As Bruce Schneier points out, the problem is not that Microsoft can install updates on your computer without asking, but as soon as it gets cracked, then soon every script kiddy on the planet will also be able to do so.
The menu editor, removed somewhere in the 2.x cycle, not replaced until years later Removed because GNOME swapped over to the FDO menu spec, breaking the old one, which replaced when manpower allowed. Not removed for reasons of simplicity or usability.
Sawfish replaced with Metacity, losing tons of features/configurability. Replaced with something that gasp, still manages windows, does so in a sane way by default and actually integrates with the desktop. In the end, no net loss of function as you can swap Metacity for Sawfish again (yes, it's configurable!).
Galeon 1.2 replaced with Galeon 1.3, losing features, and then later replaced with Epiphany, losing more features. Galeon was never the official browser. Epiphany was the first. The Galeon devs decided to stop working on the project because Epiphany was seen as a better basis going forward. If you bothered to look, Galeon's missing features are being replaced with plugins for Epy.
xscreensaver replaced with gnome screensaver, which has no options at all Actually, it the saver itself is just as configurable as plain xscreensaver. No, savers are not configurable but if you read the bug report the developer is planning to implement this. It was replaced again for better integration with the desktop as JWZ wasn't willing to do/allow it. Most (all?) of the main configuration options that were lost were actually moved elsewhere (e.g. to the power manager).
And an example where important features are intentionally not implemented for usability reasons And the reply clarifying GNOME's actual position - which is that features will be implemented if they are genuinely useful and a reasonable way of doing it can be found.
You can't argue that a lot of configurability has been removed from Gnome since the 1.4 days. These changes were done in the name of usability. Yes, of course, "everyone" knows it is true. I'd like, just once, even one example of this.
You're a smart guy, you know this happened, and can find your own references. Heh heh. Of course you're not. Wouldn't want a little bit of reality raining on your parade. Unfortunately, as the person making the claim in this instance, it's up to you to provide the burden of proof. C.f. Russell's teapot. Funny how of every anti-GNOME troll that repeats this mantra on/., no one has ever provided some evidence.
Yes, there is bias there, but not as bad as you would make it seem. Actually, it is. It completely invalidates the usefulness of such a poll. C.f. "Statistics" and "The Scientific Method".
Technical users make requests on behalf of less technical ones as well. And face it, the majority of Linux users are technical users. You can ignore this and not cater to them if you want, but you're targeting users that may never even use Linux. You're actually saying we should assume that non-technical users will never use Linux and hence we not bother to cater for them. I see.
Removing features just because someone is confused by them is not a valid reason. You have to think about it more critically than that. Thanks for repeating the myth, yet again.
Please, Gnome are not the only ones thinking about usability. They are just suffering from the delusion that less features and less configurability makes for usability And... bam! And there's the myth again, twice in one post. That has to be some sort of record. So go on, provide some references to back up these assertions.
These features weren't added randomly to KDE, they were added because a significant number of users requested them. You mean, "they were added because a significant number of users who were motivated and willing to submit feature requests using the appropriate mechanism, who were technically competent enough to do so and knew that such a mechanism existed requested a particular feature". Which, of course is a flaming great classic example of response bias - the same thing that makes television and newspaper polls useless as an indicator for the actual value of a population parameter.
What you have is an bunch geeks and hobbyists - the very people to want extreme, nifty and mostly useless features - in control of functional requirements for KDE. Something gets posted to the Dot and all of the geeks who read it rush over and vote or whatever and the feature gets implemented because "everyone" wants it. If KDE has any user base outside of these groups, they they (and their needs) go completely unrepresented by KDE's requirements gathering "process". Awesome. And people wonder why KDE has 3 billion (approx) random configuration items and pointless features.
And you're right, usability studies are generally qualitative in nature, but using mixed methods allows you generalise the qualitative data while still being able to look at individual differences. It, you know, removes the "fuzzyness" (Is that a technical term?) - it makes what would otherwise be a particularly useless study quite useful for improving the ergonomics of your user interface.
But in no way is a usability study any less useful than using an obscure popularity contest accessible only to an extreme part of the user base to determine what should go in. Also, what about removing useless features? Does that ever get voted on? No? Damm, that must be some serious bloat going on.
So you can talk about how it's not fair that the GNOME developers ignore bug reports and how they can't possibly know what is needed and what is not - despite the fact that major usability studies were run on GNOME in 2001 and 2005 and continue in part at betterdesktop.org - and waive your hands as much as you like and cry "what about my obscure feature request" but in the end it it much better that someone is at least thinking about and trying to improve actual usability, rather than relying on such a fundamentally flawed, biased and mediocre process such as the one you have outlined.
Sorry, let me clarify what I meant when I said "when sorting it by date the ordering implicitly tells you".
What I meant was: when you sort the files by last modified date, the order in which they then appear in the file list actually tells you which files have been modified most recently, relative to each other, regardless of the fact that the date is printed as "Today" (or whenever).
For example, lets say you have two files, "bb" - modified 1 minute ago and "aa" - modified two minutes ago. In the file chooser, the last modified column tells you they were last modified "Today" (this is much more usable than printing the date and time because it tells you instantly when it was actually modified - you avoid the higher cognitive load and potential for error in having to parse the date, remember what day it is today and then doing the comparison). If you want to find out which was modified more recently than the other, click the "Last modified" column header to sort based on the last modified date/time of the files rather than sorting them based on the file name - "bb" will appear at the top instead of "aa". Now, to tell which files were modified most recently, just choose the ones at the top. Amazing!
This assumes of course you're using an program that doesn't automatically do this for you (you're kidding, right?) or that you're not using Nautilus (which, as I already mentioned in the GP post)/does/ show full timestamps.
Like KDE, you mean?;) Heh. Nah, that other Free desktop environment. Oh, and MacOSX.:P
I think your entire argument seems to boil down to GNOME being better because it's default out-of-the-box is closest to what you see as the most "efficient" configuration. No, not at all. I'm saying it's better because the developers have put more effort into working out what really is the best behaviour, done that by default and provided prefs for only stuff that is really important.
I'm not saying that they have done a perfect job, but I will suggest that they have done a better job of it in GNOME v2.x than the KDE developers did in KDE v3.x. It will be interesting to see what KDE 4 is like, from what I have heard it's a step in the same direction as GNOME.
"By that rationelle, in my case neither KDE, GNOME, XFCE, Windows, OSX, BeOS, OS/2, Fluxbox or indeed any other windowing system I have ever seen has "got it right" out of the box."
Correct. Some of them just try harder than others.
While some kinds of preferences make total sense, some do not and too many are generally a bad thing. To paraphrase a wise hacker, those extra preferences are just way for lazy developers to avoid making hard decisions.
Yes, and I'm glad that he can configure KDE to work for him.
However, he seemed to also be applying this to all users, i.e. that because GNOME doesn't work for him, that it won't for all users - which is what I was taking him to task about.
Of course, while a desktop environment has a technical side (how do I display widgets, handle user input) it has an equally important ergonomic side (how do I let the user do what they want to do).
While I would trust Linus to be right about the technical side nearly all the time, I seriously doubt him when it comes to ergonomics - recall that he stared flaming GNOME because he wanted to remap a click on the window's menu button to do something other than what you would reasonable expect (i.e. show the window menu).
If that is something he wants to do then fine, he should use something else that lets him do this. A different WM, a different DE, or whatever. It is certainly not a reason to start flaming GNOME, though.
What you can do is locate the file in nautilus (with creation times down to, gasp, seconds) and drag it into the file chooser. Or drag it into the application directly, avoiding the file chooser altogether. Or find it in a terminal and do "gnome-open filename" and avoid all of it.
Serious question here: How often does it actually matter? How often can't you use reasonable cues like the file name, or by noticing that when sorting it by date the ordering implicitly tells you?
"So yes, the KDE control center is crammed with features, but I only know and use those that I need and I have turned the desktop into a wonderful, simple and sane experience for me. A thing that I can't do with GNOME, XFCE or any Windows."
And that's of course where you're missing the point. GNOME, XFCE and MacOSX attempt to be usable by default. They do this not by removing random features just to spite people, but by conducting usability studies to find out what actually works and doesn't work for people then doing the former by default and fixing the latter.
The fact that you had to hunt around and make changes to make the desktop simple and sane enough to use means that KDE failed to get it right in the first place. Now, this could be because you prefer to have double-clicking on a window's title bar start a ytalk session using a regex over the window's text, or because you prefer to rebind the enter key to double-backspace-n, which is fine - go for your life. But if that's the case you're an outlier (no offence - rejoice in your point of difference!) and you probably shouldn't be making broad judgements about the usability of desktop environments for anyone other than yourself.
"So that's the puzzle: How do you build an advertising economy when the number can't be trusted?"
You can't. So give up, stop bombarding us with ads for useless things we don't need, go outside and get some sunshine. Do something useful for humanity instead of dragging us all down./Mike
Don't go to college in the US, go anywhere else except there. As a non-US citizen, it is now trivial to have you declared an enemy combatant, deny you your right of habeas corpus and have you thrown in detention indefinitely.
Slashdot Mirror
Surprise, surprise.
As Bruce Schneier points out, the problem is not that Microsoft can install updates on your computer without asking, but as soon as it gets cracked, then soon every script kiddy on the planet will also be able to do so.
Then you're really going to be screwed.
-mike
Can someone mod this up plz? This is the real reason why (a) this isn't an issue at all and (b) why it shouldn't be in the security repo.
/.: how do you want to troll Debian politics today?
-mike
Blah blah blah. Keep on waiving your hands.
Get over it, I have.
-mike
Next.
-mike
-mike
What you have is an bunch geeks and hobbyists - the very people to want extreme, nifty and mostly useless features - in control of functional requirements for KDE. Something gets posted to the Dot and all of the geeks who read it rush over and vote or whatever and the feature gets implemented because "everyone" wants it. If KDE has any user base outside of these groups, they they (and their needs) go completely unrepresented by KDE's requirements gathering "process". Awesome. And people wonder why KDE has 3 billion (approx) random configuration items and pointless features.
And you're right, usability studies are generally qualitative in nature, but using mixed methods allows you generalise the qualitative data while still being able to look at individual differences. It, you know, removes the "fuzzyness" (Is that a technical term?) - it makes what would otherwise be a particularly useless study quite useful for improving the ergonomics of your user interface.
But in no way is a usability study any less useful than using an obscure popularity contest accessible only to an extreme part of the user base to determine what should go in. Also, what about removing useless features? Does that ever get voted on? No? Damm, that must be some serious bloat going on.
So you can talk about how it's not fair that the GNOME developers ignore bug reports and how they can't possibly know what is needed and what is not - despite the fact that major usability studies were run on GNOME in 2001 and 2005 and continue in part at betterdesktop.org - and waive your hands as much as you like and cry "what about my obscure feature request" but in the end it it much better that someone is at least thinking about and trying to improve actual usability, rather than relying on such a fundamentally flawed, biased and mediocre process such as the one you have outlined.
-Mike
Sorry, let me clarify what I meant when I said "when sorting it by date the ordering implicitly tells you".
/does/ show full timestamps.
What I meant was: when you sort the files by last modified date, the order in which they then appear in the file list actually tells you which files have been modified most recently, relative to each other, regardless of the fact that the date is printed as "Today" (or whenever).
For example, lets say you have two files, "bb" - modified 1 minute ago and "aa" - modified two minutes ago. In the file chooser, the last modified column tells you they were last modified "Today" (this is much more usable than printing the date and time because it tells you instantly when it was actually modified - you avoid the higher cognitive load and potential for error in having to parse the date, remember what day it is today and then doing the comparison). If you want to find out which was modified more recently than the other, click the "Last modified" column header to sort based on the last modified date/time of the files rather than sorting them based on the file name - "bb" will appear at the top instead of "aa". Now, to tell which files were modified most recently, just choose the ones at the top. Amazing!
This assumes of course you're using an program that doesn't automatically do this for you (you're kidding, right?) or that you're not using Nautilus (which, as I already mentioned in the GP post)
-mike
I'm not saying that they have done a perfect job, but I will suggest that they have done a better job of it in GNOME v2.x than the KDE developers did in KDE v3.x. It will be interesting to see what KDE 4 is like, from what I have heard it's a step in the same direction as GNOME.
-mike
"By that rationelle, in my case neither KDE, GNOME, XFCE, Windows, OSX, BeOS, OS/2, Fluxbox or indeed any other windowing system I have ever seen has "got it right" out of the box."
Correct. Some of them just try harder than others.
While some kinds of preferences make total sense, some do not and too many are generally a bad thing. To paraphrase a wise hacker, those extra preferences are just way for lazy developers to avoid making hard decisions.
+1, Pedant. :P
Yes, and I'm glad that he can configure KDE to work for him.
However, he seemed to also be applying this to all users, i.e. that because GNOME doesn't work for him, that it won't for all users - which is what I was taking him to task about.
-mike
Check out Vala. It's what C++ should have been.
-Mike
Of course, while a desktop environment has a technical side (how do I display widgets, handle user input) it has an equally important ergonomic side (how do I let the user do what they want to do).
While I would trust Linus to be right about the technical side nearly all the time, I seriously doubt him when it comes to ergonomics - recall that he stared flaming GNOME because he wanted to remap a click on the window's menu button to do something other than what you would reasonable expect (i.e. show the window menu).
If that is something he wants to do then fine, he should use something else that lets him do this. A different WM, a different DE, or whatever. It is certainly not a reason to start flaming GNOME, though.
-mike
It's amazing how much genuinely useful work I get done with GNOME.
Never ceases to surprise me, given how genuinely useless it all is.
-mike
Yes, that is _precisely_ what I said.
Seeya!
You can't (AFAIK).
What you can do is locate the file in nautilus (with creation times down to, gasp, seconds) and drag it into the file chooser. Or drag it into the application directly, avoiding the file chooser altogether. Or find it in a terminal and do "gnome-open filename" and avoid all of it.
Serious question here: How often does it actually matter? How often can't you use reasonable cues like the file name, or by noticing that when sorting it by date the ordering implicitly tells you?
-mike
"So yes, the KDE control center is crammed with features, but I only know and use those that I need and I have turned the desktop into a wonderful, simple and sane experience for me. A thing that I can't do with GNOME, XFCE or any Windows."
And that's of course where you're missing the point. GNOME, XFCE and MacOSX attempt to be usable by default. They do this not by removing random features just to spite people, but by conducting usability studies to find out what actually works and doesn't work for people then doing the former by default and fixing the latter.
The fact that you had to hunt around and make changes to make the desktop simple and sane enough to use means that KDE failed to get it right in the first place. Now, this could be because you prefer to have double-clicking on a window's title bar start a ytalk session using a regex over the window's text, or because you prefer to rebind the enter key to double-backspace-n, which is fine - go for your life. But if that's the case you're an outlier (no offence - rejoice in your point of difference!) and you probably shouldn't be making broad judgements about the usability of desktop environments for anyone other than yourself.
-mike
Using an RBL lets an untrustworthy third party censor email being sent to your users.
/Mike
Do not use one.
Or perhaps, "more dumb"? ;)
Who would have thought it was possible to invent something more boring than watching TV. Of course... watching people as they watch TV. Genius!
/Mike
I think I just felt the world get a little dummer.
"So that's the puzzle: How do you build an advertising economy when the number can't be trusted?"
/Mike
You can't. So give up, stop bombarding us with ads for useless things we don't need, go outside and get some sunshine. Do something useful for humanity instead of dragging us all down.
"Maybe the future is something more like "write once, run anywhere"."
LOL! You crack me up! No, really!
Don't go to college in the US, go anywhere else except there. As a non-US citizen, it is now trivial to have you declared an enemy combatant, deny you your right of habeas corpus and have you thrown in detention indefinitely.
Friends don't let friends to to the US.
Wow, /. really has become "news for weenies, pseudo-science that doesn't matter".
AI != a flash amimation hooked up to something Emacs has had for decades.