At least you have a way around it. Those of us running GNU/Linux on PowerPCs are stuck in the cold and we've got even less hope than you do. When a site uses Flash, I have two options: Don't visit it, or use another computer. I usually pick the former.
(Disclaimers: For Youtube and similar sites, its often possible to use an online tool that extracts the.flv Flash video file, but this only works when flash is used as a media player. When people are using Flash the way it ought to be used, that doesn't help. Gnash exists, but unless it's got remarkably better in the last few months, it's still very much in alpha and not worth installing for an end-user.)
I don't run software I can't run on all my computers. Weird thing: That means I don't run Firefox because it doesn't work on my main desktop, but I could run Opera.[*] In spite of the fact that Firefox is free software and Opera is proprietry.
What the hell does the resolution of the example image have to do with anything?
You can't make a fair comparison with a low resolution image. The fact that the image is low-res doesn't mean that the product on offer is bad; it just means I can't make a fair comparison. Considering one of the anonymous coward's points was rendering of text, you really need full resolution to make any sort of comparison!
Your car analogy is really bad, btw. A more accurate one would be saying "My car is better than yours. As proof, I present a matchbox car model of mine". A matchbox car will give me a very rough idea of how the car looks on the outside, and give me no indication of how hidden parts look, or it handles, or how much maintenance it requires, or whatever.
It's the implementation that is expressed that is important, not the quality of the visual symbol. If it's too vague a concept for you, walk up to a Mac and use one in person, or hell, Google for a better picture if you've never seen this mysterious "OS X."
I have no idea how you came to that conclusion based on what I said. The fact that I introduced my post with "-1 Troll" should indicate I'm criticising his argument, not facts because he's provided none. I also find your tone unhelpful. For whatever it's worth, I am experienced with Mac OS X and I do know how it looks and how it feels.
The fonts used in Linux by default are horrible. It's like a bastardized cross between a monospace font and a proportional one, harboring the problems of both and the advantages of neither.
There is, to my knowledge, nothing unconventional about Bitstream Vera Sans/DejaVu Sans. Perhaps it has some agressive kerning pairs, but there is nothing remotely like a monospace font about it.
UI elements are in desperate need of antialiasing
Here you sound ignorant. Perhaps you are thinking of applications based on ten- or fifteen-year-old toolkits.
and some toning down of the garish colors. There's bright coloration, and there's "OMG look 16 colors!"--use some more nuance, some shadow, some gradient. A solid, pure hex green check mark on an okay button (apart from being superfluous) looks like a child created it.
Actually, a check mark on an okay button is not superfluous; when used consistently it provides a visual cue of how to continue that is much faster to process than words. It also provides consistency when (for other reasons) the "okay" button say "OK".
In any case, I've never seen a dialog box using a pure hex green check mark on a dialog box without any shadow or gradient. Ubuntu's default theme is fairly bright (like WinXP and OS X, brighter than I like) but it is certainly not pure hex green. When you exaggerate and say things that are flat-out wrong, it is very hard to take anything you say seriously.
Desktop effects wizardry that looks like a five-year old nVidia demo is not a viable competitor in the face of rich blacks, glossy reflections, and fluid slides and fades.
I have no idea what you're saying here. How black a black is is determined by your hardware, not your operating system. (I suspect you might be referring to the Mac's media centre thing, but in that case I have no idea how it's relevant to the discussion. And Carsten Haitlzer's media centre is similarly slick.)
You say: The visual presentation as a whole is lacking.
That is precisely the charge being made. Provide accurate, meaningful specifics and we can think about fixing things.
Thankyou for your useful reply. The KDE print settings dialog you link to is indeed... weird. Whether the fonts really are that large probably depends on the user's screen resolution and eyesight, but it does look... wrong.
There are a few examples of good UIs on KDE/GTK apps, but for the most part, they tend to look very sloppy. Win32 apps tend to look neutral and professional. OS X apps are a bit more flashy, but are on a similar level of "neatness".
I certainly would've agreed with this a few years ago, but today I think the biggest charge that can be levelled against most GTK+ apps that follow a Gnome or Gnome-inspired HIG, is that the piecemeal feel is still there. Mac OS X and Windows applications, for instance, merge into the window manager — but at the cost of integrating window management policy with the applications. As you say, this isn't a problem with free software per se, but with the architecture. Although, I think the problem is more the cost of flexibility — and one which the people most capable of changing probably feel is worth it.
Now as to your comment about toolbars, that certainly surprises me. I've always found Windows to be the environment which overdoes toolbars. On my desktop, I generally disable what toolbars I don't need and use the menus for almost everything. But even this I rarely do because most programs I run don't have much toolbar by default. On Windows, I find that programs have stupidly many toolbars by default and I'm forever hovering my mouse waiting for a tooltip to come up.
I'm not sure what causes this difference of experience, but I can think of many things: For instance, I run mostly GTK+ apps, which tend to follow a Mac inspired HIG with relatively few toolbars; you cite a KDE example, which is generally regarded as being more Windows-like. Another possibility is that I mostly use my own free desktop by choice, and I've deliberately chosen an environment and programs that minimise toolbars, whereas I only run Windows because I have to, so I'm more likely to come across programs with interfaces I don't like (with toolbars) when running Windows.
-1 Troll. You can't use that picture as a comparison of free desktops and Mac OS X. It's so low-res, the only thing you can see in that picture of any consequence is OMG SHINY AND BRIGHT COLORS which are really quite irrelevant.
If you could provide specific examples of how, for instance, Gnome or KDE have "amateurish UI element spacing and layouts", that'd be useful. Otherwise, why talk?
(On a related note, why do I think I've heard about this already being done with Linux without the DRM?)
I'm not entirely sure I know what you're referring to, but if you're referring to fully containing applications in a single relocatable folder and/or shell integration thereof, there's two different free options for this on GNU/Linux and other *nix-like operating systems that I'm aware of.
Firstly, there's GNUStep, which is basically the same as Mac OS X in this regard, being another NeXTSTEP derivative. In terms of shell integration, the only difference that I know of is that "open" is instead named "openapp" (and the default paths are different).
Secondly (and this is the method I use), there's the ROX Desktop, which is based on RISC OS, a desktop OS that used to be made by Acorn in England. If you have an executable file named "AppRun" in a folder, it recognises that folder as executable. There's a patch for bash and a script for zsh that lets them recognise these in your PATH and run them simply by typing the folder name. If you run "rox (arg)", then ROX runs (arg) the same way it would've if you'd clicked on it in a Filer window (i.e. running AppDirs, or opening files with their default association). This is a bit different from Mac's "open" tho, because it has nothing like a search path.
In addition, there's GoboLinux, a distribution which contains all the packages in discrete folders, but they're not, to my knowledge, relocatable. I've never used GoboLinux. I think its package manager automatically symlinks the binaries to a common directory. And everyone's favorite vaporware, the GNU OS, is meant to use a similar albeit more automatic method, just as soon as a stable version of the GNU Hurd is released which I'm sure will be Real Soon Now.
Of course, no method has any DRM, and in fact ROX AppDirs usually contain the source and will (try to) automagically compile it if it doesn't contain a binary for your platform.
As a non-American, why is your primary election system incredibly screwed up? In Australia, we have a parliamentary system, so there's no single big election for one person. Each party has a local branch in each electorate (voting district). A very small number of people in each electorate is likely to be a member of the party they'll vote for, but only these members get to vote for who'll stand for the party. Because of the small number of voters in each local branch, "branch stacking"—the practice of enrolling members who have no particular association with the branch to vote for a particular candidate—is common and effective. Then, the party's national executive can overrule the branch's vote anyway and force whoever they want in.
In America, by contrast, you have primaries where anyone can vote, and which are (generally) binding so the national executive can't say someone with no particular association with the seat should stand, or whatever. It certainly sounds better than our mess, and I've heard it once or twice suggested that we should import a form of your primaries into Australia. But, I don't know anything much about American primaries in any case...
This is just typical FUD BS... at least in my opinion
Yeah, we know. Calling something "bullshit" is necessarily in your opinion; there's no objective standard. This is why your highschool teachers told you not to use "I" in an essay (thinking an overly broad rule is better than people saying silly thintgs like "at least in my opinion").
Not even close. The anonymous coward is prohibiting something that's legal on his turf. This is quite reasonable: no-one's allowed to smoke in my house (but smoking is legal); you're not (generally) allowed to eat in a library (but eating is legal).
Your criminal houses are trying to allow something that's prohibited. This is not possible, for the very good reason you point out.
In general, you can forbid thing's that aren't; but you can't allow things that are forbidden. Unless you're forbidden from forbidding it; you can't forbid someone from ever leaving your house (i.e. imprisoning them) for instance!
Face it, in the eyes of the FSF, copyright is an evil which they have decided to pervert for good.
Not at all! In fact, later this month, Stallman will be talking in Sweden making suggestions to the Pirate Party encouraging them not to loosen copyright too much! Free software needs copyright.
Australia as a whole doesn't have anything remotely similar to your Bill of Rights. We've managed to have a long-lasting, uninterrupted democracy without. Our freedoms lost in the name of the War on Terror are comparable to those lost in other countries with bills of rights or similar documents. On the other hand we've got a bit of censorship (some forms of porn are refused classification, making them illegal to sell; certain works by Islamic Jihadists are also illegal), although our High Court has found an "implied right" of political freedom of speech.
What gives America your freedom isn't your constitution, it's your culture. You want freedom, and you believe in it. We believe in freedom, and we have it. If Australians and Americans decided combating terror (or whatever) was more important then freedoms, we'd both lose them just about as easily.
(Victoria and the ACT both have limited bill of right like documents. I'm not sure about the ACT's one, but the Victorian one has absolutely no teeth. For instance, all law passed is deemed to have satisfied the requirements.)
Here in Australia, Victoria and the ACT have both had trial electronic voting systems for blind voters. Voting is compulsory in Australia, and the compulsion is forced; this is good and proper: You don't get out of jury duty just because you don't want to do it.
Anyway, the evoting system in Victoria was required by law to include a method to vote informally (i.e. spoil your ballot) either by not filling in all preferences or by skipping a number. (We have compulsory preferential voting: If you are registered to vote, you are required by law to fill in all preferences. So the law required that there was some method to break the law.)
See now, you're making particular assumptions. You're assuming that all there is to know about us follows "the laws of physics". You're assuming that we're monistic. You're assuming there's nothing special about people.
These are reasonable assumptions. But there's still a long way to go before science will prove them right, if it ever can. I'm too attached to the idea we have free will to make your assumptions. Which makes me question what I know about other things, too...
There's no indication of 'free will' here. It just suggests the conditions in your brain were determined to change.
I didn't mean to argue that. What I meant, was that you can't see this by looking at the brain before it's happened. So we can't see all decisions before they're made.
It's not possible for any being to have mental control over their physical processes. The physical processes determine the mental state, not the other way around. I don't know what your definition of free will is, but it would have to be limited to that fact.
I doubt there's a true conflict here. It's in Red Hat's best interest to minimise the amount of time they spend doing support. They went as much profit from their support as possible, and every time they have to do something, it eats into their profits. Red Hat would do much better using other funds convince everyone we need their support.
but already we know that we don't have free will (we make decisions before we are aware of them, for example)
No we don't. All the research I'm aware of is limited to volitional movements. This is completely uninteresting; mice have the ability to make volitional movements. We don't know whether I'm completely free to make a decision to travel to Europe at the end of this semester, or if I should eat that chocolate now. Also, it's possible to make a decision and then change your mind before executing it, and as I recall even the decisions you refer to before look exactly the same up until the point of changing your mind.
It's apathetic wankers that like him that mean Australia has compulsory voting. Voting is civil duty just the same as jury duty. Go fulfil it. It won't kill you, but it just might save you.
Um. Apple uses CUPS in Mac OS X, so that sounds like it must be some sort of a configuration issue. It's certainly never happened to me. But, driver support is such that I've always used good ol' sneaker net for my printing. And when I have been able to almost get it to work, it's always seemed quite flaky. So I'll generally agree with you, but your problem must have some resolution...
If you want OpenType goodness in LaTeX, use XeTeX. Apparently it's in Debian/Sid[*] now that Etch has been released, via TeXLive 2007; I've been using it manually compiled against TeXLive 2005 for some time now. It has far and away the best OpenType font support I've seen on anything running on GNU/Linux; it's somewhat at the level of Mac OS X's stuff (except it uses backslashes instead of mice and OpenType instead of AAT or ATSUI or whatever Apple calls their font format).
[*]: (Of course, you can run it on other operating systems; it's developed for Mac OS X so you can get binaries from the developer, and other distros may or may not include TeXLive 2007 now that teTeX is being phased out.)
Of course, if you use XeTeX it means you don't get pdfTeX's microtypography thing. So we come back full circle: I want something that does both! (Apparently the working version of pdfTeX, called luaTeX, is meant to add OpenType font support to pdfTeX (eventually), but because it'll be done in a completely different way from XeTeX, whether special font features will be supported automatically is a different matter.)
Oh, also, you're getting it backwards. LaTeX sits on top of XeTeX and pdfTeX, not the other way around. XeTeX and pdfTeX can do wonderous things with or without LaTeX as plain (pdf|Xe)TeX or (pdf|Xe)ConTeXt. LaTeX needs an update so that modern packages can do modern things.
Some of the weird tilting effects by themselves are completely useless, but if you start dragging text to copy it from a non-topmost window, a window partial obscuring it automatically tilts away so you can see what you're copying. This feels like it'd be one of those features that once you get used to it, it's indispensible. I only tried it for two or three days, so I can't really get
Finishing sentences is overrated when you're hungry at want lunch. I was just going to say I'd only tried it for two or three days, so I didn't really get comfortable enough with it.
As to my final paragraph, it's worth noting that Metisse is a project of HCI researchers working at a University, and Beryl and Compiz are just regular free software projects.
Some of the effects they show in the demonstration videos are actually useful in contexts we're not used to. If you have a tabletop computer with a large screen and people are sitting around it, window rotation could be very practical. (One of the demo videos shows exactly that.)
Some of the weird tilting effects by themselves are completely useless, but if you start dragging text to copy it from a non-topmost window, a window partial obscuring it automatically tilts away so you can see what you're copying. This feels like it'd be one of those features that once you get used to it, it's indispensible. I only tried it for two or three days, so I can't really get
So yeah... Metisse is both "look at what we can do!" and "these ideas of ours have practical application": A guided search. Beryl and Compiz both seem to be "look at what we can do!": If you shoot enough arrows, one will hit bullseye.
It will use your graphics card acceleration if it can; it ran very nicely for me on my new laptop using modern 32-accelerated Intel integrated graphics. I also tried it on my old laptop which has very old Intel integrated graphics using the i810 driver (nothing like the modern stuff!) and it ran very nicely considering. But on an old desktop with a 32 MB NVidia graphics card with very simple 32 acceleration (I assume it used the proprietry drivers on the Mandriva live cd), it ran like a dog. So for sufficiently old computers it might be desireable to turn acceleration off.
I played with Metisse a couple of months ago in a beta of Mandriva. It's mostly novelty, but it has some features that I have been wanting for ever.
Zooming out to view all virtual desktops like a fullscreen pagerhas much more value (to me) than a cube—it's essentially Exposé for virtual desktops, except it's actually useful because you always know where everything's going to be.
The ability to rearrange tools in windows so that what you want is where you want it is something I've wanted for ever, although in practice it seems a little too cumbersome to want to do very often.
Various nifty features like being able to partially grey out windows that aren't in focus sounds like it's useless, but if you use focus-follows-mouse it can increase your productivity especially on high resolution screens. Shadows likewise.
Unlike Beryl and Compiz, Metisse actually seems to be based around the idea of increasing productivity.
Slashdot Mirror
At least you have a way around it. Those of us running GNU/Linux on PowerPCs are stuck in the cold and we've got even less hope than you do. When a site uses Flash, I have two options: Don't visit it, or use another computer. I usually pick the former.
.flv Flash video file, but this only works when flash is used as a media player. When people are using Flash the way it ought to be used, that doesn't help. Gnash exists, but unless it's got remarkably better in the last few months, it's still very much in alpha and not worth installing for an end-user.)
(Disclaimers: For Youtube and similar sites, its often possible to use an online tool that extracts the
I don't run software I can't run on all my computers. Weird thing: That means I don't run Firefox because it doesn't work on my main desktop, but I could run Opera.[*] In spite of the fact that Firefox is free software and Opera is proprietry.
[*]: I don't.
What the hell does the resolution of the example image have to do with anything?
You can't make a fair comparison with a low resolution image. The fact that the image is low-res doesn't mean that the product on offer is bad; it just means I can't make a fair comparison. Considering one of the anonymous coward's points was rendering of text, you really need full resolution to make any sort of comparison!
Your car analogy is really bad, btw. A more accurate one would be saying "My car is better than yours. As proof, I present a matchbox car model of mine". A matchbox car will give me a very rough idea of how the car looks on the outside, and give me no indication of how hidden parts look, or it handles, or how much maintenance it requires, or whatever.
It's the implementation that is expressed that is important, not the quality of the visual symbol. If it's too vague a concept for you, walk up to a Mac and use one in person, or hell, Google for a better picture if you've never seen this mysterious "OS X."
I have no idea how you came to that conclusion based on what I said. The fact that I introduced my post with "-1 Troll" should indicate I'm criticising his argument, not facts because he's provided none. I also find your tone unhelpful. For whatever it's worth, I am experienced with Mac OS X and I do know how it looks and how it feels.
The fonts used in Linux by default are horrible. It's like a bastardized cross between a monospace font and a proportional one, harboring the problems of both and the advantages of neither.
There is, to my knowledge, nothing unconventional about Bitstream Vera Sans/DejaVu Sans. Perhaps it has some agressive kerning pairs, but there is nothing remotely like a monospace font about it.
UI elements are in desperate need of antialiasing
Here you sound ignorant. Perhaps you are thinking of applications based on ten- or fifteen-year-old toolkits.
and some toning down of the garish colors. There's bright coloration, and there's "OMG look 16 colors!"--use some more nuance, some shadow, some gradient. A solid, pure hex green check mark on an okay button (apart from being superfluous) looks like a child created it.
Actually, a check mark on an okay button is not superfluous; when used consistently it provides a visual cue of how to continue that is much faster to process than words. It also provides consistency when (for other reasons) the "okay" button say "OK".
In any case, I've never seen a dialog box using a pure hex green check mark on a dialog box without any shadow or gradient. Ubuntu's default theme is fairly bright (like WinXP and OS X, brighter than I like) but it is certainly not pure hex green. When you exaggerate and say things that are flat-out wrong, it is very hard to take anything you say seriously.
Desktop effects wizardry that looks like a five-year old nVidia demo is not a viable competitor in the face of rich blacks, glossy reflections, and fluid slides and fades.
I have no idea what you're saying here. How black a black is is determined by your hardware, not your operating system. (I suspect you might be referring to the Mac's media centre thing, but in that case I have no idea how it's relevant to the discussion. And Carsten Haitlzer's media centre is similarly slick.)
You say: The visual presentation as a whole is lacking.
That is precisely the charge being made. Provide accurate, meaningful specifics and we can think about fixing things.
Thankyou for your useful reply. The KDE print settings dialog you link to is indeed ... weird. Whether the fonts really are that large probably depends on the user's screen resolution and eyesight, but it does look ... wrong.
There are a few examples of good UIs on KDE/GTK apps, but for the most part, they tend to look very sloppy. Win32 apps tend to look neutral and professional. OS X apps are a bit more flashy, but are on a similar level of "neatness".
I certainly would've agreed with this a few years ago, but today I think the biggest charge that can be levelled against most GTK+ apps that follow a Gnome or Gnome-inspired HIG, is that the piecemeal feel is still there. Mac OS X and Windows applications, for instance, merge into the window manager — but at the cost of integrating window management policy with the applications. As you say, this isn't a problem with free software per se, but with the architecture. Although, I think the problem is more the cost of flexibility — and one which the people most capable of changing probably feel is worth it.
Now as to your comment about toolbars, that certainly surprises me. I've always found Windows to be the environment which overdoes toolbars. On my desktop, I generally disable what toolbars I don't need and use the menus for almost everything. But even this I rarely do because most programs I run don't have much toolbar by default. On Windows, I find that programs have stupidly many toolbars by default and I'm forever hovering my mouse waiting for a tooltip to come up.
I'm not sure what causes this difference of experience, but I can think of many things: For instance, I run mostly GTK+ apps, which tend to follow a Mac inspired HIG with relatively few toolbars; you cite a KDE example, which is generally regarded as being more Windows-like. Another possibility is that I mostly use my own free desktop by choice, and I've deliberately chosen an environment and programs that minimise toolbars, whereas I only run Windows because I have to, so I'm more likely to come across programs with interfaces I don't like (with toolbars) when running Windows.
You still say nothing of value. But then, you're an anonymous coward so I'm not sure why I'm even bothering.
-1 Troll. You can't use that picture as a comparison of free desktops and Mac OS X. It's so low-res, the only thing you can see in that picture of any consequence is OMG SHINY AND BRIGHT COLORS which are really quite irrelevant.
If you could provide specific examples of how, for instance, Gnome or KDE have "amateurish UI element spacing and layouts", that'd be useful. Otherwise, why talk?
(On a related note, why do I think I've heard about this already being done with Linux without the DRM?)
I'm not entirely sure I know what you're referring to, but if you're referring to fully containing applications in a single relocatable folder and/or shell integration thereof, there's two different free options for this on GNU/Linux and other *nix-like operating systems that I'm aware of.
Firstly, there's GNUStep, which is basically the same as Mac OS X in this regard, being another NeXTSTEP derivative. In terms of shell integration, the only difference that I know of is that "open" is instead named "openapp" (and the default paths are different).
Secondly (and this is the method I use), there's the ROX Desktop, which is based on RISC OS, a desktop OS that used to be made by Acorn in England. If you have an executable file named "AppRun" in a folder, it recognises that folder as executable. There's a patch for bash and a script for zsh that lets them recognise these in your PATH and run them simply by typing the folder name. If you run "rox (arg)", then ROX runs (arg) the same way it would've if you'd clicked on it in a Filer window (i.e. running AppDirs, or opening files with their default association). This is a bit different from Mac's "open" tho, because it has nothing like a search path.
In addition, there's GoboLinux, a distribution which contains all the packages in discrete folders, but they're not, to my knowledge, relocatable. I've never used GoboLinux. I think its package manager automatically symlinks the binaries to a common directory. And everyone's favorite vaporware, the GNU OS, is meant to use a similar albeit more automatic method, just as soon as a stable version of the GNU Hurd is released which I'm sure will be Real Soon Now.
Of course, no method has any DRM, and in fact ROX AppDirs usually contain the source and will (try to) automagically compile it if it doesn't contain a binary for your platform.
As a non-American, why is your primary election system incredibly screwed up? In Australia, we have a parliamentary system, so there's no single big election for one person. Each party has a local branch in each electorate (voting district). A very small number of people in each electorate is likely to be a member of the party they'll vote for, but only these members get to vote for who'll stand for the party. Because of the small number of voters in each local branch, "branch stacking"—the practice of enrolling members who have no particular association with the branch to vote for a particular candidate—is common and effective. Then, the party's national executive can overrule the branch's vote anyway and force whoever they want in.
In America, by contrast, you have primaries where anyone can vote, and which are (generally) binding so the national executive can't say someone with no particular association with the seat should stand, or whatever. It certainly sounds better than our mess, and I've heard it once or twice suggested that we should import a form of your primaries into Australia. But, I don't know anything much about American primaries in any case...
This is just typical FUD BS ... at least in my opinion
Yeah, we know. Calling something "bullshit" is necessarily in your opinion; there's no objective standard. This is why your highschool teachers told you not to use "I" in an essay (thinking an overly broad rule is better than people saying silly thintgs like "at least in my opinion").
Not even close. The anonymous coward is prohibiting something that's legal on his turf. This is quite reasonable: no-one's allowed to smoke in my house (but smoking is legal); you're not (generally) allowed to eat in a library (but eating is legal).
Your criminal houses are trying to allow something that's prohibited. This is not possible, for the very good reason you point out.
In general, you can forbid thing's that aren't; but you can't allow things that are forbidden. Unless you're forbidden from forbidding it; you can't forbid someone from ever leaving your house (i.e. imprisoning them) for instance!
Face it, in the eyes of the FSF, copyright is an evil which they have decided to pervert for good.
Not at all! In fact, later this month, Stallman will be talking in Sweden making suggestions to the Pirate Party encouraging them not to loosen copyright too much! Free software needs copyright.
Australia as a whole doesn't have anything remotely similar to your Bill of Rights. We've managed to have a long-lasting, uninterrupted democracy without. Our freedoms lost in the name of the War on Terror are comparable to those lost in other countries with bills of rights or similar documents. On the other hand we've got a bit of censorship (some forms of porn are refused classification, making them illegal to sell; certain works by Islamic Jihadists are also illegal), although our High Court has found an "implied right" of political freedom of speech.
What gives America your freedom isn't your constitution, it's your culture. You want freedom, and you believe in it. We believe in freedom, and we have it. If Australians and Americans decided combating terror (or whatever) was more important then freedoms, we'd both lose them just about as easily.
(Victoria and the ACT both have limited bill of right like documents. I'm not sure about the ACT's one, but the Victorian one has absolutely no teeth. For instance, all law passed is deemed to have satisfied the requirements.)
Here in Australia, Victoria and the ACT have both had trial electronic voting systems for blind voters. Voting is compulsory in Australia, and the compulsion is forced; this is good and proper: You don't get out of jury duty just because you don't want to do it.
Anyway, the evoting system in Victoria was required by law to include a method to vote informally (i.e. spoil your ballot) either by not filling in all preferences or by skipping a number. (We have compulsory preferential voting: If you are registered to vote, you are required by law to fill in all preferences. So the law required that there was some method to break the law.)
See now, you're making particular assumptions. You're assuming that all there is to know about us follows "the laws of physics". You're assuming that we're monistic. You're assuming there's nothing special about people.
These are reasonable assumptions. But there's still a long way to go before science will prove them right, if it ever can. I'm too attached to the idea we have free will to make your assumptions. Which makes me question what I know about other things, too...
There's no indication of 'free will' here. It just suggests the conditions in your brain were determined to change.
I didn't mean to argue that. What I meant, was that you can't see this by looking at the brain before it's happened. So we can't see all decisions before they're made.
It's not possible for any being to have mental control over their physical processes. The physical processes determine the mental state, not the other way around. I don't know what your definition of free will is, but it would have to be limited to that fact.
Why?
I doubt there's a true conflict here. It's in Red Hat's best interest to minimise the amount of time they spend doing support. They went as much profit from their support as possible, and every time they have to do something, it eats into their profits. Red Hat would do much better using other funds convince everyone we need their support.
but already we know that we don't have free will (we make decisions before we are aware of them, for example)
No we don't. All the research I'm aware of is limited to volitional movements. This is completely uninteresting; mice have the ability to make volitional movements. We don't know whether I'm completely free to make a decision to travel to Europe at the end of this semester, or if I should eat that chocolate now. Also, it's possible to make a decision and then change your mind before executing it, and as I recall even the decisions you refer to before look exactly the same up until the point of changing your mind.
It's apathetic wankers that like him that mean Australia has compulsory voting. Voting is civil duty just the same as jury duty. Go fulfil it. It won't kill you, but it just might save you.
Um. Apple uses CUPS in Mac OS X, so that sounds like it must be some sort of a configuration issue. It's certainly never happened to me. But, driver support is such that I've always used good ol' sneaker net for my printing. And when I have been able to almost get it to work, it's always seemed quite flaky. So I'll generally agree with you, but your problem must have some resolution...
If you want OpenType goodness in LaTeX, use XeTeX. Apparently it's in Debian/Sid[*] now that Etch has been released, via TeXLive 2007; I've been using it manually compiled against TeXLive 2005 for some time now. It has far and away the best OpenType font support I've seen on anything running on GNU/Linux; it's somewhat at the level of Mac OS X's stuff (except it uses backslashes instead of mice and OpenType instead of AAT or ATSUI or whatever Apple calls their font format).
[*]: (Of course, you can run it on other operating systems; it's developed for Mac OS X so you can get binaries from the developer, and other distros may or may not include TeXLive 2007 now that teTeX is being phased out.)
Of course, if you use XeTeX it means you don't get pdfTeX's microtypography thing. So we come back full circle: I want something that does both! (Apparently the working version of pdfTeX, called luaTeX, is meant to add OpenType font support to pdfTeX (eventually), but because it'll be done in a completely different way from XeTeX, whether special font features will be supported automatically is a different matter.)
Oh, also, you're getting it backwards. LaTeX sits on top of XeTeX and pdfTeX, not the other way around. XeTeX and pdfTeX can do wonderous things with or without LaTeX as plain (pdf|Xe)TeX or (pdf|Xe)ConTeXt. LaTeX needs an update so that modern packages can do modern things.
Gosh! Confusing.
Some of the weird tilting effects by themselves are completely useless, but if you start dragging text to copy it from a non-topmost window, a window partial obscuring it automatically tilts away so you can see what you're copying. This feels like it'd be one of those features that once you get used to it, it's indispensible. I only tried it for two or three days, so I can't really get
Finishing sentences is overrated when you're hungry at want lunch. I was just going to say I'd only tried it for two or three days, so I didn't really get comfortable enough with it.
As to my final paragraph, it's worth noting that Metisse is a project of HCI researchers working at a University, and Beryl and Compiz are just regular free software projects.
Some of the effects they show in the demonstration videos are actually useful in contexts we're not used to. If you have a tabletop computer with a large screen and people are sitting around it, window rotation could be very practical. (One of the demo videos shows exactly that.)
... Metisse is both "look at what we can do!" and "these ideas of ours have practical application": A guided search. Beryl and Compiz both seem to be "look at what we can do!": If you shoot enough arrows, one will hit bullseye.
Some of the weird tilting effects by themselves are completely useless, but if you start dragging text to copy it from a non-topmost window, a window partial obscuring it automatically tilts away so you can see what you're copying. This feels like it'd be one of those features that once you get used to it, it's indispensible. I only tried it for two or three days, so I can't really get
So yeah
Metisse is free software, of course.
It will use your graphics card acceleration if it can; it ran very nicely for me on my new laptop using modern 32-accelerated Intel integrated graphics. I also tried it on my old laptop which has very old Intel integrated graphics using the i810 driver (nothing like the modern stuff!) and it ran very nicely considering. But on an old desktop with a 32 MB NVidia graphics card with very simple 32 acceleration (I assume it used the proprietry drivers on the Mandriva live cd), it ran like a dog. So for sufficiently old computers it might be desireable to turn acceleration off.
I played with Metisse a couple of months ago in a beta of Mandriva. It's mostly novelty, but it has some features that I have been wanting for ever.
Zooming out to view all virtual desktops like a fullscreen pagerhas much more value (to me) than a cube—it's essentially Exposé for virtual desktops, except it's actually useful because you always know where everything's going to be.
The ability to rearrange tools in windows so that what you want is where you want it is something I've wanted for ever, although in practice it seems a little too cumbersome to want to do very often.
Various nifty features like being able to partially grey out windows that aren't in focus sounds like it's useless, but if you use focus-follows-mouse it can increase your productivity especially on high resolution screens. Shadows likewise.
Unlike Beryl and Compiz, Metisse actually seems to be based around the idea of increasing productivity.
Exactly. People tend to think of evolution as having some sort of a goal, an endpoint of a "perfect" being.
Wrong! Geeks are perfect. This is why we're so unlikely to reproduce and hence serve as the endpoint of evolution!