ev­er use.

• Your writ­ing style is stupid, and an idea wrapped in stu­pid­i­­ty is a stupid idea. I al­­most faint­ed with the re­f­er­ence to the "won­der­­ful­­ly sub­­ver­­sive path". Stu­pid­i­­ty.

• You ob­vi­ous­­ly have no idea of the ef­­fort in­­­volved in ac­­tu­al soft­­ware de­vel­op­­men­t. I do. I know it so well, I stopped. You just have a chip in your shoul­der and an at­ti­­tude. Your ig­no­rance drives your para­noia. Your para­noia drives your work. Your work drives noth­ing, be­­cause it's lame.

In your site, you say "think­ing dif­fer­ent­ly, think­ing dan­ger­ous­ly".

Amaz­ing as it is that you ape a mul­ti­-­bil­lion dol­lar cor­po­ra­tion's slo­gan to pre­tend to show your dis­con­formis­m, I agree.

You think dif­fer­ent­ly. You think wrong­ly, too, but at least yes, you think dif­fer­ent­ly. As for the dan­ger­ous­ly part... well, I sup­pose that if you are too busy think­ing dif­fer­ent­ly you may fall in­to a drain or some­thing.

In short:

• Your so-­­called soft­­ware project is­n't.

• It's a patch, and it's a lame one.

• Your at­ti­­tude, if you saw it in a de­vel­op­er (which you aren't), you would den­­nounce. So you are al­­so a hyp­­ocrite. (note: I am not. I ful­­ly en­joy flam­ing peo­­ple some­­times , and sup­­port ev­ery­one's right to flame and be ornery at will).

• Your im­pulse comes from sheer ig­no­rance, para­noia and con­­ceit.

I am hap­py to en­cour­age you, Ilan, in your path. Please go and prove me wrong, by de­vel­op­ing a much nicer KDE, and then mak­ing it the de­fault in many, many dis­tros.

On the oth­er hand, I am will­ing to bet USD 20 that in six months you will have noth­ing to show.

Go ahead, make my day. Or at least earn me a din­ner.