In Linux, you *have* to have a Start menu (or some analog). You can't just have an Applications folder, or any other automatically-updated application browser like you can in OS X.
Umm... Perhaps if you're running Gnome or KDE, but that's no fault of the kernel. (Remember: Mac OS X is on top of a unix-like underpinning, so whatever it can do, Linux, in principle, can too.)
For instance, I use a ROX desktop on a single-user box. When I find a new ROX program, I save it to ~/apps/(location)/ folder, and then I run it. If I don't like it, I right click and choose delete. (If I do like it, I change its ownership so that I can't accidentally modify it/nothing else can, either, but that's probably paranoid.) My ~/apps folder is always up-to-date.
There's also GNUStep, which I had a play with yesterday. It seems to be less flexible WRT where programs are saved (I tried to move GNUMail.app to ~/apps/Network/GNUMail, and it didn't work), but the/usr/lib/GNUStep/System/Applications folder is always an up-to-date list.
This is the case because both ROX and GNUstep use something like AppDirs, where the whole program is stored under a single folder, and the UI makes it look like you click the folder to run the program.
Now, it's unfortunate that neither the ROX Desktop nor GNUStep are self-contained environments, so if you want an office suite you have to look elsewhere, so in practice it's difficult to have an auto-updated folder, and I've manually copied a few.desktop files like sol.desktop to ~/apps/Games/Solitare, but in principle it's entirely possible.
(b) You're criticising Mozilla there. Why does Mozilla make it so hard to install Firefox? Third-party apps for GNU/Linux can be installed as simply as downloading and extracting a folder, and putting it wherever you want: The folder looks like the program to the end user, much the same as Mac OS X's system. You can distribute programs with all libraries statically linked, or add versions into the program and add them to the end of the dynamic link library search path. There's absolutely no reason (aside perhaps from arrogance and stupidity) why third-party software distributors shouldn't be using something like AppDirs or Autopackages. But this is no fault of Debian's; it is a fault of the third-party software distributors.
(b) Less importantly, a normal user would almost certainly be happy with Debian's version of Firefox, I think. So this is hardly a normal example. (I don't like Firefox, so I'm not sure what the differences are, or how significant: Thus I could be a bit wrong. But I doubt such differences are enough for the normal user to notice.)
(If you're stuck on Windows, try the TX-Mouse Gizmo for "true" X-like mouse behavior. Type in windows that aren't on top, lower windows with the right mouse button, X-like copy-and-paste. It's free to download & use, but I don't think it's free software.)
On the other hand, I don't think any major UI idea is ever lost, it just becomes another Free software project...
Re:GPLv3 is going to be examined?!
on
Sun Exec Backs GPLv3
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Not to be too negative, but I think there's been enough FUD about the GPLv3 from the likes of Torvalds and slashbots that I think it will be a long time before it's as widely accepted as GPLv2. The main reasons it will be so widely accepted are probably going to be (a) FSF has the copyright to so much and (b) GPLv2-or-later is compatible with GPLv3, but GPLv3-or-later isn't compatible with GPLv2.
This is a sad thing. The GPLv3, like almost everything RMS has done in his free software fight, will be great. RMS is strange and one of those people who always seem wrong and way out, but time and again events have shown that when it matters—there's no-one I'd rather trust on matters he talks of.
Which is entirely irrelevant. Most people can see the distinction between a person choosing to kill someone versus a traindriver killing the driver of a car that got stuck on a level crossing. Most people can see the difference (although they might dispute the significance!) of a foetus/embryo dying before it comes to term (because of genetic difficiencies/poor diet/accident) and one being terminated through human decision. And, likewise, there's a difference between wanking and your body getting rid of old sperm. You might dispute the moral significance, but the difference is still there...
You do of course realise that many Christians who are against abortion, are against "jerking off" and contraception. If you're going to criticise people for being inconsistent, you might first check that they are.
FOSS hardly goes bye-bye. There's many solutions, here's a couple: Free software, or maybe software you haven't paid for, nor paid for support for, is exempt. Free software is published anonymously, so it's not possible to track its authors down with enough certainty. Even distributions like Debian could still work using some anonymous P2P style system with trusted keys/hashes you've downloaded from Debian's website. Also, there's the whole issue of other countries.
Wouldn't work because most alternatives are available to almost all software publishers, so the law would be rendered practically irrelevant within a year.
If you're talking about Yes/No dialog boxes - no, they do it differently.
Differently from Windows and KDE yes, but the same as Gnome (which is what's at issue here). Gnome and Mac OS X both use verbs, not Yes/No/Cancel, and both have a sensible button ordering (default choice where you eye is mostly likely to be next, and in a constant location).
Thanks for explaining the justification. I switched to Linux back when Netscape Communicator 4 was latest-and-greatest, and X apps generally don't have Windows-style MDIs. And considering that tabbed browsers allow multiple toplevel windows, I've always thought of it as a special kind of SDI thing...
But much scarier—Ctrl+W always used to close the window. Now I never have any idea what it'll do, and I just use my mouse. I wish they used a new command, like Ctrl+T instead of Ctrl+N for a new tab vs window. (This is a problem in (?almost) all tabbed web browsers I've used, so I suppose it's too late to change.)
GNOME is the GNU Network Object Model Environment, and as I understand it the desktop for the GNU project. Is GNOME also owned by the FSF/GNU, or just developed in conjunction with it?
Why? How is it harder to keep track of a single value (i.e. one vote) than of a set (e.g. transaction id, amount of money, from account, to account, date/time, location). I might be showing my ignorance, but I assume the bank transaction would also be stored in multiple places which then have to be linked to each other.
I don't mean to be cheeky: I am honestly ignorant in this regard; I've never dealt with a database with more than a few hundred records. Do banks regularly call up customers and ask if they meant to make a particular transaction? Do customers regularly find a transaction wasn't registered? (I've never had that happen to me, but I never have more than two pages of transactions listed a month.)
I suppose the HAV act seems somewhat reasonable then, but I don't see why it's 'natural' to encourage the machines use, particularly because in so doing it becomes hard for a party to confirm that they actually lost. (And of course, in Victoria the count will still be by hand anyway, so nothing is to be gained by putting everything on a computer.)
As for my expectation, well, only six voting centres are currently listed as having electronic voting machines at them on the Victorian Electoral Commission's website about the topic. This is admittedly just a "pilot" so in the future I guess they'll be available at more and more centres.
But if you read from the top of the page, you'll see I'm actually wrong when I say 'few people' other than those who need to will: "Electronic voting is only available for people with vision impairment who are unable to vote independently."
(When I wrote my earlier post, I thought they were available at all fully accessible voting centres and assumed they were available for anyone who wanted to use them as long as they were available. But my experience is that few adults[*] in Melbourne use facilities provided for disabled people unless they have to. Sure, touch screens are fun, but nothing beats the random access of a piece of paper. Especially because we have preferential voting, so you have to number every box.)
[*]: Children are, of course, always interested in playing with things.
(One very interesting thing about electronic voting in Victoria: The law requires that the "computer program allows an elector to give an informal [i.e. invalid] vote by selecting no preferences for any candidate or by voting for less than the number of vacancies to be filled at the election". This is an interesting requirement, because everyone enrolled must cast a secret, formal/valid vote (and enrolment is compulsory). You'll be fined for not being enrolled or not casting a vote; but because the votes are secret, there's no way to tell who voted informally, so people do this to get around the requirement.)
I obviously can't read an entire act in five minutes, but are you saying that the Help America Vote Act requires the use of electronic voter machine? That's quite unbelievable.
Here in the Australian state of Victoria, electronic voting machines will be in use for the first time at the upcoming election later this month. The reason for their introduction is not to asist with counting, but to allow the blind to cast a secret ballot for the first time. In fact, after the ballot, the votes will be printed off and included in the hand count of paper ballots with the rest. The use of the machines is entirely voluntary and I expect that few people other than those who actually need to use one will. The system is obviously still prone to problems: Ballots are not printed out till the end of the vote, and in any case, there's no way for a blind person to confirm it (unless it's done in braille, but surely you could've done that without computers anyway). Still, I'm informed the source code has been verified by independent parties and the machines tested (voting machines are not trade secrets). The contrast between the approach here and in America couldn't be more stark; I feel as if my vote counts, but I don't know how an American could...
but I do know the difference between thru and threw which I do see mixed up from time to time.
Ironically, for the people who still distinguish 'threw' and 'through'--and I think there's still a few left in the English west country--'threw' and 'thru' would be pronounced the same (something like 'thriw', with that iieeeewww of disgust but shorter and more speechlike), and 'through' is different (throo, the same as most people say it). For my part, although I've adopted 'tho' in informal writing, I leave 'thru' for the 'Drive Thru'. And apparently I haven't adopted 'altho' either...
(I realise you're just following a convention and aren't criticising you, just observing...)
The section labelled '1' represent the proportion of our population that lacks the gene, whereas the total of the sections labelled '2' represent the proportion that has it. Approximately.
(Or maybe you wanted a Private Investigator chart? I can't help you there--one piece of lame ASCII art per day is my limit.)
It's actually closer to six times out of seven (not accounting for leap years). Cup Day is the first Tuesday in November, but the American Election Day is the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. So if Cup Day is 1 November, Election Day will be 8 November.
Then there's also the difference of time zones. In at least some of America, voting hasn't begun by the time it's Wednesday here.
So:P
(FWIW, Slashdot says my autogenerated antispam email address is 'slashdot@TWAINthecartographers.net minus author' today, which is funny, because in The Age yesterday there was an extract from one of his books about his trip to Australia, when he observed Cup Day. Apparently it's not much changed since then...)
Small in terms of world power, not geography. (And we are the smallest continent, and the only populated one not connected to another continent, so it's a bit easier for us to have the entire continent in one country...)
Apparently up in Queensland, the Australian equivalent of the American South, they don't have daylight savings because, amongst other things, it'd give their children cancer, or something. But I wouldn't exactly call Queenslanders 'normals'.
Changes to daylight savings time start and end times are hardly a big deal. In Australia it happens all the time. Just this year, daylight savings time was extended by a week in March, and no planes fell out of the sky. About half the computers I used updated and showed the real time, and the other half (including some apparently independent clocks that were set by some remote mechanism) switched back early and were an hour slow. Everyone coped just fine.
Most people know what hour it is anyway, so it's only important computer systems that matter. And if Microsoft can have a patch for two states and one territory in a relatively small country, then they can have a patch for the vast majority of their home country...
Absolutely nothing to worry about. Just enjoy the extra daylight in the evening!
What sort of things are you voting on that there's so many choices, and why are there so many different ballot styles?
In Australia, every three years we have federal elections which have two ballots: One for the House of Representatives, and one for the Senate. We also have state elections every three to four years, which are also usually two ballots (one for the upper house, one for the lower house), and every four-ish years we have local government elections, which are usually one ballot.
Once every now and again there's also a referendum or plebicite, but these don't pass often so they don't happen often.
We also have the sort-of-an advantage of having compulsory voting, so there's probably relatively less waste: Around 95 per cent of enroled voters vote each election. Obviously there's still going to be waste because you can't guarantee that everyone will go to the nearest polling site... I don't know if these cancel out...
There's also going to be a reduction in logistical issues because each election is either federal or state/territory or local: in fact, some of the states/territories with fixed elections delay them if they would clash with federal elections (which aren't fixed).
Slashdot Mirror
In Linux, you *have* to have a Start menu (or some analog). You can't just have an Applications folder, or any other automatically-updated application browser like you can in OS X.
/usr/lib/GNUStep/System/Applications folder is always an up-to-date list.
.desktop files like sol.desktop to ~/apps/Games/Solitare, but in principle it's entirely possible.
Umm... Perhaps if you're running Gnome or KDE, but that's no fault of the kernel. (Remember: Mac OS X is on top of a unix-like underpinning, so whatever it can do, Linux, in principle, can too.)
For instance, I use a ROX desktop on a single-user box. When I find a new ROX program, I save it to ~/apps/(location)/ folder, and then I run it. If I don't like it, I right click and choose delete. (If I do like it, I change its ownership so that I can't accidentally modify it/nothing else can, either, but that's probably paranoid.) My ~/apps folder is always up-to-date.
There's also GNUStep, which I had a play with yesterday. It seems to be less flexible WRT where programs are saved (I tried to move GNUMail.app to ~/apps/Network/GNUMail, and it didn't work), but the
This is the case because both ROX and GNUstep use something like AppDirs, where the whole program is stored under a single folder, and the UI makes it look like you click the folder to run the program.
Now, it's unfortunate that neither the ROX Desktop nor GNUStep are self-contained environments, so if you want an office suite you have to look elsewhere, so in practice it's difficult to have an auto-updated folder, and I've manually copied a few
(b) You're criticising Mozilla there. Why does Mozilla make it so hard to install Firefox? Third-party apps for GNU/Linux can be installed as simply as downloading and extracting a folder, and putting it wherever you want: The folder looks like the program to the end user, much the same as Mac OS X's system. You can distribute programs with all libraries statically linked, or add versions into the program and add them to the end of the dynamic link library search path. There's absolutely no reason (aside perhaps from arrogance and stupidity) why third-party software distributors shouldn't be using something like AppDirs or Autopackages. But this is no fault of Debian's; it is a fault of the third-party software distributors.
(b) Less importantly, a normal user would almost certainly be happy with Debian's version of Firefox, I think. So this is hardly a normal example. (I don't like Firefox, so I'm not sure what the differences are, or how significant: Thus I could be a bit wrong. But I doubt such differences are enough for the normal user to notice.)
(If you're stuck on Windows, try the TX-Mouse Gizmo for "true" X-like mouse behavior. Type in windows that aren't on top, lower windows with the right mouse button, X-like copy-and-paste. It's free to download & use, but I don't think it's free software.)
On the other hand, I don't think any major UI idea is ever lost, it just becomes another Free software project...
Not to be too negative, but I think there's been enough FUD about the GPLv3 from the likes of Torvalds and slashbots that I think it will be a long time before it's as widely accepted as GPLv2. The main reasons it will be so widely accepted are probably going to be (a) FSF has the copyright to so much and (b) GPLv2-or-later is compatible with GPLv3, but GPLv3-or-later isn't compatible with GPLv2.
This is a sad thing. The GPLv3, like almost everything RMS has done in his free software fight, will be great. RMS is strange and one of those people who always seem wrong and way out, but time and again events have shown that when it matters—there's no-one I'd rather trust on matters he talks of.
Which is entirely irrelevant. Most people can see the distinction between a person choosing to kill someone versus a traindriver killing the driver of a car that got stuck on a level crossing. Most people can see the difference (although they might dispute the significance!) of a foetus/embryo dying before it comes to term (because of genetic difficiencies/poor diet/accident) and one being terminated through human decision. And, likewise, there's a difference between wanking and your body getting rid of old sperm. You might dispute the moral significance, but the difference is still there...
You do of course realise that many Christians who are against abortion, are against "jerking off" and contraception. If you're going to criticise people for being inconsistent, you might first check that they are.
FOSS hardly goes bye-bye. There's many solutions, here's a couple: Free software, or maybe software you haven't paid for, nor paid for support for, is exempt. Free software is published anonymously, so it's not possible to track its authors down with enough certainty. Even distributions like Debian could still work using some anonymous P2P style system with trusted keys/hashes you've downloaded from Debian's website. Also, there's the whole issue of other countries.
Wouldn't work because most alternatives are available to almost all software publishers, so the law would be rendered practically irrelevant within a year.
Um, that's 10 pt you heretic.
If you're talking about Yes/No dialog boxes - no, they do it differently.
Differently from Windows and KDE yes, but the same as Gnome (which is what's at issue here). Gnome and Mac OS X both use verbs, not Yes/No/Cancel, and both have a sensible button ordering (default choice where you eye is mostly likely to be next, and in a constant location).
Thanks for explaining the justification. I switched to Linux back when Netscape Communicator 4 was latest-and-greatest, and X apps generally don't have Windows-style MDIs. And considering that tabbed browsers allow multiple toplevel windows, I've always thought of it as a special kind of SDI thing...
But much scarier—Ctrl+W always used to close the window. Now I never have any idea what it'll do, and I just use my mouse. I wish they used a new command, like Ctrl+T instead of Ctrl+N for a new tab vs window. (This is a problem in (?almost) all tabbed web browsers I've used, so I suppose it's too late to change.)
GNOME is the GNU Network Object Model Environment, and as I understand it the desktop for the GNU project. Is GNOME also owned by the FSF/GNU, or just developed in conjunction with it?
Why? How is it harder to keep track of a single value (i.e. one vote) than of a set (e.g. transaction id, amount of money, from account, to account, date/time, location). I might be showing my ignorance, but I assume the bank transaction would also be stored in multiple places which then have to be linked to each other.
I don't mean to be cheeky: I am honestly ignorant in this regard; I've never dealt with a database with more than a few hundred records. Do banks regularly call up customers and ask if they meant to make a particular transaction? Do customers regularly find a transaction wasn't registered? (I've never had that happen to me, but I never have more than two pages of transactions listed a month.)
I suppose the HAV act seems somewhat reasonable then, but I don't see why it's 'natural' to encourage the machines use, particularly because in so doing it becomes hard for a party to confirm that they actually lost. (And of course, in Victoria the count will still be by hand anyway, so nothing is to be gained by putting everything on a computer.)
As for my expectation, well, only six voting centres are currently listed as having electronic voting machines at them on the Victorian Electoral Commission's website about the topic. This is admittedly just a "pilot" so in the future I guess they'll be available at more and more centres.
But if you read from the top of the page, you'll see I'm actually wrong when I say 'few people' other than those who need to will: "Electronic voting is only available for people with vision impairment who are unable to vote independently."
(When I wrote my earlier post, I thought they were available at all fully accessible voting centres and assumed they were available for anyone who wanted to use them as long as they were available. But my experience is that few adults[*] in Melbourne use facilities provided for disabled people unless they have to. Sure, touch screens are fun, but nothing beats the random access of a piece of paper. Especially because we have preferential voting, so you have to number every box.)
[*]: Children are, of course, always interested in playing with things.
(One very interesting thing about electronic voting in Victoria: The law requires that the "computer program allows an elector to give an informal [i.e. invalid] vote by selecting no preferences for any candidate or by voting for less than the number of vacancies to be filled at the election". This is an interesting requirement, because everyone enrolled must cast a secret, formal/valid vote (and enrolment is compulsory). You'll be fined for not being enrolled or not casting a vote; but because the votes are secret, there's no way to tell who voted informally, so people do this to get around the requirement.)
I obviously can't read an entire act in five minutes, but are you saying that the Help America Vote Act requires the use of electronic voter machine? That's quite unbelievable.
Here in the Australian state of Victoria, electronic voting machines will be in use for the first time at the upcoming election later this month. The reason for their introduction is not to asist with counting, but to allow the blind to cast a secret ballot for the first time. In fact, after the ballot, the votes will be printed off and included in the hand count of paper ballots with the rest. The use of the machines is entirely voluntary and I expect that few people other than those who actually need to use one will. The system is obviously still prone to problems: Ballots are not printed out till the end of the vote, and in any case, there's no way for a blind person to confirm it (unless it's done in braille, but surely you could've done that without computers anyway). Still, I'm informed the source code has been verified by independent parties and the machines tested (voting machines are not trade secrets). The contrast between the approach here and in America couldn't be more stark; I feel as if my vote counts, but I don't know how an American could...
but I do know the difference between thru and threw which I do see mixed up from time to time.
Ironically, for the people who still distinguish 'threw' and 'through'--and I think there's still a few left in the English west country--'threw' and 'thru' would be pronounced the same (something like 'thriw', with that iieeeewww of disgust but shorter and more speechlike), and 'through' is different (throo, the same as most people say it). For my part, although I've adopted 'tho' in informal writing, I leave 'thru' for the 'Drive Thru'. And apparently I haven't adopted 'altho' either...
(I realise you're just following a convention and aren't criticising you, just observing...)
Um ... they're pie charts, because they look like pieces thereof. But if you're really after pi charts, then maybe this will satisfy you:
/ 1 | 2 ) / | |
/ / | |
/2 / | | / | |
__________________-,
\__--+ +---+ +---'
/__/ | |
/
/
\__/ \__/
The section labelled '1' represent the proportion of our population that lacks the gene, whereas the total of the sections labelled '2' represent the proportion that has it. Approximately.
(Or maybe you wanted a Private Investigator chart? I can't help you there--one piece of lame ASCII art per day is my limit.)
It's actually closer to six times out of seven (not accounting for leap years). Cup Day is the first Tuesday in November, but the American Election Day is the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. So if Cup Day is 1 November, Election Day will be 8 November.
:P
Then there's also the difference of time zones. In at least some of America, voting hasn't begun by the time it's Wednesday here.
So
(FWIW, Slashdot says my autogenerated antispam email address is 'slashdot@TWAINthecartographers.net minus author' today, which is funny, because in The Age yesterday there was an extract from one of his books about his trip to Australia, when he observed Cup Day. Apparently it's not much changed since then...)
Small in terms of world power, not geography. (And we are the smallest continent, and the only populated one not connected to another continent, so it's a bit easier for us to have the entire continent in one country...)
Ooh, a Queenslander who knows it's the sun that made them that way?
That's probably a retaliation for the EU's antitrust suit. Did they have any important meetings with them in October? :)
Apparently up in Queensland, the Australian equivalent of the American South, they don't have daylight savings because, amongst other things, it'd give their children cancer, or something. But I wouldn't exactly call Queenslanders 'normals'.
Changes to daylight savings time start and end times are hardly a big deal. In Australia it happens all the time. Just this year, daylight savings time was extended by a week in March, and no planes fell out of the sky. About half the computers I used updated and showed the real time, and the other half (including some apparently independent clocks that were set by some remote mechanism) switched back early and were an hour slow. Everyone coped just fine.
Most people know what hour it is anyway, so it's only important computer systems that matter. And if Microsoft can have a patch for two states and one territory in a relatively small country, then they can have a patch for the vast majority of their home country...
Absolutely nothing to worry about. Just enjoy the extra daylight in the evening!
Wow! I think I get why a lot of Americans just don't vote...
What sort of things are you voting on that there's so many choices, and why are there so many different ballot styles?
In Australia, every three years we have federal elections which have two ballots: One for the House of Representatives, and one for the Senate. We also have state elections every three to four years, which are also usually two ballots (one for the upper house, one for the lower house), and every four-ish years we have local government elections, which are usually one ballot.
Once every now and again there's also a referendum or plebicite, but these don't pass often so they don't happen often.
We also have the sort-of-an advantage of having compulsory voting, so there's probably relatively less waste: Around 95 per cent of enroled voters vote each election. Obviously there's still going to be waste because you can't guarantee that everyone will go to the nearest polling site... I don't know if these cancel out...
There's also going to be a reduction in logistical issues because each election is either federal or state/territory or local: in fact, some of the states/territories with fixed elections delay them if they would clash with federal elections (which aren't fixed).