Only half of the Unix world uses EMACS keybindings. The rest of us use something else.
You are right, the rest of us use vi keybindings.:)
Re:UI isn't my problem with GIMP
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The GIMP UI Redesign
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· Score: 2, Insightful
That's what I mean! Windows has no concept of windows management. On Unix using Xwindow with a decent window manager, applications rarely open documents in a full screen window. Each application window is relatively small, and when it opens, the window manager places it such that it minimizes overlap with other windows, or by some other user configurable criteria. You can then easily maximize and un-maximize windows using the keyboard or mouse. You can even make windows grow in only one direction, or only grow until they bump into another window. In addition to that, you have practically unlimited number of virtual desktops. If you want to, you can have each application place its windows on a separate virtual desktop, and just switch desktops to switch between applications. Windows does not do any of that, so each application has to do it for itself, using its main window as its own virtual desktop, and placing all its windows on it. The problem with that is that I rarely use only one application at a time, and I prefer to group my windows according to project rather than according to an application. You can easily do that with virtual desktops, but not with the one main windows and number of sub-windows. It's a decent work around for the shortcomings of Windows OS, but it completely lacks the flexibility of a good window manager on Unix.
Re:I don't have too much of a problem
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The GIMP UI Redesign
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· Score: 2, Interesting
You can turn the window menu bars off in your preferences. You will then have only one menu bar - on the main toolbox. That was the original design, and I prefer it that way, but so many people were bitching that they want menu bars on every window, that the developers implemented it and made it the default. It's the first thing I turn off when I install GIMP on a new computer.
Re:UI isn't my problem with GIMP
on
The GIMP UI Redesign
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Amen! There is nothing major wrong with the GIMP UI. Of course there are number of small quirks that should be fixed, but besides that, GIMP interface is actually fairly similar to that of Photoshop - the original Mac version, that is. The problem is that lot of people are now using GIMP on Windows. Windows, in spite of its name, has no concept of windows management. Basically each application is supposed to manage its own windows. That's why there are all those weird multiple document interfaces on Windows, like the braindead but common design where an application has one large window and every document creates a small window inside it. Photoshop people realized that when they ported Photoshop to Windows, and completely rewrote the UI and gave it a multiple document interface that Windows users are used to. As a result it is now somewhat painful to use for everybody who is used to PS on Mac or GIMP on Unix, but it is usable as a Windows application. GIMP was ported to Windows without any UI changes, and as a result it is very hard to use on plain vanilla Windows without third party software that makes managing windows on Windows easier.
As far as I am concerned, leave the UI, fix the quirks, provide alternative key bindings, and, most importantly, concentrate on the parents wishlist, rather than wasting time rewriting the user interface.
^K is from emacs. It works in many other unix applications, and since GIMP was initially supposed to be a unix program, it makes sense to adopt key bindings unix users are familiar with. I don't see any reason why both cannot be used, though. I personally would like to see a graphics program with modal vi like key bindings.
and no, you can't just pour human waste on fields to fertilise crops, food crops or not. significant processing is required to even think about using human waste. it would not be a practicle solution.
Dumping raw unprocessed human and animal waste on fields certainly works. It has been used for thousands of years by farmers all around the world. It does have some problems: if you use it on a food crop, you run a risk of spreading all sorts of diseases. Also, it really really stinks.
How did this troll get modded anything but comical? Wait, I know why, because the Troll mod will get slapped on this rebuttal. So be it.
Rebuttal? I see no rebuttal here. What you are describing are your preferences. Notice that I said "my desktop", not "your desktop"?
10. Does any/.er running XP get blue screens on a regular basis? How about in 2007? How about any number more than one for a given machine. On about half a dozen machines, over five years, I have had two, and one was from failing hardware.
Yeah, two in about last year or so, one of them from failing hard disk. But I wasn't talking about BSOD's. I think I clearly stated that "it very rarely crashes on me". Something that used to be quoted as problem no 1 when mentioning windows is now down to 10. I think that is great progress by Microsoft, and I give them credit for that. But in my experience, my XP machine is still significantly less stable than any of my Linux machines, meaning lockups, slowdowns, running out of memory etc.
9. Does any/.er ever get p0wned? Thought not.
Considering how much porn sites some of them claim to be surfing, I would be very surprised if some of them didn't get p0wned from time to time. But we all know that people who use windows do get p0wned regularly. At work, my computer is very well firewalled, it runs antivirus software which our IT staff keeps up to date, and mail is completely filtered so that anything suspicious gets stopped long time before it arrives in my mailbox. I don't have to worry about it at all. At home, I would have to all that myself. On Linux, I do some of that too, I do have a firewall and I keep all my software that could have any vulnerabilities up to date, but it's really minimal effort compare to what I see Windows users going through. Again, this used to be #1 or #2, and I give it 9, I think that is pretty good improvement.
8. What part of zero cost is hard to swallow? No one buys XP. They buy a system that comes with it installed. Dell's linux experiment is about to show how few linux users will be putting their money where their mouth's are.
I buy all my home computers from garage sales for $20. You can get very decent computer that way, you would be surprised what some people are getting rid of. They either come without an OS, or with a copy of Windows I cannot use, since its license explicitly forbids transferring to to somebody else. So if I wanted to run XP, I would have to buy it, at multiple time of the cost of the actual computer. As I wrote, i have better ways to spend the money. I have a decent university professor salary, but I also have three kids who like to take music classes, art classes, learn languages, and travel, and I also love to travel, and all that is not cheap. I would rather send my daughter for spring break to Mexico or Europe than to buy a brand new computer, especially since I can have completely satisfactory one for $20 total.
7. This one is so hilarious I can't see my keyboard to type a reply. 4 words: Salty tears of laughter.
What's so funny about it? Until recently, several programs I use for my work ran only on Unix. Now most of them are ported to windows. Lot of other software I use daily existed on Windows for a while, but was always poorly integrated, and that remains a problem.
6. No need to comment on this nonsense either.
Why is this a nonsense? Installing software on Windows is (at least in my experience) harder that it is and was on most Linux distribution for some 5 to 8 years now.
5. Patches are dicey. I am glad _I_ need to initiate patching. Upgrades usually involve money and so the vendor contacts you to encourage you to upgrade. But who among us upgrades their software any more? My Office 2000 works perfectly for my needs. My email program, Eudora, is no longer being updated at all and I am fine with that. Cu
Yes, I know that there are programs that will do most of these things for you, but they are far from perfect, don't work with every application (see the system integration in my previous post) and are often unreliable. Besides, why do I have to install (again, there is no easy way to do it) bunch of programs on top of an expensive operating system just to make it usable?
Well, if nobody said it yet, I will be the first then. Windows has horrible interface, I simply cannot stand it. The top 10 reasons Windows will not make it on (my) desktop are:
10. stability: I must say windows improved a lot since 95, it very rarely crashes on me, but I still get considerably more problems from my windows box in my office than from any of my linux boxes at home, and I use it much less.
9. security: again, MS improved a lot, these days it is actually possible to secure a windows desktop computer pretty well, and if you avoid using IE, outlook and office, put your computer behind a good firewall and have good full time IT staff handling security patches and maintaining the firewall, you are actually pretty safe.
8. cost: again, that does not bother me too much, as it is my employer who is paying for it, but I wouldn't buy windows for my home computer, I have better ways to use the money.
7. lack of software: this used to be a big one. Again, these days most applications I use have been ported to windows, so the situation is not as bad as it used to be.
6. software installation: this is still a big problem. There is no good way on windows to install software. As I wrote above, there are good applications for windows, but to get them, one has to go all over the web, download bunch of.exe files, double click on each of them and click through bunch of totally useless installation "wizards". They usually give you stupid advice, such as "close all other programs" (why?) and "reboot your computer when you are done" (again, why?).
5. upgrading: There is no way on windows to keep your software up to date. If you want to have an up to date desktop, you have to watch bunch of websites for new releases, and manually upgrade every application you are using.
4. file system organization: the way the files are organized is just a mess. There is no logical organization, and finding where your files are can be a nightmare. And what's with the drive letters?
3. system integration: even though there are now good applications running on windows, most of them do not integrate well with the system, nor with each other. One of them expects unix type paths, another windows type paths. One works with "focus follow mouse", another doesn't. They keep their data files at different places, problem closely connected with the file system organization problem mentioned above.
2. User interface (window manager): There is so much that's wrong with windows user interface that it occupies the top two reasons. The window manager itself is horrible, even worse than metacity. Only one desktop. No window shading. Hardcoded unintuitive keyboard shotcuts, if there are shortcuts at all.
1. the rest of the user interface: You cannot cut and paste with mouse, at least not in an easy way. Not only there is number of demented modal dialog windows, but there are modal dialog windows from which you have to open another modal dialog window. If you do that, the first window stops responding, and you cannot even move it or iconify it, until you close the top dialog. If that window obscures something that you need to see in order to use the top most dialog box, too bad. The way the programs menu is (not) organized is just impossible. I really don't understand how somebody can call that a good user interface.
Putin brought stability, and the state has regained control over the country, which was lost in 1999. If the politics of the nineties were continued, russia could not exist anymore. In fact, putin saved russia. Repeat after me: correlation does not imply causation.
Russia went through terrible time, because their economy was destroyed by more than half century of communism. It could not happen in any other way, and there was no way for that to be prevented. After decade and a half the new free market economy finally started working and Russia dug itself up from the hole it was in. At about the same time Putin came to power. How exactly does that make him a saviour of the Russian nation?
There is a huge difference between "Russia" and "Russians", just as there is a huge difference between "America" and "Americans". In 1968, when the "Russian" army invaded my country, several Russians risked all they had, including their lives, to protest the occupation by chaining themselves to a statue an the Red Square. In the meantime, large numbers of my compatriots were trying to figure out how they could personally benefit from the sudden change of political situation in their country.
Poland and the Czech Republic are on Russia's doorstep,... Poland is on Russia's doorstep only if you ignore all the countries that separate the two of them. Of course, a Russian nationalist would say that Ukraine and Belarus always belonged to Russia, and still are and will always be parts of Russia, even though they are currently little disobedient, being under evil western influence. Quick glance on a map will tell you that saying that Czech Republic is on Russia's doorstep is about as valid as saying that Austria and Germany are on Russia's doorstep.
Russia was humiliated by the end of the Cold War, it lost its Empire, saw its beliefs collapse and then allowed its economy to be destroyed by Western 'reformers'; Russian economy was not destroyed by western reformers, it was destroyed by decades of communism. It is probably true that many things about bringing economical aid and foreign investment into Russia could have been handled better, but if anything it was just the last blow to an already almost dead system.
the end result was millions of Russians in horrifying poverty, the collapse of the economy, social system, education, and in large parts of the country, law-and-order. Now, it has discovered it has unbelievable power in the form of its energy reserves, it has massive amounts of foreign currency sloshing around, AND in the form of Putin, the fabled Russian strong man who can unite the country.
American policy towards Russia under Bush has been a disaster, That I completely agree with.
it has provoked confrontation after confrontation, rolled its tanks up to the borders, abbrogated long-standing treaties and acted like Russia was a backward nation. Putin is using national resentment to give America (and Britain in particular) a serious case of the jitters.
Whether American missiles can destroy Russian missiles is almost immaterial, it gives the Russians a chance to throw their not-inconsiderable weight around, and it offers their, let be honest, stunning missile designers, plenty of opportunities to bring in a new generation of planet killers. Putin can now make sure he's succeeded by a fellow strong man and Russia can really start to influence European politics - at the end of the day, it's going to be the gas taps as much as the warheads that will make Europe gradually turn towards the East. And that may not be a good thing. Indeed.
Sorry, no. The Russian people were not, in general, in poverty in the 80's towards the end of the USSR. Sure, they were a way behind the comforts of the west, and the farmers were worse off than the urbanites (by design in Marxism, never could get my head around that), but things were generally manageable. Then they went free-market all at once and most existing organisations collapsed - things got a LOT worse for many people. The Russian economy, much as the economy of the rest of eastern Europe, was decimated by decades of planned socialist system. It was completely drained, and was to collapse at any time. If communists stayed in power, and the system continued, you would see the exact same, and possibly even worse poverty and destruction. Most of the party leadership understood that, too, that's why they were willing to accept reforms, in some cases actually initiated reforms. Some of them did not care about reforms, just wanted to quickly bail out. They knew the system is not going to work much longer. Lenin understood that long time ago, thus his NEP. Chinese understand that. Most eastern European parties and governments just simply gave up, with surprisingly little pressure from the people. They realized it was better to get out as quickly as possible, rather than waiting and ending up being held responsible for what was inevitably going to happen in the next five or ten years.
The collapse of the eastern block was not a result of the cold war. The pressure from the west, arms races etc. probably speeded things up a bit, but the system collapsed because it was not economically viable. Planned economy which discourages any personal initiative and treats majority of its citizens as potential enemies simply does not work.
Indeed. I would say that we mathematicians are lucky that for the longest time (and I would argue it is still the case) wordprocessors were simply so unsuitable for our work that we ended up with LaTeX as the preferred format for both authors and publishers.
I would be interested in knowing how many journals outside of the areas of mathematics, physics and perhaps computer science use LaTeX or other TeX based solutions internally. If they do, do they offer their authors an option to submit papers in TeX? Of course if I was in a field where there were no journals accepting submissions in TeX, I probably would not bother learning TeX in the first place.
The trouble is that you don't want your authors to submit the paper in the format of the typesetting program, because (a) it's a bugger to convert from one format to another, If they really submit the paper in the format the typesetter uses, this step is unnecessary.
and (b) you're going to have to reset it anyway even if they use the right file format, because you need to run spell-checkers and whatnot on it before typesetting, You can run spell-checker on a LaTeX file just fine. And since it is just a text file, you can run bunch of other filters on it, too.
and you're pretty much guaranteed that the author won't have used journal style[1] (or even set up their text style formats in a rigorous way such that they can be easily converted) Most math journals provide their styles to authors in form of a.sty or.cls file. It is usually very easy for an author to download the file (its a text file, usually very small) and use it in the paper, and as far as I can tell, that is exactly what most authors do.
Most journals will impose a certain style on all papers for consistency: spelling (analyse or analyze?), numbers in the text (nine samples or 9 samples?), reference style (Vancouver or Harvard?), etc. Plus we have the different text styles for different levels of heading, figure legends, etc. Rare indeed is the author who can figure out exactly what the preferred options are and use them consistently, particularly as the paper may have been hawked round several journals before getting accepted by this one. Of course some amount of editing will have to be done on nearly every submission, but for LaTeX files, some of this (spelling) can be done by a filter, and the rest can easily be done by an editor. As far as styles for captions, headings etc, one of the reasons for using LaTeX at the first place is that you don't have to worry about things like that. Simply including the proper journal package or documentclass in the preamble takes care of that, so it is pretty much a no-brainer. Besides, you as an author have an advantage to see pretty much exactly how the paper will look like when published.
That's a good news, I guess. At least if there is an easy way to import and export TeX code to and from Word. Since the article complains that Word cannot export equations in MathML, my hopes are not high.
Even with all that, I still think TeX/LaTeX is easier to use. Maybe it's just that I don't know how to use Word properly, but if that's the case, than nobody I know knows (judging from bunch of word documents written by other people that I have to deal with). For example, is there a simple, fast and easy to remember way in Word to insert a stretchable vertical space between paragraphs?
My husband is a mathematician, and he uses the whole alphabet, the whole greek alphabet, and then has to improvise in some of his papers, and it's full of actual equations with all kinds of superscripts and subscripts and various integration symbols and whatnot. You can do all that in MS Word too. So why does your husband use LaTeX? I cannot speak for her husband, but maybe the reason is that most math journals will not accept anything but LaTeX (or maybe AMSTeX). Also, MS equation editor is incredibly painful, using LaTeX is simply so much easier. In grad school I had a part time job working for a textbook publisher, and had to write couple hundred pages in MS Word, with bunch of (relatively simple) equations, and it was one of the most painful things I have ever done.
Slashdot Mirror
/usr/games/nethack, obviously. It's a game that teaches you how to hack the net!
There are some people who will get their code contributions out to the world even if they have to smuggle them out in printed form.
You mean in typewritten form. 20 copies at a time, with 19 layers of carbon paper.
Only half of the Unix world uses EMACS keybindings. The rest of us use something else.
:)
You are right, the rest of us use vi keybindings.
That's what I mean! Windows has no concept of windows management. On Unix using Xwindow with a decent window manager, applications rarely open documents in a full screen window. Each application window is relatively small, and when it opens, the window manager places it such that it minimizes overlap with other windows, or by some other user configurable criteria. You can then easily maximize and un-maximize windows using the keyboard or mouse. You can even make windows grow in only one direction, or only grow until they bump into another window. In addition to that, you have practically unlimited number of virtual desktops. If you want to, you can have each application place its windows on a separate virtual desktop, and just switch desktops to switch between applications. Windows does not do any of that, so each application has to do it for itself, using its main window as its own virtual desktop, and placing all its windows on it. The problem with that is that I rarely use only one application at a time, and I prefer to group my windows according to project rather than according to an application. You can easily do that with virtual desktops, but not with the one main windows and number of sub-windows. It's a decent work around for the shortcomings of Windows OS, but it completely lacks the flexibility of a good window manager on Unix.
You can turn the window menu bars off in your preferences. You will then have only one menu bar - on the main toolbox. That was the original design, and I prefer it that way, but so many people were bitching that they want menu bars on every window, that the developers implemented it and made it the default. It's the first thing I turn off when I install GIMP on a new computer.
Amen! There is nothing major wrong with the GIMP UI. Of course there are number of small quirks that should be fixed, but besides that, GIMP interface is actually fairly similar to that of Photoshop - the original Mac version, that is. The problem is that lot of people are now using GIMP on Windows. Windows, in spite of its name, has no concept of windows management. Basically each application is supposed to manage its own windows. That's why there are all those weird multiple document interfaces on Windows, like the braindead but common design where an application has one large window and every document creates a small window inside it. Photoshop people realized that when they ported Photoshop to Windows, and completely rewrote the UI and gave it a multiple document interface that Windows users are used to. As a result it is now somewhat painful to use for everybody who is used to PS on Mac or GIMP on Unix, but it is usable as a Windows application. GIMP was ported to Windows without any UI changes, and as a result it is very hard to use on plain vanilla Windows without third party software that makes managing windows on Windows easier.
As far as I am concerned, leave the UI, fix the quirks, provide alternative key bindings, and, most importantly, concentrate on the parents wishlist, rather than wasting time rewriting the user interface.
^K is from emacs. It works in many other unix applications, and since GIMP was initially supposed to be a unix program, it makes sense to adopt key bindings unix users are familiar with. I don't see any reason why both cannot be used, though. I personally would like to see a graphics program with modal vi like key bindings.
Crap, I wish I had some mod points now. I just wasted all of them yesterday.
Can you really fight terrorists with giant bombs?
Of course you can! You only have to define the word "terrorist" the right way.
and no, you can't just pour human waste on fields to fertilise crops, food crops or not. significant processing is required to even think about using human waste. it would not be a practicle solution.
Dumping raw unprocessed human and animal waste on fields certainly works. It has been used for thousands of years by farmers all around the world. It does have some problems: if you use it on a food crop, you run a risk of spreading all sorts of diseases. Also, it really really stinks.
...keeping unusual work hours...
On the other hand, what exactly counts as unusual work hours in academia?
Also, it's not as if we'd be the first to implement such a plan in either case.
You are right! All those nice communist countries used to have very similar system in place.
How did this troll get modded anything but comical? Wait, I know why, because the Troll mod will get slapped on this rebuttal. So be it.
Rebuttal? I see no rebuttal here. What you are describing are your preferences. Notice that I said "my desktop", not "your desktop"?
10. Does any /.er running XP get blue screens on a regular basis? How about in 2007? How about any number more than one for a given machine. On about half a dozen machines, over five years, I have had two, and one was from failing hardware.
Yeah, two in about last year or so, one of them from failing hard disk. But I wasn't talking about BSOD's. I think I clearly stated that "it very rarely crashes on me". Something that used to be quoted as problem no 1 when mentioning windows is now down to 10. I think that is great progress by Microsoft, and I give them credit for that. But in my experience, my XP machine is still significantly less stable than any of my Linux machines, meaning lockups, slowdowns, running out of memory etc.
9. Does any /.er ever get p0wned? Thought not.
Considering how much porn sites some of them claim to be surfing, I would be very surprised if some of them didn't get p0wned from time to time. But we all know that people who use windows do get p0wned regularly. At work, my computer is very well firewalled, it runs antivirus software which our IT staff keeps up to date, and mail is completely filtered so that anything suspicious gets stopped long time before it arrives in my mailbox. I don't have to worry about it at all. At home, I would have to all that myself. On Linux, I do some of that too, I do have a firewall and I keep all my software that could have any vulnerabilities up to date, but it's really minimal effort compare to what I see Windows users going through. Again, this used to be #1 or #2, and I give it 9, I think that is pretty good improvement.
8. What part of zero cost is hard to swallow? No one buys XP. They buy a system that comes with it installed. Dell's linux experiment is about to show how few linux users will be putting their money where their mouth's are.
I buy all my home computers from garage sales for $20. You can get very decent computer that way, you would be surprised what some people are getting rid of. They either come without an OS, or with a copy of Windows I cannot use, since its license explicitly forbids transferring to to somebody else. So if I wanted to run XP, I would have to buy it, at multiple time of the cost of the actual computer. As I wrote, i have better ways to spend the money. I have a decent university professor salary, but I also have three kids who like to take music classes, art classes, learn languages, and travel, and I also love to travel, and all that is not cheap. I would rather send my daughter for spring break to Mexico or Europe than to buy a brand new computer, especially since I can have completely satisfactory one for $20 total.
7. This one is so hilarious I can't see my keyboard to type a reply. 4 words: Salty tears of laughter.
What's so funny about it? Until recently, several programs I use for my work ran only on Unix. Now most of them are ported to windows. Lot of other software I use daily existed on Windows for a while, but was always poorly integrated, and that remains a problem.
6. No need to comment on this nonsense either.
Why is this a nonsense? Installing software on Windows is (at least in my experience) harder that it is and was on most Linux distribution for some 5 to 8 years now.
5. Patches are dicey. I am glad _I_ need to initiate patching. Upgrades usually involve money and so the vendor contacts you to encourage you to upgrade. But who among us upgrades their software any more? My Office 2000 works perfectly for my needs. My email program, Eudora, is no longer being updated at all and I am fine with that. Cu
focus follow mouse, or better, sloppy focus.
Yes, I know that there are programs that will do most of these things for you, but they are far from perfect, don't work with every application (see the system integration in my previous post) and are often unreliable. Besides, why do I have to install (again, there is no easy way to do it) bunch of programs on top of an expensive operating system just to make it usable?
Well, if nobody said it yet, I will be the first then. Windows has horrible interface, I simply cannot stand it. The top 10 reasons Windows will not make it on (my) desktop are:
.exe files, double click on each of them and click through bunch of totally useless installation "wizards". They usually give you stupid advice, such as "close all other programs" (why?) and "reboot your computer when you are done" (again, why?).
10. stability: I must say windows improved a lot since 95, it very rarely crashes on me, but I still get considerably more problems from my windows box in my office than from any of my linux boxes at home, and I use it much less.
9. security: again, MS improved a lot, these days it is actually possible to secure a windows desktop computer pretty well, and if you avoid using IE, outlook and office, put your computer behind a good firewall and have good full time IT staff handling security patches and maintaining the firewall, you are actually pretty safe.
8. cost: again, that does not bother me too much, as it is my employer who is paying for it, but I wouldn't buy windows for my home computer, I have better ways to use the money.
7. lack of software: this used to be a big one. Again, these days most applications I use have been ported to windows, so the situation is not as bad as it used to be.
6. software installation: this is still a big problem. There is no good way on windows to install software. As I wrote above, there are good applications for windows, but to get them, one has to go all over the web, download bunch of
5. upgrading: There is no way on windows to keep your software up to date. If you want to have an up to date desktop, you have to watch bunch of websites for new releases, and manually upgrade every application you are using.
4. file system organization: the way the files are organized is just a mess. There is no logical organization, and finding where your files are can be a nightmare. And what's with the drive letters?
3. system integration: even though there are now good applications running on windows, most of them do not integrate well with the system, nor with each other. One of them expects unix type paths, another windows type paths. One works with "focus follow mouse", another doesn't. They keep their data files at different places, problem closely connected with the file system organization problem mentioned above.
2. User interface (window manager): There is so much that's wrong with windows user interface that it occupies the top two reasons. The window manager itself is horrible, even worse than metacity. Only one desktop. No window shading. Hardcoded unintuitive keyboard shotcuts, if there are shortcuts at all.
1. the rest of the user interface: You cannot cut and paste with mouse, at least not in an easy way. Not only there is number of demented modal dialog windows, but there are modal dialog windows from which you have to open another modal dialog window. If you do that, the first window stops responding, and you cannot even move it or iconify it, until you close the top dialog. If that window obscures something that you need to see in order to use the top most dialog box, too bad. The way the programs menu is (not) organized is just impossible. I really don't understand how somebody can call that a good user interface.
Russia went through terrible time, because their economy was destroyed by more than half century of communism. It could not happen in any other way, and there was no way for that to be prevented. After decade and a half the new free market economy finally started working and Russia dug itself up from the hole it was in. At about the same time Putin came to power. How exactly does that make him a saviour of the Russian nation?
There is a huge difference between "Russia" and "Russians", just as there is a huge difference between "America" and "Americans". In 1968, when the "Russian" army invaded my country, several Russians risked all they had, including their lives, to protest the occupation by chaining themselves to a statue an the Red Square. In the meantime, large numbers of my compatriots were trying to figure out how they could personally benefit from the sudden change of political situation in their country.
American policy towards Russia under Bush has been a disaster, That I completely agree with. it has provoked confrontation after confrontation, rolled its tanks up to the borders, abbrogated long-standing treaties and acted like Russia was a backward nation. Putin is using national resentment to give America (and Britain in particular) a serious case of the jitters.
Whether American missiles can destroy Russian missiles is almost immaterial, it gives the Russians a chance to throw their not-inconsiderable weight around, and it offers their, let be honest, stunning missile designers, plenty of opportunities to bring in a new generation of planet killers. Putin can now make sure he's succeeded by a fellow strong man and Russia can really start to influence European politics - at the end of the day, it's going to be the gas taps as much as the warheads that will make Europe gradually turn towards the East. And that may not be a good thing. Indeed.
The collapse of the eastern block was not a result of the cold war. The pressure from the west, arms races etc. probably speeded things up a bit, but the system collapsed because it was not economically viable. Planned economy which discourages any personal initiative and treats majority of its citizens as potential enemies simply does not work.
Indeed. I would say that we mathematicians are lucky that for the longest time (and I would argue it is still the case) wordprocessors were simply so unsuitable for our work that we ended up with LaTeX as the preferred format for both authors and publishers.
I would be interested in knowing how many journals outside of the areas of mathematics, physics and perhaps computer science use LaTeX or other TeX based solutions internally. If they do, do they offer their authors an option to submit papers in TeX? Of course if I was in a field where there were no journals accepting submissions in TeX, I probably would not bother learning TeX in the first place.
I know several mathematicians who work for Microsoft, and they all use TeX.
That's a good news, I guess. At least if there is an easy way to import and export TeX code to and from Word. Since the article complains that Word cannot export equations in MathML, my hopes are not high.
Even with all that, I still think TeX/LaTeX is easier to use. Maybe it's just that I don't know how to use Word properly, but if that's the case, than nobody I know knows (judging from bunch of word documents written by other people that I have to deal with). For example, is there a simple, fast and easy to remember way in Word to insert a stretchable vertical space between paragraphs?