While I do work better at night (this seems to be common in science and technology), I actually work better when there are frequent interruptions and other disruptions.
I think - at least for me - that the most difficult disturbance is myself. WIth nothing to focus on except the task, I can not stop my own thought processes from veering off in all directions. Before I'm even aware of it, I'm off on a totally different paper or project, or planning something completely unrelated.
By contrast, when there are a lot of things going on around me, it manages to filter out these tendencies, so I actually get more done. Instead of floating off on something else for twenty minutes, I get interrupted, and when I get back, I focus on the work again, rather than whatever I was going off on. Also, I find stimulation from the environment very helpful when I am trying to do something analytical; it probably prevents me from getting into a rut.
In any case, I don't _really_ suffer from this. I'm used to it and able to work around it.
Yes to all of it, except the perfectionist bit:) As long as it is good enough, it will do. Of course, "good enough" for whom is the question...
And of course you are right. A major cause of procrastination is fear of failure in some form or another. Only when the failure of getting it done at all is subjectively greater than the failure of doing good work will you actually do it.
One sad consequence of this if you aren't aware of this is that it is easier to get things done that you don't really care about. I suspect this can sometimes lead people to _not_ do what they are interested in and good at, in favour of a career they really don't care for.
Accept that you are a procrastinator, and that you will not get anything done until the last minute. Then plan accordingly.
Say you have a paper due in a month. Great. Talk to the professor and set up a meeting a week from now where you will show your outline, thesis and detailed plan on how to defend it.
In another week, set up a new meeting with the same or different authority figure to go over your list of references and help clear whether you are quoting the right stuff or not, and whether those people in the references really can be interpreted the way you do it.
And the next week, have another prearranged meeting to go over your language and style.
Suddenly you have hard deadlines for every aspect of that paper, which means you will actually be quite comfortably done when the real deadline appears. True, you will still be stressed and feeling behind, but on the positive side you do see that the work is actually progressing nicely. And with this predisposition, you will never _not_ feel stressed in any case, so just make it work for you.
the trick is to make these deadlines _real_ - arranging for a friend to take a look at the paper won't do it; such a "meeting" is too easy to blow off, and a friend will be forgiving if you haven't done the work. It needs to be with people that will cause real, negative, consequences if you mess it up.
I have exactly the same problem you describe. I can sit at the desk, stuff right in front of me, and still end up doing no work for hours. I may surf the net, read mail, pick up a suddenly interesting (but unrelated) book, make coffee, doodle, making suddenly important phonecalls, decide my chair needs reupholstering or whatever.
Only when I am cornered like a frightened rat, with the third extended deadline breathing down my neck, voices screaming at me to get going (no, not in the head; they belong to people hat need my results) and my stress level is high enough to induce cardiac arrest am I able to focus and actually do it.
A partially successful strategy is to put yourself in a situation where you have another, even more important, task to do; this will transform your duties into avoidance activities and will suddenly get done quickly and easily - just witness how clean and well-organized your apartment is after an important deadline. Of course, that does mean the new, hugely important task will be lingering instead.
On the downside, I have never found any way to really solve this. I just put up with failing myself over and over again, putting off stuff I should have done long ago. On the upside, even with such faulty strategies, I have managed to get a Ph.D. - and high blood pressure, jeadaches stomach pains and stress-related mood swings, but hey, you can't have it all.
The surprise would not be that the members reached consensus - remember that for every acrimonius spat, there are many decisions that do go smoothly and without fuss. The surprise would be being able to keep quiet about the whole thing.
_If_ such a thing ever existed, It'd be more likely that it would be an organisation set up by one or two of the member states, without connection to the EU itself.
It isn't being dropped. It has the same status it's always had. Until now, Gnome has never had an "official" browser, and, well, while Galeon isn't the "official" one now, it never was before either. 1.2 is/was a great browser, and the upcoming version is likely just as good if not better. Just continue to use it and enjoy it!
The Galeon developers basically do not wish to follow the Gnome HIG. This is certainly fine - and Galeon is a good browser - but I'd say it's pretty reasonable that an application that is so central to a desktop should also follow the common guidelines set up for the core apps.
And as usual, there is absolutely nothing stopping the knowledgeable user from simply running whatever apps they want on their desktop. As for Redhat, they have switched to a more open process, where outside people have a lot more say in what should go in - make yourself heard!
Re:Hopefully this fulfills the Exchange Need
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I am from Europe (Sweden, specifically) and I am seeing the opposite trend, with people more likely to use Evolution on KDE than KDE:s own offerings, and a drift toward Gnome in general.
It's difficult or impossible to assess trends based on what happens locally, but from what I've seen, it seems both are holding steady at about the same popularity on a global level.
And no matter which, I don't see a server solution for only one particular client as a particularily good thing - what if Apache supported only Mozilla, for ezxample?
Yes, I've found that out too. I moved to a new apartment two years ago, and didn't hook up the TV for a couple of weeks, while getting the network up and running was high priority. When it was time to actually set up the TV, I realized I really didn't want that big hulking box taking up and dictating how my living room was to be furnished, so I sold it and bought a tuner card for the computer instead.
About a year ago, I bought a new computer (a laptop) that I couldn't conveniently set a tuner card in. I kept the old computer around to be able to watch TV among other things, but I found that I never bothered to use it, as it was too much of a bother. Today the old machine is in my storage space in the basement and I haven't watched 'real' TV for almost a year.
If there is some show I really want to see, I can usually pluck them from the net, and watch at my convenience, rather than when the network deigns to show it. News and commentary I get better from online newspapers, blogs and through sites like this one. If I wanted to follow a reality show (yeah, right), most have their own websites with as much, if not more, juicy material than the episodes show. I really don't see what the TV medium really is able to offer that the net doesn't do better.
With iCalendar and LDAP addressbooks, does it mean Evolution will work as a client as well? Have you tested it, and if so, what problems are there? And how about Apple's mail proggie?
Re:To bad Evolution probably wont support it
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Not my experience - though Europe is not a homogenous market. Among the people I know, or know of, running Linux on the desktop, there have usually been about a 50-50 split between Gnome and KDE, with some of the KDE people running evolution. Lately, there seems to be a slow movement toward greater use of Gnome, and especially Evolution now that 1.4 is out and stable. It's gotten to the point where some Windows-users are starting to ask how to run Evolution on their machines.
Well, an authors of course have every right to name the apps whatever they want. I could write a suite of vastly different apps and call the App01, App02... in chronological (or source code size) order, and nobody would have a right stop me.
If I did suffer from temprary insanity, though, and decided to use that scheme, I hope I would be wise enough to listen if numerous people argue that it may not be the best possible naming scheme for various reasons.
I see this sort of like bug reporting. There is a world of difference between useless and mean bitching about some perceived fault on one hand, and constructive criticism on the other. Saying "The name GNU/OpenKGKGKGKGKGKG sucks. You stink." is mean-spirited and unhelpful. Saying "Good app. I have a suggestion, though: wouldn't 'Docfilter' or 'Textconvert' be a better name? It would probably help a lot of people find the app." is, on the other hand constructive and helpful.
Pointing out that having a largish collections of applications all starting with the same latter can couse problems for the users is certainly valid criticism - as long as its not along the lines of "you are dumb" as discussed above.
And there _are_ general naming problems today. To take one axample from my favourite desktop: Galeon. Nice name. Starts with G and everything. But - what is it? Sit a new Linux user down on a Gnome desktop and ask them to run the web browser - they will not associate an app named "Galeon" with anything web-related. They may think it's something nautical, or perhaps some kind of fonance program, but not a browser. For all its faults, "Internet Explorer" does have an excellent name. "Netscape" works only because it's such a well-established term. "Mozilla" may in time achieve the same status. But the smaller browsers really have a problem here - and it goes for Galeon, Epiphany, Konqueror and Opera.
Now, for one app, the problem isn't all that great - you find it once, and you know what it is. Gnome and KDE has a special problem, though - one that isn't shared by most other projects. That is that they are collections of many applications. If all - or most - of those applications have the same naming issues, learning the desktop will be an excercize in frustration. Not all apps have this problem, of course; 'gedit', 'kword' 'AbiWord' are fairly clear, for instance, signalling their general task area in the name. Having a convention like "start all app names with G/K" increases the problem - frequently you see names that are very convoluted or artificial, simply so they can fit that mold, which of course does not help the user one bit. KDE arguably has a small additional problem, as the template there specifies to replace 'C' with 'K'. A user remembers that it was named "Conqueror", and tries it on the command line, with no success. Another small, but needless, moment of frustration ensues. There is _very_ good reason why, for instance, redhat elected to replace the actual app names in the menus with descriptive entries.
Another reason to be wary about cute naming schemes is that it easily grates on people. I would be very happy if I never needed to feast my eyes on another app starting with 'G' or 'K' ever again. Especially those that does a nifty sound-alike replacement ("Konqueror", "gnumeric") is a source of low-level irritation - I know how it's supposed to be spelled and get the same mild annoyance I get from misspelled words in other places where people are supposed to know better. Again, not a big thing at all, but these kind of minor issues pile up and do determine the general impression of quality, often on a subconsious level.
So yes, call the app whatever you want, but please do so knowing why the name may be a problem.
Because, perhaps, that actually many (if not most) gnome apps don't start with G: Evolution, Epiphany, Sodipodi, Dia, Anjuta, Pan, MrProject, Abiword and so on. Yes, too many still use that old overworked scheme, but not nearly as many as in some other projects.
As the link above says, though, it is a pretty ugly hack, considering that it could have supported LDAP for contacts. I'm actually a bit mystified as to why they didn't use LDAP - I mean, surely the KDE tools support it?
It is a pain, I agree. It's sort of cute the first five minutes, then it gets old really fast - and it doesn't matter whether it's Ksomething, Gsomething, OpenWhatever or FreeThingy.
However, Gnome has taken some pains to get away from that naming scheme; we have Evolution, Sodipodi, Anjuta, Epiphany, Gnumeric, Abiword, Xchat, Dashboard (whenever that one is ready) and so on. Not that the names necessarily are any better or more descriptive, but at least you don't get cross-eyed from an overdose of 'G':s anymore.
Re:Hopefully this fulfills the Exchange Need
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But how would you use Evolution with it? As far as I can tell, it only supports the KDE tools, which is a shame, as the majority of users use Evolution today, no matter what their desktop.
It is understandable, as it is a piece of contract work specifically for use with those user-space apps, but still a shame.
I have been longing for a relatively simple server like this specifically for supporting a smallish group of people (3-10 or so) using a mix of Linux and OSX desktops. This doesn't seem to be it, though.
The numbers they quote are system crashes, not application crashes. An operating system that allows a user-level app to cause a system crash is poorly designed. It doesn't matter if the fault originated in the OS itself or not.
I too reacted specifically to the "hello vendors" thing - not becuse it is inflammatory (that's fine) but because the language in those sentences differ so markedly from the rest of the document. It feels like a late, beer-fueled addition two minutes before deadline. Maybe just clean it up stilistically?
It's not the functionality that the surfer came there to experience, however.
And nobody says you can't show ads to the surfers; just that you can't - without their consent - track which surfer has viewed what ad.
You could arguably make a case that the site (not the ad company!) can use session cookies used anyway to rotate ads so the individual does not see the same ad all the time. Once you bring that functionality to the ad provider, however, it is a definite no-no.
I don't mind when slashdot posters comment on things without actually checking the facts, but I get prtetty annoyed when a news site does the same thing. IDG has had a long campaign against any kind of privacy regulation or other things that may hamper their ability to do whatever they want. The article is factually bunk, in other words. These are the same people lobbying for a sales tax exemption to advertising in very shrill overtones.
The law explicitly allows using cookies for session management, identity and presistance without consent by the surfer when it is needed for the functionality the surfer came to the site to use. Slashdot would be in the clear, no problem. So would shopping sites using cookies for keeping track of a shopping cart, for example. Most asp and php sites would have no problem either.
The law _only_ regulates cookies that are not relevant to the site functionality. Specifically, ad tracking stuff, web bugs and other stuff that track you independently of the site functionality can not store cookies without your informed consent. That's it.
At least here (Sweden) it is generally ok for Islamic practitioners to take a few minutes off for prayer during the day, and it's the same for devout practitioners of other religions (I highlight Islam here simply because they have a fairly fixed schedule for daily observances, unlike most other religions, which brings the issue into focus in the workplace). It's seen as the same kind of thing as taking a bathroom break or going for another cup of coffee or something.
The keyword really is respect. It's one thing to go off for a quick prayer, it's another to disrupt the workplace when doing so. Again, it's no different from other personal activities - playing with a tennis ball on your desk while working is fine; having impromptu cubicle-tennis matches across the room with a friend is not.
I wouldn't see a problem with having a prayer group as one of the possible activities during this relaxation time. My personal preference would be to have a garden outside the building to manage, though. Planting, pulling weeds, pruning, mowing and so on does wonders for my emotional well-being.
Slashdot Mirror
While I do work better at night (this seems to be common in science and technology), I actually work better when there are frequent interruptions and other disruptions.
I think - at least for me - that the most difficult disturbance is myself. WIth nothing to focus on except the task, I can not stop my own thought processes from veering off in all directions. Before I'm even aware of it, I'm off on a totally different paper or project, or planning something completely unrelated.
By contrast, when there are a lot of things going on around me, it manages to filter out these tendencies, so I actually get more done. Instead of floating off on something else for twenty minutes, I get interrupted, and when I get back, I focus on the work again, rather than whatever I was going off on. Also, I find stimulation from the environment very helpful when I am trying to do something analytical; it probably prevents me from getting into a rut.
In any case, I don't _really_ suffer from this. I'm used to it and able to work around it.
Yes to all of it, except the perfectionist bit :) As long as it is good enough, it will do. Of course, "good enough" for whom is the question...
And of course you are right. A major cause of procrastination is fear of failure in some form or another. Only when the failure of getting it done at all is subjectively greater than the failure of doing good work will you actually do it.
One sad consequence of this if you aren't aware of this is that it is easier to get things done that you don't really care about. I suspect this can sometimes lead people to _not_ do what they are interested in and good at, in favour of a career they really don't care for.
A workable strategy is acceptance.
Accept that you are a procrastinator, and that you will not get anything done until the last minute. Then plan accordingly.
Say you have a paper due in a month. Great. Talk to the professor and set up a meeting a week from now where you will show your outline, thesis and detailed plan on how to defend it.
In another week, set up a new meeting with the same or different authority figure to go over your list of references and help clear whether you are quoting the right stuff or not, and whether those people in the references really can be interpreted the way you do it.
And the next week, have another prearranged meeting to go over your language and style.
Suddenly you have hard deadlines for every aspect of that paper, which means you will actually be quite comfortably done when the real deadline appears. True, you will still be stressed and feeling behind, but on the positive side you do see that the work is actually progressing nicely. And with this predisposition, you will never _not_ feel stressed in any case, so just make it work for you.
the trick is to make these deadlines _real_ - arranging for a friend to take a look at the paper won't do it; such a "meeting" is too easy to blow off, and a friend will be forgiving if you haven't done the work. It needs to be with people that will cause real, negative, consequences if you mess it up.
I have exactly the same problem you describe. I can sit at the desk, stuff right in front of me, and still end up doing no work for hours. I may surf the net, read mail, pick up a suddenly interesting (but unrelated) book, make coffee, doodle, making suddenly important phonecalls, decide my chair needs reupholstering or whatever.
Only when I am cornered like a frightened rat, with the third extended deadline breathing down my neck, voices screaming at me to get going (no, not in the head; they belong to people hat need my results) and my stress level is high enough to induce cardiac arrest am I able to focus and actually do it.
A partially successful strategy is to put yourself in a situation where you have another, even more important, task to do; this will transform your duties into avoidance activities and will suddenly get done quickly and easily - just witness how clean and well-organized your apartment is after an important deadline. Of course, that does mean the new, hugely important task will be lingering instead.
On the downside, I have never found any way to really solve this. I just put up with failing myself over and over again, putting off stuff I should have done long ago. On the upside, even with such faulty strategies, I have managed to get a Ph.D. - and high blood pressure, jeadaches stomach pains and stress-related mood swings, but hey, you can't have it all.
The surprise would not be that the members reached consensus - remember that for every acrimonius spat, there are many decisions that do go smoothly and without fuss. The surprise would be being able to keep quiet about the whole thing.
_If_ such a thing ever existed, It'd be more likely that it would be an organisation set up by one or two of the member states, without connection to the EU itself.
It isn't being dropped. It has the same status it's always had. Until now, Gnome has never had an "official" browser, and, well, while Galeon isn't the "official" one now, it never was before either. 1.2 is/was a great browser, and the upcoming version is likely just as good if not better. Just continue to use it and enjoy it!
The Galeon developers basically do not wish to follow the Gnome HIG. This is certainly fine - and Galeon is a good browser - but I'd say it's pretty reasonable that an application that is so central to a desktop should also follow the common guidelines set up for the core apps.
And as usual, there is absolutely nothing stopping the knowledgeable user from simply running whatever apps they want on their desktop. As for Redhat, they have switched to a more open process, where outside people have a lot more say in what should go in - make yourself heard!
I am from Europe (Sweden, specifically) and I am seeing the opposite trend, with people more likely to use Evolution on KDE than KDE:s own offerings, and a drift toward Gnome in general.
It's difficult or impossible to assess trends based on what happens locally, but from what I've seen, it seems both are holding steady at about the same popularity on a global level.
And no matter which, I don't see a server solution for only one particular client as a particularily good thing - what if Apache supported only Mozilla, for ezxample?
Yes, I've found that out too. I moved to a new apartment two years ago, and didn't hook up the TV for a couple of weeks, while getting the network up and running was high priority. When it was time to actually set up the TV, I realized I really didn't want that big hulking box taking up and dictating how my living room was to be furnished, so I sold it and bought a tuner card for the computer instead.
About a year ago, I bought a new computer (a laptop) that I couldn't conveniently set a tuner card in. I kept the old computer around to be able to watch TV among other things, but I found that I never bothered to use it, as it was too much of a bother. Today the old machine is in my storage space in the basement and I haven't watched 'real' TV for almost a year.
If there is some show I really want to see, I can usually pluck them from the net, and watch at my convenience, rather than when the network deigns to show it. News and commentary I get better from online newspapers, blogs and through sites like this one. If I wanted to follow a reality show (yeah, right), most have their own websites with as much, if not more, juicy material than the episodes show. I really don't see what the TV medium really is able to offer that the net doesn't do better.
With iCalendar and LDAP addressbooks, does it mean Evolution will work as a client as well? Have you tested it, and if so, what problems are there? And how about Apple's mail proggie?
Not my experience - though Europe is not a homogenous market. Among the people I know, or know of, running Linux on the desktop, there have usually been about a 50-50 split between Gnome and KDE, with some of the KDE people running evolution. Lately, there seems to be a slow movement toward greater use of Gnome, and especially Evolution now that 1.4 is out and stable. It's gotten to the point where some Windows-users are starting to ask how to run Evolution on their machines.
Well, an authors of course have every right to name the apps whatever they want. I could write a suite of vastly different apps and call the App01, App02 ... in chronological (or source code size) order, and nobody would have a right stop me.
If I did suffer from temprary insanity, though, and decided to use that scheme, I hope I would be wise enough to listen if numerous people argue that it may not be the best possible naming scheme for various reasons.
I see this sort of like bug reporting. There is a world of difference between useless and mean bitching about some perceived fault on one hand, and constructive criticism on the other. Saying "The name GNU/OpenKGKGKGKGKGKG sucks. You stink." is mean-spirited and unhelpful. Saying "Good app. I have a suggestion, though: wouldn't 'Docfilter' or 'Textconvert' be a better name? It would probably help a lot of people find the app." is, on the other hand constructive and helpful.
Pointing out that having a largish collections of applications all starting with the same latter can couse problems for the users is certainly valid criticism - as long as its not along the lines of "you are dumb" as discussed above.
And there _are_ general naming problems today. To take one axample from my favourite desktop: Galeon. Nice name. Starts with G and everything. But - what is it? Sit a new Linux user down on a Gnome desktop and ask them to run the web browser - they will not associate an app named "Galeon" with anything web-related. They may think it's something nautical, or perhaps some kind of fonance program, but not a browser. For all its faults, "Internet Explorer" does have an excellent name. "Netscape" works only because it's such a well-established term. "Mozilla" may in time achieve the same status. But the smaller browsers really have a problem here - and it goes for Galeon, Epiphany, Konqueror and Opera.
Now, for one app, the problem isn't all that great - you find it once, and you know what it is. Gnome and KDE has a special problem, though - one that isn't shared by most other projects. That is that they are collections of many applications. If all - or most - of those applications have the same naming issues, learning the desktop will be an excercize in frustration. Not all apps have this problem, of course; 'gedit', 'kword' 'AbiWord' are fairly clear, for instance, signalling their general task area in the name. Having a convention like "start all app names with G/K" increases the problem - frequently you see names that are very convoluted or artificial, simply so they can fit that mold, which of course does not help the user one bit. KDE arguably has a small additional problem, as the template there specifies to replace 'C' with 'K'. A user remembers that it was named "Conqueror", and tries it on the command line, with no success. Another small, but needless, moment of frustration ensues. There is _very_ good reason why, for instance, redhat elected to replace the actual app names in the menus with descriptive entries.
Another reason to be wary about cute naming schemes is that it easily grates on people. I would be very happy if I never needed to feast my eyes on another app starting with 'G' or 'K' ever again. Especially those that does a nifty sound-alike replacement ("Konqueror", "gnumeric") is a source of low-level irritation - I know how it's supposed to be spelled and get the same mild annoyance I get from misspelled words in other places where people are supposed to know better. Again, not a big thing at all, but these kind of minor issues pile up and do determine the general impression of quality, often on a subconsious level.
So yes, call the app whatever you want, but please do so knowing why the name may be a problem.
Because, perhaps, that actually many (if not most) gnome apps don't start with G: Evolution, Epiphany, Sodipodi, Dia, Anjuta, Pan, MrProject, Abiword and so on. Yes, too many still use that old overworked scheme, but not nearly as many as in some other projects.
As the link above says, though, it is a pretty ugly hack, considering that it could have supported LDAP for contacts. I'm actually a bit mystified as to why they didn't use LDAP - I mean, surely the KDE tools support it?
It is a pain, I agree. It's sort of cute the first five minutes, then it gets old really fast - and it doesn't matter whether it's Ksomething, Gsomething, OpenWhatever or FreeThingy.
However, Gnome has taken some pains to get away from that naming scheme; we have Evolution, Sodipodi, Anjuta, Epiphany, Gnumeric, Abiword, Xchat, Dashboard (whenever that one is ready) and so on. Not that the names necessarily are any better or more descriptive, but at least you don't get cross-eyed from an overdose of 'G':s anymore.
But how would you use Evolution with it? As far as I can tell, it only supports the KDE tools, which is a shame, as the majority of users use Evolution today, no matter what their desktop.
It is understandable, as it is a piece of contract work specifically for use with those user-space apps, but still a shame.
I have been longing for a relatively simple server like this specifically for supporting a smallish group of people (3-10 or so) using a mix of Linux and OSX desktops. This doesn't seem to be it, though.
The numbers they quote are system crashes, not application crashes. An operating system that allows a user-level app to cause a system crash is poorly designed. It doesn't matter if the fault originated in the OS itself or not.
I too reacted specifically to the "hello vendors" thing - not becuse it is inflammatory (that's fine) but because the language in those sentences differ so markedly from the rest of the document. It feels like a late, beer-fueled addition two minutes before deadline. Maybe just clean it up stilistically?
It's not the functionality that the surfer came there to experience, however.
And nobody says you can't show ads to the surfers; just that you can't - without their consent - track which surfer has viewed what ad.
You could arguably make a case that the site (not the ad company!) can use session cookies used anyway to rotate ads so the individual does not see the same ad all the time. Once you bring that functionality to the ad provider, however, it is a definite no-no.
It's not part of the functionality that the surfer came there to get (unless your site is excplicitly for surfers that wants to view advertising).
I don't mind when slashdot posters comment on things without actually checking the facts, but I get prtetty annoyed when a news site does the same thing. IDG has had a long campaign against any kind of privacy regulation or other things that may hamper their ability to do whatever they want. The article is factually bunk, in other words. These are the same people lobbying for a sales tax exemption to advertising in very shrill overtones.
The law explicitly allows using cookies for session management, identity and presistance without consent by the surfer when it is needed for the functionality the surfer came to the site to use. Slashdot would be in the clear, no problem. So would shopping sites using cookies for keeping track of a shopping cart, for example. Most asp and php sites would have no problem either.
The law _only_ regulates cookies that are not relevant to the site functionality. Specifically, ad tracking stuff, web bugs and other stuff that track you independently of the site functionality can not store cookies without your informed consent. That's it.
Just ignore the hysterical rhethoric from IDG.
And they actually _read_ the material they are commenting on!
At least here (Sweden) it is generally ok for Islamic practitioners to take a few minutes off for prayer during the day, and it's the same for devout practitioners of other religions (I highlight Islam here simply because they have a fairly fixed schedule for daily observances, unlike most other religions, which brings the issue into focus in the workplace). It's seen as the same kind of thing as taking a bathroom break or going for another cup of coffee or something.
The keyword really is respect. It's one thing to go off for a quick prayer, it's another to disrupt the workplace when doing so. Again, it's no different from other personal activities - playing with a tennis ball on your desk while working is fine; having impromptu cubicle-tennis matches across the room with a friend is not.
I wouldn't see a problem with having a prayer group as one of the possible activities during this relaxation time. My personal preference would be to have a garden outside the building to manage, though. Planting, pulling weeds, pruning, mowing and so on does wonders for my emotional well-being.
If I had modpoints I would mod you as "+1 Aaarghhh"
The trick is to drink coffee often enough during the day that you never hit the lows.