I have google news filtering out the extreme/slanted sources so I can get a balanced view. So I see less Drudge, WSJ, Fox News and Huffpo and more Reuters, Bloomberg, AP, NPR, Christian Science Monitor, Atlantic, Popular Science, Wired, etc. Basically sources that don't gag me with obvious editorlizations. Of course, 50% or more of the "articles" are blog posts, so editorials seems to be the new news.
Anyway, that's the bubble I try to make for myself--not one that excludes opposing views, but one that excludes extremist nonsense. I see no problem with that whatsoever--to me it's just like filtering obnoxious junk mail.
And perhaps the ability for senior developers to veto management decisions on features and functionality.
The thing is that as an employee you serve at the pleasure of your employer. If you are in a designer/analyst role, one of your functions is to identify and effectively communicate issues, options for resolving them, and the pros and cons of each, keeping in mind that there is no perfect solution and different parties have different goals and priorities. If the problem is, for example, a conflict between elegant code or elegant UI, and user experience is a top priority, then that's management's call. It helps to have a prioritized list of objectives from the outset that you can reference in these discussions, but usually that's not the case.
If, after you have explained the consequences of each option and given justification for your preference, management decides to stay the course, then all you can do is document the discussion in the issue log and do the best with what you have.
Now, if we're talking scope and release schedules, then that is a slightly different scenario. In that case the best way to make everyone happy is to have management (or the customer) prioritize their wish list, and then either specify a release date or a feature set, but not both. From there you can return a list of guaranteed deliverables in whatever timeframe is agreed upon based upon your professional estimate. But that involves negotiation and compromise, not vetoes or overrides.
Of course, all this is assuming that both sides are rational and reasonable. If that isn't the case then no amount of process or project management is going to make things go smoothly.
Good issue tracking, short iterations, and daily stand-ups to discuss issues. Assign mentors to junior developers that you know need help, and have the mentors spot check the code. Let the more experienced developers choose the stack, define the interfaces, an create prototypes, and then hand those off as a template for other developers to follow.
Seems like they underestimated the open source communities willingness and ability to fork and move on. I noticed a week or so ago that our Hudson server now said "Jenkins" all over it and it's still cranking away. My Natty installation has LibreOffice all over it now, and honestly I can't say I've noticed any difference. In the face of this, it is impossible to "monetize" the product itself--all closing the source accomplishes is the exclusion of community contributions. Maybe they're finally getting it.
Then again, Hudson/Jenkins are kind of niche products... how many people would actually pay for a continuous build service whose core functionality comes from the underlying build system (Maven and Sonar)?
What will be interesting is to see if the open source projects go back to the former branding once the projects are given back. If not, then that would kind of send a symbolic message that the original project died at the hands of Oracle and that its too late for amends.
I switched to FGLRX this morning and that got rid of the artifacts, but the UI was really clunky. Disabled vsync in Compiz Config manager and set it to always enabled in Catalyst Control Center, and regained smoothness in the UI. A lot of the glitchiness seems to have abated. Looks to be an issue with the new X server, the new Mesa/Gallium release, and/or bugs in the Unity Compiz plugin.
Oddly, with the radeon drivers when I got an IM and clicked on it in the notification window it wouldn't open a chat window half the time. (I'd have to click on it 5 or 6 times). Same with Thunderbird E-mails. With FGLRX that hasn't been an issue (so far).
See post above. Grub comes up about as fast as in Maverick then it sits at a blank purple screen for 20-30 seconds, then I get the Plymouth splash for 20-30 seconds, then I get the GDM screen. Then I log in and it takes about 10-25 seconds for the panel and launcher to appear, whereas in Maverick it took 2-3 seconds.
Asus M4A7TD-EVO, Athlon II X4 630, 16 GB G.SKILL DDR3-1666, Gigabyte ATI Radeon HD 4350.
This setup was rock solid with Maverick (and Windows 7, when I boot into it). It has only been since the move to Natty that I've had problems, and then only with Compiz/Unity and Evolution. KDE live CD works fine. I did a memtest a month or so ago and had no errors. It's not the hardware.
A lot of the performance problems (specifically blur and resizing windows) have been fixed. Akonadai and Nepomuk are now integrated and polished to the point you don't even know they are running. Dolphin still has some stability issues, but it's not as bad as it was.
I upgraded from 10.04 to 10.10 because 10.04 was still giving me problems by the time Maverick came out. Maverick was pretty solid and I was happy with it. I upgraded thinking the new X server and Mesa libraries would make things a bit faster (and they advertised faster boot speeds). Oh well.
Forgot to mention: boot up times went from about 10 seconds in Maverick to well over a minute in Natty. That's a minute to get to the login screen. And now, after I log in, it takes 30-60 seconds to bring up the launcher and panel. Major step back. Wish I never upgraded.
Compiz crashes 2-3 times a day for me. Evolution crashes as soon as I start it (hangs fetching messages) and I have to do 'evolution --force-shutdown' on the command line because for some reason xkill is gone. Had to switch to Thunderbird, because Evolution was unusable.
I also uninstalled the appmenu because there were situations involving VirtualBox and Java/Swing apps where it would just go blank and stay that way, so I would have no menu at all. Plus, when you combine the app menu with Gnome's propensity to steal focus and raise windows to the foreground regardless of what you happen to be doing at the time, it's almost unusable.
After 4 days of tinkering and disabling things I'm to the point where I can actually do something (barring the compiz crashes, which require a reboot). Overall this is the glitchiest, most unstable Linux instance I've ever dealt with. I'll probably go back to KDE this upcoming weekend.
Does anyone really shop at the big box stores anymore? I might go to one to look at a TV to see how the picture is, but then I'd turn right around and order the a comparable model from NewEgg. And even then, for the past year or so I've been basing my purchases almost entirely on customer feedback, and I have yet to be disappointed. That's something you simply can't get at a big box store.
Anyway, online stores don't play that model number game except to the extent that the model number denotes things like the size of hard drive or color of the device, because if they did they couldn't harvest reviews and things from other sites. And you can usually drop the last -XXX from whatever from the model number and find comparable devices from other stores.
I've been watching Gnome shell for some time now. When I saw the first prototypes I thought "ick". However, I've got to say that the finished product looks a lot better. I read the design documents (most, if not all of them) and there is at least a logical reason for every design choice that was made. Plus it has been in development forever, and has been refined. Most of the feedback I've heard about Gnome 3/Shell is positive.
Unity, by contrast, is basically a rapid prototype. It was started primarily to address issues with screen real estate, and then developed organically in reaction to criticism. Having used Unity, the primary difference, to me, is that things are just plain harder to find now. It's like when Office went to the ribbon interface--change for the sake of change, and little to no benefit. Consequently, the majority of feedback for Unity I've seen has been negative.
So I plan to give Gnome 3 a try, if for no other reason than the notification/IM system looks great. If that's done as well as it looks, then I can forgive a lot of the other stuff. If not, there's always KDE, which has been looking really good since 4.6.
I realize there is a classic mode, but that's being jettisoned in 11.10. I've tried classic mode, and all it does is add an extra click to get to everything.
And when I said "the global menu is not always active" I should have said "not always visible". Most apps I played with use the global menu, but unless you spasmodically throw your cursor around the screen and accidentally hover over the panel you would never know there is a global menu in the first place.
For the record, I like the global menu on the Mac. The active window title and menu are always visible. The window title is bold and the text is never cut off or obscured by the menu. The apple menu is always in the top-left and has all the system-related commands I need. The window title itself is always a menu that has the preferences for that app and any commands related to app window management. Intuitive and, most importantly, *consistent*.
If you want to save real estate and truly target mobile devices, you need to be revolutionary, not evolutionary. Consider:
1. Why do apps even need menus? Can we achieve the same level of functionality without cascading drop down menus? The mobile industry has shown that this is possible. We just need to re-think the application interfaces.
2. What good is that silly ubuntu icon in the top left? This seems to be a non-functional throwback to the concept of a "Start" menu. It's like the apple menu, but it doesn't actually do anything useful. I can get to the dash by clicking on the icons in the launcher, pushing the super key, or going to the top-left corner. It's a waste of space that could be used for displaying the active window title so it doesn't have to be cut off by the menu.
3. Why can't the launcher be some kind of overlay so it doesn't have to fight with the other windows for real estate, sliding in and out depending on state of the active windows? For that matter, does the panel need to always be visible? Can't that be part of the overlay?
Gnome 3 did a better job with these issues, I think. I'm hoping Unity will end up being a New Coke / Coke Classic kind of thing to make people ecstatic to switch to Gnome 3 in 11.10.
Um, Unity is just another move toward cloning the Mac interface:
1. Global menu? Mac has had that forever 2. Monochrome notifications on the top right? Check 3. Dock? Check (except its on the *side*!)
The only differences I see so far are annoying ones:
1. The global menu is not always active, so it is non obvious how to access it 2. On mouseover the global menu obscures the window title 3. The maximize behavior with the close/minimize/restore buttons in the panel is just ugly and unweidly 4. The dock hides and appears in a nonsensical, semi-random fashion. It should be always on or auto-hide -- "dodge windows" is just weird 5. It has the dash, which is completely useless once you get the apps you use pinned to the dock 6. It crashed like crazy when testing in VirtualBox... not sure I want to attempt it on my main system
I got an upgrade notice this morning and for the first time in 3 years I declined.
I think this is hilarious. I had exactly the opposite experience. I had DSL installed under BellSouth (whose service was phenomenal) and then initiated a "move" order after they merged with AT&T. As part of the move I was supposed to get a new router (the old one was no longer supported) and a new installation disk.
So 2 weeks later--no router, no disc. I call up, and they tell me my router isn't supported and I had to configure it myself. 8 days and 16 phone calls later they discover it is actually a problem on their end, and to fix it they had to wipe out my entire account (including E-mail) and re-install me. 2 days later its working on my old router (still no new router or install disk) with 75% packet loss and 128 Kbps throughput. Ridiculous.
Anyway, all that to say that with DSL (AT&T at least) all you need to do is reset the router to factory defaults, go to http://192.168.0.1/ and set up NAT. (All DSL modems/routers I've dealt with have the factory gateway IP and admin credentials printed on a sticker with the MAC address, etc.) I think I had to put in PPP username and password, as well, but you don't need a disk for that.
And on cable, once the tech installs the modem (which acts like a gateway/bridge) you can put anything you want behind it.
It's what the system monitor reported. I usually run VirtualBox with Windows, NetBeans, JBoss, and run maven builds constantly, so it was pretty busy. I burned my finger when I touched the vent to feel how hot the air was.
Exactly. I had a Latitude D830 whose CPU was running at a more or less constant 212-218F and was virtually unresponsive. After blasting some canned air into the vent on the sides and back it started working like new.
I talked to the help desk guys about it and it's a pretty common occurrence with Dell laptops. Seems like a major design flaw to me.
That's one of my pet peeves as well. Menu fonts are too big, disabled menu entries are some kind of horrible inverse 3D black-on-black nastiness. Aggravating but not a show-stopper. AFAIK that's an issue with the GKT look and feel with Oracle's JVM. I've read that everything works as expected under OpenJDK (which is what Fedora uses).
I've read a lot of comments about nationalism being a primary factor in our sticking to the Imperial system. The fact of the matter is that we consistently use both systems almost daily. Our thermometers, odometers, speedometers, measuring cups, etc. all have both systems. Medicine is dosed in ml. Most people know that 32 F = 0 C and 212 F = 100 C and room temperature is 20-25 C and can guestimate from there. When the directions are in metric you use metric, and when they are Imperial you use Imperial.
The reason we "cling" to the Imperial system is that all of the "directions" happen to currently be in Imperial units and it is cost prohibitive to change them. Particularly road signs and mile markers--we have millions of them to replace. As we globalize and digitize (think GPS) we can eventually ween off of these things and convert (as it will be lest costly to do so) but in the meantime we're okay with dealing with both.
Slashdot Mirror
I've never seen that pop up on Google news, but thanks for the heads up.
I have google news filtering out the extreme/slanted sources so I can get a balanced view. So I see less Drudge, WSJ, Fox News and Huffpo and more Reuters, Bloomberg, AP, NPR, Christian Science Monitor, Atlantic, Popular Science, Wired, etc. Basically sources that don't gag me with obvious editorlizations. Of course, 50% or more of the "articles" are blog posts, so editorials seems to be the new news.
Anyway, that's the bubble I try to make for myself--not one that excludes opposing views, but one that excludes extremist nonsense. I see no problem with that whatsoever--to me it's just like filtering obnoxious junk mail.
And perhaps the ability for senior developers to veto management decisions on features and functionality.
The thing is that as an employee you serve at the pleasure of your employer. If you are in a designer/analyst role, one of your functions is to identify and effectively communicate issues, options for resolving them, and the pros and cons of each, keeping in mind that there is no perfect solution and different parties have different goals and priorities. If the problem is, for example, a conflict between elegant code or elegant UI, and user experience is a top priority, then that's management's call. It helps to have a prioritized list of objectives from the outset that you can reference in these discussions, but usually that's not the case.
If, after you have explained the consequences of each option and given justification for your preference, management decides to stay the course, then all you can do is document the discussion in the issue log and do the best with what you have.
Now, if we're talking scope and release schedules, then that is a slightly different scenario. In that case the best way to make everyone happy is to have management (or the customer) prioritize their wish list, and then either specify a release date or a feature set, but not both. From there you can return a list of guaranteed deliverables in whatever timeframe is agreed upon based upon your professional estimate. But that involves negotiation and compromise, not vetoes or overrides.
Of course, all this is assuming that both sides are rational and reasonable. If that isn't the case then no amount of process or project management is going to make things go smoothly.
Good issue tracking, short iterations, and daily stand-ups to discuss issues. Assign mentors to junior developers that you know need help, and have the mentors spot check the code. Let the more experienced developers choose the stack, define the interfaces, an create prototypes, and then hand those off as a template for other developers to follow.
Seems like they underestimated the open source communities willingness and ability to fork and move on. I noticed a week or so ago that our Hudson server now said "Jenkins" all over it and it's still cranking away. My Natty installation has LibreOffice all over it now, and honestly I can't say I've noticed any difference. In the face of this, it is impossible to "monetize" the product itself--all closing the source accomplishes is the exclusion of community contributions. Maybe they're finally getting it.
Then again, Hudson/Jenkins are kind of niche products ... how many people would actually pay for a continuous build service whose core functionality comes from the underlying build system (Maven and Sonar)?
What will be interesting is to see if the open source projects go back to the former branding once the projects are given back. If not, then that would kind of send a symbolic message that the original project died at the hands of Oracle and that its too late for amends.
I switched to FGLRX this morning and that got rid of the artifacts, but the UI was really clunky. Disabled vsync in Compiz Config manager and set it to always enabled in Catalyst Control Center, and regained smoothness in the UI. A lot of the glitchiness seems to have abated. Looks to be an issue with the new X server, the new Mesa/Gallium release, and/or bugs in the Unity Compiz plugin.
Oddly, with the radeon drivers when I got an IM and clicked on it in the notification window it wouldn't open a chat window half the time. (I'd have to click on it 5 or 6 times). Same with Thunderbird E-mails. With FGLRX that hasn't been an issue (so far).
See post above. Grub comes up about as fast as in Maverick then it sits at a blank purple screen for 20-30 seconds, then I get the Plymouth splash for 20-30 seconds, then I get the GDM screen. Then I log in and it takes about 10-25 seconds for the panel and launcher to appear, whereas in Maverick it took 2-3 seconds.
Asus M4A7TD-EVO, Athlon II X4 630, 16 GB G.SKILL DDR3-1666, Gigabyte ATI Radeon HD 4350.
This setup was rock solid with Maverick (and Windows 7, when I boot into it). It has only been since the move to Natty that I've had problems, and then only with Compiz/Unity and Evolution. KDE live CD works fine. I did a memtest a month or so ago and had no errors. It's not the hardware.
Running the latest updates as of this morning. Problems are actually worse despite multiple reboots.
They really jumped the gun on this release. For anyone who hasn't upgraded -- I really would not recommend it. Wait for FC 15 or Ubuntu 11.10.
A lot of the performance problems (specifically blur and resizing windows) have been fixed. Akonadai and Nepomuk are now integrated and polished to the point you don't even know they are running. Dolphin still has some stability issues, but it's not as bad as it was.
I upgraded from 10.04 to 10.10 because 10.04 was still giving me problems by the time Maverick came out. Maverick was pretty solid and I was happy with it. I upgraded thinking the new X server and Mesa libraries would make things a bit faster (and they advertised faster boot speeds). Oh well.
Forgot to mention: boot up times went from about 10 seconds in Maverick to well over a minute in Natty. That's a minute to get to the login screen. And now, after I log in, it takes 30-60 seconds to bring up the launcher and panel. Major step back. Wish I never upgraded.
Compiz crashes 2-3 times a day for me. Evolution crashes as soon as I start it (hangs fetching messages) and I have to do 'evolution --force-shutdown' on the command line because for some reason xkill is gone. Had to switch to Thunderbird, because Evolution was unusable.
I also uninstalled the appmenu because there were situations involving VirtualBox and Java/Swing apps where it would just go blank and stay that way, so I would have no menu at all. Plus, when you combine the app menu with Gnome's propensity to steal focus and raise windows to the foreground regardless of what you happen to be doing at the time, it's almost unusable.
After 4 days of tinkering and disabling things I'm to the point where I can actually do something (barring the compiz crashes, which require a reboot). Overall this is the glitchiest, most unstable Linux instance I've ever dealt with. I'll probably go back to KDE this upcoming weekend.
Does anyone really shop at the big box stores anymore? I might go to one to look at a TV to see how the picture is, but then I'd turn right around and order the a comparable model from NewEgg. And even then, for the past year or so I've been basing my purchases almost entirely on customer feedback, and I have yet to be disappointed. That's something you simply can't get at a big box store.
Anyway, online stores don't play that model number game except to the extent that the model number denotes things like the size of hard drive or color of the device, because if they did they couldn't harvest reviews and things from other sites. And you can usually drop the last -XXX from whatever from the model number and find comparable devices from other stores.
I've been watching Gnome shell for some time now. When I saw the first prototypes I thought "ick". However, I've got to say that the finished product looks a lot better. I read the design documents (most, if not all of them) and there is at least a logical reason for every design choice that was made. Plus it has been in development forever, and has been refined. Most of the feedback I've heard about Gnome 3/Shell is positive.
Unity, by contrast, is basically a rapid prototype. It was started primarily to address issues with screen real estate, and then developed organically in reaction to criticism. Having used Unity, the primary difference, to me, is that things are just plain harder to find now. It's like when Office went to the ribbon interface--change for the sake of change, and little to no benefit. Consequently, the majority of feedback for Unity I've seen has been negative.
So I plan to give Gnome 3 a try, if for no other reason than the notification/IM system looks great. If that's done as well as it looks, then I can forgive a lot of the other stuff. If not, there's always KDE, which has been looking really good since 4.6.
Well, you got one here. FC 15 for me, or some flavor of KDE ... maybe Chakra. I'm done with Canonical though.
I realize there is a classic mode, but that's being jettisoned in 11.10. I've tried classic mode, and all it does is add an extra click to get to everything.
And when I said "the global menu is not always active" I should have said "not always visible". Most apps I played with use the global menu, but unless you spasmodically throw your cursor around the screen and accidentally hover over the panel you would never know there is a global menu in the first place.
For the record, I like the global menu on the Mac. The active window title and menu are always visible. The window title is bold and the text is never cut off or obscured by the menu. The apple menu is always in the top-left and has all the system-related commands I need. The window title itself is always a menu that has the preferences for that app and any commands related to app window management. Intuitive and, most importantly, *consistent*.
If you want to save real estate and truly target mobile devices, you need to be revolutionary, not evolutionary. Consider:
1. Why do apps even need menus? Can we achieve the same level of functionality without cascading drop down menus? The mobile industry has shown that this is possible. We just need to re-think the application interfaces.
2. What good is that silly ubuntu icon in the top left? This seems to be a non-functional throwback to the concept of a "Start" menu. It's like the apple menu, but it doesn't actually do anything useful. I can get to the dash by clicking on the icons in the launcher, pushing the super key, or going to the top-left corner. It's a waste of space that could be used for displaying the active window title so it doesn't have to be cut off by the menu.
3. Why can't the launcher be some kind of overlay so it doesn't have to fight with the other windows for real estate, sliding in and out depending on state of the active windows? For that matter, does the panel need to always be visible? Can't that be part of the overlay?
Gnome 3 did a better job with these issues, I think. I'm hoping Unity will end up being a New Coke / Coke Classic kind of thing to make people ecstatic to switch to Gnome 3 in 11.10.
Um, Unity is just another move toward cloning the Mac interface:
1. Global menu? Mac has had that forever
2. Monochrome notifications on the top right? Check
3. Dock? Check (except its on the *side*!)
The only differences I see so far are annoying ones:
1. The global menu is not always active, so it is non obvious how to access it ... not sure I want to attempt it on my main system
2. On mouseover the global menu obscures the window title
3. The maximize behavior with the close/minimize/restore buttons in the panel is just ugly and unweidly
4. The dock hides and appears in a nonsensical, semi-random fashion. It should be always on or auto-hide -- "dodge windows" is just weird
5. It has the dash, which is completely useless once you get the apps you use pinned to the dock
6. It crashed like crazy when testing in VirtualBox
I got an upgrade notice this morning and for the first time in 3 years I declined.
Um, 212F is 100C last I checked...
I think this is hilarious. I had exactly the opposite experience. I had DSL installed under BellSouth (whose service was phenomenal) and then initiated a "move" order after they merged with AT&T. As part of the move I was supposed to get a new router (the old one was no longer supported) and a new installation disk.
So 2 weeks later--no router, no disc. I call up, and they tell me my router isn't supported and I had to configure it myself. 8 days and 16 phone calls later they discover it is actually a problem on their end, and to fix it they had to wipe out my entire account (including E-mail) and re-install me. 2 days later its working on my old router (still no new router or install disk) with 75% packet loss and 128 Kbps throughput. Ridiculous.
Anyway, all that to say that with DSL (AT&T at least) all you need to do is reset the router to factory defaults, go to http://192.168.0.1/ and set up NAT. (All DSL modems/routers I've dealt with have the factory gateway IP and admin credentials printed on a sticker with the MAC address, etc.) I think I had to put in PPP username and password, as well, but you don't need a disk for that.
And on cable, once the tech installs the modem (which acts like a gateway/bridge) you can put anything you want behind it.
Such is the beauty of TCP/IP and Ethernet.
It's what the system monitor reported. I usually run VirtualBox with Windows, NetBeans, JBoss, and run maven builds constantly, so it was pretty busy. I burned my finger when I touched the vent to feel how hot the air was.
Exactly. I had a Latitude D830 whose CPU was running at a more or less constant 212-218F and was virtually unresponsive. After blasting some canned air into the vent on the sides and back it started working like new.
I talked to the help desk guys about it and it's a pretty common occurrence with Dell laptops. Seems like a major design flaw to me.
That's one of my pet peeves as well. Menu fonts are too big, disabled menu entries are some kind of horrible inverse 3D black-on-black nastiness. Aggravating but not a show-stopper. AFAIK that's an issue with the GKT look and feel with Oracle's JVM. I've read that everything works as expected under OpenJDK (which is what Fedora uses).
Looks great under QT/Kubuntu too.
Could be the JVM. I've had a couple JVM crashes running NetBeans, but it wasn't NetBeans' fault.
Thanks for this.
I've read a lot of comments about nationalism being a primary factor in our sticking to the Imperial system. The fact of the matter is that we consistently use both systems almost daily. Our thermometers, odometers, speedometers, measuring cups, etc. all have both systems. Medicine is dosed in ml. Most people know that 32 F = 0 C and 212 F = 100 C and room temperature is 20-25 C and can guestimate from there. When the directions are in metric you use metric, and when they are Imperial you use Imperial.
The reason we "cling" to the Imperial system is that all of the "directions" happen to currently be in Imperial units and it is cost prohibitive to change them. Particularly road signs and mile markers--we have millions of them to replace. As we globalize and digitize (think GPS) we can eventually ween off of these things and convert (as it will be lest costly to do so) but in the meantime we're okay with dealing with both.