I was talking about free software development. I do not know how open-source development may relate to that kind of stuff, but there is nothing intrinsic in free software that causes it.
If you get a bunch of volunteers and watch them to make proprietry software (e.g. shareware) you see the same problems. If you pay a bunch of coders to write free software, you'll get similar results to proprietry software developed under similar circumstances.
Free software development is not the same as open-source software development (even if all free software may be open-source software and vice versa). That's why there's two terms!
(My experience as basically a non-coder is that if I have a problem and can provide adequate help, the developers try to give me adequate results. I do, however, remember that they're volunteers and have day-jobs and the like.)
Fonts are funny things. Everyone seems to like different ones. I dispise Cleartype on Windows (it's better without anything). And Mac fonts I find to be ugly, too. The fonts in my GTK+ 2 environment, though, I find to be absolutely supurb. If you gave me Windows-like rending of fonts on my GNU/Linux box, I'd punch you in the face.
(However, I consider Times New Roman to be godawful no matter how it's rendered, or even in print, so I almost always use only Bitstream Vera Sans/Serif/Sans Mono, the TeX Computer Modern series, and a handful others like Gentium for special characters. I even have my web browser configure to use my fonts and only my fonts, to the best of its ability.)
Indeed. All those people who have ever said 'GNU/Linux will never be ready for the desktop' were wrong, and were always going to have been wrong. It just takes time. Not because free software development is an inefficient process, but because when a bunch of volunteers get together, they're going to create something they want to use first. It just so happens that the typical Unix user was happier with another system.
Now as that's changed and dollars've also become a driving force, GNU/Linux desktops are heading in a different direction, but it takes time. Windows wasn't written in a night, and neither can Gnome have been.
Actually, if that's true about sovereignty, it's totally unlike copyright. One reason there's so many people who object to current copyright laws is that failure to enforce your copyright means... absolutely nothing to the future enforceability of it. Hence, something someone created and published in 1930 and then died fifty years later is still copyrighted, but it might be very difficult to find out who holds the copyright and get to license it. Patents similarly last until their expiration, which is why GIFs were under-the-radar till the holder of a patent covering an aspect of the format decided they wanted to enforce it.
Trademarks, however, do require enforcement to remain, because if I start referring to all cola softdrinks as 'coke', then when I say 'coke', you don't know if I'm talking about Coca-Cola's softdrink, or Pepsi's, or Tarax's, or whoever else's who make a cola softdrink. (Of course, I do, and so do most people unless they looove Coca-Cola and haaate Pepsi, but its fair enough that legal recognition of genericisation of trademarks is a slow process.)
(This post says nothing about the requirement of enforcing sovereignty to maintain it. I don't know anything about that.)
Apple's OS X has one huge problem that many Linux geeks recognise. It mightn't be a problem for everyone in the short term, but in the long term it'll become obvious.
MacOS X is closed source and proprietry. Late last year, I bought myself a new iMac G5. I liked my ROX desktop, and disliked Windows, but I thought something a bit more solid and coherent would be nice. After all, I didn't really do much modifying software, and the fact that so much needs to be compiled was pissing me off. (I started using GNU/Linux in the first place because I couldn't afford a Windows licence, and didn't want to run unlicensed software for what I considered then to be ethical reasons.)
Boy, was I wrong. I'm a geek, but not a skilled developer. I might occasionally make a minor change to a piece of software (which given my ROX desktop and my limited abilities usually meant choosing 'Look inside' from the Filer's menu, then fiddling with the Python files in there). The fact I couldn't do that on MacOS X was actually painful. I was also unable to make basic customisations to the interface like moving the close icon away from the minimise/maximise ones in window decorations. These limitations probably won't hurt your average user, but they will hurt people who are used to GNU/Linux and other *nix-like OSes.
These limitations are intergral to MacOS X. Linux geeks do not yearn for a beautiful MacOS-X-on-GNU/Linux. They yearn for a system they like. Some of them would like a simpler-to-administer system, and they're writing it. Others get paid to do it. Fortunately unlike Apple they are not selfish and are allowing others to make changes (minor or major) to their software. This is what Ubuntu and Gnome people are explicitly working towards (even if they're still a ways away). Even if they fail, they create the market, and with it the money that will pay other developers to write better software.
The system is not currently suitable for all (or even most) users, probably. But as more and more people and companies recognise the benefits of free software, and a greater variety of inputs and requirements are asked of GNU/Linux, desktop systems based on GNU/Linux are becoming accessible to more and more people. It will be and is strengthened by its diversity. And although it may be that (say) ROX isn't for everyone, if someone decides to convert from the undetermined überenvironment that is able to replace Windows as the everyman's operating system, they can do so at absolutely no cost. No driver issues. All their data will be accessible. Even all their old software will be accessible! In fact, switching back to what they liked before will be a menu-option away.
Isn't that amazing? Isn't that how computing should be? Isn't that the true way to complete userfriendliness?
Most people don't want to shape their operating environment around them, but some do. Those that do want to do so to different extents. A system that prevents me from doing that isn't userfriendly, any more than a system which requires me to do it, or forces me to a console. Only a free software environment can cater to all tastes. Linux geeks get this. They may be pursuing it in the wrong order. But maybe they aren't, only unwritten history will tell us that.
That's why GNU/Linux will still be going strong when everyone's forgotten that Apple did anything but make portable music players.
More concisely, the strength of GNU/Linux is that paste there is no 'crop of leaders and movers and shakers controls the [GNU/]Linux scene'. But anyone (including technophobes by virtue of money) can add extra stuff on top of it.
(To the extent that this post wasn't directly relevant to yours, it was something I wanted to say. As this is an open forum, such bits may be considered an open letter to people who aren't so understanding of open software.)
In Australia,* due to the Olympics, we started daylight savings a few weeks earlier in 2000. This meant that it would be on at a marginally more watchable time for Americans or something.
I can honestly say that we got on just fine. We needed to insist that some Windows computers change the date, but it didn't cause planes to fall out of the sky the way the 1/1/2000 did.
* Actually, in New South Wales, Victoria and the ACT. Everywhere else is on a different time zone/changes to DLS at a different time. But as everyone knows, Sydney==Australia, so my statement stands. (I went to Sydney last week for the first time, and they definitely seem to assume that Sydney==Australia.)
Yeah... There'd been decent browsers for OS/2 before I could use it, but they were no longer current so lacked needed features. Now I can't use it (hardware issues + my install CD* is both scratched and lost -sigh-), I'm sure there's decent browsers now. Just at the time. Didn't mean to imply otherwise!
* A few years ago Australian Personal Computer had a copy of the few-years-old OS/2 Warp 4, which is what I used.
I've played with OS/2 a bit, and I must say I did like it, but when I was able to give it a shot, there was no real decent web browsers for it. Without a web browser, I wasn't able to give it the chance it deserved. (Very little software besides is important to me if I want to give an OS a shot besides a web browser, a text editor, and a half decent UI.)
Acronyms are usually treated linguistically as adjectives when they're still pronounced as acronyms. 'ATM' is a word on its own that derives from 'automatic teller machine', but does not necessarily parse as that. The fact that enough people use the word like that means that you are wrong, though you have history on your side.
The BBC is probably smart enough to realise that if they required your licence number to unlock it, then some helpful strangers from Britain would give the rest of us their numbers...
Anyway, thanks for funding the BBC to create the high quality output they do. I so desperately would like to see something even remotely equivalent down here in Australia, but our ABC (and commercial TV) is nowhere near comparable.
Even under normal versions of Windows, you can't do that. Well, you can, but it's not because the button sits in the corner. It doesn't; there's space between the corner of the button and the corner of the screen. Instead, clicking in the corner of the screen activates the button. So they might've visually moved it, but it might still act the same...
I use Dvorak mostly, on my computer, and Qwerty occasionally, on other computers. In general because I used GNU/Linux on my computer and Windows on other computers, I find that the environment makes me switch mentally. Recently I've had to use Windows on 'my own' computer so it's had Dvorak on it, so that default's broken down a bit. When it fails, if I start typing and get gibberish, I mentally switch layouts, but I don't necessarily know what from/what to until I notice that my fingers are flying all over the place in Qwerty.
I find I pseudo-touchtype as fast at Qwerty as Dvorak if I can glance at the (Qwerty) keycaps, otherwise my typing's a little slower, but not painfully so (painfully flying all over the place, yeah, but not painfully slow!).
On the other hand, I can't use VIM in qwerty. It makes no sense whatsoever to my fingers. My fingers have totally and 110 per cent accepted things like having hjkl in very different places from in Qwerty and it seems so perfectly intuitive. I've never understood the common complaint of it being unintuitive in Dvorak. They're just keys. In Qwerty, O isn't two lines above o, between which is i, after which is a. In fact, o's got nothing to do with inserting in a new line. And similarly in other programs, Ctrl-X has nothing to do with cut or paste or whatever it does (you don't know, you just do! me a little different from the rest of youse).
As for learning the layout, I recommend against any uglyfications like rearranging keys or putting on extra labels. I mean, you're learning Dvorak so you can touchtype well, so while you're learning just look at a sheet of paper with the layout next to your screen or something. Also, its really useful to have Qwerty keycaps on your keyboard, so that when you see a really weird tyop like pwn, you can look and say "oh, the P and O keys are next to each other---he probably means own". (Honestly, for the novelty value, admittedly having used Dvorak for a few years now, yesterday I rearranged the keys on my keyboard (the keycaps are all the same height so it wasn't a big deal with feel). I promptly put F and J back beneath the index fingers, and I'm considering putting the others back---it's really weird!
Why is it that in dupe posts, there's always half a dozen posts rated up about how it's a dupe? And, once there's already been a first post pointing out that it's a dupe, why are there still many more to come?
Once a link's been given to the orginal post, that's great; continue the discussion either here or there, but let it go.
People who use Dvorak touchtype (otherwise there's no point), so a Dvorak keyboard could have no letters, or them in alphabetical order, for all the difference it makes.
Heh, original copyright my arse. The original copyrights (as letters patents, meaning open letters) were infinite. It was granted as a way to limit what was published. Sounds like we're returning well enough on our own.
Nevertheless, I think your proposals too extreme. Limiting copyright terms to five years would noticeably affect the creation of works (even the useful life of software packages can be greater than that!). A minimum term, in my mind, would be twenty-five years; and surely society would be the better for a term lasting the life of the original creator.
As a trade-off, the copyright should not be private property, but a right inherit in the creator, and cannot be traded. For actual creations of large companies and the like (software, frex, but not music), where the names of the original creators are not usually available, a term of fifty years would be acceptable in my mind, but I would be happier with twenty-five. (For corporate creations like movies where there's one major creator and myriad other minors, I propose the longer of the life of the major creator and twenty-five or fifty years to make it easier to ascertain when the copyright expires.)
'Cancelling copyright on [software]' would only give the greatest monopolies the more power. Imagine if anyone could use Word without worrying about licencing feesall but five users would not care about AbiWord or OpenOffice.org! Microsoft could include whatever features and our power to object would be reduced. Also, the GPL is reliant on copyright law to work.
I have no idea what (3) means. AFAIK (IANAL), EULAs are not legally enforceable anyway.
As for (4), I do not understand how it fits in with (2) or (3). In any case, it has somewhere between buckley's chance and none of getting accepted by any legislature of the known world.
There's another difference, which might really be irrelevant on the largest scale, but certainly goes some way to why I don't read Internet ads and have no problems hiding them. Newspaper ads are targetted to the local audience. Most ads on the Internet are targetted to an American audience, and a huge proportion of the remainder are targetted to an idiot audience: I don't even bother with them.
Ads on the website of The Age (the newspaper I read in print) are sometimes interesting and worth clicking. But I still block them because they have movement right in the middle of text. I came to read your content, not watch your ads!
That should read 'I block Google's text ads on gmail'. They may or may not blocked on Google's search page; if they are, it's only because of the former.
I block Google's text ads on google, because they do get in the way and do distract. They significantly narrow the viewspace so that I have to widen my window to more than 800-odd-pixels-wide before I can read my emails. Half the time even the bottom navigation items are covered up! Unfortunately, if I choose to widen the window, it makes it impossible to read most other websites I'm likely to by click a link from GMail because the the content on those sites ends up way too wide. It also means I can't have two browser windows side-by-side (one for mail, one for web), in spite of the fact that I have an ueber-wide screen.
OTOH, I don't care about graphical (or other text) ads, as long as they don't move, don't cover up the text, and don't interfere greatly with the text and navigation elements. Y'know, kinda like you get in newspapers?
In Australia, where around 90 per cent of people make formal (valid) votes (enough consider it a social obligation, just like jury duty that it's compulsory). However, we didn't get to vote on the issue, because both major parties supported the so-called Free Trade Agreement with America (the Government was obviously in support of it, and the Opposition had been led to believe they'd screwed up majorly and the only option to get elected was to support it).
That really is the bigger issue. We don't get a say on it. Voting is more than just a formality, but in issues like these where it's Big Business versus the Weird Extremists (even if they're speaking up for the People and are conservative), the Weird Extremists don't even need to bother turning up.
Macs aren't the be-all-end-all of usability. The Mac UI has many problems itself: Consider the case of menus for instance. If you click, it closes the menu. That seems to make sense, except when you consider that it closes the menu if you click on a separator (which you probably did because you mis-aimed given that there's no clear separator between the separator and the items above and below... now you need to open the menu again, re-aim, and perhaps repeat!), and the menu closes if you click an item with a submenu, which you probably did because you want the damn thing to open!
Not to mention the amount of times I've been confused/lost time (or even slept in!) because some dialog boxes are instant apply, others are apply-when-you-close and others are explicit-apply. Of course you have to guess which is which (even different pages of the same, central System Preferences box behave randomly differently!), whereas in X, the different desktop environments either behave close enough or look radically different.
I'm not saying that X-based Dekstop Environments have no usability problems, or even necessarily that they have less. I'm saying that we shouldn't glorify OS X, because it's just the same mess we already have, but with the menubar at the top of the screen.
(Whether your scanner works isn't an issue of usability really (it's an issue of driver support), and in any case it's something that's being worked on. Many distributions allow you to plug in hardware and have it 'just work' nowadays, and just as Mac OS X has drivers for some thingns Linux doesn't, Linux has drivers for some (modern, desktop-oriented) things Mac OS X doesn't. If you want any random piece of hardware working, you use Windows.)
I don't see why no one else is adopting the new Apple-style verb-based dialog buttons.
They are. Take a look at http://rox.sourceforge.net/phpwiki/index.php/Style Guide/Dialogs for instance. (That's from the ROX Desktop style guide, because I use a ROX Desktop, but it shows that at least two non-Apple desktop environments recommend the use of verb-based dialog buttons.)
Slashdot Mirror
I was talking about free software development. I do not know how open-source development may relate to that kind of stuff, but there is nothing intrinsic in free software that causes it.
If you get a bunch of volunteers and watch them to make proprietry software (e.g. shareware) you see the same problems. If you pay a bunch of coders to write free software, you'll get similar results to proprietry software developed under similar circumstances.
Free software development is not the same as open-source software development (even if all free software may be open-source software and vice versa). That's why there's two terms!
(My experience as basically a non-coder is that if I have a problem and can provide adequate help, the developers try to give me adequate results. I do, however, remember that they're volunteers and have day-jobs and the like.)
Fonts are funny things. Everyone seems to like different ones. I dispise Cleartype on Windows (it's better without anything). And Mac fonts I find to be ugly, too. The fonts in my GTK+ 2 environment, though, I find to be absolutely supurb. If you gave me Windows-like rending of fonts on my GNU/Linux box, I'd punch you in the face.
(However, I consider Times New Roman to be godawful no matter how it's rendered, or even in print, so I almost always use only Bitstream Vera Sans/Serif/Sans Mono, the TeX Computer Modern series, and a handful others like Gentium for special characters. I even have my web browser configure to use my fonts and only my fonts, to the best of its ability.)
Indeed. All those people who have ever said 'GNU/Linux will never be ready for the desktop' were wrong, and were always going to have been wrong. It just takes time. Not because free software development is an inefficient process, but because when a bunch of volunteers get together, they're going to create something they want to use first. It just so happens that the typical Unix user was happier with another system.
Now as that's changed and dollars've also become a driving force, GNU/Linux desktops are heading in a different direction, but it takes time. Windows wasn't written in a night, and neither can Gnome have been.
Actually, if that's true about sovereignty, it's totally unlike copyright. One reason there's so many people who object to current copyright laws is that failure to enforce your copyright means ... absolutely nothing to the future enforceability of it. Hence, something someone created and published in 1930 and then died fifty years later is still copyrighted, but it might be very difficult to find out who holds the copyright and get to license it. Patents similarly last until their expiration, which is why GIFs were under-the-radar till the holder of a patent covering an aspect of the format decided they wanted to enforce it.
Trademarks, however, do require enforcement to remain, because if I start referring to all cola softdrinks as 'coke', then when I say 'coke', you don't know if I'm talking about Coca-Cola's softdrink, or Pepsi's, or Tarax's, or whoever else's who make a cola softdrink. (Of course, I do, and so do most people unless they looove Coca-Cola and haaate Pepsi, but its fair enough that legal recognition of genericisation of trademarks is a slow process.)
(This post says nothing about the requirement of enforcing sovereignty to maintain it. I don't know anything about that.)
Apple's OS X has one huge problem that many Linux geeks recognise. It mightn't be a problem for everyone in the short term, but in the long term it'll become obvious.
MacOS X is closed source and proprietry. Late last year, I bought myself a new iMac G5. I liked my ROX desktop, and disliked Windows, but I thought something a bit more solid and coherent would be nice. After all, I didn't really do much modifying software, and the fact that so much needs to be compiled was pissing me off. (I started using GNU/Linux in the first place because I couldn't afford a Windows licence, and didn't want to run unlicensed software for what I considered then to be ethical reasons.)
Boy, was I wrong. I'm a geek, but not a skilled developer. I might occasionally make a minor change to a piece of software (which given my ROX desktop and my limited abilities usually meant choosing 'Look inside' from the Filer's menu, then fiddling with the Python files in there). The fact I couldn't do that on MacOS X was actually painful. I was also unable to make basic customisations to the interface like moving the close icon away from the minimise/maximise ones in window decorations. These limitations probably won't hurt your average user, but they will hurt people who are used to GNU/Linux and other *nix-like OSes.
These limitations are intergral to MacOS X. Linux geeks do not yearn for a beautiful MacOS-X-on-GNU/Linux. They yearn for a system they like. Some of them would like a simpler-to-administer system, and they're writing it. Others get paid to do it. Fortunately unlike Apple they are not selfish and are allowing others to make changes (minor or major) to their software. This is what Ubuntu and Gnome people are explicitly working towards (even if they're still a ways away). Even if they fail, they create the market, and with it the money that will pay other developers to write better software.
The system is not currently suitable for all (or even most) users, probably. But as more and more people and companies recognise the benefits of free software, and a greater variety of inputs and requirements are asked of GNU/Linux, desktop systems based on GNU/Linux are becoming accessible to more and more people. It will be and is strengthened by its diversity. And although it may be that (say) ROX isn't for everyone, if someone decides to convert from the undetermined überenvironment that is able to replace Windows as the everyman's operating system, they can do so at absolutely no cost. No driver issues. All their data will be accessible. Even all their old software will be accessible! In fact, switching back to what they liked before will be a menu-option away.
Isn't that amazing? Isn't that how computing should be? Isn't that the true way to complete userfriendliness?
Most people don't want to shape their operating environment around them, but some do. Those that do want to do so to different extents. A system that prevents me from doing that isn't userfriendly, any more than a system which requires me to do it, or forces me to a console. Only a free software environment can cater to all tastes. Linux geeks get this. They may be pursuing it in the wrong order. But maybe they aren't, only unwritten history will tell us that.
That's why GNU/Linux will still be going strong when everyone's forgotten that Apple did anything but make portable music players.
More concisely, the strength of GNU/Linux is that paste there is no 'crop of leaders and movers and shakers controls the [GNU/]Linux scene'. But anyone (including technophobes by virtue of money) can add extra stuff on top of it.
(To the extent that this post wasn't directly relevant to yours, it was something I wanted to say. As this is an open forum, such bits may be considered an open letter to people who aren't so understanding of open software.)
In Australia,* due to the Olympics, we started daylight savings a few weeks earlier in 2000. This meant that it would be on at a marginally more watchable time for Americans or something.
I can honestly say that we got on just fine. We needed to insist that some Windows computers change the date, but it didn't cause planes to fall out of the sky the way the 1/1/2000 did.
* Actually, in New South Wales, Victoria and the ACT. Everywhere else is on a different time zone/changes to DLS at a different time. But as everyone knows, Sydney==Australia, so my statement stands. (I went to Sydney last week for the first time, and they definitely seem to assume that Sydney==Australia.)
Yeah ... There'd been decent browsers for OS/2 before I could use it, but they were no longer current so lacked needed features. Now I can't use it (hardware issues + my install CD* is both scratched and lost -sigh-), I'm sure there's decent browsers now. Just at the time. Didn't mean to imply otherwise!
* A few years ago Australian Personal Computer had a copy of the few-years-old OS/2 Warp 4, which is what I used.
What's the Conditional Cascade Menu?
I've played with OS/2 a bit, and I must say I did like it, but when I was able to give it a shot, there was no real decent web browsers for it. Without a web browser, I wasn't able to give it the chance it deserved. (Very little software besides is important to me if I want to give an OS a shot besides a web browser, a text editor, and a half decent UI.)
Acronyms are usually treated linguistically as adjectives when they're still pronounced as acronyms. 'ATM' is a word on its own that derives from 'automatic teller machine', but does not necessarily parse as that. The fact that enough people use the word like that means that you are wrong, though you have history on your side.
The BBC is probably smart enough to realise that if they required your licence number to unlock it, then some helpful strangers from Britain would give the rest of us their numbers...
Anyway, thanks for funding the BBC to create the high quality output they do. I so desperately would like to see something even remotely equivalent down here in Australia, but our ABC (and commercial TV) is nowhere near comparable.
Even under normal versions of Windows, you can't do that. Well, you can, but it's not because the button sits in the corner. It doesn't; there's space between the corner of the button and the corner of the screen. Instead, clicking in the corner of the screen activates the button. So they might've visually moved it, but it might still act the same...
I use Dvorak mostly, on my computer, and Qwerty occasionally, on other computers. In general because I used GNU/Linux on my computer and Windows on other computers, I find that the environment makes me switch mentally. Recently I've had to use Windows on 'my own' computer so it's had Dvorak on it, so that default's broken down a bit. When it fails, if I start typing and get gibberish, I mentally switch layouts, but I don't necessarily know what from/what to until I notice that my fingers are flying all over the place in Qwerty.
I find I pseudo-touchtype as fast at Qwerty as Dvorak if I can glance at the (Qwerty) keycaps, otherwise my typing's a little slower, but not painfully so (painfully flying all over the place, yeah, but not painfully slow!).
On the other hand, I can't use VIM in qwerty. It makes no sense whatsoever to my fingers. My fingers have totally and 110 per cent accepted things like having hjkl in very different places from in Qwerty and it seems so perfectly intuitive. I've never understood the common complaint of it being unintuitive in Dvorak. They're just keys. In Qwerty, O isn't two lines above o, between which is i, after which is a. In fact, o's got nothing to do with inserting in a new line. And similarly in other programs, Ctrl-X has nothing to do with cut or paste or whatever it does (you don't know, you just do! me a little different from the rest of youse).
As for learning the layout, I recommend against any uglyfications like rearranging keys or putting on extra labels. I mean, you're learning Dvorak so you can touchtype well, so while you're learning just look at a sheet of paper with the layout next to your screen or something. Also, its really useful to have Qwerty keycaps on your keyboard, so that when you see a really weird tyop like pwn, you can look and say "oh, the P and O keys are next to each other---he probably means own". (Honestly, for the novelty value, admittedly having used Dvorak for a few years now, yesterday I rearranged the keys on my keyboard (the keycaps are all the same height so it wasn't a big deal with feel). I promptly put F and J back beneath the index fingers, and I'm considering putting the others back---it's really weird!
Oh cool, if I learn that many digits of pi, does that means I'll more than double my chances of getting a girlfriend too?
Why is it that in dupe posts, there's always half a dozen posts rated up about how it's a dupe? And, once there's already been a first post pointing out that it's a dupe, why are there still many more to come?
Once a link's been given to the orginal post, that's great; continue the discussion either here or there, but let it go.
Do Sun keyboards still have odd layouts, with the Cut/Copy/Paste and so forth keys? Do these laptops have them?
People who use Dvorak touchtype (otherwise there's no point), so a Dvorak keyboard could have no letters, or them in alphabetical order, for all the difference it makes.
(I just typed that in Dvorak.)
Oh wait, now we have to be careful to avoid the Yahoo! View of History being predominant on Wikipedia!
Heh, original copyright my arse. The original copyrights (as letters patents, meaning open letters) were infinite. It was granted as a way to limit what was published. Sounds like we're returning well enough on our own.
Nevertheless, I think your proposals too extreme. Limiting copyright terms to five years would noticeably affect the creation of works (even the useful life of software packages can be greater than that!). A minimum term, in my mind, would be twenty-five years; and surely society would be the better for a term lasting the life of the original creator.
As a trade-off, the copyright should not be private property, but a right inherit in the creator, and cannot be traded. For actual creations of large companies and the like (software, frex, but not music), where the names of the original creators are not usually available, a term of fifty years would be acceptable in my mind, but I would be happier with twenty-five. (For corporate creations like movies where there's one major creator and myriad other minors, I propose the longer of the life of the major creator and twenty-five or fifty years to make it easier to ascertain when the copyright expires.)
'Cancelling copyright on [software]' would only give the greatest monopolies the more power. Imagine if anyone could use Word without worrying about licencing feesall but five users would not care about AbiWord or OpenOffice.org! Microsoft could include whatever features and our power to object would be reduced. Also, the GPL is reliant on copyright law to work.
I have no idea what (3) means. AFAIK (IANAL), EULAs are not legally enforceable anyway.
As for (4), I do not understand how it fits in with (2) or (3). In any case, it has somewhere between buckley's chance and none of getting accepted by any legislature of the known world.
There's another difference, which might really be irrelevant on the largest scale, but certainly goes some way to why I don't read Internet ads and have no problems hiding them. Newspaper ads are targetted to the local audience. Most ads on the Internet are targetted to an American audience, and a huge proportion of the remainder are targetted to an idiot audience: I don't even bother with them.
Ads on the website of The Age (the newspaper I read in print) are sometimes interesting and worth clicking. But I still block them because they have movement right in the middle of text. I came to read your content, not watch your ads!
That should read 'I block Google's text ads on gmail'. They may or may not blocked on Google's search page; if they are, it's only because of the former.
I block Google's text ads on google, because they do get in the way and do distract. They significantly narrow the viewspace so that I have to widen my window to more than 800-odd-pixels-wide before I can read my emails. Half the time even the bottom navigation items are covered up! Unfortunately, if I choose to widen the window, it makes it impossible to read most other websites I'm likely to by click a link from GMail because the the content on those sites ends up way too wide. It also means I can't have two browser windows side-by-side (one for mail, one for web), in spite of the fact that I have an ueber-wide screen.
OTOH, I don't care about graphical (or other text) ads, as long as they don't move, don't cover up the text, and don't interfere greatly with the text and navigation elements. Y'know, kinda like you get in newspapers?
Ha!
In Australia, where around 90 per cent of people make formal (valid) votes (enough consider it a social obligation, just like jury duty that it's compulsory). However, we didn't get to vote on the issue, because both major parties supported the so-called Free Trade Agreement with America (the Government was obviously in support of it, and the Opposition had been led to believe they'd screwed up majorly and the only option to get elected was to support it).
That really is the bigger issue. We don't get a say on it. Voting is more than just a formality, but in issues like these where it's Big Business versus the Weird Extremists (even if they're speaking up for the People and are conservative), the Weird Extremists don't even need to bother turning up.
Macs aren't the be-all-end-all of usability. The Mac UI has many problems itself: Consider the case of menus for instance. If you click, it closes the menu. That seems to make sense, except when you consider that it closes the menu if you click on a separator (which you probably did because you mis-aimed given that there's no clear separator between the separator and the items above and below ... now you need to open the menu again, re-aim, and perhaps repeat!), and the menu closes if you click an item with a submenu, which you probably did because you want the damn thing to open!
Not to mention the amount of times I've been confused/lost time (or even slept in!) because some dialog boxes are instant apply, others are apply-when-you-close and others are explicit-apply. Of course you have to guess which is which (even different pages of the same, central System Preferences box behave randomly differently!), whereas in X, the different desktop environments either behave close enough or look radically different.
I'm not saying that X-based Dekstop Environments have no usability problems, or even necessarily that they have less. I'm saying that we shouldn't glorify OS X, because it's just the same mess we already have, but with the menubar at the top of the screen.
(Whether your scanner works isn't an issue of usability really (it's an issue of driver support), and in any case it's something that's being worked on. Many distributions allow you to plug in hardware and have it 'just work' nowadays, and just as Mac OS X has drivers for some thingns Linux doesn't, Linux has drivers for some (modern, desktop-oriented) things Mac OS X doesn't. If you want any random piece of hardware working, you use Windows.)
I don't see why no one else is adopting the new Apple-style verb-based dialog buttons.
e Guide/Dialogs for instance. (That's from the ROX Desktop style guide, because I use a ROX Desktop, but it shows that at least two non-Apple desktop environments recommend the use of verb-based dialog buttons.)
They are. Take a look at http://rox.sourceforge.net/phpwiki/index.php/Styl