The new dock-based, MT KRN is advancing well, although the amount of things broken in it is a bit scary. Of course the code to do all the things 0.6.11 did is still there (and anyway, that's what CVS exists for ;-) but it is totally divorced from the UI.

On oth­er is­sues, I got over slash­dot to­day, af­ter a long while. Af­ter I thought the site had reached the bot­tom, they get a shov­el and dig deep­er :-P

No, I don't mean /. it­self, but the peo­ple com­ment­ing in it. What *is* the point for them? What do they get? I am a firm be­liev­er in quid pro quo[1].

Are they so eas­i­ly amused as to be re­ward­ed by the imag­ined re­ac­tion of peo­ple read­ing about grits and pet­ri­fied teenag­er star­let­s?

I doubt any of them will read this, but... well, let me tell you: there is prob­a­bly no re­ac­tion at al­l. I know I just look at that waste of elec­trons with sort of a blank ex­pres­sion, and then click "nex­t". I ex­pect ev­ery­one to do the same (ex­cept for the grit­ter him­self, who prob­a­bly looks at his oeu­vre and gig­gles in­sane­ly for around 13 min­utes).

But to­day, it had reached new depth­s. One guy made a poor taste com­ment about GNOME, pos­ing as a KDE ad­vo­cate (I se­ri­ous­ly doubt he was, I'm more in­clined to be­lieve he was just a a trol­l).

But the an­swer left me as­ton­ished. It in­clud­ed a graph­ic de­scrip­tion of how all KDE ad­vo­cates are worm­s, who look for­ward to be put in a hook. Pret­ty dis­gust­ing. Again: I don't be­lieve that an­swer was writ­ten by a GNOME ad­vo­cate, but just by a pre­pubescent mo­ron.

How­ev­er, when the time comes that peo­ple need to im­per­son­ate oth­ers to fight in the name of those oth­er­s' be­lief­s, such peo­ple have deep trou­bles. So, sor­ry, /., you are now of­fi­cial­ly a loony bin. It used to be fun to hang around there. Close it, and start an­oth­er site. Or rather: don't close it, and start a new one, hope­ful­ly the stupid and in­sane will stay in /., trolling and in­sult­ing each oth­er.

If that day comes, email me, I will be on an­oth­er site. Which one? Sor­ry, I won't say. It's a nice lit­tle site, with short dis­cus­sion­s, usu­al­ly in a po­lite tone.

I al­so saw a dis­turb­ing trend here, with the trust met­ric ar­ti­cle, and the Jab­ber peo­ple ar­gu­ing about whether they de­served to be "mas­ter" or what­ev­er... light­en up­[3]. If you are a mas­ter, you are a mas­ter re­gard­less of what col­or your name ap­pears on ad­voga­to, and be­ing marked as mas­ter here if you are not is just food for the ego, and junk food, for that mat­ter.

And it must be true be­cause I say so, and I am a mas­ter... oop­s, Jour­ney­er, what­ev­er that means :-)

This must be the long­est di­ary en­try I ev­er wrote, and I'd bet not many have writ­ten longer ones, hope­ful­ly you, hy­po­thet­i­cal read­er, will for­give me.

[1] Yes, I be­lieve we don't do free soft­ware out of the good­ness of our heart­s[2], and that we all have ul­te­ri­or mo­tives, even if we are not ful­ly aware of them. I should write about it some­day.

[2] I al­so be­lieve the end re­sult is pret­ty much in­dis­tin­guish­able from what would hap­pen if we were do­ing it out of the good­ness in our hearts (or rather your heart­s, mine is dark and eeeevil, just ask around)

[3] Of course ask­ing oth­ers to light­en up about things that are of no big im­por­tance to me is easy. That's why I do it. I sup­pose that if ad­voga­to rat­ed projects and KDE was some­how marked as lame, I would care. I hope peo­ple will tell me to light­en up when that hap­pen­s.