via Eurogamer


In the latest Blizzard podcast, Diablo III's lead designer Jay Wilson - we talked to him last week, nice man - reveals that the game is technically in an advanced state of completion, and the team is fully focused on content production.

"A lot of the team is really production focused now and we're generating content for the most part; a lot of the tech and underlying engine is really solid," Wilson said.

While the art team had moved on to building the game's second act, he revealed that "most of the design team is still on Act 1 because we're refining and improving the quests and flow, and some of the big game systems that we haven't really announced yet."

There he goes again with the unannounced "big game systems". Wilson repeatedly referenced these after the game's unveiling at June's Worldwide Invitational in Paris and seems genuinely excited by them. Our bet is that they have something to do with skill trees, or runes, or both.

Wilson revealed that the team was working through the game in a linear fashion, from start to end - "but you want your best work, which you tend to do latest in the project, to be at the beginning of the game". So the team will take plenty of time to revisit what it has already done. "It's pretty much how Blizzard works; we have a tendency to iterate over and over again on everything we do. So we build something and then we rebuild it," he said.

"If we haven't rebuilt something five times it really doesn't deserve to be shipped. That's pretty much our policy." Don't hold your breath for a release date, then.

Wilson went on to discuss several aspects of the game in detail. He explained that, as with previous Diablos, the best way to get the best items would be through trading, but that this system would be more accessible than it was in Diablo II.

"A bartering system is actually a very exclusionary trading system," he said, so Blizzard would be aiming to make a common currency - probably gold - more valuable this time. "A currency really provides a common language: that's the point of a currency... We don't want to do some of the stuff that Diablo II did where they kind of actively devalued gold.

"Really we're trying to allow more people to get into the trading game because the more people that are in it the more fun it will be."

There's an in-depth discussion of the inventory system - moving from the game's traditional (and "pretty unpopular") grid to a World of Warcraft-style simple slot inventory. Wilson promised that "we're going to give people lots of ways to expand and deal with your inventory and... more info on that, coming in the future," with the idea being to reduce the use of "mule" characters. Sharing and trading items will be made much easier, perhaps via a mail system.

Fans hoping for Diablo II's Necromancer class to return will be disappointed, it seems - Wilson said that his team was focused on creating new classes, or returning to ones it felt could be greatly improved, whereas the Necromancer "plays too well".

"The Necromancer is an awesome class, actually my favourite class, from Diablo II, and the class I'm currently playing the most of," Wilson said. "It's not that we just dislike him, we love the Necromancer, but... the issue we have is, he was so well-designed... there's certainly some things we could do a little differently, but do we feel like we can make him so much better, and change his core gameplay experience? If anything, we'd say we really don't want to."

He didn't rule out revisiting it in a future expansion "after we felt like we've kind of established the core Diablo III game," however.

Finally, after yet another lengthy defence of Diablo III's art style, Wilson hinted that the arc of the game would take players from a lighter tone in the beginning into an increasingly dark and apocalyptic setting.

"We really want to make sure that the tone of the game is right, that it's dark, that it's foreboding," he said. "What we showed at WWI really is a very early game content, you know, it's first act dungeon, first act environments.

"And we've made a conscious effort to make sure that the tone gets worse - one of the things that we really want to tell a story of, basically, is the coming apocalypse, and it works best if there's a contrast, you know, if things get worse in act two and act three, and act four... people are probably going to see some environments that feel, tone-wise, a lot more, menacing than what we've shown so far."

Oracle's technical forums have been racked with performance issues all week since the vendor upgraded the system.

Forums.oracle.com underwent a "long, long overdue" upgrade last weekend to Jive Forums 5.5, according to a blog post by Justin Kestelyn, editor in chief of Oracle Technology Network.

But apparently, some Oracle users have had to wait a long, long time to access the system, receiving error messages and experiencing slow performance overall.

The situation has users who did manage to get into the forums sounding off in colorful fashion.

"I do not care whether or not this forum has loads of funky new features -- if no one can get to the site and/or post anything, what's the point?," wrote one poster, "ATD," on Thursday.

"I would also like to register my disgust at what's been happening for several days and my sheer disappointment that Oracle, of all companies, would allow an application to go live without thorough testing or, if it was thoroughly tested in UAT, without rolling back immediately when it was obvious that there were problems in the production environment," ATD added.

Oracle teams have been scrambling to resolve the issues all week, according to Kestelyn, and uptime reached 80 percent by Wednesday, compared to 7 percent on Monday.

"Uptime is still not where it should be of course; forums.oracle.com is business-critical for a lot of folks (as well as for Oracle), and I'm glad they consider it so," he wrote.

"We made a conscious decision early in this process to stick with the upgrade; to fight through the problems instead of run from them," he added. "Regardless, I do want to apologize for the downtime you've suffered through thus far."

It is possible the company will change course platform-wise, he said. "Stability is our top priority - much more so than features. If we have to trade the latter for the former, we will."

Today’s people are very conscious of their human body and shape. Models strive for perfection which unfortunately means being very thin. In this pursuit of perfection, all sorts of diets and weight reduction programs thrive. However, these efforts though unhealthy at time, are intentional.

College tuition is expensive enough, but hitting the campus bookstore with a shopping list of textbooks is where you can really get gouged—unless you know where to find the best discounts. With the start of the school year right around the corner, we asked savvy student deal hunters the best way to save money on textbooks. Over 100 responses later, we've compiled the best sources and tips to that will get you the textbooks you need without breaking the bank.

The majority of responses were specific web sites readers had used to save money on books. We've subdivided the textbook sites into categories for you, followed by tips and tricks for saving on your textbook haul this semester.

The Comparison Engines

When the price matters more than the store, online textbook price comparison engines shine. When you don't care what truck your $200 Chemistry book fell off of or what far reaches of the world it has to travel from to get to you as long as it's dirt cheap, comparison engines are the perfect tool.

BigWords.com is by far the most popular comparison engine amongst readers. BigWords has expanded over the years to cover not just the buying and selling of textbooks but price comparisons for DVDs, music, games, and other consumer products. According to the self-published statistics on the site:

Multi-Item Price Optimizationâ„¢ saves about $173 on average multi-item orders, including coupons, promotions, and shipping*. 35% cheaper than other online stores, 50% cheaper than bookstores.

Based on personal experience, while I have no idea if BigWords is in fact 35% cheaper than their competitors I have saved tons of money buying books with their comparison engine over the years. The real deal-sealer, of course, is the giant orange robot they employ as a mascot. You can always trust a robot.

While AddALL's web site isn't as polished as BigWords, it does search 41 book sites ensuring that whether your book is on Half.com or Walmart.com you'll end up with a low price. Unfortunately AddALL cannot do multiple comparisons like BigWords.

Rent Your Textbooks

Taking a hybrid approach between selling books and lending them, Chegg.com is a book rental service. From the test searches I conducted and from the comments left by readers it would appear that renting a book from Chegg for a semester is roughly 50% the cost of purchasing it. Chegg does offer the option to outright purchase the book if you so desire, but as any seasoned college student can tell you there are many books you'll never use again. If you're looking for an environmentally conscious bookseller, Chegg is an excellent candidate.

When we realized that 20 million trees a year are consumed for books—four million for textbooks alone—we decided it was time to give a little back to Mother Nature. That's why we plant a tree for every book you rent, buy, sell or donate! Together we can make a difference, one book at a time. Booksellers and Marketplaces

A powerhouse in the regular book industry, it didn't take long for Amazon.com to branch into the realm of textbooks. While Amazon didn't always have the lowest prices in my informal testing, some readers pointed out that there is sometimes more to shopping than the absolute lowest price. Amazon has history of strong customer service and the few extra dollars you may spend buying a book through Amazon.com might be worth the saved headache if things aren't quite what you expected. Also, Amazon offers a 30-day price guarantee, so if a book's price drops after you buy they'll refund you the difference. If you buy from Amazon, use a service like RefundPlease to monitor your purchases for price drops for 30 days after your purchase.

Half.com has built a name as a place to quickly buy and sell used books—and textbooks are no exception. With a spartan but efficient interface you can quickly enter entire lists of books to buy or sell and find out the going rate. Keep in mind that most textbook comparison engines will check sites like Amazon Marketplace and Half.com so visiting a single specialized retail site isn't always your best first stop.

The Free: The Library and Friends

The most obvious (and maybe most overlooked) place to find books is the public library. Many college libraries maintain a reserve of popular textbooks. If your library doesn't have the book you are looking for, check into getting it from another library. If you're new to using the library, see how to get the most out of your local library.

Finally, don't forget to simply ask around—online, like on Facebook, or in person. If you're a college student purchasing textbooks there is a pretty good chance you're in an area saturated with other college students who are all just as dismayed at the idea of selling back their $180 textbook to the campus bookstore for $15. Ask around, because no matter how cheap you find a book in a textbook search engine nothing beats the hassle of giving a fellow student $20 and being done with your textbook hunting on the spot.

Tell us about your best textbook discounts this academic year in the comments.

1. Stay Conscious
2. AK47 (feat. Vast Aire)
3. Opium Scripts (feat. Billy Woods)
4. Hattori Hanzo
5. Air Battery (feat. Tommy Gunn & Billy Woods)
6. Trigganomics
7. Broken Halo (feat. Invizzibl Men & Hi-Coup)
8. Light
9. In the Mirror (feat. Vast Aire & Karniege)
10. Beautiful
11. Learn
12. Peanut Butta Up's
13. Keep Living (feat. Billy Woods)
14. Imani (feat. Billy Woods)
15. (...)

Filed under: Hybrids/Alternative, Green, GM, Toyota

The attention of the hybrid technology universe has been focused firmly on two vehicles: the Chevy Volt and the plug-in Prius. On the surface, these two vehicles are primed to be big-time competitors in the battle for mpg-conscious buyers. Not so, says the king of quote, Maximum Bob Lutz. According to Mr. Lutz, the two vehicles are very technologically different. Toyota also says that a plug-in Prius will be in production in 2009, a full year ahead of the Volt. Lutz hypothesizes that the Prius plug-ins will be available only to select fleets and not in large scale production, and the GM Vice Chairman says that the Volt will be available as part of a large test fleet in late 2009, as well.

We agree that the Volt and Prius are technologically different, but we're pretty sure the two vehicles will be competing for the same buyers. After all, Americans are calling for more fuel efficient vehicles and don't care if one's a plug-in parallel hybrid that runs on nickel-metal hydride batteries and the other is a series hybrid with lithium-ion batteries and a "range extender". They just care about whichever one can go further on a drop of fuel.

[Source: Detroit News]

 

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http://www.mhswellness.com is a site you should visit if you’re one of the health-conscious folks in Colorado Springs looking for a chiropractor. Not all Colorado Springs chiropractors are the same. Compare!

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Envoyé : 29 août 2008
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http://www.last.fm/music/Lyricson

Filed under: Displays, HDTV, Home Entertainment

Thin is in at IFA 2008, and Sharp's LCD lineup leads off with the super-skinny XS1 Aquos series LCD. A 23mm thick 1080p 52- or 65-inch panel packing 10,000:1 contrast ratio, 100Hz motion processing and detachable speaker system, halves it's previous 5cm best from May of this year. Old school fat LCD fans can look forward to the D65E line, pulling 20,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio and claiming an "environmentally conscious design" for Sharp's premium range, in sizes from 32- to 52-inch models, with prices to match from €899 to €2299. Of course, none of this would be right without a matching Blu-ray player, and Sharp has announced the BD-HP21H, a Bonus View Profile 1.1 model with a quick-start mode, but like the XS1 lacks pricing info that would make it so much juicier. All are due in the UK in October, we should hope for more details before then.

Gallery: Sharp XS1 eyes-on

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Sharp showed off an impressively anorexic concept display at IFA last year, and this year they've turned it into production reality. In 52 and 65-inch sizes, the Sharp XS1 LCD TV is a hair less than an inch thick (23mm 0r .9 inches) and displays 1080p, 100Hz (this is Europe) and a contrast ratio of 10,000:1. Slated for release in the UK this October, we still don't know the price and/or whether or not chubby Americans will be allowed to be seen in the same room with such a svelte TV. The company has also just announced the BD-HP21H Blu-ray player and D65 "premium" televisions—also both for Europe. For more info on those models, here's the full release: XS1 AQUOS Series – Ultra large, ultra slim LCD TV Exploiting the latest in LCD technology, the new flagship series of LCDs produced by Sharp, the XS1 series, have transcended the boundaries of the modern TV. With the world’s slimmest TV body at just 2.3 cms and available in 52” and 65”, these TVs make a bold statement. Despite this, because they are so skinny, they are very light and can even be mounted on the wall. With the technology to complement their stunning appearance, the XS1 series come equipped with a 6ms response time and an advanced contrast ratio of 10,000:1, images are crystal clear and watching anything becomes a pleasure. With a slim, detachable speaker system and five 2.1 channel speakers, sound is reproduced with complete accuracy. The XS1 is also fitted with a gallery mode, which enables images from a USB stick to be displayed in Full-HD, either as a slideshow or as an interior centrepiece. Incorporating 100-hertz picture enhancement technology and offering Full-HD resolution of 1,920 x1,080p, the XS1 series are the next stage in LCD TV evolution. D65E AQUOS Series – Sharp’s new premium range This premium quality series, in Sharp’s signature slim-line, piano black finish, boasts a design packed with functionality and elegance. With a dynamic contrast ratio of 20,000:1 and a brightness of 450 cd/m2, the image clarity of this series is superb. This, combined with the built-in DVB terrestrial tuner, means that when combined with high-definition signals in 1080p format, the picture quality is phenomenal. The D65 series also comes with High-Fidelity sound and a 10w audio output to ensure the sound quality is as crystal-clear as the on-screen image. With an environmentally conscious design which includes low-power standby and an energy-save feature to reduce power consumption, the D65 series is designed to increase the enjoyment of TV watching for the style-conscious homeowner. The 65 AQUOS series will be available in 32”, 37”, 46” and 52” models. BD-HP21H Blu-ray player – Sharp’s first cinema-quality Blu-ray player Whereas many Blu-ray players on market cannot release the full potential of Blu-ray discs, Sharp’s new BD-HP21H is able to produce colourful, detailed and vibrant colour. Combined with the 24-hertz frame rate – the same rate used for cinema content, any on-screen motion is rendered as smoothly and naturally as would be expected on the big screen. Designed with a 1.1 profile and with Bonusview functionality, the BD-HP21H offers users the opportunity to take advantage of picture-in-picture and simultaneous play functions to offer a more interactive viewing experience. The BD-HP21H also has a Quick-start mode designed to reduce power consumption and a Jpeg playback feature so pictures can be viewed in High-Definition quality. Compatible with the latest High-Definition formats, and developed to incorporate Sharp’s signature black finish and slim profile, The BD-HP21H is a beautiful match for any of the new range of AQUOS LCD TVs.

Environment, science & technology: Carbon-conscious enthusiasts ask restaurants for waste vegetable oil to power their European journey

Product Category: Home Theater Speakers
Manufacturer: The Speaker Company
Where to Buy: The Speaker Company
Price: $449.97
System Requirements: Any 5 channel amplifier
Specifications: Drivers - 1x 1" Shielded HiCell dome tweeter and 2x 3.5" Shielded Aluminum cone midranges/woofer. Frequency Response - 120 Hz to 20 kHz. Sensitivity - 87 dB. Nominal Impedance - 8 ohms. Recommended Power - 15-125 watts continuous. Dimensions - 12.5" H x 5.31" W x 3.25" D. Weight - 4 lbs. 2 oz. each.

Pros:

• Excellent aesthetics;
• High build quality;
• Low price.
  

Cons:

• Sub-woofer required, but not included in package;
• Won't impress the brand conscious.
  

Summary:
As a newcomer, but with a respectable heritage, the TSAT-2000s offer a great value. If you are looking for a quality set of classy, unobtrusive speakers to go with your flat panel TV, this is probably one of the best bargains going.

Time For Some New Speakers
Oh how the times change. It has been nearly a decade since I purchased speakers (a set of AR-315-PSs with matching center channel on the front, Optimus on the rear, and a JBL sub-woofer). They’ve served me well, but as I’ve started to plan for a large flat screen TV for our living room (to replace our current gigantic rear projector), I’ve realized that I’d really like a more subtle, wall mountable set of speakers. However, given that I already have a great set of speakers that work perfectly well, it is hard to justify spending a ton of money or taking a hit on quality, just over a matter of aesthetics. The Speaker Company states that they offer “Quality Loudspeakers at Half the Price”, so when they offered to let me test drive their brand new TSAT-2000s, I was happy to oblige.

First off, if you're like me, you may never have heard of The Speaker Company. Their goal is to change that. Their website talks about their experience in the industry and that they are using the direct sales model to cut out the middleman and pass on the savings. This is an easy promise to make, but not always easy to live up to, so I did some outside research. A quick whois look-up identified the owner of their domain name as D&M Holdings, which is the parent company of Denon, Marantz, and Boston Acoustics. So if you have any fears of this being a no-name operation, the pedigree of this company should help allay your fears. In addition, to help back up their claims, they offer a 30 day trial with free shipping in both directions.

Physical Characteristics
These are classy looking speakers. They've got some heft and feel very solid. The cabinets are made of wood and have a 5 layer hand rubbed lacquer finish giving a nice deep glossy black look that reminds me of a highly polished grand piano. The grills are a matching black finish and attach via small magnets, making removal and re-installation a breeze. If black is not your thing, they are also available in white. The “tSc” logo can be rotated so that it is correctly positioned no matter how you orient your speakers.

Figure 1: Fronts (with and without grills).

The back of the speakers feature attachment points for the mounting plates and spring loaded clips for attaching speaker wire (much more efficient than the screw down clips on my current setup).

Physical Characteristics (Continued)

Figure 2: Backs (with and without mounting bracket). The high gloss finish does show the fingerprints!

Figure 3: Close-up of speaker clips.

Putting Them Together
The set includes an ingeniously simple mounting system that should let you mount them however you would like. Basically screw the plate to the wall or into a corner and then use a set of included screws to attach the speaker to the plate. Since these are on loan, I wasn’t going to start putting holes in my walls to try them out, but it looked very simple. The speakers can also stand vertically on their own if you want to use them as bookshelf speakers. Finally, a foot is included which attaches to the mounting brackets and allows you to stand them horizontally.

Figure 4: Mounting Hardware

Figure 5: Close up of installed mounting hardware including foot for horizontal applications.

Sound Quality
Sound quality is probably one of the most subjective things you can review, so before I start off this part of the review I wanted to clarify that I am not an audiophile and have not developed the ear that those who regularly review speakers have for subtle nuances. On the plus side, most consumers haven’t either, so what you will get here is the high level assessment of what a “normal” person thinks of these. I’m going to test with music movies and games, using the optical output on my xBox 360 to send material to my amp. I’ll be doing two types of tests. First I’m just going to hook up the left channel and leave an AR attached to the right channel. This should let me do a pretty effective side by side comparison. The second test will be with all five speakers hooked up and should let me assess the speakers working together on their own merits. So, let’s get to it.

I’ll be the first to admit that my first test really isn’t a fair comparison. The ARs have a dynamic range going down to 38 Hz as opposed to 120 Hz for the TSATs. The lack of a low end was very apparent in a side by side test. However, I also noticed that the sound from the TSAT speaker was what I would describe as crisper and cleaner. I was able to hear more subtle details on the high end than I was from the AR side.

After hooking up the other four, I noticed more of the same, a very crisp and clean sound but lacking in the low end. So I fired up my sub and was disappointed to still find the low end lacking. Then my brain kicked in and realized that I had the crossover set pretty low for use with the ARs. So I experimented and found that between boosting the crossover to about 140 htz and slightly increasing the sub-woofer's volume, I was able to come up with very satisfactory results. So with a smile on my face, I auditioned them for the rest of the day. I listened to music while working around the house, watched portions of the HD versions of 300 and Serenity, and played some Guitar Hero and the TSATs performed well for all uses. I pumped the volume well past my comfort level and they remained clear and without any obtrusive hissing.

Pricing
Having not bought speakers in nearly a decade, I’ll have to admit, I had to do some research into what current prices were. Right off the bat, I knew these had to be a pretty good buy because 10 years ago, the ARs cost more each than this entire setup costs. I took a look at the pricing for some of the sets The Speaker Company indicated were competitors and found that the competition seemed to cost more and offer less in both the features and style department. However, most of these sets included a sub-woofer. My contact indicated that numerous sub offerings were going to be available in the very short term, so it looks like you should be able to add one and still stay below the prices of these other setups.

Conclusion
Once I added in a sub-woofer and calibrated it properly, I found the TSATs very satisfying. As you would expect, head-to-head, I would choose the ARs on overall sound quality, but only by a small margin. Factoring in the size, price and aesthetics along with my desire to go for something more minimalist to complement a flat panel TV, these are exactly what I am looking for. Best of all, you don’t have to take my word for it. The Speaker Company offers free shipping and free return shipping, so you’ve got no risk in trying them out, and at $449.97, I think you’ll find them to be keepers.

Chris Gohlke is a Contributing Editor for Digital Media Thoughts. He loves poker, RPGs, and Sci-Fi and loves to get his hands on real-life tech gadgets. He lives in Tallahassee, Florida, USA with his wife and three cats.

At Akademy 2008, KDE Release Team members Sebastian Kügler and Dirk Müller discussed the future of KDE's development process. Describing the challenges KDE faces and proposing some solutions, they spawned a lot of discussion. Read on for a summary of what has been said and done around this topic at Akademy.

Our current development model has served us for over 10 years now. We did a transition to Subversion some years ago, and we now use CMake, but basically we still work like we did a long time ago: only some tools have changed slightly. But times are changing. Just have a look at the numbers:

• KDE 0.0 to 3.5 took 420.000 new revisions in 8 years
• KDE 3.5 to 4.0 took 300.000 new revisions in 2 years

Also, this year's Akademy was the largest KDE event ever held, with more than 350 visitors from every continent of the world.

This enormous growth creates issues both for the wider community, for developers, and for the release team. Patches have to be reviewed, their status has to be tracked - these things become progressively harder when the size of the project balloons like it currently does. The centralized development system in Subversion's trunk doesn't support team-based development very well, and our 6-month release cycle - while theoretically allowing 4 months development and 2 months stabilizing - often boils down to barely 50% of the available time suitable for new feature development.

KDE's current revision control system doesn't allow for offline commits, making life harder for people without a stable internet connection. Furthermore we're still looking for more contributors, so lowering the barrier for entry is another important concern.

Changing requirements

We will have to allow for more diversity and we must be able to accommodate individual workflows. Not everyone is happy with a 6-month schedule, not everyone prefers Subversion. Companies have their schedules and obligations, and what is stable for one user or developer is unsuitable for another. Meanwhile, new development tools have surfaced, such as the much-praised distributed revision control tool Git. Together with new tools for collaborating, new development models are emerging. KDE is in the process of adopting a much wider range of hardware devices, Operating systems (OpenSolaris, Windows, Mac OS) and mobile platforms such as Maemo. And we have an increased need for flexible and efficient collaboration with third parties and other Free Software projects. Sebastian and Dirk believe it is time for a new way of working. In their view, KDE's development process should be agile, distributed, and trunk freezes should be avoided when possible. While there are still a lot of culprits in their proposal, KDE needs to get ready for the future and further growth.

Agile Development

The most fundamental idea behind Agile Development is "power to the people". Policies are there to avoid chaos, and to guide (but not force) people in any way.

What is Agile Development supposed to offer us?

• Shorter time-to-market, in other words, less time between the development of a feature and the time users can actually use it
• More cooperation and shortened feedback cycles between users and developers
• Faster and more efficient development by eliminating some current limitations in team-based development processes.
• Simplicity. Not only good in its own right, but it also makes it easier to understand and thus contribute to KDE development.

How can we do this? To achieve this, we have to reflect upon our experiences as developers and share our thoughts on this. Our process should be in our conscious thoughts. Sebastian and Dirk talked about a specific lesson they have learned: plans rarely work out. As a Free Software project, we don't have fixed resources, and even if we did, the world changes too fast to allow us to reliably predict and plan anything. We have to let go. We should set up a process aimed at adaptation and flexibility, a process optimized for unplanned change.

This needs to be done in one area in particular: our release cycle. Currently, our release cycle is limiting, up to the point of almost strangling our development cycle. So Dirk and Sebastian propose a solution: "Always Summer in Trunk" Our current release process, depicted in the graphic below, can be described as using technical limitations to fix what is essentially a social issue: getting people into "release mode". Over 4 months, we develop features, then enter a 2 month freeze period in which increasingly strict rules apply to what can be committed to trunk. This essentially forces developers to work on stabilizing trunk before a release. Furthermore, developers need to keep track of trunk's current status, which changes depending on where in the release cycle KDE currently is, not taking into account diverse time schedules of both upstream and downstream entities. At the same time, many developers complain about Subversion making it hard to maintain "work branches" (branches of the code that are used to develop and stabilize new features or larger changes in the code), subsequent code merges are time-consuming and an error-prone process.

The proposal would essentially remove these limitations, instead relying on discipline in the community to get everyone on the same page and focus on stability. To facilitate this change, we need to get the users to help us: a testing team establishing a feedback cycle to the developers about the quality and bugs. Using a more distributed development model would allow for more flexibility in working in branches, until they are stabilized enough to be merged back to trunk. Trunk, therefore, has to become more stable and predicable, to allow for branching at essentially any point in time. A set of rules and common understanding of the new role of trunk is needed. Also, as the switch to a distributed version control system (which is pretty much mandatory in this development model) is not as trivial as our previous change in revision control systems, from CVS to Subversion. Good documentation, best practice guides, and the right infrastructure is needed. The need for better support for tools (such as Git) in KDE's development process does not only come from the ideas for a new development model though. Developers are already moving towards these tools and ignoring such a trend would mean that KDE's development process will clutter and ultimately become harder to control.

In Sebastian and Dirk's vision, KDE's current system of alpha, beta and release candidate releases will be replaced by a system which has three milestones:

The Publish Milestone

This is the moment we ask all developers to publish the branches they want to get merged in trunk before the release. Of course, it is important to have a good overview of the different branches at all times to prevent people from duplicating work and allow testers to help stabilize things. But the "Publish Milestone" is the moment to have a final look at what will be merged, solve issues, give feedback and finally decide what will go in and what not. The publish milestone is essentially the cut-off date for new features that are planned for the next release.

The Branch Milestone

This is the moment we branch from trunk, creating a tree which will be stabilized over the next couple of months until it is ready for release. Developers will be responsible for their own code, just like they used to be, but one might continue using trunk for development of new features. To facilitate those developers who do not want switch between branches, we could have a tree which replicates the classic development model. Developers are encouraged and expected to help testing and stabilizing the next-release-branch.

The Tested Milestone

The "tested" milestone represents the cut-off date. Features that do not meet the criteria at this point will be excluded from the release. The resulting codebase will be released as KDE 4.x.0 and subsequently updated with 4.x.1, 4.x.2, etc. It might be a good idea to appoint someone who will be the maintainer for this release, ensuring timely regular bugfix releases and coordinating backports of fixes that go into trunk.

Technology

A prerequisite for this new development model would be a proper distributed source code management system. Git has already stolen the hearts of many KDE developers, but there are other options out there which should be seriously assessed. Furthermore we need tools to support easy working with the branches and infrastructure for publishing them. Getting fellow developers to review code has always been a challenge, and we should make this as easy as possible. We also need to make it easy for testers to contribute, so having regularly updated packages for specific branches would be an additional bonus. Trunk always needs to be stable and compilable, so it might be a good idea to use some automated testing framework.

Under discussion are ideas like having some kind of "KDE-next" tree containing the branches which will be merged with trunk soon; or maybe have such trees for each sub-project in KDE. Another question is which criteria branches have to meet to get merged into the "new" trunk. Especially in kdelibs, we want to ensure the code is stable already to keep trunk usable. Criteria for merges into various modules have to be made clear. What happens if bad code ends up in trunk? We need clear rules of engagement here. How can we make it as easy as possible to merge and unmerge (in the case the code that has been merged is not ready in time for a release)?

Having a page on TechBase advertising the different branches (including a short explanation of their purpose and information about who's responsible for the work) will go a long way in ensuring discoverability of the now-distributed source trees. A solution also needs to be found for the workload around managing trunk. Especially if we have tight, time-based releases, a whole team of release managers needs to take responsibility. KDE's current release team has come a long way in finding module coordinators for various parts shipped with KDE, but currently not every module has a maintainer.

While there are still a lot of questions open, we'd like to work them out in collaboration with the KDE community. KDE's future revision control system is discussed on the scm-interest mailing list. Discussion on a higher level can be held on the Release Team's mailing list, and naturally KDE's main developer forum, kde-core-devel.

With the release of KDE 4.0, the KDE community has entered the future technologically. Though timescales for the above changes have not yet been decided upon, Dirk and Sebastian took the talk as an opportunity to start discussing and refining these ideas: it's time that KDE's primary processes are made more future-proof and ready for the new phase of growth we have entered.

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