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So with even a $399 tablet doing 2560x1600 pixel displays, can we please just make that the new standard laptop resolution? Even at 11"? Please. Stop with the "retina" crap, just call it "reasonable resolution". The fact that laptops stagnated ten years ago (and even regressed, in many cases) at around half that in both directions is just sad.
I still don't want big luggable laptops, but that 1366x768 is so last century. Christ, soon even the cellphones will start laughing at the ridiculously bad laptop displays.
And the next technology journalist that asks you whether you want fonts that small, I'll just hunt down and give an atomic wedgie. I want pixels for high-quality fonts, and yes, I want my fonts small, but "high resolution" really doesn't equate "small fonts" like some less-than-gifted tech pundits seem to constantly think.
In fact, if you have bad vision, sharp good high-quality fonts will help. #noexcuses36734.80 rating - Read in G+
I still don't want big luggable laptops, but that 1366x768 is so last century. Christ, soon even the cellphones will start laughing at the ridiculously bad laptop displays.
And the next technology journalist that asks you whether you want fonts that small, I'll just hunt down and give an atomic wedgie. I want pixels for high-quality fonts, and yes, I want my fonts small, but "high resolution" really doesn't equate "small fonts" like some less-than-gifted tech pundits seem to constantly think.
In fact, if you have bad vision, sharp good high-quality fonts will help. #noexcuses36734.80 rating - Read in G+
3.0 pushed out.31420.25 rating - Read in G+
If I can get 4000 upvotes for a rant on security people, just imagine what a picture of a cat could do...
Mwahahaahaa... I'll get millions of +1's! Isn't that how these things work?27931.11 rating - Read in G+
Venting.
I don't think I can talk about "security" people without cursing, so you might want to avert your eyes now.
I gave OpenSUSE a try, because it worked so well at install-time on the Macbook Air, but I have to say, I've had enough. There is no way in hell I can honestly suggest that to anybody else any more.
I first spent weeks arguing on a bugzilla that the security policy of requiring the root password for changing the timezone and adding a new wireless network was moronic and wrong.
I think the wireless network thing finally did get fixed, but the timezone never did - it still asks for the admin password.
And today Daniela calls me from school, because she can't add the school printer without the admin password.
Whoever moron thought that it's "good security" to require the root password for everyday things like this is mentally diseased.
So here's a plea: if you have anything to do with security in a distro, and think that my kids (replace "my kids" with "sales people on the road" if you think your main customers are businesses) need to have the root password to access some wireless network, or to be able to print out a paper, or to change the date-and-time settings, please just kill yourself now. The world will be a better place.
.. and now I need to find a new distro that actually works on the Macbook Air.20137.45 rating - Read in G+
I don't think I can talk about "security" people without cursing, so you might want to avert your eyes now.
I gave OpenSUSE a try, because it worked so well at install-time on the Macbook Air, but I have to say, I've had enough. There is no way in hell I can honestly suggest that to anybody else any more.
I first spent weeks arguing on a bugzilla that the security policy of requiring the root password for changing the timezone and adding a new wireless network was moronic and wrong.
I think the wireless network thing finally did get fixed, but the timezone never did - it still asks for the admin password.
And today Daniela calls me from school, because she can't add the school printer without the admin password.
Whoever moron thought that it's "good security" to require the root password for everyday things like this is mentally diseased.
So here's a plea: if you have anything to do with security in a distro, and think that my kids (replace "my kids" with "sales people on the road" if you think your main customers are businesses) need to have the root password to access some wireless network, or to be able to print out a paper, or to change the date-and-time settings, please just kill yourself now. The world will be a better place.
.. and now I need to find a new distro that actually works on the Macbook Air.20137.45 rating - Read in G+
Prediction: instead of Oracle coming out and admitting they were morons about their idiotic suit against Android, they'll come out posturing and talk about how they'll be vindicated, and pay lawyers to take it to the next level of idiocy.
Sometimes I really wish I wasn't always right. It's a curse, I tell you.15610.96 rating - Read in G+
Sometimes I really wish I wasn't always right. It's a curse, I tell you.15610.96 rating - Read in G+
I haven't bothered to mention the whole sad Aaron Swartz saga, because it's been covered elsewhere.
But having the involved US attorney then basically lie about it all in a very public statement is something that I find particularly offensive. Compare these two statements - one from July 2011, one from yesterday, and tell me Carmen Ortiz isn't lying..
Yesterday (as reported by the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere):
"At no time did this office ever seek – or ever tell Mr. Swartz’s attorneys that it intended to seek – maximum penalties under the law."
And July 2011 (as posted by justice.gov itself):
"SWARTZ faces up to 35 years in prison, to be followed by three years of supervised release, restitution, forfeiture and a fine of up to $1 million"
Maybe that official and very public PR thing wasn't "telling Mr. Swartz’s attorneys", right? Because in private, Ms Ortiz was probably talking about how she wanted to pay Aaron for his services, and just hug him. Right? Anybody?
Ms Ortiz, just admit you were an ass-hat, and apologize. Instead of this kind of crap. Weasel-wording and misleading about your actions is not making your office look any better.
Here are the sources, so that people can compare them for themselves.
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2013/01/17/us-attorney-statement-on-the-prosecution-of-aaron-swartz/
http://www.justice.gov/usao/ma/news/2011/July/SwartzAaronPR.html
(Post edited: it's 2013 now, so "July 2011" isn't "last July". Oops.)13916.25 rating - Read in G+
But having the involved US attorney then basically lie about it all in a very public statement is something that I find particularly offensive. Compare these two statements - one from July 2011, one from yesterday, and tell me Carmen Ortiz isn't lying..
Yesterday (as reported by the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere):
"At no time did this office ever seek – or ever tell Mr. Swartz’s attorneys that it intended to seek – maximum penalties under the law."
And July 2011 (as posted by justice.gov itself):
"SWARTZ faces up to 35 years in prison, to be followed by three years of supervised release, restitution, forfeiture and a fine of up to $1 million"
Maybe that official and very public PR thing wasn't "telling Mr. Swartz’s attorneys", right? Because in private, Ms Ortiz was probably talking about how she wanted to pay Aaron for his services, and just hug him. Right? Anybody?
Ms Ortiz, just admit you were an ass-hat, and apologize. Instead of this kind of crap. Weasel-wording and misleading about your actions is not making your office look any better.
Here are the sources, so that people can compare them for themselves.
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2013/01/17/us-attorney-statement-on-the-prosecution-of-aaron-swartz/
http://www.justice.gov/usao/ma/news/2011/July/SwartzAaronPR.html
(Post edited: it's 2013 now, so "July 2011" isn't "last July". Oops.)13916.25 rating - Read in G+
Editorial: is Engadget really that stupid? Or just corrupt? Or trolling us all?
Here is another "race to the bottom is bad" article, this time in the form of an "editorial" from Engadget. It's even more idiotic than usual.
The whole "race to the bottom" concept is odd to me: people complaining about how technology gets less outrageously expensive, and more available to everybody, and more commoditized. Like that would be a bad thing? So the whole argument is fundamentally flawed to begin with - any time I see some pundit or CEO complaining about how the competition is making things cheaper, I go "Uhhuh, crybaby".
But when it comes to cellphones, it's not just a flawed argument, it's doubly stupid. Because in that market, particularly in the US, the alternative is the whole broken carrier subsidy model, with all that entails. None of which is good, and all of which is much worse than any (hypothetical) "race to the bottom" arguments.
And at no point did that deeply flawed editorial even mention carrier lock-in issues. What crock.
I have many reasons to like the google nexus phones: I just think that the plain android experience is generally cleaner than most of the skinned ones, and even when there is superior hardware (Samsung Galaxy SIII) I tend to prefer the Nexus model (honesty in advertizing: I've gotten free phones from both google and Samsung, but I actually bought my own Nexus One and Galaxy Nexus on google play store. And I installed CyanogenMod on the SIII Samsung gave me, because I wanted the JellyBean experience).
So I like the Nexus phones just because I think they have a nicer interface.
But I like the Nexus phones even more because they are clearly pushing the whole "no carrier lock-in" model. And price is absolutely part of it. 12823.54 rating - Read in G+
Here is another "race to the bottom is bad" article, this time in the form of an "editorial" from Engadget. It's even more idiotic than usual.
The whole "race to the bottom" concept is odd to me: people complaining about how technology gets less outrageously expensive, and more available to everybody, and more commoditized. Like that would be a bad thing? So the whole argument is fundamentally flawed to begin with - any time I see some pundit or CEO complaining about how the competition is making things cheaper, I go "Uhhuh, crybaby".
But when it comes to cellphones, it's not just a flawed argument, it's doubly stupid. Because in that market, particularly in the US, the alternative is the whole broken carrier subsidy model, with all that entails. None of which is good, and all of which is much worse than any (hypothetical) "race to the bottom" arguments.
And at no point did that deeply flawed editorial even mention carrier lock-in issues. What crock.
I have many reasons to like the google nexus phones: I just think that the plain android experience is generally cleaner than most of the skinned ones, and even when there is superior hardware (Samsung Galaxy SIII) I tend to prefer the Nexus model (honesty in advertizing: I've gotten free phones from both google and Samsung, but I actually bought my own Nexus One and Galaxy Nexus on google play store. And I installed CyanogenMod on the SIII Samsung gave me, because I wanted the JellyBean experience).
So I like the Nexus phones just because I think they have a nicer interface.
But I like the Nexus phones even more because they are clearly pushing the whole "no carrier lock-in" model. And price is absolutely part of it. 12823.54 rating - Read in G+
Pet peeve of the day: Oregon is trying to make it harder to have exceptional public schools. Which kind of sucks.
Background for non-Americans: the US school system is a disaster, with very uneven quality. You have some good school districts, and you have some really bad ones, and it's all just pretty crazy. Very different from back in Finland, where education isn't just good, it's fairly reliably good. You don't have to worry too much about which school you go to, because while there are certainly differences, they simply don't tend to be all that marked.
In the US, if you care about education, you end up having to make sure you live in a good school district. Or you do the whole private school thing, or try to make sure you can transfer, or whatever. The one thing you do not do is to just take it for granted. You work at it.
I'm not a huge believer in private schools, and I actually wanted my kids to be able to walk to their friends houses, so we made sure to move to one of the better districts in Oregon.
Now, living in a good school district means that you end up paying a lot more for housing, so it's not actually necessarily really any cheaper than sending your kids to a private school. But you do also end up being in a community where people care about education, so it's not just the school: it's the whole environment around you and your kids.
But it's unquestionably unfair, and it unquestionably means that people who can afford it get a better education in the US. Despite the whole "public" part of the US public school system, it's like so much else in the US: you don't want to be poor. The whole "American Dream" is pretty much a fairy tale.
So the Oregon legislature is trying to fix the unfairness. Which I very much understand, because I really do detest the whole US school system - it was always one of the things that we talked about being a possible reason to move back to Finland when the kids needed to go to school. We ended up learning how the US system works, and made it work for us, but that doesn't mean that I have to like the situation. Because I've seen better.
So why is trying to make things fairer a peeve?
The way the Oregon legislature is trying to fix things isn't by making the average school better, it's by trying to make it hard to have the (fairly few) bright spots around.
In particular, let's say that you do have a good school district, where people not only end up paying for it in the property taxes (which is what largely funds the school), but also by having special local tax bonds for the school in addition to the big fund-raisers every year. Because the public US school funding just isn't that great, so the local community ends up fixing it - to the point of literally raising much of the money to build a new building etc.
And I realize that this all just sounds completely insane and broken to any sane person, but hey, Americans are so used to it that they seem to think that it's how things should work. The whole school bake sale is a part of the whole American psyche (and I'd be a big proponent of using that funding method for the military too, but somehow it never works that way).
Anyway, if you actually were successful, had people who cared deeply about the local school, and built a good local public school around such a community, such a school district used to be able to accept out-of-district kids, but charge them extra tuition to make up for the fact that they obviously aren't paying the local tax bonds etc.
And now, in the name of fairness, there's a bill (HB 2748) getting pushed through to make that kind of "out-of-district tuition student" not be an option any more.
And I really do understand the fairness question. Why should public schools be able to charge some people, just because they don't live in the right place? It's a public school, isn't it?
I'd be frickin annoyed too about the kids of well-to-do families who get to go to a better school in their nice district. I absolutely get it. I grew up in a country where private schools were for odd people who wanted their kids to be in full-time foreign language immersion classes and learn more than just four languages. Where one of my buddies transferred to my school not because it was more convenient or a better school, but because it was the only Swedish-speaking one that taught Latin, for chissake. And it was all free, and we didn't need to have cookie bake sales.
So I really do understand why people would want to get rid of the special schools and find them odious. I find them odious, and they are a sign of how broken the US school system is.
Except HB 2748 doesn't actually do anything to try to fix the breakage, it just says "you can't charge out-of-district students". It doesn't fix the bad schools, it just makes it harder to be a good school. Suddenly local tax bonds etc don't make much sense, because you can't make non-residents bring in the equivalent funding.
Oh well. I bet nobody wanted to hear that whine, and I guess I should put the "First world problems" meme picture here, but hey, I wanted to get that rant off my chest.10051.30 rating - Read in G+
Background for non-Americans: the US school system is a disaster, with very uneven quality. You have some good school districts, and you have some really bad ones, and it's all just pretty crazy. Very different from back in Finland, where education isn't just good, it's fairly reliably good. You don't have to worry too much about which school you go to, because while there are certainly differences, they simply don't tend to be all that marked.
In the US, if you care about education, you end up having to make sure you live in a good school district. Or you do the whole private school thing, or try to make sure you can transfer, or whatever. The one thing you do not do is to just take it for granted. You work at it.
I'm not a huge believer in private schools, and I actually wanted my kids to be able to walk to their friends houses, so we made sure to move to one of the better districts in Oregon.
Now, living in a good school district means that you end up paying a lot more for housing, so it's not actually necessarily really any cheaper than sending your kids to a private school. But you do also end up being in a community where people care about education, so it's not just the school: it's the whole environment around you and your kids.
But it's unquestionably unfair, and it unquestionably means that people who can afford it get a better education in the US. Despite the whole "public" part of the US public school system, it's like so much else in the US: you don't want to be poor. The whole "American Dream" is pretty much a fairy tale.
So the Oregon legislature is trying to fix the unfairness. Which I very much understand, because I really do detest the whole US school system - it was always one of the things that we talked about being a possible reason to move back to Finland when the kids needed to go to school. We ended up learning how the US system works, and made it work for us, but that doesn't mean that I have to like the situation. Because I've seen better.
So why is trying to make things fairer a peeve?
The way the Oregon legislature is trying to fix things isn't by making the average school better, it's by trying to make it hard to have the (fairly few) bright spots around.
In particular, let's say that you do have a good school district, where people not only end up paying for it in the property taxes (which is what largely funds the school), but also by having special local tax bonds for the school in addition to the big fund-raisers every year. Because the public US school funding just isn't that great, so the local community ends up fixing it - to the point of literally raising much of the money to build a new building etc.
And I realize that this all just sounds completely insane and broken to any sane person, but hey, Americans are so used to it that they seem to think that it's how things should work. The whole school bake sale is a part of the whole American psyche (and I'd be a big proponent of using that funding method for the military too, but somehow it never works that way).
Anyway, if you actually were successful, had people who cared deeply about the local school, and built a good local public school around such a community, such a school district used to be able to accept out-of-district kids, but charge them extra tuition to make up for the fact that they obviously aren't paying the local tax bonds etc.
And now, in the name of fairness, there's a bill (HB 2748) getting pushed through to make that kind of "out-of-district tuition student" not be an option any more.
And I really do understand the fairness question. Why should public schools be able to charge some people, just because they don't live in the right place? It's a public school, isn't it?
I'd be frickin annoyed too about the kids of well-to-do families who get to go to a better school in their nice district. I absolutely get it. I grew up in a country where private schools were for odd people who wanted their kids to be in full-time foreign language immersion classes and learn more than just four languages. Where one of my buddies transferred to my school not because it was more convenient or a better school, but because it was the only Swedish-speaking one that taught Latin, for chissake. And it was all free, and we didn't need to have cookie bake sales.
So I really do understand why people would want to get rid of the special schools and find them odious. I find them odious, and they are a sign of how broken the US school system is.
Except HB 2748 doesn't actually do anything to try to fix the breakage, it just says "you can't charge out-of-district students". It doesn't fix the bad schools, it just makes it harder to be a good school. Suddenly local tax bonds etc don't make much sense, because you can't make non-residents bring in the equivalent funding.
Oh well. I bet nobody wanted to hear that whine, and I guess I should put the "First world problems" meme picture here, but hey, I wanted to get that rant off my chest.10051.30 rating - Read in G+
Toys, toys, toys..
Hey, I've joined all the cool kids in having one of the new Google "Pixel" laptops (aka Chromebooks). And it is a beautiful screen, to the point where I suspect I'll make this my primary laptop. I tend to like my laptops slightly smaller, but I think I can lug around this 1.5kg monster despite feeling fairly strongly that a laptop should weigh 1kg or less.
Because the screen really is that nice.
And I really appreciate not just the pixels, but the form factor. I despise widescreen displays, but I had gotten resigned to them. Until now. 3:2, baby!
I don't understand why people complain about "black bars", when I can't see why it would be any different to have "no pixels at all", which is what the silly widescreen displays do.
I'm still running ChromeOS on this thing, which is good enough for testing out some of my normal work habits (ie reading and writing email), but I expect to install a real distro on this soon enough. For a laptop to be useful to me, I need to not just read and write email, I need to be able to do compiles, have my own git repositories etc..
Side note: I also have the Nexus 10, which also has tons of pixels, but on that one I didn't get the feeling that I could use the pixels very well... Sure, I could run a web browser and make the text smaller, but without a keyboard I can't reasonably write anything, and without the option of installing a full Linux distro I couldn't see it replacing my laptop anyway, so getting a BT keyboard didn't seem all that relevant either.
One thing that the Chromebook Pixel really brings home is how crap normal laptops have become. Why do PC manufacturers even bother any more? No wonder the PC business isn't doing well, when they stick to just churning out more crappy stuff and think that "full HD" (aka 1080p) is somehow the epitome of greatness.9664.87 rating - Read in G+
Hey, I've joined all the cool kids in having one of the new Google "Pixel" laptops (aka Chromebooks). And it is a beautiful screen, to the point where I suspect I'll make this my primary laptop. I tend to like my laptops slightly smaller, but I think I can lug around this 1.5kg monster despite feeling fairly strongly that a laptop should weigh 1kg or less.
Because the screen really is that nice.
And I really appreciate not just the pixels, but the form factor. I despise widescreen displays, but I had gotten resigned to them. Until now. 3:2, baby!
I don't understand why people complain about "black bars", when I can't see why it would be any different to have "no pixels at all", which is what the silly widescreen displays do.
I'm still running ChromeOS on this thing, which is good enough for testing out some of my normal work habits (ie reading and writing email), but I expect to install a real distro on this soon enough. For a laptop to be useful to me, I need to not just read and write email, I need to be able to do compiles, have my own git repositories etc..
Side note: I also have the Nexus 10, which also has tons of pixels, but on that one I didn't get the feeling that I could use the pixels very well... Sure, I could run a web browser and make the text smaller, but without a keyboard I can't reasonably write anything, and without the option of installing a full Linux distro I couldn't see it replacing my laptop anyway, so getting a BT keyboard didn't seem all that relevant either.
One thing that the Chromebook Pixel really brings home is how crap normal laptops have become. Why do PC manufacturers even bother any more? No wonder the PC business isn't doing well, when they stick to just churning out more crappy stuff and think that "full HD" (aka 1080p) is somehow the epitome of greatness.9664.87 rating - Read in G+
So here's the random trick of the day: say you decided to finally upgrade your monitor due to a random discussion on G+, but it turns out that you haven't upgraded your desktop in a while, so you're stuck with single-link DVI.
And the fancy new monitor is a 2560x1440 one that requires dual-link DVI to drive it, so says the documentation in big letters. What do?
Of course, you could just try to find a HDMI cable, since I suspect the machine is still new enough that it happily does HDMI at pixel frequencies high enough that it would all work fine. But you're a lazy git, and you can't find a cable anywhere. And by "anywhere" I mean "lying right there on my desk, not under a pile of paper".
So rather than waste your time with trying to find hardware you may or may not have, just say "hey, I'm not playing games anyway, so why not just drive that thing with a single DVI link at 30Hz instead of the 60Hz it wants. It's going to buffer the data somewhere to see if it needs to stretch it anyway".
And if you are that kind of lazy git, here's what you do:
Step 1: calculate the VESA timing modes for 2560x1440 at 30Hz. You could do this by hand if you were a real man, but we already covered the whole "lazy git" part. So use the "gtf" tool (no, that's not random noise, it means "Generalized Timing Formula", it's part of the VESA standard for how the pixel signal timings are supposed to look like)
Running "gtf 2560 1440 30" spits out the following lovely turd, bringing back bad memories of X11 config files. There's a reason we don't do them any more, but people still remember it, and get occasional flashbacks and PSTD:
# 2560x1440 @ 30.00 Hz (GTF) hsync: 43.95 kHz; pclk: 146.27 MHz
Modeline "2560x1440_30.00" 146.27 2560 2680 2944 3328 1440 1441 1444 1465 -HSync +Vsync
Yeah, G+ will completely corrupt the formatting of those two lines, but for once it doesn't really matter. It looks like noise regardless of formatting. It's not meant for human consumption.
Step 2: tell 'xrandr' about this mode by just copying-and-pasting the numbers that gtf spit out after incanting the magic words "xrandr --newmode 2560x1440". So the command line looks something like
xrandr --newmode 2560x1440 146.27 2560 2680 ...
which will quietly seem to do absolutely nothing, but will have told xrandr that there's a new mode with those particular timings available.
Step 3: tie that mode to the list of modes that the HDMI1 output (which is what is connected to the DVI output, which you would have figured out by just running "xrandr" without any arguments what-so-ever) knows about:
xrandr --addmode HDMI1 2560x1440
Again, absolutely nothing appears to happen, but under the hood this has prepared us to say "yes, I really mean that". Lovely.
Step 4: actually switch to it. This is where the monitor either goes black, spectacularly blows up, or starts showing all its pixels the way it is supposed to:
xrandr --output HDMI1 --mode 2560x1440
Ta-daa! Wasn't that easy? Never mind what the manual says how you should use this monitor, we have the technology to do better than that. Or, in this case, worse than that, but whatever.
Now, obviously any sane person would ask himself why the GTF calculations aren't something that 'xrandr' just knows about, and why this isn't just a single command to say "please switch that output to 2560x1440@30". Why all the extra steps?
The answer to that question? I have absolutely no idea. Graphics driver people are an odd bunch. 9098.69 rating - Read in G+
And the fancy new monitor is a 2560x1440 one that requires dual-link DVI to drive it, so says the documentation in big letters. What do?
Of course, you could just try to find a HDMI cable, since I suspect the machine is still new enough that it happily does HDMI at pixel frequencies high enough that it would all work fine. But you're a lazy git, and you can't find a cable anywhere. And by "anywhere" I mean "lying right there on my desk, not under a pile of paper".
So rather than waste your time with trying to find hardware you may or may not have, just say "hey, I'm not playing games anyway, so why not just drive that thing with a single DVI link at 30Hz instead of the 60Hz it wants. It's going to buffer the data somewhere to see if it needs to stretch it anyway".
And if you are that kind of lazy git, here's what you do:
Step 1: calculate the VESA timing modes for 2560x1440 at 30Hz. You could do this by hand if you were a real man, but we already covered the whole "lazy git" part. So use the "gtf" tool (no, that's not random noise, it means "Generalized Timing Formula", it's part of the VESA standard for how the pixel signal timings are supposed to look like)
Running "gtf 2560 1440 30" spits out the following lovely turd, bringing back bad memories of X11 config files. There's a reason we don't do them any more, but people still remember it, and get occasional flashbacks and PSTD:
# 2560x1440 @ 30.00 Hz (GTF) hsync: 43.95 kHz; pclk: 146.27 MHz
Modeline "2560x1440_30.00" 146.27 2560 2680 2944 3328 1440 1441 1444 1465 -HSync +Vsync
Yeah, G+ will completely corrupt the formatting of those two lines, but for once it doesn't really matter. It looks like noise regardless of formatting. It's not meant for human consumption.
Step 2: tell 'xrandr' about this mode by just copying-and-pasting the numbers that gtf spit out after incanting the magic words "xrandr --newmode 2560x1440". So the command line looks something like
xrandr --newmode 2560x1440 146.27 2560 2680 ...
which will quietly seem to do absolutely nothing, but will have told xrandr that there's a new mode with those particular timings available.
Step 3: tie that mode to the list of modes that the HDMI1 output (which is what is connected to the DVI output, which you would have figured out by just running "xrandr" without any arguments what-so-ever) knows about:
xrandr --addmode HDMI1 2560x1440
Again, absolutely nothing appears to happen, but under the hood this has prepared us to say "yes, I really mean that". Lovely.
Step 4: actually switch to it. This is where the monitor either goes black, spectacularly blows up, or starts showing all its pixels the way it is supposed to:
xrandr --output HDMI1 --mode 2560x1440
Ta-daa! Wasn't that easy? Never mind what the manual says how you should use this monitor, we have the technology to do better than that. Or, in this case, worse than that, but whatever.
Now, obviously any sane person would ask himself why the GTF calculations aren't something that 'xrandr' just knows about, and why this isn't just a single command to say "please switch that output to 2560x1440@30". Why all the extra steps?
The answer to that question? I have absolutely no idea. Graphics driver people are an odd bunch. 9098.69 rating - Read in G+
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So with even a $399 tablet doing 2560x1600 pixel displays, can we please just make that the new standard laptop resolution? Even at 11"? Please. Stop with the "retina" crap, just call it "reasonable resolution". The fact that laptops stagnated ten years ago (and even regressed, in many cases) at around half that in both directions is just sad.
I still don't want big luggable laptops, but that 1366x768 is so last century. Christ, soon even the cellphones will start laughing at the ridiculously bad laptop displays.
And the next technology journalist that asks you whether you want fonts that small, I'll just hunt down and give an atomic wedgie. I want pixels for high-quality fonts, and yes, I want my fonts small, but "high resolution" really doesn't equate "small fonts" like some less-than-gifted tech pundits seem to constantly think.
In fact, if you have bad vision, sharp good high-quality fonts will help. #noexcuses14603 pluses - Read in G+
I still don't want big luggable laptops, but that 1366x768 is so last century. Christ, soon even the cellphones will start laughing at the ridiculously bad laptop displays.
And the next technology journalist that asks you whether you want fonts that small, I'll just hunt down and give an atomic wedgie. I want pixels for high-quality fonts, and yes, I want my fonts small, but "high resolution" really doesn't equate "small fonts" like some less-than-gifted tech pundits seem to constantly think.
In fact, if you have bad vision, sharp good high-quality fonts will help. #noexcuses14603 pluses - Read in G+
If I can get 4000 upvotes for a rant on security people, just imagine what a picture of a cat could do...
Mwahahaahaa... I'll get millions of +1's! Isn't that how these things work?13217 pluses - Read in G+
3.0 pushed out.10868 pluses - Read in G+
Venting.
I don't think I can talk about "security" people without cursing, so you might want to avert your eyes now.
I gave OpenSUSE a try, because it worked so well at install-time on the Macbook Air, but I have to say, I've had enough. There is no way in hell I can honestly suggest that to anybody else any more.
I first spent weeks arguing on a bugzilla that the security policy of requiring the root password for changing the timezone and adding a new wireless network was moronic and wrong.
I think the wireless network thing finally did get fixed, but the timezone never did - it still asks for the admin password.
And today Daniela calls me from school, because she can't add the school printer without the admin password.
Whoever moron thought that it's "good security" to require the root password for everyday things like this is mentally diseased.
So here's a plea: if you have anything to do with security in a distro, and think that my kids (replace "my kids" with "sales people on the road" if you think your main customers are businesses) need to have the root password to access some wireless network, or to be able to print out a paper, or to change the date-and-time settings, please just kill yourself now. The world will be a better place.
.. and now I need to find a new distro that actually works on the Macbook Air.6479 pluses - Read in G+
I don't think I can talk about "security" people without cursing, so you might want to avert your eyes now.
I gave OpenSUSE a try, because it worked so well at install-time on the Macbook Air, but I have to say, I've had enough. There is no way in hell I can honestly suggest that to anybody else any more.
I first spent weeks arguing on a bugzilla that the security policy of requiring the root password for changing the timezone and adding a new wireless network was moronic and wrong.
I think the wireless network thing finally did get fixed, but the timezone never did - it still asks for the admin password.
And today Daniela calls me from school, because she can't add the school printer without the admin password.
Whoever moron thought that it's "good security" to require the root password for everyday things like this is mentally diseased.
So here's a plea: if you have anything to do with security in a distro, and think that my kids (replace "my kids" with "sales people on the road" if you think your main customers are businesses) need to have the root password to access some wireless network, or to be able to print out a paper, or to change the date-and-time settings, please just kill yourself now. The world will be a better place.
.. and now I need to find a new distro that actually works on the Macbook Air.6479 pluses - Read in G+
Prediction: instead of Oracle coming out and admitting they were morons about their idiotic suit against Android, they'll come out posturing and talk about how they'll be vindicated, and pay lawyers to take it to the next level of idiocy.
Sometimes I really wish I wasn't always right. It's a curse, I tell you.5966 pluses - Read in G+
Sometimes I really wish I wasn't always right. It's a curse, I tell you.5966 pluses - Read in G+
My most shared posts
3.0 pushed out.
3275 shares - Read in G+
3275 shares - Read in G+
So with even a $399 tablet doing 2560x1600 pixel displays, can we please just make that the new standard laptop resolution? Even at 11"? Please. Stop with the "retina" crap, just call it "reasonable resolution". The fact that laptops stagnated ten years ago (and even regressed, in many cases) at around half that in both directions is just sad.
I still don't want big luggable laptops, but that 1366x768 is so last century. Christ, soon even the cellphones will start laughing at the ridiculously bad laptop displays.
And the next technology journalist that asks you whether you want fonts that small, I'll just hunt down and give an atomic wedgie. I want pixels for high-quality fonts, and yes, I want my fonts small, but "high resolution" really doesn't equate "small fonts" like some less-than-gifted tech pundits seem to constantly think.
In fact, if you have bad vision, sharp good high-quality fonts will help. #noexcuses
2680 shares - Read in G+
I still don't want big luggable laptops, but that 1366x768 is so last century. Christ, soon even the cellphones will start laughing at the ridiculously bad laptop displays.
And the next technology journalist that asks you whether you want fonts that small, I'll just hunt down and give an atomic wedgie. I want pixels for high-quality fonts, and yes, I want my fonts small, but "high resolution" really doesn't equate "small fonts" like some less-than-gifted tech pundits seem to constantly think.
In fact, if you have bad vision, sharp good high-quality fonts will help. #noexcuses
2680 shares - Read in G+
Venting.
I don't think I can talk about "security" people without cursing, so you might want to avert your eyes now.
I gave OpenSUSE a try, because it worked so well at install-time on the Macbook Air, but I have to say, I've had enough. There is no way in hell I can honestly suggest that to anybody else any more.
I first spent weeks arguing on a bugzilla that the security policy of requiring the root password for changing the timezone and adding a new wireless network was moronic and wrong.
I think the wireless network thing finally did get fixed, but the timezone never did - it still asks for the admin password.
And today Daniela calls me from school, because she can't add the school printer without the admin password.
Whoever moron thought that it's "good security" to require the root password for everyday things like this is mentally diseased.
So here's a plea: if you have anything to do with security in a distro, and think that my kids (replace "my kids" with "sales people on the road" if you think your main customers are businesses) need to have the root password to access some wireless network, or to be able to print out a paper, or to change the date-and-time settings, please just kill yourself now. The world will be a better place.
.. and now I need to find a new distro that actually works on the Macbook Air.
2303 shares - Read in G+
I don't think I can talk about "security" people without cursing, so you might want to avert your eyes now.
I gave OpenSUSE a try, because it worked so well at install-time on the Macbook Air, but I have to say, I've had enough. There is no way in hell I can honestly suggest that to anybody else any more.
I first spent weeks arguing on a bugzilla that the security policy of requiring the root password for changing the timezone and adding a new wireless network was moronic and wrong.
I think the wireless network thing finally did get fixed, but the timezone never did - it still asks for the admin password.
And today Daniela calls me from school, because she can't add the school printer without the admin password.
Whoever moron thought that it's "good security" to require the root password for everyday things like this is mentally diseased.
So here's a plea: if you have anything to do with security in a distro, and think that my kids (replace "my kids" with "sales people on the road" if you think your main customers are businesses) need to have the root password to access some wireless network, or to be able to print out a paper, or to change the date-and-time settings, please just kill yourself now. The world will be a better place.
.. and now I need to find a new distro that actually works on the Macbook Air.
2303 shares - Read in G+
I haven't bothered to mention the whole sad Aaron Swartz saga, because it's been covered elsewhere.
But having the involved US attorney then basically lie about it all in a very public statement is something that I find particularly offensive. Compare these two statements - one from July 2011, one from yesterday, and tell me Carmen Ortiz isn't lying..
Yesterday (as reported by the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere):
"At no time did this office ever seek – or ever tell Mr. Swartz’s attorneys that it intended to seek – maximum penalties under the law."
And July 2011 (as posted by justice.gov itself):
"SWARTZ faces up to 35 years in prison, to be followed by three years of supervised release, restitution, forfeiture and a fine of up to $1 million"
Maybe that official and very public PR thing wasn't "telling Mr. Swartz’s attorneys", right? Because in private, Ms Ortiz was probably talking about how she wanted to pay Aaron for his services, and just hug him. Right? Anybody?
Ms Ortiz, just admit you were an ass-hat, and apologize. Instead of this kind of crap. Weasel-wording and misleading about your actions is not making your office look any better.
Here are the sources, so that people can compare them for themselves.
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2013/01/17/us-attorney-statement-on-the-prosecution-of-aaron-swartz/
http://www.justice.gov/usao/ma/news/2011/July/SwartzAaronPR.html
(Post edited: it's 2013 now, so "July 2011" isn't "last July". Oops.)
1468 shares - Read in G+
But having the involved US attorney then basically lie about it all in a very public statement is something that I find particularly offensive. Compare these two statements - one from July 2011, one from yesterday, and tell me Carmen Ortiz isn't lying..
Yesterday (as reported by the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere):
"At no time did this office ever seek – or ever tell Mr. Swartz’s attorneys that it intended to seek – maximum penalties under the law."
And July 2011 (as posted by justice.gov itself):
"SWARTZ faces up to 35 years in prison, to be followed by three years of supervised release, restitution, forfeiture and a fine of up to $1 million"
Maybe that official and very public PR thing wasn't "telling Mr. Swartz’s attorneys", right? Because in private, Ms Ortiz was probably talking about how she wanted to pay Aaron for his services, and just hug him. Right? Anybody?
Ms Ortiz, just admit you were an ass-hat, and apologize. Instead of this kind of crap. Weasel-wording and misleading about your actions is not making your office look any better.
Here are the sources, so that people can compare them for themselves.
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2013/01/17/us-attorney-statement-on-the-prosecution-of-aaron-swartz/
http://www.justice.gov/usao/ma/news/2011/July/SwartzAaronPR.html
(Post edited: it's 2013 now, so "July 2011" isn't "last July". Oops.)
1468 shares - Read in G+
Prediction: instead of Oracle coming out and admitting they were morons about their idiotic suit against Android, they'll come out posturing and talk about how they'll be vindicated, and pay lawyers to take it to the next level of idiocy.
Sometimes I really wish I wasn't always right. It's a curse, I tell you.
1216 shares - Read in G+
Sometimes I really wish I wasn't always right. It's a curse, I tell you.
1216 shares - Read in G+
My most commented posts
Pet peeve of the day: Oregon is trying to make it harder to have exceptional public schools. Which kind of sucks.
Background for non-Americans: the US school system is a disaster, with very uneven quality. You have some good school districts, and you have some really bad ones, and it's all just pretty crazy. Very different from back in Finland, where education isn't just good, it's fairly reliably good. You don't have to worry too much about which school you go to, because while there are certainly differences, they simply don't tend to be all that marked.
In the US, if you care about education, you end up having to make sure you live in a good school district. Or you do the whole private school thing, or try to make sure you can transfer, or whatever. The one thing you do not do is to just take it for granted. You work at it.
I'm not a huge believer in private schools, and I actually wanted my kids to be able to walk to their friends houses, so we made sure to move to one of the better districts in Oregon.
Now, living in a good school district means that you end up paying a lot more for housing, so it's not actually necessarily really any cheaper than sending your kids to a private school. But you do also end up being in a community where people care about education, so it's not just the school: it's the whole environment around you and your kids.
But it's unquestionably unfair, and it unquestionably means that people who can afford it get a better education in the US. Despite the whole "public" part of the US public school system, it's like so much else in the US: you don't want to be poor. The whole "American Dream" is pretty much a fairy tale.
So the Oregon legislature is trying to fix the unfairness. Which I very much understand, because I really do detest the whole US school system - it was always one of the things that we talked about being a possible reason to move back to Finland when the kids needed to go to school. We ended up learning how the US system works, and made it work for us, but that doesn't mean that I have to like the situation. Because I've seen better.
So why is trying to make things fairer a peeve?
The way the Oregon legislature is trying to fix things isn't by making the average school better, it's by trying to make it hard to have the (fairly few) bright spots around.
In particular, let's say that you do have a good school district, where people not only end up paying for it in the property taxes (which is what largely funds the school), but also by having special local tax bonds for the school in addition to the big fund-raisers every year. Because the public US school funding just isn't that great, so the local community ends up fixing it - to the point of literally raising much of the money to build a new building etc.
And I realize that this all just sounds completely insane and broken to any sane person, but hey, Americans are so used to it that they seem to think that it's how things should work. The whole school bake sale is a part of the whole American psyche (and I'd be a big proponent of using that funding method for the military too, but somehow it never works that way).
Anyway, if you actually were successful, had people who cared deeply about the local school, and built a good local public school around such a community, such a school district used to be able to accept out-of-district kids, but charge them extra tuition to make up for the fact that they obviously aren't paying the local tax bonds etc.
And now, in the name of fairness, there's a bill (HB 2748) getting pushed through to make that kind of "out-of-district tuition student" not be an option any more.
And I really do understand the fairness question. Why should public schools be able to charge some people, just because they don't live in the right place? It's a public school, isn't it?
I'd be frickin annoyed too about the kids of well-to-do families who get to go to a better school in their nice district. I absolutely get it. I grew up in a country where private schools were for odd people who wanted their kids to be in full-time foreign language immersion classes and learn more than just four languages. Where one of my buddies transferred to my school not because it was more convenient or a better school, but because it was the only Swedish-speaking one that taught Latin, for chissake. And it was all free, and we didn't need to have cookie bake sales.
So I really do understand why people would want to get rid of the special schools and find them odious. I find them odious, and they are a sign of how broken the US school system is.
Except HB 2748 doesn't actually do anything to try to fix the breakage, it just says "you can't charge out-of-district students". It doesn't fix the bad schools, it just makes it harder to be a good school. Suddenly local tax bonds etc don't make much sense, because you can't make non-residents bring in the equivalent funding.
Oh well. I bet nobody wanted to hear that whine, and I guess I should put the "First world problems" meme picture here, but hey, I wanted to get that rant off my chest.500 comments - Read in G+
Background for non-Americans: the US school system is a disaster, with very uneven quality. You have some good school districts, and you have some really bad ones, and it's all just pretty crazy. Very different from back in Finland, where education isn't just good, it's fairly reliably good. You don't have to worry too much about which school you go to, because while there are certainly differences, they simply don't tend to be all that marked.
In the US, if you care about education, you end up having to make sure you live in a good school district. Or you do the whole private school thing, or try to make sure you can transfer, or whatever. The one thing you do not do is to just take it for granted. You work at it.
I'm not a huge believer in private schools, and I actually wanted my kids to be able to walk to their friends houses, so we made sure to move to one of the better districts in Oregon.
Now, living in a good school district means that you end up paying a lot more for housing, so it's not actually necessarily really any cheaper than sending your kids to a private school. But you do also end up being in a community where people care about education, so it's not just the school: it's the whole environment around you and your kids.
But it's unquestionably unfair, and it unquestionably means that people who can afford it get a better education in the US. Despite the whole "public" part of the US public school system, it's like so much else in the US: you don't want to be poor. The whole "American Dream" is pretty much a fairy tale.
So the Oregon legislature is trying to fix the unfairness. Which I very much understand, because I really do detest the whole US school system - it was always one of the things that we talked about being a possible reason to move back to Finland when the kids needed to go to school. We ended up learning how the US system works, and made it work for us, but that doesn't mean that I have to like the situation. Because I've seen better.
So why is trying to make things fairer a peeve?
The way the Oregon legislature is trying to fix things isn't by making the average school better, it's by trying to make it hard to have the (fairly few) bright spots around.
In particular, let's say that you do have a good school district, where people not only end up paying for it in the property taxes (which is what largely funds the school), but also by having special local tax bonds for the school in addition to the big fund-raisers every year. Because the public US school funding just isn't that great, so the local community ends up fixing it - to the point of literally raising much of the money to build a new building etc.
And I realize that this all just sounds completely insane and broken to any sane person, but hey, Americans are so used to it that they seem to think that it's how things should work. The whole school bake sale is a part of the whole American psyche (and I'd be a big proponent of using that funding method for the military too, but somehow it never works that way).
Anyway, if you actually were successful, had people who cared deeply about the local school, and built a good local public school around such a community, such a school district used to be able to accept out-of-district kids, but charge them extra tuition to make up for the fact that they obviously aren't paying the local tax bonds etc.
And now, in the name of fairness, there's a bill (HB 2748) getting pushed through to make that kind of "out-of-district tuition student" not be an option any more.
And I really do understand the fairness question. Why should public schools be able to charge some people, just because they don't live in the right place? It's a public school, isn't it?
I'd be frickin annoyed too about the kids of well-to-do families who get to go to a better school in their nice district. I absolutely get it. I grew up in a country where private schools were for odd people who wanted their kids to be in full-time foreign language immersion classes and learn more than just four languages. Where one of my buddies transferred to my school not because it was more convenient or a better school, but because it was the only Swedish-speaking one that taught Latin, for chissake. And it was all free, and we didn't need to have cookie bake sales.
So I really do understand why people would want to get rid of the special schools and find them odious. I find them odious, and they are a sign of how broken the US school system is.
Except HB 2748 doesn't actually do anything to try to fix the breakage, it just says "you can't charge out-of-district students". It doesn't fix the bad schools, it just makes it harder to be a good school. Suddenly local tax bonds etc don't make much sense, because you can't make non-residents bring in the equivalent funding.
Oh well. I bet nobody wanted to hear that whine, and I guess I should put the "First world problems" meme picture here, but hey, I wanted to get that rant off my chest.500 comments - Read in G+
This is a really interesting Reddit AMA: much more so than the Obama one that got so much press, although they are obviously both related to the upcoming US elections.
Mormonism as a religion is a fairly close second to the Scientologists in the race to "Batshit Crazy", and quite frankly, it's not brought up enough in politics because of idiotic politically correct fears of religious criticism.
What is interesting is also that the whole "closet atheist" like in the AMA (or at least "doubting") seems to not be unusual among Mormons. I've met people like thism who basically cannot admit even to their family that they aren't believers, but are then able to talk to me just because they know I'm atheist.
So despite that apparent widespread acknowledgement that there's some serious crazy stuff there based on the rantings on a convicted con-man, the social bonds seem to hold it together fairly closely.
Now, any religion tends to be more about the social bonds than the actual belief, but I think Morminism shows that more than most just due to how obviously ridiculous some of it is, and because the history is in fairly well-documented historical times.
Older religions have had more time to adjust their crazy (or bring it mainline, so that it isn't quite as obviously ridiculous, because you don't think about it)
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/z6ufq/iama_hardcore_mormon_who_will_tell_you_what_we/496 comments - Read in G+
Mormonism as a religion is a fairly close second to the Scientologists in the race to "Batshit Crazy", and quite frankly, it's not brought up enough in politics because of idiotic politically correct fears of religious criticism.
What is interesting is also that the whole "closet atheist" like in the AMA (or at least "doubting") seems to not be unusual among Mormons. I've met people like thism who basically cannot admit even to their family that they aren't believers, but are then able to talk to me just because they know I'm atheist.
So despite that apparent widespread acknowledgement that there's some serious crazy stuff there based on the rantings on a convicted con-man, the social bonds seem to hold it together fairly closely.
Now, any religion tends to be more about the social bonds than the actual belief, but I think Morminism shows that more than most just due to how obviously ridiculous some of it is, and because the history is in fairly well-documented historical times.
Older religions have had more time to adjust their crazy (or bring it mainline, so that it isn't quite as obviously ridiculous, because you don't think about it)
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/z6ufq/iama_hardcore_mormon_who_will_tell_you_what_we/496 comments - Read in G+
Any gnome3 knowledgeable people out here?
I broke down, and upgraded my old aging Fedora install on my desktop. Simply because my old F14 comes with ancient X versions that don't contain all the fixes to make intel 3D really work well. And yes, things really do work better on the graphical side.
But with F17 comes gnome3. And I knew I'd have trouble, but also knew that most of the worst crap could be fixed with extensions, and I'd used 3.4 on my laptop enough to know it should be all somewhat usable.
But christ, it's a "one step forward, one step back" kind of thing. Change the font sizes? No can do - until you install the tweak tool, because the standard settings panel still doesn't do something as fundamental as that. Ok, I knew it used to be broken, I knew the work-around, but it's still broken?
So I go to extensions.gnome.org, and install the panel favorites extension that not only obviates the need for the stupid dual "first go to activities, then go to favorites", but also fixes it so that I can get multiple terminals without doing the whole "three times widdershins and left-click" dance. That gets things usable.
And then I want auto-hide. But now extensions.gnome.org says "You do not appear to have an up to date version of GNOME3". Oh? So 3.4.1 (current F17 as of today) isn't up-to-date enough? Oh wait, no, it's actually just that the chrome plugin seems broken. Fire up firefox instead - now it works. And I can get panel settings and enable auto-hide so that I don't need to look at that butt-ugly thing that has clearly been designed by some goth teenager that thinks that black is cool.
But where did the "Lock Screen" button go? I can still find +Sriram Ramkrishna's extension by searching for it, but it's grayed out - and apparently for a reason. It doesn't seem to work any more.
And how do I add --enable-webgl --ignore-gpu-blacklist to the google chrome favorites entry? I'm pretty sure I was able to edit the startup details for the favorites in some version of gnome3 with some random installed extensions (probably the frippery set), but it's impossible to find now.
I have to say, I used to think that the "extensions.gnome.org" approach to fixing the deficiencies in gnome3 was really cool. It made me go "Ahh, now I can fix the problems I had".
But it turns out to be a major pain, when it basically ends up as a really magical way to customize your desktop, which breaks randomly and has no sane way to do across machines. And the extensions seem to randomly break when you update the system, so they don't work as well as they would if they just came with the base system.
End result: extensions.gnome.org may be a really cool idea, but it seems to have some serious usability problems in practice. And the whole gnome3 approach of "by default we don't give you even the most basic tools to fix things, but you can hack around things with unofficial extensions" seems to be a total UX failure.
Who do I need to fuck to get standard font size and panel options, instead of having to wade through this kind of "unsupported and random extensions that look ugly as hell and break randomly" crap? Maybe if I told people I was going blind, and claimed the font size was an "accessibility" feature, people would care? Never mind that I want to make the fonts smaller.496 comments - Read in G+
I broke down, and upgraded my old aging Fedora install on my desktop. Simply because my old F14 comes with ancient X versions that don't contain all the fixes to make intel 3D really work well. And yes, things really do work better on the graphical side.
But with F17 comes gnome3. And I knew I'd have trouble, but also knew that most of the worst crap could be fixed with extensions, and I'd used 3.4 on my laptop enough to know it should be all somewhat usable.
But christ, it's a "one step forward, one step back" kind of thing. Change the font sizes? No can do - until you install the tweak tool, because the standard settings panel still doesn't do something as fundamental as that. Ok, I knew it used to be broken, I knew the work-around, but it's still broken?
So I go to extensions.gnome.org, and install the panel favorites extension that not only obviates the need for the stupid dual "first go to activities, then go to favorites", but also fixes it so that I can get multiple terminals without doing the whole "three times widdershins and left-click" dance. That gets things usable.
And then I want auto-hide. But now extensions.gnome.org says "You do not appear to have an up to date version of GNOME3". Oh? So 3.4.1 (current F17 as of today) isn't up-to-date enough? Oh wait, no, it's actually just that the chrome plugin seems broken. Fire up firefox instead - now it works. And I can get panel settings and enable auto-hide so that I don't need to look at that butt-ugly thing that has clearly been designed by some goth teenager that thinks that black is cool.
But where did the "Lock Screen" button go? I can still find +Sriram Ramkrishna's extension by searching for it, but it's grayed out - and apparently for a reason. It doesn't seem to work any more.
And how do I add --enable-webgl --ignore-gpu-blacklist to the google chrome favorites entry? I'm pretty sure I was able to edit the startup details for the favorites in some version of gnome3 with some random installed extensions (probably the frippery set), but it's impossible to find now.
I have to say, I used to think that the "extensions.gnome.org" approach to fixing the deficiencies in gnome3 was really cool. It made me go "Ahh, now I can fix the problems I had".
But it turns out to be a major pain, when it basically ends up as a really magical way to customize your desktop, which breaks randomly and has no sane way to do across machines. And the extensions seem to randomly break when you update the system, so they don't work as well as they would if they just came with the base system.
End result: extensions.gnome.org may be a really cool idea, but it seems to have some serious usability problems in practice. And the whole gnome3 approach of "by default we don't give you even the most basic tools to fix things, but you can hack around things with unofficial extensions" seems to be a total UX failure.
Who do I need to fuck to get standard font size and panel options, instead of having to wade through this kind of "unsupported and random extensions that look ugly as hell and break randomly" crap? Maybe if I told people I was going blind, and claimed the font size was an "accessibility" feature, people would care? Never mind that I want to make the fonts smaller.496 comments - Read in G+
Venting.
I don't think I can talk about "security" people without cursing, so you might want to avert your eyes now.
I gave OpenSUSE a try, because it worked so well at install-time on the Macbook Air, but I have to say, I've had enough. There is no way in hell I can honestly suggest that to anybody else any more.
I first spent weeks arguing on a bugzilla that the security policy of requiring the root password for changing the timezone and adding a new wireless network was moronic and wrong.
I think the wireless network thing finally did get fixed, but the timezone never did - it still asks for the admin password.
And today Daniela calls me from school, because she can't add the school printer without the admin password.
Whoever moron thought that it's "good security" to require the root password for everyday things like this is mentally diseased.
So here's a plea: if you have anything to do with security in a distro, and think that my kids (replace "my kids" with "sales people on the road" if you think your main customers are businesses) need to have the root password to access some wireless network, or to be able to print out a paper, or to change the date-and-time settings, please just kill yourself now. The world will be a better place.
.. and now I need to find a new distro that actually works on the Macbook Air.495 comments - Read in G+
I don't think I can talk about "security" people without cursing, so you might want to avert your eyes now.
I gave OpenSUSE a try, because it worked so well at install-time on the Macbook Air, but I have to say, I've had enough. There is no way in hell I can honestly suggest that to anybody else any more.
I first spent weeks arguing on a bugzilla that the security policy of requiring the root password for changing the timezone and adding a new wireless network was moronic and wrong.
I think the wireless network thing finally did get fixed, but the timezone never did - it still asks for the admin password.
And today Daniela calls me from school, because she can't add the school printer without the admin password.
Whoever moron thought that it's "good security" to require the root password for everyday things like this is mentally diseased.
So here's a plea: if you have anything to do with security in a distro, and think that my kids (replace "my kids" with "sales people on the road" if you think your main customers are businesses) need to have the root password to access some wireless network, or to be able to print out a paper, or to change the date-and-time settings, please just kill yourself now. The world will be a better place.
.. and now I need to find a new distro that actually works on the Macbook Air.495 comments - Read in G+
I'm trying out KDE after a long absense.
It still looks a bit too cartoony, and the default widget/plasmoid behavior with mouse-over pretty much immediately showing the controls for it annoys the hell of me. You can lock the widgets down and they calm down and act normal, but it's some really odd and distracting default behavior.
But ah, the ability to configure things. And I have wobbly windows again.
I do understand why some gnome people think that KDE may have gone a bit overboard on the configuration ability, though. Because some of the "you can configure everything" things are just odd.
Like being able to rotate those desktop widgets any which way you want. "I wonder what that odd rotation thing on the widget control bar does? Whee - trippy".
As a result, right now my terminal and web browser buttons look like a drunken fratboy has been messing with my desktop. I suspect I'll turn them back to their boring upright position (because that's how I roll - boring), but for now I'm mildly amused by the sheer whimsicality of it all.494 comments - Read in G+
It still looks a bit too cartoony, and the default widget/plasmoid behavior with mouse-over pretty much immediately showing the controls for it annoys the hell of me. You can lock the widgets down and they calm down and act normal, but it's some really odd and distracting default behavior.
But ah, the ability to configure things. And I have wobbly windows again.
I do understand why some gnome people think that KDE may have gone a bit overboard on the configuration ability, though. Because some of the "you can configure everything" things are just odd.
Like being able to rotate those desktop widgets any which way you want. "I wonder what that odd rotation thing on the widget control bar does? Whee - trippy".
As a result, right now my terminal and web browser buttons look like a drunken fratboy has been messing with my desktop. I suspect I'll turn them back to their boring upright position (because that's how I roll - boring), but for now I'm mildly amused by the sheer whimsicality of it all.494 comments - Read in G+