Well eventually Gnome will create their own editor for the standard fdo menus. Until then you can use one from another DE--xfmenu4 is (I'm told) quite nice. Obviously it's not ideal because it won't confirm exactly to the Gnome HIG, but it's better than nothing.
Why would I want to use KWord when Abiword and Openoffice.org do the job, but also tie in with the look and feel (less so in Openoffice.org's case I admit;) ) of my Gnome desktop? Especially since KWord is switching to the common OASIS file format that everyone is enthused about.
The reason Linux (and other free Unix-alikes) have several toolkits is because the developers are free to do what they want. They don't give a shit whether this makes you unpahhy or not.
Oh, where's the rest of your reply? Changing the subject, are we?;) Goodbye.
The problem is that the browsers are rendering the address correctly.
The HTML entity а != U+1072. It corresponds to U+0430 CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER A, which it seems most fonts render almost exactly identical to U+0061 LATIN SMALL LETTER A.
It appears the problem is in RFC3491 "Nameprep: A Stringprep Profile for Internationalized Domain Names (IDN)" or RFC3292 "Punycode: A Bootstring encoding of Unicode for Internationalized Domain Names in Applications (IDNA)". As I understand it, one of the processes these RFCs describe involve a sanitisation process to be carried out on domain names, that fixes cases where an attacker is using odd unicode control characters to make one character appear like another.
The problem is that these procedures overlooked U+0430 CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER A (and perhaps others?).
So I suggest flagging the address field with a red tint when such characters are discovered as a work around, until the clever people who write RFCs come up with a good idea of how to proceed.
I think having some kind of icon in the address bar, or changing the background of the address bar to red, is the simplest and most transparent solution.
At least it is good enough as a workaround, until you think of something better!;)
> The fact that you separate your body of users into "us" and "newbies" is a big, > big error, in two ways. First, you're dismissing an entire class of users by > assuming that they're not going to want to do something; that's not a valid > assumption. And second, you're assuming that a class of people -- whatever the > opposite of "newbies" is --are okay with a needlessly complex user interface. > Also not a valid assumption.
I'm sorry for using such loaded terminology as "newbie". I should have said "people looking to change the volume" vs "people wishing to select which subsystems multimedia programs they run will use".
I was talking in terms of those two use cases, not generalising all users into the classes of newbie and advanced user.
> Why just there?
Becase it's visible all the time, not hidden away under several layers of menu options. Because the icon for a speaker is familiar to Mac and Windows users (and hopefully to users who aren't familiar with computers at all, but might recognise the icon from, say, a hifi), and its placement is similar to that in those operating systems.
> Why are all the sound controls not grouped together in a Sound control panel?
They are, you get it by clicking on the speaker icon. Selecting multimedia subsystems is not a "sound control", it's a genealised multimedia operation.
> Why are they spread out all over creation?
Some would call it not lumping two orthagonal functions together into the same program. Separating out the the (related) functions of selecting the audio and video subsystems would create an interface whose components are "spread out all over creation".
> You're assuming that the user has third-party external powered speakers with a > volume knob on them. In my experience, this is hardly ever true.
In my experience it is usually true. In the case that it is not, the user can adjust the volume by going to the speaker icon, which is aways visible and is located in a prominent position that is even familiar to users who have used the Mac OS and Windows.
> Physician, heal thyself.
You are the one who dismissed my examples as "stupid examples of nonsense situations that nobody would ever, ever do in the real world".
> Linux is doomed to obscurity and commercial failure as long as the people > responsible for its future keep acting like snobs.
Yadda, yadda, yadda. If you have some constructive comments to make, address the Gnome HIG people, instead of trolling Slashdot.
I see what you are saying, but read my reply (cousin to this post) to drsquare's post. A newbie will have no reason to ever access the controls in the MSS. The controls that you talk about for adjusting sound settings are all accessed via the litle sound icon at the top left of the screen (analogous to the little speaker icon in the system tray that everyone is familiar with on Windows).
The MSS is (on my system ) in the menu under Applications -> Desktop Preferences -> Advanced -> MSS. A newbie is unlikely to pick this menu option while looking for a way to adjust the volume of the music playing on his computer. In fact, he's most likely to adjust the volume by using the little knob on his speakers!
> Um. Yeah. Stupid examples of nonsense situations that nobody would ever, ever do > in the real world do not help your case. You may want to use your computer as a > boat anchor, too, but that doesn't mean welding an anchor chain to the top of > the case is a wonderful idea.
Please don't presume to let your experience of using a computer dictate what others may wish to do. GStreamer (the multimedia system that the MSS is a front-end to the configuration of) allows you to do all of these things. Have you never wanted to record a stream from the 'net, or 'broadcast' music to a 'net radio station?
If I wanted to use a system that let the ignoance of newbies get in the way of doing more advanced things, then I'd use Windows.
> But how the hell would a newbie know what the hell OSS, Alsa or ESD are? I've > played with Linux for a few years, written config files, compiled kernels etc, > and I still don't know what the difference between them is, or even what they > actually do.
If a newbie wishes, he may press the prominent "Help" button that you may have noticed througout the Gnome desktop environment. This button may help him achieve enlightenment. But this process is optional, since there is no need for a newbie to know what the different options do. This is because newbies will end up whatever settings the distributor has chosen as the defaults.
Because the distributor picks what other software goes into the system, and what settings that other software runs with, the distributor is able to specify defaults that work well together.
For example, the default in Debian 3.1 (Sarge) is to use the Open Sound System. This is beause the default kernels use OSS for their sound, and the optional (2.6) kernels use ALSA, configured to emulate the OSS API. Since Ubuntu ships with (only) 2.6 kernels, the default lselection will be ALSA. And so on.
> Why do you need three different things which all do the same thing?
They don't all do the same thing. Please stop being obtuse.
> It's the same with gtk and qt etc. Say for instance you use gnome, you install > the greatest theme ever and get all your fonts and colours right, then you > open KWord, and it's all blocky and grey. What the hell's all that about?
"Doctor, doctor! It hurts when I poke myself in the eye!" "Don't do that, then".
If you care about you apps looking nice together, use Abiword or Openoffice (which is what a newbie will do, since KWord will not appear on the Gnome Applications menu). Or use a gtk theme that hooks into qt and applies the qt theme to your gtk applications.
I think this *is* a problem with the patent system. Although the article doesn't go in to much details, it sounds like the patent is similar to Adobe's patent on the 'invention' of using tabs in palette windows. In other words, it sounds (and smells) like utter bullshit.
How is the progress of science and useful arts helped by the elimination of Microsoft Word's biggest competitor in Japan?
> No, it's right up there next to the "Audio" tab...you know, the one that should > read "Sound."
Then I don't understand how the fact that the multimedia systems selector is *not* a volume control, could have escaped your understanding.
> Sound and video are two different things. They don't belong together. Break > one out and call it -- I'm gonna get wacky here --"Sound," and the other > "Video."
The actions of picking which subsystems to use for audio/video (hence the 'multi' in multimedia) capture/output belong together. The actions are known as "selecting which multimedia systems to use". Hence, "multimedia system selector".
> Of course, if you have no video card attached to your computer, a "Video" > control panel is superfluous. No video output, no need for a "Video" control, > see? So if there's no video output (composite, 601, 292M, whatever), there > should be no video control panel.
Quite incorrect. I may wish to select one of the video sinks that records a stream to disk, shunts it accross a network, or calculates MD5sums of the data stream. Not to mention configuring video capture.
> To change the volume, you click on the little volume icon shown at the top > right of the screen.
Because:
* the multimedia systems selector is not a "sound" control panel; strcmp("multimedia systems selector", "sound") != 0
* if changing the volume was hidden away in a control panel then unskilled users would never find it
* if it were hidden away in a control panel then anyone who did find it would be annoyed that it was hidden away!
2. Anyone done a search to see if Valve have a patent war chest themsevles? I'd be surprised if they didn't have a little something stashed away to deter suits from companies like Yahoo. And to use themselves, against a similar start-up, tring to compete in the FPS/online games industry.
The best thing is how, if you change your Gnustep theme, colours, fonts, etc, Window Maker won't match it. Despite being the Gnustep window manager, Window Maker doesn't seem to share any of the UI code or functionality. Grrrrr!
Is there a website buried somewhere on europa.eu.int that lists the results of the vote? I want to know whether the two pro-swpat votes came from my country (the UK).
Perhaps this is glib, but i would say that it's the fault of the programmer for for releasing code under a license that he not read and understood.
If a programmer does not want to make his work available under "any later version" of the GPL, then he simply doesn't include that phrase when writing his copyright notice.
The GPL even states, under "How to Apply These Terms to Your New Programs":
To do so, attach the following notices to the program....
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.... etc
Sounds like you are typing the CD key in again? All you have to do is log in with your original steam account details, and all the games registered to your account will be available (albeit after a lengthy download process).
Slashdot Mirror
Hey, that also works for Debian! Sarge has been ~1 month away for... 12 months. :(
I didn't know Bill Gates posted on Slashdot!
Lisp will rise again!
That's just what the assembley programmers said when researchers were moving to C. ;)
Well eventually Gnome will create their own editor for the standard fdo menus. Until then you can use one from another DE--xfmenu4 is (I'm told) quite nice. Obviously it's not ideal because it won't confirm exactly to the Gnome HIG, but it's better than nothing.
Why would I want to use KWord when Abiword and Openoffice.org do the job, but also tie in with the look and feel (less so in Openoffice.org's case I admit ;) ) of my Gnome desktop? Especially since KWord is switching to the common OASIS file format that everyone is enthused about.
;) Goodbye.
The reason Linux (and other free Unix-alikes) have several toolkits is because the developers are free to do what they want. They don't give a shit whether this makes you unpahhy or not.
Oh, where's the rest of your reply? Changing the subject, are we?
The problem is that the browsers are rendering the address correctly.
The HTML entity а != U+1072. It corresponds to U+0430 CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER A, which it seems most fonts render almost exactly identical to U+0061 LATIN SMALL LETTER A.
It appears the problem is in RFC3491 "Nameprep: A Stringprep Profile for Internationalized Domain Names (IDN)" or RFC3292 "Punycode: A Bootstring encoding of Unicode for Internationalized Domain Names in Applications (IDNA)". As I understand it, one of the processes these RFCs describe involve a sanitisation process to be carried out on domain names, that fixes cases where an attacker is using odd unicode control characters to make one character appear like another.
The problem is that these procedures overlooked U+0430 CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER A (and perhaps others?).
So I suggest flagging the address field with a red tint when such characters are discovered as a work around, until the clever people who write RFCs come up with a good idea of how to proceed.
More info on this blog, if you are interested.
What's your solution?
;)
I think having some kind of icon in the address bar, or changing the background of the address bar to red, is the simplest and most transparent solution.
At least it is good enough as a workaround, until you think of something better!
> The fact that you separate your body of users into "us" and "newbies" is a big,
> big error, in two ways. First, you're dismissing an entire class of users by
> assuming that they're not going to want to do something; that's not a valid
> assumption. And second, you're assuming that a class of people -- whatever the
> opposite of "newbies" is --are okay with a needlessly complex user interface.
> Also not a valid assumption.
I'm sorry for using such loaded terminology as "newbie". I should have said "people looking to change the volume" vs "people wishing to select which subsystems multimedia programs they run will use".
I was talking in terms of those two use cases, not generalising all users into the classes of newbie and advanced user.
> Why just there?
Becase it's visible all the time, not hidden away under several layers of menu options. Because the icon for a speaker is familiar to Mac and Windows users (and hopefully to users who aren't familiar with computers at all, but might recognise the icon from, say, a hifi), and its placement is similar to that in those operating systems.
> Why are all the sound controls not grouped together in a Sound control panel?
They are, you get it by clicking on the speaker icon. Selecting multimedia subsystems is not a "sound control", it's a genealised multimedia operation.
> Why are they spread out all over creation?
Some would call it not lumping two orthagonal functions together into the same program. Separating out the the (related) functions of selecting the audio and video subsystems would create an interface whose components are "spread out all over creation".
> You're assuming that the user has third-party external powered speakers with a
> volume knob on them. In my experience, this is hardly ever true.
In my experience it is usually true. In the case that it is not, the user can adjust the volume by going to the speaker icon, which is aways visible and is located in a prominent position that is even familiar to users who have used the Mac OS and Windows.
> Physician, heal thyself.
You are the one who dismissed my examples as "stupid examples of nonsense situations that nobody would ever, ever do in the real world".
> Linux is doomed to obscurity and commercial failure as long as the people
> responsible for its future keep acting like snobs.
Yadda, yadda, yadda. If you have some constructive comments to make, address the Gnome HIG people, instead of trolling Slashdot.
I see what you are saying, but read my reply (cousin to this post) to drsquare's post. A newbie will have no reason to ever access the controls in the MSS. The controls that you talk about for adjusting sound settings are all accessed via the litle sound icon at the top left of the screen (analogous to the little speaker icon in the system tray that everyone is familiar with on Windows).
The MSS is (on my system ) in the menu under Applications -> Desktop Preferences -> Advanced -> MSS. A newbie is unlikely to pick this menu option while looking for a way to adjust the volume of the music playing on his computer. In fact, he's most likely to adjust the volume by using the little knob on his speakers!
> Um. Yeah. Stupid examples of nonsense situations that nobody would ever, ever do
> in the real world do not help your case. You may want to use your computer as a
> boat anchor, too, but that doesn't mean welding an anchor chain to the top of
> the case is a wonderful idea.
Please don't presume to let your experience of using a computer dictate what others may wish to do. GStreamer (the multimedia system that the MSS is a front-end to the configuration of) allows you to do all of these things. Have you never wanted to record a stream from the 'net, or 'broadcast' music to a 'net radio station?
If I wanted to use a system that let the ignoance of newbies get in the way of doing more advanced things, then I'd use Windows.
> But how the hell would a newbie know what the hell OSS, Alsa or ESD are? I've
> played with Linux for a few years, written config files, compiled kernels etc,
> and I still don't know what the difference between them is, or even what they
> actually do.
If a newbie wishes, he may press the prominent "Help" button that you may have noticed througout the Gnome desktop environment. This button may help him achieve enlightenment. But this process is optional, since there is no need for a newbie to know what the different options do. This is because newbies will end up whatever settings the distributor has chosen as the defaults.
Because the distributor picks what other software goes into the system, and what settings that other software runs with, the distributor is able to specify defaults that work well together.
For example, the default in Debian 3.1 (Sarge) is to use the Open Sound System. This is beause the default kernels use OSS for their sound, and the optional (2.6) kernels use ALSA, configured to emulate the OSS API. Since Ubuntu ships with (only) 2.6 kernels, the default lselection will be ALSA. And so on.
> Why do you need three different things which all do the same thing?
They don't all do the same thing. Please stop being obtuse.
> It's the same with gtk and qt etc. Say for instance you use gnome, you install
> the greatest theme ever and get all your fonts and colours right, then you
> open KWord, and it's all blocky and grey. What the hell's all that about?
"Doctor, doctor! It hurts when I poke myself in the eye!" "Don't do that, then".
If you care about you apps looking nice together, use Abiword or Openoffice (which is what a newbie will do, since KWord will not appear on the Gnome Applications menu). Or use a gtk theme that hooks into qt and applies the qt theme to your gtk applications.
I think this *is* a problem with the patent system. Although the article doesn't go in to much details, it sounds like the patent is similar to Adobe's patent on the 'invention' of using tabs in palette windows. In other words, it sounds (and smells) like utter bullshit.
How is the progress of science and useful arts helped by the elimination of Microsoft Word's biggest competitor in Japan?
> No, it's right up there next to the "Audio" tab ...you know, the one that should
> read "Sound."
Then I don't understand how the fact that the multimedia systems selector is *not* a volume control, could have escaped your understanding.
> Sound and video are two different things. They don't belong together. Break
> one out and call it -- I'm gonna get wacky here --"Sound," and the other
> "Video."
The actions of picking which subsystems to use for audio/video (hence the 'multi' in multimedia) capture/output belong together. The actions are known as "selecting which multimedia systems to use". Hence, "multimedia system selector".
> Of course, if you have no video card attached to your computer, a "Video"
> control panel is superfluous. No video output, no need for a "Video" control,
> see? So if there's no video output (composite, 601, 292M, whatever), there
> should be no video control panel.
Quite incorrect. I may wish to select one of the video sinks that records a stream to disk, shunts it accross a network, or calculates MD5sums of the data stream. Not to mention configuring video capture.
> To change the volume, you click on the little volume icon shown at the top
> right of the screen.
Because:
* the multimedia systems selector is not a "sound" control panel; strcmp("multimedia systems selector", "sound") != 0
* if changing the volume was hidden away in a control panel then unskilled users would never find it
* if it were hidden away in a control panel then anyone who did find it would be annoyed that it was hidden away!
Did the 'video' tab escape your notice?
The multimedia systems selector allows you to select which multimedia systems, both audio and video, programs will use. What would you have called it?
To change the volume, you click on the little volume icon shown at the top right of the screen.
1. If Steam Friends actually worked. :)
2. Anyone done a search to see if Valve have a patent war chest themsevles? I'd be surprised if they didn't have a little something stashed away to deter suits from companies like Yahoo. And to use themselves, against a similar start-up, tring to compete in the FPS/online games industry.
The best thing is how, if you change your Gnustep theme, colours, fonts, etc, Window Maker won't match it. Despite being the Gnustep window manager, Window Maker doesn't seem to share any of the UI code or functionality. Grrrrr!
$ apt-cache policy nvidia-glx /var/lib/dpkg/status
nvidia-glx:
Installed: 1.0.6629+1-1
Candidate: 1.0.6629+1-1
Version Table:
*** 1.0.6629+1-1 0
600 http://ftp.uk.debian.org sid/non-free Packages
100
You suck!
Is there a website buried somewhere on europa.eu.int that lists the results of the vote? I want to know whether the two pro-swpat votes came from my country (the UK).
The BBC's a write up is titled by a witty pun. Oh yes.
Perhaps this is glib, but i would say that it's the fault of the programmer for for releasing code under a license that he not read and understood.
...
... etc
If a programmer does not want to make his work available under "any later version" of the GPL, then he simply doesn't include that phrase when writing his copyright notice.
The GPL even states, under "How to Apply These Terms to Your New Programs":
To do so, attach the following notices to the program.
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
Ouch. Did you submit a bug upstream?
It should be per cubic inch. :)
Sounds like you are typing the CD key in again? All you have to do is log in with your original steam account details, and all the games registered to your account will be available (albeit after a lengthy download process).
Hit a file sharing network and download someone else's. :)
I don't see the FSF lobbying congress to extend the length of copyrights.
Also, you may not have noticed that many people post to Slashdot, thus the posts reflect many disparate views.