or my favorite first person shooter gaffe - shooting people only to have them fall forward or straight down.
You know, this isn't necessarily a gaffe. Although a bullet has lots of kinetic energy, because of its low mass it doesn't have a high momentum. Also, bullets tend to pass through people rather than lodging in them so they may not transfer all their momentum.
The direction someone falls is determined more by physiology than physics.
If you shoot someone with a rifle bullet, they will collapse, but this is thought to be due to blunt trauma of the spinal cord (see bottom of page) rather than the momentum of the bullet per se.
With a pistol round, if they fall, it's likely to be due to blood loss or surprise at being hit.
In either case, there's no particular reason for them to fall away from the side they were hit on.
>Are FAQs copywritable?
Sure they are. Just use the "cp" command or try dragging the icon into another folder.
If you still have trouble, you need to check your file permissions.
Oh, "copyrightable."
>First of all, some of the requests you list are not the job of a Window Manager. A window manager is supposed to manage windows. Obvious point, but you seem to want more.
Yeah, I should have made clear that I was talking more about problems that need solving with GUIs in general at the end there.
This does suck. There's a thing called Pushpin which gives you the ability to stick a window always on top, but obviously third-party hacks show that there's a deficiency in the existing system.
>alt-tab, windowshade, window groups (and
>raise/iconify/etc working on entire groups),
>virtual desktops, and restricted alt-tabs (meta-
>tab limited to xterm, control-tab limited to
>mozilla, etc) over that any day
All those things to solve what's effectively a single problem seems a little baroque. I'm sure you can use them effectively, but I'd rather the window system did more of the work for me.
The taskbar works for me but I don't have as many windows open at the same time.
Maybe what's needed is a more scalable version of the taskbar, allowing you to create and view groups of windows and give you an overview of running apps rather than an icon for each one. Something like an outliner type interface? In other words, let the taskbar do some of what Sawfish does in a simpler (dumbed-down?) way.
MDI, I like for certain things. It makes sense in a browser, for example.
My other gripes weren't strictly window management. It still amazes me that people put implementing translucence ahead of getting cut/paste working consistently though.
For goodness sake, what problem do translucent windows solve? The need to see what's behind your xterm while simultaneously rendering it unreadable?
The window management in Windows is better than anything I've seen in Linux. I'm sorry, but it's true. I don't care if you can make windows "roll up" into the title bar and you think it looks cool - what problem does that solve that wouldn't be handled better by minimising the window and showing it in the taskbar? Really, I'd be interested if someone could tell me the advantage.
I'd like to see a better way to handle multiple windows, but sadly it seems we are stuck with things that look cool rather than anything useful.
These are the problems that need to be solved, I reckon:
Provide a consistent, graphical way to traverse the file system.
Provide a graphical way to represent pipes and allow the user to send the output of one GUI application to another. For example, if I want to send the source of a web page to my text editor, I shouldn't have to go "View Source, Copy, Launch Text Editor, Paste" - there should be a natural way to do it in a single gesture. Ditto for sending a web page image to a graphics editor.
Similarly, there should be a simple way to record a sequence of operations in the GUI and replay/modify it.
With the advent of widescreen displays and multiple monitors, the GUI needs to arrange windows intelligently without the user dragging them back and forth.
Something called the Bekenstein bounds (I have seen this spelled different ways) put a limit to the number of quantum states that a given amount of matter can have. Apparently.
So I think that implies that even the universe should have a finite number of states.
Would someone who knows what they're talking about please comment?
>Outlawing cryptography because of the DMCA will effectively undermine any nations capability to crack the next code the next Hitler tries to use.
Come off it. I don't think the NSA or GCHQ are going to be bound by copyright law.
In fact, the Poles made even more of a contribution than you've said.
Polish mathematicians actually broke an earlier, weaker version of Enigma. It was only when a change in the procedure was made (a different or extra rotor I think) that they stopped being able to read it. Even then, they had a way to break it using specially perforated sheets but not the resources to make them.
IIRC, Polish intelligence found the mole who leaked Enigma operating manuals too - not sure about this bit.
My source for this is the history of Enigma by Hugh Sebag-Montefiore, ISBN 0753811308.
My source for this is
Whatever you think of the DMCA/P2P apps issue, it's a totally different thing from the effort to break Enigma. Defending fair use is important, but hardly in the same league as defending the free world from the Nazis.
Your lame, forced comparison cheapens the achievement of the Bletchley Park codebreakers and the Allied troops who risked their lives to capture Enigma material.
It also makes you look like a whining tosser who thinks his right to download an MP3 is as important as the rights and freedoms won in WWII.
I think the DMCA is bad too, but for fuck's sake, don't do this kind of thing again.
And Christianity has inspired extremists in the US and other countries to violence - against abortion clinics, or in the militia movement for example.
Don't forget that Hinduism has inspired anti-Muslim violence in India too.
"Other religions like Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Wicca and probably a lot more allow for secular coexistance and equal rights"?
The societies where those religions are dominant do, perhaps. But don't forget that the social changes in Western society which promoted tolerance weren't necessarily inspired by religion.
Look at Christianity in the UK - the Church of England was hardly active in promoting social change, even in the 20th century. It was decades behind the rest of society in female equality (as far as actually allowing them to be priests, anyway).
Arguably there is more glorification of terrorism and acceptance of propaganda in the Islamic world.
What will hopefully happen as Islamic countries get more prosperous is a secularisation process where religion becomes less influential.
Slashdot Mirror
You know, this isn't necessarily a gaffe. Although a bullet has lots of kinetic energy, because of its low mass it doesn't have a high momentum. Also, bullets tend to pass through people rather than lodging in them so they may not transfer all their momentum.
The direction someone falls is determined more by physiology than physics.
If you shoot someone with a rifle bullet, they will collapse, but this is thought to be due to blunt trauma of the spinal cord (see bottom of page) rather than the momentum of the bullet per se.
With a pistol round, if they fall, it's likely to be due to blood loss or surprise at being hit.
In either case, there's no particular reason for them to fall away from the side they were hit on.
>Are FAQs copywritable? Sure they are. Just use the "cp" command or try dragging the icon into another folder. If you still have trouble, you need to check your file permissions. Oh, "copyrightable."
>First of all, some of the requests you list are not the job of a Window Manager. A window manager is supposed to manage windows. Obvious point, but you seem to want more. Yeah, I should have made clear that I was talking more about problems that need solving with GUIs in general at the end there.
>Click to focus + focus autoraise.
This does suck. There's a thing called Pushpin which gives you the ability to stick a window always on top, but obviously third-party hacks show that there's a deficiency in the existing system.
>alt-tab, windowshade, window groups (and >raise/iconify/etc working on entire groups), >virtual desktops, and restricted alt-tabs (meta- >tab limited to xterm, control-tab limited to >mozilla, etc) over that any day
All those things to solve what's effectively a single problem seems a little baroque. I'm sure you can use them effectively, but I'd rather the window system did more of the work for me.
The taskbar works for me but I don't have as many windows open at the same time.
Maybe what's needed is a more scalable version of the taskbar, allowing you to create and view groups of windows and give you an overview of running apps rather than an icon for each one. Something like an outliner type interface? In other words, let the taskbar do some of what Sawfish does in a simpler (dumbed-down?) way.
MDI, I like for certain things. It makes sense in a browser, for example.
My other gripes weren't strictly window management. It still amazes me that people put implementing translucence ahead of getting cut/paste working consistently though.
Oh yeah, and anything "skinnable" can fuck right off.
The window management in Windows is better than anything I've seen in Linux. I'm sorry, but it's true. I don't care if you can make windows "roll up" into the title bar and you think it looks cool - what problem does that solve that wouldn't be handled better by minimising the window and showing it in the taskbar? Really, I'd be interested if someone could tell me the advantage.
I'd like to see a better way to handle multiple windows, but sadly it seems we are stuck with things that look cool rather than anything useful.
These are the problems that need to be solved, I reckon:
So I think that implies that even the universe should have a finite number of states.
Would someone who knows what they're talking about please comment?
>Outlawing cryptography because of the DMCA will effectively undermine any nations capability to crack the next code the next Hitler tries to use. Come off it. I don't think the NSA or GCHQ are going to be bound by copyright law.
Polish mathematicians actually broke an earlier, weaker version of Enigma. It was only when a change in the procedure was made (a different or extra rotor I think) that they stopped being able to read it. Even then, they had a way to break it using specially perforated sheets but not the resources to make them.
IIRC, Polish intelligence found the mole who leaked Enigma operating manuals too - not sure about this bit.
My source for this is the history of Enigma by Hugh Sebag-Montefiore, ISBN 0753811308. My source for this is
Your lame, forced comparison cheapens the achievement of the Bletchley Park codebreakers and the Allied troops who risked their lives to capture Enigma material.
It also makes you look like a whining tosser who thinks his right to download an MP3 is as important as the rights and freedoms won in WWII.
I think the DMCA is bad too, but for fuck's sake, don't do this kind of thing again.
You do see Judaeo-Christian bombers sometimes.
Jewish extremists in Israel tried to bomb a school
And Christianity has inspired extremists in the US and other countries to violence - against abortion clinics, or in the militia movement for example.
Don't forget that Hinduism has inspired anti-Muslim violence in India too.
"Other religions like Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Wicca and probably a lot more allow for secular coexistance and equal rights"? The societies where those religions are dominant do, perhaps. But don't forget that the social changes in Western society which promoted tolerance weren't necessarily inspired by religion.
Look at Christianity in the UK - the Church of England was hardly active in promoting social change, even in the 20th century. It was decades behind the rest of society in female equality (as far as actually allowing them to be priests, anyway).
Arguably there is more glorification of terrorism and acceptance of propaganda in the Islamic world.
What will hopefully happen as Islamic countries get more prosperous is a secularisation process where religion becomes less influential.