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Oldie from Scum games
Jingle Bells, Charlton smells, Georgie Best's a queer, And as for the Stretford End, They've all got Gonorrhea. Oh Jingle Bells (repeat)...
Coro Marching On Together Chorus
All-time classic Leeds FanChant. One of the best club anthems around. Sorry this is chorus only.
Coro We Are Leeds, We Are Leeds
All time classic. Great ringtone.
Coro Glory, Glory Leeds United
Great fanchant finishes with classic "on and on". Nice ringtone.
Top rouser, hairs on the back of the neck stuff (Ed: Get this as yer ringtone)
Coro When I Was Just a Little Boy
Sung at most games
Coro We All Love Leeds (Extended Version)
Truly an anthem now. (Ed: Extended version so excuse if takes a while to come through. Well worth the wait :)).
Coro We're Leeds and We're Proud of It
Still true no matter.

subset: commoncrawl


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The desert lies before you. Your mission is to plant a flag a four days march into the interior. You do not have any special equipment and must rely on your own powers. Carrying food and the flag itself is not a problem. The only limitation has to do with water: you can carry only a five-day supply of water. Thus, the amount of water you could bring with you would take you only two and a half days toward your destination and back to your
starting point. Given these conditions, how can you fulfill your mission using at most a twelve-day supply of water? (You can assume that
you have plenty of water at the starting point.)


text:
There's an active debate inside newsrooms, and particularly within the NPR newsroom, about how to characterize the statements of President Trump when they are at odds with evidence to the contrary.
That debate began during the presidential election campaign. For example, in 2015, candidate Trump claimed that when the World Trade Center was attacked on Sept. 11, "I watched in Jersey City, N.J., where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down."
The claim was never substantiated and NPR said so. But we didn't call him a liar.
In September 2016, Trump got into a tiff with an African-American pastor, the Rev. Faith Green Timmons of Bethel United Methodist Church in Flint, Mich. Timmons had criticized Trump for failing to keep his remarks to her congregation, as promised, nonpartisan. Trump later had his own version of that event. Our reporter Scott Detrow was there. He reported what he saw and heard, and that didn't back up Trump's account. Back then some listeners asked why NPR didn't just report that Trump was a liar.
This week that same question is being posed to NPR.
This time, NPR's Mary Louise Kelly reported on Trump's fence-mending visit to the CIA's headquarters in Langley, Va., the day after his inauguration. Despite his tweets comparing the intelligence services to those of Nazi Germany, Trump told his audience he is with them "a thousand percent." He also said that the media were to blame for making up the feud between him and the intelligence services. Kelly said, "It's provably not true. In that same speech out of the CIA this weekend, Trump also falsely inflated the size of the crowd at his inauguration."
Now many listeners want to know why Kelly didn't just call the president a liar.
On Morning Edition, Kelly explains why. She says she went to the Oxford English Dictionary seeking the definition of "lie."
"A false statement made with intent to deceive," Kelly says. "Intent being the key word there. Without the ability to peer into Donald Trump's head, I can't tell you what his intent was. I can tell you what he said and how that squares, or doesn't, with facts."
NPR's senior vice president for news, Michael Oreskes, says NPR has decided not to use the word "lie" and that Kelly got it right by avoiding that word.
"Our job as journalists is to report, to find facts, and establish their authenticity and share them with everybody," says Oreskes. "It's really important that people understand that these aren't our opinions. ... These are things we've established through our journalism, through our reporting ... and I think the minute you start branding things with a word like 'lie,' you push people away from you."
Oreskes acknowledges that other news organizations have made a different decision, most notably The New York Times, where he worked for more than two decades. The Times uses the word "lie" in this headline about Trump's repeated claim that millions of votes cast by immigrants who are in this country illegally prevented him from winning the popular vote.
As the Times and NPR have reported, there is no credible evidence of widespread voter fraud.
Let's talk about what to call a fact that is not a fact. President Trump made a string of statements at the CIA over the weekend. Our correspondent Mary Louise Kelly used this language to describe some of them.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, BYLINE: It's provably not true. That's what he said, and that is false. Trump also falsely inflated the size of the crowd at his inauguration.
GREENE: But Mary Louise did not use the word lie. And many listeners asked why. To talk about why, Steve Inskeep sat down with Mary Louise as well as Michael Oreskes. He's the senior vice president who is in charge of news here at NPR.
STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: Good morning to you both.
MICHAEL ORESKES, BYLINE: Good morning.
KELLY: Good morning.
INSKEEP: Mary Louise, what exactly did people ask you?
KELLY: Well, to set the stage a bit further, on day one of his presidency, Donald Trump went to the CIA and delivered a remarkable speech - remarkable in part because he said several things that were not true. So in our reporting on that speech, we described them as you just heard there - as untrue claims, false denials, et cetera, which led to my inbox exploding with people writing to say, why are you pussyfooting around? Why not just say he lied?
INSKEEP: Just to be clear, pussyfooting was a phrase that someone...
KELLY: A direct quote that, I think, a couple of people tweeted at me.
INSKEEP: OK. Why not say he lied?
KELLY: So this has prompted me to go actually look up the word lie in the Oxford English Dictionary. And here's the definition. I'll read it - (reading) a false statement made with intent to deceive. Intent being the key word there - without the ability to peer into Donald Trump's head, I can't tell you what his intent was. I can tell you what he said and how that squares - or doesn't - with fact...
INSKEEP: And leave you...
KELLY: ...With publicly available fact.
INSKEEP: ...Leave the listener to make their own conclusions.
Mike Oreskes, how much discussion has there been about this word, lie?
ORESKES: There's been quite a bit. And of course, it began during the campaign. And we at NPR have decided not to use the word lie in most situations. And there's really two reasons. One of them is the one that Mary Louise cited. But to me, there's a second reason - and maybe more important. Our job as journalists is to report - to find facts, establish their authenticity and share them with everybody. And I think that when you use words like lie, it gets in the way of that.
And there's the really important work we do, the important work that Mary Louise does. And by the way, I want to just interject. I thought she handled this perfectly. And it's really important that people understand that these aren't our opinions. These aren't just thoughts we happen to have. These are things we've established through our journalism, through our reporting. And I don't want to do anything that gets in the way of people seeing that reporting. And I think the minute you start branding things with a word like lie, you push people away from you.
KELLY: I would add, though, that this is something that reporters in our newsroom are wrestling with.
ORESKES: Totally.
KELLY: I will count myself in there - because we are trained as journalists to pick our words carefully. We are also trained to call a spade a spade.
INSKEEP: Correct. And I want to make clear a couple of points here. First, you're not saying the word lie is banned from NPR.
ORESKES: No.
INSKEEP: There's no word that is banned...
ORESKES: No.
INSKEEP: ...From NPR News. We use the words that we use and the best words that we possibly can. The second observation is that some news organizations are clearly making a different choice.
ORESKES: Right.
INSKEEP: We've had Dean Baquet of The New York Times, the editor of The New York Times, on the program. And they used it this very week, also referring to the president. The headline was "Trump Repeats An Election Lie To Top Lawmakers."
What do you think of their choice?
ORESKES: I don't want to edit their newspaper any more than I would want my friend Dean deciding what we should do at NPR. I think one of the beauties of the First Amendment is we can make different choices. I don't think there's any question that Mary Louise and her stories and other NPR stories have clearly communicated the facts in this case. And I have a lot of respect for our audiences. And I think they understand what's happening.
And to the other point Mary Louise made, it's for each of us to make our own judgments about what we think the motives have been here. I think one of the big challenges for us will be in situations where the falsehood is repeated so often that it becomes clear, the intent. And then I think it'll be fair to challenge us on the question of - the intent is so obvious that you could add it up and come to the word lie. We'll see.
INSKEEP: Is this a situation where, as reporters, we need to note when things are false, whoever says them...
KELLY: Of course.
INSKEEP: ...As best we can determine it but do that in a matter-of-fact way and pay attention more to what people actually do?
KELLY: My job, as a beat reporter here, is to be intensely familiar with everything that's been said, every document that's out there that's publicly available so that we can correct the record so that when the president of the United States comes out and says, for example, I never maligned the CIA, I can quickly, on deadline, point to where, in fact, he did malign the CIA. And I can point that out and then try to advance the record by adding more facts the next day, calling sources and trying to advance it bit by bit so that the facts add up.
INSKEEP: NPR national security correspondent Mary Louise Kelly and NPR editorial director Mike Oreskes - thanks to both of you.
ORESKES: Steve, thank you.
KELLY: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.


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New Social Networks With Old Technology - What The Egyptian Shutdown Tells Us About Social Media
This paper argues that this use of pre-digital technologies to form the kinds of infrastructure afforded by modern social technologies is evidence of a radical change in people's perceptions of their world and its connectedness. Social media has constituted a real change that goes beyond specific technologies. This flies in the face of many sceptical critics who argue that new technologies only reinforce old practices and social structures.
This view of the effects of social media presents a challenge to its study. Technological studies and formal analyses of relationships inscribed in social networks will never be able to capture fully the way people understand and interact with these technologically-enabled structures.
In this paper, I use the internet shutdown in Egypt to raise issues that I believe need to be considered in analysing the influence of social media on social movements. I discuss how existing models need to become hybridic, heterogeneous and responsive to the grassroots appropriation of technology, especially the future creation of alternatives to the corporate internet. In conclusion, I analyse the phrase 'Egypts Facebook Youth' as the emblem of social media's impact.
Social Media and Activism
The role of social media in enabling social protest has been the subject of significant commentary, especially since the so-called 'Twitter Revolutions' in Moldova in April 2009 and in Iran in June 2009. Widepsread coverage was given to Malcolm Gladwell's article in The New Yorker which dismissed the role of Twitter in Iran ('Small Change: Why the revolution will not be tweeted') and to Evgeny Morozov's book 'The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom' which articulated a number of reasons why social media is potentially more useful to autocratic regimes than to citizens or activists. Researchers like Ethan Zuckerman have attempted to resolve the debate in specific cases through an analysis of relevant Twitter data sets without being able to draw definitive conclusions.
I've been involved in spreading both practical social media skills and a critical framework for their deployment in social change. In 2009 I led a workshop in Riga where Sami Ben Gharbia, a leading Tunisian exile and online activist, shared his skills and experiences with civil society activists from across Central and Eastern Europe. Sami is co-founder of nawaat, a Tunisian collective blog which was a key online aggregator during the overthrow of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011. As a participant in the eCampaigning Forum I see the frustration of practitioners who feel that their nuanced efforts to use social media for positive social change are overridden by the aforementioned cyber-skepticism or recuperated by the State Department to be used as a tool for US foreign policy My contention is that social media is neither the cause of major change, nor irrelevant to it; but that it's impact is most powerful in cementing new ways of thinking and acting based on connectedness.
Events in Egypt
The young opposition in Egypt as been using social media to organise since the 'Kifaya' (Enough) movement in 2004. According to researcher Jillian C. York of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard,
"demonstrators were seen pre-planning online strategy nearly a week prior to January 25. Egyptians on Twitter discussed the best hashtag to use days in advance, settling on #jan25, while the hundreds of thousands of members of the "We are all Khaled Said" group on Facebook collected e-mail addresses in a Google Doc in case of a Facebook ban. As the demonstrations got underway, members of that same Facebook group posted updates from around the Web, sharing videos, photographs, and first-hand accounts."
At the time of writing 659,627 people had signed up to the "We are all Khaled Said" Facebook page and 35,995 were signed up to the "January 25 Revolution Day on torture, poverty, corruption and unemployment" which was also used to organise for the demonstrations. On January 25th hundreds of thousands of people gathered for peaceful protests in Tahrir Square in Cairo and in other cities around Egypt.
According to activist and technologist Ahmad Gharbeia "The role of the internet was critical at the beginning. On the 25th, the movements of the protesting groups were arranged in real time through Twitter. Everyone knew where everyone else was walking and we could advise on the locations of blockades and skirmishes with police."
The Cut-Off
On the first day of protest on January 25th 2011, reports began to emerge of interference with the online social networks that were being used to coordinate the demonstrators. Despite denials from an Egyptian Government spokesman, Twitter put a message on its official PR stream saying that use was being restricted:
"Egypt continues to block Twitter & has greatly diminished traffic. However, some users are using apps/proxies to successfully tweet".
Indeed, some people in Egypt were quick to discover ways to circumvent the blocks. It emerged that the mobile version of the Opera browser used a proxy server to reformat web pages, thus enabling people to evade the block on specific sites. The first pragmatic deconstruction of the social web was visible, as people circulated direct IP addresses for Twitter and Facebook. For people in the central Tahrir ('Liberation') Square, the situation was more difficult, as reports came in that mobile reception was also being blocked and Vodafone subsequently stated that they complied with an order from the Egyptian authorities to to suspend services in selected areas. It was reported on social media that residents around Tahrir square removed the passwords on their wifi routers so protesters could reach the outside world.
Over the following days the circumvention efforts became more systematic, building on the base of knowledge within the human rights community about tools like Tor (a network of virtual tunnels that hides the connection between a user and the website they are viewing). By keeping some of the network entry points hidden, Tor is also able to evade many internet censorship systems. The Tor project reported on January 30th that "Over the last three days, 120,000 people — most of them Egyptian — have downloaded Tor software". The Tor project was a platform for participatory solidarity as word spread across the social web of the need for people to run Tor relays and bridges on their computers, and graphs on the Tor blog show the dramatic rise in the number of bridges around the world after 25th January.
However, on 27th January 2011 the government of Egypt took the unprecedented step of shutting off internet access for the entire country. In a statement that day, the internet monitoring firm Renesys reported:
"In an action unprecedented in Internet history, the Egyptian government appears to have ordered service providers to shut down all international connections to the Internet...At 22:34 UTC (00:34am local time), Renesys observed the virtually simultaneous withdrawal of all routes to Egyptian networks in the Internet's global routing table. Approximately 3,500 individual BGP routes were withdrawn, leaving no valid paths by which the rest of the world could continue to exchange Internet traffic with Egypt's service providers. Virtually all of Egypt's Internet addresses are now unreachable, worldwide".
The graph of Globally Reachable Egyptian Networks against Time on Jan 27th shows Egypt falling off the the Internet. Examining the above data in detail, the Renesys analysis concludes "this sequencing looks like people getting phone calls, one at a time, telling them to take themselves off the air. Not an automated system that takes all providers down at once; instead, the incumbent leads and other providers follow meekly one by one until Egypt is silenced". As the former White House Deputy Chief Technology Officer (& former Google executive) Andrew McLaughlin wrote:
"Since the internet age dawned in the early 90s, no widely connected country had disconnected itself entirely. The starkness and suddenness of Egypt's reversal – from unrestricted to unreachable – marks one of the many tragedies of the Mubarak regime's brutal and hamfisted response to last week's emergence of citizen protests".
Google's own Transparency Report (which provides information about traffic to their services from around the world) shows the drop off late on Jan 27th and the flatline on Jan 28th in a graph which has uncanny similarities to the signal trace on a cardiac monitor.
The only ISP to stay connected was Noor Group, the connection provider for the Egyptian Stock Exchange. A few people connected via Noor were able to provide some net access to their fellow citizens until Noor, too, was taken completely offline in the evening of 31st January.
The Response
People inside and outside of Egypt collaborated to re-create the missing networks using the still-available technologies of landlines, dial-up and ham radio. The mainstay of this effort was analogue: setting up international numbers for users in Egypt to connect via dial-up modems. Some ISPs, like FDN in France, offered free access to Egyptians specifically in response to the government's actions, and internet activist groups like Telecomix set up modem links and circulated lists of dialup numbers. On their blog they report their experiences:
"No data was flowing. As the phone lines were working, this was the solutions: Modems. Technology form the last millenium lying dusty in some boxes. We built them in our computers and reactivated them. Some of us still had them working. We set up servers which could answer modem calls via landline. Many of the Telecomix agents who were setting up this were even not born when this technology was considered modern and they had to do many hours of try and error till they got them up and running. Some touched their first modem on these very days."
Telecomix was also at the forefront of experimenting with much older technologies as a way to re-establish horizontal communications with people in Egypt, such as ham radio:
"#SOS Please avoid #hamradio transmissions near 7080.8 kHz #cw transmit frequency, esp. region 1. Listening for #egypt. #dx #swl #hamr"
They established a fax-to-web bridge which would receive faxed messages from Egypt, remove header lines which might identify the sender's location, and publish the content to their main web page. While it is not clear if any faxes were received, it seems clear that the ham radio option wasn't viable for the situation in Egypt.
Another pre-web technology being used during the internet blackout was the Bulletin Board System, or BBS. This system for exchanging news and messages allows users to connect and log in directly over a phone line using a modem, and uses different technical protocols to the TCP/IP of the internet to network BBSs:
"Block web 2.0 - counter with Net 1.0 - BBS networks springing up in #egypt to connect people - it's the 1980's all over again."
Even when a part of the Internet is shutdown, the social web can give agency to the savvy user. John Scott-Railton is a graduate student at University of California with a network of personal friends in Egypt. When their social media was shut off, he phoned them for updates and posted them online at his Twitter account @Jan25voices. When the mobile networks were blocked, he drew up a list of people he knew with landlines. Even when many journalists were struggling to report from the ground there were live updates from Jan25voices – as Scott says
"Some of the updates I was getting were from people's aunts standing at the window, holding their phone out so I could hear what was happening"
A parallel piece of corporate innovation was the speak2tweet collaboration between Google and Twitter. On January 25th, Google acquired SayNow, a company with a set of services that connected phone calls and social media. Following Egypt's Internet shutdown, engineers from Google and Twitter collaborated to create speak2tweet which allowed Egyptians with phone access to leave a voice message on the SayNow site. A link to the message is automatically tweeted on the Twitter feed @speak2tweet.This also spawned a crowdsourced translation effort – people entered the translations on a google doc and they were posted on the site 'Alive in Egypt'.
The Internet in Egypt crackled back to life on February 2nd 2011, the day after Hosni Mubarak's first defiant post-protest broadcast. Quite why Internet services were restored at the same time that the regime was implementing a violent crack-down was a source of confusion to many observers. This chart of Egyptian Internet traffic from Arbor Networks shows the return as being as dramatic as the cut-off.
The Lessons
Even when the backbone supporting the social networks had been stripped away, people inside & outside Egypt strove to sustain sustain social communications with determination and creativity. Indeed, they sought to craft point-to-point analogue technologies like modems and landlines (and even fax & ham radio) in to a substitute, as well as a bridge back to the rest of the Internet. This approach suggests a radical change in people's perceptions of their entitlement to connectedness. Social media has constituted a real change that goes beyond specific technologies, flying in the face of many sceptical critics who argue that new technologies only reinforce old practices and social structures.
Arguments over whether a particular social change would have happened in the absence of social media are somewhat sterile; there is no experimentally controlled comparison where we can re-run a revolution without Twitter. But more importantly those arguments fail to go to the core of the impact i.e. that social media has changed the global sense of entitlement to real-time peer-to-peer communication within fluid networks of association.
There are parallels with the unfolding impact of open source software, where the practical affordances of a technology form leveraged a wider impact for ideas of 'openness' (such as open innovation and open data). Internet scholar Wendy Seltzer comments on the Egyptian shutdown by drawing a parallel with the layers model of the Internet protocol.
"We also see that the Internet is not any particular means of data transport. The independence of layers means that applications don't care what the route underneath looks like, so long as there is one. That meant that even cutting off Internet service providers couldn't stop information flows: while Egyptians could call out from the country, they could tell their stories at @jan25voices, and through the Google-Twitter-Phone service, @speak2tweet, that automates some of the voice-Twitter connection."
On the basis of Egypt and other examples, one can say that the social media model of communication now has a social or cultural layer that exists over and above the actual technical platforms that normally facilitate it. This is a generalisation to wider culture of the tendency observed several years ago by anthropologist Jeffrey Juris in his book 'Networking Futures: the Movements against Corporate Globalization' that networking practices
"form part of an innovative mode of radical political practice that has to be understood in the context of an increasing confluence between network norms, forms, and technologies. It is important to point out that, when I talk about networking practices, I am not only referring to the use of digital technologies, but also to new forms of organizational practice. Activist networking practices are both physical and virtual, and they are frequently associated with emerging political imaginaries. It is precisely the interaction between network technologies, network-based organizational forms, and network-based political norms that characterizes radical activism".
For those of us who have experience of both community mobilisation and social media, this doesn't come as a surprise. Networks are common to social media and to every aspect of social and business life, and it is the disruptive interplay of networked technology and business & social networks which is opening up new possibilities of social impact. The elements of participatory innovation observable in events following the shutdown of the Internet in Egypt have characteristics in common with Crisis Camps (e.g. the crowdsourced and social web-enabled response to the earthquake in Haiti) and our Social Innovation Camps (which bring together interdisciplinary self-organised teams to hack web-based solutions to social problems in 48 hours).
Future Research
This view of the effects of social media presents a challenge to its study. Technological studies and formal analyses of relationships inscribed in current social network platforms will never be able to capture fully the way people understand and interact with these technologically-enabled structures. What follows are issues that we believe need to be considered in analysing the impact of social movements. We also discuss how existing models need to become hybridic, heterogeneous and responsive to the grassroots appropriation of technology.
The first challenge is the fluid online-offline way these networks work. Restricting an analysis of relationships or dynamics to an online data set neglects the 'dark matter' of offline interactions that are necessary to make sense of the whole. While this is true in general, it becomes even more so when the trajectories of interaction leap from Twitter to mobile phone to street and back again.
Grasping social media in the context of social change also means appreciating the intent of the participants. In the same way that the embedded ethnography of Danah Boyd (PDF) cut through the haze around youth and social networks created by the collision of Pew Research and media punditry, there's a need for participant observation at the interface between social media and social impact. The overlap of social movements and the social web has generated is a tendency for near-real time reflexivity, where participants reflect openly on their experiences and tactics, as exemplified by the Twitter-based debriefs of the UK Uncut activists organised around the hashtag #ukuncutdb. Jeffrey Juris reports that
"contemporary social movements are increasingly "self-reflexive," as evidenced by the countless networks of knowledge production, debate, and exchange among global justice activists, including listserves, Internet forums, radical theory groups, activist research networks, etc."
I have observed similar reflexivity in the online movement of #jan25 (the hashtag for the Egyptian uprising).
Retrospective studies of situations like Egypt and Tunisia also need to address the framing bias of pseudo-public spaces like Facebook and YouTube. Technology and policy choices strongly affect the way they are used in community mobilization. This ranges from citizen media videos being removed from YouTube due to 'violent content' that violates the Terms of Service, to the repeated suspension of activists by Facebook for not complying with the "real name" policy for their own safety.
All these challenges may converge if trends catalysed by the Egyptian shutdown come to fruition. Galvanized by the shutdown, a group of tech entrepreneurs started the OpenMesh Project which aims to create with ad hoc mesh networking solutions in a city where the Internet backbone and mobile networks have been silenced. Conversations along similar lines can be observed across blogs and social media (see, for example, the comment thread in the aforementioned Tor post). These initatives and the use of BBS in Egypt echo the call by author Douglas Rushkoff to abandon the current Internet on the basis that it has been surrendered to centralised corporate control. Presciently, he called for a new net of 'the commons' that learns from BBSs and deploys overlapping meshes, ham radio and telephony.
Recognising that if any of this happens it will be as part of a convergence of technology with cultural forms, we can propose that critical frameworks drawing on mesh models will be useful to future analysis. For example, de Landa has developed the idea of meshworks (PDF), influenced by the theoretical work of Deleuze and Guattari. "Meshworks are based on decentralized decision making...self-organization, and heterogeneity and diversity... It can be said they follow the dynamics of life, developing through their encounter with their environments (by "drift"), although conserving their basic structure."
Conclusions from Tahrir Square
The mis-translation of a protester's sign from Tahrir Square encapsulates the argument about the impact of social media. The photo that shows a middle-aged protestor in Tahrir square holding a handwritten sign in Arabic. The only English word on his sign is 'FACEBOOK', in large red letters carfeully highlighted in black. Many western blog and media outlets published versions of this with the slogan translated as 'Thank you Facebook'. In fact, as I have verified with correspondents in the Egyptian diaspora, the correct translation is 'Thank you, Egypt's Facebook youth'. The gulf between these sentiments is huge; the wrong translation elevates the technology, whereas the real one identifies the youth as agents of change. But in labelling them 'Egypt's Facebook youth' it also recognises that they're acting differently to what came before, that their post-deferential dynamism reflects the character of their favoured tool.
And therein lies the visible impact of social media. It doesn't create uprisings or anything else, but it opens up ways of thinking and behaving because it makes thinking and behaving in those ways (horizontally, self-organised) more effective than before. It opens up new fields of possibilities.


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A serious note
Last Wednesday Tyler Clementi jumped off the George Washington Bridge. He was only 18 years old, a student at Rutgers. His roommate and some other dumbass taped him via webcam having sex with a man. Then they streamed the video online. Tyler died, literally, of embarrassment.
Many contend that he would not have suffered the same fate if he was not gay. That he'd probably be celebrated instead if he was f-cking some girl. I agree.
And then 50 Cent at about midnight last night tweeted this:
If you a man and your over 25 and you don't eat pu**y just kill your self damn it. The world will be a better place. Lol
It's being interpreted as a homophobic remark, especially given his homophobic track record. He may have simply been stating however that straight men should go down more on their women. But this goes back to that "once a cheater..." point I was making the other day about David Beckham – I'm more inclined to believe the assumption when you've given me reason to in the past.
I have heard from many of you today expressing grief about Tyler's death.
Please click here and here if you'd like to help prevent the next. Thanks Joan!
File photo from Wenn.com


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Howard County unveils new bully reporting system
Buses also equipped with camera system
A new high-tech tool was unveiled Friday, along with plans to install more cameras on Howard County school buses in response to an increase of bullying incidents in the county and across the state.
Whether it's on campus or in the community, students and other Howard County residents can use something as simple as their cellphones to report bullying.
Mobile users tap here for video.
Stand Up Ho Co is a high-tech online and Web-based reporting system that gives students, as well as the general public, a way to head off bullying. Howard County Executive Ken Ulman is convinced it'll make a difference.
"This is the first time in the United States of America that it is being done as a community-based approach, that a person can report bullying wherever it happens at a park, at a school, at a library or anywhere else in the community," Ulman said.
More than 250 county locations have already been loaded into the website in order to give more access to anyone who reports an incident of bullying.
"We have hoped for just a way to change the way kids behave and the way they interact with each other. It's so awesome. It's so amazing to see so many people come together to finally make it happen," student Kylie Zuiderhos said.
The parents of a Howard County teenager who took her life last year after she was bullied over social media showed up at the Stand Up Ho Co news conference.
"I pray that it helps. When we needed help we couldn't find it, and I think that raising awareness has helped just in general what children are facing, especially with social media," Howard County resident Christine McComas said.
Other Howard County parents are counting on the same.
"I think this will make good steps forward to help kids have a place where they can take action and report bullying when they see it," Howard County parent Kristin Jackson said.
Besides the website, more cameras have been installed on Howard County school buses. The cameras will record possible incidents of bullying, but school officials said they'll use strict guidelines.
"School administrators are going to have access to these recordings for three weeks and they'll be able to review the recordings when complaints or problems occur. Our goal is to give them information so that they can respond to situations quickly and objectively," Howard County Schools Superintendent Renee Foose said.
The school system is making plans to have cameras on board all of its buses over the next couple of years.
Check the Howard County Online Reporting website for more information.


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Grand Prairie Texas Flat Fee MLS Listing is, the way to sell. The internet has completely changed the way homes are bought and sold. List on the MLS just like all other listings, and only pay a commission if a buyer agent brings you a buyer. If you sell as a FOR SALE BY OWNER, you will pay no buyer agent commission but we still help you with the process. We offer full service flat fee and when you are ready to buy, get a home buying rebate, with our rebate program. Buying & Selling is no longer expensive, in fact, it can cost little to no commission, if you work with us.
What is the MLS? The multiple listing service, or MLS, is a facility that allows real estate professionals - REALTORS ® to learn about and share Grand Prairie Texas property listings in support of the interests of clients and customers. REALTORS® enjoy an economical, efficient system of sharing real property information and facilitating cooperative transactions, while their clients and customers have access to the most accurate and up-to- date property information available. There are hundreds of MLS's across the country, which use a common set of rules to enable a smooth exchange of information in their local communities. The Grand Prairie Texas MLS provide a means for participants to offer compensation to other participants and enhance cooperation among them. As applications of Internet technology to the real estate business have increased in number, quality, and acceptance by the public, most real estate brokerage firms have established "online identities." The Grand Prairie Texas MLS has adopted Internet Data Exchange (IDX) programs as a means of enhancing cooperation between REALTORS®. Under IDX, brokers exchange consent to display each other's listings on participants' websites and using applications for mobile devices that participants control. Many MLS's, as a service to their members, also provide listing information to third-party aggregators such as realtor®.com and others through syndication or other similar type agreements, unless the broker withholds consent.
We comply completely with SB 810 on all our listing packages (along with all rules and regulations by TREC, TAR, NAR & MLS Grand Prairie Texas Boards - that includes a provision that requires a broker who represents a party or who lists real property under an exclusive agreement to: inform the party of material information related to the transaction, including the receipt of an offer by the broker, and answer the party's questions and present any offer to or from the party. The bill prohibits a broker who represents a party from telling another broker to negotiate directly with the broker's client. The bill further provides that, for purposes of 1101.157, a license holder who has additional authority to bind a party under a power of attorney or a property management agreement is considered a party to the lease or sale; an inquiry to an employee of a builder or developer about contract terms or forms does not violate §1101.652(b)(22) if the person does not have authority to bind the employer to the contract; the delivery of an offer to a party does not violate §1101.652(b)(22) if the party's broker consents to the delivery and a copy of the offer is sent to the party's broker; and provides an exception to the requirement of sending a copy of the offer to a party's broker if the party is a governmental agency using a sealed bid process that does not allow a copy to be sent to the broker.
Texas Real Estate Commission Information About Brokerage Services
Texas Real Estate Commission Consumer Protection Notice


text:
Album: Native North America Vol. 1Monday, March 9th, 2015
This is a superb and historically important album, a compilation of music by indigenous musicians in Canada 1968-1985. It's telling that I had only heard one of these tracks before hearing the album; it points to a disturbing lack of airplay of native music during those years. This album belongs in every music collection in Canada and beyond.


text:
Hotline Miami has received a lot of attention lately for being somewhat of an indie darling on the PC and with the game gearing up for a PSN release, we figured now is a good time for the AO crew to dig into the game and give you our two cents on the bloody romp through 1980′s Miami. Please enjoy.
PS: Eff the dogs
Byat .


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Template:Article summary start Template:Article summary text Template:Article summary text Template:Article summary heading Template:Article summary text Template:Article summary heading Template:Article summary wiki Template:Article summary wiki Template:Article summary wiki Template:Article summary end
From KDE - KDE Software Compilation:
- The KDE Software Compilation grew out of the history of the KDE Project. In its inception, KDE was formed to create a beautiful, functional and free desktop computing environment for Linux and similar operating system. At the time, these systems lacked a graphical user environment that could rival the offerings from the larger proprietary operating system vendors. KDE was created to fill this gap.
- The KDE Software Compilation is the set of libraries, workspaces, and applications produced by KDE that share this common heritage, and continue to use the synchronized release cycle. Software may move in and out of this semi-formally defined collection depending on the particular needs of the contributors who are working on that software, with exceptions made to ensure that binary compatibility remains at the library level throughout any major release of the compilation.
From KDE - Getting KDE Software:
- KDE software consists of a large number of individual applications and a desktop workspace as a shell to run these applications. You can run KDE applications just fine on any desktop environment. KDE applications are built to integrate well with your system's components. By using also KDE workspace, you get even better integration of your applications with the working environment while lowering system resource needs.
- 1 Overview
- 2 Installation
- 3 Starting KDE
- 4 Configuration
- 4.1 Personalization
- 4.1.1 Plasma Desktop
- 4.1.2 Window Decorations
- 4.1.3 KDE 4 Theme Integration with GTK Applications
- 4.1.4 Icon Themes
- 4.1.5 Arch Linux Logo Icon in Kicker menu
- 4.1.6 Fonts
- 4.1.7 Space efficiency
- 4.2 Networking
- 4.3 Printing
- 4.4 Samba/Windows support
- 4.5 KDE Desktop Activities
- 4.6 Power Saving
- 4.7 Monitoring changes on local files and directories
- 4.1 Personalization
- 5 System Administration
- 6 Desktop Search and Semantic Desktop
- 7 KDM (KDE Desktop Manager)
- 8 Phonon
- 9 Using WebKit in Konqueror
- 10 Firefox integration
- 11 Using Telepathy
- 12 Troubleshooting
- 12.1 KDE4 does not finish loading
- 12.2 KDE and Qt programs look bad when in a different window manager
- 12.3 KHotkeys issue
- 12.4 Enabling thumbnails under Konqueror and Dolphin file managers
- 12.5 Suspend to Disk/Ram not working
- 12.6 Graphical related issues
- 12.6.1 Low 2D desktop performance (or) Artifacts appear when on 2D
- 12.6.2 Konsole is slow in applications like vim
- 12.6.3 Low 3D desktop performance
- 12.6.4 Desktop compositing is disabled on my system with a modern Nvidia GPU
- 12.6.5 Flickering in fullscreen when compositing is enabled
- 12.7 Sound problems under KDE
- 12.8 Arch linux specific packaging issues
- 12.9 I wanted a minimal installation of KDE. After I installed some packages and logged in KDE, there are no panels
- 12.10 I want a fresh installation of KDE for my system. What should I do?
- 12.11 Plasma desktop behaves strangely
- 12.12 Hiding partitions
- 12.13 Konsole does not save commands' history
- 12.14 Kimpanel does not work with the IBus backend
- 12.15 KDE password prompts display three bullets per char
- 12.16 knotify4 process constantly uses CPU time
- 12.17 Nepomukserver process still autostart even with semantic desktop disabled
- 13 Other KDE projects
- 14 Bugs
- 15 External Links
KDE 4.7 Software Compilation is the current major release of KDE that includes a number of improvements and bug fixes. The new Arch package set for KDE makes it possible to only install those applications you like.
Important features of the Arch Linux KDE SC in short:
- Split packages; for more Information see KDE Packages and Splitting KDE.
- You can use different Phonon backends, like Gstreamer or VLC
- Meta packages ensure a smooth upgrade and emulate the old monolith packages for those who prefer them.
Important hints for upgraders:
- Always check if your mirror is up to date.
- pacman will ask you to replace all kde packages with kde-meta packages.
- Do not force an update. If pacman complains about conflicts please file a bug report.
- You can remove the meta packages and the sub packages you do not need after the update.
- If you do not like split packages just keep using the kde-meta packages.
Information about upstream changes is available here
Full install
To install the entire KDE set, first fully upgrade your system:
# pacman -Syu
and then:
# pacman -S kde
# pacman -S kde-meta
If you need language files:
# pacman -S kde-l10n-yourlanguagehere
e.g. kde-l10n-de, for the German language.
Minimal install
If you want to have a minimal installation of the KDE SC, here is an example:
# pacman -S kdebase kde-l10n-yourlanguagehere phonon-vlc
You can choose phonon-gstreamer instead phonon-vlc.
Starting KDE
Start the dbus daemon and add dbus to your DAEMONS array so it starts automatically on boot.
Starting KDE depends on your preferences. Basically there are two ways of starting KDE. Using KDM or xinitrc.
Using KDM (KDE Display Manager)
It is highly recommended to get familiar with the full article concerning display managers, before you make any changes. See also KDM Wiki page.
Starting KDM through /etc/inittab [recommended]
/etc/inittab and comment out:
#id:3:initdefault: [...] #x:5:respawn:/usr/bin/xdm -nodaemon
Then uncomment:
id:5:initdefault: [...] x:5:respawn:/usr/bin/kdm -nodaemon
Starting KDM as a daemon
Add "kdm" (without the quotes) to daemons array in
DAEMONS=(syslog-ng dbus network crond ... kdm)
Using xinitrc
The meaning and usage of xinitrc is very well described here.
/.xinitrc. Then uncomment:
exec ck-launch-session startkde
After a reboot or/and login, each execution of Xorg (startx or xinit) will start KDE automatically.
For other personalization options not covered below such as activities, different wallpapers on one cube, etc please refer to the Plasma wiki page.
How to set up the KDE desktop to your personal style; use different Plasma themes, window decorations and icon themes.
Plasma Desktop
Plasma is a desktop integration technology that provides many functions from displaying the wallpaper, adding widgets to the desktop, and handling the panels or "taskbar".
Plasma themes can be installed through the Desktop Settings control panel. Plasma themes define how your panels and plasmoids look like. If you like to have them installed system-wide, themes can be found in both the official repositories and AUR.
Plasmoids are little scripted or coded KDE apps that enhance the functionality of your desktop. There are two kinds, plasmoid scripts and plasmoid binaries.
Plasmoid binaries must be installed using PKGBUILDS from AUR. Or write your own PKGBUILD.
The easiest way to install plasmoid scripts is by right-clicking onto a panel or the desktop:
Add Widgets -> Get new Widgets -> Download Widgets
This will present a nice frontend for kde-look.org and allows you to (un)install or update third-party plasmoid scripts with just one click.
Most plasmoids are not created officially by KDE developers. You can also try installing Mac OS X widgets, Microsoft Windows Vista/7 widgets, Google Widgets, and even SuperKaramba widgets.
Window Decorations
Window decorations can be changed in
System Settings -> Workspace Appearance -> Window Decorations
There you can also directly download and install more themes with one click and some are available on AUR.
KDE 4 Theme Integration with GTK Applications
Please go to Uniform Look for QT and GTK Applications.
Icon Themes
Not many full system icons themes are available for KDE 4. You can open up System Settings > Application Appearance > Icons and browse for new ones or install them manually. Many of them can be found on kde-look.org.
Right click on the Kicker menu button, press Application launcher settings and then press the icon on the right. Then you may choose an Arch Linux icon or any other icon that will replace the default one.
Official logos, icons, CD labels and other artwork for Arch Linux are provided in the archlinux-artwork package. After installing you can find such artwork at
Fonts in KDE look poor
Try installing the ttf-dejavu and ttf-liberation packages.
After the installation, be sure to log out and back in. You should not have to modify any settings in the "Fonts" panel of the KDE System Settings application.
If you have personally set up how your Fonts render, be aware that System Settings may alter their appearance. When you go System Settings > Appearance > Fonts System Settings will likely alter your font configuration file (
There is no way to prevent this but if you set the values to match your
fonts.conf file the expected font rendering will return (it will require you to restart your application or in a few cases for you to have to restart your desktop).
Note too that Gnomes' Font Preferences will also do this if you use both desktop environments.
Fonts are huge or seems disproportional
Try to force fonts DPI to 96 on System Settings > Application Appearance > Fonts.
If it does not work try set DPI directly on Xorg configuration here.
Space efficiency
KDE is often criticized for being bloated.
The user might get this perception from seeing many toolbars and pretty big scaled icons in the applications. One thing that improved the situation was the new Kwin-Theme that came with KDE SC 4.4.* with the more elegant buttons that one can also resize. KDE Apps allows to hide many toolbars, menubars and statusbars.
All sorts of *bars
Most toolbars of a program can be removed in the menubar-entry "Settings". There you often can hide the statusbar and often all toolbars. The last step should be to remove the menubar itself via Ctrl + M.
If you do not want to remove any bars you can still make them smaller or remove the text via:
System Settings -> Application Appearance -> Style -> Fine Tuning -> (Main toolbar text / Secondary toolbar text)
Since most aspect ratios of modern flat screens are wider than 4:3 it could be reasonable to put the toolbar at the left or right of a window to artificially stretch windows more to the monitors aspect ratio.
There are also some settings and modifications you can apply to your plasmoids to make KDE less space wasting.
For example, the "Digital Clock" wastes more space than the "Analogue Clock". The little plasma icon ("Cashew") that one can see in the panel can be hidden by locking the widgets via rightclicking onto the panel.
If you have got many tasks in your task-manager you should consider using Smooth-tasks.
This alternative task-manager allows you to just display the icons of a task thus using less space but still maintaining the ability of the user to distinguish the different tasks.
Install smooth-tasks from the AUR.
After installing and substituting it with the original task-manager you should have a deep look at the settings since they are much broader. One way of using the features of smooth-tasks could be to only display the icons of tasks and move the panel to the left or right of the screen. This is most useful on widescreens.
On very small screens it could be reasonable to set the bottom-panel to auto-hide completely.
For netbooks there is a special workspace, called Plasma Netbook, that makes better use of the screen:
System Settings -> Workspace Behavior -> Workspace -> Workspace Type
Windows decorations can also be resized by decreasing button size in the decoration thus making the whole top border smaller:
System Settings -> Workspace Appearance -> Window Decorations -> Configure Decoration... -> Button size
You could also remove the side-border of all windows via:
System Settings -> Workspace Appearance -> Window Decorations -> Configure Decoration... -> Border size
NetworkManager support has been added in KDE SC. See NetworkManager for more information.
Also you can use wicd-kde.
The printers are configured in this way can be found in applications KDE.
You can also choose the printer configuration through System Settings -> Printer Configuration. To use this method, you must first install the packages:
# pacman -S kdeadmin-system-config-printer-kde cups
This means you need to start the cupsd daemon first.
This means you need to give the user rights to manage printers.
For CUPS, this is set in /etc/cups/cupsd.conf.
Adding lp to SystemGroup allows anyone who can print to configure printers. You can, of course, add another group than lp.
# Administrator user group... SystemGroup sys root lp
Samba/Windows support
If you want to have access to Windows services:
pacman -S samba
You may then configure your Samba shares through
System Settings -> Sharing -> Samba
KDE Desktop Activities
KDE Desktop Activities are Plasma based "virtual desktop"-like set of Plasma Widgets where you can independently configure widgets as if you had more than one screens/desktops. Since KDE 4.5, the feature of changing Desktop Activities has been simplified.
On your desktop, click the Cashew Plasmoid and on the pop-up window press "Activities".
A plasma bar will appear at the bottom of the screen which presents you the current Plasma Desktop Activities which exist. You can then navigate between them by pressing their correspondent icon.
Power Saving
KDE has an integrated power saving service called "Powerdevil Power Management" that may adjust the power saving profile of the system and/or the brightness of the screen (if supported).
How to enable Cpufreq based power saving
Since KDE 4.6, CPU frequency scaling is no longer managed by KDE. Instead it is assumed to be handled automatically by the the hardware and/or kernel. While some distributions use the
ondemand cpufreq governor by default, Arch does not.
As a prerequisite to the following, you should carefully read through the wiki article on cpufreq and ensure that the appropriate kernel modules are loaded. If you are happy with setting your governor once at boot (with the
cpufreq daemon script, for example) then this section is not relevant and can be skipped.
1. If you have not already done so, install the
cpufrequtils package (for the
cpufreq-set utility):
pacman -S cpufrequtils
2. Next, you will need to grant access to
cpufreq-set for the appropriate users by configuring sudo. For example, if you are part of the wheel group, you could use
visudo to add
%wheel ALL = (ALL) NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/cpufreq-set
to your
sudoers file.
3. From System Settings > Power Management > Power Profiles select a profile to edit or create a new one. Check the Run Script option and add an appropriate
cpufreq-set command for the selected power profile. For example, your "Powersave" profile might have:
sudo cpufreq-set -r -g ondemand
Your "Performance" profile might have
sudo cpufreq-set -r -g performance
For some CPU families the
-r switch may not set the governor for all cores/cpus and instead only set the governor for CPU 0. In this case you will need to write a script to iterate through all your cores. A simple script for a four core system could look like:
#!/bin/bash for i in {0..3}; do sudo /usr/bin/cpufreq-set -c${i} -gondemand done
cpufreq-info -o or less intuitively by inspecting
Monitoring changes on local files and directories
KDE now uses inotify directly from the kernel with kdirwatch (included in kdelibs), so Gamin or FAM are no longer needed. You may want to install this kdirwatchAUR from AUR which is a GUI frontend for kdirwatch.
System Administration
Set keyboard layout in order switch language inputs
In order to do that, navigate to
System Settings > Hardware > Input Devices > Keyboard
There you may choose your keyboard model at first.
In the "Layouts" tab, you choose the languages you may want to use by pressing the "Add Layout" button and therefore the variant and the language. In the "Advanced" tab, you can choose the keyboard combination you want in order to change the layouts in the "Key(s) to change layout" sub-menu.
Terminate Xorg-server through KDE system settings
Navigate to
System Settings -> Input Devices -> Keyboard -> Advanced (tab) > "Key Sequence to kill the X server" submenu
and tick the checkbox.
Useful KCM
KCM means KConfig Module. This modules help you to configure you system providing a interface on System Settings.
Configuration for look&feel of your GTK apps.
Configuration for the GRUB2 bootloader.
Configuration for Synaptics driver based touchpads.
Configuration for main system config file rc.conf.
Configuration for UFW
Configuration for Policy Kit
Configuration for Wacom Tablet
More KCM can be found here.
Desktop Search and Semantic Desktop
Most users who freshly install KDE are wondering what functionality the following four pieces of software are able to offer. Most features are still somehow hidden under the hood and yet not many applications featured in the KDE SC are using these interfaces. This chapter intends to first explain the features and then convince the user of the power these tools offer once properly integrated into KDE. The following sections are more or less a roughly shortened version of this blogpost.
Soprano is a library for QT that is able to process RDF data. This is semantic data. Semantic data is a special kind of metadata which is much more flexible than metadata you might know from MP3-Tags or Meta-Tags in HTML since RDF data more resembles the structure of a spoken sentence, thus allowing a much wider field of ways dealing with them. Soprano stores semantic data in a backend and allows low level access to this data.
Nepomuk is somehow the glue between Soprano and the KDE Desktop and thus the user. Nepomuk allows to tag the files with various entries and offers an API for the applications featured in KDE SC. It is enabled by default. Nepomuk can be turned on and off in
System Settings -> Desktop Search
Nepomuk has to keep the trace of a lot of files, because of that is recommended to increase the number of files that can be watched with inotify, to do that:
sysctl fs.inotify.max_user_watches=524288
To do it persistant:
echo "fs.inotify.max_user_watches = 524288" >> /etc/sysctl.conf
And restart Nepomuk.
Akonadi is one of the ways of getting data into Nepomuk. Its intention is to gather all kinds of PIM data from KMail, KAdressbook or Kopete. It collects chat contacts, email addresses, email attachments and email contents. First of all it feeds Nepomuk with this data but moreover it provides a centralized access point for all this data.
Disabling Akonadi
If you do not want Akonadi to be ran in your system (for your own reasons), edit
~/.config/akonadi/akonadiserverrc and turn
And then relogin into your account.
Configuring Akonadi to use MySQL Server running on the System
First, you need to set up the database using the following commands (replace password with the correct one):
CREATE DATABASE akonadi; GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON akonadi.* TO 'akonadiuser' IDENTIFIED BY 'password'; FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
~/.config/akonadi/mysql-local.conf does not exist then
cp /usr/share/config/akonadi/mysql-global.conf ~/.config/akonadi/mysql-local.conf
and uncomment the following line
Then edit
[%General] Driver=QMYSQL [QMYSQL] Name=akonadi Host=localhost ServerPath=/usr/bin/mysqld StartServer=false User=akonadiuser Password=<password> Options= [Debug] Tracer=null
Restart the Akonadi server with:
akonadictl restart
Strigi Search
Strigi is another way of feeding data into Nepomuk. It preferably indexes the users home-folder. Indexing means that it not only gathers filenames but also information about your music collection or tagged downloads you did with Kget. The Strigi search is also integrated into KDEs launcher which can be accessed via: Template:Keypress + Template:Keypress
By default, Dolphin has a search bar on top-right where you may type what you want to be found from Strigi's index.
Strigi folder indexing can be configured in:
System Settings -> Desktop Search -> Desktop Query -> Customize index folders…
KDM (KDE Desktop Manager)
KDM Xserver file
An example configuration for KDM can be found at
/usr/share/config/kdm/kdmrc. See
/usr/share/doc/HTML/en/kdm/kdmrc-ref.docbook for all options.
Configuring KDM
You can visit System Settings > Login Screen and make your changes. Whenever you press "Apply", a KDE Polkit authorization window appears which will ask you to give your root password in order to finish the changes.
Problems while Configuring KDM as a user
If you seem not to be able to KDM settings when launching System Settings as user, press
Template:Keypress + Template:Keypress
and type
kdesu kcmshell4 kdm
In the pop-up kdesu window, enter your root password and wait for System Settings to be launched.
/root/.kde4 and not under
~/.kde4 (your home location).
In the System Settings window, go to Login Screen.
What is Phonon?
Phonon is the multimedia API for KDE 4. Phonon was created to allow KDE 4 to be independent of any single multimedia framework such as GStreamer or xine and to provide a stable API for KDE 4's lifetime. It was done for various reasons: to create a simple KDE/Qt style multimedia API, to better support native multimedia frameworks on Windows and Mac OS X, and to fix problems of frameworks becoming unmaintained or having API or ABI instability.
from Wikipedia.
Phonon is being widely used within KDE, for both audio (e.g., the System notifications or KDE audio apps) and video (e.g., the Dolphin video thumbnails).
Which backend should I choose?
You can choose between various backends, like GStreamer (phonon-gstreamer), VLC (phonon-vlc), Xine in [unsupported] (phonon-xineAUR) or even MPlayer in [unsupported] (phonon-mplayerAUR). Most users will want GStreamer or VLC which have the best upstream support. Note that multiple backends can be installed at once and you can switch between them via System Settings -> Multimedia -> Phonon -> Backend.
According to announce of KDE 4.6 in Arch and mail in Phonon dev list:
"Phonon Xine is not maintained and thus will not see releases."
"This intial preference currently rates GStreamer highest, followed by VLC as there is some feature difference."
Using WebKit in Konqueror
What is WebKit?
WebKit is an open source browser engine developed by Apple Inc. It is used by Safari and Google Chrome. WebKit is a derivative from the KHTML and KJS libraries and contain many improvements.
How to use in Konqueror
It is possible to use WebKit in Konqueror instead of KHTML. First install the kwebkitpart package :
pacman -S kwebkitpart
Then, after executing Konqueror, press Settings > Configure Konqueror.
On the "General" submenu, select the "WebKit" as the "Default web browser engine".
You can, of course, choose KHTML again, if you do not like WebKit as the rendering engine.
Firefox integration
See Firefox#Firefox_with_better_KDE_integration.
Using Telepathy
A new project, known as Real-Time Communication and Collaboration, has been started in KDE. The goal is to integrate Instant Messaging clients with the desktop systems.
At the moment things are in progress and miss some features, but a very base communication system is ready.
To install all Telepathy protocols install the telepathy group. To use the Telepathy KDE client, install the telepathy-kde group.
KDE4 does not finish loading
There might be a situation in which the graphic driver might create a conflict when starting KDE4. This situation happens after the login but before finishing loading the desktop, making the user wait indefinitely at the loading screen. Until now the only users confirmed to be affected by this are the ones that use Nvidia drivers and KDE4.
A solution for Nvidia users is to edit the file at
/home/user/.kde4/share/config/kwinrc and change the option Enabled=true to false in the [Compositing] section. For more information look at this thread: [1].
KDE and Qt programs look bad when in a different window manager
If you are using KDE or Qt programs but not in a full KDE session (specifically, you did not run "startkde"), then as of KDE 4.6.1 you will need to tell Qt how to find KDE's styles (Oxygen, QtCurve etc.)
You just need to set the environment variable QT_PLUGIN_PATH. E.g. put
export QT_PLUGIN_PATH=$HOME/.kde4/lib/kde4/plugins/:/usr/lib/kde4/plugins/
into your
/etc/profile (or
~/.profile if you do not have root access). qtconfig should then be able to find your kde styles and everything should look nice again!
Alternatively, you can symlink the Qt styles directory to the KDE styles one:
# ln -s /usr/lib/kde4/plugins/styles/ /usr/lib/qt/plugins/styles
KHotkeys issue
Ιf khotkeys does not work, make sure you have a fully updated system first.
You can also create
~/.kde4/Autostart/reloadkhotkeys.sh with contents
#!/bin/bash (sleep 3 && qdbus org.kde.kded /modules/khotkeys reread_configuration) &
and then do a
chmod u+x ~/.kde4/Autostart/reloadkhotkeys.sh
then logout & login.
Enabling thumbnails under Konqueror and Dolphin file managers
For thumbnails of videos in konqueror and dolphin:
# pacman -S kdemultimedia-mplayerthumbs
# pacman -S kdemultimedia-ffmpegthumbs
Suspend to Disk/Ram not working
If you are starting KDE with startx try adding ck-launch-session to the
as so:
#!/bin/sh # # ~/.xinitrc # # Executed by startx (run your window manager from here) # exec gnome-session exec ck-launch-session startkde # exec startxfce4 # ...or the Window Manager of your choice
This is done automatically with KDM.
Low 2D desktop performance (or) Artifacts appear when on 2D
GPU driver problem
Make sure you have the proper driver for your card installed, so that your desktop is at least 2D accelerated. Follow these articles for more information: ATI, NVIDIA, Intel for more information, in order to make sure that everything is all right. The open-source ATI and Intel drivers and the proprietary (binary) Nvidia driver should theoretically provide the best 2D and 3D acceleration.
The Raster engine workaround
If this does not solve your problems, maybe your driver does not provide a good XRender acceleration which the current Qt painter engine relies on by default.
You can change the painter engine to software based only by invoking the application with the "-graphicssystem raster" command line. This rendering engine can be set as the default one by recompiling Qt with the same as configure option, "-graphicssystem raster".
The raster paint engine enables the CPU to do the majority of the painting, as opposed to the GPU. You may get better performance, depending on your system. This is basically a work-around for the terrible Linux driver stack, since the CPU should obviously not be doing graphical computations since it is designed for fewer threads of greater complexity, as opposed to the GPU which is many threads but lesser computational strength. So, only use Raster engine if you are having problems or your GPU is much slower than you CPU, otherwise is better to use XRender.
Since Qt 4.7+, recompiling Qt is not needed. Simply export QT_GRAPHICSSYSTEM=raster, or "opengl", or "native" (for the default). Raster depends on the CPU, OpenGL depends on the GPU and high driver support (it is buggy and highly in development, so I would not expect it to work), and Native is just using the X11 rendering (mixture, usually).
The best and automatic way to do that is to install kcm-qt-graphicssystem from AUR and configure this particular Qt setting through
System Settings > Qt Graphics System
For more information, consult this KDE Developer blog entry and/or this Qt Developer blog entry.
Konsole is slow in applications like vim
This is a problem that is caused by slow glyph rendering. You can solve this by switching to a scalable font like Bitstream Vera Sans Mono.
Low 3D desktop performance
KDE begins with desktop effects enabled. Older cards may be insufficient for 3D desktop acceleration. You can disable desktop effects in
System Settings -> Desktop Effects
or you can toggle desktop effects with Template:Keypress + Template:Keypress + Template:Keypress
Desktop compositing is disabled on my system with a modern Nvidia GPU
Sometimes, KWin may have settings in its configuration file (kwinrc) that may cause a problem on re-activating the 3D desktop OpenGL compositing. That could be caused randomly (for example, due to a sudden Xorg crash or restart, and it gets corrupted), so, in case that happens, delete your
~/.kde4/share/config/kwinrc file and relogin. The KWin settings will turn to the KDE default ones and the problem should be probably gone.
Flickering in fullscreen when compositing is enabled
According to https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/KDE/How_to_reduce_fullscreen_flicker :
Press Alt+F2 and run:
kwriteconfig --file kwinrc --group Compositing --key UnredirectFullscreen --type bool false
Apply the changes by pressing Alt+F2 and running:
qdbus org.kde.kwin /KWin reconfigure
This forces KWin not to use window unredirection but can affect performance of fullscreen OpenGL applications when desktop effects are enabled. Desktop effects can be suspended to prevent performance issues (press Alt+Shift+F12) before running such applications.
See https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=177495
As of KDE SC 4.6.0, there is an option in systemsettings -> Desktop Effect -> Advanced -> "Suspend desktop effects for fullscreen windows" Uncheck it would tell kwin to disable unredirect fullscren. (icarus-c)
Sound problems under KDE
"Falling back to default" messages when trying to listen to any sound in KDE
When you encounter such messages:
- The audio playback device <name-of-the-sound-device> does not work.
- Falling back to default
Go to
System Settings -> Multimedia -> Phonon
and set the device named "default" above all the other devices in each box you see.
I cannot play mp3 files when using the GStreamer Phonon backend
That can be solved by installing the GStreamer plugins:
pacman -S gstreamer0.10-plugins
If you still encounter problems, you can try changing the Phonon backend used by installing another such as phonon-vlc:
pacman -S phonon-vlc
Then make sure the backend is perfered via:
System Settings -> Multimedia -> Phonon -> Backend (tab)
If you have OSS4 installed and encounter any problems you should be aware that developers of Kmix are still integrating OSSv4 support. There is an AUR package that is still experimental.
Arch linux specific packaging issues
Due to some upgrades on the packages or a newer versioned pacman with bugs (pft, like there are any ;) there could be some problems during upgrading. Please read the sections below, if you have a problem.
I wanted a minimal installation of KDE. After I installed some packages and logged in KDE, there are no panels
If you wanted a minimal installation of KDE, logged in, heard the login sound but nothing else happened, you may not have installed the Plasma binaries. These are included in
Install this package and restart Xorg.
I want a fresh installation of KDE for my system. What should I do?
Just rename the settings directory of KDE (just in case you will want to go back to your original settings):
mv ~/.kde4 ~/.kde4-backup
Plasma desktop behaves strangely
Plasma issues are usually caused by unstable plasmoids or plasma themes. First, find which was the last plasmoid or plasma theme you had installed and disable it or uninstall it.
So, if your desktop suddenly exhibits "locking up", this is likely caused by a faulty installed widget. If you cannot remember which widget you installed before the problem began(sometimes it can be an irregular problem), try to track it down by removing each widget until the problem ceases. Then you can uninstall the widget, and file a bug report (bugs.kde.org) only if it is an official widget. If it is not, I recommend you find the entry on kde-look.org and inform the developer of that widget about the issue (detailing steps to reproduce, etc).
If you cannot find the problem, but you do not want all the KDE settings to be lost, do:
rm -r ~/.kde4/share/config/plasma*
This command will delete all plasma related configs of your user and when you will relogin into KDE, you will have the default settings back. You should know that this action cannot be undone. You ought to create a backup folder and copy all the plasma related configs in it.
Hiding partitions
If you wish to prevent your internal partitions from appearing in your file manager, you can create an udev rule, for example
KERNEL=="sda[0-9]", ENV{UDISKS_PRESENTATION_HIDE}="1"
The same thing for a certain partition:
KERNEL=="sda1", ENV{UDISKS_PRESENTATION_HIDE}="1" KERNEL=="sda2", ENV{UDISKS_PRESENTATION_HIDE}="1"
Konsole does not save commands' history
By default console commands' history is saved only when you type 'exit' in console. When you close Konsole with 'x' in the corner it does not happen. To enable autosaving after every command execution you should add following lines into your .bashrc
shopt -s histappend [[ "${PROMPT_COMMAND}" ]] && PROMPT_COMMAND="$PROMPT_COMMAND;history -a" || PROMPT_COMMAND="history -a"
Kimpanel does not work with the IBus backend
There is a bug (FS#19580) with current Arch kimpanel packaging. See IBus#Kimpanel for a workaround.
KDE password prompts display three bullets per char
You can change it under System Settings > Account Details. At Password & User Account the options are:
- Show one bullet for each letter
- Show three bullets for each letter
- Show nothing
knotify4 process constantly uses CPU time
It is a bug with Gstreamer phonon back-end. Try changing to VLC phonon on System Settings > Multimedia > Phonon > Backend. If this is not in the list, install it:
#pacman -S phonon-vlc
If you do not want change the back-end you can try use an external player to play the sound systems. First install mplayer, vlc or any other sound player.
Go to System Settings > Application and System Notifications > Manage Notifications > Player Settings and change to Use an external player putting the path of your preferred sound player.
Nepomukserver process still autostart even with semantic desktop disabled
Go to System Settings > Startup and Shutdown > Service Manager > Startup Services and uncheck the Nepomuk Search Module.
Other KDE projects
KDE unstable (snapshot)
kde-snapshots (unofficial)
The member Zolnierz is maintaining a repo where he uploads development snapshots of KDE packages. You may visit this topic for more information.
Semi-official kde-unstable
When KDE is reaching beta or RC milestone, KDE "unstable" packages are uploaded to the [kde-unstable] repo.
You may add it by adding:
[kde-unstable] Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist
They stay there until KDE is declared stable and passes to [extra].
Make sure you make bug reports if you find any issues.
Read this section in the wiki as well.
KDE Legacy
Along with the official KDE4, the KDE3 code "lives" under the fork project called "Trinity".
Unofficial community repository for KDE 3
From the release of KDE 4.x, the developers dropped support for KDE 3.5.x. Nevertheless you can still use KDE 3.5.x through a project called kdemod3 In this thread. The current rebuild of the unsupported KDEmod3 is based on the Trinity project code (KDE 3.5.12). See Trinity on Arch Linux below.
Trinity on Arch Linux
Trinity SVN is currently KDE 3.5.13. An unofficial effort to provide a working set of PKGBUILDs for Trinity for Arch Linux is in the beginning stages and produces a working KDE 3.5.13 desktop for Arch Linux. Links for binary packages built from the Trinity SVN code as well as the PKGBUILDs are available. For details on this effort, see the Trinity Arch wiki:
Trinity Stable (KDE 3.5.12) packages are also available as an update to kdemod3. The following repository holds binary packages from the Trinity (3.5.12) code base:
# Trinity 3.5.12 - i686 [kdemod3] Server = http://rapinjam.com/beta/lefa/kdemod3/i686/ # Trinity 3.5.12 - x86_64 [kdemod3] Server = http://rapinjam.com/beta/lefa/kdemod3/x86_64/
- After adding the repository, issue 'pacman -Syu'. If that fails to trigger the update (or if you do not have kdemod3 installed), then use 'pacman -Sy kdemod3-complete'
Chakra Project KDEmod
The Chakra Project KDEmod (for KDE4) is no longer active and the current Chakra Project's KDE is no longer compatible with Archlinux packages and repos.
If you have installed KDEmod (for KDE4), please remove it and install KDE SC from the official Archlinux repos.
Distro and Upstream bug report
It is preferrable that if you find a minor or serious bug, you should visit the Arch Bug Tracker or/and KDE Bug Tracker in order to report that. Make sure that you be clear on what you want to report.
If you have any issue and you write about in on the Arch forums, first make sure that you have FULLY updated your system using a good sync mirror (check here) or try Reflector.
KDE 4 config files are usually located at
and for app-specific configs


text:
I was nosing around this section the other day, through some of the recipes that people have posted up. I came across a few good burger ones but then I was thinking, what's the ultimate burger? The best one you've ever made with any ingredients you can think of?
The way I like to make them is to use that McCormick hamburger seasoning, onion salt (or powder), ground pepper, season salt, and just a smidge of ranch mix. Mix all that in the hamburger, make it into patties, and then put it in the fridge over night. When you make them on the grill brush them with your favorite BBQ sauce....then add the lettuce, pickles, bacon, (and whatever else you want) and man it's enough to make you think you're in heaven.


text:
Minimizing Corneal Graft Rejections
Knowing signs and symptoms can help you detect rejection early and increase chances of success.
By Gregory W. DeNaeyer, OD
Dr. DeNaeyer is the clinical director for Arena Eye Surgeons in Columbus, Ohio. His primary interests include specialty contact lenses. He is also a consultant or advisor to MedLens Innovations, Inc. Contact him at firstname.lastname@example.com.
The cornea is the most commonly transplanted solid tissue, with more than one million corneal transplants performed in the United States since the 1960s (Eye Bank Association of America, 2009; Kaufman et al, 1998; Sellami et al, 2007). The most common indications for corneal transplant include corneal dystrophy, aphakic bullous keratopathy, and keratoconus (Rao, 1991). Full thickness (Figure 1) or lamellar grafts are able to restore vision or integrity to a cornea that has been irreversibly compromised by disease or trauma when all other medical management options have failed.
Figure 1. Corneal graft with uninterrupted sutures.
Corneal graft rejection is an immune mediated response that is the primary reason for graft failure (Sellami et al, 2007; de Freitas, 2006). This article will review rejection and how to minimize its risk of occurrence, especially in patients who want or need contact lenses post-operatively.
Mechanism of Graft Rejection
The eye is considered to have immune privilege, meaning there is a lack of immune response against allografts transplanted into the ocular microenvironment secondary to a blood barrier and lack of lymphatic drainage (Taylor, 2009; Streilein, 2003). However, rejection is still possible with an incidence between 9 percent to 12 percent, and rejection remains a lifelong risk (Sangwan et al, 2005; Triqui et al, 2005). Human leukocyte antigens (HLA) are glycoproteins that function as cell surface antigens. The human body uses HLAs to recognize self versus nonself. It takes 10-to-14 days for sensitization to occur during which there is the potential for the recipient to recognize the donor as non-self. Should this occur, then a cascade of inflammatory events is initiated against the graft (Panda et al, 2007). Any one layer, or multiple layers in combination, can be affected during a corneal graft rejection.
Signs and Symptoms
A corneal graft rejection is inflammatory in nature and so the patient will initially notice redness, irritation, or pain and sometimes photophobia. A significant reduction in visual acuity will also be evident as the rejection progressively worsens. If a corneal transplant patient should report these symptoms to your office, corneal graft rejection should be at the top of your differential and you should see the patient immediately.
A rejection of the epithelium can occur within the first few months after the transplant and will appear under slit lamp exam as a line of progressively disrupted tissue. Although self-limited, treatment of this rejection type is indicated as it may foreshadow a stro-mal/endothethial rejection.
Stromal rejection causes the stroma to appear thickened and hazy, and almost always occurs in concert with an endothelial rejection (Kaufman et al, 1998). The signs of an endothelial rejection include a distinct line of cellular compromise, known as Khodadoust line (Figure 2), which has the potential to advance across the entire cornea. Corneal edema (Figure 3) and epithelial disruption (Figure 4) will follow as the endothelium is compromised, and keratic precipitates are also commonly observed.
Figure 2. Endothelial graft rejection. Arrow points to Khodadoust line.
Figure 3. Cross section highlighting corneal edema above Khodadoust line.
Figure 4. Epithelial bedewing secondary to graft rejection.
Differential Diagnosis
It is important to rule out etiologies other than graft rejection that may have initiated an anterior inflammatory cascade.
Primary Graft Failure Usually occurs within the first month of the transplant and is the result of donor endothelial dysfunction (Kaufman et al, 1998). The key is that if there is failure with the graft within the first few weeks, corneal graft rejection can be ruled out because the recipient would not have had time to sensitize to the donor's tissue.
Corneal Ulceration A marked epithelial defect, and infiltrates would be observed.
Intraocular Pressure (IOP) Spike An elevated IOP of 40mmHg or higher is needed to cause severe stromal edema and epitheliopathy.Corneal Dystrophy Decompensation Corneal dystrophies will present with significant corneal changes well in advance of corneal decompensation.
Herpes Simplex Keratitis (HSK) Recurrent HSK is possible and can initiate a graft rejection and vice versa. If the initial lesion is geographic rather than dendritic, differentiating HSK from graft rejection can be difficult.
Prevention and Treatment
Patients who have undergone a corneal transplant have a lifelong risk of rejection. Long-term treatment with prednisolone acetate 1% (Pred Forte, Allergan) protects against immunologic graft rejection and is usually prescribed q.i.d. for two-to-three months and then tapered down. Some patients may completely stop prednisolone treatment, while others may use it q.d. or less to prophylactically prevent graft rejection. Patients with previous HSK need to prophylactically and post-operatively be treated with acyclovir to reduce recurrence. Patients who have had a previous rejection episode need to remain on immunosuppressive therapy, as their rejection risk is greater (Epstein et al, 2006). If graft rejection should occur, aggressive treatment with topical prednisolone acetate 1% is the mainstay treatment (Panda et al, 2007). The reversibility of preventing a rejection from becoming a graft failure is estimated to be between 63 percent and 91 percent (Sangwan, 2005; Epstein et al, 2006). If the graft rejection is severe and there is no improvement after two-to-three weeks of immunosuppressive treatment, then the graft is considered failed.
Contact Lenses
A significant number of patients wear contact lenses after having corneal transplant surgery. Although some patients may choose contact lenses as an option to be glasses-free, other patients may have to wear them to avoid anisometropia issues or to mask corneal irregularity. In general, wearing contact lenses does not in itself increase the risk for corneal graft rejection; however, complications from lens wear can (Kaufman et al, 1998; Geerards et al, 2006). Neovascularization, especially stromal, can put the patient at increased risk for graft rejection. Careful and frequent monitoring of graft patients is required so that you can make changes if neovascularization should initiate (Figure 5). Once vessels start to form in the host cornea, they can quickly invade the graft. Whether using soft or GP lenses, fitting patients in high-Dk materials on a daily wear basis will help minimize the risk for hypoxia-related neovascularization. Besides hypoxia, a contact lens may also lead to corneal neovascularization by irritating the cornea mechanically, especially if the contact lens has interaction with an exposed suture.
Figure 5. Corneal neovascularization due to lens wear.
If rejection should occur, patients should discontinue their lens wear immediately so as to not interfere with immunosuppressive therapy. If the rejection is successfully reversed, a reassessment of lens fit and power is indicated.
Case Example
A 38-year-old male reported on an emergent basis complaining of redness and irritation of his left eye for two days. The patient previously underwent a penetrating keratoplasty of his left eye after developing severe corneal scarring secondary to a chemical injury. At the previous appointment two months prior, his vision measured 20/40 OS with a scleral GP lens and he was using Pred Forte q.d. He reported running out of the Pred Forte just before the onset of his symptoms. The patient's vision with the contact lens now measured 20/50. A slit lamp exam showed 2 conjunctival injection and 1+ keratic precipitates. His left cornea was without staining, infiltrates, or observable edema. IOP of the left eye was 14mmHg, and all other findings were unremarkable.
We instructed the patient to discontinue lens wear and to restart the Pred Forte in his left eye every two hours while awake for seven days and to return in one week. At his follow-up appointment, the patient reported significant improvement of his symptoms, compliance with the Pred Forte, and that he had not worn his lens. Slit lamp exam showed less redness and no additional keratic precipitates. The patient was slowly tapered to using Pred Forte q.d. and successfully resumed his contact lens wear.
Corneal graft rejection is an immune mediated response that is the primary reason for graft failure (Sellami et al, 2007; de Freitas et al, 2006). Risk factors for corneal graft rejection include neovascularization of the graft, history of rejection episode, and a graft size >8mm (Sellami et al, 2007; Epstein et al, 2006; Wagoner et al, 2007). There is no increased risk for rejection if the second eye is done, especially if they are done 18 months apart (Rao et al, 1999; Ozbek et al, 2008). Long- term treatment with prednisolone acetate 1% has been proven to protect against immunologic graft rejection (Nguyen et al 2007). There is evidence that other topical immunosuppressive agents such as loteprednol etabonate (Lotemax, Bausch & Lomb), rimexolone (Vexol, Al-con), and topical cyclosporine (Restasis, Allergan) may also have a role in preventing graft rejection while putting the patient at less risk for an IOP response (Randleman et al 2006). Besides topical immunosuppressive therapy, an intracameral injection of triamcinolone acetonide has been suggested to play a role in reversing rejection (Maris et al, 2008). Bevacizumab (Avastin, Genentech/Roche) may be an adjunct therapy for managing rejection if neovascularization is present (Awadein, 1992).
In the past decade, researchers have tried to determine whether matching HLA types or ABO blood types between host and recipient would help to decrease the likelihood of rejection. In 1992, The Collaborative Corneal Transplantation Studies (CCTS) reported that matching either HLA types or ABO blood type did not significantly decrease the risk for graft rejection. However, a 2004 study found contradictory results and reported that HLA typing may decrease incidence of graft rejection (Reinhard et al, 2004). Most recently, in 2008 another team of researchers confirmed results from the CCTS that ABO incompatibility did not increase the risk of graft rejection (Dunn et al, 2008).
Descemet's Stripping Automated Endothelial Keratoplasty (DSAEK) is a recent procedure to treat Fuch's dystrophy patients that replaces only the diseased endothelium. There is a hypothesis that it may lower the risk for rejection for several reasons:
- There is no exposure to surface antigen presenting cells.
- There is a reduced number of sutures.
- There is an absence of direct contact between the host stroma vessels and the transplanted tissue.
- There is a reduced immunogenicity of the donated tissue due to the absence of the epithelium (Prakash et al, 2007). Also, the surgery decreases the risk of status post irregularity and wound rupture after trauma (Price et al, 2008).
AlphaCor (Addition Technology) keratoprosthesis, which is an artificial cornea device, is an option for patients who suffer from bullous keratopathy secondary to graft rejection but are unlikely to have a successful repeat transplant (Ngakeng et al, 2008).
Corneal graft rejection can lead to transplant failure, but with early detection and aggressive immunosuppressive treatment with topical prednisolone, it can be reversed. It is important that patients be properly educated about the signs and symptoms of graft rejection so that immediate treatment can be administered. Fit patients who wear contact lenses post-operatively in high-Dk lenses on a daily wear basis to reduce hypoxic risk and secondary neovascularization. Frequent follow-up visits are necessary to continually monitor for neovascularization and unhealthy contact lens-to-eye interaction. The development of lamellar transplant surgeries and improved immunosuppressive therapies may help to improve success rates for patients for whom corneal transplantation is their only alternative. CLS
To obtain references for this article, please visit http://www.clspectrum.com/references.asp and click on document #166.